Hard to Love

I’ve been thinking about something lately and want to post about it but find it difficult.  I don’t want to sound like I’m whining – because I’m not.  But I’m puzzling something out and it involves talking about things that still, years later, are sad to me.

Several years ago I had a rough several months friend-wise.  I lost a couple of my dearest friends all at once, though for very different reasons.  I had made a promise to myself several years before even that – that when someone chose to give up on me without a fight, that I in turn would not fight to keep them.  I stuck with that promise then and there are days that I deeply regret it.

But lately I have been thinking that there have been, perhaps, more subtle repercussions to those events then just the periodic twinge of regret I was familiar with.   Building new friendships has been hard and I have found myself reluctant to fully commit to new people.  Often I feel myself emotionally recoiling from that vulnerability as I would physically from an open flame.  When I get the slightest sense that I may have allowed someone to become more important to me than I am to them, I immediately withdraw and work to pull apart those connections in my heart.

What I have been realizing is that… well… this sounds ridiculous but I think I have made myself even harder to love.  I have no delusions about being easy to love – I am moody often bordering on morbid, a natural recluse with too much interest in books and a somewhat prudish sense of humor.  I can be demanding of others and yet personally lazy and there are days I think Colin must have the patience of a saint not to throw his hands up and walk away.

Add on top of that an inability to trust my own value to others and you have what I can completely understand as a truly obnoxious combo.

And really, that is what is a new realization to me – that underneath the regret and the disappointment over the broken relationships and sad memories is a deep current of distrust.  If I was so easy to discard by people who had known me for years… how can I hope to build up anything new that won’t prove to be just as flimsy?

But then – when asking myself that question, I realized the hypocrisy in it, because those same people could feel the same way about my actions – because I let them go.  When given the opportunity to defend myself and fight for my friends, I gave in to pride, raised my chin and said ‘if we were truly friends, I wouldn’t have to prove myself to you.’

But isn’t that what friendship is, in the end?  Proving yourself?  Showing another person that you deserve that piece of themselves they chose to entrust to you?  And that you’ll take the stripes that inevitably come when people aren’t perfect and they wound you, but as a friend, you love them through it?  If that is a test of friendship, then I am the one who failed it.

And if I am harder to love as a result, it is my own fault.

I can't help but feel frustrated with myself for taking so long to see this.  I have long understood what pulling inward and pushing away has cost me - but I called it self-preservation and accepted it as a result of the pain inflicted upon me by someone else.  Never once did I stop to question whether I might have caused it myself.

All of this winds around and back into something I have been contemplating for months.  Forgiveness.  I desperately want to be better at forgiveness.  In speaking with a friend last fall just a few short weeks after she lost her father unexpectedly, I realized again how short life is and how quickly it can slip through our fingers.  And bitterness, anger, frustration, resentment - are they really how I want to be remembered?

But forgiveness is hard when you cannot see what you yourself need to be forgiven for.  Does that make sense?  Until I can see myself as someone who NEEDS to be forgiven, I can not hope to be able to truly forgive someone else.  When I focus only on that I stand in a position to forgive someone else, I think that I am better.  That I have the ability to choose to forgive.  But I need to break myself down to understand that I stand where they stand - that I also need to be forgiven and someone else stands in that same position relative to me - the position to choose.

If I were to come to the end of my journey today, and would have to trust someone else to tell Grady someday who I was and what I was like - I would want them to say good things.  I would want them to focus on whatever good there is in me and leave out all the rest.  But I have to inspire that - I have to be the good things I would want him to hear, have to BE that with all that I am, with all that I do.  And that begins, I think, with understanding that I am not those things.  That I am, in fact, the opposite of a lot of those things.

And I ask you to forgive me.

And I promise to try to deserve it.

Be present or be absent. But not both.

Most of you know that last week I was at a professional conference that advertised itself as being all about leadership.  But in reality, I learned a whole host of things that I think get back to the core of an individual on a very personal level and aren’t about what we generally think of when we think about leadership.

Typically when we think of leadership, we’re thinking about qualities that have an impact external to a person – as in, leading others.  But this conference started in a very different place.  It started with leading yourself.

One of the main teachers had an excellent point that really hit home with me – “how can you lead someone else, if you can’t even lead yourself?”  Now to be honest, I’m not sure I would’ve ever really thought about it in just those terms but it’s an excellent question.  And it starts with some very simple lessons that you have to teach YOURSELF if you ever hope to get anywhere with anyone else.

This one in particular was one that I liked because I think it speaks to some common struggles today – one of which is… smartphones.  Most of us have one.  And most of us are ADDICTED to the dang thing. We’ve all seen them – the families out at restaurants, each person completely ignoring the others, bent instead over their own little handheld personal computers.  Now truly be honest – how many of you have been that person?  Lost in your own little high-tech world, and completely lost TO the family sitting around you?

I’ve been working really hard not to be that person lately but even this weekend, after it had been brought to my attention last week, I still found myself doing it!  Ugh.  It’s so difficult to fight something that’s mindless – because you don’t even realize you’re doing it until after it’s already done.

So I’ve decided to make some changes that will, hopefully, change my relationship with this stupid electronic tether (which sits in front of me  even now as a type on a much bigger computer – for reasons I myself don’t even understand) and lessen its hold on me.  It’s time that I reclaim my mental self – and part of doing that is to clip the apron strings that bind me to my phone.

In search of this reclamation, I have committed to the following:

1)      I removed my work email from my phone.  Let’s face it – I’m not that important.  And if someone does have something that needs more immediate attention, they can call me.  It’ll be faster than sending me an email anyway.

2)      When I got home with Grady this evening, I left my phone in the other room while we ate and played and goofed off.  I had the ringer up high so if someone called or texted, I would hear that but out-of-sight, out-of-mind – and it worked like a charm.

3)      Not phone related but I’m also going back to no real-time TV.  I have three shows right now that I want to watch in new episodes but Grady doesn’t like it when they’re on because it’s pretty obvious my attention is directed not-at-Grady.  And is any show really worth making my son feel like I'm not paying attention to him?  (Another good observation from teach last week: you can hurt those you love with where you choose to direct, or not, your attention.)

I’m sure it’ll be a continuing battle because the difficult thing about changing a mindless habit is that we’re not aware we’re doing it –which makes it hard to stop. But I think the first two of these things will drastically improve my phone dependency. The first because I’ll just have less to look at when I do look at my phone and the second because if it’s not in front of me, I can’t mindlessly pick it up.  I can't help but think - doesn't my family, don't I deserve that?  Deserve to disconnect and focus and just truly BE in a moment, instead of constantly worrying about what's going on outside of that moment?

I’ll let you know how it goes.  But in the meantime – do me a favor and try to implement this in your own life to whatever extent you need to.  I think that our constantly-connected society these days is always pulling us in a hundred directions at once – which, if you think about it, makes it hard to truly be anywhere.   So pull yourself back out of the craziness and just BE wherever you are.  With your family, with friends or even just by yourself.  Be present or be absent, but let's stop buying into the hype that we have to try to be both.

A generation in pursuit of YES.

I was recently encouraged to blog about this subject but hesitated.  I hate jumping into subjects that seem to encourage angry negativity and this could be one of them.  But… well, here it goes.

There’s a lot of complaining that goes on in the business world these days about what’s being called the millennial generation.  Words like entitled, demanding and the oh-so-popular ‘lack of commitment’ are consistently used to label our latest round of recruits – at my own firm and elsewhere.  Sometimes it feels a little bit like there’s a generational tug-of-war going on and the typical responses of upper management are starting to turn the term ‘professional’ into a bad word.

Now I myself am, apparently, in this generation and to be quite honest – I’m pretty darn proud of that.  I’ve often heard others…. with more experience than myself (let’s just say it that way shall we?) use phrases like “Life’s not perfect” or “Not everyone loves their job” or “You don’t have to love work – that’s why it’s called work.”  But my generation is rising up and in response to all of those things we have one, seemingly simple, response.

Why the heck not?

Why should we just accept the idea that life isn’t perfect?  Why doesn’t everyone love their job?  Why does work have to be… well, work?  You hear all the time about people who do what they love and love what they do.  Why is it that I can’t strive to be one of them?

Now I’m not so naïve has to think that my life will be perfect every second of every day or that I’ll just absolutely love every assignment I nab at work (I am married after all – I no longer believe in fairy tales).  That’s not even what I’m asking for.  But why should we just give up on the possibility that work overall could be truly fulfilling, and instead shrug our shoulders, and live only for retirement?

Not to be snarky but if I’m LUCKY retirement will make up about 25% (MAYBE) of my life as a whole.  Why in the hades would I want to put off general professional happiness for the other 75%?

This conflict comes out in a lot of ways but mostly it’s in that nebulous ‘work/life balance’ we so often hear about.  You’ve got executives putting in 12 or 14 hour days not just 5 days a week but 7, not just during a busy season but all year.  And then here come along my happy-go-lucky peers who want to put in their 40 and then spend their evenings and weekends playing in a band, making indie films or growing organic vegetables.  These two groups can’t coexist in a professional setting because they both want to convert the other to their version of balance.

And of course, here’s where my opinion inevitably comes out.  I was raised by two of the most hard-working people I’ve ever known.  They taught me the value in commitment to my career, in exceeding expectations, in approaching my tasks with intensity.  But they also taught me to love, to laugh, to live.  And when those two lessons are in conflict – it’s the second that wins out.

And I’m okay with that.

You see, over the past several years people around me have lost people close to them.  I have been spared the direct experience but I have watched it, over and over again.  And each time one idea is impressed even further on my heart.  Death, in one way, is very final.  Regardless of what you believe about what happens next – in the terms of this particular life – it’s final.  Over.  Done.  And each time I find myself asking about how I would feel if it were me.  If my life were over and done right now, today, what would I think?  What would I feel?

I can tell you what it wouldn’t be.  “Wow I wish I’d put in more time at work.”

And I don’t think that it would be that for anyone.  So then all that I, and I believe my generation, is asking is – why live like it would be?  Why live like we have all the time in the world and overworking ourselves is worth the time we trade? 

Why not live as if today is your last day and if you came to the end of it you would breathe a deep sigh of satisfaction and feel only “YES”…

I believe that there is a place for work in a life like that.  And I believe that life, ideal though it may be, is worth pursuing. 

think think think

This past month or so that I’ve been back to work full time has been… a learning experience.  It feels like so much gets crammed into every week and weekend between work and home and Grady and Colin being smack in the middle of his crazy season that it feels as if time is flying by.  And at the same time crawling miserably slow.  Will the end of full-time ever get here?  Can I make it?

I know I can but forgive the dramatics.  It’s been tough.  Being full-time while Colin is working ridiculous hours has turned into a perfect storm that has left our family a little off-kilter lately.  Colin and I are really reclusive homebodies at heart that feel most grounded when we have ample time together as a family and also time alone as individuals.  Neither of which has been available recently.

We’re making it through but this period in our lives has certainly challenged us to consider what our lives are like now, what we want them to be like and how we accomplish that.  We’ve been doing a pretty good job over the past few years of checking off the short-term goals we had established but now we need to look further.  What does the future look like and how do we get there?

I love times like these for us.  Colin and I are pretty good at entertaining together what might start out as crazy ideas that then follow one of two paths.  They either get chunked in the ‘that is just ludicrous’ bin or we revisit them.  And revisit them.  And revisit them.  Over and over until all of a sudden we realize we’re no longer talking about hypotheticals and silly fantasies – we’re talking plans and commitments.

I like that about us.  We’re planners.  Always thinking.  Overanalyzing.  But when you put us together and give us enough time to make a dream seem like a possibility, we then start talking not about the what but about the how.  And the why.  And then the… why not?

I know it’s a dreadful tease because I’m not going to tell you what it is yet that we might be planning.  It’s too early yet to say if it’s going to come off or not or if we’ll scrap it for something else.  But I do know that change is coming for our little family.  It has to.  This crazy, over-the-top, never-together life we’re in right now just isn’t us.  It feels like an old outfit that I’ve pulled out of the back of the closet to try to weasel back into and it still doesn’t fit quite right.  We’ve been turning it over, this way and that, trying to decide if it’s just the angle we’re looking at but I don’t think it is.  You can’t dress this up and make it better than it is. 

You have to either accept it or choose to change it.  And I think we’re going to change it.  At least, I hope so.

D(r)eadlines

“I got so caught up in other people’s deadlines that I forgot my life has its own timetable: There aren’t going to be infinite years to realize my dream...”

- Katherine B. Weissman

I was reading a magazine article the other day when this quote just reached out and smacked me right in the face.  Do you ever have that happen?  You’re just reading along, minding your own business, and it’s like the author says “Hey - you!  Yes, you!  I know exactly what you’re thinking in the back of your brain where you aren’t really focused on my article.  And THIS is what you need to hear.”

No?  I’m the only one who has entire conversations in my head with complete strangers/authors who most certainly aren’t speaking directly to me?  Too bad.  It really can be quite illuminating.

In this particular instance, this quote pairs rather well with something that I’ve been contemplating recently and it all adds up to the same message: Get a move on.  What are you waiting for?  It could be that tomorrow that you’re waiting on won’t ever get here.

I recently learned something about myself that I really already knew but to be honest, I’m rather thick-headed and need things to just come up and slap me like the aforementioned quote.  I realized that I’m incredibly susceptible to encouragement.  Like, stupidly so.  I had someone encourage me recently to take a step forward on a dream project ‘if it’s something I really have [my] heart set on’ and they didn’t actually even know exactly what they were encouraging me to do.  All they knew was that it was something I wanted and by darn it, if it means something to me then I should go after it! 

I left that lunch that day feeling exhilarated.  “I SHOULD do this!  I want to!  Why am I hesitating?”

In truth, I’m hesitating because of the following reasons:  1) I’m scared I’ll get overwhelmed and won’t finish, and 2) I’m scared people will think I’m an idiot for even attempting it.

To which I say: 1) Surely not finishing for whatever reason might cause me to not finish wouldn’t be nearly as terrible as never starting, and 2) when do I allow myself the grace to not give a crap what other people think?  When do I grow up and put on my big-girl pants and just accept the fact that people are not always going to agree with me (or even like me)?  I’ve realized just how much of my time (and the resultant posting on this blog) goes into worrying about other people’s criticism and it’s really beginning to bug me.

You see, the flipside to being susceptible to encouragement is that I am also very susceptible to DIScouragement.  I am keenly aware of other people’s lack of excitement for something I’m working on and it tends to infect my own feelings about it.  And really it’s just sad because it means I place my emphasis too heavily on what others think - despite my projection of a confident woman, I’m really just a little girl begging for approval.

Well phooey on that.  I don’t have forever to wait for that someday in the sun where everyone around me agrees with my dreams for myself and lavishes me with overwhelming amounts of encouragement to strike out and finally make my path one of my own choosing.  That day WILL NEVER (not just MAY never but WILL never) come and it’s just about darn time I accept that fact and move the hell on with it.

So that’s what I’m attempting to do.  I have taken step one.  I have started down the path.  It’s going to be a windy one and it’s going to take a long time to reach the end.  But in my mind’s eye, this new path is a shady one, wandering beside a little stream with lots of trees and flowers and the sound of birds hidden somewhere up in the branches overhead.  It’s pretty here, and quiet, and I can hear the beat of my own heart and feel the grass between my toes.  This won’t be a bad place to be alone, if that is what I have to be to walk it. 

I know I won’t really be alone.  I’m a pretty lucky girl in the cheering section department, despite the detraction of a few cranky-butts in the audience.  But the important thing really, at least right now, at least to me, is that I have to be ready and willing TO be alone if necessary.  I can’t place my emphasis outside of myself - it needs to be focused within.  On what my heart says I need and on where my feet want to take me.  I have to figure out how to manage that shift in focus away from the encouragement of others, even when they do choose to give it.

The important thing is not to NEED their encouragement, which is where I am now.  I have to get to where it’s just icing on the proverbial cupcake. 

Mmmmm... cupcake...

This love is ours.

So I have to start off with yes, this quote comes from a completely schmoopy teen-angst love song by Taylor Swift.  But no, this post is not going to be some romantic mushy mess about Colin.  (Truth be told if anyone would have to endure familial remarks about the others' tattoos it would be Colin – not me.)  No, this song can absolutely reduce me to tears but for a completely different reason.

Every time I hear it, I think of Grady.

Weird, right?  To hear a love song and think of my infant son?  But let me explain. 

Part of my experience of motherhood so far has been wrapped up in a lot of frustration about the constant critique I find myself undergoing from what seems like all sides.  (You'll remember I had this same issue while pregnant.)  Everyone you've ever met has ideas about parenting (even people who aren't parents) and for whatever reason – they aren't shy about sharing.  You work hard to do what you think is best only to find out that someone you have a lot of respect for thinks you've totally screwed up your kiddo because of your approach to sleeping, feeding, playing, child care, or whatever else is on their agenda for the day.

It's really disheartening sometimes.

You see, my approach to parenthood is much like my approach to anything else.  It involves a lot of careful research, thoughtful consideration and then carefully selected and implemented actions.  I'm not just stumbling around in the dark hoping I don’t accidentally feed Grady cat food because well, oops I just wasn't thinking.  So when someone rips into some aspect of how I'm handling my baby, it can be pretty hurtful because the implication is that I don't care enough about my child to think about what I'm doing and make (what I think are) good choices.

So the reason why I love this song is because it reiterates something that I tell myself all the time about baby Grady: this love is ours.

The thing is – no one can ever understand a relationship when they're standing on the outside.  I know that there are a million ways to raise a child and that even people I love are occasionally going to disagree with the path I've chosen.  But my commitment is what matters – my intention, the inspiration for my actions.  Everything I do, I do for love – love of my son.  Others may disagree, or they may wish I'd follow a different course, but I have to follow the path that feels right to me, that feels like it honors what's best for him.

I'm working on building up a thicker skin in this area but in the meantime Colin and I have chosen to surround ourselves with the people who support us even if they think breastfeeding is overrated and organic baby food a waste of money.  They might gently chide us about things they think we should loosen up on but in the end they respect us and believe we're honestly trying to do right by Grady – and the reassurance that they see that in us gives me an incredible shot of strength when I need it most.

Being a parent is hard.  It's overwhelming at times and downright frightening at others.  I worry all the time about the choices I'm making and what their long-term impact on Grady could and/or will be.  All I want is to be able to give him the best shot at being the best version of himself that he can be – whatever and whoever that is.  Even now at just 6 months old, he is an adorably tiny person that listens and learns and responds.  I strive to always pay attention to what my actions could be teaching him and whether or not those are lessons I actually want him to learn.

And when I encounter one of those people that wants to explain to me that not allowing my toddler to drink soda will just be 'denying him the pleasure' I just smile and say 'yup – I guess I'm THAT mom' and in my head I think of this song and refocus.  This love is ours.  I know why I do the things I do – and I know that one day, Grady will know too and understand and perhaps even laugh with me at some of the things I worried over anxiously.  (And he may very well even be sipping a Route 44 Pepsi at the time – but darn it he'll at the very least be old enough to have ordered it himself!)

Beauty Bravery

As I've introduced the super-short hair to various groups of people (coworkers, clients, etc.), it has inevitably led to lots of conversations about bravery.  People have been telling me how brave I am for chopping off all my hair.  (Secretly I think that's their way of saying they don't really like it, i.e. 'It must've taken a lot of guts for you to get a haircut like THAT.')

What I keep telling them is just a simple response – 'I have a tattoo.  I permanently inked my skin.  I am in no way scared of a haircut.'  But in reality, there's so much more to it than that.

Have you ever had one of those times in your life where you find yourself squirming around in your skin, uncomfortable in your day-to-day existence but unable to quickly change it?  There's just this sense, somewhere down in your heart or at the back of your mind that you just don't quite fit in your current circumstances but you feel at a loss as to what to change or how?

That's where I am right now.  And it's oddball for me because there are certainly aspects of my life right now that I LOVE and couldn't imagine any different (being a mom for example, feels so incredibly natural and fulfilling it's almost impossible to describe) but there is just something… something nagging…

Thus the hair.  The joke in college was that you could always tell if I had recently been through a breakup just by seeing me – because my hair would be different.  I'd end some relationship and immediately call my stylist.  For the first few years of our marriage Colin still looked at me askance whenever I told him I had a hair appointment.

I've been planning this pixie cut for over a year so the decision itself wasn't made on the fly but the timing was definitely driven by an inner need to just DO SOMETHING.  To break out of the rut, to change my perspective, to see the world differently.  I began to feel this antsy-ness coming over me and I knew – it's time.  Time to chop it.

I realize at first blush it seems silly to talk about a haircut changing my perspective or allowing me to see the world differently but the truth is, in our beauty-centered culture, it's probably not so hard to see how such a drastic appearance change can change a person's outlook.  I often encourage my female friends to ditch their makeup or cut their hair to change their point of view.  If you change the way you look at yourself, how could you not change the way you see everything else?

The pixie falls into it this way – I need to see myself and my place in this phase of my life differently.  I need to be able to turn a more critical eye towards every detail so that I can find the one that's giving me grief.  How better to do that than to change the way that I see myself (both literally and metaphorically)?  And what easier way to do that than to strip away what can easily be such a large part of any woman's identity? 

A lot of this has to do, I think, with my needing to figure out where I am now in all this mom-ness.  Just as when Colin and I got married and I lost my 'me' into our 'we' for a while, I'm naturally having that same experience with baby Grady.  My life right now focuses on him, revolves around him, is all about him and that is, of course, how it should be.  But in order to be the kind of mom that I want to be for him, I have to also start taking the time to reestablish myself as a separate entity and figure out how to honor that person as well.  If I can't do it myself, I can't expect him to do it either.

But in order to do that I have to take stock of the changes that have occurred within me over the past six months (and longer) and figure out where they leave me as an individual.  There is more to me than motherhood – but what is it, exactly?  What does she look like and – more importantly – what does she want?

It's a harder question to answer than you might think – but I believe at least some of the barriers to the answer were left on the salon floor among the clippings.  I look in the mirror and I see a different me.  Now I just have to get to know her.