Reality Check

Alright, here it is: I'm a terrible writer. Shocking? No, if you're reading this (Joel, this may just be you), you've read my last two blogs. I have no idea how to wrap things up. Some nice conclusion at the end of my last blog where I discovered who I want to be and what I want to do with my life? Ha! Please. If I had those answers, I'm sure I wouldn't have a blog.

Today's thoughts... asking for help. This is something I am TTTTTerrible at. From a ride to carrying something when I have 8354 things in my hands, to the much bigger, I have never been good at it. To place blame, I could say it's my parents, who have always been there for me whenever I've needed something, so it's rare and unusual when I have to find someone else so I usually prefer not to. Woe is me, with the supportive parents.

To preface, this is not going to end with me discovering how to be brilliant at asking for help. This is just more pointing out a flaw in the hopes that perhaps recognizing it will highlight its existence in my life and therefore become something I improve at in the future.

I guess even more than not asking for help, I hate putting people out. And I mean, anyone. Asking a waiter for a side dish they forgot to bring me. Even if it's their "mistake", I think I've always tried to live my life in the philosophy of leave something better than you've found it (an old scout motto), and have extended it to not wanting to impose on anyone, ever.

So, how do I improve this situation? Ha. How do I start putting people out? How do I impose without imposing?

I don't know, but I hope to figure it out. I recently was listening to NPR (something I've started doing in the hopes of gaining back some of my dwindling intelligence post-educational years) and I heard an interview of author Suzan Colon of the cookbook "Cherries in Winter". Long story short, I now follow her blog and this is a quote I've taken to heart from it: "I've never run a half-marathon before. I've never been 46 before. And I've never told quite so many people that I was going to do something like this. But I like the sound of it: I'm training for a half-marathon."

Never done it. Doesn't mean can't. But what, oh what, will I apply it to? I always view birthdays as a time to reflect and change or improve things. My own personal New Year's resolutions. At 19, I decided it was time to finally pierce my ears. Not exactly changing the world, but getting over a life-long fear of needles long enough to sit in a seat and allow both Claire's employees to drop what they were doing to simultaneously pierce both ears, for my fear of not being able to go through the second one after having gotten the first. And it wasn't so bad. To the extent that five or six months later, I got them double-pierced. Again, simultaneously, but hey, baby steps.

For 24, I'd like to do something as well. Here, I've started this blog, to share my, what I'm sure I find to be starting revelations, when in actuality I will look back and laugh at my profound findings. But I digress. I'm thinking of getting a tattoo. I could barely sit through a needle going through my ear for a split second five years ago, so why I now think getting stabbed repeatedly would be a brilliant idea, I'm not sure, but I like the idea. Something small and Irish on the inside of my left wrist, because no matter who I am or where I am or what I'm doing, Irish is something that will never change. That and/or a peace & love on my foot, just on the visible side of a ballet slipper, my own personal life philosophy. Will it happen? Only time will tell.

If someone else has a better suggestion of how I change, I'm open to suggestions... For now, I leave you with random love quotes, because it is February, the month of love.

"Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly." -Rose Franken

"Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have." -Anonymous

"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be." -Robert Browning

"A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful or a good one." -Mae West

"My heart is ever at your service." -William Shakespeare

"There is no remedy for love but to love more." -Henry David Thoreau

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." -Anonymous

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." -Mother Teresa

When I Grow Up...

I was never that kid who knew what they wanted to do from the age of... forever. That kid who tells his teacher the first day of kindergarten his career aspirations and then sticks to them. I never had a clue. With all the possibilities out there, how is one supposed to choose?

I think the closest I ever came to anything of "this is what I want to be when I grow up" is one of those little kid aspirations that I will tell you never ever would pan out. In light of recent events, both in my life, and in those of the idol I looked up to years ago, it got me thinking.

When I was about 8, I wanted to be an ice skater. Honestly. In 1994 at the Winter Olympics, Nancy Kerrigan was my hero. She made it look effortless. I remember hopping about my house, pretending on was twirling about on the ice. I finally took a year or so of skating lessons around the age of 10, and I don't think I was too bad.

However, I went ice skating for the first time last week with my dear friend Monica, the first time I've been on the ice since about 1996, and let me tell you... it's not like riding a bike. It doesn't just come back to you. Having grown about a foot and a half taller since the last time I skated, the fear of falling had also grown. As my mom used to joke when I was younger, falling is scarier to taller people, because you have further to go before you reach the ground. I will attest to that. If I hadn't had Monica by my side, I would have willing paid others to prevent me from having to make my way on to the ice. I did bite it rather hard once, and nearly two weeks later, I still have a lovely purple bruise on my left knee to prove it, but beyond that, I survived. Definitely a workout, of sheer terror, if nothing else.

Nearly twenty years since kindergarten and I still don't know that I ever had a practical aspiration. I mean, I can't imagine doing anything other than what I'm doing (as "practical" as it is), but do I want to do it forever? I'm sure my parents would kill me, but I'd love to dabble a little in everything. ...okay, maybe not ice skating.

Despite not having any idea what I wanted to be doing as an adult, I did see an older version of myself. Well, not really. I still have a hard time seeing myself any differently than who I am now. I can't see myself in 5 or 10 or 30 years. No clue. But there were certain things about my younger self I was sure I would grow out of.

The one I thought I would grow out of, but still managed to hang out to? My lack of coordination. At 10 days shy of being 24, I still trip over my own feet, run into doorways, drop things, spill things, etc. This would be one thing if I did them like any normal person, or even as infrequently as any other person. But no, every single slip-up is like an all-or-nothing, I end up unintentionally making as big a fool of myself as possible.

Yesterday, for example. I managed to hit myself in the head with a water bottle that fell out of my purse when I bent over; when walking down a hall, in order to make room for the person I was passing, I ran into a door (mind you, there was plenty of room, I just over-accounted); I opened a door into a 3rd grader at school and saw him today and thanked my lucky stars he didn't have a black eye (soooo sorry about that, Ryan); the road was blocked on my way home from the gym, so I took side roads and surprise- got totally lost in the town I've been living in for a year and half; and finally, opened a packet of grape sports drink to mix in my water bottle, it ripped open, going all over the floor and table at the gym, and the left half of my chest, ribs and stomach on my white v-neck undershirt, making it look like I had done a self tie-dye on my workout clothes... the epitome of grace I am not.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, one thing I have gotten significantly better at is being outgoing. Those of you who have known me for a short while can't imagine me being shy, but those of you who have known me 10, 20+ years probably can perfectly imagine the 4, 5, 6, even like 12-year-old me, the awkward, impossibly shy little one that I was. When I was in 1st grade, my teacher made us take turns reading books out loud to the class, because this was the only time I would EVER talk in class, when absolutely forced to. (Ending a sentence in a preposition, who am I to teach grammar??)

When I was about 10 or 11, I remember riding in the car with my mom, and her talking to me about needing to open up to people, or else they would think I was snobby. I am not a snob, nor have I ever been, and the idea that someone would misinterpret my fear of talking to them as such was even worse than the fear of having to talk to them! S0, slowly but surely, I turned into this ramble-y, bubbly person that I am today (if you think I am neither, then you need to get to know me a little better...). I'm not exactly jumping to take the mic from Miss Michelle in Where's That Comma? but it also doesn't make me break out into a cold sweat either... though it might if she makes them sing me "Happy Birthday" next week, as she's threatened to... (another preposition!)

Did this blog start on one topic and move completely to a different one? Well, I did tell you I ramble...

Tribute

An honest-to-goodness grown-up blog! Alright, so I still have a Xanga, but who follows those anymore? Hardly no one it seems, so as another part of turning 24, I'm getting my feet wet in the world of adult blogging.

My blog 'html' is a tribute to one of my favorite movies, and a personal philosophy as well. I'm a sucker for new music, but also a sucker for that song you've heard so many times, you know it by the first note and are instantly brought a feeling of glee.

My blog 'title' is another personal philosophy. Ups and downs, I keep on dancing. Really though, a little more dancing could do us all some good- who doesn't come out of dancing in a better mood? The answer, my friend, is no one.

So, read, follow me, whatever. Or don't. It's your choice. Watch me stumble through my mid-twenties, both the good and bad, favorite books and movies and songs, embarrassing and awkward moments that still continue to happen to only the likes of me, and the many adventures of anyone trying to figure out who they're supposed to be, as well as what they're supposed to blog about in the adult world.

x's, o's, peace and love.