Saturday, November 14, 2009
I need a travel agent.
Do you ever realize that before the end of Friday you were going to rebook your plane ticket home and your plane tickets to Seattle in December for work, but you totally spaced it and so even though you JUST said you never feel tempted to swear anymore, the first thing that comes to mind is a swear?
Just like the Prodigal Son, I've returned...
If you were born in the 70s, chances are you recognize that line as a really brilliant lyric from a rap. But more on that in a second.
Tonight I was thinking about how I haven't blogged in forever...and yet writing is a HUGE part of who I am. I've been thinking about starting a new blog and maybe leaving this one behind because this one contains so many things that I felt like weren't me. They were this crazy person who inhabited my body for a short period of time. I thought that if I started a new blog and left this one in the dust, I would be starting fresh...
And yet, there are a lot of posts on here that are totally me and that still resonate powerfully with who I am now. So I decided to "sanitize" my blog by deleting all of the stuff that made me feel sick inside--mostly painful stuff about relationships where I just wasn't thinking straight. I left quite a bit of stuff that is ridiculous, immature, hyper-vulnerable, etc., because all of that is a part of who I was and am. But some of my relationships are better completely deleted from memory.
As I read through my blog tonight, it was startling for me to realize how much I grew this past year without even noticing that growth taking place. It just felt like a painful year where I made a lot of mistakes and behaved at times like someone I wasn't. But at some point in these past 13+ months, "[I] came to [myself]...and...arose and came to [my] father" (Luke 15:17-20). And I feel like a different person than I was. Here are some things that have changed and some things that haven't:
Daniellika, August 2009, 32 years & 8 months
Paia, June 1978, 31 years & 11 months
Tonight I was thinking about how I haven't blogged in forever...and yet writing is a HUGE part of who I am. I've been thinking about starting a new blog and maybe leaving this one behind because this one contains so many things that I felt like weren't me. They were this crazy person who inhabited my body for a short period of time. I thought that if I started a new blog and left this one in the dust, I would be starting fresh...
And yet, there are a lot of posts on here that are totally me and that still resonate powerfully with who I am now. So I decided to "sanitize" my blog by deleting all of the stuff that made me feel sick inside--mostly painful stuff about relationships where I just wasn't thinking straight. I left quite a bit of stuff that is ridiculous, immature, hyper-vulnerable, etc., because all of that is a part of who I was and am. But some of my relationships are better completely deleted from memory.
As I read through my blog tonight, it was startling for me to realize how much I grew this past year without even noticing that growth taking place. It just felt like a painful year where I made a lot of mistakes and behaved at times like someone I wasn't. But at some point in these past 13+ months, "[I] came to [myself]...and...arose and came to [my] father" (Luke 15:17-20). And I feel like a different person than I was. Here are some things that have changed and some things that haven't:
- My job was and is incredibly stressful. I did and do often feel that I am on the verge of breaking.
- I work much harder than I used to.
- In some ways, I'm much more independent.
- I still love people in a way that is often overwhelming to me.
- In some ways I used to be a more thoughtful person.
- I also used to be so angry all the time.
- I had to make goals to stop swearing. I remember it being hard for me...which seems so foreign to me now.
- I still love my MBA girls so much.
- I've been obsessed with the Peter Pan & Wendy Darling metaphor for a while.
- In all of eternity, I will never be able to repay Paia and Dan for what they have done for me.
- I know and love (and am loved by) the most wonderful people on earth.
- Heather, Jason, and I have been a great little triumvirate from the start. I have never felt like a third wheel. I have always felt like I am on equal footing in our friendship.
Daniellika, August 2009, 32 years & 8 months
Paia, June 1978, 31 years & 11 months
Monday, August 3, 2009
Sleep-eating...like sleep-walking but more delicious.
Have you ever been jolted awake in the middle of the night for no reason? But you suspect it's thirst so you stumble deliriously to the kitchen but when you get there, you forget why, so you pull out the macaroni salad and start eating it and after a few unfulfilling bites, you remember you're thirsty, so you go to return the salad to the fridge but somehow you completely flip the bowl over so it lands upside down on the floor with the saran wrap against the ground and instead of feeling distressed, in your half-asleep state, you stand there in your underwear in the kitchen laughing out loud to yourself like you've just heard the best joke ever...until the laughing wakes you completely up and you suddenly realize to your dismay that you have to clean up that mess and you start pondering the viability of sliding a plate between the saran wrap and the floor so you can just flip the bowl back over and salvage the salad and after concluding that your plan could work, you put it into action, wasting only about a cup or two of salad and then you realize you're still thirsty but now you're also tired and cranky so you quickly make some crystal lite while feeling you have somehow been personally wronged because there aren't any chocolate chip cookies in the house, but wanting to mitigate those grumpy chocolate chip cookie-deprivation feelings, you eat three frozen Tim Tams instead while questioning if snorting crystal lite powder is any good after which you stumble deliriously back to your room but this time the deliriousness is from too much sugar and too much thinking? Has that ever happened to anyone else?
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Spiritual promptings vs. Good ideas
Which is which? Sometimes it is hard to tell. Here is a short list for my life with their interpretations:
(While in Target) Don't buy a new iPod speaker. This is a luxury. PROMPTING. Obeyed.
Log off of Facebook and go to bed. PROMPTING. In process of obeying.
Have family prayer with your mom since you are the only two home. PROMPTING. Had to be told twice. But then obeyed.
Apologize for being a jerk to friend. PROMPTING. Obeyed.
Put Mom's socks on for her. GOOD IDEA. Obeyed.
Email latest crush to tell him how great he is. BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA. And I will not do it.
Brush teeth and floss. GOOD IDEA. But can't be bothered. I have to go read my scriptures...and as I say this, I know that I will fight it for a while and then eventually go and brush and floss. Ugh.
(While in Target) Don't buy a new iPod speaker. This is a luxury. PROMPTING. Obeyed.
Log off of Facebook and go to bed. PROMPTING. In process of obeying.
Have family prayer with your mom since you are the only two home. PROMPTING. Had to be told twice. But then obeyed.
Apologize for being a jerk to friend. PROMPTING. Obeyed.
Put Mom's socks on for her. GOOD IDEA. Obeyed.
Email latest crush to tell him how great he is. BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA. And I will not do it.
Brush teeth and floss. GOOD IDEA. But can't be bothered. I have to go read my scriptures...and as I say this, I know that I will fight it for a while and then eventually go and brush and floss. Ugh.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
My blog
Sometimes I check my blog to see if I've posted anything new and interesting. Nope. I haven't. Rats!
Oh, but here's a newsflash, mayonnaise has 90 calories and 10 grams of fat per tablespoon! What's that all about?!
Oh, but here's a newsflash, mayonnaise has 90 calories and 10 grams of fat per tablespoon! What's that all about?!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Piercings
One of my friends asked me about piercings (or rather I told her I had an experience with it and she said she'd like to hear), so this is for her. And anyone else who cares.
A lot of people know this about me, but when I was 22 I pierced my nose. I had always thought it was such a rebel thing to do until I met my friend Sarah Fuh-rillll-o (nee Ballard) when I was 18. Sarah was a white girl from Connecticut with tons of spunk and attitude. She was awesome and beautiful and although she was a bit of a rebel, it didn't seem rebellious on Sarah. It just fit her. And I started to see piercing my nose not as a rebellious thing, but as more of a jewelry thing to do.
So one day while walking through the mall at 22, I got my nose pierced (p.s. Don't get it pierced at the mall. They don't know anything.) And I loved it. I thought it was especially beautiful with my olive skin and my ethnic nose. I never had an actual ring, but I had quite a few studs--some of which I kept for almost a decade. My favorite was a little diamond that was big enough to glisten without looking like a huge rock on my nose. Have I mentioned that I loved it? A few of my friends hated it...and by a few, I mostly mean Deb. :) She hated it, but I think that was more because of what it symbolized to her rather than because it was unattractive. And my parents hated it. My mom especially hated it. It made her sad.
Shortly after piercing my nose, I decided to pierce my tongue too. I remember talking to Matt and his sidekick Patrick afterward and I remember them laughing and asking what I got it for. Yeah, I was totally naive and asked them in the most sincere way what they meant. I don't think I really got it until maybe 2 years ago. Perverts. I will say, though, that in the most Angelina Jolie-Billy Bob Thornton kind of a way, Matt and I both removed our piercings while we still knew each other and...we exchanged them. I loved Matt's and when he went off to Berkeley, I kept his until Raelynn Barton finally took it away because I was behaving like an obsessed lunatic about Matt leaving. Thank you, Raelynn.
But back to the point of the story, which I'm sure is still completely unclear. The point of the story is that I pierced my nose because I loved it and thought it was beautiful. I pierced my tongue because why stop at one piercing? And then because I had piercings, people started treating me differently.
Or did they? I thought they did. And then I heard a story by my then ecclesiastical leader Scott Baird. Bishop Baird told us once in a church meeting from the pulpit about when he was growing up in the 60s. He was one of those longhairs. He was just a hippie like everyone else, livin' the dream, but there were a lot of people who didn't like that dream. A lot of conservative society saw long hair as a symbol of everything that was rebellious and crazy in the 60s and because of that, there was a lot of prejudice against people with long hair. Sometimes you couldn't get jobs (fyi, not all forms of discrimination are considered unlawful; each of us discriminates everyday; it's called making decisions), people would look at you funny, you wouldn't be allowed to socialize in certain establishments...conservative society did what they could to exclude people like Scott Baird. And he resented it.
Who were these people to judge him for his long hair? How dare they? He was a good kid and a law-abiding citizen. He didn't smoke pot, he went to church, he had a job, he went to school, and yet these people judged him unfairly and they had no right to. I no longer remember all the details of Bishop Baird's story, but I do remember the ending. As he was going around trying to prove himself or at least prove that he didn't care what those people thought about him, he realized that his long hair had created for him a chip on his shoulder. Whether people treated him differently or not, he was behaving differently, and perhaps that was causing a reaction in people. It had turned into a cycle and he no longer knew where the beginning was. Which came first? The discrimination or the egg, I mean the discrimination or the attitude problem?
So you know what he did? He didn't start a campaign to prove that people with long hair were decent people; he cut his hair.
I had noticed the same thing with me. I didn't start out trying to be rebellious, but I found that either people thought that I was or I thought that they felt I was and the result was the same: I was constantly on the defensive. I felt I had to prove myself or at least prove that others were wrong. And that made me start behaving a little more rebelliously. So you know what I did? I took out the piercings. I gave the tongue ring to Matt and I stashed my nose rings away.
This was before the LDS Church ever came out with an official statement against piercing oneself beyond women having a single ear piercing. That happened about a year and a half later in the fall of 2000 when I was 23. And that statement made me really sad because I had always planned on repiercing my nose when I was in a community (i.e. California) that wasn't as conservative.
Since I removed my piercings, I have repierced for Halloween (fall of 99, I think, which I painfully did myself with a corsage pin--DO NOT try this at home) and then again because I wanted to in the fall of 2007. But there is a huge difference between fighting society and fighting a mandate of a faith that you believe in completely. The ring stayed in during fall of 2007 for just over 24 hours. I once thought about repiercing during summer of 2008 after grad school. I always loved my nose ring and I had held onto a couple of my favorite studs for a long time. And then in 2008 as I sat there asking myself the same dumb question of whether or not I should repierce, I needed reinforcement (for what I already knew the answer should be since now it was clearly a case of disobedience), so as I was standing outside of a piercing place, I called Natalie and texted Mark, two people who think that it looks really hot. Natalie saw me with it and thought it was beautiful and Mark knew Natalie at the time I had it pierced, but he never knew me during that time period. But he did always say that he thought it was hot that I had had it and that he was sure it looked really good on me.
I had already made my decision to not do it, but I wanted some support...and I was kind of hoping one of them might say, "Go for it!" But both Natalie and Mark came back with the same answer: that it looked awesome on me but absolutely not. Under no circumstances would that be the right choice.
A few days later I thought about how I'd been holding onto this idea for nearly a decade and yet for my faith, the official statement in 2000 now made the decision a black and white one. So I got out my hundreds of dollars worth of nose rings (those things are not cheap and some of the ones I had were pretty hard to find) and I said to myself, I will never again ask this question. This is not something I need to struggle with or that I need to have as a temptation for me to not be obedient. And with that, I threw the rings in the trash. It was actually a very hard thing for me to do and it was a significant decision where I felt I was placing my stake in the ground and saying, "I will not be moved. I can and will be obedient in this thing." I think I might have cried. And I think I told both Mark and Natalie when I did it and they were like, "E' beh?" (which in some dialects of Italian can mean, "So what?") They didn't get it, but I knew how much that decision meant.
And there are times when I think back on my ring and that day and...psych! After a decade you would think that I would care, but I don't. I haven't thought about it again. Ever. It's done. And I didn't realize until now how awesome that is. Once I placed my stake in the ground, I was never again tempted by that desire. Interesting...I think I need to place some other stakes in the ground already on some other issues...
A lot of people know this about me, but when I was 22 I pierced my nose. I had always thought it was such a rebel thing to do until I met my friend Sarah Fuh-rillll-o (nee Ballard) when I was 18. Sarah was a white girl from Connecticut with tons of spunk and attitude. She was awesome and beautiful and although she was a bit of a rebel, it didn't seem rebellious on Sarah. It just fit her. And I started to see piercing my nose not as a rebellious thing, but as more of a jewelry thing to do.
So one day while walking through the mall at 22, I got my nose pierced (p.s. Don't get it pierced at the mall. They don't know anything.) And I loved it. I thought it was especially beautiful with my olive skin and my ethnic nose. I never had an actual ring, but I had quite a few studs--some of which I kept for almost a decade. My favorite was a little diamond that was big enough to glisten without looking like a huge rock on my nose. Have I mentioned that I loved it? A few of my friends hated it...and by a few, I mostly mean Deb. :) She hated it, but I think that was more because of what it symbolized to her rather than because it was unattractive. And my parents hated it. My mom especially hated it. It made her sad.
Shortly after piercing my nose, I decided to pierce my tongue too. I remember talking to Matt and his sidekick Patrick afterward and I remember them laughing and asking what I got it for. Yeah, I was totally naive and asked them in the most sincere way what they meant. I don't think I really got it until maybe 2 years ago. Perverts. I will say, though, that in the most Angelina Jolie-Billy Bob Thornton kind of a way, Matt and I both removed our piercings while we still knew each other and...we exchanged them. I loved Matt's and when he went off to Berkeley, I kept his until Raelynn Barton finally took it away because I was behaving like an obsessed lunatic about Matt leaving. Thank you, Raelynn.
But back to the point of the story, which I'm sure is still completely unclear. The point of the story is that I pierced my nose because I loved it and thought it was beautiful. I pierced my tongue because why stop at one piercing? And then because I had piercings, people started treating me differently.
Or did they? I thought they did. And then I heard a story by my then ecclesiastical leader Scott Baird. Bishop Baird told us once in a church meeting from the pulpit about when he was growing up in the 60s. He was one of those longhairs. He was just a hippie like everyone else, livin' the dream, but there were a lot of people who didn't like that dream. A lot of conservative society saw long hair as a symbol of everything that was rebellious and crazy in the 60s and because of that, there was a lot of prejudice against people with long hair. Sometimes you couldn't get jobs (fyi, not all forms of discrimination are considered unlawful; each of us discriminates everyday; it's called making decisions), people would look at you funny, you wouldn't be allowed to socialize in certain establishments...conservative society did what they could to exclude people like Scott Baird. And he resented it.
Who were these people to judge him for his long hair? How dare they? He was a good kid and a law-abiding citizen. He didn't smoke pot, he went to church, he had a job, he went to school, and yet these people judged him unfairly and they had no right to. I no longer remember all the details of Bishop Baird's story, but I do remember the ending. As he was going around trying to prove himself or at least prove that he didn't care what those people thought about him, he realized that his long hair had created for him a chip on his shoulder. Whether people treated him differently or not, he was behaving differently, and perhaps that was causing a reaction in people. It had turned into a cycle and he no longer knew where the beginning was. Which came first? The discrimination or the egg, I mean the discrimination or the attitude problem?
So you know what he did? He didn't start a campaign to prove that people with long hair were decent people; he cut his hair.
I had noticed the same thing with me. I didn't start out trying to be rebellious, but I found that either people thought that I was or I thought that they felt I was and the result was the same: I was constantly on the defensive. I felt I had to prove myself or at least prove that others were wrong. And that made me start behaving a little more rebelliously. So you know what I did? I took out the piercings. I gave the tongue ring to Matt and I stashed my nose rings away.
This was before the LDS Church ever came out with an official statement against piercing oneself beyond women having a single ear piercing. That happened about a year and a half later in the fall of 2000 when I was 23. And that statement made me really sad because I had always planned on repiercing my nose when I was in a community (i.e. California) that wasn't as conservative.
Since I removed my piercings, I have repierced for Halloween (fall of 99, I think, which I painfully did myself with a corsage pin--DO NOT try this at home) and then again because I wanted to in the fall of 2007. But there is a huge difference between fighting society and fighting a mandate of a faith that you believe in completely. The ring stayed in during fall of 2007 for just over 24 hours. I once thought about repiercing during summer of 2008 after grad school. I always loved my nose ring and I had held onto a couple of my favorite studs for a long time. And then in 2008 as I sat there asking myself the same dumb question of whether or not I should repierce, I needed reinforcement (for what I already knew the answer should be since now it was clearly a case of disobedience), so as I was standing outside of a piercing place, I called Natalie and texted Mark, two people who think that it looks really hot. Natalie saw me with it and thought it was beautiful and Mark knew Natalie at the time I had it pierced, but he never knew me during that time period. But he did always say that he thought it was hot that I had had it and that he was sure it looked really good on me.
I had already made my decision to not do it, but I wanted some support...and I was kind of hoping one of them might say, "Go for it!" But both Natalie and Mark came back with the same answer: that it looked awesome on me but absolutely not. Under no circumstances would that be the right choice.
A few days later I thought about how I'd been holding onto this idea for nearly a decade and yet for my faith, the official statement in 2000 now made the decision a black and white one. So I got out my hundreds of dollars worth of nose rings (those things are not cheap and some of the ones I had were pretty hard to find) and I said to myself, I will never again ask this question. This is not something I need to struggle with or that I need to have as a temptation for me to not be obedient. And with that, I threw the rings in the trash. It was actually a very hard thing for me to do and it was a significant decision where I felt I was placing my stake in the ground and saying, "I will not be moved. I can and will be obedient in this thing." I think I might have cried. And I think I told both Mark and Natalie when I did it and they were like, "E' beh?" (which in some dialects of Italian can mean, "So what?") They didn't get it, but I knew how much that decision meant.
And there are times when I think back on my ring and that day and...psych! After a decade you would think that I would care, but I don't. I haven't thought about it again. Ever. It's done. And I didn't realize until now how awesome that is. Once I placed my stake in the ground, I was never again tempted by that desire. Interesting...I think I need to place some other stakes in the ground already on some other issues...
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