Life Like Fiction

Happiness isn't entertaining. What I mean is that being happy isn't interesting to write about. It doesn't create intrigue or suspense. It doesn't make good TV or movies. No one goes to the theatre to see happy people, they go to see drama and passion and obstacles and action. Unhappy people, or maybe I should say unsatisfied people, are the ones with the excitement, the gossip, the STORIES. People who are unsatisfied have things to write about because every event could be the first stone on a path toward satisfaction. The pursuit of happiness involves a twisted cast of players whose every action and reaction can be analyzed, dissected, observed and written about. Heartache is ever-changing and evolving.

Happiness, on the other hand, is relatively stagnant. It's wonderful and fantastic and beautiful and full of glitter and hearts and roses. It's great and I'm not complaining. But it's also calm and certain and stable. I am currently happy with consistancy. Because of this overall sense of happiness, I don't feel the urge to write about what's going on in my head nearly as much. There is no necessity for "working things out in writing." How many hours can I legitimately spend expressing joy? Answer: Not half as many as I can spend ruminating on situations that confuse or frustrate me. Writers be honest: An ambiguous text message is a much better muse than a sweet one.

So herein lies the problem.

Six or seven months ago I was truly inspired to start a novel. Between my own experiences and those of my book club friends, I had plenty of material to start a novel about modern dating life in a metropolitan (but not exactly centralized) city like San Diego. I used my time almost exclusively to read, write, and "collect ideas" about the difficulties of dating in a time when meeting a potential life partner in an organic way seems less and less likely every year. The characters were fabulous reincarnations of people I know whose statuses ranged from happily married and pregnant to dating like mad. The plan was to write about relationships in all stages and create insightful situations to express the frustrations of trying to find real, lasting happiness.

But then the worst possible thing happened to my plans - I got Plans instead. Dating someone takes all the fun out of writing funny but bitter anecdotes about dating. Suddenly instead of writing about relationships and love and the desire for intimacy, I was curled up with Plans enjoying the honeymoon months of a brand new romance. Writing and even reading have dropped down to minor priorities and the ideas I had about ridiculous pick-up lines, speed dating, wine tastings and meetings for SD Young Professionals were part of a distant memory of plans gone by.

Still, I know it can be done. Happily married people still have successful careers as authors, right? Maybe in a few months the inspiration will spark again. Maybe Plans will do something annoying or we'll pass the honeymoon stage and I'll be able to concentrate on incorporating the story about the home-tattooed, unemployed, divorced, scummy guy who hit on my friend the other day into a relatable narrative describing the Pursuit of Passion in the Big Bad World of Dating.

Eat, Pray, Love: Indonesia

(I probably should postpone my last Eat, Pray, Love post until mid-February as my book club has decided to swap our original February selection for this book and now all of my favorite quotes and ideas are already advertised, but oh well. Indonesia is more quotes I love and don't have commentary on anyway.)

Page 260

...people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment.

I love this idea. Happiness is absolutely a right for everyone, but that doesn't mean that everyone gets it. Not everyone chooses to be happy. Not everyone puts in the effort necessary to find their own happiness or maintain it. How sad but also revolutionary.

All the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people.

This is even worse! Just as sneezes and yawns and hiccups are contagious, our attitudes are, too. When you are around a person who complains a lot, sometimes the tendency is to compete for the spotlight. "You think that's bad? Well I have a story about something that happened to me that's worse!" Girls do this a lot because we talk and compare and rate just about everything. "Oh, your boyfriend is being a jackass? Well let me tell you about this guy I dated who was more of a jackass than your jackass!" We constantly reinforce the mood around us. Attitude is our own fault. We choose to enjoy our lives or complain about them. (This is even more reinforced by things like Facebook that ask people to post their "status" on a weekly, daily or sometimes hourly basis. I find that I look forward to reading what my positive friends have to say, whether it be about how much they enjoy their jobs, the funny things their kids have done, or some random positive thing they found about their day. On the other hand, it becomes wearisome to constantly read updates from friends who use their Facebook to status to complain about everything from the weather to the traffic.)

Page 262

The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in one lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same old addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma (and also of Western psychology, by the way) -- take care of the problems now, of else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering -- that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding -- there's where you'll find heaven.

Page 325

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of human life is caused by words, as is all the joy.

As a teacher of language who spends abundant time literally jumping up and down trying to convince 15 year-olds that words are important, ALL words are important, I am in love with this quote. I will most likely make my next poor class do a journal on it. What a profound idea. Maybe I'll even turn it into a placard in my classroom or a pillow in my house. Ugh. LOVE it!

Eat, Pray, Love: India (Soulmates)

Page 149

Liz's friend Richard on soul mates:

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.

This is exactly how I have always thought of soul mates. I believe that people are brought into your life at certain times for specific reasons. There are some people who stay with you because they can constantly continue to teach you things. Soul mates are people who understand you, at the most basic level, completely and immediately.

You may not understand right away why you are drawn to a particular person. People think soul mates are romantic, and how lucky it is when they are, but I think soul mates are people who are connected in a way that is totally unrelated to romantic love. Soul mates are people who challenge us, who see through to the parts of ourselves we don't want to face and make us face them. Soul mates force us to see ourselves. I had a soul mate a few years ago who forced me to see that I was approaching romance in a way that would never yield the results I said I wanted. He was in my life for just 2 months and he ripped me wide open. It was heart-wrenching. But he changed the way I thought about a lot of my own goals and ideals. He served his purpose in my life and then he was gone. I think it happens like this a lot.

Eat, Pray, Love: India (I)

Page 132

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

After my Dad died, my Mom and I made a conscious effort to "think positively" as much as possible. We were in the middle of the most intense grief either of us had ever experienced (very different types of grief, of course, but still) and we knew that if we didn't deliberately choose positive thoughts over our negative ones, we would each slip into a dangerous depression. It takes a lot of practice to control your own thoughts like that, but I wrote many journal entries trying to focus on the things for which I was thankful instead of the things about my life I wished I could change. For example:

Journal entry from 11/3/2008: "Substituting is not the ideal situation, but I get to go to work every day in a place where I hang out with teenagers and talk about books. For better or worse I am a teacher and this job allows me to keep doing that. I'm lucky to be so sure of my purpose and to have a passion that so readily translates into a career."

After 2 years of practice it has become much easier to think positively. (Plans is even better at it than I am and the reinforcement of being around him and always finding the "bright side" also helps.) Even more than that, it has become harder to be around people who do not try to find the positive in their own lives. The phenomena of Facebook is that people are constantly projecting themselves to the world. I can't help but start to categorize my Facebook contacts into The Complainers and The Thankful. I am drawn to the people who find joy in their lives, especially in small things. I grow weary of people who consistently choose to post status updates that are negative. When I want to whine about something that went wrong in my life that day, I try to get a little perspective and then post the "bright side" instead.

From A Return To Love: "Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell."

The more you repeat negative thoughts, the more powerful they become. The more you concentrate on finding beauty and joy in your environment, the easier they become to spot. I could complain that my boyfriend lives in another state, that I am financially dependent on my parent, that I had to get a second job and I don't have the career I want yet. But instead I am happy that I have people in my life who love me, that I live with my best friend, that I still get to function as a teacher even if it's not in the most ideal way, and that I am healthy and living in a beautiful place. (And when I'm getting away from these thoughts, which happens often enough, I revisit the Vision Board. The vision board is ALL positive. Again, "If you don't have one, get one!")

Page 177

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I eat and read and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in life -- whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can't rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

Eat, Pray, Love: Italy

I decided to read Eat, Pray, Love for the second time in December because I find it comforting to revisit books I liked. (Right after my Dad died I re-read the 7th Harry Potter because I wanted to be with characters who felt like friends. Coincidentally, I think Eat, Pray, Love might have been the next book I read.) It has been about 2 years since my last trip through Italy, India and Indonesia with Liz and, considering the VERY different personal space I am in, thought I may feel differently about the thoughts and revelations of that book. Here are my notes (I am such a student...):

Page 37

Total delight! Liz has been to the gelato place near the Pantheon in Rome that I have literally been raving about for a year and a half!

Il Gelato di San Crispino has some of the most original flavors of gelato I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of extensive flavor selections between Italy and Spain). Liz even mentioned specially the cinnamon-ginger ice cream I craved (with McDonald's french fries of all things) for at least a year after my Italy trip with my students. I admit now that this is not the most enlightened note I have in the book. Lisa will be the only person who reads this and understands the truly transformative experience of this particular gelato.

(Note the picture is mine of the menu at San Crispino. That's how much I love this place; I took a picture of the MENU!)

Page 41

When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which I frequently am, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, "You have the opposite of a poker face. You have, like... miniature golf face.

My thought: Oh! Me too! Me too! That's why I can't lie or pretend. It's why my students like me and sometimes my bosses think I'm not respectful enough - I can't hide anything. I can't fake it. I don't know how. I'm just ... me... all the time. For real. And real me thinks everyone should be able to share what they really feel. (I've found that this is not as well-received in the World of Work as I think it should be.) The only thing I would say differently is that when I am lost, which I too frequently am, I look so damn confident about where I am going that not only do I not necessarily look lost, but people with good senses of direction will actually follow me into the complete unknown assuming I know exactly where I am going. When traveling the confidence is good, the lack of direction is awful. The miniature golf face is a bit of a liability when traveling alone, too.

Page 62

For me, though, a major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritan guilt. Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is very American, too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.

I think one of the reasons I like this book so much is because I identify with Liz in many ways. I'm a good student, a good planner, someone who sits in the first row of class and takes genuine self-worth from whether or not my teachers (bosses, colleagues) like me. I'm good at following the rules and doing what I'm supposed to do. At an early age (I usually say 16, but 12 if I'm being honest) I put my life on a scheduled path of school and hard work and degrees and a job that would make it all worth while. I'm not good at idleness. Too much relaxation makes me feel lazy. My self worth is too closely tied to job performance and productivity. That's why unemployment was so difficult for me in the beginning. For about 4-6 months I suffered a kind of mild depression because without work I felt indulgent, irresponsible and lazy. How could I justify being happy if I wasn't doing my part to contribute to society?

But as I said in my 2009 blog, I realized that being happy itself is a contribution to society. Happiness is a natural right. You don't have to earn it. The size of my paycheck and the number of hours I spent slugging away at a job do not correlate to how much enjoyment I am allowed. This concept, expressed in just a few sentences, has taken about 2 years to really believe and there are still days when it slips my mind completely.

Page 95

It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.

They should make a bumper-sticker out of this one. It's just a great motto to live by. I want to hang it on a wall somewhere.

Page 115

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

My mom and I have discussed this concept at length in the last 2 years. Somehow in our Puritan society self-sacrifice has become the ideal many women strive for. "Look how successful I am! I do everything for my husband and kids and parents and friends and never think of myself at all!" Or, better phrased for my taste, when asked if she ever has needs of her own Jane (in 27 Dresses) says, "No. I'm Jesus."

But this ideal has it all wrong. You can only offer yourself to the people around you if there is something there to offer. Self-care is not a luxury, it's a necessity. If I don't take the me-time to rest, read, breathe, and do whatever I need to do to rejuvenate myself occasionally, what exactly am I offering to the people I love? Finding and experiencing beauty and joy and tranquility as often as possible is not indulgence. Living a life of balance is not something that we should feel guilty for, it is a basic human necessity.

Stay tuned for India...

Plans in Big Bear

A few months ago Joe's friends Ryan and Chantel invited us to join them in the mountains in the winter. Joe was incredibly excited at the prospect of snowboarding and hanging out with friends and I, fan of warm fires and reading that I am, thought this could be an opportunity for a wonderfully cozy and relaxing time.

There was talk for a minute of me even trying snowboarding before my judgement caught up to me. I don't sport! I'm not competitive in that way. And since Joe honestly didn't care whether or not I tried it and was just happy to be away together, why would I chance a sport the most common injury of which happens to be double broken wrists? Umm... I seem to remember going through that lovely condition already once this year.

All snow-geared up for the day! (Ryan P, Jenny, Chantel, Joe, Sarah, Ryan R)

What a gorgeous day! I don't have to be falling down a mountain to appreciate that view...

Me and my Plans :)

Evening activities...

A walk/hike in the mountains on New Year's Day

(I just wish I could figure out a way to post these panoramic photos in their original form but bigger! They're such gorgeous pictures!)

Productivity

One of the ways I have found to satisfy my desire to feel productive in my current state of basic unemployment is jewelry making. I've always been craftsy and this holiday season I was able to make some of the gifts I gave for Christmas instead of buying them. Two birds, one stone; I felt like I was using my time effectively and 4 different people got personalized gifts they can use.

Reanna's turquoise, green & silver necklace.

I was so flipping excited about this set (my first attempt at this style of necklace and the first pair of earring I've made EVER) that I almost didn't want to send it to Reanna at all. It broke my heart to put it in the mail...

Cate's purple, black, charcoal and silver necklace.

Cate's double drop earrings.

Smoky blue and silver for Sissy.

Turquoise glass short necklace and earrings for Alicia.

Teal, green, silver and charcoal.

A coral set for me :)

Plum earrings to go with a necklace Mom made for herself. (I was bored)

2009 Year in Review

If 2008 was a year characterized mostly by big change I did not choose nor want (Dad's death, losing my dream teaching job after just one year), 2009 has been a year of making new choices for changes I want. 2008 was a year of survival until my trip to Argentina for Habitat for Humanity. That trip in many ways gave me the release I needed to start a new life for myself, to decide what I really want in order to be happy. After 11 months of grief and disappointment, it was time to change my perspective.

In December/January, I was convinced that in order to be happy, I had to effectively traumatize myself out of my comfort zone by completely uprooting and moving to a new country. I thought that if I had the courage to move to England, I would come back with the confidence to find the life I really wanted here.

I had a lot of free time during those months (5 sub days in about 10 weeks...) and I used it to read, write, and generally figure out what exactly I envision for myself in the big picture. I read and re-read Eat, Pray, Love; He's Just Not That Into You; A Return to Love. I watched Oprah. I made a vision board. (If you don't have one, get one!) Slowly, I began to change the way I look at my own life, my own choices, my own attitude. I began to break out of the patterns that had kept me lock

ed in my house for nearly a year.

(The vision board includes my goals for my life in the areas of

romance/home, travel, teaching, world citizenship, family, and self.)

The goals for 2009?

1. Be happier with myself as a person.

2. Be more social.

3. Find ways to feel worthwhile and satisfied that are not related to employment.

At first I thought I had to go out and find new friends; a daunting and unpleasant prospect. In the meantime, I wanted to be more consistent about the friends I already had. My credential friends and I started having monthly "Diva Dinners" to catch up. I started a book club without having any idea of how beneficial it would be for me to reconnect with people from high school. How was I to know that having those people in my life again would accomplish my exact goal of "making new friends?" I didn't need *new* friends, I needed people who knew and understood me already. I needed the Divas and the Lady Longhorns.

A year ago, I would've expected to have entirely new friends, a new place to live, a completely new life at this point. Instead, I have old friends, a home filled with love and support and family, and a life I had all along but am so much happier to be living now. The bullet points of my life right now don't seem like much (unemployed 26-year-old who still lives at home and is rapidly running out of savings money to live on...), but in reality I am just so undeniably happy. I live with my best friend. I am friends with my sister and get to spend time with her regularly. I have a boyfriend who makes me feel confident and happy and excited. I have learned to be happy with the accomplishments of every day tasks, rather than feeling like a failure because I don't have the job I want. If this is my starting point, I can only hope that 2010 will be even better.

Wishing everyone the peace and hope and happiness I feel this season.