In lieu of posting something new today, which I was thinking about in between my new yoga routine that’s now two days old and putting off doing work for my actual job by reading interview materials for a potential new job, I’m going to send you over to the wonderful Renee’s blog, where my Powerful Woman Monologue is up! I wrote it after a particularly annoying day talking to my students about Twilight and after FINALLY watching all of Miss Representation with my sister. I’m so happy Renee put this project together, as it is an awesome way to spread awareness about a prevalent problem we all too easily forget about.

I’m happy to say my students are in the midst of the project I referenced in the piece, and it is going amazingly well. It was amazing and empowering watching their eyes open to the ways media can manipulate our views of ourselves and others, and I am proud of myself for making my students a bit more media literate and, hopefully, a bit more accepting of themselves and those around them.

Please check out Miss Representation’s website to learn more and join the movement!

One of my 2012 goals is to “be happy being single.” This should be easy enough. Being single means getting to do whatever (pardon my language) the fuck I want to. All. The. Time. I can spend a full Sunday on the couch watching nothing but Dance Moms, Mrs. Doubtfire, and 500 Days of Summer. I can spend my Thursday nights marathoning The Wire and getting drinks on a whim with my TFA friends. I can go dancing with my college girls on Saturdays and get brunch every Sunday with everyone. I also live alone now (which is AWESOMELY AWESOME by the way. You should all try it sometime), which adds even more to this “All What Amanda Wants to do All of the Time” business. (It also means every show on my DVR is mine, which is epically fantastic. Also great? Ample fridge space!)

It also means I should have significantly less drama and angst in my life. When any of my friends or I am in a relationship, there are always so many questions – where is this relationship going? Why didn’t he call me today? Why did his voice sound so weird on the phone? Who is he texting all the time? Why is he hanging out alone with that girl he’s “only friends” with ALL THE TIME? Well, not all the time, but enough that is annoying and a thing and I’m going to ask questions about it, goddamnit! I mean…yeah, there are a lot of questions. And sometimes stress and angst, thus being single should be easy! Stress and question free! All Amanda All The Time!

But for some reason, for the last few months, it hasn’t been all easy. It has kind of sucked. And I know it’s sucky, not because being single is inherently sucky, but because I, on some level, am making it sucky for myself. It is sucky because I sulk about it to myself when I get asked these questions by my friends, when I see people holding hands or sitting on the same side of the booth at brunch (which, I mean, NO ONE SHOULD DO!! Just eat your eggs without getting handsy. It is not that hard), when I see stupid RomCom commercials and hear single girls behind me in CVS bitch about how Valentine’s Day isn’t fun for anyone because its about corporate greed and making single people sad! (Oh, CVS girls, you are just sooo original.) It’s sucky because I (horribly) have internalized that being single is somehow a reflection on my self worth, like it means that I am somehow less than a woman who is in a relationship and that no one wants me , not that I have yet to find anyone worthy of my awesomeness, which to be frank, is probably closer to the truth. (You are loving my humbleness right now….) I have grown up in a culture where, for girls, love is the goal, and since I have yet to attain it, I am somehow missing some big, important facet of my life and should be spending all my free time searching for it and sulking for not having it yet. It is even more sucky because I regularly deny to myself that all of the proceeding facts are true. I tell myself that I have actually truly internalized all the feminist literature I’ve read (and fully believe) and am totally happy with my awesomely independent life-style, but honestly, I still feel kind of sucky. It’s a terrible vicious cycle. I make myself feel sucky for being single and then feel sucky for feeling that way instead of feeling sassy and awesome and on and on and on.

BUT step 1 of my 2012 goal is to admit all of this, here on the internet, to try to begin breaking the cycle of sucky. I desperately want to fully enjoy being single because it is in so many ways, for me right now, the best possible thing. I need time and energy to focus on not failing at my job, on filling out grad school scholarship applications, and on finishing The Wire season 1. Plus, I need to spend as much time as possible with my amazingly awesome friends, who I will miss terribly come fall if I end up using those grad school scholarships and momentarily leaving LA. So, deep breath….new mantra: single is super not sucky.

Also, full disclosure, I will for the time being, be on E-Harmony, (Thanks enabling work friends who are also on E-harmony!) because single girls still like dates right? Right…

For this winter break, my family decided that we should go on a family cruise! I love my family enough that the idea of spending a week essentially trapped on a boat with them sounded lovely, so it was on! We had a wonderul and wonderfully hilarious at times time on said boat trip, and I learned a number of lessons along the way that I thought I would pass onto you potential future cruisers:

1) The Buffet is the soul-sucking worst: Why ANYONE would elbow their way through a crowded room full of vaguely stale, luke-warm food only to spend twenty minutes frantically pushing through swarms of extended families calling out each other’s names only to find a table on the deck in 40 degree weather a 10 minute walk from the nearest water station when there are BEAUTIFUL dining rooms with real chairs and servers and equally “free” food (my dad liked to remind me that while I wasn’t paying a bill then, the food wasn’t actually free) is BEYOND me. What I’m saying is, avoid the Buffet.

2) People like terrible entertainment: My sister and I regularly (and by regularly, I mean once) got to bars early to get seats for the entertainment we were excited about – mainly a British cover band doing Beatles songs for an hour and The Second City touring group’s improv shows- but in order to keep those tables we had to sit through things like “Men versus Women Challenge!” which my sister adorably thought would be a “battle of wits” (to which I responded sadly, “WHY would that be it?”) and which was actually a contest to determine important questions like, which gender can fit more people on a single bed sheet or which sex can locate their shoes faster when they’ve been left in a giant pile on a bed sheet. (Props were clearly limited). What was sad was not that these games were offered, but HOW MANY PEOPLE SHOWED UP! SO. MANY. PEOPLE! Like standing room only. And they LOVED it. The cheering was deafening. And then they all left when actual good acts came on. It baffled me, but at least answered my question of who all these people are that are watching 2 and a Half Men. This also led my sister and I to decide to start a TED cruise, where in all entertainment is intellectually stimulating and awesome.

3) Harry Potter World is the best place on earth: This is how my mom actually convinced me to go on this trip. I had doubts, but the second I found out I could visit Hogwarts, I was in! My sister and I spent 8 hours in this magical wonderland, doing everything from drinking Butterbeer (see below: And yes, that would be a commemorative mug), to buying wands, to reading all of the ride warnings, which were written as proclamations from various departments in the Ministry of Magic. We again got on our pop cultural high horse when we decided that people should have to take a Harry Potter quiz to get in after I overheard some girl in Honeyduke’s saying she’d “only like seen one of these movies.” THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE TAKING UP PRECIOUS SPACE!?! *deep breath* Anyway, it was ridiculous and awesome. The line for the Hogwarts ride alone, which leads you through the castle and includes holograms of Dumbledore, Harry, Hermione, and Ron, would’ve made the whole trip worth it.

4) Large groups of people and children make me tense: My goal on this trip was mostly to avoid being around lots of people, which is difficult on a boat holding over 4,000 people. This led to a lot of me sitting on our balcony reading, which was beautiful and fine with me. My family also suffered from this anxiety, which also led to us getting some primo seats in Great Stirrup Cay, Norwegian’s private island. I found some small note on the island map which noted an “adult” beach, which was THE BEST. Few people. No children. No noise. When we walked by where they actually wanted you to be sitting, the place with all the food, music, entertainment and people, my mom simply stated, “Why would ANYONE want to sit over here.” We’re clearly a fun bunch.

5) You meet cool people on cruises, despite previously stated annoyance with people: My family’s cruise friends included: a Ukrainian neuroscience researcher and her husband who sat with us doing the Second City Show. She was very interested in my teaching and hilariously and for no reason lied to her husband about my sister and my ages, which he seemed genuinely confused by; a Serbian lifeguard who lived on the private island (or had for three days at that point) and informed my sister and mom that the Norwegian staff often have parties with the staff on the Royal Caribbean island next to them; a South African woman who had lived in Israel and now lived in Chicago but hated it because of her kid’s school who was also very interested, but also confused by, Teach for America. She did, however, tell me I was changing the world and thus may have been my favorite.

6) Boat movement is weird, especially in windowless rooms: I have only been on one other cruise in my life, which was one around the British Isles. I remember it being very smooth, which now in retrospect makes a lot of sense as we were merely floating in the small stretch of water between English and Ireland. I now realize that most cruises involve more movement and thus more dizziness and nausea for me. Thankfully, my mom had Sea Bands, little wrist bands that look like eighties sweat bands that have little plastic balls that push on your pressure points and supposedly help with sea sickness. I still think they are more psychosomatic, but they helped. They also cut into my skin giving me weird scabs on my wrists. Not cute. In bathrooms, however, nothing helped. Feeling a toilet seat moving beneath you is just weird and upsetting.

7) Boat movement will continue long after you get off the boat: I also don’t remember this from my last cruise, but I definitely felt like I was moving, especially again in windowless rooms, for a full four days after the cruise. This makes walking around a mall not the funnest.

8 ) Towel animals are kick-ass and make any night better: See photo evidence below.

9) You can reach a point at which your body can consume no more food: It took a week, but it happened. I think it was this dessert that did it.

10) My family is the best: Being on a boat for a week could’ve made me slightly loopy – something about my liking to have control and being vaguely claustrophobic – but my family made this trip hilarious and fun and relaxing and awesome. They are simply the best.

11) (And I almost forgot!) Running on a treadmill on a boat is the ACTUAL soul-sucking worst – or at least tied with the buffet: It’s like running up and down a hundred little hills!

I was struggling to write a year end post, as I always have trouble wrapping up my year in a nice reflective bow and setting realistic and helpful goals for my next year. (See last year’s almost completely unaccomplished goal list.) I was, however, inspired yesterday by my lovely friend Nicole’s goal setting template (and general awesomeness), which totally kickstarted my goal-setting and reflecting.

Looking back over this year, I would say that a word to describe it would be unexpected. This year did not go as I planned, again see last year’s goal list. There are, however, some things I would definitely put on my Eff Yeah List: knowing myself enough to know that my relationship wasn’t working and having the courage to leave, working for Teach for America and in the end feeling like I did “widen my impact” as TFA lingo goes, actually committing to and having some success in running, moving in by myself and loving it, not letting moving in by myself turn me into a hermit but actually using it to be MORE social and making some new fabulous friends, and of course, eating ridiculous amounts of brunch.

There were lots of things this year, however, that were not so full of Eff Yeah-ness. They included feeling like I’m not doing a good job at my job for the first time, making some boy decisions that were probably not the healthiest, drinking a BIT too much red wine, and hurting my knee several times whilst running. Which leads me to my word for next year…

Element.

This one takes a bit of explaining. I just finished reading a book by Ken Robinson, an educational innovator and writer who is pretty kick-ass – seriously, if you have not listened to his Ted Talk about Education and Creativity, leave this place now and go watch it – called The Element, ironically partially as an assignment for work. (You shall see the irony in a minute) In it, he explains about The Element, or the intersection of your passions and talents, and how important it is for us personally and as a society to find our own elements and live in them. While reading, I finally accepted that I am not living in my element. I am doing something I am pretty good at and that I like, but I am not consistently doing the things that I LOVE and am GREAT at doing. My goals for next year all have to do with finding the time and making the big life decisions that will lead me towards my Element, and if I don’t love something – an activity, a person, a job – I want to have the strength to let it not take up my time and my life.

From that point, I put some goals in place in various buckets. Some are extremely tangible – running: run 3 races (5K, 10K and half marathon are my goals now – I’m not setting an actual distance goal just yet as my knee is still wonky, and I don’t want to set myself up for failure.); cooking: cook a REAL meal (nothing frozen) at least once a month. Invite people over. Blogging: Post at least once a week.

Some buckets are much more about mind-sets. Knowing I have some big work decisions coming up, my biggest goal there is to not let fear dictate my decisions. For relationships, my two biggies are to simply stop making bad decisions and be happy being single. (I think these two are related…)

I’ve also tried to anticipate that I may be leaving LA (albeit only for a year or so…) in this next year, so I did make a bucket of Fun LA things, which include going to a new restaurant/bar each month and doing the Hollywood Sign hike – my favorite LA-y thing – at least two more times.

All of my buckets encompass things or people I love, and in a lot of cases, don’t spend enough time doing – blogging, photography, cooking, etc. I really want to find my Element not just at work but in my hobbies and free time – how can I best use my time to do the things I am passionate about?

Overall, I’m satisfied with 2011 but not entirely happy with it, if that makes any sense. I know that this next year could land me in a totally new place – both literally and figuratively – and I hope my goals will help guide that change process in a positive way. Here’s to 2012!

(Note: I wrote this about a month ago but didn’t feel like actually posting it. Now, I feel like I just need to put this out there…see reasons below.)

I’m going to give a warning upfront: there is about to be a WHOLE lot of self-love up in this post, but right now, I kind of need to write this down. I need to send this message out into the universe as a way of making it actually sink into my own head, as I’ve spent some time in the past few months making decisions and putting myself into situations that did not always make me feel like an awesome person, and really, it was my fault and my decisions to be in those situations, but really, I want to say this now, for myself:

I’m pretty fucking awesome.

I regularly make people laugh out loud. I have interesting taste in television and books. I will listen to pretty much any music that anyone has ever liked, ever. I always compromise and try to make other people happy. I go out of my way to say nice things to people. I rarely get angry, and I think I take a lot of things in stride. I’m understanding. I work out regularly. I’m an amazing cook AND will offer to clean dishes. I’m a pretty excellent dancer, and I’m social at parties. And if I’m being really honest with myself, I’m pretty good looking! I take care of myself. I spend an uncomfortable amount of money getting my hair cut, and I’m fairly stylish. I love my family and am (I’ve been told) an excellent friend. Other people’s parents love me, and I am excellent at giving running commentary to terrible television shows and movies. I work hard and have ambition. I’m intelligent and can hold an interesting conversation. I will call you when something good happens to you and be the first one to suggest a celebration, and I will happily drink wine with you to cheer you up after a terrible day. I’m fairly clean, and I leave awesome messages on Facebook for people’s birthdays.

Someone would be lucky to have me, and someday, I sincerely hope that someone I think is pretty fucking awesome sees that too.

(One more note: Kate Monster’s part in “It Sucks to be Me” from Avenue Q may be playing on a constant loop in my head right now….I do see the similarity in tone and message here.)

My senior year of high school, my dad ran a half marathon.

For a lot of people, this is a big deal, but in my family, I now see it as sort of a pivot point – the point at which my parents’ lives went in this new and totally interesting direction. At the time, of course, I did not give it proper credit. I was pretty wrapped up in that whole “I’m 18 and my life and where I’m choosing to go to college is pretty much the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of all mankind, forever” thing. I remember seeing him lying on the couch at home afterwards, wrapped in a blanket, because even though it was April, Ohio had decided it would be an awesome time for some snow. I said congratulations (I think), but really, I should have celebrated more. Up until I was in high school, my dad had always been moderately overweight. Not horribly, like a Biggest Loser contestant, but I would never have called him skinny, and I didn’t give that a second thought. That was just how my dad was. Then, when I was in high school, my dad started losing a ton of weight. And he started running. It culminated in his running a half-marathon. Again, I gave this very little thought at the time.

A year later, I was in college at BU, and I got to watch my uncle as he passed by my dorm in mile 25 of the Boston Marathon. My uncle had never run a marathon, but a series or circumstances – him being the weatherman on ABC and having the chance to run for a charity close to his heart – allowed him to do it, and he did. He finished the Boston Marathon.

His running Boston and my Dad running his half then inspired my mom to start running. When I went home the next fall, she would be out doing intervals in our neighborhood. When she started, she couldn’t run a mile.

This year, she ran her third marathon.

Again, at the time, I did not give any of this much thought, except that when my mom came up to Boston my Junior year of college to run the Tufts 10K, I felt vaguely guilty and out of shape. A year later, after several visits home during which I would roll out of bed at 10, only to encounter my parents coming in from a ridiculously long run, I finally felt guilty and out-of-shape enough to try to start running myself. I went with the Couch to 5K program, and it went pretty well for about a month. I would go running along the Charles, congratulating myself on how fit and dedicated I looked. I got up to jogging for about 5 minutes. Then the knee pain hit. Debilitating knee pain that made me limp home in shame and made walking up and down stairs for the next week or so extremely difficult. Bye-bye running.

For the next few years, my parents continued to kick-ass at running. When they moved to Delaware, my mom got a job at a gym, which led to her becoming a personal trainer and starting a local running club. My mom began to inspire adults to run, giving them tips, helping them train, and giving them the inspiration to start. She also started coaching Girls on the Run, a program to help girls in 3rd-5th grade build confidence through training for and running a 5K. My parents ran several half-marathons before they needed a new challenge and decided to take on a full marathon – the Marine Corps Marathon, which my dad used to help run (as in facilitate) during his years as a Marine. At this milestone for my parents, my guilt kicked in again, and I thought I’d give this running thing another try. Maybe that knee thing was a fluke, and as I’d been using my knee as an excuse to not run anymore, I thought, why don’t I just do it again to see what happens. I got four weeks in for the 2nd time before the knee pain popped back up again. I gave up again, and frankly, I was sort of happy to have an excuse as to why I couldn’t do it to use every time people would say “So are you a runner like your parents?”

I used that excuse until this past Spring, I suddenly, and happily, became extremely close to Christina. Christina is a runner – a logs Daily Miles on facebook daily, has run 3-marathons runner, but she hasn’t always been. She only started three years ago when we started teaching. She ran the SRLA program at her school and ran her first LA marathon. She reminded me of my mom in that way.

Around this time, I also heard that Nicole was training for a half marathon, and I know that Nicole was not a runner before this.

Suddenly, I felt stupid and lazy with my excuse. My knee hurt. So what? My parents had several injuries that they had gotten over. So has ANYONE who has ever run, ever. My excuse felt flimsy, and I was suddenly tired of telling stories of my parents’ awesome running lives to my friends with awesome running lives, instead of having any of my own besides “Oh, I don’t run. You know…knee pain and all.”

So I started the Coach to 5K again, for a third time. I pretty much had the first 5 weeks memorized at this point. And at about a month and a half in, without fail, my knee pain came screaming back, but this time, I wasn’t secretly relieved. I was pissed off. I wanted to join this elusive running club of which I had never been able to gain entry. I wanted to punch this knee pain in the face. So I did.

I finally went to see a sports doctor who diagnosed my injury in 2.5 seconds and gave me a way to fix it. Two weeks later, I was easing back into running, pain free. Four weeks later, I ran for 20 minutes without stopping – the longest I have ever run in my life. And I couldn’t wait to call my mom and tell her.

This week, on the eve of attempting to run for 25 minutes, I signed up for a 5k and had my mom make me a training plan to work up to running a half-marathon in the Spring. Christina has been cheering me on all week. When I get back, I’ll probably ask Nicole to show me some running trails by our apartment. I finally feel part of the club.

I didn’t write a post this week about what I’m thankful for because it felt like it would be cliche and sound like everyone else’s. I’m of course thankful for my friends and family, but today, I am specifically thankful for having such inspiring, motivating, helpful and encouraging friends and family. If my dad, my uncle, my mom, Christina, and Nicole hadn’t put on shoes, walked outside and started to run, despite the fact that they had never done it before, despite the fact that it was hard, I never would have done it…three times. I would have given up and been fine with that, but seeing them do it and keep doing it, I realized I wasn’t fine with giving up. I wanted the joy, the frustration, the pain, and the triumph of running too. So, thanks you guys! I wouldn’t be doing this without you.

So here I am. Still alive after all these months. Who would’ve thought? I certainly wouldn’t have thought that I would be sitting here in November, single, living in my own apartment, questioning my next step, having accomplished none of the goals I set out for myself in my last post what seems like a life-time ago but well on my way to accomplishing new goals and being totally fine with all of that.

While my life on paper looks pretty much like it did before, there are some minor changes. Still Teaching For America, though as an official alumnus now and not as an active Corps Member, and I did move up a grade with my kiddos. Plus, I joined the TFA staff bandwagon, working at their Summer Institute this past summer, which was both the most ridiculously tiring and stressful and most ridiculously fun job I’ve ever had.

Still living in LA, but I made the move from my super trendy, Grove-adjacent neighborhood, to a less trendy, more quiet, much much much closer to work neighborhood within walking distance of Nicole and Drea. Also, I’m living alone for the first time, which was mildly terrifying at first (like double-checking the locks every night before I went to sleep and then getting up again after 10 minutes of being almost asleep to check them again terrifying), but now that I can come home, sit in silence while watching a DVR full of shows that only I have taped, I’m starting to enjoy it. Plus, I get to feel all adult and accomplished when I do crazy things like unclog my shower drain after being annoyed with the standing water for a month. (That’s an adult thing right?)

And there was that whole, I was in a long-term relationship and now am not thing…which I’m fine with. I’ve had a crazy single summer and have been spending more time brunching, dancing, and just generally hanging out with my amazing friends and some new amazing friends, all of whom say I’m way more fun than I was last year, so I’m going to call it a win. Also, I may be contemplating joining a synagogue just to meet new cute Jewish boys, which I think God would be totally fine with…so maybe I’m not totally fine with being single, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The other big change is that I’m thinking I may be done with teaching after this year. While I certainly don’t hate it, I’m starting to feel the “wow, I’m actually completely burned out” feeling, which may have something to do with that ridiculously tiring summer job and the fact that I”m teaching a new grade/subject for the third year in a row, and have thus never been able to reuse any of the work I’ve done for the past two years, and yeah….I’m feeling a little done, which means I need to now have that whole WHAT THE HECK AM I GOING TO DO NOW conversation in my mind for the next 8 months, which in turn means a lot of grad school applications, TFA staff applications, and web searches for jobs in theater education to see what comes up. So you’re welcome for the slew of angsty, where-do-I-want-my-life-to-go posts that will be coming your way in the next few months.

That’s all I’ve got for now – hopefully now that I’m a regular person again, after a lovely two-year hiatus, I’ll make this posting business a regular part of my week again. I mean, I owe it to the awesome redesign to at least give it a chance. (Thanks, Steph!)

I’m not a huge fan of resolutions, because they feel kind of unmeasurable, and I usually forget about them. This year, I’m going to try something (slightly) different, and set specific goals, as Teach for America has so kindly taught me how to do.

So here, for public consumption and accountability are my goals for 2011:

1. Lose 10 pounds before the summer. (How? Working out an average of 3 times a week and re-joining Weight Watchers, which helped me lose 10 pounds in three months in 2009.)

2. Bike 50 miles in the Tour de Cure for Diabetes in Long Beach in May.

3. Read 8-10 books, with the help of my new super awesome Nook!

4. Blog….more. (This shouldn’t be hard, as right now, I’ve averaging six posts a year.)

And that’s all I’ve got mentally for now, as I have a horrifying cold and am currently wrapped in the softest blanket on earth reading Dan Savage’s The Commitment on my Nook, both courtesy of my super awesome boyfriend. Hopefully, if I stick to goal #4, I’ll be back with a voice and a slightly higher capacity for thought soon.

This week is my birthday week.

Wednesday (my actual birthday), I’m going out to dinner with the boyfriend, and probably getting a chocolate cake from one of my students who came to me the other day to ask me, and I quote, “chocolate questions,” to determine my cake preferences.

Friday, my boyfriend organized a dinner with our awesome and amazing co-workers at one of my favorite LA spots. (In fact, I was just there enjoying buttery garlic balls with Andrea and Amy!)

Saturday, my roommates organized a dinner and small get together for my outside of work friends.

Today, my sister told me she is getting me tickets to go see a taping of “Big Bang Theory,” something we’ve been talking about wanting to do for months.

All in all, I’m feeling overwhelmed with the amount of love and general awesomeness in my life right now.

After my last post, I’ve been trying to live in the moment, to stop thinking about how my life looks and to start focusing on how happy I am at this juncture of my life.

In thinking about this coming birthday week, I went back and read what I posted last year on my 23rd birthday, and this one line in particular hit me:

“While my 23rd year most likely won’t seem as life-changing on paper as my 22nd, I’m thinking that by my 24th year, I’m going to be an entirely different person, and for today at least, I feel kind of OK with that.”

This hit me, because of how right I was in my assumption. On paper, my life is almost exactly the same as last year. I live in the same apartment. I have the same job. I have the same friends, but this year, I feel, somehow, more whole. I feel much more grown up, more settled. Despite stress, I feel good at my job, where as last year I felt, at times, like I was drowning. Last year, though I would rarely admit it, I felt utterly, emotionally alone, and now I’m with someone who constantly surprises me with understanding and with exactly what I need at the end of a long day. Last year, I still missed my “homes” in Boston and with my parents, and while I still feel a little ache for that, I now feel like when I come to my apartment, I’m home. I feel like LA is where I live, and when I fly into LAX, I feel like I’m returning instead of just staying for a bit.

My prediction came true. My 23rd year was not life-changing like last year was. I’m different now, and I’m still very OK with that.

I’ve always been a pretty self-reflective, always dreaming up extremely vivid images of what kind of life I want to lead and what kind of person I want to be. I think blogging has factored into this a lot in the past few years. Blogs constantly expose you to a multitude of life choices, crazy adventures, and differing attitudes. In a weird way, it was reading blogs – mom blogs and blogs of people working for themselves, in particular – that made me realize I didn’t want to work in entertainment, because I wanted a more “regular” life, and that influence hasn’t gone away yet. Being constantly exposed to other people’s lives in this way allows me to see how other people are living on a weekly basis and see if they are living the kind of life I want for myself.

The problem with this, and with me, really, is that I have terrible “grass is greener” syndrome. Even as I’ve been happy with my life, I’m always seeing the awesome, cool, interesting, and exotic things OTHER people are doing. I see people eating at amazing restaurants, going on hot air balloon rides, creating a ball-pit in their living room, traveling the world, staring their own businesses, decorating adorable apartments, getting married, going to grad school…I see all these things, and I think, THOSE are the types of things I want – the interesting lives with the new, small adventures, with the adorable outfits and the Etsy adorned apartment and the fun, entrepreneurial new job….

Lately, I’ve come to realize, however, that what we see on blogs is SUCH a small slice of people’s lives, and not just any slice, the slice people *choose* to share with the world. We sometimes see the struggles, but always protected and monitored, always as a small chunk of the image. We don’t see the daily grind, the annoying traffic, the family frustrations, the utter heartbreaks, and the boring days. The more bloggers I’ve met in real the life, the more evident this has become to me. As much as we know and share with each other, we don’t know that much *just* from reading blogs. People are doing these fun, cool, adventurous things, but they are also living real life. Just like I am.

With this realization, it has been my mission to think about how my life could (or would) be perceived (if I actually blogged about it on a regular basis, that is), and what people may see in me, when you take away all that daily grind crap.

My blog would show that I love my job, stress and crazy kids and all. It would show that I have a great adorable teacher boyfriend who loves me. It would show that I do go on some crazy adventures, like hitting up Disneyland with these lovely folks and having a heart attack on Space Mountain, like going with my best friend to see Maroon 5 at the Greek theater, and like going with my hilarious co-workers to Drag Bingo in West Hollywood. It would show that I do have some cute Etsy jewelry. I do go to fun restaurants that have been featured on “The Best Thing I ever Ate,” and even though it isn’t super decorated, I do have a pretty sweet apartment.

Someone reading would look at my life and not see the disorganized room, the hour of me in sitting (and screaming) in traffic, the pain of getting up at 5AM, and the lack of decoration in my apartment, but they would see someone who has a pretty good life. And it is definitely the life I want.