What I've Unlearned

When I was working with kids, I've noticed something. I've noticed that the older the students, the more fearful they are in the classroom. Of learning. Of putting themselves out there, making mistakes, and doing it differently next time. My point: there's a ton of stuff I learned growing up that I'm spending my 20s trying to unlearn. Didn't Picasso say something insightful about how it takes a very long time to become young? Related: we teach ourselves our limitations, you guys. I started to write the following manifesto as a notebook entry, but to hammer it home I wanted to make a public declaration of it. (Don't I always?)

Here's what I'm unlearning:

Life's hard

You have to fight for what you want. It's not designed to be easy. Prove yourself. Urgh. My new year's resolution for 2015 was to do more of what feels good, and less of what doesn't. And you know what? It's awesome. And that's because life wants me to be happy. Life wants me to pursue my dreams, and see the magic in the everyday, because the universe wants to be noticed for the glorious work that she does. We notice the presence of the divine by personifying love, by leaning in to what feels amazing for as long as it gets us off. What if I believed that I deserve every lovely thing that happens to me?

Chase facts, not feelings

Nope. You know what facts do? Distort the truth. There's not a single statement that can't be justified with a percentage or statistic or number. We prize numerical data above all else because we can quantify "facts", and feelings are slippery little devils that change and alter, that can't be "proved". I don't have to see something to believe it: I can see it if I believe it.

Being alone is lonely

How many times must I learn the lesson, that I feel one thousand times worse spending time in the wrong company than I do if I pass the time in that of my own? I recently declared to myself that for any social occasion, I'll only go if the thrill of it outweighs the thrill I feel of being at my desk writing or reading: my happy place. That means my social life will shrink exponentially, then, and I have to be comfortable with that. FOMO (fear of missing out) is for the insecure, and I have to be determined to find peace in my own (much less busy, much less outwardly interesting) path.

(Shockingly, I'm applying this to fellas, too. You don't need to have a romance in order to have a romantic life, said a very wise woman. I hear that so hard.)

Likeable girls are modest

This is absolutely the hardest non-truth for me to navigate. Oh, how I want to be liked! LOL. I consistently talk myself down, making jokes at my own expense (getting to the punch line before anyone else can), so as not to appear threatening. But actually, I'm a badass. I'm smart and kind, self-aware and determined. I'm a good person. But beyond that, I have talent. I can write. I'm over the moon about that. It makes me wonder: What would I do if I wasn't so afraid of what other people think?

Disagreement is bad

I find comfort among those who agree with me, but growth among those who don't. Not seeing eye-to-eye with somebody is where the good stuff happens, and I wish I could be braver about that. See: stop trying to be so likeable. Furthermore: I am enough.

Screwing up is failure

You know what? My mistakes have taught me so much that I'm thinking about making a few more. The only failure is not trying. Failure is not trying again, when that 1st attempt didn't work. Failure is fear. And fear is a learned state. It's the flawed, imperfect, mistake-riddled path that leads to the best games adventures

Hello from the Other Side

An Open Letter to Socality Barbie

Dear Socality Barbie,

I spilled my coffee this morning trying to take a photo of it. It's dumb to even ask why I was trying to document the experience, I wanted people to know that I'd gotten up, made my own coffee, and was now preparing to conquer the first Monday of November. Why else would I need the perfect morning lighting and my cellphone at 6am? My mom looked at me and blinked twice like, "why are you even taking a picture of it?" Now not a single soul knows how authentically I managed to live this morning with my coffee. If you felt like your day's missing something then it's probably that photo. Happy to solve the mystery for you, Barbie.

But do you know what happened after the coffee spilled this morning? Life moved forward without the documentation. I made my new coffee. It's still good and piping hot. No one's made better or worse because of some inspirational caption I planned to pair with a photo softened by VSCO Cam. I tasted real life for a second and it felt pretty foreign on my lips. I wrapped myself in a blanket and a little bit of conviction for this day: why is it necessary to obsess over making life look perfect for the others? We all know it isn't. Why does the charade play on until something breaks? Glass or a heart, why can't I actually show you my real mess?

…

You weren't made to have my actual, day-to-day mess. It's you and a couple hundred or thousand followers who are not equipped for what happens when my junk actually hits the fan. You and I both know it, Barbie: the day you get drunk and leave Ken, and act like an angry train wreck with a megaphone on all your social media streams then people on the fringes won't want you anymore. It's harsh but probably true. Ken's friends will unfollow you. So manage your mess, Barbie. We want a mess we can monitor from the people we follow. We want honesty without the bruising. We want the kind of pain that's digestible and won't disturb our days. The day you use social media as a megaphone for your pain, the kind of pain latte art can't touch, people will leave you.

Some people will start talking in their circles the day you start to let the anger and the rant statuses flow. They'll start psycho-analyzing and putting the pieces together from a safe distance. They'll take social media and turn it into a soap opera, sigh out of relief as they say, "at least I'm doing better." But when did tiny glimpses of our lives, cropped to perfection, become the measuring stick for who's doing better and who's doing worse? When did life, and managing to live it, become a competition and a comparison? When did we confuse the real with fake and the fake with real?

Maybe I'm being a little too cruel to you, Barbie, seeing as you're not really 'real' but I reminded her of all the times people manage to say, "well, that person was fun to follow until that happened." And we all know what that thing was. Point's this: we want you right now, Barbie. We like you right now. You're doing something awesome and managing to make some really great puns of out of posed coffee shots and #liveauthentic hashtags. When you're doing something awesome people will always want to claim you and tag you. When you're making life look easy then people want to follow you.

…

Social media's in the DNA of our relationships now. It scares me to say that but it's true. I wanted to see how a friend's doing the other day and I clicked into her Instagram. I checked her off my mental list without even using the phone in my hand to perform the task it's always meant to do, dial and hear a person's crackly voice on the other line, find out they're okay. I know how damaging that action of mine was. I know because I sat across from a friend, and I heard them say to me, "from the looks of social media, you are doing just fine."

Them saying that, it broke my heart. It broke my heart to think that, because I had white walls in all my pictures, it meant there's no longer a reason to reach out and ask if I was really doing okay. Barbie, I'm so afraid to check people off my list because of surface level visuals. I'm so afraid to find out, too late, that I needed to ask "how are you" before someone died inside and no one could get to them. Please don't hide within the cracks of the exposed-brick breweries and trendy tiled coffee shops you find. If you're lost, pick up the phone and call someone. If you think you're about to lose someone (and yes, there's a gut feeling for that), pick up the phone and call them. Ask them 4 words: are you really okay? We save lives everyday when we just manage to speak up.

…

This whole letter might be a terrible waste. Maybe your life's as perfect as you portray it to be, Barbie. In that case, congratulations! You beat us all with your plastic lattes and trendy hiking boots. Regardless, I hope you find something real today. Something tangible and intangible, all at the same time, that you would skip the act of documenting it just so you could live inside it for a little bit longer. I hope you spot a rare, soon to be extinct, moment. And I hope it's all yours, no need to share it. Maybe it's the smile of an old man who's going to leave this earth real soon. Maybe it's a piece of a mail from a friend you used to be able to trace the scent of when they showed up in a room. Maybe it's a single dance from a cute stranger at a wedding who makes you feel like you're the most beautiful thing in his orbit.

Either way, I hope you feel known. I hope you feel picked out and chosen. I hope something grabs you so hard, shakes you so good, that even the notifications can't touch it. You're not fake, Barbie. You, like the rest of us, are probably just doing the best you can within a world that wants to trace and tag every tiny, beautiful piece of itself.

Ask the Question

You want more love. To be in love. In love with your life.

You want more adventure. More chances, and with it the guts to grab them with both hands, greedily and hungry, knowing you deserve to dive into every opportunity your belly aches for when nobody else is looking.

You want to understand how it feels to try, really try. To trust yourself in succeeding beyond your wildest, most inventive daydreams. You can't even comprehend what's waiting for you yet: that's how daring your future is.

You want the security of self to demonstrate, without permission, without restraint, that your vulnerability is your biggest strength, and that your humanness is your greatest asset.

You want to know, mind, body, heart and soul, that who you are is already exactly perfect.

You want to be enough.

I know that sometimes you settle for less because the prospect of daring to ask if you can take up more space, of demanding more, is crippling in its "but people might not like it" murmurs. There's that voice. a voice stubbornly rooted, deep down in your belly, that whispers, even at your best: nope, you can't do this.

"What if it doesn't work?"

"I'll prove everyone right when I screw this up."

"It's better to be safe than to be sorry."

"People like me don't live lives like that."

Listen, sugar. You deserve to conquer the absolute shit out of your kingdom. To be the protagonist of your own beautiful life. You're worthy of the room it takes to spread yourself wide open, legs akimbo, hands behind your back, surveying the land from your throne as you say, without a trace of shame, here I am. Here's what I want.

Know your place. Who the Beyoncé are you to keep yourself small? Who the Virginia Woolf told you to not to swell, not to open your heart and your wings, lest you fly? Are you telling that to yourself? Quit it. Re-write the script. Right now. Actively choose, demand, from yourself and from the world, to direct your life according to your rules. Because your place? Your place is in the sky, soaring. Your place is front and centre. Your place, your purpose, is what you say it is.

The alternative is a half-life. A half-truth. A half-you. The good stuff isn't designed to only happen to other people. The universe wants the good stuff for you. It's not a privilege to know who you are. You don't need to await consent to show all of your parts. To be you. To possess your truth. The show has already begun. The cameras are rolling and it's your line. What are you going to say?

- me writing to myself

We're Strangers Once More

I was sitting in a Starbucks in the hazy middle of daybreak. It's barely light out, despite the clock hitting 10 am. The rain's dripping, falling slowly and softly on the windows flushed green from the gray sky. Outside, trees were blowing. In just seconds, it went from a pale gray to charcoal horizons. It's dark indoors, the outside spreading a smudginess into the flickering light of Starbucks. Cars zipped by quickly, skipping the drive through, skipping the place, and slip through the rain.

People come in, wet and tousled from the deluge, laugh, say they're escaping from the storm. Instantly, strangers become friends for minutes, united over terrible weather, worried about the storm that's passing, gathering around each others phones to glance at radars, bemoan over the clouds of blackness coming in. I've got a caramel Macchiato, and then they're gone. The tables outside echo with the slap, every second more droplets tap out their pattern, the sound dulled by heavy glass windows and the faint hum of electricity. The water outside is soupy, splashing in puddles up to the middle of car tires as they rush through. It's so deep outside that waves are made and they crash on the cement. It's strange, unsettling, to see cars that size swallowed up in water that was just minutes ago suspended in air. Every so often, lightning opens up the dimness of the sky and reminds us that the power could disappear in an instant.

People come and go, regulars filter through those looking for a decent cup of coffee, and people see each other for the 1st time. These bonds created over a strangers phone, from people trapped inside because of the weather, who only know each other based on their daily cup of coffee, surface. A group of people, finding solace together. It's a rainstorm that brings us together, and yet, the sun persists in coming forward, pulling apart what's being built. And so we go about our days, waiting for these collective glimpses of humanity, reading between the lines and usual orders to see something a bit more, a yearning for relationships above else.

The rain pounds but the sky clears. A bird flies across the murky clouds, an ink stain in the weather, and the cars roll by unknowingly on the freeway, forever apart, forever mysteries. Thunder rumbles, the rain abates, hardens, rolls on surfaces and fills the pooling tables and streets, and yet, we're strangers once more.