happy anniversary!

I'd like to take a moment to wish my blog a happy anniversary...it's been one hell of a year for writing, woohoo! Many thanks to my readers...old and new. Yes, I love you all.

The anniversary of 28SOTC planted an epiphany in my brain earlier today: It takes work to keep up something good. Ideas never transport themselves...even the good ones.

With longevity comes confidence...with history comes comfort and when we are comfortable we take our world for granted. What we tend to take most for granted after time usually involves our passion, love, and utility. What? I have a thing for words in 3s. But...this is true.

We forget that novelty is what carries us only initially in life's adventures. We are in tune with what's happening to us in our new job, new relationship, new location, new dreams...but often we forget as time moves forward that novelty is ephemeral. Our attention spans are no better than that of a 5 year old who isn't obsessed with his new toy anymore...because there is always something newer, something more exciting to come; there is always something we've not conquered yet. Remember, people are overly indulgent creatures.

We succumb to captivation because we love when our hearts rise into our throats and we nearly explode, sweetly gasping for air. We are having a love affair with thrills...but can we really be blamed?

When I first started writing for 28SOTC, I was fueled by my dreams of the expression I couldn't have put in public before due to the nonexistence of blogs. The inspiration to write about any and everything shot through my circulatory system daily. As time passed, I found less and less time for writing. But I always had an excuse...I always had a reason. I was tired. I didn't have time.

Everyday I could find less time to do the things that recreate novelty in my relationship, for my job, etc....it seems easier and almost more appealing to have an autopilot switch. However, we can't just exist, we have to live. Growing up teaches you that living is not effortless 90% of the time. We have to try constantly. We have to push constantly for the shit we claim to care about. It's OK to crave the brilliance of your future that exists in your dreams...but only one thing is real right now...the present.

If we keep looking for a fast forward button, life will move past us and we'll miss the fleeting beauty that is the current.

Everything that matters most to us will have plenty of anniversaries.

i vant ta be a celebritayy

"Before you graduate please define success for yourself. If you don't you will get caught up with what success means for the rest of the world."

I keep her words near and dear to my heart…but I’ve never fully listened to them. When touching upon the impending sorrow most college grads feel upon being hung from a helicopter and dropped into an ice cold bucket of real life, I think my soror said it best.

I have recently become rather infatuated with celebrities, one in particular whom I will not name (Kim Kardashian), but only insofar as they are deemed superhuman. Now my most loyal readers already know that I consider myself irresistibly philosophical and given this there would be absolutely no reason why the eminence of seemingly normal people wouldn't be intriguing to me. I find it incredible that all it takes for un-famous people to second guess themselves is to see a celebrity who enjoys attention, accolades, neverending access to the world, and money. I realize that by implying that celebs aren’t the only ones that can be looked up to I am echoing the archaic ideal of teachers and doctors being recognized more (which really means being paid more).

Many may have realized this before but my epiphany is something which I really do pray helps me get over my obsession. We are the reason celebrities are the way they are. If there was no paparazzi, no cameras, no multi-million dollar salaries, no gossip sites/magazines/tabloids, and no envy...celebrities would cease to exist as the fuel to young aspiration that they are now. They are normal human beings in all ways. They get tired, they have bad hair days, they get pimples, they think about how they are getting old and must do something worthwhile. They overwork and underdeliver and sometimes the opposite. Although they seem to float carelessly thru life, they are forced to hide their humanness because somehow we've tagged 'impenetrable' onto the definition of 'celebrity'. If we weren’t in their faces all the time they wouldn’t feel it necessary to be on their A-game all the time. The only reason they are special and we compare ourselves to them is because they make drastically more money than a substantial part of the globe.

Celebrities look/are perfect because of money. If impoverished and middle-class people had enough money, they would look airbrushed all the time too. They would endorse products and lose weight at lightning speed and donate $1 million to Haiti Earthquake Relief. I never really thought of money as an enabler in this way and I know it sounds trite but money is really the only way to substantiate the label of celebrity. Well, duh. The substantiation of the celebrity label also shows in what types of work we think are deserving of mass sums of money. I do thought experiments on the regular (to determine level of possibility) and my current relish comes in the form of picturing how the world would be if we started ignoring celebs...also known as treating them and their human faults as human. Would Hollywood writher up and sink beneath the ocean?

When my soror elaborated her point she went on to say the once out of school you come into contact with a variety of people. She said she met people in their 40s who made less money/year than she did and they were struggling. She met people who hadn't even hit their 20s yet and they made millions a year, they were set for life. But what do we mean when we say "set for life"...you can buy whatever you want? or you can buy whatever you need? Both? Aren’t all people deserving of enough money to buy what they want/need? No, I am not communist.

So, given what my soror so brilliantly relayed to me it's quite unnatural for people to view their success outside of their financial standing and by what age they attain such financial standing. Money buys any and everything if you have enough of it. I don't know that I have a personalized answer for the question of whether money buys happiness. Is success seen as the attainment of a large sum of money in whatever one’s field/passion is? Some might say it’s the amount of change you can inflict with your passion but others might say money is needed in order to fully and freely pursue one’s passion. I have not figured out my definition of success yet.

I find myself wishing I had enough money to just be able to dabble in whatever I wished. I don’t really know what I’m good at or where my passions could lead me. It only makes sense that I would aspire to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible so that I could then use the money to try a whole bunch of shit and see what makes me happy!

glass half...empty?

Balance. is. a. bitch. Not only is it difficult to achieve but it stays riding on my last nerve. Like most people I have my off days and I have been known to describe my off mood as a feeling of 'empty'. 'I feel empty'. But what does that mean?

[I feel that one gains emotional intelligence by experiencing and internalizing emotional occurrences. By internalizing I do not mean acting like the average 18 year old boy does when he is hurt and refuses to cry or complain about it. I mean internalization in the way that can be used to interpret and extract personal meaning from experiences so lessons can be learned and remembered. In spite of all this one can imagine my relief at having come across some individuals that are much more emotionally intelligent after dealing with a bunch of idiots from Elusive headquarters. I don't believe that ability and desire to delve into emotional experiences can be attributed solely to being a woman. One must have a certain impetus.]

Now I am not exactly sure whether I believe the evidence that exists to show that dreams give us insight about our lives or current endeavors. That is not to say that I don't believe they give us insight...I am just not buying into the hints marketed in the next copy of the dream dictionary on the bookshelf. To me there is nothing that can demystify the clandestine nature of our minds...unless for some reason humans suddenly become able to use 90% of their brains rather than a mere 10%. Then the interpretative strength of our own minds might actually be a force to be reckoned with.

I had a very salient dream last week that stuck with me. I felt 'empty' the next day. I was in reflection mode during which I tossed the images I dreamt about around in my head all day long...ended up being pretty exhausting. My dream went something like this:

[I had just hopped out of the shower after washing my hair when someone showed up at my place to offer me a job. They let me know that Booz Allen Hamilton, a reputable consulting firm that actually exists in McLean, Virginia, wanted to hire me. My pay would be $115,000/year. I am immediately interested and thus do not have time to blow dry or flat iron my hair. I get dressed and next thing I know I'm at the headquarters with a bunch of other young new hires. We meet the jovial owner/President/? of the company and he seems thrilled that we are all there. A few of us, including me, are to join him in his helicopter to go to some other place, a satellite office I believe. We are literally flying through/above traffic in DC...dodging the corners of buildings. The helicopter ride was sweet but there was a lot of turbulence. We were rolling all around in that thing but just as I was prepared to say something, a few faces signaled to me that it was still safe. It was apparent to me that all of us were safe even though I felt a little frightened by the helicopter obvious unruliness. The last part is a bit blurry...I was telling my man that I was going to be on travel for 7 months in a country with a weird name that doesn't actually exist as part of this new position. I would be back after that period but it would thwart our dream of moving in together when we had planned. I told him I needed to think about it.]

There was nothing depressing about this dream. It was exciting and calm simultaneously, if you can imagine the coexistence of those 2 characteristics. However, as great as it sounds, I can't help but panic about this dream.

INTERPRETATION: Booz Allen Hamilton is a well known firm and the pay was going to be ridiculous. This says something about the high standards I hold myself to and the way I relate to social standards for acceptable and high achievement. My hair was still wet and undone when I left to go accept this job which iconifies my own impatience. Additionally, it signifies the pressure I feel to find a stable and by my own standards (and those of society), successful occupation. Although helicopters are objects of flight and flight is usually a positive signifier of freedom, access, and success...the one in my dream was not operating smoothly or safely. The fact that all of us were silent even despite our awareness of the helicopter's lack of control signifies the acceptance that people usually have of life's spontaneity. My compliance with the silence signifies my personal hope and trust in life's spontaneity as well as my willingness to trust others around me. Lastly, the fact that this great opportunity was going to stand in the way of another dream of mine signifies the difficult choices we must make in the face of life's spontaneous offerings or misgivings. The 7 month travel period is a devil in an angel's disguise. Traveling placed an extension on the time I must wait to make my original dream of moving in my man happen in addition to forcing me to deal with more of life's unknowns in an unrecognizable place, while being away from him.

Without consulting a dream dictionary, I have come to a few conclusions about myself and the era of which I am part of. First, we are no longer living in the era of the YUPPY or Young Upwardly Mobile Professional Person. This is not to say that young people are no longer upwardly mobile. Right now, in 2009, it’s radically more difficult than it was in the 1980s because everyone and their mother's dog has a college degree. Secondly, society can blame the economy but I refuse. Quite frankly it has become harder to succeed because society's standards have become nearly unattainable and uninclusive of perceptions of success as influenced by the fundamental differences in people that make them define achievement dissimilarly.

If you are thinking the last conclusion is a much more pleasant one...it's not. Success must be self-defined. It is inevitable that I meet people in their 50s who will never accomplish what I have while I'll also be faced with the 18 year old little shit that has accomplished more than I ever could in my lifetime. The solution can be perceived as a rather grim one: function separately from society in ways that don't get you arrested and live life at your own speed and with coherence to your own views of accomplishment? Easier said than done!

My boyfriend always tells me: "You are 22. It's about time you stop trying to change yourself. There comes a time when you have to be ok being you...whatever that is." I am done (well, maybe not) driving myself crazy because I am not Martha Stewart, Barack Obama, Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel or...God. I don't quite know what I am destined to do in this world...but I don't have to save the world, feed all the starving children, and pay off my college loans all at once!

When I feel empty I have become drained of all the rest of the world and full of me...only me. Empty is a state in which I become blissfully impervious to the rest of the world and the rules it is so unmerciful in holding me to. With that said, my proverbial glass is very, very full.