wednesday words

These words describe my life pretty perfectly right now.
For the past year, I have felt so uninspired and so lost in the world.
Though I am a mother and a wife, there is a large part of me missing.
The problem is that I have no idea what it is.
I know some things that I like and I definitely know the things I don't like.
But I haven't found a passion in life yet.
For a long while, I thought it was photography.
And I haven't ruled that out. But it just didn't feel right.
So lately, I have limited my media usage and started to write and sketch more.
Just ideas about life. Things that come to me while I am washing dishes or playing with the kids.
I am just trying to live the life I have and let the rest come to me.
And I know that it will if I allow it to and I work hard at getting there.
Writing this blog helps. I know it will evolve as I do and that is comforting.
I am in control here. I just have to believe it.

// print via Departika on Etsy

sometimes i get... jealous

Sometimes I get jealous. It's true. I'm not really ashamed of it, but it isn't a fun emotion to deal with.
Sometimes I am jealous of what other people have.
Sometimes I am jealous of what other people look like.
Sometimes I am jealous of a life I cannot live.
I credit the Internet to a lot of the jealousy I experience.
We see an infinitely broad range of lifestyles on the web.
But in real life, everyone seems pretty much the same.. pretty, well, regular.
But we are not regular. We are all special. We are all human.
We all live intersecting and diverging lives.
In that I only mean that while we all seem so different from each other at times,
we have the capability to overlap and to teach each other, to learn and to love one another.
So when I get jealous, I remember that we all experience it and that perhaps I am the root of another person's jealousy. And if I can recognize that, I can have a better grasp of the world I live in and the people that surround me.

must-read kid's books

Kid books are my favorite. I really like reading adult books, but I could spend a serious amount of time reading kid books. I've always loved cute illustrations, so I think my obsession stems from that. I take my kids to the local public library just about every week.. we get 10-15 books and we read the heck out of them. And we also go to the bookstore fairly often. Sometimes I get to go alone and I grab a magazine or two, a cookbooks, a couple of nicely designed nonfiction novels to peruse and then a giant stack of the latest children's books. I'll admit, I pick mainly based on how much I like the cover and the name of the story. But then I really read them!

Here are some books that I am currently loving to bits:

1. Stop Snoring Bernard // Zachariah Ohora
2. 1-2-3 Peas // Keith Baker
3. This Monster Needs a Haircut // bethany bARTon
4. Otto the Book Bear// Katie Cleminson
5. Ladybug Girl at the Beach// Jacky Davis & David Soman
6. The Boy Who Cried Ninja// Alex Latimer

you feel small there

I never feel more alive than when I am at the beach. Everything is so serene and beautiful.
The way the sun shines on the waves and glows a neon pink.
The way the tide creates these wonderful patterns in the sand.
How unpredictable the waves are.
How you can look both ways and see nothing but infinity.
How you can look straight out and see the vastness of the world.
You feel really small there. And it makes me feel alive.
// photos taken on iPhone4

the cool crowd // media awareness part 2

Speaking of the cool kids and all the super rad bloggers and entrepreneurs out there...
Let's talk a little about how we follow them. If you like someone or are inspired by them, it's likely that you'll want to be like them and this includes liking the things they like. Feeling pressure to buy things the cool kids have or read the blogs they read can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety. Your inner dialogue may ask you, 'Where will I get the time to read 400 blogs posts a day? Where will I get the money for that designer watch? How will I ever keep up?' or worse.. you'll spend the time or the money trying to keep up, inevitably making yourself feel inadequate. The truth is.. you don't have to! You can't possibly like everything everyone else likes. You have to discern for yourself what gets your time and money and what you think is cool. I love this tap essay about what what it is to like and what it is to love on the Internet. You really have to take a look at yourself and understand who you are as a media user and as a person. Being part of the 'in' crowd does not mean you conform. If you don't like polka dots, don't buy polka dot jeans and if you don't like a blog that has a million followers, don't read it. I guarantee you are not missing out. There will be another 'it' thing in approximately 4 seconds. So don't fret. Sometimes finding yourself means that you don't get to feel cool. And if you're a mixture of this crowd and that, then be that. Fitting in is not a real thing. The cool crowd is only who you deem it to be.

the cool crowd // media awareness

There are so many cool people online. Like seriously cool people. Writing blogs. Taking photos. Traveling to faraway lands. Making a name for themselves. Sure, we are all online. We all search and pin and tweet. But the cool people are the ones creating. Cool crowd? Maybe. But it's a free-for-all. We all have this chance. To be cool, I mean. To be savvy. It can be hard- dealing wither the jealous feelings of wanting to be cool like her, to dress like her, to have her confidence, to be talented like her, to have a nice house like her. But we are all on our own journey. And if we want to be cool on the Internet, all we have to do its work hard and get it. This isn't high school and the cool kids shouldn't be so intimidating.

Can I tell you a secret? I was terrified of the popular crowd in high school. I was so jealous of what they had that I often forgot about what I had. And I'm only now starting to grow out of that and realize that I just want to be me and that my mind has something to offer too.

As part of my own media awareness, I have to recognize my feelings as I search this vast... VAST Internet. Am I 8 pages deep into this blog because I am feeling jealous or am I truly inspired? What will I take away from this person? Am I going to click 'X' and then go feel like shit because I don't have what she* has (or what I think she does) or am I going to do something about it? Because there is no point if it's the former.
Don't make yourself feel like shit. You have that choice. If you wanna be cool, then be cool

*I relate to the her/she because I am a girl. It's just an ambiguous character. It could be anyone.

never give up, mom

Kids seriously say the most profound things.
My son is way more insightful than I would ever expect him to be at almost 4.
He hears us say things that seem smart and then he uses them in a totally different context and more often than not, they are totally genius.

After dinner, we went to Walmart to pick up some water shoes so his feet would stop getting all cut up at the pool. Suffice to say, it was a slightly challenging trip. For whatever reason, I got anxious and overly-annoyed. I was being short and moody. When we went to the parking lot, another mother looked as if she felt the same way. But I got totally judge-y (okay, this was mainly because her toddler daughter's carseat was completely loose when strapped on, but still) and I saw my attitude in her and it made me annoyed with myself. Evan was chatting on about wanting to put on his new shoes. And finally, I caved and said I would put them on.

Then he said to me, "Never give up, Mom. You can't give up."

And at that moment, I completely understood him. And he completely understood this world.
I wish he could stay that way forever. Just seeing things the way they are.
Some people might say that he was just saying something that sounded good and he had no idea what he meant, but I know him and I know that he knows what he meant.
He could see that I was struggling to feel like a good parent in that moment.
And he told me to never give up trying.
Parenting isn't something we just do and we're great at it and it's so easy and fun and peaches and sunshine all day day. I have to work at it. I have to not give up trying.

And my son. Who is not even 4. Knows that.

441 social statuses

Yesterday I deleted Facebook off my iPhone.

Oh God it feels good.

Those little apps shook, I pressed the little X and everything changed.
Instead of checking on the social statuses of all 441 "friends" that I have 5 times per hour, I checked on it 5 times total today. And I hope to make that less.

You see, as much as I just love seeing photos my friends' kids and seeing what the people I graduated high school with SIX years ago are up to, I just don't care. I love to catch up with people that love to catch up with me. And there are many of those on Facebook. But there are too many that don't. And there are too many that I don't.

It's changing us. Facebook. iPhones. the Internet. Even television.
We find meaning and truth in something that couldn't be further from it. We find purpose.
But we're all lost. We're all mixed up. We all need to let it go.

Technological advances are so freaking cool. We've come a long way.
But what's too far? Have we reached it? Were we there already? Probably.

I can't keep wasting my life away. I can't keep feeling lost. I have to find myself.
And I am not hiding in 441 social statuses. That can't be where I am.

reading and writing

Nobody knows I'm writing this blog. At least nobody I know. Except Eric.. because we share everything. I need to come to a place with it that I like and that I feel comfortable sharing. I need to come to a place with it where I feel proud of what I put here and I can feel proud to say that I am a writer. That I write this blog and that I am writing a book. It's difficult to find yourself in this world. I mention it a lot here- the idea of finding oneself. I'm on that journey and it is so damn hard. It's really easy to make the wrong decisions, but really hard to find the right ones. We're not supposed to be searching for them. They are meant to be there for us. We can't wake up and decide who we are, no matter how much we wish that we could. We can't wake up and find success. We have to work for it. We have to pour our souls into it. We can't just half-ass life and hope to find money or recognition or happiness. Happiness is there for us, but we have to be willing to let it in.

My kids love books. They love them. They look at them with such innocence. They don't have judgments and they don't analyze them... yet. They just like the pictures and the characters and they like when there's a silly word. They like to flip the pages and they like to stack them and they like to occasionally rip a page right out. There's tape for that. Books give them happiness. It's so simple for them and I hope it always will be.