Make Your Choices Reflect Your Hopes, Not Your Fears

When I was a child I was confident in everything I did.  I can remember knowing that I was always right.  One of my good friends used to tell me that she knew better than to tell me what to do because I was going to do what I wanted to do regardless of whether it was a good idea or not.  Just because I wanted to.  Which is true.  I am stubborn and bull headed and because I weigh the pros and the cons of every situation I think that whatever decision I am making, it's always going to be the right one. 

The thing is that I'm not always right.  Obviously.  And every decision that I make isn't always the right one.  I am an emotional person, and even though it doesn't really seem like it.  I live in the moment.  A lot.  I take my current circumstances and don't take into consideration that circumstances change.  

I quit my job a couple of months ago to go back to school full time and work part time.  I thought this sounded like an ideal situation. I was really burned out.  I was working at a difficult property, for a difficult owner and everyday seemed like a cesspool of negativity (I wrote lots of blogs about it, Just look back a couple of months). I felt like the only way I could ever do something besides property management would be to get a degree.  Thus going back to school. 

What I discovered after I had quit and been home just a week was a that a lot of my confidence and self-worth was tied up in bringing home a paycheck, in going to work everyday and being the boss.  Even working part time wasn't enough because I was bored.  I was SO bored. Even after school started I was bored.  So this week, I went back to property management, at a different property, and I'm not bored anymore, and my self confidence is back and I feel like I'm contributing again.  

The lesson that I learned the most, and the point of this blog, is that circumstances can change everything. And that is applicable in all aspects of life. 

You can be doing the exact same thing you were doing a year ago and be ten million times happier because your circumstances have changed.  

You can be at a different property, or you can have a different staff. And everything could be better (or worse) because of it. 

You can be getting married for the second, or third, or fourth time and it can be the best thing to ever happen to you.  Because your circumstances have changed.  You've changed, and grown, since the last time and you aren't marrying the same person. 

You can be starting a new relationship and be scared that it's going to be just like all the other times.  But it's not.  Because no two relationships are alike.  You don't want your fears to ruin something amazing.  Different circumstances, different people, different outcome. 

You are not the same person that you were when whatever you were doing before was happening. Which means, as you change your circumstances change. 

What that also means is that you should never base a current decision on a prior circumstance. Nothing is the same as it was the last time.  If you don't like where you are change it.  That doesn't mean you have to change everything, just the things that make you unhappy.  And that doesn't mean that just because you are unhappy means that you have to make a drastic change.  A small change in circumstance can make all the difference in the world. 

Change is really the only constant. You could wake up tomorrow and be the happiest you have ever been.  Isn't that a pleasant thought. 

I Have More Than Three Tattoos, Therefore I Have a Collection.

Would you rather have piercings or tattoos?

What a funny question.  I have both piercings and tattoos.  My most read blog is about my newest tattoo. I know that if I HAD to choose I would choose tattoos.  But I started with piercings.  I'm going to call piercings my gateway drug to tattoos. Each piercing and tattoo has a story attached.  Everything has some meaning right?

My first non-standard ear piercing was my ear cartilage. At the point that I decided I needed my cartilage pierced I had three holes in each ear and I wanted something different.  It was also 1995 and piercings were cool.  My cartilage hurt and was no fun.  That may have had something to do with the fact that I had my friend Rick do it. Using a piercing stud and a bag of peas on my parents front porch.  It was traumatic.  And once it was pierced it hurt for years.  I'm not being dramatic either.  I couldn't talk on the phone on my left ear for a really long time.  It's still pierced.  I've never taken it out.

My mom let me get my belly button pierced for my 16th birthday.  I then took it out for some reason. Got it pierced again.  Got pregnant and took it out (because I was so big I didn't have a choice) then had it pierced again when I was done being pregnant.  It's still pierced.

I got my tongue pierced after I turned 18 and promptly proceeded to travel to Eugene for a party where I smoked and drank and it got infected.  I hid it from my parents.  They told me that they spent WAY too much on my teeth for me to ruin them with a stud in my tongue.  That may have been my "I'm an adult now" act of rebellion.  I kept it long enough to go to Greece and freak out my ex-husbands small town Greek extended family, then I took it out.  I drove myself nuts with it, running it back and forth along my teeth. There's still a hole in my tongue where you can see where it was. There are pictures of this tongue piercing, at said party in Eugene. However, in addition to thinking I should have my tongue pierced, I also thought I should be a horrible shade of blonde.  It was all bad.

 My most recent piercing was a Christmas gift to myself in 2008.  It was my first Christmas as a divorced person, I was sharing my son with his Dad and was having a bit of a crisis over it.  I had been thinking about getting my nose pierced for a long time but the Ex didn't want me to.  I had talked about scarring with an esthetician.  I figured out which nostril was traditional for piercing and then one day on my lunch I went and did it. I question whether or not I'm getting too old to have my nose pierced occasionally, then I decide I don't care.

Traditionally the left nostril is the one you pierce for fertility reasons. Also if you are married, or of age to be married,  you wear a nose ring.

Tattoos, oh tattoos.  What should I say about tattoos.  I love them.  I love them on me.  I love them on other people.  I am a fan of tattoos.  I don't think I could ever be a person that has tattoos all over. I do like to be able to hide mine if necessary and I do think any tattoo above the collarbone is gross.  But I still love tattoos. My first husband had one wimpy tattoo and my second husband had no tattoos at all.  I've lucked out this time. My boyfriend has them everywhere and he wants more.  SEXY!!!

My first tattoo was the Chinese symbol of friendship.  I got it with a few friends after graduation.  I was 17 and my mom had to sign for it.  For my 18th birthday my mom and dad paid for my crown tattoo.  I think that there's a possibility I can blame my tattoo obsession on my parents :-)  After that I didn't feel like the crown was big enough so I had a swirly design added below it.  The crown and swirly design are technically a what is now referred to as a "tramp stamp".  I don't care.  They are still two of my favorites and it was 2000.  Lower back tattoo's had taken over where piercings left off.

Yes this is my crown.  No you cannot see the rest of the pictures.  But if you want to take pictures like it I can hook you up with the best boudoir photographer in the Portland/Vancouver area.

After that I waited a few years and got a tattoo of a frog on my foot around my ankle bone.  PJ was my little frog when he was a baby and I never wanted his name tattooed on me but that frog is symbolic of him. That tattoo lead to a HUGE fight with my then husband so when I left him I got another tattoo of a Forget-Me-Not down by my hip bone.  Low enough that if you ever got to see it you surely wouldn't forget.

Next came my maid-of-honor tattoo from Hawaii.  Mi'Cole and I both got tattoos while we were there.  In all of my genius I got a sun tattooed on the top of my foot, in the middle of September, which meant no shoes.  Until my most recent tattoo this one was definitely the most painful. But completely worth it.  My brother thinks it looks like I shot myself in the foot but I don't care. I still
love it.

You can kinda see both feet tattoos...

I took a few year hiatus (read I was re-married and didn't get to have anymore tattoos for five years) before I got my Bliss tattoo.  I got this tattoo about three days after I moved out of my second husbands house.  I was finding my bliss dammit.  Regardless of what happened I knew I didn't want to forget that was my goal.  So I had the word tattooed on the inside of my left bicep.  It is the one people see the most and I can't wait to get Patience tattooed on the other bicep.  Soon, very soon.

I then went with my friend Veronica to get her massive side tattoo and decided to get one on my right rib cage to test the pain level, and because, you know, why not?  It's an Audrey Hepburn quote that I love. And still love and do not mind having forever on my body.**

**I actually completely forgot I even had that one.  I guess that's why anything more than three is considered a collection.

Then there was the massive tattoo that I got about six months ago.  Like I said you can read all about it here.  Next will be the Patience tattoo. And then.  Then I'm going to get something big on my left shoulder blade/back and connect it to the big painful one on my side.  Maybe something like this... yeah that's a shadow and awesome and really what better to go with waves and flowers than the sun and moon and stars?

***Correction*** I was just reminded by my friend Lindsay (who actually has a matching Forget-Me-Not tattoo that we got together) that I didn't talk about the Fairy on my right shoulder, which you can see in the above picture. I don't remember why I got that one except that I found a picture I loved and based it off of.  I got it after the "tramp stamp" and before the frog.  I can't see that one and forget it's there. Goodness gracious.  I have grey hair and I'm losing my memory.  I feel old. 

I Wish That I Could Fly. Into the Sky. So Very High.

Would you rather fly or read minds?

I know that reading minds is a super power that a lot of people think they would like to have. I think that maybe I have read too many science fictions books.  All I can think of when I think of reading someones mind is the movie Bruce Almighty when he is trying to block out all of the prayers.  I also think about all of the shit that runs constantly through my mind, the stuff I don't say out loud, and I can't imagine having to listen to that constantly run out of other peoples brains and into mind.

I suppose there is the issue of selective mind reading.  As in you would only read the minds that you wanted to, when you wanted to.  I just don't feel like that would be good for me either.  On the other hand it would help with my obsessive tendency to get in my head and over think everything.  There wouldn't be a whole lot to over think if I knew what everyone else was thinking.

Now flying, that I can get on board with.  I could fly anywhere I wanted to.  Let's work with flying like Superman.  I could go anywhere in the world.  I could, hopefully, carry someone else with me. That way I could go on vacations all of the time and not have to pay for airfare.  We could go to the cabin whenever we wanted.  I could fly Josh to see his girls whenever he wanted.  Or go pick them up so they could visit.

Being able to fly would give you a lot of the freedom of being independently wealthy without actually having to be.

If I could fly, when the weather got cold and rainy I could just make a quick trip to someplace close and warm and get my Vitamin D and be happy again.

Reading minds sounds like a huge responsibility whereas flying sounds like a huge treat.  Maybe I should look into getting my pilots licence. Then we can buy a plane and I really could fly.

10 to 1 - Here I Go Again #blogchallenge

It's been almost an entire month since I posted a blog and I miss it.  Just like we all knew I would.  I've decided after some extensive thinking that all of the challenges that I face while blogging can be overcome and that I just need to do it.  So I'm going to start over again with the basics and then I'm going to do another blog challenge to get me back in the groove.  This is going to be a "Would you rather..." challenge that I discovered on Heck Yeah Tumber! and it should lend some good blog topics.  I feel like this 10 to 1 blog is a little bit of revisiting my first 30 days as a blogger and is appropriate for starting again.  

10 Facts about Yourself

1. I suck at making decisions.

2. I don't know what I think until I talk it out or write it down.

3. I'm ridiculously happy with my life and my love

4. I have some awesome friends

5. I hate cleaning the shower

6. I love to read

7. You shouldn't talk to me until I've had a cup of coffee in the morning

8. My first job was at Hallmark

9. I am going to live at the beach someday

10. I like to watch movies and read books that make me cry

9 Favorite Songs (I sure hate this one. They're all my favorite)

1. Hey Pretty Girl - Kip Moore

2. Purple Rain - Prince

3. Kind of Woman - Stevie Nicks

4. Fall into Me - Brantley Gilbert

5. In My Mind - Heather Headley

6. You Used to Love to Dance - Melissa Etheridge

7. Picture - Kid Rock

8. Promise - Jagged Edge 

9. Fuck My Car - Too Short

8 Places You’d Love to Go to

1. Italy!!!

2. Rio de Janerio

3. The Caribbean (I'm not going to be picky).

4. Ireland

5. Australia

6. Spain

7. Germany

8. Italy!!! (This goes on the list twice I want to go so bad!)

7 Things You Couldn't Live Without (or could live without but don't want to)

1. Sex

2. Music

3. Sleep

4. The Beach

5. Josh

6. PJ

7. Coffee

6 Favorite TV Shows

1. Gilmore Girls

2. Scandal 

3. Friends

4. Castle 

5. Bones

6. So You Think You Can Dance

5 Favorite Foods

1. Tacos

2. Tuna

3. Pasta

4. French Fries

5. Hamburgers

4 Favorite Drinks

1. Coffee

2. Wine

3. Dr Pepper

4. Lemonade

3 Things You Like About Yourself

1. My smile

2. My laugh

3. My awesome personality!!! :-)

2 Things You’re Looking Forward To

1. Thanksgiving

2. Travelling

1 Quote You Live By 

1. Happiness is a risk. If you're not a little scared, then you're not doing it right.

I Think That The Gift For a First Anniversary is Paper - Fitting I Think

Today it has been one year since I posted my first blog.  An entire year of blogging.  When I started this blog it was because I wanted something to take up my time while I wasn't going to school.  I am amazed at how therapeutic blogging ended up being.  I was able to work through a lot of crap throughout this past year.  I have always known that I understand better when I read what I think.  In order to read what I think, I have to write what I think.  The best thing about writing down your feelings or what you think about something is that you can read it the first time know what is where you are really at.  Then you can edit until you are comfortable with other people reading it.

I have posted 118 blogs in the last 12 months, had 8,318 total page views and people in over 10 different countries have read my blog.  Obviously the U.S has the most reads, but then comes Germany and Canada.  The oddest countries that my blog has been read in are South Korea, Turkey and Singapore.  Not surprisingly the #1 read blog is My New Tattoo, my second highest read blog is A Little Late on this #yesallwomen Bandwagon, Then Drama, Drama, Drama. Why? Why? Why?, and finally A Sweet Story About Puke rounds out the top four.  I'm sure that the blog about my tattoo is viewed the most because of Pinterest and the pictures in the blog.  The #yesallwomen blog taught me the power of the hashtag.  The drama blog was a surprise.  It's amazing to me the number of times that blog is read per week.  And it always does my heart good when I see that the Puke blog has been read since it is one of my favorites for a lot of reasons.

I haven't been blogging a whole lot in the past few months.  When I first started blogging I didn't care if people were reading my business.  After all it was my business and whether or not people were reading it was something that effected only me.  Now it's a little different.  I know a lot of my friends read my blog and a lot of Josh's friends.  He has a hard time with that and in return I have a hard time blogging.  He's never asked me not to blog, or told me directly that it bothers him for other people to know what's happening in our lives.  But I can tell it does. I sometimes wish I had the foresight to keep our identities secret at the beginning. I'm pretty sure everyone still would have figured out that I was the one writing and that Josh was the one I was writing about and who my ex-husbands and kid are and who my parents are.  For those people that know me all of that information is obvious and for those that don't it isn't.  But it is certainly hard to maintain a blog and not write about the things going on in your life.  Thus, telling other people your business.

I also experienced someone taking information out of my blog a using it against me a couple of months ago.  It wasn't a happy experience, it's what the Drama blog stemmed from.  I never really gave two seconds of thought to whether or not people who didn't like me were reading my blog.  It just didn't matter.  If I matter enough to someone that they are going to read my blog just to find out information about my life, that's their problem.  Or so I thought.  I had no idea that someone would take general information that they knew about my life, add it to information that they learned reading my blog and then use it to play on every insecurity that I have in this world.  Let me tell you it was an eye opener.  And it made me just as hesitant to write about my life as "telling other people my business".  I even dreamed last night that I was mad and upset about something different and I yelled "she's the reason I can't blog!"  I guess my subconscious was trying to tell me something.  This makes me mad and embarrassed especially since I have spent the past year of blogging trying to be positive, change my life for the better, and not care what other people think about me.

This blog started as a 30 day challenge and has now managed to make it 366 days.  In the past year a lot of things have changed and my life is completely different today than it was last September. School starts in a week.  I'm not sure that I am going to have time to blog and combined with the fact I'm not sure what I have to blog about this may have only lasted a year.  But let me tell you.  I am proud of what I have written. What I have learned about myself. What I have worked through with my relationships. And I'm not sure I could have done it without the help of this blog.

So, thank you, to everyone who read this is the past year and helped me reach 8,318 pageviews, who supported me with great comments in the early days.  Who encouraged me to keep writing when I was finished with my challenge.  I hope that I have kept you all entertained and made you think a little bit.  I hope more than anything that my journey inspired you a little bit. It's been a good year.

I Only OCD My Life. Not Yours.

I was at my moms a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about her starting a blog or a Facebook page/group supporting partners of men with prostate cancer.  She made the statement that she isn't sure that she wants to commit that much time to managing and maintaining a Facebook page.  I was trying to explain to her that it wouldn't take that much time. While she was trying to explain to me that she is afraid that she is too OCD, which I should understand.

It was at that point that I made the statement. "I only OCD my life.  Not yours".

Isn't that kinda true for everyone?

It's the classic do as I say not as I do.  Or, how when you are looking at someone else's life challenges you think that you know what they should do and how they react and you don't understand when they don't do the same thing you would do.

Everyone sees things differently.  Everyone approaches problems different.  The other day Josh was cleaning out the garage and every time I walked out there I looked at the order at which he was dealing with the massive mess and it took everything in me to not say anything.  After all, he wasn't doing it wrong.  He was just doing it different than the way I would do it. The end result was the same.  A clean, organized garage, with enough room to play ping-pong. Goal achieved.

That's also why people can give advice so easily. Because it is super easy to give advice about a problem or an issue that you aren't invested in. Emotional investment is what makes problems so hard to solve for yourself. Emotional investment is what keeps people up at night (and boy am I an expert on over-thinking keeping you up at night).  Emotional investment is what makes a person think that they are too OCD to manage a Facebook page or keep up a blog.  It's funny that something so simple can cause someone's OCD to kick in.  I know that if I don't blog fairly regularly I start to feel guilty. That is for sure my OCD tendencies rearing their ugly heads.

I suppose that being emotionally invested doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to be OCD about something.  Obviously I am emotionally invested in my dad's cancer and the way it effects my family. However, because I live in a different house, 15 minutes away, and see my parents once or twice a week I do get to be emotionally distant to some extent.  That can even help with the advice. Any sort of distance can lend perspective.  That is why couples "take a break" or have a "trial separation". If you distance yourself from a situation you are able to see it more clearly.

Emotional investment is also what makes anyone else completely unqualified to have any sort of say in your life.  If someone is not emotionally invested in the outcome of your issue than they aren't the one who is affected by any decision you may make.  Which potentially makes their viewpoint valuable,  But by no means should you take the advice of someone who doesn't have to deal with the ramifications of your decision.  Although, I do believe that any emotionally distant viewpoint may lead to the one paragraph, or sentence or word that resolves your issue which that is awesome. You are the one who gets to make that decision.  Not the person who doesn't have to deal with the fallout.

I guess the moral of this blog is that if you need any advice I'm sure I can give it (but you maybe shouldn't take it).  I may not have my shit together (as my over thinking proves) but the fact that I am emotionally distant from you means that I might be just what you need to solve any problem you may have.  After all.  I only OCD my life. Not yours

Eh, whatever. It's a blog.

I haven't been blogging at all lately.  I feel like it's weird that I quit my job and because I didn't have anything to bitch about I didn't have anything to blog about.  That isn't true.  I blog about a lot of stuff that isn't negative.

It could be that for three weeks I was pretty much interacting with the same two people every day. That doesn't lead to a whole lot of blog topics typically.

Or maybe it was that I was having such a hard time with the fact that I wasn't working that I just didn't want to blog about it.  No one wants to admit that they are struggling with a decision that they had made to better their lives.  I don't regret quitting my job in the slightest but boy did I struggle with not working.  I guess I need to feel productive.   Shocker.  I don't know where that came from. The best thing is that at the end of the day I love being able to say that I quit my job because I was unhappy, I'm much happier now and I had the support I needed to do it.

I could have been blogging about how hard it is to find a part time job, or two, that let you work more than 69 hours in a month.  Or how hard it is to find a full time job because no one wants to pay for health insurance.  Thank you Obamacare. (There is a chance I might still blog about this, I'm pretty annoyed).

I guess that's my summer in a nut shell.  I spent three weeks stressing about quitting my job, three more weeks without a job and the past two weeks working at Clark College.  This summer was not uneventful.  But it's just about over and since I was able to summarize (lol no pun intended) it so well in the past four paragraphs it's just time to move on to fall.

Fall, fall, fall.  School started for the kid yesterday, school starts for me in two weeks.  It's been a little over a year since I went to school.  Getting back into a routine will be necessary. I get to adapt to having a part time job, potentially two, while going to school.  Which is still going to be better than doing property management and trying to go to school.

It's funny looking over this blog I feel as though I should have had a whole lot harder time with this summer than I did.  And although the people I live with may not agree with me, I feel as though I handled all of the changes fairly well. At least for me.

It's amazing what surrounding yourself with the right people will do. Help you cope. Get you through. Support you. Make all the important little things seem big and make all of the stressful big things seem little.

Amazingly all things seem to be falling into place.  Just like things are supposed to.  Now, let's tackle fall.