I helped put out three proposals last week.  On top of other things - if you only knew. By Friday, my body (I believe) began to kick into stress mode.  You see, I handle stress really well.  Until I don't.  Then I black out.  Thankfully, I've learned the warning signs - like shaking, sweating, the room beginning to move when I'm sitting still. I apparently also get migraines from stress now.  Or it's something else, because John and I have both been sick on and off (and mostly on) for a few months now.

Suffice to say, I'm seeing a doctor today.

But I think it's just stress.  And maybe allergies.

Seriously folks, I put out three proposals last week.  And worked a 12 hour day on Monday, on less than 4 hours of sleep.  Please, hold the applause. ;)

I feel an incredible pressure to be something, somewhere by 30.  To have arrived.  To be impressive. As if after 30, I have failed or can no longer be remarkable.  I'm curious if this is because I am a youngest child and for so long have identified my success alongside the scale of my age.  Or if it is because of our culture - the 30 Under 30 list and 40 Under 40.  I've known people on those lists. And my name is nowhere near making a list.  Of any kind.

I think at this time - I'd settle for just knowing clearly what my big goals are by the time I turn 30. What my dream job even is - that one thing that will make me come alive in the workplace.  

I asked my coworker today "What is your dream job?"  She said she didn't know.  I told her I don't either and that it's making me bloody depressed.  She leaned her head back on her chair and said, "Me too."  I'm beginning to think it's a disease English Lit majors are especially prone to - and it's making us all sick in the soul.  We pursue a degree we love - and it can apply to almost anything - but finding that one thing becomes increasingly difficult as our dual technical-artistic selves get pulled deeper and deeper into the business world. And here we are nearly 30, still thinking we are moving toward something, some thing we cannot name. 

For some reason, all of this makes me dreadfully sad to not have a grandparent.  I feel like if I had one, they'd tell me - you're 27 years old, dammit. You've barely begun to live. But I don't have a grandparent.  I hardly ever did. And that silence just seems to drive the end ever closer to me - this pressure to do something, be somewhere, be someone, quickly.  Because life seems to end too soon.  And I've barely begun. 

And now that I have depressed you all - go read this article.  It may be the best thing I've read in a while... and I'm only two-thirds through it. 

Twin Talk

I have often talked about this and watched as people stared at me like I was crazy. This doesn't always happen, but often a set of twins will develop their own language, such as my cousins Kate and Kolleen did.  It resulted in the more dominant twin becoming the translator for the other, making it less necessary for her to learn to communicate to others in English.  You would literally watch one tell the other and the dominant one communicate their needs.  Of course, they were toddlers and none of it was exactly clear.  But it was crazy to see, and a bit remarkable.





"Forty Percent of Twins Invent Their Own Languages.

These languages are called autonomous languages. Researchers suspect that twin babies use each other as models in developing language when an adult model language is frequently absent. The "language" consists of inverted words and onomatopoeic expressions. These autonomous languages are formed when two very close babies are learning how to speak a real language alongside one another and naturally often play and communicate with each other. While this is more common among twins, since they are more likely to be around each other and developing at the same rate, this phenomenon can also sporadically occur between two babies who are not twins. The made up "languages" often disappear soon after childhood, once the children have learned a real language."     

-The Huffington Post

Happy Anniversary Mumsy & Dad!

Happy Anniversary to my mom and dad, who've taught us what it means to love one another for better or worse, through thick and thin. You've shown us a real (stubborn) love.  And, you're a whole lot of fun!

Thank you. xoxo.

I was asked the other day what my friends would say was the one thing they most appreciate about me.  I replied, "that I am consistent."  Well my interrogator disagreed, and it has me thinking why I gave that answer.  "Are you sure you're not being humble?  They wouldn't say fun? I think they'd say fun." He's right, my friends probably wouldn't actually give, "consistent." After all, who does? I told him I might be being overly-confident, that they might not say consistent.  But I didn't want them to say "fun" - everyone in their twenties is fun - but few are consistent.

Somewhere along my journey, or perhaps all along, being consistent became one of my biggest measures.

Consistent = Trustworthy.

You can fake anything for a day, you can sell yourself as anything to a new group. So when people seem to become a color wheel of characters and styles, I give a wide berth to their spin.

I'm really not the most fun person in the room.  Nor the funniest.  I'm not the smartest.  I'm not the prettiest.  Lord knows I'm not the tallest. But whatever I am, regardless of how I may be feeling, I try to be the same person every day in every room.

I've been writing on this same blog at the same url for nearly nine years. I've published 3, 116 posts here. This blog is not the prettiest or wittiest in the room either.  But, it is consistent and honest.  And to me, that counts.

"We must take care that everything doesn't get so dreadfully serious.  We must play -- but we must play seriously." 

 - Hans Wegner

[source and full article: fastcodedesign.com]

Oatmeal is a power food.  It is to everyone. But to me, oatmeal is also my 'game day food.'  It is steal cut comfort and confidence.  It reminds me that I win sometimes, and I work hard all the time.  It reminds me that I'm strong.  It reminds me that I'm a morning person.  That I'm a team player.  That I'm a striker.  That size matters less than strength and speed. That I have good coaches in my life - and that I'm good at listening to them.  And above all, it reminds me that I have a few very loving and strong people behind me - like my dad, who I'd hear out in the kitchen banging pots, closing cabinets, running the tap, cooking me oatmeal on game days.  And now my Beau, who set his alarm early to make sure I had a cup of coffee waiting for me in his kitchen when I came in at 6:30am.

That's why this morning, I had oatmeal.

This is going to be quite the week.  I'm fairly certain I had the flu this past weekend.  Lots of sleep, a few cancelled plans, 4 baby chicks and a 5k later.... I'm back at work and going to attempt to pump out 3 proposals in the next 3 days.  On top of that, some other side-exploratory-projects.  Aaaaaaaand Morgan, John and I are flying out to San Fran 6am on Thursday!!

"Not Cool Robert Frost!"

A Pep Talk from Kid President to You

We've got work to do and we can cry about it or we can dance about it.

I feel my humanity ignored. When I'm walking down the street I don't feel recognized by strangers as another, like them.  I feel unattractive. Unnoticed. Un-human. At work, I feel more and more like a piece of a machine, a tiny mechanism to be tinkered and fixed.  At best left alone to operate efficiently and clean, leaving as little loss as possible along the way. Replaceable. One in a line that can be switched, changed, unnoticed and unnamed.

It could have something to do with Brave New World.  Each day I've spent my commute lost in the laboratories and Fetus assembly lines, carried along in their pre-conditioned lives.

It could be my work.  Could be our consumer-loving new world, driven by the twin demons of large corporations and personal autonomy obsessions. Could be my perspective and lack of attention to my own humanity.

Go watch this Ted Talk Playlist:  Work Smarter.  Especially, watch the second one in the playlist, "The Happy Secret to Better Work."

I'll be honest, I'm avoiding writing the next part of "our story".  I like it and I'd love to share it.  But I've been thinking so much on conversation lately and working intentionally to improve mine and what I post here is an extension of that - this is part of my contribution to the written conversations happening between us all. And I'm tired of the conversation  - so tired, that I'm willing to bite my tongue about John and I's story for a bit longer.

Instead, I'll tell you this.  There's seasons of life where you feel under water.  Not like you're drowning, just like all your movements are fluid and slow, not quiet obstructed but resisted.  You see the other end of the pool and you'd like to get there, but walking feels ridiculous, nearly humorous.  And so you dive under water to swim, but then you can't see where you're going, it's either pitch black or blurry shapes at best - you have to just point yourself in the right direction and hope to get there - bumping into all sorts of people and weird objects that have sunk along your way.  And if you're lucky, you'll get there.  And your shorts will still be on.

I'm in the pool. And swimming itself seems a bit silly right now, because I don't think getting out of the pool is the point.  And I don't know what "end" of the pool is really the best anyways.  But all my movements are so damn slow. I kind of just want to thrash around like a child, cut my arms along the surface and splash.  See if John will let me climb up on his shoulders and jump off.

It's hard to write when you're in a pool.  

Nebula

She is the center of her own world.  Ruling those around her with quick words, frenzied comments and an unbeatable drive to be first.  To conquer others through the sheer rush of finishing first. She imagines others spinning round her, colliding into the literature she consumes at the core and tosses out into her system as if she were their sun, leaving bright zodiacal light all around to be called dust.  But that dust was once stars.  And those stars are held together only by their own gravity.  They don’t need her to feed them light. In truth, it is her pull that would try to consume them.  Devour them.  Her fire burns the brightest on the surface as her core has already begun to shrink, so soon she’ll collapse and leave nothing more than a black hole. 

You Can't Eat Beauty

Oscar Winner Lupita Nyong'o Speech

6/25

Insurgent by Veronica Roth.  It was okay.  I'm angry about the end.  Maybe talk to me about it again in a few weeks.  I liked Divergent a great deal, Insurgent a little less, and Allegiant the least of them all.  At moments, I found myself annoyed with the characters decisions and inability to learn through THREE books. I didn't gain the same incredible attachment to them as one does in the Hunger Games.  I did tear through each of them fairly quickly, and that says something perhaps.  But again, now that I have finished the series, I would rate them only "okay."