I am supremely excited to announce that starting in March I will be blogging for Stratejoy as one of their season 6 Quarterlife Crisis bloggers!
For the unfamiliar, Stratejoy is a life-coaching business run by the always wonderful Molly Mahar, and it encompasses everything from individual coaching to group courses to fun and introspective journal prompts as a way of helping women figure out who they are and how to lead the most meaningful, joyful lives possible.
A big component of Stratejoy is the Quarterlife Crisis bloggers, where a number of women spend several months guest posting on the site to share their unique stories. I am honored and humbled to have been accepted as a blogger for season 6, excited to start writing and NERVOUS AS ALL HELL to put it all out there.
It's going to be a huge step outside my comfort zone, as I'll be blogging about all the vulnerabilities and insecurities and other fun stuff that I'm going through right now. I've started trying to get this blog going in that direction but I'll be taking it even further at Stratejoy. I hope you'll all follow me over there (no worries, I will absolutely be posting links here to try and tempt you all to click over).
My natural tendency is definitely not to put myself out there in this way, so I'm proud of myself for even applying in the first place, and anxious to see how it goes. But mostly, I'm super super pumped to follow in the footsteps of so many ridiculously intelligent and inspiring women.
YAY.
My new 'tude, part 3
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Labels:
Not so happy stuff
In part 1, my friend accused me of drinking too much.
In part 2, I disagreed, but admitted that my drinking had taken on a new dimension - drinking to forget the things in my life I'm not happy about, instead of just drinking for fun.
In all honesty, I never wanted this to become some drawn out blog saga. I intended to start and finish, to present the problem and then wrap it up all nicely with a bow, within the same blog post.
The problem is that now, 2 weeks later, I have no desire to finish what I started. I no longer believe the things I felt so strongly about when I wrote part 1 - the new me, the new attitude I was going to take towards my problems. But maybe if I put them out there, I'll rediscover what so inspired me. So here we are.
I recently started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which, aside from the fact that it takes way too long to make each of the 7 points, is a really fantastic book.
The first habit, "Be Proactive," is all about taking responsibility over your life. It's about no longer finding a scapegoat on which you can blame each and every shitty thing that happens to you. While you can't influence your external environment, you can influence what you do, and how you react, in response to them. It teaches you to stop playing the victim and to start taking control.
When I read this I was really inspired. My mood lifted almost immediately, and I experienced what for me can only be described as near-mania. I walked around with my head held higher, and I felt as though I had a new power that I didn't have before. I didn't have to just sit back and accept my fate in life. Wah wah I lost my job and all this other crap - so what? While I didn't have the ability to just snap my fingers and have everything be perfect, I had the ability, nay, the responsibility, to not just sit around and be helplessly bummed about it. It was in that moment that I wrote part 1.
Much like with most new and exciting things, the novelty wore off quite quickly. I realized that telling yourself that you refuse to be sad is much easier than actually refusing to be sad. After all, how can you really just change the way you naturally react to something? You can't help how you feel.
So I've realized it's not as easy as I thought. But even though I'm not as elated as I was 2 weeks ago, even though the light at the end of the tunnel is slightly further outside my grasp, I'm not giving up. I keep trying to train myself to think more positively and to keep a mindset of motivation to do better, not one of "woe is me."
So we'll see how it goes. I'm definitely someone who enjoys the occasional good wallow in self-pity, so it's going to be a struggle for me to really try and always look on the bright side. But people under much higher levels of duress have made it happen (the book gives some particularly amazing examples), and hopefully, so can I.
I'll drink to that! (Kidding)
In part 2, I disagreed, but admitted that my drinking had taken on a new dimension - drinking to forget the things in my life I'm not happy about, instead of just drinking for fun.
In all honesty, I never wanted this to become some drawn out blog saga. I intended to start and finish, to present the problem and then wrap it up all nicely with a bow, within the same blog post.
The problem is that now, 2 weeks later, I have no desire to finish what I started. I no longer believe the things I felt so strongly about when I wrote part 1 - the new me, the new attitude I was going to take towards my problems. But maybe if I put them out there, I'll rediscover what so inspired me. So here we are.
I recently started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which, aside from the fact that it takes way too long to make each of the 7 points, is a really fantastic book.
The first habit, "Be Proactive," is all about taking responsibility over your life. It's about no longer finding a scapegoat on which you can blame each and every shitty thing that happens to you. While you can't influence your external environment, you can influence what you do, and how you react, in response to them. It teaches you to stop playing the victim and to start taking control.
When I read this I was really inspired. My mood lifted almost immediately, and I experienced what for me can only be described as near-mania. I walked around with my head held higher, and I felt as though I had a new power that I didn't have before. I didn't have to just sit back and accept my fate in life. Wah wah I lost my job and all this other crap - so what? While I didn't have the ability to just snap my fingers and have everything be perfect, I had the ability, nay, the responsibility, to not just sit around and be helplessly bummed about it. It was in that moment that I wrote part 1.
Much like with most new and exciting things, the novelty wore off quite quickly. I realized that telling yourself that you refuse to be sad is much easier than actually refusing to be sad. After all, how can you really just change the way you naturally react to something? You can't help how you feel.
So I've realized it's not as easy as I thought. But even though I'm not as elated as I was 2 weeks ago, even though the light at the end of the tunnel is slightly further outside my grasp, I'm not giving up. I keep trying to train myself to think more positively and to keep a mindset of motivation to do better, not one of "woe is me."
So we'll see how it goes. I'm definitely someone who enjoys the occasional good wallow in self-pity, so it's going to be a struggle for me to really try and always look on the bright side. But people under much higher levels of duress have made it happen (the book gives some particularly amazing examples), and hopefully, so can I.
I'll drink to that! (Kidding)
My latest obsession
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Labels:
Puppies
This isn't even an exaggeration. I really do spend a lot of time looking at pictures of Martha Stewart's chow chow. His name is Genghis Khan. AND LOOK AT HIM. I stole all these pictures from Martha's blog, which is not a thing I would ever have thought I would read seeing as I am craft-inept.
Oh there he is, just enjoying TEA AT THE PLAZA IN HIS NAPKIN BIB.
More hanging out at the Plaza before Westminster. Where he won best in breed, OBVIOUSLY, because how could any chow be better than this one? HOW GREAT IS HE?!?!?!
Tra la la, Genghis Khan just waiting to start taping the Today Show.
Tell me this is not the best dog you have ever seen in your life. Tell me you do not want to just hug him because HE IS SO FUZZY. I cannot even deal with this. You know that video that was all up on everybody's Facebook last week with Kristen Bell completely flipping her shit over the prospect of meeting a sloth? Well first of all, my roommate is also obsessed with sloths and is verging dangerously close into Kristen Bell territory when she talks about maybe hanging out with some in Costa Rica later this year. But more importantly, I feel like I would be that way if I were to meet Genghis Khan. The dog, not the Mongolian leader.
Okay, I'm done now. Not really.