Words to Live By

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The Adventure of Failure

I have started and restarted this blog a dozen different ways attempting to draw from some analogy that would mask the more venerable and personal aspects of its origin. Screw the analogies. This blog entry is about the raw ugly hard part of life that I don't usually send off into cyberspace for fear that it will taint others' ability to view me in a strictly professional light. However, I honestly believe that the most precious thing we have to offer one another are our stories, because in doing so we can inspire, motivate or even provide accountability to those around us. So allow me to begin by saying 2009 was not my year.

If you had asked me at 21 what the next ten years of my life would look like I'd have told you that I was going to finish my degree, get a job as a photojournalist, travel the world, fall madly in love, and that the rest of my life would be a long string of momentous occasions. Because why the hell shouldn't it be? Here's the truth. Two men have loved me enough to marry me, and those same two men have cheated on me and left me. For five years I immersed myself in all things journalism only to spend two years working in a corporate cubicle before watching my career swirl down the drain before it had really even begun. There are days, today even, when I allow the doubt, the defeat and the resentment to creep in and take hold of my mind and my heart. There have been countless times in my life when the only thing that kept me pushing was knowing that there were people who cared what happened to me even when I didn't. Perhaps that's the trick to a good life; always surrounding yourself with people who are supportive and love you through the tough stuff.

So back to 2009... After a year and a half in my cubicle I had gotten stir crazy and was itching to go back to school. My company had an opening in Tempe, AZ and would help me pay for my MBA at Arizona State. I told myself that if I got that opening it was a sign - I was meant to go. So when I got it, I did. Perhaps I should have seen the red flags popping up when HR messed up my transfer paperwork, or when my car fell off a U-Haul trailer just shy of Palm Springs on the drive over. I tried to stay optimistic and just passed it off as clumsy luck. As my three months in AZ slowly crept by, I found myself dealing with endless HR problems, drama with my ex back in CA, and even went into kidney failure thanks to the triple-digit dry desert heat. I threw in the towel. I shoved as much of my belongings as would fit into my Ford Focus and abandoned the rest. I headed back to NorCal, but this time through Vegas because, hell, who wouldn't have needed a weekend in Vegas at that point. Upon arriving home I didn't even apply for unemployment because I couldn't imagine it taking longer than a couple weeks to start working again. Four months later I found myself caving in and accepting a job pushing papers in a small office for barely over minimum wage. I worked hard and learned quickly and my financial situation slowly began to get better, but only as my personal life once again fell to pieces.

I could easily end this entry there and wait patiently for your, "I'm so sorry!" and "Keep your chin up!" replies, but that's not the point of this entry at all. The point is that 2009 might have topped my list of disastrously disappointing years, but it has been jam packed with adventure.

I went to a rave in Mexico City and got drunk at a soccer bar with the locals. I attended my second Southwestern Photojournalism Conference in Dallas. I had an action packed road trip to Arizona. While I was there, I got to deepen my friendship with one of my dearest girlfriends and hung out with cousins who I grew up only visiting every couple years. I watched the sunset from the top of "A" Mountain and played volleyball in Lake Powell. I road tripped to Vegas... twice. I spent a weekend helping my college best friend pick out a couch for her new apartment three blocks from Venice Beach. I went to a fashion show with an old friend who didn't mind sharing a bottle of cheap wine in soup cups. And perhaps most incredible of all, I watched my nephews start preschool and was able to be around when they began using all sorts of smart words.

2009 can't have been a bad year, it was just a year full of the unexpected. The author of "Eat, Pray, Love" wrote about how agonizing her transition was from who she was before the one-year adventure that became that book and the woman that book allowed her to be. By being stripped of everything she had, including her financial security and her relationship, she found a new and better woman inside herself and began to thrive. I challenge you, I challenge myself - Let 2009 not be a year of brokenness but a year of refiner's fire that segways into a 2010 overflowing with blessings and success.

Gender and Purpose

Last weekend a friend and I were discussing our views on relationships, marriage, and life in general. We agreed that most of our friends had become single parents or entered into unhappy marriages. We speculated the "whys," trying to sort out the reasons behind the difference between the path our friends had taken and those we had taken.

Does it not defy our culture of the American Dream for us to be in our mid-20's and unmarried? To not have roots anywhere or a long term commitment to anything or anyone? This friend and I are both self-proclaimed adventurists with insatiable wanderlust. If asked to choose between domesticity and globe trotting, we would both choose the latter in a heart beat. This caused me to start analyzing what other factors outside of an obsession with travel and culture could be contributors to this lack of interest in the "American Dream." I decided that, at least in my case, there are two major factors.

The first goes hand in hand with wanderlust. It is one's world view. Why do I have a lack of interest in domesticity? Because I have seen enough of the world to know there is so much more yet to be discovered. Why do I not care about having a formal wedding and a status affirming diamond ring? Because I know how far $30,000 can go in in the pocket of a globe trotter, and because I have seen the devastating affects of the diamond industry on the developing nations where those stones originate. Why do I not care about having my own children? Because I have worked in orphanages where multitudes of abandoned children waste away discarded and abused. My world view is more broad than that of someone who has been raised to believe the world is only as big as their suburban town, and that their value goes only as far as their ability to become an integral part of that town.

The second factor and the one I want to focus more on in this blog has to do with my perceived lacking of "real men." I don't subscribe to the rational of blaming men in general or society as a whole for the struggles that my generation of women face; although I do believe that understanding the current condition of these things sheds light on the tug of war inside our heads and hearts. If society places a strong feminist emphasis on the equality of genders and the dissolving of "traditional" gender roles, we cannot be surprised to find a generation of emasculated young men stripped of their fight. Men are designed to have a warrior's heart and an adventurer's spirit, but when they embrace these things they are chastised for their machismo. My generation of women were taught that they shouldn't be dependant on men. In turn, our generation of men have realized that women don't need them. These men have begun to believe that unless they allow women to "wear the pants," they'll be trampled and lost. They sacrifice their masculinity in order to simply be kept around. I realize how controversial this is but I'm going to say it anyway - Feminism has deflated real men. But what we need are real men.

If a man doesn't know how to be masculine he will never walk with purpose. If a woman doesn't know how to be feminine she will never be satisfied. "A man needs to be tender at times, and a woman will sometimes need to be fierce. But if a man is only tender, we know something is deeply wrong, and if a woman is only fierce, we sense she is not what she was meant to be." – John Eldredge in Wild at Heart. Before a man or a woman decides who they want, they need to discover who they are. They need to be whole people in and of themselves with a sense of direction as to what they were created for, and then trust that IF they are meant to get married and have children then as they walk out their purpose those two seemingly polar opposites will align in way that works uniquely for them.

Not everyone believes in destiny or callings. I believe that these things are not only real but that their acceptance is an integral part of our ability to thrive. Some of our passions in life are more than fleeting interests; they are a part of our purpose and should not be cast aside for the sake of practicality or fitting the mold. I have often been told that my wanderlust is merely a subconscious aversion to commitment and that someday I'll deal with my "issues" and decide to settle down. However, I know that my wanderlust is a part of my being and cannot be ignored or stifled or treated because doing so would strip me of my purpose.

So where is the balance? I am a 25-year-old, educated, financially independent, single woman. I cannot live each day husband hunting any more than a woman who yearns for motherhood can live each day denying her calling to that. We cannot merely want what we are taught to want, or be the sort we are told to be. The focus should not be on finding someone to make us happy, but on finding happiness in being, and trusting that by walking down our own paths the rest will fall into place without any compromise or extraneous effort on our part.

Warm Wispers

It's driving through the countryside on a warm summer night with your arm out the window and soulful acoustic music blaring. It's sitting on a dew soaked hillside in South Africa as the sun peaks into view, the crisp breeze turning your cheeks pink from the chill. It's free falling from an airplane at thirteen thousand feet and closing your eyes because you don't care about the view, you just want those weightless sixty seconds when for once the world isn't falling down on you, but you're charging at it with every ounce of your being.

I don't know if the feeling is the same for everyone, or if we all experience it differently. But for me it's that moment when you know in your soul that there is something right in the world. When your fickle friends and your difficult family and your frustrating career can't touch you, because you, in that moment, are at peace. In that moment you are filled with the realization of the wonder that is around you and the strength that you have by embracing rather than rejecting it.

Missy Higgins - "Your warm whispers, out of the dark they carry my heart. Your warm whispers, into the dawn they carry me through. I'm weeping for honey and milk yet you stay surrounding me. Your warm whispers, letting me drown in a pool of you. Your warm whispers, keeping the noise from breaking through."