2 Steps Away

There was a routine on last week’s So You Think You Can Dance about a girl and her fear. I finally had a chance to watch it tonight and when I say I watched it, I mean I watched it over and over and over again. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long long time. And it totally spoke to me. I have an incredible fear of being alone. There’s an element of that that is so incredibly ridiculous because my life is filled with people that I love, that love me. But I still fear being alone. I think that’s part of why I made the move I just did. I guess I just want to embrace that fear. Pretending it’s not there hasn’t really done a lot of good when it comes to healing, so I decided to face it head on. Some days, it’s really really hard. This last week especially. I found myself on several occasions worrying that I was going to fail in this job, that I won’t ever find a place that I really fit in here, that maybe I’m just not strong enough to do this. Really that I’m just crazy to move away from the people who love me most in my life and start again.

The song that was used with the routine about fear talks about being two steps away from loneliness. That resonated with me on so many levels. Right now with this move I think I’m walking a bit of a tightrope. I don’t want to fall into the loneliness that’s below, but at the same time I’m not sure the journey is going to be complete if I don’t fall off a couple times before I make it across.

Life is hard. This past year has been really really hard. I’ve found myself missing my friend that I lost in May almost as much this last month as I did when we first lost him. I’ve seen people that I had to look twice because for a split second I thought it was him. He’s been in my dreams and I still can’t even get myself to delete his number out of my phone. Isn’t that crazy? Grief is a lot like fear in that. It’s completely irrational. You can pretend it’s not there and some days you don’t even notice it. Then one day you wake up and it’s so thick it’s like a spiderweb that you can’t seem to brush away no matter how hard you try. I think part of me is just starting to wake up again. I’d allowed myself to become a bit numb with life in the last year. I think a lot of that was a form of self-protection. Sometimes life is just hard to process. I think it’s been a while since I really tried. For the last year I’ve been going through the motions because some days that’s all I could ask myself to do. I know that God won’t give us more than we can handle but the past 11 months have been rough. It was the hardest year that I’ve ever dealt with and I fear- there it is again- that this past year is just life- it’s the way life works. It’s the way life is.

But I need to learn to love through that. I need to learn that Joseph is not the only person I loved that I will lose. Losing him doesn’t make the loving him any less worth it. It just made it that much more real. I need to learn that our family is sometimes all we have and this past year helped remind me that I don’t have to be related to someone to be their family. I need to learn that I can succeed in this new place I’m in. It might not look like what I think it will but that doesn’t mean it’s not successful. More than anything else though I need to keep learning that life is fragile and tenuous and hard and that maybe we’re all two steps away from loneliness. It’s worth it though. It’s so totally worth it.

So I guess now is as good of a time as any to admit to being a closeted control freak.

With a new job comes that moment or moments as I seem to be having many of them, when you realize that you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing at the exact right moment. I really loved my job. Really. I loved the people I worked with. I loved the people that I talked to on an everyday basis. I loved having a job where I felt like I was making people’s lives better by what I was sharing with them. I loved getting up and going into work in the morning, even when I knew that it was going to be a day when I could never possibly get everything done. As I’m going on month 2 in this new position, I’m also discovering something else I really loved about my position. I loved being in control. This is a strange discovery for me. I have never thought of myself as a control freak or really even someone who enjoyed being in charge. Apparently I hid these qualities so well, I even overlooked them in myself. When I was in my old position, I set up and executed every step. Doing so ensured that the level of quality was where I wanted it to be as well. If it wasn’t good enough, the only person to blame was myself and I had to recognize that and fix it. It’s just not quite that simple in this new job. I think one of the biggest lessons I’m going to learn in PR is that you’re never in control. Even when you feel like you’re in control, there are a million things going on along the sidelines that could totally derail where you were planning to go.

I don’t think that this discovery in myself and this change of career at this point in my life is by chance. Really I don’t often think things happen by chance. I think our decisions are constantly shaping where we’re going to end up. I think more than anything else, at this point in my life, I need to realize I’m not in control. I need to stop trying to be in control. I need to just let life happen around me. My views on God have changed a lot in the last several years. The way I love people has changed, the way I view the “church” has changed, the way I view Jesus has changed. The one thing I’ve tried hard not to change is my desire to not control the important things in my life. The more control I’ve tried to impose on life around me, the more I seem to get lost in the details. Not that the details don’t matter. They matter a lot, but all I can do is my part and then learn how to adapt to how my part changes and shifts into something else. That’s what I want my life to look like. The difficult part is getting there. I guess it’s no coincidence that the getting there is actually the most important part.

And then all of a sudden life changes, and things don’t look the same anymore. The landscape is different. You’re crossing bridges and state lines and the cornfields are gone. The coffee tastes different. The people seem distant. I guess you’re starting over.

I realized that I could become whatever I wanted to be in this change. I could either find myself here or I could hide myself here. Finding is a lot more difficult than hiding. But then again, I guess it’s not supposed to be easy. One of my very best friends shared a quote with me as I was packing up to leave Indiana. “Bloom where you’re planted.” Maybe it really is that simple. I’m nearing the end of what has easily been the most difficult year of my life. I’ve had to face things that make my chest ache to even think about. And these things changed me. Tragedy creates such a strange dichotomy. There’s the part of you that wants to love recklessly because you never know how much time you’ll have. Then there’s the part of you that wants to shrink into the smallest version of yourself you possibly can in hopes that maybe life won’t leave you so raw. If I’m being honest, I’m not past that yet. I’m not ready to go back to loving recklessly. It looks different after you lose someone. It looks different when you see that your parents are not ageless like they seem in our minds. It looks different when the people you love most are hurting in ways you can never begin to fathom. “I don’t know nothing except change will come. Year after year what we do is undone. Time gets moving from a crawl to a run. I wonder if we’re ever gonna ever get home.” I guess it’s a lot less about where we’re going and a lot more about how we get there. So tomorrow I’ll get out of bed and I’ll try to love someone just a little bit more. When it comes down to it, I guess that’s all that matters.

Go where you want to go
Be what you want to be
~The Weepies

I’ve been trying to do some much needed cleaning out because I’m getting ready to move. It’s really amazing how much stuff I can pack into approximately 25 square feet of living space. (really, it’s that small. You should see it. I’ve seen bigger closets). Anyway, nothing new here, I’m not good at throwing things away. Whether that’s clothes, shoes, cards or letters, I just don’t throw things away. In fact my mom told my sister that she wanted them to just show up as I was leaving for work one day and clean out my clothes without me. She said if I asked about one shirt in the next two years she’d gotten rid of, she’d consider it a success. Super. I’m really working on it though, and not just with what I own. But with who I am. I’m going to say something that is going to come across probably really selfish, but I’m not sure how else to put it. I think for a long time I’ve just been ignoring myself. I live in this body and this world and I go through the motions and soon all the days run into each other and I wonder what it was about the day before and the month before that, that I’ve allowed to make me numb to what’s going on around me. And I realized I hadn’t been paying attention. I think I had become this person that I hardly recognized. I knew I was still in there somewhere, but I had covered it up with distractions and stress and unhealthy relationships and weight and fear and frustration. And I saw it all, all of a sudden. I looked at a picture taken right after Christmas and I didn’t recognize myself anymore. It wasn’t just about the weight, it was about the girl inside. And I didn’t like it. And I realized that no one but me can change this. I’m the only person responsible here. So I’ve started doing something about it. And slowly I see myself coming back. I’m trying to love my weaknesses as much as I love my strengths. But it’s such a difficult process. I have to clean everything out and start over. And I realized as I was cleaning out things at home, that I’m the same way inside. I came across some old letters, and not the ones that you want to keep. The ones that really sucked to read the first time. The ones that point out your faults and your failures. And these are from years and years ago but I’m not at all sure why I decided to keep them. I realized something when I picked them back up though. I do the same thing in my heart everyday. I don’t let things go. I don’t forgive myself. I don’t let go of my failures. And when I saw the picture in December, I could see that in myself. And I didn’t even recognize that girl. I had become this muted version of myself that was slowly disappearing the bigger I got. I don’t talk about my weight on this blog. As much as I’ve talked about everything else, and tried to never have a censor, I stopped just short of the weight talk every time. Because if I talked about it here, even to the three readers I have, it would be admitting it was a problem. And I saw that every day. When I got up, when I looked in the mirror, when I went to work, when I came home, when I went to bed. The more I held on to my failures and my weaknesses, the heavier I became. Why would I even bother telling you something you obviously already see? But the truth is, it wasn’t just weight. It was years of never really looking at myself. Never looking at who I want to be. Never looking at where I want to go. Years of reminding myself of the ways I’ve failed, the relationships I’ve ended, the people that I have hurt. And the truth is, I was only hurting myself in this. The things I still allowed myself to feel guilty for, were forgiven a long time ago. So this year so far has really been about just that, me cleaning out my life, for lack of a better metaphor. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, all the things that I’ve been ignoring for a long time. And while it’s only about 4 months in, I can already see the differences. In how I love and how I breathe. In how I laugh and how I feel. And for the first time in a long time, when I look in the mirror I see myself.

I can’t really say why everybody wishes

they were somewhere else.
But in the end the only steps that matter

are the ones you take all by yourself.
And you and me, walk on, walk on, walk on
Cause you can’t go back now.
~The Weepies

I think I have a problem. I feel like it’s important to just get it out in the open. Admit to it. Move on.

I’m an apple snob.

I will even visit multiple grocery stores to find the right kind. There is only one right kind and not everyone carries it. Kroger unfortunately has let me down on numerous occasions. At numerous locations. So far Target has my back, as well as the Marsh/O-Malia’s across* the street from work. But I worry that they will stop carrying them and I’ll be forced to go back to my second place finisher, Fuji. Which up till a couple months ago, really got the job done. Just not anymore. Now it’s only the Pink Lady for me. That’s a sentence I sure never imagined myself saying. The older I get (which is almost 30 ladies and gentlemen who are still paying attention, if anyone is still out there) the more I realize that I can be really picky about specific things. I only like 1 kind of turkey lunchmeat (archer farms honey roasted turkey, shaved) and I typically only buy 1 kind of milk, Oberweiss. I think I’m becoming a snob all around. I think I might need to go buy some potted meat just to even it out. (Hey Kevin, do you think the Swifty still carries it?)

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you didn't blog for almost 9 months and you come back to discuss your grocery habits. (I'm thinking it too.) Well apples are just that important. And I can't make it something profound, or you will come to expect it. And that's just not how I work.

I am moving in less than 3 weeks. Who wants to come clean out my shoes for me?


*Why does a large percentage of the population feel that across needs to have a past tense put to it and say acrossed? Because it’s never ok. And I have to admit, having that word in my business’ name means that I hear it, over and over and over again. And every single time, I just want to yell ACROSS! IT’S JUST ACROSS FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY! Some people like to call this overkill. They would be correct.

I want to be a part of it, New York, New York

I’m going to justify my blogging absence with the fact that I was gone for most of the summer anyway. With the random vacations, houseboat, florida, Atlanta several times, I just haven’t written much of anything down. I suppose I should work on that.

Week before last I went to NYC for my annual conference. My friend Beth and I went up early to see some extra shows and hang out in the city a little more because we don’t have much free time once the conference starts. I got to see 8 shows in 6 days and it was more fun than I could tell you. This is one of those moments that I will reiterate just how much I love my job. I saw some really great shows and some that I thought were just ok. I guess it all depends on mood.

I landed in New York mid morning on Saturday and headed straight to the hotel. We had just enough time to check in and find a place for lunch before our first show of the trip- JERSEY BOYS. I loved the show. It’s the story of Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons. It is everything that a Broadway show should be. The music was incredible. We actually had the understudy for Frankie Valli and he blew me away. The rest of the guys were the originals. I’m not at all surprised that the show won the Tony for Best Musical a couple of years ago. It’s really an incredible show. I can’t say I’ve ever been someone to listen to a lot of oldies, but it’s funny that I still knew all the songs. I wonder sometimes what kind of a musical legacy today is leaving. Is there anything that will be worth listening to when my children are my age? (Granted I have to have children to be able to really ask this question, but we’re just going to assume that someday maybe before all of my eggs disappear I might get the opportunity to use them. I’m just saying.) Now that I’ve totally derailed- the show was great. It was a lot of fun and a great great show.

Our second show of the trip was CURTAINS. This is the show that David Hyde Pierce won the Tony for best actor in a musical for in June. He was fantastic. The show is a murder mystery musical comedy and somehow it’s pulled off really well. The show was the last collaboration of Kander and Ebb who are best known for CHICAGO and CABARET. I loved this show too. To be honest I wasn’t that excited about seeing it b/c it just seemed to be the old style big Broadway show that tends to get a little boring and feel a little long. It was great though. It was really funny, and well written. The dance numbers were fun and the cast was great. I’ve read some poor reviews on the show and have heard a lot of people say they were bored but I thought it was great. I loved seeing David Hyde Pierce in the role and I’m not at all surprised that he got the Tony for this role.

On Sunday, the first show we saw was LEGALLY BLONDE. I have to tell you that I didn’t love the show. I thought it was cute, and it was fun, but there were several numbers that just got on my nerves. The opening number, Omigod You Guys was stuck in my head for almost the entire week, and I can’t say that was a good thing. It was entertaining at times, some songs more than others and the dog was great, but overall it just felt like fluff. I guess a lot of entertainment is like that. And it’s not like I walked away changed from JERSEY BOYS or CURTAINS but I just felt differently about LEGALLY BLONDE. A lot of people loved it though, so maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I will say Laura Bell Bundy who plays Elle was incredible. She has a fantastic voice and I would love to see her in other shows.

Sunday evening we hadn’t originally planned to see anything but decided since we were there, we might as well go to another show. We tried to get tickets to CHORUS LINE but it’s dark on Sunday evening so we ended up with tickets to a little show off Broadway called WALMARTOPIA- A Musical With A Mission. I think it goes without saying what the show was aiming to do. I had heard most of the subject matter concerning Wal-Mart that they included in the show. (The insane number of lawsuits against them for sexual discrimination in the promotion of men over women, the fact that everyone thinks they’re products are “American made” but in actuality a very large number is sent to China to be produced for pennies, etc.) The show hadn’t been open long, and there were a couple areas where lines were dropped or just hesitated on long enough to show that it wasn’t as polished as it could be. It’s cheesy but in a good way, and I feel like they do a good job of conveying what they’re trying to say. I’ve had some issues with Wal-Mart for a while now, and have a hard time with that balance of disagreeing with how they run their business, and at the same time, knowing they are the cheapest and going there anyway. At this point I’m on a Wal-Mart break. I think I’d rather pay a little more than feel guilty over supporting a company that I just don’t agree with their practices.

One of my best friends, Jamie, flew in Monday morning and spent the day with us walking around SoHo. We had a lot of fun wandering into random stores and ending the afternoon at the Magnolia Bakery which is really well known for its cupcakes. You feel a little strange waiting in line just to get a cupcake, but I have to say it’s worth it. Jamie and I then had tickets to RENT Monday evening. It was the best production of RENT I had ever seen. I have seen the show probably around ten times by now but it was the first time to see it on Broadway. We got tickets specifically because Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal, the original Mark and Roger were in it. It was incredible. They blew me away, especially Adam Pascal. His vocals were amazing. Tamyra Gray is currently in the production playing Mimi and she was phenomenal. I think I cried through almost the whole thing, no surprise there. I’m really really glad we decided to see it while in New York. It was easily the pinnacle of all of my other experiences seeing RENT.

Our conference started Tuesday evening with a cocktail party then everyone had tickets to see SPRING AWAKENING. I was more excited about seeing this show than any other while in New York, well except maybe RENT. I’ve been listening to the cast album for several months now and thought it was incredible musically. The show blew me away. It was far and above, the best thing I’ve ever seen on stage. I don’t know that I have ever been so emotionally affected by a stage production in my life. I would tell you about the show, but if I tried to describe it, it would just come across sounding offensive and not conveying any of the feelings that I was left with after I saw it. I lucked into a front row seat for this one, and the show is set in a theatre with steps coming down from the stage where the cast will stand and sing different numbers. Being that close and hearing the vocals raw before they’ve even been amplified was incredible. I think that this is an incredibly beautiful show. It deals with really heavy topics. It’s based on a play written in the late 1800’s in Germany about teenagers growing up and essentially not understanding all the feelings that they are coming into- emotionally, sexually, physically. It’s definitely an adult show, but if I had teenage children, I would want them to see it, if for nothing else than to open up lines of communication. I think our society does a terrible job of just saying don’t do this, but without ever explaining exactly what “this” is, or how it’s ok to feel what you’re feeling. The show left me completely leveled. I couldn’t even talk about it after it was over without crying. (Just a warning if you decide to check the show out, it deals with very adult themes and the language is very colorful.) The show won 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical and I have to say it deserved every single one of them. It blew me away. I could’ve gone to see it again the next day instead of seeing MARY POPPINS again (which was a little boring the second time around.) I can’t wait to go back to New York and see it again.

Thursday evening I went to see XANADU the musical, yes, that XANADU. Yes on roller skates. It was so funny and a nice shallow show after being so affected by a couple of the others earlier in the week. We flew home Friday evening so no show there on the 7th day.


Extra credit to you if you made it through that entire rambling New York review. :) Tomorrow I'm flying to Baltimore for a show preview (THE WEDDING SINGER) which I've heard not so great things about, so we'll see. I'm just sad that I'm not going to be landing until mid afternoon, it's well past the time where I can sing Good Morning Baltimore....

I got in the mail today tickets to see everyone’s favorite band, Nickel Creek. Ok, maybe not everyone’s favorite. Maybe just me and on the random occasion that someone else has heard of them, he or she as well. (If they have taste.) This is bittersweet for me b/c it’s the first show that I’m seeing from this tour entitled “Nickel Creek’s Farewell (For Now) Tour”. Have I mentioned that they’re breaking up? Yeah, they decided the time had come to take a break from the group, and do some solo ventures. I can’t blame them, they’ve been playing together since they were really little. Now that they’re all in the late twenties, they want to try something different. I can respect that, and I will even support that. I just don’t have to like it. So, I just purchased tickets to their concert in August in Columbus and it’s looking to be the first of 5 shows I plan to see of theirs this fall before the end. They’re also going to be in Bloomington in October at the Bluebird, the Fox Theatre in Atlanta in October, and rumored to have two nights of shows completely with DVD filming at the Ryman in Nashville around Thanksgiving. These are also rumored to be their final shows, and you better believe I’m making the trip down. I mean, it only makes sense with the level of obsession I’ve had for this band for over 7 years now. So here is my public service announcement. If you like music, in particular live music (b/c if it’s not done well live, then why waste your time?) then you need to, HAVE TO, see them live before the tour closes. I promise you won’t regret it. The passion at which they play music is something I’d never experienced before seeing them live. It’s incredible. I’m just saying…

I had my first of two vacations last week. I spent the week lying on a raft on Dale Hollow Lake. Well, lying on a raft, riding in a boat, reading books, drinking beer, playing dominoes and listening to music anyway. I made it through the re-read of Harry Potter 5 & 6 in the first 2 ½ days then read a bunch of other randomness that’s hardly memorable, but incredibly relaxing. I think that it has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world and definitely brought me a much needed dose of peace.

Lately I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the relationships in my life. I’m so incredibly blessed. I can’t imagine anyone having better friends than I do. I just can’t.