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| #1: A fun, special weekend breakfast at home. Fun brunch vibes! |
(Sharing this post along with some more fun ways I've been trying to "live intentionally" this summer).
A perpetual theme in my thinking, Youtube watching, journaling, and existential crisis-ing is my deep desire to be living an intentional life.
So much of life feels completely chaotic, and this year for me personally has been the most chaotic yet. In many ways, though, I'm incredibly grateful that this string of unfortunate events took place this year. For the first time in my entire life, I feel more equipped to handle it. Chris and I are stable, and good. We have strong friendships. We're both relatively comfortable at work, and have control over our work lives. We've started to feel like real adults, and with that our capacity to deal with challenges has grown larger.
Moving in with Chris was a milestone in my life for many reasons, but one of the most challenging aspects of it at the time was what a strong break it marked between me living my life the way I wanted to, and me living in a way that my upbringing expected. Growing up in not just a conservative Christian household, but also a fundamentalist-leaning homeschooling community, moving in with a boyfriend carried the weight of not just a life change but of moral failure. At the time, I was still doing my best to be a good Christian and form my life in that way. While I didn't believe moving in together was wrong, I also spent a lot of my emotional energy coming up with ways to defend myself.
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| #2: Always having fresh flowers (once a bouquet starts to die, I pull the ones that still look good and make these mini bouquets). |
While we hadn't tried to hide it (and actually, had explicitly told our close church friends before we moved in together), a pandemic meant that it took six months before most of the people in my home church "knew." A lot of people were upset. We received heartbroken texts, and went to dinner with one couple who told us everything we were doing wrong. Fast forward a year, and we were engaged and starting to plan a wedding. We reached out to a church I had been to get married, and received a double sided pdf in response. The letter held many bullet points (and interestingly, only one bible verse) and demanded an apology from me. It stung. I felt abandoned and alone by a church family I had tried for a really long time to please.
These scenarios, which all occurred within a year and a half of each other, were monumental shifts for me. They marked the first time in my life where I chose myself--my needs, wants, and desires--over the life that has being handed to me and expected of me. I grew up with a lot of expectations around me, as well as a lot of black and white thinking over what the "right" way to be was. Even when these expectations didn't seem to fit me (and to be honest, they often didn't), I tried my best to change myself for them rather than finding a different way. I did this as a kid of course, but I also did it as an adult...for way too long.
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| #3: Cooking with both smaller portions of meat, as well as less days where we eat meat. This veggie stir fry has been a go-to this summer! Cheap, cleans out the fridge, and doesn't heat up the apartment. :) |
The past few years have felt like crash-landing into an adult life where I actually have options. It's been exhausting, and to be honest, a little traumatizing. But while the last two years haven't exactly looked like a That Girl video waxing poetic abut the importance of routines, I can't imagine a way I could have lived these years more intentionally. In all the mess, this season of life meant me finally getting real about what kind of future I wanted. It was about me challenging old beliefs, and standing up to people and systems I had previously believed it a sin to question. For the first time in life, this season I embraced change and discovering new ways of looking at the world. We don't talk to talk about the mess, but I think the mess has way more to do with "living authentically" then we care to admit.
Perhaps our views on living intentionally need to shift. Perhaps it's less morning routines and fruit infused water and more hard conversations, setting boundaries, and challenging yourself in therapy. Maybe living intentionally is making scary, annoying, and even mundane choices. I love an aesthetic "Sunday Reset" vlog as much as the next person (and honestly, maybe more), but we all must realize deep down that changing your sheets don't actually change your life. The most important stuff isn't the pretty stuff.
As we've worked through everything the past few years, I have felt a lot of grief, a lot of anger, and a lot of disappointment. I've realized my self-esteem was based largely on what others think of me (a pretty unstable foundation). I have felt the inclination to hide from family, to hide from the world, just to avoid getting rejected. Carrying all of this has felt so heavy.
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| #4: Taking a second to CHILL. I've been trying to be very aware about my energy lately, and turns out, after running around out in public for a few hours I am STRESSED and need to sit on the bed or the couch, have a fun drink, and just zone out or else my brain becomes mush. |
As the waves seem to settle, and a new season emerges, I'm preparing to feel a lot more satisfaction in this life we are living. We are only two months away from getting married! We are all moved in to our new apartment. Bear is behaving significantly better than he used to. We have fantastic friends that have stuck by us through all the sticky parts. And we're ready to live with a lot more JOY.
Because it's a huge gift to get the chance to build a life. Though it feels like I'm starting from scratch, it's a gift to have a fresh start and to get to explore all the ways I could be. The world is truly brand new: are we sleeping in on Sundays or going for a run? Happy hours with friends or brunches at home? Beer or wine on a Friday night? Trash tv or curled up with a book? Where do we get the news? When do we read the news? How do we budget? Who are our friends? What are we valuing in the world, when we aren't told what to value? How are we showing up for our communities, when we aren't told who to show up for? What do I think and want, when I finally get to tune out decades of other voices?
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| #5: Going on way more fun, little adventures that remind us we are ALIVE and DOING THINGS! Bonus points if they include friends, and double bonus points if they include something local we haven't done before (this was a Portland Sea Dogs game!). |
I'm excited to find out. I suppose if I had to have a quarter life crisis, I'm grateful for where this one led me. Here's to continued question asking, intention setting, deep thinking, and a lot more spontaneous fun in the next 3/4 of my life.
