An Ambitious Life

Aunt Mary showing us the topiaries she cares for at the botanical gardens. 

This week, we are traveling with family in Iowa for my cousins college graduation. We are staying with my Great-Aunt Mary in Des Moines, about an hour north of where my cousin went to school. Aunt Mary is 83, bikes 10 miles a day "whether she needs it or not," volunteers at the botanical garden and has stories from travels all over the world. Her and her husband had a great relationship, and lived together in their cute little cottage complete with a potting shed. Aunt Mary worked full time up to a few years ago, when she felt she was too busy with her hobbies and volunteering to continue working full time. She's been a widow for 20 years, and while she clearly misses her husband--and talks about him often--she has also led a vibrant life filled with international trips with friends, birthday lunches, and so many hobbies. 

I've been thinking about ambition often. I've talked about how it feels like we are in the beginning of a whole new season. At times, I have felt lost with what I want work to look like and found it hard to claim anything I want in the future other than a vague sense of *vibes.* But there are so many ways to lead an ambitious life, and certainly, so much more to living well than having a big job. 

As we enter this new season, I want to take myself seriously enough to pursue my work as a proper career, to set myself up in a situation that will allow me to do work that is meaningful and fulfilling and fits into the rest of my life. In doing so, however, I want to acknowledge the rest of my life. I want to put energy into decorating a cute apartment, starting our marriage off on the right foot, taking time to foster our friendships and to figure out our new roles in our families. I want to plan fun vacations and spend our free time exploring the places we'll live. I want to have go-to coffee shop orders that feel fun and whimsical, and read books while curled up on the couch in the summer. 

My cousin, Ena, is graduating college. To oversimplify it, she is at a threshold of getting to make so many decisions about how the rest of her life will turn out. Move home? Go somewhere else? Which job to take? The meaner part of my spirit can be jealous of that clear, fresh start. I didn't leave home to go to college, I didn't have a clear first day at my new grown-up job, and I often feel behind because I never had a clear starting line. But I can give that fresh start to myself. At any moment, I can decide that we're moving, we're mixing things, we're changing our lives and upending everything to run faster towards the lives we desire. Lives that involved work but also lots and lots of play. 

In so many ways it feels like my Aunt Mary defies ageing. She is fun and comfortable, she has a great sense of humor, she still has new experiences and still has new thoughts at 80. She marvels at the world. I want that in my future, but I also want that today. 

noticing

 

We are in that typical New England time of year where we oscillate between desperation that it is still so cold out, and unbridled joy when the sun feels like we're already in mid-summer. Neighbors we haven't seen in months are suddenly outside on their annual dog walks. New noises drift through open windows. I am getting excited to have some outdoor plants this year. We don't have any private outdoor space, just a little bit of gravel around our parking spot and then a large porch connected to the shared entrance to our building. I want to put some pots of flowers out (maybe zinnias? and marigolds?) and attempt some tomatoes as well. I am being patient, though. Most of the time, the first warm day hits and I plant everything too early, dooming myself to watch their slow and anticlimactic demise. Instead, I've been taking my dog walks past the houses with the best, most cared for gardens and front porches. Like my own personal groundhogs, I'm waiting for the first sign of freshly bought mulch or clay pots pulled from the garage, the first hopeful tray of grocery store pansies sitting in the driveway waiting to be repotted. These garden houses certainly know better than me, and I'm trying to notice and follow their lead. 

I spend a lot of my time running around from one thing to the next, so much so that sometimes it's easy to miss that the underlying feeling of frustration underneath is my impatience that this is also a season of waiting. When I take the time to notice, I can see that both Chris and I have landed in a place we used to dream of. This June will mark five years since we've been together, and while that is such an incredibly small percentage of a life it is also a huge percentage of the time we've been adults. It feels like we've made it to the end of a chapter, and have checked off a lot of dreams: getting married, getting a dog, Chris working at a fire department, me skating in shows and coaching full time, an ambitious road trip honeymoon. I want to not just notice but to revel in these achievements, these things that felt so out of reach just five years ago when we whispered them to each other. But it's hard to revel in something when I am also finding myself anxious for the next step, itchy and restless and desperate for some direction so I can know who I am in the world. 

I am noticing that I spent a lot of the beginning of my twenties in survival mode, desperate to become someone and changing rapidly as I discovered who that was supposed to be. My inner world has settled more now that I am 26, and I feel more capable of looking at the whole picture of the person that I am. There are so may pieces I am dissatisfied with; how I cry almost every time I say what I think, how I can get so angry and combative before I've even noticed myself starting to get frustrated. I'm proud of the person I've become, but I also think I'm not always a good friend. I would like to be more level headed. I would like to feel like more of a grown-up to myself. 

This noticing sucks so much more than noticing when the first crocuses pushed through the snow, or when you can first smell the wet dirt in March. I hate it and I want to push it away. It's not a task that I can add to my monthly list, or an aesthetic little reset I can make a tiktok about. There is no quick fix. While I know it's good to look into the deeper recesses of yourself, I also just DON'T WANT TO and I really hate that in so many ways I am the problem. hi! It's me. 

I am noticing what makes me uncomfortable and what makes me comfortable. I'm noticing the thousand ways each of those is good and each of those is bad. I am noticing that I am in a season where I need to listen a lot more than I usually do, and I'm noticing it's high time I challenged my gut reactions, old dreams, ways things have always been, and the inner dialogue that tells me if I'm behaving the way I want to. I am taking the time to notice what is next, to notice where I am going, instead of racing there and misunderstanding the path. Someday, I would love to turn 36. I would love to have decade-old friendships and feel like todays demons are well behind me. And I would love to be in-tune enough with myself and with the world to know when a season is coming, and to sense when it is time to plant. 

three little rituals in April

 One the greatest joys of adulthood has to be finding your own rhythms and rituals. Look at me! A person out in the world deciding my own preferences. The absolute pleasure of identity-making (or at least identity exploring?). Here are some of my favorite rituals over the past month:

A favorite walking route. Most mornings, Chris and I take Bear for his morning walk together. While we have favorite routes we take often, Chris especially tends to mix things up each time. On days when Chris is out of the house for work, though, I have one favorite route that I always take Bear on for a solo morning walk. We go past my favorite garden house where we stop to drink from the dog bowl and see what's starting to grow, then past what I've decided is our future house to admire the porch. We go down a short stretch of a paved walking trail, then loop back past my friends house. Finally, we go past some flowering apple trees and a house with chickens. The perfect morning loop. 

The quietest Friday nights. Currently, weekends have been jam-packed with my regular coaching work, plus shows and rehearsal schedules for both the company I skate on and the company I direct. This has led to Fridays being one of our chill-est nights. While I often go to happy hour on Wednesdays only to stumble back at 10pm, on Fridays, I get home from work and find Chris already starting dinner (often from the vegetarian cookbook we're working through). We chat together while one of us takes lead finishing dinner, have a drink, then curl up with our comfort food in the living room. We usually only watch one episode of something (recently: Beef, now: Ted Lasso and whenever the Bruins are playing). Then I shower, we clean up, we talk, read a little, and go to bed early. 

A reading break from the world. Spring is a busy season for work, and I've been working hard to ensure that I keep myself grounded and happy even while running around. I'm proud to say it's been a little better this year. One of my new year's resolutions was to stop working when I get home at the end of the day, and I've stuck to that. I've now also started to add in some reading upon walking in the door some days. Ideally, it's a beautifully sunny day. The sun is still out. I grab a beer, then curl up on the couch for 20 or 30-minutes with a book. Sometimes, Chris joins with his own book or a video game. Ultimate reset. 

Happy Friday! xo

Winter 2023: A Scrapbook

 

Somehow, winter has come and gone and I am typing this while snuggled up on the couch on a relatively warm March evening. I am currently enjoying what I think must be the best part of any long-term partnership: Chris is currently making dinner, and has also explicitly said that he doesn't want me to help or to talk to him so he can cook while watching TV. The beginning of relationships are so fun, but I think my heart is partial to being able to give each other space without feelings being hurt. This is what a marriage of two introverts looks like, and I love it. 

January and February have been jam-packed with activities and have been busy work wise, but somehow, I still feel like there's been a lot of time to just...exist? Throughout most of my adult life, I have considered myself a little better at working than at playing. From 18 until very recently, I've held down multiple jobs at once, had periods of life where I was training skating almost 20 hours a week, and been a student. I love the purpose that comes with being a "busy" person, and overall I think I'm more emotionally even when I keep my calendar relatively full. It is not good for me mentally, however, when that drive pushes me over the edge into anxious territory. I watched this Tik Tok from our light, our life, our love: Chelsea Fagan recently, and honestly have been thinking about it for weeks. I know I have internalized a sense of always needing to be busy, and I do struggle with my self worth when I do something as simple as take a day off because I'm sick. I want to be better at reframing the parts of my life that are self-imposed, instead of making myself a victim of my owl compulsion to do everything.

Heading off to Portland ME!

Used bookstore in Portland.

One of my goals for the New Year was centered around working more intelligently, and no longer allowing the constant sense of "always being working" to keep messing with my personal life. I decided to set a hard limit on the admin side of coaching. Since the start of the year, I have a hard rule about not working when I get home from coaching (depending on the day, this could be as early as 6:30 or as late as 9pm). It's been life changing! At night, I have no agenda and just hang out with Chris and Bear, make dinner, watch movies, or read my book. In the morning, I wake up with a lot less dread because I gave myself time to unwind the night before, and I've been so much more focused at getting stuff done during the day because I don't have the option of figuring stuff out in the evening. It also makes me way more likely to see friends in the evening, because I have no sense of keeping the time available in case I need it for work (which I always did when it was an option). 

I think this mindset of actually "leaving" work at the end of the day has been especially important for me right now. Over the past few months, I've been working through a lot of self doubt and inadequacy, and all the shame that comes with feeling those things while also "getting" to "live my dreams." Weird territory! So it's satisfying (and grounding) to feel so proud of my personal life at the moment. For perhaps the first time, I feel like my life is full of friends, adventures, satisfying relationships, hobbies, and quiet time to lay on the couch with the dog. I love my personal life right now. It is joyful and playful and creative and life giving. I am proud of the years it has taken for me to cultivate this, and I don't want to take it for granted. 

Saturday afternoon relaxation of choice: Youtube and a lunch beer.

Tacos and beer on the coldest day of the yar.

We've made room for so many adventures over this winter: In January, Chris and I took the train up to Portland ME to go to bars and walk around bookstores. It snowed SO MUCH but we loved it even when we got chilled, and catching the train back home was so fun. Towards the end of the month we had friends over for what I called a Friendsgiving (even though we were well past the holidays, I served pasta, and the only remotely festive thing was a pumpkin cake). It was the most people we'd ever had in our apartment for a party and I LOVED it. This will be the year of parties. In the beginning of February, we also experienced a few days with below zero weather. While we mostly stayed in, we did sneak out for tacos and beer at one of our favorite walking-distance spots and sitting in the warm bar while we watched frost form on the windows was exhilarating. For Valentines Day, we decided to be a Proper Grown Married Couple and got reservations for the Saturday before at Cava in Portsmouth, a *fancy* tapas place that we'd only been to once before. We sat at the bar and did their fixed menu option and really enjoyed it.  

Also for Valentine's Day, I made Chris a homemade coffee cake. By a stroke of luck, I unlocked all my own nostalgia: this recipe tasted exactly like the Krusteaz mixes my mom would buy and  make on Sunday mornings before church. Also in the homemade date category: February we experienced a Disney resurgence and watched so many movies, new and old. While Turning Red was probably my favorite of all the new watches, my favorite night was when we watched Ratatouille while eating homemade ratatouille, with crusty bread, a cheese board, and wine. Probably my favorite at-home date nights we've ever done. 

Ratatouille date night.

UNH Hockey Game

Mid-February, I took a leap and got a wolf cut. I love it! And honestly feel like this is the most "myself" I've ever looked like. Styling bangs again is a trip but thankfully I'm much better than my 13 year old self was (scroll through the archive for proof, at your own risk). Other highlights of the month were seeing a comedy show at WHYM brewery, going to a UNH hockey game with friends, finding what we believe to be the best happy hour in town (it's The Brick on Wednesdays), and my first time night skiing in four years. To round out the winter, we saw Couch in Burlington VT with friends at Nectar's, a small bar and concert spot downtown and walking distance from their apartment.

Seeing Couch in Burlington VT.

Overall, an epically full godsend of a Winter. I'm so grateful for my friends, my husband, our sweet Bear and Charlie, and the chance to be out here trying new things. Spring is looming and looking busy, so I'm excited for: soaking in and really noticing the sunshine and longer days, creating more at-home date nights, doing some fun travel, and getting outside more often. Thanks for being here! <3

I can't move on until I say something about 2022

 

I've been working on a post that adequately sums up 2022--a year that was equally full of the most heartbreaking moments of my life, as well as the most joyful--and also explains every way in which I intend 2023 to be better. To be fair, I didn't intend for 2022 to be so challenging. January of last year, I was also journaling and planning blog posts and getting ready for a busy year of achievements, new hobbies, travel, better habits. But some years are just like that--unexpected avalanches of challenge and grief. I think it would be more fair if these moments were spread out, like mini snow squalls of unhappy things spread over a decade. I guess we have about as much control over that as the actual weather, though. 

Amongst everything else, there is something about this year that has felt so solidly grown up, so adult. When something goes wrong, there is no one to tell, no one to get. I can (and do) tell people about it, but there's a big difference between retelling a story and leading with "help!". I also find myself using the word "adult" more than any other adults I know. Somehow, I am constantly looking for the grown-ups, trying to mimic their behavior and walk in their shoes in a way that definitely comes off less cute and more naïve than when actual children do it. I wonder if large, out-of-our-control circumstances is what helps people turn the corner from looking for the grown ups to being looked to. Alongside the anxiety and grief and weight of this year, I've also felt a perverse sense of pride, even of joy, in how we (my husband and I) are able to handle things. An unexpected move and six weeks living apart, my partner's concussion, loosing grandparents, and loosing someone who was basically my brother in law unexpectedly a week into our own honeymoon. The shitty circumstances remained shitty but I am still proud of how we reacted. We took actions, came home early from trips, were reliable and present and made ourselves voice our thoughts. We showed up--dressed appropriately, with tote bags of food and markers for guest books--and stayed afterwards to clean up, like the grown ups we apparently are. Is this really what we were looking forward to all these years?

Because everything about growing up is gray and nuanced, it would be unfair to write bout 2022 and only list the circumstances that were hard. This year also held a jam-packed, adventurous summer, making a lot of art I felt strongly about, moving to a new town and feeling like it is exactly where we wanted to be. This was the year I got to marry the man that stood by me and picked me up and made every hard circumstance of this past year doable. Our wedding was beautiful and fun and very us, and we cried the whole time. 

My whole life, I have felt both incredibly excited and incredibly terrified to grow up. I was one of those kids that was always a bit too grown up; prim and proper and obedient, never overly excited and (predictably) too wrapped up in the approval of adults. I never felt like a kid, so imagine my confusion when I hit birthday after after birthday and instead of finally feeling "my age," I started feeling younger and younger. I became somehow more inept and confused, and way less impressed with my own capabilities.  I have spent this first half of my 20's feeling remorse for all the ways I wasn't more wild when I was younger, feeling embarrassment for all the ways I haven't felt more grown up, and desperately throwing myself on the hamster wheels of "catching up" and "good enough."

Perhaps this year was a chance to stop and realize that life comes at you too fast to worry so much about being on top of it. Our lives are often messy, chaotic, unsatisfying; sometimes it's our fault, and often it's not. Life is just all the things, constantly. The parts of my life that often feel the most embarrassingly non-grown up didn't affect how I showed up with my family as we were grieving, or how Chris and I planned our wedding and life together. You don't have to be emotionally mature to clean the house, but you definitely do to attend funerals that really shouldn't be happening. Or host a huge party and not yell at anyone. 

In the mundanity that's (luckily) filled our lives this fist part of 2023, I'm enjoying a sense of feeling grown up in more gentle ways. Throwing flyers in the recycling instead of on the table when I check the mail. Lighting a candle to make dinner. I am grateful to be enjoying these things. To not be worried if I'm too young or too old, but just to be who I am, where I am, carving out some space for myself amidst the noise. 

September Ambitions

 

Though my to-do list overfloweth, this Tuesday has led me to a quiet night alone in our apartment, a sleepy dog that for once isn't threatening the neighbors, and a very large pour of wine because the bottle wasn't full enough to justify leaving it for another night. I've set my timer and allotted myself thirty minutes to indulge my blogging self for a bit. It's been a while! This marks my eighth post in all of 2022, and we find ourselves in the very beginning of September (though my calendar already says the 13th. weird). But a September feeling is certainly in the air...I'm starting to crave baking and cozy nights in, the only recently bought six-packs have all been pumpkin themed, and we find ourselves buckling down with a renewed focus to just get things done. 

Specifically, Chris and I are now panic-planning the last details of our wedding, which is now a whopping 3.5 weeks away. I have a lot to say about planning a wedding, chiefly that I am excited,  I've never been more ashamed of my procrastinator tendencies, this is going to be a hell of a party, I will certainly never do something like this ever again, and I cannot wait to get to the day and be wearing my awesome shoes and surrounded by friends and drinking a butternut squash martini and BE MARRIED!

The rest of this year is gearing up to be a whirlwind. Wedding weekend leads us into two weeks of road tripping for our honeymoon. Two days after we get home I fly out to an ice show through the rest of the year! Busy, busy, busy, but all I want to do right now is soak every single moment in. This year has gone by so fast and I just want to keep treasuring and holding all these moments. 

Here are some of my September ambitions (and some bonus for the rest of the year). 

>> Workout every single day before the wedding! Because otherwise I will go completely insane. We're dealing with things as they come up and making sure we're going in with some clarity. 

>> Not running around for work, but instead focusing my time and attention on my core skaters. I want to make sure I leave everyone for a bit with goals checked off, strong programs choreographed, sub coaches updated, and everyone feeling good. 

>> Walk into the week of the wedding with the most organized set of spreadsheets, week of timeline, and wedding binder I can manage. I've been a hot mess through most of this but we're going to nail that. 

>> Send out Christmas cards! I love Christmas cards and sending out our first Christmas cards as a married couple is something I am looking forward to literally so much. Can't wait. 

>> Make the best scrapbook of our honeymoon!

>> Read so many library books!

>> Soak up every single moment with family, friends, and Chris over these hectic weeks.

Intentional Living: Less Aesthetic, and More Mess

#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. 

#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. 

#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. 

#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?

#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.