When you do what you love, the seemingly impossible becomes simply challenging, the laborious becomes purposeful resistance, the difficult loses its edge and is trampled by your progress. -Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)

On my way to work last Tuesday, I decided that I walk strangely. Of course, I can't tell for SURE because I can't see myself unless I watch my reflection in building windows. I try to refrain from doing this because I'm concerned that the people around me will think that I am checking myself out rather than worriedly attempting to diagnosis my mobility issues. But the flip side of that is that they already think I'm strange because I walk oddly.

My legs just feel like they don't want to cooperate in a smooth fashion when I move around. They seem to prefer a jerkier, slightly lopsided motion, potentially exacerbated by the fact that I walk about 3x faster than the normal person, as it is. This is something that I cannot help. When I try to slow down, I am faced with a sensation that feels like what trying to stop a very heavy wagon from rolling down a very steep hill feels like. I have to concentrate really really hard on moving my feet more slowly. Usually, I just give up and speed back up again. Because, actually, my walk gets even more awkward when I attempt to reign it in.

The other day when I was walking home from work, an older businessman with a briefcase in hand actually commented on it.

"Must be those Chuck Taylors making you walk so fast," is what I heard as I zoomed by him.

"Haha, could be! Or just the cold!" And, with a good-natured smile, I kept going. But seriously. I must look...irregular. I blame my New Yorker mother. As a small child, I had to move my little stubby legs at double-time to keep up with her purposeful stride, and, as I became accustomed to moving at that speed, proportionally, I continued to move that quickly when I got older. That is my thinking.

Things are far worse now that there is an irritating amount of snow on the ground. Now I wobble on top of moving strangely. On Friday I almost careened into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Such is my life.

Today, as I sat in John's car at the Bryn Mawr train station, I was struck by the thought that I really ought to make a concentrated effort at self-improvement. When I said this thought aloud, I was met with a look that made me think he was thinking that I was a lunatic. Which was nice, for all intents and purposes (assuming he wasn't thinking that I was so hopeless that working towards self-betterment was a fruitless endeavor), but which didn't change my mind.

I too easily give myself a lot of leeway when it comes to figuring my shit out. "I'm young." "There's time." "I've got a lot to get through first." Yeah, sure. Excuses. It's not like I am suddenly going to hit a place in my life where things are suddenly smooth sailing and I can kick back and hone whatever skills I think that I might have. If I keep giving into those excuses, letting them ultimately direct me, I'm going to wind-up as a very boring and very unaccomplished person. Just like most everything in life, self-direction and self-knowledge take effort and work. But I'm fairly certain that it is well worth it. In the end, I'll know exactly where I stand. I don't think I'd ever quite realized how exhausting leading an interesting and full life really is. As far as I can tell, society does a bang-up job of wearing us all down to little nubs of the people we are by telling us what we "should" be doing. To live to the fullest takes a kind of courage and a kind of independence that I hadn't really considered. Life is too short to stay safe and to put off exploration and development. I have to work to get where and what I want. And now is the time to nail down exactly what it is that I DO want. Period.

"420. Don’t be sorry for speaking your mind. It’s like you’re being sorry for being real." (Thanks, Leo)

 

This is a good thing to remember. We are so often frightened of getting a load off of our chests that we forget that evasion, avoidance, and misrepresentation are akin to saying, "My thoughts aren't good enough" or "My thoughts are wrong." It's too easy to fall into that trap. It makes you wonder how many thoughts worth hearing are lost in the shuffle because the thinker is too afraid or too ashamed to give them voice.

 

I'm in a funny mood today. Sad. A little. Pensive. A lot. I sat in front of my computer trying to come up with a post that would center around something light-hearted or funny, and I came up blank, so I decided to go with reality as opposed to vignette. I blame this state partially on the blog that I have been reading (click the link above) because never in my life has my little brain been flooded by so many beautifully simple pieces of wisdom in such a short period of time. I'm realizing that someone, somewhere, at one time or another, has created a quotation that encapsulates literally every moment of every life. The magnitude is frightening and awe-inspiring.

 

It also has me convinced that I have to read more.

 

The other part of the blame rests on this song:

Between the two of them, blog and music, I have been reduced to small, emotionally fraught, body. And let me just tell you, it blows popsicle sticks to feel like this and to have to pull together some semblance of productivity while I am work. Tongue depressors might be more on point than popsicle sticks, actually. Like the big kinds in the jar in the doctor's office that always used to be really scary because, as a kid, you never knew if the doctor was going to come at you with one of them and attempt to jam it down your throat.

 

I picked this particular quotation because I'm starting to get the feeling that it's going to be representative of the theme of my 2011. I have this sense that it'll be a year for journeying and growing. I also picked it because speaking my mind was something I was amazingly good at as a small child and something that I was equally as bad at once I got older. And let me tell you, being challenged in that particular area is anxiety-inducing. And also character-splitting. Two bad things that could get pathological if I keep it up until I'm old and grey. Which is not how I want to end up when I'm wizened and grumpy, zipping around in my little motorized chair. I'll probably already be running over people in grocery stores, I don't need to be fighting panic attacks and dual personalities while I'm doing it.

So here's to speaking my mind, being honest and upfront, confident and sincere, and here's to strengthening relationships through doing it.

 

 EDIT: Look! Images from my blog are showing-up on Google Image Search!

Don't tell anybody, but I usually spend the first half hour of my workday screwing around on the internet and being unproductive; this is mostly because I am always the first person into the office every day and because mornings tend to be slow (probably because everyone else is screwing around on the internet, too). This morning, I got an email from my mom that included this: Crow and Cat

Unbelievable, right? It sort of throws a wrench into the nature vs. nurture debate, or at least adds another element to it. Anyway, I just wanted to share.

***

Have you ever been someone who was scared of everything that was, or could be construed, as even a little off-kilter? Like wearing plaid socks that might end-up being visible when you sat down? Or like having parents who implemented a 10pm curfew when you were a a senior in high school so you pretended that you just didn't actually WANT to be out late anyway? That's how I was. I also embarrassed really easily, which made me less than open about just about everything.

Like sex and anything related to it.

I was still scared of penises when I was a senior in high school, and I was utterly convinced that if anyone was going to be the victim of immaculate conception ever again (no offense intended), it was going to be me. I was equally convinced that the first time I had sex I would get pregnant and they'd put me on one of those trashy MTV shows about good kids who managed to somehow fuck up big time. Sometimes, when I was feeling especially masochistic, I would play out a scene where all my family's friends were gathered around, shaking their heads, and saying, "She had such a bright future...I just didn't see this coming. She was always such a smart girl..." I also figured I'd have to move far away and not talk to anybody I knew ever again. Looking back at my youth now, and seeing how many complexes I gave myself, I'm shocked that I'm even half as well-adjusted as I turned out (which is not extremely, but I do all right).

Most of them came from being frightened of everything but my shadow, and maybe even that at night if I were half asleep and trying to stumble into my bathroom. I made it worse by never actually owning up to being frightened of everything, and I'm fairly certain that that misstep is what gave me complexes. I used to work very hard to put up a facade of suave, untouchable, coolness. I tricked most people with it, because I was a control freak and kept myself in an iron-tight grip, but I was stressed-out all the time. It was a tough existence! I constantly had to anticipate and predict any bumps on the road that would force me into patch-up mode so that people didn't actually figure out that I was a huge, lame, weenie. This made me every girl's best friend in high school and an enormous bitch to just about every guy. Which somehow managed to work out for me, anyway...which still puzzles me enormously.

That is why, with the dawn of 2011, my biggest goal might just be to be open and up-front about myself with myself and with other people. (Can I get a "HELL yes")? So far, I'm doing pretty well.

Now that it's the new year, I'm going to kick into high gear with respect to studying for the LSAT. And I really mean it. The tumultuous romance between me and my study aids wore off about 3 weeks after I received them in the mail, but now it's time to settle into a comfortable relationship with them and learn them inside and out. I plan to do this in several ways, including but not limited to:

1) Make a schedule. Withhold things that I want from myself until I stick to said schedule. This means no tv show binging on my computer, no Starbucks, no friends, etc.

2) Reward myself when I succeed. Could occur simultaneously as studying (see number 3).

3) Bring the romance back. Study in public (like at Starbucks). Look studious. Attractive. Smart. This can be done by carrying more books than I actually need, plugging into my iPod so that people think I'm divorced from my surroundings (when I'm still probably people-watching), carefully choosing an outfit that looks effortless, yet good, and arranging my materials so that at least one book's title regarding the LSAT is visible to passersby.

4) Get my roommates to guilt-trip me if I don't seem to be studying enough. Rubbing in the fact that I might never be able to effectively handle idiot corporate bureaucracy like Park Towne's if I don't go to law school might be a good starting point.

I think there are probably more. Besides the LSAT, there are other things that I want to do in 2011 (I recently came to the abrupt realization that this is the first year of my life in which school is not a player at all. It scared me).

1) Come up with a backup plan if law school doesn't pan out; maybe just a plan for 2012 pre law school if it DOES pan out: move to Chile and do something that doesn't count as this, move out west and work on a goat farm, work on a cruise ship, team up with Mike and drive around a country - doesn't have to be the U.S. - in an RV.

2) Learn how to cook.

3) Stop only grocery shopping once a month because doing so means that I have at least a week where my diet consists solely of rice and beans and pasta with garlic and olive oil. And maybe some leftover frozen veggies if I'm lucky. Hello, scurvy.

4) Be more honest with myself. Own the person I am.

5) Write more frequently, both blog and otherwise.

6) Finish Shogun. Finish at least 10 other books over the course of the year. This means less brain-dissolving online tv watching. And normal tv watching. Also read the NY Times more regularly.

7) Make good use of my art museum membership. Go on more tours.

8) Be better at staying in-touch with my parents. We have a 5 minutes a day rule for a reason!

9) Don't forget how to think critically sans the help of school.

10) Live more. Make memories!