A 7 Days Farewell

I'm so behind on blogging (are you noticing a theme?)...I wanted to do this DURING the final round of 7 Days but, as it happened over the Christmas holiday, there was really no time. I still need to go in and finish commenting on everyone's photos...sheesh.

Anyway.

7 Days is a project that I was invited to by a longtime internet friend.  It is was a group on Flickr in which, four times a year, members would take a self-portrait every day for 7 Days.  The creativity and ingenuity and just overall badassedness of this group of people welcomed me in with open arms and just-slightly-too-tight Internet bear hugs.

I participated for 3 years of the 7-year life span of 7 Days.  I got more creative with my photos.  I met some incredibly amazing people.  None of whom I have met in real life, mind you, but with whom I've become very close and of whom I've grown very fond.

I've mentioned them before.

I'm so glad for Internet friends, and for Twitter and Facebook, which allow me to keep up with them constantly, whether they like it or not!

Anyway...You can view my sets on Flickr here:

Spring 2011
Summer 2011
Fall 2011
Winter 2011

Spring 2012
Summer 2012
Fall 2012
Winter 2012

Spring 2013
Summer 2013 (unfinished because I was overly pregnant and OVER EVERYTHING)
Fall 2013
Winter 2013

And here are some of my favorites of all my 7 Days shots:

Changes

(for the record, that's not the brilliant blog post title I wanted.  but at the end of the day, that's the basic subject of what you're about to read. and it's more important to me to get all of this said than to come up with a witty title.)

(also this post is gonna be long. sorry.)

I have lots of internet friends. Some I've met in real life, some I may never meet in real life, but I actually feel closer to them than you might imagine.  One of those awesome internet-friends-I-just-haven't-met-yet-but-I-know-we'd-be-besties friends is Bex.

Bex is rad.

Bex sent me a CD full of Nate Ruess music (Fun., yes, but also stuff from when he sang with The Format).

Bex (indirectly) encouraged me to read Bukowski and watch The Big Bang Theory.  These are all reasons Bex is the bomb.edu, but I want to talk about a post she wrote recently (real recently...like, published today) in which she basically set up camp inside my brain and put into words many of the things that I haven't been able to quite articulate yet.  Here in a moment or two, I'm going to straight up copy/paste some of her sentiments and then add my comments.  But first...

Anyone who knows me (and knows me well) will have noticed that, over the past 10 months or so, I have made some pretty drastic changes.  I stopped drinking soda, cleaned up my eating, and lost 20lbs (and counting, I hope).  I stopped drinking alcohol. I started spending more time at home. I got back into a habit of spending time with the Bible and reading my devotional emails and trying to live a Christ-focused life. I started saying "no" to things.

I'm trying to simplify.

All of these things have made a couple of things very clear to me...the first and most important was that I needed to start making Christ a priority again.  The (very close) second was that I have not been the type of wife I should've been trying to be from "I do." The third was that, even with all these awesome internet friends...all you really need is a close circle of real life friends.  K.I.S.S. and all that.  Keep it simple, stupid.

I'm trying to recognize which friendships are worth cultivating and making daily, real effort to maintain, and recognize which ones are surface, online, fringe friendships that probably don't need to take up a whole lot of energy or drama or stress. Please understand what I'm saying here. Nobody is a throw-away friend. I wish ill on nobody. All I'm saying is...simplify. 

I need to prioritize.

What makes me happy? Actually, what makes my husband happy? What makes my Creator happy? Is what I'm doing making all 3 of us happy? Because that's what matters.

So onto the Lovely Bex and her amazing words that seemed to reflect what I've been stressing over lately:

I'm here to tell you that sometimes it's okay to be selfish. There's a difference between being selfish and being self-centered in that selfish can be temporary, whereas self-centered rarely is. Sometimes you're worn down by constant demands that are made by loved ones and/or coworkers. Hell, sometimes you demand too much of yourself. It's okay to take a step back and breathe, because here's something that took me too damn long to learn -- it's okay to say "no" to people. You can say no to hanging out if you want to stay in. You can say no to a phone conversation if you know that you'll just be dead air to the other end of the line. You can say no to favors. If your friends know you well enough, they'll back off. They know as well as you do that if they had a crisis in the middle of the night, you'd still show up with no hesitation. Needing time to yourself is not synonymous with being a jerk.

Word, Bex.

You guys, if I'm saying "no" to things and wanting to stay home instead of going to the bars, or not taking the ONE day I have off and going to see your show, stop taking it personally. It's not you, it's me. I just need to recharge. I need to do what's best for me. 

It's okay to re-prioritize your life even though some people may not make the cut... and it's okay not to miss those people, too. Usually it means you've made the right decision. You'll get nostalgic occasionally, but it's mostly nostalgia for the fun or the happiness you had with the people in question. In our everlasting instinct to want to think the best of people, our memories turn to the happy times when we reminisce. If you've ever been upset over the end of a crappy relationship, you know how this goes. People change. You change. As the age-old proverb goes, change is the only constant.

Speaking of which, it's okay to change. You are not betraying anyone by growing as a person (and if they act like it is a betrayal, seriously, it's time to re-evaluate your social circle). Life is too short to pretend to be something or someone you're not just to appease other people or keep from hurting their feelings. Some people want to travel, others are homebodies. Some people want to get married, some will never get out of their party animal stage. Some people want kids, some people don't. Some people need friends outside of their marriage, others are perfectly content with their spouse and their family.  It's okay to be any of these things, as long as you don't lie to others -- or yourself -- about who you really are and where your heart truly is.

Some of those are...whoa...I mean get out of my head, Bex. The colored text (I added the color to point it out) is something I've been trying to verbalize for a couple of weeks now.  

Facebook has put a pressure on all of us to hang out all the time and stay completely invested in the lives of our 400 friends. I really wish I had a nickel for every time I've seen an "I miss you so much let's hang out!" and it just seems...rote. Borderline insincere at times.  But here's the thing...it's okay! I really don't mind if you don't wanna hang out with me; nor should you mind ("you" being the general population here, of course) if I only want to stay informed of your life based on what you choose to share on social media. It's really, really okay. I love seeing parts of your life, "liking" your photos and whatnot...but it's really really okay if we don't keep putting this ridiculous pressure on finding a time to get coffee, which is probably something neither of us really wants to do, so let's just be honest about that. 

I don't expect my hundreds of Facebook friends (does that make me sound like an a-hole? I don't mean to...) to put in a whole lot of effort to keep up with me outside my public timeline. I won't do the same for all of them.  Put that energy into the friendships worth cultivating, and you'll save everyone a lot of hurt feelings and awkwardness. It's really okay.

Re: it's okay to change -- yes.  It's okay for me to change.  It's okay if you change. It's okay if you don't change. I don't drink alcohol at the moment...I don't care if you DO.  I want to stay home with my husband on a Friday night...I don't care if you wanna go OUT.  It's okay to be different and to have different priorities. I don't feel judged at all for my recent choices, but it's important to me that my friends know that neither do I judge them for theirs (unless they are harmful, of course, but that's coming from a place of concern and compassion, not judgment).

If someone is incandescently happy, don't you think you should be happy for them too?  Don't you think that they might have walked through the fires of hell to get to their happiness? Don't you think that if you focused a little bit more on yourself and how to escape your struggles that you'd eventually find your own happiness (and want to shout about it from the rooftops)?  I mean, I know it takes less effort to sit, sulk, and snark (and if that's what you choose to do, then I sincerely pity you) ... but what will you ever truly accomplish with your life if that's your attitude toward someone you claim to love who is happy?

Okay Bex, I hear ya. This one, I am guilty of doing to others. Part of my personal growth in the last year has been learning to recognize and admit to my flaws.  This is one of mine.  I get bitter, sometimes. I get angry when I feel like others seem to have every possible fortune bestowed upon them, when I'm struggling to make ends meet or don't get cast in a show or....am having a fat day while they (rightly) announce meeting their next weight loss milestone. I don't think I tend to dwell (for long, anyway) on my struggles so much, but I DO have to fight a knee-jerk reaction to be bitter, rather than happy for friends. I have to be proactive about remembering my own gifts and blessings and talents.

I'm...working on it. And yes, I know that "I'm working on it" and "I'm aware of it" do not give me carte blanche to be an asshole.  I'm going to mess up and struggle, but please know that it is something I'm aware of.

I recently turned 31. I'll blog about the actual birthday and all of it's awesomeness soon (all my pictures are at home, and by the time I get home, I'm sick of looking at a computer screen). I thought that, by my 30s, I'd have more of this all figured out.

I don't.

But I'm making changes, and they feel good. I truly hope the same for you...for my "fringe friends" and for my close friends, I wish you the same clarity and simple happiness...whether that comes on a quiet patio with a cup of coffee or surrounded by music and loud laughter and talking and people!

And I ask your forgiveness if I've hurt you or made you feel judged or unhappy on this journey of mine. It's my responsibility to not take the stumbling blocks along the way and use them as an excuse to bring you down with me.

Now, go get yourself another cookie (or bagel, or pickle, or whatever it is you are craving) for making it through another long post!

Teaser

Today's prompt: What did people tease you about growing up?

You know, with all of the news and (horrible, heart-breaking) stories in the news lately regarding bullying, and the work I did on Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead back in March, I have been thinking a lot about my childhood and formative years in school.

I think I've finally come to the conclusion that I really wasn't bullied or teased very much.  Or, if I was, I didn't know about it or it didn't affect me so much that I remember it.  I was blessed to go to a small school (my graduating class had 70 people in it) from first grade through graduation and, during that time, I really developed a wonderful core group of friends -- many of whom I'm still in touch with via the magic of Facebook. 

Sure, I remember a time in elementary school when the Cutest Boy in School told me to "move out of the way, Fatty," and I remember tiny catfights with girl groups, but there was nothing like what some of these kids in the news are going through.  We didn't have Facebook walls to post on and phones with which we could text people hateful things. 

I certainly wasn't one of the Pretty Popular Girls. I was always round and a bit chubby.  I wore braces and had frizzy hair.  I was in band and theatre.  But I also was on the tennis team (heh...I was terrible) and part of the Fellowship of Christian [Anybodies] (we didn't restrict our group to athletes) and was voted Most Talented my senior year.

Maybe I was just lucky.  Or maybe it was just a simpler time or I just had such a supportive family and group of friends that I never felt the lasting sting of their words.

As an adult, however, I've found myself much more sensitive to the words and accusations of others.  I talked about that in detail here. Perhaps it's because I feel that, as an adult, I should have figured it out by now.  Or maybe I'm making up for lost time.

I try to remember at all times, even when it's hard, that however others may think of me, or whatever they may find fault with in my character or appearance, that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.



Photo by Lindsay



##

I'm participating in a monthly blog challenge called Reverb Broads! Check us out, and join in on the fun! #ReverbBroads

Testing, 1...2...

Wow. There's nothing like resolving to begin and continue 2009 with being positive to test the Fates, is there?



In the past 24 hours alone I have learned that:

• Someone I respect and admire VERY much was laid off from his job


• A friend via the internets has suffered a devastating miscarriage (is there any other kind?)


• A wonderful friend from HS is in the hospital. I can guess why, but the other friend who told me doesn't feel at liberty to elaborate without my friend's permission (which is frustrating, but which I can completely respect).

It's just...I don't know...really hard to digest sometimes without allowing the stress to overwhelm me. The emotional being that pervades most of the time wants to start to hyperventilate, cry, etc. until things get resolved, but the tinier (yet growing stronger) part of me that sees logic and the power of prayer and calm is slowly making herself a more prominent fixture.

Alone, I can handle these events. When thrown at me BAM BAM BAM without warning, it's a bit harder to comprehend and take a step back from it all and compartmentalize.

I think that the hardest part for me is that every part of me wants to fix things for them. I'm a bleeding heart, and I freely admit that.

So, rather than panicking, I'm blogging, so that the time it takes to type everything out allows time for me to take deep breaths, pause, and lift each one of them and their families up in prayer that God will hold them in His healing hands (whether or not they want Him to) and make their burdens light.

Babies, babies, babies...

It seems like EVERYONE I know is either pregnant or has just had a baby. I don't know what's in the water around here, exactly, but I'm staying away from it as long as I can!! Don't get me wrong... I LOVE babies, and I do plan to have one or more of my own some day. Also, I've got a little baby cough...nowhere near bad enough to be called baby "fever" yet, but it's there. I'm just not quite ready yet! We've only been married for four months, and we've got our hands full with the Operahaus.

However, when I see gorgeous gals like my friend Jessica (the obviously pregnant beauty in red in the pictures above), I get very sentimental and can almost hear my biological clock give out a few feeble ticks.

This afternoon was SO much fun, and I'm incredibly happy for Jessica and Jason. I have known them both since first grade, and they both were in my graduating class, along with Jessica's twin sister, Jodi (pictured on the other side of Jessica in the first picture), so it was really surreal to see her so far along in her pregnancy today. This was the same girl with whom I would slide down the slides with on the playground in first grade, while we both wore her big pink puffy coat (we'd put one arm in the sleeve closest to us, and wrap our inside arms around each other and zip the thing up before going down. It was great fun!).

So in the spirit of January's NaBloPoMo theme, "Change," I'm sitting here with a few tears pricking the backs of my eyes as I upload these pictures and reflect on how much time has passed and all the wonderful changes we can look forward to as adults...and how blessed I am to have known them for so long.

Congratulations to my dear friends. I can't wait to be Aunt Operawife to baby Ethan next month!