Attitude Reorganization

Everyone has days when they wake up and dread the idea of going to work but over the past few months, I was having more of those days than ever.  Even though I’m happy to have a job, I didn’t have the same love for it that I once had until recently something changed my attitude. 

I am corporate meeting planner.  When I graduated college, I knew this was the career I wanted to get into and after years of building up the experience I needed, I finally had the opportunity.   Originally I was hired to handle all tradeshow involvement, company meetings, and corporate events.   Over the years since I started, my company had undergone several reorganizations.   Each time we had a restructuring, I have been told that I would be doing more marketing tasks in order to incorporate me more with my department and give me additional responsibility.  While I was happy to accept the challenge, I was moving further and further away from the doing the things I originally signed on to do.  It had taken me over three years since I graduated college to land my “dream job” and with each change in management I was slowly watching it fade away.  I found myself doing less and less of what I was originally hired for, which resulted in my unhappiness with my career.

 However, a few weeks ago, I experienced yet another reorg.  It was less drastic one than those I had gone through in the past but it still affected me directly.   I had a new manager to work with and suddenly everything changed.  This person believed in me and I was back to spending my time focusing on the things I wanted to be doing.   He thought I was good at what I did and that made me want to be even better.  I found myself working harder than I ever have and want to go above and beyond to be successful.   I'm busy but I love it.  

I started to think that if reorganization can help me find joy in my career again, maybe I could apply that theory to other aspects of my life to generate the same affect.   I’m starting with my living arrangement.  Since I’ve moved into my apartment almost two years ago, it’s been exactly the same.  So this weekend I devoted my efforts to changing things around.  It’s nothing really major but just a few adjustments to hopefully rejuvenate me. 

Being happy is a state of mind.  If you are unhappy with something in your life, don’t be afraid to be proactive in seeking out the change needed to put you back in a better place.  Sometimes we need things that are out of our control to change like getting a new manager at work or a promotion.  Other times we change our state of mind all by ourselves.   If you’re not happy with how you look, maybe it’s a new diet or work out plan that will make you feel better or changing up your wardrobe that will refresh you.   Maybe it’s your home that is leaving you feeling less than thrilled with life so stop by Ikea to grab some new furniture or change a room around.  A little reorganization in our lives might go a long way to help adjust our attitude.  Before you know it, you might just be happy again.

"Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." -Abraham Lincoln

Unanswerable Questions

According to Wikipedia, philosophy is defined as the study of general and fundamental problems.  In my world most of the time philosophy is just a fun skin care line but today I’m going to get a little philosophical in a more traditional kind of way.

If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?  Reply hazy, try again.  What is the meaning of life?  Ask again later.  What is the nature of the universe?  Can not predict now.  What happens at death?  Concentrate and ask again.  As you can see philosophy is just a series of subjective, unanswerable questions that the magic 8 ball of life is pretty non committal on. 

Well I have a few never ending questions of my own.  Can people really change?  I’m working very hard to change myself to be more of the person I want to be but when it comes to other people, can they really change?  Is it true that history repeats itself?  There is a common expression that says fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.  If you lose trust with someone, can you ever fully get it back or will you always keep one eye open waiting for that person to let you down again?

Life is full of unanswerable questions.  It would be nice if that magic eight ball could tell you all the answers but since it can’t, we just have to trust our heads and our hearts.  Too bad sometimes even when our heads scream “Wake up to you moron!” our hearts will tell us something completely different.   What happens when our hearts and heads refuse to agree with each other?  I guess it’s just one more philosophical question to ponder.

“Philosophy is the science which considers truth.” – Aristotle

Get In The Car

Yesterday I was asked to return a rental car for my boss.   Instantly I felt myself transcend into a state of pure panic.  I’m not a very good driver.  I am an accident prone driver, a nervous driver, a slow driver, sometimes a stop and go driver but overall good is one description I would not give my driving.  In fact, if at all possible, I avoid driving.  But as I drove along the unfamiliar Florida highways, facing my phobias while praying that I would not get in an accident, I started thinking just how much life is like driving. 

Driving down the road of life can be scary at times.  We experience all kinds of obstacles and excitement.  Sometimes we get flat tires or hit a bump in the road and other times, we sail down the highway, traffic free with the windows down on a beautiful day while enjoying a great song on the radio.

Currently, I’m not rolling in happiness or excitement but I’ve reached a point where life is happening and although it’s enjoyable, I’m pretty much just riding in neutral.  No real ups or downs just cruising along while flipping through the radio stations trying to find something good to sing along to.  It may be a little bit of a mundane road trip but for someone who was content to sit in the passenger seat of her own life for so long, at least I'm finally driving.

This weekend, I was reminded of hazards of the road.  I have a friend who recently had her life take a turn for the worse.  While I watched her struggle to maneuver the twists and turns of the road, I felt so bad because I have been there.  The road ahead of you seems to stretch for miles and all you can see are orange cones and detours telling you the path you planned to take is currently “under construction”.  I don’t know what it is but most of the time you feel like you just can’t catch a break.  As the rain of misfortune pelts your car, all you can do is throw on your windshield wipers and wait for the storm to pass. 

Sunday night my travels led me to a cocktail party for work and I found myself surrounded by people driving on a more positive stretch of highway.  I started with my company three years ago and back then our sales meetings were long days of meetings followed by late nights out at the bars.  Everyone was young, single and care free.  Now, as I looked around the room, I couldn’t believe how far they had all travelled down the road in such a short time.  Conversations that once centered around sorted stories of hangovers and parties were replaced with baby pictures and wedding recaps.  These people I had known for years had evolved into more mature, polished versions.  However, even though most of them have traded in their BMWs for minivans, they were still ultimately driving down the road we are all traveling on; they are just hitting less traffic right now.   

As you take your journey through life, buckle up and just keep driving.  Don't just settle for riding in the passenger seat because you are afraid of what the road might hold.  Yes there will be bumps in the road or hills we will have to get over.  There may be construction or detours standing in our way but eventually we all get to where we are going.  If you get lost, don’t be too stubborn to pull over and ask for directions.  There may not be a GPS available to guide you on your way but there are plenty of people willing to help you get back on course.   When you hit the high points of your road trip, try to enjoy the ride.   Although the road may seem flat right now, eventually we will need to take ourselves off cruise control so we should just enjoy the calm while it lasts.   And don’t forget, you never know what lies ahead so proceed with caution because life can change around every corner.   

“On the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers.  Drivers wanted!” – Volkswagen Slogan

My Own Worst Eskimo

This morning I turned on the TV and instead of watching the Today Show like I usually do, I was compelled to flip through the channels.  I stopped my search when I saw ABC Family had Boy Meets World on at 7:30 in the morning.  It has been years since the last time I saw Cory, Shawn, and Topanga but I will admit I do love that show.   As I watched, I began to think that maybe I was meant to see this morning’s episode.

For weeks now I’m been saying I want to really start doing some writing.  Now I’m not talking blogging but real writing.  My goal has always been to write a novel and no matter how much I want it, I just seem to fall short of actually completing that task.  Sometimes I doubt myself and wonder if I have what it takes to write something that really matters.  Sometimes I think that even though I have ideas, I will never be able to find the drive and focus needed to finish any of the stories I start.  To be honest, I constantly think that the whole idea is just an impossible dream rather than a realistic possibility. 

This morning, teacher/mentor Mr. Feeney assigned Cory and Shawn to go out and get tickets to the Superbowl.  He also told Topanga that she would not be allowed to help.  No tickets equaled failure for the boys and butting in would mean failure for Topanga.  Yes, it was mission impossible all around.  As the show went on, Topanga tried charades to avoid interfering and blemishing her perfect record while still aiding the clueless boys in their attempt to get the tickets.  Cory and Shawn ended up entering a contest to win the tickets that required Shawn to sit on a billboard in the freezing cold longer than all the other contestants to win.  Although he made it to the final two, when he noticed that he was competing against an ice cream cone eating Eskimo who was visiting Philadelphia in January for vacation, he realized that his task was impossible so he gave up.  The trio went in to Mr. Feeney to say and that the lesson they had learned was that the task was impossible but Feeney refused to accept anything but a completed assignment and asked where the tickets were.  This prompted Shawn to go back up on the billboard and the other two to go get him.  The contest was over but Shawn had to return to the scene of his latest failure, Corey once again had to go and try to save him, and Topanga had to keep fighting to not get involved in order to remain perfect.   Shawn eventually tells Cory to be his friend and get out of his way because he was going to the Superbowl.

In the end each of them learned a lesson that they all needed to learn.  Topanga learned that it’s ok to fail or not be perfect.  Sometimes you have to fail to help you grow.  No one is perfect.  Cory realized that no matter what he wanted for Shawn, he had to step back and let Shawn do what he wants.  He had to let his friend figure out life on his own.  And then there was Shawn, who learned the most important lesson of all.  There will always be an Eskimo standing in your way but that doesn’t mean that things are impossible.  It just means that you have to keep trying to make things happen.  The episode ends with everyone watching the Superbowl and Mr. Feeney seeing a sign in the crowd that said, “Feeney, nothing’s impossible”.  Shawn was at the Superbowl.  Assignment completed, mission possible.

There are a lot of things in life that we term as “impossible” but maybe those things aren’t necessarily unattainable but rather just tasks that require a little more effort to make them possible.  The real truth is that even though there are things that will stand in our way, we are the biggest roadblock to our ultimate success.  Sometimes we are our own worst Eskimos.  I know I definitely am.  I can talk myself out of anything if I really put my mind to it and that’s not always a good thing.  Sure my desire to be my generation’s Salinger and write the great American novel may not be the most attainable goal but somewhere inside of me is a story that I want to tell.  I don’t want to let the Eskimos in my way keep me from trying.   This morning I needed a little Boy Meets World reminder to give this dream all I have regardless of the odds against me.   If I fail, I fail but at least I went for it.  Nothing is impossible unless we let it be.

“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.” – Vince Lombardi

Blues, Booze, and A Wizarding World

Yesterday I told you that I took a little mini vacation to Orlando but I didn’t give you details.  Another thing I wanted to make sure that I did this year was experience things that I hadn’t done already.   I travel a lot but most of the time even though I go places, I don’t really go anywhere.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone from airport to hotel to convention center, barely even seeing the light of day.   It wasn’t until last April when a work trip to Phoenix turned into a road trip to Sedona that I realized that the chance to visit all these amazing destinations will not come around every day so I should take advantage of it now.

That’s where the mini vacation comes in.  It was a last minute decision to send me to Orlando and when I found out I would be going, I couldn’t help but think about my last trip there.  It was about a year ago and I had a meeting at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.  I was there two days before anyone else from my company arrived and although I was working, I did have some down time.  Maybe it was all the Mickey paraphernalia or that the Contemporary Resort brought back a lot of memories because it was where I stayed when I was a kid, but I felt drawn to Cinderella’s castle every time I saw it from my hotel window.   So I went for it.  I bought a Disney pass and walked around the Magic Kingdom by myself.  Well let me tell you, Disney by yourself equals zero fun.  I felt almost sad being there all alone.  My walk lasted only a little over an hour but I just didn’t know what to do with myself.  There is only so much shopping in souvenir stores that one person can do!

Well this time when the plane ticket said Orlando, I was determined to make it better than my last trip.  I grabbed my cousin Sean who has nothing to do until he goes back to school at the end of the month and decided to have a Disney do over.  I spent a week planning my ultimate Orlando trip and tried to figure out how to do it all in two days but I have to say that it exceeded all my expectations.

Friday was a night out where we stumbled upon BB King’s Bar and Grille just in time to get some fried pickles and take in a blues concert.  There were margaritas and tagging money at a Mexican bar and a stop at Cuba Libre.  Saturday was my Disney redo, which included an eating and drinking tour of Epcot complete with pictures of me representing the ugly hats of the different countries.  Finally Sunday was a visit to Harry Potter World, which allowed me to check another thing off the list of unexpected adventures. 

Overall, I did a lot on this trip but most importantly, I stepped outside of my comfort zones.  I’ve never seen blues before and eating fried pickles was a first.  At the margarita bar, I crossed off the OSU Buckeyes that was written on the bar and wrote PSU over it, which is something I would normally talk about doing but then get too afraid to do.  Even though I’ve done Disney before, I did it like I never have and tried on a lot of funny hats along the way without worrying about making a fool of myself.  I went to Universal Studios for the first time and saw one of my all time favorite books come to life plus checked another thing off my to do list.  And the bonus was I got to all this with one of my favorite people.

You have to take advantage of the all the opportunities you are given in life.  I want to let the experiences and the adventures challenge and define me as I go along.  Hopefully this trip will inspire me to continue to go for things rather than just sit back and wait for them to come to me.   My weekend adventure may have been filled with small steps but small steps or big steps are all steps and steps keep you moving forward.  I want to see everything I can and I will just have to do it, one blues, booze and Wizarding World trip at a time.

"We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experiences and character." - Henry David Thoreau

CTRL+ALT+DELETE

It’s been almost a week since my last post and it’s definitely been a crazy couple of days but my absence is completely justified.  Sometimes we have to step away from our computers and our lives in general to reboot. 

I made myself promise to do several things when I decided to start this blog.  One of those promises was that I would start 2011 completely baggage free, which is where the whole letting go thing comes in.  I guess you could call it a new year’s resolution of sorts but I think it really goes beyond that.  I want the idea of not holding on to things to be a way of life moving forward and I actually started out really well.  I took the necessary steps I needed to take in order to deal with everything head on and on December 31^st, I really thought that I had released all the skeletons in my closet. 

Last week something, or rather someone I thought I had bottled up and left in 2010 had reappeared and I found myself at a fork in the road.   On one hand, I could have gone down a very familiar path and ended up right back where I started or I could have made the choice to face the issue and deal with it in order to remain on the path I want to stay on for the future. 

It seems like a no brainer but I will be honest, I stumbled a little bit.  I found myself hurting when I thought I would be completely immune.  My friend Amy said it was because I still cared about this “situation”.  She’s right.  I did still care but unlike in the past, this time I didn’t want to.  I had committed to letting go of certain things and this particular issue was one of them but committing to let go means closing all doors, which I did not do.  I had left one door still open for this issue to reenter my life and that was my mistake.  The truth was I really didn’t think it would be a big deal but last week it became one causing me to accidently trip back into all the craziness I had tried so hard to extract from my life. 

However, even though we stumble, we don’t have to fall.  We can catch ourselves.  When trying to let go it’s only natural that there will be some back sliding.  I was fortunate enough that I was able to realize this before I got all bogged down in the drama again.  With very little hesitation, I closed the final door connecting me to this person.  I think subconsciously I wanted to leave one more link available if I never needed it but I realized I will never need it nor should I ever want it.  In our worlds, some people are lucky enough to be in it and others are just taking up space.  There aren’t enough minutes in the day to waste any of them on those who don’t waste even a second on you. 

So this weekend, I took 48 hours, 2880 minutes, or 172,800 seconds and spent them all on me.  Since I had to work the latter part of the week in Orlando, I decided to spend the weekend and have a little mini vacation.  While the Northeast froze, I soaked up some much needed Vitamin D and got the perfect escape I needed to keep me from sliding back into old habits.  It was my version of CTRL+ALT+DELETE.  Now I’m back up and running and in the words of the rapper Drake, “I just hope that you miss me a little when I’m gone”.    J

"A bend in the road is not the end of the road...unless you fail to make the turn." - Unknown

Happy Reality

So I have a guilty pleasure.  Hi my name is Ali and I’m a reality TV aholic. (Hi Ali!)  I know those shows are completely ridiculous but sometimes it’s refreshing to experience the drama on TV rather than in my own life.  This week, when I watched the new episode of The Bachelor, I became convinced that Brad Womack and my ex-boyfriend have a creepy resemblance.  There are very few photos of that relationship still remaining but I do have them tucked away.  There was one in particular from a night out in Hoboken, NJ that I thought would prove that I’m not crazy in thinking they look alike so I decided to rummage through my memory box to try and find it.  However, as I went through everything, I got a little side tracked.

Basically, I have a large Tupperware container that over the years has become filled with all the things I want to keep from the special moments in my life.  I know I’ve mentioned before that I’m a pack rat but if you could see the contents of this box, you would know how much of a sickness it really is.  It’s been such a long time since I really went through those things and I have to say, I’m just so happy to have it all. 

There are award certificates, high school football signs, Gamma Phi Beta mementos, and old concert and sporting event tickets.  There’s a card from my best friend during our first year of college when we went to different schools that starts off “Sup *uckhead” (now that’s love!) and a Valentine’s Day card from my “Original Crazy Roomie”.  I’ve saved countless thank you notes for baby showers, wedding gifts, Christmas presents, and work.  There are cards from boys who had crushes on me and boys who loved me.  I have cards congratulating me on my PSU graduation, wishing me a happy birthday, and hundreds of cards from my parents all signed with “You’re our favorite daughter” (I win by default because I’m their only daughter).  There are cards and letters from my aunt who passed away, a whole separate box of dancer mail from THON, and pictures of family and friends.  There are postcards written by ex-boyfriends from Bali and Siena, pictures of past relationships from those cheesy photo booths, and cards signed “you might be worth keeping around for a little while” (didn’t realize at the time how true that one would be!).  I have homemade thank you notes made by campers from my summer camp job, construction paper cards from my little cousins, and every picture and card my god daughter has ever given me.  There is even a great  Barbie 21^st birthday card from my sorority big sister that came with a “license to have fun” for Little Ali (thanks Col!).  It’s my whole life down to one box. 

Of course I could go on for days with all the things I have saved but I definitely enjoyed getting to go through everything.  I talk a lot about changing and wanting to change but I don’t really talk about the amazing things that I do have.  I have the type of friends that most people would kill for, my family is in a league of their own, and I am without a doubt fantastic.  Confidence comes from being happy with who you are and somewhere along the line, I realized that I am pretty damn happy.  Going through everything in my memory box was just another reminder of how ridiculously lucky I am.

I never did find my Brad Womack look-a-like ex boyfriend picture but I gave up the search.  Suddenly that didn’t seem that important and it's probably better it says buried anyways.  But I did find that all this started with my reality TV obsession but ended with the realization that reality is better than TV.  Sure there is drama and negative stuff in my life but when I look back on all the happy times, I know that it is all worth it.

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.” – Edith Wharton