Learning to Live

I typically go into every new year with a list of concrete goals I would like to accomplish. I will read X amount of books. I will run X amount of miles. I will save X amount of money. Blah blah blah. This year I tried to simplify things a little bit. I would write, I would read, I would run, and I would focus on enjoying life more by getting out of my head and focusing on my emotional intelligence (SUPER simple, right?). As I reflect on 2019, I'm proud to say that I accomplished all of these goals and the best part about not quantifying any of them is that I really do feel like I lived life to the max this year. I did everything I wanted and so much more. And of course, along the way I learned a few valuable lessons that I feel the need to document somewhere besides my journal. 1. " And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." - John Steinbeck in East of Eden I have spent so much of my life trying to have it all together. I want to run, read, so...

"Focus on you, not the future." Bless my mother for her beautiful words of wisdom. It's no secret that one of my "things" is stressing unnecessarily about literally everything, especially the future. Obviously this doesn't make me special as we all tend to stress about the future from time to time, but some of those times make me unable to eat or sleep or think straight.  The thing is, I shouldn't stress. Life is great. Life is beautiful. Life will always be okay and if I've made it this far, I will likely just keep on keeping on, but sometimes I think too much about timelines. I look at the people around me and their timelines and then I think about where I should be on mine. But here’s the thing, timelines are bullshit. My friend Luke and I like to yell this a lot. We laugh about it, but it's true. We all gotta do what we gotta do on our own time. I'm so happy to see my friends getting married, buying houses, or bragging ab...

A lot of my writing comes from reading first, so it's no surprise that this post will bring you to an essay by Mary Laura Phillpot that is featured in her book I Miss You When I Blink.   This particular essay starts out by reminding the reader to put down the phone and Post-it notes and stop rewriting the to-do list in your head. WOW. RELATE. The moment I wake up I have a to do list in my head and that list just gets modified as the day goes on. I wish this was just a daily thing, but I find that I do it for my life all the time. And it is EXHAUSTING. It's exhausting to feel the need to do it all and do it well and be kind to others along the way. I find myself in a state of "simmering, low-grade resentment" at times and it's sucky because it's not even anyone else's fault. It's all mine and my stupid brain. I see myself the way I think the world sees me, which means that I only feel worth when I'm getting something checked of my list. It do...

I've been busy procrastinating on pretty much everything productive and spending a lot of time in my own head as I work on enjoying silence and simply being by myself. This is not one of my strong suits as I am constantly go-go-go, but it's a work in progress. Anyway, at the urging of one of my very best friends (sup Kel), I took an Enneagram personality test . Before you roll your eyes about how personality tests are maybe a load of crap, this one is special because Ryan O'Neal of Sleeping At Last has taken it upon himself to study all of the personality types and write a song for each type . I love to learn about myself and I LOVE music, so this is truly the best of both worlds. O'Neal also hosts a podcast  where he breaks down each song and the lyrics within it. If you made it this far, I recommend that you take the test and listen to your song. I hope that you can get as much out of it as I did. Not only does this particular test tell you your strengths, but also ...

Like most people, I went into 2018 with a lot of goals. The biggest one was to write more, but the thing about writing is that it can sometimes be scary. Taking my thoughts and feelings out of my brains and putting them on paper makes them real, and sometimes I try to avoid that. This avoidance led to a whole lot of reading. What better way to avoid writing about myself than by reading about others?! I did continue my tradition of documenting these books with writing down memorable quotes and I used these to define my 2018. "Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you." - Celeste Ng in Little Fires Everywhere 2018 was a good reminder that it's easier to forgive people than to hold on to the mistakes that they have made. I don't have the time or the energy to be angry with others for something that they may have done to hurt me, so I forgive them and take a lot of comfort in...

Last August I opened up to social media about something that I had been dealing with for a long time. It has been a little over a year since I came to the realization that I needed to make a decision to get help and within that year I realized the true power of our decisions. For a long time I was terrified of making decisions because I was always scared that I would make the wrong one, but as I have gotten older, I realized that the truth lies at the heart of every decisions. That truth is the life that we want for ourselves. This year I was fortunate enough to travel to a lot of beautiful places with some of my favorite people. That is mostly because at the beginning of 2018 I made a list of places I would go and I made it happen. Simply making the decision to live the life that you want is all it takes to get that life. People will often comment on my fun and adventurous life and forget the work that it takes to get there. We tend to believe that the grass is always greener ...

Hi everyone! I promise I'll be back with something soon... Just reminding myself how to write! Thanks as always to Brian Andreas for capturing my feelings about EVERYTHING.  http://www.storypeople.com/2013/12/16/how-to-write/

As a teacher it hasn't been particularly easy to listen to the media in the weeks following the Florida shooting. I didn't know how to react to everything that was spinning around on Facebook and I definitely didn't know how to talk about it with my students. I still don't know how to talk about it with them, but I have found it encouraging to listen to how they talk about it among each other. We have been working on an argumentative unit and although some people would definitely disagree with me, I do not believe in censoring my students. Instead, I believe that they should have the freedom to research and write about whatever they want. This unit started right around the shooting and naturally I had a few students who had a lot of feelings on the recent shooting and what the government was doing about it. My favorite example of this was when a student started doing a lot of research on gun control. I did my best to play the devil's advocate and challenge the p...

I was recently reading John Green's latest book Turtles All the Way Down (check out my review on Goodreads !) when I was struck by something the main character's mother said to her.   You see, Aza, the main character, struggles with OCD and it pushes her into what she calls "thought spirals." She was experiencing a rather intense though spiral when her mother reminded her that her now was not her forever. That did little to soothe Aza and I don't blame her, but probably not for the same reason.   Those 6 words can be interpreted in a few different ways. Aza's mom was using them to remind her that things would eventually get better and although it can be a comforting thought, I find things a bit scarier.   Those 6 words sum up how I feel about my anxiety.   Your now is not your forever.   Although it is meant to be optimistic and serve as a reminder that the future will be better, it tells me that the good times also don't last. So even...

Every now and then I think I should delete my blog because I don't think anyone really cares about what I have to say. But then I remember that it's not necessarily about other people. Writing is one of the best ways for me to flush out my thoughts and feelings and believe it or not, I have a lot of feelings. So here is another post dedicated to my feelings about this crazy beautiful life. Like most people I tend to go through phases of being obsessed with things. Sometimes it's an author, sometimes it's exercise, sometimes it's food. But right now it's literally anything that Nora McInery has done. Nora McInery is the Minneapolis author of  It's Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool Too). My best friend gave the book to me for my birthday likely because the title is basically the story of my life. Although I would recommend Nora's book without hesitation, I think I would recommend her podcast even more. "Terrible, Thanks for Asking" is basically...

I've never really been able to explain why I wanted to leave Minnesota and go abroad. Part of me thinks it was really just a middle finger to everyone who said I would never leave, but another part of me thinks it was because I knew I needed an adventure before I settled back down in Minnesota for the rest of eternity. Whatever the reason is that I decided to do this, I had no idea that it would change me as much as it has. Again, I find myself struggling to put my feelings into words, but I am obviously coming out of this experience a much different person than I came into it. I guess one could say that I had "miles to go" before I became the person I really wanted and needed to be.* Even though I feel like I can't summarize exactly how I have changed, I have a few ideas... 1. I'm so much more comfortable being alone. I was nervous to live alone, mostly because I am terrified of getting kidnapped, but my hobbies that were meant for one person got a...

I should have just gone to bed the night before I flew back to Minnesota for Christmas Vacation. Instead, I read through my journal for 2016 and then I spent the whole night digesting every thought I had over the course of the year and got ZERO sleep. Sometimes it feels silly to have a journal. It feels like I'm reverting back to the 6th grade girl who writes about the boy she likes and the fight she had with her dad. But mostly, it's a great way to remind myself of my experiences and my feeling about those experiences. My journal is filled with memories, ideas, quotes from books, tidbits from conversations with the people I love the most, lists, and life plans. Much like running, writing things down helps me try to understand life. (Way cliche, but way true.) As I reflected on this year, I relived my feelings. My heart hurt thinking about my most recent heartbreak, but it also swelled with joy as I read the list of people who helped me through it. I remembered the incred...

There are a few moments in my life that I consider to be game changers. They changed the way I thought about the world and they helped me become who I am today. The first moment I remember was the decision to join choir in high school. I am still so thankful that Mark Potvin cornered me and told me I HAD to join choir. Unfortunately, this isn't a post about how much I love singing. It's a post about how much I love running. When I started running in my freshmen year, I thought it was a phase. A phase driven by the desire to lose weight. SPOILER ALERT: You will not lose weight if you eat and drink everything that you want and then justify it with a run. I'm sure all of my friends and family thought it was a phase too. After all, I despised running in high school and made up any excuse that I could to get out of the mile. So my new adventures left my friends and family surprised and confused, especially when I signed up for a half marathon. The decision to take my runni...

If you know me at all, you know that I have A LOT of feelings. ALL of the time. I'm genuinely a pretty happy person, but sometimes I get sad or mad or frustrate and it overwhelms me. Here's a poem by Rupi Kaur that describes me to a T: When I read this poem it really resonated with me. I don't know what it feels like to live a balanced life. I'm happy and then I'm sad. And it changes SO fast.  I cried every single day last week. Sometimes they were tears of happiness, sometimes they were sad, and sometimes they were just tears of being overwhelmed. A student saw me after a lunchtime meltdown and asked if I was okay. "Yeah, I'm okay!" "Well, your mascara is not okay." And then he gave me a hug and chatted with me and suddenly the moment where I thought I couldn't do it all anymore passed and I was okay. I'm emotional and my students know this. Thankfully they are understand how vulnerable I am and they are kind about it. ...

Lately I have been trying to determine if the word "overwhelmed" has a negative connotation or a positive one. I think it started when my brother told me I have an "overwhelming" personality. I'm not arguing with him, I know I can be overwhelming. I just wonder if that's good or bad. Dictionary.com gives us the following definitions: 1. to   overcome   completely   in   mind   or   feeling: overwhelmed by remorse. 2. to   overpower   or   overcome,   especially   with   superior   forces;   destroy; crush: Roman   troops   were   overwhelmed   by   barbarians. 3.  to   cover   or   bury   beneath   a   mass   of   something,   as   floodwaters,   debris, or   an   avalanche;   submerge: Lava   from   erupting   Vesuvius   overwhelmed   the   city   of   Pompeii. ...

"Miss, sometimes you try too hard." I didn't really have a response for this student because I was trying to decide if it was a compliment or an insult. And what exactly he was trying to say... "Sometimes you try too hard to get us to like you." "Sometimes you try too hard to make us learn." "Sometimes you try too hard to make your class fun." "Sometimes you try too hard to make us think about the world around us." Well, I'm sorry if my students think that any of those are a bad thing. And I'm sorry if at this point in my life I pour my heart and soul into being a good teacher. But my apology is only for one person really- myself. My student was right. Sometimes I do try too hard. I'm trying my best to beat my best every day of my life. And not just with teaching. I'm trying hard to beat my best in every aspect of my life: teaching, running, exercise in general, relationships, writing, reading. I wake up...

I can't believe that 2015 is already over. It seems like just yesterday that I was struggling to remember to write 2015 on my checks in mid-March. I think the more that happens in one year, the faster it goes. Or maybe it always goes fast. Maybe life never slows down. Meh. I could talk about that all day and never get anywhere, so instead I'll just reflect on this crazy beautiful life and hope that it continues to stay that way- even if it does go by too quickly. Here's a list of my 2015 in number format (Thanks Kate Bjelde for this awesome idea!) Countries: 5 I finally got to put my Christmas gift from last year to good use! My passport now has several more stamps in it (and even a Work Visa!) than it did last year at this time. I was fortunate enough to visit Italy, Croatia, Germany, Greece, and Mexico! My travels have taught me that there is so much that this world has to offer us and it's up to us to take advantage of it. Flights: 18 For a girl who was ter...

I've been in Mexico for about a month and a half now and this week I had the chance to celebrate Mexico's Independence Day. It was mostly exciting because we had a day off of school, but it was also pretty cool to see people so excited about their culture. On September 15th the students had a short day so they could have a pep rally of sorts and it was honestly chaos to watch them all scream "VIVA MEXICO" at the top of their lungs while student council threw out candy. Definitely an interesting scene. But for me, the coolest part of the day came later when a few friends and I were out for drinks. The conversation had been all over the place, but somehow we ended up discussing how we all made it to CAT and Torreon. My friend Paola is actually from Mexico, but she had been teaching at a school in Cancun before she came here. She made a really good point that sums up why we are all here I think. Even though it would be easy to live in the same place forever and teach...

I have officially been a real teacher for a week and a half and it's everything I thought it would be, but it's also different than I ever could have expected. My students are wonderful. They are kind and intelligent and funny! And they are also sneaky... Just last week they tricked me into telling them how old I was by asking how old I was when 9/11 happened. And then they did the math. And realized I'm not much older than they are, "Miss, your outfit makes you look older, but you still seem very young. Are you 17?" For those who don't know, I am teaching 10th grade Composition and Ethics. I have two sections of Composition and three sections of Ethics this semester. My schedule is chaotic and different every day, but I get to spend the entire day working with 15 and 16 year olds and to be honest, it's pretty awesome. It's so fun to teach them about the world around them and hear what they have to say about life.  I love teaching Compositio...

Life has been too crazy to document on my blog for the past few months, but here is a quick recap: -Graduated from college in May with a degree in Communication Arts and Literature Education (Quite the mouthful) -I turned 22 (And my friends threw me an awesome surprise party-- I cried.) -I ran a marathon (I think I blogged about that, but I still like to say it as much as possible.) -I traveled Europe (Italy, Croatia, and Greece) with one of my best friends (This warrants a post of its own, but like I said, life has been busy!) -I had one of the best summers yet! -I moved to Mexico and started my first big girl job! The last one is probably the biggest thing in life right now- for obvious reasons. The months between signing my contract and actually moving down here were a rollercoaster of emotions. I would go from anxiety to excitement in a matter of minutes. Huge thank you to anyone who talked to me during one of these rollercoaster moments (mostly looking at you, Wendy!) bec...