2011 Goals - Recap

Be more independent.

Debatable. I'm fairly clingy with D. and all my close friends. I need to get it through my brain that "aloof" and "independent" are not the same. I haven't mastered how to do my own thing without feeling like I'm being cold to someone else.

Spend more time with girlfriends.
Check.

Read voraciously.
Check.

Run a sub-hour 10K.
Run a half marathon.
Nope.

Travel to Europe.
Nope. 

Volunteer.
Check! But I need/want to do more of it.

Save $2,500 towards a Roth IRA.

I did open an IRA this year and saved $3,300 towards retirement. I have every intention of maxing it out at $5,000 for 2012 and opening a second one.

Begin to invest.

Check. Thank you, DailyWorth for telling me about Betterment. I still have a lot to learn. Book recommendations?

Stay active, exercise 3-4 times per week.
Fail. I went full steam at mach 12 and then injured my knees. Was a sack of potatoes for most of 2011 even though I just recently joined a gym. "The first wealth is health," has really hit home recently though and I've been going at least every other day now.

Purchase a nice (used) car.
I scrapped this goal earlier this year when I decided to attack my student loan debt instead. For now, D. and I share his car and costs. He's very generous.

Decide next big move - stay put or run away?

Made a big change and staying put, for all the right reasons. I love where I'm at in my life right now.

O Hai, Christmas Nostalgia.

Ashley recently wrote about the annual nostalgia that's felt when you're a twenty something and you travel home for the holidays - how it ebbs and flows and as she has gotten older, it doesn't feel as melodramatic. This morning, another friend tweeted, "At JFK JetBlue terminal and have not seen anybody from high school. Might finally be aging out of that particular inevitability." Then I decided to walk two miles across town in foot high snow to cuddle with a dog I know. During my snowy journey, When You Say Nothing At All came on Pandora in my headphones and jarred me back to my first flight home from University of Hawaii for Christmas during my freshman year, one of the first times I listened to it. I had decided that the song would be my song for my first-ever boyfriend. It was naively sweet at the time but looking back I realize that I only chose it because he never had anything nice to say - his kindest moments were silence.

I've come a long way since I was eighteen and the best thing that I thought I had going for me was a guy who could be mistaken for kind if he wasn't talking. I realize that sounds bitter but that's not my point. I'm way too old to be waxing nostalgic about the first guy that didn't treat me well. This one's about me-- I'm ten years older and working in a job I genuinely love in a beautiful town. I'm paying off my student loans in the next 16 months, maxing out a Roth IRA, nurturing the relationships that matter, and cutting toxic situations out of my life bit by bit. My personal net worth is higher than it has ever been. I am drinking less. I am walking to and from work and getting healthier. It's all by choice. I used to be convinced that I had to have a guy to validate whether I was a worthwhile human being. I've spent far too many years worrying about whether or not I'm lovable. Trying to be liked by everyone is as futile as absorbing a sea. When Christmas rolls around, I don't worry anymore about who will be in town when I'm home or who will be offended if I don't visit them or why someone hasn't called me yet either. I let it all go. I'm okay with it, all grow'ed up. I'll go home, clink wine glasses with my mother, drink all of the coffee that my father brews for ten people even though it's just the four of us, exchange in the usual self deprecating joke-off with my brother and take high-contrast phone pictures of the Rocky Mountains.

I'm a real woman, self-made. I'm flawed and obsessive, too hard on myself, quick to judge and faster to forgive, but above all stubbornly self-sufficient. Now that I'm living with The Guy, it's interesting to watch all of the insignificant stuff fall away with little to no effort on my part. When the blinds in our bedroom come crashing down after I yank on them too hard, he just smiles and says, "Babe, you're so strong." And 10 Christmases after that first plane ride home, I know I am... maybe for the first time.

Ch-ch-changes!

Since we're in the last month of it, I've been pondering 2011 quite a bit. It's easy to feel as though the days are running together but I have made a lot of changes in a year's time. I feel proud.

Body

• Got a long overdue eye exam followed by glasses followed by understanding what it's like to actually see things.
• Stopped putting sugar in my coffee.
• Joined a gym.

Wallet

• Considered going back to school for licensing in stenography / court reporting. So glad I didn't. Never wrote about it here either.
• Opened a Roth IRA.
• Decided to pay off my student loans before I turn 30.
• Stopped serving tables as a side hustle once and for all.
• Picked up a new side hustle writing for a resort corporation.
• Quit the university.
• Landed my actual dream job.

Heart

• Moved across town. Twice.
• Gained a southern best friend (the best kind).
• Got honest about my anxiety.
• Attended my ten year high school reunion.
• Put my hands on one of my high school friend's first pregnant tummy.
• Went to Las Vegas (twice).
• Went to Michigan in the summer time.

Oops

• Tried (and failed) to read Infinite Jest over a summer.
• Gave myself runners' knee in both legs and had to find other ways to exercise.
• Tried (and failed) P90X Lean.
• Many other things, I'm sure.

Anyway (Curse of the Moral Compass)

{I haven't been blogging as much because a few things are eating at me. I'm going to attempt bravery and just write about them instead.}

One of my closest friends is battling stage four Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Her older sister is my childhood / high school best friend. I'm helping wherever I can with raising money for the bills, putting together a silent auction and benefit, and rallying the resources of our hometown around her while she kicks cancer's ass. Her struggle is my struggle. That's how I have always felt about the people with whom I am close. In the age of social networking, it's easier than ever to spread the awareness for her fund. The flip side of this coin is that free will allows anyone to think anything they would like about why I would do such a thing.

I'm as close with my cousin Ariana as I am because we have both been plagued by what we call, "the curse of the moral compass," our whole lives. My brother and I talk about it often too and we joke that it runs in the family. In short, the moral compass is a curse because in using it to guide your life and actions, it results in judgment / alienation / anger by or from any number of people around you when you do any combination of the following:

a) Choose to take the noble, high road.
b) Do something important for your own life that benefits only yourself.
c) Protect someone else that can't protect him/herself.
d) Do any solo mission out of the good of your heart. (The cheese stands alone.)
e) Anything else that can be classified as a reckless act of kindness.
f) Refuse to participate in mean-spirited gossip.

We kid that it's a curse because it's not an active choice. I am compelled to do/be good because that's how I wake up every day.

There will always be people that decide it's for other reasons.

If you do good, strangers will decide that you were only doing good to get credit for it or for show.

If you do good, people that have never done good will decide that there must be something terrible inside your past for which you have to compensate. Why? That's the only reason they would do good, and they don't understand any other reasoning for it.

If you do good, you will lose former loved ones that decided that your doing good was somehow a coldhearted, personal blow to them by the rule of exclusion.

I'm not a saint. I'm learning to be more confident but I have never thought highly of myself. I'm just a woman who is willing to do anything for the people she loves. If it means that people in my life continue to come and go frequently because they are convinced it means something different, it's their own loss.

...It's not between me and them anyway.


People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
- Mother Teresa

Annual Work Reunion in Las Vegas

This is obviously my first annual reunion in my new position / at this company but it's their third. We opted for Las Vegas this year and an unconference in Caesar's Palace.

With Laura. We took a penny slot machine for all it was worth - a $5.55 profit.

I'm never going to forget this weekend. It was a non-stop mixture of inspiration and startups and I finally had the chance to meet a lot of the mentors and founders that make us great.

That said, the average person's absorption rate suffers from the stimuli overload in Sin City. Add the flashing lights, bare butts, and people watching of drunkards to three intense days of meetings, panels, and speakers, and you get tired. By the last day I felt like a hologram of myself (rainbow, shaky, ready to turn into static). 

Oh, and this:

Thanks, dep sleeprivation! I threw the socks away once security allowed me back into my room.

From the speakers:

"Coming from a dysfunctional family is an unfair advantage, because it gives an uncanny ability to bring order out of chaos." - Steve Blank

"Money is only useful if you are following your dreams." - Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger

"Success is a terrible teacher. It deludes you into thinking you cannot fail. We learn more from failure." - Don Dodge, Google developer advocate

--

During the early morning before our flight out of Vegas, Laura tiredly asked me, "How much have do we time?" and I said, "Me too."

This also happened in the caverns of the conference center, late at night, during the final evening and a game of Werewolf, and I still laugh every time I think about it:

They checked on him. He was just really, really drunk fine.

I love my job.

I Talk Like I Surf the Internet

And it has to stop.

An in-person, recent conversation between my brother (Shad) and I recently:

Me: So how is the new job?
Shad: It's good, they--
Me: --and what do they have you working on?
Shad: Well, I'm still going to--
Me: --what time do you have to be there in the morning? Do you take the bus?
Shad: Yeah, I--
Me: --Do you park at the park 'n ride? How early to you have to get up and afkdlafjslruouriowfkaljd83490289042cnmnc,asd,fdnsamf,snam,fns,d438190891adkjfdkal.?
Shad: ...
Me: So you like it then?!
Shad: sigh.
Me: HAVE YOU SEEN THE NEW MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON? So good. - boots up laptop -

When you quickly gather the most information possible in the shortest amount of space/time for a living, it's too easy to get caught up living the rest of your moments like this. When I get the gist of a topic / the top five links on a Google search of it, I zoom onward with the wind in my hair. To the next task! That's not okay to do during a conversation with real people.

I'm going to stop now though. I'm listening.