getting back in the swing and/or living the vacation-life

here i sit after a week of ridiculous fun filled with boot-buying, overeating, girl-talking wonderfulness. back to my own life. jeesh. since moving to vancity, our ontarian friends, family, and people we barely knew want to visit us. all. year. round. mostly i love it. wait for it. (re)schedule my life around it. but the part i hate. the part i dread. is the end. after you get to have a pretend vacation, put on a few pounds, neglect your everyday friends, and generally have a merry ole time, you have to face what was always in the background. your life. all unshiny. and not new. not like holiday time at all. just dishwashing. and cat feeding. and general life chores. sad really. unless you spin it. maybe i can go on permanent vacation. and pretend like life is just part of the adventure.

now just bear with me here. i am not suggesting denial or other deceptions of the self. i am suggesting a new view. a new paradigm with which one can refocus one's life in the positive. we all have stresses. annoyances. everyday trials and tribulations. and most often we look at the lot of others and think, "i wish that was all i had to worry about." as though life's trials are a matter of kind and not degree. as if we only had to worry about ourselves. our upcoming paper. our upcoming presentation at work. but if we only had to worry about going into an office. doing manual labour. raising a child. then we could function properly in the world. we wouldn't worry. we wouldn't fret. but that is our real self-delusion. we would. plain and simple. we would worry. fret. stress. not matter what. because if you are going to tie yourself up in knots for a paper. a work presentation. a promotion. then you will always and forever tie yourself up in knots. it is who you are. what your worldview consists of. you are programmed to fret. but this is not the only answer.

so what would everyday vacation-life look like? well, for one thing, you must take into consideration your surroundings. if so many people want to visit us out here, it must be pretty kickass, no? so the first requirement is easy. live in a kickass place. check. the next requirement might be a little more existential. love what you do. as monotonous as everyday life can be, vacation-life requires us to see the "bigger picture." the reason you do it at all. and not for the money. for the beauty of doing a good job in a field of your choice. and maybe vacation-life requires us to give, as my wonderful colleague and dear friend S. explains, our entire, 75%. this might sound odd but i think it might be the key to vacation-life. trying to do everything 100% when our 75% is not only good, but great, might ease off some pressure. at least a smidge.

i think the final, and perhaps most important part of living your best vacation-life everyday is a heady combination of taking risks and diversifying the portfolio of your everyday activities. move outside your comfort zone. take up hobbies. volunteer. engage with a world outside your own four tiny (if you live in a vancity condo) walls. i think we act our confident best when we go on vacation. we wear clothes that make us happy. we do different things with our hair. we buy things that make us feel good. we eat without counting calories and grams of fat. we live. and we are happy. perhaps it is as easy as following a passion that we find when we are away. or as simple as being the you that takes chances, risks, and leaps of faith that compel you to travel in the first place. vacation-life, here i come.

this post was brought to you by the tony robbins in all of us.

friendshippy goodness

a visitation by my oldest and dearest friend from the national near east has prompted a great deal of thinking about friendship. how amazing. wonderful. inspiring. and wonderful it is. i used to think that friendship was about loyalty. commitment. and stick-to-it-ive-ness. cause sometimes, i found, friendship could be painful. or chore-like. with its jealousies, conspiracies, and mishandled feelings. friendship, for anyone who grew up as a girl, could be a battlefield. a series of hurts that one keeps returning to for fear of the different and unknown. girls can be cruel but this cruelty was only stereophonically magnifying our own personal cruelties to ourselves. the suffering of the t(w)eenage heart. when everything is painfully embarrassing beyond words. everything.

somewhere/time in the past, i assumed friendships may not stand the test of time. those unsurmountable differences of time, place, existence. but some do prevail. i don't want to rose-colour the ease at which this evolution evolves, but i do think it is a testament not only to shared histories but to a pair's ability to judge less. to leave behind schoolgirl gossip and the socialization that leads us to judgment, exclusion, and competition. there is beauty in not repeating stories. not reminding of past loves. not carefully constructing the "you" that is best, appropriate, and friendliest in the face of new friendship which often closely resembles dating as we age. friendship sustains us in all that we do but it also continuously feeds who we are especially when we are reminded of who we used to be. grounds us in the reality of what we are.

friendship is perhaps the most important thing in our lives as they continuously flux and change. because friendship is all we have to offer to family, friends, and acquaintances as we get older. we no longer rely on others solely for survival. we must offer something of ourselves to get something in return. i know, i feel it deep within my bones, how important friendship is in my life. i strive to be a good friend. an honest, committed friend. who values each friend as much as every other. i love my friends. they make who i am.

before i tear up, i will just offer that my upcoming awol-ness from my beloved blog is due to one such friendship. a friendship that makes me eight years old again while simultaneously reminding me of how far i've/we've come and how far we have to go. together. and always.

anxious much?

of course i shouldn't be surprised, but anxiety is alive and well for me and my academic colleagues. in this post-xmas apparent disaster of unfinished papers, projects, living amongst the debris of all those unachievable goals (such as: i am going to read every single book on my topic over the break, i am going to finish all my research, my comps, my dissertation, etc.) that we deliriously, giddily, outlined for ourselves back in the heady days of december, when the holiday season promised to be with us forever, we find ourselves sad, anxious, unmotivated, and most vomit-inducingly, overwhelmed.

everyone i have talked to is either: scrambling to finish something, prep something, or simply keep themselves from dropping out and becoming a chef. or a florist. or working for walmart (not that there is anything wrong with that). psst. i'll let you in on a little secret about those of us in academia: we are overachievers with underdeveloped emotional intelligence. we think to ourselves, "poor us that we have so much to do, so much to become, so much knowledge to pack into the 5% of our brain that we actually have access to." we pity ourselves for getting to do meaningful work. for getting two weeks off a christmas and then, god forbid!, have to go back and slog over the topics that we are passionate about, teaching that helps us to grow, change, and evolve as people, and communities of knowledge that sustain us in friendship and in intellectual growth.

poor us.

it is sad for us really.

however, as foolish as i make it sound, or as facetiously as i try to slough it off, i think all of us suffer from taking ourselves too seriously sometimes. from thinking that we are extremely important. and that, somehow, the world does, in fact and unquestionably, revolve around us. whatever the reason we do this, we start thinking along these lines: that the world will end if the paper doesn't get done, if the course isn't perfect, if the report isn't our finest work. but it never does. and still we worry. we obsess. we overwhelm easily.

as is a common refrain on this blog, i don't have the answer(s). but instinctively i feel the problem lies in the over-evaluation of our own individual importance (not that we aren't all special, ya'll). in seeing the revolutions of the world as too fixed in our own orbits. we don't realize that everyone strives to be and do their best. that people most often don't do things to us (judge, evaluate, disdain) but for themselves (to quell their own feelings of worry, insecurity, uncertainty). that everyone exists in the worry of their own making and are not, could never be, as concerned with what you are doing, how you are doing, as they are in evaluating their own goodness, bestness, ability, inability... perhaps then, the answer lies in a shift of focus. off ourselves and onto others. in being sensitive to the worlds of others' making.

to trust our greatness to the care and nurturance of others.

or perhaps...

we (well, um, i) could just chill the f*ck out. ;P

disarming good

with all the hoopla about positive thinking in the realm of new-agey BS, i thought i'd give it a shot. can't hurt. can it? as a disclaimer i should say that while i don't believe in the innateness of human characteristics, i might just have been born a cynic. asking the universe for what you want, creating your own reality, being positive all seem like things people do if a) they are unhappy; and/or b) they are dirty hippies (just wanted to say dirty hippies. hehe.). but my softer, more "open" side compels me to think, to know, to believe in the old adage that you catch more bees or flies or whatever with honey than with vingear. i have no idea why one might want to catch bees, so flies is probably the ticket (although aren't you just trying to kill them in this watery/honey-filled grave you are constructing? this is like the moment you find out that fairy tales are actually the scariest horror stories ever told. bees. flies. imminent death. a tragedy i tells ya). anyhoo. i recently wondered what the worst thing that can happen out of being positive is. and, of course, it's nothing. so i tried it on for size and it isn't too bad. for one, the annoying bus lady that talks too loud to her friend about the intimate details of her life was actually a gift to me yesterday as we stood still on the granville street bridge for a really. long. time. her story was interesting and made her multi-dimensional. like an actual person you know. a friend. keeping you company on the bus. then there are the actual friends in your life that support you. are kind to you. respect you. and yet you never see it. it is like you are blind to kindness until it smacks you in the face. by bringing you tea, coming to your talk (that they have heard over and over and over), giving you fabulous ideas. kindness and good stuff abounds but perhaps we are closed off to it. afraid of the unknown that is good. positive. disarming. we struggle against what we are, what we do, who we know, what to be. but for nothing. we all have our struggles. our unease. our unfinished projects of the self. but even knowing that is positive. good. refreshing. like honey water. maybe mixed with vingear for some bite.