You Have To Ask Yourself Why You're Doing It

It's always easier to point the finger, to blame someone else for things not going the way that you want to. You can always claim that it's not their life so what right do they have, and that's true. But I can promise you that the hardest thing to do is be honest with someone when you know they aren't going to want to hear it. The true test of someone's character doesn't come when they prove they can hide the truth for the sake of keeping all feathers unruffled. It comes when they stand on the side of truth even if they stand alone. And  you can hate it. You can fight it. You can tell them they have no idea what they're talking about or that they are making a mistake. You can turn around and walk away and never look back. But why did you do it? Were they really wrong? Or were they right and you just couldn't bring yourself to admit it? 


I have lost friends in telling them the truth. I don't like that walking away is the easy response, but it won't change what I do. I don't tell someone the truth to ruin their fun or to be right, I tell them because I respect them that much. They matter so much to me that I will risk the relationship we have just to make sure that they can never say they didn't hear it. 

It's Overrated Until You Have It

Dreams are fun to dream until you fall trying to reach them. And love is warm and comforting until it's cold and distant. Tears are okay to cry until you can't stop them. And laughter is freeing until it's fake. At some point in each of our lives everything we stand for, what we believe in, the way we look at the world around us, all of it will be challenged. One day we wake up and realize that dreams and love require hard work and commitment. For some rising to the challenge is the natural option, for others, it's the only option. But there are some that it doesn't come naturally to and some that see victory as an illusion; it's just not in the stars for them. We grow up and forget how to see the magic in the world. We lose track of the simple joys. We stop hoping for anything. We slowly learn to settle. We make the best of mediocre even though we were designed for great. Great takes work and work is hard. We start to believe that greatness is overrated and we joke that everyone else is racing for it and we want to be different. Hearts break and stop believing that fairy tale love exists. Dreams aren't reached the first time and we question if we have what it takes or if we dreamed too big. We hide behind that laughter to avoid the pain. 


But what about the person who reached their dream? What about the one who wakes up every morning next to the person that they were sure to never find? They won't tell you it's overrated! It isn't. It's everything they wanted it to be and chances are good that it's more. Sometimes we stop believing, but life has a strange way of converting the worst of cynics. And it only takes that once to change it all. It takes one success to make all the failures fade. It takes one perfect day to make you forget that you never thought it would come. 


Those dreams and hopes and wishes about love and life and greatness aren't overrated, they're simply hard to find sometimes. And other times you aren't supposed to find them, they are to find you. When that happens you can be sure that the part of you that refused to stop believing is going to whisper...


"I told you so..."

Is It Everything You Thought It Would Be?

I get that question often. The world, or at least those apart of my world want to know if my move to L.A was everything I thought it would be. The short answer to that is, no. And now for the longer answer. The city itself is everything I thought it would be. Fast cars, cranky people, too many ethnicities to count, and all the languages start to sound alike, unfortunately none of it sounds like English. But what I am doing in it is nothing like I planned. Plans are funny that way. We make them thinking that we are somehow the center of the universe and everything should work out the way that we want it to because it is after all about us. If only that were true. Life happens and the life I have tomorrow could be very much the same as the life I had today or it could look nothing like it, the truth is that I won't know until tomorrow. The life I have today looks absolutely nothing like I thought it would a year ago. Life happens. It's the attitude that you live life with that counts. I could be bent out of shape that things aren't going exactly as I planned for them to. However if I did that my world would be very dark and few would dare to enter it. My dreams aren't going anywhere unless I send them away and I have no intentions of doing that so if life happens along the way that's okay. My life is nothing like I thought it would be when I moved here, but that doesn't mean that my life is bad or that I made the wrong decision. I am actually quite confident that I made the right decision and things will unfold exactly as they are supposed to. There is no point in rushing through life to get to the end of it and find that you missed out on most of it because you saw your dreams and nothing else along the way. Don't sacrifice your dreams for the sake of a the life you think you should have, but don't sacrifice your life for the sake of the dreams you want to reach. 

What's Your End Game?

I walked into the Guitar Center on Sunset Blvd today looking for an electric guitar for my nephew. I found a few that might be suitable for him, but that's not why this story is noteworthy. I got to talking with one of the guys that works there and at some point in the conversation he asked what my end game was. Because of the city that I live in the question 'who are you?' really means 'why are you here?'. Rarely do people actually want to know your story, they just want to know whether or not you will be any sort of competition for them. I was not offended by his question, just caught for guard, most people in this town would consider the 'end game' obvious...fame. I liked that he didn't assume that. With as much as his question surprised me my answer surprised me much more. I told him that I don't care what I am doing as long as I love it! Some people may think it's a copout, that it's the answer may expect from someone who has no dreams or aspirations, but that isn't true at all. I have many dreams. I want to be a successful writer. I want to be a successful musician. I want to be a successful photographer. I want to travel the world. I want to be a wife and a mother and a grandmother. I add new things to my bucket list everyday. With the dreams that I have it almost seems as though I am living more then one life, but there is one thing that they all have in common. No matter what I end up doing I want to love it! I want my work to be play and my play to be work. I want to give my excellence in everything. I want to love and laugh and even cry as long and hard and often as possible. I want to enjoy every minute of my life, the great, the good, the bad, and even the ugly because every second counts. So my end game is to look back on my life from my death bed and be able to say that I did it well! 

What is your end game?!

I Did Something I Don't Do

In February of 2009 my grandmother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. This past February I moved to LA to be with her. My friends knew what I was doing. My family knew what I was doing. And most days I know exactly what I did. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't get asked how I am doing, my typical response is 'I'm fine'. In my mind that's a middle of the road answer, I'm not great but I could be a lot worse, so I'm fine. Most of the time I am fine (and believe me I relish in the great days and shake my fists at the shitty ones), but there is a reason that 'most' and 'all' are different words with completely different meanings. I knew that there was going to come a day when I wasn't fine, when there weren't even going to be words to describe how bad I was doing; that day came a lot sooner then I was expecting! That day came three days ago. 


I cried for hours and for seemingly no reason last Thursday night. Nothing had happened. Nothing about my situation had changed. My reality didn't become more real. I was just tired enough to not have the strength to fight the tears and once I surrendered there was no stopping them. Typically in moments like this I try to sleep, I shut off the computer, I turn off the cell phone, I sit in the dark. I shut the whole world out because the world doesn't need to see it and I am not sure the world would know what to do with it. However this time was different. 
I kept the light on. I sat in front of my computer. I picked up the phone. 


There is a reason that there are so many people, we were made for each other. We were made to love, protect, comfort, and need one another. I have the easiest time letting the rest of the world need me, but I am awful at telling anyone that I need them. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out well for me in the past and when my heart is already hurting the last thing it wants is a reason to fear that it will hurt more. Trusting myself instead of someone else makes sense to my heart, but that also usually means it's the last thing I should decide to do. Your heart will look out for itself, it doesn't care if your mind needs a voice of reason or if your body needs arms to hold it. Three nights ago I decided that I wasn't going to let my heart win this time. I was just comfortable enough in my frailty that I decided to tell someone I needed them. I had never done that before, never told someone that I don't know how to need someone else. I know how to appreciate someone that is there for me but I don't know how to ask for it and it's scary, because what if they say no? Normally I would be sure that I couldn't handle that, but three nights ago I didn't care. 


I did something I don't do. I don't let knew people in, and I don't tell them to their face that I don't do that. I guess you could say that I did two things that I don't do. My vulnerability was met with a massive hug and the reassurance that they were always going to be there for me! I dared to do something different and I thought it was going to be a mistake. The morning after I confessed that the deepest parts of who I am are barely holding it together regretted my confession and wished that I could take it back. I am glad that I couldn't. 


We need people, and other people need to know that they are needed. If you're like me then do something you normally wouldn't do. Tell someone you need them, say, "I need you", and you won't regret it. And don't ever let anyone tell you that you are wrong to need someone! 

Each Coming Night

Ever take a drive and then when you finally stop realize you don't know where you've been, what you've seen, or how long you've been gone? I took a drive tonight and don't remember much. I was never not looking out the windshield, but the whole time I looked past the other cars, the lines on the road, and the streetlights. Traffic could have been bumper to bumper or I could have been all alone, it wouldn't have made a difference to me. I wouldn't have noticed. My eyes were looking forward, but what I was seeing wasn't in front of me. All I could see was the past few hours replaying over and over again...


I watched The Last Song, a movie I had already seen, a book I have already read. For some reason the plot eluded me because it wasn't until Ronnie's dad was collapsed on the sand that I remembered how it ended. I forgot that one of the things that makes Nicholas Sparks such a greater writer is his ability to write these intricately woven tragically happy endings. My stubbornness has always kept me from stopping a movie regardless of the reason, so once again I watched my future unfold on the big screen...


It's a crazy life that I am living, one I constantly question if I am strong enough to live...

Today She Hates

Today she hates him, but there's more to it than that. It's easy to say that you hate someone because as soon as you remove that person from your life the hate goes too, at least that would be the logical process. However, most of us are fully aware that emotions are rarely, if ever, logical. The truth is not that you hate the person, it's that you hate what they did and you hate what they did because of what it did to you. It hurt you. It made you cry. It made you afraid. It made you doubt. It made you feel guilty. It made you feel like a failure. It made you feel ashamed. It made you feel foolish. It made you feel unworthy, unlovable, and insignificant. It caused you pain. You lost sleep. You stopped eating. Their actions turned your entire world upside down and they didn't even blink. It is easier to hate then to deal with all of this. It's always going to be easier to hate then to deal with any of this. But in the end your hatred only hardens YOUR heart. It only skews YOUR perception of the world. It only limits YOUR ability to love or to trust. It only inhibits YOUR ability to hope. 


Today she hates him. Tomorrow she may hate him. She may hate him through the end of the week, the end of the month, or even the end of the year. But one day she is going to wake up and she won't hate him at all and it will be because she never denied hating him to begin with. We think it makes us awful people to admit that we hate someone, and often times we try to pretend that we don't because admitting that we do means admitting that everything else is true, that the insecurity is real. She will eventually stop hating him because she's not afraid to admit that she does, and she's also not afraid to admit that she doesn't want to.