Car-free?

So I entered this contest thing to be a part of a Car-Free Challenge - it will end up being two people going car-free for a whole month, documenting the whole experience via vlogs, twitter, fbook, and the occasional camera crew.

Anyway, I'm a finalist- one of 6 - and it's now up to the voting public. Top two go on to the actual challenge. I really want to win!! one, because it would be an awesome experience, and I would get to document it mainly through social media, which I am obviously a fan of. Also, I would get a bike, and other cool ways to try to get around town, like Metro fare, and a Zipcar membership! Win!

So you should vote. Everyday. Like, go right now. You just have to click on my video and hit "Vote" - you don't even have to watch the whole video if you don't want to - I mean, since you'll be going there every day, it might get a bit old:)

http://carfreedietskeptics.com/stage/vote/

vogue

So we went to this fabulous black light party - I love having friends that really enjoy throwing huge bashes. We had the whole upstairs to this swanky club - and it was super decked out for the party - black lights, moving lights, paint-yourself areas, etc, etc. A total experience.

Anyway, I felt like doing something really big and out there, so I totes put a mohawk (more fauxhawk) in my hair. It. was. ridic. I was pretty much obsessed with it.

This picture is terrible, for many reasons, mostly disappointingly because it is not from the side, and you therefore, dear reader, cannot witness the full glory that was this mohawk. Also, I look gross, and you can't see my cool eye makeup and bitchin outfit (I'll brag a little...I was pretty pleased with my whole look for the evening, if this self-indulgent post wasn't a big enough clue for you) However, it does somewhat show...gives your imagination some fodder for how it looked.

That's really all this post is for. To show off my mohawk. I can't wait to rock it again sometime....hopefully though, this time, I won't have a terrible headache the next morning. And no, it wasn't from the 53 bobby pins I had in my hair.

Also, hopefully, you won't judge me too much for this post. Really. I surprise myself sometimes with my silliness.

pavings

sometimes, I have really good intentions.

really, nothing more. I don't know what I want, I don't know what you need. I make no pretense that I understand any of it. I just really want to try.

I'm not always trouble, you know? I'm not always a great big ball of hurt.

I'm sorry. I honestly am. I'm sorry if I lead you to believe something different - that I was different, that we were different, that what we had was...different.

It was. I guess I'm just always wearing glasses of a varying hue. I am not a big fan of the black and white. I'm not sure it exists, really. Not the way you see it.

You know, I'm thinking about running away again? But this time, I really think it's running in the right direction. I have to go, you know that. I have to go and be and discover and live. Live my life. Not the one that was laid out like itchy church clothes for me.

I think I have been cut from a very different cloth. That's not a bad thing, is it?

Speaking of cloth, the amount I have been sewing is a blissful distraction. And I am sketching so much more than my 45hr/week schedule lets me actually create. But there is relief in the inspiration.

I need to start doing something that makes me live a bit more.

A lot like love...but more just like living. I'm okay with that one.

wowowow.....

You know when you get those sudden urges or rushes of clarity? Or when you feel something so deeply and so intensely, but you're left wondering where in the world it came from?

yeah. yesterday was one of those moments for me.

It was certainly not something that I was expecting. It wasn't something I was looking for. But I guess when you are looking for something you can be surprised by what you see. Sometimes, you open your eyes to a whole different world than what you had imagined while you had them closed.

There were some weird signs of this coming...but signs that couldn't have pointed me to this conclusion. They're the funny signs that you only see in the looking back - "Oooooh, that's what that meant!" That kinda thing.

But this is a big one. My eyes are wide with some sort of mix between insane excitement and incredible fear. I am not a person that likes uncertainty. I love surprises...for other people. But I would rather have all the details in advance of my stepping out the door.

This does not look like a situation like that.

Perhaps this is exactly what it is supposed to be though...that I need to be taken a bit (or waaaaaay) out of my comfort zone. Perhaps my comfort zone isn't where God can do the most work. Funny how that plays out.

I'm jittery in the waiting...I am seeking confirmation...I am looking for more definite signs before making my commitment...but I am trying to gear myself for commitment without knowing the outcome. For faith in grace, that all things will work out if I am willing to step out on a limb where I am supposed to go.

Just got the random mental image just then of Indy in the Search for the Holy Grail. Blindly stepping out when it looks like nothing is there to catch him. And finding that there was something there all along - it just took a complete, and potentially life-ending trust to discover it.

I am no Indiana Jones.

But I trust in One far bigger than whoever was setting up that invisible beam for him.

I honestly don't know what to say at this point other than I seek prayer, wisdom, and clarity. And I'm buckling my seat belt for the ride ahead.

sometimes children's stories are written for the grown-ups...

I have a hard time understanding love...I know, I know, that sounds incredibly emo, but I just sometimes have a really hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of what it means...

I haven't always had the best examples of love in my life...haven't seen it as a successful entity. And heaven knows that I have never come close to having it fully myself (outside, of course to my wonderful friends and my family).

I put up a serious wall before I even get started in a relationship. I have not been in many, just because the few I have been in have taught me that I need to work far more on myself before I can give myself to another person.

I catch myself, when it comes to love, thinking that things should be far more cookie-cutter and pretty than they can actually ever be. Or, at the first sign of pain or hurt or messiness I throw in the towel. I don't want love to be difficult.

But I think it is in love, when you love, when you are truly loved, that you are most fully alive. You are most real.

And what is real?

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I think I have been a person who breaks too easily. A person who was afraid of becoming worn. But it is indeed the true sign of love to see something that is a bit used...a bit broken in. The china dolls on the shelf never know the messy grubby hug of an exurburant child. The are lonely in their perfection.

I am not a china doll.

And I am not content with putting myself on a shelf out of reach. If being real means that I have to get a bit mussed up, then I will roll around in the dust bunnies a bit more.

If being loved (and truly truly loved) means that I have to hurt a little, then I'm bracing myself. Because I am ready to be the real me.

So here I am. Broken pieces and all.

How much do I love this city??

Soooo much....

I was talking to some of my college girlfriends in the past week...we are all off on our own adventures now...this is grand.

Truly, I think it says something about the life that I have created that so many of my friends are so far away - not that our time together meant not enough to stay close..

because we are close.

not that we have all gone our separate ways...

because ways means so much more than location.

I love that I continually surround myself with people who pursue and live their dreams....

Like my friend in China, teaching a child and embracing an entirely new culture...Shanghai from ATL is certainly further than DC from Sugar Land. Oh, how brave she is!

Or my friend in Las Vegas - actually chasing after his career dreams, even in this tough economy, in an already tough career path. Las Vegas is awfully different from little'ol Waco, Texas. Oh, how brave he is!

Or my friend in NYC - making insane connections and working for big names...what was a beautiful click on a camera in small-town Texas will now become a name-maker for a new boy in the Big City...Oh, how brave he is!

Sometimes, I wonder if perhaps I am not doing enough, trying enough, being enough. I think they are living these extraordinary lives and I am waiting behind....

and then I remember...dreams come in all forms...

Here I am, a transplant in a new city. Living in a world so foreign from my own. And yes, there are struggles. Yes, there is heartache in the separation. Yes, there are days I wake up and forget that this is actually where I LIVE now...that I didn't go for a visit, that its not a study-abroad trip with an end-date in sight. I have chosen a place to put down my roots and now I am trying to gather as much sunshine as I can...I am embracing the here and now.

And I sometimes have to let my little heart swell with pride...I am living my dream too. I have stared the big, bad world in the face too and I didn't run away. When I packed up my car with as much of my stuff as I could, when I settled Zoey (dog) in the front seat and Chloe (cat) in the back...when I drove off through a flood of tears....I was embracing life in my own way. They were tears of fears - the "what ifs" and "what nows" and "what am I doings" were certainly some of the streams cascading off my chin. There were tears of missing...knowing how hard it was to leave the people I love. And there were tears simply of embracing the unknown.

You notice that children sometimes cry simply because they don't know what else to do? That life is just, in that moment, a bit too big and foreign and new....

Yeah, there were definitely some of those tears too.

But here I am...tears dried. There's always facebook and twitter and skype and..and you, blog. I will never lose those people. Because they are in my heart forever. And on the interwebs for infinity.

This...this is a new adventure.

I drank my tea and have now found discontent as I look

into the traces left at the bottom of the cup.

In and out in and out

My days blend into a far too still and predictable line.

The movement sways so little that I question if

there is a difference between days at all.

Remembering old loves...

some with such disdain

or regret

or surprise

or sorrow.

It is not the ones I was most heartbroken to let go that sting the most in the brooding that comes on dark winter nights.

Nights where the sunlight has just said fuck you, I'm out.

She leaves now at a shocking hour, staying only as long as she absolutely must to keep up opinions and convince us that she still remains a part of it all.

perhaps I am taking my cues from her.

But on these days when the darkness has been given an early chance to creep in,

as I sit and think about chances that have come and gone,

ones I have pretended to try to tie my heart to,

it isn't the ones that broke my heart that linger longest in these shadowy spots.

Instead, I am more often consumed with the ones that I could have sworn were lovely things,

in the afterthought.

Looking back, I have had it good a few times.

These are the ones that pushed me away the fastest and hardest and most desperately.

It's funny. This odd creature that I am.

Have always been.

Will probably always be.

Sure, I've grown, evolved. It's survival of the fittest, baby.

Survival of the toughest, the calculating, the ones that can turn on and shut off certain things within that will cause them to physically survive.

Evolution in this respect seems to have very little to do with the emotions.

Maybe I'm going about surviving in all the wrong ways.

Maybe I've got it all wrong.

Maybe the thought of figuring it out is too scary though to make the necessary changes.

It's that time of year when the whole world falls in love....

we are promised the exciting possibility of a whole new year - Oh, how a new life might be started! Oh, the changes I will make! The love I will find! The world I will transform!

And then, every year, we are not awoken with a slap in the face or a splash of water to shock our system.

No. This is what we need to happen.

It seems that I sleep each January first morning a little later, stretching my muscles slowly as I fight that unwelcome pull to open my eyes. I awake with no new purposes, no new insight, no actual gumption to make all those exciting changes that, somehow, as I lay in bed on the dawn of the new year, seem suddenly less appealing and far more daunting.

And silently, unadmitting, and shamefully, I choose to close my eyes again, thus giving myself permission for the rest of the year to continue to make all the same mistakes and live the same little life.

This year, I hope I have the commitment to get out of bed. I have lain to long in this comfortable section of my life - where I am warm and unbothered.

I need that splash of water to shock me out of bed.

Maybe this year, I should stop trying to be a lot like love and be a little more like living.