"There are things about me, things I don’t wear on my sleeve. But I don’t try to hide them either. And I’m going to talk about it now. Living well is no grand gesture. It is waking up. Trying to be reasonable and kind. It is making a phone call, a loaf of bread, a visit, a bowl of soup. It’s going easy on yourself so you can go easy on everyone else. It’s having faith because really we have no other option in this life. There is little we can control, and so we must let go and live with faith that somehow, come what may, we’ll make it." - Beth at Local Milk.
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"I asked, ‘How can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all?’ And he said ‘You can’t. You can’t, you can never be sure. You die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good.’ Brandon and I try as often as possible to go with the flow or, as he likes to say, "move like a jellyfish"-- with each other, with our work, with our families and friends. Being in a long distance relationship for 1.5 years basically makes moving like a jellyfish a mandatory survival skill. Either we let go and flow with one another, or we get tangled and sink. We're not perfect at it, but we get better all the time. This past weekend we had a wonderful time moving like jellyfish up in Healdsburg, acting as guests to a supremely generous and fun loving co-worker of mine. We had little to no itinerary info going into the weekend (which could potentially cause my type A, organization king of the world, boyfriend to have heart palpitations) but decided to worry free leave it all up to the 3-day weekend gods. Each time another itinerary change was suggested, we'd simply look at one another, shrug and say Rock and Roll...which was our motto for hanging with all of our new, fabulously eclectic friends. While floating in tubes in the Russian River, after having spent the day before at gorgeous hotel pool, while discussing the BBQ for later that night, we began to laugh at how...well...utterly random our time together has often been. I don't know how this randomness has managed to play out so beautifully other than to credit our jellyfish, wherever life takes us, ways as the key to our success. "So I guess this is where life wants us today", B chuckled, gesturing to the river surrounding us. To be content exactly where we are--this is one of the greatest gifts our relationship has given me and one that I look forward to continuously exploring as time moves on (and extra look forward to sharing with you all, here). Besides, who could resist being where they are when that "where" includes this guy? Side-note: he met Louise the rescue pup only about 30 minutes before she chose his lap over everyone elses for her afternoon nap. Sheesh. Even animals have a hard time resisting him.
I guess that's just where life wanted her to be :) In Gratitude, Trish Guest Post by Janice Nicol
Hello, Grateful Lifers. Trish recently joined me for happy hour cocktails at an SF bar to celebrate my 30th birthday, a few hours before my second celebration destination: Disney World. As I was dashing out to catch a red-eye to Orlando, she left me with a pointed question: what’s it like to kick off a very adult decade in the land of children’s dreams? I’m reporting back for y’all here. First, know that although I would love to feel the lifelong magic and excitement for Disney’s grand imagination that others do, I just don’t. I haven’t seen a Disney movie since Aladdin, circa 1992. I also don’t have kids. I’m not married, honeymooning, or being proposed to any time soon. Essentially, I’m the Magic Kingdom’s least likely customer. But when my kid-at-heart partner sprung the idea on me a few months back, the destination met my criteria of 1. warm (too much San Francisco fog!), 2. cheap airfare, and 3. somewhere I’ve never been. So, I bought some white cutoffs, borrowed a friend’s metallic gold fanny pack, packed five types of sunscreen, and ventured east. My boyfriend and I arrived at our Port Orleans Riverside room armed with a park hopper pass and detailed Google Calendar breakdown of our strategy for conquering all five parks in our four Florida days. This plan was bolstered by three apps that algorithmically optimize a park’s itinerary based on live open-sourced wait times. We were ready to conquer the Kingdom in a way no child could. That said, the cast member who checked us in gave me a ‘Happy Birthday’ button -- the ‘i’ in Janice dotted with Mickey’s visage -- which meant that every Disney employee we encountered wished me some variation of “Happy Birthday Princess!.” The ever-supportive BF stood by me as I sported that button for four straight days. From our first destination, a lazy river loop at Typhoon Lagoon, to the last, one more Space Mountain ride as the clock struck midnight, I loved relinquishing control of my happiness over to Disney. Sure, they couldn’t quite accept my life choices -- I was frequently welcomed as Mrs., despite two last names on the res and visible lack of ring, and I was impelled to open a pretend engagement ring on-screen for four hundred Monsters Inc comedy show attendees -- but the illusion of a simpler world was too lucrative. Life could be sensory, playful, gravity-free. |
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