I have come to realize that when I neglect this space, I neglect me. For the past few years, this blog has been my "private" public space to express myself. For me, writing and to a lesser extent, talking have provided the most purgative release from whatever angst that ails. Writing has brought awareness of things that are often hidden and has brought me insight that has helped to keep me grounded in a sea of change.
As I have alluded to before, somehow marriage changed everything for me and I no longer felt free to just pour out with the level of authenticity I so prided this blog space for. I felt that I could not just share openly and honestly and so I simply stopped sharing. Two years into the marriage, I am now finding that the time has come to resume this journey into me.
It was easier to write about my life when I was single because I didn't feel committed or obligated to a common cause. It was all about me. But what I have learnt recently is that while there is another in the equation, I am still here. My presence should be thusly fully accounted for.
Marriage is not the only thing that made me stop posting here with
regularity. When I turned 30, I struggled with finding relevance to this
blog. What would a 30 year old have to say on a blog devoted to being
20? I had an identity crisis and could not reconcile this conundrum. I
first changed the name of the blog to Thirtysomething, but then
somewhere along the way, I decided to go back to Twentysomething but I
added the "+" sign. When I started this blog, I wanted to document the
dramatic decade of my 20s as I tried to make sense of all of it and my
place here on earth. I added the + because, as far as I see it, the 20s
are only the beginning of the self-exploration needed to keep centred in
this life. I am still in many ways, the Twentysomething woman on a
quest to find and actualise her truest self. I will be for the rest of
my days. I do not want to start a new blog or change the name for every
decade. The + anticipates all the years to come and the additional
wisdom and insight they will bring.
At the beginning of the year I also started another blog that has provided a new career and the creative release I needed. I have used that platform well and it has opened up doors I had only dreamt of. But, there is something about this blog that is special. I miss this space. I do not regret leaving it for a while because it made sense at the time. I wrote here when I had something to say that fit this space. Now, it feels like I have lots to say.
I may have lost my readers here, but I am not looking for a following. That is for the other blog. Here I am simply looking to be me.
I am up at 4:00am writing this while ESC sleeps after coming home at 1:30 after a tiring and busy service. I haven't been up alone this late in a while but I woke up when he came home and couldn't go back to sleep.
It is not easy being married to a chef. I suspect, it is not easy being married to anyone, including me. Such is life. Despite, this, the hours and intensity that come with ESCs career have amplified some teething pains.
Marriage is a mirror that we hold up to ourselves. I have felt more vulnerable over the past two years than I have ever felt in my life. I have opened up and let another human being into my most sacred places and that is a heck of a thing.
It has also been very difficult to be so far from family and close friends. The distance made me feel like an alien in my own life. I still look at pictures and read stories of home and feel like I am missing from it all. I have not left since I arrived and I am tremendously homesick, though I am afraid to admit just how much.
Yes, it has been rough at times, but, have we have certainly not been worse for the year. We have been growing individually and as a couple and that has made all the difference. We encourage each others growth.
So what's keeping me up at 4:00 am?
I think I need a break. I feel overwhelmed with a lot of things I have been facing recently. ESC and I are working through major issues, I have regained 3/4 of the weight I lost, my little sister had a baby, my grandmother's cancer has spread to both her lungs and I cannot visit her in the US because my visa renewal is undergoing a very lengthy session of "administrative processing." All of this is compounded by the fact that I pretty much have to deal with my issues on my own due to ESC's hours.
It would be nice to leave the country with ESC for a few weeks and visit my granny and go home. We need the time together and I need the break. But, alas, it is peak season for him, and again he is the chef in charge of the kitchen and cannot take leave before April.
I am hoping and praying that things will align so I can visit my granny and be surrounded by family soon. Next year I will be traveling home work on a book that I am being commissioned for. It cannot come soon enough.
I realize that for our marriage to work well, I will need to budget for annual trips away to meet family and friends so that I can refuel with the love and passion that space gives. I have neglected to make this a priority because I wanted to share the experience with ESC, but I am now aware that I need to go in spite of whether or not he can. In many ways, I have to think like a single woman to survive the intense aloneness that comes from his hours and being so far from my support group and feeling like my life revolves around him.
I don't think we will be here for very much longer. Three years tops. He just changed jobs in April and will probably stay put for another year and a half until his two year mark. After that, the rest is up for grabs. While we have both fantasized about moving further east, I think I need to move back west first. But who knows? Maybe I am just anxious because I have been away so long and miss home. I could very well go home and feel rejuvenated and come back pumped for years away here as long as I get to go home at least once per year. I have never been away from home for longer than 6 months and I think that my lack of travel could really be the source of my current distress. I just need to travel.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
My battle of the bulge
I have been neglecting this blog- to my own detriment. I miss this space, but I have been finding it difficult to find the words and the time to post here. But... alas, I am back.
I have a weight problem.
I have a sugar addiction.
I have regained 14.5lbs of the 20 lbs I lost.
I had been stable for a while then I took a baking class and as my cakes improved, my sugar intake did as well. I would eat nothing but cake all day for several cakes.
I know. I have been here over and over again and I am just tired. I feel like a stuck record. I spend the first months of every year losing weight and then my birthday rolls around in August and I slack off a bit and I fall totally off the wagon.
I am just stuck. In a rut.
I am now working in the food industry and that doesn't help.
But that is an excuse, not a condition.
I just need to get my act together. My health and my life depend on it.
I have a weight problem.
I have a sugar addiction.
I have regained 14.5lbs of the 20 lbs I lost.
I had been stable for a while then I took a baking class and as my cakes improved, my sugar intake did as well. I would eat nothing but cake all day for several cakes.
I know. I have been here over and over again and I am just tired. I feel like a stuck record. I spend the first months of every year losing weight and then my birthday rolls around in August and I slack off a bit and I fall totally off the wagon.
I am just stuck. In a rut.
I am now working in the food industry and that doesn't help.
But that is an excuse, not a condition.
I just need to get my act together. My health and my life depend on it.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Turning 31
On the eve of my 31st birthday, I am in a very weird place.
I am trying to wrap my head around where I am now.
I have a lot on my plate. A lot.
Here is an excerpt of one of the greatest TV writing I have ever witnessed- Oprah's farewell from the Oprah Winfrey Show.
"After deliberating for some time, we decided to do what we do best, and that is a show about and with everyday people. This show always allows people, hopefully, to understand the power they have to change their own lives. If there's one thread running through each show we do, it is the message that you are not alone. Twenty-five years and I'm still saying thank you, America. Thank you so much. There are no words to match this moment. Every word I've ever spoken from this stage of The Oprah Show for 4,561 days of my life is what this moment is all about.
...
"When I came here, I was about to turn 30 years old. I didn't have a vision or a lot of great expectations. Stedman talks about vision all the time, but I didn't have one when I came here. I just wanted to do a good job and cause no harm. ... That first day was a shock to me. There was no audience. There I am in my best Anne Klein II velour outfit, my guests were a few Chicago football players, New Year's Day, 1984. ... I needed people. I needed to have you to gauge how things were going during the show, if you were responding, if you were laughing, if you were tracking with me. So after that first show, we put up some folding chairs in the audience. We brought in the staff. Secretaries. Anybody we could find in the building and filled the first rows with staff people and the rest with people off the street that we bribed with doughnuts and coffee, and we'd say, 'Come in.'
...
"Two years later, when we went national, I remember at the time, Roger King told me that one station manager said that he'd rather put a potato in a chair in his market than have a big black girl with a funny name. And in spite of that, from Memphis to Macon, from Pittsburgh to Pensacola, from New York to New Orleans, you all let me in."
"The first week we went national, I remember I got a letter from a woman named Carrie in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Carrie said, 'Oprah, watching you be yourself makes me want to be more of myself.' That was and still remains one of the nicest things I ever heard. What Carrie felt is what I wanted for every single one of you. I wanted to encourage you to be more of yourself just as you all encouraged me, and you cheered me on and occasionally complained about my outfits, my big hair and earrings the size of napkins. Now I see you had every reason to.
...
"Soon after I started the show, something shifted for me. It really did. I started the show as a job and was very happy to get the job, but it was not long before I understood that there was something else going on here. More than just job satisfaction. Something in me connected with each of you in a way that allowed me to see myself in you and you in me. I became your surrogate—to ask the questions, deliver the answers, learn, grow, expand my thinking, challenge my beliefs and the way I looked at the world. I listened and grew, and I know you grew along with me.
...
"Sometimes I was the teacher, and more often, you taught me. It is no coincidence that I always wanted to be a teacher and I ended up in the world's biggest classroom. And this, my friends, will be our last class from the stage.
...
"What I knew for sure from this experience with you is that we are all called. Everybody has a calling, and your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it. Every time we have seen a person on this stage who is a success in their life, they spoke of the job, and they spoke of the juice that they receive from doing what they knew they were meant to be doing. We saw it in the volunteers who rocked abandoned babies in Atlanta. We saw it with those lovely pie ladies from Cape Cod making those delicious potpies. ... We saw it every time Tina Turner, Celine, Bocelli or Lady Gaga lit up the stage with their passion. Because that is what a calling is. It lights you up and it lets you know that you are exactly where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And that is what I want for all of you and hope that you will take from this show. To live from the heart of yourself. You have to make a living; I understand that. But you also have to know what sparks the light in you so that you, in your own way, can illuminate the world."
I am trying to wrap my head around where I am now.
I have a lot on my plate. A lot.
Here is an excerpt of one of the greatest TV writing I have ever witnessed- Oprah's farewell from the Oprah Winfrey Show.
"After deliberating for some time, we decided to do what we do best, and that is a show about and with everyday people. This show always allows people, hopefully, to understand the power they have to change their own lives. If there's one thread running through each show we do, it is the message that you are not alone. Twenty-five years and I'm still saying thank you, America. Thank you so much. There are no words to match this moment. Every word I've ever spoken from this stage of The Oprah Show for 4,561 days of my life is what this moment is all about.
...
"When I came here, I was about to turn 30 years old. I didn't have a vision or a lot of great expectations. Stedman talks about vision all the time, but I didn't have one when I came here. I just wanted to do a good job and cause no harm. ... That first day was a shock to me. There was no audience. There I am in my best Anne Klein II velour outfit, my guests were a few Chicago football players, New Year's Day, 1984. ... I needed people. I needed to have you to gauge how things were going during the show, if you were responding, if you were laughing, if you were tracking with me. So after that first show, we put up some folding chairs in the audience. We brought in the staff. Secretaries. Anybody we could find in the building and filled the first rows with staff people and the rest with people off the street that we bribed with doughnuts and coffee, and we'd say, 'Come in.'
...
"Two years later, when we went national, I remember at the time, Roger King told me that one station manager said that he'd rather put a potato in a chair in his market than have a big black girl with a funny name. And in spite of that, from Memphis to Macon, from Pittsburgh to Pensacola, from New York to New Orleans, you all let me in."
"The first week we went national, I remember I got a letter from a woman named Carrie in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Carrie said, 'Oprah, watching you be yourself makes me want to be more of myself.' That was and still remains one of the nicest things I ever heard. What Carrie felt is what I wanted for every single one of you. I wanted to encourage you to be more of yourself just as you all encouraged me, and you cheered me on and occasionally complained about my outfits, my big hair and earrings the size of napkins. Now I see you had every reason to.
...
"Soon after I started the show, something shifted for me. It really did. I started the show as a job and was very happy to get the job, but it was not long before I understood that there was something else going on here. More than just job satisfaction. Something in me connected with each of you in a way that allowed me to see myself in you and you in me. I became your surrogate—to ask the questions, deliver the answers, learn, grow, expand my thinking, challenge my beliefs and the way I looked at the world. I listened and grew, and I know you grew along with me.
...
"Sometimes I was the teacher, and more often, you taught me. It is no coincidence that I always wanted to be a teacher and I ended up in the world's biggest classroom. And this, my friends, will be our last class from the stage.
...
"What I knew for sure from this experience with you is that we are all called. Everybody has a calling, and your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it. Every time we have seen a person on this stage who is a success in their life, they spoke of the job, and they spoke of the juice that they receive from doing what they knew they were meant to be doing. We saw it in the volunteers who rocked abandoned babies in Atlanta. We saw it with those lovely pie ladies from Cape Cod making those delicious potpies. ... We saw it every time Tina Turner, Celine, Bocelli or Lady Gaga lit up the stage with their passion. Because that is what a calling is. It lights you up and it lets you know that you are exactly where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And that is what I want for all of you and hope that you will take from this show. To live from the heart of yourself. You have to make a living; I understand that. But you also have to know what sparks the light in you so that you, in your own way, can illuminate the world."
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