When I tried to achieve things like success or recognition, they eluded me.

When I tried to achieve things like success or recognition they eluded me. Paradoxically, when I let go of these objectives, and worked from a place of compassion and purpose, looking for excellence rather than the results of it, everything arrived on its own. -Ryan Lobo

Lies and truths

I feel as though I have been at an impass.

My life can go one of two ways. Well, I’m sure it could go a number of ways, but I see two distinctive paths.

One involves a life in LA. This one, that I had been considering earlier. Then another, that is so completely different and involves very few aspects of the former.

As hard as I try, I keep going back to the second choice. Its been two years and I still feel so deeply that it is where I’m meant to be. It makes me excited to live.

From The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho:
The old man knew how to read and had already read the book… “Its a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man. “It describes people’s inability to choose their own destinies. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.

“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
…
“[But] there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth… And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.”

Let go.

When you try and control everything, you limit yourself to only the best outcome that you can think of.

Do you really want to miss out on saying, this is better than I ever could have imagined ?

What I’d been missing was a wanderlust that came from letting go.

What I’d been missing was a wanderlust that came from letting go. -Lovely Bones (305)

I do. …What exactly do I do again?

I have never understood marriage.

On one hand, I just never had a model for it since my parents divorced when I was so young. And on the other, I have only ever been in relationships with an expiration date.

Because of this, marriage to me was composed of a bunch of verbs, and verbs that I didn’t really understand, and thus, didn’t really find appealing.

Love. Settle down. Hard work.

Hard work? What does that even mean? Settle down? Constrictive, and love? well love can go away. And that is damn scary.

I think though, as I grow up, I learn more about what my marriage will need to look like in order to feel fulfilled (fulfilled in marriage, that is) and that a successful marriage is not a simplistic as I’ve naively made it out to be, but how could I have known any differently?

I recently came to a new understanding of that first verb, love.

I realize that it is not IN LOVE love that makes a successful marriage. That successful marriage-love evolves from that IN LOVE-love into something more encompassing. It becomes more about loving that person in their entirety, than the rush of feeling IN LOVE-love. Respecting and understanding another person so much that there is this incredible intimacy and closeness. I imagine my marriage as this kind of love with the IN LOVE-love will oscillating over the years.

To me, this greater idea of love, is what I want, and is so much more comforting.

I’ve always been afraid that love was something that I could have one day, and not have the next.

But this kind of love? This kind of love is sustaining. Sustaining because it is built on a foundation that is so much deeper, that is so full of understanding and compassion, and that only has room to grow.

IMs with Jake

Jake: how are you though? i saw you posted something about 2009 being hard

LR/IM: oh
you know
it was just a lot of inner work
and that stuffs always hard
I think everyones going through that this year tho

Jake: some of the most difficult

LR/IM: its just that time
yeah

Jake: hard to gauge how much work you’ve done and how much more you need to do
job market still a mess?

LR/IM: lol i’d like a break haha
yeah
it sucks
Im applying to some programs tho
I’m just going to try and get more into it I think this year
and try and enjoy myself more
and meet new people
I’ve done a lot of soul searching this year
and its like
you know
you tear into yourself
so i feel like i still have all these open wounds
but they’re healing now
theyre still kinda open, but it doesn’t hurt as deep I guess
idk

Jake: sounds like it wasn’t an enjoyable process though

LR/IM:  it was hard
and really humbling
who am I DESPITE all that I have accomplished
and I feel like I’ve just been holding on to that
and its been holding me back and dragging me down

Jake: not an easy question to answer either, you coming to terms?

LR/IM: yeah
I just think that what happened
is like
Im a student
Im a college student
Im studying abroad
and then you’re ready for your next role
a good job right?
and then it doesn’t happen
so I’ve been grasping like hell to being a student and that role and who I was
but its like
who am I without those roles?
How am I as a person?
How do I treat other people?

Jake: we do cling to them

LR/IM: How do I limit myself?
yeah
we DO
and its like, I need to embrace who I am as a person right now
in order for me to move forward and have my feet on the ground

Jake: and be comfortable with who that person is

LR/IM: right
and not need to tell everyone about it
and listen more
and be more understanding
and change when life requires change instead of remaining steadfast and not really getting anywhere

Jake: has this been coming back on you in a negative way?

LR/IM: I mean
its just humbling you know
I’ve always known who I am
seriously
but I placed so much confidence on the wrong things
that I felt really insecure and sad you know

Jake: is this past tense or present tense?

LR/IM: I mean
I can’t say that I’m totally better right now
like i said, the wounds are still open that I ripped open
but I’m feeling better
and more confident
and I feel like maybe soon, I’ll be able to learn things without having to break myself down maybe?

2010 and beyond, more or less

I was reading an article on the Huffington Post by Dr. Frank Lipman about New Year’s Resolutions.

I’m not big on New Years Resolutions, but I liked some of the things he said.

More than anything, they reflected on the things that I have been working hard to figure out all year.

So maybe now, instead of figuring them out, I can just concentrate on doing them?

I don’t know.

Out of his resolutions, the ones I liked are:

More Being, Less Doing
More Consciousness, Less Ignorance
More Letting Go, Less Holding On

Some of my own:

More Listening, Less Talking
More Conscious Living, Less Ambivalence
More Natural, Less Over Planning

and the one that I’m still really working on:

More Today, Less One Year From Now.

I guess the trick to that one, is being content in today. Though the circumstances might not be able to change, my mindset can, and that’s the direction I think I’m going.
What are your New Years/New Life resolutions?

9 things I learned in 2009

1. My identity is actually who I am despite all my accomplishments
2. Telling guys straight up that I’m not interested is so much easier than the “slow fade”
3. I want to have kids someday
4. There is hiking in Los Angeles
5. The Dodgers rule (and I love Matt Kemp)
6. In times when I can’t do anything on the outside, there is an opportunity to look inward
7. I am wholly loved and looked after
8. I learn a lot from books
9. Autumn is officially my favorite season

Turning the page: 2009 in books

Last night after all of the Christmas Day festivities, I finished my book, The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright.

Since I doubt I’ll finish another book by the year’s end, this is my book recap of 2009.

1. The Wednesday Letters (Jason F. Wright)
2. Tortilla Curtain (T.C. Boyle)
3. Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert)
4. Nineteen Minutes (Jodi Picoult)
5. P.S. I Love You (Cecelia Ahern)
6. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
7. Shopgirl (Steve Martin)
8. Ya-Yas in Bloom (Rebecca Wells)
9. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
10. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Rebecca Wells)
11. The Choice (Nicholas Sparks)
12. The Tao of Pooh (Benjamin Hoff)
13. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
14. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)
15. Bridges of Madison County (Robert James Weller)
16. For One More Day (Mitch Albom)
17. Love Walked In (Marisa De Los Santos)
18. Ant Farm (Simon Rich)
19. The World According to Garp (John Irivng)

I read 19 books this year! That is almost twice as many as I read last year.

Some of my favorites this year were For One More Day, The Tao of Pooh, P.S. I Love You and Eat Pray Love.

Here are the books I read last year, in 2008.

Vegetable noodle, chicken, potato leek… so many soups

Something weird has come over me in the last few weeks.

It started with soup. I want to make soup, I thought, from scratch. So for the last two weeks I have been trying to make everything from scratch- including of course, soup. It was some weird urge and I wasn’t really sure why.

Then two Wednesdays ago, I was out with the super hot GM and a couple of his friends at a local bar. One of his friends asked me whether or not I was going home for the holidays.

I am home, I replied.
No, he said, I mean where your family is.
They’re all here, I told him.
Wait, he said, you mean, you’re from LA? I never meet people that are actually from here.

It turns out he is from New York.

Anyway, I realized that I am kind of lucky to be from here. To live in a city that so many people wish they could live in and have all of my friends and family here… well most of my friends at least.

That made me think. I realized that maybe I should apply to some California schools, some LA schools, hey, maybe I like it here, and that’s when things got weird…

I was at The Grove with Cassie and we were talking about all the fun LA schools I would apply to, and all the futures that might be. And then, because it was the two of us, we were talking about our moms. My mom and I have had a rocky relationship since I was about 15. But we were talking and I said something along the lines of, well, she’ll watch my kids when I have them.

And then I realized two big things. One, that when I have kids, I want to live near my family and two, that I want to have kids. What?!? Me?? I can’t stand kids! Or can I? Wait, wtf…

And then the ball really started rolling. Well, if I have kids, I have to be married. What?!? I want to get married??? Since when?? Not that I necessarily didn’t want to before, I just didn’t want to if that makes sense. Like, it wasn’t a priority.

And then it was like, well if I get married I should have a boyfriend first. OMG, I’m still single. But who cares, I’m 24- which sounds young when you say it aloud, but with all of these things going on inside my head, I’m like, holy shit.

Basically, I think what happened is that my biological clock turned on, and then it started ticking (hey 24 is your fertility peak you know). Like, it didn’t even exist before. I never thought about having a boyfriend, having kids, settling down, having a family- none of it. I never cared. Until now. And though I am somewhat freaking out, I am trying my best to get used to all of these feelings and keep my hormones in check- aka, restraining myself from signing up for every dating website on the planet.

And so now the soup makes sense. Obviously, if I’m going to be a wife and mother, I should know how to make soup from scratch.