Whoa, blog!

Reasons.

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:50:21 +0000

Today ended my two weeks in Europe. It was the first time that I had been back here in 4 years, and the excitement was unbelievable leading up to that departure flight. But after being here for 14 days, the excitement wore off and I’ve had plenty of time to think about everything.

Four years ago the last thing that I wanted to do was go back to NYC. When the plane took off from Heathrow airport, I remember wanting to yell for it to stop so I could get off. England had become my home, because that’s where I was happy. That’s where I wanted to be, and here is where I wanted to live out my life. Fast forward all this time and all these life changing moments, and I feel differently. England is still absolutely wonderful, and it’ll always have a very special place in my heart and memories, but it’s not my home. It’s not where I’m happiest. And it’s not where I want to live out my life.

As of right now, and for the foreseeable future, NYC is.

NYC has my best friend, and some of my closest friends. It has the job that I actually can’t wait to go back to tomorrow morning, and a bed I can’t wait to sleep in again. It has Oxford that I’ve ended up missing so much, and that I hugged the shit out of when I came into my apartment. NYC has so many things for me now, that it never had before. Emotionally, mentally and physically.

I’ve done so much exploring on my own in the city, and on the east coast the last few years, that I’ve grown so comfortable with it. Sometimes, I prefer it that way. And I don’t really see it as scary or challenging, because I’ve figured out how to manage. Even in foreign countries with languages that I don’t fully understand. Traveling entirely on my own to Normandy last week was a blast. Navigating a city I hadn’t been to in 4 years, then traveling to a part of the country I’ve never even seen was actually exciting. And it makes me more confident to do that kind of thing many more times in the future.

Europe will always be a part of me. And I’ll go back there many, many more times in the future. Certainly to different countries and cities that I’ve never even thought of before. But it’s a vacation for me now, not a potential home.

I wouldn’t trade in what, and who, I have now for anything in the world. I’ve worked really, really hard to have this, and this trip has made me realize just how much I appreciate it. I bought so many gifts for everyone, especially those that mean a tremendous amount to me. I thought of those missed people often, and I think it shows in the fact that I had to find another suitcase to come home with. I can’t wait to hug my friends and give them what I’ve packed up.

This trip was absolutely fulfilling in every way I had wanted it to be. It was well worth every single penny, and then some.

The Reflecting Skin.

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:52:55 +0000

Touching my feet down on British soil again Thursday morning is going to be one of the best feelings in the world. I’m beyond excited and anxious to get back over there and travel some more. Eight o’clock Thursday morning can’t come soon enough.

This trip is going to be amazing, and so very refreshing. I’m going to absorb and capture every single second I’m there.

Young Blood.

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:03:44 +0000

“Thank you for being such a positive, motivational force in my life.”

I loved hearing that from a friend :)

Cannibal Girl.

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:24:14 +0000

Last night, at 5 minutes to midnight, my work friends and I formed a small circle at the house party and made a toast. We all took turns saying our peace, sipped from the bottle of champagne and passed to the next person in the circle. I was the last one to go, but I knew what I wanted to say. It was heartfelt, sincere and exactly what I’ve wanted to say to them for months.

Then at midnight, we ran up to the roof with the rest of the party and cheered, hugged, and danced to fireworks exploding over Brooklyn. Then we sprayed champagne everywhere, whooped, and danced the rest of the night under the stars and fireworks.

One of the best nights ever.

I Feel Everything.

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:25:22 +0000

2011 has been an amazing year. Hands down. I don’t feel like I’ve ever had a better one. Everything has paid off, and just about everything has worked itself out. I think within even the span of a year I’ve emotionally grown at a pace I couldn’t have expected of myself. I’ve forgiven faster, and more often, I’ve calmed down a huge amount, I’ve approached situations in a new way, honesty about my emotions has increased, and I’ve learned to cut out the bad while retaining, and nurturing, what helps me as an individual. Maybe the most impressive, and certainly notable, is that my best friend and I haven’t fought in over 2 months. For us, that’s monumental. Small disagreements still happen here and there, but we’ve been able to overcome them with surprising speed, and learned to communicate a fuck ton better. I’m so proud of us.

I haven’t made any New Years resolutions like the rest of the world seems to have again. They never work for me, and starting them around the new year seems cliché and silly. But I do know what I want to accomplish in 2012 and beyond, if the world doesn’t end on December 21st. For a lot of it, I’ll let the universe takes me where it wants me to go, but I have some small, personal goals I’d like to achieve. One of them being travel a whole lot more. Scratching off that world map with locations that I’ve been has put my travels into perspective quite a bit, and I’ve realized I need to do a whole lot more. I need to reach every continent at some point. I need to scratch off more of that map.

I need to get myself significantly out debt. Paying off at least 2 credit cards entirely is a goal, and cutting down at least halfway on the third is another. After that, it’ll only be my student loans. But hopefully those will be cleared away by the end of 2013. I think it’ll be fairly simple to do, barring any surprises.

I also need to become happy with myself. If I put only half the energy that I put into my emotional and mental well-being that I put into a physical change, I’d have that accomplished in only a couple months. For some reason I haven’t been able to, but that’s the last area I feel I need to pay some attention to. After that, everything else will fall into place.

More often now than any other time in the last 3 years, I’ve thought about the idea of me not being here. As in, what if I had gone through with what I had tried so many times before? The obvious and simple answer is that I wouldn’t be here. At all. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the job that I have now, or the wonderful people that I’ve met along the way. I wouldn’t have gotten the experiences of delicious new food that I never imagined having the opportunity to try. I wouldn’t have this apartment that I plan on settling into for the next several years, or the tuxedo kitten currently trying to sprawl himself all over my keyboard. I wouldn’t be able to say that I’ve been to Europe twice, or heard Explosions in the Sky live again after so many years of missing them. I wouldn’t be able to say that I’ve traveled solo for days at a time, met legendary designers, or rekindled friendships. I would never have sky dived over the skies of the Northeast and really, honestly felt true, unbridled freedom for 30 untainted seconds. I would never have flown my own parachute down to the ground and known what it felt like to fall at over 200 mph without anything blocking the sunlight.

I would’ve missed out on standing up for students that had been taken advantage of for 15 years, and finally putting a stop to the corruption. I would’ve missed out on how unbelievably satisfying that feels to the soul. Knowing through and through that I was right for doing what I did, and that I’d do it again in a heart beat.

If I weren’t here, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the feeling of being alive on New Years Eve last year. Being at a crazy house party, watching the ball drop with my closest friends, dancing with champagne raining down from the air, and not having a single care in the world outside of that room. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to celebrate that feeling again tonight with new work friends, or have had that feeling pop up during the pure, simple moments throughout my days.

I hit rock bottom to bounce back from it. That’s really why everyone hits rock bottom at some point. It’s the blob that bounces you back up, and throws you wildly into whatever you’re supposed to be doing. I’ve accepted that, because it’s part of my story.

Who I am today is a far cry from what I was a year ago. Or two. Or five. Who and what I am now, bears zero resemblance to high school me, and almost no resemblance to college me. That’s how it’s supposed to be though. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the people in my life who’ve been pivotal in those changes. I owe them absolutely everything.

Here’s to everything that 2012 has to offer.

Collapse.

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:08:43 +0000

01/11/12 – 01/24/12
NYC > London > Bath, England > White Cliffs of Dover, England > Paris > Normandy > London > Zurich, Switzerland > London > NYC

03/08/12 – 03/18/12
NYC > Austin!!!!!! > NYC

Sometime before the end of next year
NYC > London > Barcelona > Marrakech, Morocco > Athens > Venice > Basel, Switzerland > London > NYC

Traveling makes me happy. Traveling makes me feel like I’m not just a single girl in NYC who works far too much. It makes me feel like I can do, and be, so much more than that.

Drumroll.

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:42:38 +0000

I hate it when a single talk ruins the rest of my evening.

Spotlight (Oh Nostalgia).

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:56:01 +0000

There were times for weeks, often months, but sometimes years at a time where I felt nothing but sadness. Nothing but sadness, anger, hurt and resentment. I was absurdly negative, spiteful, and everything was everyone else’s fault almost all the time. I avoided, I denied, and I excused my own mistakes and faults more times than I can even remember. I was ill-tempered and just flat out cruel sometimes. Either inwardly towards myself, or outwardly at the people around me.

I think a very, very large part of me felt like I deserved to feel that way. I was punishing myself. For what? I’m not entirely sure. But I consciously know that I forced myself to suffer – physically, emotionally, mentally – and I had only openly, honestly and explicitly confessed that to one person my entire life. And it was to a med student during a hospital intake interview 2.5 years ago.

Today though, today I could not be a happier person.

I’ve let go of dwelling on things that have happened, simply because I can’t change the past. I can’t fix how things were, I can only move on from where I am right now. I’ve allowed myself to really hurt, really hurt, when I needed to, and then I collected myself to move forwards. Then I’ve also realized that there’s no point in complaining about things that I cannot change, especially things that I just HAVE to do. They’re not gonna change just because I bitch about them. Example: the really high price of toilet paper.

My job had a holiday party earlier this week. They made several announcements, one of them being that they donated 1% of their yearly earnings to charities in our names: to the tune of $100,000. Apparently they’ve always done that, but this was the first year they felt compelled to tell us because of how phenomenal they’ve done. They hired 17 people in the last 12 months, me included. They’ve taken on million dollar accounts and are becoming one of the most sought out firms in our industry. We have contracts with amazing clients, we’ll be expanding in a year and a half, and they’re already looking to open up offices in additional cities. They are absurdly kind to everyone they meet, they treat everyone with respect and dignity, and they have actually changed me as a person. I never thought I’d say my bosses are an inspiration, but they truly are.

I’m proud of where I’ve come, and I’m excited for where I’m going to end up. Additional life things will come when it’s time, and I’ll be ready for them. Or maybe I won’t be, but we’ll deal with that when it happens. I’m okay with that. I don’t need it all right now.

I have more friends now than I ever did before. I go out more with a variety of people, all over the place. I’m exponentially more social, more open to things, and absurdly content. Not only that, but I have only 23 days until I go back to Europe for the first time in 4 years, and one week until I ring in the New Year one more time with amazing work friends.

I never knew I could feel this way. I never knew I could feel this good, feel this loved, and know it wasn’t a passing feeling. It’s lasted weeks and months now. I never imagined myself here, having the full life that I have right now. Because I never imagined myself here, I’m just overwhelmed with how satisfying this feels. Every simple moment is something that I relish, and because I’m so content with my life, I wanna do what I can to help my friends get here too. They all deserve it just as much as I do. They deserve to notice kids smiling in their cars as you go by on the subway, and they deserve to truly enjoy the small seconds of their life. They deserve the support that I get every day, and they deserve to feel like everything is working out.

This is cheesy as hell, but my heart feels full. I’m so happy, and I’m okay with that.

Warning.

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:22:48 +0000

I work 13 hour days a lot. More often now, it’s 15 hour days. But getting thank yous like these from work clients more than makes up for the countless hours I spend in front of the computer. And it only makes me wanna work harder.

“I cannot thank you enough for being so responsive to our ‘emergency needs’. You have gone above and beyond.”

Mary Without Sound.

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:52:28 +0000

36 days until two solid weeks in Europe.

Flipping. The fuck. Out.

I’m so excited, I don’t even have words for it. Just see above GIF for what I feel like inside.