Just your (un)average girl

I got the job.

Start ASAP and let’s hope AnA let’s me finish the month out

Monday…

I should hear back from that job today on whether or not I have it. We shall see…

It is The Man’s birthday today and I CANNOT wait to give him his presents! and for dinner he requested I make him pizza.. gladly! So i am working til 4, then to the market and then off to see him. Yesterday we got some good quality time in, so I am feeling better indeed.

Yesterday I said to him, “I love being with you..” and after a few seconds he was like, “Whew, i was scared for a min there..” Meaning that he HEARD “I love you…”

I have thought about it and I know that his reaction is not going to be a good one at this point, if I did say it. I even have dreams working this whole thing out and each time he is not down with it. I even told him that yesterday… he didn’t believe me and I said I just had a dream last night (next to him, btw) that he flipped about it.

Honestly, I don’t even know… I don’t know when the little timer buzzes and you know. I know I am falling in love with him, but i don’t know anything else and maybe i don’t have to. Remember, i don’t know healthy… So this is new territory for me and not that I think it would mess things up if I did feel like saying it, but I don’t even know.. I think I need more than little over two months to acknowledge it…

I know that with his schedule being so wacky, I am in for a fun at least 3-6 months until his route clears up more.. but honestly..

I waited 30 years to knock on his door… if I have to go three more months seeing him once a week… I will be just fine. Destiny has brought us together and I gotta stop trying to fight that and just let it be.

So here is to The Man’s birthday and me hopefully getting a FT job today! Happy Monday XOXO

Flashback Friday

When I went to LA to see Andre, we went to this little town on the way back from San Diego and they had little crafts and such and I remember seeing this one in particular and just loving what it said..

” Sometimes we don’t know we have a dream, until we have a dream come true.’

I know I have talked about dreaming bigger, but it is so true. I don’t really have dreams that don’t come true because I don’t dream often enough, but I can tell ya… I didn’t know The Man at this time, I was without a job (still waiting to hear back on an official offer today, btw) BUT I really understood this phrase. 

And now I understand it even more. There are things that happen with The Man that i never thought would for me… I haven’t had a mutual, healthy relationship in my adult life and for me to have one.. was just a dream for me. 

Listen, he is not perfect but newsflash, neither am I.  I have had to give up on the notion that I am actually. That it is okay I make mistakes, and now that I have come to terms with that, it is easier to accept that others are the same way…  I really think we are great together and I’m happy about that. I find myself and my recovering co-dependent self catching or almost cringing when I hear him say that I make him happy, or… that I even think the same. In the past, I thought people did make me happy and maybe they did but not in a healthy way… but I shouldn’t cringe when I hear that because when it is healthy it is okay.. He does make me happy. I am happy alone, but he should make me happy, duh! and I want to make him happy too! It doesn’t mean ” you are my everything and i am miserable without you..” 

I’d like to say that one day I won’t analyze things as much ( i know Dre is thinking that by now..) but truth is… I will be this way. I am just glad I am coming to better conclusions at the end. 

Dreams do come true, even if I never allowed myself to have them. 

allthingsconsiderate: This is worthwhile. artdawdlings: Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Currently at 43. Very cool - I mean interesting. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.” Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’ Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free. This.

allthingsconsiderate:

This is worthwhile.

artdawdlings:

Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Currently at 43. Very cool - I mean interesting. 
  1. Allow events to change you. 
    You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

  2. Forget about good. 
    Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

  3. Process is more important than outcome. 
    When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

  4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). 
    Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

  5. Go deep. 
    The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

  6. Capture accidents. 
    The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

  7. Study. 
    A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

  8. Drift. 
    Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

  9. Begin anywhere. 
    John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

  10. Everyone is a leader. 
    Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

  11. Harvest ideas. 
    Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

  12. Keep moving. 
    The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

  13. Slow down. 
    Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

  14. Don’t be cool. 
    Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

  15. Ask stupid questions. 
    Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

  16. Collaborate. 
    The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

  17. ____________________. 
    Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

  18. Stay up late. 
    Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

  19. Work the metaphor. 
    Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

  20. Be careful to take risks. 
    Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

  21. Repeat yourself. 
    If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

  22. Make your own tools. 
    Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

  23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. 
    You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

  24. Avoid software. 
    The problem with software is that everyone has it.

  25. Don’t clean your desk. 
    You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

  26. Don’t enter awards competitions. 
    Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

  27. Read only left-hand pages. 
    Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

  28. Make new words. 
    Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

  29. Think with your mind. 
    Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

  30. Organization = Liberty. 
    Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

  31. Don’t borrow money. 
    Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

  32. Listen carefully. 
    Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

  33. Take field trips. 
    The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

  34. Make mistakes faster. 
    This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

  35. Imitate. 
    Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

  36. Scat. 
    When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

  37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
  38. Explore the other edge. 
    Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

  39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. 
    Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

  40. Avoid fields. 
    Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

  41. Laugh. 
    People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

  42. Remember. 
    Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

  43. Power to the people. 
    Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

This.

(via bestnatesmithever)

I had a talk with The Man yesterday about the whole ticking clock and it was good. He is starting a new quest on the career front and we are new and schedules and such… but we both want it to work which is what matters. 

Last night the recruiter called and said the company I interviewed over the phone with on Tuesday wants me. She asked me which shift i would prefer and when I could start and said she would get back to me.. so we will see.. I am not jumping up and down just yet. Not to mention that this job is not near my house, but I would like to have a more stable job and that way The Man and I can also get into our groove. 

What is for you will not pass you. 

After I hear back from the recruiter and know more, then I will be working this evening and have to tell them.. and I am not looking forward to that conversation. 

To The Man

Dear The Man,

    I know I signed up for this relationship knowing what your ass backwards schedule was, but it is hard. I feel like I am living against the clock each day… there is time for your work (16 hours yesterday), time struggling to try and stay awake for me, time where your body just wins, time to wake up before the sun, time for myself, time for yourself, time to connect… that is the one I am missing. I feel like the time we get together is just a moment in this life before you have to leave or sleep.. and this makes me miss you even when you are around me. 

   I will do whatever I need to in order to fight this through because I truly believe you deserve that and me. I believe that we are great for each other and that I don’t want to run away from you just because of schedules.

  I don’t know how to fix this when you work 7 days a week. You have made it so easy for me to love you, but it is hard to date you. 

                           Truly,

                               The girl that still doesn’t regret knocking on your door. 

In other news…

Yesterday was my 11month VSG Post Op… 

I am down.. 84.4lb. 

I don’t really have words… but that I would like to be down by 90 in a month. 90 lbs in one year.. I’d like that a lot. 

Got a good feelin’

So i have been working non stop for a week (that was Mother’s Day and Graduations..) and I am SO GLAD I have today and tomorrow off!  

Better yet.. I am being so productive and it is not even 8am! 

I have a phone screening at 9 for a job.. a full time one! I was/am skeptical ONLY because of the location… it is 40 min with no traffic, but if i have “normal” hours.. i am driving through downtown at rush hour and not looking forward to that.. so i thought this morning… well if it comes to it.. ask to come in early! I mean The Man is up around 1 or 3 depending on the day… so we already are early to bed and I am an early bird anyway… Who knows, maybe I could work 4, 10 hour days and have 3 days off… which I also thought of how to stay at AnA part time… either way it is all going to work out. 

I applied to a job I REALLY WANT on Friday and I just emailed an old executive and asked him to put a good word in for me with his friends there.. I will do whatever I gotta do people! 

Another note- my store manager started on Sunday. Mind you we have been there without her since we opened a month ago and my assistant is on vacation right now (til tomorrow) and I just am not vibin this girl… She is all about numbers… and they preach about how we are not a numbers company but yet it is told to me like 100 times a day.. listen, I am going to sell the shit… and I always go over goal, sometimes by 3x… the product sells itself.. and i cannot control who comes in that door… so just hush and get to know us before micro-managing… 

So today’s agenda:

Phone Interview, shower, lunch with old co-worker that I miss dearly, pick up meds, go to deli, go to supermarket (grilling something tonight), MANI/PEDI and then cooking!!! 

A moment about fear

This last week, I thought about “fear’ a lot. I wondered why we have it. Why I can be the most rational person, but something about fear can just hold me by the neck at times. 

In relationships I think I struggle with it the most. Or at least feel like it is around my neck more. I feel like if i have a fear of heights, I will work on overcoming that in some logical way… like go up high.. little by little.  Fear of spiders? Inform myself.. be around a spider in a safe environment.. logically realize that I am much bigger than it.. overcome the fear. 

But how does one overcome the fear of a broken heart?  Not even a broken heart.. but the opening of an old scar. I logically was thinking while I was away that even if I came home to an email from The Man saying that he no longer wanted to be with me.. that I would still live. My life would shift some, I would change a little, I would be hurt.. and then I would be fine. Endings do that to us. But that fear that it would happen the same way as it had before.. the fear that some piece of my hope for my future would be jeopardized.. that is what is so hard for me. 

I do not say this lightly. I do believe that The Man is The One. I see myself having a life with him and a damn good one.. one filled with equality and generosity… acceptance.. communication.. loyalty.. trust.. and growth. 

I never allowed myself to think it would be here.. now. I always kept my head held high and in hopes that in my future I would find someone I felt that way about and now he is here… and the fear that it could be gone. That I could be wrong.. again. The fear that I do not get to have a happily every after WITH someone… (I totally accept that I can/will alone). 

That fear holds on to me. I haven’t discussed this with The Man at this time. This is for me to work through and there is nothing more that he could say or do that would make it instantly and forever go away. If I needed something from him, I would discuss it with him…

For now, I keep fighting my demons. Logically trying to pull apart the fact that he and this relationship are their own entities and that people don’t always leave. My future is here now. 

“The future is no place to place your better days”- Dave Matthews