Sometimes, it takes some harsh words to finally snap out of a funk.

I was daydreaming today about homes … which included a few (more than a few?) google searches and virtual tours and floor plans and gallery browses.  And since it hasn’t been the most uplifting week, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into self-pity.

Why wasn’t I where I wanted to be … why hadn’t I achieved what I wanted to achieve … why did everything feel so difficult, so challenging?

And then I wallowed some more.

Driving home, instead of listening to a good book and escaping into another world, I called the man and wallowed some more, sniffling and hiccupping into the phone.  He spoke purposefully but with compassion.  He said “Becoming miserable can happen to anyone. Staying miserable is our own fault.”

And he said it again as we met each other’s gaze over the kitchen island.

And I knew he was SO right.

The thing is, last year, as we launched into 2013, I thought so much about staying upbeat ~ about meeting my diagnosis head on and not allowing it to control me, or ruin me.

And then somewhere along the way, I lost that outlook.  I’m pretty sure it was when I broke my foot ~ which is sad, because that happened nearly seven months ago.  My attitude was compounded by other health stuff … which might have been triggered by my poor attitude.  Basically a vicious cycle of ‘ugh.’

Even just snapping out of it tonight has made me, in a small way, feel lighter.  It really is such a mental battle.  It’s about finding the positive, and working toward betterment rather than focusing on the negative and always seeing the short-comings.  I think being negative is so much easier ~ it stems from insecurity and feeling slighted or as though an injustice has been done.  It’s harder to always work for the good.  (Sidenote:  My acting teaching in college was big on ‘por los buenos’ … aka, for the good.  All character motivation was working por los buenos ~ something that helped make seemingly dark or bad characters have believable motivation and depth).  But the thing is, quality of life exists when focusing on life’s blessings rather than life’s curses.  And as difficult as that may be, I think with practice, it will get easier.  And hopefully both I and my beloved husband can find our way back to a better mental place.

Some days are harder than other days.

Recently, I’ve had a string of bad days and it’s hard to recover from that.

Last night I said to John ~ “Sometimes, after a difficult day, or a grueling meeting, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror I’m surprised that I’m not the ugliest hag of a troll with no brain whatsoever.  Because after spending too much time listening to how certain people talk to me, it’s hard to imagine NOT being the dumbest, ugliest, most clueless person ever.  Since that’s how I’m treated.”  And that can basically sum up a certain percentage of my days at work.

I think we all probably have days like that.  And then we come home, and make a comforting dinner, pour a restorative glass of wine, curl up to watch “Downton Abbey” … and for just a moment, things don’t seem so bad anymore.

And then the next day arrives with frightening speed.  And it just keeps happening … over, and over and over again.

It’s hard not to find some of one’s identity in the work we do, in the days spent with the same people ~ not, perhaps people that we would choose to socialize with, but people who make up the bigger picture of ‘work.’  And our self-confidence comes from that, from how well we do our jobs, from the feedback, from the way co-workers treat and interact with you.

But then there are those moments, when work has been challenging and long and exhausting, and you’re finally done, and sitting around with the group of people you’ve put all the blood sweat and tears in with … and there’s a camaraderie and an understanding.  And you know that even if you get annoyed or frustrated or just plain sick of these people, in the end, you all have each other’s back.  You’re friends on a different level, friends who all “get it.”  And that’s what makes all the other b.s. worth it.

Sometimes my brain catches a thought, and starts rolling with it … and then all of a sudden, I’m remembering things I haven’t thought of in years.

It can be a good thing ~ a fun thing.  Remembering the neighbor’s yard when I was five, and the three large stones that as kids, we named.  Thinking about the forts that my brother and I built in his closet when we lived in New Jersey, or the games we used to play on the staircases ~ ravenous crocodiles and alligators lurking on the bottom steps.

On the other hand, sometimes I remember things I’m not really proud of ~ moments in life when I wish I’d made a different decision, said a different thing, walked a different way.  Those trains of thought are uncomfortable, and humbling.

Something I began contemplating this morning was the idea of friendship.  I have had my fair share of friendships ~ good, bad, superficial, meaningful.  I guess it applies to relationships, too.  Some of my friendships have ended because I walked away, some because I was left and some were just mutual.  But isn’t it amazing, as life keeps rambling along, which friends have been around for most of the journey?

And, more pointedly, which are not?

I like being in my thirties ~ I feel more settled, more focused, more true to who I am.  I think, for most of my twenties I forgot ~ and after I forgot, I allowed (or couldn’t control?) my insecurities to run rampant and make (many) terrible decisions.  I think ~ once you lose your direction, your focus ~ if you don’t have good people around you, it’s really hard to find your way back.

And for a lot of time in my twenties, I didn’t have very good people around me.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate.  I’m sure to other people some of my former friends were, are and will continue to be good people.  But they weren’t good people or good friends to me.  And as I thought about all of that today, I got really disappointed in myself.

I very clearly remembered having moments when I wondered what happened to me ~ what happened to the person I’d been ‘before,’ the things I’d cared about and valued.  Thinking about those years of confusion and darkness was almost… sad.  And, while it doesn’t make me feel a lot better, thinking it through now makes it easier to see how I’d fallen into such a bad place   Some people head down a bad path, and never recover.  Potential is lost, and a human life becomes a cautionary tale.  I think there was a moment when I could have become stuck.  But I didn’t.  And even though remembering some of the things I did and decisions I made make me want to crawl into  a dark hole and never emerge, I guess I’m also glad that a point came when i decided I was done wasting my life away.

Friends are important.  Of course, family is as well, but friendship is something different, something precious.  I feel as though I’ve finally arrived at a place in my life when none of my friendships are toxic.  In a way, it’s sad that women are as vicious as we are ~ on the other hand, I know that the friends I have now are real, and true.  And they know and like the person I am ~ not the broken shell of a person people took advantage of for most of my twenties.

I’m glad to be where I am now.  I think I might not have found myself here if I hadn’t struggled through my twenties, fallen a thousand times and finally gotten back up the thousand and first.  But thinking too hard about it still hurts a little.  I could focus on the positive ~ I got through it, am a little bit stronger, a little bit smarter and a lot more aware of who I am.  But sometimes thinking of how many bad decisions I made, people I trusted … shudders.

On the plus side, it was all in the past.  And remembering it will hopefully help me from making those mistakes again.

Sometimes, when I’m alone, and sort of in my head, I see something, a moment happens, and I wish I could capture it with words.  I thought ~ maybe to get back to writing, to get back to hearing that creative voice in my head, I’d share some of those moments.

This was today.

It was early evening, the sun sinking in the sky, leaving swirls of rosy pinks and powder blues precipitating the inky darkness of a midwinter’s night.  I was driving home from the city, winding my way down the ribbon of Kelly Drive along the Schuylkill.  The river looked like glass with huge expanses covered in nearly transparent patches of ice.  Life felt calm, clear and crisp ~ like the air outside.

Yesterday, as I took yet another break in my day to flip mindlessly through my phone, I realized that social media had once again begun eating up my life.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy scrolling through photos and seeing the way people I know view the world ~ their likes, experiences, children, adventures. Or sharing what I believe are adorable pics of my man, my pup, my life.  It’s great.  And I love being on top of the news via 140 characters. Or ‘shouting out into the universe’ random, sometimes pithy things that are on my mind. I even like old school FB, and reading people’s thoughts on, well, everything. Sometimes, I even share my own.  I love all of those things.

But here’s the flip side ~ the reason that I took social media off my phone.  Because on some level, I find it a little creepy.  There are people I haven’t seen in years, and through FB I know all about them … and yet, not because I’m in touch, or because they necessarily know that I’m reading all their updates (even though they are putting them out there for all to see) … but because I can, theoretically, know all about a person via their social media profile without putting any effort whatsoever into maintaining a friendship.  On top of that, instead of being ‘in‘ my life, I have moments when I take a picture, or type a thought that is nearly completely unrelated to anything I am doing ~ it just seemed photo/tweet-worthy.  So then, all of a sudden, I’m living my life for Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook.

I find all that a little weird.  And a little uncomfortable when I think too much about it.

And then I realize that instead of talking to the real, live people around me, I’m being anti-social and involved with my phone … and that just compounds the weird, uncomfortable thing.

Our culture is changing ~ that’s inevitable, and it’s, well, life.  Today I interviewed a man who was hoping, after finishing college, to study the psychology of social media on this first, incredibly technology-based generation.  Which I found fascinating, and so on point after my deletion of social media on my phone.  But it also made me wonder ~ are we on a path that will require social media to interact?  Is that where society is headed?  No longer knowing people face-to-face, but instead knowing the image they project through their online profile(s).

Listen, I’m not quitting completely ~ that would be crazy (especially in my line of work ~ and doesn’t that emphasize how important those avenues are after short amount of time in existence?).  But I do think that I allowed online living to take precedence when it shouldn’t ~ so now, when I have WiFi on my iPad, I’ll catch up on my feeds.  But otherwise, I want to spend time reading, and writing, and plunking away on my new keyboard.  And hopefully that means that the relationships I have are real, and when someone tells me a story, I haven’t already read/seen it online.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned.  But I’m okay with that.

Cheers to 2013; the memories, the accomplishments, the celebrations and the love.

And cheers to 2014 ~ a blank book whose pages we get to write each day.  I hope that my writing is clear, that my thoughts are my own, that my intentions are honorable and that my achievements are earned with dignity.

I am blessed with a wonderful husband, an amazingly perfect pup, a supportive and inspirational family, a challenging yet (usually) fulfilling career, incredible women as friends and a brain full of goals and imagination.

I’m looking forward to coming back to this space ~ to cook, to think, to share and to contemplate.  I wish everyone wonderful journeys in the days ahead.