Cup of Holiday Cheer

Being that December is right around the corner, I wanted to share a bit of holiday joy with you all:

This is my pup, Bebe, when I got her two years ago. She weighed one and a half pounds and fit perfectly in this Christmas wine glass! Today she is a healthy 4 pounds and just as lovable as she was when I first got her, if not more!

Enjoy

On a bad day.

Amy

so dont apologize for being human. everyone has good days and bad days. friends are the ones that are around for both.

plus if you were suzy sunshine 24/7 youd be boring and we wouldnt talk lmao.

And this is why I love her.

I like me, as me.

Lately, I’ve been telling myself I need a muse. That I lack creative inspiration. That this rut I’m in will all change when the time is right. But what I really need to tell myself is far different from that.

I need to convince myself that being me, unoriginal, uncreative, silent, calm is okay. That taking time to focus on the little things that comprise my life is acceptable. And maybe, just maybe, that I’m perfectly fine just being me.

I don’t need to have thousands of Twitter followers, hundreds of blog hits, or the most original website design on the World Wide Web yet to date.

I can be me, little ole Angela, wrapped up in a blanket on my balcony, cuddling with my sick puppy dog, drinking a hot chocolate in the middle of August, and still be likable.

I need to slow down and stop looking for me and realize that I am here, right now, and I should accept me in all my glory. No one else will do that for me.

Sure, does it feel good when someone I’ve never met before recognizes me from my Twitter handle, or from the work I’ve done? Yea. It does. It feels really cool to be known. recognized. seen. But there’s way more to life, at least for me, than by spreading myself thin trying to run in as many social circles as possible.

I’m lovable and awesome just being me.

And I say this now with full confidence, ask me again tomorrow and I bet I’ll be back to picking out my flaws with a magnifying glass. Til then…

Dear Self:

I love you.

Lacking.

Lately, something has been lacking. Something about my life, has been off.

I try to not be superstitious, but I am. And today’s horoscope perfectly describes my restlessness:

You may have a strong yearning to learn about something completely different or to travel to someplace very far away. Unfortunately, it’s more pressing for you to focus on the mundane side of your life, such as paying bills, being responsible at work and honoring your personal commitments. Don’t worry about losing touch with your dreams; you’ll get your chance to follow a more distant star later if you deal with what’s right in front of you now.

Yupp. More soon.

Creatively Challenged.

Sometimes I just feel really lame.

Maybe it’s the field I’m in. I’m in a field that changes daily with new, inspiring things happening all around me. Creative, new, catchy, exciting things are being built by my friends EVERY day and  I feel like I’m just floating around in this vast sea of awesomeness but not actually contributing to it.

In college, I always had ideas. Then I graduated, and realized I’m not as sweet as I think I am. In fact, I’m pretty damn average.

Nothing about me stands out, nothing I do is making a huge difference in the world, and I have no awesome brainchild project to be gallivanting around town talking about.

My friends = sweet.

Me = blahhh.

Maybe I’m in a creative slump, or maybe I need to allow my brain to adjust to all my crazy life changes before lightbulbs start going off.

But I don’t wanna wait.

I wanna be awesome NOW. I wanna catch someone’s attention TODAY. I wanna impress the hell out of someone in some fashion, and SOON.

And yes, I realize those are all things I need to make happen, but when my brain refuses to function and come up with sweet things, I remain unsweet.

Oh gods of creative coolness, please help me get rid of this mental block I have and fix me. I wanna go back to being awesome and proud!!

Yeah.

Can’t live with em, can’t live without em

Here I am, going through my day to day tasks and constantly dwelling on the one person in the world that I want who I can’t have. But lately, I look around and two very stable, very strong relationships have been severely tested. Two good friends of mine have boyfriends whom they’ve been with for a really long time. BOTH men have been tempted by evil slutty witches lately, and both have acted out of line.

In case you’ve seen the movie, “Two Can Play That Game”… this is the part where Shante describes what warm weather does to men, ‘they start to show they asses’. Tramps walking around in their little barely-there outfits, trying to steal other girls’ good men… yea, warm weather tends to fuck with all relationships.

So why do I so badly want one? I’m a catch, and I don’t look horrid in a bathing suit. I should be out every weekend just living up the single life… but no. I’m unhappy. And so are my friends.

Men.

Can’t live with em, can’t live without em.

It’s bad luck to be superstitious.

I so suck at relationships.

I was with my last serious boyfriend for almost four years and we broke up well over a year ago. To this day, he’s my best friend and if I just asked, he would be get back together with me and probably propose on the spot. But something just is missing. He’s not everything I want, though he is close.

On November 5, I met someone who had every quality I thought I wanted. He was professional, mature, older, gorgeous, funny, sensitive… okay, okay, I’m stopping myself. Point is, I was ecstatic to find someone who, I thought, was totally compatible. Problem is, in January he was moving to another state for his job. Naturally, I tried to prepare myself by pushing him away because I knew once he left, it was over. But this son of a bee, tells me he wants me to stay in his life, that he cares more for me than he ever expected, and that he didn’t see why we shouldn’t try. After he left, he even went to so far as to pick out a weekend for me to fly out and see him. I asked him one day if he would mind talking to me because I was worried that things weren’t the same between us and that we may have been wasting time. I just wanted to talk, all we had was communication, I couldn’t go see him and force him to talk to me, all I had was a phone.

Well, I should have, and probably could have, guessed what would happen next. He stopped answering my calls, returning my texts, and a week after blatantly giving me the cold shoulder, he told me to stay out of his life. Hey you, color blind kid, in case you ever read this, you’re the most selfish human being I’ve ever met.

Needless to say, he hasn’t spoken a word to me since.

I thought I wanted a guy who put his career first, a guy who could balance his professional and personal life. And maybe, maybe this guy can do just that. But he didn’t for me, and he lead me on to believe that he would. He wrote me a note before he left, telling me that I taught him how to be unselfish- because I always made sure he considered seeing his friends or family before me (and rightfully so, he barely knew me and he was about to move away from the people who have loved him for years) but in all honestly, he learned nothing about selflessness.

Maybe I should have been more selfish. Maybe I should have never gotten involved. Maybe if I called him right now, he would explain everything and there would be a perfect, beautiful, rational explanation as to how the hell this situation could be justified… but then again, maybe not.

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve flipped a coin, shook my magic 8 ball, or picked a lucky heads up penny up off the ground, hoping it would give me an insight as to why this happened. Bottom line is, superstition isn’t going to get me anywhere.

This all happened months ago, and I’m still baffled. Maybe I need to stop shaking my magic 8 ball for the answer, and maybe I need to stop thinking about MAYBEs… because a what if and a maybe won’t change what is.

My life did not end, and while I’m going through a lot of personal shit, I’m damn proud of what I’ve accomplished since he left. Still, I’m waiting for the day to come when he doesn’t cross my mind.

I babysat this weekend for some of my favorite children and in the middle of watching The Princess Diaries 2 with Livy, I forgot where I was and blurted out ‘Where is my prince charming?’ Livy didn’t miss a beat and said, ‘You’re not a princess’. Thank you, Disney, for making it seem impossible for an ordinary girl with flaws to get a great man. But guess what, I’m still gonna look for him. And so should you, every one deserves to be happy and to find someone who wants you to be happy.

In case you haven’t thought about this lately,

You’re beautiful. Inside and out.

How Personal is Personal? (Cross-post)

Today I posted this to my public blog, the one that I allow employers and such to see (and the one that I much less frequently update) but I felt that it deserved a posting on here as well… so here it goes:

One question that constantly needs addressing in the social media world is the question of personal versus professional interaction.

Especially lately with all the uproar over Facebook’s privacy policies, I’ve always been one to blend my personal and professional lives on my social media accounts. Even now with my current position, when commissioners request to friend me on Facebook, usually I tell them that I don’t have anything to hide and I don’t mind accepting their requests. Because in all honesty, I really don’t. I don’t party hard, I don’t engage in embarrassing activities after work hours, and I have found that my friends are all people I really am proud to say I know.

However.

Last Friday, something happened in my life that I could not bring myself to share with everyone. I wanted to tell close friends, but I could not do so without alerting everyone in my social networks. I chose my words carefully, and I posted very little to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. All I wanted to do though, was break down and tell a few close friends and family what was really going on and how much I genuinely needed support.

My 20 year old cousin very unexpectedly passed away and my entire life was put on hold. I don’t exaggerate when I say my family is my rock and when something such as death breaks our strength, my whole world came to a stop even as life went on.

So.

This past weekend has propelled me to question just how ‘personal’ I am on these social networks. Yes, I accept both professional and personal friend requests and yes, I do post content that relates to my job as well as my life as a recent college grad, but really… I’m not sure if I’m genuinely close with 90% these people.

In a time where I needed love and support from just a few select close contacts, I found that my networks were TOO big and TOO impersonal. In other words, while I use social media for personal as well as professional interactions, these networks are not my real personal connection to people.

* Thanks to those who gave their love and support over this past week. I truly appreciate it.

No.

Yesterday, my 20 year old cousin passed away.

She survived cancer.

No one saw this coming.

I didn’t make it home from Lansing in time.

It’s Memorial Day weekend.

We had to break the news to my grandparents.

The scene of my grandparents falling apart will forever be burned into my memory.

I want my cousin back.

I’ve never seen my uncle cry before.

My cousin, her brother, quit his job when she passed.

Her boyfriend was going to propose.

I’m going to take time off work and social media for a while.

My family is in shambles.

I want my cousin back.

Sometimes, life is not fair.

Frog Collection

I had lunch today with a very good friend. I’m not sure how it happens, and I never try to talk about this, but our conversations usually ALWAYS return to karma and the powers at work in the world.

It started as an innocent conversation about his relationship with his boyfriend, and my last semi-relationship with *jackass* and turned to psychics. From psychics, we got to talking about karma and from karma, I learned the most basic, simplistic truth I’ve ever heard.

He said to me:

It’s like when you were a kid. You might have a frog collection, but unless you tell people that you’re collecting frogs, no one will ever give you one.

And that right there is the most beautiful truth in the world. I can want a man who has certain qualities, and I have ideals about the kind of life I want to live, but unless I express my desires and put myself in situations to make those things come true, they never will. If you want good things to happen, you have to get the ball rolling. And that my friends, is karma.

Now… I don’t collect frogs (I collect Snow Babies, if you’re curious) – but I do firmly believe in karma. So remember, if you want something- let it be known. Why not start right now and tell me what you want- what is your ‘frog collection’?