Building Rome

A holiday can be the perfect window of time to reexamine your life from afar. Free days spent wandering through another city, listening to a different language, and exploring the way others live has always made me consider how I live and how I most want to live.  

This past week, I was in a city that is practically sacred to me: Amsterdam. After several months there studying during university, I was overwhelmed with inspiration and desire. It affected the rest of my university career activities and I quickly returned to graduate school and began working in international education. I moved to Boston and cultivated a lifestyle that incorporated European ideals and American realism (and a lot of cheese). Not every dream came true, but not every dream is meant to.  I was - and am - very lucky for these opportunities and experiences.

IT had been six years since my first time in Amsterdam, in Europe, abroad, alone. And while it felt like coming home when I walked out of Centraal Station and into the canals, I had become so much more of myself in those half a dozen years.

My wanderlust is monumental; I know I will go back to Amsterdam and to a multitude of other places. For now I face the reexamining of my ‘real’ life: my career, my relationships, my daily habits, good and bad. I want to change and grow and accomplish so much. I’ve carried home hundred of photographs and ideas, bits of writing and more Dutch vocabulary, and I want to fulfill every dream I stumbled across in those canals. But instead, I can’t stop weeping. The goals I set for myself always seem a few steps ahead, just out of reach. There are so many things I wish to do and complete, but I fall short more days than not. Notoriously hard on myself, I wake up each morning convinced I’ve been reborn and today will be the day I do everything i set out to do and ultimately - inevitably - i am disappointed.

This morning the idiom “Rome wasn’t built in a day” drifted into my head as I surveyed the teetering piles of paperwork covering my desk. I thought of the half un-packed bags at home and the unmade dinner and my lack of muscle definition and I finally realized the answer: patience.  Seemingly so simple and obvious, but in the modern rush to be everything to everybody and have really nice hair, I had gotten overwhelmed and tried to do it all at once. Nothing beautiful or great comes into existence immediately; masterpieces do not materialize out of thin air. Be it a novel or a truly great painting or just a decently organized house, I could not accomplish any of them without putting in the time. And in putting in the time, allowing myself time. There is not one half-decent book written in 12 hours nor a perfectly appointed house decorated just right as soon as one moves in; how could I expect to accomplish either?

So I aim to be kinder and more reasonable to myself. I know I will fail at that, and fall back into writing lists of lists and trying to outshine Martha Stewart / J.K. Rowling / the Duchess of Cambridge. And I know I will inevitably outpace myself and let myself down again; old habits die hard.  But hopefully I can remember that like Rome, I wasn’t built in a day either.

 

27 Things I learned by 27

Today is my 27th birthday, I am officially in my late 20s. Since college graduation five light years ago, I've moved to Boston, got a M.A., got engaged, bought a condo, got married, and the list goes on and on. I am more settled in a lot of ways than my friends but I am still dreaming of other places, paths, and goals. And so...

27 Things I Learned in 27 Years

1. College may have been great or it may have been terrible, but it's over. Be grateful and move on.
2. You can no longer party like you could in college, no matter how hard you try.
3. Money (or lack thereof) dictates a lot. Live within your means, save something, think ahead.
4. Of course, don't let finances take you away from the things you love. Think outside the box.
5. Travel. Before you have kids and a dog or senior family members. It doesn't matter where, just go.
6. "I regret reading so many books" said no one ever. READ.
7. Keep learning. A class in beer brewing totally counts.
8.  Hydrate well, it can be the difference between feeling good and feeling terrible.
9. Please don't drink soda. Or at least try to drink less of it. It's not worth it. (Beer is an acceptable substitute).

10. Establish routines that are all your own. Revel in your independence. Enjoy being free.
11. Love comes to you when you least expect it. Cliche but true. Be open to the universe.
12. It's okay to be single now. It's okay to be married now. You are the master of your life, don't allow other people's definitions of relationships bring you down.
13. Wear sunscreen (Remember this?) You'll be glad you did.
14. People change and friendships with them. Try to keep in touch with the people that make you happy.
15. You may  hate your job / field / career path now, but try to make it work. And if it doesn't work, change.
16. You cannot make anyone happy. That's for them to do. Don't despair over what isn't your failing.
17. Inversely, no one can make you happy but yourself. Choose happiness everyday.
18. Pick your caffeine weapon of choice. You will need it more and more.

19. Buy things that are beautiful and useful. And sometimes that means they will be expensive.
20. Money matters but it's not everything. You can always make more.
21. It's easier to find a job when you have one.
22. Never underestimate the power of a good blazer. It's like my office armor.
23. Take more walks. It can be the start to a great adventure.
24. Challenge yourself, but not in the "power hour" type of challenge.
25.  Do something ridiculous and don't regret it. (Unless it gets you arrested).
26. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
27. Make all the years 'the best years of your life'
 

 

 Found via pinterest, http://observando.net/post/30931656500

Writing Prompt # 974

I have been working on writing more often and was happy to discover a whole site of writing prompts (that were not of the high school standardized test variety...)

Using Prompt 974  from Easy Street Prompts, , I had these nine word / phrases to work with:

overthrown - crustaceous swimmer - marinated

trivialized -  inconvenient pedant  - convict

outlaw - immaculate crumbs - schoolmarm

This is the type of writing exercise I need since it gives me structure and a concrete goal.  I will surely be doing more of these and probably will post a few along the way.

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The schoolmarm stood on the creaky front porch, hand to her forehead as she peered out over the sea.  The wind whipped her faded dress around her thin legs.  The stone gray sea that lay beyond the cottage’s walls looked cold and impersonal.  A single crustaceous swimmer scuttled from rock to rock, slipping and clinging to the earth like a frantic crab. 

The schoolmarm surveyed the endless waters once more, acutely disapproving of the lone swimmer’s poor choice of behavior before she turns and disappeared back inside. 

People like that trivialized life, she thought sourly.  She believed nothing was trivial and everything profound, from the smallest creature to the largest gesture.  The only time she felt otherwise was in church on Sundays, when she had to admit that everything other than GOD was a bit trivial.  She always felt like an outlaw, realizing she had forgotten about God in the days between Sunday and Sunday.  But she asked for forgiveness and received it in the host; those immaculate crumbs brought relief that smoothed out the guilt.

The pastor watched the schoolmarm enter the worn pews of his church and leave them every Sunday morning service.  She was a faithful devotee in his eyes and he wished he knew of her faith more personally.  He longed to reach out and lay his gentle hand on the faded sleeve of her dress, slowing her departure.  He would have liked to talk to her about God and faith and life and death, but a tiny voice inside his head balked and he knew in any moment alone with her, he would prove to be an inconvenient pedant and his attentions overthrown.

He watched her come into church and he watched her go out.  He often gazed out his study window as he sat at his desk and hoped that God would lead her past his door.  He wrote each sermon for her, at least one line or verse wholly dedicated to her.  He marinated his mind and soul in the words of the bible but ultimately he was soaked through with thoughts of her. 

He exhaled as she slipped out the chapel door and turned left.  He knew her rituals as he knew his own, and they would both take tea now in solitude to contemplate the word of the Lord they had both just heard.  He would think of her and the Lord; he was her convict.

The schoolmarm tightened her shawl around her thin shoulders and turned into the wind toward home.  She would soon sit down to tea.  She anticipated its warmth and thanked God for that and nothing else.