#Goals

This month I challenged myself to achieve goals set by someone’s Instagram post. Seems slightly ridiculous, but it struck a chord with me. The goals seemed very achievable and focused on living in the present. I can tend to fixate on the future and abandon the present, so to intentionally spend a month trying to work on a part of myself that I know needs work, maybe isn’t that ridiculous. I’ll start off saying I didn’t meet every single goal I set for myself, however I noticed myself making new goals, work oriented goals, that were impactful. Let me start with what I did not achieve. One goal was to have a night out with friends. Let’s be honest, I’m a little bit of a grandma. I don’t go out much at all. Don’t get me wrong I love to dance, and I love wine but the older I get drinking heavily, takes a toll on me quickly. The next day my stomach is wrecked, and not even in the “hangover” way, just bloated and uneasy. Even my face bloats! However, I do see the point of that goal especially for me. Since it isn’t something I do often, I should have made more of an effort to meet this goal. I am working on doing that this month. It may seem so crazy for a young-ish girl in party city, Austin, needing to make an effort to go out, but I do. That’s the truth. The only other goal I didn’t achieve was the 24-hour social media free. I actually thought this wouldn’t be a problem! I frequently leave my phone at home or when I’m home I’ll leave it in my bedroom to disconnect from the world. For some reason this month, it just got away from me. I (foolishly) tried to plan out the month and map out when I would be doing the action items on my list. But something that is so habitual, like picking up your phone and checking Instagram or snapchat, really, I found cannot be planned.

Now for the goals I did achieve, the ones I knew wouldn’t be a problem were day to yourself, date night, breakfast meet up with friends. Those I knew I could do, it’s already a part of my monthly rotation. The older you get the more of an effort you need to make to meet your friends. If you want a long last friendship, it takes a little effort. You must try to meet up with each other and take an interest in each other lives or you will just fade out of each other lives. My date night was so fun! I planned a pottery painting activity as a well as a wine tasting! We both had an amazing time, and it was so fun doing something we had never done together. In all honesty, I took a wine education class in college and have painted pottery before, BUT we had never done it together so it counts, y’all . It was so nice to reconnect and just have fun with each other. The day outdoors goal, was also special to me since I got to spend this one with an amazing friend in a new city. We spent the entire day, exploring San Diego. The refreshing sea breeze and salty air was favorable to me, as opposed to the stagnate humid heat of Texas in the summer. The goal I was unsure I would achieve was “1 day serving others”. I interned for nonprofits in college and truly enjoyed my work for them, but typically nonprofits want a minimum of time committed to them, understandably so. I needed an organization in which I could quickly volunteer as I could and didn’t require me to commit for 6 months, or need a background check, basically anything that would prolong what I wanted to accomplish this month. How I would love to commit 6 months to helping an organization and doing good, but I just don’t have that kind of free time. Anyway, I was able to register for 2 shifts to volunteer at the Central Texas Food Bank. My job offers 8 hours for us to take to volunteer, so it was perfect. The experience was great! It was a lot of work but it felt good to know that so many people were going to be impacted by our efforts. The first shift was pretty simple, laying out cheese for sandwiches, stacking trays, and sealing food. The second shift was the hard work. In the warehouse, we were sorting through potatoes, onions and carrots. Cleaning them off, making sure they weren’t rotten and packing them in sacks to be given to families. I smelled like onions the rest of the weekend, and was sneezing for days. I got home and was so exhausted, but when they told us we worked enough to feed over 10,000 families it felt so worth it. I want to take my niece and nephew when they get old enough so that they can get the experience of hard work and the incomparable feeling of giving back.

Throughout the month I felt so determined to achieve my goals, that I started to get ambitious and set more goals. At work, I am so focused on my overall career progression that I’m doing my best to meet with anyone who would listen and hear me. I’ve been trying to pick their brains on what I should do to help myself. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and started meeting with people I did not know, and just start a conversation. I still have a lot of work to do, but I’m not sure I would have been in this mindset without starting this silly challenge. Overall this month has felt really positive to me, I’ve done things for myself and for others that was solely about positivity. I want to strive to do this every other month to keep myself present, and involved. If anyone can take anything away from this, is even the most organized person can benefit from setting a goal, and feeling of accomplishment kept me accountable in many other areas of my life. Who doesn’t need that in their life? Please share your feedback! Are there goals you want to accomplish this month? Are there some you think I should try? I'd love to hear what you think!

Thank You for Reading...

UN-DATEABLE Vol.2

A few years ago I ended a 10 year friendship with someone. This person was a staple in my life, we were, at one point, inseparable. There's no denying we had chemistry and a connection even we could not explain. I met him when I was 15 and we instantly became friends. Often, people would question if we were dating, and we prided ourselves on telling them no, we were just great friends. He knew my family and became friends with all of my friends. Eventually, we did cross the friendship boundary and everything changed. We held on as long as possible and tried to convince ourselves we could continue the friendship, but nothing was ever the same. The friendship strained along for many more years. We lived in different cities so it wasn't hard to disconnect occasionally, but when we would reconnect we fell in to old habits. I will say, I think a big part of it for me was I liked who I was when I was around him. I felt more fun, more relaxed and free. There was definitely some heavy drinking involved in our friendship and some partying. However, we also bonded over music. I'd share my latest obsession and it would quickly become his. Ultimately, as some things do, the friendship began to fall apart. What happened is not really important, and not the point of this story, but our friendship ended. Abruptly. We stopped talking to each other and never saw each other again...until one day. 

It had been almost a year to the day, ( I remember this because when we stopped talking it was approaching his birthday), that I had a dream of him. I don't quite remember the dream exactly, but I remember him introducing me to a new girlfriend. I woke up feeling weird, as I had not dreamed, or even really thought, of this person in so long. I just shrugged it off and went to work. At work, I told my co-workers I wanted some Tex-Mex. I wanted some from a particular restaurant I NEVER go to. I don't know why, but I had the strongest craving for this specific restaurant.  Everyone at work was in, and asked me to place the order and I agreed, I'd pick it up. It wasn't even convenient to the office, but we were all excited. I called the place and someone picked up to take my order, and their name was the same name of my old friend, and sounded like him too. My stomach dropped, and after placing the order I told my coworker what I just heard. I told her about the dream, as well and we just decided it must be that he was on my mind. I convinced myself, there was no way it could be him, so I gathered my things and drove to pick up the food. The whole drive there, I kept wondering, could it of really of been him? "There's no way", I told myself. As I approached the restaurant my heart started to beat faster and more heavily. I reached the door, and lo and behold, there he was. His mouth dropped and eyes bulged. I probably didn't look as shocked as he did as I was half preparing myself for that very moment on the drive over. He was literally the attendee in which I needed to pick up my food from so he could not of been avoided. We said "Hi", and "How are you doing?". He stared at me with his head resting on his hand. My hand was trembling, as I was trying to sign the receipt. He promptly asked me, "Do you feel awkward?" My response was a cold, "Yes." He responded by saying " Don't feel awkward, we're cool". He told me he is loving living in Austin now and that he is thinking of starting a band, something we always joked we'd do. I just looked at him and said "that's cool". I won't lie, I was angry at the way things left off, I was genuinely hurt and heartbroken. I probably came off so rude and aloof, but I couldn't wait to leave. We just looked at each other and said goodbye. We both understood, that we had no intentions of reconnecting. I collected my things, and myself and drove off.

I could not wait to return to work to tell my co worker, what had just happened. I walked in, and announced, "Well, Guess What!?". I remember as trying to tell her the story, dropping my keys twice on the floor. Still in disbelief, I called my best friend who knew everything about the situation, and at one point friends with him as well. I knew she would fully comprehend how insane this was. I recall her saying that it was probably closure. I laughed, and said that "That was the worst f-ing closure story, ever. 'Do you feel awkward' is all I get after 10 years?!" She persisted that regardless of the quality of closure, this was probably a good thing for both of us. I did tell her, that I didn't feel anything when I saw him, other than anger, but as far as feelings, those were gone. 

Looking back, my friend was right. It was closure. It wasn't perfect, and not something you see in a romantic comedy, but it was closure, whatever that means. As crazy as it was, almost a year to the day that we last spoke, we happened to run in to each other and face one another, with no intent of seeing each other again, and have not since. A couple months later, I pushed myself to date again and I got into the relationship I am in now. I truly believe, it was the push I needed to completely move on and let go of that phase in my life. I'm no longer angry, and only wish him the best. What's for damn sure, is that I NEVER went to that restaurant again. 

What are your thoughts on closure, is it healthy or not? Share below!