Chin Up, Beautiful

I was looking through my journal, as I sometimes do, and I came across a nice passage:

"If I've learned anything this past year, it's that time goes by slowly, but yet again all too quickly. You never know who you're going to meet, or what will happen tomorrow. So chin up, beautiful. It's going to be a good day."

At the end of January 2012, one of my best friends insisted I keep a journal that only spoke of positive things. The journal started with this rule:

Don't write anything negative in here.

This is all about love and personal growth and getting back up.

Fill it with beautiful images, reaffirming thoughts and quotes.

Write in it every day and each day write something you're grateful for.

It was the first time I kept a journal with the intention of staying positive, and it's the only journal I've made it past the halfway point with. See, I used to write only negative things, or things that bugged me, and eventually, you just get tired of all the negativity. Since I started this journal, I've felt myself not only being more positive, but also being more self-confident and more able to see the good in everyone and be happy when others are happy.

If I feel myself going negative, I open the journal. If I can't write, I read. It's filled with color and glitter and smiley faces. It's my happy place. Well, that and a little ruler I have that has dancing penguins on it. 

The thing is, I didn't realize until today just how much of an effect this journal has had on the way I choose to live my life. It was a simple suggestion from a friend, and I owe a lot to her. So, as of today, I'm accepting donations to help me move to Chicago (just kidding on that donations bit...). I love Orlando, but I want a change, and I want to be closer to my best friend, Carly. I can't move until after my lease is up, and I have no idea what direction my career will be heading... but I need a goal and a dream, and that's Chicago right now.

So, for now, chin up, beautiful, it's going to be a beautiful day.

The Facebook Hills of Beans

Most people have songs randomly stuck in my head. While that happens often for me, I also get random movie quotes stuck in there as well. Today, while cleaning my apartment, the same quote from Casablanca kept popping up:

"I'm not at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

So, I stuck the movie in the player and spent the afternoon humming As Time Goes By.

This past week I deactivated my facebook for the first time since I created it back in high school. I removed it from my phone, from my Kindle, and from anywhere else that might tempt me to reactivate. It felt good not to be so connected. Even reactivating it, I'm keeping it off my phone. 

Now, there were certainly some drawbacks. I realized after I deactivated that it was my only connection to some friends living abroad that I still need to message back. Breaks at work were spent staring idly at my phone instead of scrolling through facebook updates. 

What I enjoyed, however, was that I couldn't share my random thoughts with everyone as freely. As you see, I didn't update my blog at all last week either. It all comes back to this quote: "[my] problems... don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." We spend so much time checking who's in what relationship, what pictures were posted, what everyone thought of this week's Bachelorette... sometimes I think we forget that there are more important things, or become too absorbed in distracting ourselves. 

I'll still argue that facebook can be a great communication tool. I, myself, have used it to broadcast poor road conditions or solicit prayers for causes. Let's not forget, it's a great way to keep in touch with lost friends. 

So, I reactivated, with the intention of perhaps not taking over the news feed with my own little hill of beans. Facebook, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

On Love Letters

I was watching the Sex and the City movie and there's a scene where Carrie is reading love letters from great men, like Napoleon and Beethoven. Carrie chides Big for never writing her love letters, and he mentions that of course the great men of the past wrote them, because they were always far away from their loves.

It got me thinking, how romance has kind of gone out the window with technology. I mean, some people fall in love with someone they meet online, hundreds, thousands of miles away sometimes. They then get upset if they don't talk every day or see each other through Skype. With planes and cars it's easier to go visit, even on a whim. In this age of technology, we get almost too attached, because why should we deny ourselves? Instant gratification-it's expected these days.

But what happened in that time when "business trips" took months? Letters were all they had. In this day and age, you stick two people in those same circumstances and I can't help but think they would almost definitely cheat on each other if the opportunity presented itself.

It's the romantic side of me, but just the idea that someone is far away, thinking about you, writing you letters, well, who wouldn't want that? So of course, in our minds, we yearn for love letters, it's the idea of them that makes us swoon. But these days, it seems all but impossible that a relationship can survive off of just that.

How did they do it back then? And would you consider those relationships stronger than modern-day attachments?

PS: If anyone wants my new mailing address, just let me know ;-)

=P

There's a Lot of Beauty in Ordinary Things... Isn't that Kind of the Point?

One day in college my roommate asked me if I had ever watched The Office. She put on one of the episodes of Season 2, The Injury, and the rest, as they say, is history. Most Thursdays for the next five years I would buckle down with friends, family, my dog and even my own musings to watch a seemingly mundane show about a paper company. Better yet, for someone who can't fall asleep without something on in the background, The Office became my lullaby. Jim and Pam were the fairytale I fell asleep to every night.

The cast of The Office says that everyone thinks they're Jim and Pam, when really they're Kelly and Ryan. And as much as I love Jim and Pam's story, I've always been pretty good at doing impressions of Kelly. I'd like to think I'm somewhere in the middle between the two. See, I can point to that moment in my life where I ran across the hot coal and spoke my mind to those who needed to hear it. I can also talk just as much as Kelly can about romantic comedies and the order they might show up in Netflix.

I won't spoil the ending of The Office for anyone. I won't say who came back or what was said or what happened to everyone's favorite characters. I'll just say that it was absolutely perfect. It was the best send-off any fan could ask for. Better yet, it reminds us that our lives are so much more than what other people might see. It reminds us that we keep on living, even when no one's watching.

Like I said, it was perfect.

To Let Go, and to Let God

Let go, and let God. This is what we said in youth group. It sounded inspirational, so we kept repeating it, again, and again. Stressing too much over a test? Let go and let God. Afraid of falling and hurting yourself during the ski trip? Let go and let God. Holding onto a grudge? Let go and let God. It sounds right enough at least. The thing is, the more we say it, the less we practice it. Take that first example: You're studying for a test, going crazy trying to cram more info into your head, because you waited until the last minute. You couldn't control yourself enough to study beforehand, so now you're trying to control your grade. You hear "Let go, and let God" and you're calm. You think, yes, He'll take care of this for me. And that's when you're most controlling. You're not letting go, you're trying to get God to do what you should have done yourself. You're controlling a whole different entity. And then you get mad at Him when it doesn't go your way.

To Let Go is to accept that things may not go the way you plan. In fact, they might get worse. Picture yourself hanging on a cliff, and you can't see the bottom. If you let go, you might fall into water or it might not be that bad of a drop... or you might die. Letting go is accepting your fate, whatever it's destined to be.

To Let God is to trust. This doesn't mean that letting go of that cliff will definitely result in you being just fine. This means that you've come to peace with what He has chosen for you. You're letting him take the wheel, as Carrie Underwood would say, and you trust that He has a reason and a purpose for everything that happens in your life.

To Let Go and To Let God means relinquishing all control. It means becoming a piece of driftwood and allowing yourself to be taken and changed by the environment around you. It's difficult. Myself, a planner, a slight control-freak... to let go and to let God scares me more than the Evil Dead. Knowing what you need to do and taking that first leap, letting go... well, there's a lot of time between those two steps. So, for now, I'm holding on to my control, because I'm not ready yet to drift in the water, to be taken to unknown places... I'm holding on, and I'm praying up until that moment when I'm truly ready to Let God.

Reflection

This is potentially the most candid I'll get on this blog (and that's saying something), so read on at your own risk.

High School - Very self-conscious about my
body... hiding behind a binder of Celebrity
Crushes

I don't hate my body. Sure, there are plenty out there, some of you reading this, I'm sure, who have plenty to say about it, but I don't hate it. I'm honestly extremely comfortable in it. I have, oddly enough, a large amount of self confidence, and I like who I am. I do, at times, look back at those moments in life when I was skinnier, when I was the thin one in the family, and I have to laugh at myself. See, back then, I thought I was fat, and I couldn't stand my own body.

I laugh, because I'm more comfortable now in a larger body than I ever was when I was smaller. Perhaps that's even part of the hesitancy to change it (and change it I must for health reasons more than anything else). I don't want anyone to get this odd impression that I'm ashamed of myself. I'm not.

Bigger, but more confident!

See, I have this self-confidence and great imagination that allows me to picture myself differently. Take this afternoon, for example. I was driving down I-4, with my windows down, scream-singing along to some crazy song and my hair blowing in the wind. Now, if I were to look in a mirror while I was doing this, I would probably burst out laughing, because I'm sure it looks nothing like I imagine it in my head. But, see, it doesn't matter how ridiculous I look. When I drive down the road with my windows open, singing, well, sometimes that's the best part of my day. Why should I really care what I look like?

The person I see in the mirror, isn't who I imagine in my head, but that doesn't bother me. If you're too blind to see past that first image, then you clearly don't need to be a part of my life. I'm not going to go through life changing myself to fit the narrow perspectives of others just so they can get the chance to know me. I think that's just ridiculous.

I'm me. Rory. Not Lori or Cory. Roar like a lion, Rory. And while that first image may change through the years, the inner reflection remains the same. I really hope you're able to see that.

Good News All Around

It's been a busy past few weeks. As of tomorrow, I'll have been signed on my lease for two week and as of today, it's been a week since I officially moved in. All I can say for now is that I'm in love. I love how my new place is basically in the middle of nowhere. It's like a 15-20 minute drive to the nearest Wal-Mart. There's hardly any traffic in my small area. While I have to take I-4 to work, my hours are hardly ever starting or ending around rush hour and I have barely encountered any traffic.

My new room is a sanctuary in a way my old room couldn't be. I'm no longer constricted by my pinkish purple walls and mossy green carpet. I feel a lot less childish and had a great time decorating and organizing. The shape of my room makes it look almost round, which makes me feel a little like I'm in a tower. Honestly? My room is completely meant for me. I love it! (If only I had the money to get a bigger mattress... I currently have a twin, and man does that get smaller as you get older).

So, the major downside is that I'm far away from my closest friends and my family, of course. Not too far away, but driving so much could take its toll on me, and my car. Places that I used to think of as only a 20 minute drive away are now a 40-60 minute drive away. Suddenly, it becomes a small day trip to go some places that used to be "just over there". Being in the middle of nowhere, it's a little more difficult to come up with new places too. What can I say, though, it's an adventure!

I had the best day today. I can't describe everything that happened, but it was just one of those good days at work where you truly feel you made the right choice in profession. Then, when I left, it was pouring outside. And I mean POURING. As I was leaving the garage, an associate was trying to figure out how to get to the entrance without getting soaked, so I offered her a ride. Speaking with her in that short drive actually helped me figure out the better way to drive to avoid I-4 in the pouring rain. Good Karma never hurts, right? Anyways, today was really great.

So it's all good news really =D Great day at work, great new home... somehow I feel like I'm just asking for the sh** to hit the fan... Dear Lord, please don't let that happen!