You Can't Always Get What You Want, But You Can Always Get Back in the Game

I haven't been writing because of one very important, all-consuming project. We celebrated a few CEOs who have transformed their companies. Now that project is over, and I can sit back and strategize my next move.

Funny-- I thought I knew what my next move was.
Until a few weeks ago, it was absolute. Today...it is no longer an option.


When I realized that, I was so disappointed that I was angry. Embarrassingly, it took me two weeks to get through the "if I can't do this, I don't want to do anything" slump.

The only way I got through the slump, was by reframing this let down as an opportunity. That might seem like a comfort mechanism, but that's not what it is--and that's not why I did it.

I did it, I intentionally reframed the situation, because I know that it is a good way out of slumps. I know that people who do that are more successful and happier than people who don't. I know that people who intentionally reframe challenges tend to be more grateful and more resilient. And I want to be both of those in increasing measure as I age.

So I reframed. I said, "The best thing about not getting what I wanted was..."

Was that it forced me to want something else. It forced me to ask myself what my non-negotiables are, and to let go of brand names, titles, locations and salaries in order to find a good fit for my passions and talents.

The best thing about not getting what I wanted, is that I found out what I care about, what I'm willing to fight for, and even what I'm worth. Sometimes when you slip easily from one stage of life into the next, you don't have to ask those hard questions. Slipping into something is a whole different exercise than climbing into something, but I won't bother tracing that metaphor out right here.

So it was a good thing, not getting what I wanted.

On Despising Humanity

A good man is pleased, rather than amused, to find patterns in human behavior.

Instead of, "oh God, how sad we are," he says, "wow, we do that, it's true!"

Labor Day

"Leisure alone, as great as it is, will not restore your soul."

-Rev David Bisgrove

It's Labor Day today.

I've eaten Mexican food and gelato, read up on representative democracy and texted friends. I have a date in a few hours, with an Italian man. It's all very leisurely.

But I feel anxious today. This feeling surprised me because I haven't felt this way all summer. I think it's not about the actual work I'll do this semester. It's about all the missed opportunities and mistakes I made in undergrad. This feeling is about all the happily married finance workers that mill about the city on Saturdays. Really--it has very little to do with me. But I feel it, nevertheless.

Instead of thinking too much on it, I'm choosing to focus on the day ahead and all the possibilities it holds. Museums, if I'm interested. The parks. Friends. Laughter. Exaggerated sentimentality.

And rest.

Remembering Existentialism, With Some Regret, Ministered By An Observant Me

Step outside
Gonna step outside,
I'm gonna step out
Heart's on fire, leaving all behind you
Dark as night, let the lightning guide you

-Jose Gonzales, Step Outside

I turned Jose on, reclining back on too many beige and white pillows.  "I have never ventured beyond..."the words in the novel said. What have I never ventured beyond? Harlem, for sure. Beige, at least in this room.  

Laying back, staring at both myself and the wall opposite me, my coral colored shirt begins to float away from me, and swirls into the walls and carpet. Finally, I see that this room is missing the color coral, and decide to cover the windows and the closet with coral cotton and paint. 

I can't ever forget the Tibetan village I stayed in at Xiahe; Oh!, the striped bedspreads and tablecloths--- so garishly red, green and then heaven-white in surprising places. .

I lay my phone on my chest with the speaker pointed at my chin.

Dark as night, let the lightning guide you...

I lay the weighty pages of my latest summer reading down on my forehead, and the gushing notes of the music fill the little triangular space between the speakers, the book and my self, until I squeeze my face up into a ball of emotion. 

Then I relax, as I see the girl who has let the emotion swell into her and knock her off course. By seeing her, I have anchored her. 

Then, finally, I resent that I ever became an existentialist. And wish that I had skipped from youthful naturalism straight to Christianity. How much less would I watch myself, I wonder?

Guess Who

Another contradiction:

We put parts of our full selfs into closets, along with our ill-fitting, trendy dresses and decades-old business pants. There is something embarrassing and too loose about our accents, the way we eat when no one's in the room, the way we overreact when our siblings tease us...

It's not the self we're offering to the others we want to bring close.

But when relationships get tense and there is too little freedom in our shared mental space, how easy it is to put on our old strange self, that one we hid from sight all this time.

I'm Not Exactly Who I Appear To Be (Who Is?)

We can choose to surround ourselves with people who couldn't possibly understand where we've come from, and in doing so, we can create a barrier between ourselves from the past and ourselves in the present.

This strategy breaks down if we then feel a great loneliness because we are not somehow "fully" accepted. 

This Friend's Taken, Move Along

Heading into new friendship territory. Anyone else feel like the mid-30s are a repeat of adolescence? The ease of the early 20s are long behind me and people have settled, more or less, into distinct groupings (which we used to call cliques).

I'm new to town. Hi.

In the beginning of adulthood, every person was a new adventure. And every new adventure showed me something thrilling about the world. I grew into a thousand different versions of myself and explored the type of person I wanted to become.
15 years ago.  

At 35, in New York City, I'm finally settling down. But...with whom?

I was recently talking over the problem of finding friendships in my 30s with a potential new friend from LA. We met in Union Square at one of those artsy coffee joints that has the wood interior of 1980s skate park. She's very similar to me: good-natured, respectable and hard-working.

She is just like a Nashville friend. Like Betsega or Jen M. But I already have a Betsega. I already have Jen M. I asked her about that. About feeling like all of my 'best friend' spots are full. Let's be real, my friendship real estate is like a vacation property; the owners visit irregularly. But it hasn't bothered me that the spots aren't getting used.

Why hasn't it bothered me?
Probably because I'm so busy.
Maybe because it's less demanding of me.
Could be more convenient.

Alex Williams expressed the same thing in his popular New York Times article on the challenges of making friends in adulthood:

As people approach midlife, the days of youthful exploration, when life felt like one big blind date, are fading. Schedules compress, priorities change and people often become pickier in what they want in their friends.
No matter how many friends you make, a sense of fatalism can creep in: the period for making B.F.F.’s, the way you did in your teens or early 20s, is pretty much over. It’s time to resign yourself to situational friends: K.O.F.’s (kind of friends) — for now.

What if I have more best friends out there, waiting for me to stop hanging on the edge of the pool?

Williams added that the three things sociologists say are necessary to making friends:

1. Proximity;
2. Repeated, unplanned interactions; and 
3. A setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other

New York definitely can nurture these things, if I let it. I met my best NYC friend at a diner across the street from my house, and we see each other all the time. Church is another place that would facilitate this, of course.

I guess I've got some friending to do.

Hope That Doesn't Disappoint

Even when we have nothing to be optimistic about,
We have hope.

Hope is different from optimism.
Optimism is thinking about the future in light of our resources, our investments and good luck. Optimism says "I worked so hard, I bet I'll get that promotion."

Hope is not optimism.

Hope is having the taste of fruit in your mouth when you have no tree and no money.

Hope is sensing that something good is tied up in all this. That this thing in your hand, which on paper does not fit, will be wonderful. Hope tells you that you can have wonderful experiences that don't have anything to do with who you are and what you've earned.

No wonder hope does not disappoint.