by Joey | May 24, 2016 | Throwback
It’s 5:30AM. My husband is still asleep on the couch where he fell asleep watching TV last night, and the cat is pawing at my lap, begging for more cuddles.
But I’m staring bleary eyed at my computer. It’s too early to put in my contacts, and I’m too stubborn/lazy to put on my glasses.
My alarm sounded at 5. I pulled myself from my cozy bed and checked my todo list for the day. You may not know this, but Myra and I are launching a business soon. And it dawned on me that we haven’t really talked much about it online.
And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because when we do launch, it’ll appear like this business just materialized out of nowhere. That these two little brunettes stomped into the world and blew up like firecrackers.
And oh, my gosh, is that so untrue.
That’s the problem with the internet, in my opinion. All we see is the after. We rarely see the messy middle. When this business launches, you won’t see the three hour phone call I had with Myra explaining my fears when I was going at this solo when suddenly it occurred to me to bring her on. You won’t see the countless hours spent on the website. You won’t see the hundreds of international phone calls scheduled around a six hour time difference hammering out packaging deals and debating business language.
We all do this thing where we like to act as if everything is easy, no big deal. I’m not that person. In some ways, getting this business set up has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I’m working with my best friend. I’ve happily traded in sleep for work that I enjoy while still balancing a full-time job. I’ve allowed my creativity to flourish, taking on a life of its own.
But the truth is, there is so much work that goes into building and launching a business. I’ve had my nose stuck in business books for months. I’ve sat in hours upon hours of online classes. I’ve spent all day on a website page only to delete it the next day because it wasn’t good enough.
But in a few days, Myra and I will casually announce that we’re boss. We’ll tell you how you can hire us. Our passion and giddiness will take the internet by storm, and we’re so excited. But remember this, it takes work. A lot of freaking work.
And guess what? You can do it, too. I think we all get so caught up in everybody’s afters that we get discouraged. We dive into our dreams and quit halfway through because they don’t look as dreamy as someone else’s. I assure you, their dream was once messy, hard, and ugly, too, they just didn’t share it.
This is the messy middle.
The part that doesn’t look so dreamy (but in some very strange screwed up way feels dreamy).
Keep going. The dreamy is worth it.
by Joey | May 18, 2016 | Throwback
A friend texted me last night and asked me how book #2 was coming.
It’s not, I replied.
I racked my brain searching for a reason, and I had plenty, but they all sounded like excuses. Because they are.
The truth is, life got busy. I got wrapped up in work. My family is dealing with loss. And hello turning thirty is a full-time job. Side note: why is that? Did any of you go through some type of life reevaluation in the months leading up to your thirtieth birthday? I leapt right over reevaluation and went straight into destruction and reinvention mode. It’s exhausting.
Point being, I stopped making writing a priority. Whether it was an intentional choice or not (it wasn’t), that’s the reality I’m dealing with in this moment. And I’ll be honest, I felt a tad bit annoyed that my friend was asking. How dare they make me feel guilty about this, I thought. And that’s just ludicrous. They took a special interest in me and the things I keep important. It’s my own fault if I feel guilty. And more importantly, it’s my own fault that there’s anything to feel guilty about in the first place.
At some point, I started putting everyone and everything else as a priority over myself and what I hold important. That happens sometimes; it’s called life. But when that becomes a problem is when you don’t recognize it and don’t do anything to fix it.
Oddly, I’m learning a lot about myself lately. The time I spent in Buies Creek, while lonely, served as an important benchmark I use to monitor my happiness. I might have been lonely, but I was the happiest I’ve ever been while we lived there. My marriage was in the best shape it’s ever been. The two things to recognize about that period of time are 1) I was spending a great deal of time with myself, and 2) J and I were both spending our days doing exactly what we wanted to do for work.
I’ve been unusually unhappy lately. And when I’m unhappy, I don’t write. I obsess over my emotions and drain myself of any creative juices by agonizing over how my life doesn’t feel like my own. The solution there might sound simple: spend more time with myself and spend more time writing. And yes, those absolute key elements to finding my happy.
But everything fits together like a puzzle. I’ve been taking each piece, holding it in my hand and carefully considering if it fit’s into my puzzle anymore. And maybe you’re struggling with something similar, feeling overwhelmed and like you’ve lost control over your life.
I’d like to encourage you to do the same. Take each piece of your life, analyze it. Ask yourself if it serves a purpose or brings you joy. Don’t get confused over whether its served a purpose, that’s not the question being asked here. The question is is it currently serving a purpose. If the answer is no, reevaluate. Consider other pieces, ones that might not be a part of your current puzzle and ask yourself if maybe that piece fits better.
For me, my puzzle will always be filled with writing, connecting, running, alone time, and my marriage. The other pieces? Well, those just come and go.
by Joey | May 17, 2016 | Throwback
I’m scared down to my bones.
And it feels so good.
I spent Sunday night googling Mercury in Retrograde at my kitchen counter with Amanda. She’d been hearing about it all over the place, and truthfully so had I. But I tend to take things with a basic understanding and just assumed that the planets had shifted (as they often do periodically, which I learned from my brother’s space obsession growing up), and that the shift somehow messes with our mental faculties.
Turns out, I was pretty right. Mercury in retrograde is when the planet looks like it’s going backwards in the sky. I’m not an astrologist nor do I really care to find out why it does this, that’s not really the point here.
The point is that it’s believed that Mercury rules communication, clear thinking, truth and travel. And when Mercury seems to be going backwards, all those things do, too. Be cautious, I’ve been warned. Mercury is in retrograde. Like it’s something to fear, to be prepared for.
It seems the retrograde (is that the right terminology here? I’m new at this) will last until May 22, this coming Sunday, after starting on the 28th of April.
And I’ll confess, my life has seemed to be all kinds of backwards since then. I made some big, no huge decisions in the last few weeks. I allowed myself to be honest in situations that I’d been holding my tongue about for far too long. I’d been feeling trapped in a truth that no longer felt like it fit, and I said so.
I got clear about what I want and spoke the truth around it. And maybe for me, that is backwards. And maybe that’s not exactly a bad thing.
I feel like sometimes the decisions that were once right for our lives start to hold us back, or worse pull us backward. But because they were once right, we feel loyal to the choice, afraid to change things up. Scared to accept that it’s time to move on.
I don’t know if Mercury and it’s cosmic behavior is to blame for any of this, but if it is, I’m thankful. It pushed me outside of myself. It turned things
backwards in the best way.
When everything feels like it’s falling apart,
hold on tight.
Because it usually means things are falling into place.
by Joey | May 12, 2016 | Throwback
When I’d get broken up with in middle and high school, because I always did, I would lock myself in my bedroom and blare sad breakup songs. I’d let the feelings of loss and sadness, inadequacy and heartbreak wash over me, breaking me. I’d sit and cry until I couldn’t cry anymore. I’d write it all out, pen furiously scribbling across the page answering my own questions as I asked them.
The point here is that when I got sad, I let myself feel it.
I might have been a lunatic as a pre-teen and teenager (please feel free to hold your tongues here, sibs), but I was kind of on to something I have to admit. I didn’t carry those feelings around with me. I didn’t stew in them for weeks or months at a time, allowing them to change me at my core.
Funny how we could all probably learn a thing or two for the resilience the younger versions of ourselves experienced. When the darkness creeps in, and you allow yourself to marinate in it instead of dealing with it head on, it becomes harder to find the light.
I remember my uncle went through something awful when I was a kid. He made a big life decision around falling in love only to be left, literally
up and left weeks later. He kept on like everything was fine, and we let him. And then one afternoon
this song,
nobody knows it but me by Tony Rich Project, came on the radio while I was riding shotgun in his car. I broke down sobbing. Panicked, he pulled over, frantic to find out what was wrong.
The song, I told him between ragged breaths. It makes me think of you.
I’m fine, he assured me. But I knew he wasn’t.
I knew on the inside he was dying, but he never broke. Never.
I saw him cry often in his life, but only ever tears of happiness.
But I knew there was darkness in him, and I remember my heart hurting so badly for him.
I was just a kid, but I got it.
I understood that loss could feel like being gutted, leaving you empty and hallow inside.
Somehow losing my dad has compounded all of the other losses I’ve suffered in this life, especially that uncle who we lost unexpectedly in 2007. Taking a page from his book, I channeled what little inner strength I had and told myself to get through it.
I was a smarter kid than I am adult.
Because it doesn’t work that way.
You don’t get through loss. You don’t get over it, either. You have to let yourself feel it, suffer through it, all the while reminding yourself that someday you’ll learn to carry it with grace. Sometimes you’ll feel fine. Sometimes you’ll break. And all of it is okay; we all wear grief differently. It hits us all in different ways at different times.
It’s been exactly five months since my dad took his last breath, and I have no idea how to make sense of how I feel about that. It’s been 9 years since my uncle passed away, and that loss hits me like a ton of bricks repeatedly without warning often.
The locked door, sad songs and scribbles don’t seem to have touched this brokenness,
but I’ll keep trying.
by Joey | May 11, 2016 | Throwback
I don’t know exactly where this mindset came from, I’m sure I’ll find out after spending a 100 hours on a therapist’s couch, but I grew up with this mindset that I’d already lost.
I would see people doing things and think to myself I can’t ever do that. It wasn’t a matter of confidence or self-doubt, it was just a simple fact that I accepted. A voice inside my head reminding me that I’m me and they’re them. And the theys got to do things. The mes did not.
That didn’t stop me from graduating with a degree in writing, a specialty that had a very low success rate. But in a lot of ways, it was fitting. I went to class every day and listened to a professor remind us over and over that we probably wouldn’t make it. That’s okay, I’d think. I wasn’t going to make it anyway.
But as I rapidly approach thirty (holy cow how is it only four weeks away), I’ve started to challenge those thoughts, the I can’t do that assumptions. I’m embarrassed to admit that it’s taken me this long in life to realize that I actually can do what I want because I’m capable and willing to put in the work.
And with that realization comes the confidence. I may not know how to do everything, but I have the capacity and the desire to learn.
I am confident that I can because I am sure I will do everything in my power to figure out how. It’s not always about your innate ability, it’s about how badly you want something and how far you’ll go to get it.
It might have taken me a long time to realize these things about myself and to find my confidence, but it didn’t take long at all for me to learn that nothing comes easy. I’ll admit that I skated my way through schooling, never taking it quite as seriously as I should have. But that doesn’t mean it came easy, it means I put in exactly enough work to just get by.
And unfortunately, I subscribed to that theory much of my adult life. I wasn’t striving for greatness, I was striving for good enough. And maybe you can relate to that. And if you can, let’s change it. Ask yourself what it is you want, what it’ll take to get it, and make a promise to commit.
Because the reality is you can and you will as long as you just keep putting in the work.
