by Joey | Mar 11, 2014 | Throwback
I have a sign hanging in my office.
I’ve had it for a really long time.
I remember I bought it as a reminder–but I couldn’t tell you the last time I read it all the way through.
Well, before today that is.
- Be You.
- A Genuine Original.
- Find your voice.
- Make a difference.
- Don’t forget where you came from, but never lose sight of where you are going.
- Believe in your gifts–Cherish them and explore their possibilities.
- Be brave and wild at heart.
- Make mistakes and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
- Embrace all the things that make you unique.
- Practice kindess and compassion.
- Be passionate about the things that matter to you.
- Be a hero to someone.
- Become someone you will be proud of when you look back on your life.
- Be a good friend.
- Live your life with no regrets.
- And remember that all the things about yourself that you sometimes wish were different are really the most special. Because you are the real thing.
That’s some pretty powerful stuff. Pretty straight forward, too. And it all seems easy enough. You know–to be a good person and focus on your strengths. But it’s not–am I right? It’s so much easier, it seems, to focus on all the ugly things about ourselves.
I was the girl in high school who only heard the nasty things people said about me. It didn’t matter that I had friends who were telling me quite the opposite–I only heard the nastiness. I focused on it. I let it stew for weeks and months and years. And now it’s all I remember.
And then a few weeks ago–I was catching up with a friend from HS. Their perspective of how my life was like in HS was so completely and utterly different than how I felt then or how I remember it now. She said “I was jealous of you, because your life/friends/relationships seemed so much more interesting than mine!”
I had no idea.
And when I think back on my HS years, I definitely don’t see anything that was worth jealousy.
I was tortured.
But I tried to be a good person.
I tried to be a good friend.
Despite all the things people said and did to me.
The point is. I bought that sign to remind myself to basically believe in myself. To know that I’m a good person. To be the kind of friend I know how to be. And to see the good. And to remember the good. I don’t want to remember pettiness and heartache and fear when I look back on this time in my life. I want to remember that I was exactly who I was supposed to be.
Become someone you will be proud of when you look back on your life.
Be yourself
& see the good.
by Joey | Mar 10, 2014 | Throwback
Hi friends!!
I wasn’t myself last week. I felt like everything just slipped out of my control. I was feeling really discouraged with my revisions. The house was a mess because why bother. And admittedly–I was feeling lonely. Sometimes this working from home thing can feel so isolating. Sometimes it feels like it’s all for nothing.
But…
Saturday brought a shift in the weather.
And with that–a shift in my perspective.
I took back control.
If there is one thing I just cannot do it’s being able to run. I am physically incapable of running. It’s not just that I don’t like it–I actually can’t do it. I feel like my heart is going to blow out of my chest and like my legs are going to give out. So what better way to challenge myself than to start the c25k program (for the 3rd time–maybe this time I’ll get past week 1). Here’s my thought process with this.
I work best with tangible accomplishments.
I function on todo lists and goals.
But with long term goals it’s easy to get discouraged. Or to allow yourself to feel like the tiny little steps you’re taking aren’t really leading you to success. But they are. It’s just hard to see it sometimes.
Like with my revisions.
So if I can track my time, and my efforts, in a tangible way (like challenging myself to run–something I am actually totally incapable of doing)–it’ll be easier for me to remember that on the days I feel like I can’t–I am actually still getting somewhere.
I was rejected from the school of my choice at first. I wrote about that
before. It would have been easy to just let myself be content with where I was. I was
in a college–what did it matter if it wasn’t
the college. And don’t get me wrong–there were many times when the thoughts crossed my mind to just stay where I was. It would have been easier. I would have made friends. I wouldn’t have had to spend every waking hour killing myself so there wouldn’t be a single reason for the school of my choice
not to accept me. I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time on the phone with admissions checking and rechecking the requirements–making sure I was meeting and exceeding every single one.
It would have been so much easier.
But it wasn’t the life I wanted.
It mattered to me.
It wasn’t anyone else’s place to tell me that I wasn’t good enough.
I am the only person who can tell myself it’s time to quit.
I am the only person who can tell myself it’s time to give up.
To accept my life for what it is.
But it’s not what I want.
And I’m the only one who can make it happen.
So I’m running. I’m running to remind myself that I can do it. If I want it–I can do it. And so can you.
by Joey | Mar 7, 2014 | beauty, Loves
I won’t lie to you. This manicure was a complete mistake. I’d painted my nails earlier in the week with OPI The World Is Not Enough. I really, really love this polish. I’m a huge fan of OPI in general, but lately haven’t been spending the dollars on it. Abby gave me this polish when I was visiting over the weekend. I tried (lazily) to take an iphone pic of it, but it just doesn’t capture well. You can kind of tell in the photo of the bottle that it’s very iridescent. It has flecks of gold, pink, purple, green etc while having an undertone of taupe. It’s just freaking gorgeous.
OPI polishes usually wear pretty great (at least on me). I can go a week or longer without any chips, etc. Except, I accidentally nicked myself with a huge knife (yeah, I know. Why did I even think it was okay to USE a huge knife). I ended up gauging out part of my index finger nail. Ew, right? Aside from the pain–it messed up my pretty polish.
I planned on taking real pics of my earlier mani and just using that for this week’s nail files (if you can’t tell–the blog is suffering from neglect thanks to my revisions). But when I messed up the mani, I figured I’d try to throw something together quickly. I really wasn’t in the mood to do my nails (are you guys gasping? I know. Even I don’t want to do my nails sometimes). I have that sinful colors pinky glitter. I picked it up while browsing my collecting thinking of what I could use it with. On a whim, I threw a quick coat over one of my nails just to see how it does as a top coat and holy cow I fell in love.
So all of that to say, I didn’t mean for this to be my manicure. But the glitter camouflages the gauge in my index finger and it adds a certain rose gold quality to the existing polish!!
linked: thenailfiles
by Joey | Mar 6, 2014 | Throwback
- I messed up. I’m the one who basically bullied Kristin into making this a link up–and then I went on some kind of blog hiatus and totally forgot all about it. Either way, I’m here now. But about that blogging hiatus thing? I blame revisions. And the fact that it’s my husband’s “spring break.” Don’t get all excited–he’s still going in to work–just not until 10 or later, which means I’m staying up crazy late and sleeping in–and then trying to shift my gears into “work.” Don’t stone me, but I’m much more productive when I wake up at the crack of dawn.
- My no carb eating husband has finally been convinced that maybe it’s a better idea to eat a good proportion of a well-balanced meal instead. So he’s all into the idea of the green smoothie which is a-ok by me because I love those things. Mind you, we discussed the ingredients and then made a 10:30PM trip out to cookout. We do what we want.
- I’m on the Scandal train. And it’s going warp speed. I just started the second season. I’ll blame this as another reason I’m staying up super late. I’ve admitted here before that I’m not exactly the smartest person on the planet. Don’t get me wrong–I can function as a normal human being–but I’m not tremendously smart. A lot of what goes on on Scandal kind of goes over my head until it all “comes together” at the end. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Whatever. I’m still enjoying it.
- While I was visiting the BFF last weekend (which, by the way–awakened parts of my soul I didn’t even know were dormant)–we got to go out in civilization. I know. I KNOW! We went to Buy Buy Baby (this former nanny knows way too much about little creatures that aren’t in her house), TARGET (do you hear those angels singing?) And Ulta. Would you believe me if I told you all I bought was a $1 elf eye shadow brush and some sleeping pills? I think I was just in shock to see actual live human beings and that prevented me from actually spending any money. Target seemed like a museum of my past to me. Just standing in there and breathing the air was good enough for me!
You should definitely go and link up with
Kristin! There aren’t any rules! Just link up! Oh, and it would be polite if you linked back to her–but it’s not completely necessary because she’s wicked cool like that.
by Joey | Mar 4, 2014 | Throwback
I don’t often gush over books. I try to keep myself contained. I am also extremely guilty of what my sister calls reading like a writer instead of just reading for fun. A lot of times, that ruins books for me. She’ll come running to me with a book she absolutely loved that I could hardly force myself limp my way through. It drives her nuts.
I read Eleanor and Park just like everyone else. And I found it charming and adorable if not a little slow paced. But I liked it none the less.
But there was something
different about
Attachments. After finishing the book, I of course updated my goodreads–and found that a lot of people had conflicting feelings about it. In fact, my very trusty book pal
Tara only gave it three stars. Huh.
I started to question myself for half a second. That maybe I missed something or that perhaps my opinion wasn’t exactly cool. But I know myself well enough to know–I don’t just enjoy books. I’m harsh and critical. I often find myself skimming through unimportant pages cursing the author for feeling the need to go on and on when the words they are writing aren’t important.
I read every word of this book. And I found myself entirely engaged. I adored the format. I liked the flawed characters. I enjoyed the fact that the email exchanges between Beth and Jennifer reminded me completely of emails I’d send to Kelly back when life didn’t make any sense.
I can’t exactly put my finger on whatever it was that I got out of this book…but I know I got something out of it. I liked it from word one. And I read it intently until the very last page, which by the way, left me happy and satisfied in a completely unpredictable way.
So I guess this is me gushing. Over a book. And saying that maybe, perhaps, you should give it a read. And then come talk to me about it. Okay?
