epiphanies

state of the blog-ion

by ameena on March 17, 2013

in 2013, blogging about blogging, real talk

This weekend I had some real talk with myself over this whole blogging situation. When I made it my one and only New Year’s Resolution to blog every day in 2013 I didn’t really give myself a whole lot of parameters on what I wanted that to look like – other than, you know, blogging every day. We are now 76 days (?!) in to this year two thousand and thirteen, and I am already very pleased with my goal so far. These past two and a half months have been so good for my creativity.

But I feel it is time to kick it up a notch.

These first few months of 2013 have largely been about finding myself – not only on this blog but in all aspects of my life. I was at one of the lowest points in my life when the clock struck midnight 76 days ago, and I have spent the time since then focusing on rediscovering my center. Now that I am finally in a good place, it is time to start dreaming big once more.

As far as this here blog goes, that means digging deeper. I fear I have gotten rather lazy with my writing these days and I don’t like it. I know I am capable of so much more but there is a wall of fear in my way. I am holding myself back and I don’t know why, but I am determined to figure it out.

So I spent this weekend at the drawing board. And this post is a promise to myself to keep digging.

how running and unemployment have taught me that everything is going to be okay

by ameena on February 23, 2013 · 3 comments

in plight of the twenty-something, so you say you're a runner

The longer I have been unemployed, the more grateful I am for the experience. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely spend a lot of my time shaking my fists at the universe in frustration and panicking about my perpetual unemployment, but the truth of the matter is that prior to my tumble in to the jobless life I was more miserable than I had been in a very, very long time.

I have spent the majority of the past year on a roller coaster of highs and lows. For me, a good week was one in which I only had one anxiety attack. Most weeks I could barely make it two days without calling my mom in hysteric tears. Everywhere I went I was haunted by my future. I felt so much pressure to make big, life changing decisions – even though I wasn’t even the least bit ready to do so. Helpless, I spent the year blindly marching forward like a bull in a china shop, I was frantic to make anything work. Then one day I stopped and took a look at the mess I was creating for myself. I realized that I could really make something of my time in unemployment. That the uncertainty did not have to be my undoing, it could be my greatest opportunity.

Unemployment has offered me the opportunity to slow down and really, truly assess my current situation. For the first time in years I have had serious time to reflect on where I am and where I would like to go next. I know this all sounds incredibly cliche and worthy of the ultimate eye roll, but I really have begun to find myself these past few months and I am honestly happier than I have been in a very long time.

The best thing that unemployment has done for me is that it has offerred me the time to fall back in love with running and adapting cleaner, healthier eating habits. I am finally back to the place where all I want to talk about is running, all I want to read about is clean eating and all I want to do is practice both.

So even though I still face a whole mountain of uncertainty on this job search, I really feel as if I have started to build myself a solid foundation to help me get to the other side.

my highway to success // aka someone get me a hardhat and a jackhammer

by ameena on February 19, 2013 · 2 comments

in plight of the twenty-something

Graduating college gave me The Degree.

Graduating high school gave me The Diploma.

Graduating middle school gave me The Map.

I think you know which map I am referring to here, you probably have a copy stashed somewhere, too. It is the map our elementary, middle, and even high school teachers spent the majority of our education telling us was the map to success. In case you need some refreshing, The Map looks something like this:

1. Hit an SAT homerun.
2. Convince a fancy college to take all of your money.
3. Decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.
4. Study that for the next four years while kicking ass at extra curriculars.
5. Earn the shiny degree of promises.
6. Find a boring big kid job.
7. Work forever and ever amen.

That’s it. There are no detours on this map. No exits. It’s a one-way street to success. Oh, the wisdom of The Map!

Or at least, that’s what my teachers told me. Over and over and over again.

It wasn’t until I was on the stretch of highway between “go to college” and “earn the shiny degree of promises” that I decided to pull my car off to the side of the road. I was feeling trapped and needed some fresh air. I got out of the car, stretched my legs and began surveying the land for an escape route. Deep down I felt that even though I was on the so-called road to success, maybe it wasn’t my road to success.

It wasn’t long after I stalled my car on the side of the Success Highway that the Status Quo Highway Patrol came to my aid. Frustrated and overwhelmed I got back in my car and kept driving. As I pulled back on to the highway my backseat driver whispered “This can’t be it. There must be more.” With the quo po-po in my rearview mirror I told the voice to shut it and pressed down on the gas pedal.

Now here I am miles of road behind me with my shiny degree of promises hastily thrown on the passenger seat, and I’ve pulled over once again. I am surveying The Map for the millionth time trying to see if there is a stop I missed along the way.

Nope. Everything checks out.

This can’t be it. There must be more.

I check The Map one last time in vain.

I begin thinking about the people I admire the most. I think about their paths to success and how none of those paths resemble The Map. Most of them skipped stepped six, some of them even skipped steps two-five, and all of them are skipping step seven. I think about how hard they worked to build their own map and wish I, too, could find work that makes me come alive. These people are changing the world and saying “fuck that” to the status quo.

My backseat driver is back, but this time she has something new to say:

Your fancy map to success? Fuck that. There IS more you just have to fight for it, sweetie.

With that I tear up The Map and smile. Looks like summer is here early. Construction on MY Success Highway begins now.

image source (pinterest is the best i got)

to my someday someone

by ameena on October 7, 2012 · 1 comment

in disney adventures, matters of the heart

the other night i spent the evening with some men folk and let me tell you, i have surely missed the company of men. now, i greatly adore the lady friends i have made here in florida, but lately it has been all estrogen all the time and i am all exhausted. i think my fellow ladies understand what i am saying. there is a serenity to be found in the company of men – like the fresh air i never knew i needed.

so there we sat, the men and i, watching superhero movies and eating cheese fries and even though i had only met some of them moments before, they were quick to help me feel welcome (so comfortable they even made fun of my drama queen tendencies). the whole evening had a heartwarming simplicity to it. i felt closer to home. oh, and did i mention one of them was from australia? he didn’t speak much, that one, but when he did i made sure to absorb everything he ever said.

and i know what you are thinking, but alas no i did not find myself particularly attracted to any of these delightful men (even the australian!). i mostly just relished my time spent in their company. however, this didn’t stop the occasional stolen glance or innocent flirtation, because i am after all a woman still and it is fun to flex my womanly muscles just to remind myself i still got it. which is what this evening was more than anything. it was the re-ignition of hope.

to once again feel the warm reassurance of hope burning deep within me. saying softly, someday. someone.

my truth

by ameena on October 5, 2012 · 3 comments

in disney adventures, plight of the twenty-something, real talk

I haven’t been very honest with you lately. There is a truth I have been keeping mostly to myself on account of I am rather embarrassed by the thing. You see, I’ve been feeling completely stuck and up until recently it has been making me entirely miserable. I have been spending pretty much all day, every day, at the most magical place on earth and mostly I have just been upset. So there it is all at once – my truth. Oh, I know it sounds absurd, but it is my truth and my burden to bear.

Ever since my truth first appeared, I have been beating myself up over it. How could I possibly be so upset when I am surrounded by happiness in every direction? At first I tried to blame my overly emotional nature and the possibility that my grief is just homesickness in a clever disguise. Yet whenever I finally have the courage to look at my truth full on, it doesn’t remotely resemble homesickness. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with my truth that I try to tell myself to just suck it up and get through the next four months.

Yet here is the thing, I can try to blame my misery on my overly emotional nature or tell myself to suck it up all I want, but my truth is my truth and telling myself I am just being overly emotional doesn’t make my truth any less true. Plus sucking it up and getting through it doesn’t sound even remotely appealing, right? What I need to do instead is look at it full in the face and figure out just what I am going to do with the thing.

So the truth, I feel so very stuck. Pretty much before I even arrived in Florida I have been worried that when I am all done with this internship, I will be no closer to figuring out what is supposed to happen next and the very thought makes me feel all claustrophobic-like. As a recent college grad and a girl with a head full of big dreams, I feel as if I ought to be constantly striving toward big things in order to get the most out of my time.

It wasn’t until earlier this week that I finally realized just how exhausting the previous paragraph sounds. Try living in my head for just one day, folks.

And just like that I finally accepted that, hey, it’s okay to feel stuck sometimes. In fact, there is so much beauty to find in the stuckness of it all.

So with that I have a couple of promises to make:

I promise to stop my gaze from wandering too far in to the future and instead focus on the present.

I promise to enjoy the ever-loving eff out of my time here at Disney.

I promise to invest in my happiness and myself by cultivating positive lifestyle habits.

I promise to make more honest use of my time.

For the first time since I was in high school I have found myself with actual free time and it is the most curious feeling. Instead of freaking out that I am wasting my time, I want to use this time to finally try all those recipes I have been eyeing and experimenting with my photography & drawing and getting caught up on my book & movie lists that currently sit at approximately one mile long each. With making more time for the things that I love, I want to also focus on cutting out all the things I secretly hate. I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately and it’s the craziness to me how much of my time is devoted to pursuing things I don’t particularly care for – mostly because they are either things I think I should like.

Just because I feel stuck, it doesn’t mean I have to be stuck everywhere.

And for now that’s enough.

this is what happens when you spend all of your time thinking about condoms

by ameena on July 25, 2012 · 10 comments

in a day in the life, favorite posts, half-baked ideas, olympics, random musings, real girls like sports

Ever since Olivia and I learned that 70,000 condoms wasn’t enough for the Sydney Olympic games and that the Olympic Village now orders 100,000 condoms, we seem unable to discuss little else. Mostly what this means is that we spend all of our time obsessively discussing how we are going to sneak our way in to the Olympic Village.

Before you go judging me, just remember we are talking about Olympic-caliber sex, people!

As one athlete from the article put it, “even if their face is a 7, their body is a 20.”

At first we thought we would take the traditional approach and become Olympians ourselves. After a thorough brainstorming session (ten minutes) we concluded that our height gives us two ways in: through the basketball court or through the beach. Since dribbling a basketball is a concept that is entirely lost on me but I have been known to spike a volleyball or two in my life time, we decided beach volleyball was the way to go.

Thus, we present to you Misty May Treanor and Kerri Walsh 2.0! Coming to an Olympic games near you in 2016!

I mean, it is the most brilliant plan, right? Well, except, there is one teeny tiny problem:

oh hello, mister ryan lochte. (source)

This fine, outstanding gentleman will be at the 2012 games and we just don’t want to risk missing out. I’m sure you understand.

This led us to Plan B:

Step One: Find two free flights to London by Friday.

Step Two: Sneak in to the locker rooms at the Olympic pool.

Step Three: Locate Ryan Lochte and Ricky Berens.

Step four: Use our charm to get in to the Olympic Village (By the way, if “charm” were an Olympic event we wouldn’t have to be resorting to Plan B, I’m just sayin’ (okay, now you can judge me)).

Clearly Plan B is in the early development stages. If any of you could help me out with steps 1-3 I’ll try to bring you back some Official Condoms of the Olympic Games.

So yeah, this absurd number of condoms being used by thousands of Olympic athletes in the span of about 16 days pretty much consumes 80% of my brain function at all times. And because it is all I can think about, I had this thought today:

If there are about 10,000 athletes competing at the Olympic games that would mean that each of them goes through about 100 condoms each. But since they are all sleeping WITH EACH OTHER that is just straight-up crazytown, right? Even for an athlete.

Don’t worry, about three seconds after I sent that enlightening text to Olivia, I realized the severe error in my math and readjusted the number to the accurate 10 condoms per athlete. Which, once you’ve started thinking about 100 condoms per athlete, “only” ten condoms per athlete is the world’s biggest disappointment.

Clearly Olivia agreed because she responded with, “I bet you and I could get Ricky Berens and Ryan Lochte to go through more than 10 each.” To which I say, HI MOM.

Then we realized we forgot to take in to account the athletes from more conservative countries that probably won’t engage in the crazy sexcapading of the Olympic Village. We also decided to take married and relationship-committed athletes out of the equation since non-athletes are not allowed in the Olympic Village (besides us, OBVI) and we’re just gonna go ahead and assume no cheating will be going on (Sorry K Stew, you’re out! (Too soon? (Call me Rob!))). Based on our highly unscientific research and some borderline stereotypical assumptions for which I am certain I will be frolicking in Hell, we decided this knocked the number down to about 7,000 athletes dipping in to the condom supply.

Which now puts us at 15 condoms per athlete.

BUT THEN I struck gold when I learned that this year the Village’s condom supply has been increased to 150,000 FUCKING CONDOMS.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!

This means that on average each sexually active athlete is going through about 20 condoms. That just sounds so much better than ten, don’t you think?

And now you know how I spend the majority of my free time.

Now to find that free flight….

this day was written and directed by the sads. but don’t worry, it was produced by hyperbole.

by ameena on February 14, 2012 · 1 comment

in plight of the twenty-something, real talk

Today was a particularly awful day. One of those no-good, dirty-rotten, can I please have a do-over sort of days. A day I would have much rather spent in bed buried under the covers not thinking about all of the things threatening to break me. Today the Sads were in the director’s chair.

Blast those pesky sads!

But before I tell you all about this rotten day I feel I ought to inform you that it had absolutely nothing to do with today being Valentine’s Day. Except that maybe I was made all the more sad that the Sads were ruining it. Because did you know I rather like Valentine’s Day? I mean, what is there to hate about a day all about loooove??

In fact, it dawned on me earlier today that of my twenty-three Valentine’s Days, I have been single for twenty-two of them. And the one year I was actually in a relationship during Valentine’s Day, I wrote an embarrassingly angry post all about how much I loathed the holiday. It was entirely unbecoming of a romantic like myself. And I did it all because my boyfriend at the time didn’t possess a single romantic bone in his body and I was so afraid of being disappointed that I convinced myself that the holiday was dumb. The tragedy!

Where was I?

Oh, right.

The Sads.

Except this isn’t even really a post about the Sads. And it definitely isn’t a post about Valentine’s Day. I’m not entirely sure what kind of post it is. I think maybe it is a post about hope.

This afternoon as I was sitting at work trying with all of my might to quell the incoming tears, my coworker smiled at me. I don’t think he had any clue of the turmoil going on inside my head, but it was the exact right kind of smile at the exact right kind of moment and suddenly I found that all of my overwhelming sadness seemed like a manageable burden to bear.

In an instant I felt the fog begin to lift. I was suddenly able to think much clearer and face my sadness full on. I finally realized that for months my frequent run-ins with the Sads have pretty much all been sparked by the same things. And while I am far too afraid to write about these things today, I’m really happy to have fully acknowledged them. I mean, how can I ever be expected to come up with awesome solutions if I never even knew the problem?

I think what this whole rambling, overly dramatic post is trying to say is that even though it might take only one sentence to throw me in to the Sads, it also just takes a simple smile to help me back out.

It’s rather nice to remember that.

the secret to being an adult

by ameena on January 15, 2012 · 3 comments

in random musings

A couple of months ago I accidentally stumbled upon what I like to call the secret to being an actual grown up adult version of myself. It was totally one of those Oh! So this is what being an adult feels like moments. But like, it was one of the good this is what being an adult feels like sort of moments. Not the oh shit I am an adult when did that happen somebody make it stop sort of moments. Do you know what kind of moment I am referring to? All you need to know is that it’s a really great kind of moment. The best part is it kind of hit me when I was in the middle of actually doing it without realizing just what I was doing.

Are you ready for it? Here it is, my secret to being an adult:

Do the thing you are supposed to be doing.

There it is. That’s it. And how gloriously over the mother effing moon happy does it make me when I finally stop procrastinating and do the thing that I am supposed to be doing! As a chronic avoider of all the things in life, I have spent plenty of time and energy avoiding the exact thing I am supposed to be doing. Procrastinator extraordinaire at your service. Let’s just say that stress and I, we’re old acquaintances.

But when I do the thing I am supposed to be doing suddenly I find that I have more time (and energy!) to do more of the things I actually enjoy doing – guilt-free! Like, when I actually clean the kitchen I waste less time stressing myself out over how messy the kitchen is and more time dancing in my underoos. The most surprising part? When I regularly clean the kitchen it actually takes me less time to clean it. WHOA. And that’s pretty much how a lot of things in life go. Do the crappy stuff first, have all of the fun later. ALL OF THE FUN!

Since discovering my adulthood secret a couple of months ago I have found that I have started being less talk and more action. I’ve gotten in to this crazy-pants habit of making a to-do list every night before bed. Crazy right? It gets crazier: I then spend the next day actually checking things off my list. INSANITY. And now I have the added benefit of Nicole’s insanely awesome Eff Yeah 2012 goal template to help my neurotic, list-obsessed self kick it up a notch. Fifteen days in to this new year and my goals have already revolutionized my life. So many lists! So much happiness!

As always, my old habits never disappear without a fight. Not long after I found myself happily doing the thing I was supposed to be doing, my inner child rebelled. It was like I was taking two adult steps forward and then three tantrum induced baby steps back. I absolutely, positively refused to do any of the things I was supposed to be doing. Instead I binged on True Blood, slept half my life away, and avoided studying for finals by any means necessary.

Fortunately, I have found that the baby step tantrums are becoming less frequent and my more adult strides are finding their regular rhythm. I’m learning to tackle the most important pieces of my day first and do what it is I am supposed to be doing.

Oh hey adult me, you’re looking good.

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