Grateful #36 - cold-calling and posters

As May rolls around, countless seniors are trying to wrap their minds around what it will be like when they go to college.  They’re scared, they’re excited, and they’re ready for that next big adventure they’ve being hearing about since they first started going to school.  In every single conversation I’ve had with them, I try to give them that extra boost of confidence that yes, they will make friends and no, they will not be sitting alone on a Friday night.  More worried about the social aspect than the academic aspect, these seniors are realizing that the built in group of friends they’ve had for years is suddenly going to go disperse, and they will be left to try to create other meaningful friendships that do not originate from something they had in common in the 2^nd grade, or from bonding over the time they got in trouble for laughing at the teacher in their freshman English class. 

Today, one of my students was lamenting about the possibility of getting stuck with horrible roommates.  I pointed out that she will probably get the names and numbers of her roommates ahead of time, which means she’ll get a chance to talk to them before she’s thrown in a room with them for a year.  And then I remembered getting the name and number of my first college roommate, Ellen.  Before the days of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, (and kind of right on the cusp of when email was used as a means of correspondence) my only choice was to call her.  On a land line.  I don’t really even remember the conversation; we probably discussed our majors, our hobbies, our boyfriend struggles, and the color of our comforters.   Bigger than all of those get-to-know-you questions, we went into the conversation WANTING to like each other.  And when we finally met in person in room 1311 of the East Tower, we instantly clicked.   

And then I thought about how current high school seniors will get to know their new roommates before they meet them. 

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. 

A very likely scenario:   Students are given the names and email addresses of  their future roommates.  A student will find her future roommate on facebook and begin to scroll through all of the future roommate’s pictures and judge her based on her clothes, her hair, what her friends look like, how many selfies she takes, and what her favorite bands are.   The senior will definitely compare herself to her future roommate, worry that her future roommate is prettier than she is, make up a story in her head about how her future roommate steals her friends and her love interest, and then have already decided that she hates her future roommate - before she has even seen or spoken to her. 

I wish it wasn’t that way – for as much as I use and love social media, it has it’s downfalls.  Pre-judgment will undoubtedly be the downfall that causes future college roommates to have to work really hard to be liked.

Besides, we tend to put things on our facebook pages that we want the world to see.  We only give a snipit of ourselves to the world, and it's usually the prettiest days, the happiest occasions, and the things that make us look good - we never upload photos of what we look like when we're feeling insecure, we never broadcast to the world how much we've been hurt by someone we cared about,  and we don't brag about our mistakes and our errors.   Our portraits on social media have few flaws; our reality is often quite the opposite.   

 I'm grateful for a poster that hangs on one of the classrooms  across from mine.   It says, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."  I think we forget that.  I think we forget that behind the Macbook Pro screen protectors, and all the URLs and the prom photos and pictures of our families and the posts about our best 5k time and checking in at our favorite restaurant- we are all fighting hard battles.    Human kindness, as my friend Melissa told me about her years of living abroad, is the one thing that all people, regardless of place in the world, have in common.  Tweet that. 

Grateful #35 (which is a coincidence) Ducks not in a row

I don’t know how it happened.  All of a sudden, I was at party with all my co-worker friends I’ve been teaching with over the last nine years, and I noticed that every single friend, save one, had a baby.  Or two.  I almost felt like an imposter.  I sat with this feeling for a few days and I came up with this:

I’m in that age bracket where everyone gets married and has children.   I average one or two weddings a summer and at least three or four baby showers a year.  At times I’ve felt a little far behind, but because I never really do anything on the same timeline as others, I’ve never really internalized my lack of marriage and baby in a negative way. 

 It could be my impending 35^th birthday.  It could be my sans-child status I take with me to parties and social gatherings.  It could be that my newsfeed on facebook has been overcrowded with ridiculously cute pics of babies holding bunnies, babies dressed like bunnies, or babies eating chocolate bunnies.  Whatever it is, something has been messing with my sense of accomplishment, equilibrium, and self-confidence.  

I think they named the life-crisis cycle incorrectly.  Instead of the quarter life crisis, (because when you’re 25 everything is a crisis, really) they need to add 10 years and call it the “why aren’t all my bunnies  ducks in a row crisis.”  Because 35 year-olds have things.  They’ve done their due diligence in their 20’s, and by the time they reach 35, they have stability, a husband or wife, friends, children, and a career.  I am not naïve; I do not believe that all 35 year-olds have all of these things.  However, as I think about my peers, I can honestly say that the vast majority of them do not have holes or gaps in the areas of marriage partners or children.   Not everyone is happy all the time either; marriages break up, children go through their terrible twos and their teenage angst, and some couples decide not to have children. But all in all, 35 year olds have things lined up in an attempt to secure a happy, meaningful life.   They don’t stare down the end of their 30’s and worry that they’re too old to have children or that they’re never going to meet the right person.

The thing that makes this life crisis the most challenging is that there are not many other 35 year olds with the same fears, challenges, problems, and concerns.   They are signing their kids up for daycare and paying exorbitant amounts of money to do so, taking their kids to little league, soccer practice, changing diapers, and finding a minute to spend time with their partner in order to maintain a healthy marriage.  Pitting my issues of not having enough time to go grocery shopping at the 3 different grocery stores I need to go to in order to satisfy all of my strange eating habits, wanting to find time to take a writing class, improving my backhand, paying off debt, finding people I would want to date and getting some quality time with my friends against a mom who has her own set of issues plus kids and possibly a spouse?  I lose every time.  I feel stupid for even pretending my struggle is hard.    

 And not many other 35 year-olds can relate; they’re too busy getting their kids ready for school, helping them with their homework, and then finding whatever time they can, to work on their own things whether it be for their job, their family, or themselves.  So it makes me quiet.  It makes me keep a lot of my daily struggles inside. 

But. While I may be missing some ducks, I can still quack.  Loudly.  That is to say, I can be bigger in other areas that my peers may not have access to anymore.  I can find someone to watch my dog and go on a vacation at the drop of a hat.  I can play tennis on 3 different teams without securing a babysitter before a match.  I can take classes on the weekends, make dinner the way I like it and I can take a writing class at night when everyone else is tucking in their kids, watching tv, and going to bed.  I can write in my blog without feeling guilty or bad about having me time. 

Putting a timer on my duck pond is like strapping a weight to the few ducks I do have.  I’m just going to let my ducks float for a while and see if I can pick some up along the way, because I do want to be madly in love with someone and I do want to have children.  I just need to have my own timeline.   This may be a strange thing to be grateful for, but I am grateful for that story, “The Ugly Duckling” – not because the ugly duck became a beautiful swan, but because there were so many ducks in a row and in the end, the one who wasn’t in a row was the happiest one of all.

Grateful #34 - Proactivenss AKA the 4th car is the charm.

My very first car was beautiful.   It had a sunroof, leather seats, a spoiler, and was adorned with 716 bumper stickers that told the drivers behind me that A)  I was obviously a teenager and B) I liked music, democrats, going against the norm, and clever sayings that reaffirmed my youth.   And while it looked so cool from the outside, I neglected to think about the inner workings of the car – the parts of the car that made it run.  I drove it through PA, NY, and everywhere in between, without so much as an oil change, a tire rotation, or a service check.  One day it literally just stopped working.   Every car I’ve had since then (save the car I have now) was given to me or handed down to me, and suffered a similar fate.  Learning from my mistakes takes me a few more mistakes than the rest of the world, apparently.

I bought my own brand new car a year and a half ago; funny that when you buy something yourself, you tend to treat it better.  Today I took my car in for its 10,000 mile routine service check.  Before something went wrong.  Before the check engine, check oil, check fluids, check battery, check everything lights came on.   Before I was stuck on the side of the road with smoke wafting out of the engine.  I am grateful for  finally doing something as a precautionary measure instead of as an emergency measure.  Never again do I want to get in my car and have to say a little prayer to the automotive gods that the warning lights on my dashboard don’t light up – it’s a feeling of impending doom.  A very expensive impending doom.

I’ve learned my lesson about taking care of things along the way instead of having to fix them after a catastrophe.  If I ever have kids, the 4^th one is going to be in great shape.   

Grateful #33 - The end of your comfort zone

Occasionally, I get stuck on Pinterest.  After I look at all the Do –It-Yourself projects that I can never do by myself, I tend to browse the quotes for some inspiration.  Tonight, I came across this picture of a girl jumping off of a cliff into a lake – arms wide open.  The quote read: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.  The picture was almost identical to a picture of 22 year-old me jumping off of a cliff into a lake – arms wide open. 

I think about that day, back in Ithaca – I remember hiking out there with my friends, climbing up a huge embankment and pulling myself up a rope to reach the spot where everyone jumps – it was a cliff that jutted out maybe 2 feet from the embankment, which is not a lot of clearance room, especially since it’s a 30 foot drop.  My 3 friends jumped before I did - each one of them came back up, bobbing in the water, exhilarated.  I danced around the edge, and then I hurled myself into the air – arms wide open.   You're only in the air for a few seconds, but it feels like you're never going to hit the water - and all forethought about how you should positions your legs, or how you should hold your arms - it doesn't even matter.  At 9.8m/s/s all you can do is scream and ride it out.   Free-falling should be named in reverse.  It should be called falling-free.  Because that's how you feel.  Free.  

I am grateful for opportunities I've taken to break away from the routines, the average, the safe, the usual, the status quo, the normalcy – and hurl myself over any fear and past my comfort zone.  While jumping off of a cliff is a literal interpreation, there are many things that take you to the edge of your comfort zone -  it could be starting a new job, being in large social situations, dealing with loss, or learning something new.  

Maybe it's not that life begins at the end of your comfort zone, but that you grow into your life at the end of your comfort zone.  Because you're always living your life; you just may not feel it until you hit a growth spurt.  

Grateful#32-milestones

Milestones.  We remember them with such a warm, nostalgic fondness.  Our first kiss.  The day we got our driver’s license.   Throwing your graduation cap up in the air.  The day we moved into an apartment and our parents’ house was no longer what we meant when we said we were going home.  The memories come rushing back and bring that slow, wide smile – the kind where your teeth don’t show, and you raise your eyebrow as you realize you’re referring to these memories as the good ole days. 

As the coach of the high school tennis team, I have to say goodbye to a group of seniors every year.  The class of 2014 gave me 7 seniors that I absolutely adore, the biggest group to go through my tennis program. Tonight I held a senior night celebration to honor their athletic achievements.   This was the last home tennis match they will play in their high school tennis careers.  It wasn’t how they reacted to the medals, flowers, goodie bags, player bios being read aloud for everyone to hear, or the handshakes and hugs they got – it was the conversations I overhead that made me grateful for milestones. 

Overheard:

“who do you think will be the next me?”

“im totally going to come back and give a pep talk to next years team”

“we should come back from college over break and play tennis and do lunch”

On paper they may not sound like much, but watching them have this air of maturity (or at least acting like they have an air of maturity) brought me back to those same kinds of thoughts and emotions that I had when I was a senior in high school at my last tennis match.  I thought I was so cool, so mature – the same underclassmen I just played tennis with all season suddenly looked so sweet and innocent from my mature and grown up perspective. 

I stood there watching these seniors with flowers in hand, medals hanging around their necks, and I almost envied their innocence more than the innocence of the freshman.   I was watching these kids live out in real time the moments that in many year from now, they will refer to as the good ole days. It’s not often that moments are tangible, and thought it’s not my own milestone moment, I am holding it very close to my heart.