Doubt is the devil.

Have you ever been so sure of something and then one person whispers something that throws your whole world for a loop and you start doubting every choice you have ever made.

Doubt is a terrible thing; it sneaks into your mind and makes you think about the choices you have made in your life. Even the most confident decisions, the decisions you have never once doubted – you start to re-think them… all of them. Then you wonder if you have been making bad decisions your entire life and let’s be honest if you have ever met me you know how many bad decisions I have made.

Have any of you seen those Prego Sauce commercials – where a woman walks up to a sauce tasting stand in a grocery store and tries two different types of spaghetti sauce, one store brand and one Prego brand. After she taste the sauce and wonders why she has been choosing store brand she  “reflects” of what else she had been choosing wrong – BAM. Doubt. 

 She imagines her life and what it could have been like if she had gone down a different path. 

Doubt is when one little thing, comment, suggestion, or idea makes you re-think choices you have made that lead you to the point you are in your life or even worse if you re-think the path that leads you to your future. Ugh.

Now that example is extreme – that lady is not any better or worse off because she has been buying store brand pasta sauce but it’s the principal of the matter that we have very little self-confidence in our decisions once someone disagrees with us.

There are a variety of different ways to deal with doubt – a personal favorite is to call my mom and have her tell me what to do – since, let’s be honest, she is the smartest woman on the planet – even if it takes calling her 5 times back to back to let her think there is a serious emergency! But come one, when you questions life choices you made it pretty much is an emergency.

Step 1 – the first thing you should do whenever doubting a life choice is to listen to the voice of reason, whether that be a parent, a significant other, a friend, or another family member. Hearing someone else’s opinion on the matter can be a huge help. You aren’t going to be able to please everyone but hey that is okay because it is your life which leads me to Step 2…

Stop worrying what other people think. Your life is your life and I am not saying do whatever you please and disregard the opinions of the people, friends, family who have stood by you as you have made terrible decisions in the past because let’s be honest if you are anything like me – you have made at least a handful.

Your opinions, choices, thoughts, feelings are yours and as much as other people want to tell you how to feel, what to think, and what to do it’s not their place. Hopefully, they have your best interest in mine and hopefully they only want the best for you. But ultimately you have to live your life, do what you want, make those regrets, and gain as much experience as you can.

 I am constantly learning tough lessons – since I feel like I say that in every post. Life is full of tough lessons and I am slowly but surely learning them. As I learn I like to share, not to scold, not to preach…but honestly for you to hop on board the hot mess express and learn along with me.

Now repeat it with me…doubt is the devil. It creeps into your life without a hint of caution but beware my friends kick that douche bag devil out of your life asap. Listen to your gut, you are the only person who knows what you truly think, feel, and believe in. Stand Tall. Stand Confident. Stand firm in your decisions, make the regrets you need to make, live YOUR life and do what is best for you. Everything else will fall into place.

Adios Doubt!

Big 2-6!

Last year was the Big 2-5 and I thought that was a big deal. 

Yeah turning 25 was something pretty impressive but you know what’s not impressive, how much I have aged in the past year!! 365 days have gone by, but it feels more like 1,658 days have gone by – that number is totally random, stop trying to do the math. The point is that after you leave college, after you have the fun in your first few years of being 21+, it LITERALLY all goes downhill. Yeah I can rent a car now – whoop whoop! But other than that what am I looking forward too?

I am officially over the hump and now in the later part of my twenties – this is a huge milestone because I now, by unwritten laws, have to stop being trashy when I go out and have to start being classy. No more Friday nights where I go out and drink way more than I should and come home and eat way more pizza than I should. Now, are the Saturday nights spent at a bar with friends until about 11pm when the young twenty something’s come in – by the time they finish up their pre-game party I am already at home on the couch with my flannel pajama pants and a glass of water and Advil by my nightstand. Ugh.

Don’t get me wrong I occasionally have a few rowdy nights where I have one too many drinks and things get weird but those are few and far between and when they happen I am pretty much immobile the next day and feel worthless. 

It’s ironic because this blog post could not have come at a better time (I did that on purpose, it’s not ironic at all) this past weekend actually marked 4 years since my graduation. It was commencement weekend at good ol’ LC and the alumni social media account asked alumni to post pictures from their own commencement. I HATE, HATE, HATE (HATE) how far I had to scroll to find a picture from my commencement!! I don’t have any on my phone! I had to search my Facebook page for like 12 minutes – gross! Scrolling on Facebook directly correlates with how old you are and how lame you have become – it's science. 

So by this point you have either rolled your eyes at how dramatic I am being, you have stopped reading because you think I am some whiny millennial, or you are trying to remember if you have a bottle of wine at home that you can open up tonight... 

Again, with all my posts, don’t get me wrong, as much as I complain I do kind of look forward to these next couple of years a lot of my best friends are getting married, people are having babies, some of my closest friends have kick-ass jobs and are killing it which allows them to spend  WAY too much money when they come to visit me, I can plan vacations that are more elaborate than going to the mall for the day – there are benefits to aging and becoming older, wiser, and more mature. 

This post isn’t to shit on becoming an adult 
(that’s what my other posts are about). 
This post is to 

1. Acknowledge my birthday- hello!! 

2. Acknowledge my birthday – whoop whoop! 

And 3. To say See Ya Later to the first few years of my 20’s and What’s Up to the second half of my 20’s!

Cheers to over the hump and to the years ahead!

Optimism vs. Pessimism

"When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It's all a matter of perspective." – Harvey Mackay

Well what if I don’t want to be!  Do you ever have one of those days where you know anything that can go wrong will go wrong…one of those days where you know you are going to have just a day full of bad luck. You find yourself saying “I cannot catch a break” or you feel as if you are already getting kicked while your down..well that is your 20’s for you! Just Kidding – but not really.

So in just a few short days I turn the big 2-6 which means I am officially in the later part of my 20’s and be warned there will be a woeful post and a goodbye to my youth – bleh! But this post is not about that, it is about the pessimistic glasses that I sometimes wear and for some reason cannot take off.

If you are a devoted reader to my blog, which you should be, you have read post after post of how I am the conductor of the hot mess express which is my life – 
well this post is more about how I view my life then the actual events of my life. 

So my mother, is literally my saving grace some days, but is more importantly my rock and by that I mean every time I feel like I am just floating around with no direction, she brings me right back down to Earth with a big ol’ reality slap – don’t worry I have an example…

So a few weeks ago, I was having my melodramatic whiny moment where I think my life is complete crap. With a simple roll of her eyes and a few mom-ish one liners, she brings me back to reality – and it becomes clear that I am simply wearing my pessimistic glasses again. For every 5 things in my life that go right, one goes wrong and I find myself focusing on that one thing instead of 4 awesome things that I should be totally grateful for. But instead of noticing those things, to me it feels like one bad thing after the next – this is NO way to live. 

 I cannot be the only one out here who does this!  Is there anyone else who feels as if they can’t catch a break, or if you utter the words “why me” more than once a week?  
It’s not that you are a pessimistic person and I am not saying go be an optimistic person but I think that before we go around worrying about all the bad things in our lives let’s take a look at all the good things we have going for us.

I often have to remind myself of this when I’m in a bad mood – for whatever reason it may be – but if I get hung up on something, I need to let it go. Focus on the positive, learn from the negative and move on.

Yeah yeah yeah…easier said than done. 

On a brighter note here is a picture of my dog in a rain coat...

From one pessimist trying to be optimistic to another – Cheers!

Adulting; doing what you have to do, not what you want to do.

So where is the code red when you are child that says, don’t grown up. I have written posts like this before because I hate being adult and I have for years, so nothing new here. But I have come to terms with what being adult is.

Doing what you have to do, not what you want to do.

Here me out, because being adult doesn’t suck all the time (but it does most of the time). I think you just get to a point where what you are okay with what you have to do, or if you are lucky, you love what you do and you don’t feel as if it is a job, chore, requirement, etc. 

So I don’t want to clean my house on the weekends, I don’t want to go to work Monday-Friday, I don’t want to drop hundreds of dollars to fix my car, I don’t want to spend half of my pay check paying back my student loans…but I have to.

Driving into work this morning it hit me, I want to stay home with my dog every day, I want to take a sunny day during the week and hike some of my favorite trails, I want to spend more time with my friends, I want to have more time for myself..but I can’t because I am too busy doing the things I have to do.

I can’t quit my job to hike all the time. I can’t skip cleaning the house to hang out with my friends.  I can’t go on vacation like I would like to because I need new tires on my car – that is being an adult. 

When you are not an adult if you want to go hang out with your friends on a Saturday afternoon – you can, because your mom is at home cleaning the house and there will be dinner on the table when you get home. 

Your parents plan a whole vacation and all you have to do is show up and have fun. Being adult is sacrificing what you want to do for what you have to do. That, my friends, is a very very tough lesson to learn.

If you know anything about me, I am constantly having epiphanies, I know I am literally the most dramatic person in the world, but I have these moments of clarity, where suddenly I know what I want to do with my life.

This often happens with work – I have been job hopping for the past few years because I cannot find something that satisfies me (that is what she said, for all you pervs out there!) But honestly it’s the truth and it is because I keep finding jobs that I have to do – jobs that have benefits, a salary, etc. Think about it for a minute – if you could do any job in the world what would you do? There are a handful of you out there who would think about your current job and that is awesome for you. But a majority of us are doing our jobs because we have to not because we want to. Is this any way to live?

The problem is that when you first get out of college the idea of making money is so overpowering – for the past 20 something years you had to ask your parents for money if you wanted to do anything big. You don’t even pause for a second to think about what you want to do or what you are good at. You have this idea that once you get a job you will have the money to do whatever you want and at that time, that is all that matters. Welp, too bad,  all that money you make starts going to the things you have to pay for – student loans, rent, utilities, car payments, etc – sucks doesn’t it. When that moment happens…you’re an adult. You don’t have the time to even think about what you are good at, what do you enjoy doing, what would you do if money didn’t matter.  

All you can do is cry and grab a glass a wine cause you have 50+ years of this, so buckle up.

Cheers to Adulting...