all I need to know i learned at target

There are few things more satisfying than pushing around a shopping cart at Target with one hand and a wrist, because the other hand has a warm, salty soft pretzel in it and there's a Diet Coke resting on the child's seat. It's a smallish cup for a proper Diet Coke, but I guess that's the point of the refills. The more refills you go back for, the more times you walk by the hair products and all-natural bath products and children's clothes and makeup and Oreos and holiday-themed foods (ie. ingredients for green bean casserole) so you find yourself purchasing $70 worth of items in exchange for the Diet Coke.

Potentially worth it, depending on how many refills you get. (In my case, just the two so I averaged only about $15 worth of P.O.Ps).

It's a privileged experience I had, padding around in an oversized sweater (bought at Target) and cut-off shorts (also Target), my feet rattling around in too-big slipper-boots I bought years ago instead of Uggs (Target brand, $19) and my hair escaping from a wrap headband with cats on it-- no work today, no children to tend to, no appointments to meet.

Just me, my soft pretzel/Diet Coke combo $3.49, and the crown jewel of department stores, in my estimation.

I came with a specific mission: to get that soft pretzel and then reclaim my life.

If you think that's a tall order for a visit to Target, you clearly haven't allowed Target to do its job. Breathe. Let it happen. Get some popcorn and wander for an hour or three. Find some leggings that have leopard faces or a YOU GO GLEN COCO t-shirt. Let it whisper to you the secrets of your soul.

Here's what I learned at Target today:

When debating between brand name or off-brand cleaning products, and the difference in price is only $0.39, I can buy the brand name because it's reputable and also-- I earn my own money. This Clorox toilet bowel cleaner has clout and it will save me from doing my second-least favorite chore so frequently. It is my toilet bowl and it is my $0.39.

Whenever I need to run into someone I know in public, it'll inevitably happen in the aisle between girls clothing and check-out. The people I meet are always the ones I need to see and they will tell me what I need to hear. Today, I got a giant VALIDATION stamp from one sassy hairdresser, and blew Chase Brown's mind when we were in the same place at the same time again. Amy Poehler believes in time travel-- these brief encounters make me believe too.

(Amy Poehler's book is brilliant and lovely and it is available at Target.)

I need to listen to my gut when I'm drawn to that $3 Christmas ornament. It'll bring me specific joy forever, especially if it's covered in sequins.

As a pet owner, it is my prerogative to weigh my litter box options and then purchase a more expensive brand that may be a better fit for my home that I live in and have to clean. Arm & Hammer BLOWS MY MIND. My third least favorite chore is little more than sandbox time (joke!) because I have the option and I get to choose and I am even rewarded with a $1.50 off coupon.

Polka dot bedsheets and a pillow top mattress pad may do more to make a person (me) feel more like herself (myself) than almost any change to appearance, wardrobe or circumstance. My bed cloud is my oasis. It's OK to invest in things that celebrate that.

I left smiling and empowered. I made specific choices. I am energized and excited in a way I haven't been for weeks or maybe months. It was a relatively small set of purchases that has seemed to have rocketed me to another level of self-actualization.

So much so that I came home and cooked up a bowl of peas and corn.

Because self-actualized people eat vegetables.

And because I like peas and corn specifically.

And because I have to offset the salted soft pretzel one way or another. 

Summer of Self(ies)

I've had a hard time recognizing myself lately. Just generally-- I have oozed with WHO AM I.

I haven't really known myself lately.

It's safe to say I've had a big year. Big changes, big ups and downs, big successes, and what feels like equally big failures.

(I know I haven't actually failed, it's just colored that way sometimes.)

It's pretty confusing, if I'm being honest.

I feel all of the feelings all at the same time, just swirling around inside me all at once. It's taught me a lot about feelings, actually. How all feelings are valid, and they stem from each other, and how it's so very possible to feel acutely elated and flat lined all at once. My heart chakra can hardly deal.

It's manifested a lot to me personally in my face.

I don't recognize myself.

I mean, objectively I do. I know I'm me when I look in a mirror.

But I just don't look how I've always thought I do. Or how I've always felt? Or I don't look the way I expect to, is probably most accurate.

Especially because it's been a big year.

I should look more sad, or angry, or tired, or old (I'm almost 30!?), or numb, or whatever it is-- but I shouldn't look like THAT to myself because what I look like mostly is just happy.

Happy and beautiful and self-actualized and grounded and brighter than I suppose I have any right to be.

I don't know if I look like that to other people. It doesn't really matter. I've just had the pleasantest time getting to know myself and see ME the way I am.

So I started an experiment.

Starting the April 27, I started taking pictures of myself when I felt happy or pretty or calm or confident or anything that, by social ridiculous standards, I wasn't supposed to feel yet. I had no intention of doing anything with them at the time except to have them handy when I needed to prove to me personally, "HEY. YOU WERE ELATED IN THIS MOMENT."

Or confident or pretty or calm or anything, really.

Selfies, OK????

A lot of frigging selfies.

Selfies on purpose, selfies for insta, selfies saved from snap chat (thanks for snapping with me everyone-- you've been a tremendous help!).

Hey self, you have really good hair today.

Hey, this skirt has next looked better.

Hey, your eyelashes are really long.

Hey, your lipstick is great.

Hey, people think you're really funny. 

Hey, you saved that cat and she had a great life because of you.

Hey, you have a lot of friends.

Hey, people want to date you.

Hey, you have a chance to help others.

Hey, the stars are really bright tonight.

Hey--

There has been so much momentum.

And I have-- I have used those pictures as a pep talk to myself because hello, IT HAS BEEN A BIG YEAR and sometimes I need to physically remind myself of my worth.

(And now is as good a time as any to also acknowledge those others who have reminded me of it too, even though it's kind of embarrassing to me because being vulnerable is hard but I have a picture of that too because hey, I can do hard things!!

You lovely, dear, perfect people know who you are-- especially three of you. Thank you thank you thank you. Please let me take a photo of us together to add to my album.)

The best part has been, however, how the photos have changed for me. I started quite shallow, as I think these things require, but also because I have had moments were I just couldn't recognize all the pieces of my face together in one whole. It didn't look like me all together, but those eyes did, and sometimes the mouth, and usually the nose, so THIS IS WHAT I LOOK LIKE, SELF.

But it progressed quite naturally into feelings and learning who I am, what I look like, when I feel a thing-- even a sad or depressed or confused or lost thing (and there are plenty of those).

And has recently become much more about what I offer as a person, where i come from, WHO I come from, where I'm going, without much emphasis on the look at all except that I'm one cohesive package.

Selfies have changed me.

What had the capacity to become an obsessive, shallow bad habit has proved to myself that I have worth and value and much to offer at the most fundamental level-- most especially a lot to offer myself and not anyone else.

I recognize who I am.

I know me.

unity by binary

Have you ever felt yourself splinter?

I don't mean just scattered bits of you, trying to figure out how to accomplish too many tasks or juggle too many social engagements or which pair of earrings to wear this morning.

I mean your literal, actual soul-- your identity-- just splitting apart like the ends of my hair that need a trim?

You know, my hair is a great metaphor. Because those strands of hair that are splitting-- the origin is one strand that separate into two and three and maybe more little bits. So it's all really the same hair, just different sides of it.

You know?

I've been splintered.

Not exactly in a bad way, before you jump to conclusions.

It's actually allowing me to inspect each of the little bits and figure out where they split off from the singular me, the united me, the United States of Me, and why they split, and how exactly they split off from USM (United States of Me).

And how it's possible that I see and feel two sides of every individual thing in every single moment.

You know in the last season of LOST when there were two different versions of the same story? There was the linear continuation of the same story we had been watching (and scratching our heads about but never stopped watching because Ben Linus was just so freaking good and we just had to see if it could actually come full circle ((which it didn't really, let's be honest with ourselves)). At the same time there was the second new story that told us about what would have happened if the crash never happened-- if the LOST never happened.

[Truthfully I take umbrage with Sideways Land of LOST because I just didn't really like the story and the finale was not the enlightening experience for me that it seemed to be for everyone else (except for Sun and Jin obviously). That said, it's created a perfect illustration for me.]

I feel like I'm living like that final season of LOST. I have the linear me that's marching down the same, albeit unpredictable, unified USM path I've been on my whole life. I grew up, graduated from BYU, got married, have done a lot acting, had some jobs, am getting divorced, will do something else, etc.

And there's the Sideways Land me (SLM), which has been snapped back 5 years. I've just finished college and have the whole world at my feet. I have no money but 1000 prospects in every possible area of my life. My name is mine again. My contact lens prescription is the same. A surprising number of My People are still single, and even if they're not I've seen more of them than I have in years-- I mean, it's uncanny and wonderful. I never changed the URL to this blog. The only things that have changed (I mean, not really, but you know what I mean) is the presence of my three cats (much to the surprise of my dog-loving heart) and my thyroid condition (hyper-turned-hypo, making me a hyper-hypo).

These two sides of me aren't mutually exclusive. It's the same me starring in both worlds, on separate planes but always in the exact same moment. In one single minute I can be grieving and grasping at straws to heal, and giggling at a thoughtful message that brightens my vision of the future.

I feel invincible and glorious while I'm fallible and dull.

Lovely and interesting and ugly and tedious.

Unmotivated and ambitious.

Loved and unloved.

Overwhelmed and free.

Sexy and frumpy.

A world of binaries that very few people seem to understand.

What people don't see is that I mourn by embracing opportunity. I am busting out of my skin as I sit still. My soul sings in the silence, or sometimes my throat sings so I can be silent.

I laugh and cry all at once, one feeding off the other in a grand cycle that's occasionally confusing but always informative.

It's weird.

But it doesn't feel weird. It feels natural.

Weird and natural. And weird.

All splintered and skipping around trying to grasp at reality and possibility-- constant dichotomy that's thrilling (terrifying), difficult to explain (easy to feel), resentful (grateful), hopeful ( sense of impending doom...).

And strangely, it's all driven by love.

So unexpectedly, I am driven by love.

I have never loved more-- and that's no dichotomy.

In each win, as in each loss, a little crack is chiseled into my heart that's not breaking at all but expanding it into this giant, enormous heart that just wants to hug everyone.

I want to spend time with everyone, and talk to everyone, and really know everyone, and help everyone, and support everyone, and give everyone gifts, and bake everyone pies, and spend a warm evening with everyone piled on blankets in a park under the stars holding hands.

The splinters are magnifying my capacity to love.

And so maybe it's not like my hair at all-- not split up sides of the original USM.

Maybe it's the other way around.

Maybe the splinters are the original parts, emerging from all around and swirling together to make this whole, loving, loveable person.

The me I've always been all at once-- that I've just never given myself the chance to feel and see and be it all at once before.

 How fascinating.

And not at all boring.

i can do hard things 5

This was a hard week.

Just generally.

A hard week.

A lot happened-- a lot of tragedy, a lot of joy, a lot of confusion, and confusion on how I should deal with all of it at once.

I feel like I did a pretty good job and I didn't (entirely) self-implode.

I also learned how I need to keep my people close to me and that it does take effort-- but not all that much-- to do so.

(On that topic, I have really, really excellent people.)

I did a lot of hard things this week.

High-five, self.

i can do hard things 4

I've had ideas for other posts swirling around my head this week, though nothing has really stuck enough to sit and write about it. Maybe that's part of the problem? I should just take the time to write it out and then it would come together? Who can say. I'll try that this week.

• I took an audition. It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me at all that this particular audition was filled with a lot of anticipation and expectation. It's for a role I love in a show I love that could allow me to play opposite the guy I love, so.... it's kind of a big deal to me. And I did it. And it wasn't the worst. And I haven't been cut yet. Now the hard thing will be to not put too much weight in what happens next. What will be, will be.
  
• I performed Les Mis five times in less than three days. It may not sound like much, but by the middle of last night it was just really hard to keep my eyes open. I think some people misunderstand me and think by being physically tired that I've moved on emotionally (or maybe didn't even invest in the first place), but that's not at all true. The body just gets tired sometimes, you know? It actually makes me care about the show even more because I know how focused I can (and should) be. Anyway this week kicked off the rest of our busy, busy run and it was a good indication of how I need to sustain myself.
  
• I cured a blossoming sore throat/cold with just a steamer for my throat, a lot of drinking water, and some essential oils. I drank some oregano and it was THE WORST. But I didn't die, and in fact my health improved.
  
• I refrained from eating an entire box of oreos (in one sitting).

I guess my week wasn't all that hard.

#firstworldproblems?

i can do hard things 3

• I stood up for myself. This week I found myself in the middle of a fresh he-said-she-said, interestingly with someone I don't actually know. I mean we've spoken a few times, but we don't know each other. So instead of letting it fester (or worse-- letting it continue into communities of people who also don't know me but think they do), I personally nipped it in the bud. And concluded with a zinger that I'm particularly proud of.
  
• I had a really helpful and empowering voice lesson. And I realized that I'm good at this. I have a lot to do, but I've come a long way in the last year (with the help of some wonderful folks) and I'm really excited to continue to work hard and get really good at it.
  
• I've accepted myself in the Now. Improvement and self-actualization are on-going goals. But the journey really is exciting in itself, and I'm interested in validating myself as I go. I'm working hard. And it's just as important as the end results.
  
• I auditioned for another commercial and was not nervous even at all. Instead, I'm able to take it exactly as seriously as I need to and keep it in perspective.
  
• I blogged twice.

 I'm really glad I started this little weekly tradition.