write me well

Tag: life

  • The Bucket Theory

    I’m a chronic mom-caller. Like, I may live over three thousand miles away from my mother, and I may be a grown-ass thirty-year-old woman, but if I go more than 2-3 days without speaking to my mom, it’s weird. I used to call her on my way home from work, and now that I have my own place, I call her as soon as I’m home, eating my pre-made dinner on the couch while I tell her about my day and listen in turn about hers. I’ll call her on my days off when I have literally nothing new to tell her. I’ll call her when I discover pre-filled strawberry jam and cream scones for sale at Tesco. Chron-ic.

    Whether it’s because I do such a faultless job of this on a regular basis, or because my mom has a tendency to feel like she’s a ‘bother’ if she’s the one that calls me (“I never know what you’re doing! You’re so busy. You could be at work.” “Mom, I keep telling you. If you call me and I’m busy, I just won’t pick up the phone.” I digress.) – my mom hardly ever calls me. But this afternoon I was off work, sitting at a coffee shop, when my phone rang and it was my mom. Calling me!

    We talked about a lot of things, as we always do. Work stress, life stress, good things, challenging things. And at one point, somewhere between good things and challenging things, I mentioned my Bucket Theory. I feel like I tell everyone and their mother about my Bucket Theory, so I was 110% sure I’d already not only mentioned it to my own, but explained it in depth. But it turns out I hadn’t, and because I will never not enjoy the sound of my own voice – especially when expounding my own life views – when she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard about your Bucket Theory” – I LEPT at the opportunity. And as a result, the topic is fresh on my mind, and I figured no time like the present to infect the internet with it.

    So here, un-asked for, is my Bucket Theory.

    We spend an inordinately large amount of time while we’re growing up and getting older being told exactly What Will Make Us Happy. People, society, strangers, LIFE. They all act like there’s a one-size-fits-all formula for how to make a life for yourself that genuinely brings you joy.

    What I spent my twenties doing was unlearning all of that.

    Attaining happiness is only universal in that it can always be broken down into buckets. One bucket, six buckets, twenty buckets, every person is different. The buckets come in all different sizes. Maybe yours are all tiny and easily filled; maybe some are bigger, and need a regularly scheduled top up. But the constant between everyone’s buckets is this: the sum of their parts is a Satisfying, Happy Life. (Accidentally just typed Lie, and I’m gonna go ahead and ignore what that typo is trying to tell me.) The only way your buckets can be Wrong is if they hurt people in the process of being filled. As long as you have peaceful, kind buckets, I truly think your only priority in life should be to define them and fill them however you see fit.

    I believe I’ve gotten to the place I am in life because I figured out what my buckets are and made a big deal out of prioritizing filling them the fuck up. Having my family in my life is a big bucket – but for me, geographic closeness isn’t a requirement of keeping that full. I rely heavily and happily on technology to do so. Having a job that’s satisfying, but also allows me creative freedom in my style and on my days off, is another big old bucket. It needs a regular top up in that I always want to feel driven and like I’m developing the people around me, but I’m quite certain my career bucket will never get any bigger. It will always play second fiddle (second…bucket?) to others.

    And then there are the surprise buckets – Being Near Medieval English Things turned out to be a pretty major one. Nobody told me when I was thirteen that where I live would bring me more happiness than my college degree itself. Tattoos. Financial Independence. Writing – well, no surprise there. Seven year old Kathy could have accurately drawn the size of that bucket right after she wrote her first short story about a girl sneaking off from a family picnic to find a dragon in a hillside cave. It will probably always be my biggest bucket.

    But if your career bucket is your biggest, wahey to you! You will find no judgement here. The same if being physically close to those you love is a big bucket. I get that too. Making a family. Having a dog. Achieving fame. Immersing yourself in other cultures. Helping the environment. Listening to great music. Chocolate chip cookies. They are your buckets. It is your life. Too many people get down on themselves because their buckets are different or strange or maybe even because they’re not different enough. I assure you, it doesn’t matter. Nobody has to deal with whether or not something brings you happiness and fulfillment except You.

    So on this doing-its-damnedest-to-pretend-its-not-Spring April afternoon, if you’re looking for an extra bit of happy in your life, take a look at your buckets. And once you figure them out, there are only two things you need to do: chase their fulfillment like nobody’s business, and never apologize for it.

  • 2019. For Now, Anyway.

    Eighteen days into 2019 and I’m just now sitting down to write for the first time in what feels like an absolute age – that, my friends, is what a retail Christmas will do to you.  

    This is the first time I’ve parked at Foyles with a pot of tea, post-perusal of the English Middle Ages history section of the store, satisfactorily plonking out several overdue email responses since the ensuing chaos of December’s end. Retail Christmas is always a busy time, but this particular one was full of firsts that only added to the controlled burn: First time managing a flagship store through peak? Check. First time spending Christmas on my own? Check. First time launching end of season sale on Christmas day and then running inventory less than two weeks after NYD? Check and fuck-that-noise check (I mean, not really – I’ve got a dream team that got me through it, and you can only ever learn and improve). 

    Sitting here, though, five days following that last check mark, listening to Hozier and deciding his vibes are my 2019 vibes (has anybody else seen and fallen in love with that oatmeal-based Twitter exchange he had?), I wouldn’t change it. Every box you check off brings you that much closer to what you want your endgame to look like.  

    It does not hurt that I have a pretty clear idea of what the next few months will look like, and the forecast is most excellent. February includes my first trip home since moving here back in March! I’ll get to see several of the lights of my life that give me the brightest and best faith in the world and I won’t have to plug my brain in for fourteen straight days. May will see my first trip to Croatia with a fabulous friend, a week of beaches and books and delightfully one-pieced swimsuits. Dotted in-between, ideally with a bit more planning than last year but cherished regardless, more day trips around the whole of England, maybe even with a few weekend trips thrown in because nothing says living on the edge like a solo mini-break to a village most people would struggle to point out on a map, but damn yo, those castles!  

    It’ll also be the first few months of the UEA Women’s Alumni Network, something I’ve been helping put together for the past eight or so months and launched with a chic and lovely bang this past Tuesday at my store. You don’t realize how deeply energizing and empowering it is spending time with and relating to other women until you have an evening filled to the brim with chats and questions and anecdotes. Plus, as a rather pleasant side effect, it reminded me of just how much I enjoy public speaking. It’s not something I have the occasion to do very often but I genuinely enjoy the thrill of it – even if it was only about a minute and a half. I mean, I realize it’s easy to feel good at anything that only needs to be sustained for a minute and a half, but I’m also not too big to admit I like easy and good.  

    Resolutions on the whole are a bit bullshit – we as a society know that – but can you even call it January if you don’t resolutely overreach and then hate yourself a bit for it less than halfway through the month? Suzy has encouraged me towards the philosophy that the only true resolution is to listen to your body and believe in moderation, and nearly-thirty-year-old-me is quite inclined to agree with her (she writes, feeling smooth, sophisticated, and balanced, two cups of tea and six songs into her Hozier playlist). Yes, I have chosen to test myself in my annual fashion by cutting out my favorite beige foods, but it’s more an exercise in will power than anything else. One of my great glories in life is that I am very happy with who I am, where I am, and that I’m lucky enough to get to present myself to the world, both physically and mentally, in a way that is incredibly satisfying. If there’s anything I’ve truly resolved to do, it’s to be more present and supportive to those that don’t have that luxury. So there that is, 2019. Less new year, new me; more new year, old me with significantly improved friendship, mentorship, and partnership performance. Next year I will focus on trying to make myself sound less like an emotional Volvo.  

    Other things I’m looking forward to: making my new place feel like a home, bookshelf by bookshelf and wall art by wall art; diving head-first into longsword fighting or boxing (…emphasis on the metaphor, ain’t nobody got time for decapitation); making myself a better manager and leader; wearing more mock-necked everything; embracing facial moisturizers and a committed skincare routine; continuing my mission to simplify my wardrobe and only commit to classic, clean, investment pieces; helping motivate and develop those around me; eating more green things; devouring more medieval history than has been healthy since the seventeenth century; and, finally, let’s be honest…probably another tattoo. 

    I’m not so special as to see my writing as any kind of forum, but if you’ve been looking for the place to jot down 2019’s positivities and potential proclivities, and unlike me don’t have roughly thirty-seven blank notebooks to choose from and then immediately regret doing so because handwriting is the WORST whenever you need it not to be, here’s a safe space for them.

    2019’s gonna be a good one.

    (Or, at least, please oh please better than the last trip around the sun, right?)

     

     

     

     

  • Elixirs

    I can’t sleep.

    I can’t sleep because MY BEST FRIEND WILL BE HERE IN LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS.

    As I type this, she’s probably somewhere over Wyoming, or possibly far-north-Canada because flight paths boggle the mind and almost always curve way more than I expect them to. So, instead of watching Season 1 of Sons of Anarchy for the fiftieth time (this week’s background show, I love you Opie Winston), I’ve thrown on Something Corporate like I’m fifteen and am getting PUMPED for the next six days and spending every minute with one of the most fantastic, comfortable, FLAWLESS humans on this planet.

    (I could not be more thrilled that Linds’ trip (LONDON BABY) landed when it did. We’re gonna grab some well-earned relaxation, hit up the TOWER OF LONDON FOOD FESTIVAL, celebrate my recent promotion, and have first-time-Dublin experiences together. It’s going to be a killer six days. Real talk: even if we sat on the couch the entire time, it’d still be killer. See Kathy’s 2015 Seattle trip for reference.)

    My latest writing project has been collecting stories from the seven years after graduating from college and turning it into something like a collection of essays. Right now it’s pretty structure-less and my commitment to it will likely wane in perfect opposition to the upcoming peak retail season, but for most of the summer I was fairly on-fire creating decent, funny content for the first time in years. I’ll pick it back up any minute here (I have lots of funny content…somewhere, stored away between my childlike boundless enthusiasm and certainty that life IS A MOVIE and every decision should be made as if you’re driving the plot, obviously), but in the mean time I’ve been admiring some of the keener observations these mid-what-the-fuck-years have inspired. And one of those resoundingly true blurbs is an in-the-works story about friendship.

    I won’t poach on the territory my future collection of stories will cover, but the gist of what I realized while writing about friendship is that there’s a very real reason that adult friendships are hard. You can argue it has everything to do with not having time, with not wanting to put yourself out there, with meeting decent funny relatable humans of any gender being equally impossible whether you’re trying to befriend them or (be-?)date them. But I posit that what makes it the most impossible is that the older I get, the less interested I am in spending copious amounts of time downloading all of the necessary life details that are required to understand (and appropriately criticize/commentate/rapidly agree with vim and verve) my reaction to a thirty second conversation I’ve had with my sister. Or other friend. Or coffee lady that I get coffee from every day. Just, who has the time for that? Who has the energy? This is why there is a deeply satisfying level of comfort with old friends. You’ve been through a ton of shit, sure, but sometimes it is just real nice sitting with a person that’s lived through fifteen years of your vibes. Having that common bond isn’t irreplaceable, but dear god the thought of even attempting to replicate it is EXHAUSTING.

    So. This brings me to the level of skin-thrumming excitement inspired by the thought that LINDSAY will be here this time tomorrow. We’ll only have six days together, and we will both be the first to admit that by the end of that six days it’s probably for the best that we part ways because I love that woman but long-term co-living, our souls were not meant for. But those six days will be a laugh-filled elixir of magic best-friendiness, and I need me some of that. Life’s no fun if you don’t get to share it with someone, and as a semi-permanent single person I’m in the camp (roasting s’mores and) insisting that we all spend way too much time acting like that someone has to be the love of our life. I’ve got my bestie. My pallo. And I’m a pretty happy clam.

    Other contributing factors to Happy Clam Status: that promotion I snuck in a few paragraphs ago. When I got the good news last week, I did what used to be the cool thing and I made a Facebook post to commemorate the occasion. I can’t even call it a #humblebrag because it made no bones about my belief that the STARS ALIGNED to make this happen. And even if it was a #humblebrag, sorry for the post I am not, because do you know what it did? It reminded me of how many stunning humans I’ve gotten the chance to work with over the course of the last seven years. Even people that I haven’t spoken with since 2013 and managed in my first leadership position were happy to congratulate me and internet-celebrate how far I’ve come. It was just such a visceral (the internet is not visceral I know but metaphor okay?) way to be reminded of how much I love humans and peoples and teams. Being a manager has afforded me so many opportunities to be silly with people, to work kick-ass hard during a murderous peak day, to share potlock food with, to pick fantastic playlists and badly belt out tunes with. Nothing about the last seven years has been simple, or direct, or easy. And I know the coming months will have their own challenges. But so many amazing humans made the experience worth while.

    And dude – do you know how many amazing people I yet again find myself working with? This world is full of them, guys. If you’re not at a job where you like the people you see every day, you’re not living your best life. (Yes. I know. Best Lives don’t generally include work. But tbh? Mine does. I’d be bored as a Bored Thing without it.)

    In summary: I still can’t sleep. Linds is probably somewhere over Lake Ontario now. Life’s pretty amazing right now.

    AND MY BEST FRIEND WILL BE HERE IN LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS.