I’m a people pleaser.
Really, I think a lot of us are. We want to be accepted, acknowledged and congratulated. We want to know that we’re “in,” that we’re doing okay in the eyes of others. We crave this type of approval. It’s part of the reason why the majority of us do the things we do–chase down impossible degrees at outstanding universities, work 60-hour work weeks, force ourselves to follow ridiculous diets, even go to church. These sorts of behaviors say things about our moral fibers and press an invisible stamp of approval to our foreheads: I’M SUCCESSFUL AND INTELLIGENT AND HARD-WORKING AND NURTURING AND…
What IS that?!
There is no need for any of us to feel as if we must answer to anyone! In order to pursue passion and happiness and fulfillment and spirituality and self-honesty, we need to be prepared to disappoint. It is inevitable.
(I think it goes without saying, but the only One who truly matters is GOD!)
Very recently, I’ve done some disappointing and quite honestly, it’s tearing me apart. I can’t stand to be in the shadows of someone else’s disapproving glare. I want to be impressing and perfect and…well, I want to be a lot of things I can’t. Not if I’m being true to my own heart.
Letting people down hurts a lot. But the alternative is like…forcing your size-9 feet into a very beautiful pair of expensive size-8 shoes. It may seem like it’s a good idea. It may seem like it could turn out okay. But it can’t, and it won’t. It doesn’t fit.
We can only, always, be ourselves. Our own hearts are all we have to offer.
Filed under: life
I’ve been thinking about happiness lately. How much I have, how much I share, what makes me happy.
I’ve come to the following conclusions: I’ve got a lot, I try to give a lot, and a lot makes me happy.
I’ve also started thinking about the people I know–the happy ones, the not-so happy, and the ones that seem to revel in disappointment. The difference? All of the truly happy people I know are happy because they want to be, whereas the people who seem to somehow find disappointment in all aspects of their life either don’t want to be or don’t know how to be. They’re content with consequential happiness, the type that comes only as the result of circumstance (i.e., a promotion, a relationship moving forward, a dream that has been realized).
That’s not happiness.
That’s mere satisfaction.
When we behave like this, when we act as though happiness is something owed to us once we’ve achieved something great, we miss out on the opportunity to find joy inside ourselves, something to make and enjoy and share. We miss out on living.
This isn’t to say that happiness that is brought about by circumstance isn’t authentic. It definitely is. But the thing that made us happy, whatever it was, won’t last. It’s greatness, it’s newness, will fade with time, with each new great thing that happens, seemingly better than the last.
Today, make your own happiness. Share it.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m back to lists. Again.
(Good news, though. With the arrival of summer comes more from A Stellar Smashing! You’re excited!)
Things I Hope For:
1. To be in love forever with my very best friend
2. To travel, travel, travel, travel, travel, travel, travel…
3. To someday trust God completely
4. To always feel more passion for love and life and friends and family than anything else
5. To die without enemies
6. To have curly-haired children
7. To one day consider both/either of my parents my best friend(s)
8. To learn to play another instrument, or take up the oboe again
9. To learn to forgive without hesitation
10. To accomplish great things and still seek humility
11. To find that inner peace that will quiet my neurotic thoughts
12. To learn to love the world
I’m interested in your desperate hopes, too. Let me know what they are!
Goodnight.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m a very, very different person from the last time I wrote.
Since then, I’ve become the person I told myself I would never be: someone who works too much and thinks about money far too often. Someone who neglects her passions to make time for sleep and school and obligations. Someone who, when dealing with stress and mistakes, turns into herself. Someone who groans about tomorrow, about everything.
I’ve been trying to do too much. I’ve been trying to accomplish more than I can handle, just for the sake of a bigger paycheck, for a higher self-esteem, to feel like I’ve earned my right to complain.
I’m not happy, but I will be soon. I’m cutting my hours at work. I’ll just spend less and…figure out another way to save for next fall’s rent and my trip to Italy. I’m going to set aside time for school, for reading and writing and walks in the city–the stuff I LOVE about being alive and living in this city.
I’ve stopped pursuing the things in life that make me the happiest because of a slip in priorities. I thought I’d be happier with more money to spend or save, but everything I buy loses it’s newness as soon as I walk out of the store. I thought I’d feel accomplishment with a 30+ hour work week, but I only feel like I’m wasting time when I’m at work. I thought I could get by in my classes without pushing myself, without taking the time to employ my creative faculties, but I just don’t feel engaged.
So, here’s to spring and the sun and absolute clarity. Here’s to self-honesty, and the pursuit of passions, and to what makes life enjoyable. Here’s to the old Naomi.
Filed under: Uncategorized
This is a section from the creative essay I wrote this past semester for my Prose Forms class. The essay was entitled “Growing Things,” as in the act of and things that do. Even though the essay contained a lot of personal experiences, this one turned out to be the most…emotional, I suppose.
“Irrigation”
Summers in the Midwest can be hot and dry, and the garden needs cool, dank moisture to absorb nutrients and avoid dehydration. After a particularly harsh July day, the plants thirst and the soil is dusty and broken. It needs water.
Wait until the sun has almost dripped out of the sky, and then attach several lengths of hose to each other and to the spigot at the back of your house. Turn the rusty spigot until it creaks, until it won’t turn anymore, and then walk out to your garden, stretching the lengths of hose behind you. Attach a nozzle to the end. It doesn’t need to be one of those colorful plastic cones that look like something you’d shower under. It just needs to produce a steady, strong spray. It just needs to bring water.
Take your shoes off. If you’re not wearing shorts, roll the hem of your pants to your knees. Coil as much of the hose as you can around your arm or over your shoulder so you can flex it and bend it and control it, and then step into the garden. Feel the cool soil between your toes and wiggle them, letting the dirt tickle the tops of your feet. Laugh.
Point the nozzle at the sky, out and up and away from your body, as far as you can reach. Squeeze the handle, and feel the water course through each inch of the hose and explode from the nozzle in a spray of water droplets that dazzle like jewels of every color of the tragic sunset dying in the opposite horizon. Walk, slowly, between each row of your garden and let the water shake the leaves of your plants. Let it hit the soil and make thick mud that splatters chocolaty drops up to your knees. Let the spray drift on your face and arms, and relish the creeping shiver that raises the fine hairs on the back of your neck.
Lower your arm and point the spray at the earth. Let the water reach to every vein of every leaf, to every finger of every root. Let your plants feel this sweet rescue. Let them rest in cool, dark quiet tonight.
This is your rainstorm.
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s been awhile since I prayed.
I mean, okay, I pray nearly every day. Small pleas to God to make my train start moving again on the way to work, to grant me patience with the slow walkers in front of me on the sidewalk, to make it snow.
But I hardly talk to God anymore. It used to be something I did all the time. I used to have whole conversations with Him as I drove around town back home, or as I walked to class, as I straightened my hair. I don’t remember when I stopped, and I can’t tell you why, because I miss it. I miss God.
…Which is sort of silly, because I know He’s there. I know He’s waiting, watching, arms outstretched, ready to welcome me, ready to take me back, to listen to me and let me revel in the joy of His love.
I just don’t understand why I’m not running back to Him, why I’m not falling all over myself to get back to Him in any way that I can. When did I become content with this disconnectedness?
It’s been quite some time since I have written here. I might list the several excuses I have ready to explain my recent absence, but it would be unnecessary. The truth is, I’ve been lazy.
So, even though I’m unsure of my stance on New Year’s Resolutions (Must we NEED an occasion to improve ourselves? Or DOES the new year warrant fresh attitudes?), I’m making just this one: to write MORE. I’m always happiest when I do.
Oooh…by the way. I recently discovered a new music obsession! Check out Bitter:sweet, the best electronic/pop groove I’ve felt in a longggg time.
Filed under: Uncategorized
The clouds tore themselves open.
The sky steeled itself for the cold.
The sun dropped to its knees at the edge of the earth, and it snowed.
She cried, and her tears froze, crystalline.
A cold breath, sharp in her throat.
A match was struck, a flame took, amber burned at her lips.
Rush of menthol, heat slipping into her veins, a relief far too fragile to dilute despair.
Another cigarette, a nicotine savior.
Another tear, another sob, another heart broken, another love choked.
The snow falls still. Pure and white and clean, it falls to the dirty earth.
It clouds the lamplight, muffles the sound of the train creaking by over her head.
It blankets the hurt, but doesn’t heal.
(11-29-07)
Filed under: Uncategorized
Sometimes I wonder why I even listen to myself,
especially when it’s my heart I should be following.
I believe that apologies are in order.
Last May, when I returned to your furrowed fields and grassy flatlands, it was with the bitterest attitude that I unpacked my boxes, brimming with so many months of memories of my time in the city. I was ready for a summer of little inspiration, for weeks of inexhaustible boredom, of too much of the same old thing.
While I can’t say my expectations didn’t fulfill themselves, I believe I was being a bit unfair.
As it turned out, because of my time in Chicago, I was able to appreciate you a little more, Muncie.
I found in you many things I had noticed before, but never truly counted on: your quiet calm, the starry show that reveals itself each night in your sky, the eternal expanse of emerald fields reaching out in every direction, to every horizon. Things I once despised about you became minor blessings: your sluggish pace made me slow down and consider the life I’m living, the lack of things to do inside your city limits gave me more evenings alone at home, to read and think and contemplate the world from the comfort of my front porch swing.
It’s hard to admit it, but it’s true: sitting here in my apartment in Chicago, with sirens wailing in the streets below me and the honking of irritated traffickers beating these words from my brain, I miss you, Muncie.
Thanks for always being my home.
Goodbye for now,
Naomi
