Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Oxford Comma

After I got home from Vashon, I watched some episodes of How I Met Your Mother. The last episode featured this song, and it made me smile.

Why? I'd just gotten a ride home with the same person who introduced me to this song in New Orleans two years ago, and we just had a conversation that relieved a lot of my anxieties from this summer.

I don't think much about what I have in common with the people around me, instead I assume that no one will understand and I'd best not get into it because it's just. too. complicated.

But it's not. And I'm not the only one who's anxious. One thing I really came away with was that I fixate too much on how generous other people are with me, and forget to ask myself how generous I am with them....

And when you start to think about generosity and common ground, everything else seems so silly.

So what's the nutshell? I'm anxious because I left a messy, confusing place with little direction and watched the people I left behind make more of it than I feel like I ever could. My parents tell me I'm too hard on myself, and maybe I should talk to someone about it. But who would understand? My expectations for myself are so high that I feel like if I took someone else's advice, I'd be compromising my vision. Yeah, it sounds funny to me too. Then you look at all those interviews of inspiring people who sounded like such anxious little things before they made it big, and maybe at the time they thought of giving up, but the dream, the dream....and do I dare compare?

I can still see the beauty in what I've done. The connections I made, the connections I enabled and couldn't be a part of, and the fact that they're still waiting for me...I see beauty in the fact that I experienced anger and sadness and now I feel more open than I've ever felt. It shows me what matters most, honesty, love, adventure.... 

Why would you lie about anything at all?
First the window, then it's to the wall...
Lil John, he always tells the truth....



In one of those episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Ted is making his new intern do all this work for his new architecture firm, while he sits at his desk and puts off calling clients. He wants the website and the portfolio to be perfect before he makes the call, because it's his first big venture and he only gets one shot. He wants his dream to stay a dream, instead of turning into something he just failed at one time.

Then he gave up on being an architect and decided to teach. And it's not just because that's "how he met their mother," though I recognize that when you follow your passion things just click, but I feel inclined in that direction too. At the age of 24 I feel like I have something to teach, which is a pretty cool thought.

Rock on, Ted.