As a birthday gift to myself I decided to finally buy a domain name for the blog! I’ll now be posting from:
http://www.LindseyMorningstar.com/
So change your subscriptions, Google Readers, and anything else you read blogs on. Hope you like the changes!!
Happy Birthday to Me!!
Birthdays are pretty fabulous occasions because it’s the one day of the year everyone says nice things to you, you get presents, and you get to eat copious amounts of dessert. Um, fabulous! They also tend to me the time in the year I take inventory of my life and make my new years resolutions. I guess you could say my calendar year revolves around me. *Reminder I was an only child most of my life so I’m a little self-centered when it comes to birthdays.
So here are my hopes/wishes/challenges to myself in my 28th year:
1. Finish this god forsaken dissertation and defend this bad boy in June.
2. Even though this is out of my hands now, I hope to end up in an internship placement (and even if it’s not my top choice) I’ll make it work and embrace every challenge (remind me I said this when I’m knee deep in paper work and drinking 5 cups of coffee a day)
3. Successfully run a half marathon in May with the aim of staying in the 9.30 min/mi range. Perhaps more intensive training right now would help, that will be next week’s task.
4. Stop procrastinating. So let’s rephrase #3 to training for the half is this week’s task.
5. Eat more organically. All the time and not some of the time like I do now.
6. Live out the these last 5 months of living in Santa Barbara to the fullest. This will probably be the last time I am living 5 minute from the beach with 70 degree weather year round. Oh man I’m already getting nervous….
7. Trust my gut instinct instead of my over rationalizing brain.
8. Continue to remember that the number on the scale is not the sole determinant of my emotional state. And remind myself the goal of exercise is not to become “skinny” but to feel more confident and become more healthy.
9. Write what I want to write about. I started this blog out with the best of intentions but at times have written posts to please others because it was a popular topic or a post that got a lot of comments in another blog. I’m still figuring out where I want to take TMP, but as I stated in #7 I think this decision is going to have to come from my heart and not the head.
10. Tell the important people in my life how much they mean to me all the time, and not just special occasions.
I’ll start by saying how grateful I am to have you all in my life! I cannot thank you as readers because you are the reason I keep writing. I love every single one of your comments as they inspire me to make TMP better, more truthful, more honest, and more neurotic like I am 🙂 So thank you thank you thank you.
Now I’m off to eat cake!
When I was little I heard the line “absence makes the heart grow fonder” in Disney’s Robin Hood. The idea seemed to make sense in my Kindergarten mind. Clearly Maid Marian longed for Robin during their time away, and Robin fought the rich in order to get back to his love once again. The distance didn’t seem to matter, and in fact the time apart made them pine for one another even more. So at 5 I decided that this is how true love worked.
Fast forward to the present and I would rewrite Robin Hood so that while apart for years at a time Maid Marian and Robin would opt for an open relationship. They could keep in touch via messages sent bow-and-arrow style, but they could have the option to see others. And you know Robin was the flirty kind so he probably hooked up with some other lady friends while robbing from the rich (women like a bad boy). But mostly the romantic fantasy of having time apart is just that, a fantasy movies created.
As most of you know I spent 23 days away from my husband because of internship interviews. All the interviews were on the east coast and he had to work on the west coast, thus instead of paying out the nose for air fare we decided it made the most sense to for me to stay on the east coast until the interviews were complete. This was not ideal for either of us, but it was the reality of the situation so we had to make do.
And make do we did. Conversing through phone calls, texts, emails, photos, etc. That didn’t mean we both wouldn’t get frustrated when the other was too busy to talk at the time. Or the constant cutting out of phone calls when someone would go into a dead zone. Or having to remember the 3 hour time difference when trying to get in touch. But the hardest part was the inevitable fact that when apart you are experiencing life separately. You see things, hang out with people, laugh at jokes, have wonderful meals, engage in conversations the other is not a part of.
When the traveling finally ceased and we were back to being in the same time zone, I noticed something was ‘off.’ We just weren’t connected. As someone who studies school connectedness (students connection to their school/teacher) I know that the feeling of connection comes from being engaged with another, feeling a part of the bigger picture, feeling safe, and the understanding that your presence means something to someone. In our case, I was struggling to fully explain everything that happened during my interviews. I could explain the basics of the plot but I couldn’t convey the feelings I had about being in different cities, taking a walk in a snow storm, seeing old friends again, and spending much needed time with family. On Mike’s end he was still frustrated that my profession required me to travel so much, which took away from time we got to spend together. And for both of us, we felt left out of the other’s life. A place we weren’t used to.
So we did something novel – we talked. We didn’t retreat to our safety activities (mine are gym and computer, Mike’s are golf and ESPN) and just pretend the disconnectedness would disappear on its own. The conversation didn’t start easy, as is the case for most important ones. We both tried to play the “I’m fine” card until the other broke down the wall. And then we talked for a long time. I felt misunderstood and he felt neglected, and we both dearly missed one another. By the time we got to the heart of the issue we could start laughing again.
Getting re-connected is not easy. It takes work on both ends. When I start feeling lazy about doing needed relationship work I remind myself of this quote:
“Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.” – Barbara De Angelis
So go home and kiss the ones you love. Sincerely ask about their day and listen intently for the answer. Do something together like make dinner, go for a walk, see a movie, anything! Just be together.
How do you reconnect with loved ones after time apart?
Have you ever told a complete stranger personal details of your life?
I think of all the random people in the world who know bits of pieces of my personal story. The Starbucks barista who asked “What’s on the agenda today?” The person sitting next to me on the spin bike waiting for the class to start. The Nordtsrom’s sales clerk who helped me pick out a present for my husband. The cab drivers who picked my friends and I up after the bars closed in college (those people know way too much). And definitely the person sitting next to me on the long plane rides across the country.
I’m fascinated by people and their lives (hence the choice of psychology) so when I get the opportunity to meet a new person I’m always thrilled.
Ok I take that back, I’m not always thrilled to talk to new people on planes. Most of the time I just read my magazines, play Angry Birds (if you don’t have this app yet you need to get it immediately – it’s amazingly addicting), and sleep a lot. I’m also one of those awkward sleepers who bobs their head all the time…it’s kind of embarrassing.
But every once in a while I get seated next to a fabulous conversationalist. My Phoenix to Philadelphia flight I got seated next to Rich (hi Rich if you reading this!) Turns out Rich grew up near Baltimore and is in the process of getting his PhD as well. So the initial getting to know you chat turned into a 4 hour long conversation touching on his family and 2 little boys, mine and Mike’s cross country journey, favorite travel spots, finding a good glass of cab, the ridiculousness of reality television, and how awesome all Google and Apple products are. Not to mention religion, solving the energy crisis, and war in Iraq. Yes it was pretty much a UN meeting on Southwest flight 3249 in row 7. Except I don’t think UN officials eat Pizza flavored Combos while discussing the problems of the world….or do they?
I sadly didn’t meet any other wonderful people in my airline travels. The woman I got placed next to on the flight back was an older lady who gave me the stink eye every time I requested to use the restroom….which was only twice on the 4.5 hr flight! She also was wearing head-to-toe leopard print (including her 2 hand bags) so I was perhaps giving her the stare down as well. I mean we all know that bold prints should be accent pieces in your wardrobe and not the whole collection, right? Right.
Have you made any new friends while traveling?
PS – All my internship interviews are done which means TMP will return to some blogging normalcy!
So remember all that Ho, ho, ho-ing? Jingle bell rocking? Present wrapping? Cookie baking? Complete freaking out because you totally forgot to get Aunt Dorene a present because you thought she divorced your uncle but it turns out they are actually still together and are newly devote Buddhist monks?
Oh wait that didn’t happen in your house? Shame. It didn’t happen in mine either but if it did it would have made an awesome blog post.
So maybe you forgot all that chaos, all the months of planning, and all the $$ you spent (don’t worry Visa will kindly remind you). I know it didn’t cross my mind until I was looking through my photos and realizing I won’t be using all my holiday decor pics in any new posts.
And honestly how could you remember when every single magazine is reminding you, yes you with the bag of chips on the couch drinking a calorie-laden caramel mocha frappacino, that you need to loose the bulge and fast! It’s freaking January and that means you have to loose all that weight chubba-lubb!
Let’s check out Brooke Burke here on the Jan issue of SHAPE as an example:
Do you have those abs? No? Thankfully SHAPE will grant you FREE workout cards (aka pieces of paper I will look at and then completely forget about) to show you how you can look sexy in your metallic bathing suit too – score! And don’t fret because you are also able to drop 10 lbs by next month! Yup next month, you can’t eat any of the fabulous dessert recipes advertisers shoved in your face last month, but don’t worry you’ll be fine. And while you’re sweating your ass off at the gym and eating carrots, your boyfriend is going to be eating a cheeseburger, drinking a Coors Light while watching porn. Fan-freaking-tastic.
Speaking of men, let’s see what their mags are advertising:
Threesomes, beers, football, and hoverboards – standard. And surprisingly their cover girl actually has more clothes on then our good friend Brooke. Then again Olivia here looks like she just rolled out of your little brother’s college bedroom, so lets be happy she even put a shirt on.
Listen here ladies magazines, I know January is the season for news years resolutions which oftentimes includes weight loss and healthy living goals. But can you not have those proclamations sprayed across all your covers the month directly following a season where advertisers detail all the ways we can include butter and cream in every dish for the holidays.
How about a little balance instead? Or at least throw us a little sarcasm with cover story on “Yea your boyfriend’s eating deep fried Twinkies and still can loose weight faster than you, but at least you can read this overly simplified article where you will see false claims to loosing weight in an insanely fast way”
Can you see why I wasn’t meant for a sales position?
The Morningstar Project 