Fleeting happiness

Between Saturday and yesterday, I spent a cool six hours in the Baltimore airport on layovers, which gave me more than enough time to watch a movie, read a book and then ponder until I fell asleep on my flight.

I just finished watching the movie, "The Freedom Writers" and then bought the book in the airport Borders - pretty interesting movie and book, even though the movie is a bit "MTV" at times (they produced it). Primarily, the movie appealed to me for the same reasons that "Coach Carter" did - one of my deepest desires has always been to really change someone's life in a positive way. Seeing movies, or reading stories about people who impact others in a positive and dramatic way always inspires me, but also forces me to look for meaning in all that I do.

As a writer, the topics written about by the students amazed me. While their stories were compelling, their writing style was really impressive for students that supposedly were "nothing" in the system. While you got a good feel for their writing in the movie, the book is the actual writing - and it shows so much more.

There is a part in the book, where the teacher shows them a poem that someone wrote. The person who wrote it attended college with her, and drowned in the San Francisco Bay shortly after writing it. More or less, it focused on the present and the future. After reading the poem, the teacher posed this question to the students - "'If you could live an eternity and not change a thing or exist for the blink of an eye and alter everything, what would you choose?"

We experience days, weeks, months, and even years where it seems that nothing is right. If we could change this, have that, everything would be better. Then, we experience that one fleeting moment where everything is perfect - the moment in time that you wish you could freeze. Yet nothing major has changed; your life simply handed you the moment you had been waiting for.
I'm coming off of a weekend that I could describe as perfect. While I was nothing but happy for a few days, coming back to reality hits that much harder. And the changes that would have to be made to make this more than just a fleeting moment, aren't likely or reasonable right now.

I wonder what it would be like to feel content - to not have the fleeting moments of extreme happiness, but rather a comfortable feeling of contentment. Would that be better that having those moments that leave you wanting more?

The Beauty in Leaving

"She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes"
- "Wide Open Spaces"
Dixie Chicks

I know there is a word for it, yet I don't know what it is. It's actually probably not a word, per se, but a psychological term or syndrome. Whatever it is – I have it and I'm feeling it.

From the time I was seventeen years old, I've moved as many times as I could count on both hands. The irony is this is that I never moved as a child – until seventeen, I was pretty stationary. I would be lying if I didn't spend the majority of those years counting the minutes until I could get out and start a new life for myself. I fancied escapism since the age I knew it was a viable option.

I wanted to go to college in California or Hawaii, as far away and as divergent from Long Island as humanly possible. My parents rejected that idea outright, and I soon discovered that Georgia was about as far away as they would let me go. Needless to say, reality did not meet up to my ideals and by the end of my first trimester I was ready to leave, to try something new. To be honest, if I hadn't met my college boyfriend at the beginning of my sophomore year, I doubt I would have stayed.

I insisted that I wouldn't return to New York after graduation, and I did, due to lack of opportunity elsewhere. I spent eight months living at home, working in the City, and going out every night in an effort to escape my dissatisfaction with the life I had.

The first opportunity to move again, I took. I packed my belongings and relocated to Charleston. With my dream career on deck and the promise of a bright future, everything was supposed to change. I tried every possible combination over the next few years: coupled, single, career-type job, waiting tables – yet nothing seemed to totally click. I would lie if I said I wasn't comfortable in Charleston; the job situation simply made it impossible to stay there.

So I moved back to New York, once again in search of opportunities and more room to make ever greater mistakes.

I have that feeling again; the feeling that if I don't make a change soon, it will become impossible for me to exist in my own world. Yet I know that it is the wrong time for me to leave – that moving and starting over would only present bigger problems.

Each day I feel as though I lose more of my faith, in things and people. It gets harder to look forward to the possibility that things can change. I feel like I am becoming more jaded, more cynical, and completely negative. It just feels impossible to be optimistic – to believe amongst all the chaos and bullshit that something real does exist.

I'm tired of being disappointed by people that I wrongly put faith in, trusted, or gave credit to. I'm over being hopeful about things that may never happen. It seems like the perfect time to pick up and go, to get away from all of the negativity that surrounds me and the people I need to get away from.

But does it ever really change anything?

"Some things you have to learn them all on your own
You can't rely on anybody else
Or the point of view of a source unknown
If it feels good and sounds nice
Then it's your choice
don't doubt yourself
Don't even think twice
Pull the hair back from your eyes
Let the people see your pretty face
You know they like it when you smile
Find a reason to smile
Try not to focus on yourself
Share that love with someone else
Don't let the bitters bring you down"
- "Sooner or Later"
Michael Tolcher

It Is What It Is

My friend Joe and I were joking on the way home today about that phrase - "It is what it is." Basically, that needs to become my life's motto - I need to learn to let go of some things (namely what I cannot control) and accept that things "are what they are."

All day long, I have felt more stressed than I have in ages. It just seems like when your work life is making you crazy, if your personal life is reasonably calm, it doesn't seem as bad. And likewise. But when both are out of sync, the result is feeling like your head is going to explode.
That's exactly how I have felt all day today, like my head is going to explode.
I am notoriously a poor relaxer, when it comes to achieving balance. I relax well only when I have nothing else to think about (i.e. on vacation). When I attempt to relax otherwise, I pretty much fail miserably.

I want to quiet my head, to tell myself that most of what is causing me to stress so much is transient - that it will all pass. I try to tell myself that in the grand scheme of things, most of what is bothering me doesn't matter. Finally, I try to tell myself, "it is what it is" - in other words, it sucks that things aren't going right, but I have no power to change most of it.
I need to learn to compartmentalize - to reserve my stress for the things that matter (a.k.a the things worth stressing over) and for the things that I can control. I need to stop focusing on trying to figure out people that I don't understand. I need to trust my instincts more than I generally do.

I just hate feeling "off"...it's one of the worst feelings in the world.