friends | findingravity

Today was a feel good day.

Yesterday was a, “work from home and accomplish more in one day than I have in the entire year,” day. I woke up at 8:00 for a 9:00am conference call, and spent the following seven hours at my computer. I have some seriously amazing projects, publications, and posts on queue for April, which makes the space I’ve been floating in lately more bearable.

Today, you can check out my guest post over at Bloomize. I wrote about five things that I travel with as part of the “What Travels With You” series.

On Friday one of my pieces over at AimingLow will be published titled, “No Really, Braces Make You Cooler.” I’m super excited for this publication. Remember having braces? Oh my. I’m going to have to dig up and scan a few pictures this week of what I looked like with braces. Be on the lookout Friday for said pictures and the article. You can do that thing where you point and laugh, while staying silent about the fact that your mother also has a zillion embarrassing photos of you looking like a beaver trapped in a telephone wire. It’s okay, we’re still cool. You and I both know that picket fence smile didn’t come from Santa.

If you were born with a perfect smile, I SHAKE MY FIST AT YOU! Blake is one of those people. You can sit with him and chat about having great genetics, while I sift through photos of prepubescent limbo.

So yesterday was a day of progress and productivity, but I needed a day to just feel good…I needed to feel good about myself, my relationship, my friends, and all of the intricacies that make up my life.

Sometimes we become so tuned into our work, our social medias, and our deadlines, that we forget that the real world exists. Even when I realize that I’ve been staring at my computer screen for so long that my eyes are starting to burn, and one pupil is morphing into the shape of the Twitter symbol, while the other is morphing into the little envelope symbol on my Gmail account, it’s hard to put things down.

After a day of madness filled with cranking out articles and meeting deadlines, I needed a feel good day. I needed a day with no technology, where I could acknowledge all of my backlogged thoughts as they came along, and send them on their way after I’d resolved them.

Today, little G turned three. If you’re new here, Little G is one of the two children that I’ve been nannying for the last year. The wonderful people I nanny for have become close friends and extended family. It was a day of good company, good coffee, celebration, birthday cake, mimosas, wrapping paper, and fun pictures. I woke up and didn’t turn on my computer. I didn’t answer any emails or write anything. Once Blake and I arrived at the party, I left my phone in my purse, and left my purse on wooden chest in the corner of a room. For the entire day, from the moment I woke up until we left the party, I just wanted to focus on celebrating the day Little G was born, without technological static.

I hope everyone has been able to find feel good moments this weekend, and if you’ve been crazy busy, there is always Sunday! If you simply can’t afford an entire day of feeling good, at least allow yourself the simplicity of a few positive moments.

Soak them in, uninterrupted.

[Photos shot with a NikonD3000]

Sometimes, for whatever reason, we lose touch. We don’t just lose touch with friends, family, and each other; we also lose touch with ourselves. We lose touch with reality. Our jobs, our cars, our personal agendas all take on the roll of the intangible delicacies of life, and we forget that these things will never love us back. We forget what is important in life.

My college dorm mate and I had an interesting two years living together, probably because we were the two most opposite people that could have shared a living space. Not just a living space, but two desks, two dressers, two beds, and all contents belonging to two individuals crammed into what felt like a 4×8 cement cell. Dorm style living is never glamorous, especially when it is forced upon you for two years by your university.

Dorm living sucked.
Can I get an AMEN?

Ashley was a cheerleader in high school, and I was a basketball and volleyball player. I surfed, she sewed. I liked rock and she liked country. I liked to write and she liked to knit. I am was obsessed with the show Friends and she would kill me if I even thought of changing The Cooking Channel. We were two very different people, who didn’t necessarily get along half of the time.

We did have moments of alliance, where our differences did not pose a threat to our sanity. We won the “how well do you know your room mate” challenge two years in a row, and I couldn’t even complain when she wanted to watch the cooking channel, because she was the BEST cook. Even with only a microwave in our dorm room, I’m positive her hot pockets always came out the best. After the two years that Ashley and I spent living in the “comforts” of Smith Hall, we went our separate ways.

Other than the occasional contrived “Happy Birthday”, or that awkward “Hey. How’s it going? Good. See ya,” hall passing, Ashley and I didn’t speak for a while. It wasn’t that we were angry at each other, we just didn’t have much to talk about. I’m sure many of you have had this experience walking down the street, or in the grocery store, when you see somebody that you’ve known for years, but it’s easier to pretend like you’re strangers than to make genuine eye contact and exchange in congenial conversation.

We lost touch.

It has been almost five years since Ashley and I lived together, and our conversations have always remained sparse, and some degree of simple. A few weeks ago I was driving home from work, and I stumbled upon my little cousin’s Facebook. I realized that Nathan now goes to high school where Ashley was once a cheerleader. My mind started drifting the way a mind tends to drift when you’re driving along a scenic route and “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is playing. I started wondering about how Ashley might be doing these days. It wasn’t a passing thought, it was an honest and deliberate reflection that came out of nowhere. When I arrived home, I took out my phone and sent Ashley a Facebook message to say hi and to let her know I was thinking about her.

The response was beyond shocking and heartbreaking.

Ashley’s younger sister, Alicia, had been diagnosed with Cancer.

The passing weeks for Ashley, Alicia, and their family, were filled with a roller coaster of emotions, traveling back and forth to various hospitals, for surgery and treatment.

In the middle of all of the madness, I believe I was meant to connect with Ashley at this time in her life.When moments like these occur, we MUST regain touch. We MUST remember what it’s like to be human, and accept each other’s flaws. We MUST have compassion. There is never a point in time where past silly teenage altercations become more important than what is happening in the present moment.

It is at this time that I ask you, whoever you are, to take five minutes out of your day, and click the link that I have attached to the bottom of this page. If not for Ashley, or Alicia, do it for something deep within. Do it for something bigger than you. If there has ever been a reason to donate to a cause it’s this: Cancer survivors are not just Cancer survivors. A disease can’t define anybody. Alicia is younger than I am, with the world in her hands, and a large future in front of her. She is NOT just somebody who has been diagnosed with Cancer. She is a girl with a career. She is a girl with friends. She is a daughter. She is a sister. This isn’t some stranger knocking on your door soliciting a brand new knife set, this is somebody’s life. Somebody I value. Instead of spending that 20$ on the window sale you passed this morning, put it toward hope.

I won’t try to sell you on statistics, I just want you to take a moment and reconnect with what is important in life.

Once you do, please, don’t lose touch.