My 10-year Life Plan

To do before I officially enact this plan: move into an apartment with a roommate. 
Application in, lease to sign and pro-rated rent to pay, move in starts April 30.

This year:

-lose 20 pounds or more

-keep up with all my big kid bills

One Year: By Dec. 31, 2011 (23 y/o):
-graduate with a B.A. in English Education and a minor in Spanish
-continue working at BABW and saving money
-keep my life balanced so that my hair stops falling out from stress

Two Years: Spring/Summer 2012 (24 y/o):
-maintain good financial standing
-work at BABW while looking for a teaching job for the fall
-write Lamarr's book (and some other things)
-do primary and secondary research for hearOKC

-start teaching

-get my own place with no roommate

Three Years: Spring/Summer 2013 (25 y/o):
-go to DC for (Pres. Obama's second ;-)) inauguration
-continue to write and research
-maintain
- have great savings so that I can travel

Six Years: Spring/Summer 2016 (28 y/o):
-be financially stable
-keep writing and researching
-start the Oklahoma youth poetry slams 

Seven Years: Spring/Summer 2017 (29 y/o):
-start graduate school
-take a team to the Brave New Voices Youth Poetry Slam Festival 

Ten Years: Spring/Summer 2020 (32 y/o):
-have a master's (don't know in what yet)
-have some good writing under my belt

These are the things that need to get done in ten years, in that order. But if I'm awesome and can do them faster then mad props to me.

Edits in light pink.

Help Me Help Myself

I should be doing homework, and I'm going to sleep as soon I finish this, but I'm doing this because blogging makes me happy and the lack of happy things in my life is why I eat my emotions and my hair is falling out.

Here's the deal.
My whole life is work.  Gubernatorial campaign = work. Build-A-Bear WORKshop. Being an education major = work.  This is not to say that I don't love my jobs. I do love them. But a body can only handle so much.  I rarely hang out. I'm only available at night when everyone else is studying or sleeping like I should be.  So what I need to de-stress is time to do something good for my body, relaxing for my mind, and WITH OTHER PEOPLE. 

Here's where you come in.
I've already decided that I am going to start doing yoga on Tuesday nights again. I like Art of Yoga in the Paseo. Something like $50 for five sessions. Good prices and the teachers are great. If you want to join I'd love to sweat and stretch next to you at 5:30 on Tuesdays (there's a beginner's rate, don't remember what it is. Just call them).
But I need some more activities. I'm available most Thursday afternoons and evenings, Saturday and Sunday mornings. I get up at 9:30 so I can do something starting about 10:30. I know that's difficult for some of you church-goers. But I would like to walk around Lake Hefner (or a park somewhere) with a buddy. I would like to play sand volleyball with a group of buddies. I'd like to make a t-shirt quilt, or go to the museum. 
If any of these activities strikes your fancy leave me a comment, give me a call; we'll do it. Promise.

Help me help myself. I like my hair. I don't want it to fall out due to stress. I am pretty good company. Some people think I'm funny. Be my friend. Hang out with me so I won't be lonely.

Thank you for reading. Hope to hear from you soon.

P4L: The Breakdown

Passion, desire, motivation, love, inspiration
None of these words describe anything tangible. They describe feelings or emotions.

Some people go through life doing what needs to be done without really engaging their emotions - without being worried about how they feel about things.  In the public sphere we are encouraged to use the word "think" and never "feel", we are taught that emotions are nothing, that actions/rationale are everything. 

Lamarr Womble branded his concept on purpose. Passion - the feeling - for Leadership - the action - is the intersection between the ethereal and the practical. It is the heart's way to the head, and the head's way to balance the heart.  Don't think for a moment that passion is all fluff and fancy with no concrete necessity or basis.  And don't be fooled into the belief that you can lead successfully (for very long) if you are not passionate.

As co-author to this book and someone who lives her life by its philosophy, I know this concept through and through.  Allow me to give you a piece of advice, before you embark on the journey that is passionate living. Open both your mind and your heart to these ideas; experience this on a practical and an emotional level.

When I first heard the P4L concept at a conference when I was a junior in college, I experienced it on an emotional level because my life had been overrun by the practical. I was in five or more extracurricular organizations, taking 16 hours of classwork, work 2.5  jobs, and having panic attacks. I was spread too thin. It wasn't, as a poet I know wrote, "what I loved but what I felt I was supposed to do" (Colin Gilbert, "Desert of Words").  After hearing that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, and not everything requires a degree, and I didn't have to (and shouldn't!) quit my day job to develop my "side hustle", I was near tears with relief.  A leader has to hustle, but if she is resourceful, and if she's hustling for what she really wants then it won't feel as hard - and it won't cause panic attacks!  Here's the challenge: If you tend to shut off your emotions and focus solely on action - let this book appeal to your feelings, your heart.  Read it all in a short amount of time, don't dog-ear pages or make notes or use a highlighter.  Don't study it, just receive.  And once you've let the initial impact settle (a week or more) then go back through and pull out the more practical elements.  If you tend to never look at the practical and focus solely on the way you feel - let this book teach you that practicality doesn't have to be dispassionate.  Take this book slowly and in small bites: one chapter a week with a highlighter and a pencil. 

Lamarr hit the bull's eye with this. It will change your life - not just your collegiate career or your job search, but your whole life - if you let it.

Happy reading, passionate living, effective leading!

Hope and Desire and Freedom

There is so much going on right now. I'm going on vacation tomorrow, but I'm overwhelmed by the things that will be facing me when I come back.

School - I have another research paper coming up. I have a new class starting.
I need to figure out my summer classes and plan my summer schedule. I need to decide when I'm graduating and what I'm doing with my life. 

Build-A-Bear - I need to write down some Spanish phrases to better serve our clientele. I need to brainstorm some training methods. I need to schedule some training time. I need to update our calendar.

Classen SAS - I need to spend 30 hours there before April 16th.

OSGA - I need to write a script for our promotional video and finish editing/send out the minutes from the last meeting. I need to contact a guy about the website.

hearOKC/art - I need to schedule in time to brainstorm, blog, edit my previous writings, and talk to people about the movement.

----
I've never really liked how it is decided who has to do what in order to "pay their dues" to a concept.  You have to be the leader of however many organizations in high school to be eligible for certain scholarship programs in college. Regardless of your willingness to do what it takes starting now.  You have to win local competitions and do local shows before you can get big roles in the performance world. Regardless of how good you are and whether you're perfect for the job. You have to be a reporter before you can be a columnist before you can be an editor. Regardless of the fact that you're better at opinion writing and better at editing than reporting.
I understand why you have do certain things and get experience before you can do other things...but I feel like oftentimes, the process of those experiential things takes the love of the bigger projects away.

I want to make contacts in the poetry world but I have to slam first. I don't want to slam. But supposedly I need that experience before I can have the right perspective for other things.

It's just frustrating.

----
In other news, what the hell is going on with my life? At Levey's wedding, I was single and not really trying to mingle.  I have so many things I want to do with my life that I don't want to have to think about a relationship. I have codependent tendencies, so thinking about the potentiality of a relationship messes with my mojo. And I'm a bit of a control freak who likes to only have my wants and needs to worry about. For better or worse, there was (is?) a situation with a guy who seemed like a great catch - smart, funny, older, far away, self-reliant, focused.  The problem is: I am VERY easily distracted, and very quickly attached to ideas. So I spent all this time thinking about all of the potential goodness and how that might or might not affect my future plans. And now it looks like it has fizzled out before it really got started.
The moral of the story is: for a month I've been really excited about something that was not in my 3-year plan. I considered how I'd be willing to change my 3-year plan. I forgot about small parts of the 3-year plan that impact the 5-year plan and the 10-year plan.  And now I'm back to the place where a potential relationship isn't in the forecast. I kind of feel like I wasted a lot of mental energy this month and I am worried that every time a guy shows an interest I'm going to do the same thing. 

Is it selfish to not amend your thinking regardless of who comes into your life? I.e. if I were to assume that a relationship couldn't go anywhere (except the bedroom) because my 3-year plan needs focus, would I be driving away a good guy because I'm not flexible? Or is the right guy a guy who thinks, "It's awesome that you have this plan for your life. Don't worry about me. Just fit me in where you can"? Or should I do what I did, have an alternative plan for my life if I'm with someone?

I guess it really comes down to hope and desire and freedom.  Do I hope for a relationship, or do I hope to be "a movement by myself"? Do I desire the things that I know I can accomplish on my own, or do I desire the things that require partnership? I am free to choose. In the freedom lies the tension.

In Need of Expression

Art has been creeping up in strange mental places lately.

I got a message on Facebook from someone who wants me to try out for a slam team. The qualifying slam is April 1. I have a lot of material, the question is: will I work on it? Will I try out? "You can't fail if you don't try." But there are some things one should do while they are young and beautiful.

I keep thinking of my friend Frank - about his guitar (that he started teaching me to play once), and his knowledge of music and performance art, and his patience level (high). And I keep having this vision of me writing songs, teaching myself to read music again, teaching myself to sing again.

I still see my name on the covers of books.

I have "a tornado inside my ribcage - call it justice or opportunity or love - swirling strong enough to break bone, ready to initiate revolution." What to do, what to do...

The Subtext of Love

It started as text messages while studying:
Her: Hey, are you still working?
Him: Of course I am, but it's obvious that you're not.
Her: I am. But you crossed my mind, so I wanted to tell you that you're hottest when you're earning As. Lol. 
Him: Yep, the best girls do it with their brain.

It escalated to his hand on her thigh under the table while they both had their books open on the tabletop.

At its best they study in the same room, because it never fails that during midterms and finals, they'll accidentally meet glances at the same time, gesture toward the bedroom, have a quickie, and return to their studies - her in his shirt and socks, him in his underwear and t-shirt, both of them prepared to focus for at least a few more hours.

That's what love looks like.