Painfully Tired

If we are all honest with ourselves, we will admit that sometimes we are just painfully tired.  We run around feeling like there are a million things to do, and there are billions of people in the world with their own million things to do.  We never want to show a sign of weakness.  Never want to be the one moaning about how tired they are or how busy they are.  But lets all take a minute.  Not to complain, but to say yes.  I'm a little burnt out.  Run down.  I could use twelve days of sleep.  

 I am one of those people who hates to show a weakness.  I don't want you to know if you hurt my feelings, if I'm tired, or upset, and I especially hate to cry.  Crying in movies is fine.  Crying about other people's lives is also fine.  But to cry about my own feelings... That's a no.  But sometimes by hiding these things from other people, I hide them from myself as well.  

I hadn't realized that I was tired.  I usually ignore such feelings and go on with my 60 hour work week between 3 jobs.  "I'm fine".  That's what I usually say.  According to The Italian Job, fine means, freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.  That is exactly how I feel when I say that I'm fine.  But I would never want you to see that.  So how did I realize today that I was tired?  Well first I was described as somber by a co worker.  This is drastically different from my normally talkative and out going personality.  So what did I do?  I went and took a nap on some old sofa in the back office before my shift started.  And by nap, I mean I layed there for 23 minutes while I thought about everything I needed to get accomplished in the next 3 hours to 7 years of my life.  

Why can't we slow down?  Why can't we just take a breath and enjoy life for a second.  I have this notion of my life that I'm going to work really hard in the next 10 years.  I'm going to be wise with my money, pay off my student loans.  Maybe by that time  I will have a husband and we can live debt free in a quaint east coast town where I can own my clothing store/coffee shop and close everyday at 5 pm just in enough time to take a walk on the beach with a glass of wine in my hand.  Of course this is aside from the three months out of the year that I go travel to parts of the world that need God, and a lot of help.  That is why I work so hard now.  But if i'm honest with myself, there will always be something else.  Some other reason to not slow down.  

Now I am all about working hard and being disciplined.  I was raised to work hard, with parents who always pushed me to do my best and an uncle who said, "get to work" if you were not out of your pajamas by 7am.  I was on the deans list in college and I am 22 with a start up business.  I believe that people should not be lazy sloths, but follow there dreams.  But at what point is enough enough?  I'm not sure.  If you've figured this out please let me know.  

And don't get me wrong.  I'm young and i've got a lot of years of exciting and challenging adventures ahead of me, and I am ready for them.  I just wonder if I will know when to stop.  So just say, "okay, I think I'm going to work a little less, and enjoy a little more".  

So now that we've all admitted to being tired, lets do something about it.  For me this means that this week I am not going to take my work home with me.  When i leave the studio at night I am going to go wherever it is that I am going and have an evening of not working..  What are you going to do?

Panic Button

Do you ever see some one in sheer and utter panic?  Like a mom whose child is about to run into the street, or a guy who looks at the check on a date and realizes that he doesn't have enough money in his bank account to pay for dinner?  Well that is how I look.  All day everyday.  I used to think that this idea of a panic attack was a work fiction.  That people just said that when they got a little nervous or worried.  I have been proven wrong.  Since graduating from college I have become the queen of panic attacks.  I get all hot and shaky   I freak out and emotionally and mentally go into a tizzy.  The signs that one of these is coming is as follows.  I start to call my parents every other second.  I send my sister a quick text asking if she wants to move somewhere random and start a new adventure.  These are my tells that life seems a lot a bit overwhelming.

It all started yesterday.  I suddenly had this really bad feeling that I was making a mistake staying in Philadelphia after graduation.  I want to start a new chapter of my life, and for some reason I can't help the feeling that this chapter shouldn't be here.  It's not any one thing.  It's a little bit of everything.  I can't find a new apartment, I can't afford a car, I feel a little bit too old and a little bit too young to relate to everyone around me.  While I know that there are people fighting this same battle, I feel alone in the war with myself.  Where do I go from here?

Well i decided to fast from movies and tv for one week, which if you know me at all, is a challenge, but  God is already opening and closing doors.  He's beginning to make it clear.  An old professor of my told me about a job here in Philly, while applying for that, I stumbled across a job in Atlanta I wouldn't mind having.  And then I came across another opportunity to kind of do my own thing.  So doors, are opening, which is great.  But it didn't come without lots of panic, some words of wisdom from my parents, and trusting that God has a plan for this crazy thing I like to call my life.

As my dad told me in the middle of my panic attack, "panic comes from fear, and fear comes from a lack of faith".  It is all a little bit easier said than done.  Don't fear.  Well you have never been inside my head, telling me not to fear, what is that?  Well just incase you have ever been anywhere close to this terrifying place in life, here is a scripture that has been helping me.  "So do not fear , for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10

All of this is really great, I know.  But I frequently struggle with the idea of waiting for God to make my path clear, or going out on faith, taking action, and him guiding me as I go.  I don't have the answer.  I am the kind of person who calms down by making lists.  I'm a doer, which is weird because I am also a free spirit, but this stage of life has made me into more of a control freak.  So anyway, I figure I can pray about which way to go, but start being proactive all at the same time.  So get to work.  If you don't know where you are going or what you are doing, just take some steps, God will slam the door in your face if that's not the step he wanted you to take.

I've Never Been in Love

I came home from work, and I really was not feeling well, so I took a nap.  Totally normal thing to do.  I woke up about 15 minutes ago, with a completely different prospective on life.  Does that ever happen to you? That you have a dream that completely changes you? Well I will tell you about mine.  Just has a heads up I will not tell you who this dream was about, but he’s not really the important part.  I will refer to him as Mr.. (The only time I will ever tell you who is it, is if one day I happen to marry him, and it just adds to the romance of our story.  Haha)

The dream kind of starts discouraging.  I am older.  Probably late 30s, and still single.  Yes I know, huge disappointment thus far.  My parents were getting a little older, in there late 60’s, and they said that they wanted to take me some where on a little trip.  So I said yes, whatever I mean I’m practically a spinster, I might as well go on vacation with my parents.  So they take me to this super small town, very woodsy.  All the way there they are telling me about this fireman.  “Ohh he’s just so wonderful, he saved an entire town,” they would say.  I was like…well that’s cool.  Why are we talking about this fireman so much.  But knowing how much my parents talk about the what they are reading, and things they hear, it didn’t surprise me much. 

So we get to this camp.  And forsome reason there is a trampoline.  And my dad was again saying how this great firemen lived in this town, and he was injured saving people, and now the town adores him! “Okay okay I get it, this man is perfect I understand”.  My dad sends me and my mom to the store.  For some reason I was dressed like a normal person on top, but I was wearing purple floral slippers, and matching fleece pajama pants.  And for anyone who knows me, this is not how I sleep, so it was just weird.  So me and mom walk through the town in my pjs.

I get to a point to where I can see him.  It’s a bad view, kind of a back, I can’t see your face view, but I would know him anywhere.  So I panic.  Why am I wearing slippers, I was thinking to myself!  I started to figure the whole thing out.  One piece at a time.  I looked at my mom with terror in my eyes but she made me continue walking. 

I get to a point where I have to cross this bridge, but it’s filled with girls and their moms fishing in the river, and there is no way through.  So I say excuse me, and all of their eyes, evilly dart in my direction.  They lift up their poles while I walk under them, with my ear pounding in my ear because I knew I was about to really see him.  Up close.  For the first time in years.  His hair looked grayer, his face had aged, and he had a slight limp from being injured, but he was still the way I’d remembered him.  I was facing the other direction so I had a minute to get myself together.

I passed the last couple girls at the bridge and finally broke into a normal stride.  I nudged him softly and quickly, before I could over think about it too much.  “Hey stranger”.  That’s all I said.  No other words, and he turned and looked at me with this beautiful grin, and wrapped my up in a hug.  It felt like home. 

Apparently my parents had taken me all that way because they thought we would be perfect together.  Earlier in life we were on two different paths.  It was just bad timing.  Now it was our time. 

Then I woke up… Reality sucks, but sometimes dreams give us hope. 

Why did I tell you this?  It’s soo mushy I know I know.  But sometimes I feel like it will never happen.  My person.  My other half.  I feel like I will never find him, and even more frequently, I feel like he will never love me.  But this dream gave me hope.  And one hug in one dreamed changed my life.  I can’t even adequately describe this hug, but it was home.  It was love and friendship, and respect.  It was a hug worth waiting for.  I woke up feeling like I would wait for a love like that.  Even if I don’t find it until I’m 30 something or later , though I pray to god it’s before then, its okay because it’s the only kind of love that I want. 

I believe that God has perfect timing for us.  It is so hard for me to live that on a day to day basis, when I’m feeling alone, or heart broken, or insecure.  But waiting for his plan, in his timing is better then anything I could dream up myself.  I grew up with a saying on our fridge that my mother put there.  It says,” God’s will is exactly what I would want, if I knew what God knew.”  So I’m here.  Not necessarily sitting and waiting, but living life, figuring out myself, hoping and trusting that God is going to  give me exactly who I need, exactly when I need him.  

Pops

                                me and dad then and now

Hands on the Wheel

I could have been a potter.  I say this every now and then when I think about my life.  There are very few, but specific things I remember asking for growing up that I didn’t get.  Yes, that means I was spoiled.  My parents did their best for my sister and I.  They wanted to give us everything we could have dreamed of.  Growing up I didn’t feel well off, because we shopped at Aldi, had old cars, and our house was small compared to all of my friends’.  Really Kassie?  In retro spec I was so blessed and really was just a selfish child.  Then I remember the two things… The two things I remember wanting so badly and never getting.

I’ve talked a lot about my dad.  He’s a businessman so I call him every five seconds during this whole, start a business process, and he is a huge part of the majority of my life changing moment stories.  I have also mentioned that he reads books.  So when little me asks him for a bunny as a child, he responds by saying that as soon as I read all the books in the library about owning bunnies, that he would buy me one!  “My life is perfect” I thought!  All I have to do is go get some books, read them, and get a bunny!  So little me, with glasses that covered my entire face, got the books.  I read them and studied them.  I can still clearly remember them in my mind.  The one book was all primary colors.  So as I turned each page, the red, blue, and yellow images clearly demonstrated what I needed take care of my bunny.  I studied and read.  I don’t remember exactly how it all went down, but I can tell you this.  I’ve never had a bunny.

I was born in St. Louis, Missouri but moved to Chicago shortly after.  My extended family still lives in MO so you can just imagine all of the road trips back and forth between the two.  Lucky for us, there is this place.  Its called Blain’s Farm and Fleet and its somewhere in the middle of nowhere right smack dab in the middle of our trip.  Its actually humorous how many times I’ve used their bathroom, bought Christmas presents, candy, and games at this place.  For those of you unfamiliar with this store located in the rural Midwest, it is basically an everything store for farmers.  The clothing section comes with a complete selection of overalls, work boots, and wool socks.  Yes, its that kind of store.  Well this magical place also has a pretty sick toys isle.  And one year I found this kids pottery wheel.  OHH I wanted it.  So bad.  To this day, I still want that pottery wheel.  I thought about it all the time.   It was red, blue, yellow and perfect.  I waited and waited until Christmas morning just knowing that mom and dad had gotten it for me!  How could they not?  I only had probably another 100 things on my Christmas list that year!  Well you can just imagine my disappointment on that special morning, when I woke up at 5 am to open presents, and it wasn’t there.  I never got the pottery wheel.  Which is why, when I’m feel sassy, which I usually am, I say to my dad with a little smirk, “I could have been a potter…”

While these childhood experiences have shaped my life so much, I thought I would tell you about the more important wants, and the talks with dad that came along with them. 

I love tattoos.  I’ve wanted one since I was 17 and I was determined to get one.  The only thing standing in my way was a man shaking his salt and pepper hair cover head in my face.  Dad.  Him being a more conservation business man protested the idea often and with force.  At the end of every conversation he would say, until the day comes that I am not paying for you anymore, you can not get a tattoo.  What this meant in my mind, it that I am going to keep asking until he cracks.  Once I was in college, holidays seemed like a perfect time to discuss this.  We would be driving from Chicago to St. Louis so we would be trapped in a car for 5 hours.  He couldn’t escape.  Year after year, I asked.  Year after year, he said no and I would get so mad.  You would have thought he killed my puppy.  Right after I turned 21 I had decided to get my nose pierced.  I thought I had to ask my dad, so I did.  He responded my saying that I was a grown up and I could do what I wanted.  OH HO HO.  I got him.  You know I was about to turn that around and use it against him with the tattoo.  I waited, like any good kid, for them to see me once with the nose piercing so they could get used to it, and then I did it.  I had planned it out so I knew what to say.  Two weeks later I got my first tattoo.  Man I’m good!

Most recently and most annoyingly, I have been in need of a car.  Now this has caused some heated arguments over the last four years between the rents and I.  My sister always had a car in college.  Why can’t I have one?  In my parents mind, I live in a city, so a car was pointless.  But school was in the suburbs.  This meant I have spent the last four years of my life bumming rides off people every time I needed to go to the fabric store, or target, or to pick someone up from the airport.  Not having a car makes me feel trapped.  It still does to this day.  I need space sometimes.  I need to just get out of the city and go somewhere.  I am a grown up!  If I want to drive myself to the beach I should be able to!  But no.  And most recently I was asked to sell a line of clothes at Kembrel, a boutique in Philly.  This means I need supplies.  Which means I need a car to go get it.  And I don’t have one.  It’s the most complicated and dramatic thing in the world.  So last night I called my dad way too late, I knew he would almost be sleeping.  But I didn’t care.  I was mad and stressed and I always blame him for me not having a car so obviously I was going to call him to give him a piece of my mind. 

Dang it that man is just too good.  I hate when people make it hard to be mad at them.  As the phone rang I told my roommate that I was going to fly to Chicago to punch him.  Ya I know, not my best moment.  But I was heated.  He was just so spiritual and all you need to trust God.  And I was all like, “can’t you just became a hitman really fast to make some more money!”  He didn’t think it was funny.  So no car.  Trying to trust that it’s all going to work out.  It’s hard.  If you have a car that you don’t want.  Send it my way.  I won’t protest.  End of story, as I hung up the phone, my roommate asked if I was still going to fly to Chicago to punch him in the face.  My answer… No.  

Zombies

I saw World War Z the other night.  I had wanted to see it when I had first seen the previews, but for some reason the news that zombies were the main event of the film had not yet reached me.  Yes, I know it is a book, so yes it would logically make sense that I would have some sort of clue.  But I didn’t.  But since I came in uninformed, the previews decided that they would foreshadow how the movie would be.  Just as a kindness I presume.  Every preview leading up to the feature presentation was for a horror film.  I’m not talk just thriller type movies, I’m talking about the demons in the house, clap twice and some possessed creature takes over your body, the name is Asylum type movies.  Little did they know that I almost walked out of the theater at this point.

Let me tell you something small about myself before I continue.  I have gone almost the entirety of my 22 years avidly avoiding horror movies.  And not just horror, gory, anything with cannibals, possessed children, and basically any movie that has the words “The house…” in the title.  There is only one time in my entire life when I did not successfully avoid these movies.  And in short its because my best friend liked this guy, and he liked scary movies, which meant despite my enthusiastic protest, I watched Amityville Horror with a pillow over my face.  To every person who tries to make me watch a scary movie, I say, “If you want to watch me wet my pants out of sheer terror, and then I get to call you every single time I can’t sleep in the middle of the night because of that movie?  Then sure we can watch it!  Oh yes, and you DO get the wonderful job of checking behind the shower curtain before I go into the bathroom, and canvassing every closet and closing the doors before I go to sleep”.  From this, they gain a true understanding of what I mean by no, and continue on to our other film options. 

So after all of that, without spoiling it, here is just a glimpse into the movie.  I jumped out of my seat in the first 10 minutes, and I spent the majority of the two hours with my hands on my face so it was easy access to cover my eyes or my ears when I got scared.   I have never seen a movie that has ever given me so much anxiety in my entire life.  I could actually feel my body unclenching in parts where I knew zombies wouldn’t be attacking.  It was a rough ride to say the least.  But for some reason I still really liked it. Maybe it was Brad Pitt.  What could be better then a man whose motivation for saving the world is his wife and daughters, and who is, let me say it (we’re all thinking it), incredibly handsome the whole time he’s doing it?

Most importantly,I left the movie fully believing these few things.  Zombies are real.  If and when there is ever a zombie attack, I would like someone I love to kill me before the undead have a chance to turn me.  I wouldn’t hate if I happened to one day buy a house that has a bunker built beneath the surface stocked with a lifetime supply of food for my family and I, and more seriously, that I am terrified to ever have children in this world. 

This blog is not about movies, although I would have no problem telling you all about my most and least favorite movies ever filmed.  But there is a point to rambling about WWZ.  And that is that I left, more then ever believing that God has a plan.  Okay maybe not, more then ever, but I did leave with a true belief that hes got this.  It’s something that I tell myself daily, and I know logically, but it’s believing it on a more heartsy level that I have a hard time with.  I actually have a tattoo on my ankle that reminds me that he has a plan for me.

If you’ve been reading my other posts you know that my life is just a little bit of a mess right now.  I’ve started working full time at one of my jobs, I start working for two designers this week, and I’m still trying to start my own business.  This was not my plan.  This is not necessarily what I wanted to do post-grad.  I didn’t want to be spread thin, running about the city of Philadelphia trying to avoid zombies, and accomplish a hundred things a day.  But that is just where I’m at right now.  And I have to believe that it will get better.  I have to believe that one day, I will get all of my student loans paid of, that I can open my own store, and maybe, just maybe, I won’t be working three jobs at once.  So keeping my head held high, I focus on this truth, that God has my back, and he is the mastermind behind this wonderful mess of a thing I call my life.  

Cynical Old Me

I am one of the most cynical people when it comes to self-help books.  So the huge surprise is that I’m basically reading three of them at the same time right now.  You most likely don’t know my father.  But he’s a very wise man, I love him, he’s great.  Except 90% of our real life talks start with him saying… and I quote, “I’ve been reading this book…”  and it ends with, “…and I think it would be good for you to read it!”  The funny thing is that as soon as he starts, I give a big eye roll, and tune him out.  Side note: dad I know you are probably going to read this, and I’m sorry but you know it’s true! But the point is, he is always recommending books to everyone.  He even offered me 50 bucks once to read the Anatomy of Peace.  It’s still unopened on my bookshelf unfortunately.  And the thing is, that I know these books would all be just so very helpful to my ever so chaotic life.  The problem, is that I am stubborn.  Period.  I hate people telling me what to do.  I hate when someone tells me to read something, and then I hate when that book tells me to do something that disrupts my life.  This is called pride.  The first step is admitting I have a problem.  So I admit it.  There are things in my life that I really do want to change, to figure out.  But I want them to be my idea.

            So my dad, being the great man that is, send me hints.  Thinking maybe he can make me think it was my idea.  He knows I won’t do something because he tells me to, but he also, being my father, knows that the benefit of it would be life changing.  So he buys the book.  And then tells me about it.  And then lays it on my bed when he’s in town.  And says, “ya know kass, you can borrow that from me if you want.”  Hmmm mmm.  Like I don’t know you bought that for me.  So when I call him telling him I started to read it, and ask if I can write in the book he says, “Oh ya that’s fine!  Make it yours, and I’ll order another one!”  Really… you planned this.  But the shocker is that yes, I’m reading a book he recommended.  It’s called START, by Jon Acuff.  It’s great because it talks about starting a business which I am doing right now.  I have no money, but a ton of dreams.  Ironically, I am simultaneously doing Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey, which is telling me to get out of debt, and SAVE SAVE SAVE!  How do I start a business and save at the same time?

            Well both of these books slash programs, along with, The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry, is helping me figure out how to start a business, pay off student loans, and be joyful about my circumstances all at the same time.  However impractical that may seem, for some reason I am loving it.  I sit in my made up, grown up office.  Really I am sitting in my comfy plaid chair, surrounded by chairs, and stool, covered in books, and workbooks, and sketchbooks, and packages of my new computer programs and its just a mess of an office.  I make a pot of coffee in the morning, and drink it out of my Grand Hotel mug all day long, throwing some smoothies in there every now and then. 

            As messy as this may all seem, I couldn’t be happier.  Well maybe I could, but for my situation I’m pretty stoked!  My roommate who usually sees me stressed and running around with my head cut off, finally says, “you seem happy now”.  And I am.  I’m learning what I want to learn because I want to learn it…Its always been, learn Bio!  Because Philadelphia University says we produce well rounded individuals!  And well rounded individuals know Bio!  Do you think that after that class I know anything about bio?  NO!  I’m stubborn remember!  I only retain what I think is important.  Well that and random facts that I will never use unless I’m at a Quiz Bowl or something…

            So the point of all of this is just to say, you should be friends with my dad.  Just kidding.  Well kind of, you should, but you should also take my advice and figure out what you want to do when you are young.  I have my whole life to get it all together.  But I know where I want to be.  It’s messy and unconventional, but it is working.  My savings account, which actually has so little money in it, people would laugh, I am proud of.  I am learning to save, so every dollar I put in, I feel like I accomplished something equivalent to world peace.  I feel great about the $60,000 plus I have to pay back for student loans because I’m learning how to handle it.  YAY to learning!  So go read all of these books!  No, they did not pay me to write that, but when I get excited about something that I’m learning I want everyone to know what I know.  Literally this just clicked while typing…I’m turning into my dad!  And I can pretty much bet that he’s cracking up reading this part..