PS: How perfect is this drawing? That's exactly how I imagine it.
Somewhat similar to my last, very short, post. I think this concept is essential to growing up. I think you know you're maturing when you start to think things through, weight the consequences with potential benefits. Knowing how to resist instant gratification. Knowing what decisions need to be though through. It's not about losing your sense of spontaneity and it certainly doesn't make you a boring person to suddenly realize that you just can't go through life making split second decisions based on your current emotions. Personally, I feel everything to the core. Any emotion - I feel it deeply and a lot of the times, I want to act on these emotions (good or bad) and see immediate results. I usually succumb to the temptations. But as I've gotten older, I've realized how important it is to use your better judgments. There's something so authentic and genuine about following your heart (ie: those gut reactions, impossible-to-ignore feelings, travel/shopping/etc desires...) and I think it represents one's remaining innocence. It's nice to know there's a part of us who wants to act on impulse, regardless of the consequences. It's like we can forget all the times we might've been hurt in the past, or all the potential dangers that lurk, and simply do something because we want to do it. On the other hand, as we become adults, we have to look out for ourselves. I hate being warned about anything, especially if it's a person, and I always say that my mistakes are mine to make. And I stick to this mentality 100 percent, but I also know that this makes me my sole protector. In exchange for hearing "I told you so" from friends and family, you only have yourself to blame when you end up hurt. Being held accountable by ourselves is what teaches us how to use our brains while following our hearts. It's about finding a balance between the sometimes idiotic impulses of our hearts and the wiser, more hesitant tendencies of our brain. Our brain is the one who's going to remind us of the heartache we felt the last time we gave in to an ex and our brain is the one who reminds us that we're broke college students who probably shouldn't be spending $200 a night in New York. Nobody wants to lose that impulsive, vulnerable, emotional side of themselves, but nobody wants to end up jaded from mistakes they knew could've been avoided.
PS: How perfect is this drawing? That's exactly how I imagine it.
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Listening to some Mumford in bed tonight, alone on this Valentine's Day, and some of their lyrics are really important to me. "I'll be bold, as well as strong. And use my head alongside my heart." Goodnight everyone, hope you have someone to love tonight.
I'm not one to really invest any emotions or serious thought in my daily horoscope. Basically, if it says something favorable - I'll pay attention. If it says something that doesn't apply to a current situation or my life in general, or if it's negative in any way, I'll probably choose to ignore it. Admittedly, I have a fair weather friendship with my horoscope. Last week I had an exceptionally good horoscope (found in the back of a magazine in a waiting room...) that was not only extremely positive, but also applied to my life in lots of different ways. It was so great that I took a picture of it on my phone and sent it to my best friend. Here is the horoscope:
"January 30th's new moon will make February an exceptionally romantic and lighthearted month. If you're single and hoping for that exciting first meeting, surprise-a-minute Uranus in close angle means your chances have never been better for a fateful introduction. The full moon in Leo on the 14th will enliven your area of friendships and events, so plan to socialize in large groups rather than hole up with your partner or spouse. Your chart suggests that a collective setting will bring you more stability and happiness. Your only distraction this month will come at the new moon in Pisces on the 28th. Life at work will get very busy, and if that sounds dreary, rest assured that any new assignments ill come with intriguing creative elements that will allow you to leave a big, beautiful mark of success. Jupiter in your house of honors and achievements all but guarantees it." So far, my horoscope has been on point. We're nearing the end of fashion week (a whole other post in itself) and work has been crazy busy. The atmosphere has been equal parts exciting and chaotic. I've gotten a chance to work with A+O's stylists to prep for our show - working with the clothing first hand and witnessing all the elaborate details that go into making a presentation what it is. I've been surrounded by beautiful clothing, shoes, and accessories all week and truly feel like I'm living in some sort of fantasy land. And it's not just the clothing and fashion that has been incredible lately. I feel like I've been surrounded by beauty and interesting sight all the time lately. Maybe my attention to detail is just developing, but I swear I want to take a picture of everyone and everything lately. I want to capture all these moments of my life so I can always have them with me. Whether it's the cute little board outside LuluLemon on 14th St (today featured a Mumford & Son's lyric: Where you invest your love, you invest your life) or the gorgeous views while walking the Highline in Chelsea, I've found myself snapping pictures all day long. Just looking through my camera roll on my iPhone makes me realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by obvious and subtle beauty alike. I feel like being in New York has allowed me to be creative in so many different ways. I constantly feel so inspired by the people, fashion, music, etc that I see on a daily basis. There are so many little moments that have allowed me to be fully present which is something that I've struggled with for a while. I'm either stressed about the past or anxious about the future, so it's a nice change of pace to be content in the present. For example, today I was waiting for the subway listening to a girl sing/play guitar. She was SO incredible, better than anyone I've heard in a while so I just allowed myself to really focus on her voice and I got so peacefully caught up that I didn't even check to make sure I was getting on the right train. We often don't allow ourselves to just be, and I promise it's one of the best things you can do. That was a little bit off topic, but back to my horoscope. It mentions a fateful introduction which I can see playing out in two different ways according to my current life. Either it's referring to the guy who I yelled at in Grand Central because I thought he was trying to sell me something (he was asking for my phone number) or another recent "introduction". The latter is not so much a first introduction like one has with a stranger, but it is most definitely fateful. I've heard it said many times that what's meant to be will be, or something along those lines. But on the other hand, I've also heard that people who end up in your past are there for a reason. I think it's really hard to know who, or what, is meant to be left in the past. I'm a true believer that what's meant to be will eventually find it's way, but I also think that this can sometimes become an excuse to keep people around that should've been ditched a while ago. It's hard to draw the line at who's worth it and who's not. You never want to find yourself five years down the road asking "what if?" but you also don't want to keep someone around in hopes that it will turn into the fairytale you've always envisioned. But if there's something I've learned the past year or so, it's to always trust your instincts. If there's always that one person you find yourself thinking about, you shouldn't let them go. When you find yourself wandering the streets of New York and wishing that person was by your side just to keep you company, you shouldn't let them go. And when this person is the first person you want to text or call when anything happens (good or bad), they're probably meant to be in your life some way or another. I think as I've gotten older, it's become increasingly clear to me how important those things are. It's so easy to get caught up in the past, especially if you have a messy history with someone, but eventually you just want that person to be in the present with you - to share every little detail with. And though it's corny, it's true when they say "Never give up on someone you can't go a day without thinking about." So I've had a little over a month to ponder some goals for the year. I'm usually not one to make any resolutions, it's just never something that I've done. But the other day I overheard a girl in my office talking about how there are three new moons happening all at once (or something along these lines...) and that everyone should write down their goals and dreams and wishes, etc. Hopefully the moons are still new and I'm not jinxing myself here. Sometimes it's nice to write things down and see it for yourself, to make things a little more "real" as opposed to a lofty idea that floats around your brain on occasion. So here it goes, my goals/dreams/wishes/etc for 2014 and beyond: 1. Write a book with my best friend. We've been talking about this idea for a couple of months now and it's going to happen. We're both odd and outspoken and opinionated (lots of O words here) and I know we would write a killer book. Just need some ideas. 2. Design a potential clothing line. Call it Jamesway. 3. Save money and make some financially responsible moves. For example: don't rely on my mom for everything. 4. Keep in (better) touch with my family and friends. 5. Be friendlier and more approachable. I realized that to a stranger, I am neither of those things. Especially when I'm walking around New York with a frown (the natural state of my face) and my sunglasses on. The other day, a construction worker told me to "smile. It's almost Friday." It was Tuesday. 6. Eat healthier. I am constantly on the run whether it's at work or commuting to/from work and I have to admit, I live off Cliff Bars and Diet Coke and Skittles. And I have a bad habit of excess snacking on weekends. I'm looking to switch from Diet Coke to lemon water, and from Skittles to fruit (like real fruit). The Cliff Bars can stay. 7. Somehow morph into my boss (looks, life, etc). 8. Get a new iPhone. Mine has been cracked since December and it makes me feel like a sloppy degenerate. These are just a few for now. Let's see how this goes. Happy Thursday! So not excited to see your baby pictures on Instagram today. PS: Here are some fab pictures I look this week. OH BY THE WAY: HAPPY FASHION WEEK!! "Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter because there was all the rest of the world to visit ... And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy." The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
"And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought." A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon "What they failed to teach you at school was that the whole business of being human just got messier and more complicated as you got older. You could tell the truth, be polite, take everyone's feelings into consideration and still have to deal with other people's shit. At nine or ninety." A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon "Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive." The Shack, William P. Young "The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever." The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon "I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition." Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid "Asking someone to say they love you - and she always asked - is like buying yourself a birthday present. It's more than likely exactly what you want. But it must make you feel awfully sad to get it." Sometimes I Think I Hear My Name, Avi "This is the danger of loving: no matter how powerful you are, no matter how many kingdoms you rule, you cannot stop those you love from dying." The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo "You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet." Love, Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all." Beloved, Toni Morrison "I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away in the middle of the night." The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini "All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall we woken, a light from the shadows shall spring. Renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be kind." The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien "A mile-high man could catch and cup her among the falling stars." Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace "I loved something I made up, something that's just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it, whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn't see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes - and not him at all." Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell "You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river, on the sails of the ships, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil." Great Expectations, Charles Dickens "All human beings search for either reasons to be good, or excuses to be bad." Tell-All, Chuck Palahniuk "He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would only be half alive; and he said mine would be drunk. I said I should fall asleep in his and he said he could not breathe in mine." Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte "I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky. And she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane." Looking for Alaska, John Green "I am so tired of feeling like a shattered vase across a slippery floor and I am so tired of watching you tip toe around the pieces so you do not cut yourself on me." Typewriter Series #210, Tyler Knott Gregson "The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed." Ernest Hemingway "The expression 'following suit' is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first." The Austere Academy, Lemony Snicket "One s loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving." The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho "Last year when my grandma fell and broke her hip, she couldn't paint her toenails anymore. So my grandma started doing it for her, even after he fell and broke his hip, too. For me, that's love." The 19th Wife, David Ebershoff "I don't put up with being messed around and I don't suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can provide character references." Sunshine, Robin McKinely "Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about: if you loved me, you would." Prozac Nation Elizabeth Wurtzel "It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them." An Autobiography, Agatha Christie "Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore." Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury "It's clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty bumming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another." The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller " 'There are two kinds of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girl eats a sandwich, how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about her. The second type of man - and I am in this category - can fall in love with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her.' " Snow, Orhan Pamuk "It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal." A Room With a View, E.M. Forster "There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living." The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson "But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." Brave New World, Aldous Huxley "Remember, the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony." Shampoo Planet, Douglas Coupland "Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about." The Passion, Jeanette Winterson "I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together." Blue-Eyed Devil, Lisa Kleypas go go "But who say can say what's best? That's
why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives." Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami "Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe." A Game of You, Neil Gaiman "He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach -that it makes no sense." American Pastoral, Philip Roth "What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know...I felt that by walking away I was abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people." Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, Peter Cameron "I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesterdays are buried deep - leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can." West with the Night, Beryl Markham "I want to be the kind of person who can do that. Move on and forgive people and be healthy and happy. It seems like an easy thing to do in my head. But it's not so easy when you try it in real life." Waiting for You, Susane Colasanti "I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark." The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, Amy Hempel " 'That proves you are unusual,' returned the Scarecrow; 'and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.' " The Land of Oz, L. Frank Baum "It seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that's the way the world worked- people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can't have everything you want at the same time." Lena, Jacqueline Woodson "I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. Sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much.. so, so much." Maizon at Blue Hill, Jacqueline Woodson "If by now you're a little confused, don't be too hard on yourself. Life is confusing, and anyone who claims that she has all the answers has probably uncovered the wrong ones." Inside the Shadow City, Kristen Miller "I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed it's beauty to them." Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak "Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and try to have patience, if you can." Unfinished Tales, J.R.R. Tolkien "I never left you; I never will leave you. While life lasts, and beyond, I am here." Lady of Avalon, Marion Zimmer B "Umm, I don't know. When I see something I like looking at, I get to keep looking at it." Happy Thank You More Please Do you remember "Where is Waldo?" from when you were younger? Do you remember searching through a claustrophobic beach scene for his signature red and white striped shirt? And then once you finally found him you wondered how it took you so long. It's like those seemingly millions of little sunbathers and beach umbrellas never existed. You just see Waldo and his stripes. If you're like me, you found your "Waldo" by dividing your life into chronological chunks. Lessons learned by age 16: don't drink tequila like it's water unless you want alcohol poisoning that will haunt you for five years. Lessons learned by age 18: life is not over because you didn't get accepted into your "dream" college. Shockingly, there is a world that exists outside of high school. And you will gradually lose touch with friends you thought would be in your wedding. Most of your "best friends" will become strangers. And a few lessons learned by 21: 1. Not every relationship or friendship is meant to be anything other than temporary. 2. You can't expect to always get what you give. People will disappoint you - more than once if you let them. 3. True friends are extremely hard to find. Appreciate these people and keep them around. Quality > quantity. 4. Being single is liberating and so underrated. You'll be okay if there's nobody to text at the moment. 5. There are too many options in this world to settle for mediocrity. Too many places to go if you hate where you live, too many guys to date if your boyfriend is a dick. 6. Don't cheat on a significant other and never lie to those who love you. It's easier to heal from being hurt than to forgive yourself for hurting someone else. 7. Trust is not only difficult to establish but also impossible to get back once it's lost. 8. There is nothing appealing or interesting about pretending to be perfect. These people are boring. 9. Try as you might, you cannot change someone to fit your expectations or ideals. People are who they are, and change will occur, if at all, on their terms only. 10. Lastly, you can love someone with your entire being and it will not be enough. Eventually, when enough time has gone by and you've learned your lessons, you will get an idea of what (and who) is important. All those trials and errors, though painful and confusing, will lead to many moments of clarity. And maybe, if you're like me, you'll look back and feel slightly dumb for not having seen it all along. It's like looking at every inch of the page and finally resting your tired eyes on Waldo. Maybe it took you thirty seconds or maybe it took you an hour - but you found him. And what's the point of "Where is Waldo?" if there are no obstacles that make him so hard to find? Empathy is when you learn of a stranger's passing, and this knowledge instantly rips apart your heart in the same familiar places that were once so deeply destroyed; your heart was unrecognizable. You don't necessarily ache for the loss of the stranger, but for the person you know (an acquaintance, classmate, Facebook friend). You ache for the inevitable struggle they will face in the coming months. You ache for their confusion, anger, helplessness, and regrets. Oh, the regrets.
And even if some time has passed since the initial destruction of your own heart, it's like this once-healthy, unbreakable organ is just being held together by weak threads sewn into the broken places, with huge gaps between the stitches. These threads will stretch and quiver, sometimes getting pulled so thin; they snap. Any reminder or memory of "your person" can break these threads, can slip through the open gaps between stitches. The repair to your heart is enough to get you through the days, but so vulnerably that you search out a good, safe place to cry at your office or school. Just in case. For me, there are obvious moments. I'll get a quick glimpse of my tattoo in the mirror, often doing a double-take. Written in Mike's handwriting, "I love you" is permanently inked on the back of my neck, not visible to me unless my thick, dark hair is up and I've twisted my neck in just the right way. I can usually only get a glimpse of the "I" or the letter "u". This moment is bittersweet, every time. The tattoo is new enough (October 13, 2013) that it hasn't become a familiar part of my skin, like the scar on my left leg from when I was three or the beauty mark on my right cheek. It's new enough that I'll get a quick look and I'll start to feel my heart gently pull, stretching those fragile strings, forming a lump in my throat. That's the bitter part. The sweetness comes soon after, when I run my finger over the waxy ink and remind myself that Mike is with me, and he loves my tattoo. He had one too. There are moments that are not-so-obvious. I think these moments cut the deepest and hurt the most, likely because they are accidental and unexpected. They catch you off guard; the strings in your heart haven't had time to prepare for the pain. I'll be having a normal day, maybe even a great day, and then I'll pass a car splattered in dried mud. Instantly, I'll be right back to that summer day when Mike took his Range Rover off-roading and then we all drove to the beach. My heart will rip and tear so quickly, so unexpectedly that I'll be left with tears in the parking lot of a Stop & Shop. Yesterday, I looked at the date on my way to work. January 17th and my heart falls apart. The threads plucking and snapping in every direction, the gaps opening deep and hollow, making room for new pain, a new milestone in my grief. Mike would be 21 on January 20th. Empathy is when you read someone's words but physically feel their pain. You feel their pain deeply, in your own mending heart. You want to tell them your experience with death, you want to reach out simply to say that you've been there too. You understand that there is more comfort in meaningful, supportive silence than thousands of sympathetic words that miss the mark. Of course, not many young people have experienced profound loss, and for them I feel both gratitude and jealousy. Grateful that nothing tragic has taken someone away from them. Jealous that their hearts are whole and unscathed. Empathy is the connection between two people who have each experienced their own loss, each has a heart sewn together along the broken places. Empathy is the mutual understanding of a unique pain so deep that it becomes a part of your identity, lingering quietly but never fully fading away. My article "I Hated College (And That's Okay)" was published on the amazing ThoughtCatalog.com. I couldn't be more honored, and the comments/messages from strangers and friends alike has been eye opening and incredible. But that was supposed to be another post altogether! Okay, quickly the link:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/jaime-falco/2014/01/i-hated-college-and-thats-okay/ |