I'm coming in late to 2018. On New Years Day I got strep and due to stubbornness, a weak immune system, stress, and working more than resting, I relapsed hard and was in bed for the first 15 days of January 2018, including those beautiful snow days. But I'm back and I'm ready to make the traditional New Years changes. I'm gonna pretend to eat paleo for a month, (okay, a week), talk about going to the gym, and make a bottle of wine last three nights instead of two (but hey, I'm up from a bottle a night so there's already progress). Kidding! Kidding . . . .

I'd love to give you all of these exciting updates on my life, but considering I haven't been very active or exciting, I've got nothing thrilling to report except that I'm moving. Yet again. Three times in a year. A new record. I'm staying in the general vicinity of East Nash, but downsizing a bit. The only perks to downsizing are a gas stove and a beautiful and perfect front porch overlooking the downtown skyline along with a nice biking neighborhood and an easy walk to plenty of local amusements and cafes.

Sine last I posted I've seen friends be hospitalized, been a stranger to my own family, struggled immensely with an inhumane work environment, spent a Christmas in a whirlwind of emotions and broken relationships, and I was just asked to write a piece for an online magazine based on the term, "Things are Okay."

My first thought was, "but things aren't okay." And then I realized that's why they have to be okay. My whole life I've felt sorry for myself. My parents divorced before I was born and my mom bailed when I was a kid. I grew up in a broken home of parents yelling and fighting pretty much every night. My sister and my two step-sisters and I would sit at the top of the stairs most evenings and listen to them scream for hours. They thought we were tucked in bed, like their hurling insults couldn't penetrate through the paper thin walls. Those were the nights my father didn't bring his anger upstairs with him when he tucked us in, to hurl at us instead of my step-mom for a change, which also happened quite often. My father was primarily responsible for the yelling. While he does not truly believe in mental illness and especially not in himself, as it is a weakness to his manhood and his faith and ability to provide, he is manic bipolar. He hates that I am a feminist and the irony is that his degrading treatment of my stepmother and the women in my family is what fired my lust for equality and grew my zeal to be outspoken whenever possible about the normalized mistreatment of women. But I digress. My father and I have a better relationship now than we once did, and as he ages he has also watched me struggle through mental illness and I believe has more of an understanding and sympathy to it now. All of that to say, my life has been filled with the antithesis of what we are taught is the American dream, and that's just the cliff notes.

But wait, here I am talking about feeling sorry for myself and the paragraph literally turns into a pity party. It is so engrained in me to only recognize sorrow in my life because that is my norm. It's what I'm used to. What I feel I deserve. Where I place my worth. But isn't it time I started seeing the exceptional? To stop complaining about the mental and emotional and even physical toll my job is taking on me and instead say, "I have a steady job and a salary I can depend on and that's more than many can say." Instead of crying about broken relationships and familial disintegration, I can take stock of my incredible, and let me repeat: INCREDIBLE friends and be thankful for the family they have given me? Instead of letting it bother me that I am about to pay more money every month to leave a huge and beautiful and perfectly located home that I love to move to a smaller one further out, I can be overjoyed that I have a home, a roof over my head, and the ability to pay rent each month?

I need to learn that even when I don't think I'm okay, I am in fact, okay. How does one change their thought process of almost 29 years? I did it once before with mental illness, and while I stumble constantly and have many, MANY falls that take a very long time to rise from, I do rise. And that is something. I have the desire to rise, and that is everything.

And I have the desire to be okay. And so I will try, again and again, to curb my thoughts to the positive and how it effects me over dwelling on the day to day that is enough to grind anyone down.

Hopefully I will be better about writing my thoughts down for accountability, and in doing so become better and better with each admission of guilt and negativity. In the mean time, I'm going to compromise. I'm going to simultaneously break and keep my New Years goals (not promises or resolutions, because those are just asking to be broken and they hold you to an impossible standard that makes you feel even shittier when you break them). I am going to have a glass of wine at 3 in the afternoon because it is one of my rare days off, but I am also going to make a paleo dinner and do some writing. So I'm gonna call that a win for today. Tomorrow is another day, and to quote Anne Shirley, "tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet." And that is incredibly uplifting to me.

Good luck, everyone. You're okay. And if you aren't right now, you will be.

In the meantime, I'm here, and we can chat if you want. I'm a good listener I think/ hope.

Okay guys,

So it's been a wild ride these past two years, for me anyway, I don't know about you. But I would assume so if you are living in America under this asshat. But I digress . . .

So, I had a hell of a year in 2016, as I think a lot of us did, mine being the holy trinity of economical, political, and very personal disaster. 2017 has been no different. Many of you who know me know that I went through a nasty little breakup with a lying, two-faced, male who masquerades as a feminist. I had a hard time finding steady work. There were protests, shootings, injustices, floods, betrayals, and heartbreak all around. But there were also really beautiful friends that will be my ride or die SATC homies until the end of time. And that overpowers everything else. And then I landed a job with one of the most prestigious, wealthiest, well known companies in the world. So of course I up and moved to Boston from Louisiana, knowing no one and having never been. It was a thrilling little ride of eight months. Eight months of every emotion you can fathom, but I'm glad I did it.

Although said company royally fucked me and then made me sign some evil things and take a sad amount of money to go away and never speak of it to anyone, I am glad I went. I am glad, however horrible, for the experience. Because it wasn't all bad. I met some incredible human beings who I am still wonderfully close to, arguably soul mates. I learned so much about leadership and management and business and holding your ground for what's right. I learned values and ethics and learned a lot of new Bostonian words for things, like bubblers and jimmies. I re-developed and re-kindled several very important relationships back home from people kindly and sincerely reaching out to support me (thank you forever, you know who you are). I went to a Red Sox game. I walked the Freedom Trail. I spent many a Spring and Summer afternoon exploring a beautiful and wondrous city and I regret none of that. But most importantly I was brave. Or so people keep telling me.

I think everyone dreams of moving away and starting fresh, and I did it. The only way I could have done it bigger is if I moved somewhere I didn't speak the native tongue (but let's get real, some parts of Boston have their own language). People kept telling me how brave I was for going somewhere I didn't know anyone and had never even visited. Moving from the tropics of Louisiana where I had a "community" to the snow covered streets of Massachusetts in the dead of winter. But honestly, it just felt like the next step in life. To not be stagnant you must always be moving forward. Life is short in that you need to grasp at opportunities when they come your way, but it's also long in that, if you take that opportunity and give it all you've got and it doesn't work out, it's okay. IT'S OKAY. You have all the time in the world to get up, dust off, and leap at the next opportunity that unfolds before you. You will fall MANY times before you land. Trust me. I know. I'm not done falling yet.

My next opportunity seems to be Nashville. I can't tell you what it is yet, but I can tell you I'm here, and I'm hustling my ass off to find it. I have had the luck of landing a killer house in Cleveland Park and two pretty bomb ass roomies hailing from Chicago and Knoxville. Margot, my fat beauty queen boulder of a cat, is coping with having another feline in the house. I am working part time at a sweet little shop called Two Son run by some pretty neat people, and I am doing freelance writing pretty consistently as well as promo work here and there. I still don't have enough money to pay rent in my bank account and generally sell more and more of my belongings each month to make ends meet, but hey, I'm not ashamed.

I had this idea in my head that at this point in my life I'd be stable, happy, know exactly what I wanted, and all those oreos. But that's just not how life is. Life is messy and unexpected, and things rarely go according to plan. And while that is scary and sometimes knocks us on our backs, it's beautiful and exciting and the best way to grow and learn that we will ever get. I am constantly comparing myself to others my age and younger and beating myself up about the choices I've made and dwelling on how unfair life has been to me, but what-the-fuck ever, right? Life is unfair to everyone here and there. I just keep my head up and tell myself that it won't always be like this. And hey, it might be. It very well might be. I may always be in debt. I may always struggle for steady work despite everyone I've interviewed with raving about my resume and experience. I may always feel like I'm not doing enough. I may always deal with depression and anxiety, but I also know that I will always have my dear friends who have been holding my hand through thick and thin since we met. I know I will always have my cat (yes, she will never die). I know I will always have The Great British Baking Show to remind me that humans are kind and caring and gentle. Knowing these things helps me deal with the unknown day by day.

I may not be anywhere close to having it all, or even a little bit. But I'm very thankful for what I do have and that's nothing to scoff at. So until I figure my shit out, which may be next week, or it may be another ten years, I'm gonna work my knuckles to the bone to do right by people, to stay kind and not jaded. To bench press my cat every Wednesday (and yes, we'll be wearing pink). And to always be there for my friends the way they have unfailingly always been there for me. Who knows, I may even have health insurance again one day and get my happy meds and acid reflux meds back!

So, here I am. What better time to launch the blog and domain you've been hiding for two years than when you're unemployed and work in your pjs from home all day with your cat constantly walking across your laptop and pissed at you for moving your arms so frequently to type. This website, while available to the public, is for me. At least right now. It's for me to come and write, and practice, and grow, and hopefully someone can relate and it becomes a source of comfort and motivation even. Who knows what will be. But if you are reading, thank you for taking the time as it is such a precious commodity.

What is Okay?

Are You There, God? It's Me, Brenna.