Short and tiny.

I am having such a great reading week so far. Thank you to my husband and my blogger Secret Santa friend.

The Other Language by Francesca Marciano

There is something to be revered about the successful short story writer - I am convinced it's a mix of part art, part science, part innate talent. Many of the characters were better developed, with more personal depth achieved in a few pages, than entire chapters from some novels out there. From a never-before worn, yet endlessly adored Chanel dress to learning a new language to sharing an intimate experience with thousands as one, I am a big believer in books finding their way to you when you need them the most. This one was exactly it. 

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories (Vol. 1 & 2) by Joseph Gordon-Levitt

As if any of us had another reason to love on JGL, he mentally architects this creative concept series and then collaboratively engineers it into fruition with the beautiful, brilliant, poignant works of anon writers and artists everywhere. I just sat there, in wonder. 

Day 5 - Your dreams

I remembered today, while we're still in National Letter Writing month:

I completely fell off the bandwagon with my 30-day letter writing challenge. For years now.

This was an incomplete, private entry from earlier this year, when I got laid off 14 days into the new year. I am coming up on my third month at my new job soon, and when the senior marketing coordinator piped up, What? You've only been here for two months?, It was exactly what I was thinking. 

What a difference a change of season makes.

* 

Dear Dreams,

This isn't exactly how I wanted to start off 2015, unemployed and unsure of where life is taking me. It being the year I turn 30 and all later this fall, I thought I was finally going to settle in and put my tumultuous twenties behind me. Mainly because I am so ready to turn this page already. 

And yet here I am, struggling with feelings of inadequacy and acute anxiety this week, trying, trying, trying, trying to snap out of this depressive fog I've mentally created and enveloped myself in.

There have been moments throughout these last few days where I am overwhelmingly grateful that we don't have a child to care for while I am job-searching, wondering what's next. I know it's a process - and yet this in-between place. It feels dark and scary and lonely, making it hard for me to think about my dreams. 

My dreams. They seem like a luxury now, a defense mechanism I am hanging on to in order to forget about what's at hand, the reality that my share of our household income will be next to zero after this month.

Let it go

How do you let go of a friendship that once invigorated you but no longer feeds you?

Do you try to hold on?

Should you?

A complete life.

And so the year is coming to an end, soon, and as if on cue, a scheduled recurring habit, I always feel a tinge of nostalgia. 

These last few years have been some of the best ones of my life, and in spite of my social circles shrinking from year to year, and my days becoming less complicated, I have never felt more full, more whole. 

2014 was the culmination of so many dreams come true. He carried me through the door into our first home together. I walked across the graduation stage as they called my name. I wore a crown of flowers in my hair and danced with childhood friends until I could no longer feel my body, just the music and laughter. 

There are days where I wish I could store every single memory to adore them, over and over again. And yet I know their beauty resides in the moment, in the being, that is fleeting, evading.  

It'll always feel like the first Christmas

Our first Christmas together, five years ago, he had built for me a small nightstand, white in color, imperfect in its construction, an English version of Le Petit Prince carefully stacked between other titles while my cousins gifted me the original version, in French, that same year. 

I have had four different addresses recorded to my name since then and gasped out loud at his suggestion of donating the item, made with love from his two hands, when we moved in our new home the first week of this soon-to-be past year. 

Hands that continue to build and fix and make this home more his and mine and ours together. That is his love language to me while I am still trying to find out my own for him. 

And while we sat there, buried in blankets with no heat in the house, him caressing me while I grasped on to a vintage book he managed to track down for me, both of us breathing quietly, staring at the Christmas lights illuminating our faces and bodies across the living room, he said things to me that made the illusion of time between then and now oscillate between five hours and five decades all at once. 

All is well because we understand each other. All is well because we have each other.

Day 4 - Your sibling (or closest relative)

Dear Brothers,

There are three of you so to be fair, I won't play favorites. At least openly. Heh.

Thanksgiving just passed and while I was a terrible daughter, not calling our father to wish him happy birthday until four days later, I'm not half as bad of a sister if I told you I am thankful for each of you and love you.

All this to say: It's kind of comical, yet totally logical, for me to realize that I feel -- that I am -- so much closer to each of you than to our own parents, combined.

We've had our disagreements and arguments, but we've always been in the same boat -- whether it was sailing or sinking, we taught each other to swim and held on to each other when we drowned. We saved each other and continue to do so -- through tears, through laughter, throughout the years, together.

And while I've frequently found myself envying other people's relationships with their mothers or fathers, I've never once wished for, nor thought about having, any other brothers but you.

(Except, of course, having a sister. But that doesn't count.)

I'm glad that I have been the kind of sibling you can turn to in your times of sadness as much as your times of happiness.

If I don't become a mother in this lifetime, I'll still die smiling, holding on to all of our memories together as sister and brothers.

The last of it.

My birthday is a little over a week from today.

This upcoming year will be the last of my 20s.

It was tough at times. Especially in the beginning. 

But I am excited. To be alive; to be 29, soon.

Being a girl.

Becoming a woman. It's sort of overrated in some ways, isn't it? I'll always be a girl at heart -- a hint of wildness; a glint of mischief; always curious.

Take heart.

My father had a heart attack earlier this evening. 

He is no longer in critical condition, but they will need to keep him in the hospital for the next few days to monitor his condition. The doctor said he was lucky to be alive, with three arteries being 95% - 100% clogged.

He looked so small and weak tonight, when we were finally able to see him. I couldn't hold back my tears. The nurse teasingly asked him what upset him, and he simply replied, "Oh, nothing, I just got emotional."

It is strange how life is, sometimes, sudden and surprising and sobering. Just yesterday we were celebrating my mother and brother's joint birthdays at my parents' home and then today all of us are in a hospital waiting room doing just that -- waiting.

Unfinished business.

I was included in a local campaign recently, to celebrate women making a difference in their communities in honor of National Women's History Month, and I felt so out of place and small next to some of the women featured. 

And I thought, well, this is good, this is very good, because this only means that there is room for growth. And when you are still growing, you are  still pursuing, still hustling, still living.

... 

It was my mother's birthday this past weekend, and the weather was warm and glorious. I stopped by with a mango mousse cake and spring flowers and I could feel Husband's amused smile and the sun and yesteryears' memories enveloping me as Mother and I raconted and exchanged tales of my and my brother's childhood between us. 

It was so delightful to hear the sheer happiness and exuberance in her voice as she started telling us about her work.

"It is amazing to be surrounded by people who get you, who get your ideas, who get your vision, who don't think you're crazy," she gushed. 

"I love it. I really love it."

And I started thinking, she turned 54 this year. I hope I don't have to wait until I'm 54 to find my bliss but more than that, I hope I don't die unfinished. 

And I squeezed my husband's hand just a little harder.

The old, with new eyes.

In another life I would have become an architect. But I lacked the focus and discipline to make it past ARCH101 in college,

so now I appreciate the fact that there are two architects in the family, and that my husband always loves (tolerates?) going on antiquing adventures with me. 

I have always loved learning the history of things. Everyone has a story.

Should'ves, could'ves, would'ves.

Someone close once said to me, "That's the problem with being 'good at everything'. You can't decide on doing one thing."

So true. At least in my case.

Due to me battling sickness and the entire city battling the snow these last few days, I've been stuck indoors, doing a lot of thinking. 

I'm coming up on my last year of my twenties soon and there is a significant part of me that feels like I've wasted it. Because I did. 

I spent almost three years working in a soul-sucking job even when I knew I no longer wanted to become a lawyer. 

And even though I love my current company, I am still working in a legal capacity, which goes back to my notion of wasting time -- when you know you shouldn't be doing something, for whatever reason, but you do it anyway, out of a misplaced sense of obligation or responsibility or pride.

That's the worst kind of wasting, because it is the kind that is done out of cowardice, and a lack of courage, and fear of change. This kind brings with it its own subtle taste of bittersweet and sadness, because you thought you were better, and more brave, and ambitious than this.

But, 2014. From the very beginning I knew 2014 was going to be different somehow. 

Somehow. I just need to figure out how.

We will see.

Let's get it over with.

I've realized recently, that I am constantly in a state of becoming.

And yet I never make it a point to simply just enjoy being, instead. 

Discrepancy noted. Efforts to change to follow.

Pause.

Where did this month go? Can we hit the pause button on life for just a few moments, please.

Insomnia.

I find this

 

so hauntingly beautiful. 

I don't know how to be a "wife".

That's it. That's all.

Names and titles come with their own set of expectations, both yours and others'.

But I have to remember that just a few years ago, I didn't know how to be a girlfriend, either. And then "fiance" sounded nice, but it was totally an in-between phase. That point of your life that is your becoming. It was mine.

It still is, it seems.

Glimpses.

My view, this past official first Saturday morning in our new home, overlooking our snowy, lovely little backyard.

Thank God for those few slices of sunshine, because the following two days have been gray and rainy and absolutely gloomy.

Peace of mind. That's all I want and could ever hope for, in this upcoming year.

Annual review.

My current company's annual performance review process is slightly different from what I'm used to with my previous employers. Whereas most people receive their bonuses and raises at the end of the year, we receive them in the first quarter of the following one.

I'll admit it wasn't particularly helpful coming up on the holidays in my first year here with no extra funds for Christmas presents, but then I realized, most (if not all) of my bonuses have always gone straight into my savings accounts anyway, so actually receiving it was more for peace of mind than anything.

Peace of mind. Now that we've purchased a home together and considerably depleted our bank accounts in the process (damn that down payment and closing costs!), I think I've subconsciously started to worry more about things that I previously wasn't as worried about, like job security.

Actually, I'm mostly just worried about job security -- especially in this economy, nothing's ever guaranteed, although TIME reports things are looking slightly better. That, and the CEO of my company recently extended his employment contract for another six years here, so I'll take my and Husband's decision to move to MD as a good sign of things to come.

I realized over the weekend that I've been, more or less, working since high school, when I was 15. My first foray into being an entrepreneur involved teaching piano to my grandmother's neighbor's children, while my first "real", tax-paying job was as an activities assistant at the nursing home down the street.

Although it's been well over a decade since those very first paychecks, and I've gone down many other paths since then, I still feel so lost and unsure -- and, most damning of all, still unfulfilled.

Reflecting back, I've only experienced true happiness -- that is, true bliss where my professional work and life is concerned -- in very short, very infrequent bursts since those early days.

Admittedly, those enjoyable moments have been more frequent in recent years, through freelancing projects and school. My thesis topic, also, brings me much joy and passion as much as it makes me feel anxious and stressed out as graduation inches closer and closer.

But the fact remains that I've always felt this constant, incessant need to "find my calling", so to speak, and that void remains glaringly, largely unfilled. A feeling most characteristic of my generation, perhaps, but even more so, a feeling most characteristic of creative, wild souls like mine, more probably.

May 2014 get me there.