This is not really a manifesto

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As my 27^th birthday began to draw near, I contemplated writing a manifesto about what I realized about myself, who I was, and what I wanted to accomplish. And then Event season started, house projects began to accumulate, and things like sleep, wine, and trashy shows on Netflix seemed somehow more appealing… When I actually think about my life, things are kind of great right now. I have a job that I love most of the time, and yes there are days when I want to pull my hair out, but I think every workplace has that from time to time. I’m still amazed that I’ve been in one place for four years, and how much the company has grown and evolved in that time frame. I am getting ready to move into my first house. Though I am still technically renting it, it is rather reassuring to know that my rent is going towards a house payment, and that someday it’s a place I might actually put down roots. I have a precocious little bulldog, my yoga business is actually making a profit, and I’m gardening up a storm. Things are maybe even better than great.

  

But  in some of my free time between packing boxes and getting the soil out from underneath my nails I have been thinking about life in my late twenties, and some things I want to accomplish this year. 

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  1.  I want to start dressing better. I have a closet full of awesome beautiful clothes… and most of the time I wear jeans, a tee shirt or yoga pants. Last week an acquaintance of mine was talking about dressing professionally and she said something along the lines of “I dress nicely, because I want men to realize that I value myself… why would they think they need to value me if I’m acting/ dressing like I don’t value myself.” I think there might be some merit to this… though I also don’t want to be dating a guy who is totally superficial and into me because of my style and my makeup… but I get what she is saying. I know its an excuse, but with teaching yoga 4 days a week, actually putting an effort into looking nice, is exactly that, a huge effort. It’s packing a change of clothes, shoes, makeup etc with me most days… and mostly that seems high maintenance. I always do when I’m meeting event clients, and going to meetings, but there are some days when I literally don’t interact with anyone unless I’m grabbing a coffee, and on those days yoga pants and slouchy tops are usually my go to look.  I think there is a time and a place for being put together. I hate the women at the gym who wear makeup… why do you have mascara on at 7AM? We are working out?  But I also don’t want to be the woman wearing pajamas at the grocery store… So my goal is to find a place somewhere between the two extremes… and to make a better effort about picking mindful outfits each day.  *I promise I’m not super frumpy all the time. I’m a fashionista at heart… but I’m also practical.
 
2. Entertain more. Now that I have a house with a real living space, a dining room, and a fabulous back yard, I want to entertain all the time. Impromptu dinner parties,  BBQs, cocktails in the garden. I am so ready to be a hostess with the mostess.

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           3. Date. Often and much.  Which of course is easier said than done. But the truth is, I’m lonely. My last relationship was almost two years ago, and my last date was double digit months ago. (Sadly this is not my longest dry spell. This gal is familiar with the wasteland of love, just ask my college roommates…) My dates have been so few and far between lately (not by choice) that I just find myself being really awkward on dates. I mean that is to be expected, dating is awkward in general, but to some degree I think dating is a skill that takes practice. It’s like doing a challenging yoga pose, it gets easier and less awkward the more you do it… you need to tone your muscles and get used to the pose. Not that I’m saying I’d like to be a skilled dater… More, I’d like to be less awkward when I do date, and the way I see it, the only way to go about doing that is by dating more than I am currently.  I’m not entirely sure how to go about this… (obviously. If I knew I’d already be dating someone)  I’m pretty much against on-line dating, and men aren’t exactly coming out of the woodwork here. Lets face it, I work at a lavender farm, there aren’t a ton of handsome men strolling in here on average, and when they are, they are here with their wives, fiancées and girlfriends.  Hello handsome, of course I would like to show you and your fiancée our event space for your upcoming wedding. Not the best way to meet men.    But I do know that I’m fun and I’m young and I’m single. I also know that I love baseball, I’m a great cook, and I have a bulldog, I’m articulate and quirky, and I’ve been known to shotgun a beer or two. I’ve got my life mostly together, (and I'm growing out my hair)   and I’m ready to date.  All of those things have to work to my advantage somehow. I might be inviting the good the bad and the ugly, but dating is dating, and I think that means I have to take the good with the bad.

Everything I learned about makeup I learned from...

Full disclosure: I used to be a cheerleader. It’s not like it’s a big secret, or even that I’m ashamed of it, but its usually not something that comes up very often (as all my friends read this they eye roll, because there may or may not have been a few times I have randomly broken out some cheer-leading moves, and full dance routines… I can’t help it, they are imbedded in my brain… it’s like a reflex). I’m sure it was probably listed on my college application as an extracurricular activity, and yes I did “letter” in cheer-leading (cause it’s a sport and all) but, again its not something that I bring up very much. I was never overly nostalgic about high school and graduating, and I was one of those teenagers that was very aware that those were not the best years of my life, and there was more to life, and so I never really dwelled.

And then I started watching Friday Night Lights… and a little nostalgia set in. One of my friends and I were talking about the show and all the characters, and I mentioned in passing “yeah I used to be a cheerleader.”  “UM WHAT? How did I not know this? You were a cheerleader?”  “maybe? Yes, ok I was” “Hello Lyla Garrity”… Not quite. I wasn’t sleeping with my paralyzed boyfriend’s best friend… But yes, I was a cheerleader… at one point I was even head cheerleader, and I did date a football player.  This is of course really saying nothing, in a school of 200 people, over half of our cheerleading squad couldn’t even cartwheel. Yes, I was one of those invertedly challenged individuals… I actually didn’t even make the cut the first time I tried out, but that had more to do with the fact that I was home-schooled, and less to do with the fact that I couldn’t cartwheel. Its one thing to have a gymnastically challenged cheerleader, but heaven forbid allowing an introverted “socially retarded” sophomore trying to pep up a crowd. Someone ended up dropping out, I got their spot, and that was the last time that anyone was every cut from the cheer-leading squad/ didn’t make the team.  That being said, cheer-leading at RLHS was nothing like anything you see in any of the various movies or tv shows. We couldn’t cartwheel, we couldn’t tumble… we could do a few stunts, even fewer jumps, and none of us were popular (ok maybe some of the other girls were… I was not).

But I can say, without a doubt that the most beneficial thing I got out of cheer-leading was a crash course in makeup. We would have to ride the bus with the team, and would arrive at away games at least 4 hours early since we only cheered for the varsity games. We would get stuck in a random classroom that served as our dressing room. There we would be, with our home-work, garment bags, blankets and pillows (for the bus ride) snacks, ribbons, and piles of makeup. We would eat French fries from the concession stands, curl each other’s hair, and huddle around tiny compact mirrors making sure our eye makeup was just so. And it was by watching the senior girls that I learned what is probably the most important makeup trick of my life: Wetting the makeup brush and using the eye-shadow as a liner. I might not have socially benefited from being in cheer-leading, and I’m sure it had nothing to do with me getting into college… but I use that makeup trick at least twice a week, and for that I will be eternally grateful to one Katie Turner.

This was long before the days that I even knew what Sephora was, or anything about angle brushes… this was also probably back when I was wearing weird frosty blue eye shadow. But aside from my flashbacks during Friday Night Lights, the fondest memories I have of cheer-leading are when I’m putting on my makeup. Even though most of the time my theory with makeup seems to be “less is more” there are certain occasions that require a little additional oomph.  I have a new co-worker, and her everyday makeup is something that would probably take me hours to achieve and, quite frankly, is only something that I would only wear when going out in Vegas. But to her credit, she can pull it off, and she does daily. So last week, as I was getting ready for a work related event, I figured I needed to up my makeup game a little bit. Out came the angle brush, a handful of glimmering eye shadows, and surprisingly enough a flair of cheerleading nostalgia.

jumping in fearlessly.

I have one week left as a 26 year old… This time next week, I’ll be celebrating the longest day of the year, and officially entering into my late 20s. I’ve been taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging… not that I’ve been doing anything terribly exciting, or terribly time consuming, but sometimes life just gets in the way… and sometimes living life is more important that writing about it.

As I was out working in my garden today, I realized that my new outlook on life is to approach things fearlessly. This is  a little different than fearless abandon, but as I rapidly approach my birthday I am doing the cliché life reflection thing, and lately it seems like I’ve been jumping into a lot of things feet first… and I really really like it.

I was transplanting a bunch of tomatillos this afternoon… I have no idea if they are going to survive (I only sort of know what I’m doing when it comes to gardening… but I often pretend that I do, and figure the learning curve will kick in eventually, and if it doesn’t, I have a handful of Master Gardeners at my disposal… it’s all gonna work out). As I was watering the very wilted plants, and sending them good vibes, I realized that it was ok for me to approach my gardening with a bit of reckless abandon. I might have no idea what I’m doing, but why not give it a try? Why not try to transplant the volunteer tomatillos that un-expectedly sprung up in my garden? What do I have to lose? If there were ever a situation to jump into fearlessly it’s a garden project… I have 14 raised beds… if the tomatillos don’t survive, its onto the next experiment, the next plant, the next crop. And if they do, it’s a summer of salda verde! I have 7 tomato plants… what am I going to do with that many tomatoes? I have no idea… hopefully sauce, and can, and cook and dry… and 5 cucumber plants! I think there will be a lot of salads in my future… this might be the downside of approaching gardening with fearless abandon… (I might be afraid of the tomatoes come August, I’ll get back to you)

As of today there were 32 bean plants!

I am also in the process of moving… again. You’d think I’d learn by now that moving once a year isn’t the most fun activity. Packing sucks! But, moving from an apartment into a house is a rather exciting transition. It’s not my dream house, and it is by no means perfect, but it is so full of potential! Did I mention the giant back yard, and the 14 raised garden beds? Or the cherry tree, apple trees, fig tree, plum tree, marionberries, raspberries, tay-berries, (is that a sign or what? It’s like I’m supposed to live there!) and a shed that could potentially be turned into a chicken coop? You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need (that song is actually playing on Pandora right now, and it seemed really fitting) This house doesn’t have everything that I want, but it has enough, and this twenty-something and her bulldog are pretty excited about it.  I am getting a little nostalgic about leaving my neighborhood… I’ve honestly lived within a 5 block radius for the past 4 years! I love being 2 blocks from the farmers market, but I will still be a short bike ride away, and I cannot even tell you how excited I am to be leaving the road construction nightmare behind! Plus now that I’ll be living on a street with less traffic, and a real driveway, I think it is high time Toby learned to skateboard.

Moving into a bigger space, means a rent increase, and with that comes a roommate… I might not be approaching this fearlessly, but I’m working on it. I have lived by myself for the last 5 years, and I know that suddenly cohabitating is going to be an adjustment,  and though I love my future roommate I would be lying if I said I didn’t have some reservations.  I’ve had 5 years to accumulate stuff, get stuck in my ways, and 5 years of having my own space (minus the bulldog, but he and I don’t share the bathroom, and he definitely doesn’t care if I run down the hallway naked…) But again, I’m jumping in with both feet. I’m trusting that we are both adults and that a new living arrangement will not over-extend our friendship. I’m trusting that we can keep it a drama-free household, and hopefully Toby doesn’t munch on any of her furniture! (realistically, I hope he doesn’t munch on too much of it… let’s face it, this bulldog put everything in his mouth. He’s going to eat something)

And now I’m going to bed, so I can fearlessly get up at 5AM to get to a yoga fusion class. Some things area easier to jump into than others… but I’m trying to become a morning person…maybe I'll be successful at it when I'm 27.