Tag Archives: Relationships

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Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Before the final round interview for my dream job, I went out to a handful of stores to find something I’d feel sassy and confident in. Considering how much I wanted the position, I knew I needed to not only study up and prepare intensely for the interview, but also have that extra kick that comes from an outfit that looks just plain killer.

It took a little time, but I ultimately found a pleated pencil skirt and silky top duo from H&M that seemed to fit the bill with some careful accessorizing. The morning of, my friend M came over to approve of the outfit I created (my personal fashion consultant who charges by the glass of champagne) and to come along with me, that way she’d be there once it was over. Mr. P was there in my apartment too, since he was visiting to wish me luck.

Standing in front of the mirror, I said to them: “I have something new (the dress), something old (the shoes), something blue (my cardigan) – but what about borrowed?” Instinctively as if he was waiting for it, Mr. P handed me his Chapstick (yes he carries Chapstick). I smiled and glanced over at M who was sweetly rolling her eyes at me. Mr. P asked as I applied his borrowed gift, “Are you going to marry this job?” I thought about it, pressed my lips together to make sure the gloss was even and said, “I hope…I do!” Mr. P kissed my head, told me to go get em’ Tigar, and headed to work. M and I caught the train after some prayers and some praises to the Job Fairies, and the next day, I got the call that would change my life.

The offer of my dream job. Tomorrow, I start.

Maybe it’s the way to pass time or to calm jitters, but I had a vision of wearing a blue dress on my first day. I wasn’t sold on the idea until my mom called to say she had the same prediction and that it was an astrologically-sound color, so I quickly went on the hunt for the perfect one. Turns out, finding a not-too-professional, not-too-casual, not-too-tight, not-too-loose, not-too-classic, not-too-modern dress in Manhattan isn’t as easy as it sounds. Maybe I was asking for a tall order and just didn’t realize it.

Over the course of week, I went to two TJ Maxx stores, Marshall’s, Gap, H&M, Forever 21, Bloomingdales, Barneys, Express, New York & Company, and a few no-namers without any luck. I messaged my friends for their opinions, called my mom wishing she was there to go around with me, and even got caught in the rain a few times, wondering where in the world my new something blue was.

Finally, today, about an hour or so ago, M and I were picking through the clearance rack at Filene’s Basement and there it was.

Stuck between something with sequins and a pasley skirt, a petite dress that fit me just right. As soon as I put it on, I felt what brides must feel when they find their wedding gown: I screamed to M: “I found it! This is it!!” I cached out of the dressing room and she smiled, beaming and probably relieved that I wouldn’t hassle her with the search anymore: “It’s perfect, Linds!”

And it is.

But the dress doesn’t make the job, just like it doesn’t make a marriage. Even so, a job and a marriage have more things in common than we think. If we’re lucky, they bring us immense joy, but require a lot of work and understanding. Like you must make a commitment to continuously get to know your partner as they change, at a job you should constantly challenge yourself to learn more, to raise the bar higher for yourself and the company. You get to practice trial and error, especially in media – seeing what stories work and what doesn’t, and how to communicate your message effectively. Doesn’t the same go with your partner? You must remain dedicated and patient with yourself as well as your mate and your career, and you should plan for the future as much as you practice diligence in today.

And if we’re lucky, the job and the marriage gives as much as it takes, and it makes some of those dreams we had as kids become a reality. I may not be the expert on falling love, but I think the two things you can fall in the love with the hardest are often the ones we think we’ll never find: the dream job and the dream guy.

I’ve found one out of two and I’m not 30 yet. I’ll accredit it to the luck of the something old, something new, something borrowed, and finally, something blue.

PS: Have a question for me? Want to know anything about my life/advice from my adventures in dating? Before September 19, I’ll publish a post answering all of your questions. Email me, Tweet me, Tumble me, or Facebook me. Or you can comment below!

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Get Up and Go

While I am a thinker – always analyzing, discussing, and chatting myself (and my friends) to death, I’d consider myself more of a doer. Like any other transplant who grows roots in New York, I came here with lofty dreams and blind ambition, but I paired those traits with a hard-working, spirited attitude. I’m rarely lazy and I function better when I have a million things to do than if I just have a few. I enjoy being busy; I prefer a fast-paced environment compared to a slow one. I yearn to be challenged and to solve problems that seem impossible.

Maybe that’s why running is a good choice of exercise for me it’s all about motivating yourself to keep going, often without anyone else to encourage me. The problem, though, with being a doer is that I expect everyone else to be the same. And as you can guess (or maybe as you are), not everyone has that get-up-and-go-attitude that I do.

Take Mr. Possibility for example, who wakes up slowly, nibbles on whatever he can find, downs some orange juice, maybe some of that muscle milk stuff that’s so gosh-darn disgusting, and then he clicks around on the computer, flips the TV from channel to channel, then he showers or goes to the gym or picks up coffee or chats on his Blackberry…loudly. There’s nothing wrong with this morning routine, casual Saturdays after all, should be kept casual, I suppose.

But as much as I’d like to think I could just relax and take it easy as he does- once I’m up, I’m up. I’m ready to go. I make my bed, I take a shower, I check my email, this baby, the Times, CNN, and Facebook. I buy coffee on my way to the train, after I make breakfast and clean up after the mess that morning foods seems to always make. I text or call my friends, I figure out what the plan is, and I get moving. I’m not a fan of idle time and because he is, there’s always a bit of tension.

But it’s not just in romantic situations -I’m the same with my friends. My birthday is mid-September, but I’ve already make the Facebook invite and set up a private space at a trendy midtown club. I don’t like to “play it by ear” or “see what happens” – I’d rather have an idea of where we’re going and then let it happen, so I can not only budget my time but my expenses, and most importantly, my outfit. I want to know what’s next, what we’re planning, what we hope to achieve: drinks, dinners, wandering around, working out…what?

What are we doing? And why are you, my best friends, my family, my boyfriend – moving so miserably slow?

Step 11 is about being quiet, meditating, finding inner peace, reconnecting to the universe, being still, and having faith. But if patience is a virtue, I’m not the virtuous. It’s not so much that I want my way – or maybe it is, I wouldn’t deny I can be bossy at times – its just that I want to keep moving, keep going. Rationally I know that being still is positive, but I feel so much better when I go. I mean, my mama swears up and down I skipped walking and went straight to running – so really, I was born this way.

I’m learning as I grow and as I get older though, that getting up and going sometimes leads to poor decisions. It can entice you to enter relationships before you’re ready, agree to things without careful consideration, and make hasty decisions that aren’t always the best. And by being so intent on moving ahead, it can also cause you leave others behind simply because they just take things a little slower. We all move at different paces and our comfort levels rise and fall at varying places – so somewhere between the movers-and-shakers and the restful, wise souls is a happy medium.

A normal person, maybe?

Maybe that’s where I need to be, who I should aim to become – someone sitting sweetly, pacing inside my mind, twirling my fingers and twirling my hair, making endless lists of everything I want to be and want to accomplish, but waiting for a while, completely still. Just so I know I’m doing it right, just so I know I’m not rushing others when going smoother is what brings them happiness. And if they don’t speed up just a bit to meet me in that middle, then I can go without them.

Just a little slower than usual though, so they can catch up if they’d like. So they, in their own way, can get up and go, too.

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An Ageless Bond

Standing in the fitting room of a trendy boutique in the West Village today, staring at myself in the mirror in an overpriced $105 cotton blue dress with embellishments, I had an ache in my heart for no one other than my mother.

Considering I’ve been out of grade school for quite some time now, and the whole “back-to-school” shopping trip ceased when I hit college, every Fall, my 20-something self misses spending a few hours at the mall with my mom. She used to set a budget and then let me go at it – jeans, sweaters, leggings, bras, shoes, school supplies, and anything else I needed was up to me to pick out. She’d go around holding up things that she thought would be “cute” and the older I became, the more I went against her suggestions and went with my own.

Maybe some have mothers who want them to wear turtlenecks and long skirts that cover every possible inch of their body, but my mom was never like that. She’s actually one of the best critics – she’ll be honest about how I look and she’s queen of selecting pieces that flatter my body. She never told me to hide my curves, but to dress for them. She should know how to do that after all – she’s the one who gave them to me. While we may disagree on certain picks, I trust her the most on fit, and I value her sweet sentiments over anyone else’s.

Our Girl’s Days Out weren’t limited to pre-September though, it was always our thing to do monthly. Sometimes we’d just go bouncing around to thrift stores, try a new restaurant downtown, and once I became an adult, I started dressing her instead. Since she’s been walking or biking a few miles daily for as long as I can remember, my mom is in great shape and for a 50-something (sorry mom!), I’d say she’s pretty smokin’.

But she doesn’t always think so. And she has to be reminded that wearing tight clothes isn’t out of the question in your middle-age, that being sexy doesn’t disappear because wrinkles appear, and that she deserves new clothes too. After spending a vast majority of her life treating me to special things and taking me on shopping trips, she often forgot herself – but now it’s her time.

She started esthetician school today and I couldn’t be more proud. I waited anxiously by my cell phone for her to get out of class, wondering how her day was and if she liked her classmates. She was nervous about the transition from working to taking a chance on something she’s always been interested in. Accounting is far from waxing and beauty treatments, but with her gentle touch and fiesty entrepreneurial-spirit, I’m confident that with a degree, she’ll be unstoppable.

While I was happy for her bright, new beginning, I was sad that I wasn’t there to share it with her. To treat her to a new outfit to wear to class that flatters her style and the softness she exudes without trying. To split a bottle of wine and chat about what she liked and didn’t, and dream up what kind of salon she would open up. To just see her beaming and brave, being the woman I’ve always known was inside of her, but she was afraid to face.

It’s funny how tables turn and how eventually, we end up parenting out parents a bit. Or maybe they just become our friends because they’ve been befriending us our entire lives. And just like they have to with us or we have to with a childhood friend that can’t come along for our ride, we have to learn how to let them go. How to support their new endeavors that don’t involves us or our day-to-day lives that don’t include one another, or the goals they’re reaching that we can’t quite see. How to stand on our own and let them stand as well.

How to pick out our own clothes with our own money for the brand new job we sought and found, while they start a brand new chapter of their lives by returning to school. How mothers continue to learn just as much as daughters, and how closing your eyes and sending a hug from the big city to the sweet countryside may seem impossible, somewhere, you just know she can feel it, too.

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A New York Week

Well folks, I’m beside myself. I have a full week to do whatever I please in this busy, rainy city and I’m drawing one huge blank. With so many options and not wanting to go over my budget too badly, what in the world should I do?

I figure this is one of those rare opportunities – in fact, I can sorta feel it. When else will I have time off to just be one with New York, without obligations, without planning a trip, or preparing for something life-altering like surgery, pregnancy, marriage, etc. This is really a time, in my 20s to go exploring the place I love without worries. Freedom is funny that way though – when you have so much of it, where do you begin?

I’ve been down to the Pier and I’ve taken a cruise on the river. I’ve seen the Statue of Liberty, I used to work in Times Square. I used to live near the Flat Iron building and I’ve waited more times than I’d care to admit in the Shake Shack line. I’ve toured Central Park, soaked up the absent sun on the Great Lawn and swung on a swingset for kids on my way out.

I’ve been to every museum I have an interest in going to; Bryant Park continues to be one of my favorite places in Manhattan.

I’ve went shopping in the West Village and waited in another long line at Magnolia’s. I have a library card but don’t really use it; I’ve been to Tiffany’s and Macy’s, Saks and Bloomies, and even stomped on the big piano in FAO Schwartz.

I’ve pretended I was Eloise at the Plaza, I’ve walked the highline and will soon work near it. I’ve gone clubbing in meatpacking, made friends with college kids in the East Village and Union Square, and hung out with the gay hubbies in Chelsea.

I’ve sat in the middle of Columbus Circle, looking downtown, dreaming of the future, and on top of a building in Williamsburg gleaming at the city at night.

I slept on a couch in Park Slope and sat outside eating Lobster Mac N’ Cheese near Wall Street. I’ve seen more than a few Broadway Shows, ran the West Side Highway, and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve met some celebrities, interviewed a handful, and enjoyed the baking talents of one.

I’m a regular at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where I light a candle for me, for you, for my family, for my friends, for the world. Mr. Possibility works in Rockefeller Center, so I’ve visited consistently. I’ve been to several fashion weeks, even bringing a friend along for the ride thanks to a friend who invited me.

I’ve paid my respects to 9/11 and pretended I could afford anything in Soho. I’ve battled China Town and welcomed free wine in Little Italy.

I’ve been stuck in the rain trying to catch the uptown one train after a tireless day of touring the city with a friend, but took it all in style anyway.

I’ve jumped through fountains in the middle of a ‘Welcome to New York’ boozy brunch with a friend of mine and without shame, sported my super pale legs.

I’ve enjoyed the beauty of New York dining, including free passes to pop-up restaurants where everything is cooked outside and made deliciously, including a wine bottle coincidentally filled with water.

I’ve discovered the art of the ice cream cone in the middle of a hot August afternoon and how actually, there is such a thing as too much whipped creme.

I’ve been on countless dates, shared a few kisses on doorsteps, and loved only one in New York so far – and with him, the possibility, been caught having a moment at an event.

I’ve had the luck to gain experience in interviewing folks on camera, including on the rooftop of an apartment building I wish I could afford to live in smack-dab in the middle of Chelsea.

I’ve enjoyed the city in all of its seasons: drenched in sweat in the summer, preparing for an unexpected storm, inhaled the colors of fall in Central Park, enjoyed my favorite, the lovely tulips in spring, and even made it to see the Rockettes.

And ice skating at Wollman rink…

And surviving my first experience seeing a live, male stripper (giggling and shock and all)…

And city views from The Boom Boom Room to rooftop hotel bars with my favorite people on Earth…

But through it all – I’ve had one thing that New York is best at: making me smile and giving me a life full of people that make the city what it is…

Home…

So what do I do with a week off – when I already feel like I have it all?

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Writing About Love

Mid-day Gchat conversation with my friend K recently, I mentioned how I had written about something we were discussing. The chatting continued and I realized that again, I had written about another topic that came up. And as if I hadn’t already known, I typed “God, I’ve really been writing about love a long time, haven’t I?”

Maybe I’ve never actually claimed the title, but it’s true: I’m a Love Writer. If you count my teen column in a tiny newspaper at 15, being front page editor for the middle school gazette, and fairytales I composed before I kissed a boy – you could conclude I’ve been penciling love for over a decade. It’s only been within the last five years that I’ve been paid to write about such things, but I’d still do it for nothing (hence this blog).

You’d think after nearly 365 posts (can you believe it?) and ten years of coming up with ideas surrounding the many tangled complications of relationships, the messy wonder of sex, and how those both combine to create a combination of feeling and choice – something most of us call love. And most of us also curse the name of at least a handful of times between the eighth grade dance and “I do.”

But you’d guess wrong. Fodder for these posts and my other pieces is rather quite easy. It’d be easy for you too, if writing was the way you decided to express yourself. Even if you gladly wear the cynic badge, believe you can go your whole life without falling in love again, and have a vendetta against all men – there is always something about love that’ll come out of anything. Especially out of those fleeting feelings of hatred and fear. Writer and monk Thomas Merton said it better: “The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it, from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love, because love is not just something that happens to you: it is a certain way of being alive. Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life.”

I’m not under the belief that you need romantic love to have a full, complete, whole life – but you need some sort of love. Maybe that’s the greatest lesson I’ve learned from all these bylines and this journey – love isn’t limited to men or relationships, but about the life you build around yourself. Even if I found that great love, that patient man who will suffer through a lifetime of me writing about our marriage, our children, our home together – if I didn’t have great friends and great experiences to go along with him, our relationship wouldn’t survive.

But I’ve also learned that while I know I could survive and find happiness if I never did meet that man, if he doesn’t actually exist, I’ve also discovered that half of the battle in shaking the distraction of love is admitting that yes, I do want that. I’m a confident, successful, strong, smart, and bold woman – but I’m also loving and understanding, kind and compassionate, and full of hope that someone out there was meant to be my partner. It doesn’t make me weaker to want love nor does it make me a silly, irrational girl – it just makes me human. We’re all entertained by the idea and we’d all like to be supported – it just depends on how we go about it.

I’ve met important men in my life when I wasn’t looking and when I was, when I wanted it and when I didn’t, when I was unsure of their intentions and when I thought I had them figured out. There’s really not a way to control who you fall in love with, but you do make a choice to stay in that love. From what I hear from married folk, it’s a daily decision to remain committed to not only the person, but to that love.

So maybe that’s why I think I’ll always write about love. Why I’m not ashamed to call myself a Love Writer. Because while everyone experiences it, everyone talks about it, everyone wonders about it, everyone wants it – I take the chance and put it all out there. At least when it’s out, there’s no room to doubt what it is that I hope for. After all, what would a love writer be, without love?