Gutsy

Thought I'd share a picture of rainy Washington! Beautiful hike outside of Granite Falls. There is something about getting into the wilderness that calms my soul. 

As you all should know by now if you have been reading my summer posts, I am blogging every Thursday. I should say I’m trying to blog every Thursday, excluding this coming Thursday because I will be driving the 12 hours from Seattle to California by myself. I thought about trying to video blog but I think my writing is more entertaining that my speaking. My words will be anything but funny and I’m sure crude while I’m alone in the car and facing the terrible drivers of Washington and Oregon. Thankfully I will have a companion on the home stretch five hours from the Bay Area to Santa Barbara the following day. Good thing Nicole needed a ride to Santa Barbara for the weekend!

Yellow lights will not leave me alone in this never-ending Seattle rain. I’m late everywhere I go, forgetting rain slows down freeways. I swear there is a small man with a camera on my car changing all the lights I head towards yellow right as I come up to them. They turn yellow at the split second I could either go or stop, generally I go. Usually I should stop. Story of my life.  

When I sat down with the intention of writing today absolutely nothing came to mind. Was I really not learning anything in my last full week in Seattle for possibly months? I reflected on the last week or so and tried to process some conversations and adventures I’d had. What have I done all week other than slave away at the restaurant that might have taught me something worth writing about? Yesterday morning I went on a hike with my best friend Amanda and we discussed some parts of her life that are in the process of changing. Without disclosing the private details of trail talk, my mind eventually halted on the very thing I am in the process of doing as well as what I discussed with her; follow your gut.

In exactly a week I am heading back to California for the rest of the summer without doing anywhere near as much planning as my parents would have liked. Within a matter of about two weeks, a place to live and a nanny job popped up in Santa Barbara when I had been telling my parents I would be in Seattle for the summer. I sprung it on them while driving my beloved car that is older than me up to Seattle for what should have been the summer.

As the sun set behind the ocean, and slightly obnoxiously in my eyes, on the first Saturday of May, I left Santa Barbara for what could have been months. Within miles of driving away, my heart began to ache with how much I wanted to be back there. Most of the people I have talked with have mentioned the obvious, that this is true of any transition time, but from that moment I have not once wavered on where I wanted to be for the summer. By the time I was a few hours into the part of the drive I was doing alone, I knew whole-heartedly I was going to return for the rest of the summer, situation providing.

My parents are right. I would make more money in Seattle, and have a fine summer. Maybe a little more rain, little less time with friends, but I would walk out more financially prepared for the school year. I will have spent quality time with my family, and would no doubt eventually adjust again to the surf-less, ocean-less, sunless Seattle. Despite this logic, which I generally would make a decision solely based off of, I am heading back to California anyways. I am taking a gamble on an inconsistent nanny job, searching for a restaurant job, and a possibly sketchy house in Ventura.

This is not a smart gamble by any logic. With that being said, I am taking this gamble with my whole heart to be able to jump in the ocean right when I feel the urge, share a small space with the lovely Kylie who will be my roommate for the summer, and spend time with my handsome boyfriend.

I keep dreaming about the ocean. I dream about the waves lifting underneath me while I surf, I dream about swimming around in it, and I dream about how mysterious it is. The ocean has captured my heart not only because of how much I will never know about it, but also because of its overwhelming beauty. A sunset over the waves melts me. I have been given the chance to live in the city I love, with a small portion of the people I care about so much. This could not come without a price to pay, especially for someone as unfortunate as me.

I am sacrificing familiarity, more family time, a relatively “high paying” job, and abandoning all plans to skip off to the ocean. For a reason I cannot put logic too, which is rare for me, I am so happy making this decision. My soul is at rest as I follow where my instincts lead. I am so sure that if I did not take this opportunity, I would look back wondering why I passed it up at my age. If my escape to California doesn’t go as planned, I have promised my mom I will return, been guaranteed my job back at the restaurant, and can risk at ease knowing I have a back up plan.

In the mean time, I am running away from the rain to the beach with my boyfriend. I plan on surfing, pinching pennies, working my ass off for much less money than I would have in Seattle, and casting my cares onto the sand, barefoot.

If there’s one thing I learned since last ThursdayBlogDay it is that I continually wish I had not sprung leaving on my family. I wish I had been honest from the time I began realizing I didn’t want to be in Seattle for the summer. Why I struggle so much to be up front for the blunt person I claim to be I do not know. Despite that, I am learning even more that following your heart is so important in being content with looking at the past, present, and future.

Follow those nudges in your soul, no matter how subtle.  

Learning to Be "Broke"

thursdayblogdayyay. Don’t ask me why that’s all one word, and a full sentence, because I don’t know. If you enjoy reading my blog, I bet your friends will too! Share it with them! Ideas: the most meaningful Facebook status you will make in months, my blog. That hilarious, witty tweet you’ve been holding out for, #myblog. The screenshot on your iPhone that everyone is just dying to see on Instagram… My blog. Anyways,

I’m in love…

With my car. In two weeks I will have officially owned my little $650 Toyota Celica for two whole years. I just gave her a bath for the first time in 10 months and unfortunately the dirt is baked on. She’ll never be pearly white again; her age lines are starting to show. As the name of my blog gives away, I am a slightly unfortunate person. In almost any situation where the outcome could go either great or quite poorly, I am that person that the worst almost always happens to. I see yellow lights a hundred times more than my boyfriend right now (he’s in California, I’m in Seattle, that’s about a hundred yellow lights a day, that’s not normal). However every once in a while, extremely once in a while, lady luck is on my side.

When I bought my sassy little Celica, now named Celicia, (see previous posts, as you should anyways if you’ve never read them), I had just totaled my car that was eleven years newer than the Celica, tried and failed to end a really long relationship, and was about to graduate high school. The car I totaled was a 2001, with hardly 70,000 miles on it, and destined to run for many more years. I had spent all my money from my 16^th birthday on it and treated it like my baby. Apparently I didn’t baby it enough because I totaled it in a preventable accident. What I realized about a year after my accident, when I went truly broke for the first time in years, was that I had just enough money at that time saved up to cover my tow bill, pay the ticket from “Failure to Yield with Causal of Accident”, buy a new car, and license the new car, all out of pocket.

When I turned 16 I started working at a little Italian restaurant as a hostess. Becoming a hostess at 16 is like a gateway drug into the high of restaurant cash flow. After about 8 months of working at this little Italian restaurant, I showed up to work one day to see them emptying out the place and the doors locked for good. The last time I spoke to the manager there was the shift I worked two days before that. In a frantic mess, I landed myself a new hostess job at a Greek restaurant down the street three days later. Once again, so strangely lucky but so strangely unlucky. I started waiting tables for brunch shifts at the Greek restaurant at 17, and watched eight general managers and 40+ employees come and go under a terrible Spanish head chef who should not be named. In the midst of employee turnover hell, I started supervising before I even turned the legal age of 18. Every penny the restaurant had in cash including bank deposits, tills, and tips came through my hands. I clocked 40 or more hours while going to high school, and was making much more money than any 17 year old should. Because I had so much free flowing money with hardly anything to pay for other than a cell phone bill, car insurance, and gas, I fell in love with Nordstrom and designer jeans, and learned nothing about self control in handling personal finances.

After the madness at the poorly managed Greek restaurant finally drove me out the door, I started working at the restaurant I still work at during the summers here in Seattle. When the sun shines on Lake Washington, people drop dough. I walked out of the first summer at the new restaurant with $12,000 in four months. At 18, I could buy anything I wanted. I headed off to college in the fall to have no income for 9 months, at blew through $4,000 without blinking. My dad picked me up after freshman year and I had $3.54 to my name. This was so new to me, and I couldn’t wait to get "back on my feet" financially as I returned to the restaurant in Seattle.

The weather had another plan for me. We had no sun for almost an entire summer. I saw clouds for 6 weeks straight from May-mid June and walked out of my second summer at the restaurant with $5,000. Do the math, that’s $7,000 less than I expected to make. That’s a good chunk of money, but I had yet to learn how to be broke. I spent almost everything I made that summer, hoping the weather would get better, saving almost nothing. I started off the school year still broke, and in November of my sophomore year, in a financial heartbreak of a moment that I know I blogged about in November, dropped $600 on my car and $300 days later to be able to register for classes dropping me down to $30 and no expected income. I couldn’t work because finals weeks was right around the corner, and somehow could not get ahead financially for the rest of the year. Running very close to nothing for the following 6 months taught me something I needed to learn, fast. Hold onto what you make because there’s no telling what’s around the corner. I couldn’t shop, I could only buy what I needed at the store (meaning coffee and bottled water, the bare necessities obviously), and that did not change for those last 6 months of the school year.

Now that I am back at the restaurant for at least this month, and the sun is shining, I am definitely making enough money to spend a little. I could even shop if I wanted to, but I can’t seem to force myself to do it. The habit of spending money has been broken for me and I appreciate so much more every penny I have, and every penny I can make. Being relatively broke, and I say relatively because most of the world would love to have all I have being as broke as I am, is strangely okay. I might not know when I’ll make enough again to feel like I can relax about income, but that no longer stresses me out.

There are so many things I would not sacrifice now to work that I would have years ago. A balance is brought from being penniless. Life is peculiarly more fulfilling when stripped of the chance to pursue things like money, clothes, and high-end objects. My car has character, and is a piece of my hard work. Celicia may be embarrassing at times, but she gets me where I need to go, and wouldn’t trade the experiences I have had working hard for my money to have a nicer car bought for me. Talk to me in 6 months and that might be different, just kidding. 

Life tastes sweeter when there’s no overload of sweets. Load yourself with sweets, and it suddenly tastes gross.

Growing Pains

Thursday=summer blog day! A life lesson a week keeps the doctor away, or something like that. (11:41pm is still Thursday, step 1 to completing blog once a week on Thursdays goal-complete). 

  

With ending my sophomore year of pre-med/Biochem classes, the hardest year of my undergraduate degree, I think I should feel much more accomplished than I do. Instead of feeling empowered, I feel like a run-down disgrace of a student. I’m sick and taking antibiotics, exhausted, confused, and headed back to work here in Seattle in five hours. I drove my car back from California yesterday. Celicia made it! Her second successful trip between California and Washington was just as smooth as the first. By smooth I do not mean floating in an Escalade smooth, I mean smooth as in no problems like a truly unfortunate member of my family would have had. Celicia is anything but smooth, she bumps with the road and buzzes along like a little race car, but not as cool. I love summer. Celicia must know that because it felt like summer the whole trip, with the heater stuck on. Who doesn’t love a constant stream of warm air right in their face?

Yesterday was my 20^th birthday and I had such an amazing day. Any day that includes accidental Asian jokes in places like nail salons and sushi restaurants, misunderstandings about how similar “I just ripped ass” and “Man that guy ate fast” sound, and quality friend time is a day I feel blessed to be a part of.

On a completely related note to ass and birthdays, I am coming to realize I don’t like to instigate conflict. However once in the midst of conflict, bring it on, I just don’t want to start it. Thank you Momma Annabelle for the very obvious comment of “Uh, Chelsea, who does?” Good point Annabelle, good point. Annabelle 1, Chelsea 0.

When I started writing this post, I was, and still am, in the process of deciding where to spend my summer. When my mom heard I was blogging she said, “Oh gosh is it a rant? Great”. No this is not a rant, its more of a discussion, or a disagreement, with myself. On one hand, I have Seattle with a great but gamble of a job and I have family. However Santa Barbara holds the key to my heart where I have been offered a job and a great (cheap) place to live. My hopes in writing about this, which happens often when I write, is that I will walk away from this knowing more of where my heart truly lies on one side of the decision. In making this decision, I have been consulting a lot of people. I love talking through things and listening to perspectives in decision-making and have done quite the amount of talking and listening. The other thing I would love is input from my readers, if you have a thought on this please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email on the email above!

In Santa Barbara I have a job offer that should make me enough money to live, and save about $3000 for living during the school year. I would also get to be in sunny California near most of my friends, a boyfriend, and a beach. A summer of surf and work would be in future. On the other side of the spectrum I have Seattle, with family, a few friends, a chance to put away more money but only a gamble. The first summer at the restaurant I usually return to I made around $10,000. The second summer I walked away with $5,000. This summer the weather is supposed to be good, meaning more money than last, however the restaurant business is risky and so is the weather in Seattle.

As the days to make a decision about draw to a close and I start the process of accepting my nanny position to lock in moving, my last prayer is that my parents begin to respect the decision I will end up making about this. Unfortunately for me, I am bull headed enough to stand firm on decisions even against my parents. As they said today in our discussion, “That trait alone will get you far in life, but it will also cause you to make a lot of mistakes”. I’m good at making mistakes. It’s a terrible thing to be good at.

It saddens me to think of what I will miss out on over the summer here in Seattle. I will miss my dad’s 40^th birthday (young, right?), time with my siblings, and soccer games. Despite all of that, my heart is in California. If I could pick up my family (figuratively) and take them with me to California my heart would be complete. But as I know I have discussed before, I have two lives, one here in Seattle and one in California. The gap is growing wider and after spending a total of 18 months in California, I don’t know that I could live here for 4 months. I wish the chance of more money and family was enough to keep me for that amount of time. Seattle is where I grew up, not where I currently reside, and not where I feel at home anymore.

One of the biggest ideas swaying me into leaving early is that money is no longer of the highest value in my life. At one point I was working an insane amount, supervising a restaurant at 17 years old, and in search of money to spend; also successfully making money to spend. These are growing pains because my priorities are changing, I’m changing, and I’m doing it from two states away from my family. I also call this time in my life a time of growing pains because it hurts. It is painful to leave where you grew up for good, and painful to hurt your family in the process. It breaks my heart to break my parents’ hearts, but yet another thing I am unfortunately good at.

If I could redo this whole process of living in California for the summer I would have told my family months ago I was thinking about not being in Seattle for the summer. I made the mistake of saying nothing until heading back up to Seattle. I have never regretted going to school two states away, and would not trade the two years I’ve had in California for anything, but I am so jealous of the people that have family within hours of driving. It takes me hundreds of dollars and a plane trip, or two days of a road trip, to get to my family. Because of that, I made a home away from home, which is now winning out over my home.

I am not only learning lessons in honesty but also on bringing up the difficult things in life. I want to keep the peace, as does anyone, but that is a downfall in most situations. Sometimes hard, lose-lose decisions must be made and uncomfortable topics must be talked about, but this is part of a life worth living. 

Procrastination, Surprises, and Waves

Somehow finals week is right around the corner, and here I am writing instead of pretending to do the horrifying homework in front of me. The amount of work I have to do in the next nine days is so daunting I can do nothing other than think about all things apart from school. The ever-feared Organic Chemistry is almost over, terribly unnecessary Physics is almost complete, and I am about halfway done with my undergraduate degree. Life is flashing before my eyes, and contrary to what you would think, I am fully aware of it. Weeks feel like days, and months feel like weeks. How disproportionate, right? 

It seems the more work I have to do, my brain gets exponentially more unorganized. My writing however gets more organized. Just kidding, good luck following my train of thought. 

Usually I procrastinate like a boss and then right at the end I pull it together. I strangely pride myself in sliding by with impressive grades for the situation I got myself into, and swearing I’ll do it different next semester. However after the year of academic hell I’ve been running through, I’m beginning to doubt I have it in me to pull it all together. That takes such a push of effort, and I’m running out of steam, fast. Part of me is so used to having tremendous piles of homework looming over my head that it no longer instills the drive it once did. There is no test, no paper, and no part of an undergraduate degree that could scare me into working hard earlier than I have to. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. What doesn’t make you drop out makes you smarter? I wish.

In the midst of the craziness of ending the school year, I have done the unthinkable, and gotten myself into a relationship. That word made me cringe for a long time. A few of the texts that have been lighting up my phone since this said relationship went on Facebook include little gems like, “The girl who could not be tied down is now Facebook official?? I guess he really is special”. I laughed over text and told the sender of that he couldn’t be that surprised; he was really that shocked.

Hopefully that successfully conveys how most of my friends reacted to my new relationship. I have run from commitment for months, enjoying being carefree and reporting to no one. Underneath my genuine carefree attitude that carried on for months, an internal wrestle match started, in which I began to desire normal and stable, but enjoyed the strength of being a woman in a man’s game of not wanting commitment.

Ever so quickly, this one snuck up on me. Before I could even surprise myself, I surprised everyone else with a real relationship. This one I want to do right, hopefully with more success than doing my homework next semester. I’m taking my lessons in honesty and in breaking hearts, and attempting some wisdom ahead of time. But let’s be real, I attempt a lot of things. Lady luck hates me.

A while ago I hinted at a post about about learning to surf. It has also been six weeks since my last post. In other words, life has been out of hand and I haven’t been writing. What I’m coming to realize is that that also means I’m not processing as much. The past six weeks have been a lull in schoolwork and a surge of life. I have embraced this few week break from the hammer of homework open heartedly, living it up with the most free time I’ve had since freshman year. Life comes in waves like this. Unfortunately, one can never be prepared for the worst ones.

As with life, one can only be so prepared for something as big and unpredictable as the ocean. Surfing puts you right out in the middle of that unfamiliarity, with sets of waves often large enough to knock you under water for what seems like hours. The biggest obstacle in learning to surf for me was the waves themselves. The first time I went in the water, I was absolutely terrified of these four-foot waves that I couldn’t read at all. Four feet doesn’t sound too bad, right? Wrong. When you’re lying down on a board, four-feet looms over your head like a manager on a power trip. I couldn’t paddle away from them, I couldn’t stop them, and for that first hour, nowhere felt safe. I spent at least the first two weeks out in the water just letting the waves roll under me, figuring out when they were about to crash on my head, and when I was relatively safe. Surfing scared me more than anything I’d ever done, so I had to keep doing it. I was strangely fearful of looking back and knowing I was too scared to do something well.

I still can’t really surf, but I try to surf a few times a week. The waves are no longer terrifying, and instead relaxing and humbling. They are out of my control and I can only know so much about them. Learning to surf has taught me two important lessons:

1.     Face your fears. There is no feeling better than conquering something that had the potential to limit you forever.

2.     Life is like waves; you can only prepare yourself to an extent. Learn what you can, let them roll under you when they’re too big, and don’t take your eyes off of what is to come.

All in all: Procrastination leads to revelation, surprises are fun (never let predictable be in your self-description), and waves are incredible. 

Oversimplification

It feels a little bit like getting multiple piercings, with a thick needle on a thick piece of skin, and right on top your bones. The body responds to pain with a flood of endorphins, a chemical that is involved in excitement. In search for this flood of endorphins underlies some really crazy actions. For some however, it leads to tattoos. The pain of getting my first tattoo on my ribs yesterday was strangely bearable. It was indeed quite painful, but I felt like I could endure it for quite a long time. Tattoos are permanent; I will forever have Greek lettering on my ribs. I chose the word agape, meaning perfect, unconditional love. Not only is love the most important aspect of life, but unconditional love is the highest meaning, and the only truly permanent aspect of an identity. I know I hinted at a post about surfing, but I haven’t stood up yet, so as soon as I accomplish that goal some time after my fresh tattoo heals, that post will come and rock. Oversimplification is not a simple word at all, ironic.

Although everything in life, apart from unconditional love, is at risk of changing, I am a firm believer that life goes on and one should never dwell, however actions have consequences. In the process of simplifying life, I have forgotten this fact. Life is as simple as you let it be but I have let it be too simple. In the midst of this care-free lifestyle, I left out a very important side of friendships and relations; put yourself in others’ shoes. It is so important to live day by day, however that does not mean without regard for those you are blessed to spend time with.  

Honesty is the biggest form of respect you can give. When being honest with anyone, it demonstrates the magnitude of the value you have for him or her. It also demonstrates how much you are willing to put him or her first. This lesson is drilled into your mind all growing up, yet somehow it never ceases to escape me in a shortage for words. With my “who cares?” attitude in full swing, I also let this slip my mind recently. In a nutshell I have managed to live selfishly and dishonestly in a friendship, all at the expense of another person. I’m a winner if you haven’t picked that up yet.

As I mentioned before, no event should ever be regretted because if you have taken a lesson from it, it was worth it. However sometimes, especially for me, shit hits the fan and that’s easier said than done. Taking your own advice seems to be marginally harder than I thought as well, but here I am biting the crap out of my nails (figuratively), trying to smile sweetly at the bitter lessons I’m learning as I fumble through these college years.

Carpe Diem, carefully. The saying should really go like this, “Carpe Diem, with others in mind, always being honest”.