Things I have anxiety over that I shouldn't. Part 2: items 4-8

This is mostly a blog with my appearance based anxieties.

4.) The zombie apocalypse. I mean, everyone is talking about it. If I am honest with myself I can admit that I am way to out of shape to outrun the blood seeking undead. I once had a dream that I was at the office by myself and I was walking through the back door where we store all the boxes of old files and zombies started climbing out of the old cubicles and over the boxes and I had to run away. And this was terrifying because it meant that I will probably be killed by zombies.

5.) Everyone hates me. This is basically impossible. I have a gigantic family that is basically required to love me. I am a friendly, social, kind, and fairly introspective person. The likelihood of everyone hating me is zero. However, here we are.

6.) Developing cankles.

7.) Not knowing where to find something at the store. I once had to ask nice, attractive young gentleman if he could point me in the direction of the lard. Can you imagine what a laugh he got later that the fat...errr voluptuous chick at the store asked where the lard was? It scarred me for life.

8.) That I will be on an episode of Maury called 'I am big, sexy, and I know it". And I am sitting on the couch in too revealing lingerie with my name on the bottom of the screen with a caption that says, "I gots it and I flaunts it." Oh my.

Today.

My day began with The Invitation. My cousin posted a hard to read portion of it to my Facebook page but I recognized it immediately as the Oriah poem that I once vowed to live by. So much has happened since I first read those words. So many days have passed since I picked up the book at Barnes and Noble. One small book with a sunflower on the cover. It was on sale and I bought it because it matched my decor of all reasons. Typical Sara move really. I buy into something for the outside and am fundamentally changed by the heart of it all. 


"I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul."


I feel like if I treat this wonderful work as a to do list that it defeats the purpose of the words themselves and only serves to confirm my need to check things off a list rather than LIVE. But I feel if I don't treat it as a to do list that I will somehow miss part of it and end up in a mess. And then I know that the mess is part of it. What kind of woman am I at the end of the mess is what is important. Not that we create messes just to clean them so we have something to do. But I want to be the kind of person who can "live with failure...and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "YES!"


Every day I put a new quote on the marker board on the fridge. A few days ago the quote of the day was, "Do that which you are most afraid." Yesterday was, "Advice is what you ask for when you know the answer but wish you didn't."


The universe is urging me to step toward something and didn't I say myself, "Go. Don't ask why. Ask what." I am not yet ready to reveal my thoughts or plans for fear (yes fear) of feeling obligated to do something I wasn't meant to do because I had a day filled with things that cannot merely be coincidence. 


Especially when five minutes after I vocalized what I was thinking of doing I began to retract and make excuses as to why it is impossible. I said, "I have a life here." And my kindred spirit, like a good friend should, responded by asking me, "what is life?" It is such a good question. 


And as my day began it ends with The Invitation. I wonder whether or not I am truly ready to accept it.

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dreams for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Since when did I become a ma'am?

Somewhere in your mid-twenties you are bound to have a fairly serious quarter life crisis. This happens when you start asking the questions that you have been either too drunk or too dumbfounded by adulthood to ask yourself. Mainly: What am I doing, what am I doing, what, what, what am I doing?

And all because people started calling me ma'am. From ma'am on it is really just a straight path to 30. I am not in the know and am pretty sure I sound like the mom on Modern Family when I exclaim that something I found on Facebook is "Totes Adorbs". Some part of me is so proud to have achieved the car, home, and maturity level to be called ma'am but mostly I am quasi-horrified that I now refer to 18 year old adults as "kids".

I have no real clue where the last 7 years have gone and know that the next 7 and the next will go by just as fast. I am trying to enjoy every stage of my life. Instead of being eager to get to the next stage I am going to try to enjoy becoming "ma'am" and be excited for the next chapter.

Life is an adventure and that doesn't even begin to cover it.

Until next time, stay happy.

Sara

A fact or a ridiculous notion?

I cannot live without talk radio. When the zombie apocolypse inevitably takes place I am hoping that the first voice I hear over the AM waves is Michael Savage saying: "This is Michael Savage with the Savage Nation. Now we really are a Savage Nation; those socialist zombies, those flesh eating marxists, they think they can take whatever they want. Well we'll show them. We are Americans."

I don't know why I chose Michael Savage to be the one conservative radio host that would live through the zombie apocolypse but it seems somehow plausible.

Hello Armpit Hole.

Every once in awhile I have a shirt that will rip in the armpit. Never anywhere else-just the armpit. The ghost ripper of shirt armpits is not my friend. In fact, he baffles me. Why ghost ripper of shirt armpits, WHY?

Things I have anxiety over but shouldn't.

The author of my new (second) favorite blog made a list of things she has anxiety over that she shouldn't. I started to feel that most every woman I know has the same problem and thought I would entertain the (masses) by detailing mine. So without incident here are items 1-3.

1. Teretts. And no disrespect to people who actually have it....But I am actually terrified that I will blurt out something horrible, distasteful and/or reprehensible at a moment not of my choosing. Like, for instance, I will say something weird and categorically untrue like, "oh yes, I know him. In the biblical sense." in front of the Mormons. Or asking a particularly decent looking client if he'd like me to take his shirt...err...coat! And then I will get fired. And have to hook to pay the bills. Hey, there ain't no rest for the wicked after all-thank you Elephant Cages or whatever your weird band name is for creating an environment where there is moral flexibility regarding employment choice.

2. Burning the house down. I am not sure when or why this fear developed but I have a borderline A&E style obsession with checking the stove burners, the hair straightener, and the dryer for signs of flame. Before I leave the house I sometimes check it 3-4 times. It's ridic.

3. A plane crashing into my house.

All of these scenarios are highly improbable. I think they make medication for this kind of thing.

Sara

Sometimes I just....fail.

In high school I was obsessed with having a nose job. I hated my nose. I thought it was huge. Whenever I would see a picture where my nose was prominent; I would cringe. Apparently, my parents didn't think that plastic surgery was an awesome idea and I would have to wait until adulthood to obtain said rhinoplasty. Now that I am 24 I have not only come to terms with my "Houser Schnauzer" but I actually kind of like it. It's quirky and quite frankly fits nicely on my enormous noggin.

I am so often (constantly really) obsessing over something.

Sometimes I just can't shut my brain up. It is like a perpetual strain of perpetually inconsequential thoughts. We are never really happy with ourselves. And not in a "never stop bettering yourself" way. It seems like it is more often than not in a, "how about I constantly beat myself up about my self destructive behaviors" way. I recently started following a blog where she talks about how whenever she starts to mentally berate herself she plays a game called "I bet Taylor Swift never..." Where she lists all the things she does that Taylor probably never does. Which is ridiculous but also very funny. Because I started to do it too. And really, if I am going to obsess over everything, I might as well have a go at laughing about it.

Today I obsessed over the following things:

How everything I say lately is categorically unfunny.

How many things I do not do because I am too busy playing "draw something".

How many people have inadvertently heard me say bad things about them because the phone hadn't quite hung up (I have had a quite horrific experience with that...)

Which reminds me of that story. So once upon a time in a far away land at the offices of a most beloved employer my most beloved supervisor (ish) (ish as in she was 'ish' my supervisor not 'ish' beloved) was leaving the company and wanted me to go to her new company with her. Now if you have never had an I am in love with/I hate my escrow officer relationship you might not understand why I wanted to leave a great company to follow my coworker to the unknown. Half of it was because she used to call and leave voicemails of just her howling and once left a voicemail greeting when she went on vacation that said "if you need immediate assistance please contact my partner Sara". Which, uh, I am sorry but I am not her "partner" and we laughed so hard at the messages that ensued that I almost peed myself.The other half was that she taught me everything I know and we got shit done when we were a team.

So yea, I was going to follow her. I had an interview at the other company and totally nailed the job. (No that is NOT what she said). I wanted to share the news and my lovely friend was still at the office and I called her to tell her the good news. Only she didn't answer her cell so I called the front desk to have them transfer me to her office line and the mainline voicemail kicked in. Meanwhile she called me on her cell phone and I somehow managed to conference in the front desk voicemail and it recorded the entire conversation.

The next day I got called to the Principal's (eer...president) office and he sat me down and proceeded to tell me that somehow the conversation had been recorded and it was brought to his attention that I would be leaving the company. It was all very awkward. 

In the end I didn't leave. And I wasn't fired. Which has put me in a situation for which I am very grateful but the whole thing has made me very paranoid about the call status of any phone conversation where important and/or catty information is exchanged.

These are the kind of things that seem to always happen to me.

I bet Taylor Swift never got caught in a technology crossfire where her conversation containing Charlie Sheeny goodness was recorded for the world to hear.

I love that game...CROSSFIRE.

Okay, I really have to be done now.

Sara