Beautifully Chaotic

It’s funny to me to think about now, how some years ago I used to panic if a mere handful of days passed between my blog posts.  Blogging as a whole has changed and evolved; people who used to make time for reading lengthy passages and ponders are now satisfied by a photo, a simple “like” given in the shape of a heart, or a thumbs up, depending on the medium.  I am guilty of this myself.

But I’ve been writing here for eleven – eleven (!) – years and what I have come to realize is that these are my pages, this is my story, no matter if I update daily or…let weeks and weeks pass before I head back to the interwebs.

Lately, as the world spins faster and faster and the days fly by, and I try to cram as much as I can within each minute, I have these moments where I stop and think to myself – I am 36 years old.  I know that probably sounds funny – 36 comes after 35, so of course I'm 36.  Truthfully, I’m actually closer to 37; I will greet that year in just over a month.  I suppose, in some sort of attempt to try and slow down time, or at the very least pause and notice it passing, I have – even with the insane schedule I keep – been doing my best to look around, to notice my friends and how suddenly, seemingly overnight, we have all become Grownups.  Perhaps it’s the fact that we are far enough removed from our teens, our college years, our twenties now that we have gained some sort of clearer vantage point.  Perhaps it’s because it seems we’re all tackling more “real” adult issues – careers, home ownership, marriages, divorces, babies, toddlers, children, aging parents, and all the rest of it.  Or maybe it’s because I am somehow, impossibly, actually old enough to identify in some bizarre older and wiser vantage point with the younger men and women working today.  There are afternoons where I find myself eavesdropping on conversations among twenty somethings in line to get a sandwich at lunch and recall having almost the exact conversation myself ten or twelve years ago; complaining about roommates or rent or not having enough responsibility at work. The difference is now, instead of thinking "yes! exactly! I'm annoyed about my roommate never taking out the trash too!" I find myself listening, thinking "Oh, I am so glad those days of living four to a house or apartment are behind me." 

Earlier this week I was texting with a very dear friend of mine, who I met at my very first real grown up job out of college.  She and I suffered through that tedious administrative job together, making next to nothing, deciding some nights if we wanted to spend our sparse “allowance” on dinner or, instead, one really good strong cocktail. (For the record, the cocktail vote usually won out and we’d beg the bartender to refill the peanut bowl over and over and over as we nursed our cold dirty martinis.)  She has two children now, a toddler and a newborn.  She and her husband are juggling the children and their jobs.  I continue to work full time at this crazy old demanding job, while working on year two of business school, while juggling a new (wonderful) relationship, while trying to find time to work out, see my friends and my family, clean my house, have some peace and quiet (ha!) and a little bit of sanity.  LIFE, man.  It’s crazy, really, isn’t it?  Sometimes I worry to myself that I am losing focus, that I have lost sight of what’s really important. We’re all so busy, our days are so jam packed, but I like to think, when push comes to shove, we do remember.  In fact, maybe the crazy, the busy, the LIFE makes us realize with an even sharper clarity about what matters.

Last week, at a work conference, a speaker asked us to write down the most important product we owned.  That thing that we absolutely could not live without.  She gave us, all 500 of us sitting in the conference hall, a minute in silence.  People reached for their notebooks, their pens.  Began writing.  But I just sat there, pencil in hand, unable to think of a single thing. of a single product that I could not imagine my life without.  Yes, I love this certain dress I have, of course, I have a favorite piece of jewelry, and my books, my journals, my photographs mean the world to me.  But I sat there thinking, as the speaker went on to talk about what makes a product go from good to great that if all of the items I owned or coveted disappeared I would still be okay – more than okay - so long as I had my loved ones – both the humans and the furry ones – alive and healthy, all would be well.  That I wouldn't let anyone take away what was in my heart or my head.

When Katherine and I ended our texting conversation – me, off to a meeting and her, off to feed her littlest one – she messaged me one last final text bubble: “Things are beautifully chaotic. That is the reality.”

They are.  Oh, indeed they are.

Beautiful.  And lucky.