January 1, 2012

Happy 2012!

A new year. I love the start of a new year. So much. Everything stretched out before you… infinite possibilities. It’s cliche, but I feel like I can do/be anything at the start of a new year. I love that feeling.

This year I will…

  • Take more personal pictures.
  • Shoot more film.
  • Travel: DC, Vegas, Hawaii, and San Francisco are already planned. I’d love to add Berlin to that list if we can make it work financially. Maybe a weekend in Montreal. Back out to Westhampton for a couple days in the summer. I just need to keep moving to be happy.
  • Be healthy. In both 2010 and 2011, I had startling reminders that if you have your health, you have everything. I watched two people I care about battle cancer… one miraculously came out okay. The other did not. They both reminded me to not take my health for granted. I made really great strides to that end in 2011… but in 2012 I want to take it to a new level.
  • Try really hard to let go of anger/past resentments. This is the biggest ongoing project in my life, and it has been for quite some time. I’m trying really hard, but it’s not easy. I can’t change other people or the past. I can only change myself. I’m trying. That’s all I can do.
  • And similarly… cut toxic people out of my life when necessary.
  • Read more.
  • Go on more walks. Explore New York City more.
  • Get a New York driver’s license.
  • Make more time for friends. Be a better friend in general.
  • Make more time for John.
  • Stop putting work first in my life.
  • Be more organized.
  • See the good in people and not focus on the bad. I feel like I got really good at this in 2011, and I want to keep working on it. It annoys me when I talk to someone and they just want to talk about the bad things about other people. I don’t want to be involved in bringing more negativity into the world.
  • Volunteer. Use my art for good.
  • Have my own gallery show in New York City.
  • Be less lazy and take fewer cabs.
  • Continue to choose happiness.
  • Give back as much as possible to the world.
  • Stop procrastinating.
  • Relax more.
  • Eat breakfast everyday.
  • Dance more.
  • Try to be more outgoing and not so shy in social situations.

I hope you had an amazing New Year’s. We spent the evening with some of our favorite people in the world. I hope the whole year is just as awesome as last night.

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December 12, 2011

The Person I Was and the Person I Am

I like to think that most people are capable of great change. Certainly I am not the person that I was at 16 or 18 or 22 or 25, even. But I’ve realized that there are people in my life who don’t see that change… or accept it. They put you in a box and you stay in that box… even when it doesn’t fit. Even when that box is exploding at the seams. And the worst part is, when you’re around that person who thinks they figured you out 10 years ago and refuses to acknowledge that you might have actually grown up, sometimes you revert back to that worst version of yourself… that version of you that they think you are… the version of you that in every other area of your life is so gone. Is such a distant memory.

It sort of makes me sad the more I realize this. That people who are supposed to be close to me don’t really know me at all. Or rather… they don’t know 28 year old Katie. They just know annoyed at the world, stubborn, angst-y 17 year old Katie. I really like the person I’ve grown into. I had a real shit time in high school, and was not exactly the happiest person in the world as a teenager, but I grew out of that. And I long ago took down the wall I built around myself. I went out into the world and created a happy, little life. And that’s the person I am – a much happier, more open, optimistic person. No longer cynical. Often silly. Kind of shy. A different person completely, really.

But then I talk to someone who refuses to see the change in me, and I do become that negative, sarcastic, awful version of myself. And I hate it. And it’s just as much my fault as theirs, I guess. But how can you make someone see you for who you are? Especially when they continually treat you as the person you were? I don’t know the answer to that.

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December 2, 2011

Ten Goals

It’s a bit early for New Year’s Resolutions, and I guess these aren’t actually resolutions at all. Just some things that have been on my mind lately. Some things I need to work harder on and make happen. They could go on my Life List, but they’re short term goals – like… have these done by March-ish type goals.

1. Get my Etsy store back up, and start selling prints and postcards again.

2. Get a handle on my bookkeeping. My books… they are a scary mess, people. A scary, scary mess.

3. Get my fine art site up and running.

4. Finish my Theia Project. Start trying to get the work shown.

5. Figure out what my next personal project will be.

6. FINALLY get a hold on my work/life balance. (maybe?)

7. Get my 2012 business plan in place.

8. Order new business cards and packaging to match my new website.

9. Get back to blogging on my business blog everyday.

10. Go back to yoga at least three times a week.

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December 1, 2011

A Blog Post in Which I am a Whiny Pants

I have about a bazillion half written drafts for blog posts, but I never get around to finishing them or pressing send. Some of them are really good stories – (I got stuck in cement and then cut off the top of my finger in separate incidents on the same day, and I KNOW you want to hear about that) – that I should finish. Maybe I will.

It’s December. I have this love/hate relationship with December. I LOVE Christmas. I’m a holiday fanatic. I love the lights, I love decorating our tree, I love hanging stockings and giving gifts. Oh man, I love giving gifts so much. I love Christmas music. But December is also the darkest month, and unfortunately I have a little seasonal affective disorder that runs through the end of November to about mid-January every year. I simultaneously want to skip around and sing and bake and be full of holiday cheer and also lay on my sofa and feel blue. It took me a long time to recognize this pattern in myself, because man… seriously… the holidays RULE. So how come I feel so sad/annoyed 75% of the time?!! Gah. I think I need to get one of those lights that’s meant to cheer you up through the long winter darkness.

I really thought I’d avoid it this year for some reason. All through Thanksgiving week I was feeling on top of the world. “No winter blues for me this year!” I thought. But it caught up to me. I don’t mind cold. (Although aside from the freak October snowstorm, it hasn’t even been that cold this year so far.) I like wearing boots and winter coats and hats and scarves. I love snow like crazy. I think it’s just the weird light. Even when it’s bright and sunny, it doesn’t actually feel bright and sunny. Winter light is so weird.

Aaaaanyway. Don’t mind me and my Eeyore-ish mood. I’m going to work on snapping myself out of it. I haven’t been to yoga in three weeks because of traveling and work and Thanksgiving, but I think going back to class this week will help. Or maybe I should go for a run and get some endorphins all up in here. But my shoes are all the way in the closet, and then I’d have to put on my exercise clothes, and go all the way downstairs… and that’s a whole big to do. (I’m mostly joking, but man, everything does sort of feel like an ordeal when you’re a little blue.)

 

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November 7, 2011

My Arch Nemesis

I have an arch enemy. We all need one. Mine is Brooklyn. Yes… the borough. Oh man, I frickin’ hate Brooklyn. Literally all of my friends live in Brooklyn, and most of them absolutely adore it, so I know I’m stepping on some toes here.

Sometimes I think I love Brooklyn. Well… parts of it. Brooklyn Heights is so gorgeous and neighborhoody… I always think I want to live there when I visit. But then Brooklyn does things like confuse me with its non-grid street layout or make me ridiculously late to things with its constant subway problems.

Yesterday I had to go to Brooklyn for a portrait session and what should have taken two trains and 35 minutes took four trains and an hour and 45 minutes. C’MON BROOKLYN! Seriously?! I always get lost going to Brooklyn or end up two hours late for things because of train delays/changes/construction/whatever. Every. Single. Time. People get mad at me for this… but it’s NOT MY FAULT. It is Brooklyn, trying to screw me over. (And the MTA. But that goes without saying.)

Also – Brooklyn makes me feel really uncool. I am just not awesome enough to live there, and Brooklyn loves to remind me of that with its eclectic cast of characters. I’m not unique or creative or pretty enough to live in Brooklyn.

I feel like Brooklyn has really stabbed me in the back lately. I’ve spent years trying to convince John it was a great place to live – more space! A backyard maybe! Lots going on! The commute isn’t that bad, really! REALLY!! But Brooklyn just laughs in my face and proves me wrong time and time again. And now I bitterly hate it, maybe more than John even. After years of defending it, I feel betrayed.

You’ve screwed me over for the last time, Brooklyn! I am done trying to convince John you’re awesome and that we should move there! If you can’t throw me a bone once in a while, I vow to never leave Manhattan for you! *shakes fist*

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October 13, 2011

Failing at Adulthood

I think I’m a bad adult. I really want to be a good adult, and I think most people probably think I’m a good adult looking in from the outside, but I (and my husband) know the truth.

When faced with something that needs to get done – John will just do it. He will come home from work and take care of his half of the chores. Or if he misses one of his regular gym days, he’ll get up in the morning and go. He sees what needs to be done – at work, in our house, in his personal life – and does it. He doesn’t whine or procrastinate. He pays bills on time and is good at saving money and budgeting and y’know… being a grown up, basically. I really admire that about him.

I, on the other hand, could not be more opposite. I don’t put things away right after I’m done with them – I’ll put them away in a week. After John asks me to. I put off laundry until it’s a mountain in the corner of the bedroom threatening to topple and kill one of the cats. When I do the laundry, I’ll fold his clothes nicely and put them in his drawers, but I’ll just throw mine in my drawers because I’m in a hurry to get it done. And sometimes I forget to pay my cell phone bill. It’s not a money issue – I just literally forget to do it. And AT&T doesn’t remind me. I don’t whine out loud (anymore) when I have to clean or organize something, but I definitely whine in my head.

I like things to be clean and orderly. I want to be one of those people who has it totally together all the time – sparkling apartment, bills paid promptly, wrinkle free clothes, goes to yoga every day, and takes her vitamins without fail. And part of my life is super organized and together – my business. But in my personal life, I get distracted. I start working on something, and then remember something else I need to do, and forget to come back to the first thing. I’m just really bad at being a grown up.

(My favorite xkcd comic pretty much sums it all up.)

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