Only The Curious

I’m not usually a quitter. I don’t like giving up on things. This can be kind of a problem, because I like doing a lot of different things, which makes becoming over-committed far too easy to do.

This quitting was sad, too. I was quitting something I had wanted to do for YEARS. But sometimes when you want something that badly for that long, you stop seeing how it really is and just picture it as the way you want it to be.

So, here it is: I’m not going to be a wedding planner. Not in the near future, anyway.

It’s weird to say that. For about 7 years I’ve been wanting to start my own wedding planning business. I picked out a name and wrote a business plan years ago. I LOVE weddings. And I love planning parties. And I worked on a lot of big events in college, and was darn good at it. So I thought “let’s combine a bunch of my favorite things! It’ll be great!”

Last summer, I started writing an Examiner column on Wedding Planning. The idea was to use the column to get into the industry, get an internship, and work my way up to being a planner. And it worked – since November I’ve been interning with the fabulous Kerri Butler and her team over at A Touch of Bliss. I met Kerri by interviewing her for my column.

The day she brought me on, I called my mom and screamed into the phone “I’M GOING TO BE A WEDDING PLANNER!!!” Then I went directly to the library and checked out as many wedding magazines as I could. (I already had a bunch of books at home I’d started collecting years ago.)

The internship was great. Kerri is a fantastic planner, and I love all of the ladies on her team. I got to see a ton of the industry from the inside, met lots of people, and even worked on a couple of events. It was fun and exciting and I was thrilled to be part of it.

But, the point of an internship is to learn about the industry, see if a job fits you. I found out it didn’t, basically for three reasons:

1) I’m NOT a design or fashion freak. I don’t have an aesthetic eye. (This is why my art is in words and singing and dancing, and not anything visual.) Half of what people hire a planner for is the design piece. I realized I would always need to work in tandem with someone who could do that stuff, because I just can’t. And I don’t know if it’s something I could learn.

2) The energy started really flowing with my social media and freelance writing work. As anyone who is a business owner or freelancer knows, you have to pay attention to what’s bringing in your income. And I found myself needing to spend more time on that stuff, and less on my internship. It wasn’t really fair to either thing not to give it my all. Sometimes you have to recognize where the energy is flowing and where it’s not, and follow it.

3) As anyone who knows me will attest, I love doing about a bajillion things. It’s a huge part of why I moved to Colorado – for everyday adventures like rock climbing, biking, playing ultimate, hiking, skiing, etc. And those are just my athletic/outdoorsy hobbies. But the important thing to realize is that no matter how much I loved weddings, I would never love working at one on a Saturday instead of being on one of my adventures. It wouldn’t be true to doing what I love, and it wouldn’t be fair to the bride or the wedding not to be completely focused on her and happy to be there.

I sat with this all summer, thinking about where I REALLY wanted to devote my time and energy as I flipped through pictures of epic weekends and time spent with friends. I stopped contributing much to my internship. I started writing more. And I was okay with that.

Ultimately, I realized that I still LOVE weddings. I love helping people come up with ideas, being a resource and offering recommendations, and telling peoples’ unique stories. But I can do all of that as a writer. So, I’m going back to writing my column. My goal is to eventually get to write for The Knot, so here’s to my column working its magic a second time!

There was a huge lesson learned in all of this, and I’m grateful for the journey that led me to this conclusion. I hate closing doors, but it feels good to walk away knowing exactly why, and that I’m still going to be part of it all, in the way that suits me best.

So go read my column. And tell your friends who are getting married or who work in the industry. New articles will be going up 2-3 times/week from now on. And if you have any ideas for topics, people to interview, etc. I’ll always be looking for inspiration.

Here’s to turning away from one thing so I can move forward to the next.

And thank you, Kerri.

Tweet This Post

A year ago today I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I packed two trash bags of clothes and shoes, my guitar, a suitcase, and a few odds and ends into my little Mazda, strapped my bike on the back, and headed West. As glorious and romantic as it was to finally move to Colorado – fulfilling a dream I’d had for 15 years – it meant leaving behind people and a place that I still to this day care about very deeply. And that was harder than I’d ever imagined it could be. I guess that’s why I had returned to Madison “for 6 months” to save money for my move. That was 6 years ago.

Whenever I had pictured my grand departure in my head, it looked something like this: early morning, all of my friends and my family standing around in my parents’ driveway. We would’ve been hanging out and drinking coffee, saying last goodbyes, joking, taking pictures. Then, at the appointed moment, I would climb into my stuffed car, turn on some great exciting song, open my sunroof, and shout a goodbye before pulling out of the driveway, at which point everyone would wave, running down the street, wishing me luck and bidding farewell. We’d take pictures and video out the window as I pulled away, grinning ear to ear at the success of finally GOING.

Yeah, unsurprisingly, it wasn’t like that at all.

Which is not to say there weren’t plenty of sentimental goodbyes – I think I gained 15 pounds last summer going out “for one last beer” or brunch or coffee with people. I had a big goodbye party two days before I left, and a great dinner with my folks the night before. But the actual leaving day? Well, it was the middle of the week and everyone was at work. I was still cramming things in my car around noon.

The worst part was leaving Ian. That was, in fact, a very movie-esque moment, pulling away and watching him grow smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror. I got barely a block out of sight before I had to pull over because I was sobbing so hard. It was so strange to hug someone and say goodbye just like I had every morning for two years, only knowing this time I wouldn’t be back for months, and when I was, that things would inevitably be different. It just felt wrong. And terribly, terribly sad.

I can’t really explain in this moment why he didn’t come along, or why I didn’t decide to stay for him. Suffice it to say that Colorado was my dream and not his, and he had known from probably our first date on that I was going to go someday. He supported it, even though it meant us being apart, potentially permanently. There are probably dozens of posts that could be written about that process and that relationship, but we’ll save those for another day. In the end I am grateful to Ian for not only being supportive but encouraging; I can’t imagine anything that demonstrates love more than literally letting someone go, not knowing if they would ever come back.

{Kim, that last bit applies to you too. Thank you both for being awesome, amazing friends to me even as I was planning my departure and making a mess of your apartment. I still have in my wallet the goodbye note you left me on the table that morning }

Once I regained enough composure to drive another half mile, I picked up my wonderful friend Leah, who had volunteered to help me drive out to Colorado and then flew back alone. I remember the night she offered to come

along, and am still grateful for her support. I don’t know if I could have gotten here in one piece without her.

Then Leah and I went on to my mom’s house for another sad and anticlimactic goodbye. Then we stopped at Target. If you watch the videos from the move, the first one basically starts with me at Target. That was the only time I really considered chickening out. Here I’d been crying and upset for three hours and I wasn’t even actually out of Madison yet. That will definitely leave you wondering if you’re doing the right thing, and at that moment, it seemed so easy to just turn around and go back to mom’s house.

But I knew I’d regret it forever if I didn’t go. Besides, I’d already done the hard part – I’d said goodbye. I’d cried. It would only get easier from here on out. No reason to go through that again, or worse, make it all for naught.

Leah offered to start off the driving, seeing as how I was puffy faced and still intermittently crying. But I insisted that I had to be in the driver’s seat at least until the border. So we got in the car, turned on an awesome, great, departure song, and headed West.

…
reflections on my first year here to come tomorrow
…

Tweet This Post

I had nothing on my schedule today. NOTHING. No work, no events, no hanging out with friends. I don’t even have things in mind that I might do. Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 was a blank slate for me. I think it’s the emptiest day I’ve had since… the last summer vacation I had when I didn’t have a job. So like, 8th grade.

It’s weird. Usually I would try to fill a day like this. Seeing my empty calendar would normally inspire one of two feelings in me: panic at the nothingness and lack of people-interaction, or a manic-like need to get as much done as humanly possible in my empty time. Or, at least, I would normally try to take advantage – go on a big hike, go to the museum, do things I wouldn’t normally do during the week because I don’t have time.

But I didn’t. I spent 5 hours meticulously cleaning the house this morning, and now I’ve been writing and doing internet-y things all afternoon. I’m probably going to go work out after I finish this post. Then I might make dinner. Exciting stuff.

Part of me feels like I totally wasted a good day. A good SUMMER day at that. I feel guilty. Like it’s a bad thing that I didn’t go lie in the sun and read, or go see something new, or get a ton of freelance work done. I think because I have so often used housework as procrastination that when I get down to just doing some chores that need doing I still feel like I’m using that as an excuse for not working.

Maybe I am. But, then, I find a cluttered house really distracting. I struggle to sit down and focus when everything around me as a mess. Dealing with that doesn’t count as procrastination, does it? What about if it takes up half of a beautiful day?

I should add here that housecleaning, like exercising, is no quick task for me. It’s one of the few realms where my perfectionist tendencies are still allowed free reign. In the process of folding my clothes and putting them away, I’ll go through my closet and organize my clothes by type and then color. And then I’ll make sure all of my shirts are facing the same way. This morning I scrubbed the coffee grounds out of the grout in the kitchen, and reorganized the cabinets for maximum efficiency. Poor Karl won’t be able to find his cereal tomorrow. Oh, I re-arranged the contents of the freezer, too, so that all of the meat is in one part, the pizzas and breads in another, and frozen veggies in a third. They each have their own place. And now there’s more room in there. And nothing falls out when you open it.

Okay, so maybe I’m a little neurotic about keeping my environment tidy. I would love it if my house were always perfectly clean and organized, so I could always find things, entertain at the drop of a hat, and never feel like I need to spend an entire day cleaning instead of doing things that earn me money. Or are fun.

But being that level of tidy isn’t really in my nature. So I let it go until it stresses me out. Then I have a freakout day and go nuts getting it all cleaned again. Rinse, repeat.

According to the MBTI, we flip to the opposite of our preference when we get stressed out. So I guess, being an ENFP, that it makes sense. The P part of me is too busy having fun and winging it to worry about cleaning. But then it stresses me out and I flip to uber J and you find me bleaching the kitchen counters or scrubbing things with a toothbrush at 2am.

Speaking of, I’m pretty sure the putty is dry enough for me to go sand down the walls in the bathroom…

Tweet This Post