Dreamers

I spent a day last week with my Grandma, she's 92. My aunt and I took her to lunch and we talked and it was family time. My grandma is living an incredible life. She raised seven children and has too many to count grandchildren and great grandchildren. She was telling me about some highlights in her life and they all centered around her family, us.  Trips, homes, weddings, events. 

She said, "I don't regret any of it." I think that's a real powerful thing to say when you are 92 years old.

Anne Lamont has been a favorite author of mine since my undergrad years. She says,

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

Just showing up, taking risks, and trying. Trying doesn't mean succeeding, it more often than not probably means failures, but I've recently decided I would rather fail than never show up, try, watch, and work.

Anne Lamont also said, 

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

 This is super helpful for someone (um...... ME) who struggles with perfectionism.  Dreaming without expecting those dreams to come true in some sort of "perfect" way. That a dream can come true, still be a failure, but can be marked as a dream coming true.  It's not always how a dream turns out, sometimes I think it's just about the fact that it happened.

I'm not a teenager anymore, I don't live a fearless life. I don't jump off of train bridges - I value my life too much, I take very different types of risks these days.  I tried a new job, I said yes to my boyfriend proposing to me and now I have an incredible husband, I meet new people and some of them become my friends, I adopted a puppy, I dream, I wait, I watch, I work.

I married a dreamer. Ryan dreams big. He's an artist.  We imagine what this life together will bring, exploring and enjoying.  Using this one small tiny stretch of time in the best way we can. Sharing the times we are in pain or filled with joy or sick. Sharing all those mundane moments that add up to our lifetime.  Sharing it with ourselves, our pets, and people we love.

This past weekend NYC got an epic snowstorm, which everyone in the world who has any access to any type of technology has already heard about. My husband and puppy are both new to blizzards, they both thought it was so fun and beautiful. Their joy made it fun and new for me. They chased each other around in the empty streets. Ryan threw snowballs at Callie and Callie dug herself into a few massive mounds of snow. We walked around, our little family, getting snowed on and freezing, and connecting. I love these little moments. It sounds so simple, so small, but in those "mundane" moments I know, life can't get better than this. It's in those small joys, I know, I am showing up and in that moment, I saw the dawn.

Our lives are more than those moments that we frolic around in a blizzard. Ryan and I daily question our careers, our apartment, and what kind of quality of life NYC gives and takes. We wonder if we will every own anything more than great boots and functioning bikes. We spent the day after the blizzard in the laundromat cleaning all our towels and sheets and blankets because our dogs went into heat during the blizzard.  (Her appointment to get spayed is THIS week, it's just SO classic that her body decided to bless us with her heat a week before her spay surgery! Just so classic).
 So all of those things build character, sometimes they build fights, sometimes they don't. We just show up and try to do the right thing.  We watch and we work, then we wait.
So, high five for all our little lives and for doing our best, whatever that best looks like, we do just that. We are all just trying to show up and try, doing the thing that makes the most sense for us, our goals, our dreams, and for those we love.