Today is my birthday. My 31st if we’re putting a number on it, though I honestly still feel 18 sometimes and 24 most of the time.

My friend Ingrid has a tradition of choosing a different word every year to focus on. I’ve decided to do the same, and as my new year always starts on my birthday (it holds more significance for me than January 1st), I’m choosing my word today.

courage

Courage to be true to myself, to be true to my feelings, to follow my path. Courage to tell others how amazing I think they are. Courage to talk to strangers and make new friends. Courage to open my heart up the world and take it all in.

I can’t wait to see what adventures come my way.

{first image via the sweetest occasion, second image here}

I have a little test I put all my closest male friends through: I date them in my head. Now, this isn’t true if a guy has a girlfriend, because then I am already able to see firsthand how he treats a woman he cares about (see this post). But for my single guy friends, I often imagine what it would be like to date them — would they treat a woman well? respect her? speak thoughtfully and kindly?

Those that pass, I keep close — not because I’ll necessarily ever date them, but because I know that in their hearts, they’re really amazing people.

I was reminded of all this over the weekend, when I saw a close male friend who I met while studying at UCSD. It was so good to catch up with him and talk about our lives. He was there when I needed someone to talk to many times, and while we no longer see each other frequently, we do chat often and I like that I can be completely honest with him. Finding someone I can connect that way to means a lot to me, especially because he always provides me with a much needed perspective. It’s really nice to have a guy who is very clearly a good friend.

It was a lovely little dose of my old home in my new city.

(I should warn you, there’s one problem with my test: occasionally you might get one guy friend stuck in your head and start wondering what dating him in real life would be like. Sometimes you can shake it off, but sometimes it haunts you.)

{image by my dear friend Jo Bozarth — check out her etsy shop for some cute holiday gifts}

For years, I thought the best way to define myself was through my job. Everything else in my mind was second to that. I was going to be an actress, see. I was going to be on stage and somehow change people’s lives like that. Yet after three years in college, I concluded I wouldn’t have the impact I wanted to have on the world that way.

And so I started searching. It’s been almost a decade and my journey has taken many turns, but when I look back at everything I’ve done, I realize how it’s allowed me to arrive at this moment. I have this strange Renaissance background and a real passion for something: food.

Not just baking and cooking either, though I do love those. I’ve been working on projects focused around food justice for the last year, and at school, my research has found its way to food as well. We could call it philosophy of nutrition, but it comes down to the simple question: “Why do we have the relationship with food we do?” It’s a complicated one, and I’m only working on what I see as one little branch of that tree, but I love it.

I have a little favor to ask of you: would you keep your fingers crossed for me? I found a job and I fell in love with it. I can’t begin to tell you how ideal it is. I sent all my brilliance in on three sheets of paper (that was difficult to do), and now much patiently wait (that’s even more difficult to do).

The lesson I’ve learned since graduating college has been this: your whole life defines you. Not just your job. But if you can weave what you love to do into what you do for a living and somehow mix that in with what you do in your spare time — well, could it get better than that?

{image from makingthingshappen}

The sunshine has finally been warm enough lately to feel it making freckles on my skin. I try to cover myself with those as much as possible. It’s like having little constellations there to tell stories about.

There are days when I feel like my life is on fast forward and I forget to just take that time to draw pictures on my arm, imagine stories in the night sky, watch people and wonder who they are. The last especially was such a good exercise in compassion. I found myself more patient with people after a good session.

But the hardest person to watch and have patience for is myself. I can’t move at light speed, and I constantly have to remind myself to slow down, to act intentionally, to turn off the autopilot that clicks on sometimes and sends me off into the direction of schoolwork and more schoolwork.

Today, I think I’ll spend a bit more time outdoors in the sunshine, watching the world.

{all images by Lieke Romeijn}

When I was younger, in high school and college, poetry used to flow out of me like water from a river. It came with such ease. I wrote about so many people: my grandmother, friends, guys I liked. Actually, it was unrequited love in particular that made me so prodigious.

I kept lists of the men I wrote about — their names, the dates they passed through my life. It’s like a strange sort of diary of things that never happened.

I was trying to remember the other day when the poetry left me. In verse, not in prose (I like to think that some of my good prose might be close to poetry). In some ways I grew tired of all my dreams being locked up on the page. I wanted my life to be a poem, my very self.

And yet sometimes I read the lines of others, poets like Pablo Neruda (one of my favorite poets) and Shakespeare (I still love that Romeo and Juliet speak to each other in a sonnet when they first meet) and Maya Angelou (I get chills every time I read “Still I Rise”), and I miss the words too. I’m hoping I can find there somewhere again.

Do you ever write poetry? Or do you prefer to weave spells in other ways?

{first image of letterpress poem by satsuma press, second image by Parker Fitzgerald with lines by Shakespeare, third image of print by the big harumph with lines by Walt Whitman}

Last week my heart broke.

I was sitting in my living room, talking to two friends at a little dessert party. I don’t remember the topic of the conversation, but I was carefully watching the way he was with her.

They had first dated in college. Then he went to Georgia for school, and she went to Ghana to volunteer at a home for children with HIV. When he came to San Diego, she came as well and planned to go to nursing school. She went through the pre-requisites, impressing everyone as she went, but last week, she found out she wasn’t accepted to the only program in San Diego that would allow her to go back to Ghana and open a clinic.

So now, she may be going back to Africa very soon, not in two years as originally planned. And I could tell by the way he stroked her hair, the way she was the only person in the entire room for him, that his heart was breaking by the thought of her departure. The thought was still new, and I know he’d give her anything to keep her here with him. But he’d never take any of her dreams and plans away. That’s loving someone with your whole heart.

I’ve never seen anything so beautiful and so sad.

All I want is a “happily ever after” for them.

{first image by Shannen Norman via A Cup of Jo, second image via Compact Girl}

I had the greatest idea for a tattoo last week: a sweet little piece of script that says “moonshine”. On my wrist maybe.

In college I first started entertaining the idea of a tattoo. The problem? Commitment. A tattoo is a huge one. A lifetime one. Somehow, I’m more willing to give my heart away to a man for the rest of my life than have a word or symbol permanently on my skin. That’s odd, isn’t it?

“Moonshine” has become a special word for me. It’s one of those with a hidden meaning: freedom, light.

Now if only I could figure out where to put it. (That would be the first step before I decide that I will positively get one.)

Do you have any tattoos? What do they say? Would you consider getting one if you don’t have one?

{images here and here (no originals)}