the hard way

You are never going to learn things the easy way. Because that's not learning, that's luck.

You learn more from doing (correctly or incorrectly, even though you learn more when it it the latter even though it is more painful and/or stressful) than from thinking or theorizing or pondering. But just because it is the best way does not mean that it feels the best.

Sometimes it sucks to learn a lesson. Sometimes it sucks even more to realize you are learning a lesson you thought you were way beyond learning. Sometimes it sucks the most toe learn that lesson and realize that you are nowhere near where you want to be because you have based so many choices on a pre-enlightened mindset.

Guess what? Time to move on. You can't change the past, you can't go back and "only know then what you know now." All you can do is make the future as much as you can with the knowledge that you have.

And don't forget- just because you change what you want, doesn't mean you get to say that you didn't get what you wanted in the past. It just means that you have to accept that you have changed (for better or for worse) your goal; you got exactly what you wanted, it's just time to want something new.

two freaking years

I almost called this post, "Time Heals All Wounds." But then I realized that was a boldface lie. Well, maybe not, but it is not a statement I feel comfortable saying emphatically (or at all). Time may ease the sting of even the worst burn, it may fade bold colors into nothing more than a faint outline, it may even turn a boulder into the grains of sand that wash upon a beach. But the truth is that time changes, it doesn't erase- that faint memory of what was, even if only a mere shadow of its former self never ceases to exist, it just exists differently.

Source: http://youtu.be/LZ0epRjfGLw

Today I am different. Time has not stopped my existence, rather it has altered the way I exist and I would like to think for the better. I am NOT that same girl that just two years ago dragged herself across a graduation stage already wishing she could undo that walk and what it represented. That girl exists, and its a good thing. Because that girl, as much as the mere idea of her brings pain, she is the shadow of what was, the reminder of what has been and will not be again. Treasured for what she was, but appreciated as only a mere a memory, not an omen.

Today I am different. I have been doing this whole "real life" thing for a full two years now, TWO YEARS. And a lot has happened in that time: I've gone from full time student to full time marketer, from confident senior in the protective bubble of college to the low man on the totem pole of life, from petrified interviewee to petrified interviewer (ok maybe not THAT much has changed...).

Today I am different. This is an interesting day for me- a celebration of a great time in my life (and another great time a year later), but also a painful reminder of the past. It has made this time of year has been a struggle- on top of the fact that it is already the "in between" time. Spring- not warm and clear enough to really be summer nor cold and raw enough to be winter, unpredictable- not crazy enough to call it busy season, but not slow and steady enough to phone it in (like I am even capable of that...). In a word, complicated. In two, overwhelmingly so.

It is a beginning... and an end.... and a beginning.

Take this as an opportunity to appreciate the pleasure and pain brought on by the memories of the past, but remember that those memories are no longer the boulders that once weighed you down and they have become the sand that you can now use to build your castles of the future. Take the extra time to look at what you have already built to get where you are, and what you can build more to the future.