Because when the president of the (NNHS) senior class (of 1999) advised James (from Dublin) to simply write if he wants to become a better writer, (student government) secretary (of yore) that I am, I took note.
So with the renaming, I intend to have a clearer purpose here on the ol' blog. I realize in the past, I've alluded to but never quite explained what a Goldilocks Complex is, and I am excited to say I have come so crazy close to finding a bed, a chair and a bowl of porridge that’s juuuuuuust right, honestly.
I also have a feeling there are boatloads of Golidilock Girls and Guys out there wandering what feels like aimlessly through their early twenties, swimming blindly through life in the big cities and tasting porridges that are simply too cold or too hot for their liking night after night, week after week. So I'm writing for them (and of course, my couple handfuls of regular readers).
I'll break it down for the blogosphere once and for all as I build my platform. And I'll do so...hmmm... let's see. Not daily. But bi-weekly maybe? I think I can commit to that. I still can't commit to a nail polish color for more than a week at a time, but I am getting better about commitments, in general, so sure... Bi-weekly posts, here we come!
Sundays and Wednesdays till I live happily ever after.
What the heck should I rename this blog??? DanielleNaugler.blogspot.com perhaps? I don't know... dare I be so bold as to bare my soul to the interwebs and reveal GoldilocksNYC's true identity?!
This thing is already linked to my DanielleNaugler website, it's also felt on its way to being obsolete for going on two years now.
I have a feeling 2016 will be a year for its re-emergence though. 2016's the year I get published, soooo..... go big or go home?
In the meantime, here's something facebook big-brothered my way this morning:
Last night I went on a movie date with my 75 year old grandparents to see Bridge of Spies with America's sweetheart, Tom Hanks, and a huge cast of people I didn't recognize other than good old Landry from Friday Night Lights who's making the rounds in major motion pictures this fall.
To say going to see a picture with the two of them was cute would be the understatement of the year. They are avid movie goers, and very much in love after 55+ years of marriage. And they were so tickled by the fact that I wanted to spend a random Tuesday night with them.
It was super nice to be out with people who were super excited to spend time with me.
So that's fun. And the movie was stellar. Spielberg tells a damn good story.
Three times (naturally, since it was a joke), the Russian spy character asks Tom Hanks' character whether it would help if he worried.
And beyond it being a cute gimmick, the question's become my new inspiration for this season of life. The answer's so reassuring. Of course it wouldn't. Worrying will literally never help anyone's cause.
I'm picking up wisdom like this and like the 4 Agreements below left and right these last few months of being 30. And life is good.
A guy I know from forever ago, who is in advertising these days and prone to check in with me from time to time, asked me last night where my angst is.
I had "just" been thinking about my lack of angst in December actually. Last summer, I realized that angst seems like something you grow out of - if you're lucky by the time you graduate high school, more commonly probably by the time you're out of college, and often enough over the course of your twenties.... so when on a fourth or fifth date (save your applause, okay, no fine, go ahead, give me props for getting that far into a courtship - afterall, it'd been a while), anyway, so when on a fourth or fifth date I found myself on around Christmas, the gentleman I was out with referenced his own current angst, I filed the reference under a tab in my mind labeled red flag.
He was almost 40, that fellow. And he has so much going for him, he's quite a catch. But yikes, angst that's lingering 10+ years after your quarter-life-crisis must be agonizing and/or at the very least a mindfuck.*
*eloquent.
I told my bud last night that I'd left my angst behind with my mid-twenties. Because I really think I did. When I was 27 going on 28.
In hindsight I wish I'd thought to put it on my old taking/leaving list, then maybe I'd have spared the world some final flairs of my dramatics at 28, but I'm not gonna beat myself up about those. Because the point is, by last summer, when I was pushing 30, I knew my angst was gone for good.
I'm reading "The Happiness Project" and will smugly admit that much of what Gretchen Rubin discovers month to month I already knew or have come to know on my own in the past 9 or 10 years, but tonight I read her June chapter (I'm reading each chapter prior to the calendar year which feels like both a cute and intentional way to approach it), and something she notes stuck with me:
"In a letter to a friend, Flannery O'Connor put this precept another way: 'from 15 - 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don't look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.'"
No wonder this wise lady's getting a stamp. She gets it. And what's there to get is this: get over it. Hang ups, jealousy, suspicion, insecurity, competitiveness, feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, regret... angst. These things weigh you down, dampen your spirit and darken your days. Ain't nobody got time for that.
There's something I heard at the funeral of a dear friend’s
grandmother a while back … “Golden hours are one of the few things in this
world you get free of charge.If
you had all the money in the world, you couldn’t buy an extra hour.What will you do with this priceless
treasure?Remember, you must use
it as it is given only once.Once
wasted you cannot get it back.”
I've moved now, ohhhhh let's see, 11 times in the last 9 years (having previously lived in one of two homes in Newton, MA for 23 years). The nomadic lifestyle lends itself to making cuts and learning how to live a minimalistic existence. Somewhere along the way to fully valuing time I left my bag of angst behind. And man oh man, do I recommend others do the same.
