Living the dream

Confession: I get stressed (doesn’t everybody?!). I worry A LOT, I hold on to things that don’t mean anything at all. I try to stay so organized, so on top of things, so “with it”. And I’m buuussssyy. I work, go to school, volunteer, write on here sometimes, blog and manage the social media freelance style for a local biz and until recently, sold handmade items on Etsy.

I always thought, when I get that life I’m gonna love it. When I start living my dream, I’m going to dive in and appreciate it 100%. When my life starts resembling what I’ve dreamt about for so long, I’m going to relish it. But I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even realize that I have been living my dream for quite a while now.

I remember when I interned at Sub Pop Records, right out of college and a fresh transplant to Seattle from Texas. I thought everyone that worked there was so cool. They had cool tattoos, cool boyfriends/girlfriends, cool bands, cool jobs and cool friends. I wondered if I would ever be that cool. Now that I have an intern at work, I wonder… does he think I’m that cool? AM I that cool? Whoa. Maybe I am!

I stress so much about making things rad, being the best I can be, working hard… even (if you can believe it) having fun, that I lose sight of reality. The glaring awesomeness that is my life somehow has totally slipped under my radar for years. While doing the dishes one morning this weekend I came to this realization. Let me illustrate for you how cool my life is right now (written with total and utter non-sarcasm).

I work in the music industry, for a local ticketing company
My husband works for Electronic Arts, a video game company (Psstt… I’m married to a guy that loves me!)
We just bought a lil Atomic Ranch style house in an up and coming neighborhood in one of the best cities in the US
We have four awesome pets (okay, well… they’re pains in the asses but we love the STUFF out of them)
We have lovely devoted friends who: screen print for a living, make jewelry, work with autistic kids, do awesome metal-smithing and welding, perform burlesque for fun, invite us to VEGAAAS, move to Thailand without a job purely for the adventure etc
We live near my amazing family and have their support in everything we do
We lived in Seattle for five years, where I learned so much about myself and about life
We have enough expendable income that we can eat fancy dinners on occasion, drink champagne for no reason and donate money to our local no-kill rescue organization
I’m going to school to learn to become an amazing technical writer, and I don’t have that much longer left!
My husband is a STELLAR cook (and no this is not an understatement) and calls me sweet baby princess almost all the time

There’s more, but I’ll spare you. Pretty cool life right now huh? And to think that I couldn’t even see it from where I was sitting (in the freaked out/over-committed section). File me in the under-appreciative, and lost-in-the-details drawer.

But it’s turning around now, everyday I’m going to work on realizing the lot of all this greatness. I won’t remember everyday, and I’ll probably still stress about tons of stuff and suck at being a friend sometimes and make myself sick with worry sometimes. But I’m going to try… and this realization, this trying, this working is a HUGE step for me.

On to LIFE and living and love and appreciating and working towards a goal and being the person you always wanted to be.