High School Confident

A few weekends ago I attended my high school reunion. While I initially thought it would be a great idea, as the day got closer, I started feeling anxious. I started remembering how much I had hated high school. I started recounting the embarrassing moments, the moments that made me feel little and small, the moments I felt invisible and lost and the moments that left me feeling like I couldn't wait to get the hell out of high school. Why had I chosen to return to this place that had caused me such angst? Immediately, I regretted my decision to attend.

Flanked by my best friends from high school, I entered the reunion of Bethel High School Class of 1997. It was like entering the twilight zone. People whose names I had stored in the deep recesses of my mind were suddenly appearing before me. Thankfully, social media had helped create a present-day yearbook so I wasn't totally surprised by what people looked like now, their marital status, how many kids they had, etc.  As I started talking to the people in my past, I was surprised by my lack of the anxiety and embarrassment that had plagued me when I was a teenager.

As I danced from one conversation to the next, the person who I was in high school was overshadowed by the woman I was now.  I was able to talk to all different types of people, was able to joke with them and converse with them in ways that were unthinkable two decades ago.  I blurred in and out of high school that night, the flashbacks and memories presenting themselves in funny ways. Approaching one woman, I had a sudden flashback to when she was an all-star athlete in multiple sports, but present-day enjoyed doing a whole lot of nothing and rejoiced in "being lazy".  I talked to a boy who I had a mild crush on and while talking to him, the teenager within me was sweating bullets at finally having the guts to talk to him now.

I started talking to one woman who I had idolized in high school.  As she started talking, I realized the the pedestal I had put her on in high school was a product of my own low self-esteem and social status in high school. As she continued talking, I no longer looked at her through my teenage goggles and saw her for what she was twenty years later: a normal person who like me had the same anxieties about success and accomplishment, the same fears about raising children who were socially conscious, well-fed and nourished intellectually, and the same complex of trying to have it all while working a full-time job.

As I finally walked away, I felt a pang of nostalgia and of innocence lost. However, in that moment, I also realized how much I had grown from high school and how different I had become. Life experiences seemed to be the equalizer in that 20-year high school reunion. There were no longer classifications of people based on their "coolness factor"; it seemed now that all of us were in this same boat of life and most of us were just trying to make it to the next day with an ounce of self-preservation and dignity occasionally aided by a glass or two of wine.

I took all of these important lessons with me as I walked confidently across the room to my best friends and we celebrated and rejoiced in our 38-year old selves at a teenage party.

The Happy Mess

While I'm at work, just after lunch time, I usually take a ten-minute break to peruse people.com. Don't judge me. It's my time to escape from work, responsibilities, and these days, Trump news. It's similar to reading my Facebook News Feed with the difference that I now know mundane details about celebrities' lives in addition to the happenings in my friends' lives. So today, I read that Molly Sims, the gorgeous former supermodel who now has 3 kids under the age of 5, wrote a new book called Everyday Chic. What caught my eye in the article was that she has a neon sign in her kids' playroom that reads "The Happy Mess" and it's a phrase that sums up her house and her life. Yes!  That's exactly how I feel and why I started Messy Bliss.

One of the areas that had been quite messy for me last year, mostly literally, had been dealing with and organizing all the stuff that comes with kids while also living in a small space. My husband and I used to live in a 1200 square foot, 2-bedroom condo and that was plenty of space before children. It was fine even when we had one child. But having a second put a strain on our spaces and stuff was everywhere. It didn't help that we lived in a loft with most of the square footage in one grand room. So that room housed the kitchen, TV, sofa, dining table with chairs, dining board, a piano, a plethora of toys and all the contraptions that infants/kids need (musical chairs, bouncy chairs, scooters, etc.) Unexpectedly, the mess was seeping into other parts of our lives. There was no space for us to just be by ourselves, to retreat to or to lounge and relax. We were always on edge and always cleaning. There was no designated space for the kids to play; every night after the kids went to bed, my husband and I would pick up after them, putting the toys away in a huge closet trying to recreate an adult living room. We were in each other spaces in ways that were nice to create a cohesive, tight family unit, but not in ways that would foster independence, relaxation or exploration.

For me, a "Happy Mess" place is one that is balanced between the happiness and messiness that coexist in one's life.

In our old place, I felt that our balance was greatly skewed towards that of messiness. We started to lose sight of the joy of having kids because all we could see and feel was their stuff everywhere. Moving to a larger home helped us find more of this balance and to eventually create these "Happy Mess" spaces. We now have the luxury of adult spaces void of clutter and toys as well as a room that the kids can call their own. The kids can often be found in their playroom (that doubles as an office when they go to bed), which is equipped with their toys and is a safe space; they can hang out and remain in this room without being constantly supervised. These separate spaces have helped in ways that we could not have anticipated. One day, we arrived to the kids' playroom to find a "store" set up by my kids of over 50 handmade paper fans, in different colors, shape and sizes (my daughter had learned how to make fans that day in preschool). In having their own space, the kids were able to use their imagination and creativity to create something new. This would not have happened in our old space.  And because we are not spending every night picking up after the kids and putting away their toys, Kishore and I are able to spend more time together. These spaces are not completely neat and defined but they do have less purposes than what our spaces did before. What I've found is that embracing our "Happy Mess" has meant creating separate spaces for our children and ourselves in which we can all explore our "messiness" and be happy in the pursuit.

Embracing one's "Happy Mess" can mean different things to different people- it could mean embracing the unpredictability of work/life balance or embracing the nuance in an alternative or non-traditional romantic relationship. Finding out what mess is creating anxiety and what can relieve or balance that mess is the first step in creating a "Happy Mess."

Have a Happy Mess of a weekend!

The Phones We Love Too Much

I'm Day 5 into my Facebook diet and it feels similar to a food diet. The first day was really hard. Every time I opened my browser (I had deleted the Facebook app on my phone to curb use but that didn't help much), I wanted to refresh Facebook. I thought many times during the day "just this once" and "nobody will ever know" but I'm trying to keep my word to my readers and to my blog, so I didn't cheat. But boy did I want that "chocolate chip cookie"! Day 2 was a little better. I thought about checking my Facebook News Feed about half the amount of times that I had on Day 1. I wondered what I was missing out on, whose birthday I was forgetting and whether anybody was feeling my absence. On Day 3, I started visiting new sites that I had never really done on a regular basis like The Boston Globe and other blogs like Cup of Jo other than my usual New York Times fix. And whenever I felt the urge to look at Facebook, I turned to People.com instead. Trolling celebrities' lives, while not the same, satiated that urge to know what is going on in someone's life.  I know it sounds pathetic.  Day 4 was easier as I found myself letting go and not so preoccupied.  I wasn't turning to my phone in the same way that I had been when I was checking Facebook constantly. So today, Day 5, is much like Day 4. I am still nostalgic about Facebook, but I am no longer feeling the anxiety that I was feeling before the diet.  I find myself having time now to think about other things  and caring less about what XYZ person from high school (who didn't even like me back then) is doing with their time.  I'm losing the "weight" that compelled me to go on this Facebook diet in the first place.

One of the reasons I forced myself to quit Facebook for a while is because I felt addicted to my phone. Ironically enough, the other day I stumbled across this article called "The Phones We Love Too Much".  I read with extreme interest. There is a professor at UConn that founded a Center for Internet and Smartphone Addiction. The motto for this Center is to "plug back into life."  Need I say more?

Technology and the use of technology is one of the biggest sources of tension in our household. Both my husband and I have demanding jobs where we are expected to respond quickly to client and colleague emails. I've done my research and read the negative effects of cell-phone use generally and especially in front of loved ones including children and how such use makes children (and apparently spouses) feel inadequate, unimportant and anxious. So I've tried to put in place times in our house where technology is not to be used including while eating, especially at the dinner table, and on the weekends (unless to respond to friends' texts to coordinate plans for the day/evening). While I feel that technology has taken over our lives and impacted them in ways that we are just beginning to understand, Kishore feels that there really is no problem at all. He only sees the benefit of being able to come home to spend time with our children despite the demanding job. I say that we are not truly "present" with our kids when we are on our devices.... and so the argument continues.

What I am learning with this Facebook diet and that was reaffirmed with this NY Times article is that I was overusing tech and quite dependent on it and that this overuse and dependence were a sign of overcompensation for other things such as fear of being alone with my own thoughts, loneliness, boredom and feelings of inadequacy. Cutting off access to something so addictive like Facebook is helping me see what might be amiss in my own life. With this self-imposed Facebook hiatus, I hope that instead of loving my phone too much, I can spend quality time with and show and express my love for the real people in my life.