I'm back! ~Adult~ Birthday Celebrations

TL;DR - I've found many birthday ideas to make this month wonderful despite being broke, tired, and chronically lazy. ☆

I'm one of those people who goes overboard in celebrating my birthday. I'm not sure how I came to find getting a year older such an exciting prospect, but for as long as I can remember I've celebrated my existence as a continued gift to this world by treating the entire month of August as one long party.

Over the past year I've gone through some ~stuff~ which kind of put a damper on my birthday last year. I felt like there was nothing to celebrate, though I did do the obligatory obliteration of my memories of the night with a few close friends. I had no job, no man, my health was not great, and my ambition was at an all time low. For me, one night celebrating at a bar was such a cliche it was as good as not celebrating at all, compared to previous years! To put that into context - for my golden birthday, 23, I was in Budapest the entire month of August for work and I traveled to Vienna, Ibiza, Dusseldorf, Rome, Geneva and Bern as well. On the actual day I went exploring along the Danube river and partied all night at a Hungarian bar called Peaches and Cream. I am the queen of birthday celebration. But last year I didn't do so well.

At the beginning of August this year, my mindset was sort of similar. I was going to go to Olive Garden with my family, a longstanding tradition, and that was it. I have bills to pay, sleep to catch up on, and not a lot of friends in the Milwaukee area. Celebrating seemed like more work than it was worth. But at some point my attitude shifted. Though it may be a glaringly obvious observation, I've concluded that I don't need to run through sprinklers or have a boyfriend or visit the Schonbrunn palace in order to properly commemorate this day. As an Adult™, there are many small but wonderful ways to celebrate! So this is what I'm doing/have done this year and I highly recommend it all if you, like me, have tired of drinking to celebrate absolutely everything and are looking for something more fulfilling. I'm chronicling it because I'm so over the top excited I just cannot contain myself (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and also because I have made a resolution to focus on positive things etc.

1. Visited the tiny children - everyone who knows me is aware that my brother and sister are my favorite people on the planet, so I visited them at the beginning of the month. They were off school, and we spent the week watching movies, eating ice cream, swimming in the pool, and playing board games, among various other shenanigans. Though adults can generally be relied upon to let you down, children can always be relied on to have an amazing time with at Chuck E. Cheese.

2. Planned a horse riding day - though this and everything below is yet to transpire, I'm really very extra excited about it. The last time I went on a proper horse ride was at least fifteen years ago, so I'm not exactly well equipped for this and am more than a little nervous, but animals are amazing and horses are beautiful so I'm doing it anyway. A small group of friends and I are going to go out to a ranch in the Wisconsin countryside and we'll have a picnic and there will be lots of bugs...but I am optimistic.

3. Getting my hair done - every girl knows the secret to having an amazing day is getting a your hair professionally blow dried, and since this year I basically am a real life Rapunzel I am totally capitalizing on this for exactly $19 because groupon.

4. Volunteering at the Humane Society - Though my tiny bunny is the light of my life, one animal is simply not enough for me. So before I get my hair cut I am going to volunteer with the little dogs and smother them with love and affection. I expect that their resulting goodwill will be a wave I can ride for the rest of the day.

5. Taking a yoga class with my absolute favorite Milwaukee teacher, Marietta Pucillo at Yama Yoga - classes with Marietta always leave me feeling pleasantly limber and relaxed, like I could be an Olympic gymnast if I wasn't about to have the best nap of my life. The fact that Yama gave me a free class credit for my birthday is just delicious icing.

6. Getting a Sephora makeover! These are, apparently, free with a $50 purchase which I will be making anyway to stock up on my green powder lols (yum)! Can't wait to leave Sephora looking like Kylie Jenner.

7. Getting (free) birthday drinks at Rosie's with Amy and a 2016 mug to add to my collection - this has become another Milwaukee tradition of mine, and I dread the day when I will be in another city and miss a year. Armed with my blow dried hair, my Sephora approved face, and free beer mug, I will be unstoppable.

8. Getting a facial at Aveda - this is a pre birthday treat which actually has nothing to do with my birthday and just happens to coincide with the time that Aveda was doing free facials for rewards members to introduce their new skincare line. But I'll take it.

9. Movies on movies on movies - this is also kind of a coincidence in that a lot of good movies just happened to come out this month, but I am attributing it to the secret world plan to make August the best month.So far I've seen Ice Age (pretty good but I saw it with my sister so it was a top notch day) and Bad Moms (HILARIOUS) and I will be seeing Sausage Party next week which by all accounts should be amazing.

10. Birthday rewardsss! These are way too numerous to mention but suffice it to say that if you sign up for enough rewards programs and mailing lists you will feel like a queen for the ENTIRE MONTH. So far I have gotten freebies from Aveda, GNC, Gigi's cupcakes, Yama Yoga, Sephora, and several others. I didn't have to spend a dime (though in some cases...I did cave). Yes please.

11. Good deeds - this is sort of in the same vein as volunteering at the humane society, but I read an interesting article online that suggested celebrating your birthday by doing random acts of kindness for others. Because I am way too selfish, materialistic and hungry to celebrate in this one very altruistic way, I am making it only a part of my day.

12 Getting a massage - this also happening pre birthday (tonight) because I don't want to feel sleepy and moist while I'm trying to celebrate my existence (although I suppose on my actual birthday...I was likely both sleepy and moist).

12. And of course...dinner at Olive Garden with my family and Delishmish in my new bunny print shorts. I plan to eat for three.

Pilates & Yoga for life lessons

It's past midnight, so it's officially Valentine's day. And as of a few days ago I am officially single for it. Hooray!

The past few days have been hard. I'm not sure who I want to share this with. I'm not trying to convince anyone, reader. I know they've been hard. I'm not trying to convince myself. Sometimes I find myself wanting to tell him, which is silly, because he knows this too. I wish I had more friends nearby. But I am grateful that I have wonderful friends to call on for strength and motivation and validation, when I need it, even if they are scattered around the country and the world.

But you know what, I feel good. My muscles are very, very, sore. I've kicked up my workout game a few notches. Hour long Pilates sessions every day, no excuses. Yoga afterwards. I'm finding that Yoga helps a lot. When I'm left to my own devices I'm very fidgety. Practicing Yoga, pretty much any pose, really centers me. If it's easy, that's great, and I give myself a pat on the back for being more flexible than I give myself credit for. And if it's hard, then I will be more flexible tomorrow. If it hurts, tomorrow it will hurt less (except in some cases, when it hurts more before it hurts less - gotta love those).

Pilates and Yoga keep me disciplined, they keep me focused on myself and on becoming better every day. I'm committed to this now. And I try to bring the lessons I'm learning into the rest of my life. Like I said, if it hurts today, it will probably hurt less tomorrow. And if it doesn't, I know that over time it will go away and it will make me stronger. Soon, I'm going to be okay. That's my new mantra. I cried all of Wednesday night, all of Thursday, and some of today. I'm a little ashamed, though I know I shouldn't be and I'm trying not to judge myself. But I'm going to be okay. I feel this with certainty. If I can keep moving, and not collapse onto the floor (which I admit I did on Wednesday when I got home), then I will be okay. It will all be okay. With or without him, or anybody else. Because I am with myself.

Corporate America or your happiness?

I am on the cusp of becoming a corporate sellout. Let me preface this by saying that I don't mean this to be a rant about my job or company specifically. I, like most people probably, want my company to flourish in the market and enjoy the hoi polloi's goodwill. Mainly for selfish reasons but also because I think the leaders here at some level care about the right things - personal development, employee satisfaction, corporate social responsibility, etc. And I enjoy working here as much as I believe anyone can enjoy working in a corporate atmosphere. I truly believe that my company is one of the better ones to be at, from a personal and professional point of view.

However. That is not to say that of all the life choices one could make, having a corporate job is the most satisfying. When I first forayed into the grown up world I had this idea that your career and your life purpose should be one and the same, and that this is a very realistic goal. A couple months in and I realized I was an idealistic youth with misplaced ideas about happiness. There is no way that this job - or any corporate job - can become my life's passion or a source of perpetual contentment for me. Running system tests on a sales application in no way trumps the very real and meaningful experience of training a puppy at the animal shelter or serving food to the homeless. To compare the two ways of life would be ludicrous. I thought about quitting and working at a non profit - I was actually told by an executive that that would probably make me very happy - and then the same executive told me I would probably earn about a quarter of what I currently make if I did that. And that is the grim truth about Corporate America, friends. They buy your soul in exchange for pay raises and flexible work hours and dental.

It's hard to crush young people's ideals. Let me tell you. I am a vehemently idealistic young person. Nearly two years into working full time I am still convinced that this job cannot make me, or anyone, truly happy. Up until a few weeks ago my long term plan was to quit eventually to go back to school and/or do something more fulfilling and altruistic with my time. And then something terrifying happened to me. A finance manager asked to reschedule a meeting I set up with him because this is a busy week for finance - this is the time of year when all the executives go back and forth over which projects need to be funded and finance has to figure out how to orchestrate it all, essentially - and I found that I was interested in the process. Not only because it impacts me (now I have to reschedule my meeting!) but because I was genuinely curious about the timeline and deliverables and how it all works. So I walked over to my colleague Lacey's cube and had the whole process explained to me very thoroughly. Then I walked back to my desk feeling very happy and satisfied with myself* OH MY GOD I'm becoming a cyborg.

My dream of going back to school, making the world a better place, and finding true fulfillment in what I do with the majority of my time is at war with the practical side of me that knows financial stability and health benefits are somewhat indispensable commodities. It is very tempting to pay off my college loans and buy an overpriced Kate Spade handbag. Is that settling? What do you think?



*Not, like, a deep and abiding satisfaction with my contribution to this earth. This is the empty corporate version that you experience when you understand a particularly convoluted problem that could only ever exist in Corporate America to begin with.