Memories….

Memory: the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences.

Good, bad, conscious or repressed; memories are important parts of growing up.  I spent a lot of yesterday creating my “Days to remember” page and it got me thinking.  Me thinking, I know… Well that is what I do most of the time, especially instead of listening in class or meetings. 

Without memories how do you learn? How do you grow? How do you get emotionally hurt? How do you get sentimental? How do you associate with the right people? Memories are not just your path once traveled, they are also your gateway to a new beginning.

 Going through my quick mental appendix of old memories yesterday I began to remember what made me who I am today.  I saw the paths I took.  Where I was naïve.  How I over corrected.  And of course in some cases, how I never corrected. 

 

As I reflect on my 2009 goals and my bucket list I began to think about how I came up with these ideas.  Most importantly as an achiever, how am I going to track and measure my success?  From this “Days to remember” was born.  Like the rest of this blog it is a living breathing document. It will change as I uncover more repressed memories and will expand as I accomplish future goals.  This also came from my piece on role models when I saw how many times Abraham Lincoln failed in his life and still achieved his goals.  That is why my days to remember will include all experiences from births to deaths and all those failures and feats in between. 

 

Memories are a funny thing.  I for one feel that I have a mind like an elephant particularly when it comes to useless facts, movie quotes and drunken stories.  I have recently received feedback from one of my friends asking what I meant by claiming that we have become recluse.  In his statement prior to the question “I never reach out to anyone” he proved my point. Even so it made me evaluate our interactions.  I must say that I enjoy those interactions.  They mostly go like this.  We meet up in a remote location after not seeing one another for a good six months to a year.  We start with mass quantities of domestics and jump back into telling drunken story after drunken story.  Throw in a couple of new ones that happen with our new friends.  Then proceed to get hammered and try to create new stories each night we are together.  Watching each other, judging each other and more important attempting to top one another through out the course of the trip day in and day out.  Now this is a group that doesn’t settle to live in the past.  We are years ahead of Al Bundy. 

 

I think this is the reason that over the years this core group has never wandered too far.  To many memories together.  Some might say we are the weekend warriors similar to flag football players, but unlike them we are not trying to recreate segments of the game.  We are full fledged playing at a new and higher level.

 

I leave you with this.  When you get to your 30’s you realize that everything you wanted do before you turned 30, you are actually capable of doing at 30 and beyond.  I have always wanted to travel to Europe, pick up photography, learn to really cook or surf.  Before I was to busy getting in my own way or to broke to buy the equipment.  That time was spent setting up the dominos of my education and career so that I could enjoy the experience now instead of just wonder about them. Establishing yourself in a career and in life provides you with choice.  You now can choose to achieve those goals and turn them into future memories. DON’T fall asleep at the wheel letting these days pass you because you will always wonder what if….

Turning page 30…..

 

I write this with my interest in the word recluse.  Merriam-Webster says recluse means: marked by withdrawal from society.   Wikipedia says: A recluse is someone in isolation who hides away from the attention of the public, a person who lives in solitude, i.e. seclusion from intercourse with the world. The word is from the Latin recludere, which means “shut up” or “sequester”.

 

Maybe I am sensitive to the word of late, but I have noticed it more and more on the radio and in general conversation.  After speaking with a good friend this week about how he has handled life after 30 he claimed that has been forced to become a recluse.  Being overly social people my friends across the country and I are struggling with the balance of social and stable.  We are noticing as we are turning the 30^th page of our life that we don’t bounce back like we once did. We can not drink and eat the way we still do without paying a hefty price. 

 

This 30^th page of life is one of balance and humility.  I have spoken prior of the cockiness and inexperience of my early 20’s.  Responsibility in the timeline of life is like air travel.  Boarding the plane is like your teenage years, you are at your lowest level with little air/responsibility.  As you enter your 20’s you are traveling at speeds on the tarmac that are uncontrollable.  Then your late 20’s you have taken off, working your way through that initial climb to your cruising altitude.  You will spend most of that time getting comfortable with yourself, getting your grasp of your gauges and knobs.  Knowing who your friends are and grasping the basic route you will travel through your trip of life. 

 

Once you hit cruising attitude you have hit your 30’s.  You should have a basic idea of what you want to accomplish in life and what you feel you need.  You will still hit patches of turbulence and will have to reroute through some weather, but the outline should be there.  This is where I am now.  I am designing that outline. I am setting my goals and I am flushing out my values. 

 

My friends are all in a similar place give or take a few miles.  We know our heath is an important part of our balance.  We know that our careers are still being flushed out and will change as a product of our generation.  Our relationships are a few of the unforeseen storms in the horizon.  The basics are we want stability, we want structure and we still all want a challenge. 

 

Most of us are not religious to the letter of a book.  I for one have never really scene religion for more than a set of guiding principles similar to ethics.  I am starting to believe though that you need to stay true to yourself and enlist yourself into your values to a level I have only seen with the most religious.  I am not saying to the extreme of narcissism or being an elitist.  But you do need self-respect and appreciation.  You can not let yourself fall behind in your priorities. 

 

This is where being a recluse comes in with my friends and I.  We have not found that balance keeping our personal priorities near the top without separating ourselves from the world.  Maybe it’s our internal party animal or lack of will power that prevents us from staying with our goals to workout 3-4 times a week or cutting back on the fast foods.  Some reason once that chicken wing or frosty beer hits our lips that pipe dream of a workout becomes exactly that a dream. 

 

To prevent the self-loathing that indubitably will set in the morning worse than when a freshman girl wakes up naked in a fraternity.  We decide that we have to force ourselves into being that recluse.  The reason being is that we struggle with that life balance of maintaining a mature social life and a college kegger.  This slippery slope of disaster we deal with is our personal Bermuda triangle.  We wake up those Monday morning thinking we are just circling the drain of no return.  Once that foggy hanger over clears like the turbulence that it is, we realize it’s Wednesday and we can begin to regain that plan of a healthier life. Even if that dream is for only another 3 days before we do it all over again. 

 

As you read this it can seem like a problem or an illness, but it isn’t the booze or wings we yearn.  It is companionship, the uncontrolled need to be there for someone and, pure desire to be a part of something.  Working out and remaining discipline is individual and remote by nature.  Two things we don’t thrive on being.  But when turning that 30^th page you begin to find that self-confidence and independence.  Thirty creates that personal validation of its ok to be you.  You are no longer being judged as a high school kid or beer pong champion.  It provides that feeling of content to be alone to your own devices.  It is part of flying at that cruising altitude, because your responsibility changes.  It is no longer about you as a child; it is about you as a person.  Your health and personal development is now for the support of your future family/relationships what was once that unforeseen horizon is that snowcapped mountains in the distant cloudy sky. 

 

I leave you with this.  Enjoy those beer splattered years, everyone once in awhile take a road trip and do shots at a wet t-shirt contest.  Just don’t prevent yourself from being the person you want to be now; because you feel your best benchmark of success was that Polaroid from T.J Horny Frogs in Cancun, Mexico.  What ever you passion is: photography, cooking, hiking or writing.  Even if it takes scheduling the time like an appointment, just don’t loose your chance to turn that page so you can be you….