Seeking Something Different

I recently took a girls’ trip to South Beach.  We had a ball!  While the weather was spectacular, the accommodations impeccable, and the leisure level well within my range of expectation, I can’t help but note that the most intriguing part of the trip for me was what is produced by adding a new component into the mix, in this case, a new friend to a group of existing friends.

Of the six gals that traveled to Miami together, five of us live in the same neighborhood, where our kids all attended the same elementary school and now attend the same high school. While those factors led to our initial introduction and laid the groundwork for our subsequent friendships, those same elements sometime keep us from digging deeper for conversation as there’s already so much in common.

Lotus, on the other hand, is easily fifteen years our junior, lives in Indiana, has a young son, and commutes daily to a full-time job in Chicago.  I met her by chance a few years ago when she signed up for a park district volleyball league that I play in.  We invited her for drinks after a game one night and we got along famously.  I off-handedly invited her to travel with me sometime as I like to go somewhere every few months to rejuvenate, and she jumped on board immediately with this Miami trip.  While Lotus has exceptional attributes I could rave about, it’s not her personality that made me enjoy our trip so much.  It was her contrasting perspectives to those of mine and my longtime friends that made such a distinction. 

It’s just like throwing in one new ingredient to the pot, where the flavor of the entire dish changes, evolves, and morphs into something new.  Lotus changed the dichotomy of the group and of the trip itself with her unique interests, character, and viewpoints.  Unbeknownst to her, she opened up the door of difference that allowed each of us push our routine conversations aside in lieu of new topics where lines of connection grew.  We all stretched outside of our comfort zone and a new best beast was born. I love when that happens!

I’m simply a sponge for variety.  As a young person, I spent tons of energy forcing myself outside the lines of sameness by seeking out uncommon people, typically deemed by appearance or actions.  Often I’d push myself to be the most unusual in a crowd.  Today, I still gravitate toward anyone with a different take on life, but it comes from conversation instead of image.  By surrounding myself with so many different models of life, I am constantly fed new ideas and thoughts and viewpoints that help me constantly hone who and what I want to be when I grow up.  It plays out in my work, relationships, social life, interests, and ideas, where I’m constantly a work in progress.

While I have developed strong values and principles over the years and do tend to also surround myself in a safe community of people who share some of the same standards, I’ve been known to soften, negotiate, and even change my convictions based on information I’ve accumulated from other people’s ideas and experiences.  

Variety is central to my existence.  I truly believe that my identity is a collaboration of characteristics and beliefs of all the people I’ve connected with over the years.  Everyone I know was at one point the difference that I sought out that turned into a piece of my character.  Pretty cool to think that I'm carrying a piece of each of you around with me every day!

Time Alone Makes Time Together Better

I am a poster child for taking time for myself.  As a child chit chatter and showoff entertainer, I needed downtime away from the same people I craved in order to recharge.  As a teenager, I wore the title social butterfly, but spent equal time alone listening to music, reading books, and just existing independently.  Living alone as a young adult I was Julie the cruise director when it came to mingling with others, but I treasured every single minute I got to spend alone in my apartment.  Today as a parent and spouse, I find taking time to myself is a difficult task, yet more important than ever, as I’ve realized that I most appreciate my family, friends, co-workers and neighbors when I take regular breaks from them.  

Maybe it’s the ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ thing or maybe it’s truly a case of everything in moderation, but taking time away from the Mardi Gras of life as I know it is vital to keep my relationships in check.  A planner by nature, traditionally I schedule time out each week for myself to do the things that I love…play volleyball, watch crappy Lifetime movies, spend time with friends, read a good book, or explore a street festival.  Occasionally, though, the trials of life keep me from my alone time, and like clockwork, I turn into a downtrodden mess of a Negative Nelly, sometimes unable to even process the daily tasks I perform, or the conversations I partake in, as I’m functioning on auto-pilot.  With the all-important me-time out of whack, my relationships with my kids, wife, close friends, and sometimes even casual acquaintances, suffer.

In order to replenish my soul in these cases, I have to physically remove myself from my life, even if just for a few hours.  This week I’m in Miami.  I’m flying solo in a condo overlooking the beach.  I’ve been so strung-out with the pace of life recently that I envisioned just chilling on the balcony reading books all week, while occasionally looking out over the ocean.  Instead, I’ve filled my days with self-inflicted challenges, like bombarding as many swanky hotel pools as possible without being thrown out, and living as frugally as I can by taking public transportation, shopping for the best Happy Hour specials, and carrying a backpack full of food down the beach so I don’t have to dine out.  Other dares include testing how far I can walk on my blistered feet in flip flops before I have to amputate my feet, and entering as many cheesy surf shops as possible in search of gifts for my kids, knowing full well that I will never buy a single South Beach item.

Rejuvenation takes many different forms for different people.  For me, hanging at a bus stop chatting with self-proclaimed “Mr. South Beach” who’s trying to convince me that Mango’s is the only place to be if you’re anybody, works.  Getting caught in a rainstorm while riding my rented Citibike down the beach, and not caring in the least bit, is restorative.  Dining alone on Ocean Drive and watching the parade of people strutting their stuff invigorates me.  While attending a screening of the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, I realize that I absolutely despise the female short films I’m watching; walking out of the theatre without watching them all makes me feel alive again. 

But best of all, seeing a picture of my kiddo with a newly missing tooth, hearing about my other kid’s ‘most excellent’ day, and listening to my wife tell me she misses me, brings me around full circle.  Just what the doctor ordered….a dose of anti-reality to bolster the appreciation for reality.