do something that scares you: the value of living like a fearless idiot or 13 year old boy

Inching away from me on her rolling stool, the doctor lowered her glasses, squinted her eyes, glanced down the words “28 year old female” and said “A skateboard? Whose skateboard and why?’ She had asked how it had come to be that my left ankle was 3 times the size as my right. “I was skateboarding and I landed weird.” I said. No, my skateboarding skills are not something I have kept like a secret from you all. I had never tried to ride, save the one time I went rolling, hands stretched out, down a friend’s carpeted hallway. A couple of days ago, I was inspired by the amazing weather and the dazed feeling of happiness that comes from overdosing on sunshine, to try something new. I remembered one of many New Year’s resolution to “learn something new” and to “try something that scares me” and figured this would knock out two resolutions in one go. I had no idea what I was doing. I was scared, but I kept going. I was almost figuring out how to go more than 6 or 7 feet without stopping when I flew into the air and landed, like a heap of misguided arrows, onto my ankle.

An hour or so after the appointment, me and my crutches were navigating our way off the train platform. The weather was still as nice as it had been the day before, when I was strongly, bravely, soaring into my neighbor’s lawn, sending the skateboard on a unexpected trajectory across their driveway. I was happy, and I was surrounded by the type of people that make you feel invincible. What happened here? I was being brave, trying new things, and now I was hobbling and defeated.

Once I was home, raising, icing, compressing and elevating, I started seeing things differently. We are brave, or we act brave in the face of something we are scared of. We seek out courage when we want to do something but are not completely sure we can. “Trying something new” and “Taking a risk” or “Doing something that scares you”, are all commonly accepted as “positive” goals. You will notice that there are no caveats. It’s not “try something new and amaze yourself with how you did it perfectly” or “take a risk and it will be totally worth it and you’ll want to do it again”. It’s the initial act of trying that counts. It’s about getting on the skateboard, then smashing yourself up, and then being happy that you tried getting on the rolling death trap in the first place. You try something new, and before you find out how good you are at it, that initial experience of trying causes a change. Before you fail or succeed, you have already become more courageous for the next time.

While I don’t encourage dangerous behavior, and being safe is clearly one of the fundamentals for survival, I would like to put in a good word for adding some daredevil qualities to your week. Whether it’s Italian, or the fiddle, or speaking up when you want to, or an unfathomably hard to operate rolling plank of wood, I think you should go for it. I figure if I keep in the habit of trying new things, I’m sure to tumble and smash my way into something amazing.

xoxo

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Inspiration lesson #1: Don’t be a hater

My week in Austin, Texas has come to an end, and I am one very tired yet inspired girl. I learned so much at the conference for total nerds (SXSWi) that I attended this week. I want to pass as much of that on to you as possible, and so we begin a little series about inspiration. Inspiration is so hard to find, especially when you’re uninspired and unmotivated. As if there was a harder time to seek out inspiration, right? When you’re at your lowest point? So hard! I just got a huge dose of inspiration, so while I’m riding this wave, I’ll try sending some your way. Believe me, before I left I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, and was all “seriously, what is the point”. I mean, we’re talking super uninspired. So it’s possible to turn things around. Let me know what you think, too! If there’s something that really helps you get yourself out of a funk, email or comment. Everyone’s mind works differently, and these are just things that I personally found inspiring. If you’ve got a different take on things, I’d love to hear it.

When someone does something amazing, you can either be inspired by them or madly jealous. Go with inspired as much as you can. For example, Europeans are generally more fashionable than you, no matter what you do. This used to infuriate me. I was in Paris and I was sitting at a café, staring this poor Parisian chick down, just trying to figure out exactly what it was that made her so damn rad looking. They have a name for it: Je ne sais quoi. You can’t figure it out, so stop trying. Or girls with adorable southern accents that can say “hey, y’all” and not sound like idiots. I sound like an idiot, no matter how much I practiced while I was in Texas. In design school, when someone would make something so insanely cool I would be instantly jealous. Going to conferences with people in my field, I was instantly filled with a feeling that I was not as good as them. I figured that if the people that hired me ever met these people there’s no way I’d have a job.

With this in mind, you can imagine my initial feeling last week as I headed off to a conference of amazing designers and other professionals, with a large contingent of Europeans. Recipe for complete self-doubt. Then, the strangest thing happened. It was if I was so overwhelmed with the awesomeness of these people that I couldn’t take it anymore. They started to inspire me. I wasn’t upset about the girl who looked like Uma Thurman, draped in scarves and bad-assery. I was inspired by her confidence and attention to detail with her clothes. That doesn’t sound so unattainable, right? Then I went to a presentation that was run by a woman who, I’m not kidding you, is living out pretty much all of my dreams. Like, if she’s ever held a baby gorilla on top of everything else she’s done, she would be able to check every one of my life goals off of my list. But listening to her, I wasn’t overwhelmed with guilt that I’m not living every second of every day like it’s my last and saving the world like I want to. I was just inspired to start. She had a goal, an idea, like so many of us do. The difference is that she did it. It wasn’t magic. She ran into tons of setbacks. But she had this vision and she charged ahead, no matter how crazy it seemed. I wanted to jump up and yell “hell YES girlfriend” but it wasn’t really that type of crowd.

If I can leave you with one thought, it’s this: what if you turned every moment of jealousy into an opportunity for inspiration. Just turn that train around. I’m not the type of person who sees the girl who is dating my ex and thinks “man, she looks so pretty and it’s great that she’s doing so well, I can really see why he loves her, etc”. Sorry. I’m not Ghandi, nor am I trying to be. I’m just trying to happy, and I’m finding that the more I use people’s successes to fill my own well of inspiration, the happier I am. So don’t hate, y’all.

xo

Lexi

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a musical….tuesday?

as they say, better late than never!  hope you’re all having a sunny and inspired day! xo. Lo

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sunday snapshots

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sunday snapshots

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person, place, thing (or idea)

“A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea.” I started thinking about nouns the other day while I was tutoring. My 6 year old sidekick was asking about them, and I got nervous, as I always do when asked to do something besides read or demonstrate the proper way to carry scissors. As the day went on, and I kept thinking about the weight those types of words carry, I came to realize how often we ignore the “ideas”, as if they’re not as important as the “person, place or thing” part. Grammar and happiness aren’t usually correlated so directly in my mind, but give me a chance to explain.

Do you remember learning about nouns? I remember warm, humming overhead projectors displaying transfers that read “A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. It was 2^nd grade, Mrs. Feldman’s class. It made enough sense that an idea could be a noun. It’s a thing. You can have it, you can give it away, and it can be beautiful of ugly.  Still, it seemed like an afterthought, tacked at the end, because they had nowhere else to go.

I spend so much time in my head, dreaming away, but I feel like I don’t give my ideas as much credit as the other nouns, like “my job” or “my artwork.” What’s that all about? There are so many beautiful ideas out there that; some we turn into tangible things, some we don’t. Think about a story. It’s just an idea but when you hear or read a beautiful story, it has substance. You wake up with an amazing vision of building a bright blue chicken coop in your backyard. You know nothing about animal husbandry, your city’s stance on urban farming, or the construction of simple structures. It’s beautiful though. Whether or not you do it, it’s your idea and it’s worth celebrating. It lives in your mind until it lives in your backyard. It may never live in your backyard.  Sometimes, when I have an idea for something I want to make or do, I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of premature disappointment, already doubting that the idea will come to fruition. What if, by letting your mind wander, imagining amazing places and adventures and creative expressions without any self-doubt, it already has come to fruition in a way? It’s something already. It’s an idea. You can make it tangible if you want to, if you can, if you’re ready.

So don’t get too stuck on the physical stuff, okay? Your beautiful ideas can stay in your mind, as fantasies to escape to on long car rides, or they can serve as inspiration for your next amazing feat. Feed your pretty thoughts, try weird stuff, and give your ideas a chance. Example: I want to live on a goat farm sell goat cheese, and teach children to paint out of amazing refurbished airstream trailer with a tree growing out of the middle. I love this idea. It might be really nuts. I just love having it. I can carry it around with me as I go through my day. It inspires me to figure out how cheese is made, and to giggle when I see pictures of goats, and to try to sneak in as much drawing as I can when I tutor; but honestly, it hasn’t done that much more than that. But it’s free, and it’s positive, and that’s a pretty decent combination if you ask me.

Just an idea for you.

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this week in photos

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vegan diaries: day 15

dear (vegan) diary,

today is the 15th day of our vegan journey. panicky moments of 2am starvation without a bite of vegan friendly food in sight have become rare. sad realizations that the only vegan option at the work luncheon is the decorative lettuce that the sandwiches are displayed on are becoming more amusing. we’re doing lots of cooking, which seems to be the only way to be a healthy vegan – unless you have the kind of cash flow that allows for constantly eating out at vegan places. we don’t, so we cook our faces off.

we’ve also learned a lot about vegan baking. lesson 1: this is not as easy as you thought it would be. thankfully, there are tons of books and blogs and websites that have been so, so helpful. vegan cooking, we discovered, is actually really easy. you just need to have lots and lots of veggies, tofu, beans, and spices. from there, it’s like a science experiment. to be fair, there are fantastic recipes out there, but our approach is more like, skim a cookbook, head to the kitchen and see what happens. not everything that happens is tasty, but that’s okay because you’re learning something and that is SO COOL.

so, overall, week two went much better than week one, and we’re feeling good. that’s one thing to keep in mind: if you’re just starting off with vegan eating, especially if you’re going from meat eater to vegan, your body is going to be like “whoa, are you kidding me?” for a little while. according to things we’re reading, your body is going through detox, and you might feel a little off. so do your research! make sure you know what your body needs as far as calories, water, nutrients, etc. we’re totally NOT health experts. just two girls who are trying to stay educated on what we’re putting in our bodies, what we need to stay healthy, and what kinds of vegan foods taste like horrible garbage and which ones don’t. and then we tell you about it! and you tell us what you think! that’s the idea!

gotta run- the crazy-looking lentil stuff/experiment-of-the-day needs the cook’s attention. we’ll be back next week with another update for you, and in the meantime, email us or comment with any vegan cooking tips, Chicago restaurant recommendations, veggie horror stories and the like. we’d love to hear from you!

xo

lexi and lo

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a musical monday: wrong side of the bed

good morning, dollfaces! i woke up this morning feeling just so…bleh. ever have those days? in an effort to combat my grumpiness, i made a pot of coffee, threw together this couldn’t-be-fussy-if-you-tried playlist, and had a one woman dance party. correction: one woman and a cat dance party. now my spirits are lifted and i’m ready to face my day. wish i could say the same for my cat! xo, Lo.

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this week in photos

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