Adventure Bowl Part 2 Just What Exactly Did I Do To Help Me Start The Life I've Always Wanted?

I will write what I did. It's pretty exciting. It's not ONLY exciting, but it is something ANYONE could do. But I want to tell you the whole story and the whole story is long and the whole story being long, is what often keeps me from putting my butt in a chair and writing about it. And I miss you guys!

So just give me a few days. Yes, I have said that before. But I am hoping once I move this blog over to TUMBLR which supports a format with lots of pictures, videos and short essays, I will be able to keep you up so much easier. I promise.

Keeping up with you all is so important to me. Do not take my absence as anything else but being crazed :)  It's taken me YEARS to get to this good place - emotionally and physically - to a place of not being scared and immobile all the time and I want you guys and gals to feel the rewards. Maybe see (as I'm seeing), CHANGE is not so hard. The biggest roadblock is mental - the games we play in our head, the jibber jabbering we do to talk us out of our loves, dreams, aspirations.

But I don't want to make this post heavy, what I've most wanted to say is just how much fun I'm having in New York.  Okay, so let me tell you about my time in here (all three weeks of it!):

1) Eating way too many bagels! Why do they have to make them sooooo good? I like an Everything with scallion cream cheese and the bagel is sprinkled with a salt-like-substance that I am sure is CRACK! "Bagel World," that's my fav. Then "Smooch" for coffee. Then realizing I will be broke with a huge bagel butt if I keep this up too much longer.

2) The first 2 weeks I lived in a twin bunk bed - top bunk! You can have no shame nor be a diva when you are starting your life over! It made me think of college because I was living with a couple - which meant leaving a lot so they could have "alone time," wink, wink - sex ;)

3) Exploring. Within a week I was known for my legendary 6 hour walks. (The blisters were THE GROSSEST things I had ever seen - like some "Discovery Channel - Medical Abnormalities!" craziness). I would put every thing (hat, sweaters, umbrella, snack) in a back pack and just roam. Now a lot of this was apartment hunting mixed in with personal stubbornness of not wanting to ask for directions. But I love it!  Walking is the best.  Seeing everything seems so new.

4) Kissed a boy a week and 2 days in

5) First week, gallery openings, wine tasting, a party at a vinyl records store, Happy Hour drinks with people I've never met before. Who am I?

6) Grateful feelings that now that I am not fighting so hard (as I was in LA) to make things work MY WAY, that doors are opening here, people are coming into my life, like literally, in the strangest ways. My two new roomies (until I end up in my place Nov. 6) are like best friends; I randomly met someone - she had a loft to rent to me $300 under market value a month; I was lost in Brooklyn, I met a guy who said he was a web site designer - wait, that's exactly what I needed for my new venture! Hanging out in the lobby of my building so my roomies could spend some time... meet some Pratt (design) students who also want to help me with my new venture. Who's life is this?  (Hmmm.... no regrets, but maybe I should have "let go" sooner.)

7) Went on a date with an absolute hottie. I'm going through an identity crisis here. In L.A. I never got asked out. But then again, I don't walk past 200 people a day like you do in NYC. Men here tell you you are "pretty" or "gorgeous." It throws me. Trying to believe it.

8) The crunch of the beautiful fall leaves. Sorry beautiful leaves... I took your bright yellow, golden and orange for granted when I used to live here as a girl. I love your smell. The sound of you beneath my feet. I feel like I am home.

Yesterday was the five year anniversary of my cousin's murder. I started this blog two years after his death when I was so thoroughly depressed that I didn't think I would EVER get out of. I felt lost inside. I felt so sad that I felt cloaked in it as if... it was-- that there was no where out.

I challenged myself - one Adventure a week to get my life back. I did that before his 2nd anniversary - the idea was to respect his memory but living the life he would want me to live. And now, it strikes me PROFOUNDLY that I would make this NEW DARING exciting, life fulfilling dream move before meeting his anniversary again.

I hope you can see me up there, D. I feel you down here, by my side... walking down the cobble stone streets and stomping through the leaves with me. Thank you for helping me look in... to listen, to hear and to act, no matter how scary it felt sometime.

xoxoxox

*****

Adventure Bowl Part 2
Just What Exactly Did I Do To Help Me Start The Life I've Always Wanted?