Reason #14 Why I’m Glad I Left my Twenties: Character vs. Reputation

Posted on September 8, 2012 by MAL

I saw this quote on Twitter the other day: “Worry about your character, not your reputation. Your character is who you are, and your reputation is only what people think of you.”

This goes hand in hand with what Cate said in the previous post, and is a bit similar to people pleasing, but is really about integrity.

I’d like to think I’ve always known this – that my mother taught me this growing up, that it’s more important to be who you are than to care what others think. We get caught up in thinking that what other’s think matters – but I’ve found that the right people will know who you are, and the people that don’t weren’t worth knowing.

“It is generally much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it.” #quote #reputation

— meagan adele lopez (@meagan) September 7, 2012

Some say reputation is all you have, but who you are is all you have. You are all you have.

But it doesn’t really sink in until you realize that you have no idea what happened to those girls who made fun of you in middle school nor do you care; that you got to where you are based off your hard work, your family’s love for you and your belief in yourself; and that your life is so rich and full not because of your reputation, but because of your character and the path you chose to take.

Mercury’s in Retrograde, and I’m Staying Put.

Posted on July 19, 2012 by MAL

Everyone is so eager to change/quit things in their lives – moving, weight, hair, boyfriends/girlfriends, jobs. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done it way more than most. I’ve lived in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Nashville, Los Angeles, Paris, England, Princeton, New York, Philadelphia and even Altoona, Iowa (for a hot second). I’ve changed my hair from red to green to blue to platinum to brown to highlights to short to long to bangs and back again. I’ve changed careers from acting to writing to casting to social media marketing. I’ve dropped out of college and gone back to finish.

I thought of myself as never settling for status quo, as someone who always pushed the boundaries and sometimes, I would even accept that I was courageous for making these changes.

But there is a time when courage comes from staying put. There is a time when one needs to stop blaming outside circumstances for one’s unhappiness, shame, or tough times. There is a time when there is nothing that change will let you (me) hide from, run away from or ignore any longer.

When a job gets hard, our friends say “Just quit!” When we get in a fight with our significant other, our family tells us “Dump his ass!” When we complain about our constant headaches, our doctor shoves a pill down our throat.

I’m not saying anything new or anything you haven’t heard before, but the amazing thing to me is just how easy it can be to just leave. We convince ourselves of the opposite – we convince ourselves that change takes courage and triumph and balls, and that we are the better person for standing up for what we believe in. But what if instead of leaving and stepping out, we tried to learn from it? We had a conversation about it? Or we didn’t just quit?

Maybe it’s just me – maybe this is my pattern, and most people reading this do stick things out way past their expiration date, have never quit a job or moved to a different city. I kind of think with a 50% divorce rate though, that I’m not the only one. I kind of think that we don’t take time to sit still and learn from it..enough.

At this period of my life, one month before my 30th birthday, I’m ready to stick it out. Don’t get me wrong, if shit goes wrong, and I’ve tried everything I possibly can to fix it – and I mean everything, then and only then will I move/quit/leave. But I almost wonder if most of us know what that point is…have we truly stopped complaining and dreaming of the other side long enough to really know if we’ve given it our all? Or are we so consumed with keeping up with that idea of who we “should” be or who we “ought” to be, that we don’t listen to what we ourselves are doing wrong – what we are doing to make things wrong and bad.

I haven’t, and that is where I am in life. At this stage of my life, I’m ready to change…and by change, I mean, change me – not my circumstance, not my job, not my partner, not my city…but ME. And I suppose that’s easier to say from someone who, despite changing everything else, every other external circumstance, in her life – she realizes that through it all, shit has stayed the same…

There can only be one other thing left to do…

And this part of my life will be even more scary than any move/hair color/job change could ever be…because it’s time to face the music.

Four Years: The Roulette Anniversary

Posted on March 24, 2012 by MAL

Four years ago yesterday, I met a Brit in the Las Vegas’ Palms Hotel at the Ghost Bar, and thus started a love that inspired a novel, and countless other blog posts, dribblings, and musings.

Since we didn’t actually start getting serious until four months later, we have two anniversaries. This March anniversary is a fun, casual date that always involves some sort of gambling. Our first ever date, we gambled – so, we carry on the tradition!

Our first anniversary, we went to the dog races in Portsmouth and won a bet on a dog named “Vegas” and “Ghost Dog” (or something VERY similar – it was bizarre).

Our second anniversary, we hit the Bingo tables with all the other blue haired ladies, and lost terribly.

Our third anniversary, we bought a bunch of scratch off tickets, and spent the evening scratching one off for every beer we had. We won $5.

So, for our fourth anniversary, we decided to gamble our entire evening…meaning, there was not one decision we could make on our own, we had to either flip a coin, spin a roulette wheel app, or pick a name out of a jar.

I knew the evening was going to go awry when we started naming “types of cuisines” (everything from delicious French to mouth-watering Thai food), but I threw in “Irish” as a joke at the end. Well, of course, I picked “Irish” out of the 16 other types of cuisines. I love Irish pubs on a good day, but not exactly the most romantic way to spend a four-year anniversary.

We threw in a bunch of shady places, but luckily the one we picked was Timothy O’Toole’s – not too far away, a fun, lively pub (underground), and one I had been wanting to go back to for some time (not sure why…).

The next steps went like this:

Number each item on the menu
Associate number with number on roulette wheel
Order whatever item the roulette wheel fell on

Needless to say, Jock was limited to veggie choices (he gave up meat for Lent) – and ended up with 1. a pretzel and 2. a bread bowl of tomato soup. But is soup supposed to do this??

I ended up with a Reuben sandwich (which I haven’t ordered since I was a teenager), and we both drank some Stouts mixed with Sam Adams (because the wheel told us to).

The next place we went was determined by a coin – we picked North or South, and then headed in that direction to the first bar we saw. Whether or not we met up with some friends was also determined by a flip of the coin, and the rest of our night, we had to drink the following beverages:

Bloody Mary
Gin Spritzer
Red Wine
Lager
Stout

Surprisingly, I feel pretty damn good today.

Moral of the story? It may sound freeing to not have to decide anything for an entire night, but ultimately, you know what you like better than some dumb iPhone roulette app!

Lots of love, Jocko.

P.S. If you want to see some embarrassing photos of us the night we first met, find my profile on Facebook.

What is a Quarter-Life Crisis?

Posted on February 27, 2012 by MAL

When I started writing my novel, I was in the middle of coming out of a quarter-life crisis. The themes throughout my novel, Three Questions follow this path. This quarter-life crisis could be described as the moment I left college, left a great job (casting) to start working in a pointless, menial job (aka personal assisting), and began questioning everything that my childhood and teenage life had set up for my adult life to take on. I was promised a world of, well, just that…promises, happiness – adulthood was supposed to be knowing who I was, what I wanted to do, and how to make anything happen. I was unprepared. I didn’t know this “moment” or “crisis” even existed at this point in a person’s life.

But, then again, I should’ve just googled it – apparently, I wasn’t the only one – although it felt like it at the time. Wikipedia has a brief page on having a quarter life crisis that says “The quarterlife crisis is a period of life following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the late teens to the early thirties, in which a person begins to feel doubtful about their own lives, brought on by the stress of becoming an adult.” Jesus – I should have written that post. Why didn’t you tell us that becoming an adult was so difficult?!

symptoms of a quarter life crisis

Del (the main protagonist in Three Questions) addresses it in a scene with her best friend, Samantha. They are both actresses in Hollywood, and have been since they were eight years old. For the first time, they are questioning this path:

“But our parents told us all along, everyone did, they said that if we believe something enough, we can make it happen; that if we will ourselves to be actors, then we can become them. That’s the American way. They filled us with this intense self-belief that we are special and unique and if we believe it and set out to do it, we can. Then our mid-twenties strike,” I said.

“Out of nowhere,” she added.

“Completely out of the blue,” I agreed. “I swear we were 18 just yesterday. Mid-twenties means we’re almost too old. ‘Almost’ is just as bad as being too old. But then, oh but then, they do something even worse which is to tell us the unlikely tales of the actors in their forties who all of a sudden make it big. But that’s the question – what do you do in the meantime? Wait around for a career that may never happen? Spend most of your life miserable on the off chance that you’ll be discovered? I can’t do that.”

“Neither can I,” she admitted.

“So, what do we do?” I asked. My phone made a noise. I had a text message.

“No idea.”

quarter life crisis no mozzarella sticks

A BBC article from 2002 also stated that this was becoming more prevalent by the rise in student debt – they weren’t even in the middle of the unemployment crisis yet. I research further, and find a Guardian article from just May of last year titled “The quarterlife crisis: young, insecure and depressed”. They say it better than I would:

“It is supposed to be the time of opportunity and adventure, before mortgages and marriage have taken their toll. But struggling to cope with anxieties about jobs, unemployment, debt and relationships, many young adults are experiencing a “quarterlife crisis”, according to new research by British psychologists.”

But it makes sense – I graduated from college in 2006, and I felt it. I can only imagine what students now a days feel.

Quarter-Life Crisis Vs. Mid-Life Crisis

I’m not sure when it started – there wasn’t a definitive day. It was definitely a slow build up, and I don’t really even know when I got out of it. All I know is that it happened, it sucked, and I don’t look forward to the mid-life crisis. Although, to be honest, now that I have analyzed, been through and written a book about this crisis, I’m hoping I’ll recognize the next one and be able to by-pass it.

I know where a quarter life crisis comes from – you’ve spent your entire life with your parents, with a structure of some sort – and all of a sudden, you’re shot out of school’s digestion tract and expected to compose yourself, but the tract has given you all sorts of skills, ideas & nourishment, but no real way to deal with it in “real” life. You’re left like a big pile of poo – all this tract has done is left you slightly smelly, feeling like shit, and mushed up in a pile of confusion. (Bad analogy…really bad – but I know I felt like a big pile of poo at that point in my life!)

So, does the mid-life crisis come from realizing you’re more than half way through your life, and are closer to death than your birth for the first time ever? That kind of mortality reality would hit me hard.

Because, that, I think is scary. But, if it’s similar to a quarter life crisis, where you’ve gone the last twenty years taking care of children and other people, and working, and all of a sudden have all this free time, and no idea what to do with it….well, that, I could deal with. After all, I’ve written a book about just that.

All I know is that I plan on enjoying the next twenty five years…until the next crisis.

If you’re going through a quarter life crisis, you might, just might – get some solace from this novel, Three Questions.