Wrapping up my 20s...

It is the day before my birthday & I'm feeling pretty good about it. I got to work today & our "Monday morning meeting" was cancelled, so that always makes me happy. The sun was shining brightly this morning. I am breathing. Life is good.

It just is, plain & simple. I don't have anything to complain about really, though I'm sure if I sit here long enough, I could conjure up something. My 20s were fun and very eventful! I may not be married off by now, or with child, or maintained a career, or, or, or... but I have done more than most. Instead I've dibble-dabbled in a couple of careers and have been in two "long" relationships, to come out the other side knowing what I want my professional life to look like & what I want my love life to look like. That to me, is a huge feat in itself.

Before leaving work today, a colleague in the New York office told me to pop open a bottle of wine & toast to the end of my 20s. Brilliant idea, I thought to myself but instead, a friend called & wanted us to grab dinner to catch up, so we did. We went to a cute, quaint Columbian/Peruvian restaurant that I had never seen in all my 16 years of being in Charlotte. The food was quite tasty, as was the homemade sangria. Before sipping my glass I took a moment to silently (i.e. in my head) say goodbye to 29 and be grateful of what's to come.

So now I'm at home and about to get an early night. There are a few people that will surely call me at midnight in a race to be "the 1st place winner" to wish me a happy birthday, and like every year, I look forward to it [insert smiley emoticon].

Wow... 30 is really coming.

Playa Mujeres!!

A week ago, my college best friends and I returned from Playa Mujeres, Mexico, a place that a year ago, we began planning to visit in honor of becoming 30 years old.

Our brainstorming the location was quite precise. We wanted to travel to someplace warm, not kid-appropriate, fairly inexpensive & all-inclusive were the main consensus. The date? We decided Labor Day holiday weekend would be a decent fit... it wasn't as cheap as earlier in the year, and yeah, it's in the middle of hurricane season but the weather wouldn't be horribly hot and it would serve as a somewhat median for our birthdays: Katie turned 30 in January, Shameika's birthday was in June, Daphne, Tokii and myself are in September and bringing up the rear is J's birthday in October. Perfect! Labor Day weekend it is!

Unfortunately, not all of the Sensational 6 could make the trip. Passports weren't arriving in time, a baby was born, life just got in the way. The Sensational 6's 30th birthday trip ended up just being 4:



Tokii, Me, J and Katie headed off to Cancun Mexico's secluded beach of Playa Mujeres on Saturday, September 4th and boy did we have a ball...

I read somewhere that one of the keys to life is to make at least 3 people smile each day. I don't know if I personally did that for them but they certainly made me smile several times everyday. Not to mention the location! I couldn't help but smile at our room's beautiful view of one of the 7 pools on the resort, where we were just a brief walk away from the Caribbean Sea. The weather was ideal everyday, there were things to do -or nothing to do at all- which is EXACTLY what I wanted out of this trip: Plenty of time to relax with my girlfriends & mentally vacate my life. Who would want more? I strongly recommend a girl's trip as you wrap up your 20s because even though I'm not 30 yet, it was the perfect way to enter the next chapter of my life, and what better way to do it than with those you love?

Swim, bike & run?

"Proficiency in swimming, cycling, and running alone is often not sufficient for success in triathlon."

That's the last sentence I read on Wikipedia's thorough breakdown of what defines a Triathlon.

And when I mentioned doing a Triathlon with a colleague whose wife recently completed one, he said, "It is not for the faint of heart".

Hmm. Not feeling very positive right now. Which is the same way I felt when I decided to run a half marathon, so perhaps I'm on the right track! (no pun intended)

Competing in a Triathlon is up there with skydiving for me. Both are things that I've thought about doing but am not sure if I can. Minus the whole possible death part of skydiving, I think I'd enjoy doing them because they're both ideas that have been lying dormant in the back of my mind, chillin'.
Can I do it?
Will I be able to squeeze in the sufficient training time into my schedule?
Am I trying to do too much right now?
Goals have to be realistic & attainable so I'll continue to think about this before blogging any further...

Whoa, "woe"??

Sometimes when I feel unsure about decisions I make or am curious if I'm odd in my way of thinking, I'll run my private thoughts by my closest friends.



I emailed J (a nickname I gave her in college) and explained my latest situation and asked her if it made sense to her. She reassured me that I was sane afterall (whew!) & offered her tidbits of thoughts around the whole thing. I ended the email thread thanking her, thinking that would've been the end of the conversation. She wrote back telling me that she hated that I have to be in the situation I'm in & then said, "You meet a guy, he seems GREAT but he has baggage. You meet a guy, he seems unbearable and annoying, so of course you can’t get rid of 'em." I responded, "And with that, you’ve inspired a blog that I shall write later..."



So here I am. I'm not going to lie... I planned on writing about how unfortunate my adult dating life has been & how I can't catch a break for anything. I was going to go into vague detail (haha) about being willing to love a man but he "has baggage," as J put it. Or about how I'm constantly having to shoo the other men -the ones I'm not interested in- away. I planned on whipping out my violin, complaining about how "they never get it 'til you're gone" & singing "woe is me"! Now that I sit at my desk ready to write it, I just don't think it's appropriate anymore...



Only because woe is not me! Woe is defined as grievous distress, affliction, or trouble, an exclamation of grief or lamentation. Sure I've had unfortunate luck in the dating world but is it truly woeful? Perhaps. Let's see:


I was in an emotionally abusive relationship for almost two and a half years... Prior to that, I was in an emotionally abusive relationship for three years. I've been on a date when it was apparently okay to practically admit to still being inlove with your homosexual exgirlfriend, while smoking a joint in a restaurant... I've been lied to repetitively by so-called guys who "cared" for me, yet could only show it behind more empty lies & closed doors... Some guys placed the importance of themselves over my well-being... Some flat out wanted to play games... Some refused to commit... Some didn't want their lack of commitment to be common knowledge... Some were lacadaisical... Some were physically violent... and my latest earth shaker, one that just isn't ready (emotionally) to fully give 100%.



Yes, it sucks, but life could be worse.



Lately I've been thinking a lot about death, more specifically "Slick", Ricky & a colleague at work. One of my best friends Katie, has blogged many times about her dealing with Slick's passing. Although a friend of mine as well, I've grown to learn far more about him in reading her latest blog(s). I think about how much Katie went through & how much of that I will never know. And that hurts my heart.



I think about my friend Ricky Childers, who passed almost a year ago. He had a vivacious way of living, one I've only seen rarely. I remember our last conversation, I think about all the things I'd love to tell him & how I wish I had more time with him. He drowned in the Caribbean while on vacation with his family, so I'm trying to decide if my recent flood of thoughts of him are due in fact that I'm leaving for a vacation in Mexico next week or because the anniversary of his death is coming. I'm not sure but I think of him everyday now.



I think about my colleague at work who has less than 2 months to live. When I was hired almost 4 years ago, she & I connected rather quickly due to our ability to speak French. She has been battling a rare type of lung cancer that is prone to those that are passive smokers. In other words, they don't smoke themselves but have contracted this lung cancer through second-hand smoke. How tragic to be dying from something you couldn't prevent, something not of your own doing! It breaks my heart. Especially because of her strong will to live and humongous heart. Now her daughter is beginning college this week, knowing that her mother could be passing at any minute.

Yet... I want to bitch about how the stars aren't aligning correctly in my dating life?

There's far more to life than a date on Friday night. DISCLAIMER: I am Not demoting my current guy to being just a bed-warmer or a movie date by any means...but surely there's more to complain about in life, right? There are starving children in the world, wars, judicial injustices, unexpected deaths, to name a few. There's far more to life than my measely problems really. So, I'm not going to blog about how miserable I am not seeing him everyday but be grateful that I have sight at all. In the meantime, I won't deny that I'm unhappy, frightened, anxious & sad because I do believe that emotions shouldn't be kept hidden if you're truly in them. But what I won't do, is continue to bury myself in this state of self-pity.

Yes, it sucks, but life could be worse.

Oh the irony..

16 years ago today, I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina.


16 years later to the day, I got a call from my realtor:


"hey girl, it's Sophia... gimme a call, i got an offer on your place..."


Not really "ironic" at all but it does bring forth a scratch the chin moment though, doesn't it? I mean, this is it. This is the moment I've been waiting on since putting my condo on the market in February! Now I can finally move back to Miami, & it's because of this that I believe it to be ironic that I'd receive such news on the day I dreaded leaving in the first place.


...And now i'm dreading making this decision altogether. For there is uncertainty looming and it has been since I got back from my last trip to Miami.

So now what?!

A slight turn for the...better?

I forgot to wear earrings today.

As an adolescent, I quickly decided never to leave the house without my rings, earrings or lipstick and to this day, I never typically do. If for some reason I rush out of the house without any of the aforementioned, I am probably seriously late or stressed out to the point of mind fogginess. Last night I had a conversation I didn't want to have... this morning I forget to put on earrings before leaving the house.


Mind fogginess.


The conversation I had last night was necessary. I needed to have it, if only to give my mind a nap from all the recent analyzing & hovering curiosity.


I met someone worth meeting. Yes, we've all said that before but this one is something different. This one & I (please excuse the cliché)... we clicked. On paper, he is everything I would even list categorically. In reality, he is everything I would have conjured up for myself. Needless to say, this time we spent together has been "a God-send" truly. I don't regret any of it, I wouldn't change any of it.



However I would have considered that certain something in your past that was still quite present in your life, so that last night's conversation wouldn't have had to have taken place.



I would have considered having a lighter conversation about it earlier on... when things between us were still somewhat "light and fluffy."



So now that feelings are invested, I'm left a little... Topsy turvy.


Am I supposed to now pretend that you don't exist so that your past memories with her don't exist?


Am I supposed to now pretend that I don't miss you and that it's hurting me inside to not say "hi"? Just the lack of a simple "hi" hurts?


All in the name of being "older and wiser". This is definitely a blog of clichés and I apologize for that, but I can't find the words right now. I couldn't find the words last night. I'm a writer so I do hope the words find their way back home to me soon or my Editor is going to be livid. I just... I can't... I... I mean...[sigh]...don't know.



What I do know is that this necessary conversation of ours was indeed imminent. It can only make things better in the long run. Should there even be a 'long run.' Lord I hope there's a 'long run.'


So as unhappy as I/we may be, I tip my hat off to last night's conversation. I've learned so much about myself over the past year, I have all confidence that I'm approaching 30 a new woman. I doubt I would have had last night's conversation a year or two ago actually... I would have ignored all considerations and "enjoyed the moment," but been living in the club every weekend. Not always the healthiest decision. Don't think I've ever been so proud of making myself so unhappy.



So here's to 30... and to remembering my earrings tomorrow.

No Stress, Just Success

The day finally came for me to spend the 10 days in Miami for research & audition purposes. I had planned to arrive 2 days before the audition day, and remain for the week after, should I progress to the Boot Camp round of the audition process. When I was leaving Charlotte, Zin took me to the airport and once noticing the apprehension & nervousness in my face before kissing me goodbye, he looked at me and said, "No stress, just success?" Which I repeated with confirmation, "no stress, just success."



However, that day of traveling had events of it's own that created little stresses here and there, like the kicking & crying toddlers behind me, and my absentmindedness causing me to rush out of a stinky bathroom without my very expensive, very gorgeous head shots required for auditions. I somehow managed to remain very calm and stress-free for the most part.



Auditioning for the Miami Heat is an experience that I would recommend to all of my past teammates and dancer friends. Nearly 400 girls were in attendance and the energy was at an unknown high the minute you arrived at the American Airlines Arena. The outfits were outrageous, the talent was tantamount to watching the So You Think You Can Dance audition episodes... just with more of a hip hop and Latin flavor. I felt comfortable yet excited and eager to begin.


So we did. They began with a video montage of the prior year's squad, then immediately into a freestyle cut. Then we learned a hip hop routine taught by the Heat's director, and a Jazz routine taught by prior MHD member and So You Think You Can Dance finalist, Susie.



I've never struggled with learning choreography and I didn't struggle with it at the Heat audition. I did feel slightly overwhelmed however, by the amount of talent surrounding me that the old stand next to someone worse than you rule, couldn't come into play. At all. I did my best, I danced hard but didn't advance into the next round.



Surprisingly, I was fine with it and was uber proud that I made it past one round! I had spent so much energy considering the possibility of not making the team and worrying about what it would do to my ego, that it never crossed my mind that I could be okay. And I was. Some of that in part has to do with a conversation I had with Zin actually, when he painted a different variation of the process to me & reminded me that I'm no less of a dancer for not making this squad. Especially after having been out of the game for 2 years now.



Truth.

The rest of my remaining days in Miami was focused on job follow-ups and spending time with family and friends and I have to be honest... a lot of self-realization occurred.

I realized that my lack of closure with my hometown may have already been reconciled, unbeknownst to me. I love Miami -I always will- but that joie de vivre I referenced wasn't there this time around. I learned throughout the week that I might have been holding on to what it used to be, not what it had become: an empty box of old memories.

Not all of my family still lives there... my childhood best friend has a life (and a lifestyle) of her own now... the life dynamic has changed... things are different overall. I wondered, is this where I want to be?

Turning 30 is a bitch. It definitely does something to the psyche whether you admit to it or not. I do believe however that we as a society tend to put these deadlines on ourselves & associate them with age, which is unfair as every person's lives and goals differ. But you just can't help thinking about what you may want for yourself when 30 comes around. At least, that's my explanation.

So I have some serious pontification ahead but hey - "no stress, just success."I stand now in limbo of whether or not a plan to relocate to the Sunshine State is what's best for me... or if it's what I truly desire anymore. And that's okay. Perhaps I've ripped out that chapter and am beginning to write a newly revised one for myself now...