We see America differently from having lived abroad, now appreciating some things we used to take for granted, yet also taking taking advantage of other things we previously could not access.

This trip to Germany is not my first, but I’m getting the sense it will be a first. It’s my first time coming here after living in Asia. Where once, from the perspective of a flight from LAX to Tegelhof, stepping on German soil felt exotic and foreign, now it feels comfortingly familiar – so much so I’m often caught by surprise by the fact that I don’t speak the language and that I have to re-learn basic things like how much to tip and to stop smiling so much at strangers.

And this trip to Europe will actually be my longest stay in Europe yet. Instead of just popping by, I’m getting an opportunity to truly immerse. You orient yourself differently when you know you will be in a place for just a few days versus several weeks. It’s a different way of traveling; a different way to be.

Henry Miller once said, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

I wonder whether and how a month in Eastern Europe will change my way of seeing. Already I begin to sense the addition of more cultural milieus into my thoughts, awareness, and orientation. I begin to sense that the more you’ve been everywhere, the less you begin to fit in anywhere.

But that’s okay. If the world is a book, I’d prefer to read the whole story, not just one page.

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

In a little over a month, I turn 32. What does this mean? Scientifically speaking, I suppose it means I’ve hit my sexual peak and am moving towards an age marked by reduced fertility. Gray hairs have started to weave their way through my tresses, which are not as thick as they once were. My skin is not as vibrant or taut, my ability to shed weight even less remarkable. Where I might have once enjoyed a few nights on the town, drinking with large groups of friends in loud bars, I now drink in the joy of a smooth cocktail sipped in a quiet lounge, or even a night in.

I remember when life in high school was my frame of reference for most any topic of conversation. Then it became college. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen myself in the faces of college undergrads. They all seem so young to me now.

I recently read David Sedaris’s memoir, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and spent most of it wondering how the hell he remembers all that crap from childhood. Most of my memories have long since faded. Years gained, people and moments lost.

BUT.

At 32, I’ve grown comfortable in my own skin. I know what’s important to me (family, words, travel, creativity, food, new and enriching experiences), and I know what is not (convention, status symbols, money for its own sake). I revel in simple joys more, and more often. I know I have a lot of opinions and ideas and I don’t hesitate to voice them. I know I have the right to be heard and, after many silent years, I’ve now found my voice and I intend to use it. I encourage others to shed their own barriers preventing them from the full realization of self. I know, too, that my opinions are nothing more than that. In fact the older I get, the more I know I don’t know. But I’m okay with ambiguity.

I have a loving husband, a sweet dog, and a large, caring family that extends in many directions. I have a life in which I’ve insisted on pursuing my dreams – even as they and I have changed.

I have many miles left to walk yet and many more destinations to reach, but I’ve never been more comfortable, ready, happy, fulfilled, and proud to be me.

Don’t forget to link up at Momalom’s Five for Five too!

 

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

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Warning: if you don’t like reading about “women stuff” you might want to go ahead and skip this post.

The calendar pages flip ever inexorably towards May, an innocuous month as far as months go, except for the niggling little reminder in the back of my head that in May of last year, my husband and I decided we were ready to officially go “TTC.” I was gung-ho about it at first, marking and timing, tracking and predicting every possible sign of fertility with scientific precision – I got that doctorate for something right? – until it began to dawn on me that a decade of artificial hormones would not leave my body without a trace, as I suffered the worst cramps of my life and bleeding sufficient enough to send me to the doctor convinced I was having an early miscarriage. (I’d read all about them on WebMD.) A consultation, ultrasound, and internal examination later, the doctor calmly explained to my very red face that what I was experiencing was called my period, otherwise known as menstruation.

I gave up tracking and just submitted myself to the wait for my body to regain some sense of decorum. But the months were ticking by. The more time passed, the more normal my body became, but closer we were getting to Things We’d Like to Do If I Don’t Get Pregnant. Like travel to Hong Kong in January. That trip came and went. Now it’s flying to Berlin to visit Toby’s family. This fall, it will be a trip back home to the States to visit family, go to a writer’s conference, and take part in our friends’ wedding. It’s a tricky time where, if I don’t get pregnant, we get to do awesome and important (to us) things. But that means I will still be walking around sans bebe. It leads to an awkward stage where we’re trying, but kind of not.

This trying-but-not-very-hard means I don’t know if I actually have a fertility issue, or if we’ve just managed to avoid getting me pregnant. It also means I’m left wondering if, despite all doctors’ claims that it is a nonissue, the pill was a bad choice after all and maybe I should have stuck with options that didn’t involve messing with hormonal imbalances. {Insert guilt.} I also wonder if, irony of ironies, waiting those years to get educated, financially secure, settled in marriage, and emotionally ready to be great parents meant I missed the fertility window for motherhood. {Did I mention guilt?} And I wonder if the fact that we want to take these trips to visit family we haven’t seen in nearly two years means I’m still putting selfish desires in front of a (hypothetical) baby and therefore still unready to be a mother. {Oh hai, Mme. Guilt! Come sit by me.}

Most days, I try not to think about it and what with moving to a foreign country, a healthy supply of visitors, working on my book, and doing work with SOLD, I’ve had enough on my plate to keep me distracted. But then I’ll be in the grocery store and spy a colorful little worktable and imagine myself sitting down with a large-eyed, towheaded son or daughter and a palette of paints or scrap wood dino construction kit and I feel a twinge. Or I’ll see a sakura bloom sling and imagine our little one in a sling of our own, and there that twinge is again. Or I’ll look at my husband and wonder what blend of his features and mine we would produce, and the twinge becomes more like an ache.

Most days, I manage not to be too worried, thinking we still have time, and we’ll get really serious about trying after our trip in the fall. I know there are fertility clinics too, and options. This isn’t the 1800’s where a woman having difficulty getting pregnant is labeled “barren.”

But some days that word, barren, is exactly how I feel.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away.” 
- Author Unknown

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

]]> http://jadekeller.com/2012/04/that-thing-i%e2%80%99m-not-sure-i-want-to-talk-about/feed/ 27 http://jadekeller.com/2012/04/an-intentional-life-written/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss http://jadekeller.com/2012/04/an-intentional-life-written/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2012 08:24:04 +0000 Jade http://jadekeller.com/?p=4215 Continue reading →]]> Living life with intention isn’t always easy. Sure, with a little practice and desire, you can be intentional about the big things. Big plans, big actions. It’s the little moments that get hard – because you’re distracted, and they’re small, so do they really matter? But eventually all the little moments begin to tot up and you have to wonder if too many little pieces, fine enough by themselves, are together creating a picture you wouldn’t necessarily choose. I always appreciate these weekly Bigger Picture Moments, for they are a call and a reminder to take a step back and ask myself whether the momentary is really in line with what I want for the momentous.

And this week, I realize I haven’t been approaching my writing with much intention lately. Since I finished writing the draft of my novel, it’s been harder to get immersed in my writing. (Editing is a very different kind of beast.) I write almost every day: blog posts, more blog posts, timed writings, presentations, emails, and comments, and notes in the margins. Almost every day I’m creating something. But I find I’ve had too many days…too many weeks!…where I’ve just shoved my writing into the crooks and crevices between point A and point B.

That’s good – to an extent. I’m writing, even when it’s hard and I have to eke the words onto the page, like tears when you’re too defeated to cry. But it has been too long since I really engaged with my own words or since I tried to see if I have something to say other than just something.

So this Saturday, I’m taking a writer’s retreat. I’m shutting off the computer, logging off from the internet, and unplugging to go play with words. I’ll bounce around from cafe to park to home, wherever I need to be to say welcome to Miss Muse. I’m officially inviting her on a date.

Do I have chores to do? Yes. Things on the to-do list? Of course. Deadlines approaching? Yeah…don’t remind me. Because this is at least as important as that, and I know I’ll regret it if I relegate myself to writing only in the cracks.

Right then. Tally ho!

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away.” 
- Author Unknown

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

I had a lot of fun putting together my family tree. Here it is:

What’s yours? Link it up and join in here!

happy.

Sure, I have those things that worry, things that annoy, and things that anger. But me? I’m happy. Because, besides all those things, I also have:

a journal to write in
books to read
photos to take
good coffee to sip
a husband who makes said coffee
a dog with sweet eyes and a wagging tail
bubble tea
the energy of a good run
happy results after eating well and going on that good run
smiles from the kids I work with
smiles from the adults I work with
the pleasure of a joy ride on a scooter
a rice field and mountain view
dinners out with friends
loved ones coming to visit
loved ones I’m going to visit
easy camaraderie with people I meet
skype conversations with friends and family back home
pretty new platters I found on sale
a comfortable home
a duvet I like to sink under in bed at night
blue eyes I love to wake up to seeing in the morning
music in my head
a book emerging
friends getting married
friends having babies
lime drinks and mango smoothies
letters in the mail and emails in the inbox
peanut butter and honey
…and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.

Yup. I’m happy. And I know it. This is me clapping my hands.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away.”
- Author Unknown

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

Share.
Link up your gleaned moment this week HERE! Please be sure to link to your post, not your blog, and include our button or a link back to the host page. 

Encourage.
Visit some of the other participants and encourage each other in this journey we call life.

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It was so inspiring to be there and see some of the projects they do. Like, they had the boys develop first aid kits – they designed the logos and collaborated on putting together the kits – and then went to deliver them in poor neighborhoods around the city and outlying villages. (How awesome is that? Empowering AND giving back.) They have regular English classes and guitar lessons. The ladies take the boys on camping trips and they have weekly baking days.

So simple…and yet it blew my mind.

I got so many ideas from talking to these ladies about projects I could do with the kids at SOLD. And I realized (as a former university educator), my mind was SO stuck on teaching the kids things they’d need for school and things that school teaches are important for life. Things like: how to write a 5-paragraph essay, how to think critically, how to question and how to form an argument. Those are all important in their own way. But life skills are so much broader than that. There are so many things we do from day-to-day that we each have to figure out…and probably never really took a class for.

Things like baking. (Unless you had home ec. My high school did not have home ec, and I’m pretty sure these kids don’t have it either.) And simple community projects. And how to show up and reach out to someone in need.

As I’m writing this, in my mind I’m thinking a big, fat “DUH.” We all know there’s a difference between book smarts and street smarts. But somehow I just had such a huge blinder focusing myself on my role as “Teacher,” thinking I could only teach school related things.

But the world is so much bigger than that, isn’t it? Tell me, what are some of the things you had to learn on your own? What lessons did you not have a class for?

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

But it is exciting news! And just in time to coincide with my blog’s brand new look! I hope this design is much cleaner and clearer. It should load a bit faster and be easy to navigate on various devices. (Even iPads and iPhones!) What do you think? Pretty?

(RSS feed readers, be sure to click over and check it out!)

Anyway….ON TO THE BIG NEWS!

Regular readers have probably picked up on the Bigger Picture blogs posts I participate in. This lovely community of women writers host, among a slew of other creative delights, weekly meditations on the simple moments in life, in which we see the bigger picture. It grew out of a desire to live life more intentionally. But these fabulous ladies don’t stop there. They are constantly on the move to inspire others to live life fully, to create through photography and the written word, and to sound our voices like clarion bells. They also support fabulous missions to bring awareness to what we eat, help charitable causes, and find simple ways to regain clarity where needed.

They are an inspiration.

And guess what? They’ve asked me to join them!

I’m honored and thrilled to announce that I will be joining the Bigger Picture Blogs community as one of the leaders. That means, from time to time, I will be hosting the BPM link-ups here on my blog. I’ll also be helping out with the writer’s book club, doing my best to inspire writers to get out there and write! I’ll also share whatever tidbits I’ve gleaned about the writing process along the way.

I can’t tell you how excited I am!

A big, heartfelt thank you to: Alita, Hyacynth, Lenae, Melissa, and Sarah!

I also want to send a big thank you to all my readers, for following me on this amazing journey. Your support has buoyed me in ways I cannot describe nor count. I love reading all your comments, and I adore the conversations we’ve had. I do hope you’ll continue with me as I embark on this next phase of my adventure.

Love & hugs,
A Very Happy Jade

Happy Tuesday! What’s in your cup today? Me, I’m drinking some nice, floral Jasmine tea. Life is slowly settling back into routine, and I find I like that just fine.

We went up to Chiang Rai this weekend to work at SOLD, and this time I taught the kids how to make Chinese dragon puppets. I’m all excited about it because I think I’ve finally hit on something that seems just right for their speed.

 (It only took me a year of Saturdays to figure it out…)

They may not be ready for fine art lessons, or deeper reflections on life. But these kinds of arts and crafts, they can do.

They’re super shy at the beginning, skeptical of the point of doing anything, and absolutely terrified of making mistakes. But when they finish, and hold something beautiful that they created with their own hands…

That wonder and amazement in their eyes makes everything worth it. I feel like dancing. So I will continue with crafts like these to help build up their confidence, and then, when I feel they’re ready, I’ll start slipping in some higher lessons.

It’s a process, and I’m learning too. Sometimes, it’s hard to see how this is really helping, but I have to believe that every bit of pride in self I can instill in them is just one more barrier preventing them from thinking that selling themselves is a way out of poverty.

In other news, I’m currently awaiting feedback on my novel from a small group of writers and readers. Once I hear back from them, I can make a final set of edits and then start shopping my book out. Call me Excitement and Impatience. I think this is the part where I feel most unproductive. I’m still writing and practicing my craft…but mostly I’m just waiting.

Otherwise, this is a pretty low key day. Laundry demands some attention, and we have to go renew the registration on our motorbikes, but I’ll spend most of the day writing. I have plans to make some home made hamburgers for dinner tonight. I even splurged and bought some cheese – really expensive stuff here, probably twice the price that it is in the States. After entertaining for over three months, we’re ready for some serious downtime, with simple home cooked food.

Salads. We miss salads.

Last night, I made some rice and chicken (rubbed with cumin, salt, garlic, spices, and a touch of Worcestershire sauce) and steamed asparagus. Simple, right? Heavenly because we didn’t have to go out anywhere and it wasn’t restaurant food. It’s funny how eating out used to be an indulgence, and now the rare meal at home has become the treat.

If we were really meeting for coffee today, I’d probably tell you how I’ve been getting back into listening to music lately, especially with some old favorites. Tori Amos is one in particular I’ve had on repeat. I remember listening to Cornflake Girl on the bus on my way to high school in the mornings and liking the song well enough, but I never knew what it was about. Only just a couple of days ago, I actually read up on the song’s meaning and inspiration…and realized Tori Amos is far more complex than I originally appreciated. And these lines, from Silent All These Years, keep running through my head: “Cause what if I’m a mermaid/In these jeans of his/With her name still on it/Hey but I don’t care/Cause sometimes/I said sometimes/I hear my voice/And it’s been here/Silent all these years”

Anyway, it’s getting late. I’d better get going on that laundry if it’s going to get dry before that sun goes down. What’s on the docket for you this week? (And let’s just not talk about how it’s already February tomorrow, m’kay?)

For the past month or so, I’ve fallen prey to a feeling that isn’t homesickness, so much as it is fatigue. I’m tired and want to retreat, to hide away from the seemingly simple things I can’t understand and the basic, easy concepts that I just can’t explain. I’m tired of fighting to find the words, and hearing ones I don’t recognize. No matter how quickly I learn, there’s always more, and the better I get at speaking Thai, paradoxically, the more impatience I meet when there is something I don’t understand. I hate seeing that look, the one that says they’re mistaking a lack of language for a lack of general mental capacity. And I think that, maybe I did that too: that, in impatience, maybe I treated someone as though their inability to express themselves in English meant they had little inside to express at all.

Long time readers will know about the struggle I had getting my ID card here, and then our battle for T’s visa renewal, and now my American passport needs to be renewed from abroad. These all seem like basic things, but then, each time, it’s never nearly as easy as these things should be. Where once it was an adventure and a story to tell, it’s now beginning to feel like we’re under constant attack, fighting a never ending fight for the right to simply be.

In my fatigue, there are times I know I’ve stopped dancing the dance of social niceties and gone straight to honesty, because I just don’t have it in me to dance. My feet hurt, and I’m going to sit this one out simply because I can.

I feel compelled to wrap this up in a tidy bow, to find the sparkle in the ordinary glass of water, and to say something like, “it’s a journey, and maybe the soul just needs a rest,” or maybe “I think I expected to find home, and it turns out I’m still traveling,” or that I need to “buck up, sistah, because there’s lots who’ve got it worse than you.” There’s good. Lots of good, and hopefully my regular readers will know that I see the good too, and feel it in my bones. But right now, at this moment, this is my truth. I’m stripped to essentials, futilely trying to cover the exposed parts with my too-small hands.

::

…and admitting all that, it feels better already. Saying all that, I think, is exactly what I needed to do to cast off the burden making it too difficult to take the next step.

And so, the next step, I now take. And maybe I found that sparkle after all.

Have you found the bigger picture in a simple moment? Join us at Sarah’s!