Category Archives: Lessons Learned

What they don’t tell you

By nopasanada | Published: March 29, 2010

“As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.”  ~Fran Lebowitz

I’m eight and my mother denies me the single joy of a McDonald’s cheeseburger. I ask why and she gives me a succinct, “Because I said so”. I huff and tell her that when I grow up I am going to eat cheeseburgers everyday. And for dessert strawberry ice cream with crushed Oreos on top. I’ll drive everywhere and never shower or wash my face. No one will be able to turn the lights on early in the morning and greet me with a,  “Rise and shine!” and force me to go to school. I’ll stay in bed all day but eventually I will get married and have babies. When I’m 24 years old. No matter because my kids will think I’m a rock star because I will never yell or make them get up in the morning. My kids will get milkshakes for breakfast and we’ll all watch The Real World all day long. We will sit close to the television and experience superfluous nudity courtesy of MTV. Speaking of, MTV will always play music videos. The raunchy kind that I’m not allowed to watch. But that’s ok because when I grow up I’ll be able to watch as many scantily clad people as I’d like.

I hate to break it to you but that’s not how it happened. No one tells you that if you decide to eat Big Macs everyday for a week, you probably won’t shit for a week either. No one tells you that seven Oreos a day will make your ass fat. Milkshakes will give you something better than child-birthing hips, try heifer-hips. No one says that if you don’t wash your face for days, Exxon will will be able to build an oil derrick on your T-zone. Technically no one can physically force you to rise each morning. And God help the person who suggests shining. Despite that technicality, no one tells you of the gut wrenching, stomach churning,  I need a handful of klonopin and a shot of Jack, type guilt that you will be riddled with if you decide not to get up in the morning. No one tells you that you’ll sometimes have to give up your vacations, make tough choices and deal with people you really can’t stand without that nice feeling of knowing that (for you) college somewhere far far away is coming up (the only proper place for them is a penitentiary). No one tells you that you just have to deal. That you’ll have to suck it up and move on.

And sad to say, MTV won’t play music forever. And not only will you not want to see anyone else naked but you sure as hell won’t want to see yourself naked (see also: Oreos, consumption of). You won’t sit right next to the television because you’ll probably go blind. Hell, you probably won’t even watch TV. You’ll ignore what’s going on out there and be all “Who is Justin Beiber?!” and you really won’t care.

They won’t tell you that 24 isn’t old. Neither is 26. They won’t tell you that your plan is bullshit and very few things will go accordingly.

They’ll tell you that you shouldn’t be in a hurry to grow up. They’ll tell you to go forth and enjoy this spring day. Enjoy lounging and mandatory naps and someone telling you to just go to bed now. They’ll tell you to enjoy someone else doing the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry and the motherfucking bill paying. They will tell you all of these things. One day you’ll grow up and finally heed their words. You’ll wish you had listened. You will make a mental note to share this secret with the world because somewhere, out there is another eight year old who won’t listen.  They will tell you that someday you’ll learn and you will. Trust me you will.

Posted in Lessons Learned | 14 Comments

The Bright Side

By nopasanada | Published: October 20, 2009

“In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups.  In old age, we yearn to be kids.  It just seems that all would be wonderful if we didn’t have to celebrate our birthdays in chronological order.” ~Robert Brault

On Friday I took the scenic route home from Manhattan and stopped at Alana’s house to make an already long drive even longer. She asked me how old I would be turning on my upcoming birthday. I told her 26 and without skipping a beat she announced, “That’s the dark side of your twenties you know…” And then I got up and left and hoped to get hit by a large truck on the thruway. The end.

***
I tend to become introspective as my birthday approaches. Though I’m finding that most people think about where their lives are and where their lives are going around the time of their birthdays. I’m finally at an age where I’m noticing that birthdays are coming very quickly. Yet I’m still young enough to remember thinking that my birthday couldn’t come soon enough. Why oh why was it only July? Why couldn’t it be mid-October? Why is 10 soooo far away? Why can’t I be an ADULT NOW NOW NOW? Here I am an adult and 16 years past 10.

Why can’t I slow things down a bit?

***

26 isn’t a big deal at least that’s how I felt up until two days ago when I had a massive panic attack after doing something so very un-adult like. Now six days until  my birthday and I’m feeling rather itchy about the entire thing. I personally do not think I should be turning 26. Not that 20-25 were anything to throw confetti at but 26 feels different. I remember writing a post a few years ago about my then roommate who was being a douche and saying that at 26 he was ‘damn near 30′. I remember the comments and the emails after that statement because 26 is nowhere near 30. Here I am almost 26 and feeling dangerously close to 30. That’s why this is the ‘dark side’; I’m now on that downhill slope to 30. I’m torn between how arbitrary 30 is and who though of that and also OMFG 30.

I was going to have kids by 30. I was going to be married. I have neither. Am I happy with that? I think so.

***

I was around a two year old, a four year old and an eight year old respectively this weekend. Suddenly I can think of 76 other things I’d rather do than have children right now including, but not limited to, cleaning my kitchen floor with a toothbrush. Children are lovely. They really are. But I don’t think I could handle the having to repeat myself 27 times due to selective hearing. Of course when I say, “We’re having pie for dessert!” it’s a god damn miracle to see how quickly a kid responds to that.

***

I’m going to be 26 and I have at least one parent who likes me.
I’m going to be 26 and I’m having a mini-party on Tuesday night.
I’m going to be 26 on the 26th: My champagne birthday. I’m making pumpkin bread and mimosas to celebrate.
I’m going to be 26 after having 24 and 25 being so terrible and mistake laden.
I’m going to be 26 and I have this feeling – this deep seeded, all encompassing, feel it in my heart type feeling – that this year is going to be really, really good.
I’m going to be 26. I can’t wait.

Posted in Lessons Learned | 9 Comments

When You Grow Up

By nopasanada | Published: October 14, 2009

“I thought growing up was something that happened automatically as you got older.  But it turns out it’s something you have to choose to do.”  ~From the television show Scrubs

La Madre and I just sat next to each other in a meeting and had what must have been the longest and in depth conversation we’ve had in months. We go through these moments of seeing each other everyday for weeks and then not seeing each other at all. But you work on the same floor! Others say. Yes, but like any working relationship you don’t see everyone everyday. It’s just different when the person you haven’t seen in a month happens to be the person who gave birth to you. Quickly and without an epidural. But at least the nurse said that I was a pretty baby so there’s that.

Between laughing and swearing and admiring the gorgeousness of this bag in Cognac and the prettiness of my new stationary; I took two phone calls. One from my hairdresser because she was having a panic attack over coloring my hair and the other with a friend to whom I posed the question What do you want to do with your life?

I’m fortunate. I forget that sometimes. I love my job and what I do and I have the job that I always wanted and yet I find myself wanting more. I want more responsibility and noteriety and to fly on Air Force I because everyone else I know has flown on Air Force I and it’s really unfair that I can’t do that. But I think about what might be next and whether or not one can get an ice cream sundae with chocolate sprinkles while 10,000 feet in the air. That’s what I want though and I implored my friend to tell me what she wanted to do when she grows up. So what that she’s already an adult? I know or at least think I know that there is more out there and that while I am an adult and I am doing what I want to do, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

I told her that her homework was to tell me what she wanted to be when she grows up. Why is it that when you’re five it’s the easiest question to answer but over 25 it’s on par with being asked the circumference of the moon divided by the radius of the sun?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Also posted in Grace in Small Things | 10 Comments

Vesuvius

By nopasanada | Published: August 2, 2009

“Life is a series of collisions with the future.”  ~José Ortega y Gasset

Sometimes I think I have more in me than I really do. Like I am equipped with an infinite amount of stamina and I can do it all. I can run, jump, swim and even fly! Everything looks good on paper. Communism looked good on paper and in theory and it might have been doable. But the execution is always where plans fall through. The minutia filters between the cracks of what was once thought to be a solid foundation.

On paper it looked like San Diego, DC, Philly, Chicago, return home to move. In reality it looked like a strep throat/flu monster hybrid was eating me from the inside out meanwhile Mother Nature was all, “I’ll show you wrath!” and lo the skies opened up while filling my car full of my earthly possessions. Like my Grateful Dead teddy bear and a Michael Kors skirt with the tags still on it. So there I was panting and lifting and moving and coughing and wishing death would just come take me away.

I felt like I was living a Shakespearean drama (“Brutus was an honorable man…”) that is if in Shakespeare, Julius was worried about how to move his pissed off cat five blocks without getting bite marks as opposed to his traitor of a friend.

Alana called during the move because she knew that I was sick and that ‘drought’ is an unfamiliar word in these parts. I sat and talked with her for 20 whole minutes because I knew and I think she knew that that was the only thing that would keep me from flinging a laundry basket full of J. Crew off the fucking balcony.

It’s been one of those weeks.

During BlogHer – of course I still have stories but in due time, my friends, in due time – I was interviewed for BlogTalkRadio and PepsiCo. The request for the interview mentioned ‘leading thinkers of the blogosphere’ and I wanted to write back, ‘You didn’t mean Heather B. you are actually looking for Heather B. Armstrong‘ But no. They meant me.

Here’s the description that they held before me as I sat down for my interview:

“Heather graduated four years ago from American University in DC and began her blog shortly thereafter. She is now living in upstate New York and does not want kids or a husband, though she is perfectly happy that way.”

Apparently PepsiCo knows more about me than I do. They’re in my head. Making me drink the Pepsi One. In reality I do want children. My want for children is a complicated want and after years of realizing that even their slightest imperfections, those times where poop ends up on your freshly dry cleaned clothes and they vomit all over you and the floor and the vomit keeps coming out like Mount Vesuvius; despite all of that they are this wonderful, complex, little people. If I can still be badly in love with the number of children who have gone all Vesuvius on me – those who I did not give birth to – then I really do think that at some point in the future (emphasis on FUTURE) I would want one of my own.

But it goes far deeper than that to the complexities of a mother/daughter relationship and how I was raised and things that would be better left for a novella than in the next paragraph. Regardless, I was taken aback by that description of my site. For have I really come across as some woman who is against marriage and children? Probably so. Back in the early days of this site.

My only response is that I started this site when I was 21 going on 22. I am now 25 going on 26. The chasm between what is only four short years is huge. I’m a different person than I was four years ago. And that is why I love No Pasa Nada. I love it because those differences for so many often go by in a blur until one day you’re 35 telling the 25 year old how much your twenties sucked. But you don’t know why. I know why. You’re twenties suck for the dumbest reasons but they are your reasons. It’s all relative of course but what pains the 20 year old is what the 30 year old will look back on and scoff at but for now and for me I like having this space to go back to and show my FUTURE children. I was never perfect, I will never claim to be and here, my dears, is the proof. Then I’ll show them this site and then they’ll find all the many uses of the word ‘fuck’. I’ll be so proud.

Anyway, here is my interview with BlogTalkRadio. Enjoy.

Also posted in BlogHer | 6 Comments

Lesson Learned

By nopasanada | Published: April 7, 2009

“Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.”  ~George MacDonald

I keep a list of lessons I’ve learned in a moleskine notebook. It’s full of really excellent advice like why one shouldn’t forget to put their car registration in their car or why one shouldn’t pretend to be over 21 to purchase alchohol when they are only 20 and my personal favorite: When walking around on grass, watch out for dog shit. I think so many people would find that last one oh so handy. But for me it’s a terrible memory of a time I stepped in dog poop on my way to the school bus. I must have been 12 or 13 and later that afternoon I was making my first trip to a ‘friend’s’ house – a word I put in quotes because she turned out to be an evil heinous bitch but that’s a story for later or when I’m not still bitter. She was one of the popular girls and I spent years fawning over her trying like mad to get her to be my friend. I wanted her to like me and that there is a lesson in itself: If people don’t like you move the hell on. Don’t get on your knees and hope that blowing them will get them to like you. It won’t. Regardless, I stepped in dog poop and she subsequently made fun of me for it. The strange thing is that over a decade later it is one of those days when I can tell you exactly what I was wearing. Forever etched in my memory as the highpoint of my groveling days.

The worst lessons to learn are those that involve realizing that trust is an issue. It’s an issue with everyone but the second you find that someone is untrustworthy it’s like a 2×4 to the head. Though worse because it’s to the heart. And we all know that mending an injured heart is one of the most impossible feats known to man. We can walk on the moon but to this day no one has figured out how to fix a broken heart. And it’s like as an adult we should know better because with age comes automatic wisdom which is why adults are so fucking brilliant, right? Adults are just big third graders with more money and more anger. They do just the same things that Middle Schoolers but without parental supervision.

The more I contemplate how adults compare to children the more I get that feeling in my heart as it sinks down to the pit of my stomach. The difference I suppose is that adults are more aware and calculating of what they do and what they say. They aren’t cruel because they know better but instead because they know that no one can or will stop them. They mask things under the guise of ‘concern’ and they are a prickly, mercurial bunch hence the overwhelming cynicism in this world.

Of course there are a few good eggs but you really have to search them out but if you’re lucky you’ll happen upon one when you most need it. Though the hurt and heartbreak that comes from finding out the truth about your peers is more overwhelming and damaging than finding out that Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy do not exist. And time? That which heals all wounds? Well there isn’t enough time in the world to heal that kind of break.

That’s the hardest lesson of all.

Also posted in The year on the edge, Whoa feelings | 16 Comments