Find Your Way

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world buzzes about goals and visions. Focus. Create a vivid picture of exactly where you want to go. Dream big, then don’t let anything or anyone stop you. The problem, as Daniel Gilbert wrote in Stumbling Upon Happiness, is that we’re horrible at forecasting how we’ll really feel 10 or 20 years from now – once we’ve gotten what we dreamed of. Often, we get there only to say, “That’s not what I thought it would be,” and ask, “What now?” Ambition is good. Blind ambition is not. It blocks out not only distraction, but the many opportunities that might take you off course but that may also lead you in a new direction. Consistent daily action is only a virtue when bundled with a willingness to remain open to the unknown. In this exercise, look at your current quest and ask, “What alternative opportunities, interpretations and paths am I not seeing?” They’re always there, but you’ve got to choose to see them. - Jonathan Fields

This, gentle readers, is something your MatchGirl wished she had thought about when she was much younger. Because when I was young, I was stubborn (those who know me now will say I still, am - they are right - but about fewer things, and with a more open mind). And in this stubbornness, sometimes, I'm afraid I missed opportunity. I didn't see them at all.

It has taken some big changes in my life, over the course of the years, to be able to see that the path I am on might have a lot of hidden passages in it. This has been true in the past in work, in school, in relationships.

Now, I feel that I am constantly learning and I am trying to constantly see the opportunities that lie not only in the direction I feel I should be moving, but a little bit off to the side. The most important thing I have learned, dear ones, over the past several years, is that life is rarely what you expect it to be. All you can do is keep your eyes and your heart open to what's around you and you'll find the path you're supposed to be on.

Surprise Yourself

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think of a time when you didn’t think you were capable of doing something, but then surprised yourself.  How will you surprise yourself this week?

I like this little prompt from Ashley Ambirge. I like it because while she is certainly a gal who faced fear (out of necessity, but maybe that's what we all need sometimes...  your MatchGirl can relate to that!) this prompt is not about fear. This prompt is about surprise.

I do things every day that are so very boring. So very rote. But sometimes, some days, gentle readers, your MatchGirl surprises herself. She steps up. She faces up. She's working on some projects right now and, if I can pull it off, that will certainly surprise me. 

I'll keep you posted.

Holding Back

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. – Ralph Waldo Emerson



Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Put yourself in the shoes of the you who’s already lived your dream and write out the answers to the following:

Is the insecurity you’re defending worth the dream you’ll never realize? or the love you’ll never venture? or the joy you’ll never feel?

Will the blunder matter in 10 years? Or 10 weeks? Or 10 days? Or 10 minutes?

Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are?

Now Do. The Thing. You Fear.


Fear by Cotter Lachlan

No. The answer is simply no.
Gentle readers, your MatchGirl cannot put herself in the shoes of someone who has lived her dreams. That's just not possible.

Here's the thing, dear ones. My dreams are my own.
Am I inspired by others? Of course. Do I look at people who have reached levels of success that I hope to achieve and wonder how they got there so quickly and if I can get there, too? Of course.
But there is no one person who has achieved my dreams.

I have, though, been held back by fear. Especially when I was younger. I wrote about facing one's fears, posted last Friday, as part of this very challenge.

So here are some things I have been terrified of, and that I have faced head on.

Unemployment.
Asking for what I want out of a relationship.
Approaching people for help - job related or networking related.
Standing out in a crowd.
Talking to strangers.
Getting serious about my life.
Going for what I want.

The main thing that ties all these fears together, gentle readers, is an underlying fear for so many of us. It's a fear of rejection. Here's something, however, that your MatchGirl has learned about rejection over the years - it's not really so bad. Because, at the end of the day, there is always someone - be it friend, lover, parent - out there who loves you and wants you and will steel you up again.

So I agree with Lachlan. Face your fears. Do the thing that you're afraid of.

You'll be better for it in the end.

I promise.

Imitation Is Suicide

Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?

I don't know how to answer Fabian Kruse's question, gentle readers. I truly don't.

Your MatchGirl, in her own opinion, has always been a pretty original bird.

It was, in fact, probably a bad thing when I was young. At least for my social life. Middle and high school girls tend to want to march to the beat of only one drummer, and those that are different than them are not always (or often) welcomed to the fold.

In terms of art, I think it infuriated my professors at university that they could not stick my paintings or my influences into one neat basket. Not that they did not value individuality and originality. They certainly did. But how to critique something you don't know what to compare it to?

I don't know how to approach this prompt, dear ones. Because I don't see myself as an imitator... To thine own self be true, isn't that how the saying goes? Is there any other way that one ought to live? I believe that I was raised to stay true to myself, to be my own person, and that I have lived that way - or tried to - for most of my life....  I don't have a true answer for this, but for now, though I'm posting it, I leave this essay unfinished...

Be Good To Each Other

Today's Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance Challenge prompt, from Eric Handler, is not a simple thing to wrap one's head around, gentle readers. Your MatchGirl has, for the past two years (a little longer) been sharing her life with you on these virtual pages. She has been sharing her hopes and reams and fears, but, she has also been spreading her message.

And perhaps I could have answered this in a tweet. It's quite possible that it needs no more than that.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

But as I take this Trust 30 challenge, I have, for the most part, enjoyed sharing my thought process, here with you. I hope that you've been enjoying being part of it. And, though I post a handful of days behind, due the the publishing schedule of this blog, I hope that you've enjoyed keep up with what I'm writing about. Believe, your MatchGirl is thinking on and writing about these prompts every day. It's a good exercise. I hope many of you are participating as well.

But, to today's prompt. If I could spread my personal message to one million people, right now, what on Earth would I say?

Be good to each other. Treat each other right. Think about how you want to be treated and, for goodness sake, act accordingly when you're interacting with others. Life is too short, gentle ones, to act any other way. So I share with you, fewer than one million people, but perhaps I will reach one thousand who will take this to heart an spread it to one thousand more (and that's a really nice start). 


Be good to each other. It's the golden rule.


It's how your MatchGirl tries to live her life. I hope it's how you try to live yours.

Face Your Fears

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. - Ralph Waldo Emerso 

Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.

Facing one's fear, gentle readers, this is what we are consistently asked to do. Lately anyway.

This is a bit of a tough question for me. I have, for several years now, lived my life very much in the open. I've blogged about it - here and elsewhere. I've shared my scary stories. I've shared my hopes and dreams. I've let you see my disappointments and failures. I've told you what I was afraid of.

Every day I do things that terrify me. It's a good thing, I promise. It's a hard thing for sure.

Something that no one who knows me now, in my mid-thirties, truly believes is this: I am shy.
Painfully shy.
Devastatingly shy.

If I am in a room full of strangers, I must steel myself before I go in. I must take deep breaths and basically throw myself through the door. To speak to people I don't know takes a great deal of effort. Especially if I must speak first.

When I was in college, if I was not sure I knew someone in my class, I would wait till the last possible moment to go in.

At parties, I often stand near the food/bar/kitchen until someone approaches me.

At networking events, it's very hard for me to approach people unless I have met them before. And even then I still need to talk myself into it.

You're surprised.
Those of you who know me from this blog.
Those of you who know me from Work It Brooklyn.
Those of you who know me from Zemoga.
You are surprised.

I seem so outgoing you will say.
I seem so confident.
I certainly, by no stretch of the imagination, seem shy.

But I am.

It's all an act, gentle readers. It's a public face I paint on when I face the world.
I am not as shy now as I was when I was young, when I would develop a debilitating stomach ache whenever I needed to be in a place I felt uncomfortable or with people I did not know well. But, I will still wait till the last moment to enter a room if I'm not sure I'll know someone. I will still linger at the kitchen door and look into my drink at a party where I do not know many people. When I hop up on stage at Work It Brooklyn events and "shhhhush" people like a kindergarten teacher, it's out of sheer necessity.

But, I am not gonna lie. I feel awesome after I do that. Because I know how hard it was for me, on the inside, to actually do it. To mak that interaction happen.

I have always been encouraged to face my fears. At 16, after crashing my parents' car, OK, actually, rolling it over and totaling my parents' car, my grandfather had me driving his truck in the fields behind his house. I've faced more personal fears, as well, leaving a terrible terrible, but seemingly secure, relationship; relocating my adult life to a new city; saying "goodbye" to someone that I loved, because, at the end of the day, it was for the best.

As for facing fears, am I going to run to Coney Island and spend a day riding the Cyclone? No. Probably not. But there are fears we face to make our lives better and more productive and to keep them moving forward... and there are fears that, really, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter...

Five Years

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. – Ralph Waldo Emerson






What would you say to the person you were five years ago? What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

Oh gosh gentle readers. This hits a little close to home. But, it's something that your MatchGirl has spent a lot of time thinking about ... as she ponders her life and times.

What would you say to the person you were five years ago?

Five years ago I was 30. I was excited to be thirty. I still felt young and like life was still of possibilities (at thirty-five, I still feel this way), but I was a bit of the mind set that life would happen to me. I wasn't quite sure how to make life go the way I envisioned that it should be.

To my 30 year old self, I would caution that life is what you make of it, not what happens to you.

To my 30 year old self, I would say, look around at all these people, at this birthday party. These people, they are your best friends. In five years, 90% of them will still be a part of your life. Love them and treat them right. They'll love you right back. And they'll protect the shit out of you - no matter what happens. I know you cherish them now. Continue to do so.

To my 30 year old self, I would remind that it's OK to be single. While sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's kind of fun. Take every day and every relationship and every man as it comes. Don't try so hard. Don't force it. I promise it will be all right.

To my 30 year old self, I would say, don't be so afraid. The worst that can happen is that you'll mess up. Life is to be lived. Stop being so timid. Stop being so cautious. Get over it.  Life is best when you live it.

What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

In five years, I'll be 40. That's a big number. I remember my dad turning forty and everyone saying he was over the hill. Of course, my gay friends say that 40 is the new 21 (these are the same men who told me that 30 was the new 21). But that's okay. I don't want to be 21 again. That's a hard age. Looking forward, I'm not exactly excited to turn forty. But I don't fear it.

To my 40 year old self, I will say, know that your children are their own people. You can't right your regrets through them, You're journey was yours. You have to let theirs be their own.

To my 40 year old self, I will remind, that this journey has been a tough one, and, even if it still is a struggle, every piece is worth it. It must be - it has been so far.

To my 40 year old self, I will say this: Lighten up. Stop being so serious. Remember to spend at least as much (if not more) time living outside your own head as you do in it.

To my 40 year old self, I will say, look at these friends around you - this man you've chosen to spend your life with, these people whose weddings you've attended, this extended family that you have gathered around you, blood or not - these people have been with you for all this time. Love them and cherish them and treat them well. They love you and cherish you and, still, will protect the shit out of you. These friendships, this community - this is something that's amazing. This is something that a lot of people don't have. Don't take it for granted.