Being New

Being New

When your  new, everything is a bit foggy and overly serious.
When you walk in a room it's a blur of people. You smile and make small talk but try to go about your business feeling as though your being watched the whole time.
When your new it's hard to laugh easily. Conversation feels forced and when you leave you feel tired.
When your new and you do something clumsy, it's not funny like when you are among old friends.
Embarrassing is just plain embarrassing and nothing else to it. It's similar to being in grade school and  tripping down the stairs or falling our of your chair. People snicker at you , but not with you.
Sometime though, after you've been new for awhile, all of a sudden you realize you aren't.
The faces of the people are clearer. Their smiles are easy, and so is yours.  You have a spot to sit and are familiar enough to speak , even when no one is speaking to you.  Your personality begins to seep out, on it's own.
Your shoulders are relaxed because if you do something embarrassing, it will actually be funny.

I am writing this after about 6 weeks of attending Jazzercise.  Today I realized I wasn't new anymore, and it felt really great.

The Art of Keeping Your Friendships Alive

The Art of Keeping Your Friendships Alive

I just found this article I had written for our local paper when I lived on Padre Island. I still think it holds true but need to revise to fit our Austin life.  I sure miss all our peeps down on the Coast!

Timeless sayings; “When things calm down, let’s do lunch” or “We are so busy, we don’t have time for anything!”

We have time for whatever we want to have time for. Those lunches with friends or family barbeques we talk up with one another, don’t happen as much as we all would like or need. Communication, support and plain old friendship in the everyday are lacking in our hustle bustle lives. How do we make this work with different schedules and family routines? I think the answer lies in adding the people you really want around you, into your daily life. Figuring out how to do life with them.

This is natural and easy with family members. I don’t worry about my guest bathroom (or in my case the kid/guest bathroom) when my sister stops by. But, my sister doesn’t stop by, because she doesn’t live here. The anxiety over a clean house and perfect appetizers make including other people in our lives a bit tricky.

Because many of us out here on the island live away from close relatives, the need for friendship is vital to our wellbeing. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that on Wednesdays your favorite friends were coming over with food, no matter what? Or, that Fridays are always cookout nights with neighbors. Once we get over “My house needs to look a certain way and my schedule needs to be totally cleared in order to have guests for dinner”, life will get a lot more fun.

Don’t let the carpool line be the only time you see your friends! Embrace sharing a meal with another family. Let the kids destroy the bedrooms while the adults laugh. When all is said and done, the reprieve each person receives from relaxing and being with others is priceless.

Life on the island lends itself to sharing life with one another because we are all a hop, skip and maybe a bike ride away from one another. Therefore, don’t get stuck every night within the walls of your house in front of your television. Eat together, share; let others into your every day.

More than a Guys Fishing Trip or a Girls Shopping Weekend, it would be therapeutic for us all to witness other peoples’ messy kitchens and unsparkly bathrooms and share a meal. Instead of saying, “It’s been so crazy; when everything settles down we need to catch up.” How about, “Life is sure crazy, can’t wait to see you Tuesday and hang out with your family!”

Keep on Keeping on, the Beauty is in the Simple Every Day…

Sunny C. Reed