Finding out what's important

Photo via Notes from the laundromat

My apologies for the small hiatus I took late last week - We had some friends from NJ come to stay for the weekend and I couldn't keep up with the blogging demands while mixing virgin cocktails.  Nothing like a mama and a baby!
Anyway, I hope you won't mind this personal post while we take a small break from the fashionable musings. You see, lately I've found myself losing the motivation for pretty much anything. I kind of feel exactly how I felt my first semester of college. Kind of lost in a foreign land with no promise for the success of the future. I'm completely overwhelmed and confused. I keep thinking about what this all could possibly mean, being that it happened to me not exactly what I orchestrated for my life. Why were we put in Charleston? Why did my career get cut short on an upswing? In a way, I feel like I'm being taught a life lesson. What really matters at the end of the day are your family, your health, your well-being. I've been plucked right out of the rat-race of New York City and plopped right down in the slowest moving population in the United States. Time for me to slow down? Stop allowing life to pass me by? I know I've voiced concerns as I got older about how I never knew how I'd ever be able to have the white picket fence, the kids that got to live like kids with streetlight curfews, a school bus popularity, and the beach-town lifestyle I was lucky enough to experience myself. I love New York. It's a part of me that will never subside. I yearn for it every day, I yearned for it everyday before I even walked its streets for the first time. I was born with the city in my dna. Yet, there's something about it that just doesn't complete my perfect circle of happiness. That kills me.

My inner-self  thinks she's Carrie Bradshaw skipping around Manhattan living the life. But, my true self wants all of the things that make life, LIFE. The love of your life, the success, the house, the kids, the dog, the family around a huge table... I mean where am I fitting that in Brooklyn? I can say that I feel somewhat accomplished by the blip that was my career. I always said I never wanted to make it all the way to the top. I could witness everyday how alone and bitter those people were. Their jobs weren't fulfilling them. They were missing out on so much so they could stay another 3 hours at night to plan the layout of a sweater table. That's what I didn't get about my job. The clothes I've designed are practically non-existent right now. They existed for 4 weeks in a store and removed off the floor to make their red-lined way to Loehmann's. The people that save lives on a daily basis - emt's, firefighters, teachers, social workers, nurses, our enlisted military being deployed every single day to the most dangerous and conflicted provinces... why are those people paid 'ok' salaries while I was paid a pretty penny to design a few pairs of jeans? I always thought how backwards it was. You can see why I'm going crazy.
So, getting so wrapped up in those anxieties got me thinking and I decided that I'm going to look into volunteer opportunities that can draw me out of my champagne bubble and open my eyes to the life others live. To really live is to open our eyes to the lives around us and how we can make a change or a difference. I love being creative, and I love being able to effortlessly do something to make a great living, but I also know that I've been put here for much more then the superficial things. I'm not going to rush into anything, but just leave myself open for the opportunity to present itself. I want to like doing it, and I want to feel that same accomplishment that I felt with my other jobs but just in a different realm of importance.

We will resume our regularly scheduled fashion talk tomorrow, friends. Thanks for listening.