Monday, February 6, 2012

Free Your Mind Monday

You know who has awesome ideas? Shana at Fumbling Towards Normalcy. She really does - she's linked up Random Musings Friday and has also been doing Free Your Mind Monday, where she shares about 5 of her answers on the "50 questions to free your mind" list. I have this list on my 101 in 1001, and I had answered them fairly early on, but hadn't figured out yet when/if to share them. Well, thanks to Shana, I feel inspired. I'm needing inspiration from people lately. I'm in a far better place emotionally than I was two months ago, but I feel like I'm at a stand still. Life has become about doing whatever it is that makes me happy and trying to push away the negativity. However, I feel like I need to let my guard down some. Not necessarily to unshield myself, but to open myself up to other happy things I've been shunning. So hopefully this will be a way to do that.

So, here we go. Opening myself up and freeing my mind, installment numero uno:

1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? Probably 25 or so. Sometimes I still feel like I’m so young and still figuring things out. Other days, I feel like I've been aged so much by the last six months or so. There are days when I'm shocked that I own a house and am married and work at an adult job and all those other things. I think it all averages out to about 25.

2. Which is worse, failing or never trying? It depends. I think there are some things you don’t have to do and fail at to know it’s not worthwhile to try. I don't believe every battle has to be fought and sometimes self preservation is valued more than experience. I think our infertility is one of those things. I'm conscious of the fact that we chose not to try, but for us, the costs and risks outweighed trying. If we weren't so risk averse, it might have been a different decision, but as long as we're okay with the choice to not try, it doesn't hurt anyone else. With other things, you have to learn from failing to succeed next time, or to learn a lesson. I think part of really maturing is figuring out which is which.

3. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do? I have no idea. Because we feel we have to? Because we know they make other people happy? I’m trying harder to focus my time on the things that I love and eliminate the things that don’t make me happy. At the same time, there are people I really value in my life and they like things I don't. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good, on both sides.

4. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done? Probably. Unfortunately, one thing I’m learning about myself when I’m truly honest is that I talk the talk and don’t always walk the walk. It’s a constant self-improvement action item for me. I'm trying to equal out the talk:walk ratio

5. What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world? It may be because of where I am now, but it’s important to me to raise awareness about infertility. It shouldn’t be shameful, and people should know that it can happen to anyone, it’s sensitive to the people going through it, and there are just some things you don’t say out of common decency. I think traditional sexual health education has done a disservice to young women, and it's important to me to find a way to improve it for the next generation of women.


There, that wasn't so hard. See you next Monday for round two :)


Also, Amanda at It's Blogworthy is kicking off her Celebrity Weekly Round-up's birthday party with some truly awesome stuff and posts and treats by incredible ladies, including probably the first ever lia sophia virtual jewelry party. Pretty awesome. Check out her site all week to join in the fun.

3 comments:

Shana said...

I love that other people are posting thier answers to these questions. It's great to see everyone's answers...how some are so similar to each other and some are so different.

Jen Vogt said...

I love that you want to work on promoting infertility awareness! I couldn't agree with you more about health education lacking this information. When women (and men) think the norm is to just easily become pregnant without any struggles...what a blow to find out it's not always that simple. I feel like this last year has been my eye-opening year about infertility and the struggles women & men go through to have families. While I can respect and completely understand people wanting to keep their struggles private, I hope the reason they're keeping quiet is not because they feel ashamed of what they're going through. I really admire you for sharing your story on your blog; I think a lot of people can benefit from hearing the experiences of others.

Brooke said...

Thank you, Jen :)