Jay Miranda

Good Taste, Mom Life, Homeschooling

10 Realizations Changed My Life

By

Bloggers, like all people, love to share the highlights of their lives. But I’m a person with self-doubt, worries, and stuff I need to figure out, just like anyone else. Who wants to read about that? Maybe you do. I want to share a set of realizations that have quite literally changed my life in the last few months.

  1. You are the sum of the 5 people most present in your life. So much of life is social, who you know, and who you most engage. This is under your control. Surround yourself with smart, interesting people who inspire you.
  2. There’s a reason why some people achieve unlikely success and a big part of it is about how they approach their strengths and weaknesses. My husband wrote the book on this—literally. He recently spoke to a group of venture capitalists about identifying people who are on the cusp of success. You can find his book here: High School Dropout to Harvard.
  3. You can make a living doing what you love. Again, my husband showed me the way on this one. I’m lucky I married the most inspiring man I know.
  4. Be grateful for everything. Since I shifted my attitude toward constant gratitude, good things keep coming into my life. When you’re resentful, you’re off the path.
  5. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” -Oscar Wilde. Do you want to be great in your career, in school, in blogging? Don’t try to be someone else; they are the best person at being them. You are the best at being you.
  6. Invest in things that help you become the sharpest version of you.  Maybe it’s a new computer, a ticket to a conference, a book, or class. Reap the returns.
  7. We’re all just passing through.
  8. Some people, places, and events in your life are shipwrecks. Don’t keep dragging them behind you. Cut them off and swim away.
  9. Never stop learning. I’m constantly reading books and consuming online media. I’m a fairly busy person, especially as a mom, but I even started taking a computer programming class. Because it’s a way of investing in myself.
  10. Love is the best motivation. For me, it’s been motherhood—I’m driven by an endless supply of love for my daughter. Love is the most renewable energy.

Blogging sometimes feels like I’m sending messages out in a bottle. I hope this one is read by the person who needs it. Please tell me if this list resonates with you. Love, Jay.

All is Lost

By

image

Because I feel moved to share inspiring experiences with you, today I’m writing about the film All is Lost, written and directed by J.C. Chandor and starring Robert Redford. Some films are pure fun, some technical marvels, and others are quiet and devastating. All is Lost falls into the last category. Robert Redford described working on the film, “like stepping into a painting.”

It’s about a man (IMBD credits him as “Our Man” because we never learn his name) whose sailboat is damaged by a floating shipping container. Here begin his efforts to save his boat and himself, encouring a series of unfortunate events and harsh elements. The ending is the most emotional piece of cinema I’ve ever seen. Not many movies cause me to weep openly. Well OK, I fully admit that the right baby commercial can make me tear up, but in this case my crying was effusive. My reaction surprised me. If you have not seen the movie, please STOP reading now and come back later!

This is a film for someone who has lived a little. It will resonate with people who have striven for something, perhaps hopelessly. It will make you wax philosophical. In a way, the movie is like an indie-budget version of Gravity. But I enjoyed All is Lost so much more and Redford’s portrayal as a person adrift is superior. I can’t think of an adjective that describes this film succinctly so let’s just say it is magnificent. Redford is brilliant.

It’s been a few hours since I watched it and it still has me thinking. So many scenes seemed allegorical to me. Inexplicably, I feel inspired to sail. Probably because there is something romantic and a little bit poetic about the act of sailing—to be out in the ocean alone, rising and falling, rising and falling. Aren’t we all.

My Early Morning Ritual

By

Rather than post 2014 resolutions, I want to share a strategy for making the most of your year by making the most of your day. I’ve used this successfully!

2014 resolution morning routine skincare facewash clearasil clear skin chamomile tea iphone app email healthy snack best lip balm

My best days are those when I wake up a full hour earlier than I’m “supposed” to wake up. Try it, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to feel more in control of their day. I’m a stay-at-home mom who also works from home, so a good start is directly related to having a successful day. Here’s a little more about my morning ritual:

Know your body. Stretch for 1 minute.

Get fresh faced. Wash my face to feel super awake + bright. Brush teeth & apply lip balm.

Calm over caffeine. I skip coffee and sip a mug of chamomile-rose tea (with milk + honey.)

Feed your mind. Read a couple pages from a magazine or book. So important!

Feed your spirit. I close my eyes and just enjoy the quiet.

Feed your body. I grab something yummy packed w/ nutrients. Ex: Berries, almonds.

List your goals for the day. Start mapping out the day on paper. I love my planner!

Clean inbox = clear mind. Start answering email on my phone.

By the time your hour is spent, you are already in the midst of your day. Old me would just be getting up now! Use the extra time to get even more on top of the day and goals. When my daughter wakes up, we have breakfast together. A bright start helps me have a great day and a great week. Hope you make this one great too!

Thanks to Clearasil and Refinery29 for sponsoring this post. They invited me to share how I #WinTheDay. They sent me their juicy Superfruit Wash, which has made my mornings brighter. Also, all readers can try a Superfruit product for free (w/ mail-in rebate), details here.

Love Story

By

I wanted a love story. The sort of aching, vulnerable, reluctant-but-inevitable-submission-into love found in the pages of Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice. I thought love would be poetry and English fields, even though I’ve never even been to England and nor did I marry Mr. Darcy.

The occasion of the day inspires me to put my feelings to ink. And I have so many of them. I lay awake at night and wonder: how many stories go untold? Why are women islands? I have so many stories to tell. Women and mothers—we have a story to tell.

So I got pregnant. And it was a big f—ing deal. Where’s the Walt Whitman, James Joyce, or Mark Twain of pregnancy?

I know, I know. Brilliant women all over the world become mothers and become so busy being mothers that there is hardly time to talk or write or make art about being mothers. And it makes me think there’s a great chasm in our culture because of it. Our stories should be told. Then one day I realized: they are told. A mother will sing her song to her child.

What story did your mother tell you and in what tone? Was it mellifluous and honeyed, sour, reticent, or dreamy? Love is a story. The absence of love is a story. Children grow up to be the bearers of those stories, for better or worse.

I remember my high school English teacher told us you can only really write about something you know and right now I am so intimately aware of my experience as a mother that I cannot escape writing about it. If prompted, motherly musings pour out of me.

First: I know I am not alone. I read stories about mothers crying in locked bathrooms or screaming in their cars, just to get through their day. I read even more stories about the quiet desperation of so many mothers. These women are everywhere and nowhere because these things are messy, don’t fit the ideal of motherhood, get labeled postpartum depression or something else that can be quickly dismissed as other. And even if that’s not exactly my story, it is one story and it’s a worthy story too.

Whence does a mother begin? The question reminds of the heap paradox from my undergrad philosophy class. No single grain of sand makes a heap. A couple grains of sand do not equal a heap. But eventually, you’re a heap. My mother told me you begin to be a mother during labor. That pain, she told me, is what made us mothers. I remember my labor pains even though my doctor told me I would forget them. Contractions felt like stabbing. Not like a bunch of little knives. Like one big knife pushing against my whole body. I was Sisyphus pushing a sharp rock, every 2 minutes. Oh, and I disagree with my mother.

For me, motherhood did not begin at labor. It began the moment immediately after I pushed my baby into the world and she was placed on my chest, writhing and perfect, and looked at me for the first time, eyes like blue almonds. I looked back into those eyes and she was the big bang, a cosmic singularity, Plato’s unmoved mover. All that contained in one seven pound, ten-ounce baby girl. My life was destroyed and assembled back together again in an instant.

I remember my life before becoming a mother. It was pretty indulgent. There was good food, good sex, cynicism, money, and different states of momentary intoxication. Ah, and what may be the biggest indulgence of all: the freedom to not care. At least not more than about myself – and hey, maybe not even about myself sometimes. But that’s not life anymore, that’s all gone. No one really talks about that to pregnant women. It’s not in the What to Expect book.

Since having a baby I feel like I am become halved and my baby is the other half. It’s this feeling that compels me to avoid drinking, drugs, frivolous purchases, and pushes me to obtain things like vitamins and life insurance. In a very real way, my life is no longer my own. It’s hers too. And there’s the rub. That’s what’s hard to accept as a woman who enjoys having an independent identity. And yet, while I do sometimes miss that part of my life, going back to my former life would probably be the worst thing that could happen to me. Because there would be a baby-sized hole in that alternate future.

See, my life had meaning pre-baby. But Julia has added purpose to my life unlike anything else. Through her eyes I’m seeing the world for the first time again. She inspires me to become the person I want to be, makes me think I can still change the world. Life is harder and more wonderful than ever.

And she is poetry come alive. Sometimes she is Bukowski, spitting and growling, sometimes she’s as disarming as a Brontë passage, and sometimes she’s a little bit Neruda when I catch her smiling in her sleep and I can tell she’s dreaming. I wanted a love story and quite unexpectedly I find myself in the middle of one.

jaymirandababy

Popular Posts