Bridezilla, Out.

I am just all about pretty graphic quotes via Pinterest. I can’t help myself, I just love them.

But this quote is my life today. Last night my fiancé and I found out that the ceremony location we’d been dreaming about for our wedding just isn’t going to happen. No amount of persuading or arguing or loop-hole-searching can change it. Because of our time frame. Because of weird English church parish laws (I can’t even…). Because weddings are 95% compromise and 5% exactly what you always dreamed of.

I feel like being grumpy and snippy and ungrateful. I don’t feel like cherishing the positive. I feel like crawling into a little ball and bemoaning the fact that my English countryside wedding (which was a compromise in itself), isn’t a possibility anymore.

But I can’t. I can’t let myself go there. There are so many incredibly beautiful things in my life that make that kind of behavior absolutely unacceptable. Sometimes I have to remind myself how far I’ve come, and how blessed I am. I have an amazing person (soon-to-be life partner) in my life, someone I thought I’d have to wait forever to find. I have my health, I’m almost finished with higher education, I’m starting my first grown-up job soon (!!!), and most importantly, I did it. I left the small, abysmal town that was my given circumstance growing up. I was determined to find a way to go out into the world and carve a life for myself that was completely different from what I was given as a child.

And I did. I am literally almost as far as I can be from The Middle of Nowhere, WA (4,000+ miles, to be exact).

It was so hard. And there were so many unbelievable challenges that, to this day, are known only to me and a handful of others. And I didn’t do it alone—I owe so much of my happiness to the outpouring of support from my fiancé and my best friend. As well as close friends who didn’t even know how much they were helping me. And when I think about those horrifyingly desperate times where I felt completely unsure of my future, I am so unbelievably grateful to be exactly where I am right now. Where my biggest worry is whether or not I’ll have my wedding at an English countryside church or a modern English church.

I mean, come on, girl.

Perspective is one of the most essential things to have in life. Bad times are just that: bad. Horrible, sometimes. But they are a powerful reminder of just how difficult life can actually be, and in turn, how trivial certain anxieties and worries really are.

So even though the sky is grey today and it’s probably going to rain during our engagement party (and probably our wedding, let’s be honest) and I won’t have most of my family and friends here for my wedding and I have a mountain of student loans to pay off and my fiance and I won’t be able to buy our first flat for at least another year…it’s all going to be okay. Because that stuff is actually not that big of a deal. I’ve been through much worse, and if my struggling self from the ’90s, early 2000s, and especially from 2010-2012 could see me acting like a spoiled princess crying her eyes out over a silly church, she would not be impressed. She would purse her lips and raise one eyebrow as she explained that those problems are 100% fixable and have no real bearing on anything.

It’s all going to work out. As always, it’s not the fanfare that matters. It’s pretty and lovely and makes for a wonderful Pinterest wedding pin, but it doesn’t really matter. People matter. And in choosing to be kinder than I feel, I’m acknowledging that the “stuff” that is so upsetting and anxiety-inducing takes a backseat to the people I love and the relationships I cherish.

Bridezilla, out.

Springtime In London & Engagement Parties

It’s been so sad and gloomy for the past two days, so I’m so excited about the springy sunshine today. I’m going on a run after the “post” arrives (hopefully containing my contract!).

But just look at how glorious it is.

image

(1) my new favorite pattern/color combo = b/w polka dots and coral, (2) a gorgeous cherry blossom tree on my walk to uni, (3) a pretty arch and cobblestone walk on my way to my new office (sorry for the wonky angle, blame my jittery second-interview hands), (4) the centerpiece for the cake my future mother-in-law is making for our engagement party this weekend.

As I prepare for our party (making my spinach artichoke dip tomorrow!), I’ve realized that everything I know about engagement parties, I learned from the movies:

  • The future bride must always, always wear her hair in a classy tousled side-bun up-do kind of thing. You don’t wear your hair down to your engagement party, it’s always up.
  • The future groom will get totally wasted and his friends will ask him if he’s really “ready to settle down”
  • The future bride will have to retell the proposal story no less than one million times
  • Everyone will have suggestions for how the wedding can be “better” than whatever ideas the bride and groom have (aka more like their wedding from the 60s/70s/80s/90s/early 2000s) 
  • Someone will ask about future babies
  • Some irrelevant relative will ask to be in the wedding party

Hopefully only a couple of these things will actually happen at our party (the up-do is already on lock), because all I really want is to eat mini-cheeseburgers and buffalo wings with a bottomless glass of white wine surrounded by my future British family.

That isn’t too much to ask, right? #cantwait

Hannah Horvath, Eat Your Heart Out: I Got A Job, Y’allllllll

One year ago I graduated from college with only the following year planned out: go to grad school and complete my MA.

But late 2013/2014 and beyond? I had no idea what I was going to be doing, or where.

One month ago I got engaged to the love of my life. That pretty much answered where I was going to be for the rest of the year and the immediate future, but what I would be doing was still up in the air.

And today I woke up and still couldn’t quite believe it was real.

I got a job offer.

And subsequently, a job.

Not an unpaid internship. Not paid work experience. A real, grown-up, salary-paying, fancy-clothes-meriting job.

I’m just gonna say it: Hannah Horvath would be so jealous of me.

I’m still reeling from the news. And I am so unbelievably excited that after all the months of self-doubt and uncertainty, I finally found a company that is a) really cool and innovative b) incredibly global and progressive, and most importantly, c) willing to pay me money to work on social media for some really fantastic clients.

The other absolutely-crazy-only-happens-in-movies part of this modern day fairytale (where the girl gets the job, not the guy) is that my new boss is from a town not even 100 miles from my hometown in the middle of nowhere in eastern Washington.

Remember how I live in London now? It’s rare that people even know I’m from Washington state (not D.C.!), let alone recognize the name of my 5,000-person hometown. Finally, someone who won’t mock my Americanisms.

And then there’s also the fact that my new office is a breeze to get to from my house in Surrey. It’s also in a really pretty part of central London with lots of other creative agencies, cafes, restaurants, and shops. Brilliant. 

Sometimes things are just meant to be. And I could feel it 100% after I left my interview last Friday; I was just hoping the feeling was mutual.

I will be breathing a sigh of relief for months now, because so many aspects of my life revolved around trying to find a job. For example, I just deleted a multi-file browser bookmark organizing companies I was interested in, recruitment agencies, etc. and it felt sooo good to not have that thing staring at me every time I open Chrome. I also put the 5-8 different copies of my CV into a file so they weren’t cluttering up my desktop. Oh, and I don’t have to stress over cover letters anymore! 

Job hunting is the worst, isn’t it?

It made me question whether I would have to do a job I hated for a few years before actually getting to do something I’m passionate about. I also thought I’d have to work for free again. Or temp like Ryan on The Office. Or basically do anyone’s job on The Office. Or go back to waitressing for a while (ugggghhh oh my god the worst).

I’m going to have to control my dorky ear-to-ear grin on my first day because I seriously cannot express how excited I am to get started. And I’m just so grateful for this opportunity. The job climate has changed so much in the last 5 years—at 18 I thought I would graduate from college with my diploma in one hand and a job offer in the other, but it’s just not that simple of a transition anymore. (Maybe it was never that simple?)

And on that note, I don’t think any one single piece of advice helped me, because job hunting is so individual. Every online news source and blog is full to the brim with articles about youth unemployment and tips for landing your first job, but the secret is to really just persist and not take employment rejection too personally. 

Also, peruse Pinterest for pretty words of wisdom. That helps too.

But I have to say, the one beautiful thing that has come out of this incredibly grim recession is the solidarity among people my age. Most of my friends have all struggled to find their first job too, and it’s one of those generational cohort things that will always make sense to us. We’ve suffered through the unanswered applications, email after email with the word “unfortunately” in it (the worst kind of email, amirite?), and hopefully we will all be able to relate to one another with our triumphant story of landing that coveted, unicorn-esque first job in the intimidating post-recession economy.

I’m starting the next chapter of my life in mid-June (time to kick the dissertation-writing into high gear!), and I am already counting down the days. 

Also how soon is too soon to update your Linkedin profile?

My “Toto, We’re Not In Kansas Anymore” Expat Moments

I spent the first 22 years of my life living in America. I am American, and I always will be. But living in the UK is a weird mix of familiar and foreign—London is multicultural enough to make you feel as if you’re in NYC or other urban American cities because we speak the same language, the general food palette is similar, our culture is remarkably similar, etc…but there are times when I realize I’m far, far from home.

Examples?

  • My fiance has pointed out that the American pronunciation of “parmesan” (cheese) sounds like “farmer john” (and ugh, I hate to admit it but he’s totally right)
  • I get called “woodsy” for explaining what a tomato bug is
  • Everyone talks about the weather all. the. time. And not just for the first 1 minute of a conversation, for like 15-20 minutes a conversation can go on about the unpredictable British weather.
  • As much as Americans get all jazzed up about a British accent, Londoners couldn’t really care less about my American accent. Something tells me if I were Southern American this would be different.
  • Spelling things phonetically used to be a skill of mine. Now I’m just completely screwed. Everything with an “er” ending sounds like an “a” ending. I spent 15 minutes (with no luck) looking for an iPhone app called “viba” because I had only heard my future sister-in-law pronounce it. It’s really called “viber.”
  • It is very difficult to find an equivalent to American cheddar cheese (the orange kind, like Tilamook’s) in a land that only really does white, super-mature cheddar. It’s even harder to explain why pasta in cheese sauce (aka mac and cheese) is delicious to someone who has no concept for it.
  • Hearing a real, live American speak to you after months of only speaking directly to Brits (except on skype) is really unsettling. When I was in Dublin surrounded by loud, obnoxious American tourists I caught myself mocking them in my head, and then I realized I was literally making fun of my own accent. Is this a very specific type of Stockholm Syndrome?
  • I’ve lived here for a long time now, but my heart (and wallet) still hurts when I have to convert GBP to USD. It hurts so much. That “cheap” burger and fries from the kind of gross restaurant for £10? Oh, that’s more like $16. For a measly, sub-par burger and fries? Can I go to Red Robin instead?

But actually, I absolutely love it here. I can’t wait to go back home for a visit (it’s been almost 10 months since I’ve been in the USA!), but I am really excited to build my life here. Even if I do get “the mickey taken out of me” for saying “ass-burgers” (asperges) or “snooker” (a peculiar type of pool that is pronounced “snooka” but is spelled “snooker” so that is how I pronounce it), I still love it here.

Plus I get to giggle at the unintentionally proper/snooty/well-to-do way that Brits say…well, everything.

Real Talk: Love Yourself Unconditionally

This is the misguided logo for the yet-to-be-seen t-shirt line supposedly put forward by the extremely talented Rebel Wilson. And I don’t like it at all.

I think it’s a very natural inclination to set up dichotomies in life. It’s much easier to understand things if they’re identifiable with an extreme (like hot or cold), rather than some ambiguous place on a continuum (coldish springtime morning bird temperature). Which is why, I think, lots of people are able to develop positive self-images by way of hating their exact opposite. If you’re more thick than thin, it’s easy to wear a t-shirt that makes fun of “skinny bitches” and feel a bit better about yourself. That mean skinny girl who was surely named Rachel or Britney or Courtney (sorry to the nice girls with those perfectly acceptable names, I didn’t name my elementary school bullies!) probably called you “fat” in the 5th grade, and now is your chance to get back at her.

Except not really.

Because defining your self-confidence through the dismantling of another’s is not healthy or even that satisfying.

But why is it so hard to just be content with ourselves, without the temptation of comparison?

I don’t really have an answer, but I do have an anecdote.

Full disclosure, I used to be (and sometimes still am) self-conscious about my height. I’m 5’9”, and while I barely notice it now because I found myself a partner who is over 6’3” with a (mostly) equally-tall family and I live in one of the biggest and most multicultural cities in the world, where there is no single “norm,” I grew up wishing I could just be 5’5” or 5’6” like “everyone else.”

But I also grew up with an acute awareness of obvious displays of self-consciousness, so what did I do? I put on a front of fierce self-confidence (because you have to fake it till you make it in my book), and I decided to celebrate my height—at least outwardly—by belittling short people and finding as many examples of tall, successful women for me to align myself with. Now, there’s no shame in trying to find someone you want to look up to, but I started to separate people into two categories: tall, elegant and successful or short, squat, and annoying.

Whenever I felt jealous of the short or average-height girls who always had boyfriends and could wear 5” heels without towering over anyone, I contented myself with the “fact” that I would be more successful because (and I quote my 15-year-old self) “tall people are more successful than short people.” Because some article told me so. Also: heightism.

Not cool, 15-year-old Kelsie, not cool. Now I realize how ugly it is to think that way, and to build myself up by tearing others down. In fact, I bonded with one of my very best friends from college (who is about 5’0”) over our mutual lack of understanding for the opposite extremes in height. And I look at her, and I think, how could I have ever generalized about “short people” for even a second?

But basically, what I’m trying to say is, you should absolutely love yourself for every totally abnormal or completely average thing that makes you, “you.” And you should love yourself because you are fantastic, because there is beauty in those who find happiness and contentedness with themselves while also helping others to feel the same way, no matter how dissimilar. Just because you’re tall or short or “plus size” or super-skinny or ginger or curly-haired or you have dark skin or light skin…just, whatever it is, you can relate to people who don’t look like you. And chances are, they have something about themselves that bothers them as well, and your little flippant comments that generalize about people of a particular “type” are hurting their feelings while making you look like a jerk.

It’s a hard thing to love yourself unconditionally—probably an impossible thing. But if I ever have kids, I will try to teach them that their self-confidence shouldn’t depend on someone else’s self-consciousness.

Also, for the record, I think it is absolutely ridiculous to use your height as a personal branding device.

What in the hell does being short have to do with your ability to do your job? 

Nothing, that’s what. Unless you’re like, a basketball player or the angry person who yells at rowers in crew (a cox? what is it?).

But my real conclusion is: haters to the left.