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Diary

The Night My Anxiety Consumed Me

12/10/2010
MLPYou can't make everyone happy.

One of my new year resolutions (and I’m starting now) is to be more open and raw.
I, much like yourself, want to achieve psychological happiness and in doing that I am starting another new year resolution.
I am finally going to the psychiatrist to deal with all the things I have never dealt with.
I want to make sure I’m much more sane before Colette is a toddler and knows what’s going on!
I have anxiety and depression but I’ve been ordered to the psychiatrist for the zillionth time to get diagnosed and treated..
.. and I’m finally doing it.

Kitty Car

My dreams have come true. I have made it to cute central, USA to meet so
many of my long-time internet acquaintances kept and lost through the years.

I was feeling fine all day.. chugging coffee to stay awake, made it through airport security with no nonsense (for the first time!).
Now I’m finally ready, finally here waiting outside with a bunch of excited and adorable girls.

I can hardly breathe.
Wait! I’m missing Colette.
Why did I come here?

I can feel it.. my anxiety taking over.
I need a drink.
I need to just start talking to someone and forget about it.

I do not realize that I have actually forgotten to take my Prozac all day.

I converse with the sweet and talented people I am lucky enough to be graced with (I was with Stephie and was so happy to see the sweetest of the sweet Audrey, Miss Kika, Cicely, a long-time web friend, Twinkiechan, and sweet as ever Maria of Locketship) and my anxiety begins to consume me.

I cannot be side-tracked.

It does not occur to me why this is all happening because sometimes I have panic attacks.

After beginning to get sick and unable to get my shit together I have to excuse myself.
I have to take a cab back to LA.
I can’t stay another minute.

I arrive at a friend’s apartment, I change out of my outfit, I leave.
Kimi is picking me up and she’s here.. somewhere.
I walk outside and she can’t find me. The street is split.

I go back inside to look at the directions and try to explain.
She can’t find me.
Why wont my brain work?
I keep having panic attacks and I finally tell her I’ll just leave and walk
until I see a busy street.
So off I go, suitcase and suitcase-sized purse in tow.

I need to leave the key in case I get lost..
I don’t know this area and there are no street lights.
I drop it in an orange cone as I leave after making sure no one was around.

I walk all over and around, not familiar with the area.
More darkness. More houses.
My phone is dead and I cannot even reach Kimi anymore.

I walk back to the apartment and try to get the key because I’m starting to
get really upset and worried.
I cannot reach it. Under the cone was a metal pipe and the key has fallen down it.
You have got to be kidding me.
I make the worst decisions in this state of mind.

I start crying and getting sick.
Why can’t I keep it together?
How am I going to get ahold of Kimi?

I see a man on the sidewalk.
His eyes are shrouded by a large, black top hat that sits on top of his long, black hair.
“Did you call for a cab?” , I ask pleadingly.
He looks me up and down and tells me that I do not belong here.
With my suitcase and large purse I stick out like a sore thumbnail.
I beg the cab driver to let me ride with them to their destination and then take me to mine.
He says no.
I can see in his eyes that he’s not prepared to deal with a crazy girl and her suitcases.

I stand back, understanding and proceed to go back up the sidewalk.
He tells me to wait.. get in.

On the way to the mad hatter’s destination he tells me all about why I
should go with him to Rainbow Bar & Grill.
How it’s probably the safest place for me with a suitcase because a lady just got shot in front of it recently.
There will probably be lots of lights and news crews there.
I politely decline.
I’m already on the verge of having some kind of breakdown.

On the way to Rainbowland my phone finally turns on.
I have just enough battery to try to make a call.
I get through and Kimi tells me where to meet her.
Home Depot on Sunset Blvd.

Taxi driver takes me through all of the lights again on a trip that I am not mentally present for.
The lights blur beside me and I wonder if this is all going to end.

Finally we arrive at Home Depot and she’s no where to be seen.
There are sketchy characters running around in the sheds on display.
I ask if I can wait here and the cab driver tells me it isn’t safe.
Another panic attack comes on and I start crying.
She’s not here.. my phone is dead.. where is she?

I ask if he can take me to a gas station..
When we arrive I tear apart my suitcase in the back of his car.
Glitter and tulle fly everywhere.
Tarina Tarantino bags of jewels litter the floor.
I don’t even care. I’m not able to remain in tact. I cannot find my phone charger.
Surely I didn’t leave it in her apartment?
Did it fall out of my suitcase?
Polkadot heels fly out the window.

I tear everything I have apart.
I pour my purse out into the seat.
I do not even wince as my dead grandmother’s necklace falls to the ground.

I begin to give up.
I begin to get very overwhelmed and unable to focus.

I start to pack everything up and there, stuck in a mass of stockings, it is.
My phone charger.

I leave everything I have and run inside to ask if I can charge my phone.
After what seems like endless hours of trying to turn it back on with no avail it gets enough power to work.
I call Kimi.
She’s finally found the apartment.

I tell her to come back, to come to the Shell on Sunset Blvd.
She’s on her way.

I pack up my suitcase, pay the man the miniscule fee he asks for and thank him.
We’ve developed a bond by now and he asks me to take his number.
He’ll be around until 2am in case I don’t find my friend.
There are always more amazing people to be found.

I sit my suitcase near the counter, plop on it and wait.
I buy a water.
I suddenly realize I forgot to take my anxiety medication.
So that’s all it was.. it happens to all of us, right?
We can’t be embarrassed or ashamed.
We have to move on.. if anyone doesn’t like you for who you are then they don’t really like you.
If they cannot stand you at your worst then they do not deserve you at your best.

Kimi arrives and we talk about music, raves and cats the whole way home.
She plays electro and we ride into through the lights of LA on a feeling of peace and an unexplainable feeling of belonging.

Diary

Moving Time and Living Out of Boxes

10/23/2010
happy birthday

Remember all those times I complained of not having my own office anymore? Of everything being transitional and having our stuff in boxes and in storage? Well we finally settled down into our new home. It took so much work to get here and I’m excited to get to share it with Colette!

I’m unpacking all of my favorite things. Things I forgot even existed.

Which reminds me of the purpose of this post, to remind you that you also own things you don’t even know exist.

Living without all of my things for over a year (I had my clothes and computer of course!) really helped me pinpoint my hoarding problem. I found I had packed and moved boxes upon boxes of stuff, most of which I didn’t need, to our new apartment. Not that my house was cluttered.. as you can see from the previous articles featuring my first apartments.. but I’ve always had too much to display! So what’s the point?

It really forced me to take a look at everything as I unpacked items one by one.. it made me really appreciate the things I had missed and realized I should donate a lot of the things I had forgotten about.. in getting rid of your excess items you can focus on your favorites OR things that really matter!

most of them

I’ve been clearing and storing.. I have this silly stack of vintage and kitschy cookbooks that I can’t seem to part with but I had to move to the closet because I felt the amount of books was getting a little overwhelming.. I’ve found that rather than collect a lot of something you like to display.. it’s best to display your favorites and possibly part with the rest (unless it’s your hobby, like Blythe is mine).

I like to have people over a lot and I’d rather them see things that really matter to me and my environment rather than a cluttered collection of dusty maneki nekos. Perhaps some of my favorites from Japan and a cute family photo? I have a thing for jars of candy.

Today is the day to get your life in order. To sort, shelve and box. To donate and to reuse. Look around and notice the clutter, notice if there’s anything that you’re not attached to. Make room for favorite things, clear spaces for new treasures.

If I can do it, you can do it.

Fear of Fear

I had originally planned to include photos of every home I’ve ever lived in but of course my computer crashed upon arriving in our new home. Did I say how anxious I am because I’m unable to work or access client files?

I thought you should know, however, that I’ve finally moved into my new office and work will ensue very soon. There is SO MUCH I’ve missed and so much I appreciate now. Most of all you.

Diary

Still Miseducated and Becoming a Mommy

06/08/2010

Hello everyone!
So sorry for the lack of updates lately, I bet you’ve been wondering where we are! We still have lots of DIY goodies (summer DIY!) coming, new articles and of course our super special giveaway is still in the works for you. You’ll be able to join in shortly!

Just so you know I’ve had my baby — she was premature but she’s doing pretty well. Learning to eat and breathe at the same time! She’s staying in a children’s hospital, which is TORTURE, but we’re hoping she’ll be home in a week or less! We visit her all day everyday which explains for the lack of updates around here — but I have not forgot about Miseducated (you’re still one of my top priorities!).

If you’d like to stay updated you can follow me on twitter or join the Miseducated fanclub on Facebook. We’ll keep you posted!

Stay tuned for many more rainbows in the future! Thank you for understanding!

xox

Diary

Find Out What You Really Want

05/21/2010

Have you ever walked to the ocean, when no one else was in sight? The seagulls aren’t even awake yet and all you hear is the roar of waves crashing against the rocks? The sand is still cold because the sun has yet to emerge from the horizon, the sky is still gray. All you hear is that deep, rolling thunderous noise of the tide coming in.

And all you can think is “Woah.”

sandtoes

Because you see, with your own two eyes, just how big the ocean is. That it’s so much larger then you originally thought. Sure, textbooks may have taught you that our Earth is mostly water, but now you’ve seen it.

I definitely had my own, ocean-sized ‘Woah’ moment last night.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ashli Jade, I’m an on-again-off-again blogger living in the suburbs, which has led to several cases of same-house-syndrome ( Ever walked into one that wasn’t yours?) as well as- in combination with other things going on- mild and moderate depression.

My parents had met in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The second most populous city in the state and you still have to drive an hour to Denver if you want to do something worth your time. They married shortly after I was born, and soon after a separation between the two landed myself, my newborn brother, and my mother in Sacramento, California with a strange old woman who smelled of something she called ‘spinach’ and hung lowercase Ts in every room and made us touch our foreheads, chests, and shoulders before eating ( I would later learn that she was my grandmother).

Eventually, a divorce was issued, which brings us to them now living on opposite sides of the same street and me not remembering a time when they were together. You’d think, after sixteen-seventeen years I would have gotten over the fact that I never really had a family. That I would have found some way to cope after all that time. But the truth is what I didn’t know what a family was, or what I was missing. I had been under the impression that what had happened was what was supposed to happen ( Don’t get me wrong. Both my mom and my dad are amazing people and we love each other very much and so on and so forth.)

The shocking thing was, as I got older and became more associated with other people and their families, and saw what they all had in common that mine didn’t ( ” You eat Thanksgiving dinner together?”), I never really became resentful toward the situation, sometimes upset, but strangely never bitter towards them. And that’s where our story begins.

For as long as I could remember, I’ve had one mission and one mission only: Get a boyfriend. In second grade, all I wanted was a boyfriend, and the same goes throughout the years until about midway through my sophomore year of high school. As I continued getting older, the obsessive goal had become more and more intricate. Suddenly, I didn’t just want a boyfriend, I wanted a high school sweetheart who I would get married to and we could have a healthy relationship and nothing would ever go wrong.

Crazy thing was I never really got one. Of course there had been flings here and there, but I was far too picky. No one that crossed my path lived up to the ridiculous expectation.

But never once did I question why I had wanted it so badly. Yes, all my friends were always in loving relationships, but they all also had horrible piercings and self-done tattoos and I didn’t want any of those.

Last night, something came to the surface. It was never about having a date on Friday night. It was never about just having a boyfriend, that’s not what I wanted. I had wanted my own family. My own family to have holiday dinners. My own family to sit with at church. My own family.

Currently, do I know that I have a family? Yes. Did I have to date someone to find these wonderful people? Absolutely not.

But that it isn’t the point of this.

The point is that sometimes, if not all the time, we need to ask ourselves why. If we don’t, we may spend our lives trying to accomplish something that isn’t worth our time, nor is it what we really want. Because if you don’t ask why, by the time you realize that that what you’re really striving for isn’t what you want, but the feeling associated with it, you will have already wasted to much time and energy you could have put into doing something you love.

Money, fame, significant others, luxury items…They don’t emanate some healing force that magically cures unhappiness or illness. They don’t make you young and full of energy.

Ask yourself why, and keep asking yourself why you want what you want, why you’ do the things you do, and eventually you’ll come to the bottom line find feelings that you’ve been chasing, and you can decide whether or not it’s worth going after. Or if you’re going after it the right way.

Diary

Your Hostess Has Fallen Down the Rabbit Hole

04/27/2010

My pride! My joy! Miseducated, I have missed blogging inspirations and hearing from you. I’d never leave weekdays without posts unless life has taken me for ransom.

It just so happened this weekend that my never-ending morning sickness had finally gotten ahold of me. I was dehydrated and having cramps and contractions — how scared was I!

It’s 2 months early, Colette still has quite awhile to bake in my stomach.

So I was rushed to the hospital and ordered to stay while they pumped me full of fluids and monitored my little stomach dweller.

The bad news is I had to stay.. the good news is all the time spent monitoring Colette paid off because she’s *very* active and healthy for her age! It was music to our ears.

Now, as for the wonderful world of Miseducated..

We have quite the inspirational, diy, career-inspiring AND GIVEAWAY goodies coming to you very soon! I’ve been collecting some of the sweetest handmade items from artists around the world to offer you in our Spring Giveaway.

This is yet another way for Miseducated to support handmade artists. Did you know you can apply to be featured in a future giveaway? Miseducated will purchase your handmade goodies and give our wonderful readers a chance to get ahold of them.

So stay tuned for new ezines and newsletters arriving into your inbox (you can submit your email in the ezine space in the sidebar!), inspiration and of course tons of color and unconventional Miseducated fun.

I speak for all of our contributers when I say, you make everything worth it!

Diary

Miseducated Scrapbook: Online Art Journaling

04/12/2010

Yikes! I’ve missed you so much lately and getting to be creative in both work and play. This past week was entirely draining but I left it feeling much more enlightened (..and slow ..and tired .. and pregnant).

I have never experienced happiness like this, absolute fulfillment.. Colette opened a new book of endless inspiration and motivation to create the world we want.

Did I tell you she’s kicking now?

So anyway, as of recently I’ve been getting back into keeping my sketch/idea book up to date and I’ve found out that still the craft of art journaling is still so fun and addicting. I decided to share it with you and inspire you to do your own journal, letters or scrapbooks! Big plans for these so if you’re interested in contributing please let me know!

So I’ve written you a little letter..

As for inspiration.. hit up your local thrift store and flip through the vintage magazines. When I feel uninspired I take a break with my magazine collection and then I imagine ways to translate home decor into web design and graphic art. It’s even great for inspiration to just relax and read as I’ve said before. Remember, a 20 minute break can help tremendously!

Until later, stay sweet, inspired and colorful.

letter

Diary

This is Getting Too Personal

03/14/2010

Things are changing so fast these days I can hardly keep up — I’ve had to become a new person (mommy) in 5 months and all the while planning an entirely new life, career goal, place I call home. There’s no room to be selfish and lazy anymore — all of my time is now precious as it always should have been, it wasn’t until now that I’ve realized LIFE IS GOOD. You can do what you want, be what you want, have what you want. It’s all just waiting for you to work for it. I used to think working for it was impossible, I shied away. However now I see that if you devote your life to your passion it can really pay off in a whole lot of ways.

doit

Speaking of which.. Did you see I’m actually posting everyday now? That’s right! I schedule them all in advance now so that I’m on top of all of the art/design I need to create and so you’re sure to get your post every morning.

bunnybelly

I’ve started joining my lovely staff and contributers here in the wonderful activity of guest posting. I’ve finally began opening up and devoting much of my free time to blogging/design/marketing. My life is filled with purpose again and I’ve found that I am doing what I love. If you start seeing changes around here this is what is happening because of this realization.. I’m making small changes so that I can devote more and more time to you and your wonderful creativity. If I could eventually offer artist scholarships and grants I would be a very thankful woman, this is one of my dreams. Helping you wonderful women artists achieve your dreams with me.

Do I regret the extreme dry spell as I devoted my time to restudying marketing and all of those hidden goodies in media law and other journalism classes my life was filled with once upon a time? Sometimes I feel I wasted a lot of time and wish I would have realized all of this sooner, but it happens with time.

A sweet friend once said, “You’re preparing for something big in the future.”

I never forgot that and nor should you. What is it you’re preparing for? All of the unique lifestyle experiences you’ve had are shaping you — what you do with it will steer your life.

maternity

To show you how passionate I am, this was GOING to be an awkward, silly, too informative post about my recent discovery in the journey to becoming a mother. My breasts have stopped feeling quite so sore, in fact they were beginning to feel a bit cold. I quickly noticed I’ve started into the wonderful world of breast milk and things are going to get a lot worse. 🙄 However, I cannot wait because my obsession that tops even work is my sweet little girl, Colette. I’ve been collecting the most adorably cute items I can find and storing them for her. I cannot wait to meet the little pixie who stole my heart and pushed me into my passion.

East Meets West Maternity at pingmag

Diary

Inside her Stomach is Her Heart

02/02/2010

Occassionally I’ll get personal and I’ll let you peek into the nonsensical world I call my own. I adore reading your stories and connecting with you, so I feel the best thanks is to be honest and sharing as well.

rainbow bunny

Me? Pregnant? Surely not.. I’d always been told it would be tough for me to conceive if not impossible. I had stopped taking my birth control for about a year now and I had to admit I felt a little strange.

Many friends in the past had told me, “You just know.” .. and I had found that very hard to believe, but here I was feeling the same way they described. Something was different. I began to feel constantly nauseated and went to the dr assuming I had caught some sort of flu. They wanted to do a pregnancy test and as they excitedly sprinted back into the room I knew what the result was.

“.. So are you trying to have a baby? It’s positive!”

My husband looked at the ceiling in absolute shock, tears of happiness along with smiles and a lot of “are you serious??” We had always wanted to someday.. but just weren’t sure if it would happen so we didn’t put a lot of pressure on it. I had hardly considered a baby and here I was expecting. We left with some shots and tests ecstatic beyond our wildest imaginations. .. So we have a new family member?

I’ve tried not to get too attached to the idea and waited to tell everyone because deep down inside I worry that something will be wrong but there it is, nestled in my abdomen safe and sound. It’s too good to be true. I’m so excited to meet them, care for them and show them the world. It’s been my absolute dream to weave a childhood of happiness and sweet memories with my husband.

I’m 17 weeks pregnant now and in three weeks we’ll find out if the baby is a girl or a boy — we’re excited for either, of course! I’m pretty feminine so a girl would easily become the center of my world, but with the unsurpassable love I experienced when my nephew was born and as he has grown, I know I’ll be absolutely pleased with a healthy boy or girl.

Oh, Miseducated, how I miss you and our talks — I’ve developed a new schedule so that I’ll have more time for my very favorite project, you. In the future you’ll meet my newest work of art, the baby of my dreams.