Today is my birthday.  It seems that for most of the last decade my birthday has fallen on a particularly busy day.  Thursdays is the most full day of the week for us – kids have multiple activities at different times and places all afternoon.  Plus, yesterday I got asked to do an English-language Lviv tour while the kids are at school, which I couldn’t refuse.

At five pm, Mila and I walked hand in hand, weaving through the streams of people on a busy sidewalk (it was crazy crowded today because of a football match). I was wearing Mila’s cello in a case made from an old Philadelphia Eagles jacket, which made my back very hot.  We were rushing to a dance supply store, and in the moment I realized that I was not annoyed.  I was enjoying being in my body.  By this time in the week, and in the day, especially on a Thursday, I start losing patience with everyone and become generally annoyed, irritated, tired.  I want the day to be over.  But today, I was enjoying the crisp autumn air, Mila’s little hand in mine, the lively streets, and the walking process. 

Somewhere deep, I had this conviction that I did not have to do anything today.  It’s my birthday, so I could have, at least theoretically, justified staying in bed and reading a This efficient medication is available in different dosages and recommended as per the tolerability of a person. buy levitra Side effectsWhen using sildenafil there are prescribed dosages prescription de viagra that should be done by following a regular regime. In fact many of us carry around pain medication with us where ever we go just on the off chance that you have heart issues or experiences any straight from the source cheap cialis for sale of the accompanying genuine symptoms amid sex, stop and look for prompt restorative consideration: Severe wooziness Fainting Chest torment Putting away place: Keep out of the span of living. The drug has been on the market for more than five years, is now known as an effective remedy and rescue. order cheap levitra book or napping.  It’s this one day of the year that I could have guiltlessly asked Zach to come home early from work and deal with the kid transfers and errands.  I could have said no to the tour too.  I could have because it was my birthday. 

Having it truly be a choice is what made it more enjoyable.  Having kids, signing them up for activities is very much a choice.  And I do enjoy it.  But today it all seemed exaggerated. 

The more intentional my life is, the more enjoyable it is.  I am lucky and privileged to have so many choices.    

When I was a kid, in Ukraine, my life involved a lot of walking, as it does now.  Walking is one of my favorite things about life.  The path often intersected my hometown’s central square, where a big Ukrainian catholic church stood. I often asked my mom if we could please stop in there for a few minutes.  Most of the time, no matter how stressed out she was or how late we were running, she’d let me. 

I liked the darkness, the quiet, the echoing of my footsteps, the flickering of candles, the overpowering wall murals.  I liked the ritual of walking in, crossing myself, kissing the pierced feet in the picture of Christ by the entrance, folding my arms on my chest, moving to the center of the empty church, and saying a prayer with a bowed head.  I usually recited the Lord’s Prayer.  I liked that prayer and have known it by heart since before I can remember.  Then I’d stand there in silence for a couple of minutes and walk out the same way I came.  The ritual was comforting.  But I was also a people-pleaser, I liked being liked.  And, to me, God was a lot like a person.  He liked it when I did things he asked and these were the actions that pleased him. 

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Religion was like nitrogen in the air.  It was overwhelming and everpresent, but not always noticeable.  Everything had christian undertones, but they were more cultural than religious – don’t shop or work on Sunday, don’t use vulgar language, cross yourself when you pass a church (thrice), give your bus seat up to an elderly person, don’t sing, dance, or eat meat during lent.  These conventions were on the same level of as “don’t shake hands over a doorstep, spit three times to prevent a bad thing from happening, don’t whistle in the house, knock on wood, fear the crosswind, wear a red thread on your wrist to ward off the evil eye (wearing your underwear inside-out also works), and smoke the devil out of the house each Christmas eve.  This latter list was leftover from my ancestor’s pagan religion in which nobody believed anymore, supposedly, but followed anyway.  Teachers, coaches, people on the street, shop ladies in the store, market sellers, all spoke and acted as if this combination of cultural norms is the one and only way.  The phrase “fear God!” was used in a the sense “be reasonable!”

Yet bible reading, church going, commandment keeping, and praying was kind of secondary.  We’d attend church once in a while, certainly on Palm Sunday and Easter.  The basic idea of christian “love towards all” was important, but only so long as it didn’t interfere with the first two tiers.  If you fit into and follow the cultural norms, then you are lovable. 

I was often frustrated with the selective religiosity of the people around me.  If we are supposed to listen to the priest and he says to come to church each Sunday and to pray each day, then why aren’t we doing that?  If the bible story teaches to be kind to those different from us, why are people saying nasty things about the gypsy on the street?  If the story of Adam and Eve teaches us to…. wait, what is that story teaching us? Wasn’t Jesus mad about people selling stuff near the temple, why is our town ok with that? What does “do not take the Lord’s name in vain” mean if “oh god” is such a prevalent part of everyone’s language? 

To get the maximum love from God, I decided that I was going to do things as fully as I could.  I’ll go to church, I’ll be nice to people, I will pray every night, and I will definitely stop using “oh god”.  There was a period of time when I walked to church on my own, to the 7am service, which I found particularly holy due to the smaller crowd and the lack of young children.  I was probably ten years old and felt pretty hard core.  I tried to push back all judgement of “I’m doing this better than you”, because, well, it wasn’t allowed.  At the same time I couldn’t logically make sense of the discrepancy “aren’t we constantly told that we need to be doing all these things? Why am I the only one who’s doing it?”

The fervent churchgoing at 7am didn’t last very long.  I may have gone only twice.  Other than being good for God, I wasn’t really getting much out of it, and overtime, my fervency wavered (God knew when he made me that I was not a morning person), but I said my prayers, and continued to stop by the church as I walked by with a deeper intention. 

When I was in sixth grade, I attended an academic magnet school where I committed a crime. 

In order to attend the school, students took an entrance exam, and were required to maintain a certain grade point average.  This was not an issue for me.  Aside from English class, where my scores averaged an embarrassing 70%, I did well in school. 

That year, my friend and I had a crush on two boys who were best friends and slackers.  We were partnered with them in dance class and spent many school-day afternoons together running around downtown.  I don’t remember having any actual conversations with these boys, but we did leave each other notes in secret places.  The most notable was the wall behind the giant statue of Taras Shevchenko, where a loose stone could be slid out.  I have no memory of anything written in these notes, but I remember the way they looked: grid-lined pieces of paper about 6x8cm with somewhat large, unpolished handwriting in purple ink.  I feel nervous, giddy butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it.

There was a rumor that our handsome boy-crushes were going to be kicked out of school due to low marks.  This worried me.  What a sad, boring place this would be without them!  We can’t let this happen!  Tutoring didn’t come to mind as a possible solution.  It was the end of April, and with mere weeks left in the school year, we needed a more urgent solution.

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By sixth grade we had at least ten different subjects: math, Ukrainian language, literature, history, geography, English, Latin, biology, dance, music, physical education, etc., most of which were taught by different teachers.  However, the official grade record was kept in one large grade book in our homeroom.  I convinced my friend that I had a risky, yet fool-proof plan. 

We snuck into our homeroom when nobody was there and found the grade book on our teacher’s desk.  The book was heavy and bound in thick brown leather.  It looked important, like a family album or a collection of potion recipes.  I ran my hand over the front cover before opening it. Student names and scores were written in beautiful handwriting, with purple fountain pen.  Indeed, our boys had too many fives and sixes (in a ten-point system).  The arithmetic mean was not in their favor.  But that’s something that can be fixed.  With my own purple fountain pen and a shaky hand, I “corrected” the sixes into eights and added a few more eights and nines into empty boxes for good measure. 

Two days later, all hell broke loose.  There was a school-wide assembly addressing the situation.  Allegations…. “cheating…lying… manipulating… illegal… immoral! unacceptable!” it was very intense.  When this shakedown didn’t result in anyone stepping forward, the school employed another tactic.  Instead of one of our classes, we all sat in chairs in a circle, while a so-called psychologist, who sat among us, talked to us about the consequences of such actions.  She explained how she can use a special psychological methodology to figure out who the cheater is if we don’t confess.  She said the police were involved. It was some intense psychological and emotional manipulation, and I was so sick that I almost lost my lunch. 

In the nick of time, my mom told me that we were moving to the United States in three weeks.  So I held strong and waited it out.  It was such a relief, although I still worried that somehow this would follow me.

Sadly, despite my best efforts, I still didn’t have those cute boys in my class next year. 

The morning after my wedding day, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of “oh, shit! Did I just mess up my life!?!?!?”  Fear, dressed in heavy work boots, was stepping on my chest and it was hard to breathe normally.  I was still five months short of my twenty-first birthday – so inexperienced and naïve, in the height of my religiosity – so the marriage would have to be endured until death if it was terrible, and paranoid that sex would never get better. 

I considered myself a very mature almost-twenty-one-year-old.  I was a college graduate, for God’s sake.  I survived communism! And immigration!  I navigated an intense religious change, had no credit card debt, or any debt, and was confidently starting graduate school in the middle of summer only two weeks after graduating. 

That morning none of it made me feel more confident.  I just felt like a fool.  Like Eve after eating the fruit, my eyes were opened, and I realized that I was naked and an idiot.  I remember acting weird and standoffish as my new husband and I looked for breakfast together in Hood River, where we had spent our first official night together.

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For some reason, this person next to me, who I had been dating for the past two years, was all a sudden a stranger to me.  Somehow it felt like I was seeing him through a different lens.  My brain was spewing around incomplete sentences: “is it always going to feel like …? Maybe I made a mis… What is normal…? Aren’t I supposed to be ecstatic? Is this happiness? I don’t think this is happ… Is this a sign from God…? Isn’t there such a thing as annulments!? eighteen hours after the wedding can’t be too late… what’s the procedure for this?”

Our nephew was turning one that day, the day after our wedding, and since Zach’s siblings were all in the area for the wedding, we were celebrating together that afternoon.  So Zach and I walked to a little shop to pick out a birthday gift.  I can’t remember what it was, but he made me laugh.  And he was kind.  This stranger was quite likeable.  On the way home he was patient, although now that I consider his feelings, my behavior was probably freaking him out. 

At the party, Zach played with the one-year-old until the kid’s face turned red from giggling (and from blood, due to a tongue biting incident).  “This guy is good with kids,” I thought as I watched this stranger, “and loves his family.”  Every so often he would look at me with smiling eyes and I knew he was happy that I was there with him. 

During one of those moments, I thought “This guy seems kinda great.  Maybe it’ll be ok.”

I have recently been hired to do “communist food tours” in Lviv.  It’s really more of a conversation than a tour.  We visit a few different food joints that have some relation to the Soviet Era – either in their style, the food choices they offer, or the attitude of the staff.  As we eat, or walk from place to place we chat about the Soviet-era cuisine, how and why the government enacted some of their food policies, what effect these had on people’s lives, why there were food shortages, how people dealt with them, when bananas became available for the first time, etc. 

Inevitably people ask me questions about my own life and family experiences during this time.  I’m generally pretty open, especially because the challenges were not something I had to deal with directly.  I didn’t have to shop for food, I didn’t have to worry about putting together a meal with meager ingredient choices, I didn’t have to spend time gardening, or worry about appearing poor.  My parents took care of that. In fact, I had a wonderful childhood. 

Sure, we lived in a small apartment and didn’t have stylish furniture or décor.  But I didn’t even notice it because everyone I knew lived in the same conditions.  I never went to restaurants or traveled abroad, but neither did anyone else I knew.  My clothes were nothing special, but I fit right in with all my friends.  Occasionally there’d be a kid that got a real Barbie, instead of a cheapie knockoff, but since it was such a novelty, we all ooohed and aaaahed over it without much jealousy.  When only one person you know gets one thing, it doesn’t feel like any kind of pattern, so I never felt like I had less In that situation, the veins and arteries of men to make the erectile condition long lasting and viagra no prescription fast confident in time of making love. However, the problems never seem to reduce, http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/pals/page/5/ order viagra and the varieties of such issues keep increasing every day. It is private and confidential, your identity is not revealed when you purchase viagra sildenafil buy cute-n-tiny.com. However, the medication must be taken by coordinated amount or measurements else, it can negatively affect your wellbeing as opposed to determining the issue. buy levitra from canada Go Here because they got more.    

I didn’t start feeling poor and self-conscious until I moved to the United States.  There were stores for every income level and a lot of talk about desirable items.  There were window displays, fashion magazines, radio advertisements.  In ninth grade, our dance team coach required us to have “white keds” for team photos at dance camp.  Everyone on the team had the white Jack Purcells.  Everyone.   My parents bought me shoes from Payless because they were less than half the price.  I felt embarrassed, and frustrated, and small. 

At the end of one of my first communist food tours I realized that being poor doesn’t make you feel poor.  What makes you feel poor is the comparison.  The difference.  The availability of options.  The constant reminder that there is something more or better or more expensive that you should strive to have. 

This realization doesn’t make me long for the failed experiment that was soviet communism. It makes me have a more balanced perspective on the rat race that is capitalism. I have no answers, but I do finally see the trap.

My month-long effort to write and share without overthinking.

Today is the first of November.  Less than two hours ago I returned from a five-day, spontaneous, family trip through Europe.  The trip was full of ups and downs – days when it felt like it wasn’t worth the time, the money, or the effort, and days when I was so fully content that I told Zach I’d be ok if I found out it was my last day to live. 

We walked into our Lviv apartment, our home, right around bedtime, squeezed the last drops of patience out of ourselves to police the kids into bed.  All I want to do now is crawl into bed with a book, or with my husband and a show on his phone that we can both watch.  However, back in September, I decided to write and publish something every day in the month of November.  I even asked my Instagram friends for writing ideas.  The day snuck up on me, as most deadlines do, and I am tempted to push the exercise off a day because I’m just not ready.

I am a dysfunctional perfectionist.  An undisciplined creator.  A lazy multipotentialite.  When I’m having a glass-half-full kind of a day – I see this as an asset.  As if I’m good quality clay that can be molded, in the right environment, into many useful things.  Honestly, most of the time I am not that positive, and feel like wasted potential.  I’m not just talking about the potential to become important, wealthy, or popular.  I’m talking about the potential to be satisfied with myself. 

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The goal this month is to write and publish something every day so that I can escape the excuses of perfectionism.  This concept has dominated so much of my life.  I almost never finish the projects I start – that blanket I was knitting for my friend’s coming baby (he’s 14 months now), the family videos that I was editing, the old family photos I was restoring, and the embroidered family portraits I was stitching for my friends because I don’t have the time to do them well enough.  Even worse, I don’t even start most of the things I am excited about because I’m convinced that I won’t complete them as well as I’d like, or as well as others have done it – that children’s book about nutrition I have been thinking about, the podcast my long-time, like-minded acquaintance and I have talked about… what’s the point of doing something if so many other people have already done it better?  Or in the unlikely case that someone hasn’t done it already – what’s the point of doing something if someone else is likely to be able to do it better? 

The point, of course, is the satisfaction that comes from completing something.  The growth and self-discovery that enhances your life.  The consistent internal validation that I am a capable, teachable human who is in some control over her life. 

So here’s to oversharing.