lucky number seven.

this week has been interesting. you’ve clearly seen how, um, introspective i’ve been, just through my writing. i guess that’s what vacation/traveling does for me. when i go to nola, it’s like…times a million. and i’ve mentioned that i’m at this odd moment of life, where i feel more in line with who i am, and who i am supposed to be than ever. and i’ve had almost ‘looking on from above’ experiences of breaking relational patterns that are not good for me. and i’m in a such a moment of life where everything is perfect. and messy. and raw. and uncertain.

and all i’m trying to do is make it. one step at a time. actually, what i’m trying to do is be ok with only going one step at a time. you see, my writing, my reading, my studying- it all adds up to me putting this immense amount of pressure on myself to implement the things i know about relationships into my own life. it’s like “the shoemaker’s children have no shoes” syndrome. but the opposite. i figure that because i’ve identified a relational pattern, or schema, without the help of a therapist, then i must figure out how to get over that pattern…instantly.

and sometimes, like i’ve said, i get to the point where i know why i am there, and what got me there, but not really what to do about it. and more importantly, i know what i need to do moving forward in relationships… but what about the ones i already have? the ones that were created with the not so healthy relationship patterns? how i do say to those people, “oh, you just filled an unhealthy need in my life that i have realized is unhealthy, and i can’t and don’t want to do this anymore,” when they are not in any place to realize that i probably filled the same pattern for them?

well, either way, i’ve been very introspective this week. in a very ok with lots and lots of alone, figure it out, time. for example, i’m writing this day’s, saturday’s, blog post at 11 pm. because today i did exactly what i needed. i spent a lot of quality time with a few select people that i knew would get it. because, as i begin to figure it all out… i realize that some of the people in my life don’t quite get it. get that i want to figure it out. or that there is more.

and this week i was able to pull myself away from the situation, life, and mostly, others‘ relational issue projection and just be ok. with me. myself.

this month is probably boring some of you. a blog post a day about steph finding herself in a much less analytical, much less rational and theoretical way. it’s much more… messy. and i’m trying to just be ok with that. so you should too. one day, you’ll be able to say, remember when she was a mess, writing a blog a day about new agey nonsense trying to find herself? look at her now.

hoping a better place is all i need, with moments of innocence and mystery. oh it’s the little things you miss, like waking up, all alone. it’s the little things you miss, when you’re underneath it all…and all your friends seem like enemies when you’re broken down and empty…

waiting. city and colour.

this weekend, i dove head first back into writing on stephdub.com. with datenight demanding much of my attention, i had left stephdub to thrive off of one very controversial and comment gathering post. i felt inspired and in touch with stephdub the writer. so i wrote, and posted on a saturday evening. when i knew that no one would be around to read it.

sunday morning i went to log into my site analytics to see how many un-noone’s did read the post, and my page was giving me this crazy weird error. so i sent a nonchalant email with a screen shot inquiring about the error.

i leave, have a wonderful and craft packed sunday and come home to watch bored to death and reply to a comment on my post that came in the night before.

at which point i see a 403 error on stephdub.com. and then i see someone tweet about not being able to access stephdub.com.

so i text @gerardramos, try not to worry, and go to bed.

at 10:38am i receive this text: ***king hard drive’s crashed. they are working on getting the data and restoring.
i respond: oh nooooo, i’m sorry, is that as terrible as i think it is? (thinking, well if they are restoring the data, this is one hell of a nightmare that will blow over for me, but be a royal pain in the ass for g.)

at 1:51pm his response: it’s way worse than you think :(

at 2:58pm my blackberry buzzes with an email titled “complete failure.”

i open it to find, among a few others, these paragraphs:
Over the weekend the server was hit with an attack.  One by one, the services were brought down and eventually all data was corrupted.  When the backups ran over night, they were corrupted as well and both hard drives crashed to an un-recoverable state.

The company will not send me the drives because of security issues and they do not have data recovery services internally. They did what they could, but there is nothing left. 

apparently, this is a similar thing that happened to ma.gnolia a few months ago. the recovery process… well, what recovery process?

it’s time to scavenge what’s in google’s cache and dive back into getting stephdub back up and running. a.sap.

and as i read that email i was oddly calm. and said ok, universe… i trust you.

you see, october has handed me doozy after doozy. and i have thrown my hands up, embracing this crazy crooked path with all of the love and trust i have in me.

it started, actually, in september. g and i were spending a sunday afternoon, post brunch, chatting about dating, business, success and progress as i prepared for datenight radio. we reflected on how stephdub.com had been going strong for a year and a half, and how far it, well, i’d come.

when he convinced me that fateful day in May 2008, to make all of my writing public, and start stephdub.com i had just quit my job, moved across the country, and was sleeping on a couch in a dear friend’s bedroom. how was i going to start a site? well, thanks to a good friend all i had to do was register stephdub.com, play in photoshop one sunday afternoon drive down the coast to create a “logo,” and have him set up my wordpress account and host it on his server.

and there i was, a year and a half later, with a radio show, a content filled blog, and a paying job discussing that it was maybe time to ‘revamp’ stephdub.com. time to incorporate datenight and my podcasts with shades of perspective and my writing. but where to begin? i still only had a couple hundred dollars to actually spend on any sort of upgrading… in what area do i spend it?
an actual logo or printable image for stephdub/shades of perspective/datenight?
some sort of site design?

and even when i made that decision, who will do the work? see you all, my designer friends in SF. you’re too badass for me. i can’t afford you. and i respect friendships too much to ask for favors…and i know your work is worth way more than i have to spend.

either way life was good. the weekend after this was my birthday party, and g’s birthday party. i was excited to party hardy and then get back on the exciting track to success with datenight and stephdub.com.

and then it started. without going into too much detail, i had to make a very difficult decision. one that created a battle between my rational, pragmatic self and my intuition. i wrestled with what to do for a while, ultimately choosing intuition and signs i would love to have ignored and…

i quit my radio show. i am no longer a dj at pirate cat radio.

like i said, there were many factors that went into this decision, but it was the right one. since, however, it was such a challenging decision, i didn’t really tell anyone. i needed to sit with it. i needed to process it and own it.

and this past weekend, i started telling a few close friends.

i also threw myself back into writing. and started planning on continuing datenight, in simply podcast form.

and then this.

i lose stephdub.com.
it is a message, universe? well i hear it loud and clear: “step up, steph. keep pushing.”

so here i am thinking… i have a clean slate. and a little bit of money, and a long ass october almost behind me.
what do i do next? well, i decided to put it out there to you… the interwebs, the twitterverse…. my friends.
i see this as the perfect opportunity to rebrand stephdub. or, well, create a brand.

and i’m asking for your help.

with my refusal to risk affecting important friendships by asking any specific friends for help or favors i will put my request right here, for anyone to accept, or adjust, process or deny.

i would like to start fresh with stephdub.com and datenight: i have limited (and i mean limited) funding (like a few hundred dollars) and want to put it towards any or all of the following things:
new site desgin
wordpress theme
logo/s
image/branding (instead of logo)

so- do you have a little free time and want to gain good karma by just donating your badass talent to the stephdub fund? are you a college student, or intern (or know one) that needs a final project? do you have any designers hanging out in your back pocket ;)? are you unemployed, getting paid by the government and want to build your portfolio but you just need a project to do it with? do you love hearts and the color black and like to doodle/sketch while on break from your high paying clients?

if you think you are any of the above, or you know someone that would categorize themselves as any of the above i swear this will be easy and fun and gain you major props by the universe.
if not. that’s cool. cause i’ll totally figure this shit out.

but a very successful saleslady friend of mine always says, “if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.”

all my love,

<3 stephdub

so, much like every person who has the luxury to be self reflexive and autonomous and intelligent enough to reflect on their past year with the ability to give thanks and make resolutions… i have been thinking about my last year extensively. and at first i started just writing a list of all the things that have happened this past year. but there was just a major component lacking to this list- feeling. it was a list of events. not the emotional, mental, or physical challenges, growths, or revelations that came with finishing grad school, moving across the country, sleeping on a couch for two months, creating a new home, or family for that matter. it was list.

so, i started to think of resolutions, like everyone else. but, without judgement to those brave souls with resolutions, this concept didn’t seem to work for me either. resolution, the word, doesn’t sit right with me, where i am in my life. i am working hard on making every action one i would not want to resolve. which lead me to think of all the lessons and personal growths i have experienced this past year. and overall, singling them out seemed to diminish the importance of the others. so this has left me pondering how to accurately summate what was the year of twothousandandeight.

and in the midst of all this ringing in the new hoopla i had been experiencing some ‘dating life’ situations that inspired some very personal and revelatory writing. and so i wrote. on a plane. where i seem to do my best and most heart wrenching writing. where there was no internet to directly post. where i could ’sit’ on that emotional post for just another day. which i did.

and, in rereading my personal and very chronologically detailed post i had a moment of hesitation to post this excerpt of my life. overall, it was a great post. but it was… personal. about me and someone. and in an attempt to verify that i would not be misunderstood by posting this blog, i sent it to a few close friends. and asked their honest opinion of what they took away from it. and low and behold, i would have been misunderstood. so i struggled with following my process of, well, processing by posting it and putting it out there, and not putting it out there in fear that i would be misunderstood. and because i trust my friends, i didn’t post it.

needless to say, the universe revealed itself to me in a way that made me grateful for that moment of hesitation. that silence.

and there i was. left sitting with my all encompassing lesson learned, thankful for experience, biggest revelation, and overall taking away from 2008: pride.

i’m not talking the deadly sin type of pride. i am talking the accountability, conscious of your actions, no regrets type of pride. i have 2008 and all of its players to thank for the greatest gift i could have ever asked for. internal self worth and pride.

and it must be said, that, long ago, the exboyfriend that has inspired so much of my writing was the first person to think it important that i understand this concept. now, he may not have been the best teacher of the concept, but he meant well. thus, my attribution of the beginning of this life changing year to him. he was the one to teach me the idea that i am not responsible for anyone else’s happiness, thoughts, or actions. that i am responsible for myself. and only myself. what i had to learn on my own, often the hard way, was what this truly meant.

it meant that i didn’t have to give up all the nice qualities i enojyed having. it did not constitute being mean. or unthoughtful, or unkind. it meant having boundaries between my feelings and actions and others’.

and my dear friend corporate america added to my understanding of this huge life concept that i was beginning to experience. it was in merchandise mart that i learned what an immense amount of value i personally placed on accountability. owning one’s actions. understanding the difference between placing blame and worth and response on someone or something else.

and if there is one truth among truths it is that learning and growth can absolutely not occur in a threatened, defensive, unsafe environment. san francisco enters stage left. a new and unbelievably understanding and advanced city of friends has taught me to be proud. proud of the actions i own. proud of the steps i take, the mistakes i make, and everything i do that adds up to steph. friends that allow me to live, learn, and grow. in that order.

so with all these huge life concepts going on in my life and brain, 2008 taught me how to blend them all into a way of living. no. a way of being.

with the acceptance of friends and family that support and encourage me without judgement, i was able to understand what it meant to truly feel an immense amount of self worth that no one could take from me. cause it was mine. and more importantly, to not put myself in situations where i am giving up this right, this ownership of my feelings, actions and… pride.

i could not be more grateful for the ability to fully understand the consequences on my actions, and act based on them. OWNING everything i do. being fully conscious and proud of every step i take. whether it is not posting a blog that would consequently give someone in my life more power than he deserves. not going home with that boy because in the morning i would feel terrible about myself. not drinking to oblivion every night because everything will still be there, throbbing, in the morning. for NOT telling everyone everything, because some thoughts and emotions are mine, and mine alone. for understanding the value of NOT talking about ‘it’ right away. for understanding the process. for understanding that there IS a process. for writing, for me, with no hopes or expectations of anyones’ reactions,

so here i am twothousandandeight, thanking you with all of my heart, for this life changing lesson. the lesson to act consciously and positively for myself, and for others. for opening myself to this journey. for enjoying the immense amount of power self worth has bestowed upon me. for everything.

break it like you mean it, boy. say it like you’ve said it before, you’re just in time to make your mistake, had all the time i can take.