The91Rewind

We have so many things vying for attention and it causes us to think that everything is important. BUT if everything is important, than nothing is really important.

We need to SLOW down and discern what truly matters to us. It’s not all important.

How are you spending your time each day, weekend, workweek, and month? I hope we will all take time to slow down and assess this for ourselves and then make room for what matters.

This weekend I’m spending some time with family, friends, AND having some ME time. I mostly looking forward to me time, because I really need it this week.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Two gifts for you…phone wallpaper to help you remember to slow down.

taking care

Progress

March 2, 2018October 12, 2022 @happedancing

Progress. It’s a fickle thing. It can take years of momentum to accomplish just a kernel. It can also seem like it happened overnight. Sometimes things are moving along just fine, and suddenly they grind to a halt. Progress can be measured/noticed/recognized in many ways, but I’m convinced you have to look to find it. You have to check in with yourself a bit to process what has happened and decide what to do next.

After some underwhelming race finishes a couple years ago, I found myself asking that very question-“what now?” I had completed my fall running events, but didn’t achieve the personal records I had envisioned. I was pretty bummed out. I trained harder than ever before-I even tried a new training plan with wan additional day of running! I had the time in my schedule to add the extra day, and I was sure it would increase my speed.

A friend of mine, who is a registered dietitian and power lifting coach and marathoner, explained that I had probably under-performed at my events because I was over training and to continue would likely wind up with me getting injured. How could that be? I know people who run twice as much I do on a weekly basis! What she said next really threw me for a loop; “training for any event is deeply individualized, and it’s likely you were just not physically ready for the mileage increase in that particular plan.”

I completed the training, but when race day came I was broken down instead of refreshed. She told me quite simply that if I wanted to run more, I was going to have to focus my efforts, eliminate some other workouts, and be willing to build mileage slowly over time.

Have I mentioned how impatient I am? The idea of doing anything slowly over time just seems like drudgery. However disappointing this news was, I had to face the facts. My method had not yielded the results I wanted. I was more focused on the outcome than I was on the path to achieve it. I wanted to break my record from the previous year and was willing to try anything to make it happen. I got caught up.

Flashback to my fifth grade teacher and her famous saying:

I hadn’t failed to plan, my plan had failed. Was I a failure? Surely not. I was disappointed, but I was also motivated to find a better plan.

Failing to plan is not limited to the absence of a plan. It can also mean following the wrong plan, or having too small a plan for the scope, or over planning. I don’t really like this saying now that I think about it. There are a million ways to fail with or without a plan, but most of the time you don’t really know until the end.

We cannot avoid trying something because we don’t have a perfect plan. We should plan to fail, in fact. When something doesn’t work, we can learn from it and make better choices the next time. Even a failure can lead to doing better in the future.

I want to go back to my fifth grade teacher and tell her to stop giving the kids anxiety. Failure is not a bad thing! Failing as fast as possible can be viewed as a path to breakthrough success. We should change the saying to something a bit more inspiring:

It gets me thinking about how many times I have tried something new and felt disappointed. Maybe that wasn’t a result of not working hard enough, maybe the let down was inevitable because of a flaw in the plan. Disappointment, like failure, is not a bad thing necessarily. The fact that one has an opinion, good or bad, on the outcome of an event shows an investment. (If we don’t care at all about something it’s easy to let it go.) Disappointment can drive us to make huge leaps forward.

After we experience a setback in life we are faced with two choices – we can give up, or we can regroup and try again. While giving up is an option, in my opinion it isn’t the best one. If you give up every time you hit a wall, you’ll just be left with a long list of limitations.

If you want to learn something, if you want to experience progress, you have to be willing to screw up a little. You have to go for it despite not knowing exactly how or what to do and possibly fail. We will never be able to know in advance if the plan will work. We’ve got to be willing to try it anyway.

If it doesn’t work out, at least you know that it doesn’t work out. You have knowledge and experience, and THAT my friends, is progress!

taking care

why we should celebrate our strengths

February 23, 2018October 12, 2022 Crystal Varner Parker

I find that it is incredibly easy for us to focus on what we are missing, our shortcomings and the challenges that face us. What if we turn things around and celebrate our strengths? What if we delight in the goodness we bring to the world around us?

The quote above is quite popular and often attributed to Albert Einstein, but they are not his words. Some may write this quote off because it’s not from a brilliant mind, BUT we can still learn a lot from this message.

Do you beat yourself up for not being able to hold that yoga pose as long as the person in front you? Or because you went out to eat again rather than making some beautiful home cooked meal like your friend on instagram? Maybe because your home improvement project turned out mediocre rather than pinterest perfect?

It’s easy to criticize ourselves. But, before you do, consider these facts: You have no idea how long that magical yoga person has been practicing. You can not guarantee that foodie pic on Instagram was prepared by the hands that posted it. Lastly, so what if your project was less than fabulous? You are learning various DIY techniques that may help with the next one.

We cannot compare ourselves to others and expect to feel good inside. I’ll say it again. WE CANNOT COMPARE OURSELVES TO OTHERS AND EXPECT TO FEEL GOOD INSIDE!

What CAN we do? Celebrate what we are good at, what we enjoy doing. We can be proud of our hard work, our desire to learn, and the effort we effort we devote to getting better and stronger. We can remember that each of us is special. Each of us has a hidden talent. Each of us has something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Next time you are amazed by someone else’s magic, consider that another person you may not even know is captivated and inspired by YOU. (Trust me, there are people who would love to have some of the abilities you have!)

If we let our self-worth be defined by all that we cannot do, we surround ourselves with doubt and negativity. Where does that leave us? Stuck and afraid to try new things. Fish were not meant to climb trees just as birds were not meant to drive cars. To evaluate our worth based on our deficiencies is like throwing out an entire pizza because it’s not chicken teriyaki. (I’m not advocating the discarding of perfectly good pizzas BTW.)

We do not need to DO everything. We cannot BE everything to everyone. We only need to be ourselves. We are good. We are worthy just as we are. We are perfectly imperfect and that’s the best damn thing!

just for fun, taking care

valentine shmalentine

February 14, 2018October 12, 2022 @happedancing

I have to admit that I’m not much of a romantic. I refuse to watch The Notebook and try my best to avoid any books, movies, and shows of that particular genre. I do not consider myself to be cold and unfeeling, but I simply do not believe it is healthy to indulge the notions proffered by these stories. In my experience, love is unpredictable, painful, and complicated, with romantic love being the most wild variety. AND if we choose to measure the “love” in our lives by romantic heteronormative relationships, we stand to miss out on a LOT in life—a lot of LOVE that is.

I am strongly opposed to the way we celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. It irritates me to no end that couples fight over this arbitrary milestone. It troubles me that people are made to feel “less than” because they don’t have a special someone. I have a hard time believing that the only people who deserve happiness and love are those “in a relationship” on social media. It seems like the unwavering mission of Valentine’s Day is to remind those of us lacking romance that life just isn’t as good. Like we are alone and broken.

The true origins of this holiday are widely debated, but without a doubt they have NOTHING to do with romance or love for that matter. Let’s not forget that this “holiday” was rebranded in the early 20th century to do little more than stimulate the economy.

I wasn’t always so bitter and jaded. There was a time when the fleeting nonsense of Valentine’s Day didn’t make me bristle up with tension.

Flashback to elementary school…as a young child, I LOVED Valentine’s Day for two reasons: first, because my mom and I would make Valentine’s for my class and there was always extra candy, and second because it was the only day where it was acceptable to wear pink and red together. Plus, even in the early 1990s, teachers mandated a progressive equivocal approach to this holiday. The rule for exchanging Valentine’s in class was that you had to have one for everyone. You would come to school with treats to share and end up with just as many to take home. The world seemed fair and just, and quite delicious. These were simpler times.

Flash forward to my mid-late twenties…I finally had a steady Valentine, but some ideological differences kept us from celebrating this or any other holiday. His family wasn’t into gift-giving or celebrations, so it was no surprise he too, saw them as a waste of time and money. Things I took for granted, like birthday parties and summer vacations; things I thought everyone just sort of did, were foreign to my partner. Like many things in our relationship, he and I just were not on the same page here. I tried a couple of times to make it special without spending money, but he would only get upset. Valentine’s Day, and all the other holidays, became a dreadful reminder that a gifting is a two-way street. It isn’t enough to give a gift, it has to be received, in order to be truly meaningful.

Ironically, our five-year relationship ended, due to irreconcilable differences, a few days before Valentine’s Day in 2013. It was messy untangling our lives, and I moved in with my parents to get back on my feet. The morning of Valentine’s day came and I was still a bit raw from the death of my relationship as I headed to work. I did not realize what day it was as I sat in the daily production meeting, absently staring out the window.

I noticed a car pull up in front of the building—well I heard it before I saw it. To my horrified astonishment, it was a car I recognized. My ex appeared and proceeded to decorate my tiny Fiat 500 with bows and hearts, flowers and candy, a stuffed animal. It was as if he purchased the entire Valentine’s Day crap section at Walgreens. The commotion garnered the attention of others in the meeting, and we sat together and watched as this desperate man made a last ditch effort to save our relationship on Valentine’s Day.

I was beyond mortified, but more than that, I was damn mad. In the years we were together, this dude could not even produce a Valentine’s Day haiku. Now after a pretty volatile break-up, he thinks $40 worth of themed garbage is going to make everything right? No. Just, NO! How dare this guy come to my office and make a spectacle of me? I couldn’t believe it.

After he drove away, I marched out there, collected all the stuff, and walked it right to the garbage. And of course, I had to entertain questions from my coworkers for the rest of the week about what happened and how I felt about it. To make matters worse, most of them thought I was frigid for rejecting what they perceived to be a sweet gesture. Appearances can be deceiving, am I right?

After hearing about my theatrical day at work, my wonderful parents did all they could to salvage things. Mom and Dad got me a sweet Valentine’s Day card and ingredients to make home-made pizzas after work. We celebrated the “day of love” as a family and had such a super fun time that I forgot all about my embarrassing morning.

Every year since then and probably each year from now on, they are my sweet Valentines. It’s accurate, I mean, they are the people I love the most, and in my eyes, the people most deserving of my appreciation and affection.

There are as many different types of love as there are reasons to celebrate it. We love our families and friends. We love our ZUMBA instructor and our favorite hoodie. We love the way that one guy at Chipotle is a little heavy handed with the guac. All of these instances foster good feelings within us. They make us feel a little special and help us treat others with more kindness.

Devoting an entire holiday to focus on one specific kind of love seems a bit exclusive. Truthfully, it wasn’t until I didn’t have a “valentine” anymore that I began to appreciate all the different ways I experience love in my life. Deepening the relationships I hold dear and learning to love MYSELF brings me more joy, warmth and fuzzy feelings than any date I could go on.

Valentine’s Day should be about sharing love! Not just with a particular type of person, but with all the people. Just like elementary school, if you’re not prepared to share with everyone, keep it to yourself.

taking care

this is NOT a drill

January 26, 2018April 14, 2023 Crystal Varner Parker

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, may be old news, but the story is all too fresh. There have been three more school shootings this week alone. Sadly, all of these incidents make up a mere fraction of the mass shootings that have occurred in the last 18 years. It seems we still haven’t learned, and things certainly haven’y improved. They say if you don’t study history and learn from it you are destined to repeat it. How many shootings of innocent people will it take before our lesson is learned?

In my professional life, I spend at least three days a week in local schools; to date, I have experienced multiple “lock-down” situations. A few have been drills, but one was not. I was confined to the school gym with one of my student employees for a LONG while. We had no idea why we were on lock-down, but together, we sat and waited, not knowing what was really happening. As nervous as I was inside, I had to stay calm and maintain my composure to keep my student calm. It turned out there was no active shooter at the school, BUT there was an armed suspect who had fled from the local police. I’m thankful the police alerted the school and that the administration acted swiftly to keep everyone safe.

The Friday before the shooting in Las Vegas, I was caught at a school during another lock-down. This time I knew that this was only a drill, so I went about my business at the school as if everything was normal. I left the room where I was working to pick up supplies from another area within the school. On my way, I was stopped by a school administrator who reprimanded me for walking down the hallway rather than staying where I was. At the time, I was so irritated that the drill interfered with the work I was trying to get done. In retrospect, I had taken that drill for granted, I had forgotten what it was like to be in a real lock-down situation. I was annoyed where I should have been grateful for the practice of keeping me out of harm’s way; a “practice” that could potentially save my life.

It seems unbelievable that this is our reality. That churches, schools, concerts, and festivals; places where communities join together, places of revelry and fellowship; have become the backdrop for mass shootings. It does not feel right that my children, husband, family, and friends could be caught in an active-shooter circumstance at any time, on any given day. It is damn frightening to think that these drills COULD, in fact, turn into real-life situations. Something has to change. Or perhaps WE have to CHANGE SOMETHING so these shootings stop happening.

I believe unequivocally that we can make a difference in shaping a safer future. This is not a debate about our second amendment rights, nor is it a dismissal of the numerous responsible gun owners out there. No matter your stance on this issue, we must work TOGETHER to make changes to our gun legislation. It will not be easy, but I am committed to having the tough conversations to pushing us forward. It starts with understanding gained through listening and sharing. I hope you’ll join the dialogue, too.

How many innocent people have to die before we’re willing to have the conversation? To not just speak, but to listen to the other side of the debate…To explore the possibility that things could be better than they are.

Every day there are lives at stake. What will it take for us to change?

taking care

Not Just Women.

January 24, 2018October 12, 2022 @happedancing

We are roughly three weeks into this new year and already seeing headlines, big ones, that all revolve around that tender topic of feminism. Not tender because it’s sweet and cute, but tender like a bruise…visible to the naked eye, yet still dismissed by some as a non-issue, or worse a “wound” we bring upon ourselves.

Last weekend marked the second annual Women’s March that saw PEOPLE, not just women, from across the country coming together in solidarity. We witnessed the talented Halsey’s poignant words, a poem that we all can identify with a little too well. Not long before that, Oprah stressed that “TIME IS UP” during an award speech for which she was the first black female recipient. Before that, we heard about a young woman, a decorated Olympian, who was abused for years and then silenced from sharing her story with the world.

As our heroes of the stage and screen, the courtroom, the boardroom, and even the arena come forward to say #metoo, they offer evidence of an unjust world. More than that, these women, these BRAVE AND INSPIRING women are offering empathy.

We applaud these words, we may like/comment/share, but how does that affect our behavior? How does that gesture of empathy manifest itself in our lives?

When a woman shares her truth, despite its ugliness and controversy, she inspires others to discover their truth. She grows more powerful by saying “this is what happened” and she empowers others, not just women, to stand up for themselves. The fact that she STANDS BEFORE YOU means that she LIVES TO TELL her truth. This is the accomplishment: it is not the content of her story, but the fact she CAN share it with you. Some women have not been so lucky, some women have died trying.

The above “quote of the day” from yesterday has a powerful message, but it begs a question also. If one of our success is ALL of our success, does the pain of one become the pain of all? The answer is a resounding YES. We share directly AND indirectly the collective pain of gender inequality. With this in mind, we must provide support for those who suffer. We have a responsibility to educate those who don’t understand. We have a duty to make examples of ourselves.

If you see something that inspires you, don’t just “like it”, REACH OUT to the author and say THANK YOU FOR SHARING! You might feel a little vulnerable putting yourself out there like that, but it’s a small price to pay when you consider how the author felt about sharing it with you. Empathy takes courage.

During these emotional times, it is important to acknowledge the struggle people, NOT JUST WOMEN, face. Regardless of race or gender, whether old or young; sick or healthy; poor, or wealthy; we are ALL going through something. We deserve a little appreciation for those battles we face and every day . A simple “thank you” message in our inbox may be all the affirmation we need to keep moving forward.

WE the PEOPLE must take our power back. NOT JUST WOMEN, everyone. We must collectively choose NOT to support systems/institutions/individuals that do not support gender equality. We must NOT TOLERATE disparaging rhetoric that widens the gap of inequality. We must recognize that feminism is NOT about women being better, it is about PEOPLE BEING EQUAL! Everyone can be a feminist…and should be for that matter.

We can rewrite the rules of this patriarchal society, but it is a task for EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US, not just women. It’s not a vote, a march, or a t-shirt. It’s not doing the right thing because people are watching. It’s not just applauding the good things, but speaking out against the bad things. It is consistent effort applied every minute of every day. It will not be easy, and there will be ups and downs along the way, but isn’t it worth it?

just for fun

#FriYAY

January 19, 2018October 12, 2022 @happedancing

Now that the holidays are over and we’ve returned to the daily grind it may seem like a long haul until our next break. The days are short. It’s cold out. For those of us in the Triangle (NC), we are digging out of an sort of unexpected winter storm. Things look pretty bleak. How on earth are we supposed to get through these less than exciting times until spring gets here?

I think we celebrate the small milestones. I think we cheer the victorious conclusion of each week with the knowledge that time is marching on and it won’t be winter forever. Think about it, we are already one month in? What’s another eight-ish weeks?

With that in mind, I’d like to propose a toast to Fridays, or #FriYAYs if you will. Fridays are rapidly becoming my favorite day of the week. They are a celebration of what HAS happened and a gateway to the weekend. No matter where you are in life, you can and should take a moment to appreciate the conclusion of one week, and the beginning of another. To me, that’s what FriYAY is all about.

What’s that you say? Isn’t Sunday supposed to be “that” day? The day of rest? The final weekend day? I don’t think so…Arguably, Sunday can be considered to be the big kickoff day of the week. (HA! a football pun!) Who can say?

At any rate, even if you work weekends (as I have since what feels like the dawn of time), there is definitely a change in the “vibe” from weekday to weekend. Saturday and Sunday just feel different for some reason. Maybe it’s old fashioned, but there’s something just a little more laid back about those two days.

It is for these reasons that I believe wholeheartedly in the #FUN of #FriYAY… I dare you at some point today, to stop where you are, amidst your busy #FriYAY, and do a little happy dance. Shake your groove thing; you can make it subtle if you need to. Maybe you #treatyoself to a delicious juice? Maybe you have dinner plans with friends to look forward to? Maybe you have an entire evening of watching Netflix with your cat!?

Whatever it is, you DO YOU on #FriYAY and enjoy it to the fullest!

xo,

just for fun

cheers to you!

January 12, 2018April 14, 2023 @happedancing

The year has just begun. It is full of possibilities and adventures and we are really looking forward to all that 2018 has in store. Not long ago we posted this little message:

To that effect, we would like to re-introduce ourselves as The 91 Rewind

Don’t worry! We are keeping all the content you enjoyed on HebrewDawn, but this time as a joint project between two friends who’ve known each other almost forever. We appreciate all of your support so far and we look forward to bringing your more stories, pick-me-ups, and good vibes.

Crystal and I became friends in 1991 when I moved to Smoketree South. We have been besties since then, and although we have both grown and changed, a lot is still the same. When someone knows you like you know yourself, it can help you stay grounded. When the road gets rough, connections like these can help you get back to your authentic self.

Crystal and I are very different but we are both honest to a fault. Our friendship has endured the test of time; probably because we have always kept it real with one another. We continue to help each other see the best in ourselves, accept what cannot be changed, and find the motivation to keep going on.

We started this blog as a way to share-with everyone-the little pep talks, comic relief, and good conversation we have been sharing with one another for years. If our friendship has taught us anything, it is that sometimes sharing your story with someone else helps to lighten the load.

The 91 Rewind is our version of a digital treehouse. It’s a place to get away for a moment, catch your breath, and find silver linings. If you need a refresh, a reset, or a “rewind and try again”, you’re welcome here. Come on over for a bit. Listen, share, but more than anything, just be yourself! We’re happy to see you 🙃

cheers!

C+E