(4) Swan Life Lessons #2: The First Step

Feb 6 2015

I woke up thinking of these instructions:

Tell everything. Begin post with “I just finished packing today…”

I just finished re-packing today. Today is Feb 6 2015. I moved to Hawaii on Jan 27th. I am no longer in a relationship. When I left the mainland I made sure my (then) boyfriend knew that I was looking for love, marriage and children. I understand that he is not ready for that. We will remain friends. I have until the 9th to stay with a friend of mine. On the 10th I will need a new place to live. Normally I would have stressed myself out looking for a place to live this whole time. But the Universe let me know that I am to wait for my new home to present itself to me. Oh wait..I have not explained everything yet. Let me start again. 

This is my story. I was living as an Ugly Duck. Actually, full fledge Ugly Duck existence is pretty new for me. I’d say that my life in general was more Swan-like than not. I have been able to travel a lot, alone and with my family. I am from California and have lived in Costa Rica, Alaska, Hawaii, England, Mexico, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, and Oregon. I completed relatively normal schooling up until the 6th grade. Then spent my 13 - 14 year in Costa Rica out of school and free to roam. I came back to the U.S. and began community college before my 14th year was over. I graduated with an Associates Degree at age 18. Turned 19 over the summer and entered UC Berkeley as a Junior. There, I created my own major which I titled: Interpersonal Relations. I received my Bachelor’s Degree at age 20. Then I spent a year out of school and entered a Master’s Program at the University of Hawaii at 22. There I studied Communicology: Human Communication and graduated at age 24. 

I have focused on my education because that was where my Swan Nature blossomed. My personal life, though, was not very wonderful. I come from a pretty cool family. However, I am the oldest of (currently) 8 children. The responsibilities of being the oldest put a strain on me. While away at college that strain lessened. However, despite having a large family, I have never been particularly social or outgoing. So, I didn’t have very many friends. Secretly, I studied Interpersonal Relations and Communicology (fancy titles for social interaction & communication) because I wanted to learn how to relate to people. I guess you could say that I wanted to study how to make friends lol. That sounds so lame. I can tell you about many other life woes but that is not important. What is important is when I became a full Ugly Duck. As you can probably imagine, becoming a full on Ugly Duck after so many years as a majority Swan/minority Ugly Duck was a shock to me. 

After receiving my M.A. degree, my education and life as I understood it ended. It was time to figure out how to be a grown up and make a living for myself. You would think that I had this all planned out already. Not exactly. I come from a very partial Swan/partial Ugly Duck family. I was always encouraged to develop my career based on my personal talents and interests. So I began to develop a Hair Growth business. Only thing.. was that this service I was trying to provide, was a very on again/ off again thing and not successful. I made a superior product - the best I have ever tried. But because of my Partial Lifestyle, it never made it off the ground. I didn’t make any money at all and lived with my family.

My family, as you know is very large. The old stressors began to overwhelm me again. After a year and ten months later, having moved with my family from California to Massachusetts in that time, I decided I was done. I was done with the stress. Right around the time I’d had enough, two of my graduate research studies were accepted into conferences. One was hosted by the International Communication Association where they had only a 36% acceptance rate. The other was hosted by the International Association for Language and Social Psychology. The first location was in Washington and the other was in Hawaii. I decided that I was going to move back to Hawaii then. It was the only place I had really loved. I packed all of my things and applied to exactly one job. I felt certain that I was guaranteed the position because it was in my own graduate department at the university and I knew everyone. 

I arrived in Washington and had a great time. I met up with my former-boyfriend-turned-current-boyfriend in Oregon and remained with him and his parents until I was supposed to attend my Hawaii conference. Then a problem emerged. Remember that one job application I sent? Turns out that did not work out as expected. So here I was in Oregon, intending to go to Hawaii without any prospects for a home or income. So I didn’t go. I was too afraid. Instead, I stayed with my on again/off again boyfriend of 5 years and his parents with the intent of finding a job in Oregon and moving into my own place. 

While staying with my boyfriend, my mind returned to “us”. I took this time to re-approach the subject of us working towards a future together. I found that even though he informed me he didn’t want that for himself (while being perfectly comfortable to continue in the present as we were), I still kept trying to “fit” him into the Husband role. 

It took a long time for me to be honest with myself. I kept making the conversation about him. Him, not wanting to marry and start a family with me. Him, not being in love with me. Although I would marry and start a family with him, deep down I didn’t want to. I knew that he was not the One. I knew that I didn’t love him either. We didn’t love each other. We didn’t choose each other. I need love. I need to be with the one I choose. 

Now that him and I are no longer together and I do not need to force us into something we are not - we are very good friends. I do love him as a friend. I remember when I met him. During our first conversation, I felt a silent twinkling sensation on the left side, at head level. The sensation, combined with his friendly nature, made me think “Huh..I like this guy. I want to get to know him. I want us to be best friends.” This was the second time I had ever felt such a thing. The first time was with my first boyfriend and the twinkling sensation was on the upper right side. Um.. I think.

Anyway time to continue. In the Duck World one makes a resume, applies for jobs, goes on interviews and then gets a job. I was now living with a whole different family and I didn’t feel comfortable continuing my partial Swan/partial Ugly Duck lifestyle. I felt that I needed to become a good Duck and quick. In order to be accepted by Ducks I began doing things their way. Normally, I would have continued trying to figure my way out of the Partial Lifestyle. But I didn’t have time to figure myself out. I needed to become self-sufficient as soon as possible. So I did things the normal way. By that I mean the Duck way. Make a resume? Check. Apply to jobs? Check. Go to interviews? Um.. not really. Get a job? Definitely not. So I was feeling a lot like an Ugly Duck right then. Ducks had given me a lot of advice on what to do to increase my chances for employment. I did everything I could but I still remained an Ugly Duck. I remained an unemployed Ugly Duck for 8 months. I kept trying to be a Duck, even though I knew from the very beginning that Duck life wasn’t going to work out for me. 

I reached rock bottom when I couldn’t pay my credit card or student loan bills, ran on no sleep and my brain bled out through my ears every time I applied for another job. 

One day I thought to myself: “What do I want? What do I really want?” 

To be continued….

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Remember the story of The Ugly Duckling? 

Many people misinterpret this story. Many think the story is about being ugly and magically becoming beautiful. Many try to apply this inappropriate logic to their lives. Hoping beyond hope, that they will one day transform into something better than they are. They miss the true point of this story. The most important part of this story is that the ugly duckling is not a duck. It is a swan that hatched from within a duck's nest. It wasn't ugly and then turned beautiful. It was always beautiful. It wasn't a duck who then turned into a swan. It was always a swan. It just needed to realize this. Once the little swan realized that it was literally a completely different bird, all its duck problems went away. It could be itself freely. It found that it wasn’t ugly after all. It was actually beautiful the whole time! The story is about finding who you really are.

That is the point of this Blog. It's to help you realize that you are already a Beautiful Swan. In order to do that, you must first understand that You Are Not A Duck!

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