It's the end of 2014 Mixtape

It's the end of 2014 and we decided do a last "Mixtape (Not)Monday" for the year. Here we highlight some of our favorite tracks of 2014 or that were on heavy rotation for us this year. Hopefully we will be doing more of these in 2015! No promises though. Check out the video below and the Spotify Playlist featuring favorites like Paramore, Kendrick Lamar, and Hozier.



 

Spotify Playlist Link

The Money Issue

I spent the eve of my 23^rd birthday in tears listening to Rilo Kiley‘s “The execution of all things” convincing myself that I was a failure.

“I haven’t done anything in life” I told my dad when he tried to assure me that my life was just beginning. Still I was sure that I had accomplished everything I could and that I was going nowhere. Maybe it was too much Reality Bites or Ms. Jenny Lewis herself steering me down the path, regardless "nowhere fast" was engraved in my head and chanting in my ears. Why am I letting you in on such an embarrassing anecdote about my life? Maybe it’s because I am currently 30 years old, still feel unaccomplished but at this moment would not be able to comprehend what makes someone a failure.

All my friends are more financially secure then I am. This statement holds such weight as some could see me as the Jennifer Aniston character in a movie highlighting late development or achievement. I used to feel so ashamed of that fact, like it somehow was tied to me as a person because it told everyone that I was worthless, unsuccessful and worst of all a failure. Luckily I learned that this was not true. It wasn't until I was 28 working a job that was deemed acceptable at my age but somehow I was miserable. I was working long hours putting time into something I thought I wanted. Then all of sudden I asked myself "What am I working towards?" Now the responsible adult in me wanted to say "You work because you have to" which is such an adult thing to say, isn't it?  The thing is that even though I knew that having a job that pays me enough to pay my bills and rent is all I should be worrying about I just couldn't shut off that small voice in my head.

When I was young and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I got older I would always answer "happy." No I wasn't raised by hippie parents and there was an actual direction that I knew I was taking but none of it seemed as important as the promise of being happy.  Now as we all know happiness is fleeting and not a career but I can honestly say that I could not let that little girl down. So I quit my job and decided to find out what would make me happy. Very stupid idea in the economy we were/are in but I think in your twenties you get to do one really stupid thing and that was it. It was hard as expected, there were times I thought I was an idiot but somehow I was the happiest I had ever been.

Now a few years have passed and I don't make that much money and at times it can be frustrating as I try to navigate my path into something that I want. What I do now is definitely not what I want to do but it feels like a stepping stone in the right direction. Sometimes you just have to know when to fold them and even though it feels horrible knowing that I can be considered the "dead beat" friend I still feel like things are going the way they are suppose to, ever so slowly. There is a path that I am on; I've learned a lot about myself, about my friends and my family through the simple act of quitting my job. It was an experience I wouldn't replicate but am glad I went through.

You know that scene from "Friends" with Phoebe and the tiny pizza? and how everyone always wants to go somewhere "nice"? That's pretty much my life. I cringe when I hear of trips being planned and money being wasted. I can't go to the mall and just purchase things because I am on a budget and I put thought into which paycheck is going to go to what. It's exhausting and annoying and I try not to make myself feel bad about it because not all adults are made the same. Not all industries pay the same amount of money and once I understood that I started to feel like less of a failure and more like someone determined to find their space. The point of this article is not to tell you to follow your dreams or find happiness because sometimes that can leave you broke, frustrated, and maybe worse. You have to figure out what works for you, what is important to YOU and never compare yourself to others.

Learning to budget, analyzing expectations, those are things I had to learn these are things that made me feel like an adult. Also learning what I want out of life, out of my job is important to. They always tell you to not compare yourself to others because it's pointless. It took me almost 30 years to learn that but I'm glad I finally did.

Mixtape Mondays: A Love Letter to Reality Bites

I remember the first time I saw "Reality Bites," well in all honesty I don't remember how old I was or where I was exactly but I do remember the feeling it gave me. The feeling I felt more specifically in the scene at the gas station which at my young age was the one that resonated with me the most. Completely oblivious of the fact that they were majorly stoned at the time, I loved the moment when Janeane Garofalo, Winona Ryder, and Steve Zahn are so compelled to dance to "My Sharona" that they ask the attendant to turn up the music and proceed to jump around like idiots. This is what I thought my twenties were going to be like, not literally smoking out and dancing like idiots which I'm sure is how a lot of people spent their twenties, but just being so enthralled in having fun with your friends that you don't care who sees. Now that I'm thirty I look back at how the movie spoke to me in different ways. "I'm not going to work at the Gap" was also a line that I often quoted and not just because I worked there but because I understood how judged Janeane felt at that moment. This movie gave me a different point of view about being an adult that maybe my parents didn't want me to know. Up until then I thought adulthood was house payments and children, I didn't understand that you were allowed to not have it all together for awhile, that you were allowed to figure things out.

With this Mixtape Monday we chose to celebrate its 20th anniversary of this movie compiling songs inspired by the nineties featuring bands like Everclear, The Cranberries, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Come walk down memory lane with us ....

To Tinder or Not To Tinder: Living The Single Life

"Most people are together just so they are not alone. But some people want magic. I think you are one of those people."

I think I should preface this with I am eternally single. I should also stress that I don’t mean this in a "cry and eat ice cream while I watch The Notebook" kind of way but in a "I have a good time with my friends and family; I am still trying to figure it out" kind of way. Still I can't dodge this question, "Don’t you want to meet someone nice? do you always want to be single?" and the answer to this, at the moment is actually I do.

Mixtape Monday - The Valentine’s Day Edition

This week we bring you The Valentine’s Day Edition of Mixtape Monday! Last week we brought you our version of the “Anti” Valentine’s Day mix and this week we bring you the more traditional version. We have so much love to share, we each picked 8 songs.  Featured this week are Band of Horses, Bjork, and Phantom Planet among many more. 

Mixtape Monday - Anti-Valentine's Day Edition

This week we are bringing you an "Anti-" Valentine's Day Mix of sorts. Anti in not a very traditional way. The songs we picked talk about unrequited love, break-ups, and heartbreak in a more realistic adult way. Featured on this weeks mix are bands like The Cranberries, Wilco, and The Cure.



Spotify Playlist Link
Tune in next week for a special (proper)Valentine's Day mix.

My Journey with Anxiety and Panic

I have anxiety and panic attack disorder (there it is World Wide Web, I said it!). Some days, weeks, and months I’m great, other days I have to add up license plates while driving or remind myself to breath just to make it through the day. I was 24 the first time I had a panic attack. I was speeding home from my college class trying to reach a doctor because I was sure I was experiencing a heart attack. I had Googled my symptoms during class and was positive I was going to drop dead unless I sought medical attention (hello - Google wouldn’t lie!).  Half way home my left arm went numb and my right arm was starting to tingle too, my vision started to tunnel and it was hard to catch my breath. I pulled over (miraculously, I avoided causing a major accident since I went from the fast lane to the right emergency lane in 1 second flat) and dialed 911.

This event marked the beginning of a very interesting, emotional and enlightening period of my life. You see that first emergency room visit only left me feeling like I had seen an incompetent doctor who hadn’t done enough tests on me (did I mention that I had Googled my symptoms?! Clearly he was a quack). That visit was the first of many (many, many, many, many… you get the picture) emergency and cardiologist visits. The first year I probably went to the ER five times and saw just as many cardiologist (thank god for PPO).

The best way I can describe anxiety and panic is the betrayal of your mind. Up to that point, my mind had never let me down. My brain was logical, bright and dependable (not including my memory, but everyone has bad memory, right? Right?). No way that my brain would give me all the classic signs of a heart attack, that would be illogical.  Except that 8 months later I finally realized that, yeah, it would. You’d think that being diagnosed with anxiety/panic would feel liberating, I mean after all I was healthy and best of all my heart was “in great shape.” At first though, my diagnosis did exactly the opposite. It made me feel out of control, scared, alone and worst of all weak. See up until that point I had always considered myself an island or rock. I was never good at expressing feelings. I’d bottle them up, worry about situations, think it to death and just processed everything alone. Now my doctor wanted to prescribe medicine and suggested I see a therapist.

By that point, my anxiety had hit an all-time high. At times my anxiety lasted days, I was barely able to go to work and get home. There were some days my dad or sister would pick me up from work, I physically couldn’t drive. When I’d get home I’d be in tears or I’d go straight to my room and read (that year I read 100 books). I was a shell of the person I use to be (but I could sure read fast!). The independence I had worked so hard to established was slowly slipping and now my anxiety was starting to drift into my families world (because news flash, this diagnosis didn’t just impact me it impacted my families lives too). Reluctantly I agreed to the medicine and therapy.

It was the best decision! The medicine helped balance out my anxiety and through therapy I learned that I wasn’t weak and understood where my anxiety came from and why it manifests the way it does. I learned breathing techniques, coping mechanisms (anxiety is tricky, once you think you've figured out your triggers, it starts manifesting in different ways!) and continue to work on rethinking and positive thoughts (like I’m not dying. Hey - I’m a work in progress) I felt great! I felt like I was gaining control again, I could finally hang out with friends and visit family. I was empowered by going to therapy.

So you’re probably thinking, “Cool story bro, but what’s the point of this post.” The point is, it took me 3 more years before I could openly discuss going to therapy or that I have anxiety. There is such a huge stigma about sharing problems and situations in our society and it’s lame. There shouldn’t be, so I have anxiety and went to therapy, that doesn’t define who I am. Nobody is perfect, everyone has a thing. I wish more people talked about their anxiety or panic or depression or whatever. In fact, I wish more people went to therapy, period. We wouldn’t feel so alone and crazy. By having these open and candid discussions we help people have a sense of connectedness and by the same token it helps people who don’t have these issues understand what it’s like for people who do. So if there is anything you can take from this post it’s to share your experiences, because you are not alone (oh and don’t trust google for medical advice). 

Mixtape Mondays: New Playlist!

We are at it again, our second "Mixtape Monday" video and playlist is here. Spotify playlist link can be found in the description of the video. Enjoy!



 

The Fear Of A New Year

This is not a best of 2013 list, or a manifesto about how 2014 is “going to be my year.” Not to knock any of that but I think so often we try to pretend that the New Year is a clean slate that once the year is over we don’t have to look back. “Thank god this year is over” we say, “Can’t wait to start fresh.”  This year I am looking at it a little differently.

You Are What You Listen To, Right?

It is no surprise that most people believe there is a direct correlation between their musical taste and how they identify themselves. You are what you listen to to right? We judge someone's music collection with a close eye, basing a lot of how we see them through what they keep hidden in their IPod.

Indie Rock? Hipster

Pop Music? Woo girl

Electric Drum and Bass? Douche

Okay, I was kidding about the last one but it would be ridiculous for me to not think that some of these "stereotypes" (if I can call them that?) about music aren't true. Especially when in Western society we hold our music taste in such high regard. There is that famous Nick Hornby quote that has been re-blogged a million times on Tumblr, maybe you are familiar with it.....

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."

But let's be honest there are definitely some skeletons in your musical closet, especially when you are younger and still trying to figure out who you are. What if you relationship partner came face to face with that N'SYNC single you purchased when you were 13? One of my favorite things to do is discover people's "guilty pleasures" especially those that they had while growing up. While you were just discovering music, what you loved and what you hated. The stories behind certain purchases are sometimes even better than the albums. So with out stalling any longer I would like to introduce to you our very first V-Log, where we explore just that. Going into our music "vault" and seeing what we came up with. Hope you enjoy laughing at us as much as we enjoyed laughing at each other.

Cleaning up your credit score: the three stages of grief

Tell me if you've heard this story before. Girl gets a job and works hard. Makes money and decides to buy nice things. One nice thing turns into many nice things. Many nice things turn into bigger nice things. Bigger nice things turn into credit card debt. Girl gets a better paying job, continues to work hard, continues to spend and repeats the cycle. Man, I should have listened to my parents (shhh, don’t tell them I said that).

This summer I came face to face with my credit card debt. My 10 year old car with 190,000+ miles on it was making a new awful sound and coupled with the check engine light that had been on for about 6 months, I thought it was time to buy a new car. But a lot had changed in 10 years, gone was that girl who bought her first car and had stellar credit. Now stood a woman who stared at her credit score in disbelief, sure some of the numbers were the same but the number order wasn't. It was a far cry from what it once was.  So my journey to clean up my credit began.  

To do this though, I had to admit a one thing to myself.  I needed to get serious about a budget. For an independent spirit trapped in a practical mind, this was in direct contradiction to my personality.  I lived in the now, I work now, I want this now, I need this now, I want to go on vacation now, I want to move out now.  While I was fortunate to have my now’s and eat them too, it was bound to catch up to me.

Enter the new car dilemma. So here’s the thing, creating a budget isn't hard; it’s following it that trips me up. I've always justified that the reason I could buy myself nice things was because I worked hard. While that’s true in some respects, in others it’s not. What I failed to take into consideration was my five, ten, fifteen year plan (my mom would be so proud to read about me writing about this now). It was time I started thinking of future Shadi.

I started saving three months before I bought my new car. I budgeted and cut unnecessary spending. I didn't need that new purse or shoes. No more Starbucks, I could drink coffee at home or from work. Two ply toilet paper instead of three. I asked myself three questions, do I need it? Why do I need it? Am I sure I can’t live without it? The formula wasn't perfect and on occasion I spent money even when I shouldn't have, but I saved enough for a down payment.

While I saved, I started cleaning up my credit. I printed detailed copies from all three credit unions and began calling banks, writing letters and getting on payment plans. And, I  also experienced three stages of grief while cleaning up my credit. And here's the the thing - no one ever talks about the emotions you experience when you have to clean up your credit. Sure you can do any Google search and find article after article on how to clean up your credit. But the emotional part is never even hinted at and let me tell you, calling banks and having to explain yourself and your financial situations to corporations that are only interested in making a profit can be an extremely demoralizing experience. So anyway, without further delay, here are the top three emotions I felt when I started cleaning up my credit. 

1. Anger – I realized what a scam credit scores are. I became enraged that my 28 year old self was being held accountable for what my 24 year old self did. Hello, I’m a changed person! Haven’t they seen my budget! My 24 year old self was so stupid (just kidding, you were awesome!).
2. Depression – I began to think there’s was no hope. There is no way I can clean up my credit enough to get that good interest rate.  Now I’ll get ripped at the car dealership and have to pay twice as much for my car in interest. 
3. Acceptance  – I realized that I had to accept the system. Bad credit didn't define me. I am not the only one with bad credit. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not a bad person for having bad credit. As Lily Allen put it in Everything's just Wonderful,  “Well it’s very funny, cause I got your fucking money and I’m never gonna get it because of my bad credit. Oh well I guess I mustn't grumble, I suppose that just the way the cookie crumbles.”

So yes, cleaning up my credit is still a work in progress  and once I got past the frustration I challenged myself to view my credit as a sort of unintentional diary. Every credit card told a story, A trip to New York, A road trip to Arizona,  a couch for my apartment, a card from when I as unemployed, a trip to the ER when I had a panic attack (funny story, more on that later).  Revisiting those memories was sort of like a silver lining that helped me realized how much I’d grown and experienced in the last 10 years.

I was able to get my new car with a low interest rate thanks to the kindness of my parents and an honest dealership.  But the lessons from this experience are not lost on me. I continue to budget, clean up my credit and think about future Shadi all the time. Next up, Roth IRAs and a new purse (whaaaaat, I work hard!). ;)

How To Survive The 6:00 a.m. Wake Up Call

It wasn't that long ago that I was beating my cell phone and mumbling to my mother "Five more minutes please" as I dreaded getting up and facing yet another school day. I would consider myself a morning person but there is something about waking up on someone else's terms that always irked me. Twelve years of early mornings made me swear off those A.M. classes in college. Of course I was not the only one with this idea and therefore ended up taking more 8:00 a.m. classes than I desired, blame my procrastination and late registration. Still being young, agile, and full of energy the ability to sleep four hours and then stay out all night never fazed me. Something I took for granted then but was told by my mom repeatedly "this isn't going to last forever" and sadly, like with mostly everything she tells me, she was right. 

Long gone are the days of sleeping at 3:00 a.m. and waking up at 7:00 a.m. for work. No more multiple nights of no sleep with little repercussion. Welcome to the world of bags under your eyes and yawning every five minute if you sleep a minute under seven hours. Here is to looking like the Crypt Keeper's younger sister when I don't get a "good night" sleep. So that's what they mean by beauty sleep? It all makes sense!

I currently have a job that wakes me up at 6:15 a.m. every morning. You might not think this is too bad, and technically it isn't. I've had jobs where I had to rise at 3:00 a.m. and take 2 buses and 3 trains to make it to work on time. Still, I was younger then, full of life, hopeful about the world and it's surroundings. Right now I just want to get more sleep or at least some caffeine in my system. I'm starting to believe that the worst version of yourself is present in the few second from when you are woken up by your alarm and you press snooze. In the past few weeks I have developed a cheat sheet to try to combat the "I hate my life, I'm going to punch someone" feeling that I get every time I hear my alarm. 

Am I an Adult yet?

Source: http://pleasestopbeingsad.tumblr.com

Maybe it was because I had worked really long hours this summer or maybe it was because I hadn't slept well or maybe I was about to get my period, maybe it was all of the above. All I knew was that it was the third time that week I had left work late and had cried while driving home. We all have that moment right, where things aren't going right and you begin to reflect on your life and your current situation and you cry. God I hope we all have those moments.

During this particular cry session, I realized was that I am 28 and a mess. I had bad credit, little to no savings, my car was falling apart, my apartment was a mess, I had gained more weight  and most of all I was working so much that I left very little time for my family, friends and least of all myself.  Was this what adulthood looked like?  One thing was for sure, I needed to stop crying while driving 70 mph on the freeway, my mascara was starting to burn my eyes (what’s up with that?).

Since then I've asked myself what’s an adult? Does being an adult mean having stellar A+ credit, owning a house, having a clean home, being married, having a kid, being healthy (do I need to memorize the food pyramid… is it even a pyramid anymore?), feeling put together, having a 401k, having a savings account, having a work life balance, hanging with family and friends and having hobbies?  

Part of me wants to throw the middle finger up and say to hell with it, I am who I am (a crying commuter with bad credit) and things will work out when I turn 30! Because side note, I always imagined that when I turn 30, there would be a fairy god mother or something and I would magically feel put together and dress age appropriate. What I’m learning is that in order for that magical moment to happen I have to take steps to make it happen.

So this is where I am, currently working to make myself a better version of the adult I am (or think I am). There’s a whole journey I’m about to take, and I’m sure it will be boring and lame but I’ll be documenting it on the World Wide Web anyway.