Amber L. Carter's Blog, page 53

Playdate with the sassiest, smartest girl in the universe can cure anything that ails ya.

Especially when you're getting a check-up in her "doctor's office" (aka, the bathroom) and she's doing her best to let you know that SHE'S the doctor and YOU'RE the patient, and so you can have a seat and wait until she'd done "looking over your file."

Yeah. She's THREE.

YEAH, The Current. And also, BOB F*CKING DYLAN!

"Are they playing Van Morrison on 89.3 FM?! I listen to The Current for the express reason to NOT listen to Van Morrison...GOD! I'm so OVER that guy!"
- Karah

Throwing Up A Long-Distance Middle Finger To The Sabotage. (the real life version, not the Beastie Boys version. That version should always stay, and all the time)

I couldn't stand Twitter.

Or Facebook.

Or listening to music.

Or watching TV. 

It just all seemed like so much noise.

Twitter was especially painful - I had to stop myself several times a day from tweeting, "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT!" in response to everything anyone was saying.

(And I mean, it's not like I don't feel like tweeting that on any other normal day. It just felt, you know...stronger)

And music...you know that feeling, after you breakup with someone, when everything reminds you of them? You could be listening to a song from 1992, but somehow it still relates, mostly because when you were 13 you used to listen to that song and daydream about how someday you were going to find that perfect person and then you thought you had found him finally and now you know that you didn't! and so now all the dreams you used to have are now crushed and don't mean anything and you wish you could just travel back in time and tell your 13 year old self that love sucks and they should spend more time learning math instead of dreaming about boys because if we had we would have been so much better off and OH MY GOD I HATE THAT FUCKING SONG NOW!

Yeah. You get it.

So I turned it off.

All of it.

Just turned. It. OFF.

And then...turned it all around.

This is a two-parter.

Part One: Set Yourself Up For Success

Back when I used to work in behavior therapy, we used to have a working principle for developing programs: set 'em up for success. It's easy to reach your goal when you're starting from a place where you already feel successful, rather than starting from the bottom of the mountain and forcing yourself to summit your way up. And based on my relationship coaching and personal experiences, I think that, when it comes to breakups, a few hard and fast rules are key.
And the first one that I believe the most in is this -

Giving myself a squeaky-clean break: a hard and fast detox from communication with - and checking up on - my ex.

It means defriending them on Facebook and unfollowing them on Twitter.

It means deleting the photos of the two of us together from my computer and Facebook (or, at the very least, printing them out and locking them in that box that goes in storage for the next 15 years and then deleting them from my computer and Facebook).

It means deleting their number from my phone. 

And it means doing it as fast as possible, and without a safety net (i.e, writing down their number on a Post-It note and putting it at the bottom of a drawer somewhere "just in case".)

It has to happen. I've entertained - and even listened to - every internal argument imaginable when it comes to doing this step. Those arguments always come from that place in our hearts that just doesn't want to let go. That wants the safety net just in case we want to talk. In case they want to talk. In case we get makeovers and lose 20 pounds and move to New York and score fabulous gigs and want them to know how much better our lives are without them!

But here's the thing that I remind myself of whenever I'm tempted to not follow through with this - We broke up. It's over. And I can't fully move on and tackle my new awesome motherfucking life if I'm always checking his Facebook profile late at night, looking for any small sign that he misses me.

Because there's no going back, my friends. There's only going forward. 

So clean cuts, kids. That's my rule. 

And I get that this rule can't work for everyone. Or at least, not right away. And I get it more now than I ever did - when you live with someone, there's loose ends to tie up and common courtesy that should be extended, etc. And when you have kids...it's even more of a necessity that you remain cordial and polite with your ex.

But what I'm mostly talking about is the door. You know the one...it's the one we want to keep open, just in case. Because every line of communication is also a possibility to us, at this point, and if we keep those open, then they know how to reach us. Then they can easily get in touch with us. Then they can easily tell us what a bunch of assholes they were and how much they've changed and how they can't imagine possibly living for another day without us in their lives.

We want to make it easier for them to change their minds and win us back.

But here's the thing: chances are, whether we broke up with them or they broke up with us (or if it was the unicorn of breakups, the mutually-agreed-upon breaking-up with each other)...we already made it easier for them. Chances are, those last few months together were all us, making it easier. Either we tried to make it easier for them to want to stay, or we tried to make it easier for them to convince us to stay.

And it didn't work. Obviously.

So why are we trying to make it easy on them still?

So stop it. Knock that shit off! Right now, the most important relationship we are in is the one with ourselves. So set yourself up for success and cut that fucking cord.

Every time I've done this for myself, I've tried really hard not to look at it as a loss. And it was tough. It is tough. Unfriending him on Facebook and deleting that number from my phone felt scary for two reasons: First, because there is no going back. Second, because there is no going back.

And it hurts. It fucking hurts! It hurts because it hurts to lose that part of your life, that piece of that connection. It hurts because I was scared he was going to notice and that he was going to be hurt by it.

That is kind of the worst of it, isn't it? That small place in the back of your heart that still throbs when you even think of them being hurt, even a little bit, even at all.

But here's the thing that I have learned from all of past breakups: when I've tried to hold on to the number...when I've tried to hold on to the Facebook friendship...when I've tried to hold on to the pictures or blog address or any other digital safety net...it never made either of us feel better, in the end.

All it did was make me feel worse. (And probably them, too, but we're talking about me right now, so let's focus)

Checking their Facebook in the middle of the night after a sad day...only made me feel worse.

Reading their Twitter feed just to, you know, see what they were up to... only made me feel worse.

Looking at pictures of us I still had on my computer as an effort to "remember the good times" or "prove that he did love me"...only made me feel worse.

Texting him after a drunken night out made me feel better...

...But in the morning, it only made me feel worse (a LOT worse).

And I've never heard a different story from any other girl I've ever known. The number one thing that all of my friends say after they've finally gotten over a breakup is that they wish they would have been the one to cut off contact first, or would have cut off contact right away instead of waiting it out.

Follow your own mantra. Read your written shot of courage. Would the person who wrote that Written Shot of Courage be cool with you obsessing over your ex? Will the person you are five years from now be cool with you Facebook-stalking and drunk-texting your ex?

Nope. Because that chick is waaaay too rad to pull that kind of miserable shit.

That kind of chick would protect herself.

That kind of chick would realize that her ex essentially said, "Hey, on second thought, no thanks... Think I'll try my luck elsewhere" when they broke up, and would conserve her time and energy and self-respect and total fucking foxiness for her own damn self, instead of wasting it on someone who just couldn't get it.

The thing is...you, me, and your cousin over there are all too smart to be leaving ourselves open to more heartbreak and disappointment. We already did all that. And the bottom line for me was this - if I'm going to allow myself the time and energy to process through my feelings...if I'm going to follow my mantra and build a new life for myself...if I'm going to get over this shit the right way...then I need to be able to concentrate on that. And not open myself to any new crap feelings/interactions coming in to that are going to put me right back where I started.

Because right now? It's all about energy. What you're doing with yours, and what kind you're letting yourself come into contact with.

And I don't know about you, but I want the good stuff. I want the good, and I want more of it, because the stuff inside my chest that hurts so badly, and all the time? That's from the bad. And if I'm working as hard as I can to get rid of what I've already got, there is no fucking way I'm letting any more take a flying leap onto the energy pile.

Other things I did to set myself up for success:

That sad-sap playlist? I nested it. I didn't delete it, because it does help every once in a while when I need to just feel what I'm feeling, but it also doesn't help to look at it every time I fire up the portable music machine. So instead I nested it inside another playlist folder so it's there for emergencies, but also not right in front of my face all time. And I highly recommend naming the folder something positive, like, "Recovery Mode" or "Closer To Feeling Fine".

Maybe not that last one...it reminds me too much of an Indigo Girls song (shit)...but you get the idea. The trick is to position and name it so that when you do need it, it reminds you that you're only getting further on down the road instead of regressing.

Then I went hunting for the most upbeat, kickass, this-doesn't-make-me-think-about-anything-except-how-awesome-my-new-life-is songs I could find. No sad sap allowed. Just songs that were new, fresh, and upbeat. Songs by strong chicks and hot men singing about strong chicks.
There's something amazing that happens when you do this: when you fill your iPod with songs that are kickass and fun...it's hard to feel otherwise. And why not have the happy pumping into your ear drums, right? Also, it's one of the cheapest makeovers you can give yourself, and it's an energy shift: listening to a whole bunch of new songs really can make you feel like you're moving on.

Mainly because you are.

I turned the Twitter and Facebook off for about a week or so. I'll tell you more about this in the next part, but it also works into this part, because the reason why I did it was so that I wasn't sabotaging myself by A. Being inundated with other people's sap-happy posts about their boyfriends and husbands and babies B. Seeing something that I just couldn't handle, like a mutual friend's post about being somewhere or doing something that I knew my ex was a part of.

So I just turned it off. Gave myself a break. Took a breather.

And it was awesome.

In the next part I'll tell you more about trying for the good stuff.

Because it's good stuff.

(Get it? I said "good stuff" when I was talking about doing good stuff. HOPE YOU GOT THAT JOKE!)

I think it's evident now that while my heart can broken...my sense of humor cannot be.

Yessssss.

Via Tumblr. If you know the orig poster, lemme know so I can give credit!

Stairway to Kittens.

Spotted on Regretsy This is EXACTLY why your parents didn't want you to skip out on college and instead move to Florida so you could work at Disney World and hang out at the beach and take a bunch of "mind-expanding" drugs. 
Because they didn't want you ending up making art like this. 
Sorry if you're in love with it. [image error]

I also listen to indie rock like every other cool person, but once in a while, I like to switch it up. You know, break out from the crowd. Remember where I came from. Take it back to the STREETS.

So I have to share this song with you guys, because I'm kind of obsessed with it.

And I use the "obsessed" thing very sparingly, mainly because I get annoyed when people say they're "obsessed" or "addicted" to everything from lipgloss to greek yogurt.

Because really? Are you really OBSESSED with lipgloss? And if so, let's talk about your options for having a personality that works.

Anyway - I've been listening to this song non-stop for the last 72 hours, and it's the one thing getting me through the all-nighters I've been pulling lately to get this book done and out... Other than, you know, the satisfaction of completing another book and the relief of having another big project completed and the worldwide acclaim and limitless fortune that is sure to be mine because of it.

But other than that, it's this song.

And you're probably going to hate it. But I don't give a shit, because I LOVE it, and this blog is about ME, and so I'm POSTING it.



You're welcome.

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Crashing the blogging couch: SMBMSP Guest Posts

It's blurry because your eyes can't even handle it.It was one of my biggest dreams this year to get Erika Napoletano up to Minneapolis so I could meet her in person. I didn't know how I was going to do it, or even if I could do it. I just knew that I really, really wanted to. And I knew that if I could make it happen, it could be a radically awesome happening for others, too.

I get a little fan-girl about Erika and RedheadWriting, but I'm totally okay with it, because her and it is some seriously cool shit. It's a little terrifying, to write an email to someone you admire and know that you can only hope and pray that it doesn't come off like the dumbest, most loserly online dating message you've ever gotten ("Uhhh...so I think ur kewl! We should hang. Tell me when u wanna come over here.").

But sooner or later, you gotta suck it up and wrangle that fucking dream. So I emailed Erika to ask if she had any dates planned to hit up Minneapolis to promote her book, and if not, would she want to come up if we could set something up for her? And then I took another chance and email the first person who came to mind who might want to help plan it with me - Mykl Roventine.

I didn't really know Mykl very well when I approached him about helping me with bringing Erika up here. I knew of him through Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis, of course, and had met him briefly at an event there and then again at an annual Lost Saturday happy hour with mutual friends. But once you take one brave step, it psyches you up to take another (possibly because chemicals from the adrenaline are rushing into your brain, making you slightly crazeballs). So I emailed to ask him if he knew of Erika and what would he maybe think about having her up to do a SMBMSP event, maybe?

And thus began one of the funnest partnerships of my life.

And while the whole thing started out with totally selfish motives on my part (I just wanted to meet Erika in person. Fuck the rest of you guys) there was something distinctly radical about being able to share her kick-assery with others. SMBMSP is pretty much the collective of cool when it comes to professionals in the Twin Cities, and Mykl and I knew that once the crew got a glimpse of who Erika was and what she was about, they would be all in, and better for it.

So consider this my personal wrap-up post. The event happened, and it was extraordinary. I was so proud to be a part of it, and I had so much fun working with Mykl and getting to know him better through this experience (we're totes friends now. Sorry if you're super jel). And I not only got to meet Erika in person, but I got to hang out with her and introduce her and her particular brand of bold to some of my favorite people.

And I'm still kind of beaming about it.

So I thought I'd also share a few of the guest posts I did for the SMBMSP After Hours event to both promote and wrap up the night. Because I had a ton of fun writing them, and so you might have a little bit of fun reading them.

But if you don't, I don't wanna hear about it. I'm not your cruise director. I can only give you what I can give you.

SMBMSP After Hours: The Nighttime Is The Right Time.

SMBMSP After Hours: The Buzz

Event Recap: After Hours with Erika Napoletano

Want even more of the SMBMSP After Hours awesomeness? 

Check out a podcast with Erika here (Mykl was rad enough to give me a shout-out, which means that I am now Podcast Famous. I'm adding it to my bio: "Podcast Famous Amber L. Carter is a writer, entrepreneur, speaker, and champion of both pizza parties AND podcasts.)

Catch up on the event photos and video of Erika's talk here. [image error]

Well hello, Fall! I didn't see you come in.

"The beer...it's just..so GOOD."Touching down in Minneapolis for a few days, then heading up north indefinitely. But in the meantime...beers on fall afternoons with friends?

I'll take it. [image error]

Feelin' it.

I think it's normal and common for us lady friends (and our more musically-and-feelings-inclined guy friends) to listen to the worst sad songs ever right after a breakup. It kind of feels like sucking the poison out - we just gotta listen to this song and cry a bunch and think about how tragic love is and then we'll feel better! Remember when Carol broke up with Michael on The Office and he kept playing that clip from "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt?
 
Watch goodbye my lover in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Yeah. It's kind of like that.

Or, like when you hear the new song by Linkin Park the day you move out of your boyfriend's apartment and you know instinctively that he'll probably love that song when he hears it and then you hear it again a couple weeks later and know instinctively again - because, I mean, you guys loved each other and just got each other and so you still just know when he would find something funny or awful or awesome - that he probably listens to it all the time now, thinking about how much he doesn't miss you, so instead of changing the radio really quick, instead you just let yourself listen to it and cry it out and get it over with.

You know...also like that.

It's like the musical form of cutting. You just need something to help you get it all out so you can start to feel better.

And here's the thing: it will make you feel better.

Here's what I know for sure (Ooooopprrraaaahhhh!): when you try to push away and stifle negative feelings, those feelings will grow five more heads and return later bigger and stronger and hungry for your (super cute) face.

So you gotta face it head on. 

You gotta feel it.

Feel those fuckin' feelings! 

I am totally that girl who never wants to cry. Even when I'm alone. I'm too strong, too independent, too smart, fuckthatguyI'mnotcryingoverhim. And I used to always feel like crying was just going to make me feel worse, so I never wanted to do it. And I know this is not an Amber-Specific thing. It's not a big secret that as humans, we are all secretly terrified of feeling pain. Emotional crap-type pain. We avoid that shit like nothing less.

(I was trying to think of a current pop culture media reference as a metaphor for the above, but I'm tired and nothing is coming to mind, so please feel free to insert your own and then congratulate yourself for being very current and hilarious. And make sure to share it in the comment section so I can steal it later and take all the credit for it)

So it kind of makes sense that, when it came to past breakups, my favorite method has always been declaring - mostly to myself - that I was Over It. I was DONE. Done done done. Over it!

But when we pretend that we're “over it” and push our crap feelings down, we don't really get “over it”.
Instead, we stuff our faces "over" it. 
We starve ourselves "over" it. 
We get drunk "over" it.

We get control-freaky "over" it.
We turn into workaholics "over" it.
We rebound "over" it. 
We shut people out "over" it. 
Right? I mean, how many times have we felt sad and told ourselves we were not going to feel sad so instead we grabbed our girlfriends to go out for drinks just to find ourselves drunk and sobbing into our pillows at the end of the night?

That kind of stuff is called self-medicating. We cover it up with methods we think will heal it, but won't. They take care of the symptoms for a while. Sometimes even for years. But they're not the cure. 
The only thing that is? 
Feeling those feelings. 
And then letting them go. 
Lemme explain: 

After the Big Breakup, I didn't want to let this to be another point in my life where it took five years to get over someone because I was stuck in "I'm okay! But I'm not really okay..." denial land. So I made a gentle promise to myself that, this time, I wouldn't push those feelings away. When I felt like crying, I would cry. When I felt like being angry and bitter, I would let myself be angry and bitter. When I felt like freaking the fuck out, I would let myself freak the fuck out.

But here was the trick: I wasn't going to roll around and soak in those feelings all day, either. There's this meditation method called the Feeling practice (taken from the book Add More ~ING To Your Life by Gabrielle Bernstein) that says that, "in order to heal it, ya gotta feel it. When you are willing to experience your negative feelings, they release." So don't push it away: allow that feeling to pass through for 90 seconds (don't worry about timing it, though. That would be weird and restrictive and slightly control-freakish, which kind of goes against the whole point). And once it passes through, take those negative feelings and ease them into positive ones. 

Stay with me here.

Remember the Written Shot of Courage?

I would read it then. Or, if the negative feeling or thought had to do with something outside of that realm, I would simply write down or repeat the opposite: the positive mirror of that fear. You can call them affirmations if you want. Most of the time, though, what they really are is the truth.

So I decided to just let myself practice this and see if it worked. And you know what? It really, really helped. I've had friends comment on how well I seem to be doing, considering, and I can nod my head and honestly agree that I'm dealing with the whole thing much better than I thought I would be. It doesn't mean I'm not still sad. It doesn't mean that I'm not heartbroken - I am, and greatly so. It doesn't mean I don't feel angry and bitter and awful and overwhelmed with stunted love and full of missing and occasionally blind with regret. I feel all those things, at different times and sometimes all at the same time. It's just that when I start to feel those feelings, I give myself permission to really feel them. To hang out with them. Get curious about them. Allow them to pass fully through and then out, like a bird escaping a room through an open window.

And after doing it for a few weeks, I can also tell, now, when I'm not letting myself do that, for whatever reason. I had a tough weekend, and I could tell that I was having a tough weekend because I ignored my list of things I wanted to get done in favor of a couch and ice cream and crap TV. And I felt shitty at the end of the day, and while I told myself I felt that way because I had been a lazy ass and ate a bunch of junk, it was really because I was sad and missed him and I wasn't allowing myself to admit it and deal. So I turned on that goddamn Linkin Park song and let myself sob it out. I let myself think about and feel all the things that hurt so badly right now - the life I thought we were going to have that we're not going to have anymore, at least not together. The people and the animals and the experiences that were a part of our life that I now have to miss. The daily living life of someone I love that I'm no longer a part of. That I no longer get to witness.

It is tough shit.

But after I cried it out for a while, I started to think about the other things. The irrefutable fact that makes it impossible for us to be together anymore. The acknowledgment that I was brave enough to break my own heart so we could both have the kind of lives we wanted for ourselves. The keen hope that I'm not done yet. That this isn't the end of me or the life I want to live, not by a long shot. That maybe this is yet another relationship that wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be, but I sure as hell am getting pretty fucking good at all this life stuff because of it.

And then I got up, washed my face, meditated, and got back to doing the things I wanted to do.

Because I felt better, the way I do now when I let myself just give in to that space for a little bit. Lighter. Like I can breathe again and maybe this wasn't the end of the world, after all, and so let's get back on track and return to what kind of beginning we want to make this.

And again, like the Written Shot of Courage, this isn't just a breakup thing. It's a people thing. A crisis thing. A bad day thing. And every-day thing. A life thing. Shit gets rough, man. Let's stop making it rougher by pretending that the rough stuff doesn't exist and that we aren't affected by it. Because we are, and when we take a step back, it's one of the best things about us: the fact that we feel. The fact that we're capable of feeling.

Because also, have you ever met a sociopath? I have. And they are scary fucking shit.

So even if it's just for little bit, embrace the thing inside of you that gives you the ability to have feelings. Feel it up! Break out that sad-sap playlist, that pile of break-up-esque movies. Give yourself an hour or two to just get real with what you're going through (that rhymes. Because I'm not just a blogger...I'm a poet). Be good to yourself. Don't be your own worst jerk friend when it comes to your bad day. Give yourself a break so you can fully brush yourself off and get on with the business of living your new kick-ass life.

Because you do have to get on with the business of living your new kick-ass life.

And this is where the really good stuff begins.

So stay tuned, pumpkin face. [image error]

Last night in L.A.

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