What to do in Asheville, NC

I just got back from my first trip to Asheville, NC and I am already planning my next. I am in awe of this town and I cannot wait to return. The locals were so warm and inviting, greeting us with genuine smiles and eager to offer recommendations of where to eat, drink and play. The town is wonderfully strange in all the best ways. Downtown is teeming with live music, local craft breweries, art galleries and farm-to-table dining. And the natural beauty surrounding the town filled me with an enormous sense of appreciation and gratitude for this amazing planet we live on.

My boyfriend and I were in Asheville celebrating our first anniversary. We stayed in a cabin, but it was so much more than that. We couldn't have dreamt this place up if we tried. Not only was it completely secluded, hidden away atop a giant mountain, but it also came furnished with every amenity we could possibly think of. Three separate decks over-looked the mountains, one equipped with a hot-tub where we enjoyed watching the sunset on our last night. The fireplace kept us warm during those chilly mountain evenings (it dropped to about 18 degrees) and the nights were so dark we could see every star in the sky, including a couple of shooting stars! To walk out on the deck as the sun rose and hear nothing but the mountain breeze gave me chills that I can still feel as I write this. Our host, Brea, surpassed every expectation we had. I've already recommended her cabins to everyone I know. Here is her website, if you are interested- CabinInAsheville.com.

The Charmed Cottage

S'mores by the fireplace

Water wheel in front yard

When we finally peeled ourselves away from the cabin, we kept busy by exploring the city of Asheville. Every restaurant we went to had us signing it's praises. We are both vegetarians, so we were nervous there wouldn't be much southern food we could enjoy. Boy, were we wrong! Not only did these restaurants offer locally grown, organic food, but they all had multiple vegetarian options to choose from. Fresh black bean burgers, soysauge breakfast scrambles, even a vegetarian Cuban sandwich! I almost cried when I saw it on the menu. Come to think of it, I may have actually cried. I grew up on Cuban sandwiches. Flaky Cuban bread pressed together with a filling of ham, pork, swiss cheese, mustard and pickles. Mmmmmmm. But since I've been vegetarian for the last six years, I haven't found a way to re-create the dish. Well, Laughing Seed Cafe sure did! They replaced the ham and pork with perfectly prepared tempeh AND added a fresh black bean spread. Here's a list of all of the restaurants and cafes we went to. I recommend ALL of them.

The Local Joint

Tupelo Honey Cafe

Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar

Laughing Seed Cafe

Over Easy Cafe

Izzy's Coffee Den

Mayfel's

The Local Joint- Asheville, NC

Over Easy Cafe- Asheville, NC

To compensate for all of the food we were consuming, we walked.  We walked up and down the hilly streets of Asheville and then ventured a bit further to walk up and down the mountains surrounding town. Downtown, we stumbled upon the River Arts District where we bought some beautiful handcrafted ceramic pieces by local artist JoAnna Carroll. We drove the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping along the way to gawk at the views and hike a few trails. And on our last day, we found the energy to drive up to Chimney Rock and climb the 500+ steps to the top!

Driving the Blue Ridge Parkway

Napping on the French Broad River

Climbing Chimney Rock

My favorite part of the trip might have been getting to see one of my favorite musicians play at a local bar. This was my seventh time seeing Zach Deputy and I am so happy I got to share it with my boyfriend. Zach is a one-man band and therefore puts on an incredible live performance. He creates all the sounds and beats live on stage and emits a pure joy that seeps into everyone in the audience.

Zach Deputy making magic on stage at The Grey Eagle- Asheville, NC

Have you been to Asheville, NC? What places would you recommend? If you have any questions or are looking for more suggestions, please feel free to comment below. Thanks, and happy travels!

Turning flaws into flourishes

My favorite kind of spooning.

So, do you have any hobbies? I never really have an answer to this question. As a child, I was a bit of a perfectionist. Not to say I’m not still. But in a child, perfectionism can have more negative implications. For example, I now know I’m a perfectionist. I understand and accept that the universe won't allow me to be perfect at every one thing. And I succumb to that truth, albeit begrudgingly. But children, they don’t own that insight yet. I really did believe that perfectionism existed and that I was capable of it.

You see, I've tried everything once. Not “once” for an extended period of time. “Once” as in I took one class, didn't master the craft immediately, and quit. Karate, dance, piano, tennis, gymnastics. My dad recounts my first tumbling lesson and I can’t imagine a clearer insight into the person I would become.

As the story goes, all the other little girls were doing there tuck-and-roll somersaults. Their tiny bodies effortlessly curling under themselves, gracefully tumbling forward. I, however, kept tumbling sideways. Clumsily, I kept trying and trying, and toppled over to the side every time. After realizing I was the only student left to have not mastered the routine, I stood up and told my parents I was leaving. I was three. You can imagine the staunch conviction I must have had as a child for my parents to just roll their eyes and nod, as if to say “yeah, we saw that one coming”. 

I was stubborn then and I am stubborn now. I don’t blame my parents for allowing me to quit. They couldn’t force me to do any of these things. If I made up my mind about something, it rarely changed.

This charming personality trait of mine has prevented me from finding a hobby I enjoy. I'm sure it's prevented me from plenty more than that., but for now I'm focusing of my lack of hobbies.

I enjoy writing. I’ve been complimented it on it, reassured that I am proficient at it, and therefore continue to write. But I’ve been in the market for another outlet. Something that doesn’t involve scouring my memories for insights and then turning them into words. Soon, this "hobby" that should be helping me unwind begins to get me quite wound up. I need a hobby that finds pleasures in the little things.

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon Hand Lettering. All I know is that I haven’t stopped since. It came a bit naturally, I must admit, which made me more inclined the pursue it. But what intrigues me most is that the nature of the craft itself allows for flaws. A smudge can be transformed into a flower, an inkblot into a flourish and so on. And the beauty is in the relaxation it brings. The ink flowing out of the pen onto the smooth paper, curling lines into letters and letters into words, until finally a work of art emerges. I’m hardly an artist, of course. But who’s to deny that what I’m creating isn’t art. As Andy Warhol once said, “Art is anything you can get away with”. I’d like to think I'm “getting away with” my Hand Lettering.

Patience is a practice, not a virtue.

A virtue is a behavior showing high moral standards. Patience, the act itself, is virtuous. But more importantly, it is a practice. A practice that takes consistent dedication. Like any habit or behavior, practice makes perfect.

Patience involves a lot of waiting. And waiting can be discouraging at times. Waiting can be synonymous with longing, with yearning, with the feeling that something is missing. Waiting is an affect of missing something, of not having. And time, it seems, has been convicted as the thief.

My friend gave me a book recently called The Moon Divas Guidebook. It serves as a workbook with exercises for women in transition. I read through it at night.

This book asked me to write down four fears and dissect them. I was told to find the root of each fear and see if the four were connected in someway. My four fears were Mortality, Settling, Imperfection and Not Knowing. Through my analysis I realized my four fears actually were sewn together with one common thread. Time. Losing it, wasting it, not having enough of it, not knowing what to do with it. 

I fear death because I’m afraid I’m going to lose my time. I fear settling because I fear I am going to waste my time. I fear imperfection because I fear I don’t have enough time. I fear not knowing because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my time. My biggest realization in this unpacking process was understanding that time is not mine to possess. I don’t have time to use. I live time. I am living in time and space and experiencing it.

It is easy to become possessive of time. As if it is ours alone to take advantage of, to hoard or to waste. But that just isn't the case. Time doesn't belong to any one of us. So no longer will I complain about not having enough time or wasting my time or biding my time. From now on I will embrace time for what it is. Limitless, expansive, universal. And with that much time, patience suddenly becomes and easy practice.

Patience

Do It Yourself: Emotional Stability

Trust the universe. Trust the universe. Trust the universe. Ommmmm.

A mantra is a phrase or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation. Some of us may have them and not even realize we use them. I’ve adopted a few over the years to help ease my anxiety, re-focus my energy and come back to my moment. However, though they’ve proven themselves true time and again, I often doubt my mantras. I become fearful that I am using them as excuses. You see, I tend to over-rationalize difficult situations in an attempt to make sense of them. In my past, this has led to toxic relationships being drawn out for years and unhappy work environments being tolerated for too long. Life’s uncertainty leaves me anxious about how to make the distinction between what I can and can’t control.

The truth is, there is a balance that must be reached. While we must act with intention and take responsibility for those actions, we must also recognize that some circumstances in our life will be out of our control. That is a difficult thing for me to accept. And in order to make sense of it, I attempt to manipulate reasoning because I ache to understand the process. But what I’m realizing is that sometimes we won’t understand why until the reason is ready to present itself. So, we must practice the virtue of patience. With patience we can cherish our moments, good and bad, for the lessons they are, for the steps they take us toward our future. We’ll never be able to control all that life throws at us, but we will always be able to control how we react to it.

If you’re anything like me, this patience can be excruciating at times. It causes anxiety and fear of the unknown. It breeds self-doubt, causing us to forget all we’ve accomplished because we’re too busy looking ahead. Those emotions are real and they demand attention. Here are some ways I have found to stabilize them.

Identification

Identifying an emotion and exploring where it’s coming from is the first step toward understanding it. For example, I become anxious because I can’t control every aspect of my life. I become frantic, grasping at straws attempting to piece together reasoning as to why things are happening the way they are. The simple act of putting words to these issues has been a good first step to understanding the effect they’ve been having on my life. Giving a name to whatever it is that’s causing us distress allows us to face it more easily because we can take ownership of the issue, rather than the other way around.

Practice

I have been managing my anxiety for most of my  life. I’m learning what works and what doesn’t, what’s healthy and what’s not. We all have our own coping mechanisms to deal with uncomfortable emotions. Some feed them with food while others may mask them with sarcasm. I took to trying to control my anxiety through purging. I felt if I could control what went in and out of my body I could in turn control my life and thus relieve myself from anxiety. I’ve since recovered from that particular habit, but it’s taken time to get to a place where I know how to manage it. And the process is only beginning, because healthy mechanisms, like yoga, meditation and therapy, only work when we dedicate ourselves to their practice. Through this practice, we can prepare ourselves to react to these emotions in healthier ways.

Awareness

It’s important to learn our triggers. They will change over time, but they tend to stay within the same realm. One of my triggers is lack of control. Where others may become anxious when faced with decisions or having to speak in front of a group, I’m rendered catatonic when I’m not in control of what is happening around me. It does take constant effort to remind myself that I can’t control everything, but the effort put in has begun to prove its reward. I’ve learned it’s easier to embrace the chaos rather than attempt to control it out of fear. Emotional triggers can be sneaky, so putting the energy into remaining vigilantly aware is the best way to stay ahead of them.

Acceptance

Above all else, accepting the fact that we can’t solve all of our problems, and that some our problems aren’t really problems at all, will bring the most relief. One of the biggest epiphanies I’ve encountered in this process may be an obvious one, but it wasn’t until I articulated it to myself, in my own words, did it truly have meaning. “The future will never exist”. That has become my new mantra. Accepting that tomorrow hasn’t happened yet, therefore it doesn’t exist. It will never exist. It will never be visible or tangible, it is a figment of our imaginations. So it’s worthless to pretend we have any control over it. All we have is our moment, and it is our responsibility to do all we can with it in order to even attempt to guarantee ourselves the tomorrow we want.

We all have our own crosses and find different ways to bear them. But in general, we all share one thing: The present. It is something we all share, collectively, and tend to frivolously waste. I encourage us all to attempt to savor it. Life is much more fleeting than we care to admit, which is why we find ways to avoid or escape the present moment. We fear its elusivity. We hate that it slips through our fingers. But as soon as we embrace it for what it is, a beautiful gift we are all given, we will be able to relish in it rather than run from it. So, be here now. 

*As seen on ThoughtCatalog.com

The Most Important Thing to Remember, is to Breathe.

Let go or be dragged.

I wish everyone did yoga. It’s difficult and uncomfortable and sometimes our arms just can’t twist like that! But I truly believe the practice of yoga can change lives. It connects the mind, body and soul in a way that betters our whole being. The clearer our mind is, the more open our heart can be. The leaner our muscles feel, the better we look to ourselves in the mirror. The longer we hold that handstand, the more powerful our confidence becomes. It’s all connected.

I have been practicing yoga for about six years now and the most important thing I’ve taken away is simply that we must be kind to ourselves. We can’t get upset with your bodies for not performing the way they did last class, or last pose. We must love our body and relish in all it can do. Yoga practice serves as a reminder that we haven’t always been able to touch our toes, or hold a warrior pose, or stand on our hands! Just as we haven’t always had the courage to move to another city, or the guts to chase our dreams or the stamina to run a mile! We are always changing, always growing. And, just as in life, sometimes we’ll try and fail. But then we’ll try again. And again and again until finally, we nail it! Even if just for a split second. That’s all it takes to feel the epiphany. To feel ourselves open up and witness all we’re capable of.

Every yoga practice is different. With each class we bring a different body. Our bones sit differently than they did last class, our muscles are tighter or looser depending on the stress we’ve been putting on them. But all this helps us remember to give up control. We can’t force our bodies into positions they aren’t ready for, just like we can’t force situations to turn out the way we want them to, or force people to be something they aren’t. Yoga teaches us how to give up control. It shows us how to trust the process, surrender to the universe, and know all works out as it should. 

Yoga also allows for vulnerability. Bending over in tight spandex in a silent room listening to everyone’s labored breaths. It’s an intimate experience, with complete strangers. But it builds strength and confidence and compassion. Witnessing others, of all different skill levels, attempt a new pose and take those few moments to become comfortable with it, it’s a reminder that we all start from the same place. Yoga is a practice, a practice that takes time and dedication. But it brings the best reward, which is knowing. Knowing we are capable, knowing we are strong, knowing we can do what we once found impossible. 

So I encourage everyone, regardless of age or ability, to walk into a yoga class today. Walk in fearlessly, knowing you’re embracing your body and inviting it to move in ways you never knew possible. Surprise yourself! And embrace the knowing that comes from within. Namaste.

Accidental Cohabitation

"Listen, smile, agree and then do whatever the fuck you were going to do anyway."

Robert Downey Jr.

Shacking up, playing house, moving in together. It’s a topic that seems to have a very specific calculation as to when the time is right. Like an old family recipe that has to be baked at the exact right temperature for not a second longer than the recipe calls for or it will burn up and ruin Thanksgiving dinner. But our choices are our own and don’t fit under one specific recipe. So, how do we know when to start the timer?

I recently have found myself accidentally living at my boyfriend’s house. It’s closer to my job, his fridge always has food in it and I happen to have fallen in love with his cat. But mostly, it’s because he’s there. I have yet to commit a toothbrush to his house and my clothes still come back and forth with me in an overnight bag, but yeah, I kind of live there.

It’s something I never put much thought to when entering into a serious relationship, but it’s an inevitable part of the process. It’s now dawning on me that we’ve started to build a life together, but we don’t “live” together. And it gets a bit tiresome living between two houses. We each have scraps of personal belongings left at each others places, but we don’t have one place to keep everything. Either he’ll forget to pack underwear or I’ll forget my make-up bag. But we press on.

This all seems like pretty typical relationship behavior. But, as I’ve learned, there’s no such thing as typical. You see, he is currently in the process of buying a new house. And as he’s looking for this new house, he can’t help but include me in the process. We both have every intention of continuing our lives together, of one day having our own family. So he wants to know that he can choose a house that I can see myself living in. And I feel confident promising that. The thing is, I know it’s what I want, but I hadn’t considered that I might be presented with this life decision at this point in my life. I unknowingly bought in to a pre-determined time frame; one absent of exceptions or adjustments.

So, I have found myself in a situation I would have never thought to prepare myself for. And, since the topic has come up, it has me wondering:  If I’m basically living with him already, why not go all in? I’m understanding now that my opinions about this have been based solely on accepted convention. There are specific guidelines laid out that we all subconsciously abide by. We’re told it’s too soon to move in or too late to have kids. We’re asked why we are still single or how an engagement can be so long. But there isn’t one universal standard to hold all of our experiences to. Each one is different, with its own unique circumstances. We need to make our decisions based on what’s right for us, not what's “right” for everyone else.

With this in mind, I’m realizing I can make my own rules for how I go about this transition. More importantly, it’s a reminder that I can make my own rules for how I go about most things from now on. It’s important to listen to others who have been there and consider their advice. It’s worth trusting those who have our best interests in mind and heeding the word of the wiser. But the only way to truly know what’s right for us is to find out for ourselves. We can’t be afraid of making mistakes or falling when we take that leap of faith. We’re more resilient than we give ourselves credit for, and from the little I’ve witnessed in my life, it seems to be worth the fall.  

So as I sit in my tiny, one-bedroom apartment, a space I’ve built for myself alone, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for all my blessings. Over the past few years I have created a beautiful life for myself and learned from my many mistakes along the way. And now, I have a partner who is offering to add to that life and make it even bigger and better. It may not be the way I’ve been told it should happen, it may not be the way it happened for someone else, but I know it’s what I’ve always wanted. I’m just getting used to the fact that always is starting sooner than I had expected. 

 * As seen on ThoughtCatalog.com and The-Gaggle.com