Category — Personal Development

I am a couple of steps closer to thinking of Kailua as home, and it is a damn good feeling.

I spent two weeks on the mainland in June– two glorious weeks with family and friends in the Bay Area and Portland that made me wish more than once that I had extended my trip. Hey, I work from home; what’s stopping me from escaping reality for two months instead of two weeks? I could easily get used to going to movies at the Sebastiani Theatre with my parents, eating my mom’s home cooking, grabbing beers with my fantastic high school friends and San Francisco posse.

Painting the town red with the ‘Noma crew

It wouldn’t be a night out in SF without one of these pictures

It felt so comfortable and safe to go home, and I could have coasted through an entire summer in Sonoma. It was tempting, but I knew staying longer would just be an attempt at avoiding starting my life in my new home. I already have a strong support network in California that I can go back to whenever I want; I needed to start building a new one in Hawaii.

In the end, I came back to Kailua just in time for the long Fourth of July weekend, and I’m glad I did. That weekend was a turning point for me– a wonderful balance of outings with new friends and time alone to finish settling into our apartment. Since I got back, I’ve gone sailing in Kaneohe Bay, hosted the first dinner party in the new place (on the table I repainted myself… I’m awfully proud of it and will probably start carrying photos in my wallet) and attended a writers’ group in Honolulu. Life here is pretty good.

Sailing on the Fourth of July

I still have rough patches when I all I want to do is throw some clothes in a bag and fly to San Francisco or New Orleans or whatever port city Brian is in at the moment, but they’re not as frequent as they used to be. I have a mental list of healthy ways of coping with stress or homesickness or general unhappiness (for example, drinking a bottle of Jim Beam and sobbing over the “Army Wives” marathon would not qualify) that I pull from when needed, but I decided to write them out into a physical list. I started this as a project for a friend going through a break-up, and I’ve been expanding it gradually. I’d love to hear more ideas from everyone else.

1. Connecting with my people back home.

After my last post, I received an outpouring of supportive comments and IMs and emails and phone calls from friends and family far away, and I was reminded again just how lucky I am to have these relationships and how important it is to maintain them. The little connections throughout the day– Facebook wall posts, Twitter replies and Google chats (can you tell I work for a Web site?)– keep me sane. The bigger ones– emails, phone calls and, my favorite, video Skype chats– make me bow down and give thanks to the Internet gods. Because of Skype’s magic, I can show Melia in Jackson how we’ve decorated the new apartment and have a good old-fashioned sobfest with Kaila and Jenna in New Orleans.

2. Spending time with new friends.

This transition would have been much harder if I hadn’t met some awesome people right off the bat through Brian’s ship and the few friends we already had here. They have been nothing but welcoming, and it’s pretty amazing to have fun, like-minded friends who are always up for an afternoon at the beach or a night of pizza and sangria.

3. Exercising.

This one doesn’t always happen as much as it should, but getting my heart rate up is the easiest way for me to stop feeling crazy (remember that logic from “Legally Blonde”? “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands.” Word, Elle.). If I go for a swim or a walk at the beach or punch out my aggression with Billy Blanks in Tae-Bo, everything seems a little more manageable.

4. Taking a class or picking up a new hobby.

In the past, I’ve tried to be flexible enough for yoga and responsible enough for financial planning (neither is an easy task for me). Now I’m trying to learn a few chords on the guitar and searching for the right halau to start up hula after an eight-year hiatus. I find the challenge of learning something new, especially something a little difficult for me, is a good way to keep my mind occupied.

5. Doing something creative.

I’m not quite at the point where I use pinking shears and puffy paints for scrapbooking projects, but I do turn to writing and photography and ReadyMade-style decorating when I need a creative outlet. Making something from scratch, even if it’s not a work of art, is cathartic.

6. Exploring.

No matter how homesick I get, I can take comfort in the fact that I keep moving to really cool places. Bottom line: I live in Hawaii and there is no shortage of places to explore. Beaches, art galleries, hiking trails, farmers’ markets, restaurants, dive bars… I’ve got my work cut out for me.

I have a confession to make: I have been looking forward to changing my name since I was a little girl… well, at least since kids in my class discovered that my last name contained a four-letter word and was therefore worthy of mockery. So around sixth grade. Junior high is not kind to the Dickers of the world.

As I’ve gotten older, tougher and wiser, I have embraced my family’s name and have become unfazed by any jokes people may throw my way. There is a long, fine line of Dickers before me, and I am proud to be part of that lineage. I’m sorry, are you giggling? Did I say something funny?

We will always be the Sisters Dicker

For the last few years, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I would change my name or not after I got married. The independent feminist in me said I should keep my maiden name to show I am still my own person with or without my husband. The family-oriented part of me wanted me to hyphenate or take my husband’s name to show unity between us and to make things easier for when we have kids someday.

Well, it turns out I don’t really like the way “Dicker-Burgess” or “Burdicker” or “Dickurgess” sounds. Plus, DMV employees already get testy with me for having a super long name. If I became Gillian Elena Mei Po Dicker-Burgess, they might kill me with their angry, soulless eyes. I decided to make the full change to become a Burgess.

I went to the Social Security Administration and the DMV last week to change my name officially, and I got a lot more emotional about it than I thought I would. I’ve had this name for 25 years, and it has served me well. Brian came with me to both places, waiting patiently and holding my hand in depressing, crowded, fluorescent-lit offices. We went out to lunch to celebrate after Social Security legitimized my new identity as Gillian Burgess. As we toasted over Karl Strauss beers, I told my husband that I’m happy I did it. And I meant it.

Welcome to the Burgi

Changing my name was a hard personal decision, one I thought about a lot before I took the plunge. If I was surprised by my strong emotions on the matter, I was even more surprised by the stronger reactions I received from friends, acquaintances and even total strangers (beyond the expected “wow, it’s going to be awhile before I get used to your new name”).

A few:

• It’s archaic to take the man’s last name and you should keep yours.
• You should definitely hyphenate.
• I think it’s nice when the woman goes the traditional route and takes her husband’s name.
• I’m going to change my name, too, when I get married.
• I would never change my name.
• You’re a terrible feminist and you might as well kiss your freedom goodbye because you are now your husband’s property.

Maybe that last one was more implied than stated outright, but I can read between the lines.

I respect everyone’s opinions, but this experience made it very clear to me that a decision that is good for one woman is not necessarily good for every woman. Taking a new last name or not, having children or not, being a stay-at-home mom or a working mom, traveling the world or settling down and buying a house, all the gray area in between– these are all choices we get to make as individuals. No one can make them for us. And that’s what both thrills and terrifies me about being a woman.

Coming soon… The Name Game, Part II: A How-To Guide to the Tedious, Obnoxious Process of Changing Your Name

I have a habit of going through periods of extreme, massive and sometimes violent change. I don’t, for example, just start a new job or move to a new apartment. Oh, no. That would be too easy. I go, what my friend Gene would call, “balls to the wall” when I shake things up in my life.

Around Christmas a year ago, I got laid off from one job, started a new one, moved from California back to New Orleans, found out that Brian was being deployed to Iraq, went through a number of emotional breakdowns and got engaged… all within a month. This is just how I roll.

OMG, what happened? Where did these rings come from and why am I wearing a blanket with sleeves?

Right now is another one of those times where everything is changing, and I just have to embrace the madness or go mad myself. First step toward sanity: going back home and burning things with my sister. Yep, that’s right. Melia and I have both been moving all over the country, yet we still have boxes and binders and bookcases of old memories left at our parents’ house in Sonoma. Every time I go home, I say I am going to get rid of things I no longer need, but I always find an excuse to put it off to a later visit.

Didn’t get to paint over the hot air balloons this time, but the Sarah McLachlan and Austin Powers posters did come down

Well, it’s finally time. If I’m really going to make the transition into adulthood and marriage, I don’t want to be tied down by pieces of my past I just don’t feel like dealing with.

Signs of progress: cleaning out shelves full of books, photo albums and knickknacks

Melia and I both came home the same week, and we formed a moral support group of two, spending our evenings deciding the fate of stacks of photos and papers and books. I was amazed by what I had kept for the last 10 or 20 years. Why did I hang on to letters that remind me of a time I’d rather forget? Did I really think my high school English paper on “The Kitchen God’s Wife” was worth saving to show my future children? I don’t even like Amy Tan!

We decided a ritual bonfire was the right way for us to let go of the past and move forward. We gathered together the bags and bags of papers we wanted to burn (sadly, photos had to be disposed of another way) and lit a match in the fireplace. In went Melia’s identity as a nonprofit workaholic: Rolodexes, curriculum plans, workshop notes. In went my reminders of being a reserved and over-achieving teenager.

Burn, baby, burn

With every stack, it got a little easier. Notes from my junior high BFFs, angsty teen poetry, senior project writing assignments, college term papers. I watched them all go up in flames, and it was glorious. Let me tell you, there is nothing more freeing than burning your SAT scores.

Anyone who has ever had to write a “dialectical journal” will know the satisfaction I got from burning one

Melia wrote a blog post about our fire, and she captured very eloquently how I felt about our ritual:

Burning the written documentation of your past is much, much more cleansing than dumping it in the recycling bin, or even shredding it. When the flames consume the pages that symbolize your past, your former self and relationships instantly cease to exist. What remains is nothing, and it forces you to relate to people — your best friend from middle school, or your enemy, for that matter — in a completely new way instead of clinging to how things used to be.

I am very different than I was at age 15 or even 20 (thank goodness), and it was a huge relief to erase my old expectations and make a fresh start. The way I celebrate a fresh start is by breaking open a bottle of red wine… and making a new list. Borderline alcoholic, maybe. More-than-slightly nerdy, definitely. But this is a good list, not my normal “holy Christ, I have so much to do and will never finish it all” list. This will be an ongoing fun list…

Fresh Start List #1: A Few Goals for the Near Future

1. Go to Central America and learn Spanish

I love traveling, and it has been far too long since I’ve gone on a down-and-dirty, fit-everything-in-a-backpack, shower-every-now-and-then trip. Summer 2005, to be exact, when Jenna and I took over the Greek Isles. I have always wanted to go to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, you name it. I loved Panama when Brian and I went there on our honeymoon, but I hated not being able to communicate beyond my toddler’s vocabulary of “hello” and “thank you” and “I have hunger.” I want to learn Spanish, and I’m comfortable enough with French now that I’m ready to tackle a new language. This summer, I am determined to go on a Central American extravaganza with my girl Angie. Our plan is to go to language school for a few weeks, then spend another month traveling from country to country on buses full of chickens while practicing our new skillz.

September 2005: Jenna has a “Titanic” moment on the ferry from Greece to Italy

2. Take the plunge on new projects

I have a million ideas a-brewin’ in my head at any given moment– business ideas, freelance writing ideas, home decorating ideas, costume party ideas– but a lot of them don’t go anywhere. I get so overwhelmed by wanting to do something perfectly that I never actually do it at all. That needs to stop. If I want to try to build a Web site (or a bookcase or a magazine) from scratch, dammit, I need to give it a shot. The worst that could happen is that it won’t be perfect and that I’ll learn something from the process.

3. Do more things every day that make me happy

I consider myself a fairly happy person. Sure, I stress out over things more than I should sometimes, but when I get carried away, I try to take a step back and keep it all in perspective. Lately, though, I’ve been working too much, working out too little and not making time for a lot of activities that make me really happy. Dancing. Cooking. Swimming. Watching movies. Taking pictures. Speaking French. Writing for fun. The best New Year’s resolution I ever made was freshman year of college when I vowed to go dancing at least once a week. I kept it up until the end of the school year (longer than any other resolution I’ve ever made), and I couldn’t have been happier doing it. I’m making a resolution to make more of these resolutions.

French Quarter Fest 2008: Dancing in the streets with my sis