I bake my cake & eat it too.

Here's what I think...

We're all working towards making the world around us as close as we possibly can to the "perfect" world we've dreamed up in our minds. That Center Stage meets 500 Days of Summer (ahem...Keltie :) meets Aerosmith video meets Kay Jewelry Commercial. Each one of them as beautiful & unique as the person who created it...What's yours? Mine is equal parts Anthropologie catalog, Breakfast at Tiffanys, & Rock & Roll chic, add a heavy dash of Carrie Bradshaw, mix well & top with a hippie bohemian gypsy flair....That's my perfect world...subject to change at any moment. Essentially I don't see anything wrong with that concept. We pull inspiration from everything around us in order to create ourselves & our universe how we each see fit, piece by piece. It means we're paying attention. There's no cure for dreamer's disease, I consider this making the best of the situation...

The difficult end of that being the realization that the world we live in will never be that perfectly scripted, painstakingly thought-out & over-thought day dream that sends you to sleep every night. My hair will never look as perfectly tousled as Carrie Bradshaw's in the mornings, I will never quite have the flair, or the Givenchy dresses, of Holly Golightly, & "he" will never actually be Jim Morrison...or Bob Dylan...The key is to look past that, see the beauty in your own situation. Your favorite scenes in movies are played out, don't preconceive every moment from now until forever or you're going to miss everything. So he stuttered a little & didn't deliver Shakespearean worthy poetry...So you couldn't afford Manolo Blahniks & wore your go-to Target pumps....There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You're as cool & quirky as the people you wish you were more like. The hard part is embracing that & giving yourself permission to just be. I get lost 35% of the time I walk out my front door, my hair is a trainwreck when I get out of bed in the mornings, I for some reason refuse to leave the house without at least 4 necklaces, 6 bracelets & two rings on, I can't walk around my room without banging one of my shins on the corner of my bed, I have the worst memory ever, & I'm incredibly awkward in social settings...not exactly Holly Golightly...but then again I doubt she'd rock a pair of black knee high motorcycle boots the way I do. If you don't remind yourself of these things the only end result will be an incredible amount of un-necessary pressure you place on yourself to live up to some crazy idea...constant disappointment....I think it's wonderful to aspire to be like people you admire but remember the differences you have make you unique and

beautiful. There is already one Kate Moss in the world, we don't need another. Be yourself, everyone else is taken. There's no need to be upset every day of your life because you're feet just aren't as beautiful as Sylvie Guillem's....most peoples' aren't, yours will never be, but point them as hard as you can & be proud anyways. No one has any right to expect you to be perfect, unless they themselves are perfect & I'll tell you right now...they aren't. There are things you can't change, let them be. There are things that you admire, take from them what you can & put your own unique twist on them. Open your eyes to the world around you, let life unfold & enjoy it. After all, what else can you do? C'est la vie.

(sometimes I have to give even myself advice in the form of a blog. Today was blustery & rainy. Dinner with Keltie was like a hot cup of Refresh tea for my brain.)

I am getting up at 5:30am to be at the gym by 6....And that's that.

"Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. "

-Jim Morrison