Regrets, I've had a few

Though plenty of people associate Mardi Gras only with the drunken debauchery of New Orleans with its boob flashing and bead gathering. I was brought up Catholic so I know that the reason behind it is getting all your sinning out of your system before the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of penitence before Easter.

Some people mark Lent by giving something up -- when I was a kid, it was often chocolate, and as an adult, my go-to has been swearing -- and others do something extra, like going to church more often. Either way, the goal is to make yourself a better person to be more worthy of the love God showed humanity by giving up his son to death.

Regardless of whether you believe the catechism lesson, there's something valuable about having an annual reminder to take stock of how you measure up against your ideal self. I've had an on again, off again relationship with church since high school but Lent still serves a powerful function in getting me to think about how I should correct course.

This year that's gotten me thinking a lot about regrets -- things I would do differently if I had the chance, and what lessons I can apply in situations that aren't too late to change.

Perhaps predictably, most of my regrets involve boys.

In high school, I found myself blessed with a great circle of girlfriends. They were nerds like me, and though there was frequently some sort of teen-age girl tension within the ranks, more often than not, if something social was happening it would involve all of us.

The core four girls had known each other for several years before they adopted me by including me in their plans for football games, school dances, shopping trips. My mom had just forced me into Catholic high school after eight years in public schools and Jody, Julie, Marie and Trisha were an amazing gift to welcome me into this foreign environment.

Sophomore year I began dating a guy who ultimately drove a wedge between me and the girls. To call our relationship stormy would be an understatement. We broke up and got back together for three years, spewing drama and crisis onto anyone who got too close. If I'd had any sense at all, I would have walked away after the first break up. Instead I was hypnotized by someone who manipulated my insecure need for affection and love, and every time I'd get close to breaking free of his orbit, he knew how to yank me back in.

Understandably, the girls grew weary of this nonsense. By the time senior prom came, I was not invited to go with them, and I'm not even sure we saw each other at graduation.

It's heartbreaking that I let great friends slip away because I was too distracted by the lousy treatment of a boyfriend who would ultimately cause me to spend a big chunk of my senior year grounded, encourage me to drive my mom's car someplace I wasn't supposed to be and thereby get into a crash that required massive reconstructive surgery, and even try to extort money from me by threatening to tell my parents we'd been sneaking around seeing each other.

Flash forward to college, where apparently I'd learned a little from this experience but not enough. I dated a guy on and off for about three years (sound familiar?) before I finally got the backbone to make it stick.

The primary lesson I had to get this time was that loving someone doesn't make that person compatible with you, and missing someone after you break up doesn't mean it was a mistake. I regret how much time and energy I wasted on angst about break up after break up with the same guy, and I often wonder how much better my whole college experience would have been without that drag on my emotions.

What would Aesop's moral be from these two stories? The top lesson is to be constantly vigilant about keeping people in my life who bring me joy and uplift me, and keeping people out who don't. If a relationship is hurting me, it's time to either fix it or end it.

John and I are calling our move the opportunity to be mindful about who we draw into our social lives. We're starting from scratch, so every friend we make is a choice. My visual for this is I want to spend time with people who uplift me, like balloons and kites, and steer clear of any who are anchors on my soul.

Bringing it back around to Lenten self improvement, I also want to uplift those I'm around. I want my friends, family and coworkers to think of me as the positive person who serves as their cheerleader, the person who makes them laugh, and the person who makes their life better.

The NY Times agrees:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/business/yourmoney/11career.html

Colloween starts Sunday

As anyone who knows me probably realizes, I love birthdays -- mine in particular, but I'm all for celebrating everyone else's, too.

I guess it's my inner 8 year old. Christmas is a great season, and Halloween can be fun, but there's something especially good about a holiday that you don't have to share. If someone wishes you Happy New Year, the polite response is something like "You, too." When someone wishes you a happy birthday, your only obligation is to smile and say thank you. It's just yours.

Sure, I share my birthday with Jerry Lewis and Erik Estrada so for them, I'll make an exception. If Ponch wishes me a happy birthday, I'll pull down my sunglasses, hike up my boots and say, "You, too."

A few years back, I somewhat inadvertantly launched a tradition called Johnukkah. I'd been crazy busy with school and wanted to make sure he didn't think I took him for granted, so I gave him little gifts for the seven days leading up to his birthday. He not only took to the idea enough that it became an annual thing, but his friends started wishing him happy Johnukkah. In fact, somewhere out in cyberspace is a Johnukkah web site Jack built after John's 40th birthday.

In the natural evolution of such a perfectly indulgent idea, of course I needed my own named birthday festival. I'd already informed John when our relationship was very young that I expected a very big fuss to be made about my birthday -- hey, you don't ask, you don't get -- so this was just attaching a name to my previously declared demands.

Friends tried a few options, but I think it was Parker who finally landed on Colloween. It doesn't have the natural implication of a several-day observance like Johnukkah, but how many options are there? Collolent? The 12 Days of Col-mass?

Today's mail brought my first birthday gift: an outstanding leopard-print flask from Katie. It's just the thing for the fashionable girl who wants to smuggle hooch into an overpriced Manhattan lounge.

Lara informed me recently that if I get a package from Vintage Lucy's, "it may or may not be
from Rob and me." Lara's the perfect mix of fashionable and hilarious, so I may knock our crabby old mail lady down to snatch that package from her hands. The suspense is killing me.

Colloween officially starts tomorrow. This means that through executive fiat I can just declare my every desire and John is honor bound to provide. If I want coffee in bed, then brunch at someplace swanky, that's my prerogative. Or I might feel like hanging around all day at home and having John cook me dinner. Or maybe I'll just want a big piece of banana cake from Billy's.

On my actual birthday, we're going to Carnegie Hall for Marvin Hamlisch conducting the New York Pops. (I remember digging him on The Great Space Coaster as a kid.) We'll probably get dinner before, but it's tough to squeeze in much between when I get off work and the start of the show. Could be a cart knish on the street. And you know what? I love those, too.