What.

Oh, hey.

I'm just casually sitting here somewhere between 1,400 (Texas) and 2,300 (Tennessee) miles away from my family/everyone I love. I've now lived here for 10 days.

So anyway, I'm sitting here in my apartment in Malibu looking out at the palm trees blowing in the wind and I can't believe it. I am officially an adult. My parents moved me in, helped me furnish my space, and shipped out.

The people here have been so welcoming and kind. I even attended neighborhood bingo night on Thursday and won the prize for having the worst bingo cards (long story). These women are serious about their bingo, and I was the youngest one there by at least 30 years. AKA, my kind of party.

I met a woman who used to sing with many of the greats, like Frank Sinatra.

I met my fellow graduate students, and 4 out of the 5 are from the South (though two of them have lived in L.A. for a few years). After spending the day with them at orientation, I'm even more excited than before about spending the next two years with them.

The 5 ladies in the graduate program at Pepperdine for orientation

I met the man who owns the local farm across the street, and hit the jackpot with the avocados he's selling.

I met a woman who has owned a local dog grooming business for years, and has recently started cremating animals with water, a process called Aquamation, which is more environmentally friendly. Welcome to California.
(Curious how the heck that works? Click Here.)


Differences between the South and Malibu I've determined thus far:
1. I say "y'all" more than I realized. "Y'all" is definitively not a thing here.
2. Everything - I repeat everything - is organic/healthy here. It's amazing.
3. The weather. It's mid-seventies and sunny with a cool breeze year-round. As my dad recently said, "It's like the outside is air-conditioned."
4. The beach. Malibu is 27 miles long and 1 mile wide, so it's almost literally all beach. The closest public beach sits right at the end of my neighborhood, so you can probably guess where I've spent most of my time.
5. L.A. traffic is INSANE. To all of you asking if it's as bad as Atlanta traffic, yes. Just yes. Worse.
6. Air conditioning doesn't exist in my neighborhood. People just open the windows and it serves the same function, and for some reason bugs don't fly in.
7. Every other car is majorly upscale. I'm talking Bentley convertibles, Lamborghinis, G-wagons, etc. All over the place.
8. Everything. Is. Expensive.


I realize this blog has been extremely random and doesn't have much of a flow to it, but it's a culmination of what has been running through my head over the past 10 days. I'm hoping to blog pretty frequently this year, so stay tuned!

Much love to all of you reading this!!
Malibu Harbie

First: Growing Up and Failure

I know everyone and their mother has started a blog, but here I am, joining the party... Reading other people's blogs and navigating through their journeys with them has brought me so much joy that I figured, why the heck shouldn't I do it? So here I sit, watching my third consecutive episode of SVU, preparing to shove my opinions and ADD-induced ramblings on each of you innocent bystanders.  You've been warned.

So, growing up.

It's such an odd concept because it's something we all want to do and dream about ("When I grow up I want to _________"), but the closer we get to it, the more terrifying it seems. As I'm applying to graduate school and about to graduate, I've slowly come to realize that, technically, I'm pretty much a grown up. 

What.

I'm 22 years old and about 8 weeks away from being shoved into the real world whether I like it or not. Why is it so hard for me to grasp that I'm ready for this? I alternate daily from excitement over the vast possibilities I have in my future to terror about leaving my comfortable space here at Samford. 

I think, honestly, the best thing I've done is talk to people in the same position as me. Reading articles about succeeding and hearing "Don't worry, it will all fall into place!" does nothing for me. Sometimes, it's just good to panic with someone who's in the same position as you are. It's therapeutic and a huge relief. 

One of the best books my mom has given me is 101 Secrets For Your Twenties by Paul Angone. My absolute favorite Secret is #25: "Your 20s will produce more failure than you'll choose to remember. The key is, when you fail don't begin calling yourself a failure." I love this. Failure isn't fun; in fact, it can feel humiliating and degrading. But EVERYONE fails. In fact, one of the recurring themes in all of my business classes was that virtually all uber-successful people failed repeatedly before they found what worked. 

Regardless, I find myself terrified of failure. But, as I told my best friend over Skype a couple of weeks ago, it's not the failure itself that's so horrible. It's having to tell people that you've failed. 

It's pride.

Ugh. 

How we handle failure is one of the biggest indicators of maturity (and, therefore, truly growing up). So here I find myself asking the question, "How will I choose to handle the inevitable failures and rejections that I'll encounter in the near and distant future?"

Hopefully with humility and grace. 




 "...For this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down"
-Mary Pickford