Ideas

“I couldn’t do what you do.” I had a friend tell me the other day as she debated about getting married at the tail end of her senior year of college. Her fear of graduating husbandless was confusing to me, until I remembered the way my brain used to think when I was going to school. For my friends who aren’t familiar with Utah or Idaho culture, a good majority of girls get married off before they graduate.

I remember being halfway through school seeing 23-year-olds leave my college without a rock on their hand and thinking, “wow, that would be terrible.” I felt bad for the hags, and I KNEW that would never be me. There were many times I laid on my bed sulking with friends after break-ups and saying, “at this rate I won’t be married till 2014.” Then we would laugh and choke down more ice cream, because we KNEW that would never happen to us. Fast forward to yesterday when we hit 2014…

Oh how the tables have turned.

This isn’t a post about why I didn’t get hitched years ago. There are plenty of resources for that; starting with half relatives who somehow bypassed getting blocked from my Facebook posts, and ending with strangers who were convinced that forcing a 2nd date with a guy who made me pay for valet parking would do the trick.

No.

This is a post about not fearing what you don’t know and not being worried when your life doesn’t turn out the way you planned it.

I wish girls realized that they have more than one option. That there really isn’t just one way to do things. And that when your idea of perfect happiness dies, you can still choose to live. After sulking around Utah as a post-grad for two years, I moved out of state and had a roommate that changed my perspective completely. She was beautiful, smart, funny, and living life to the fullest. She was 29, had a boyfriend, a successful business, and was making plans on a weekly basis to try things she had never done before. She operated opposite the ‘norm’ and was the happiest person I knew because of it.

From that moment on, I made it a point to find out what really made me happy, and even if it wasn’t the traditional route for someone like me, I did it anyway.

I would never have guessed that at 26-years-old, I would love a life that has turned out to be so different than the cookie cutter lifestyle I had always envisioned for myself. But I am. And I am so grateful for people I have met along the way who have lives as odd as mine that have taught me to enjoy all the elements of surprise that come with being a human being. Life is unpredictable. There is a lot we can and can’t control. But regardless, happiness is yours for the taking if you fearlessly look for it. The road less traveled, my friends. That’s what I’m talking about (or Robert Frost if we are getting credit hungry).

You want a new start? Do it. You want to go back to school? Apply for it. You want to start your own business? Why not? You want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro? Hike it. The Babcock did.

Cheers to 2014 from the happiest hag to ever eat her own words. And a toast to the abnormal and the unexpected.

**Note: Most this post was written mid-2013 before more recent events, but I didn’t want to leave it unpublished. My personal life may have changed since then, but the beliefs have not.

When I am in an elevator alone, I walk in circles really fast.

I have no idea when I started doing it or why, but it happens almost every morning. I walk into the elevator, step inside, and keep walking in circles until it stops. Then I walk out as if nothing weird ever happened, as if there isn’t a guy watching the footage on a camera somewhere, and as if I didn’t just speed walk my way around a box like it was a competition in the summer Olympics. (Put that on my list of sports: dodgeball, rope swinging, and elevator rotations. How do you like me now you sporty men?)

Anyway, I don’t think I am the only one.

Someone once told me that our thinking processes can get stuck spinning in circles. It’s common (I just trace mine with my feet.) We tend to overlap the same ideas in our heads until they create ruts inside of our brains that are hard to get out of and hard to stop. Over time these fears, doubts, and mistaken beliefs keep us from doing anything outside of our comfort zone. In other words: We overthink to the point of not needing to think because the rut keeps us revolving in the same limited patterns.

We guess, assume, mind-read, and avoid based off of past experience and future predictions that we might get hurt.

Until. The True Love Spin.

Introduced during the 1950’s and 1960’s by Gene Kelly and Julie Andrews, the true love spin was developed to show that when it comes to showing how you really feel, you should throw your body and caution to the wind. The spin also adds momentum to the euphoric feeling of falling in love, whether that be with a guy, a girl, the rain, or being an Austrian nun.

How to Spin

This tutorial is as simple as it gets:

1. Spin counter-clockwise of your monotonous thinking process.
2. Focus your eyes on the sky instead of the floor.
3. Relax your neck
4. Let your hair loose

When you feel small explosions of happiness going off in your body, you will know that you are doing it correctly.

The trend has surprisingly taken form, but gone unnoticed in pop-culture and animated .gifs for a long time. Here are my top 10 True Love Spins and why you should try them.

1. The Conservative True Love Spin

This is a great starter spin. It gives you just enough momentum to feel good about your day or good about the new intern who is attractive.

2. The Tandum True Love Spin

For couples looking to spice things up.

3. New Dress True Love Spin

For when you are sporting new threads for a date. For best results, make sure to have a roommate enthusiastically clap while you do it.

Important Cautionary Note: Me and my roommates used to introduce a guy to his date by having the girl do a spin while we sang KC & JoJo on a Karaoke machine in our living room. I wouldn’t recommend this. There were at least two breakups during that time period that we attributed to introducing the new dress spin too prematurely in a relationship.

4. Whip Mah Hair Spin

Close your eyes and take a deep breath through you nose while letting the wind whip your hair. This spin works best in mountainous settings and in clubs.

5. True Love Flip

Ariel one-upped all the Disney princesses when she proved she would do a flip for true love, sell her vocal chords, and sport a sheet if it meant meeting prince charming. It’s a given, but this spin could come off as desperate.

6. Call Your Girlfriend We Belong Together True Love Spin

Accomplished with high speeds while moving towards a specific destination, this determined spin tells guys, “We belong together, call your girlfriend and break up with her.” It’s a niche spin for a very niche circumstance.

7. True Love Spin with Eye Contact

This true love spin is best served in front of your significant other. By maintaining eye contact throughout the entire spin you ensure that nothing will come between your love. Not even a light shower of rose petals.

8. The Colbchella True Love Spin

Skip to 4:15 for a flawless spin for business professionals.

9. Tandem Roller Skate True Love Spin

I can only assume that these are the only two people in the world that can do this. And that we will never be able to experience true love in this euphoric of a moment on roller skates.

10. Double True Love Spin

For times when one spin isn’t enough.

This seems like a dumb post any blog with more than 5 animated .gifs does. But I sometimes wonder where that feeling went that used to pump our blood, that kept us up at 3 am looking for something that we had to have and couldn’t live without. Something that even in the smallest dose, would have us waking up feeling like Beyonce, dancing barefoot out of our covers, and into the living room in our underwear.

Maybe the true love spin is a dumb tradition advocated by absurdly wide-eyed Disney princesses.

Or maybe it’s exactly what you need to counteract ruts in your head built by fear in its most monotonous repetitive forms.

Whatever it is. It’s worth a shot. It’s just a spin.

True Love Spin featuring John Liu, the greatest .gif-t of all

Speaking of True Love…

I was recently asked by some good friends to help advertise one of San Francisco’s finest bachelors. If you are looking for smart, funny, and incredibly successful spin your mouse on this eye candy: Meet Scotty Clawson.

Image Credits- Julie Andrews: Favim, Carry Grant: GifSoup.com, Conservative Spin: Tumblr, Tandem Spin: Perez Hilton, New Dress Spin: Tumblr, Whip My Hair Spin: Fan Pop, True Love Flip: Sky Rock, Call Your Girlfriend Spin: Tumblr, Eye Contact Spin: ABC.com, Roller Skate Spin: Blogfiles, Double Spin: Starcasm.

The idea of hope is hard to swallow. Especially when it rests on another person’s shoulders.

It goes along with the cliche phrase “don’t get your hopes up,” and the idea that high expectations in others can only lead to great falls. It’s a skewed mindset, but it is easy to cave into. Unless you saw the idea of hope from a different frame of reference.

Enter City of Hope

Two months ago, I had the chance to take a tour of City of Hope. It’s an incredible cancer comprehensive center in Duarte, California that believes in not only healing the body, but the soul as well. One of the most interesting things about COH is that their hospital was purposely built across from the research center. Every day cancer patients sit in front of windows overlooking a courtyard and a building where scientists spend hours on end trying to find a cure. And every day researchers look across the same lawn to see the faces of the people who believe they can do it.

Hope is the fuel behind the patient’s drive to survive and the researcher’s drive to keep trying. It’s a high hope that chooses to believe more in another person than on possible outcomes or falls. It’s a high hope that in my opinion can become a game changer.

Enter This Video

Recently the agency I work for and COH teamed up to produce this film to raise awareness about the bone marrow registry. In the process we were smitten by the story and by Gavin.

This video is proof of how much we need each other and it’s proof that as my coworker put it life is “pretty damn precious.”

A month after this video’s first preview, I got in my car. I drove a couple hours away from my pride to fix a friendship that means the world to me. As I stood at the top of a windy ledge overlooking a lamp-lit city, I breathed for the first time, laughed with someone I hadn’t let myself laugh with in a long long time, and realized every day should be like this. I am snot-nosed. I am lucky. And life is too sweet to waste on anything less worthy than loving someone else. Regardless of what may come.

Two Things:

1. Help make more stories like Gavin’s possible by clicking here.
2. Let yourself love and care about the people you are blessed enough to have standing by your side.