girlfriends

Your tribe

by Katie Welker

One of the hardest parts about growing up is that more often than not, you end up living in a different city than the majority of your best friends. And if you’re as fueled by relationships as I am, that is a difficult reality to live with.

Fortunately, I was able to spend time with a group of some of my closest girlfriends this weekend. We planned the weekend around an event called Wanderlust, which is a “mindful triathlon” that includes a 5k race, yoga, and meditation. Although the weather caused us to adjust some of our original plans, the weekend turned out to be just as peaceful as we intended it to be.

There is nothing like the joy of empowering your friends to do their best in a physical challenge, and then laughing the night away afterward while eating pizza, drinking wine, and lounging in your sweatpants. It was a balanced and empowering weekend that left me feeling both uplifted and fulfilled.

yoga

The strong friendships in my life are so dear to my heart. And while living far away is difficult, it also makes weekend trips like this more meaningful than ever before. It reaffirms how imperative it is to make time for the people and relationships that make us who we are. 

So if you’re like me and have friends who don’t live nearby, make plans to visit. If you can’t accommodate a visit, make plans to have regular conversations… and that means more than just texting.

These relationships are the important things in life. More than money, more than work, and much more than materialistic items. It all comes down to the people who fill your heart with joy. They’re your tribe. Love them hard.

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New year, not a new you.

by Katie Welker

Yup. I’m that girl on New Year’s Eve. The one who broke her phone to the point of no return. The same phone that has the only copies of the pictures my girlfriends and I took. I reached out to people that I probably shouldn’t have (sorry if you fell victim to this). I was asleep in bed before the ball even dropped for reasons that are still a mystery to me. I got dolled up. Wore a new dress that, to be honest, I looked fabulous in, just to share the “big moment of ringing in the new year” with my pillow and teddy bear. I was dead asleep before midnight even hit. Gee, being 23 has never looked so good.

I’m a digital nutcase so the thought of losing everything I have stored on my phone is traumatizing. But, like always, I try to take a lesson out of these plain stupid situations I find myself in the middle of.

You are not defined by the date on the calendar: I do not believe for a second that your year is dictated by what you do or who you are with on January 1st. I brought in 2012 with a now ex-boyfriend and a group of people I barely knew. And 11 out of the next 12 months was spent without those people. And they were an amazing, exciting and extremely memorable 11 months.

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One of the only surviving pictures. Thanks, Instagram.

You have the choice to live your year, your month, your week, even your day, however you choose. I laugh at everyone who says, “new year, new me!”. If it takes a giant ball dropping down a big tower and tons of people gathered together yelling “Happy New Year” in unison to make you realize that you’re a “new person”, then I think you need a wake up call. But that’s just my own blunt opinion.

For now, I’ll hang out and hope that my iPhone, which is now submerged in a bowl of rice, will magically revive itself before I head to AT&T at 10 a.m. and drop an unnecessary amount of money on a new one. Until then, think about what kind of life you want to live. Not just what kind of year. 2013 and every year after will only be as good as the effort you put in each and every day.