To Admire

Home Archive RSS Ask

Compiled by Erica Allen, college student from central Kentucky.

zoom

bluelightsix:

It’s Ryan Gosling meets A Practical Wedding. I can die now.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YES.

A Practical Wedding, you are my people.

(via bluelightseven)

#apracticalwedding
4 months ago on January 23, 2012 at 06:52pm with 2 notes
Via practicalryangosling

After that period, I thought things could not get more scary than the constant gnawing fear that I was not doing what I was made to do. Sadly, this assumption was false. I was absent the day that the “nothing is more terrifying than success” memo got passed out. Or maybe that memo never got distributed because no one wanted to be the asshole that said, “I got what I wanted, and it’s scary as shit.” So, f*ck it. I’m going to come out and say it because I would have felt a hell of a lot less alone this year, had I known.

I’m telling you, you must read this post by founder of APW Meg Keene, who has just wrapped up her first year as a full-time small business owner (of APW), who just published a book, and who is planning a book tour as we speak.

And let’s talk about this quote. Sometimes this idea that success is actually very terrifying/stimulates even more ridiculous personal growth/etc etc etc is thrilling. Sometimes, when I am depressed—which I keep bumping into these recent evenings—this idea makes me want to… oh yes, curl into my bed paralyzed with despair. Sure of failure. Praying for failure. Sick in my gut of the expectations and needs of others left unfulfilled.

#mental health #depression #apracticalwedding
4 months ago on January 12, 2012 at 12:45am with 1 note

I went through large parts of my twenties consumed with worry that I wouldn’t make something of myself, that I wouldn’t live up to my own internal standard of success. I have something inside me, wound up like a spring, that won’t let me stop until I’m creating something and putting it out into the world.

Meg Keene knows my mind.

#apracticalwedding #inspiration #mental health #future #goals
4 months ago on January 12, 2012 at 12:38am with 10 notes

I’m glad that I was trained with the idea that you show up Every Single Day (we were only allowed three absences in studio per semester), no matter how sh*tty or uncreative you were feeling, and you do the work. You do the work when what you’re doing sucks, you do the work when what you are doing seems brilliant, you do the work when you’d rather be in bed. And thank God, because that takes some serious pressure off. You just have to show up and work, not show up and do brilliant work. So every day these days, I show up. I write stuff. I send emails. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it’s brilliant. But I’m glad I know that I have to do it every day.

Meg Keene on A Practical Wedding: “Working For Yourself: Month One”

For me, this was what absolutely killed my academics last year—depression and a long perfectionist streak and, oh boy, I felt/feel enormous pressure to do something amazingly right OR curl up in bed in paralyzing despair.

#apracticalwedding #depression #inspiration #mental health
4 months ago on January 12, 2012 at 12:36am with 1 note

Damn, Gina: A letter to 14 year old me about marriage, written on my first wedding anniversary ›

sarahb:

Dear 14 year old me,

Hey. What page are you at in No One Here Gets Out Alive? Cool. Anyway. I know you’re weirded out by the idea of marriage, and have some concerns about exactly what it might entail, so now that I’ve been married for exactly one year, I thought I’d give you a rundown of…

I love this forever.

“So far, our marriage is equal parts “cocktail hour before dinner” and “let’s build a sofa fort and stay in it all weekend.””

She’s 34 now, and it makes me happy to think, imagine!, I will probs totally still love to build a sofa fort when I am 34.

#marriage #weddings #apracticalwedding
5 months ago on December 14, 2011 at 04:34pm with 79 notes
Via sarahb

And when I say that the day was for our parents, I don’t mean it had no meaning for us. I mean that once you walk back down that aisle, you and your spouse, you are family. You’re connected with someone who isn’t blood related in a bond that will last a lifetime (even when it doesn’t). That choice is a choice about family. So, naturally, it’s only then that you can truly understand the joy, fears and attachment that your family has on this event. It’s not just the two of our hearts that grew that day, it was all our hearts that grew to hold another tribe.

Rachel and Zach, A Practical Wedding

#apracticalwedding #a practical wedding #family #marriage
8 months ago on September 14, 2011 at 10:04am

zoom

rachael-maddux:

I got to write about Joe and me and dating long distance and shacking up and engagement crazies for A Practical Wedding, a blog you should really be reading if you are thinking of getting married to anybody ever. (Also, photos by Andy Lee!)

This makes me tremendously happy. Lovely post! Congratulations.

#weddings #engagement #apracticalwedding #a practical wedding
1 year ago on May 16, 2011 at 10:51am with 16 notes
Via rachael-maddux

Love and Loss: Losing a Baby, Forming a Family

It starts out really, really good:

“I left a really stellar man who didn’t cheat, who didn’t spend the money or drink too much, in hopes that I could find someone who wanted to be actively engaged in building a powerfully deep relationship with me.”

And then you’ll sob, and learn and grow.

[Read More]

#apracticalwedding #marriage #everyone should read this
1 year ago on March 30, 2011 at 07:35pm