It's okay to have a dream..

Wow. I have been through many changes in my life since I started writing Lost Treasures.

My most recent is that I decided against .. getting married.
And I started a cupcake business..

I even chopped my hair off and dyed it red.

I always change my hair when I am taking a lot of risks in my life!

I've heard a few whispers here and there.  Oh Amanda may never get married.  She might just stay single because she doesn't realize that not everything has to be perfect. Sigh.

But what I really knew is that......I wasn't ready.  Not yet. And when I am ready, I will know 110%. 

Until then, I am kind of living life on the edge. Not really sure what direction I am headed in.

But I am living with faith, that as long as I listen to that little "whisper" within me, I can't really go wrong.

I think now..during this rocky time while I am taking so many risks..is a good time for a vision board..of the way I'd like my future to be.  Of course, it isn't really just me that is in control.....so who knows.

But what I do know.. is that everytime I have written down..or cut clip outs out of my dreams, they have come true.

And it is always fun to dream..............

home. ♥

cupcake mobile. ♥



rest. healing. relaxation. vacation. warmth. ♥

and just kick back to enjoy a cocktail with no worries.

more pairs of Bordello shoes for cupcake deliveries and other fun adventures. ♥

Shine like this..for the rest of my life. ♥

Here comes the bride..when she's ready.

I have the unfortunate task of announcing that not only is my engagement off..but that I also am dealing with a painful break up.  For the 2nd time in 2 1/2 years.

It isn't that I didn't want to get married. I wanted to make it work. Badly.
I wanted to move on with my life, forget about my stitched up heart and be happy.
Like people tell me that I should.

But I haven't been really happy ever since my first heart ache.
I've tried. I even opened myself up to new love, hoping that this quick mad love would repair me.
And when I say I fell in love all over again, I am not lying. I did. I wasn't expecting it.
But nothing can really repair me except for me.

So although I look selfish right now, I am doing the right thing for the first time in a long time.
I am loving him so much that I am letting him go, so he can find happiness.
Even if perhaps our happiness becomes intertwined again someday, when it is better timing.
I know how it feels to have someone do this to you-I've had it happen to me.
I am sure he is wondering why I would sacrifice our love since it was so great.

But I needed this time. For whatever God has in store.
I have battled depression, anxiety attacks, and all kinds of illnesses for a very long time.
And it hasn't gone away.
I think the source of it has been a broken heart.
So it is time I stand up and take care of myself for once.
And balancing a relationship under the pressure of a "deadline" to move on just makes it worse.
It doesn't matter how much we are in love.
I need time.
To live, and to stop numbing myself.
To stop waiting to live happily and actually create a happiness within.
To stop worrying so much about other peoples' opinions.
To listen to that "whisper" that actually whispers and yells quite loud at the same time.

Life isn't about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself.

I was going to get married, and hope that once I did, all the love from him surrounding me and not being "alone" anymore would heal my broken heart. I mean really.. I am not the first one in history to live with a broken heart.  People with broken hearts get married all the time. 

But I couldn't step into a marriage knowing that my heart wasn't all there yet.
It wasn't fair to him, and it wasn't fair to me either.
He thinks I don't love him anymore.
But that will never be true.
He is very special to me, a treasure, and it would be really selfish of me to keep him to myself right now.
I can't give him what he needs back.
Not right now.

So I know that it will be sad for awhile. I looked for him a crowded room the other day. But I was not so graciously reminded that he wasn't there. I was alone in a crowd of people.  My mom woke me up in the middle of the night the other night, asking me if I was okay because I was crying in my sleep.  I miss him, he has been my best friend.

Sigh. I wish I was Elizabeth Gilbert (eat pray love).. I could escape to Bali or Italy and get paid to write a book about my exploration of meditation, delicious food, and living in the moment.

I could make friends in far away lands and explore new pastry recipes. I would have a blast baking for my new friends.

Oh the daydreams of a wedding. The dress, the flowers, the glamour. The gathering of friends and family, the tears from the stroll up the aisle.  The hugs at the end of the ceremony. The distant family that you invited to the wedding suddenly become friends just by a smile or a congratulations.  The uncle who gets irritated because he's hungry. The mussed up half hair sprayed hair from a very long but glorious day.  The bad moves on the dance floor at the end of the night.  The kisses activated by toasting champagne glasses. The fireplace in the hotel room after, in the silence of you and your new "husband."

The visions and hopes of planning a wedding were so much fun.  But planning a marriage is different.
A marriage should be forever. It should mean holding hands on the front porch at the end of your life together. In complete understanding and appreciation of who you are. Nothing less than complete freedom. .  At least that is how I want to feel for the rest of my life. How about you?♥

"We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart."

"Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing..."

Hall Pass Schmall Pass

I saw the preview for this movie -- Hall Pass -- a few months ago in the theater and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Now it is out in the theaters and I hear people saying how funny it was.
To summarize, a wife gives her husband a "Hall Pass" defined as: a week to mess around with any woman that he wants to with no questions asked. She does this to save the "restlessness" of their marriage. Huh?

Maybe I am jaded-or taking this too seriously because I have seen too many marriages that I thought would last forever break up with infidelity as the cause. Mainly in my generation. Every time this happens to a friend..or someone that I knew I am completely devastated and it breaks my heart!

Can someone please explain to me why this movie was so attractive?

I know that one of the trends in this day and age is to daydream of a place we could never go, but want to go. Then make it happen in movies, magazines, or television, or even places (like Las Vegas, resorts, hotels, bars, etc). So is this where we want to go? A meaningless place with the lack of old hollywood romance, or class?

Movies are known to start trends. If this movie is part of the trend of it being okay for your significant other to give you a "hall pass" for a week.. what is going to happen to the next generation?'

Will marriage even exist?

Not even saying that marriage has to exist for life to be great-and if it isn't for you, then that's cool.

I am a firm believer that you only get married if you know it's going to last and if you have passion behind it.
Just like you would have passion for anything else in life-travel, your career, etc.

But what about people like my grandparents-who I look through old scrapbooks of sweet classic valentines..and know that they stayed together through thick and thin for 60 years?

Sure, maybe they flirted with other people but it was in a joking, sweet and non harmful way.

What does it say for the future generation if something as beautiful .. but serious.. as marriage is trashed publicly again and again?

Lost Treasure: How It Was Found.

I am starting this blog today for a number of reasons. One being that I feel like a new Amanda (me!) has emerged. For the first time in a long time I feel inspired. I am also welcoming a recent happy feeling into my heart.

This last year had been a rough one. Even if I live in beautiful sunny Southern California.

I was in a car wreck, I got engaged, broke off an engagement, said goodbye to the man..the best friend...I have had for 10 years.

That was the hardest part. I am still going through the grieving process, because it honestly feels like someone I loved my whole life died. But with death starts a new chapter. A new chance to explore myself, my new life..a life I haven't had for ten years because I've been waiting for something that just wasn't going to happen.

After Christmas I was in a really dark place, mainly because I saw my ex-fiance when I went back home for the Holidays (to Wisconsin). That opened a huge wound. Note: He had only been considered my ex for the last 2 1/2 months. Before that we were planning our whole lives together.

When I saw him again, he was doing better without me than I thought he would be. Unexpectedly, he seemed in better spirits than I was. He looked muscular. When we were together, it was a struggle to get him to go to the gym with me. Now he looked like he had some meat on his bones.
In contrast I had lost a lot of weight from my grief, but I felt like my face looked bony and a little aged from the pain. For the first time ever in all the years I had known him, he told me how we might be able to forget about each other when we meet someone else someday. This statement shocked me so much that it took my breath away.

After all, these words were coming from the the man that jumped on a plane to California, swooped me off my feet, knelt down in the sand at 9pm with the ocean crashing behind us, a ring in hand..begging me to be his wife. I remember so clearly saying yes as he brushed the sand off his knees, his face full of excitement and relief. I knew at that moment this was what I always wanted from him, with him. He was my best friend, and there was no one else on this earth like him.

I called my parents and his dad (who were impatiently waiting) screaming,

"I said Yes!"

Phone calls, emails were pouring in left and right with congratulations.

The day after his proposal, I couldn't work all day. People kept visiting me at my desk and calling my phone to hear this amazing love story about a man who flew from Wisconsin to California and proposed to me in the sand on a deserted beach. There is something to be said about an amazing love story.

As I tried on diamond white wedding dresses, I imagined his face gleaming on our wedding day. I would walk down the aisle to meet him as his beautiful bride. I couldn't wait to be his one and only forever.

The dream was a little too good to be true in the end. He proposed in July, and left me with the dream sitting on the couch on a Tuesday morning in September 2008.

Now here we were together again.......sitting in -5 degree weather in Waupaca, Wisconsin, a few days after New Years 2009. I was secretly ashamed for not being strong enough to stay away. But it had been the first holiday without him in ten years and I couldn't take not seeing his face anymore. I just wanted to touch his skin.

I listened to him talk about how he was destructive to me and that's why he and I just weren't meant for each other. Another stab at my bleeding heart.

We hugged. We kissed. I couldn't help myself. I couldn't pry him away. He has always felt like a part of my skin. He kept telling me that he didn't want to leave. However, it felt more like he didn't want to leave because he felt sorry for me. I know he saw the pain in my eyes. He always hated hurting me. After all he had experience in this arena. I didn't want him to feel sorry for me. I wanted him to love me so much that he couldn't stand to be without me.

I forced him to leave. I told him good-bye. This good-bye felt like the same good-bye we shared in September when he left me at sunrise on my couch in California. It was almost impossible to drive away into the icy cold weather. I watched him close the passenger door even though I wanted to pull him back in. I knew this was it. I forced the gear into "drive" and I drove away into the dark empty sky..the cold air. I don't even remember much about the drive home.

I stepped into my parents' silent house, my lips not pale from the cold, but from the shock of seeing the ghost of someone I so insanely loved. It drove me insane that life could be so cruel. Why is it that love is just not enough?

I couldn't smile for days. As my parents faded into the distance at the airport the day I left for California, I swear I saw my dad fighting back tears. His eyes welled up and turned red. His mouth was tight. I never see my dad get like this. I knew he was sad to see me in pain. He felt helpless.

The last time I heard from my ex-fiance he wrote me an email. He said when we reunited in January, he saw me wearing my heart shaped sunglasses when I drove up to meet him. He noticed my brunette hair bordered with an Indian headband. These little accessories like the heart shaped sunglasses and headband made him recall the reason he ran all the way out to California to propose to me. When I read his memory about the heart sunglasses and brunette hair bordered by a headband, I realized something. I don't want someone to have to be reminded as to why they would chase me down or love me. They should just want to love me, crave my being, feel my presence even if I am not there. My heart sunglasses shouldn't have to wake it back up again. That's when I knew that I deserved better treatment and recognition for the treasure that I am.

I never wrote him anything meaningful back. I was sick of pining over this person who wasn't able to fulfill my ultimate dream of love and passion.

I was tired of going to movies like Benjamin Button and crying in the car ride all the way home because sections of it reminded me of the way he said good-bye to me. Or sometimes I would watch Katy Perry's video "Hot & Cold" that ironically mimicked him to a "t". I used this music video to vent the frustration out of my mind.

I needed it all to stop! And the only way to let it stop was .. and is.. to get on with my life. The life that God has planned for me. I've figured something out.

Being single, I have a huge responsibility. To be an everyday angel.. to fulfill the reason why I am single.

When I let myself fall in love again, I will know it is right because I will be treated like the treasure that I am.

I honestly believe that my ex-fiance will someday have a chance to fall hard for someone in a different way. He will realize she is better for him because he won't need a detail like heart sunglasses to remind him why he would do anything to be with her. Even though it hurts to think about him being with someone else in a better way than with me, I hope he does experience it. Then he will know that he can give what he never thought he could. I just wasn't the right person to show him this.

As far as me..I plan on staying single for at least a year. I won't even look for a relationship. That's not what I need right now.

Like I said, I have a huge responsibility as a single woman. I can't get past this overwhelming feeling that my next chapter involves traveling and letting my generous heart overflow to others along the windy road or bumpy clouds.

When I retire someday I would love to kick back, spin some pottery on a wheel, and recall all the amazing places I explored.

I would love to play costume party with my grandchildren while I tell them all of the stories of the lands I once discovered, the loves I experienced. I can see it now. I will pull a whole bunch of jewelry and hats out of a whimsical treasure chest I've collected from each special land I visited and let the children try them on.

Right now I work a 9-6 job and I love what I do, it is what I moved to California from Wisconsin for. I work in the fashion industry and am a swimsuit fit model. But oh how I would love to be a travel writer! I think I could incorporate my fashion in with my travels!

This is why I want to work for Australia. Yes. I said Australia. Right now I have the opportunity to live in a Villa on an Australian island while I write blogs and take photos of all my adventures everyday. The pay is great too, but the main reason I want this so bad is because it is a perfect fit for me.

I wasn't even inspired by hearing about it. I was inspired BEFORE I heard about it. In fact, I had been telling a friend how much I wished I could become a travel writer. It would enhance all my skills-the fact that I love to meet new people, will try almost anything once, love to eat food, take photos of EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, then share my experiences with everyone possible through my words. The next day, my co-worker (who had no idea of my travel writing wishes) came in with the article talking about this amazing position open with the tourism bureau in Australia. She told me she had brought the article in with me in mind. If that wasn't a sign that the travel writing job is for me, I don't know what is.

So this next week I am going to go through the submission process. It involves filling up a 60 second video with enough Amanda-ness to convince Hamilton Island in Australia that I am just what it needs for fulfillment! Just as equally, I need Hamilton Island. This job spells out Amanda in the clouds. It is everything I am good at. All I can do is try.........and let God do the rest. No dream is too big for him.

Australia Dream Job Website:
http://www.islandreefjob.com/en/

This is where I'll be posting my video soon!