it’s a wonderful life

good day, my friends. i don’t know about you, but getting back into the swing of things after a lovely 5 day christmas and family filled weekend is the worst. i hope you had a wonderful holiday week; i had truly the best Christmas ever. though the excitement level slightly decreases as i get older, the amount that i enjoy it only seems to grow. perhaps it’s because i’ve learned that, “maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store; maybe, Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”  and it’s more about spending time with the people you love and care about. and making memories. and continuing traditions. and just being so grateful for everything you already have.

that’s what my Christmas was full of. we spent Christmas Eve at my parents and celebrated that night at grandma dahl’s with almost all of the dahl cousins. it’s neat to see how much joy it brings my grandma to sit and just watch the madness that is our family. to have her kids, her grandkids, and her great-grandkids… knowing that she made it all possible. what an incredible feeling. something i hope to experience one day with [b] + #starksthepup – because he is going to be the pup that lives forever.

Christmas day is a day that has remained virtually unchanged for as long as i can remember. we have the same breakfast, the same routine, the same dinner, everything. we dahl’s like our consistency and tradition. as we were taking our annual stocking picture my mom said, alright one with just my kids since it’s emma’s last Christmas as a Dahl. woah, shit just got real. i will always be a Dahl, but when i wake up next year on Christmas morning i will be a Bica. and that’s kind of cray.

[b] + #starksthepup and i headed back that evening to celebrate our first Christmas in the new house and watching my favorite Christmas movie; Santa Claus is Coming to Town. we sipped wine and cuddled with the pup and i couldn’t have imagined a better ending to a more perfect day.

i hope that you all had merry and bright holidays; and i pray that your monday’s be short and your coffee be strong. xo

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the one where we celebrate the awesome things

i’m not good at giving myself credit. nothing is ever good enough. i am never good enough. it could always be better, stronger, smarter, funnier, prettier, etc. striving for excellence is a wonderful thing; striving for perfection will leave you with nothing but disappointment. perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order. part of this is just being human. but part of it is because of my obsessive compulsive personality disorder. my ocpd makes me so focused on unattainable perfection that it keeps me from doing anything. it makes me feel like a fraud when i do achieve good things; that i wasn’t good enough or didn’t deserve them. [b] introduced me to the term, imposter syndrome and it completely describes how i feel sometimes. and so often when we want to celebrate our own success we feel like we are “bragging” or “showing off” and it makes us feel guilty for something we should be proud of.

thanks to some wonderful people in my life who are always there to support me, i’m working at getting over this. we need to own our successes. i didn’t get lucky by chance; i worked my (excuse my language) booty off. i put myself out there; i went after what i wanted; i took chances and risks; i made the most out of every opportunity that i’ve been given. at the ripe age of 25 i’ve been fortunate enough to have some pretty damn awesome opportunities. i am not perfect. i am not an expert. but i am someone who struggles with anxiety and depression and ocpd and despite it all has powered through to do some pretty snazzy things.

today we celebrate the successes with no guilt, just pride and happiness and smiles. in the past months i have had some incredible things happen in my life, and i’m excited to share them with you…

• gave my first paid speaking engagement on social media to the Upper Midwest EDPA. best part? it was in a CAVE!

• will be giving my session on ‘unleashing the power of social media’ for the 3rd year at EXHIBITOR2015

• participated on a webinar with cvent on ‘amplifying the social experience at every touchpoint‘

• was featured in an article in mashable on the top 5 stressful jobs; representing my fellow event professionals (yes mashable, the website i read daily and always refer my attendees to as a resouce of information… this is real life.)

let’s all start celebrating our success. our stories. i may not be perfect; but parts of me are pretty awesome.

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finding some halloween spirit

i’m not a super “Halloweeney” person. i don’t necessarily like dressing up and i particularly hate scary things. plus i’m so easily startled already. perhaps my dislike stems from a young age where i wanted to be a ghostbuster and not a pumpkin. i guess we’ll never know. regardless we always dressed up; and in typical minnesota fashion had to make sure that a snowsuit or winter jacket could fit under your costume.

i had never carved a pumpkin until my freshman year in college. *gasp* we intended to go to a pumpkin patch but ended up getting them at a cub foods. not the same. but it was fun. the next year we carved pumpkins again and panda and i started a halloween tradition of going to get free chipotle and watching rocky horror picture show. it was fantastic. the next years i actually dressed up and went out to halloween parties; junior year costume with much more effort than senior year. flannel + hat + brown boots? yee haw!

the first halloween [b] and i were dating i spent halloween in las vegas for a conference; as if the people watching wasn’t good enough on a regular day there. last year we went to emma krumbee’s in belle plaine, mn and picked apples and pumpkins – we got one for starksthepup too, of course. we all carved them and though you might not believe it starks turned out the best. we meant to hand out candy on halloween night but there were maybe one or two kiddos that stopped. lame.

this year we meant to go to some sort of a pupmkin patch again. but with all of the craziness of moving and traveling and [b] going to china we settled for a farmers market which worked out just fine. last night we carved them and yes, starks has the winning pumpkin again. (after he got done picking it up my the stem and carrying it around the house) we enjoyed them inside for the night because the squirrels in st. louis park are the absolute WORST. the destroyed our beautiful pumpkins we got a few weeks ago. so these babies won’t go outside until tomorrow.

our new neighborhood has tons of little kiddos so we’re excited to have lots of trick or treaters. we’re prepared to have to tag team the candy gig; one of us hold starksthepup back and the other distributes the candy. additionally, we trying to determine some rules for a drinking game that correlates with what they are dressed up as. characters from frozen and TMNT are supposed to be the top ones so we could associate a shot/drink/etc. with a certain costume. details yet to be determined. more on that next week as well as the unveiling of the ladies of marketing halloween costumes. and yes, all three of us in our little team are dressing up much. it’s gonna be fabulous.