Here’s the thing about Being 24. Every day, you’re still young enough to wake up all bright-eyed and ambitious, certain you can take on any challenge presented to you. You are smart! And newly educated! You’re stylish! And live in the City! And have a great boyfriend! And love your job!

Your life is full of exclamation points, before you roll out of bed. And then The Day gets ahold of you, and if it gets to you before Glorious Coffee, good luck with that. The Day just womps you, and womps you, and womps you. You’re reminded of all the things you have to do, and you divide those things into two categories: Things I Don’t Have Enough Time For and Things I Don’t Have Enough Smarts For.

Half the people in your life will blindly cheer you on, telling you that everything you’re doing is GREAT! And you’re totally AWESOME! And you should be SO PROUD! The other half are there, snickering quietly off to the side, reminding you that you’re always on the verge of messing something up.

The first group of people– even if, maybe, they’re not familiar with the intimate details of how you are sometimes the Queen of Awful– make everything possible. The getting back up again when life lays you out, the reminding yourself that you do love the cats (even if the Big One keeps eating non-edible items and the Little One proved with alarming acuity that she can disembowel an entire roll of toilet paper in under ten minutes), it’s all possible when your mother reminds you that she loves you even if your hair is being weird, and when your boyfriend kisses your forehead and eats the burnt dinner because, hey, he likes burnt garlic best, anyway.

The second group of people… Well, that’s where Mastering It comes in.

For two weeks now, I’ve been studying Corporate and Organizational Communications. My Masters’ degree. I’ve learned that this new job is going to be, more than anything else, challenging. I have to reprogram a lot of habits I have when it comes to my interpersonal communication skills. I can’t be reactive. I have to stay neutral. I have to be diplomatic, and balance The Company against My Staff, and keep everyone’s respective needs in mind.

I have to step outside my comfort zone. I have to embrace these new challenges.

… I have to Master It.

I’m on my way.

Better stand tall when they’re calling you out. Don’t bend, don’t break, Baby, don’t back down.

-M.

Yesterday, you could feel winter yawn here in NYC. The unforgiveable, crushing cold grew weary of itself and took a rest. The grateful city laid out under several hours of sunshine, soaking in and reawakening memories we had all forgotten of spring days and all their promise.

We still feel better, even with the forecast of rain today.

I wandered over to the Upper West Side to have coffee and catch up with Megan, my Junior year apartment roommate. She knew me after The Tequila days and through The Great Drew Disaster. She tolerated my clutter and the preliminary stages of my thesis research.

Megan has since been my reality litmus test. She was one of the only people brave enough and real enough to tell me me when I was kidding myself or way off base.

Megan is not a buyer of bullshit, no matter how thoroughly I had sold it to myself, no matter how pretty I wrapped it. She feels no obligation or responsibility to tell you how great you are unless you’re being great, which makes it so much more profound when she gives her stamp of approval. It’s not something distributed lightly.

And she taught me that it’s ok for my real reasons to be my real reasons, no excuses, no explanation required. No prettily-wrapped bullshit.

I knew that if my new seeming accomplishments were superficial, Megan would tell me. She provides perspective, very acute and grounded perspective. That’s why I love her.

I told her about James and work and my education and the move and all the bells and whistles. I waited for her to give a little laugh and raise an eyebrow, hearken me back to reality and sober me up a bit. Is it possible to really finally be this balanced and happy?

Yes.

We concluded, Yes. She’s a spitfire, full of passion and ambition and wholehearted good intentions and love for humans in general. She’s also grounded, and I really respect and admire her for achieving and maintaing such a delicate balance.

She told me about her life and her work and the moves she’s trying to make in her life. She told me about how music has opened up the world for her, and invited me to the New Orleans Jazz Festival this coming April.

We talked about how great it is to finally see all our hard work start to translate into a position in life where we find ourselves able to look at the challenges before us and still excitedly whisper to ourselves under our breath, “Regardless… This is possible. I can DO this.”

The city reclined back and took a day off from grumping through winter, and I had coffee with an old friend who once again stirred my soul awake. We laughed and chatted through the sunshine…

… And I find myself, even the cold morning after, once again reminded that even in the dead of winter you can find yourself a patch of spring if you’re fortunate enough to have friends with hearts as warm as the ones I find in mine.

-M.

I’m just testing the new iPhone WordPress app. I’d like to see if it will capitalize letters on it’s own. Yes! It does!

It’s new software, a whole new program, and I believe I like it.

Let’s see if it starts to eat posts, though. Or suddenly changes its mind about capitalization.

-M.

I had Giant Chewy SweetTarts yesterday. They taste like Summers in Upstate New York, tangy and sweet. They remind me of when Mimi would take me to the store and I’d get to choose any candy I wanted, even the fancy kind. I always chose Sweet Tarts. They taste like summer camp and grass under your feet and fresh air.

Mimi passed away the summer after I turned 13, and suddenly what it meant to be part of a Family changed for me. She was the second grandparent I had lost, but had been a family cornerstone. Her house smelled like fresh air and cinnamon and Irish Spring. Her hugs fit just right and there was always something delicious in her kitchen, waiting to fill your soul.

I think a big part of the Mid-20-something Emotional Growth we all do is the reconciliation of Family. You lose someone you love, Family changes. You face a parent’s mortality for the first time, Family changes. You leave for college, Family changes. Evolves. It means different things.

I go Upstate now and it’s not so much “going home” as it is “visiting my parents.” I don’t have a bedroom in that house anymore. They’re still my people, but it’s no longer my home.

And that’s OK. It doesn’t mean I love them any less, just that I’m growing into someone new.

This Someone New wants to find a new sense of Home, though. It’s unnerving, feeling uprooted and transient for such an extended period of time. Being in college is essentially reverting back to a nomadic lifestyle. Every four to eight months, your living quarters drastically changed. And now that we rent, even with new promotions and all the promise we show economically, it’s not always easy to make ends meet.

It is for all these reasons, and for the desire to get our life together started out on the right foot, that James and I have decided to swallow a bit of pride and move in with his parents for awhile– a year and a half, maybe two years.

The amount of money this will let us save is staggering, and if we don’t get our feet under us now, we’re going to be trapped renting forever. We don’t want to do that. We want to make good on the promises we whispered to one another about our kids being able to grow up with a treehouse and and a big yard. That’s more important to us than it is to live ten minutes from all the action.

Half of me rails against the idea of living with someone else’s family again. It’s been six years since I’ve had anyone else be The Woman of the House. Bit in the bigger picture, and the longer term, James and I know that we’ll happily relinquish a little responsibility again. Sometimes it feels like we forfeited being a young couple too soon. And we both know that we’ll search forever and still not find the appropriate words of thanks for his parents. They’re giving us our shot, our chance to start our life together off right.

His parents are giving, the most sincere and generous people I’ve ever met. We came home yesterday from his parents’ house with two cans of soup and enough hugs to fuel us through the week ahead. I didn’t realize his mother had slid the soup into the bag. She’s good like that. (She also cooked an entire Turkey dinner for us, and the resemblance to Thanksgiving was wholly appropriate.)

I had a taste yesterday of what it means to be part of a family again, what it means to have people who love you enough to take care of you. Who have the luxury of that proximity. It brought me back to when I was 12, eating Giant Chewy SweetTarts and running around barefoot with the grass and sand under me, taking for granted all the love and security of Family and Home.

James and I want to build together all those good things, to give to our kids. Eventually. The thing about Eventually is that it sneaks up on you.

And, really, there are no words to express how grateful I am that he and I are being allowed to get a head start on the future like this so soon.

-M.

This morning, James went into work on our mutual day off to throw a celebrity kid’s birthday party. I’m not going to say much of anything, except that I passed Brad and Angie as they were on their way out (laden with Build a Bear bags and happy children in tow) and, my goodness, that woman is beautiful. And Brad’s tall.

And it was very nice to see Brad help boost each kid into their vehicle, while Angie protectively scaned the street for paparazzi (there were none, just me, trying hard not to drop James’ coffee, which was stacked on top of my coffee so I could futz with my phone). They love their kids, and they laugh with one another. That’s all you need to know.

Last night, I went out to dinner with The Girls. (Technically these are not The Traditional Girls, which will always be Maxine and Christine, and we will always be 22 and laughing in the face of Real Life together.) To be more specific, last night I had supper with Amy and Allison, of Amy Blogs Chow and That Girl Allison. They’re the New Girls. And our Mid-20s selves chatted at 44 1/2 about life and boys and how Freelance is great if it can pay the bills. I got to talk about my cats, the texture of the peppers under my crab cake and the zen approach I bring to dating after all the interesting mistakes of college.

When you haven’t related to other women over cups of cocoa in awhile, you forget how soul-soothing it can be to have other females close enough to pass twinkles from eye to eye.

I’m no Angie. On girl-dates, I talk about my cats and my boyfriend. My hair is not long and pretty, and I wore a turtleneck last night that reminds me a lot of the turtlenecks my grandmother used to wear. But Allison told me that my makeup looked really pretty, and it means something else coming from another girl than it does when James gets all goofy-faced and tells me I’m pretty. With James, it’s a sign of adoration. With other women, it’s a sign of mutual respect. (Allison’s makeup, as always, put mine to shame, but that’s another story.)

It was my first time meeting Amy, and she’s like what a cupcake would be if you could bring one to life, give it an adorable voice and a little bit of a head cold: She’s super-sweet, but has substance and the ability to fill you up with warm, happy feelings.

I’m starting 2010 making conscious efforts to let go of The Way We Were in hopes that I’ll find new happiness in the people I have here, now. I’m no Angie, but last night, laughing at dinner with Allison and Amy, I felt like an Uber Celebrity. Somebody chic and fabulous eating out in Hell’s Kitchen with other chic, fabulous women.

Of course I then went home and put on sweatpants and snuggled with The Cats. And that’s fine. I don’t suspect Amy or Allison would think any less of me for it (or for the fact that if we go shoot the park in a bit, I’ll probably change back into sweats for that, too).

I’m in my mid-20s and rewriting all the rules for my life. What could be more Uber-Celeb than that?

-M.

I wanted to blog at least once a week this year. Keep everyone up to speed on what I’m up to. Which begs the next question… What day is it? The 6th? Are you sure? You ARE?

… Well, you’re better at this game than I am. Stop rubbing it in.

I start my Masters’ in 5 days. That means my already pressed time is going to be stretched to the limit. It also means that my resolutions I’ve made for the year will be easier and harder to commit to over time.

What is she talking about? To be honest, I barely know. I slept until 11:30am today, because my body refused to wake up. It needed to rest. The real rest. The uninterrupted rest. So I don’t begrudge myself the sleep. But I do need to quickly put into writing what it is I’m trying to accomplish this year, before I let myself off the hook from having resolutions all together.

We all know I have great friends. Best friends. Amazing best friends. We also know that they’re not, you know… here anymore. Maxine will be back in a couple months, but we both get so busy that we never see each other. Christine is still in Arizona. Kristin is all Mommy’d up. They’re my people, and it always makes me long for the past when I think about how much I miss them.

That stops now. Resolution #1: Learn to let go.

I do not have to forfeit my friends to accept that our relationships are all different than the ways they used to be. Not worse, just different. Them not being here has taught me a lot about standing on my own, something you only learn when you  have to wait for a time difference to resolve itself before you can talk to one of your confidants about whether you should or should not be freaking out.

Life may never be the way it used to, with more tequila and less worries. But I’m not the girl I  used to be either. And Mallory Now couldn’t keep up with Mallory of Sophomore Year. She wouldn’t want to. I’m content to be who I’ve become. I like her. I just need to adjust my mind into being her.

Which, yes, is scary. Because without my people here, I’m forging myself for the first time mostly on my own. And trying to pull that off while also figuring out what it means to do that as part of a couple. Cue Resolution #2: No fear.

I get all freaked out when things change. And right now, the thing I need to change is how I personally approach my life. It’s not how I planned it, and that’s GOOD. Had I lived according to my plan, I’d be traveling, taking photographs for National Geographic or Gourmet Magazine. Oh, wait…

The dreams weren’t shortsighted. I love to write, cook, and take photographs. But I’m thrilled and proud that I didn’t limit myself to that trajectory, because look how great my totally-unplanned-for life is now. The problem is that I changed my mind and made different decisions without acclimating my mind to what the effects on the long-term picture looked like.

It’s scary to decide that, instead of traveling the world and seeking adventure and living a life of fast-paced intrigue, I’m good with moving to the suburbs, getting more education and vacationing to Maine for lobster.

I just changed the plan without telling myself. REALLY telling myself. Now I know, and I just have to get on-board.

And that’s it. That’s all she wrote for me, and my goals for the year. I used to make 12. I  used to make 12 small steps a year, and the  bar wasn’t set too high. “Read more.” “Jog.”

This year, I want to take two large bounds. I want to embrace change (not the Skrull kind), and I want to revive the joie-de-vivre I used to have, that has since ebbed to Blind Terror.

The only other thing I may want to add is, Resolution #3: Make new NYC friends. Because I can’t let go of my girls and our old ways without finding new, amazing women to fill the void. I love James, but he’s not The Girls. In that vein, I’ll be having my first Girls’ Dinner Club meal tonight with Allison and Amy.

Here’s to 2010. The Year of No Fear.

-M.