brave
brāv/
adjective

Ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage.
“a brave soldier”
synonyms: courageous, valiant, valorous, intrepid, heroic, lionhearted, bold, fearless, gallant, daring, plucky, audacious;

I’ve been surprising myself lately, well, almost every day recently, by doing something brave.

For me, it looks more like plucky, or audacious, rather than true (pull someone out of a burning building), courage.

For many, many years my life was void of bravery. I ran a bravery deficit. I would have told you it was most definitely for other people! But these days my life seems to be upping the ante—giving me no choice other than to be brave…or has it?

I like what Seth Godin wrote the other day about bravery.

What do you guys think? Is it a choice?

Carry on,
xox

Bravery is for other people

Bravery is for the people who have no choice, people like Chesley Sullenberger and Audie Murphy.

Bravery is for the people who are gifted, people like Ralph Abernathy, Sarah Kay and Miles Davis.

Bravery is for other people.

When you see it that way, it’s so clearly and patently absurd that it’s pretty clear that bravery is merely a choice.

At least once in your life (maybe this week, maybe today) you did something that was brave and generous and important. The only question is one of degree… when will we care enough to be brave again?

Seth Godin

A piano has 88 keys. Each one is different. But what if they were all the same? Be an original — but play well with others.
That’s all.
Carry on,
xox

Okay. Now that I have your attention, what DOES sex have to do with manifestation?
Nothing and EVERYTHING.
Stay with me.
Here we go.
Think about something you want. Wait. Let’s use a sexier word. DESIRE. Something you desire.

Can you focus your attention on that thing for ten seconds straight? You’d be surprised how long that is AND I said straight, without interruption. That’s the thing with focus. It’s, it’s…elusive.
It gets away from you.

Unless it comes to sex.

MY sex to manifesting comparisons go something like this:

First you have to find something engaging. Something that gets your juices flowing—if you know what I mean.
Have you ever tried to have sex with someone you were not that into? Yeah, me neither.
Anyway…
Have you ever found yourself eyes wide open while they’re kissing you, searching their face or body for something appealing? You know, something to get you going?
When that didn’t work, did you find yourself racking your brain as to how it is that you have come to find yourself naked with this person?
Yeah, me too.

Here’s the thing. You’ll never manifest real happiness (or a happy ending), from something you have no passion for. You won’t have the stamina or the staying power.
You may as well play some gin rummy, or watch Game of Thrones. The end.

Then there’s the focus thing.

Focus is concentration on steroids and it is absolutely, positively necessary for the happy ending to occur.

Think I’m wrong?

Start messing around and then turn on cartoons.

Get right there, I mean right there, yes, yes! righhhhhttttt theeeerrrrreeeee!! and sneeze.

Get involved in some heavy foreplay and have your dog jump on the bed and lick your testicles.
Yeah, you know what I mean. When you lose your focus—things go…limp.
Game over.

The same thing happens when you’re thinking about that new job or project you’re excited about.
You can feel your pulse quicken when suddenly, out of left field comes your father’s voice telling you that it’s too risky, or you start to imagine all the reasons why your dream can’t possibly work.
Your focus is broken and your desire becomes…limp.

Stop. Drop. Go eat a sandwich instead.

So there you have it.
Passion, or at least excitement is required to be able to maintain an erection, focus.

Distraction kills focus and it’s easy to become distracted —except when it comes to sex.

The bottom line: It all boils down to sex. Sex and bacon.

Carry on, (That has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning)
xox

This one hit a nerve and I’ve had a ton of requests (okay, five) to re-run it.
Here ya go!
xox

Thank you, doctor, for keeping me waiting forty minutes for my fifteen-minute, two hundred and fifty dollar consultation.
I’m your second appointment of the day. It’s 10 am. How the fuck could you already be running that far behind? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m firing you on account of bad time management. I may not have all the letters after my name — but my time is just as valuable as yours.

Thank you, dear friend who is chronically late because she can never find parking.
Because of you I keep a ten-minute window ahead of all my appointments, even lunch dates, to make sure I can wrangle the admittedly criminal lack of sufficient parking in Los Angeles.
I love you so I’ll tolerate this one character flaw.

Thank you every commercial airline I’ve ever flown.
You treat departure and arrival times as loose suggestions, which has forced me to get all the apps that alert me of your lateness so that I don’t end up getting trapped at the airport, overspending at the duty-free shops, or standing so long at the arrivals gate that I end up printing a random name on a box lid just to fit in.

As long as I’m venting, thank you private jet travel.
I’ve been fortunate to partake in your luxurious expediency and I must say: You have ruined me.
It is my belief that NO individual who is financially incapable of sustaining their own jet ( which is 99% of us), should be allowed to fly private.
It is a mind fuck on steroids.
When they say they’re leaving at 10, you may arrive at 9:50, but you will be wildly, inappropriately, “rookie” early because by 9:53 someone will have taken your bags, lead you to your double-wide, leather, Barcalounger; peeled you a grape, dipped you a strawberry, massaged your feet and told you a joke. There is no long security line, no barefooted X-ray pat down or frantic belt removal.
And if everyone is on board by 9:54 — they just take off.
What?
It’s too good. I can’t take it! Never again.

And last but not least thank you over-entitled rock singers. You know who you are.
At my current age of fifty-seven I’m well aware that I’ve wasted vast portions of my youth, hundreds if not thousands of hours, waiting for you to start your fucking concerts and I’m pissed and I want that time back! I know you’ve been to the arena or stadium. You had a soundcheck and a driver for Pete’s sake. Why can’t you manage to be fed, made-up and dressed by showtime? I can.
Is that too much to ask for the millions we’re paying to see you live? I just don’t get.

And thank you, Taylor Swift. Although I’ve yet to see you live, I heard you start your set right on time. Just one of the things I love about you.

Sorry about that, I just needed to vent. I have a thing about punctuality!
What about you? Are you late as a habit? Do you think it’s rude? How long will you wait for someone?

Carry on,
xox

Shonda Rhimes, creator of TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and the book Year of Yes, speaks at TED2016 on February 15, 2016. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

Okay. So.
I really wanted to write something about this book. As a matter of fact, I was going to VLOG about it. That’s right, this mug, going on and on about how much I LOVED this book — on video.
Sadly, that never came to be. I seemed to run out of hours in the day. My screenplay is playing time-warp games with me and well, I just plain forgot.

So without further ado — Take it away Kate!
xox

“A while ago, I tried an experiment,” says Shonda Rhimes, the “titan” behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder. “For one year, I would say ‘yes’ to all the things that scared me. Anything that made me nervous or took me out of comfort zone, I’d say ‘yes.'”

Public speaking? Yes. Acting? Yes. “A crazy thing happened — the very act of doing the thing that scared me undid the fear,” she says. “It’s amazing the power of one word.

‘Yes’ changed my life. ‘Yes’ changed me.”

She wants to talk about one particular ‘yes’ that made more difference than any other. “I made a vow that every time one of my children asked me to play, I was going to say ‘yes,’,” she says. “Saying ‘yes’ to playing with my children likely saved my career.”

Rhimes is a television writer, something most people would consider a dream job. And to some extent, that’s true. “But I understand a dream job is not about dreaming — it’s all job, all work, all reality, all blood, all sweat, no tears,” she says.

Each show Rhimes works on costs millions of dollars and creates hundreds of jobs that didn’t exist before. With three shows in production at a time, sometimes four, she’s responsible for 70 hours of TV a season at a price tag of about $350 million. She has to run the business and also carve out time to “gather America around my campfire and tell my stories.”

She isn’t complaining. “I work a lot. Too much — much too much. And I love it,” she says. “When I am hard at work, when I am deep in it, there is no other feeling.”

She has a name for the feeling: the hum. “The hum sounds like an open road and I could drive it forever,” she says. “The hum is a drug, the hum is music, the hum is God’s whisper right in my ear.”

But it’s a trap. The more successful she becomes, she says, “the more balls in the air, the more eyes on me, the more history stares, the more expectations there are … the more I work to be successful, the more I need to work.”

Until Rhimes found herself wondering: “Am I anything besides the hum?” Her hum was broken; all she heard was silence.

Enter one of her daughters, who asked her to play one day as Rhimes was walking out the door. She stopped. And said yes. “There was nothing special about it. We play. We are joined by her sisters. There is a lot of laughing, and dancing and singing. I give a dramatic reading from Everybody Poops. Nothing out of the ordinary, and yet it was extraordinary.” She felt focused, still, good. “Something in me loosens and a door in my brain swings open.,” she says. “A hum creeps back.”

She realized something: “The work hum,” she says, “is just a replacement.” She had to face the hardest of facts about herself: that she, in some ways, liked being at work more than being at home. That she was more comfortable working than playing. But that only in playing did she find that hum.

“The real hum is joy,” she says. “The real hum is love.”

Since then, Rhimes has made an iron-clad rule of saying yes to playing with her kids. “It’s the law, so I don’t have any choice,” she says. “I’m not good at playing. … I itch for my cell phone, always. But it is okay. My tiny humans show me how to live. The hum of the universe fills me up.”

Her point is a simple one, yet one we always need reminding of: “Work doesn’t work without play.” Whether it’s playing with kids, seeing friends, reading books or staring out into space, it is actually important for each of us to take time for the simple joys that make life worthwhile.

http://www.amazon.com/Year-Yes-Dance-Stand-Person/dp/1476777098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455670361&sr=8-1&keywords=the+year+of+yes

So, what needs more yes’ from you? What big, fat, fear do you have that would shrivel up and die if you just went ahead and said “yes!” to it?
Carry on

“Bird poop brings good luck!
There is a belief that if a bird poops on you, your car or your property, you may receive good luck and riches. The more birds involved, the richer you’ll be! So next time a bird poops on you, remember that it’s a good thing.”
~Bird Poop Expert

What about if a single bird poops on your head while you’re driving in your car? You know, moving target and all. That feels like a whole lotta good luck coming your way—along with super silky hair, right?

I’m about to talk about poop, a lot!
Bird poop to be exact, so if you’re eating your eggs, best to put down your fork right about now. Or oatmeal or yogurt for that matter. Just stop eating until you’re finished reading, okay? Studies have shown that reading while eating can lead to something serious and most likely deadly, like choking while laughing, so in essence, I just saved your life.
You’re welcome.

And now, back to the bird poop.

Many people the world over believe that if a bird lets loose on you, then good things are coming your way. One idea is that it’s a sign of major wealth coming from Heaven (the place where ALL real wealth resides), based on the belief that when you suffer an inconvenience (like a head full of bird shit), you’ll have good fortune in return.

The most popularly held belief is that if a bird hits your noggin, it is so lucky, so random and rare (statistically speaking it is rarer than being hit by lightning), how can a lottery win be far behind?

A Case in point — and true story:

Can a head full of bird poop be lucky, you ask?
A Bay of Islands man swears it is, after winning $100,000 on an Instant Kiwi ticket. The man said a bird recently pooped on his head, and his friends told him it was a sign of luck coming his way.

“This win gives me the funds to be able to get down there and be able to help out in any way I can in the city’s rebuild,” he said.

Let me just start by saying that the man in the story is WAY more altruistic than I’ll EVER be. Or maybe not. After he pays off his debt and relocates, how much city rebuilding can he do? I’m worried about him and his financial planning abilities. He has to make that money last and $100,000 doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe he’ll have the free time to volunteer. Okay. I feel much better now.

Anyhow, on Saturday the hubster and I decided to get a jump-start on Valentine’s Day being that we had flaked, waiting until the last-minute and all the good ideas for Sunday were taken. Left to our own devices, we hopped into the car, put down the top, and decided to drive really fast out of the beautiful, summer-like temperatures and head into opaque whiteness of a foggy purgatory, the beach. Faced with the choice of putting the top back up or leaving fog-ville altogether and going for a big lunch, you guessed it, THE BIG LUNCH WON! (No surprise there).

Winding our way through the tree-lined upscale neighborhoods at a brisk 40 mph (oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, it wasn’t a school zone and besides, it was Saturday. Nobody drives below 40 mph. on Saturdays), on our way back into town and our search for the perfect kabob, I felt something clobber my cranium.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, hands on my head looking around like a freak. You have to admire my economy with words. Don’t feel bad. I’m a writer.

Anyway…

At first, I suspected it might be space debris or a tiny piece of meteorite, and it was only when hubby, with his two bare man-hands, picked a rather large and thankfully solid piece of avian excrement out of my hair—that I realized my good fortune. Lottery WINNER!

Can I just take a moment to thank my husband for his courage, strong stomach and lack of any real hygienic awareness? (He’s French). You are my hero and I will split the money with you AFTER I rebuild a city.

Needless to say, when the laughter subsided, (thankfully we share the same warped sense of humor that causes us to laugh at another’s misfortune), we hightailed it to the diviest Liquor Store we could find (because everybody knows THAT is where REAL wealth resides — not Heaven), and bought us some Power Ball, Super Lotto and Mega Millions tickets —and a box of Triscuits—the Rosemary and olive oil kind.

Then with big shit-eating grins on our faces (that’s an idiom, not literally, mind out of the gutter people, Ewwww), we drove to lunch.

Lottery or not, nothing says LOVE like picking bird poop out of your beloved’s hair—so I’m already a winner!

Love you my Big Handsome!

I know. You guys envy my life of glamour and romance. What can I say? I’m one lucky girl. Maybe YOU had a better Valentine’s Day than me? Huh? I don’t think soooo but I’ll listen!

Carry on,

xox

” Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,
I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.
General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed,
but I don’t see that.

It seems to me that love is everywhere.

Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy,
but it’s always there – fathers and sons,
mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends.”
~From the movie LOVE ACTUALLY

Happy Valentine’s Day My loves, God only knows what I’d be without YOU!

xox

“The other world is this world rightly seen.” – Nisargadatta

“The been there’s and done that’s of the adult mind — we’ve seen it all. Familiarity breeds boredom”

I think we’re all a little guilty of this to varying degrees. Don’t you? And I agree that travel can revitalize the most numbed-out mind. It’s probably one of the reasons I LOVE to travel. Makes me want to jump on a plane right NOW!

Anyhow, take a look and enjoy your weekend.
xox

Have you ever told a lie so often you started to believe it yourself?

Of course, I never have, I was just wondering about you, you lying scoundrels.

Sometimes it is necessary to lie. It can be the kindest thing to do, and often, is the lesser of two evils.

“Yes, it WAS good for me too.”

“Stop crying, that haircut DOES make you look like Charlize Theron.”

“You’re right, it is SO their loss. Your voice is…beautiful.”

I lie to myself ALL the time. It’s a habit. Like brushing my teeth and going to the gym (lie).
I started doing it in acting class.

Just so you know, acting is the gateway to a life of lying. I’m looking at YOU Meryl Streep.

It would happen just before a big audition, or sitting in front of a casting director. Then, if I’d actually bullshitted my way into the job, there’d be that moment backstage, in the dark, behind the curtain, when my head knew it had to go out and stand in the spotlight but my legs wanted to run, my stomach wanted to vomit, and my butt wanted to poop the entire contents of my large intestine—all over the stage.

There have been times I thought my blood would boil in my veins, my nose would fall off of my face or my vagina would start to recite Shakespeare, all due to nerves.

Oh, don’t look at me that way! You know what I’m talking about.

Instead, somehow, we all find it in ourselves to walk out on stage, hit the mark, and deliver the lines. Or we walk to the front of the room of VIP’S and deliver our presentation. Or we sit our asses in the chair and take the test. Or we unclench our fists—and hit send.

You fake it. You lie. You pretend. I know you do. Just for a moment. That you aren’t scared shitless. That you are a pro and not only THAT! That you’re the best at what you do!

Bravo, you brave motherfuckers!

In Jenny Lawson’s (The Bloggess), hilarious new book, Furiously Happy, there’s a chapter where she’s supposed to go and read for the audio version of her own book and instead ends up on the bathroom floor in a full anxiety attack, frantically texting her friend, the author Neil Gaiman for help.
He sends her back a single line.

“Pretend you’re good at it.”

Okaaaaayyy…She writes it in big block letters on her arm, gets up off of the floor, and keeps on going. She continues to this day to write it every time she has to get on stage for a talk or a book reading.

Pretend you’re good at it.

I do it every time I write. I do it when I sing karaoke, and I do it every time we have sex.

I know you can relate. What have you pretended to do to get you through? I’d love to know!

Carry on,
xox

http://www.amazon.com/Furiously-Happy-Funny-Horrible-Things/dp/1250077001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455242532&sr=8-1&keywords=jenny+lawson+furiously+happy

Me pretending to be Velma Kelly in Chicago (This was my own personal Pretending Olympics).

If life is a dance, I have two left feet.
Which also explains my wonky sense of direction and makes it hard to buy shoes.
But if you’ve seen me dance, or do Zoomba, or even Tai Chi, you know what I mean.

Everyone else is moving in sync to the right while I’m moving, always with great conviction, to the left.
It’s just my nature.
Always has been.
As much as I desperately want to avoid embarrassment, it is next to impossible for me to just blend in, to stay inside the lines, to behave and dance like everyone else.

But, I really have tried, and it has been exhausting.

Just like I play my own soundtrack in my head as it runs through my life (don’t you?)
I have my own unique, sometimes awkward and clumsy choreography—which I often dance alone.

It may not be pretty, but it has gotten me here.

Every once in a great while, I’m supremely graceful; like the Prima Ballerina in Swan Lake, dancing around, up on pointed toes, with my neck long, and my arms fluttering slightly.
The only problem is, the rest of the world is doing a tap routine, and I look like an ass!

So, here’s the thing: I had a humongous epiphany after catching The Dead Poet’s Society on HBO a couple of weeks back. Damn! I had forgotten what a great movie that is, OR, I didn’t have the depth of character in 1989 to fully grasp its meaning. Probably the latter.

In case you can’t remember, it takes place in the 1950’s at an elite all-boys prep school. There’s a new, unorthodox English professor, Mr. Keating, who, among other things, has them stand on top of their desks to see the world in a different way. He also challenges them to call him “O Captain, My Captain.”

John Keating: “O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It’s from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating or if you’re slightly more daring, O Captain my Captain.”

He is pushing these boy-men to embrace great literature and poetry, to become free thinkers, to question authority and buck convention. In other words, my Holy Grail!

Bear with me here, because it was this next scene that really got to me.
He has his class assemble in the school courtyard where, as an exercise in self-expression, he has them walk in a circle. A couple swing their arms, several stomp their feet, but soon they are all marching perfectly in time, hands and feet synchronized like a chain gang. Although they found it funny, Mr. Keating was proving a point.

We may start off marching to our own beat, but soon we succumb to the herd mentality.
We all fall in step, conforming, becoming a part of that herd.

It’s encoded in our DNA.

Mr. Keating wants them to break that code, to consider being another way.
Perhaps, to even entertain the idea that it might be okay to go left instead of right, to dance to their own untamed choreography.

Hmmmmmm. Maybe my feet aren’t broken after all.

John Keating: Now, we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go,
“That’s baaaaad.” [imitating a goat] Frost said, “Two roads diverged in the wood and I —
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Amen, O’Captain, My Captain.
Carry on,
Xox