change

He was adorable and sweet as hell, but not that smart and after a while I got bored. I needed some intellectual acrobatics.
Note to self. They can be pretty, but I need some MENTAL stimulation occasionally too.

He introduced me to jazz. He had accumulated the most elaborate vinyl collection of jazz I’d ever laid ears on.
Miles Davis, Coltrane, Mingus, and Brubeck. Hours and hours of rain on the roof and piano riffs. It was heaven, Eventually, I tried to introduce him to Sting, and Seal. Even The Beatles. But he wasn’t having it—so neither was I.
Note to self: I love to be introduced to new things, but I also love making introductions.
I like to call it Two-way-streeting, .

He was an AMAZING cook but he had no money.
And by no money I mean NONE. Moths flew out of his pockets on a regular basis. So, he’d rack up $300-$400 dollars a week of bills at Whole Foods on my credit cards — and I’d come home from work to a culinary masterpiece EVERY night. Unless he could figure out a way to make food that great on something less than the budget of a small country (he could NOT), we were doomed.
Note to self: I will do almost anything for a good meal. Except go broke. I can live on peanut butter in a pinch. But not in a cold cardboard box. Just saying’

He was king of the jerks, but so funny my sides still ache from laughing.
One day I was laughing so hard I didn’t realize that The Chump had dumped me. Ouch.
Note to self: Chumps are chumps even if they haven’t chumped YOU — yet. It’s just a matter of time. And jokes aren’t funny when they’re at your expense

One of my ex’s had such a great job and made so much money he probably owns a small country by now. But workaholics seldom come up for air. And by air, I mean the rest that life has to offer.
Note to self: I love ambition — but I also love vacations, uninterrupted dinners, conversations, and movies. You get the idea.

I was so nuts for a guy that one summer we took off for Europe, got Eurail Passes and trained around for a month.
Turns out some people don’t like sightseeing, or people in small towns in Italy who don’t speak English, or packing and unpacking, or food that tastes different — or trains for that matter.
Something I guess you don’t know until the excitement wears off and you’re 7000 miles away from home.
Note to self: Never leave the country with someone you’ve never spent 24/7 with. And learn to be okay on your own.

So it sounds like I had one hell of a bad streak (25 yrs) in the love department.
Au contraire, mon Frere.

I took those notes to self — gathered them up — and crafted the best man for me. And after years of tireless research — he eventually came around.

After a while it became clear to me that what I needed was:
Sweet and cute
Smart
open-minded
expert or aficionado at something
good cook
funny and kind
good job, mildly ambitious, but still lives life.
Good traveler. LOVES to travel.

Good to know, right?
You know you can do this for ANYTHING. What you DON’T want leads you to what you DO want.

I hear people, sure, bitter people, but still people who say that relationships that don’t work out were just a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more! It’s not a waste of time.

It’s an education.

About who YOU are and what you like.

You know, invaluable stuff like that!

Carry on,
xox

How many of you are with me on this one? Come on, a show of hands!

How many of you guys thinks that’s an understatement? I know I do.

How many of you have a five-year plan? How about a ten-year plan? (Really? Wow.)
Now, let me ask you this and remember, don’t kill the messenger—how do you handle changes in those plans? Do you go with the flow, or hunt down and kill whoever fucked with your brilliant plan?

I’m getting better with the flowing thing (it’s about time!), although I’m still not great, and I can totally relate to the murderous thoughts at the slightest whiff of a plot twist.

Here’s the thing, we think we have life all figured out. We leave minimal if any room for improvement. That’s right, I said improvement.

Not every plan we make is foolproof—in retrospect, most plans of mine have been foolhardy.

I have actually come to not so much welcome, (I’m not that good—yet), but to be curious about why my plan was foiled and where in the hell LIFE thinks it’s taking me.

Yesterday, as I was talking with a friend, I was encouraging him to be more curious as to why all his plans had gone to shit and where he was be directed. When we brainstormed his shitstorm (whaaaaat? Best sentence EVER!), we both came to realize how many opportunities lay hidden (like little dolphins, or Nemo) just below the surface.

Was he really in the midst of a calamity—or was an unseen opportunity unfolding?

Next time you’re unleashing a long string of obscenities ( have I told you how much I love you?), while you shake your fist at the heavens, remember this blog, unclench your fist and blow me a kiss. (Is it too soon to say I told you so?)

You’re welcome,

Carry on,

xox

I will be away this week, vacationing in a land of sun, sand, and questionable Wifi. If it’s not two gerbils running on a habit trail unreliable, I will post something NEW.
Otherwise, every day there will be one of the six most popular posts from the past few years in no particular order.
I hope you’re all pigging out and having fun. I know I am!
Carry on,
xox

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh, Ralph. Or do you want me to call you Waldo?
How did you get so smart? So enlightened? After all, you lived during the nineteenth century, a time of immense intellectual and industrial expansion; yet it was also the time of corsets, slavery, the horse and buggy, The Civil War, and before the use of the electric light bulb.

You went around espousing and developing certain cutting-edge ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Holy cow R.W.!

With this quote you give those of us in the twenty-first century, an era whose technological advances you could scarcely have imagined in your wildest dreams—permission.

Permission to make mistakes;
Permission to get over ourselves;
Permission to be high-spirited, unencumbered;
Permission to start the fuck over!

Thank you Ralph, Waldo, Wally? We really needed it, because in that respect—humanity hasn’t changed a bit since you walked the earth.

Nearly two centuries later we have yet to master the art of forgiving ourselves and employing The Start Over.

“Blunders and absurdities” not only creep in, they set up camp and ruin our sleep as they set fire to our lives; and after we clean up the mess and re-group, we have a hard time letting go of the past, the old nonsense—and an almost impossible time forgiving ourselves.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”

I don’t know about you guys but you may as well be asking me to get into a shark cage in infested waters, or eat just one Lays Potato Chip—it’s simply not going to happen.

Then I remembered this, something I haven’t thought about in eons:

Years ago a friend posed this amazing question to me after too much wine and not enough cheese. (Remember the Sheryl Crowe song My favorite Mistake? It was playing in the back round),

“What would you say is your favorite mistake?”
I watched as her IQ rose several points just in the contemplation of such a thing.

Me: A Favorite Mistake? Really? I, I, uh, I don’t know. (tens of IQ points evaporating by the second.)

I suppose it was the word favorite that initially hung me up, but the more I thought about it, the more I LOVED the concept.

If we could deem a mistake our favorite, it would release the charge, the tug in our gut.
It would become the path on which we could meet up with “high-spirited and unencumbered”.
It could become old nonsense and jumpstart THE START OVER.

I was willing to give it a try.

“I suppose my favorite mistake was my marriage at twenty. We were way too young and not a good match, and after the divorce we both went on to live happy lives with other people—and we’re still friends” I admitted, feeling lighter by the minute.

Hers was an unplanned pregnancy, a son she had at nineteen. A favorite for obvious reasons.

Thinking about this again, all these years later, my heart started racing as I ran through twenty plus years of memories and they started to look less like a Tela Novela and more like a situation comedy.

Starting my business, my store, is quickly becoming my latest favorite mistake due to all of the internal growth it’s caused. I can finally be done with it. It has become old nonsense, and now I have this (the writing) and SO MUCH MORE. I can say that now.

As I lay in bed the other night it dawned on me that since the beginning of time, humans have tortured themselves over their mistakes to the point where perfectly lovely people lead lives of quiet disappointment trying to avoid another.

What is your favorite mistake? This needs to be a mandatory question on any employment or dating application.
The answer changes people.
It changed me.

Okay, you knew it was coming, Tell me, What’s your favorite mistake?

Then you can Carry on,
xox

Elizabeth Gilbert speaking out AGAINST passion? What? That’s right you guys.
If you’ve ever felt your blood boil when some famous, successful so and so advises you to “follow your passion”, do yourself a favor and watch this video.

Big Love,
xox

http://www.supersoul.tv/supersoul-sessions/elizabeth-gilbert-flight-hummingbird-curiosity/

So here we are at the three-year mark. The third anniversary of the spontaneous creation of this blog.

It has changed me. YOU have changed me. For the better.

You make me want to be a better version of me. To write better. To always tell the truth.

Without your love, support, comments and hilarious off-the-grid emails—I’d have stayed sad and stuck.

I hated stuck. Stuck sucked. So did sad. Sad was like quicksand.

So thank you.

For letting me vent. And rant. And offer advice. And maybe even make you laugh.

You guys are the best, honestly—and I love you all madly.

Color me Immensely Grateful.

Carry on,

xox

Change.  Who likes it?  Nobody.
Who does it?  Everybody.
How does it work?
Badly for those who fight it—better for those who go with the flow.

This is for me I’m Always learning!

Carry on,
xox

Some people hate change

~Seth Godin

*Hey you guys,
You know I share everything with you, well, whatever I can get away with without getting arrested!
Anyhow, last Friday I had a huge existential crisis—a colossal crisis of faith.

Yeah, I know, I’m the only one, boo hoo, poor me.

I have a project that means a lot to me that is requiring humongous amounts of courage, and it is being highly uncooperative and testing my patience to no end.

It’s been a long while since I’ve felt so, so, low-down-gutter-shitty.
Friday I just woke up that way.

Being that I’m a writer, I wrote a long, rambling, gutter-shitty manifesto. (If I’d been an artist I’d have painted an all black canvas with the word FUCK or HACK on it).
You get the picture.

Then I sent it to my husband and four of my besties. And I waited…

During all of this emotional flailing around the voice in my head said: You are overreacting. You don’t need sympathy—you need trust and faith. (GOD! when will you quit being so goddamn right, so goddamn all the time! That is SO annoying!).

Anyway, I waited for something from my tribe…I suppose it was sympathy, okay I’ll just say it, I was waiting for sympathy with a layer of compassion and a dash of empathy and love.

You wanna know what I got?
Crickets. I got crickets—nothing.

My computer showed that the manifesto had sent. My husband’s computer showed he did not receive it.

When I tried to re-send it later that night to my one poor friend who happened to text—nothing. Again it said it was sent when it was not.

I had asked for a sign and apparently my computer was hacked by that part of me that knows better. It wasn’t having any of my sad-suckiness. It showed me no sympathy on Friday. NONE!
It let me squirm in the uncomfortableness of doubt and ride the emotions until they passed. (Two days).

So there you have it. I feel better, but I still can’t STAND doubt! How about you?
Have you had a crisis of faith? How were you able overcome it? How long were you in it?

Here is the part of the manifesto that I feel you guys could relate to and doesn’t have the f-bomb as every other word!

Carry on,
xox

Ugh.
I feel like I’ve been left hanging.

Like I got up the courage to say “I love you” to someone and the other person just smiled.

Or, like we agreed to jump off the cliff together, and as my foot leaves the edge, I am able to turn just enough as I hurtle toward the abyss—to see the other person still standing at the edge.

I feel bamboozled.

It has made me profoundly uncomfortable and has opened the door to doubt.

I fucking hate doubt.
I like forward motion, Courage and momentum. Not all of this start and stop shit.

wtf am I doing?
wtf am I saying?

Am I a fraud or some delusional hack?

I can’t shake it so I’m going to have to ride this wave and then wait for it to pass.
Give me a sign Universe—anything!

It’s noon on Monday the 21st and I should be on my way to the airport as I write this. Instead, I’m eating a peach (which looks and tastes suspiciously like a cookie), and pondering the fact that we postponed, (a much more accurate and less sad-sacky word than cancelled) our motorcycle trip to Italy last week.

As I think back on the last seven days, it’s hard to deny—many, many miracles have occurred.

By Wed—Thurs of last week, almost as if by magic, reports came back from various friends and family members; “I’m feeling SO much better!” they all enthused with great…enthusiasm.

Whew, that came as such a relief.

Because they had no idea how much their health and wellbeing had been weighing on me, and the fact that I was about to go off the grid for two glorious weeks (oh, did I write that? I meant to just think it), had tied me up in knots.

So of course when we canceled, postponed the trip—everyone miraculously recovered.

Emotional shitshow on Friday—postpone trip on Saturday—Wednesday—Miraculous recoveries all around! Yeah.

By golly, isn’t that just so..so..

The same was true on hubby’s job front.
Inspectors who swore on their mother’s grave that they could not possibly show up before he left—did. These same stone-hearted men who were impervious to bribes and copious amounts of tears and shameless begging; called out of the blue—all chipper and accommodating—showed up on time the next day (gasp) and passed not only the rough electrical—but the framing as well. (You have no idea what a big, hairy deal this is. I called the Vatican to have this miracle sanctioned, only to be told the Pope is really busy right now—something about Cuba).

Anyhow, refunded vacation money started to show up in our accounts.
Wait.
What?
Refunded money you say?
I know! We even got $1000 of our motorcycle deposit back. From Italians. All the way in Italy.
Miracles #2, 3 & 4.

Long suffering lumber showed up. Drywalling commenced. Lions and lambs lay down together and I lost three pounds!
Tuesday it even rained a big, sloppy, tropical rain—in California.
Well, now you’re just showing off.
More miracles?
Will it never end?

Laughter even made a brief appearance in our home over the weekend. (Don’t get excited, it was a guffaw really—we’re not out of the woods yet).

But it sure started to feel like it.
How about this unexpected side effect? So many things started to right themselves that it made it hard for disappointment to enter the picture.

Here’s the thing you guys, we made one really hard decision.
We stopped the bleeding that was killing the lead-up to our trip.

We called it. (I’m big on doing this now when something ends because I think attention must be paid)

Our Splendid Italian Vacation. Time of Death: 8 a.m. Saturday September 12, 2015.

Another miracle? Did it resurrect in three days? Nope—The vacation will have to wait—But our life did.

It turned its badass self around and starting behaving more like our wondrous, well oiled, things-always-work-out-for-us life again.

“Things are going so well, maybe we shouldn’t have cancelled”, hubby announced over lunch on Saturday.

Is he fucking kidding?

If we hadn’t called it quits I’m convinced the shitshow would still be in town.
And if we were still flying out today—I can guarantee you that the wings would fall off the plane.

Carry on,
xox

When you hold a book up next to your face on video; a book on surrender, and you tell all of your readers how you’re committing, to the best of your ability, to live your life that way — to let the “Hand of Life” call all the shots—said life immediately turns into a three-ring traveling shitshow and you end up canceling your Italian motorcycle vacation at the last-minute.

Yep. So that’s how I spent my Saturday. Canceling plane reservations, hotel rooms and motorcycle rentals.

It was the next logical step. All hell was breaking loose on several of my husband’s construction jobs and we couldn’t in good conscience, just leave town.

Arrivederci! See ya in two weeks!
Yeah, not gonna happen.

I saw it coming, (if i’m honest with myself; which I almost never am), about three weeks ago.
Everything that could go wrong—did.

But you know how you’ve made deposits—both financially and emotionally? Ones that you just can’t bring yourself to give up?

So we stayed the course until there was flaming hair, crying and name-calling (those were his clients, not me), and ended up canceling at the worst possible time. The last-minute.

So. What would I do differently, if I had it to do over again?

That’s just it. Nothing.

I called bullshit every step of the way. You know, like a good wife does.

My French husband, bucking the stereotype, refused to surrender.
Alas, there are two of us in this couple, and he sincerely thought he could make things right before our departure date. He is a magician after all, always pulling rabbits out of hats.
But as that date drew near, “The Hand of Life”, depending on where you were standing, either made the decision easier for us—or gave us the finger.

It’s still too soon to tell.

I can honestly say that at this very moment I’m not disappointed in the least. (Check with me in a week when I should be lounging on the Amalfi coast, tanned, drunk, and being attended to by a handsome waiter named Marco.)

Surrender. Who in the hell said this was a good way to live? Oh yeah, that would be me.

So you guys, here’s what I learned from this:

All the sleepless nights;

All the 3 a.m. walks around the block to clear his head;

All the angst filled conversations;

All the lists of pro’s and con’s;

All the endless vacillating.

All of that misery came from fighting the inevitable.

And after the surrender came a tiny nugget of a gift. Instead of disappoint; I feel peace. (I’m not sure my partner’s there yet. He still has a lot of magic to perform).

Carry on,
xox