emotions

What do you think waits for us in the afterlife?

Being that I was jeweler for over eighteen years, I imagined the afterlife, or heaven, to be the stunningly gorgeous and meticulously curated Jewelry Salon on the ground floor of Bergdorf Goodman in NYC, where all by my lonesome I could wander the aisles, open the cases, and wear whatever the hell I wanted — while wearing sweatpants.

I’ve raised the bar since then.
Now I envision my ass on a motorcycle, riding through some green, hilly countryside on my way to lunch where I will consume copious amounts of warm, freshly baked bread, and cheese stuffed deep-fried zucchini flowers. Oh, and wine. Lots and lots of room temperature Montepulciano D’Abruzzo.

What do you think about this?
In the screenplay I’m writing, one of the heroines of the story (the dead one), paints a picture of a place not too dissimilar to where we are now.

One of the really cool attributes of her heaven, or afterlife, is the fact that you carry around in your pockets some of your favorite snacks. For example, she has a never-ending supply of Fritos corn chips in her jacket pocket, her friend carries with him at all times — a bottle of Sriracha sauce.

I can’t decide what my pockets would hold. One day I’m sure it would be dark chocolate covered… anything, the next day, lemon cake from this little cafe in Italy.

I’m hoping that the afterlife is a place where changing your mind is not only accepted but revered.

THAT would be HEAVEN to me!

So I’m asking YOU, my tribe, because I want more insight into you and what YOU believe,
What does the afterlife look like to you? Or what do you imagine it to be like?
AND, OR, because I know you are not a group that likes to comment,

What snacks would be in YOUR pockets in Heaven?

Thanks, and Love you guys,
xox

“Activate in your mind only the things in your past that you want to see in your future.”
~Somebody Wise

I can’t remember who said this, Joseph Campbell? Rumi? Oprah?
Doesn’t matter. I think this is the BEST advice I consistently forget to remember. THE BEST.

Have you ever thought of someone from your past, a friend, an old co-worker or that crazy-ass woman who used to sell seashells down by the seashore? And then, out of the blue, or so it seems—they call you?

“Hello, Janet, this is Lunatica, I’m down here at the shore and I have some really great overpriced seashells to sell—and I thought of YOU.”

Ah, fuck.

I had an old luvah contact me around Christmastime. But first he had his special-needs little sister feel me out on social media.
Can you say, Schmoe?

He is someone who inhabited that very special place in my heart — the place where people go after they take my heart and break it into a thousand tiny pieces, then grind it down with the heel of their shoe into sand and blow it into my face, blinding me into thinking that I lost something special and precious. And this blind-eyed, bullshit belief caused me great suffering. For years and years. Five to be exact.

You know what I’m talking about.

I had a hard time being objective.

I wanted answers.
I wanted closure.
I wanted an apology.
I wanted a time machine to carry me back thirty years so I could ask all of the right questions I didn’t have the sense to ask at the time — and then I wanted to punch him in his squishy man-parts.

He wanted to reminisce, to catch up. After we talked I was like, “OMG, dodged a bullet!” He was like, “This was great! Let’s talk again, soon!”

Ah fuckity, fuck, fuck me running.

How in the name of God has this happened and what am I going to do about it?

Once I stopped running around with my hair on fire, I figured out that since I’d been in the process of jettisoning a ton of excess jetsam from my past that he had somehow received the unspoken, psychic memo on his way to the trash heap and just like Lunatica, he wanted to say, Hey!

I spent days writing about it. Hours of activating all of those old emotions of loss and heartbreak, bringing them out through my arm, onto the page and right back into the present.

Hello, 1986, I’d like you to meet 2016.

All it made me was more confused. Re-opening a thirty-year-old cold case and grieving the loss of a twenty-three-year-old boyfriend does not jive with gray hair. It just doesn’t.

Don’t I get to choose who comes back into my life to torture me?

Then the older, wiser, part of me, the sagging boobs and soft belly part, reminded me that YES! dammit! Yes, I do!

It reminded me of that phrase I always forget (and the fact that I need to get to the gym more often).
“Activate in your mind only the things in your past that you want to see in your future.”

Ah, fuck.

My wise friend Kim saw me spinning, on fire, and had the decency to put it into perspective for me. “Don’t waste one more minute of your time on this guy. Your life is great. Remember what that situation gave you and move on. Pronto. Like right NOW!” then she shoved a piece of chocolate into my face and gave me a slap on the ass.

That night I made the choice of exactly what I wanted to bring into my future.
I had started my spiritual practice in earnest after our break-up due to the complete bankruptcy of my self-esteem. It set me on my life’s path and brought me to where I am today.

Hey, not too shabby. Resilience, self-worth, ability to love, forgiveness, bravery, self-discipline, resolve. That’s the part of my past I’ll carry forward—the rest of it can go to hell!

When I freed up some emotional bandwidth and stopped the angst over what to do — he stopped texting.

Now I just have to set Lunatica straight.

What part of your past, if any, do you want to bring with you into your future?

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

” 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

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).

HAPPINESS
1. “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.

”

And they can’t.

Because defining happiness is like describing a boobie to a blind man. You just have to feel it.

Uh, that word happiness.  It’s such a trigger.

I once heard happiness described as being “As important to living as oxygen.”
At the time, it pissed me off something awful. What wing-nut would equate happiness with life? You can live a perfectly fine life as a miserable bitch—just ask my dog.

Listen, our Founding Father’s did. They even wrote it into our country’s Bill Of Rights — “Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness.”

Have you ever tried to pursue happiness? The big smiley face kind? I have.
That is one slippery, elusive, and habitually unattainable little fucker—when pursued.

That’s the thing. You have to let happiness come to YOU. Find YOU.

What about JOY. If you hate the concept of pursuing happiness, you’re going to loathe the word JOY.

I hear you, Joy sucks. Does it even exist? Joy? I mean really? Who walks around JOYFUL?

Stop being so angry for a second and consider of this:

Have you ever felt curious about something? Approaching it with wonder and awe?

Have you ever been in love? Maybe romantic love has passed you by, but did you ever win a fish at the inky-stink neighborhood Carnival? Or collect ladybugs at the vacant lot around the corner? Or help a hummingbird find its way out of your house?

What about when you fix something that’s been broken? Or find something precious that’s been lost?

I helped a little boy who was lost in Target find his mother.

We are completely blind to the ordinary occurrences in our lives, forever looking, PURSUING, the big, jumping in the air, new pony, fireworks and screaming, Red Ferrari, giant Happy Face moments which, if we’re lucky, happen a handful of times in our lives.

I needed a steadier stream so I learned to redefine what it meant to feel happiness and joy. I expanded the parameters ( Yes, you can do that) to include, well, everything, and I retired my track shoes. I ended the pursuit and opened my eyes.

This says FIND THE JOY IN THE ORDINARY. I say, SEE THE JOY IN THE ORDINARY, that feels SO much more doable to me. How about YOU?

Happy Hump Day y’all,
Carry on,
xox

This. This can be tricky but the results are remarkable. It’s an approach that is different but I think it’s so important to remember.

Try it.

With a lover,
With a friend,
A co-worker,
and your boss.

With a client,
a new idea or concept,
your kids,
your neighbors,
and most especially these days — your politics.

Be FOR peace instead of against war.
Be FOR a Democrat instead of against a Republican.
Be FOR the F-word instead of…well, you get the gist.

Carry on,
xox

Then I am a genius because I’m am seriously dumb about the learning to be smart part.

“Learning something new is frustrating. It involves being dumb on the way to being smart.”
~ Seth Godin

This has always been a challenge for me. I LOVE knowledge, but I HATE feeling dumb. There is nothing I hate more—except maybe old fat guys playing volleyball on a nudie beach. GOD! I HATE THAT!

I remember getting hives the day our new jewelry program arrived at work. I knew the old inventory system so well I never even looked at the keys. It took eight key strokes to enter an item. Not four and not eleven. Eight. The tech guy who was drowning in too much cheap cologne and smug gave us all a crash course and a number to call in case we faltered. After he left I tried a couple of things he had just shown us and had to be restrained from throwing the entire fucking computer into traffic—before the nerd even made it to the parking lot.

MY frustration turns to rage. Who’s with me?

Frustration as a contact sport? Uh, yeah. Especially with technology. Don’t get me started.

I Google it. I email my smart friends, peppering them with questions. I watch endless tutorials on YouTube and I STILL can’t get Suri to work for me the way I want. The way I was promised. She is cold and distant and I don’t care for her attitude.

As for technology, I’ve been shamed by a pimply faced genius at the Genius Bar and Billy who works for my brother on his way to world domination.
THEY were never dumb. Ever. They were smart on the way to brilliant. I want that. I’ll have what they’re having.

I’ll admit it. I was/am the poster child for “I want to be an expert on my way to being an expert.”

Here is how that plays out in my brain: Don’t fucking talk to me about “a learning curve”. I cannot be bothered with that nonsense. “Learning curve”. Ha! That’s just a nice way of saying: ”You’re the little train that couldn’t on the downslope to stupid.”

Brutal. I know. Can you believe the shit my smack-talking brain says to me? Jeez. It’s a wonder I get up in the morning.

Back in the day, I longed to be fluent in a beginning French class. (What? Don’t turn on me now).
When it was evident that French was a hopeless cause for me due to the fact that I am seriously “language challenged”, (it’s genetic. My tongue is not made to do some of those things. You should feel sorry for me instead of judging), I hijacked the class with my crazy antics. I turned it into I Love Lucy Takes French. At least that way they were laughing with me, not at me—the densest person to ever attempt to learn a foreign language.

I finally discovered over time and many hours of navel lint contemplation, that it’s the feeling dumb part that I hate.

The part that I LOVE is acquiring knowledge. I love to grow and change and know new stuff. It was then that I decided to reframe it. You know, to offset the frustration rage.

What if I was…curious? Not stupid.
Wow.
That feels better already. Curious is a much better thing to be than dumb. At least is was for me.

What if I was trying to “figure something out” as a part of learning? Kind of like a math problem. Except nothing like math because I sucked at math on a count of  it made me feel dumb. Well, THAT was a full circle moment. Anyhow, “figuring out” sounds smart. I like that.

What if I could remember that everyone has an awkward first day at everything. No one comes in as an infant knowing how electricity works or exactly what the iPhone 6 can do—except Tesla and maybe my little brother.

What if I could simply lighten the fuck up and make learning fun? Huh?
Well, these days I’m learning to do that (see what I did there?).

How about you?
Are you okay with feeling dumb on the way to smart? Really? What’s in your coffee?
Help me out here. Share some of your insights, Please.

and then…Carry on,
xox

I stole this from Liz Gilbert because I LOVE words. The odder the better—the only thing I love more are my husband, my dog…and bacon.

Because, come on! Bacon has no calories, it isn’t bad for us and goddamnit, apparently it cures grief!

BLT.

Mac-n-cheese with bacon.

Swiss bacon burger.

Bacon wrapped hot dogs.

Comfort food.
Yeah, I might know something about that. I ate bacon as a Vegan.
Oh, relax! I also had sex before marriage as a Catholic. Clearly I can’t be trusted to follow the rules—anyway—how did this get to be about me and my questionable boundaries?

This is about BACON.

Enjoy some levity on your Sunday and indulge in some Bacon!
xox

Yeah…I was going to write something high-minded and profound on the subject of forgiveness, but after today—sometimes it really is just this simple.
You’re an asshole —and I forgive you.

It doesn’t mean that you need to overlook what that person did wrong.

It doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shitfest.

It doesn’t even mean they were completely wrong and you were completely right.

I’m pretty sure it takes a party of two to get a table at the shitfest—right?

Here’s what I do know for sure:

The object of our forgiveness may never change—but we can!

Carry on,
xox