feelings

I love eleven-year-old girls. They smell like freshly opened boxes of crayons and cupcakes. The kind with sprinkles on top.
I love it when they’re named mid-twentieth-century names. The names our grandmothers, aunts, and librarians carried.

Helen lives on the route I walk with Ruby each morning. I’ve estimated her age and that of her little sister Abigail, by their smell and zest for life. Abigail smells like baby powder so she’s eight. I can’t explain how I know that——I just do.

Since quarantine began I don’t see them out and about anymore. But the signs of their zesty, lifieness, well, that’s EVERYWHERE. At some point in the past few days, the sisters, apparently armed with chalk, got out. And instead of the usual flowers and twirly-que-grafitti they usually leave, they jotted down a bunch of their most inspirational thoughts.

How did they know it was just what I, what we ALL needed?  

Because eleven-year-olds and their little sisters are wise. Like scary wise. It’s that time just before conformity and perfectionism kicks in, when sheer grace can shine through unobstructed. Lately, due to circumstances beyond my control, my own eleven-year-old self has started to show up more and more.

She’s named Janet, a fifties name if I’ve ever heard one, and she’s zesty, and feisty, and smells like hope.

I love my husband.
He is doing all the hard stuff. We’re all doing the hard stuff, but I’m watching him do the stuff that’s hard and well, that’s hard too—so I stopped. I stopped watching him and starting paying attention to my own hard stuff, which I’m sad to report didn’t make his stuff any easier but I felt better.

Even when his circus of hard visits itself upon me, I do my best to look away.

I have to.
I have my own hard stuff to attend to.
This morning, when I was in our bedroom meditating and he was already out in his office, having coffee and looking at his empty calender, I heard something unusual in our backyard. Naturally, I texted him to go and investigate because I’m just that lazy and husbands are made for that kind of hard stuff. They relish it. It isn’t even hard for them. It’s fun and who doesn’t need a little fun these days?

BTW: It was nothing. But I know it was something. Something was lurking. So there’s that to add to my hard stuff pile. Backyard lurking.

I love my friends. All of them. They are the reason I am who I am. so you can blame them. 

My BFF and I laugh our guts inside out on a daily basis and it SAVES me.
We’re doing big work in the world these days. Work we were born to do. Work I know I’ve trained for my whole life. Yet, some days the “hard” wins and I just want to disappear into a pile of marshmallow cream— or donuts.

This morning I went to the grocery store which used to be such a non-event but has now become a scene out of The Hunger Games. Masked and gloved and ready for some dystopian warfare, I walked the aisles of Trader Joe’s like a tribute. “May the odds be ever in your favor” I wanted to say to the hollow-eyed man lunging for the last ripe avocado.

When I got home, my husband left the hard stuff he was doing at his desk and helped me set up a grocery triage/sanitation station in the kitchen. After that, I took a Silkwood shower and began the rest of my day. But even my eleven-year-old has no zest left in her. And you know what? That’s okay. Because it has to be.

And last but never least, I love this community.

I see you and I FEEL you all sequestered in your homes, your big hearts beating in tandem. Wondering and waiting for the day when the world looks less scary. When we can leave our homes and hug a friend. And never take “normal” for granted again.

Carry on,
xox

Dear Janet,
This is a letter from the most neglected thing in your home at the holidays (besides your legs, which go unshaved in December as a timesaving measure)—the back of your Christmas tree.

I mean, I know I face the street, and people really can’t see anything beyond the white lights as they walk by, but this year I feel pressed to complain about the meager amount and shall I say questionable (I’m being delicate) choice of ornaments you’ve chosen to hang (a better word might be, hide) back here.

But enough with decorum.

She can’t be serious, I thought to myself, when you hung that dumbass plastic snowman who’s supposed to also be a construction worker (clever. Not really) in what I consider a prime spot of pine tree real estate. But hey, I get it. I’m the BACK of the tree. What did I expect, the sparkly gold-flecked Buddha? The peacock with real feathers, or the man in the spaceship? Noooooo. Those are your favorites so they get to hang in the FRONT!

This is an almost seven-foot tree and you’ve hung a total of five ornaments back here. FIVE!

To say it looks sparse would be like saying water is wet.

If a mullet says business in the front, party in the back, then this tree is an example of a mullet in reverse. We can hear the party happening in the front while back here it’s crickets. And I’ll tell ya why.

The ornaments you’ve relegated to this “no man’s land,” this great forgotten evergreen expanse, are either ones you’ve been gifted and don’t give a rat’s ass about—or they’re broken. Take for example the beloved ice skater from your childhood who had the misfortune of losing a leg in the Great Tragic Vacuum Cleaner Incident of 2011 (perpetrated by your blind housekeeper Maria—word gets around—whose coke bottle glasses should read: Objects are closer than they appear).

Anyway, she—the skater, not Maria—let us all know in the first five seconds that she used to reign over one of the coveted front and center spots on the tree, but now things have changed. My how the mighty have fallen (literally) and so we all (the other four misfits and myself) we have to listen to her go on and on about her freaking triple Axels, the morally bankrupt Russian judges who couldn’t recognize real talent if it skated up their skirts—and how unfair her life has become!

Oh, I’m sorry. Has your privileged life as an imaginary elite athlete in a wildly expensive sport taken a turn, sweetie? Tell your troubles to Jesus! I’m dying! I was cut down in my prime so you could hang here and complain all the live-long day!

Listen Janet, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, judgey, and bitter—but I am, so, deal with it. It’s Christmastime. Shit gets real. And the backside of trees, we have feelings too.

That’s all. I guess I just needed to vent. Hey, is that Celine Dion singing Silent night? I LOVE that song! I have to say, I’m feeling so much better!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Carry on,
Xox

“I Have Fear.

There’s a common mistranslation that causes us trouble.

We say, “I am afraid,” as if the fear is us, forever. We don’t say, “I am a fever” or “I am a sore foot.” No, in those cases, we acknowledge that it’s a temporary condition, something we have, at least for now, but won’t have forever.

“Right now, I have fear about launching this project,” is quite different from, “I’m afraid.”
-Seth Godin

Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck. Seth nailed me on this!

And it got me to thinking. What other feelings am I forever-izing?

The first one that comes to mind is this. “Gawd, I’m an idiot.”

(Which, sadly, I would never say to another human being other than myself.)
But I must admit, I say it to myself All. The. Time. Especially when I put periods after single words for emphasis.
I must make a concerted effort to follow Seth’s advice and acknowledge that my chronic idiocy is in reality only a temporary condition. (Monday thru Friday 8-5. Weekends my idiocy turns to slothiness which is somehow infinitely more acceptable.)

I have an idiot temporarily making all of my decisions, will be my new mantra.

“I am hungry.”

This is another one of my greatest hits. The only time it feels temporary is while I am actively eating. Once I put my fork down, all bets are off. In a cruel twist of suckiness, once it enters my body, pasta or even a steak and baked potato have the ability to disguise itself as Chinese food leaving me starving again in half an hour. I’ve always filed this under the heading of Life’s Not Fair, but now, when I’m famished I’ll tweak my thinking and say: “I feel like eating my foot” —because I only have two, so…temporary.

“I am horny.”

In my twenties and thirties and maybe even half of my forties, and three weeks in my mid-fifties, I would have fought Seth on the temporary nature of this condition. With the sexual appetite of a man, it felt like a 24-7 forever kind of thing to me. I was horniness with arms and legs. But now that sixty is breathing down my neck, yeah, I get it. With my fifteen minutes of randiness every other month, now “I am horny” feels like a lot like over-committing. Maybe “Rollover honey, because right this minute I’m thinking about sex!” is more like it.

Hey, I showed you mine—what are yours? What do you own that is in reality only a temporary condition?

Carry on,
xox

I know this looks like a waste of perfectly good food, but someone had to drown—and better the brownies, than me.

Let me explain.

This was a long three-day weekend and seeing that my husband went on his annual Memorial Day motorcycle ride through the Sierras, I was left to my own devices—along with my bitchy malcontent of a dog whose every thought causes her to whine miserably.

She is the furry, four-legged embodiment of that friend we’ve all stopped seeing. The one who drove us nuts with her complaining. My dog suffers from the same affliction. She whines when I walk her because she finds the scenery uninteresting. She whines when she’s hungry (which she may have learned from me), and she whines when I feed her because I’m not moving fast enough. She whines when she’s in the back of the car and when she’s not—on the way to and from doggie daycare—and while falling asleep.

I can only assume that must be because her bed is too soft, the blankets smell too fresh, and yet her dreams are not exactly what she had hoped. Gahhhhh…

Anyway, I tell you this so that you can understand why I was sucking down the whiskey sours with my girlfriends all weekend. I was so grateful to have someone to talk to who wasn’t complaining about my shortcomings as a mother.

During the days I worked in the garden, wrote a little, took turns reading the three books I’m in the middle of, and by Monday night I forbid myself to make a whiskey sour on account of the fact that I would be drinking hard liquor alone.

I wish that bitch of a dog of mine drank—it could improve her disposition.

Since alcohol was out of the question, 6 pm found me rummaging through the pantry looking for something sweet. That’s when I discovered the box of brownie mix left over from the holidays. Maybe not the 2016 holidays, but I can safely say it was bought this decade. Right then I could hear my sister screaming at me, “Throw it away! That shit goes bad!”

She and I have agreed to disagree on this topic.

Processed food, in my opinion, will outlive us all.

Post-apocalyptic cockroaches, zombies, and astronauts from the future would be thrilled to stumble upon my brownie mix, so I figure if it’s good enough for them—it’s good enough for moi.

And just like that, I found myself pre-heating the oven, cracking the eggs, and adding the melted butter to the powdered chocolatey mix. I waited for that familiar tap on the shoulder from the part of my brain that rules common sense and good judgment. It needed to remind me of a thing called moderation and the fact that while I was home alone a batch of hot brownies was not only a terrible idea—it was about to be like crack to an addict.

I could feel the shaky anticipation as the house started to smell like Christmas. I savored every drop of raw batter as I licked the beaters. (My sister just hurled reading that.)

Only two things trigger me this way, brownies, and pie. I felt like I imagine a junky feels waiting for a fix.

I waited a whole five minutes for them to cool off before slicing them into neat little squares. Because my old O’Keefe and Merrit has a mind of its own, they were crisp on the edges and seemed a little dry but I didn’t care. I ate three in quick succession standing at the counter without taking a breath, while my dog whined about a long-lost morsel of kibble she had spotted under the stove.

I finally forced myself to walk away—but I could hear them over the constant whining; calling me from the kitchen. Brownies are cruel that way. “Janet, (they know your name), we’re here. Just a few feet away. Happiness disguised as chocolate gooeyness.” 

And so the battle began. The douchebag brownie’s siren song versus my willpower (and the fact that I was full), telling me to forget about them.

But I couldn’t.

I lasted about one hour. That’s when I found myself back in the kitchen, staring into the pan, seriously scoping out the best section to get the maximum chocolate return. The middle pieces, of course!

As I reached for the knife the part of my brain that had forsaken me suddenly kicked in “What the fuck are you doing?” it asked in a decidedly judgy tone, “This has officially turned into a binge. Stop a minute and think. What’s going on with you?”

It barely took an instant before I heard “I’m lonely”, come out of my own mouth.

Before I could process this sudden wave of vulnerability my hand took control. In order to save me from myself, it grabbed the pan and in one giant sweeping motion threw it into the sink, turned the faucet on full force, and drowned the brownies!

I was stunned.

I hate wasting food and chocolate food even more than most. But sometimes extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. Thank God a teeny-tiny part of me knows that.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a perfect person who always saves herself from disaster; far from it.
I am someone who, for the last decade has had a stubborn five (x4) pounds to lose yet I have secretly gorged myself on entire bags of Ranch Doritos, eaten entire half gallons of ice cream at a single sitting, and scarfed a second Thanksgiving dinner an hour after everyone has left while I clean the kitchen.

I’m not a serial binger but I know a binge even when its disguised as real hunger.

These days I’m just really working on being more conscious about everything I do and it sucks. You have to feel stuff. Like loneliness and the fact that after three days of whining you want to throw your dog in a blender.

The feels aren’t pretty and if you stop and acknowledge them they tend to circumvent instant gratification and who wants that? 

But they saved me the shame of an additional five pounds tomorrow so I’m grateful. Not really, but I’m working on it.

Carry on,
xox

 And when she’s not whining I get this: Silent. Judgy. Side-eye.

Love. This.
Carry on
xox

A lot of us are experiencing our own personal pain AND tapping into global, collective pain at the same time.

We’re marching, or emphatically not marching.
We’re crying in the kitchen, out of the blue. We’re heavy with emotion by noon.

My loves, it’s critical that you let the pain move through you. You have to keep letting it go. And like, there’s no need to worry about being too detached from what’s going on. Because there’s new pain arriving daily. If you’re awake you will hurt. I’m with you…in profound agony over the state of the world. And, my faith and resolve are brighter than my doubt and stronger than my grief.

It’s an hourly practice to find that balance.

Feel it, fully, but don’t grip the pain and use it to bolster your position or identity. Holding on to pain is how you get bitter and brittle, and incidentally, much less effective.

It’s a feminine skill to process other people’s pain. Empathy. Whole humans feel things. Deeply. And then the heart wants to make something with the pain — to run it through its ventricles and transmute it into goodness. It’s a beautiful inclination. But we’ve got to keep our “pain processing for other people” in check or it will bring us down.

We might tell ourselves that taking on the collective pain is a form of being of service.
And it is — we’re in this together. But too much of that is martyrdom. And when you’re a martyr you become a burden on the system.
The pathway to the conscious management of psychic pain:
1. Feel your own pain. Analyze why YOU are personally affected.

1. And if you’re able, try to let it go by the end of the day if not sooner. Of course this is nearly impossible. But the intention will create a shift.

2. Observe other people’s pain. Seek to understand it. Relate or sympathize.

3. And if you’re able, let it go by the end of the day if not sooner. Very difficult to do, but NOT impossible. And then…return to your personal gratitude and power. Because… you must be in touch with your own blessings in order to be of service.

This is a daily practice because we’re all in pain. Humans, animals, Mother Earth…all hurting, badly. We have to let go of the pain on a regular basis so that it doesn’t backlog and turn into inflammation, depression, confusion. Or worse, blind rage.

Everyday, let it go. Give it up to Life, to God, to the cosmos and trust that we have the strength to heal. Speak out. Get a therapist for the sole reason of talking about world events and your rage and feelings of helplessness — and empowerment. Please, move. Get to a yoga class, or run your ass off a few times a week — for emotional reasons, not just for your ass. Dance! You’ve got to move the pain out of your body and psyche so that you can keep going. And we need to keep going.

If each of us made the effort to let go of pain and return to trust then there would be less pain in the atmosphere.
And with less pain in the atmosphere not only can we see more clearly and make more of an impact, but the low vibration stuff and fear-mongers have nothing to feed on and nowhere to hide. (Negative energies can turn a cloud of fear into a shit storm. So let’s not feed the cloud.)

Confront the pain with your unwavering trust and gratitude for being alive. This is where the limitless power is. Pain release and faith are a very effective way to serve. Every day. Over and over again… so we are free to rise.

Yessss. Press share to all the deep feelers in your life. xo

http://www.daniellelaporte.com

Oh, for the love of all things holy! This is music to my ears! I too have suffered the curse of having the inappropriate emotions for a certain situation. Not ALL situations, just…most one or two.

Haven’t you?

If so, give this a read. If you’ve already read it—read it again. You’ll feel so much better for it!

Carry on,
xox

Dear Ones:

Once I went to visit a therapist because I was afraid I might be a sociopath.

The reason I felt like a sociopath, is because I thought I was feeling THE WRONG EMOTION. Specifically, my story was this: I was a 30-year-old married woman, and I was supposed to want to have a baby — because that’s what married women are supposed to want when they are 30 years old. But I didn’t want to have a baby. The thought of having a baby filled me not with a sense of joy, but with a sense of dread.

So I figured I must be a sociopath — obviously! — and I went to a therapist to confirm this diagnosis.
This woman helpfully explained to me the difference between a sociopath and myself. She said, “A sociopath does not feel any human emotion. You, on the other hand, are feeling plenty of human emotion, but the problem is, you believe you are feeling
THE WRONG EMOTION. “

That’s why my life was falling apart — not because I couldn’t feel, but because I couldn’t accept my true feelings as legitimate. I was suffering and falling into depression because I still believed that there is a way that we are supposed to feel about every single life event (some sort of industry standard) and if my feelings deviated from that industry standard, then there was something deeply broken and wrong about me.

I do not believe that anymore.

We are not Dell Operating Systems, people.
We are people, people.

And we are complex and unique and perfect and true, and there is no one way to feel.
There is a way that culture teaches you that you are supposed to feel….and then there is what you are actually feeling. And if can’t allow your true feelings to exist, because you’re trying to live within the socially acceptable feeling, then you will suffer, and you will try to cram yourself into the industry standard, or you will try to numb your true feelings with addiction or self-abuse, or you will just stop feeling anything at all (to the point that you almost DO resemble a sociopath.)

Oh, my loves, my loves, my loves…
Have you ever suffered because you believed you were feeling THE WRONG EMOTION?

For years, I have collected so many stories from friends about their experiences with THE WRONG EMOTION.

I have a friend who described her sense of grieving — acute, anguished grieving — on her wedding day. That’s THE WRONG EMOTION! You can’t feel grief about getting married when 300 guests are waiting to gaze at you in your very expensive Vera Wang wedding gown! WRONG! And the shame she felt about that feeling of grief was so awful that her internal hard drive basically crashed for several years…effectively turning her into a socially-acceptable zombie, because feeling absolutely nothing was preferable to feeling THE WRONG EMOTION.

My friend the writer Ann Patchett recently wrote a brave and gorgeous essay about the tremendous joy she felt when her father finally died. He had suffered from an awful illness for years, and when he passed away, Ann felt not just relief…but joy! Ecstatic joy! And man, did she take some shit from the Internet for saying out loud that she was happy her father was dead because that is THE WRONG EMOTION. And yet that’s what Ann felt — despite, or perhaps because, of the fact that she had adored her father, and been his caregiver. She felt joy for herself, and joy for him because they had both reached the end of his suffering. And rather than keeping that WRONG EMOTION under wraps, she brought it out into the daylight and examined it, and talked about it openly, and shared it. Good for her.

I have a friend who finally said, “I hate Christmas, and I’ve always hated Christmas. I’m not doing it anymore.” WHAT?! WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who doesn’t feel any regret or sadness or ambivalence about that abortion she had thirty years ago. WHAT?! WRONG EMOTION.

I have a friend who stopped reading the news or being involved in activism and politics because he finally said, “Honestly? I don’t care anymore. I just don’t!” WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who stopped being a deacon in her church because she finally had to admit that she couldn’t swallow her church’s teachings anymore: WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who told me, “You know that expression about how nobody on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at work’? Because family and friends are supposed to be more important than work? Well, I probably will be the one on my deathbed saying that I wish I’d spent more time at work because I love working. I’m crazy about my job, and I love it more than anything! I wish I could work even more hours. My work fulfills me completely. I love my job more than I love my friends — and I find my job so much easier to deal with than my crazy family. Work is where I go for joy.”

WHAT?! WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who thought she was insane because — after her husband left her — all she could feel was relief….after twenty years of a “good marriage”. She had given everything to that marriage, and she had loved him so faithfully, and then he bailed out on her. She should have been weeping! She should have felt bitter! She should have felt shamed and betrayed and enraged! There’s a script for how you are supposed to feel when your husband leaves you after you’ve been such a good wife, but she was deviating from the script because all she felt was pure elation that he was gone and she was free. Her family was concerned about her for her reaction because that’s THE WRONG EMOTION. They thought she might need to be medicated.
My mother once confessed to me that the happiest era of her life began when my sister and I finally grew up and went to college and she had an empty nest. THE WRONG EMOTION! Women are supposed to hate the empty nest! Mothers are supposed to mourn and collapse when their children leave home. But no. My mom wanted to dance a freakin’ jig when she dropped her daughters off at college and realized that she was — at last —done with us. All the other moms were weeping, but all my mother could feel was: “Yahoooo!” But she kept that feeling under wraps, because maternal ambivalence is the single most unacceptable emotion in our culture, and a “good mother” (whatever that even means, God help us) does NOT get to celebrate being free of her children, because: WRONG EMOTION. What would the neighbors say?

And here is the ultimate: A beloved friend of mine, years ago, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. This man, who loved life more than anyone I have ever met, admitted to me that his first thought — when the diagnosis came — was, “Oh, thank God.” And that feeling didn’t go away over time, either, even as his disease worsened. He felt such deep happiness. He felt like, “Phew, I’m done!” He was dying! He “should” have felt sorrow and rage and pain and loss. But all he could think was that there was so much he didn’t have to worry about anymore! He didn’t have to worry about saving for retirement anymore. He didn’t have to figure out how to deal with his most difficult relationships anymore. He didn’t have to worry about terrorism and global warming anymore. He didn’t have to worry about getting the roof on the garage fixed anymore. He didn’t even have to worry about dying anymore because now he knew how his story would end. He was happy. And he stayed happy, throughout the whole journey toward his death. He told me, “Look, life is hard. Even a good life is hard, and I’ve had a very good life…but it’s hard. I’m excited that I get to leave this dinner party now. It’s been a fun party, but I’m tired. I’m ready to go.” WRONG EMOTION! The doctors told him he was in shock and kept handing him brochures about grieving. But my friend wasn’t in shock. Shock is when you feel nothing; my friend was feeling something —happiness! The doctors just didn’t like it, because it was THE WRONG EMOTION. Not up to the industry standard. But my friend was standing in his truth – his very own truth — and if sixty years of conscious and open-hearted living do not entitle a good man to stand in his own truth and feel his own feelings at the end of his life, then what is life even for?

My friends, listen: I want you to learn how to feel what you are feeling — not what you think you are SUPPOSED to feel, but what you ACTUALLY feel.

And I want you to guide your own life based on that, and only that.

I want you to remove the WRONG EMOTION! button from your internal keyboard forever.

I want you to throw away the idea that there is an emotional industry standard, and that you must not deviate from it. My friend Rob Bell told me that he used to ask his therapist all the time, “Is it normal that I feel this way?”, and the therapist would always reply, “Oh, Rob…we passed normal a long time ago.”

I passed normal a long time ago, too. I will not inflict upon myself anymore the shame and suffering of questioning my own reactions to life or burying my own true feelings because I am not feeling what I’m allegedly supposed to feel.

If I feel joy than that joy is right and real…for me.
If I feel grief, then that grief is right and real….for me.
If I love someone, then that love is right and real…for me.

If I feel mistrust or aversion to people I am supposed to trust and admire, then that feeling of mistrust is right and real…for me. And if I feel admiration for people I’m not supposed to admire, then that feeling of admiration is right and real…for me.

Nobody benefits when I try to make myself feel ways that I do not feel, and nobody benefits when I try to make myself NOT feel ways that I do feel…and nobody benefits when you do that, either.

Feel what you feel, allow your emotions to be legitimate, fearlessly examine your own reactions to your own life, and live your absolute truth — there is no other pathway to integrity than that.
Anything short of that is truly WRONG. (For you.)
☺
ONWARD,
LG

A few months back I was wondering why things felt like a ton of effort. Mis-communication was rampant. Things were sticky and sucky all at the same time. Since my wise dead friend pretty much knows what I’m thinking about all the time, she offered this nugget one day, “Don’t answer an unasked question” she said, “It never goes well.”

Well duh, I thought to myself. Who does that anyway?

At first, what she meant was lost on me, too opaque, it’s true meaning hidden among the words.

After I thought about it for a minute—or fifteen—I began to get the gist.

Who answers questions no one has asked? Uh, Me! Turns out I do it all the time! And as I shared this little saying with a few of my friends it seems that they do too!

We’re all familiar with unsolicited advice. You can find it here, from me, every day. Ha!

But the truth of it is, if you’re here, chances are you wanna know what I have to say. Unlike my husband. The poor guy, he’s just venting and I’m bent on solving all of his problems in the kitchen every night while we make dinner. It starts with “Here’s what you need to do” and ends with “I know, I’m sorry, I should just keep my mouth shut”.

Every freakin’ night. The man’s a saint.
But seriously!

What about when you meet a friend for coffee and the first thing they say to you is, “You look tired” (translation: you look like shit warmed over). Aren’t you tempted to reply “No one asked you”?
I am. But I never say it. Too jackassy.
But seriously!

Just to clarify, here is what she meant.

Don’t talk to people about their kids—unless they ask you and even then it’s dicey. NEVER, EVER do it if you are childless. It could be hazardous to your health.

Don’t go on and on about your fabulous vacation, love life, doggie day care, kitchen remodel, new handbag or stories about your boss if you haven’t been specifically asked. There’s no faster way to clear a room.

The same holds true about voicing your feelings about politics, religion, race relations, the Olympics, mental illness, ADHD, OCD, or any other acronym that ends with a D.

Wait to be asked.

Don’t offer the steamy details of past romances with your current mate. Even if they ask. Change the subject.

Giving other writers feedback on things they’ve written? Oh, hell no! Don’t do it unless you’re asked.

Along those lines, don’t send out unsolicited manuscripts—they get thrown in the trash or people feel obligated to give you their “feedback” which are often not-so-thinly-veiled insults.

The same goes for flash drives filled with songs you wrote or pictures you took. Wait to be asked or suffer the consequences.

Recently, a friend making conversation told her sister, whom I had just met, about my screenplay. “You need to read it”, she enthused. “You’d love it!” I cringed. “Uh, sure”, her sister replied uncomfortably. “Here, let me give you her email”, my friend continued. I could tell her sister would rather have dental surgery. It was beyond awkward. I wanted to die.

There is a larger force at work here and it is what my deceased friend was referring to. It’s Energy. It’s so much better if you stop and read a room, the collective asking so to speak. It’s easy to tell what they’re asking for but you have to take a minute, be quiet and tune in.

That’s also true for the world at large. Even though nobody was specifically asking for a movie about large highly evolved blue aliens on a distant world endangered by humans, James Cameron hit the collective nerve/jackpot with Avatar.

He answered a question buried so deep we didn’t even know we were asking. He tuned in.

That’s turning out to be the answer to everything in life these days!

Carry on,
xox

Man! That’s a hard lesson for me.
And lately, revisiting a situation in the same old manner I’ve done in the past just. Isn’t. working.
It’s insanity. Truly. Or in plain speak, it’s crazy making.

Thursday, I tried something different, something new, and I found my way out of crazy town. I know I’m not alone with my over-stamped passport and resident’s visa to crazy town so I thought I’d share what happened.

Things in my life have been going really well. Better than well. They’ve been magorific!
The writing is fun as hell, the possibilities on the horizon — endless. I have found myself happier than I can ever remember being.

I know that saying that out loud is deemed a subversive act, but it comes into play here—I just can’t help it—and besides, wtf’s with THAT?

Anyway…I’ve begun to realize inside this massive reinvention of my life, that my past comes into play pretty much…NEVER.
Nothing I’ve done in my life up to this point, besides learning to read and write, has made a rat’s ass of difference in what is transpiring these days.
That at once feels daunting — making me feel like a complete novice in my mid-fifties where you’re supposed to know shit — and liberating — like I want to take off my bra and run topless down the beach like I may have done as a girl.

The very day I was reveling in this realization, my past came to visit me. To test my resolve.

The City of Los Angeles wanted more tax money from my long since dissolved corporation. I’ve been sending e-mails and faxing paperwork to them for a couple of years. My corporation ceases to exist which means… I owe them nada.

This is the perfect time to say: I have little tolerance of bureaucracy, even less for bureaucracy when they bug you for money, and none at all when they aren’t entitled to the money they’re chasing.

Meanwhile, they’ve gotten creative with their estimations of my imagined sales and have compounded the penalty interest daily. I’m sure you know what that feels like.

It’s like arguing with an obstinant, deaf, assholish elderly uncle — who hates you.

When I saw the envelope my stomach sank. It sank so deep they were going to have to send James Cameron back into the inky blackness of the bottomless Marianas Trench in search of my poor stomach. Then the pit turned to venous victimhood, which is the thug cousin of regular, generic victimhood.

It takes me down the dark allies of shame and lack, places I am VERY familiar with.

My knee-jerk reaction was to rip it up or light it on fire, which is pretty much my knee-jerk reaction to everything
Instead, I called my accountant and basically said, “Make this go away.” She barked back “It’s tax season, I don’t have time for this”, I think I heard her take a sip of beer or a hit off a crack pipe. “You’re going to have to do this yourself. Go to their Van Nuys office in person and take care of it.”

She may as well have suggested I jump into a pen of wild tigers while wearing Lady Gaga’s meat suit.

I hung up, ready to have a cigarette with the thugs in the alley of “this is not fair”.

“Damn. I’ve been so happy”, I lamented. And that’s when it hit me.
I’d rather stay happy than go back into those OLD feelings of victimhood and shame.
My past has NOTHING to do with what my life looks like now. This is NOT going to take me down! I will gather up my own stomach out of the pit of despair, go deal with the bureaucrats myself, and take care of this thing once and for all.

Are you with me?! Can I get an AMEN?!

But first I’ll eat a chocolate chip cookie, look at the paperwork with fresh eyes, see a phone number I’ve never seen before hidden on the back — and make a call.

Due to extremely high caller volume, (from people who were obviously much smarter than I was with much fresher eyes), I was asked to leave my number and they would call me back. “Bullshit!” I sneered and started to hang up. But that was the old way I always dealt with The City of Los Angeles. This new me left my cell phone number cheerfully on the recording.

By dinner time, I realized they hadn’t called me back but instead of fuming I just went back to Plan A.
I will go to Van Nuys and speak face to face with a human being, something I probably should have done years ago. There was no stomach pit, no malice, just anticipation of releasing an energetic albatross that’s been around my neck for years.

I woke up this morning waiting for the sinking feeling I’m so used to. Even as I was reminded of my impending visit to the land of bureaucracy, I felt only relief. That was HUGE for me.

At 9 AM, on my way out the door to the gym, I glimpsed the pile of paperwork I would need for my visit to Van Nuys, and I remembered leaving my number for a callback. “You better take that with you, what if they call you while you’re at the gym?” Before I could start laughing at the absurdity of that thought, the phone in my pocket started ringing.

It was The City Of Los Angeles. I’m not kidding. I can’t make this shit up. No one would believe me.

Mrs. Garcia (I love how when I asked her for her name she told me, Mrs. Garcia. I was in middle school all over again), was all business. She asked me a couple of unanswerable questions before we found some middle ground, I stayed light and shameless, and in the space of ten minutes, a chain of pain that has been severely knotted up for several years — fell away.

Turns out I owed them nada. (Here’s where I want to scream I told you so!!!)
Thank you, Mrs. Garcia!

And thank you happiness for the giant attitude adjustment.
And thank you past, for teaching me this valuable lesson.
And thank you chocolate chip cookie for just being delicious.
And thank You Guys for reading.

Carry on,
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

Happy Sunday you guys, this is my New Moon wish for you!

There was a New Moon in Capricorn at 8:30 PM EST, January 9 (so, last night). It signifies new beginnings, as do all new moons.

According to astrologer Leo Knighton Tallarico:

“This one is in Capricorn and as such it prompts us to get back out into the world, to organize and plan, to be more disciplined, to do what one needs to do, to make firmer boundaries, to be in one’s integrity, to demand more from yourself and others, to concentrate more on work and accomplishment, to have greater self-respect, to be more logical and realistic.”

Amen to that! I could use some more organized discipline and I’m always working on setting those boundaries!

If you want to read the rest of his take on the new moon (and he also does some astrological predictions for some of the Presidential candidates which I found interesting, here’s his website:

https://spiritualtherapy.wordpress.com

Carry on,

xox