guidance

This is from earlier this year and feels even more apropos. I am as stubbornly stupid as ever! How about you?
xox

Well then, according to that I am a genius because I 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 try my damnedest to understand. I do!
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 arrogant and cold and I really 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 fastrack to stupid.”

Brutal. I know. Can you believe the shit my smack-talking brain says to me? Jeez. It’s a wonder I ever learned to feed myself.

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. It 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

Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
~Samuel Goldwyn

I have a hard time believing everything I read which either makes me incredibly wise and discerning—or lazy.

The kind of lazy where you don’t take the time to follow a recipe to the end so you just dump in the rest of the ingredients and hope for the best. Lazy like drinking hot cocoa instead of checking for icebergs or only wearing earmuffs to rob a bank.

Truth is stranger than fiction these days. If I wrote a fraction of what is actually taking place in real life, MY real life, OUR real lives right now—nobody would believe me and I’d be less famous than I already am.

Tens of people can’t all be right. Things you see on the internet or in Hallmark cards are often lies. Stupid lies. And nobody fact checks….and now we’re back to lazy.

Did a man eat his underwear to beat a breathalyzer?

Was a headless body found inside of a topless bar?

Did Hillary adopt an alien baby?

I can’t be sure. I saw it on the internet so…could just be a slight exaggeration.

You know, just like this blog, only two out of ten people read past the headline. The others prefer sugarless gum.

I for one, have had it up to here ( for all of you listening to this on the radio I’m motioning above my head), with deciphering facts. What good does it do? I’m going to accept things at face value. The good, the bad, and the stupid. Then I’m going to toss myself a word salad and pick out the anchovies AND the stupid.

Or…I may change my mind.

No more lazy. If a story seems inflammatory, like a boil on the butt of humanity, I will:
1) Consider the source.
2) Consult People Magazine.
3) Ask for proof.
Mountains of paperwork kind proof. Facts and figures kind of proof. Blind studies kind of proof. Flowcharts and graphs and exit polls kind of…oh, wait minute.

I’m reevaluating everything right now. I’ve programmed my eyes and seven other senses to steer away from the stupid.

I’ll let you know how that goes. I may end up living in a deprivation tank—or Canada.

I never apologize.
I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I am.
– Homer J. Simpson

Carry on.

xox

You guys!

What if there is no beginning and no end?

What if by naming something you give it life?

What if conciousness exists outside the body? Then would death still be the end of us?

What if time was not a straight line but rather, a circle?

What if the dead aren’t really “gone”, they’re just operating “outside of time?”

What if in moments of great conflict our future was able to inform our present?

What if you knew in advance that heartache lay ahead—would you go down that path?

What if the devastating loss of a major election caused just the right person to run for office? Someone who in a million years never thought she would run?

What if socks really DO disappear in the dryer? (Thought you might need to laugh.)

What if things are more than they appear?

What if there is more available to us than we could ever know?

What if there is more to life than meets the eye?

Maybe, just maybe you guys—we need to wake up—and ask more questions…

Carry on,
xox

“This should be compulsory. There would be no such thing as extremism in the world if people knew their heritage. There is no pure race.“

I’m sending this with love out to the over 100 countries who read this blog.

xox

I heard this today and it gutted me. And in the same moment lifted me up—if that’s possible?
It’s a song from my youth. To me it was always about disappointment. About battling unseen forces—real or imagined. About the uncertainty of life.
And it’s right.
In this time of emotional upheaval words fall short, but music?

If, like me, this makes you cry, I say get it out—let the tears flow.
Then… let it take you where the heart wants to go.

To all of you, my tender-hearted tribe,
I wish us all love & peace.
xox

The Wind

I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul
.
Where I’ll end up, well I think only God really knows
.
I’ve sat upon the setting sun…
But never, never, never, never
I never wanted water once…
No never, never, never
.

I listen to my words but they fall far below
.
I let my music take me where my heart wants to go
I swam upon the Devil’s lake…
But never, never, never, never
I’ll never make the same mistake…
No – never, never, never

Written by Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam • Copyright © BMG Rights Management US, LLC

This felt apropos, don’tcha think? It may take a while. Maybe even four years, but this situation is only temporary. Let’s choose happiness in the meantime. We have the power to make that choice.
Love ya!
xox

What do you do when you get depressed?

I’ve learned through the years that the best way to talk myself down from the ledge is to remind myself This too shall pass by repeating the mantra This_________ is only temporary.

It seems my endurance of all things sucky is fueled by the fact that I’m certain that nothing lasts forever.
Even my acne finally decided to hit the road.

This weekend during Rob Bell’s inspiring talk, he reiterated that philosophy with this quote: Depression comes when you believe that tomorrow will look just like today.

Doesn’t that make sense? And lighten your load?

My shoulders come down off my ears when I say that out loud.

Depression comes when you believe that tomorrow will look just like today. I can change that, I can turn my ship around.

To me, if I want to hitch myself to any emotion, it would be hope; because inside hope is change, and if I don’t like how things are panning out right now I can have the certainty that they will change.

The best thing about this belief is that WE don’t have to figure out HOWit’s going to change, we just have to KNOW that it will.

Haven’t you ever been low on cash and then someone who owed you money paid you back unexpectedly?

When that relationship with your soul mate, love of your life crashed and burned ten years ago someone else came along, right? And they were even better for you.

When you were so sick last fall, you recovered. You may have had that hacking cough for a month, but even that eventually went away. You probably didn’t even notice when it left.

See, that’s the thing, change is sneaky – and it’s humble. It doesn’t call attention to itself. It. just. happens.

I had a job at a grocery store after my divorce when I was in my twenties. I’d actually had it since I was fifteen in one capacity or another. At the time of my divorce I was a checker. Then I worked the night crew, stocking the shelves while you all slept, for extra money and to allow me to pursue acting, running to auditions during the day. I could work as much or as little as I wanted depending on my level of greed at any given moment.

At a certain point, around my thirtieth birthday to be exact; I decided, probably over alcohol, that I’d had enough of acting – AND the grocery business. I had NO idea what would come next for me, all I knew was that if tomorrow looked the same for much longer, I was going to be forced to join the circus to shake things up.

One afternoon while I was lying around moping, eating an entire pumpkin pie; my mom (who was well acquainted with my dissatisfaction with life) called to say she’d read about an antique mall that was opening on Melrose and was looking for part-time help. I loved antiques, so I immediately called, got an interview, and was hired on the spot.

I worked at the Melrose Antique Mall (which closed in the early nineties) by day, and at the market at night for about a year, until one day as a fluke, one of the girls that worked with me at the mall happened to mention a job she’d turned down working with real jewelry, at Antiquarius. It wasn’t the direction she wanted to take her life, but it sounded amazing to me, so I called, interviewed, and the rest is history.

I managed that store for just under twenty years and it was one of the unexpected joys of my life.

If you had asked me any day along that two-year transition what was next for me, I couldn’t have told you. All I knew was that even though I’d been working at the market for fifteen years, tomorrow could look different for me, it HAD to, and it kept me from falling into a deep pit of despair.

Not that deep pits of despair are unfamiliar to me, I just know by this stage of the game that there is a bottom—a ladder—and sunshine that can shine on our faces—if we’ll just look up.

Believe a change is on the way—because it is—THAT I can guarantee.

Love you,
xox

* If you feel you are, or have been diagnosed as clinically depressed, please seek psychological treatment.

This is an essay by my bad-ass, snort-laugh inducing friend Mel Maure. She can be funny right now because well, she’s Canadian.

I figured it would be perfect for today because maybe, if you’re like me, you’ve just emerged from your own twenty-four hour tantrum, you’re suffering from a terrible case of post-election tight-assery and you need to lighten up and just fucking say “thank you.”

Thank you Mel! Just like chocolate lava cake—you are deliciously gooey on the inside and always hit the spot.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be:
1) Searching for my sense of humor.
2) Taking back all of the power I gave away to this election.

Carry on,
xox

I throw spiritual tantrums. There. I said it.

What does said tantrum look like? Think of the ugly cry steeped in performance enhancing drugs. There is gnashing of teeth, snot runners and long bouts of standing in the corner of my stylish bedroom banging my forehead against the wall. And let’s not forget the weird keening sound that rises from my clogged throat.

When I throw down like this it’s not that I have been diagnosed with some raging incurable case of gout or have suddenly been forced to live in a cardboard box.

These beatific blowouts arise when I have not received exactly what I have prayed, asked, pleaded, lamented for, forgetting that my squirrelesque brain may not be the most reliable source of knowing what I need when I need it. I have a history of embarrassing romantic relationships to prove that.

In this unnerving place of wait and trust, I convince myself that my disconnection from the divine engine is terminal and there isn’t even a Kenny G tune to lull me while I sit on hold. I’ve been known to patiently wait at least three hours and fifteen minutes in this interminable holding pattern. But who’s counting?

In an attempt to ease this unsightly spoiled behaviour, I made a pact with the Cosmic Smoothie — what I think of as Universal Superfood, or God if you prefer. My somewhat anemic pact went something like this:
“I will refrain from pitching fits when the rate of jaw-dropping blessings coming into my granular existence is slow,” I vowed.

“When I meditate and don’t feel the rash of exhilarated connection to the Universe I jones for like a kismet junkie, I will be patient,” I promised.

“When the beasts of the forest are not swooping, roaming or stepping gingerly onto my path as unabashed signs that the Universe is there to soothe my drama du jour, I will be a quiet little angel of contentment,” I assured.
This sacred accord lasted three hours and twenty-seven minutes.

So why am I so quick to stop, drop and bang my head on the ground like a spoiled kid in Walmart’s toy section?
Simple. My memory sucks.

I am a dementiated, addled, lucky-if-I’m-wearing-pants kind of spiritual adventurer. And I don’t believe I am alone in this tendency of being lackadaisical. I refuse to believe I am the only one whose heart is akin to a sieve on good days, unable to retain the fullness. And on bad days is more like a defunct smelly well — the Stephen King kind with a creepy clown hunched and waiting at the bottom.

Being an impatient sort of soul does nothing to further the cause.

Once again, I am fairly certain I am not the only one who plugs her ears and hums a tune to drown out a greater knowing. A wisdom that says it’s not the best idea for us, in our limited fallible skin-suit, to drink from the cosmic fire hose.
So what is a petulant, forgetful, impatient spiritual sojourner to do?

First step: get up and stop thrashing about in the dirt. It’s contaminated with all kinds of bullshit. And by bullshit, I mean that potent noxious blend of fear and doubt. The only thing that brand of dirt grows is mould and poisonous fungi.

Second step: Record, write, make cave drawings if you have to, of all the times when you were doused with magic and thrumming with exhilaration. And if you are one of the more efficient spiritual travellers who keeps a log of every step and has a slide show to prove it, be nostalgic. Remember. Pour over every detail like an old high school football QB reliving the glory days. Caress every stitch across the pigskin of your divine moments.

Third step: Enjoy the reprieve and say thank you. It’s quite simple if we think of it like food. We cannot eat nonstop…God knows I’ve tried…at some point we all need to stop and digest what we’ve swallowed. Assimilate the sacred nutrients. When I skip this rest and digest place, I often mistake a wicked case of gas for the energy of the universe moving through me. It’s not a pleasant affair.

Fourth and final step: Have fun. For the love of God; quite literally, unclench.
Tight-assery is not a divine construct and no one wants to hang out with a downer or tight-ass, except for other tight-ass downers. Why would the Cosmic Smoothie be any different? There is no room for amazing things and mind-numbing blessings in the realm of the anal-retentive.

The final caveat to all of this: we are bound to find ourselves in the throws of petulance again and again. Our greatness cannot help but thrash inside the constraints of our humanness.

So if you see a fellow traveller rolling around in the dirt, producing bizarre mewling noises, please kneel down and whisper in her ear that she needs to stand up now. It would do her well to say thank you. It will restore her to remember all the jaw-dropping moments. For this invites more of the same.

For more flawed thoughts and very human fumblings from Melanie
https://medium.com/@melmaure/the-spiritual-tantrum-of-a-kismet-junkie-5f6cc779df07#.ugt3ruknx

That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m breaking up with you, politics.

I simply cannot handle the disappointment.

I feel mislead and bamboozled and I can no longer participate in your dysfunctional behavior.

Even though you told me who you were, in every moment, I held out hope that your higher nature would prevail.

I’m embarrassed to admit that instead of making me a better person, you often unleashed my inner she-devil, scum-bag asshole. You never wanted to spend time with my friends and I up on the high ground, so, in order to spend time with you, I went down into the swamp.

I had trouble Ommmm-ing my way out of the muck—and the toxic yuck you surround yourself with got harder and harder to wash off.

So consider this the end, politics.

Stop calling.

Loose my number.

I need my space.

I’ve deleted your emails, unfriended you, and changed my status to disillusioned.

I know you won’t miss me one little bit. That’s okay, I have my own happiness to focus on right now.

My wits are scattered and badly need to be gathered.

So, it is with a broken heart that I say…

Carry on,
xox

Suffragette Susan B. Anthony’s Headstone covered with women’s “I voted” stickers.

“In the midst of the chaos
When the wind is howling I hear
The ancient song
Of the ones who went before
And know that peace will come.”
~Susan Stauter

I woke up this morning and opened my eyes. Peace.
That is until my neurons started firing, thoughts flooding in, reminding me what day it is.

Election day here in the U.S.

No peace today, right?

I voted early so I have plenty of time to go bite my nails down to the nub, watch the election results with my eighty-year-old mom.

Just that I can do that makes today a victory in my book.

As far back as I can remember my mom has followed politics. More than followed.  If you look up the phrase “political junkie” online my mom’s picture will pop up. She could give Tom Brokaw a run for his money. Seriously. She has lived and breathed every aspect of this game called politics going all the way back to waiting breathlessly as a young girl for election results to be announced on the radio. A child of the thirties, she was among the first generation of women born with the right to vote.

That was huge and she taught me never to take that lightly. The common thread throughout my life has been this single phrase: This is history, Janet.

I’d like to say I’ve always shared her passion and respect for politics but I have to admit there have been many elections through the years where I just didn’t give a shit. When Reagan ran against Mondale I was in my twenties. They were two boring old white guys and I can say in all honesty—I gave less than a shit.

Not my mom.

There have been decades where I would have to change the subject immediately (usually to football, another passion of hers), so as not to get caught in a political discussion because let me tell you—she will not suffer the fool who can’t name the candidates, their platform, and where they stand in the polls.

Eight years ago I got lured back in by Obama. I cared about hope and change. So did my mom. I hadn’t seen her that fired up for a candidate since Bobby Kennedy all the way back in 1968.

God, she loved Bobby Kennedy; well, all the Kennedy’s really. Camelot had been the real deal to her. Jack and Jackie were just like her (except for the rich and movie star gorgeous part) and their children were even the same age as hers!
Then, when it ended so tragically, we all sat in front of our little black and white TV for three days so my mom could try to process her grief and mourn with the rest of the country. Watch this. This is history, Janet, she said to someone too young to understand fully what she was seeing.

She wanted Bobby in the White House so badly that when he won the Primary in our state of California that warm June night in 1968 she went to bed jubilant, only to be woken up early the next morning by my dad. “Bobby Kennedy was shot last night. He’s dead.”

God. What a brave man, my dad. I can’t imagine giving her that news.

By the time my ten-year old self stumbled out of bed that morning, my thirty-year-old, optimistic, resident of Camelot, political junkie of a mom had been transformed into a somber, red-eyed cynic. “This country has gone to hell.” she sobbed. Pay attention, this is history, Janet.  This time I understood. But something in her had changed. She stayed in the game but the light went out of her eyes where politics was concerned.

And yet she still had her opinions.

She thought the whole Nixon/Watergate thing was deplorable (sorry Hillary, she said it first.)

She liked Clinton, she just couldn’t stomach his self-sabatoge—and she wished he’d just keep his dick in his pants.

She could hardly believe the shenanigans involved with the hanging chads, Supreme Court decision of 2000.

And don’t get her started on Bush. Or Cheney. “These two are ridiculous (words I can’t write here). Someone needs to reign them in. For godsakes, where are their wives?”

But my mom was ecstatic when Obama won in 2008. The fire was back. “ I can’t believe we have a black man in office. I never thought I’d see that.” she kept repeating as we both cried our way through his acceptance speech in Grant Park with his gorgeous, beaming wife and two young daughters by his side.  “I hope nothing bad happens to him”, she worried.

Pay attention. This is history, Janet.

“But I called it, remember?” she reminded me proudly, like she’d picked the winning horse while he was still a foal. “When he spoke at the Democratic Convention back in 2004? Remember? I said he could be President some day!”

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning but I do remember her saying that. A lot.

So.. this election. This election has been…unprecedented. I think that’s the word that’s been used most often these past eighteen months. Can you believe that? This spectacle has been going on for almost 600 days!

But my mom will scoff if I throw that word around lightly. “What this guy is spewing is unprecedented!” I’ll lament into the phone. I can hear her take a deep breath, her political science professor of a brain quickly gathering the facts.

“That’s not true.” She reminds me. “People need to remember George Wallace. He ran for president in 1964, 1972, and 1976, as a Democratic if you can believe that!” she spits out the word Democrat like a nasty word. “And in 1968 as an Independent. Oh, 1968. The Vietnam war. The assassinations of Bobby and Martin. The Chicago seven. They had riots that year at the Democratic Convention.”

They say if you can remember the sixties—you weren’t there.  Oh, she was there and she remembers EVERYTHING.

“George Wallace was a bigot, and a segregationist, populist who used the Ku Klux Clan as his security. He was a man filled with anger and hate, so this guys not the first…but at least our party had the good sense not to nominate him.”

So, things have been just as bad… or worse. I should have paid more attention to history.

So, yeah. I’ll be watching the results with that woman. The woman who reminded me a while back that what was unprecedented was having the first female nominee of a major political party and potentially the first woman President of the United States.

History is being made and its gotten completely overshadowed.

But not in her eyes. I really hope and pray I get to see the glass ceiling shatter tonight, sitting with my mom the life-long political wonk as she reassures me that she’s seen it all— assassinations, hate mongering and undecided elections and that in the end—our democracy will endure.

Pay attention, Janet. This is history.

Carry on,
xox

My mom and me sometime during the Reagan administration.

“On every fourth step, you are meant to fall down. Not occasionally, not once, not twice, but on every fourth step.

The ground opens up, the wind blows, a branch hits you in the head, you trip on stones, your heart breaks, you’ve got to fold the laundry, and they’ve closed the two left lanes.

Here on the fourth step, all the forces gather together to stop you. And some people, when they fall down, they lie there for the rest of their lives.

And some people learn how to fall-down-get-up. That is one move. Fall-down-get-up.”
~ Naomi Newman

Hey loves,
You know how when a little kid falls down before they even get up they look for their mom?

As a parent you are certain of two things and possibly ONLY two things.
1. Kids fall down. A lot.

1. Avoid eye contact after a fall (unless there is blood or the “silent cry”), because the minute they see your face—they’ll burst into tears. We’ve all seen it.  It’s uncanny.

They gage their response on yours. If you get hysterical, you’re gonna have a mess on your hands.

When we were kids parenting was different. Moms weren’t helicopters. They were Uber drivers who only came when called…after you told them your location…and waited five minutes.

I was born clumsy. Still am. I can fall over while seated.
I took my first steps at nine months and spent the rest of my childhood on roller skates. As a kid I was impossibly lanky with round feet, absolutely no sense of coordination, and a jinky center of gravity—and I fell. Not every fourth step. More like every other step. I was on the ground more than I was upright. That being said, one of my first memories is my mom’s response to what seemed to me to be a life threatening fall (kids are horrible judges of the severity of their mishaps.)

“Oops”, she said in a sing-song voice “You dropped yourself!”

Oh, right…I dropped myself. Well…she doesn’t seemed too concerned…and any sentence that starts with “oops” can’t be bad…huh…I dropped myself so I guess I’ll just…pick myself up.

Throughout my life, whenever I fall, (literally or figuratively), I can hear her calm, unwavering voice, “Oops, you dropped yourself” and it puts it all back into perspective.

Then I jump back up!

Oh, who am I kidding? I at least start thinking about getting my ass back up.

Resilience. And underreacting. Definitely two of the best lessons she ever taught me.

Carry on,
xox

How do you handle a fall? Share your secrets. I know you have ’em.