guidance

“And then, when you’re off chasing a dream, you miss out on what’s happening right under your nose.”
~Charles de Lint

Oh, hello Paris, it’s me, Janet…Again.

In my mind, we are old friends given the fact that’s this is the third time in a decade that I’ve visited your beautiful City of Lights.

You might not have recognized me. My hair is a softer shade of red now that I’m rounding the bend toward forty, and I may even resemble a local Parisian woman, not the ‘American in Paris’ tourist whose skin I inhabited the other two times.  Much to my surprised delight a Frenchman asked me, ME,  for directions this very morning.  Anyway, it’s okay if you didn’t know who I was.

Paris: Bon Jour Jeannette, good to see you again. Nope, sorry, you are right, I didn’t recognize you because all American tourists look the same to me.

Me: But the man asked ME… uh…right. Was it sitting on the wall on the banks of the Seine, having my picture taken that gave me away?

Paris: No. Well, yes, that and the metro schedule and map of the city that I can see protruding from the little bag you’re carrying. Also, and I say this with the all the sensitivity I can muster ( I am Paris after all), no self-respecting French woman would be caught dead walking around my city with a sweater tied around her waist.

Me: Right.

Paris: Enough idle chit-chat, what brings you here?

Me: Oh, uh, it’s kind of awkward. I’m here with my boyfriend, but I can see the writing on the wall. We’re here for a friend’s wedding, traveling around Europe for three weeks by train and I’m sorry to say we can now add long distance travel to our ever-expanding list of incompatibilities.

Paris: Right. Sorry. How can I help?

Me: Ugh. I’m so tired. Chasing love for so many years is exhausting. Although…I do have to say I love your men. I think my next serious relationship has to be with a European man.

Paris: Well, Ma Cherie; there’s European men and then there are French men. Do you think you are ready for a Parisian man?

Me: Yeah, sure…no, you’re right…probably not. But I think they are sublime. I’ll aspire to one, yeah, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll…

Paris: You can start by untying the sweater from around your waist. Try your shoulders instead.

Me: Right. Listen, do you think I need to move here to find true love? You know, I’m not getting any younger and I’ve fantasized about doing that for years! What do you say? Rent an apartment here, eat cheese and warm baguette while walking the city, find an amazing jewelry job and a gorgeous French husband all at the same time?

Paris: This may surprise you but—I don’t believe in chasing dreams. I say go back to Los Angeles and be yourself. Wear your sweater as a belt and let the love of a Frenchman find you there. You never know, there could be the Parisian man of your dreams living within a ten-mile radius. Fate will intervene. If you are meant to marry a Frenchman…he will find you. Stop running.

Me:  Thank you Paris. I have to go now. I’m wearing a dress and the rough stone is exfoliating my ass and not in a good way. I love you.

Paris: Je t’aime Jeannette.

This is a true story. Mostly.
Actually, the moment our plane landed back in LA my boyfriend and I broke up. That was okay. I had my European dream and I just kept putting it our there and lo and behold, four years later, on a blind date in Los Angeles…I met the most delicious Parisian man…who it turns out lived within a ten-mile radius of my house. Fortunately, he was able to overlook my poor use of sweaters—and married me nine months later.

To me, that just goes to prove that ANYTHING is possible!

Carry on,
xox

A reader sent this to me. Wtf? And thank you.
This is a woman in hospice care, on her deathbed. At death’s doorstep.
And apparently this is part of her family. Grandsons? Great-grandsons? Who knows.

You’ve gotta love this. Her feisty spirit and ‘game’ is what struck me. Is that a gesture she made often in her life? (‘Come on Nona, flip ‘um the bird like you always did!’).
Or is this for a laugh like when you tell a two-year-old to say ‘fuck it?’

Is she watching the Republican debates? Or flipping off the kid taking the picture? Or is she giving death the finger?
God, I hope it’s death.

She looks as if she’s lived a good long life with her sense of humor intact until the end…

“I imagine you like this at the end”, the reader said when he sent the photo.

What a compliment.
I hope so dear reader.
I aspire.

Carry on,
xox

“Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it’s about having a lot of options.”
~ Chris Rock

Being the obedient, Catholic girl and rule follower that I am, when I was advised by my accountants back in 1998 to save every dime I could scrap together, scavenge every couch cushion quarter I could find, and buy a house–I did just that.

I took my sister up on her very generous offer to move in, put everything in storage except for the scratch post/cat palace and my pillow, and called a small room with Teddy and Fraidy, my two Siamese cats, home for a year. We all went on what I referred to as ‘The Austerity Program’. The only thing tighter than our living conditions was my wallet.

Oh, don’t feel sorry for them. As I came to find out cats have little concern for square footage. Think about it. They tend to claim one or two spots in your house as their own, which they mark with coughed up fur balls and claw marks and that’s where you’ll find them hour after hour, day after day. For mine, it was the three story cat palace during the day and my pillow at night.

Anyway…Austerity became me. I excelled at it.

Living small became a mindset that I was assured would come in handy once I purchased the house and was subject to the “sticker shock”. Except for some measly living expenses and a car payment I banked every dollar. Contrary to my former way of living there were no extravagant trips, expensive new shoes or shiny new cat toys. We all hunkered down.

I had been ‘pre-approved’ to a certain dollar amount meaning that if I exceeded that imaginary line in the sand, I did so at my own peril. Of course, as I started to look around, spending my Sundays at open houses, everything in my price range was dreck. Run down with peeling paint, wonky, un-permitted additions that looked as if they had been slapped together with playing cards and duck tape, and bathrooms that were one mold spore away from being condemned by the health department.

Did I mention the amount I had to spend was HEALTHY? Like, buy me a castle with a moat AND an alligator in Ohio, healthy?

I was advised to stay away from the properties that were over what I could spend, so I immediately made a beeline for the homes north of a million dollars. These were my people. They had taste and class and lush green grass. Alas, even if I robbed a bank that would barely cover the property taxes, so most Sunday nights saw me drowning my austere little sorrows in a bottle of two-buck-Chuck, my face buried in a cat hair covered pillow to disguise the sobs. I felt sorry for myself that I only had the equivalent of a king’s ransom to spend. Oh, poor me.

Are you feeling bad? Maybe for the cats?  Please don’t.

Eventually, I did find something I liked. It had just been reduced to the very tippy top of my price limit, so I pounced, made an offer, and I’m sitting happily in that very same house writing this today.

As it turned out the peanut gallery was right; my mortgage, gardener and other responsible homeowner generated expenses kept me waist deep in austerity for a couple of years. Then so did my business. Austerity had become the gum on the bottom of my shoe. The mindset that wouldn’t let go.

Recently, I have felt the tug diminish. I’ve begun to dream of a compound in Santa Barbara.

Yep, you heard me. A compound. It may seem as unlikely as catching me gardening in a bikini, but everything starts as a dream, right? I’ve pulled up Santa Barbara real estate on Zillow the past few Sundays as a lark, and due to some residual austerity that stuck to my face—the prices caused an accidental nose-douche with ice-tea.

Fuck it! I yelled to no one in particular after almost drowning, then I clicked on an 8.9 million dollar property.
‘I have all the money in the world to spend!’, I told myself.
‘No limit, no imaginary line in the sand to keep me down! SHOW ME A COMPOUND!’

Then the funniest thing happened. And it surprised the shit out of me.
I felt a blinding white hatred for the 8.9 million dollar house. It was dark and medieval with a wine cellar that could double as a torture chamber for a serial killer. The kitchen was enormous… but it was trying was too hard! Custom this and custom that—bleeeaaaack!

I felt the same about the 12.5 million dollar monstrosity on the hill.
And the ranch with a view of the ocean.
I don’t need nine bedrooms.
I don’t want a horse property.
I don’t need a vineyard…

Come on people! Show me a decent house!

A 5 million dollar FIXER-UPPER! Yuck!
A 3.9 million dollar nightmare dipped in gold leaf. Puke!
I started to laugh. LOUD. Here, I have all the money in the world to spend…and I still can’t find something I love! I mean, at those prices—you’d better love it.

Since succumbing to the austerity mindset, I had convinced myself that the things I couldn’t afford were the things that would make me happy!
Which made me wonder. If I really had let’s say, only 2 million to spend, would I be loving these pricier properties and cursing my sad little austere lot in life, like I did before?

Uh…NO!

I actually liked the 2-3 million dollar homes better.

So, it wasn’t about the money. It was NEVER about the money. It’s a mindset.
Even with an imaginary wallet full of cash, what you want may be hard to find.
Good taste doesn’t come as a result of having a lot of money (Donald Trump).
And real wealth has nothing to do with dollars and cents.

Isn’t that good to know?

Carry on,
xox

I lost something very important to me last week. I squirmed. I obsessed. I bargained with God. The very minute I stopped caring…it came back to me.

Pass it along…
xox

After reading my post the other day about our majestic ash tree,
http://www.theobserversvoice.com/2016/05/earthquakes-rings-and-singing-ash-trees/
many of you asked me to reprise this essay about that very same tree—and his pal JAWT—who we murdered.
And just so you know, a year later finds Ash thriving as is our garden with all of the newly available sunshine (my bougainvillea has never looked more beautiful).
Yet…RIP, ‘Just A Weed Tree’, know that you are missed.
Carry on,
xox

We are all connected.
And not just by the proximity and outreach that is available to us via our devices.

It goes way beyond that.

I believe that everything is alive and has a spirit.

There is another web active in our lives besides that World Wide one. It is a web of life, of energy that connects everything and everyone on this earth.

We are all interconnected and anything that suggests the belief that we are separate is an illusion.

Nature is the supreme example of this web of interconnection. The bees need the flowers. The flowers need the bees to bloom.

And I fucked up and cut down a tree in our front yard, apparently upsetting the delicate balance of nature throughout the world, or at least Los Angeles, California.

We are the custodians of a one hundred and fifty-year-old ash tree. And he is our giant, grounded guardian.

Of that I am sure.

I remember a psychic predicting that I would live in a tree house one day, (which at the time seemed absurd), but when I purchased this house a few years later my friends all remarked “I see you got a little house with your tree.”

It is massive, one of the largest trees in Studio City and we are so blessed to live under its majestic canopy, feeling its energy, enjoying its shade.

On the curb, just adjacent to Ash (we’ll call him Ash) was a nondescript tree-thingy.
The arborist that came to the house ten years ago during our remodel educated us, telling us all about Ash, and when asked he informed me that the other tree wasn’t any species that he was familiar with.

“It’s just a weed that someone let grow into a tree a long time ago” he told us.

Just A Weed Tree was a lot of trouble.
His canopy was dense and…ugly, even after the annual haircut we gave him, not light and airy like Ash’s.
He cast too much shade for anything to flourish and the birds loved to congregate inside that dense, dark green foliage and shit all over our cars.

He had the bad attitude of an overgrown weed. He was pushy. And greedy, lifting the sidewalk, and getting into our pipes on a regular basis.

Just A Weed Tree always appeared to be crowding Ash, vying for light; and in the severe drought that we’ve found ourselves under, I feared he was chugalugging at the water table—and I knew Ash was too polite to say anything.

I LOVE trees, I do, ask anyone. I absolutely adore Ash, but I was not fond of JAWT.
He wasn’t a tree. He was a garden variety pest.

So this past Saturday our gardener cut him down. It took two guys and they were fast and thorough, even grinding the stump.

We both forgot that it was happening that day so when we got home the whole look and energy of the front yard had changed dramatically.

There was no sign that Just A Weed Tree had ever been there. But you could feel a HUGE void.
That weed had a presence.

FUCK.

We both stood at the curb, “Wow” was all we could say.

Now you could really see the front our house, there was the added sunlight in our yard that I had craved (for the plants) and with JAWT gone you could fully grasp the wonder of Ash.

“It looks like they trimmed the big tree too,” my husband remarked as I went around picking up leaves still on their branches.
It appeared as if they had been cleanly cut and they were EVERYWHERE.

Except they hadn’t been cut. They had been dropped.
I’d never seen anything like it. They covered the entire front yard, the driveway and even parts of the roof. In the fall, Ash drops single, dead, brown leaves, never bright green leaves still on their small branches.
What was up?

My arms were full, carrying the leaves to piles I had made on the driveway
And it suddenly occurred to me: Ash was showing his shock and disapproval at the death of his friend Just A Weed Tree.

I walked over to him, closed my eyes and rested my hand on the rough bark of his truck—and I could feel his stress and despair.

Oh Fuck.

First of all, I had always felt Ash was a female. Wrong. He has a very pronounced masculine energy.
And he was pissed. And under extreme stress.
Apparently the high pitched whine of a chainsaw has the same visceral effect on trees as a dental drill has on humans (yeah, okay, got it) plus he had known JAWT for over sixty years since he was just a tiny little weed that had somehow been spared. They were buddies.

I could feel his despair and it felt awful. I should have known better. Trees do have feelings and I had callously overlooked that fact.

We had basically murdered his friend right in front of him.

FUCK.

We are all interconnected, residents of this web of life and I needed Ash to know that I could feel his anguish, so I stood with both hands and my forehead on his trunk, apologizing and conveying our sincerest condolences for the loss of JAWT. I also explained the water situation and the fact that his health and stability were of the utmost importance to us. Then I played to his vanity telling him over and over how gorgeous (handsome) we think he is.
“You Mister, are the star of this neighborhood.” I think he was flattered.

Raphael watched from a distance, he could sense what was going on, and he added his sympathies from there. “I hope he’ll be okay,” he said with genuine concern, gazing at the piles of leaves.

“Now that he understands and knows how sorry we are—he’ll be fine.” I replied.

And he is. After our little talk…he never dropped another leaf.

Carry on,
xox

I’m a copy cat. I am.
And I’m not even very good at it. I’m out here in the open admitting to it.
I’m sharing something brilliant that somebody else has shared. It’s like the double-dipping of blogging…but I just had to do it.

My friend Angie Hite has a wonderful blog that I love and the other day she posted this. It has everything; a virtual smorgasbord of yumminess; life and death, poetry, Sue Monk Kidd, curiosity, and the quest for notoriousness. I want to be notorious for something…don’t you?
Take a look and…
Carry on,
xox

http://www.angelahite.com/let-my-epitaph-read/

Take it away Angie…and Mary…and Sue…

Let My Epitaph Read…

Ya know, sometimes what I want to share is what SOMEONE ELSE has written! That is the case here. Not only do I want to share Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes,” but I want to share Sue Monk Kidd’s commentary on it, and an Emily Dickinson quote within the commentary! The only thing I personally have to add, and this will make sense at the end, is: “Me, too!”

Here is an excerpt of Mary Oliver’s poem (please read the whole thing sometime):

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

And here is s Sue Monk Kidd essay from her book Firstlight, reacting to Oliver’s poem:

“Recently on the eve of my birthday a woman said to me with a completely serious face, ‘When I turn fifty, I want to become notorious.’

‘Notorious for what?’ I asked.

This seemed to throw her. ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ she said. “I haven’t gotten that far along with the idea.’

Becoming notorious for the sake of becoming notorious was a peculiar idea to me. Besides that, had she consulted a dictionary for the meaning of notorious? I went home and looked it up. It said, ‘Notorious – widely but infamously known or talked about.’

I couldn’t see the appeal. But after my conversation with the woman, practically against my will, I began to entertain a thought: What would I want to be notorious for at fifty?

I was still secretly working on it when a group of women gathered to help me celebrate my birthday. For our evening’s entertainment, I brought out my book of Mary Oliver’s poems and suggested we take turns reading. As bemused glances were exchanged, it occurred to me if I did ever become notorious, it would not be for bacchanalian parties.

I read last, choosing a poem with the cheery title ‘When Death Comes.’ I read along unsuspecting till I got to a line in which Oliver writes about coming to the end and wanting to say that she has spent her life married to amazement.

Suddenly something unexpected happened to me. My throat tightened. My eyes filled. I don’t mean sad tears, but the kind that leak from something brimming.

I looked at the faces around the room. They seemed beautiful and shining to me. I glanced at a common white lily in a vase and honestly, the sight nearly wiped me out. It was that impertinently gorgeous. Out of nowhere, plain and simple objects were rising up to show off their flame. The divine, unnameable spark. I couldn’t think what to name the feeling except amazement at life. It was as if something fell from my eyes and I saw everything just as it is.

One second I was going along in a jaded marriage with life (because let’s face it, the intimacy can fade after a while if you don’t work on the relationship) when it rode in and swept me off my feet. I learned to be in love with life again. And I didn’t even know the romance had slipped.

‘Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it,’ wrote Emily Dickinson. Somehow I’d begun moving through life on automatic pilot, half-seeing, half-here, abducted by the dreaded small stuff. But the evening of my party, I realized all over again: we will have a true and blissful marriage to life only to the extent we are aware.

So. That’s how I resolved the question about what I wished to become notorious for at fifty. Let it be for nothing more than harboring a wild amazement at life. Let it be for choking up at poetry and the sight of human faces. For falling into easy rapture over lilies and all the other run-of-the-mill marvels that make up life. Let me become notorious for going around with my bridal veil tossed back and my mouth saying I do. Renewing my vows with life. Every day. A hundred times a day.”

Me, too, Mary and Sue and Emily! Me, too! Me, too! Can I get an Amen?

“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

“Is that my imagination?… Can I believe in that?… Because I don’t want to create something in my life that’s not real.”
~Me

What is “real” anyway? And what is…not real? Fantasy? Make believe. Hokey pokey? Flim-flam, paddy-wack, and Cracker Jack?

Remember me? Let me introduce myself. I’m the woman with the wild-ass imagination.

“Is that just my imagination?” I used to say that to myself at least twenty times a day. Now it’s down to maybe twice a week, and it makes me laugh every time I think it.

Where the hell do I think the things in my life are first created? Uh, somebody’s imagination…hello?…

My iPhone was the brainchild of Mr. Jobs.

My relationship with my husband started in my imagination and then became more tangible with a list I made of suitable qualities for the man of my dreams.

My house was the bright idea of some developer way back in 1936 when the nearby studios decided they needed housing for all of the workers in the growing movie industry.

The design of my car probably woke some German guy up in the middle of the night who was tasked with thinking up an elegant station wagon design. Well done, Gunnar!

Germs were an unfathomable idea just before the turn of the 20th century. Imagine. Invisible living organisms that can invade your body and make you sick. Well, that’s right out of science fiction!
Who’s sick and twisted imagination thought of THAT?

And what about science fiction? Our present existence would look like something out of science fiction to someone from a century ago. Bluetooth? WiFi? Electric cars? Microwave ovens? Smart phones and personal computers! Oh my!

All of those started in some smart person’s imagination. Because that’s what smart people daydream about. Life changing smart stuff.

Me? I use my imagination to scare myself to death on a regular basis.
Most always at three in the morning. I can vividly imagine and talk my rattled, sleep deprived little mind into a myriad of catastrophes that make me sweaty and weepy. My hall-of-famers are; a motorcycle crash either with me on the back or without, an Armageddon type unavoidable meteor strike, a Trump presidency, or publically failing at something that means the world to me…while naked.

Those become so real in my imagination that I never even bother to step back and question them. They become my virtual reality. Because here comes the science: Your body doesn’t know if it’s real or imagined. What?

But what about all the good stuff? Writing a script? Big money? Wild success? A movie??
Oh, don’t tease me you rascally imagination! Could those things really happen? Are those real?

What a ding-dong I can be! Honestly! If I played you guys the dialogue in my head you’d laugh your asses off it’s so ridiculous…but…wait a minute…I’d venture to guess, so is yours!

What are you unwilling to believe because it seems too good to be true? Why can’t the really good stuff, the far-reaching stirrings that lie deep inside our hearts come true? Why do we poo-poo those? Why aren’t those REAL?

They can be. All we have to do is believe in them as much as we do those awful scenarios that keep us awake at night.

Someone once said: If you can imagine it—you’re most of the way there.

You’ll be happy to know—I’m on this! I’m working on it day and night. I’ve decided to unleash my imagination and let it run rampant (only in a good way) with my life. I’m thinking of keeping a journal about my journey into this new radical reality because I have it on good authority that this next stretch is about to get super juicy!

Wanna come with me?

Carry on,
xox

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

This is what it sounds like when you put tree rings on a record player.

This is an excerpt from the record Years, created by Bartholomäus Traubeck, which features seven recordings from different Austrian trees including Oak, Maple, Walnut, and Beech. What you are hearing is an Ash tree’s year ring data. Every tree sounds vastly unique due to varying characteristics of the rings, such as strength, thickness and rate of growth.

Keep in mind that the tree rings are being translated into the language of music, rather than sounding musical in and of themselves. Traubeck’s one-of-a-kind record player uses a PlayStation Eye Camera and a stepper motor attached to its control arm. It relays the data to a computer with a program called Ableton Live. What you end up with is an incredible piano track and in the case of the Ash, a very eerie one.

Hats off to Traubeck for coming up with the ingenious method to turn a simple slice of wood into a beautiful unique arrangement. It makes you wonder what types of music other parts of nature would play.

I LOVE this so much and for so many reasons that they are almost too numerous to mention, but here are just two of them.

We have a ginormous Ash tree in our front yard and for once I am not exaggerating when I say ginormous. According to our arborist (yes, we have an arborist, when you are entrusted with the custodianship of one of Mother Nature’s wonders, you call in the specialists), it one of, if not THE largest tree in Studio City. As the saying goes “I got a little house with my tree”.

Anyhow, I am an avid appreciator of the Ash tree and now, thanks to this video, to the beautiful songs that are hidden inside.

But I have to tell you, I knew MINE had a beautiful voice right about year one after living under his (if you meet him, he’s has a very masculine, protector energy kind of guy), gigantic canopy that covers nearly 3/4 of my entire house.

One night, being Southern California and all, there was a pretty substantial earthquake. When I say substantial I mean only a couple of things fell over, the power was still on, and it only woke up one of my two cats. I was single at the time so I threw on a robe and some flip flops and surveyed the place for damage. It was my first time as an actual homeowner (as a renter I just went back to sleep and counted on the cats to wake me up if there was a gas leak), so there was a lot of checking pilot lights and looking for new cracks in my quaint little 1936 bungalow.

All was well. Except for the fact that someone was whining a plaintive, high-pitched sigh. Think squeaky old screen door.

When I realised it wasn’t me, I followed the sound outside, half expecting to discover a neighbour’s dog cowering in the driveway. Instead, I found my neighbour himself, Steve, clad in some hastily pulled on shorts (they were inside out), an old Stanford t-shirt and a bad case of bed head. We met under the tree.

“You okay?” he asked, being the gallant neighbor dude sent over by his wife to check on the single woman next door, who was obviously scared shit-less, whining like a little girl.
“Yeah. You guys?”
We were both looking around for the origin of THAT SOUND.
“You hear that?” we asked each other in unison.
“Is that?” I whispered as I walked closer to the tree.
“No…”, he replied with mediocre conviction.
“Shit”, he said in a bewildered tone as we both stood with or hands resting on the behemoth’s trunk.

“It’s the tree!” we both exclaimed in unison again (we needed to take this act on the road), our eyes dilated with amazement. He jumped back and shook his hands as if fifty million volts of electricity had coursed through him. I think I saw the hair on his head stand up even taller.

The majestic Ash tree reverberated, and then, like a giant shiver it transferred the vibrations to our hands, accompanied by that melancholy sigh as it settled back down and into the very space it has been occupying for just shy of two-hundred years. Just like a pro. Just like it has done after so many other earthquakes for years and years before me or my house were even a whisper into someone’s imagination.

It was too much for poor sleepy Steve to fathom. Seeing that I had no intention of letting go of my tree anytime soon, he quickly excused himself and went back to bed. I’m sure he never told another soul that he heard a tree sighing after an earthquake.

But I have—and now you all know.
They make sounds. They whine, and they sigh, and they laugh in a brisk wind.
And sometimes…they even play piano.

Carry on,
xox

https://vimeo.com/traubeck/years

Things are moving extremely fast these days as we continue going through our cycles of cleansing, purging, and re-birth. Right? I mean, I can’t be the only one out here who has been re-inventing herself for the past few years, decades, millennia.

One of my dear friends remarked just the other day, “I’ve changed so much recently, I don’t even know who I am! It’s like someone shook the snow globe I live inside of and everything is falling around me differently”

I agree! We barely resemble our former selves and life can be so freakin’ confusing in the midst of a snow globe shake-up.

Yet, sometimes, no, make that always—we should always ask ourselves the hard questions.

Who are we REALLY? Are we the persona we carefully construct on social media?
Am I the happy-go-lucky, upbeat, person who people meet for the first time—or the whining pile of insecurities I show to a handful of close friends who have earned that (privilege?) by sticking around?

I can be all of those people. But who am I at my core? Because that core personality makes most of my life decisions. It colors the way I handle difficult situations. It choreographs my re-birth. It does, don’t argue, it’s science!

To get my bearings when I’m feeling uncertain about who is running my show, I try not to make any sudden moves (those are always a mistake. It’s better to let the dust or snow settle), and I don’t let the peanut gallery define me (because they will be oh, so, willing to do that for us).

What I do is I take a look around at my life. What clues is it showing me? How has the person that lives deep inside me done so far? You know what? I can tell by how I feel.

Do I feel happy with some great people around me? Is there something on the horizon to look forward to, a relationship, a trip or a creative project? Or am I in a constant state of anger or anxiety, mad at the world? Lost in the endless 24/7 bad-news cycle, feeling depressed and alone?

I’ve been both of those and believe you me, I prefer the first one. But getting there can be a struggle. (Especially if the core you is moody and depressed).

Not sure who you really are at your core? Ask yourself these questions:

Am I lover or a hater? (I immediately yelled LOVER! Then I flipped off the guy next to me in traffic on the 101 Fwy.—so I may need to take a closer look at that).

Am I a peacemaker or a fighter? (Fighters are always fighting someone. The government, their landlord, insurance, family).

Do I appreciate or condemn? (This person can walk into a beautiful room and all they can see is the tiny scratch on the floor. Know anybody like that?)

Do I see possibility or failure? (I am an eternal optimist with an inner asshole/naysayer at my core …good to know).

Do I criticize or encourage? (You can tell by what’s coming back your way. Compliments or nasty critiques?)

Am I hopeful or hopeless?

Do I look forward to the future or live in the past? (People who live in the past feel that their best days are behind them. What kind of future does that make for them?)

Is life (the planet), improving or falling to shit?

Do you live in a benevolent or malevolent Universe? This is a BIG one! Man O man! It will color your beliefs about life. We all know the person who thinks that the world is a horrible place that is out to get them. Is that you?? Look at your life!

These are simple questions but they can really help you get to the bottom of who is running your life. Can you trust that part of you to make the big leap? To turn things around? Or will it betray your trust by being too fearful, pessimist or critical to be of any help?

First, you have to become aware of it, then you can change it.
When my asshole/naysayer starts to dictate the rules I tell it to fuck off. “I don’t need your help here!” I’ll say, “You’ve made some pretty bad decisions in the past that were all based on fear. I don’t trust you with my re-birth! Hit the road, Jack!” But he never leaves for good so I’m content to let him sit and watch. Quietly.

I hope this helps you. It’s one of those great tools that can come in so handy in the middle of a snow globe shake-up. I  made a lot of the same mistakes over and over again until I took the time to see what my core beliefs were, who was running the show, and most of all—could they be trusted with this precious new endeavor?

Carry On,
xox

It was heavier than I had imagined, and it left little bits of…something…all over the front of me, as a lovely parting gift.

“There.” I said after I dropped it down and kicked it into place. A brand new doormat large enough for the double front doors of the house rental project I’m working on.

As per my instructions: No flowers, no bright colors, nothing cutesy, everything completely inoffensive.
Just a simple tan-colored mat made of choir with a thin border and the word WELCOME in black. Not even a dark sinister black. A hue of medium blackish. A happy black, if you will.

“Oh my Gawd, I love everything!” she squealed.
We were near the end of this hellacious project and one of the principles had just finished a self-guided tour of the place.

With such a limited budget the transformation was nothing short of amazing.

You could say it was alchemy. I’d call it a miracle. Right up there with turning water into wine, straw into gold, Bruce into Caitlyn.

“Oh, except that. I don’t like that at all.” All the gushing had stopped dead.
I turned my head to see what she was pointing and glaring at. Her response was definitive and whatever it was — Had. To. Go.

It was the freakin’ doormat.

“I hate when they say welcome.” she pronounced. “Take it back and get a plain one. No WELCOME.” and with that she went back inside and the gushing resumed.

It never occurred to me that the word WELCOME on a front doormat could elicit such a strong reaction.

Interesting…

“You’re right…you’re right.” I replied, struggling to pick up the mat and carry it back to the truck, thinking of my own bright blue front door mat that says HELLO in friendly white cursive.

Feeling rejected, the ginormous WELCOME mat put up a struggle going back to the truck and I was out of breath.
“They should start a line of doormats that read GO AWAY or DON’T BOTHER ME or GET OUT OF HERE. Someone is missing out on a fortune.” I gasped.

I figured I was far enough away that she couldn’t hear me, but from inside I heard laughter. “I’d buy those.” I heard her say.

Huh.

You Are Not Welcome.

The insight hit me like a bolt of lightning.

Maybe you can tell a lot about a person by their front door mat.

Some people, this woman included, do not lay out the welcome mat.
Not ever.
Not to their home, their feelings, or the story or their life.

They are private and guarded and I get it.
Obviously, that is a land I do not inhabit — but I read her loud and clear.

From where she stands WELCOME in friendly black letters — is a dirty word.

It was right then that the entire project began to make sense.
All white, beige and taupe.
No color.
Nothing with any personality.
Key word: Utilitarian.

Nothing offends, nothing makes an impression — it is a blank slate.

You know what? She’s right. It’s a rental.
Don’t leave anything of yourself behind. No clues to who you might be or what you like.
A brightly colored pillow may belie whimsy, a choice of art might show your taste.

Don’t give yourself away to strangers and for Godsakes — no Welcome mats.

Oh well, to each his own.
Carry on,
xox

Do you have an aversion to the word WELCOME? Are you that private and guarded? Talk to me.