guidance

Have you ever told a lie so often you started to believe it yourself?

Of course, I never have, I was just wondering about you, you lying scoundrels.

Sometimes it is necessary to lie. It can be the kindest thing to do, and often, is the lesser of two evils.

“Yes, it WAS good for me too.”

“Stop crying, that haircut DOES make you look like Charlize Theron.”

“You’re right, it is SO their loss. Your voice is…beautiful.”

I lie to myself ALL the time. It’s a habit. Like brushing my teeth and going to the gym (lie).
I started doing it in acting class.

Just so you know, acting is the gateway to a life of lying. I’m looking at YOU Meryl Streep.

It would happen just before a big audition, or sitting in front of a casting director. Then, if I’d actually bullshitted my way into the job, there’d be that moment backstage, in the dark, behind the curtain, when my head knew it had to go out and stand in the spotlight but my legs wanted to run, my stomach wanted to vomit, and my butt wanted to poop the entire contents of my large intestine—all over the stage.

There have been times I thought my blood would boil in my veins, my nose would fall off of my face or my vagina would start to recite Shakespeare, all due to nerves.

Oh, don’t look at me that way! You know what I’m talking about.

Instead, somehow, we all find it in ourselves to walk out on stage, hit the mark, and deliver the lines. Or we walk to the front of the room of VIP’S and deliver our presentation. Or we sit our asses in the chair and take the test. Or we unclench our fists—and hit send.

You fake it. You lie. You pretend. I know you do. Just for a moment. That you aren’t scared shitless. That you are a pro and not only THAT! That you’re the best at what you do!

Bravo, you brave motherfuckers!

In Jenny Lawson’s (The Bloggess), hilarious new book, Furiously Happy, there’s a chapter where she’s supposed to go and read for the audio version of her own book and instead ends up on the bathroom floor in a full anxiety attack, frantically texting her friend, the author Neil Gaiman for help.
He sends her back a single line.

“Pretend you’re good at it.”

Okaaaaayyy…She writes it in big block letters on her arm, gets up off of the floor, and keeps on going. She continues to this day to write it every time she has to get on stage for a talk or a book reading.

Pretend you’re good at it.

I do it every time I write. I do it when I sing karaoke, and I do it every time we have sex.

I know you can relate. What have you pretended to do to get you through? I’d love to know!

Carry on,
xox

http://www.amazon.com/Furiously-Happy-Funny-Horrible-Things/dp/1250077001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455242532&sr=8-1&keywords=jenny+lawson+furiously+happy

Me pretending to be Velma Kelly in Chicago (This was my own personal Pretending Olympics).

If life is a dance, I have two left feet.
Which also explains my wonky sense of direction and makes it hard to buy shoes.
But if you’ve seen me dance, or do Zoomba, or even Tai Chi, you know what I mean.

Everyone else is moving in sync to the right while I’m moving, always with great conviction, to the left.
It’s just my nature.
Always has been.
As much as I desperately want to avoid embarrassment, it is next to impossible for me to just blend in, to stay inside the lines, to behave and dance like everyone else.

But, I really have tried, and it has been exhausting.

Just like I play my own soundtrack in my head as it runs through my life (don’t you?)
I have my own unique, sometimes awkward and clumsy choreography—which I often dance alone.

It may not be pretty, but it has gotten me here.

Every once in a great while, I’m supremely graceful; like the Prima Ballerina in Swan Lake, dancing around, up on pointed toes, with my neck long, and my arms fluttering slightly.
The only problem is, the rest of the world is doing a tap routine, and I look like an ass!

So, here’s the thing: I had a humongous epiphany after catching The Dead Poet’s Society on HBO a couple of weeks back. Damn! I had forgotten what a great movie that is, OR, I didn’t have the depth of character in 1989 to fully grasp its meaning. Probably the latter.

In case you can’t remember, it takes place in the 1950’s at an elite all-boys prep school. There’s a new, unorthodox English professor, Mr. Keating, who, among other things, has them stand on top of their desks to see the world in a different way. He also challenges them to call him “O Captain, My Captain.”

John Keating: “O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It’s from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating or if you’re slightly more daring, O Captain my Captain.”

He is pushing these boy-men to embrace great literature and poetry, to become free thinkers, to question authority and buck convention. In other words, my Holy Grail!

Bear with me here, because it was this next scene that really got to me.
He has his class assemble in the school courtyard where, as an exercise in self-expression, he has them walk in a circle. A couple swing their arms, several stomp their feet, but soon they are all marching perfectly in time, hands and feet synchronized like a chain gang. Although they found it funny, Mr. Keating was proving a point.

We may start off marching to our own beat, but soon we succumb to the herd mentality.
We all fall in step, conforming, becoming a part of that herd.

It’s encoded in our DNA.

Mr. Keating wants them to break that code, to consider being another way.
Perhaps, to even entertain the idea that it might be okay to go left instead of right, to dance to their own untamed choreography.

Hmmmmmm. Maybe my feet aren’t broken after all.

John Keating: Now, we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go,
“That’s baaaaad.” [imitating a goat] Frost said, “Two roads diverged in the wood and I —
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Amen, O’Captain, My Captain.
Carry on,
Xox

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

”

And they can’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Hump Day y’all,
Carry on,
xox

Dearest body of mine,
I would like to extend my most heartfelt apology for under appreciating you all of these years and for being your harshest critic.

It is high time I write this. It is way past time actually–horribly overdue by years, maybe even decades.

I’m sorry. I can be such an ass.

I certainly deserve your indifference and yet you are so endlessly forgiving.
I could learn something from your example.

Anyway, I’m here to say…I’m sorry. And I love you.

I have repeatedly ignored your wishes, judged you and even called you names.
Tiny department store dressing rooms, covered in carnival mirrors and bright, unforgiving fluorescent lights can attest to that fact.

Please accept my sincerest apology.

Over the years, I have deprived you of sleep, rattled you with stress, covered over your anxiety by overworking you and then made up for it at times by smoking and drinking too much, (which I’m sure is exactly what you did NOT need).

Other times, I have marinated you in a melancholy laced dissatisfaction until it affected your health, at which point you knocked me on my ass with anxiety attacks, Mono, a lung infection, strep throat or some other malady long enough to get my attention and give me time to re-group and let you heal.

Thank you and I’m sorry.

I have systematically starved and over fed you; brutally sunburned you summer after teenage summer; changed your natural hair color and texture too many times to count, tweezed, waxed and lasered you beyond all reason and basically treated you like shit since, well– since I was old enough to get away with it.

And don’t get me started on that face.
Every time I look in the mirror I only see the flaws–the thin chicken lips and over-plucked eyebrows, several deep divots due to teenage acne and just when it looked as if I had come to terms with it all–alas, the wrinkles.

But you always cut me slack. Don’t you just want to strike back at me? Like with a giant forehead zit, you know, the kind that hurt like a mutha or a stye in my eye?

You should! What the hell’s wrong with me?

Just the fact that my eyes have sight, my legs still carry me and that I can hear and smell all the wonders of the world around me–is a lottery win! You are sturdy and strong, hearty and healthy — but why hasn’t that ever been good enough?

I’m so sorry.

As a young woman I was naturally thin, (another unappreciated lottery win), so of course, I wanted to be curvy.
I never appreciated your stellar metabolism for one minute. I took it for granted, stuffing my face with junk food knowing you’d save me from myself, when suddenly at around age forty you dialed it back so that now I have to exercise like an Olympian and watch what I eat–every morsel registering on the scale.

Well-played. I know, I deserved it.

I apologize for never knowing you were good enough just as you were.
Listen, I’d like to call a truce. Can we be friends?

I finally realize you are not some cosmic mistake or last minute consolation prize. I wasn’t supposed to be Cindy Crawford or Florence Joyner. I get that now.

God chose you for me, or better yet, it was a collaboration between both of us before we were born, for the life we were meant to lead.

You house my soul for crying-out-loud–my very essence. We are a team, you and me, so you’d think I would have held you in higher regard.

I am so sorry.

So now, having said all of that,
I don’t care what you weigh as long as you’re healthy.

I don’t care if you can’t run five miles like you used to, your legs are still strong enough to hike–hikes are good.

I don’t care if you have wrinkles. Together we have worried and we have laughed–we earned those lines by engaging in a life well lived.

I promise to try to drink less alcohol (you keep telling me it no longer agrees with you).

I promise to get you checked out on a regular basis, you know, for tune-ups –like the high-performance vehicle you are and trust that you can fix yourself most of the time.

I promise to get enough sleep.

I promise to keep us stimulated, body, mind, and spirit, well into old age.

I promise to quit looking around to see how other women are aging and just be happy and make the most with what I’ve been gifted.

I promise to listen to you and to pay closer attention to what you’re telling me.

You, my glorious friend, are a work of art and a freaking miracle and every creak, groan and crack are there to remind me to treat you with respect–After all, we are a team.

Love you,
xox

Guys,
This came just in time for me!
Just when I thought I was in charge of turning the world, making things grow and rising and setting the sun. Whew! You can imagine my relief when I read that “There are greater forces than us running the show.” Thanks, Liz!

Happy Sunday!
xox

Dear Ones –
Here’s an encouraging reminder, for any of you out there who might still be suffering from the trauma-inducing misconception that you’re supposed to be in charge of shit all the time.

(NOT THAT I HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE WITH THAT MISCONCEPTION!)

Let us not forget: Greater forces than us are running the show. The world doesn’t turn because we personally turn it. Step back for a minute and see how the show still goes on, even when we release the white-knuckle grip we have on the imaginary steering wheel of destiny.
It’s all gonna be OK.

Onward and a big exhale,
LG

Ruby is a boxer-shark teenager girl.

Ruby is a pest.

Ruby is a dog-pleaser.

Ruby is completely self-absorbed.

Ruby will suck all of the oxygen out of the room.

Ruby won’t be ignored.

Ruby wears bright orange polar fleece.

Ruby gets into your face when you just want some peace and quiet. Ask Clyde.

Ruby is a bottomless pit of neediness that can never be filled.

Ruby will shove her face under your chin with her ass in the air just to get you to say I love You —Don’t be like Ruby.

xox

Okay, so, what if I call A Reprise a Flashback? Does it still count? Jim? Help!!
I’ve been feeling Particularly Piraty lately (say THAT fast five times), so fuck that, AND here ya go!

Join me mateys! Join my band of scalawags! Be a Pirate!
Argggghhh,
xox

An original doesn’t conform to expectations — they change them forever.

“It is better to be a pirate, than to be in the navy.”
~Steve Jobs

Being an original is not easy.
As Abraham says: “There is never a crowd on the leading edge.”

So for those of you starting a new, well…anything — listen up.

Unless you have a huge budget for skywriting, a Foo Fighters concert at your book signing, free Sprinkles cupcakes, and car giveaway; there will be crickets a first.

Seriously annoying nothing will happen. Day after day.

“I want the most unusual, badass store in the Valley, a place with one-of-a-kind stuff that I would buy. Hey, listen if I don’t do it two guys from West Hollywood will and I’ll go in there and feel bad as I hand over my American Express card again, and again knowing that I had the idea first.”
~Famous Last Words

I remember days at my store where the phone never rang and no one came in. When I got home I had to clear my throat to speak like you do in the morning when you wake up because I hadn’t used my voice in over nine hours. Like I said, crickets.

Your blog; book; store; talk; product or whatever, will need some back story to be understood, but don’t go overboard with that.
Keep it simple and come from the heart. Heart-Full people will eventually find you and the others, well, they can start their own tribe thank you very much.

Don’t spend too much time explaining yourself
Not to your friends, your wife or potential investors. As you attempt to get validation from the peanut gallery your brilliant creative ideas will get watered down by popular opinion.

If it was easy, made perfect sense, was a sure thing or a slam dunk — there’d be a line at your door and believe me — someone would have already thought of it.

You’re an original.
Original means new, never before attempted.

Uncharted, pirate-infested waters. No map, and oftentimes not all the answers.

Jesus others, what part of original are you not getting?

New Mantra:

People will not be able to pigeonhole you and they will hate that about you. They will also despise you for not conforming.
Happy, creative people doing what they love are annoying to others.

Others also get uncomfortable with square pegs in round holes and if the world is made of round holes and you decide you are a square peg — Grow a thick skin — and don’t say I didn’t warn you…it’s gonna get awkward.

The urge to conform will be seductive.
It will drunk-text you late at night and fill your head with lies.

At one point (or seven), in your endeavor, it will convince you that you fucked up, it will beg you to come back to the fold for an easy ride — and it will be right. It would be easier to conform.
But you will die the very slow death of a thousand paper cuts. And we all know how much those fuckers hurt.

You can’t make everyone like you or that thing you’re doing.
Unless you’re Beyonce or Mother Theresa. It’s an impossible goal so give it up right now Goddamnit.

People will attempt to copy you. Don’t worry about it.
They aren’t YOU, so it will only and always be a lousy karaoke version of your concept. And since it wasn’t their passion, their up in the middle of the night writing new ideas burning desire — they’ll get bored during the crickets phase and drop it.

Imitation has absolutely NO stamina.

Go ahead and exceed what people expect from you — but not to make a point.
Just give your creativity an outlet. Let it flow. Like blood. All over the place.

I post every day. That smokes most bloggers. I do it because I love it. And I didn’t know any better when I started.

Listen, if it was expected of me I know I’d say, “fuck it”.

Many others have given me permission to cut back and some days I do, but I have already exceeded what was expected and as a result that created consistency, trust, and then relationships followed.

You’ve gotta show up. Day in and day out.
When I’m walking around and I stumble upon some cool new shop or cafe that is beckoning me to enter, I can never understand why in God’s name, in the middle of the day, they are CLOSED.
No sign, no hours posted, no nothing.
I don’t care how cutting edge and original you are — show the fuck up. Be open, be accessible, so I can share in your awesomeness.

You may fail. Like big time, skid marks on you face fail.
Think Steve Jobs being fired from his own company. You may taste public humiliation. It’s a bitter pill but you will survive, and most likely flourish.

In closing:
Try not to be an arrogant dick.
Again think Steve Jobs. He was revered — but not well liked — and I know I said people may not like you but when they fire you from your own company…

Often nonconformists have absolutely zero social skills. Mark Zuckerberg for example.
Listen, develop some, break that mold too.
Be kind to others, crack a smile, have some fun.

Be a kind, fun-loving pirate. Think Captain Jack Sparrow — or Sir Richard Branson.

Carry on my square peg pirates,
xox

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

Try it.

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

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

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

Carry on,
xox

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and then…Carry on,
xox

Ray: I’m thirty-six years old, I love my family, I love baseball, and I’m about to become a farmer. And until I heard the Voice, I’d never done a crazy thing in my whole life.

Voice: If you build it, he will come.
~from the movie Field of Dreams

I’m baaaackkkkk! And I missed YOU!

I went away to devote a block of time to the screenplay I’ve been enlisted to write.
The one about death and life thereafter.

The comedy —the buddy picture—my own person Field of Dreams complete with a cryptic voice and characters who are invited to participate in this magical fairy tale I’ve been fortunate enough to be gifted with writing.

I haven’t always felt that way.

At first, it was so (insert baseball pun here), out of left field, that my inner skeptic was pooping her pants. I have a nose finely tuned for bullshit and this entire endeavor reeked of it.

But after a while, after a ton of questioning and “prove it to me’s” I plowed under my corn and built my field just as I’d been directed. I started writing a screenplay (which I had no interest in doing and absolutely NO experience at), that was dictated to me by my pal, the dead screenwriter.

And you know what happened? The more I got out of the way—the better it got. So much so that now, when I read it to people, ( even people I’ve just met  like the women at the retreat last week), THEY SEE THE PLAYERS ON THE FIELD. In other words, they believe in the magic and that never ceases to amaze me.

I remember loving Field of Dreams when it came out. Who doesn’t want to believe that there’s more to life than the mundane and ordinary? What Ray did seemed crazy but his courage (disguised as wavering conviction), wins everyone over in the end—even me.

I know. It’s a movie. But crazy as it sounds it’s also become a template for my life.

All ideas start as crazy fantasies. They do. Every. Single. One. of  Them.

They come out of nowhere, bite you on the ass, and invite you to come along for the ride.
What do YOU do when that happens? Do you up the volume on the radio (get caught up in life), to drown out the voices (ideas), or do you plow under the corn (take some risks), and build the field for the players to come and play (give your ideas life)?

I used to ignore the Voice. For years, I turned my back to the players on the field. But what kind of life is that?

When magic presents itself—I say, make the leap.
Not everyone will see the players on the field but that’s okay, those that do far outweigh the ones who cannot.

Plus, Magic can’t be contained. It bleeds into all other aspects of your life and that does NOT suck. I promise.

I’ve gotta go now, it’s the second inning and I’m up at bat.

Play ball!
xox

John Kinsella: Is this heaven?

~Dialogue from the movie FIELD OF DREAMS