IF I HAD A PENNY...

Another Five

2011-03-16T10:24:00.002-06:00

My previous entry was completed 5 months ago. How appropriate since the timing is entirely accurate. Short story: Broken heart. Pray for a new boy. Get him the day after the prayer. Date him for five months. Break up. Pull up my blog. 5 months later.

As you may be able to tell, everything is going as I planned. (Sense the sarcasm for it has been laid on thick.)

There are days I feel no different from the 14 year old I once was. Will I ever be smart enough or pretty enough? Will I ever get the boy? Will I get the job of my dreams? Will I ever be gut-wrenchingly happy? Just a painful sort of” stomachache, post-Easter sugar gluttony coma” happy?

Alright. Just a “I feel peace” happy?

And still, I feel extremely blessed. Because thirty something could be a whole lot worse.

My Recent Heart Doctor

2010-10-11T22:58:00.003-06:00

I’d be completely ungrateful if I didn’t take time to share a well earned shout-out.

My mama doesn’t read this blog. But this entry is dedicated to her.

My mother bore MANY children. I have mixed feelings about this fact mostly because of this one subsequent fact.

I feel she could only lend herself out so much. And usually the recipient of her uh-may-zing maternal care-giving skills was whoever needed it the most. With a few “more-needy” children, I feel like I frequently got lost in the shuffle.

But this isn’t to commentary on what I didn’t get. Rather my mom pulled through like a champ for me this past couple of weeks.

I had my heart broken as badly as I ever have save one other time and the pain was acute. I thought I would explode and I didn’t know who to turn to. My mind would throw out my mother as an option and many times I batted away the thought.

Until one day when I was driving home from work and could shoulder the burden no longer, I phoned the woman whom I NEVER speak with about any of my relationships and broke down in complete bedlam.

Luckily she had visited in February and whatever miniscule insight it gave her into the situation was the perfect starting point from there until now. I gave her all of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the relationship.

I cried. I cried. And I cried.

Every day for 5 days straight. And she soothed every day for 5 days straight. Then I weaned myself to every other day. Then every couple of days.

So mama (even though I know you are NOT reading this), thank you for being everything I needed anyone to be for me in that situation.

You were my light in the middle of a very dark moment and I’m grateful for that.

Who Hasn't Said It?

2010-10-10T23:51:00.002-06:00

I love listening to music pretty much any time of day. I listen to it when I get ready in the morning. I listen to it when I’m working. I listen to it when I want to rev it up. I listen to it when I want to chill it out. I listen to it before a date. I listen to it while I write in my journal.

Needless to say, I do a lot of collecting.

Every now and again, I will hear a song on the radio or in a movie and think, “I NEED that song. How do I not have it yet?” Inevitably, I’ll go home to download it and upon adding it to my library, I’ll discover it’s already there.

I loathe this feeling so much in a way I have a hard time articulating. Often times it comes down to this thought. “You mean I’ve had it all the time? I could have been enjoying it this entire time? It’s been right here?”

The metaphor, my friends, closely follows what I’ve discovered of late.

My life is good. Still my life is hard.

I’ve discovered a difference between those who succeed and those who fall short. Those who succeed dig in and hold on through the storm. I don’t mean merely wade through the storm. Rather, they look around and find some useful tools to help them best weather that storm.

In these storms I’ll frequently look around to acquire some useful tool to help me and frequently when I go to add it to my ‘character traits library,’ I’ll discover it’s already there.

“You mean I’ve had it all the time? I could have been enjoying it this entire time? It’s been right here?”

I once had a wise man pronounce to me, ‘trials are for defining your character to you.’ I suppose this is one of life’s best kept secrets … or most cliché phrases. You are stronger than you think you are.

And me… I’m a rock.

When One Moment Came That Stopped Me On A Dime

2010-04-11T23:16:00.002-06:00

Day 30: Listen to some words of wisdom.

My next thirty years I’m gonna settle all the scores,
Cry a little less, laugh a little more.
Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear,
Figure out just what I’m doing here. – Tim McGraw

So Fresh and So Clean

2010-04-10T23:53:00.003-06:00

Day 29: Clean house.

This was no figure of speech. To have a happy mind is to have an uncluttered mind. To have an uncluttered mind is to have a clean home.

I started with the abyss better known as my bedroom, moved to the living room, opened up a window in every room of the house to air it out, my roommate came home and jumped right in with the kitchen, and I completed six loads of laundry.

The vacuum was emptied three times, all of my hangers are being used, and there really is a desk in my bedroom.

C’mon. What more is there to recount? Happy? Check.

Ain't Gotta Rush (I Just Want To Take It Nice & Slow)

2010-04-09T23:02:00.001-06:00

Day 28: Go slow.

My eyes sleepily parted. The sun was shining through my window and I just wanted to sleep in. I pulled my cell from the night stand and looked at the time. 7:30AM.

If it had been any other day than Friday, I would have been up and moving by now. As it was, I placed the phone back, pulled the covers tighter around me, and rolled over for one more hour.

8:30AM. This time I needed to get up. I went to the bathroom and put in my contacts on the way back to my room. I climbed into bed and was easily reminded I am my mother’s daughter. Our family can sleep like champs.

I didn’t sleep though. I just needed a break from routine. I pulled open my laptop and watched an episode of Bones from the previous night.

9:55AM. After a text from my brother, a call to my sister, and an episode later, I showered and got ready for the day. Against the business casual normal, I pulled on a pair of jeans, a clean white shirt, and a black leather jacket.

11:20AM. I emerged downstairs. “It’s so nice being home all by myself. I wish I had so much more of this so much more often.”

11:45AM. I started the car to drive to work. As soon as it the engine came to life, the radio did too. It took me two seconds to realize it was too much for my slow morning. I immediately turned it off.

11:55AM. I logged in to my computer. I pulled up my email. There was one. I had been working on them all morning from my phone as they were coming in. Yet the truth of the matter was the morning was slow and I had dealt with a total of four emails in four hours.

12:00PM. “Well there you are. Are you coming?” one coworker of three asked as they were walking from our department towards the lobby.

“Where are you guys heading?” I inquired back.

“To the cafeteria. Are you coming?” he invited again.

“You guys go ahead. I have to return this one phone call and then I’ll be over.”

12:25PM. I strolled over to the corporate cafeteria. The place was empty. I easily spotted my friends tucked away in a corner of the seating area, placed my water bottle on the table, and proceeded to stand in line behind the only other person there. Our CEO.

1:15PM. I had just completed one of the most incredible conversations of my life and was still surprised to realize it involved the chief of our company. My head was reeling at the man and at the tender moments we shared getting to know one another better.

I disclosed more than I would usually find comfortable and he displayed remarkable interest in my stories. I am still astounded as I sit here and recall the incident.

2:00PM. We meandered back to our desk because someone had mentioned we ought to. It took us each five minutes to realize there was no work to be done. The day was uncannily slow.

2:07PM. Me and the coworker from the entry before last engaged in another conversation mostly comprised of a “return and report” nature.

4:00PM. “I’m going home,” I declared. This is nonsensical to stay any longer.

If ever there was a tolerable day to be employed by the man, today was it. It felt so nice to take everything back a notch and to move at a pace so contrary to everyday living.

Mental note: take one slow day per month. It’s good to refresh your inner clock every now and again.

To Kids From 20 To 92

2010-04-08T20:57:00.003-06:00

Day 27: Spa treatment!

Two weeks ago, my friend, S, walked into my living room, sat down, and started telling me a story. I was mesmerized. S’s face was glowing and my entire focus rested upon her skin.

I immediately stopped her and asked her why she looked so dang good. I knew I needed her secret. “Microdermabrasion,” she replied as simply as I queried.

So tonight I made my first appearance to receive a magical counteragent treatment to aging. The aesthetician asked me to take off my shoes, undress from the waist up, and climb onto the massage table under the sheet. This astonished me.

I’m no stranger to exhibition. Now I’m not like my sister, M, who seems to always be looking for a good reason to strip down and usually finds it in as simple an excuse as “it’s evening”. Yet, I’m not shy. Who knew the procedure would take an element of nudity to execute?

I climbed into the bed and that aspect alone brought about a level of peace. Me and massage tables have a quiet and satisfying relationship.

The aesthetician proceeded to cleanse my face via a hot white towel draped over my skin. It felt soothing. Relaxing. Calming. Amazing.

Then she continued to micro blast my skin from my forehead to my chest through my cleavage. It was so cool. I could feel the crystals sanding my skin in the most fragile way. Another hot white towel.

She continued to place the most deliciously scented mask all over the newly polished area. As she allowed it to completely saturate my skin, she commenced with a neck massage. Then a scalp massage. Then a back massage (while I faced up.) Ending with a foot massage. Again, another hot white towel.

All I know is I walked out of her wassail smelling establishment with an additional appointment for next Thursday.

And my face, it’s glowing!!

Maybe We'll Find Better Days

2010-04-07T19:05:00.000-06:00

Day 26: Be Surprised

Folks, I’ve officially evolved from recording something I did to evoke the sentiment of happiness to recording moments of happiness. What’s entirely cool about the experience is finding joy in things which have been present all along however placing myself in a mind frame to be able to recognize them.

I have often times mentioned my employment with a sour taste in my mouth. It is a place I feel so much consternation towards. Yet I work with some of the most wonderful people. Some of my coworkers have become some of my valued friends.

A male coworker of mine and I had been discussing on end lately a topic in our lives we both wish to improve. It has been incredible to find support in a place where improvement will be the most difficult to execute. The workplace.

Still it’s been fun to notice each other taking a stab at this betterment and being able to silently rejoice in the success with nothing more than an insider’s glance at one another upon our minimal victories.

Today I was tried to the nth degree in a situation anyone would have been justified in losing this battle to. Yet I prevailed.

Up jumped my male coworker who immediately and in the presence of anyone watching in our department embraced me in triumph.

Straightforward, unfiltered, affection in the face of elation. I was surprised but I was happy.

A Silver Lining

2010-04-06T23:04:00.003-06:00

Day 25: Hot tub in a snow storm.

The great state of Utah continues to flex its muscles.

Is it Spring you ask? Well apparently at home in Pennsylvania it’s summer. Meanwhile I had my wipers on high battling the frozen precipitation this state boasts of in the winter… in April.

SKI UTAH. Sure. I’m all for it. However... in April? I urge you to put your snow away.

Tonight at my friends' house, we rigged the television into the window sill and watched two hours worth of shows such as the Colbert Report while sitting in the sizzling, silky, ph balanced water which is the common hot tub.

Life is stinking good sometimes.

Follow the Leader?

2010-04-05T22:46:00.001-06:00

Day 24: Resolve to lead the troupe… next time.

I think it’s fair to say I’m a natural leader. This has been a luxury I have long since enjoyed.

But I remember a dynamic a little more than a decade ago where I was not so confident of this trait within me. In high school, it seemed there was a fine balance between influencing and being influenced. At least there was for me.

You wanted to speak up and be heard; it’s what made you a leader and what gave you voice.

Surprisingly, half of being a leader was just having the guts to grab the mic and say something. I believe people are generally listening and watching for someone to do or say something so they can more easily and also more passively agree or disagree.

As an adult, I have become comfortable in life securing that mic and giving my opinion freely from it. Sometimes it is well received. Sometimes it is not.

There is a group with which I associate on a regular basis. I am surprised to have seen our dynamic shift many times in the course of the relationship.

Today I sat at lunch in the throes of conversation and in an effort to influence them kept finding myself being influenced by them. I clearly could discern this fact and yet could find little sway over the matter.

I walked away from it disappointed. I felt stripped of my maturity and witnessed the return of a fifteen year old girl within me desperately wanting approval, desperately seeking to fit in and be cool.

While putting myself through the ringer, I remembered, half of being a leader is losing a fight. After all, people want to feel like they elected you rather than feel ruled by you.

Don’t seek to control others. Seek to influence them.

I Know The Answers Lie Far From This World

2010-04-04T23:05:00.002-06:00

Day 23: Free write.

For the past two weeks, I’ve had the most atypical and quite frankly anomalous song in my head. The composers. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The song. Any Dream Will Do.

And not the prologue version. The finale. The Any Dream Will Do completed by the final vindicated lyrics of “give me my colored coat.”

You’re singing it, huh? “May I return, to the beginning, the light is dimming, and the dream is too. The world and I, we are still waiting, still hesitating, ANY DREAM WILL DO… (dut dut dut dut duh)… give me my colored coat, my amazing colored coat.”

What if the bohemian writers of Happy Feet were right and we all have a “heartsong” inside of us? Only it can and does change with your standing in life?

Why is my suppressed soul singing Sir Webber and what does it all mean right now?

Yeah. You’ve all just witnessed one of many random musings I entertain in my psyche at any given time.

But The World Is Sleeping

2010-04-03T20:15:00.002-06:00

Day 22: Embrace your spiritual side.

Four years ago, I was approached by an older man at a luncheon I was attending. Our conversation started light but rapidly grew intense as he made a comment about the peculiar nature of my aura. Yep, you heard me.

Caught off guard, I sought clarification. What color was it? What did it mean? What was peculiar about it?

I didn’t ask one question as he merely answered them as though he were picking thoughts out of my head. It was two colors, which wasn’t as uncommon as the mixture of the two colors I was sporting at that time.

I was fascinated with him. My desire to dive into my unconscious was strong and despite what I had been taught, to steer clear of psychics and the likes, I was captivated. However, I didn’t have it in me to blatantly seek out anything more about me.

I allowed him to speak about my aura and decided that would be it. So we pressed forward in another vein as soon as he had completed his elaboration on the aforementioned subject. We spoke of my job and my family and frankly little else.

Our encounter lasted under 5 minutes. Yet as I was departing from him, he pulled me aside and in an intimate fashion barely whispered towards my ear and candidly declared, “You are one of the most spiritual creatures I have ever met.”

I looked at him for a second entirely disarmed. I fumbled for the only retort I could offer in explanation.

“Well you know how orthodox our religion…”

He promptly cut me off. “I didn’t say religious. I said spiritual.”

I stared in disbelief. I knew, as certain as I breathe now, how accurate this statement was regarding me. I have always known it. It was one of the very first things I had ever come to learn about myself.

He expounded, “Should you never have been religious, you still would have been highly spiritual.” He finished with a prediction, the second of two made by him in our short visit.

The first was entirely flawed and erroneous. Yet the second I’ve never shared with anyone and am loosely waiting to see what happens.

I try to be a religious girl. It is not something which comes easily to me and my way of life. A single gal of my age should be out painting the town red every weekend and occasionally weeknight.

Yet I feel extremely anchored to a higher being. Bound by morals I feel would exist with or without religion. So I lead a rather conservative standard of living.

Today I listened intently as men from severely traditional times past counseled those within the sound of their voice. Those who are presently apart of a chaotic contemporary existence removed from the era of the speakers' maturation.

I’m not here to claim one generation superior or enlightened to another. I believe there is no better, only different. Nonetheless I discerned, truth now was truth then and I expect truth as it has always been so long as it has existed.

This much I know. Any honest seeker of truth can find it. You only need look as far as your spiritual self will allow and the rest, the rest will all shake out in the wash.

A Weekend Off

2010-04-02T23:53:00.000-06:00

Day 21: Forget it’s a Friday night.

As a single girl, my social life has a lot to do with what evening of the week it is. Fridays are big. Saturdays are bigger. I decided to forfeit my social self for one evening to see what it would yield.

I listened as my peers discussed their weekend plans. I declined invitations to join them. I was surprised to feel as much anxiety as I did while my uneventful evening crept nearer to reality.

I reiterate again my “go go go” approach to my social life. I never slow down and I have a feeling this has been a detriment to me in some way. I can’t pinpoint it. The notion or the reasoning behind it. It just felt important to do this.

Slowing down through all of this has been good. I’ve had to slow down to think of and execute as well as record these happenings. I don’t honestly know yet what I will harvest from this.

I left work and meandered to my friend, A’s, home. She’s been like a sister to me for as long as I’ve known her, which has been the better part of ten years. So I had to laugh when upon entering her living room at 2:30pm, she asked, “Again?”

This last month of emotional turmoil for me has generated quite a few of these half-workday tearful afternoons.

Thankfully, this was not like that. I smiled at her and sat on her couch talking to a girl I have stayed up with late on many nights. Even though our late nights have evolved into afternoons with her kids, she is family to me and I knew how I wanted to spend my Friday evening.

I left A and went home to my apartment. This place produces mixed emotions for me. I ascended the stairs to my room, closed the door, slipped into bed and pulled up my laptop.

Chapter one of the evening. Catch up on an episode, any missed episode.

Chapter two. Take a nap. While everyone else in the city is getting gussied up, sleep off the anxiety.

Chapter three. Wake up and smile at the daylight.

Chapter four. Contact the brother who wanted the New Moon dvd the previous night and see if he and the wife still want to borrow it.

Chapter five. Score an invite to the only place in the valley you want to be on your technical evening off. With family.

I decided to forfeit my social self for one evening to see what it would yield. I imagine I’m not surprised to see it involved the people who usually are around to see you fall and still regularly are the ones to help you back up.

Set You Free

2010-04-01T22:27:00.004-06:00

Day 20: Speak the truth.

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson

It’s hard not to notice my blogs degrading in content and quality. The truth is, no one can write about happiness for thirty days and be able to say something entertaining and eloquent consistently.

The truth is, in the beginning it was about a list of things I wanted to do to proactively encourage a smile in others which would provoke one from me.

The truth is, there has been so much happening behind the scenes than I wish to share with an audience anymore. This project has long since migrated away from a checklist and metamorphosed into a feeling which I am happy to report more easily penetrates my life.

My mother used to say the people who need the most love are the most unlovable. Tragic, huh?

When I started this gig, I needed a little love. I had just come away from something leaving me feeling rejected and unlovable. The fates are funny like that. It feels as though the emotionally rich get richer and the emotionally poor get poorer.

Luckily, there are ways to find that much needed validation and it usually comes from forgetting about yourself.

Last week, I received a text from a person I least expected and honestly from someone who has been instrumental of late in creating an environment in which I feel unloved. We’ve been sharing little bits and pieces back and forth. However, I am truly guarded.

Today is felt nice to have a moment when I could look him in the eye and while tears streamed from mine, tell him how much he hurt me.

Speak the truth.

I’m glad I did it. I don’t think it changed anything. I certainly don’t think most boys, especially this boy, are emotionally capable enough of understanding the emotional journey of a woman, much less a woman like me.

Nevertheless, I would not have been able to speak this truth twenty days ago and I have every reason to believe it is because I have built for myself a world where I am happy outside of him or any other.

This Door Is Always Open

2010-03-31T23:33:00.002-06:00

Day 19: What makes you happy?

I have a friend who has been as close to me as any I’ve ever had. We’ve been through good times and bad but mostly just some really great times. I love her. I love her family which she has easily and generously shared with me.

She is married and the mother of three. She is beautiful. She is rational. She is truly the jelly to my peanut butter. We approach life differently and we are currently living nearly opposite lives.

But I love her so much. I will never understand how this match ever came to be. I know how it works. Many times it has been said “opposites attract” and she married a male version very similar to me.

As I drove home from work, she phoned me to tell me she was going to the store to get candy for her kids’ Easter baskets. She asked me if I wanted to tag along.

Absolutely. Anytime I get one on one time with her, I’m stoked. It’s hard to share one of the best friends I’ve ever made with a spouse, children, neighbors, etc… She is good to me. I know when she asks me which candy I love most, it’s because I will reap some of Sunday’s spoils.

I don’t know if she is making the biggest difference in the world, but she is making the biggest difference in the world to me. I’m inspired by her.

Tonight I had a meeting with a spiritual leader who I esteem highly. However, I was greeted by his executive secretary first. This young man, this peer of mine, visited with me for about ten minutes. In the ten minutes we shared, he asked if I was dating anyone.

I explained my classic story of girl meets boy, girl and boy become very close, girl falls in love with boy, and boy doesn’t feel the same. You know, regular Hollywood stuff. Heartbrokenly ever after.

In a world of people missing opportunities to connect with one another, this guy took it. At the end of the thirty second recap, he frankly stated the boy to be a fool. Then we shared a connection. He impressed me.

I work at a large corporation and have one thousand co-workers. Our company’s CEO and other executive administrators are fairly tucked away from us. Yet I have managed to put myself on the radar with them. They have talked with me, laughed with me, and even bought me lunch. I am fortunate to mingle with them and observe their expertise.

What makes me happy? People make me happy.

One Size Does NOT Fit All

2010-03-31T10:04:00.003-06:00

Addendum to my music appreciation lesson.

For those of you who are looking for something prettier, I'm suggesting Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata 1st Movement. I will even spoon feed it to you here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq4G3KRAuXc

Certainly you will enjoy this one!

Breather

2010-03-30T23:54:00.001-06:00

Day 18: Know when to break.

When it's midnight and end of month at work, take a blogging sabbatical. Smile. Now go to bed.

From Romanticism To The 20th Century

2010-03-29T23:33:00.003-06:00

Day 17: Share a piece of you with the world.

It seems to me nowadays, everyone keeps a secure lockdown on their inner selves to the world. So I figured I’d share a piece of me with you to combat any natural tendencies I may have lingering in the wake of an experience or two.

Tonight I present to you, after a very professionally difficult and emotionally stressful day, my top five songs I decompress to at work, home, or wherever else I may deem necessary. Of course they share matching genres but I listen to them in the same order each time.

Don’t rush the calm. Peace feels sweeter when you allow the unyielding angst to soften, liquefy, and then dissolve from your being.

5. Sergei Prokofiev – Toccata in D Minor Op 11: I love this piece. I always start with this toccata because although it may not be the most soothing classical piece out there, it is a piece which acts as a showcase for any virtuoso pianist. Every time I hear it, I dream about being THIS good. A piece so technically challenging, the composer himself confessed, while good with his technique, he was not good enough to master it. Uh-may-zing. (youtube the Vladimir Horowitz version. Wait until 3 minutes and 30 seconds into it until you hit that sweet spot (known as the theme) after those chromatic scales and repeating D’s… you’re welcome.)

4. Johann Sebastian Bach – Cello Suite No 1 G Major AND No 2 in D Minor: Though titled The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, most recognize them as the cello suites. I refuse to allow the commercialism of the first movement to offput me from the genius which is Bach even outside of the piano. I don’t care how many jewelry companies have corrupted these pieces in advertisements, I love them. Also I want to have the framed sheet music of the first movement hung as art in my home. It’s a visual masterpiece. (The melodic swelling from about 1 minute and 45 seconds until 2 minutes and 15 seconds.)

3. Frederic Chopin – Etude Op 10 No 3: Perhaps better known as his Etude in E, this piece stills my mind. I have a sentimental connection for it as I know it to be one of my mother’s very favorites. She would play and replay it over in the car and it is one of few pieces I ever heard my mom rewind and start again upon completion. Finally, I was asked to play this piece for my entire high school my junior year as National Honor Society inductees were announced. (Obviously I was not inducted as I sat in a corner of the stage creating an ambiance.) Playing publically and classically can be unnerving. Yet this piece was powerful enough in tranquility to easily combat both of those emotions.

2. Sergei Rachmaninoff – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op 43 Variation XVIII: If you say 18th Variation to most pianists, they’ll know what piece you’re referencing. When I think back to my piano lessons, I think of my semi-Nazi teacher (oh but she was goooood) who commenced every lesson with scales, scales, and more scales. I am still faster at chromatic scales than any other person I’ve ever challenged. But on weeks when we did arpeggios, it just made mathematical sense to me. I enjoyed arpeggios. Even as cliché as this piece is, maybe I find it so soothing to hear those full keyboard arpeggio scales being pounded out in the middle of the piece. (youtube the Arthur Rubinstein version and you’ll get chills.)

1. Johannes Brahms – Klavierstucke, Op 118 No 2: The man invented the lullaby many times over. This is NOT his lullaby you are familiar with. This is nirvana. I lay my tongue to rest. If you listen to any piece listed here now, this one, I beg of you. (Go Go Go!)

Enjoy!

A Transcendental Hour

2010-03-28T23:13:00.001-06:00

Day 16: Actively meditate.

Experience then move on.

I sat silently in the middle of the couch in an empty living room in a vacant house. The blinds to our front window were pulled up revealing one of the prettiest views of the setting golden sun against a snow-capped mountain with a clear blue sky for a backdrop.

It looked as beautiful as it sounds. Just when it seemed as though this painting was perfect, the moon crested the mountains and I couldn’t believe the sheer size and whiteness of it. Was it full? I glanced at the clock to see what time it was. 7:42PM on the most magnificently stunning, noiseless evening in over two years for me.

There was no television. There was no music. There were no stimuli.

Previously in the day, my mind drifted upon an earlier friend from a different time in my life. I was looking through my email searching for a specific letter I once sent and I stumbled upon another email thread with this friend.

My heart ached all over again as I re-faced some of the experiences we shared. Nostalgia has a way of romanticizing the past and I dove emotionally into an area I probably would have been better off not reliving.

So when I sat gaping towards the purple mountained majesty which was my front yard this evening, I decided to meditate. One full hour. Come what may.

In stillness, I watched the sun’s light wan as the moon’s light waxed. The sky went from a visible light blue to a heavy dark blue bowing in modesty before the fierce pose the fire white moon struck.

Another evening ushered in. Another chapter.

I am waiting right now for the response to something big. Something which will greatly impact my quality of life for the next little while.

Once I see this through, like the day, I am ready for another chapter.

Then Wake Up & Do Something More

2010-03-27T23:55:00.002-06:00

Day 15: Wake up early and do something.

I’ve spent the better part of my life missing life before 8AM. I imagine my theory behind this was to see what exactly I am missing.

Well, I suppose I will never find out what happens WELL before 8AM.

Eight o’clock in the morning is the time I woke up this morning. However, I contest this still counts because I sacrificed a day to sleep in for a day to get going while others were sleeping in.

I had taken my mobile phone in my hands to look at the time no sooner than it started to ring. My friend, S, was phoning and there are a handful of people I answer the phone for while I’m in bed. S is one of those.

“Hello, girl,” I groggily croaked.

“Good Morning, E! What are you doing right now? What are your plans for the day?” she chirped cheerfully into my ear.

“Nothing. I have nothing planned yet.”

“Well then I’ll be at your house in a half hour. I need to go to Salt Lake to pick out bridesmaid dresses for all of us bridesmaids.”

“Yay,” I murmured in monotone. “I’ll get ready.”

Without missing a beat, I put down the phone and immediately got out of bed. I knew I wasn’t going to shower. I knew I would only pull on some old jeans and a top. I knew all of this would take me 5 minutes.

But I knew today was my fourth attempt to execute this early morning gig and I just couldn’t handle another failed endeavor.

I was out of bed. I looked around. Should I read? Should I listen to music? Should I clean my room? What do people do when they are up early and are not early risers.

So I knelt. Beside my bed I knelt. I rested upon the mattress as if I were preparing for prayer.

Of course I ended up praying. What else was that position going to lead to? I hadn’t intended to pray and yet there I found myself prepared for no other task but that one.

I finished and straight away rolled onto my bum. Now what? I gazed out my window and up at the clear blue sky. Today was sunny and beautiful and I was just excited to get started.

So I picked up some clothes, put away some shoes, and hung up a towel.

You know, waking up early probably means more to someone with a routine. Exercise. Meditation. Whatever. I'm glad this morning only provided me with thirty minutes of reverence versus an hour or two of such.

Still, by the time 3PM had rolled around, I had been to Salt Lake City and back. I had spent quality time with a dear friend. I had been to the gas station, mall, and grocery store. And I was with my roommate headed out for a tanning session.

However most importantly, I had been up and about for seven hours per my usual Saturday three. Yes. There is something to be said for the productivity of the morning hours.

Doing Some Dishes

2010-03-26T19:09:00.002-06:00

Day 14: Unburden yourself from the unnecessary.

A plate can only hold so much. If you need to add something to it, remember to clear something from it.

This week, I had a few unpreventable scenarios come up which added to my plate. It is so easy for me to feel overwhelmed to the point of paralysis.

However today, I actively refused to be paralyzed by my load and actively unloaded some burdens. I did it in the form of bills.

I am fortunate to sufficiently have enough money for my needs. I’m lucky to say I can pay all my bills every month in totality. Yet, do I?

I have no excuses. There are times I slothfully dream of an assistant to look after the details of my life. I could tell you I’m so busy but exhaustion seems more accurate and also more defining of my indolent behavior.

Let me clear up a matter. I pay my bills. Rent. Car. Insurance. Utilities.

It’s the non-routine bills I struggle with. The two unpaid parking tickets. Why not just pay them? Because I want to fight the one. A car occupying three-fourths white curb and a quarter red should not be ticketed, right? Etc…

Today, I seated myself in front of my computer and minimized every work occupied window. I dug into my handbag for my wallet and pulled out my bank card. These bills would be paid in full and off of my mind, today.

I carefully brought up the websites to allow my payment, entered in passwords, and supplied billing information. When completed, I reviewed my 401K and increased my deposited amount. I phoned my broker and discussed my options for current and future investments.

Still most importantly, I devised a new found budget and implemented it immediately. I allotted a weekly amount to myself, went to the bank, withdrew the cash and am allowing myself to spend only that which I have allocated. IE. Until the cash is gone.

Perhaps there is no un-burdening which employs happiness more than financial freedom.

Happy as a clam from my spring cleaning, I booked a trip to Hawaii in the beginning of May for my friend and me. I get it. I'm ridiculous. Still, soon I'll be bronze and ridiculous.

Now I'm Feeling It Even More

2010-03-25T23:36:00.001-06:00

Day 13: Don’t give up on your goal… I mean, goals… I mean, dreams.

This is a double edged task as I’m waning in my desire to stick out thirty days. I will stick out thirty days. However, the ironic life parallel is not lost on me.

My favorite “getting skinnier everyday” Gopher Tortoise talked with me last night until 1 o’clock her time which is a big deal for a mom of four. I know she loves me. Amidst all of the giggling and messing around, she gave me one of the best little pep talks I’ve had in awhile.

Whilst discussing how we could help out someone who was in a rough situation, she frankly declared we couldn’t. What followed was a stream of thoughts about people having their agency and how so much of what is going on in our lives at any given time has much to do with our choices.

The best part of this philosophy is this. You have a lot more control over your life than you may realize.

She continued talking about obtaining her little slice of heaven here on earth, elaborating on the choices she makes to get her what she wants.

While listening to her speak, it kind of hit me. The question isn’t IF you can have a slice of heaven here on earth. The answer to that is not only yes but it’s what you’re here for. The question is WHAT are you doing to get your slice of heaven here on earth?

Everyone has aspirations. The romantics call them dreams. The logical call them goals. Still the objective is the same. In the end you’re looking for your little slice of heaven here on earth. I’ve been writing about mine for fourteen days now.

So make a choice today which will bring you closer to your heaven. And by all means, don’t give up on those dreams.

Yes, You Can

2010-03-24T23:54:00.002-06:00

Day 12: Think. Don’t do.

If you want something, you have to go out and get it, right? Yeah, but I think sometimes you have to put up your sails and allow the wind to do its job.

It was on a summer evening after dinner was eaten and the dishes were done. I was twelve-ish years old. Some of my siblings were gathered together watching television. I was in the back of the living room on a blue leather couch reading a book watching the sun set.

I looked on as the glowing orb fell below the horizon but left a bright orange sky behind. I inspected in awe as the sky blushed from red into orange and somehow through purple and then blue. My view from the front windows through which I peered afforded me a kaleidoscope of colors as the empty green meadowed landscape slipped into a rainbow of atmosphere.

The last two hours of daylight. I love it.

Today after work, I sleepily crept through the backdoor of my apartment to find no one home yet. I climbed the flight of stairs to my room and was immediately seized by the setting sun’s blazing gold light pouring through the west windows.

I walked into the bedroom and sat down on the floor where most of the beams were deposited. Sitting Indian style, my mind gathered every tiny detail it could about the conditions so it could store it away in the stockpile which was that emotion.

I have thousands of those memories, no two the same, yet each one so similar in content. Upon quick reference, the feeling seems to be happiness. Upon further inspection, depth and clarity of the memories afford a much stronger resemblance to peace.

Where there is peace, I can promise you there is happiness. Sometimes the only way to extend an invitation to peace is to make friends with silence. So stop moving.

I Have No Excuse

2010-03-23T11:14:00.002-06:00

Day 11: Do something you find embarrassing.

This one only made it on my list a few days ago while conversing with a friend. We were talking about the difference between our happiest times in life and not. I straightforwardly declared, “you start feeling like crap the moment you take yourself too seriously.”

Ding. Ding. I didn’t realize how quickly the time to do something embarrassing would come.

My friend A is the world’s best deal finding, coupon clipping, penny saving woman I know. She can usually make money on a transaction. Pair this board game weekly savings with a $5 dollar back store coupon then after she mails in the rebate, she’s somehow earned money.

Several of my favorite texts have become A’s midday communication regarding some absurd deal. However today at 3 o’clock, I couldn’t help but laugh at the text I received.

“RC Willey is selling the New Moon DVD for $8.95 in case you want to own it. ;)”

I found myself in a moral dilemma. I am more than willing to tell you I have read all of the books. I am more than willing to tell you I received the boxed book set this past Christmas as a gift.

I am also more than willing to tell you how last year, some of my friends who usually call me up to borrow from my movie collection phoned looking for Twilight. I explained to them I didn’t have it. When they inquired how this could be so, I elaborated simply by relating there was no way I could ever respect myself if I ever purchased that movie.

At the end of August last summer, I received the movie Twilight as one of my birthday gifts from a friend. We all shared a good laugh over it.

So today’s text conflicted me. One: Was New Moon’s release date today? (Secretly I’m giddy for June’s third installment and this just means I’m that much closer.) Two: I already own the first movie. What can’t I respect about it all? My owning or my purchasing? Three: Can you really ever pass up a deal for the two disc, widescreen, special edition version of any movie for $8.95?

I picked up my phone and called the friend who gifted me the first movie. “What should I do?” I queried. She frankly told me to buy it right away and to head to her house where she would provide the pizza if I brought the movie.

So for something embarrassing. I left work at 4:30 feeling as dirty as a mistress knowing she’s en route for the motel rendezvous.

“Was I really going to do this?” I couldn’t stop questioning myself. But alas I parked the car outside of the RC Willey outlet. It was on the way home and I literally didn’t have to drive one foot out of my way to get there.

I snatched my wallet out of my purse and shuffled through the entrance. I kept my head tucked down and was approached by my first salesman. To know RC Willey is to know everyone working there earns commissions from their sales. The employees are like vultures.

“Can I help you with anything,” he asked and I curtly replied I was fine. But I wasn’t. I looked around. I could see the couches. I could see the mattresses. I could see the washers and dryers. I could even see the televisions and electronics. Yet I could not see the DVDs.

I felt as mortified as those “standing naked in the town square” dreams leave you feeling. Did I really have to ask someone where the DVDs were?

“Excuse me. Where can I find the DVDs?”

“Aw, you must be here for New Moon,” he replied.

“Actually I’m not, “ I countered in as bold faced a lie I ever told. He pointed me in the right direction and it took me seconds to realize all of the shame I harbored was for nothing. I couldn’t find the movie. The fates were against me. Mocking me in my un-truths.

Exasperated, I looked towards the cashier for help. “Are these all the movies you have?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she responded. “Are you looking for New Moon because we’ve sold out of that
one?”

“Nope, I’m just browsing,” and I felt my soul slowly slipping away. I was a murderer. A slayer of the truth. No, I was delusional. Had I completely lost touch with reality and my factual reason for being in this very establishment?

I quickly moved toward the exit only to be approached by another 3 salesmen or so. With my eyes glued to the floor, I exited the building and briskly walked to the car.

Still I pulled out my phone and as nimbly as my fingers worked, I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I had immediately googled the RC Willey in the bordering town and was mid-dial before I felt a new wave of anxiety.

Was I really going to do this? Was there any force to step in and save my self-dignity?

I suppose not, because I was beyond securing the information by that point. Yes, indeed they had the movie and would I like them to reserve one for me. I answered the best I could. No, thank you.

This RC Willey was no outlet. The square footage was tripled which meant the distance between me and the movie was tripled. All the way in the back far corner. This also meant the number of salesmen had tripled. These were their sharpest dressed and smoothest tongued creatures reserved for battles waged against the middle class working man.

Immediately I was approached and I shortly inquired, “DVDs?” He pointed to the back. I hastily marched through the furniture which stood as road blocks aimed to divert my straight arrow tactic from point A to point B.

I listened as I heard one salesman enlighten a shopper, “and if you spend $1000 today, we will throw in a copy of Harry Potter for free.”

Just when you think you are free from humiliation and disgrace, the only thing between you and the movie is the cashier requesting your phone number, email address, and other personal information to set up nothing short of a line of credit.

The last thing I needed was this purchase, of ALL of the purchases I make this year, to be so closely linked to my very identity.

“Is this necessary? I just want to buy the movie for my friend as a gift. She will absolutely love this.” What the heck was wrong with me? This was it. The point of sale. I couldn’t finish the transaction without a final lie? No under aged werewolf, I mean vampire, fine I mean werewolf was worth it.

So with all of the false information I could summon spur of the moment relayed, I walked out having sold my soul for a total of nine dollars and fifty-three cents.

If you want to borrow it, please call. Heaven knows I’ve paid the price for it.

But I laughed all the way to the car, all the way through the movie, and I’m even laughing now while writing this. I’m absolutely ridiculous.

Zzzzzzz

2010-03-22T22:41:00.001-06:00

Day 10: Take a nap.

The objective was to slow down.

I’m incredibly social. Butterflies have nothing on me. I actually have anxiety at the thought of missing out on anything. Consequently, I spend the better part of my life doing everything.

My roommate is always making fun of me. “What are you doing tonight?” she’ll ask at 5:30PM after a hard day at work and my butt seems parked on the couch watching TV.

“Nothing. I just need a break. I’m staying home tonight,” I’ll answer.

“No you won’t. You always say that and then you always go out anyway.”

She’s right. I have probably once in the two years of living with her said I would stay home the entire evening and then stayed home an entire evening.

I’m getting older and though you may expect me to state how tired my body is, I’m considerably more laden down by how tired my mind is.

Tonight, I came home from playing with friends. It was an early night for me. I strolled into an empty apartment and staggered into the living room. The street lamps cast shadows on our walls and I fell down into the couch for a moment to think.

My mind started racing. Even though I knew the east coast was two hours ahead and my sister, a mother of four, was probably in bed, I still decided to call her. Because I had a financial question. And if I can get just one more thing off my mind, maybe I’ll feel less exhausted.

However, I digress. Today at work, things were slow. I was doing my best to proactively keep my mind from drifting on a day whose mental equation was perfectly constructed to do so.

I slouched in my work chair replaying a moment of the morning over and over again. I just needed a nap. If only I could take a nap, I don’t know, maybe it would all be better.

Then the idea came. Go home and take a nap.

Ten minutes later I was peeling off my boots, slipping out of my dress, and sliding into bed.

There is nothing better than going against the masses. I think it’s why I prefer being a night owl. I feel peace when I know others are tucked away in their beds resting. While they sleep, I’ll grocery shop, do laundry, or go for a drive to clear my mind.

Napping in the middle of the workday gave me the same kind of high. Only the sun was out. I turned my phone to vibrate. Trust me. There was a smile on my face as I effortlessly fell asleep.

Pages I've Wasted

2010-03-21T11:57:00.002-06:00

Day 9: Journal unfiltered.

Being so honest in my writing is cathartic. So you’d be surprised how much I filter in my journal.

Each day I carry in my handbag a wallet, a journal, a notebook, and no fewer than ten lip glosses. I carry the wallet to live my life, the journal to feel my life, and the notebook to feel my life honestly.

When I contemplate the idea of my journals being read by future posterity, I’m excited. I have spent a good deal of my existence thinking, evaluating, and recording. I’ve been a scientist to the human condition or at the very least MY human condition. I have asked questions, hypothesized, conducted experiments, and secured personal conclusions.

Still with all of the completed journals I own, I’m embarrassed by entry number two EVER of an eight year old girl declaring her love for Luke Perry. I sat there as an eighteen year old re-reading shamefully in my condemning handwriting my ridiculousness. Needless to say, I’ve been filtering ever since.

Now when I feel something I would rather not pass along to forthcoming generations, I pull out the notebook and compose unabashedly.

Today I thought about one affair of the last twelve months which deeply affected me. And then I wrote it. I wrote it ALL out. I wrote until my hand hurt, then took a break, then continued writing more. I wrote the good, the bad, and the ugly. I wrote what I love about how I handled it and I wrote what I would have changed if I ever could.

Today I gifted myself the gift of earnestness.

Breaking Bread

2010-03-20T10:39:00.003-06:00

Day 8: Lunch with friends.

"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it’s the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him...” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

A dear friend joined me early in the morning and sat by my side watching VH1’s top 20 countdown. This is how I know she loves me. Not because she dislikes the show rather I know she’d prefer to do anything else in the world then watch TV on a Saturday morning.

When the number one video had aired, it was time to formulate some plans. A gal should get out of the house every day, period. Whether she has four kids or is a single as a dollar bill.

While driving to the mall, I received a text requesting a lunch date. Lunch was on the docket with the friend whose presence I was currently partaking in but alas we prioritized the episode and included another.

After being distributed our menus in California Pizza Kitchen, happiness was easily secured as a good game of “Marry, Screw, or Kill” quickly ensued. (Don’t know what it is? Easy. Matt Damon, George Clooney, Brad Pitt. Get it now? You can judge all you’d like but I love the game and laugh easily when playing it.)

Still the best part of the lunch was the dreamy dark haired, fiercely blue eyed boy sitting diagonally adjacent to me.

I spent the better part of 45 minutes locking eyes with him, looking away from him, and simply lusting after him. I feel happy that after nearly a month, I WANT to look at another man like that. (In the vein of all girl lunches being giddy, I frankly declared to my companions, “I want to have sex with him.” Oh, who cares?)

So it was easy to write a note thanking him for being eye candy to have our server deliver to him.

Makes It Worth The While

2010-03-19T23:41:00.001-06:00

Day 7: Revel in a happy memory.

This assignment serves as a reminder of fate’s fickle hand and is as simple as targeting the concept “this too shall pass.”

I’ve been in the most tumultuous relationship for a little more than two years.

When we met, I thought the fit was as good as I could ever hope to secure. I found the match advantageous for me in every way. But it only took a week for me to quickly discover I was in way over my head.

However, I fought for this connection. I rolled up my sleeves and dug in as I had never in my life done before. I had quit far easier affairs over much less.

As is unavoidable, the more I invested myself into this relationship, the more I felt inclined to sacrifice for this relationship. The more I sacrificed for this relationship, the more love I cultivated in the relationship.

Six months later, when I felt as though I was comfortably settling in to this association, I was hit by a devastating blow which almost divided me from my partner forever.

By some enormous miracle, I refused to give up my baby and this time I pulled on some boots and hiked up my pants to match my sleeves to go at it once more.

My constant companion of these past two years has been my job. I have given it my all and beyond. I have poured more blood, sweat, and tears into this endeavor than I have anything else in my life ever.

My happy memory is simply this. On my white board at work is a lavender post-it whose edges have dry-erase remnant on them and whose corners are curling.

It reads simply: Stop Smiling So Much!

The post-it was modestly left on my desk by a co-worker who watched me come out of my boss’s office upon acquiring the news of my hard earned promotion after a couple rounds of excruciating interviewing six months ago.

As is customary, the news is confidential until every candidate has been notified and an official communication goes out from management.

I love this crinkled souvenir from one of the happiest days of my life.

You Should Know...

2010-03-18T23:56:00.003-06:00

Day 6: Find a product you love and rave about it.

Initially, I just wanted a good excuse to go to the store and spend a bunch of frivolous money on products I never allow myself to buy in the name of happiness.

I placed this on my “happy list” the first night I was in bed with my mind racing through this 30 day thing over and over again.

One of the most impactful things I learned from a human behavior class regarding happiness has long since stuck with me. Your happiness at any given time depends on your ability to define yourself. Strengths. Weaknesses. Likes. Dislikes. Clinically we call it self-actualization.

Often times in the throes of marital or personal dissatisfaction, we frequently hear, “I just don’t know who I am anymore,” or any derivative of that concept (who he is anymore, he/she’s not who I married, I feel lost, etc…)

There is even an entire movie built around this premise. Runaway Bride. Essentially a happy person is a person who at the end of the day can not only tell you how they like their eggs but do so easily and quickly.

You will see this theme frequently from the heroes of historical narratives and most powerfully, the Savior of the universe nearly always introduces Himself by defining who He is.

“I am the Alpha and Omega. I am the beginning and the end. I am the light and the life, I am holy,” etc… and perhaps His most authoritative self declaration, “I am the Lord your God.”

Nevertheless, I’m not here to preach a sermon and this is not a collegiate course.

Finding a product was to be a process in which I found happiness through finding me. But I didn’t have to spend frivolous money after all.

Tonight I sat in front of the TV with friends and I began a process I have easily done one hundred times in the past year.

I took off and put on nail polish. I LOVE THIS HABIT.

I love painting my nails. I have been dedicated to the practice at least once every three days for the past year plus. I enjoy the clean finished look. I enjoy the feminine touch it adds to an outfit or my own personal confidence.

I am an OPI freak and can tell you the names of every single color I own. I can delineate between the collections. I love painting my nails.

Honestly, in all of the entries I’ve posted so far, I like this one the most. It makes me the happiest.

I am H and N’s daughter. I am one of many siblings. I love the sun and the ocean. Loyalty is the most important character trail to me.

I love linens especially high thread count sheets and big bright beach towels. I try to laugh often and to get others to laugh with me. I love seeing movies on opening night.

I am lactose intolerant but can’t resist oreos and milk. I am a naturally cheerful person. I love long hugs when you can feel the adoration of the other towards you. I am a night person.

And I LOVE painting my nails.

Eating Ebelskivers Emotionally - Who? Me?

2010-03-17T22:46:00.006-06:00

Day 5: Try a brand new recipe.

My intention for slipping a toe into the world of domesticity was to widen my experience in being a “jack of all trades.”

I enjoy people. My business, my livelihood, my very keep depends on me relating to people. The reason I excel at it is because I genuinely enjoy people.

Yet to relate to many different types of people is to find a common interest to build a relationship on. I enjoy and seek opportunities to be a “jack of all trades.” Trust me. I’m aware I’m the master of none.

So for this task, I put feelers out to my friends. It went like this.

E: I need a recipe I’ve never made before.
S: Ooohh, aebelskivers.
E: What?
S: Aebelskivers. They’re Scandinavian and delicious and you’re going to love them.
E: Say it again.
S: Aebelskivers.
E: Are you kidding me?
S: Aebelskivers. They’re Scandinavian and delicious and you’re going to love them.
E: What the heck. (Her enthusiasm alone sold me.)

Aebelskivers. If you search them online, you’ll want to search for ebelskivers because they’re “Scandinavian and delicious” but unless you can find the little symbol which will run the A and the E into each other, you might as well submit to our Americanized spelling of it.

You’re searching for them online because you’re going to need a special pan to make them.

I started by making the dinner appointment for after work. I sadly moseyed into my friend’s house, and immediately laid face down into the carpet on the living room floor.

Then I had a meltdown.

As actively as anyone is in finding joy in life, every now and then a rough day is going to creep in and I suppose it’s my fault for peeing in the pool.

Upon returning to my mission, my blonde haired, blue eyed friend asked if I remembered the buttermilk. The only ingredient she asked me to bring.

Enter expletive. Back into the car and off to the store we went. (We both drink soy milk, so before you offer up the vinegar/cow milk trick, it was off the table in this instance.)

I basically forsook my Irish heritage on this St. Patrick’s Day for a Danish indulgence which obviously reminded me of the Chronicle of Narnia’s Turkish Delight.

I'm Peter (clearly) in the white witch's sleigh (the grips of boy) trading my birthright (a proper Irish adult beverage) for temporary relief (aebelskivers.)

The result is a pan fried ball scone crepe crispy smooshy spongy pastry pancake piece of goodness. How to eat it includes but is not limited to butter, powdered sugar, jam, chocolate fudge, cream cheese spread, syrup, or any combination if not a combination of all of the above (which I did.)

These aebelskivers were EXACTLY the perfectly fit recipe, from the perfectly matched company, to remedy the perfectly sour disposition, combating the perfectly rotten four o’clock, of an otherwise perfectly decent holiday.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

5 Chords and the Half-Truth?

2010-03-16T22:17:00.005-06:00

Day 4: Spend an hour practicing a forsaken talent.

Forget about taking time to wow people. Wow yourself. Fine, go ahead and wow others as well.

When my mom was in town a week or so ago, we spent one cold dark evening hibernating in my bedroom. It was the first time in my life I ever, for two fleeting seconds, saw what my mom could look like as a friend instead of a parent. She oddly resembled a roommate as she was chilling on my bed and I was on the floor folding laundry.

She gazed around my room and though clothes and a coat draped over it, she noticed my guitar stashed in a corner. She asked how frequently I played. I hmm and uh huh’d around the issue a little.

Still when your mama asks you to play that song you played for her four years earlier, in a moment when you know you wowed her, no matter how obliging or un-obliging you are, you pick the clothes off piece by piece and reveal the instrument you know you should be better at than you are.

I have to confess initially I started a bit gun shy. My voice is rough and raspy. My fingers have gotten so clumsy on both a piano and guitar. To tell you the truth, it has been quite awhile since I’ve considered music a talent of mine. I’ve been rusty for way too long and I feel acutely the loss of something I once had quite developed.

Yet somewhere in between the first “hallelujah” and the last “baby, I’m falling away,” it had become fun for me. As I finished, I opened my eyes.

I became so wrapped up in the music, I went into auto mode. My world. A world where I’m not onstage and I could care less about work, boys, or anything else.

A decent performer finds this place. The place where nerves disappear and it’s about you and the instrument.

So when I came to, I was shocked to see my mom just looking at me. I saw her mouth open to say something and shamefully I thought, “oh dear. Here it comes.”

I was just as shocked when she declared, “Elizabeth, you should try out for American Idol,” matter of factly.

I laughed for many reasons. I’m too old for one. And somehow in the moment, I thought, I’m one of those crappy singers whose parents tell them they’re actually good. Oh shoot.

Aside from all of my insecurities, this was huge for two reasons. My mother is someone who I very much look up to musically. She’s older now and her voice has lost the unblemished, much practiced, control of days past. But I know her ear is still relatively good. (Mary, stop giggling.)

It was by falling asleep to her playing the piano or listening to my dad and her play their guitars outside on the back patio on summer evenings I know she is more than qualified to comment.

Secondly, my mother spent a lifetime withholding compliments. I have to believe there were times she was not in competition with us and genuinely felt proud of our mediocre accomplishments. Still sitting on my bed that night, I swear I heard my mom allude to my being good at something more than scouring a toilet.

She doesn’t know it. But I have picked up that guitar nearly every day since that night, if only for ten minutes. And right now I’m smiling.

Last Saturday I decided my repertoire could use some dusting off and updating. I sat for nearly four hours and practiced until my fingers were dirty from oxidizing against the steel strings. I picked out two songs from my library and put in the hours to learn them both.

I once had a college professor announce if we would go home every night and merely re-read the notes we had taken in class that day, every day we had class, we would learn the material and more than sufficiently pass his class or any class.

So taking his advice, if only one run through a day, I have picked up this guitar under that notion. Still today I set aside time to practice for one hour.

I feel good. I’m actually decent at this and have more than enough natural talent to be great at this. So I reiterate. Forget about taking time to wow people. Take time to WOW yourself. I promise it’ll make you feel good.

Late To Bed, Late to Wake, & Late to Bloom

2010-03-15T11:59:00.006-06:00

Day 3: Wake up early and do something.

I’ve spent the better part of my life missing life before 8AM. I imagine my theory behind this was to see what exactly I am missing.

I set my alarm for 5:30 in the newly daylight savings morning.

With bleary eyes and a dazed mind, I dismissed this notion for another day. Moving on.

Revised Day 3: Give someone flowers.

Although I didn’t know what my objective would be exactly, upon discovering my approach, I suppose I just wanted to see someone unexpected, unexpectedly see me and smile.

I sat in a dark movie theater in the middle of the day. I wasn’t thinking about missing work to catch a flick with some friends. I was pondering how to get flowers out and who to get them out to.

Even though the obvious seemed to phone in an order to send someone some flowers, I just couldn't relive yesterday’s debacle of chasing down an address. I finally understand the never-ending bin of floral covered address books in Target’s one dollar section.

I contemplated purchasing a bouquet at the local flower shop, yet as the credits rolled I stumbled onto a concept I had given little thought to previously.

Why don’t I just buy the flowers, procure a vase, and arrange them myself? I mean, flowers are such happy things and I wasn’t going to keep them, so I might as well arrange away while basking in the scent and sight of one of nature’s better rainbows.

There she was. A beautifully stuffed, medium sized, glass vase erupting in white and plum garden flowers.

The kitchen appeared to be the workshop of some mad botanist. There were fraying amethyst ribbon scraps scattered among a sea of green leaves, stems, and stalks blanketing the table, floor, and sink.

I loved it. I didn’t want to give up such a cheery creation. Eleanore Roosevelt once geniusly stated, "where flowers bloom, so does hope."

Nonetheless, the project had already satisfied its merry purpose in my life and was meant to do the same for another.

After deciding against having a friend act as the delivery man or doorbell ditching anonymously, all I was left to do was decide upon a recipient. This was the hard part.

What did I want? What did I expect?

Someone unforeseen. Someone unexpecting me. And in that moment, the most unpredicted name popped into my head.

To know me is to know my best thoughts are the foreign thoughts of my mind. I can only describe it as an uploaded outsider in a carefully catalogued domain. One of these things is not like the others. It’s as glaring as a Picasso in a sea of Monets.

Delivery proved more difficult than I anticipated. Having been two years since I had visited my beneficiary, finding the home was arduous. Squinted eyes, small street markers, signed, sealed, and delivered the way I wanted them to be... I was glowing.

Still do you know what the happiest part of the rest of the day was? An hour more of sunny daylight and every time my fingers brushed my face, the smell of freshly cut flora reminded me spring is just around the corner.

Dear Loved-One...

2010-03-14T23:10:00.000-06:00

Day 2: Compose and mail 10 cards.

The goal of this one is to simply get my mind off my selfish self and onto anyone else in this world.

Yeah. You heard me. Mail.

So I imagine I’ve already cheated at my game. Because today’s story started before today.

I mean, I’ve compiled a flexible list of 15 tasks for my modest experiment. I wanted to be sure I never missed a day because I was lacking an idea for a happy task. As today is Sunday and the post office is closed, I purchased stamps earlier.

I meandered into the archaic establishment we call the United States Post Office. Middle of the day. End of the week. How could this possibly be? A line? For mail?

Sure it’s cold outside but not Christmas. It’s a month, no two, no three past. Saint Patrick himself is the patron saint of alcohol. Saint Valentine, the patron saint of hallmark cards, has already moved along. Then why is everyone here right now?

In a desperate plot, I struggled for a plan to personally send a gmail invite to all of these woman. But the task to digitally educate seemed overwhelming. What next for them? Should I tell them about cameras on phones, photos on computers, and portable music on players as big as a stick of gum. No. I would not today. I could not today.

I left the line and walked over to a machine in the wall resembling an ATM. Sure this was to be my time saver and as big as my photo on this page was a touch button clear as day labeled “Purchase Stamps.”

Did these women know about this machine. Focus, E. You have work.

I purchased the stamps. The Liberty Bell stamp made my stomach ache for home. Focus, E. This is for a happy task. Not sad.

With stamps in hand, I felt that euphoric sensation rush my body. I walked to the car with the same feeling you get upon completing your taxes. “Sigh. Glad I don’t have to do that again for another year.”

I love pens. So with my favorite pen in hand, I penned 10 cards. It took an hour and a half. And I do feel happy.

Running In Circles

2010-03-13T23:52:00.006-07:00

Day 1: Exercise until you think you will die.

The gist of this is to physically produce serotonin which is a proven hormone contributing to the feeling of euphoria.

I have “a friend” right now who was just enlightened by his doctor of his decreased levels of serotonin in his body. He exercises regularly but is the world’s largest stress case. (Stress which, of course, consumes incredible amounts of serotonin.)

So a few days ago, when asking his help for something, he thought he was the world’s cleverest man in declaring, “you’re gobbling up my serotonin.”

I laughed. I hereby declare one of life’s tricky little goals is to surround ourselves with people who gobble less serotonin than one is making. I have two options. Make more serotonin. Eliminate gobblers. (Check & check.)

This morning with grey milky clouds coating the sky, it was looking like rain. I tied on my asics. “Hey they’re grey like the sky and my heart,” I amused myself. Then I charged the ipod shuffle. I love the shuffle. You load this tiny mp3 player and everything after that is a gamble.

I drove to the park where I love to run. I’ve easily calculated 3 laps to equal a mile many times before.

Hmph. I didn’t like pulling up to see the field filled with college boys playing football. That last thing I wanted was an audience on “exercise until you think you will die” day. I mean, on another Saturday where I’m in it for a mile or two, fine.

Yet my plan was until I puked or as close as I could get.

I started slow. The first lap, I would walk. I hit play. The song was Miley Cyrus. Am I embarrassed by this? Of course not. Do you know me at all? The problem was trying to move my feet beyond the pace of a casual lumber. Skip to next song.

Jay Sean. Perfect and I’m indeed ‘Down’. Still I was surprised how nervous I was with this audience. "Run already."

I thought I could bust this out like a bull ride. Out of the gate as explosive as possible. 8 seconds later I would throw up and call the task completed. What the hell was I thinking?

I finished lap two and supposed it was time to ante up. What happened next was perfect. It was the heavens smiling upon me. Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” first beat dropped just as I lunged into my first real stride. “Hark! What force beckons me towards accomplishment?”

Well it took me about one minute to realize the summoner was Satan. The author of human suffereing and pain. Because this pace was way too fast for me and I was convinced I would get my bull riding moment after all.

“I can’t stop. These boys will see that I’m a third of the way through one lap and I need to walk. Oxygen. I need oxygen. What hurts more? My ego or my lungs? Oxygennnnnnn.”

I willed my fingers up to the shuffle. Skip. “Chris Brown. Too fast.” Skip. “Jason Derulo. Better but still too fast”. Skip. “David Archuleta ballad. Hell yes. This is my new running pace.”

If you want to know how long I made it in the battle of me versus my pituitary gland, the answer is I have no idea. I know I usually have a 2 mile wall and I know I went further than that.

I know upon my completion, my lungs burned and I could taste metallic blood in the back of my throat. I’m sure this was more from running in the dry 35 degree weather than the sheer distance. I know my face always gets red but today is was a peculiar shade of purple.

So here I sit. Day one completed. In both task and blog. But please, don’t make me laugh. Taking any sort of deep breath will rattle the phlegm I loosened in the depths of my lungs and spin me into a coughing fit as though I’ve come down with the bubonic plague.

I think I feel happier though?

I See MY True Colors

2010-03-12T23:26:00.002-07:00

Last night, I reviewed almost every piece of writing I have ever written which I've digitalized. I went through stories, essays, and blogs. In the spirit of honesty, I’ve been writing more and more on the side which means the 8 people who read my blog are seeing less and less.

Where are all of these other writings? Well a few have been submitted for publication and even fewer have actually made it. But it’s a side gig I’m playing very close to my heart so don’t expect me to point you towards print.

So this week when I was asked to pull a few samples together to submit for my very first, big girl, grown up writing portfolio, I was terrified. I feel there is very little worth showing another which I have written.

However, the most horrifying part came when reviewing all of my recent pieces. I shamefully confess I’ve gone emo.

When?

In the true character of being a girl, I blame boy. But with boy gone, I’m resolved once more to be the cheerful, bubbly girl I remember myself to be (before he robbed me of my yellow energy.)

This morning, I woke up and walked from my third floor bedroom to my third floor bathroom. In my third floor hallway floated a helium heart balloon still proclaiming my roommate’s boyfriend’s love for her… from Valentine’s day. And I smiled.

“Today I will be a happy girl,” I declared and luckily the sun has been on my side. Today I have been a very happy girl.

So embarking on one of the greatest challenges I can heap upon myself, and knowing that I am awful at committing to a daily accountability on this blog, I hereby start a 30 Days of Happiness experiment.

Every day for 30 days I will actively participate in one thing which makes me happy. And I will return and report. I don’t feel locked into feeling happy everyday as much as I feel compelled to proactively reign in my emotions.

Stay tuned.

I'm Just Saying: Oscar Edition

2010-03-08T00:27:00.002-07:00

No need to rehash how the Oscars have been lackluster the past few years with comparison to what they once were. Sure they have taken a step forward but I’m expecting so much more from both the Academy and the production company if they intend to keep my viewership.

However, I present my top 5 moments of the evening.

5. “Telling a great story, entertaining the audience, that’s what’s gonna win you an Oscar.” John Lasseter The best words uttered of the evening came from this director’s mouth. Academy, take note.

I don’t care about your political statements, your behind the scenes politicking (how is Al Gore in the Academy), or your desire to culture me by making me relive life’s cruel and unfortunate dealing of cards in a graphically gratuitous manner.

Keep your blood, abuse, and emotional monstrosities to an artistic depiction rather than a blatant display of brutality under the guise of “authenticity.”

4. Jeff Bridges is sexy. I don’t know why. I don’t make the rules to attraction. I’m not saying he’s so good looking (however his wife is a doll.) But he is sexy. In the immortal words of she who must not be named, “I’m just saying.”

3. John Hughes practically raised me. Oh I feel saddened for this generation of tweener movies. It was never supposed to be Disney pushing Selena Gomez, and the likes in your face. Oh how I wish you were familiar with a directing god in the form of Mr. Hughes.

B/C of him, I thought: I wanted to name my first daughter Sloane, Jake Ryan was about as hot as you could get, I wanted hair like Watts, and “I’m gonna give you to the count of ten, before I pump your guts full of lead.”

2. My real heroes are Kate Winslet, Merryl Streep, and Sandra Bullock. Britney Spears, Vanessa Hudgens, and dare I say it, Kristen Stewart (gasp!) take note. I reject your ridiculousness.

1. All girls just want to be a princess. I am no exception. Ergo, the dresses. I watch for the colorful rainbow of evening gowns paraded before me in a sparkling cocktail of hair, make-up, and jewelry to be entertained as much as the awards which follow.

Demons On My Sleeve

2010-03-02T22:21:00.002-07:00

There are a lot of things I hate in this world. Before you shoot off on a tirade about the severity of the word “hate”, I mean it.

But of all the things I hate, I hate the expiration of a dear relationship the most.

The obvious and definitely simple retort is then, why the expiration? Yet as we all know, matters of the heart (relationships are absolutely matters of the heart if not the only matters of the heart) are nearly always the most complicated entities we shall ever endeavor.

When I was a young girl, we used to “burn papers.” Simply explained, my household delineated between paper trash and garbage trash. The garbage was put out once a week and collected by men on dump trucks. But the paper stuff, tissues, boxes, and other packaging, was collected and burnt in a burn barrel by us kids.

When this chore was mine to do, I didn’t care for walking around the house and emptying bedroom and bathroom trashcans into a master bag. Mostly because the master bag was usually 6 master bags.

I hated making multiple trips from the back door to burn barrel. But if I tried my best to take them all in one trip, I nearly always left a trail of debris behind me.

Yet when the collection was done and the papers placed accordingly in the barrel (there is an art form to this, or else you can prevent a fire by packing the trash too tightly before it ever begins), the fun began.

There were different strokes for different folks. Usually though, you struck the match and best as you could, reached into the core of the pile and started lighting the corners of separate pieces working your way to the outside of the pile.

My favorite part… watching a spark turn into a blazing flame. I always loved this part. It was an accomplishment.

Some days, it was as simple as striking the match.

However, more often than not, you needed to shield the spark from the gusty wind. You would contort your body around the barrel to safeguard the flame from the element which would destroy its fragile existence until the fire could grow sufficiently. On blustery days, you would strike, protect, watch it grow, watch it extinguish, 'rinse and repeat.'

Or the rain would barrage against the barely ignited scraps and then you were met with the finite equation between using your body as an umbrella and getting out of the way in time to not get scorched. Soon it became a game. Could you get this fire going in under three matches? The equation changed according to the intensity of the downpour.

Occasionally, the equation for fire was just plain against you. The paper was all boxes and not enough “kindling.” You hoped there were dried leaves around to gather. You hoped for anything to make it work.

Still again, my favorite part… watching a spark turn into a blazing flame. I always loved this part. It was an accomplishment.

Thus a relationship is born and evolves. I love meeting someone new and feeling the first magical ember ignite. I love cultivating the combustion into a smoldering glow then eventually into a blazing affinity.

Some relationships come as easy as striking a match, though I daresay most require a tempered, persistent fortifying.

We had to mind the fire through its apex but usually could leave shortly thereafter. I didn’t realize I was turning my back on one of life’s greatest lessons. It’s what happened next which breaks my heart.

I spent many a day making fires and have given little thought to what my hard work yielded. I’m nearly three decades into this thing and have struck the match more times than I can count both metaphysically and metaphorically.

But I know this.

Without going into detail, when the wind or the rain prevails and I have started the fire multiple times only to see it extinguished right in front of my eyes, when there is nothing I can do to prevent the suffocation, or when my tears have only added to its extinguishment… well there is nothing I HATE more in this world than watching the flames die out.

My heart will forever break for each and every time at the expiration of a dear relationship. And I hate feeling like I'm out of matches.

When Are You the King of the World?

2010-03-01T01:03:00.000-07:00

MIA. For months.

So with wet hair, here in my bed, I’m making a revival of a blog long since neglected in all my holiday busyness, personal assessments, and business engagements.

You may be expecting to hear the full version of narratives which have trickled out from the mouths of those lucky or perhaps unlucky enough to be around me in the moments shortly following the tales.

Sure, there was that incident in the orange grove over Christmas. Yes, I’ve added to my list of celebrity run-ins and it’s awkward to find out you’re seated behind his parents when you’ve just told your friend in detail how you would seduce him if the six seats which separate you both weren’t there. Go Sundance Film Festival. Or how the four hours in customs resulted with a permanently flagged passport. Furthermore, if you don’t know about HIM, you are way out of MY loop.

But to compose any of those would mean we would be here until I had dry hair and with work first thing tomorrow morning, I’m not ready to commit.

So instead, I wanted to pen a Valentine’s Day musing I experienced. With the buildup of the holiday thrust upon me from both the physical location I reside in and the weighty expectations of the culture of which I’m apart, I decided to change the definitive focus from a spotlight on lovers to my concentration on love.

And the most surprising thing happened. Of all the ruminating on love I’ve ever been exposed to, I considered one cliché to absolutely be poignant for me at this point in my life.

Last night with company, I closed the evening by watching Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. I’ve concluded three things.

First, Shakespeare is the most beautiful and masterful manipulator of the English language I have ever been exposed to. He is my hero.

Second, both the male and female protagonist are the most tragically flawed, ridiculous characters lacking in even the most fundamental possession of reason ever. Still I love this play.

Finally, Romeo had it all figured out. And he is my hero. (Which is really just another shout out for my previous hero, the author.)

Love is the only thing still desperately sought after in this world. This speaks volumes to the undying most visceral desire of humanity from the beginning of time as probably the one of few elements to have survived a plethora of places, people, and time.

So when TMC’s countdown to the Oscars scheduled James Cameron’s Titanic, we were totally on board for the next 3 and a half hours (where I re-fell in lust with Leo.)

Ring of Fire

2009-11-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Even though my left cheek was smashed against my left hand, it was my left eye which hurt and I hadn’t even opened it yet.

I awoke, lumbered to the bathroom, sluggishly approached the sink to wash my hands, and gazed into the mirror.

My left eye was a fiery red and I immediately was confused. I leaned across the counter pulling apart my lids to get a better look at the plethora of spidery flames engulfing my eye.

I pulled on my clothes and conceded to glasses instead of contacts. I traveled to work thinking about my sore eye. I didn’t think it was pink eye. I had not woken with it pasted closed.

So after the urging from a coworker to at least clean out my eye with a flushing kit from any grocery store, I journeyed out in search of the magic liquid solution which would rinse the Houdini particle scratching my cornea out of my eye.

Five dollars later and rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat…

The smoldering ember blazed into a raging inferno of hot and after the cold wash I became instantaneously aware of how much pain I was feeling.

It was downhill from there. I immediately became weepy from the constant throbbing in my eye. I didn’t know what to do. Should I wait to see if the wash would relieve the source of this madness? Did I have to bring a professional into the picture?

Again at the urging from a coworker, I jumped into my car headed for the optometrist. After all, a Friday doctor’s office co-pay is a lot cheaper than a weekend ER visit.

After a co-pay, $100 prescription antibiotic eye drops, two follow up visits, and nearly two weeks of glasses later, I’m happy to report I have a cold.

Emerge

2009-10-25T13:51:00.000-06:00

And when I’m stressed, I disappear.

I could blame it on anything but the truth is it’s to be blamed on many things many of us are juggling.

Work. Love. Life.

So leaving behind the stresses of the moment to enjoy THIS moment, I continue with my love for experiences of late.

I love painting my nails. I have been dedicated to the practice at least once every three days for the past year plus. I enjoy the clean finished look. I enjoy the feminine touch it adds to an outfit or my own personal confidence. I am an OPI freak and can tell you the names of every single color I own. I can delineate between the collections. I love painting my nails.

I love eating cupcakes and talking in a still car in the middle of a parking lot as night falls upon us. I love sharing in the human condition with one another even and especially when it involves shedding a tear or two. I love trying to start the car and discovering the battery is dead and you’re stuck in the moment. Life’s message revealed: Enjoy the moment!

I love a good song. Nothing can be so powerful as a great song to raise spirits, rally the mind, and physically liven your body. I use music more now than I ever have in my life. There is no better escape than one song, three and a half minutes, one inspiring lyric, and a kick butt musical thread. I love a good song.

I hate being sick. I hate having to get out and trudge through work sick or worse, being confined to my bed. I hate missing out on all the fun I know is going on in the outside world without me. I hate the sleep you need but lose because you’re coughing or can’t inhale. I hate sore throats from draining sinuses and open mouth breathing. But I LOVE getting better. I love the moments when good health rests upon you once more.

I love my journal. Though I have left the digital world, I remain diligent in journal writing. Lately I have taken to re-reading my entries and I can see growth over an arc of chaotic, freak-out entries. Please keep a stinking journal, if only to amuse yourself later. I love my journal.

Life is extremely, incredibly, awfully, exceptionally, exceedingly, especially, dreadfully, enormously, vastly and fantastically hard. But I do love it.

Ephemeral

2009-09-28T23:15:00.003-06:00

Four years ago I drove my car across the large expanse of our country which divides the east coast from the mountain west. Many have heard me say if I ever do it again, it will be too soon.

Well fancy this. There is no place I'd rather be than in my car eastward bound finishing up Nebraska with the star sprinkled night sky over my head singing to Deliliah picks right now.

Crash Into Me

2009-07-31T12:17:00.001-06:00

I just got hit by a car... for the second time in my life. WTF?

Follow up for Mindee: Not my vehicle. ME. I just got hit by a car!

There Were Never Such Devoted...

2009-07-27T00:30:00.006-06:00

I love her to death.

She’s a pain in my side if I tell her this. Actually, she’s a pain in my side when I disclose most anything of a personal nature to her.

She’ll act like she doesn’t care. And half the time she doesn’t. However, the other half of the time I know she’s hanging onto my every word, waiting to condemn me for the drama but secretly happy I’ve given her something to gnaw on.

She’s the first person I want to phone when I find out a girl at church will be on the next season of the Bachelor. She’s the first person I call when someone makes a gigantic fool of themselves because I know she’ll laugh as hard at the story as I did in real life.

She's the girl I’ll late night email back and forth with crazy pictures. She’s the girl I’ll email the Mamma Mia soundtrack at two songs an email until the 18 track disc has completely been shared. She’s the girl I forward THE email to from my phone the moment I get it. And we'll laugh as we dissect it over and over again.

I teach her the things she needs to know because that’s what I’m supposed to do. When the ridiculous Garmin has taken us into New Jersey, I tell her to stay in the car at the gas station. They pump it for you.

I'm the lifeline she uses when she needs pop culture trivia and I believe to date I've only failed her once. (I can't possibly know the names of people in commercials.) But sometimes I wonder if I’m not doing my job because she teaches me more.

I've seen her change into mini skirts in the passenger seat of a plymouth voyager and I have admired her for it. Because she dares to do what she wants. If a girl were to hypothetically get picked up for shoplifting, she's the person I'd want right beside me, openly mocking the officer.

If there were a play where there was a prince and a princess, she might be the only person I could relinquish the princess part to with no hard feelings. I would be her queen. I would be her supporting role anytime.

I love to french braid her hair. I love to climb into bed with her on my lunch break and take a nap. I love to watch TV with her namely reality television because really how funny is two people hooking up in the dark if it were any other person telling you about it? I love to rejoice in her skinny arms.

I love her family. Her husband. Her children. I love to watch her parent. She's not perfect. But she's pretty amazing in action. I love her.

I love her to death.

Happy Birthday!

No Bluffing

2009-07-13T23:19:00.009-06:00

This has no throw back to love.

Have you ever had someone look you so deeply in the eyes, the gaze became uncomfortable enough you felt the need to break it immediately?

A stare sharp though not possessing malice rather intensity penetrating into depths you, yourself, have slightly probed?

To which I question, have you ever looked at your face in the mirror? Not to gaze upon blemishes or assess your features rather to examine yourself as others look upon you? To look yourself in the eyes and to discover what’s behind them?

I once had a conversation with a friend about a theory I have regarding people internally reflecting and evaluating themselves. My metaphor seems simple enough to me.

I picture most people in a square room 15 x 15 feet. It is white and empty, except for one thing. A full body sized mirror in one of the corners mounted on the wall.

I don’t care how people get into the room nor am I particular about age and appearance as I believe the metaphor has everything to do with an emotional and mental maturity.

We spend whatever amount of time in this room sitting in a corner, doing nothing, seeing nothing, being nothing, and most certainly noticing nothing… until we do. We notice it. The mirror.

And once we notice it, we can’t seem to figure out how we never noticed it before. Am I allowed to get up and walk over to it? Am I supposed to look in it? Will I be able to confront what I might find in it?

In this moment, the masses become easily divided by groups who dare not look and groups who dare to look.

Upon catching our reflection, many of us turn immediately from the mirror, not wanting to see anything more, uncertain of what we have already seen, mostly possessed by some sort of fear of what we might see.

And so we turn back to any other corner to hide out once more. That is, until curiosity gets the best of us.

Sure there are a rare few who will never return again to the mirror. They have their reasons and though I don’t understand, it is not a right or wrong situation.

Still many of us will want to investigate another time. What hopefully follows is an increased frequency and intensity with which we return to the mirror to gaze.

The allegory is simple. It’s quite literally self-reflection while more metaphorically finding self acceptance. Changing what you dislike and admiring what you do like. But that’s the easy part.

The hard part is jumping back up from the corner to visit the mirror regularly. To not be afraid of what you see. To not be discouraged by the task at hand. Most importantly, to not be dishonest in the undertaking.

If you abide by those rules, you’ll come out a better person every time.

On a personal level, I’ve noticed recently I’ve taken to a habit I’ve long since performed. I have caught myself on many occasions studying the faces, even the eyes, of those whom I associate. I’ve been similar to a baby fixated upon the face of its guardian in my exchanges with others.

I’ve examined the smile wrinkles, a furrowed brow, the strokes of eye liner, the dilation of pupils, and the teeth involved in a grin.

It makes any conversation, any relationship much more intimate. And I treasure it.

Why have I lacked the inclination to do so previously? Then I realize to stare into another’s eyes is to know they can stare into yours. And the vulnerability is acute. A vulnerability not for the weak hearted.

When I arise and walk myself over to the mirror, when I find the confidence to shift my scrutinizing from my outward and move inward, I’m easily scared off. I suppose to have any sense of self awareness means you’ll find yourself in the position to avoid the deep searching peek.

How can I allow another access into a sphere I rarely travel myself? Easy, I can’t.

Nevertheless, I think I’ve uncovered an excellent measuring stick for where you personally stand with yourself. How well can you look into the eyes of others?

For the first time in a long time, I’m taking the chance. I won’t look away.

The Old Man Is Snoring

2009-06-07T11:58:00.000-06:00

As my mind was coming out of the daze which is sleep this morning, I glanced at the clock. 8:25am which meant it was… hmmm… 9:25am in Texas. I hadn’t even been home for 12 hours yet.

This was impressive for two reasons. I hadn’t slept past 6am for the past few days in either UT or TX. It was an extra 2 hours of sleep-in banked no matter how you looked at it.

Secondly, my bedroom sits on the east side of the house. My body is usually awakened, if only briefly, around 6:30 when the sun, despite my blinds, is blazing through my windows interrupting any restful slumber I intend to secure in the morning hours.

Why?

With both windows opened as far as they go, I felt a chill in the air. Was this because Utah was chilly this morning or because Utah was chillier than Texas’ 90 degree weather this morning?

As groggy minds usually are, I sluggishly searched for some explanations to my disoriented questions and then I heard an answer. Was that rain outside?

I lifted myself up just high enough to get a good look outside. It was beautiful. I fell back into bed and did the undisciplined. I decided to ditch church and fall back asleep. My bed owned me for another hour.

When I awoke this time, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had been doing nothing but eating the past few days and my body was feeling it.

I pulled on some running clothes and out into the rain I jogged.

For a little more than two miles, I enjoyed an empty nearby park to myself. There were no people, dogs, or frisbees. There was nothing but a cloudy, drizzly, open space for me. It took me awhile to get my stride going but after awhile my feet were keeping time to my iPod and little else mattered.

My toes were soggy, my socks were soaked, and my sneakers were drenched. Puddles were inevitable. As I ran, my ponytail fell out and my hair tumbled around my face. The smell of hotel shampoo filled my nose and my damp hair soon became dripping.

Mostly, I appreciated the mental time off. If you ask a boy what he is thinking, chances are he’ll say nothing and he’ll more than likely be telling the truth. Me, I’m always thinking.

If you ask me what I’m thinking, I’ll tell you about work, about friends, about places I’ve been and places I want to go. I’ll tell you about my family. I’ll tell you about my hometown. I’m thinking about things which are stressing me and I’m thinking about boys. I’m thinking about changing my nail polish, my lease being up in two months, and a thank you card I’ve been needing to write for over a week.

But not when I’m running. I’m thinking about breathing and maybe a phrase or two from the playing song. So I appreciated the mental time off. A psychological vacation.

I returned home a little after 10 and I can’t think of a better morning in the past couple of months for me than this one.

I'm a gLeek!

2009-06-03T15:39:00.003-06:00

Last time I wrote in small font. This time it deserves at least a typical sized font for an atypical little message.

I am hard pressed to strongly recommend any specific piece of pop culture. I am easily entertained, easily suspend my disbelief, and easily satisfied.

I hereby declare myself the world's worst pop culture critic. (Okay, definitely not the worst as my sheer knowledge base alone establishes me as one of the elite few. WHAT?!? Yeah , I said that.)

Friends, family, and meandering strangers... please take the time at some point this summer to watch the pilot to the new show "gLee".

To all of you living room American Idol crooners, to the shower singers and the road rockers, to any high school choir has been, please, you'll at least get a kick out of it.

I may not have mentioned anymore on the subject from a previous post until I noticed the final performance number by the glee club of an already beloved Journey song sitting number nine on iTunes top 10 this week. (That's most downloaded meaning I'm not the only one.)

Shocked? Yes. Deserved? Yes.

Guys will inevitably rather go to the dentist than watch it. Girls will rank it among their indulgent closet secret loves (cough "Twilight") where the rest of our true souls reside.

I'm plugging for this little show. You heard it here.

Worth A Thousand Words

2009-05-30T23:32:00.000-06:00

If you’ve ever seen a Utah license plate, chances are you’ve seen a picture of our world renowned Delicate Arch.

This morning after camping out in sleeping bags under the clear desert sky which is southern Utah, my friends and I hit up Arches National Park so we could hike up to said arch.

Upon reaching the summit, we found ourselves in the mix of quite a few people wanting to get under the arch and snap off a picture. There is a sort of finesse required in getting this task accomplished.

We lingered as we watched some professional photographers get what they desired. The rest of us patiently waited after which we all considerately passed time until our turns to capture our pictures.

Since no one wanted to wait for you to take a picture with some of the group, switch off the camera, photograph another mix of the group, and so forth, groups made friends with someone in front or behind them and took each others’ pictures.

While my group of friends was in the arch, the couple behind us kept trying to take our picture. However, somewhere some parents were unaware of their rogue kid with a red baseball cap who kept dangerously running in and out of our picture.

The couple tried their best to snap a good picture yet I was growing ever frustrated at this menace who was rapidly killing my buzz from the hike. Neighboring onlookers were aggravated as well at the scenario.

After they had shot our picture and we had shot theirs, we were all standing around talking and the dumbest joke via pun I ever made came out.

E: Hey you guys, thanks so much for taking our pictures. We really appreciate it.
Couple: Hey no problem. Anytime.
E: No seriously, you were good trail buddies. Not like that kid who was our nemesis.
C: (Laughing) Yeah seriously, what was that?
E: I know. I’m serious. He was our nemesis. (Then it hit me like a brick.) OUR ARCH
NEMESIS.

Everyone in listening distance was standing around laughing. If I hadn’t gotten a good laugh out of it, I could have pushed that kid over the cliff.

Quick Nothings

2009-05-29T18:56:00.003-06:00

Have literally two minutes for catch up:

Got the loan.
Am looking for a car.
Love the New Moon pictures.
Am heading to Moab, right now.

Waiting For The Stars To Fall

2009-05-28T11:32:00.004-06:00

My keys jingled against my fingers as I lumbered sluggishly to my car after work.

With my sunglasses on, I threw my head back to take a deep breath and in so doing noticed the moon directly above me imitating the midday sun as a younger sibling mimics his elder.

The white orb was barely detectable against the bright late afternoon sky. Yet she was there and as foolish as it sounds, I smiled an acknowledgment to her.

Exhausted, I navigated myself home surrounded by the after work traffic weaving through the crowded streets journeying towards any reprieve.

Unlocking the door and tossing my belongings onto the kitchen table, up the stairs I plodded into my bedroom, closing the door behind me. I collapsed onto my bed in overwhelming fatigue.

My eyes fluttered shut and there I lay for the next hour.

I stirred awake and was immediately gripped with the guilt of a child having broken any household rule. Why did I feel this way?

The evening, lackluster in events, ended with a much needed drive. In an effort to just get out for a moment and breathe deeply this incredible nightfall, I leapt into my car and drove.

This time the moon was brilliantly shining and I felt a kinship to the cosmos once more.

Few things in this world can calm a stormy soul the way a night sky can.

The sound of a nearby creek. Gazing into a fire. Smelling a fresh baked dessert. Holding another’s hand.

Sign Of The Times??

2009-05-27T23:17:00.007-06:00

Eight years ago, I bought the very first car I ever owned in my life. I was as fresh as a college graduate could be and had nearly $4300 to my name. I had a roommate at the time with a brother who was an auto dealer. I was prepared to look for a car in the $6000 range and commenced a search for something which fit my skeletal requirements.

As a last final acquiescence to my roommate, we went to check out her brother’s Lexus lot. And there She was.

A five year old Toyota Camry with 58,000 miles on her. She was a sleek, sexy black and very well maintained. As I was test driving her, the dealer so typically explained how she was an afternoon trade-in the day before and the older gentlemen loved Her but was treating himself to a new Lexus instead.

It went down velvety smooth. I knew She was to be mine.

We negotiated out $8500 (which I naively did not know meant $9500 out the door), and I was to be on my way shortly. After the finances were all in place, of course.

I knew nothing about securing a loan. I trusted the dealership to do their part to help me get into this car, which they do so well, and they did for me. The man assisting me came out after running a credit check on me and I’ll never forget what he told me next.

“Your credit score is so amazing, I would let you drive away with any car on this lot for no money down.” I was proud because my parents had been incredibly instrumental in teaching me how to be a good steward over my money.

(Ironically, my interest rate was astronomically high. I took care of that one week later under the tutelage of a more financially knowledgeable man. Don’t finance through a dealership if you can help it. I know you already know this.)

Four years ago, I bought the second car I ever owned in my life. The story, though containing interesting elements to me, is unimportant.

Except the time has come for me to buy the third car I will ever own in my life. I have loved my baby but She is no longer as reliable as I need. (And I’m feeling a long distance road trip in my very near future.)

So once more I traipsed to my local bank branch whom I bank with and applied for another auto loan. I applied for a liberal loan on behalf of generality’s sake in an effort to have my finances in order for when I located Her yet again.

This morning my loan officer called me with the outcome of my application and what follows is the craziest experience I’ve ever had. Truly a fiscal sign of the economic times.

Loan Officer: Elizabeth, we ran that paperwork, do you have a minute?
Elizabeth: Absolutely! What are we looking at?
LO: Well as is, we’re more than happy to loan this amount to you but we’re going to require a strong co-signer.
E: (Actually surprised quite a bit.) Wow this economy has really affected you guys, huh?
LO: (Silence.)
E: (Joke is not well received. Noted.) Umm… well then you’re not really going to loan ME that amount, are you? How much can I get without a co-signer?
LO: Well we’re not willing to loan to you without a strong co-signer?
E: (Frustrated now.) Can I ask what my credit score came up as?
LO: Mid 700s.*
E: That doesn’t sound right to me. It should be higher I believe.
LO: Well there is this $130 charge off….
E: (**OH MY GOSH, I EFFING HATE M&T BANK!!! This is a mistake I’ve been working on for FOUR years now.) You can’t get me a decent loan when my credit score is sitting in the mid 700s and I’ve got SIGNIFICANTLY more than my loan amount sitting in my savings account right now? (This fact felt relevant to me as I know you can take out a loan against your own savings, at the very least.)
LO: You do?
E: (Still can’t believe I’m even having this conversation.) What kind of loan officer are you? You work at my bank, processed my application, and haven’t taken a look at my current account balance?
LO: (Confused and fumbling for words.) Well, let me see here, uh, well this does change things, ummm, I can run the numbers again which should make a difference, uh…. Can I get back to you?
E: Please do.

I hung up the phone and called one of my best friends in the world (Holla!) and couldn’t help but talk to him, a financial consultant, about my experience. We laughed and although he wanted to help me complete a 15 year plan (stop doing that), the talk was all I needed.

I guess I’m still waiting to hear how this will go down. Strangely, I feel confident the numbers will come back reasonably, and without the need for a “strong co-signer.”

*I know Mary and Mom both have phenomenal credit scores. You win. I’m over it.
** My apologies for the strong language but I have a searing hatred for that bank.

Wish I Could Keep You Much Longer

2009-05-26T21:27:00.005-06:00

On a lighter note, a week ago, my roommate went out of town leaving me the house all to myself. I was entirely excited in anticipation of this week. It has been everything I hoped it could be. It has been enjoyable.

On my first night alone, I came home from work, trudged up the stairs where my bathroom and bedroom are, took a good look around and opened every blind and window. I secured my laptop, plugged it into my stereo, pulled up my iTunes, clicked on an absolutely random album, and pressed play.

I’d been dying to try a new remedy which I heard could clean any tub. When you rent, any tenant knows toilets and tubs, though clean, may always appear as though you could pick up a jungle disease from using them.

A co-worker had told me a week earlier auto carburetor cleaner could scour down any tub. So with the warning to run the exhaust fan and make sure I had a proper air supply, I buckled down to the task at hand while the Immaculate Collection played. (Great album. Second half especially. I swear I hadn’t listened to it in over 10 years.) I took time to sing at the top of my lungs.

It was enjoyable.

The following night I decided I would cook for myself instead of the shameful yet honest social dining out I do almost every night. I desired a night in and a little solitude. Taking time to prepare a meal has become a daily practice since. I had forgotten I had this in me but I truly enjoy cooking.

My phone rang and although I heard it upstairs, I was caught up in the kitchen. When I finished cleaning up the last pan, I fetched my phone and saw I had a missed call and subsequent text from one of my best friends in Provo. The text: I need out of the house tonight. What are you doing?

I called her and was elated to offer my place knowing we could do nearly whatever we wanted. So we did. Oreos & milk and one movie later the laughter continued. She returned to her life and although I had planned on reading a particular book on my list of things to do this week, I was happy for the diversion.

It was enjoyable.

I arrived home the subsequent evening and intently stared at my bedroom floor. It was a battlefield and I’ve mentioned before I use the cleanliness of my room as a gauge to the busyness of my life.

I cast off my work garb and quickly rolled up my sleeves to dive into the piles. (After all, you have to maintain organized piles. Clean piles and dirty piles and piles of clothing worn just once.)

Most everything had been restored to its home and I stood sweating in my room with a huge department store bag in my hand. “What had I purchased which required a bag of this size?” Many times when the need to downsize had seized my being, I wished for a bag of this size.

Capturing the moment, I approached my closet and prayed for the strength to part with my things. My old things. My unemployed, unused, idle, and aged belongings. First the clothing. Next the shoes. The boxes which had yet to be opened since my move. Ditching anything from a computer printer or television cables to dated fashions, unutilized blankets and luggage, I filled my car trunk.

I immediately headed to the thrift store. Sitting on any item would have created unnecessary vehicle clutter and a desire to re-rumage through what charity had rightly earned.

It was enjoyable.

I spent the weekend following suit to the first few days. Laundry, culinary experiments, guitar playing, sleeping. Oh the sleep. And some holiday time off to do my soul good.

I bunkered down and read the Louis L’Amour book a guy friend had recommended in an attempt to see what guys who read, read. It was an action book for any individual wishing to escape to another time and place. Surprise, it was enjoyable.

This past week has been so pleasant. I’m excited for my roommate to get home tonight. But I cannot lie. I’ll miss the time off from my usual routine which I daresay simulates a vacation of sorts.

Mostly because it was enjoyable.

PS. Speaking of things enjoyable, I'm looking forward to the new fall series "gLee". Totally dug the pilot this week.

Caught Up In Circles...

2009-05-25T22:59:00.009-06:00

It’s back. The fidgety feeling I sporadically experience is back.

It’s been coming on for awhile but has evolved into a full force tidal wave emotion. I’d like to say I’m sitting on day 2 of homesickness (Marysickness?). It’s realistically more like month 8.

Oh the plight of a single girl. It’s amusing really.

In the corporate world, it’s rumored how preferential treatment is bestowed upon the married and the settled. My mind tries to convince me surely this must be a fallacy. Yet in this moment, I’d gamble on said type in a heartbeat over someone like me if I were management.

I feel the spirit of Sam Cooke has rested upon me in the mantra of “a change is gonna come.”

And why shouldn’t it? In a conversation once with a married adult (versus me, what? A single non-adult?), I was made to feel foolish, immature almost for the lifestyle I’ve been living since college graduation.

I’ve seen my share of moves and job changes. I’ve grown easily impatient at any given time of my present circumstance enough to impulsively alter it. So when said adult commented on the obviousness of my lifestyle and alluded to the fact it may be time for me to grow up and settle down, I felt embarrassed and inadequate. Childish even, as though I were being reprimanded for doing something wrong.

With another five years under my belt since that occasion, I’m now smart enough to retort, “I’m not you. I know nothing of the life you refer to. And perhaps my greatest advantage FOR ME is that I am not tied down… to any person, job, or city.”

Telling an enormously unsettled person to settle down is antiquated.

Tonight I comfortably positioned myself in the living room of a split level home of a dear friend. I nestled into a restful chair reading the latest People magazine while my friend snuggled into the couch opposite me. The window behind my shoulder as well as the door to the back deck were opened creating a cross breeze through the house.

The left over smell of grilled hamburgers and hot dogs wafted from the kitchen. I was calm with a tumbler full of milk and a stack of Oreos sitting on the window sill beside me. Below in the family room, a group congregated around the television playing Rock Band and their strains drifted up the stairs.

I paused in the middle of reading about Bristol's teen pregnancy to think about the book I had completed earlier in the day. A book which took me to a different place in a different world. I pondered upon the job I’ll return to first thing tomorrow morning, yet again. I reflected upon my current relationships and my mind lingered on one in particular. I gazed out the window and the sky blushed the first hue of pink.

Then it was back.

I should have felt content and satisfied. Instead I felt the opposite. Restless, edgy, and impetuous. I'm begging it passes.

I’m just saying... I’ve been HERE before, time after time.

Remove the Veil

2009-05-24T23:59:00.000-06:00

Few times in my life can compare to the frustration with this wicked case of writer’s block I’ve been experiencing of late.

I’m a record keeper. I’ve been a consistent writer in many forums ranging from notepads of thoughts, theories, & essays to journals and the more public blogosphere.

Is it because I have nothing to write about? Absolutely not.

Is it because I’ve become busy and am now overwhelmed with the sheer volume of things I want to write about? Absolutely.

Is it because my lack of consistent writing has made me rusty and thereby insecure? Absolutely.

Is it because I’ve taken to other creative outlets (to remain unnamed at this time)? Absolutely.

Then what happens?

It’s a lazy Sunday evening and as I sit by the opened window anticipating my holiday tomorrow, the drumming rain upon these side streets creates the most soothing ambiance and a gal finds herself with a robust case of homesickness.

And where there is a charged emotion, there is a girl wanting to write… saddened at the fact she’s so overwhelmed she can’t.

A Message

2009-04-29T09:20:00.003-06:00

This morning, I was driving behind a car with a bumper sticker which read, "Trees Are the Answer."

Laying all philosophizing aside, I applied the scientific experiment to the statement.

Question: My last two days have sucked real REAL bad. Why?
Answer: Trees

Nope. Doesn't work. Stupid. Stupid.

Then I parked my car in my work parking lot, jumped out of the vehicle, while my phone fell out of my pocket and crashed to the cement. My two month old Blackberry's screen is now busted for the next two years.

Day three and counting. WTF?

Like It. Like It Not.

2009-04-27T16:34:00.003-06:00

Lately I’ve been exceedingly conscious of my emotions. Yeah, I know. ME, more alert to my emotions. I assure you it can be a full time job.

Rewind.

I have another daunting birthday approaching this year. Not too quickly but sooner than I’d like.

Without launching into an Oprah tirade about being more and more comfortable in your body (which really does happen), I assert one definitely becomes more aware of one’s self. Your being. Your likes and dislikes. Your emotions.

I haven’t always, but I appreciate the opportunity to have had time to get good and acquainted with myself. Time to make a friend of myself.

Along with this come these opportunities to laugh at yourself and also to embarrass yourself. Yet at the end of the day, I’m left with only me.

Skip to present again.

I’ve been especially aware of my feelings. I have been able to see a situation generating around me and able to call my reaction seconds before it happens as though I were an outsider watching.

I guess THIS is growing up. Becoming alert to your potential self, evaluating its necessity or appropriateness, and then altering your potential self to truly reflect how you would prefer others to receive you.

Following is a very organic recording of some of my emotions in the past week. I guess with good friends and family, you can just out yourself. I’ve written in the ever simple and ever raw outline of likes and dislikes.

· Midday personal contact: If you deal with me at all, you know I work hard and I work long hours. Because of this, I appreciate my personal moments throughout any day, especially midday. I love Mindee’s BB texts, Mary’s updating phone calls, and even listening to Ashley’s screaming children. But Mary really gets me going in the middle of the day. I love midday shout outs.

· Fresh Laundry: I love linens. I have a love affair with sheets and towels. I love fresh laundry. It always feels good to pull fresh sheets and towels out of the dryer. I love washing your white sheets in the hottest temperature your washer will provide, with a cup of bleach, knowing you are killing at least half of the flu off of them. Aww. Clean sheets.

· Emotions: One in particular. Anticipation. Whether it’s good or bad, but particularly when it’s good. Wait. Wait. Wait. Now you can. YES!

· Barnes & Noble: This is my secular church. My sister(s/in-law) go to libraries. I go to B&N. Some days when I feel like I can’t talk to another person, I’ll turn my phone off and go to B&N right after work and not leave until they close. I’m a late blooming book worm and I like it.

· The Sun: I love it.

· The Snow: Go away. I dislike it on April 25th.

· A text for text and a call for call: Even if your response is 24 hours later, I am a true believer in returning what you have received. I dislike when there is a breakdown.

· Know your place: Don’t tell me you love a song more than anyone around you. Especially when I am around you. Especially when you don’t know the words to the song. Especially when you just heard it for the first time a day ago. I heard it last year, when I watched the movie, the night before I downloaded it. I love this song too. Enough to know when it was released. Trite? Yes. Fact? Yes.

· Holidays: Ever since all of my family moved away, I’ve grown to dislike holidays. I hate thinking about where I’m going to go or if I’m going to celebrate them.

· Vehicle Problems: My car is old and always breaking. It VEXES me greatly.

A Forced Surrendering

2009-04-20T20:49:00.002-06:00

I sat in the doctor’s office with tears in my eyes. It was one of the few times in my life I was really scared. I had no idea what to think because I just couldn’t come up with any explanation which made sense except I had AIDS.

I didn’t honestly think I had AIDS. I just knew I had something which left me without an immune system. THAT scared me.

A week ago Saturday I noticed it was a little difficult waking up in the morning but didn’t think anything of it because I had no pressing engagement to show me just how exhausted my body had been.

Things turned super strange when I went to Salt Lake to do some shopping with a friend. I almost fell asleep on the 40 minute ride up as though we were doing a cross country road trip, 800 miles into it.

Even then, I chalked it up to having eaten nothing and being on empty. After all, I am the queen of doing this as I frequently pull many long hour days without stopping to eat. (I don’t need a lecture. I’ve been told many times how bad this is for anyone’s body.)

So after three to four hours of walking around perusing Nordstrom’s Rack (hella hot pair of black trousers) and DWS (loved all the shoes so much, I bought none of them), I begged to be taken somewhere to eat. I was going to literally lay down and fall asleep anywhere.

We stopped and I consumed a sandwich. I felt immediately better, I thought. But as we traversed back home, it took literally 10 minutes before I thought I would pass out in the vehicle again.

I was dropped off at home, went upstairs, climbed into bed without removing one stitch and fell asleep.

I awoke confused but felt better. A friend texted me to go to a movie within minutes. I cleaned myself up and headed out. Two and a half hours later, I was home in bed completely fatigued.

Here’s the crazy part. I still wasn’t flagged to the situation… at all.

The indicator came the next morning, Easter morning. My alarm went off to get ready for my 8:30 AM church service.

And THAT’S when I thought someone with a bat had had their way with me while I slept.

I lay there contemplating skipping church due to illness, which was more than justified. Still I knew 90% of the non-regularly attending Christian world would be worshipping today.

It broke my heart to think of not going on Easter. So quite frankly some competitive side of my piety (the irony is not lost on me) ripped my being out of my bed and dressed herself.

I stumbled into church and was asleep within thirty minutes. I assure you I must have been a sight for sore eyes. I slouched passed out in comatose form apparently proving my discipleship to no one but myself.

I left after an hour and went home to, you guessed it, sleep. This is when I first realized I might have mono.

The rest of the symptoms came quickly and in blurred memory.

Monday morning was hell trying to wake for work. I had added strep throat to my illness and some sort of respiratory disease. Tuesday was the same only WORSE. I left work after a measly four hours.

Wednesday I was dead to the world. Every symptom was a trophied win as if a micro-biological Genghis Khan was conquering through me.

After Thursday’s swabbing, I was told I had the flu. THE FLU. And anyone who was following my facebook (the only thing I did while laying in bed sweating and only because I could use my Blackberry) knew I was finding out the hard way why millions of people died from such an epidemic.

I am not a baby when it comes to my sicknesses.

It is more than a week later. I’m draining. I’m healing. I’m running at 60% and I consider it a huge success. It’s been awhile since I’ve remembered how valuable good health is.

Could It Be??

2009-04-01T23:49:00.000-06:00

I awoke Monday morning with hives all over my upper torso, my chest, but especially plaguing my neck. The splotchiest, itchiest, cherry rash on my neck. I spent all day trying to eliminate it.

I evaluated a constant mental checklist of what I might have changed to cause this allergic reaction. My constant self barrage proved futile. There was nothing I had done or used differently. I went to bed hoping it would go away by the time I awoke.

Tuesday morning I woke up with the same splotchy, itchy, cherry rash on my neck. This time the cherry was even cherrier and the itchy was even itchier. Visibly obvious, this inflammation was taking center stage in my every personal interaction with anyone.

“Have you used this salve?” “Have you tried that balm?” Ironically, I work at a skin care company and the suggestions poured in steadily. I finally conceded to my boss’s proposal of immediately taking Benadryl.

I was hesitant knowing it was about 2 pm in the middle of a work day and I would get drowsy. Additionally, I knew my work day went from 8 in the morning to at least midnight.

The medicine did nothing to alleviate the rash or the itch. It did, however, administer its lethargic effects upon my being.

There I was, miserable at 5 pm on a snowy Tuesday early evening, head on my desk, and inbox still with 50 emails needing to be reviewed by midnight for end of month.

I walked over to Benefits to submit my final cafeteria plan form for 2008. I had waited until the final day to do so. Upon entrance, my neck became the source of conversation.

“Yeah yeah,” I garbled entirely unamused. I head nodded in agreement while paying little attention to the exchange.

Lost in angst, I blanked until I realized I was being asked a question. My face immediately communicated my disoriented state so she repeated yet again, “are you stressed?”

Allow me a few words to answer this question. Yes. Immensely. Always… yet in an oxymoronically nonchalant way.

While sparing everyone the hum drum, daily living, social history of my stressors, know that Harry and Nancy each gifted to their children an inherent disposition to worry, fret, agonize, and lose sleep over the natural anxieties of life.

While trying to make an insurance claim before deadline, in the middle of our month end chaos, feeling the pressure of occupation, the fog of drugs, and sprinkling in some matters of the heart or heartache, I identified some of my stress.

So when the medication did absolutely nothing for me, I was even more flabbergasted to learn what I had been experiencing with this outbreak had less to do with a physiological reaction and more to do with a psychosomatic manifestation.

As a product of my family, this was unfeasible. We don’t get sick. We sure don’t get sick from our minds. I had spent two days trying to rid myself of the ailment which had been the source of uncanny constant discomfort.

Then this morning, I woke up. As abruptly as it appeared did it suddenly disappear. I was left with a souvenir of dry flakey in skin in an area I had spent trying not to scratch the past couple of days.

Hmmm…

Walking Left

2009-02-23T00:41:00.008-07:00

Since I graduated from college, I’ve been eagerly waiting for my life to start.

I had this supposed inauguration marked by certain indicators. I would secure a great job. I would save loads of money and purchase loads of great things. I would help people. I would do great things.

I would also travel the world, a desire so strong anyone associating closely with me knew I was almost solely judging my success off of this fulfillment... or the lack thereof.

Finally in the month of January, I believe I spent a total of 6 nights in my apartment in the state where I reside. At one point around the middle of the month, our plane touched down for a layover and already having had five cities under my belt, I genuinely looked to the man beside me and queried, “what city are we in right now?”

A week later, I awoke in London.

One evening my travel companion and I were waiting for our play to start in southwest London. We stood in front of the Apollo Victoria Theater trying to decide where to kill time before the show.

Knowing Buckingham Palace was about a mile away, I suggested the quick journey up the road. We walked it and upon cresting the hill, I was immediately seized with the sight before me.

The night was purple black. The palace was illuminated with bright white flood lights highlighting its majesty. The London Eye was glowing indigo on the horizon off the Thames. I loved it.

I was so much reminded how I love looking at the DC monuments much better at night, when the tourists have left and the buildings are immaculately regal.

On that semi-foggy evening in front of Buckingham Palace, a question crept into my mind. “Elizabeth, what do you believe to be your Personal Legend?” A humid wakeup call smacking me in the face.

I once read a story of a shepherd boy living a common life who had a dream leading him on a journey to fulfill his Personal Legend.

Crucial to the novel was this idea of a Personal Legend. The boy learned of one's Personal Legend from a King who clarified to him "It's what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is.” (The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho)

Spoiler. One of the enlightening beauties of the story exists in the irony of the shepherd boy finding his treasure in the place he commenced his journey.

By the end of London, I was ready to go home. My Personal Legend had less to do with “the where” as I had originally believed and a whole lot more to do with “the what.”

My plane left Heathrow and upon stepping foot in the Atlanta airport, I was heard to exclaim quite dramatically “God Bless America” as the surrounding passengers chuckled.

I spent all of January gone and have spent all of February making up for it… in a state I have long since had little desire to be in.

I feel once more a robust drive I have felt many times in the past. A drive which has many times directed me to stuffing my vehicle and moving. Each era guided me to trivial fulfillment.

I look forward to more travel. Traveling is enlightening. Inevitably, messing with the Where will help you to decipher the What.

However, it’s not the Where I’m trying to seize. Even now, it is the What.

Life Lag

2009-01-05T10:56:00.001-07:00

It was freezing. 7 degrees Fahrenheit freezing. But the view was remarkable. 7 degrees Fahrenheit remarkable.

The house was positioned on the base of the mountain where the views of the valley were astonishing. All the city glittered in the night while left over Christmas lights twinkled sporadically here and there. The city glow ceased abruptly where the lake was responsible for the black out in the middle of the scene. The dark abyss was beautiful in its own sense and commanded respect for the grandness of the void.

When things get stressful, it’s always good to take a deep breath. When things get really stressful, it’s always good to take a deep breath of fresh air. Last night was the epitome of this.

I will spend the next 19 days straight working. I have a business trip to Anaheim at the end of this week returning on Sunday only to work on Monday; immediately followed by a business trip to Orlando at the end of next week returning on Sunday only to work on Monday through that business week.

Stressful. I rely heavily on my weekends. I love my friends and I certainly enjoy playing with my friends on the weekends. It’s a time to be renewed.

One of my dear friends started a new semester today. With half her classes registered for and the other half relying on a professor’s signature to add the courses, she too was anxious for today.

So last night while commiserating at her house, we wrapped ourselves up in blankets and sat out on her balcony porch enjoying the view… for over an hour… in coldness I would next to never be caught in. We breathed. We pontificated. We breathed some more.

Our problems did not disappear with our increased blueness. Just a deep breath. But on the up side, jet lag aside*, I’ll be in much warmer weather.

*UT to PA to UT to CA to UT to FL to ENGLAND to UT within three weeks. Literally coast to coast.

To Help Me Cope With Anything

2008-12-16T23:33:00.004-07:00

When I was younger, I would wear my bathing suit day and night throughout the entire summer. I lived in it.

Each morning, I'd wake up wearing nothing but my suit. I would stagger down to the kitchen in my bathing suit and a pair of shorts I had pulled on.

I knew weeding our half acre garden was always the large chore of the day. So I'd pour myself a big bowl of grape nuts to put off the inevitable as long as I could manage.

It was hot. It was humid. It was Pennsylvania.

Still, if we worked hard enough, we were taken swimming nearly everyday by one in the afternoon. So after the garden, I'd grab my towel and actually use my swimming suit.

My siblings and I would come home tuckered out and I'd lie down on the couch and fall asleep. When I woke, it was usually time to set the table, eat dinner, do the dishes, and I even have a few good memories of our family messing around and playing summer games outside.

All was done in my suit.

We'd come in after the sky would darken and watch television. We'd go back out again and watch the lightening bugs.

I'd sleepily stagger back up to bed in my suit and fall asleep.

The next morning was exactly the same, only tasks of snapping green beans, pitting cherries, skinning onions, canning in general, hanging sheets on the line, burning papers (which means absolutely nothing to you unless you're part of my family), and the likes can be substituted for the gardening.

Most often though, all of it was followed by swimming, napping, eating, playing, and bedtime.

I know this seems unorthodox at best if not down right disgusting to most. I lived in my suit and had I not had church every Sunday, I would have spent the entirety of my summer in it. As is, the days I spent out of my suit would have been less that two actual weeks worth.

I'm missing the beach. What I would give to be in Hawaii right now, with no fewer than two weeks of vacation ahead of me, a pair of shoes, a skirt, and a swimming suit.

Lay Thee Down Now and Rest, May Thy Slumber Be Blessed

2008-12-16T00:21:00.003-07:00

It's after midnight. But it's snowing. And I loathe the snow. But it's so beautiful. And it's the perfect backdrop for a restless night. So restless indeed, that I'm looking up quotes about my insomnia.

"It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A "bad night" is not always a bad thing." ~Brian W. Aldiss

A Popcorn and Cranberry String of...

2008-12-15T01:15:00.003-07:00

I could barely feel my finger tips in my black fleece gloves.

The black fleece hat kept inching off my head and was getting lost in the hood of my sweatshirt which barely moved with my body because it was clinging to the mint green fleece under it. The white tee shirt was twisting under the green fleece and all of it had separated from my jeans.

My bare lower back was itching from the pink striped wool blanket between me and the ground. The blanket on top of me was doing little more than annoy rather than warm. I shoved my hands in between my legs hoping there was warmth to spare for my extremities.

Despite all of this, I gazed up at the black night sky sprinkled full of white stars.

It was cold, yes. Yet it was a beautiful sight… and my two giggling friends were making it all the better. What can I say? When a person just needs to breathe some fresh air, she counts herself lucky to have friends willing to do it with her even on a frosty night.

We were all taking turns asking the questions. When I wasn’t staring at the heavens, I was focusing on the ice flakes which had formed on our blankets and any other exposed clothing.

“Is there anything you regret in your life that if you could go back and do it again, you would change?”

I laughed at the question. I still laugh at the question. I never know what I’m going to hear with something like this. Mostly in this day and age, a day where we’re taught to take little responsibility, an age where we’re told we don’t owe anything to anyone, in this day and age of moral decay, I frequently hear people comment on having no regrets. They’d do it all the same.

This has fascinated me. I understand the concept of thinking you’re on a good path now, of thinking there really is no going back anyway so why really think about changing any of it, of thinking you are a good person in a good place and to change anything about the journey may change those two facts.

The truth is I have a string of regrets. I have a series of events and behaviors I would undo or even summon the bravery to do.

I met a new friend or rather became more acquainted with a new friend who inspires me. A person who is fundamentally good to the core. A person who encourages, uplifts, and fortifies me in our every dealing. A person I can’t seem to get enough of because goodness in this form rarely, if ever, comes your way.

Every encounter leaves me wanting more and not of this person’s company but of myself.

I am reminded of my many mistakes. I see how this other has come across my same temptations and prevailed. I have many instances I bemoan.

I am thankfully aware of some of my own successes as I’m glad I don’t have to report wrong doing on my part. Not that I owe or would give any sort of accounting before this individual but because being in this individual’s presence makes me acutely aware of my being and I immediately find myself reporting to me.

I regret not being more, not giving more, not helping more. But regrets are fruitless and that’s the truth. Here’s to a holiday season which too is acting upon me as this new friend. To a season where most of us give more, help more, and generally are more.

And here’s to the friend as well.

... And You Lose Some

2008-12-05T09:56:00.001-07:00

I rarely try to disclose any specific incident in my life unless it applies to my greater and more formulated themed essay. But I woke up this morning and was giggling literally within 30 seconds of being coherent. And I promise, I do NOT laugh in the morning.

What follows is an account as accurately as I can portray it. I have not embellished which makes it even better.

Each night, I sleep with the window open. I have done this for years. No matter the season. No matter the temperature. The window has to be open for me to sleep.

On a more personal note, I sleep in my skivvies only. I have also been doing this for years. I do not wear socks. I do not wear clothes.

However, when the weather turns cooler, I’ll pull on a t-shirt and bottoms and lately my ugg boots. I don’t know when and I can’t imagine it takes long, but I always seem to wake up back in my undies only.

Last night I pulled on a tee, some pants, and my uggs. After some television watching and a little socializing, I eventually sauntered up to bed completely exhausted. I must have been wholly worn out because this morning when I woke, I was lying on my stomach and my feet felt stiff.

I literally blinked open my eyes and was wearing nothing but my undies… AND my boots. Additionally I have no recollection of how the clothes came off and not the boots.

Wait. I'm thirsting to death!

2008-11-26T10:15:00.002-07:00

... said my roommate to me when she walked in the door and I with guitar in hand told her I wanted to dedicate a song to her. I waited for her to fetch a beverage. “Okay, go,” she urged.

Probably for my final formal posted installment of all things gratitude, I grateful for good people… and my roommates are some of them.

This same roommate later on needed to run an errand and commented how her Jeep was out of gas. “Take the civic,” I offered. “I just filled her up yesterday.”

Of course I drive a mazda 626. The civic is indeed hers (yes, she is a two car woman) which she has been so hospitable to lend to me while my car, heaven help us all, is yet again out of commission and has been since Saturday.

Yet to know her is to know that even though this vehicle is hers, she’s just that nice that you’d have to offer it back to her. She’d never presume to reclaim it under my usage.

The best part is this girl is not a push over. She is a sassy little thing. But good people exist in this world. Better people than me. And I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for them.

What Is It About... Certainly Not Me

2008-11-20T12:12:00.002-07:00

I must confess, I’ve been excited to write this post for a few days.

I decided to make a goal to post on the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, and 25th entries of gratitude leading up to THE day of thanksgiving.

I made the goal with the intent to force myself to at least be grateful on those days having no foreknowledge I might actually be thankful on days in between. And I’m entirely excited for this one.

I am grateful for feeling blessed on days when I feel like I least deserve it.

I’m incredibly aware of my personal faults and flaws on any given day. I fall subject to many follies which beset mankind.

There are days when life is good, I’m very happy, and everything is going smoothly. On these days, I take little time to feel blessed. Then there are days when life is bad, I’m very miserable, and everything keeps getting screwed up. On these days, I take little time to feel blessed.

On the occasional day I feel blessed, it’s commonly a result of something going my way and the emotion which accompanies is a sort of giddiness. I smile. I laugh. I am… well giddy. Yet this is NOT the emotion I reference today.

There are moments in this world when you are going about your days knowing you could do better, be better.

You are indifferent to anything outside of yourself and apathetic towards yourself.

Then when you think no one is noticing, something INCREDIBLE happens to you. And you are immediately aware this is the result of nothing you’ve done and certainly nothing you’ve earned.

There is one source you know to offer up essential gratitude but the emotion is not giddiness. It is debt.

And it is a purer form of feeling blessed than anything else I know. I’m awed. I am overwhelmed. I… weep.

For THIS unpolluted, unsullied, authentic blessing which has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with an altruistic Gift, I am grateful.

The Recipe

2008-11-15T15:40:00.002-07:00

It was 5:34pm on a Friday afternoon. I was exhausted from my work week and excited to get home and get on with my evening plans.

I was wearing a black long sleeved shirt, a black knee length skirt, and fantastic black boots worth every last penny I spent on them. I had my bag strewn on my shoulder, my keys and security badge in my right hand and a bright red covered, holiday edition of “O” magazine in the other. I looked every bit the part of an executive woman ready leave.

As I journeyed to the glass door which separates my department from the general lobby of our building, I prematurely threw the force of my body into this door before I had adequately pushed the release bar to liberate the latch which secures shut the access.

Upon so doing, the most thunderous crash, followed by a metal scraping discharge of lever, while finishing with a pop from the sheer forcing of the door open drew all of the attention of the my two male co-workers lounging in the lobby to me.

A great deal of laughter commenced. The boys were roaring in amusement and I myself broke out in the most lively, hilarious mirth I’d experienced in an extended period of time.

My high school choir teacher once paid me one of the greatest compliments I have ever been given. One I have frequently treasured and thought upon when labeled with characteristics such as boisterous and the likes.

She told me she couldn’t help but laugh every time I laughed. She told me my laugh was one of the most authentically jubilant laughs of all the people she knew. She said I laughed from the toes of my feet to the hair on my head and was certain every part of my body partook in it.

In my more recent adulthood, for many reasons the world feels more comfortable with, I have learned to stifle this hearty laugh of mine. I have scaled back and toned down my merriment to be more appropriate for public displays of gaiety.

Yet on this darkening, autumn, Friday evening, I laughed what I have long since laughed. And I felt it in my toes and on my head.

The boys joked, “sheesh, you couldn’t wait one more second to get out of here, could you?” which sent us each into this gleeful fit all over again.

I’m grateful for laughter. This often socially inappropriate, audacious, roaring bellow of goodness which tingles life into every element of my being. I love when others laugh. However, I love it more when I get to do it myself. The sound of laughter is medicine.

A Flashlight

2008-11-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

There are times when you find yourself lost, marching in the middle of the night on unfamiliar ground.

In these times you become wide-eyed and your alertness is heightened. Each one of your senses deeply awakened. Every sensation intensifies.

The moment to panic vanishes immediately in a desperate desire to survive.

Every resource you’ve been taught you could use is gone and as you look around, you’re overcome with a realization you may not make it. A feeling of defeat. The awful true knowledge that every last drop in your reservoir of faith has been used.

Yet in this final minute, this instant of despair, is when you stumble into a new reserve you were never aware existed. A sister quality of faith.

HOPE. And this is a tremendously grand experience. Mind-blowing in all its revitalizing abilities.

Then air starts to seep into your lungs. Your clenched fists fall to your sides and begin to release. Your jaw relaxes.

I am grateful to have experienced everything which has brought me to this moment.

To be taught again and again of pain, without any exposure to it, is to know next to nothing of pain. Still pain is a commodity the world has much of and anyone with a pulse will be subject to.

Nevertheless hope, a highly examined contemplation in most any philosopher’s mind, may rarely find dwelling in any given person. It shows up in the darkest of hours. It's the unlikely choice a person makes while having every reason to choose anything else.

Though if you do, it's like kicking into rock. Yet when you bend down to observe the damage, you discover a flashlight.

Do, Re, Mi in November

2008-11-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

I look forward to every Tuesday. Even as I type this sentence, I feel like I've breeched this topic before. Nonetheless, I look forward to every Tuesday.

This is the day in which media drops, an industry term meaning albums, dvds, and books are released to the public for review and purchase.

I am an avid music lover. I know many people are these days and I don't begrudge sharing this hobby with mankind. In a world where it seems the hearts of men are waxing cold, music is a very simple, very powerful way to invoke emotion from even the most apathetic spirited person.

So the very first thing I’m thankful for this season is the gift of music. For the insightful words of wisdom gathered from inspired hopefuls around the world.

For a crucial escape from any agonizing moment.

For the soundtrack to giggling with the girls in my bed late on Saturday nights, baking pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and decided if blended oatmeal is a good substitute for wheat flour, and mostly for any good spiritual experience.

Music has almost always been the vehicle to bring me back to my divine disposition.

I am grateful to the many writers, singers, and producers who have sacrificed much to bring it to me. Music enhances my life and I, personally, am enormously grateful for it.

Nothing Is Real 'Til It's Gone

2008-10-29T00:34:00.000-06:00

My friend said it’s similar to looking at the northern lights and telling someone you love them. I equate it to being at the Goo Goo Dolls concert after a week of hard work with three of your great girlfriends while more confetti than you could ever dream of falls from above.

There are few words and whatever words may be able to describe the emotion is certainly out of my ability to do so.

I knew it was our busiest week of the year. I knew going into it how difficult it would be. I had tons of anxiety. I knew as I packed my bags the night before, before I even checked into the hotel room, before I met the foreigners, it would be grueling and exhausting. I didn’t expect it would be one of the most rewarding weeks of my life.

I expected one hundred hours as the worst case scenario. I came in just under. Yet anything between eighty and a hundred feels the same. Simply put, it’s all a blur.

I work for a global company with distributors coming from many countries around the world. This past week was a corporate convention and it all started there. “There” being a corn maze shaped like David Archuleta as his music blared from the surrounding speakers while 500 multi cultural early comers were entertained by and on the company.

I gave a tour of our corporate headquarters (a frequent job task) to a group of sixty Hungarians and Czech Republicans. My tour consisted of my English to a French translator who translated the French to Hungarian while a Hungarian further translated to Czech for all the rest.

Early on, I sarcastically made a statement only to be told in English by the French translator sarcasm is American and doesn’t translate. “Well folks, I don’t really have much more for you. Here is the corporate state of the art boardroom, CEO’s office, the Co-Founders’ offices, the elevator. Any questions?”

Later that week I would annihilate two of those Hungarians in a speed drinking contest. Upon leaving the table and dashing off to usher another event, I took my wine glass of water, and swallowed the full contents in about half a second. The president of our Eastern Europe Market was impressed. When commenting on my talent, I openly accepted the familiar astonishment as I’ve known I’ve had this ability for awhile.

Two of these Hungarians then challenged me to a drink off in which servers were summoned to bring each of us two of these glasses filled with water, the Europeans’ being room temperature and mine being cold. “Un, deux, trois!”

I smoked them. To which I was told had they been drinking beer, they would have beaten me. I was informed Europeans don’t drink water. To which I notified them I was more than up for the challenge after I finished work. I was cheered by onlookers and fellow co-workers.

Yet if I had to sum up my sixteen plus hour days filled with luncheons & motivational speakers like Peter Vidmar, hand shakes & double cheek kisses (I love these the best), registration & onsite product store assignments, charity dinners & silent auctions, late night dance practices for Saturday morning general session introductions & even later night conversations with co-workers in hotel rooms, I think the only word I could use for the encounter would be “hope.”

I felt a sort of hope which I have long since felt. A resurgence of what I’m good at… people. That I have so much left to experience and contribute in this world… a listening ear and love. That although I struggle with having mastered nothing in this world, I am naturally good at almost everything I try.

I’m bright. I’m comical. I’m charismatic. Then for the first time in a long time, I thought less about how I’ve been begging Deity to take me to the people I need to be with or the place I need to be.

I thought more about how somewhere someone is begging Deity to send me into their life. As an employee. As an emissary. As a companion.

I felt hope. Hope in people of the world. Hope in two prayers are heard better than one. Hope in my future.

So even as the concert marking week’s end finished and I was getting my pictures taken with the Goo Goo Dolls (backstage passes), I was more concerned with getting to IHOP in time to meet up with my friends I’d been without for vastly more than a hundred hours.

I finally got home, went to bed, and upon waking 14 hours later had one thought in my mind. Hope.

A Penny Saved

2008-10-19T22:39:00.003-06:00

Sunday is not my usual day for writing anything which may end up online.

I diligently reserve Sundays for personal writing. Pages and pages of journal entries.

Sometimes as simple as recounting a weekend activity, occasionally the philosophizing I restrict from public eyes, and intermittently the notation of private fears or passions.

I have acquired a weird hobby in the past couple months. I enjoy reading obituaries. I’ll go online and pull up any location in the country I wish to travel to and read about someone who lived a life there. And tonight I stumbled across a good one.

It was the picture which seized me. I gazed at this man and felt so immediately connected. I wanted to know about him. So I read. Born in another country. His immigration. His life, his education, his career, and his family. His story. Then I wanted to know him.

I have this immense love for the elderly. A substantial respect really. My friend seemed to finally take note of this in me within the past couple weeks and now frequently observes and comments on its presence in my life. I found her surprise at this fact comical and relayed it to another friend of mine.

When the latter queried to my fascination with this generation I simply replied, “I’m a story person. They have the stories.”

They have the stories about good times and bad times. The stories about war and about peace. The stories about love, hatred, and forgiveness. The stories about life.

In these stories are morsels of explanation, solutions to setbacks, and recipes for doing it all and potentially doing it better than what has come before us.

I hear optimism. I hear humor. I hear hope.

So tonight, I’m taking a second to meditate and re-immortalize this man.

I never knew you but I thank you. Thank you for reiterating to me the importance of education (formal or informal). To listen more and speak less. But mostly, thank you for showing me there are hard things to be done in life. Difficult things like leaving your country and the familiar to commence on a new path. A path I have no doubt frightened you terribly. Yet a path which offered much joy after the fight. You and others like you are inspirations to me.

Are There No Shoes?

2008-10-08T22:26:00.013-06:00

About three months ago, I finally had to submit to a package of technology I've been avoiding. Unlimited Texts.

I don't mind texting. I concede to its convenience. Any time. Any place. Anywhere. The fact I had to upgrade proves this. My church texts information regarding activities. My boss texts reminders for meetings. And my friends…

However to ignore the repercussions of its existence would be irresponsible of us. It's impersonal. It takes little thought. It holds us accountable for next to nothing.

If I had a dime for every plan made over the phone and every plan broken over text, I'd be significantly wealthier.

This past year seems to have pummeled us, forcing us into a kind technology not essential for living or work. A technology which has been enslaving in our social practices and regressive in the fine art of communing.

Hereafter is simply my opinion, my experience, and my perception.

With focus on the internet, I have seen an explosion in signups on social networking sites and blogs alone. And with every click to add a new friend, to feel less isolated, we flush away kinship.

We reduce our relationships to a digital, less than 50 words, sporadic coming and going recaps. In our desire to connect, we become much less connected.

Sure we are touching base with a growing number of people. We are locating those who we temporarily lost. Yet at what cost?

Comparison and competition is thriving in this environment. The adolescent seemingly witnesses how peers are skinnier, prettier, and dating more. Women seemingly observe other wives doing it better, other mothers being more successful, and other women who are more involved and more accomplished. Or worse. Their pride supposes them the envy of others.

For me, it's merely the car I don't drive, the money I don't have, and the experiences I’m not encountering. Funny how every walk of life leaves us wanting more and feeling less. Never did anything perpetuate this feeling within humanity as the technology I have illustrated.

Where there is comparison and competition, there is enmity.

We sign on to see we haven’t been left messages or the “right ones” haven’t left us a message. We see those who sit idly on their accounts and others leaving their cyber prints all over the place offering little insight or connection rather a stamp to prove they’ve merely been there.

Additionally I could list more reasons. However it’s my final rationale which pains me the most. The lost art of communication and people relating.

When I was in high school, I had a boyfriend who furthermore was my best friend at the time. I loved talking to him. We discussed everything under the sun. We developed this practice of nighttime phone calls.

I would get done play practice at 10 or sometimes 11, come home, get ready then jump into bed while making the call. However the calls would linger well into the early mornings.

Once my mother picked up her bedside phone at 2:30AM and spoke authoritatively, “time to hang up now.” I will never forget it. I will never forget those conversations.

Work and life has been tremendously exhausting of late. Last night I decided to retire much earlier than my usual post midnight bedtime. Upon climbing into the covers, I desired a little pillow talk. Literally.

I picked up my phone and scrutinized my contacts. I found myself in a very real dilemma.

There were two types of people. People who I know and love, who might have been up for the late night phone chat but were on the opposite coast or long turned in.

The second (and this is the distressing part) were my fellow peers. Peers who I knew if I signed onto a certain networking site would all be chatting in spades. Yet peers who I deem as lacking the skills to carry on a heartfelt, authentic, unfeigned conversation. Had I called, I would have confused any one of them.

“What’s going on?”
“I just wanted to talk, that’s all.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Just longing to connect with someone.”
Awkward silence. Stuttering. “Oh. Well… how was your day?” And those would have been the wrong words.

The right words would have been anything which would have jumpstarted the conversation. “Well I took a test today and I’m pretty sure I bombed it b/c I never listen in class. The professor is a total bore.”

“Oh yeah. I hate that. I’m so glad I’m done school. I went to the mall because I have a $40 gift certificate knowing that I wanted a pair of shoes. And after looking for no fewer than 2 hours, I found nothing. Can you believe that? Me? The shoe hoarder of late. And when I went into Vans, a tried and trusted shoe stop for me, I was greeted by indifference to a WALL of shoes, which on any other given day I can covet up to 3 pair. Can you believe THAT?”

(Unfortunately that’s a true story of this past week, folks. The excursion. Not the fake conversation.)

These are the details of our lives which bind us together. Which are defining of our beings to one another. Which are NOT blog worthy. Which get lost in this day and age of being so digitally united while so emotionally detached.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…" C. Dickens

Now I'm off to hypocritically develop my friendships via comments. After all, I love giving and getting them too.

Susceptibility...

2008-09-26T23:14:00.008-06:00

... the state of having little resistance.

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

This entry is conceived in much shame. Nonetheless, most of my posts come only after I’ve tested the ideas against time. Meaning, if I think about blogging something and three days later I still want to blog about it, then I usually commence the process towards fruition.

Some of my friends and I have been on a stage kick of late. I’ve seen two plays in the last two weeks alone. And this pastime makes going to the movies look like an activity for the poor.

(I'm still going to the movies AND attending concerts. In fact, I've done all three this week.) Two nights ago, my friends and I decided to go see Aida which is playing locally at present.

I have really come to appreciate the direction which goes into these productions. Every stage is different and every new director has a unique vision for placing the specific story mood and essential details to generate an atmosphere on the small stage.

I was completely amused by the plot though predictable. However, I enjoyed what I believe the origin of the play to be. Elton John and Tim Rice having had so much fun writing for the Lion King that the moment it ended commenced the creation of Aida.

This musical is similar in plot location and musical theme only. Fortunately, it’s about people and not a pride of lions.

I am NOT before you writing a review. There was a simple detail the director took in this production which exploits one of my weaknesses for and affinity towards in my “Pandora’s box of male characteristics.”

(Sigh discreditably.) The fauxhawk. Or my truer kryptonite, the mohawk, when executed responsibly.

Now, there could not have been a better friend or companion at my side than was in this moment. For when I gasped so audibly upon sight of the Captain and his servicemen , the only person who could laugh and understand completely my immediate physical (emotional and let’s face it, 99% hormonal) response was the girl which sat beside me.

All the same. My former roommate. My very dear friend. A hair stylist. And my own color specialist.

I love mohawks but am extremely particular to shortness of the sides, wideness of the band, and overall height. So I love the fauxhawk. Additionally, a more traditional hair do is essential (as I prefer my men with respectable jobs) which lends itself to the conservative fauxhawk better.

Men in any play have never looked so appealing and so… well, delicious that appetite seems an entirely appropriate word for sexuality. I was in love. And those who do not presume lust to be a form of love, who sadly limit their definition of love to “happily ever after”, are truly missing out.

Should you believe this to be a random act of direction for the men of the play to be required to sport the look, the play has quite a sub-plot emphasis on fashion. It makes sense for the director to have employed fashion details such as this. I applaud the person who took my dull mundane week and turned it into daydream central ever since.

I cannot ever truly love a man who does not have a fauxhawk.

With Great Effort

2008-09-16T09:13:00.007-06:00

To say I haven’t had any good times during 2008 would be a lie. To say 2008 has sucked for me would be an understatement.

It seems as though it’s been one thing after another. What’s worse is, I just can’t seem to weather the storm as I feel I should, even with all of this adversity experience under my belt.

I’m exhausted. I’m discouraged and dispirited. I’m frustrated and I’m downright angry. Is there no reprieve from the constant barrage of life’s assaults?

Now bear in mind, I’m not yet defeated. This is by no means intended to be a “woe is me” composition. I especially feel grateful a thousand times over for the loved ones in my life.

I spent the past weekend in the celebratory throws of a friend’s birthday which included a getaway to our very own nearby Park City. We crashed at a resort none of us could afford. We indulged in spa treatments. We ate out every meal at places ending in “grill” and containing words like “snake” and “creek” in them.

After the festivities and while we were homeward bound, as we drove down the Wasatch Back, I watched a rural lesser known Utah pass before me rather than the urban state I’ve come to be most familiar with.

The mountains’ foliage was already turning red and orange. The expanse was divided by an unspoiled azure stream. I became fixated on watching it wind its way through the yellowing meadows.

I witnessed a fisherman bundled in a long sleeved plaid flannel shirt under a pair of army green waders enjoying the tranquility of no one being around in this unpopulated nowhere.

While in the middle of happily beholding this breathtaking scene straight out of a movie, my mind caught hold upon the words, “for it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.”

As soon as I thought it, I queried back aggressively, “but what good is the astonishing when I’m drowning in the abysmal?” I pushed the thought out of my mind until I had a minute to reason through it later that night.

I retired to bed and the air of course had a nip in it. I gathered my covers tightly around my face and took a deep breath to ponder my earlier revelation.

In the solitude of the moment, with no one to lie to and no good reason to lie to myself, I became overcome with the power of the truthfulness of the declaration which immediately moved me to tears.

I lie in bed thinking of the countless good things I longed for. Things which I have frequently taken for granted in my life. Things like family in decent proximity, a car which doesn’t break down every six months, and other stuff as simple as good health to someone with a cold.

Then last night at almost midnight, I found myself at Sundance under a full moon enjoying myself. On the fartherest back slope surrounded by nothing except a friend with an affinity towards loudly crooning Disney songs, I felt it again.

After the credit card had been cancelled and my sister in law assures me my driver’s license is on its way. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.”

Friends Are Like...

2008-09-09T15:47:00.003-06:00

I’m back.

Or I’m slowly getting back. Where did I hiatus to, you may be asking. A little place I like to call “twice a year sulking.”

I’ve just moved yet again. The second time in four months. I’m home sick. I’m Pennsylvania sick. But mostly I’m family sick.

I’m working hard at getting settled in with some things in my life and trying hard to prevent myself from settling in to other things.

It just seemed fitting that after a family blog, I would take time to lavish accolades upon some of my friends, namely my second family. As there is no chronological order to place them in, I will resort to using names.

Amy & Tyler: You have been family for 10 years but no doubt feeling the resurgence of my presence in spades since Feb. this year. Thank you for opening your home and hearts to me. Thanks for sharing your kids, your clothes, your Costco card, your mother/mother-in-law, and your DVR. Thank you for the birthday cake. And genuinely one of the happiest days of my year so far has been when you finally conceded to just giving me a key. A key to American Idol/ So You Think You Can Dance, air conditioning, auto glue, skateboards, and anything else I have ever pulled out of your garage. A key to HOME.

Coco: My blog is titled for moments with you. If I had a penny for every talk we've shared, for every burden we've shouldered, for every act of service we've performed... if I had a penny for boyfriend drama, and birthday giggles... if I had a penny for bowling with pumpkins, and almost crashing the car while looking at Christmas lights... if I had a penny for the haircuts, shopping, and spending of money... if I had a penny for all the chicken alfredo pizzas from OG... truely if I had a penny for all of the magical moments I've had with you, I'd be a wealthy little girl.

Sarah: I’ve never experienced anything like you before. How many times have we made the joke? You ARE my sister as much as any of them are. I love you. I love every hot tub confessional and every late night swim. I love every sauna sweat right down to the jock itch on the face. Who knew kissing the wood would have resulted in that medical trauma? I love the hours you have put in with me in the sun like few can. For cooking, baking, and mostly eating in the kitchen. It wouldn’t be us if there wasn’t peanut butter or soy milk involved. I absolutely love you, Sarah-Bell.

Daphne: Mi hermana latina. Moving into that house was the greatest blessing b/c I received the gift of you. Few know the demands of being my movie companion. But you have embraced the requirements unabashedly. Pop-culture is an expensive hobby but you have put every minute and every penny into the cause right down to TSLOTAT. There is no one else I would have rather “killed angels” with and you alone were the only one who knew of my obsession with KS (note the initials). I’ll never forget the day I caught you watching me watching him. Beauty pageants, Boyz II Men concerts, and home videos mean little to me without you there.

Ammon: Everyday I come to work and leave all of my friends behind. For 8 hours I try to contribute to the gross national product until I can play afterwards. Thanks for giving me a reason to laugh during those 8 hours. Whether it be at my desk, at Great Harvest, or at the stream/pond into which you flipped your car. Thanks for loaning your dimples to me, the cafeteria talks, and the birthday rendezvous. Thanks for opening my mind again to those different to me. But most importantly, never have you had a girl so convinced she wanted to work graveyard just so she could spend more time with you.

Last but certainly not least, Ren: You have been more of a life preserver than you know. To know me is to know passion. But it is a cross I bear, to feel so much. Being friends with you has given me my life back. There are times when I’m wearied to feel so intensely but with you around, I’m always buoyed. You are kindred in the one way which matters most. I‘ve laughed with you, cried with you, and gone catatonic in your living room in front of you. I have showed few others as much passion, zeal, and enthusiasm as I have allowed myself to give you. I’ve told you secrets I have never told others in this state. You are my twin glass rock. So solid to me in spite of how breakable we are.

Loved Ones... HOLLA!

2008-08-25T00:22:00.001-06:00

Perhaps it’s the pending birthday looming at the end of the week.

If I get a spare hour, I love to youtube. (Yes, I’ve made it a verb, however, I’m sure I’m not the first to do so.) It’s the ultimate in letting “one thing take you to the next” experience. It’s one of the few places I suspend my need to know where or why and just go and do.

So imagine my surprise when my start place of John Mayer’s ‘Free Fallin’ video landed me about one hour later at a ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’ video. Seriously, you can find anything on youtube.

I laughed and clicked on it. This, semi-shamefully, is an essential reminder of my youth. (Candace, I found a user who has EVERY episode from ALL 6 seasons online.)

A few days later, my heart still kind of aches.

It’s the birthday. I know it. Nostalgia has been running deep of late and the one thing from my past I seem to be missing most is my family. Okay, it’s not so much my past as much as a separation from them in the present which is lasting longer than I would have it.

So on a very short, non-philisophical note, with little creativity and vibrancy in my writing, here exists a shout out to my family.

I LOVE YOU! I MISS YOU!

· From bottom up: Please think of me when you’re home in September. I’m sad we’re not going to be there together like we always try to be.
· I’m glad the beach was tons of fun. I’m jealous as it’s been a month and a half since I’ve been. Plus, David Cook has a new single out as well. I know you loved the Archuleta one I shot your way.
· You’re girls are getting so big. You have to blog more. But in the meantime I’ll settle for talking to you when I’m trying to get mom.
· Remember, I’m counting on you for Christmas. Thanksgiving = You + St. George. Christmas = You + Me.
· John and Jen broke up and my heart is happy? Please explain this as I know you both are one of the few others I consult with in these moments. Also, ‘Sisterhood’ would have been much better with you, girlie.
· The goal is 10 grand then New York City. I’m thinking 6 months. Thanks for inspiring me. We’ll go get sushi together.
· Girls T & K. I’m finally at an age where I’ll take that pizza and beer girls’ night you offered awhile back.
· You’re obviously throwing the coolest parties of the summer. I’m sure the new pool has nothing to do with it.
· Congrats on your big day which has ironically been in progress for years. Plus, you are single-handedly responsible for the best conversation I’ve had this summer. I cherish THAT day on the beach.
· To the big brother every girl wishes she had and I luckily do, I love the genuine interest you always show in my life. Few people sincerely care about the details of others the way you do.

A long read... but you should do it.

2008-08-18T12:39:00.005-06:00

My two friends and I were leaving the restaurant. It was in a part of town I was leery to go into in the first place. Supposedly the food was worth every bit of the shadiness it required to walk from the parked car a few blocks away so it wouldn’t get broken into or stolen itself.

We had paid and taken our last sips. I was merely standing in the sitting area waiting for the other two who had escaped for a quick bathroom break. I was extremely aware of my surroundings and in my constant assessment, I looked down to see a crisp five dollar bill on the floor under one of the benches.

I glanced around the room. As we were the only ones in the restaurant besides the staff who were all tucked away in the back, I bent over to grab the money. Upon lowering myself, I noticed another crisp five as well as a twenty which seemed to be poking out of the seam of the wall between the two rooms.

I felt guilty shoving the fives quickly into my jeans pocket but it was the larger bill which scared me. I tugged on the twenty and it pulled out another twenty. When I tugged on the second one, two more sticking to it came with it.

Afraid of getting caught but suffering from a bout of greediness, I put the first two twenties in my pocket with the fives and stood up quickly. The guilt was insurmountable now b/c my thievery was sure to be discovered. By now I was sure none of this money was accidentally dropped by anyone rather as seedy as the part of town we were in and the restaurant owners who served us.

The girls were by my side and it had darkened outside. I wanted to put the money back but I wanted to leave immediately more.

We stepped out the front door and saw two men lingering in the corner of the alley. We were positioned in the middle of tons of industrial buildings surrounded on all sides by these small alleys. My mind tried to calculate an escape plan but I silenced it as my own coping mechanism telling myself I was being ridiculous.

I was seriously afraid. There was nothing comforting about all the concrete buildings and pavement.

The money was burning a hole into my leg and while we quietly spoke awkwardly to each other to feign our normality, we were all aware of the loiterers following us. I was sure they had known what I had taken.

We tried to nonchalantly pick up the pace. As we did, the guests made no attempt to hide their agenda. They broke into a run after us. We all took off but I was slower than the other two.

I instantly found myself separated from my group and down another alley by myself completely conscious to the fact I had no idea where the car was parked. I kept running. My lungs were burning. I was not in shape for this. The acute fear seemed to paralyze me.

With horror pumping through my veins, I turned the corner and bumped into one of my friends.

“Where’s the car!” she exclaimed but I was as ignorant as she was.

By this time we had hidden ourselves behind a dumpster and although I was confident we would be safe from the riot we could hear had broken out now that night had entirely fallen, we knew staying for any longer than a minute was not an option. We would have to leave at some point.

I peered around the corner of the putrid smelling green dumpster. I recoiled at the sight before me. One of the men had pulled out his gun and shot the person in front of him. My heart was beating so fast, it had turned into more of a hum.

We dashed out and started running towards what felt like a “front” street. We had run three blocks or so when a man grabbed me by my shirt and barked orders for me to follow him. I thought we were finished. I knew this was it and my mind ran over every unfinished detail in my life.

He led us into one of these industrial buildings. We swiftly traipsed through the dirt and the clutter of broken glass and rusting gasoline cans. We walked through a door I was sure lead to something more terrible than what I was witnessing but was surprised to see it open into… an apartment.

I first noticed the bed pushed into the far right corner. The blankets were crumpled and dusty. The floor was littered with trash. The windows were busted.

“You guys can rest here for awhile,” the stranger generously offered. My mind confusingly made the leap from equating this man as the villain to my rescuer.

“What is this?” I queried. “Where are we?”

“We’re in my apartment. I keep this place because I work two blocks away. When I get out too late for my safety, I crash here.”

“But there’s no lock on the door,” I shrieked.

“Trust me; it goes far more unnoticed by appearing ‘open’. The moment I put a lock on it is the moment this place is discovered and looted by any passer-bys.”

My body ached. My muscles felt heavy and in severe pain. He explained a little more how his apartment had come to be known as a safe house for the area. He mumbled about the couches and the pillows and blankets I only now noticed on them. But my mind crazily tried to digest the sight before me.

I had wondered to the wall of windows and in the dark had been examining the literal mayhem which was chaotically taking place a mere fifteen feet away outside. Gun shots were as prevalent as footsteps. It was hard to delineate one scream from the chorus of screaming.

I watched a brute shoot another at point blank. He bent over the motionless corpse, reached into his back jean pocket and removed the leather wallet.

Life was not treasured here. How had a city, our city, turned into this? It was a breeding ground for panic and terror. I heard our host once more. He continued on the frequency of guests and in that moment, there was a knock at the door.

My heart stopped.

The door pushed open and our lost friend stood in the doorway. Having been the only one of us familiar with this part of town, she was also familiar with this place. In alarm, she explained how she had parked the Suburban just outside the loading dock to this building. If we could get to the car, we would be able to get out of this hell.

We barely thanked the gentleman for his help. He walked us once more through the rubble. My heart was racing again and I thought it might explode. I could see the black SUV we had traveled in. We had no time among all the shooting to say good bye to the man. As soon as we saw the outside, we broke into a sprint and nothing could describe the fear of every step.

I watched him pull his gun on me. I was only ten feet away and almost at the car door when… CRACK.

---
This was the first of 3 nightmares I had last night. The other two were grossly different and equally emotionally charged.

Everything was dark. My eyes flew open. My hands were wrapped around my stomach. There was a shooting pain in my gut. I could barely think of anything other than this sharp throbbing in my belly. I rolled to my side. What was wrong with me?

My breathing was short and rapid. “Sit up,” I told myself. I couldn’t shake the panic. I climbed out of bed, stumbled downstairs, went to the bathroom, turned on the light, and secured a glass of water. I popped some ibuprofen b/c the pain was real though I was uncertain why. When I was sure I could fall back asleep, I walked to my bed again.

For what? Two more nightmares. Last night sucked.

I Hereby Motion...

2008-08-16T22:15:00.001-06:00

... all chuck Norris jokes be edited into Michael Phelps jokes.

Ex: Michael Phelps can drown both a fish... and Chuck Norris.

My loved ones will understand the tribute I pay to the "machine" I have spent no fewer than 30 hours of Olympics these past 7-9 days to see him break and re-break records many times over.

I, too, have shed tears with Deborah Phelps. I'm nearly hoarse from how amazing this all has been.

One More Night

2008-08-06T20:15:00.001-06:00

Irrefutable truth regarding me: I am extraordinarily nocturnal. When others sleep, my desire to be awake strongly intensifies.

Two nights ago, I came home to a still house blacked out in sleep and quiet. I found myself in a position I’ve rarely experienced since moving in with the 3 girls. Solitude. Not a solitude of presence but a solitude of being.

As I tried to slow my mind down from the day’s stimulation, my mind kept speeding up in excitement of the alone time, something I treasure as I’m one of the most social creatures you’ll ever meet.

I commenced my evening rituals of shower, lotioning, putting away my shoes, and organizing my things for work the next day. I removed my shorts and tee shirt to settle into my bed, turned on my alarm clock, and turned off the bedside lamp. As soon as the dull yellow light disappeared, my eyes took a second to adjust to the external lights from the world peering through the windows.

I was so exhausted. I’ve been living in a constant state of exhaustion for the past two weeks. My brain has been on overdrive, surviving in a hyper aware condition to all stimuli around me, careful to take note and re-note all which is being said and done in my surroundings. I’ve barely had to lay my head down before I’ve been out.

Yet I lay there watching the shadows bounce around on the wall from the summer breeze through the limbs of the trees outside. I delineated between the white moon and the warmer street lamp glow. I traced the incoming beams to the mirror in my room and then its reflected trajectory outward.

I thought about my work. I thought about my family. I thought about my career plans. I thought about my ‘to do’ list. I thought about my work.

The air was warm and a little tacky from the moisture of the assiduously working swamp cooler. My night side fan moved around enough air to feel a faint breeze in my bed.

I thought about how much I love reading on nights like these. When everything is peaceful and silence is an old welcomed friend whose company couldn’t be more perfect in the moment. When the plot is taking you page by page deeper into your escape world. I almost decided to engage in the hobby when the concept of turning on the light deterred me.

So I decided to indulge in a moment of gratitude for the good things of the week.

The reflection of a specific friend came into my head and I smiled all over. I love good friends. Then in that vein, I mulled over a phone conversation with another friend from a few days earlier and the happiness I felt. Consequently, I smirked when I thought of my sister’s opinion of this friend. I meditated on my family on the other side of the country. I am loved.

I thought about my goals again. I tried to formulate plans. But whatever I thought of, I kept grinning. I found myself in the most smiley mood and it was 1:30 at night.

I should have been asleep. I’d regret all of this in the morning. Still those thoughts didn’t do anything to quiet my mind. I wanted to stay up. I wanted to talk. I wanted to ponder.

I’ve heard it quoted, “by night, an atheist half believes in God.”

One thing I know, as the harshness of daylight vanishes, so does the blanket of invincibility in which we daily cloak ourselves.

My mind is more open and receptive. My opinions are more malliable. The need to be or experience anything other than what I am or how I feel dissolves. It’s liberating freedom.

So take a guess why I love night.

Sweet Emotion

2008-07-24T19:30:00.002-06:00

An Enya CD
The Superman Emblem
A Christmas Tree
The 5 Olympic Rings
This one photograph of my sister and me.

These are a few things which stir great emotion in me. I’m engaged with a rush of powerful response towards all of these things.

I could take the time to explain why an Enya CD reminds me of our beach house, one agonizing sunburn, and my family. But it wouldn’t be worth it, because I’d have to scratch that story as soon as I told it to relate a completely different instance.

One involving another Enya CD on a cold autumn’s night with the bedroom window open, gripping the covers for dear life, and loving every second of it. Then I’d abandon that story for no fewer than 5 more great Enya recollections.

A week ago my world encountered a storm as big as I’ve ever been asked to weather. The story of which will not be recounted here as the re-telling of it has already worn out its welcome in my life.

However I will relate this much. There has only been one other time when I have felt so much. I was in torture so acute, so heavily laden in anguish, there are very real parts of the day which are blacked out in my mind with zero remembrance for hours at a time.

I offered one unanswered prayer many times that day, as many times as I could scarce grab the thought. “Please turn the emotions off. Please stop me from feeling. Please turn the emotions off. Please stop me from feeling.”

True to nature, my mind has been the frenzied product of a well employed heart. I’ve tried to sense and make sense of the turbulent feelings I’ve had from and towards the lessons I’ve been learning.

I am frequently heard to utter the comments “aahhh, it hurts my heart” or “awww, it warms my heart.”

About a month ago my roommate commented on the health of my heart after using one of these statements. She observed the regularity to which I exercise the organ noting I would either live a long life due to the relentless training or die young from sheer exhaustion.

So tonight while driving to a friend’s house, a lyric materialized in a song I usually skip which I had the fortunate and incredibly lucky blessing of hearing.

“Oh, there's no heart. And I've spent all this time feeling something you can't feel at all!”

And…wait for it… my heart leapt.

The obvious implication of the lyric has much to do with love, with romantic love. Yet I couldn’t help but apply more liberally the sentiment being presented to me.

Why are some of us so content to walk around this world building up fences, road blocks, and other fortifications around our feelings? Because if left vulnerable, one might get hurt?

I assure you, it will get hurt. You will love and lose. You will love and lose more times than you win. You will love and live, and live and learn. Perhaps even to despise that love.

But you will feel. You will feel a rainbow of emotions which will take a black and white world and color it with the vibrancy of existence. The very breath of life.

You will sit in your scanty boat while the winds and rains of living wallop down upon you and there will be tears.

Still, I also assure you those tears will NOT all be of melancholy. Since tears of melancholy generally bleed into achievement.

And when you look around to see who might rejoice in THOSE tears with you, it aches to see over half the population whose hearts have waxed cold and want to scream, “Oh, there's no heart. And I've spent all this time feeling something you can't feel at all!”

So tonight, ironically one week to the day, I have to say I’m grateful to feel. Even the stomach churning negative crap.

Come Here & Sit Down

2008-07-09T15:51:00.001-06:00

In the past few weeks, I have scribed no fewer than 3 lengthy blogs. Yet as I develop each essay, I can’t seem to bust one out containing the emotion and power with which I’m used to penning into something.

So I sat down and put on some music in the hopes to pick one of these out, brush it off, dress it up, kiss it with passion, and then post it.

Anyone who’s had a pulse musically this year has had an affinity for Chris Brown. As he was shortly found among the C’s, I clicked on the song “Say Goodbye” and took a moment to enjoy a throw back to 2005 when the song was released.

Chris’s work is completely reminiscent of Usher’s 90s hits. And in THAT, I found some new inspiration.

It was a cool pending summer night. The moisture in the air was more soothing to the skin than it was a nuisance to a hot body. The moon acted as a whitish yellow night light embracing the tree limbs, roof tops, and worn cracking pavement we call streets back east.

I was driving down the back winding roads of the country in my mother’s Plymouth Voyager minivan… a white vehicle with faux side wood paneling.

It was a vehicle I wildly paced too fast around turns, whose brakes I fiercely had a love affair with b/c of my youthful attraction for speed, and a nose I gently pressed to the bumper of a classmate’s car when he chose to slow for railroad tracks I had zero intention of crawling over. It was a vehicle we final few kids in my family have a fondness for.

The windows were down and my younger sister was in the passenger seat. The conversation had dwindled and the radio took over with the smooth R&B sounds we were channeling. It was one of the many times I had heard the words, “it’s seven o’clock, on the dot, I’m in my drop top, cruising the streets, yeah baby…”

For a teenage girl whose life was ferociously transitioning into a mysterious new realm, it felt to me as comfortable as anything at that time could.

We were grown ups, my sister and I. The fake kind. The adolescents who were picking up the boyfriend to bring back to hang out with at our house kind. The kind who was still mildly surprised the request for the hang out, excursion, and car was granted. The free kind.

The cicadas were thick in the shoulder grasses. Their buzzing and clicking add to the cadence of my memory’s soundtrack of the night. Additionally, there was the croaking of tree frogs, the screeching of crickets, and the humming of an enormous underworld of insects crouching in the lush foliage which is Pennsylvania.

The memory is crisp in my mind and definitively paramount to my familiarity of my home state. The new song with the old memory made me think of one person. A person I love. A person I need to call.

And while sitting over two thousand miles away, in a desert state whose sun is literally scorching the paint off of my car this year, I found some passion. It’s why I have always written. It’s why I write.

To preserve the memories.

The beliefs I possess. The associations I make. The memories of my people, my places, and my experiences. And here is the epiphany Chris Brown led me to whilst engaging in a music appreciation moment.

It is easy to feel so small and perhaps even insignificant in this world. There are 6 billion people and only one me. We are ALL seeking to be understood while hopefully remembering to seek to understand others as well.

This is why we engage in relationships. We desire to summon another witness to our lives… to be apart of our existence.

What is the way we connect to each other? By the sharing of ourselves. And I query, what are we sharing?

It has been said, “to understand a man, you must know his memories.”

Perhaps from now on I will print out my journal and print off my blog entries and bestow this book of my past to any new being of whom I wish to connect. But as William Faulkner said, the past is never dead; it is not even past.

One of My Heart's Beliefs

2008-07-04T18:55:00.002-06:00

The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.
-Earl Nightingale

Authentic Self

2008-06-06T11:30:00.001-06:00

“Guys, when a woman is slamming cupboards and tells you she’s ‘fine’ when you ask her what’s wrong, ASK AGAIN.”

I smiled to myself at my professor’s proclamation to the class. At the time, I don’t believe it had been something I had actually done in my life but could immediately sense it was something women do. Of course since my college days, it has become something I have done.

Was there ever a woman or person who existed in the world who at one time or another has not demonstrated incongruent verbal and non-verbal communication at the same time? I daresay not.

So when a roommate of mine last Saturday went from normal to angry in a millisecond, I observed the smashing of the dishwasher door and the banging of the cupboards to be so obviously indicative of her new mood. I already knew better than to waste my breath on the obvious question, are you mad?

The not so obvious questions were at what or who. Still to have asked her these questions in the moment would have resulted in shrouded deceit if not intentional dishonesty. I expected this. What I did not expect was THIS four days later.

This has since been resolved, though my frustration has had me pondering. I can’t help but wonder, why have we forsaken the notion of being honest in our dealings with our fellow men?

I only have myself to compare others against. I understand not wanting to talk about it in the heat of the moment, nevertheless, I’ve learned to talk it to death after the fact… in brutal honesty.

I’m starting to notice our lack of honesty has less to do with our honesty issues concerning others and more to do with our honesty issues concerning ourselves.

“You keep on building the lie, that you make up for all that you lack…” S.M.

Last Sunday evening, I went to a male friend’s house to find solace in a day of chaos. He gave me a hug. He provided me a glass of water. He popped popcorn. He furnished a pillow and blanket. He put on a movie. And he selflessly held me for the better portion of two hours.

He is a man who I trust. I trust him with my dreams. I trust him with my emotions. I trust him with my body. The type of trust which allows him to rest his hand on your softer parts and neither of you flinch at the contact.

It is a comfort derived from honesty. I’m not afraid to be truthful with him… or him to me. He has witnessed me yell, swear, and cry. And even when I’ve done it to him, he’s reminded me it’s often because of my frustration with myself that I sometimes do these things. In the moment, I contest his every accusation of such. Although in the stillness which inevitably follows, I concede.

So instead of penning a discourse on honesty for another ten paragraphs (which by the way, a trait I’m still working on), I leave you with what I know.

My honesty with others at any given time is directly correlated with my honesty to myself. Furthermore, when I have encountered an individual who seems to have a dishonest sense of reality, I repeatedly find an individual who has a dishonest sense of self.

A little more than two years ago, I conducted a personal re-evaluation. In an effort to ever improve my being, I made a few personal goals one of which constituted a concentrated effort in the exercise of being honest with me. An effort to maintain the truth of any situation to myself even if I had hidden it from another.

In so doing, I have found myself hiding the truth less and less towards others. I’m a late bloomer for sure. It has taken me almost thirty years to recognize the value of this while others seem to get it in twenty. Another advantage of my age I’m not willing to forfeit for youth.

Nowadays when I find myself figuratively slamming the cupboards, instead of hollering ‘all is fine’, I try to convey a more honest ‘don’t talk to me right now’ message.

***Post Script. Upon posting this blog, I stumbled aross a well known quote revealing the obviousness of my observation. I suppose I have had no original idea on the topic and the hypothesis has long since been concluded.

"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." W.S.

On Friendship, Patriotism, Marriage, & Religion

2008-05-09T16:17:00.007-06:00

Everyone has priorities in any given arena of life. Here follows some understanding of me.

When it comes to my life, my loved ones come first. Once I love you, I try to do pretty much anything for you even at my expense. I have suffered at this paradigm. I have been taken advantage of and used. Yet I have experienced many more sweet moments of service, sacrifice, and much satisfaction.

When it comes to my physical needs, sleep trumps everything. I find most of the populace to be of the same mind. Leaving the rest to choose between the appetites of food or sex. Though this claim surprises me a little as I’ve seen the latter two rejected many times in the presence of exhaustion.

I was reminded again last weekend not everyone feels this way when my roommate woke me up in the middle of a nap. The reason was insignificant because few reasons, short of death, in the world are good enough to rouse me from my dreams.

When it comes to attributes of character, loyalty is my number one priority. Anyone who knows me knows this about me.

So if you think I’m a little surprised to learn others don’t regard sleep with as much importance as I do, then you should know I’m flabbergasted at the lack of loyalty in the world.

Because at the very least, shouldn’t friends place their inner circle before those outside of their circle?

Isn’t treason considered the utmost in treachery?

Don’t we expect fidelity in marriage?

And was there ever a true disciple who wasn’t loyal to his master?

Yet we live in a day and age where allegiance to religion is subject to trend. Where allegiance to country is whimsical. And if we can’t find allegiance within us for a greater cause, it’s no surprise we struggle to find it among us individually.

Still I argue for the importance of loyalty.

James Luceno recorded, “it all comes down to serving the ones who are fighting along side you, watching your back, putting a weapon in your hand when you need it most. Loyalty.”

I can’t help but notice the brunt of failure in our society derives from our personal relationships. We are excellent businessmen. We produce creative masterpieces. We have logged amazing scientific achievements.

Nonetheless, we fifty percent fail personally. Fail at connecting to another. Fail at making ourselves vulnerable to another. Fail at seeing another’s needs before ours. Definitively, we fail at loyalty to each other. Instead of seeing ‘others first’, we see ‘me first.’

As my relationships grow more intimate, the only thing I really have to give is myself. I am awed as my love for someone swells; my natural concern for me diminishes and my concern for the other increases. The only thing better than my accomplishments are your accomplishments. And the only things which hurt worse than my failures are your struggles.

Also, as developed relationships lend themselves to intimacy, and intimacy is giving of yourself if not your whole self whom you reserve from others, then would loyalty not only be acquainted with intimacy but even a definition of it? A mark of devotion? An endowment of self which exceeds things of monetary value and other worldly gifts?

I believe most people would consider themselves loyal. Again, I warn loyalty to self is not loyalty in character. It is selfishness and the very description of loyalty denotes selflessness. I know it will take more than thousands of years to divide ourselves from that inner paradigm which has been implanted so strongly within us.

Still fundamentally, I’m taking my cue from deity on this. One of the things most religions have in common across the board (besides prayer) is the nature of a jealous God. One who expects our full attention. Our full compliance. Our full attachment. Our full commitment.

So if this is the ultimate relationship I am cultivating, and I’m looking to the Master to show me the way, and His way for His and my optimum connection requires my essential loyalty, then you can bet I’m going to pattern my other dear relationships in a similar fashion.

Subsequently at the end of the day, I think you have your strategy for a successful marriage, lengthy joyful friendships, and even a reverenced appropriate response to country and government.

Find something and practice being loyal to it. These are just my thoughts.

Sign Here

2008-04-25T23:32:00.002-06:00

There are a few things in this world one needs to just make peace with. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, your heart will get broken. You need to pay taxes. People can be unkind. Everything gets old or dirty. And I get speeding tickets.

Saturday ushered in a beautiful spring morning in a town which had been leaping between snow and sun for the past two weeks. I was excited for the day off. There were a plethora of things I wanted to get done including resting. Yes, sometimes it’s necessary for me to schedule in resting.

I attended a street sale. I went running and since I was a slave to my iPod play list, I overdid it complete with coughing all day from breaking up winter’s residue at the bottom of my lungs. I sat outside with a friend. I sat outside by myself. I absorbed the happiness and the vitamin D carried by the sun.

Then I went to my brother’s house to babysit. Or rather, I made the decision to drive 37 mph in a 25. I think I noticed him as soon as I passed him and not a second before. Then I saw them. My favorite colors. The flashing blue and red. Though I prefer my favorite colors in tee shirts and blankets.

True to my established history, I signed the citation and headed on my way. I don’t know what it is about me that screams, “I’m a competent, working citizen. Please, whatever you do, don’t let me off with just a warning.” Every time I’ve been pulled over, I’ve been cited.

Still I’ve made my peace with it. My sister and I agree it’s just the price you endure when you decide to live your life speeding. So my budget incorporates about two speeding tickets a year.

Imagine my surprise on Monday evening as I journeyed home from the same brother’s house, this time on the freeway, when my favorite colors, not in hair ties or shoes, burst into my rearview mirror once more. My usual nonchalance towards these situations was this time exchanged for anger.

I didn’t expect anything less than a citation from this one. The officer pretty much summed up my thoughts upon his return when he mentioned my previous infraction of a few days earlier. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where do I sign?” Rhetorical question. I know exactly where I sign.

“Be careful. They come in threes when it happens like this, “ my ‘all but’ brother told me on the phone. I was officially concerned about my record and insurance premiums. He assured me I’d be fine. He comforted me by means of comparison. “I get like 5 speeding tickets a year. One time I got four speeding tickets in one drive from L.A. to Idaho. I displayed the previous three tickets on the dash as trophies for the final cop. Then I called him jockey pants like three times to his face.” I laughed. I’d make it through these two alright.

Until today.

When true to the fates, I walked out to my car at lunch and discovered it wasn’t parked where I left it. My usual nonchalance towards these situations was this time exchanged for fury. I was livid.

A phone call, a lift from a friend to the tow company‘s impound lot, $150 later, and with a few hours under my belt, I’m mildly amused. This is definitely a sign of my increasing maturity (fine… decreasing theatrics).

The week has brought about quite of bit of emotion, surprisingly, aside from the tickets. Yet I’m still shocked at my reaction to it all. I find myself in this dreamlike optimism. There is this hope smoldering inside me ready to burst into flame. And I can’t help but think of what one of my executives in Texas said to me last week.

While in a discussion about the purpose and meaning of life, as discussed by two business women in the middle of the work week, she said to me as forthright and candid as anyone has ever said to me, “you still have many places to travel and many lovers to have.”

I felt the truthfulness of it surge through my being and reignite a fountain of hopefulness in me. And that is why, I’m not going to sweat the fact that at least all forty hours I have worked this week have just been spent on traffic infractions.

Next Chapter Please

2008-04-14T23:32:00.001-06:00

A little over two years and two weeks ago, I stood in one of my favorite places in the world, trying to make sense of the emotions I was feeling.

It was an uncharacteristically warm, sunny, March Monday in Pennsylvania. I was supposed to have been on my way to Utah and should have been at least in Indiana. My car had other plans. Subsequent to having dumped a grand into it the week before, Sunday brought me the devastation of a glowing orange “check engine” light.

With tears in my eyes, I dropped her off again at the mechanic’s. Then after sulking for most of the day and in an effort to take my mind off of the fiasco, my mother took me out to dinner. Upon completion, we drove to my PA mecca of peace. The Gettysburg Battlefield.

As we parked behind the Pennsylvania Monument, twilight was unfurling one of its greatest miracles on us. A thoroughfare of freedom beat… across the wilderness!*

I stood on the granite structure and although the anxiety was literally nauseating me, I was eager for the change. Both of my friends, melancholy and excitement, had shown up to support me in another transition.

Last night as twilight approached, my companions dropped by once again. In front of a fully opened window, I stood in the kitchen of my third floor apartment, watching the passing cars, and breathed in the last two years.

If I had to name a best friend of this chapter in my development, my apartment would be it. I have come to love this place and everything it stands for.

It’s my dumpy, no dishwasher, one wall is cinder block, have to drag my laundry to a laundromat, haul all of my groceries up three floors apartment.

Two years I’ve been living there. Seven months on my own now. And my best friend indicates to me everyday how blessed I am. EVERY DAY.

I’m reminded how I have a job good enough to afford living on my own. I remember how nice it is to clean and have it remain clean until I dirty it again. Showers are no longer a must especially after a tough long day… when a bath is calling your name.

I wake up when I’m finished sleeping on Saturday mornings. Not when my roommates start making too much noise. It's my refuge. It's my freedom. It's my independence.

And the view… three floors of lugging, heaving, yanking, and towing… but the view of the valley.

In the winter while the snow falls, the blanketed world seems peaceful. In the Fall and Spring when it’s midnight and raining, the traffic lights turn the roads and my living room into a hypnotic show of green, yellow, and red. Green. Yellow. Red.

And my personal favorite. In the summer at dusk, the sun reflects off the buildings’ windows and blazes as a fierce flaming gold fire.

I have laughed there. I have cried there. I have loved there.

Last night, I could have been on a granite monument in Pennsylvania as I gazed out my kitchen window with melancholy and excitement.

Two weeks will bring me to a new house, 3 roommates, and a significantly decreased rent (allowing me to travel more.)

I became an “adult” in college. I matured in this apartment. And I will miss my best friend.

*America the Beautiful

Both the Raw and the Worn

2008-04-03T13:11:00.004-06:00

I was in 6th grade when I was first introduced to the Robert Frost poem “the Road Not Taken.” I read it, listened to my teacher pontificate on it, caught the big picture idea of the “less traveled road”, then stashed it away in my mind with many things of my youthful ignorance.

I’ve only in maturity realized many writers write on many levels. Thus is the craft of a wordsmith. To portray something so strongly revealing of the present, with a silent subtle nod to the past, and either an optimistic tribute or a pessimistic sneer of the future.

Because of an experience, the poem reared once more in my mind this past weekend. I was left to commence an investigation of what truly motivated Frost to put pen to paper.

I’ve known for sometime now I managed to get myself on a road less traveled. However, what I newly noticed this weekend was my strong affinity towards others who have done the same.

Was this the first fork Frost ever encountered? I daresay not, so what made this fork different? Was it the actual path? Did he travel heretofore with a companion and was this fork only now noticed because of his separation from the companion?

It can be a lonesome journey, the less traveled road. The encounters are wild and there are times you wish you had anyone to witness the GRANDness of the experience with you.

Still, I feel somehow the universe does not gift such experiences to a generic audience but merely an individual whose mind is most receptive and open to an out of the box occurrence.

There are many days when I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone in the world.

Subsequently, there are days when I would trade my life with anyone in the world. This past weekend was NOT such a day. It was filled with some fear, modest rejection, and ended with unfeigned emptiness. Yet I celebrate the experience.

Because two less traveled roads, by two more unique travelers, merged for a meeting in time on a sofa on the front porch late on a Friday night.

It follows that I’ve had hugs where another’s body or skin pressed against mine… but a hug where another’s soul pressed against mine is something I’m not gifted enough to recount.

I felt the world silence. I felt total stillness. I felt a swelling heat permeate my essence. Then a juxtaposition of intense passion and peace in chorus.

And the bitterest sweet element is trying to discern if I, alone, was the only one feeling it. Still I suppose I wouldn’t be on the less traveled road if the other shared it with me. The universe designed these moments in solitude for the visionary. Those willing to journey a road less traveled.

Finally, my favorite question, might the two paths, both the raw and the worn, meet once more on the road Frost takes so much time to describe? Even now, I am smiling.

I shall be telling this with a sigh…
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Oh Beautiful For...

2008-03-24T20:41:00.003-06:00

I once saw a picture of me taken at Easter. I was in a striped shirt and holding a colorful basket half my size. I looked stunned but the context of the picture denotes I was looking for eggs. Judging by my age and again my expression, I’m sure I was failing miserably at the task on hand. Not much has changed in the past 20 years.

This past weekend, I accompanied some friends to Idaho for a little holiday festivity. Getting out of town and away from usual activity is good for the soul. So we jumped in the car and three and a half hours later found ourselves in nowhere, uh hem, Idaho… somewhere right outside of Burley, so I re-assert my first comment, nowhere, Idaho.

The land expanded flat and brown. Farms abounded and though the crops are either not yet planted or just having been planted, most of the ground was a rich brown until it bordered a dreadfully pale green yard. The land was vast and the spacious sky was a plush blue until it collided with purple mountained majesty.

It is a different terrain than the tree inundated, vivid green east or the rocky, steep, "in your backyard" mountains of Utah.

My friends’ family celebrated the bulk of Easter on Saturday and so Saturday we walked into “grandma’s” house with celebratory attitudes in tow. We barbequed and ate hamburgers and potato salad. (I use the term “we” loosely as anyone who knows me knows potato salad wouldn’t even cross my fork’s path, much less my lips.)

I laughed when my friends’ dad asked me if I ever participated in any redneck activities. I inquired if he had a specific one in mind. When he asked if I ever shot skeet, I mocked him relentlessly. I relayed to him my having passed my hunter’s safety exam at age 12 with a perfect score. I corrected his assertion of skeet shooting to be a redneck activity. It’s a country activity and I am from the country indeed.

Yet I had to laugh when the man I ridiculed came to my rescue for the Easter egg hunt. All the offspring participate in the hunt with the men hiding them beforehand. And after 15 steps, I recognized myself as the child from the picture in the frozen woman on the edge of the yard bordering one of the immense farms.

His mercy was hilarious as he tried to direct me with a flock of children waiting on his every command to pillage my would be plunder if they weren’t faster. Yet his patience was unfailing as he would mislead them and merely smiled at me and pointed in a different direction.

The woman that deliberates is lost. – Joseph Addison

As It Stands...

2008-03-18T21:14:00.006-06:00

In a desire to poetically commence this blog, I feel I should make some reference to the weather outside or the type of day it is. However the truth is, I’m currently at work and have no idea what the outside looks like. It could be sunny as a spring day or dreary as a late-winter afternoon.

All I know is I’m sitting here streaming a live concert of a recent musician I’ve discovered from a website which his friend referred me to. The concert is great and reminds me of my dear friend. A friend whose direct influence in my life has far waned from the intensity of the past but whose longevity of influence I believe will be extensively lived in my life. To you, this blog is about.

One day I met a boy. I don’t forget the day I noticed him, walked up the stairs to him, and sat down beside him for the duration of the class. He was life. Everything else is fuzzy.

We became quick friends and it didn’t take long before I respected him in a way I respected few in this world. The way I knew I could respect few in this world. The way I respect him still.

He was an amazing teacher. I learned to philosophize. I learned to defend. I learned how to listen.

He was passionate. I was moved on many occasions. Moved by the spirit. Moved by music. Moved to love.

Then one day I hurt him. And he hurt me. And never was there pain in the world the way I felt from him. From his actions. From his teachings. From his absence. My heart and definitely soul has never recovered.

The wounds continue even now to heal. Yet three years later, I still grieve for him.

While listening to this amazing musician performing an amazing little concert, my mind is on one thing. Him. I miss his wit. I miss his intellect. I miss his hugs. I miss his compassion. I miss HIM.

I miss the only person I’ve ever turned to in all the honesty I had to give then and miss giving him the honesty I have learned to give now. I miss my Friend.

There have been so many times I wish he could see me now. I have learned so much as his feet and so much since then. He has moved once more placing thousands of miles between us.

Having met a variety of people in a variety of places, there remains one man to whom I wish I could return and give an accounting of my experiences to. He should know I’m making a list to one day share should the opportunity ever again present itself.

Though the accolades strangely resemble an obituary, ironically it is because he has found life again, HIS life again, that I write this. He is my Boy. He is my Superhero. He is the "beloved one."

Tick-Tock Tick-Tock

2008-03-14T14:34:00.001-06:00

Leonard Bernstein said, “to achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan and not quite enough time.”

Now pick your jaw up off the floor if you’ve just comprehended the mass amount of truth given to us in point two seconds. Or, stop reading the blog until you realize the genius of the statement.

This past weekend, we once again tampered with our clocks. Though both daylight savings days each year inconvenience me, I confess the “springing forward” to be the more difficult of the two. After all, “falling back” merely robs you after you’ve woken up in the morning. All I know is the alarm clock is once again my technological nemesis.

In spite of this, it seems I can’t stop smiling. I can not stop at all. And I have nothing but a plan. One which seems to be powerful enough to emotionally buoy me in an unrecognizable fashion.

My time is spent fully every day. I laughed last night when my friend came over and I was cleaning. The last time she came over (last Saturday) I was cleaning. She cleverly remarked what an insane cleaner I was. Though true (I’m not OCD), I urged her to walk through my apartment which has been insanely unclean for the past five days. She found disaster in spades.

My cleanliness is directly correlated to my busyness. At the end of the day, I feel certain I pay more of a storage fee than rent and I’m being supremely ripped off.

Nevertheless in the past month, hard work, the same work which once scared me, has been the life source of a satisfaction I have long since known. My head is full. But so is my heart. I feel certain my alarm clock and I will always be battling and hopefully the lengthening days with lend to a truce between us.

Yet in the meantime, it’s like Einstein said. “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” And I’ve got plenty happening.

An Up-Swing!

2008-03-07T12:20:00.003-07:00

The voice mail light on my work phone has been winking at me all day. I’ve considered it useless to check it any more than every half hour on the hour. I check and clear out the mail, return a call, and hang up only to see it is blinking again. My email inbox follows in similar suit.

Yet my spirit is completely full of late and I’m pretty sure the sun and some key players in my life have had something to do with my frequent smiling. A tribute to the good, the bad, and the foolish follows... in reverse.

The Foolish: I’m repeatedly astounded to see how sure I am I have learned a lesson, my lesson, and how quick I am to abandon the knowledge when first put to the test. A certain someone paced back into my life last week and with a once familiar kiss on the cheek, received a little encouragement from me to continue his presence in my existence.

Five days later, the words to an Angels and Airwaves song surfaced in my heart and true to the lyrics (repeated 17 times) “it hurts” seemed to be the order of the day on the emotional menu.

In the university town of P’s and F’s in which I reside, I willingly go ahead and award myself an F with a new and more aware resolve to pass that exam if ever there is a next time. Knowing our history, I’m pretty sure there will be.

The Bad: Change, this time in the friend front again. Yesterday gifted me an injurious taste in my mouth with regards to a few friends.

I awoke with a set weekly practice scheduled for the evening. The duration of the day changed the original agenda for the evening and with the agenda change, I took the opportunity to then change my agenda according to new opportunity.

I am miffed at the phone call I received from one of my friends whose thirty seconds of speech was to actually, on my time with my minutes, mock me condescendingly through the repetition of the sardonic rhetorical question, “really?”

She coldly hung up when I queried, “Is this the reason you called me?” Her blatant malice is noted. The practice is hereafter abandoned. A farewell is offered to what once was. (Reference my blog titled An Epoch to Remember… or Forget, paragraph 6.)

Other than that, my concerns are of little TRUE value in the game of life.

My sister has again taken to salutations addressed to me commencing with, “hi retard,” or “hey retard…?” I fear we are once more drifting apart as the “term of endearment” only rears its head when she is feeling anything less than completely comfortable. (Do you hear me? Stop calling me that, freak. LOL.)

I can’t seem to find the new Chris Brown Umbrella/Cinderella Remix anywhere, inclusive of iTunes who has really let me down on this one.

My apartment lease ends with the completion of this month. Moving is necessary evil to be dealt with once more (as I have chosen not to renew.) Time to start downsizing.

The Good: I have rarely felt as blessed in my life as I do presently while things NOT being as I would have them. Nonetheless, there is plenty to make me smile. I’ve taken to popcorn with chocolate (M&M’s or Andes mints) with… Fresca. My new beverage of choice. The combination makes me smile every time.

My brother in law relayed to me the answer my nephew gave when questioned as to his middle name. “Buttered Popcorn.” My nickname for the kid who many months ago greeted me with grubby buttery hands upon my arrival. I adore him and the fact he dons a superman ring these days is proof he is in qualification as one of my favorites.

My work environment is good. I’m still without the knowledge I wish I possessed to perform my job. I’m not fond that it takes me twice as long to do the work that others do with ease.

Yet I love the fact that the department dart board is adjacent to my work space. I frequently hear laughter and my whiteboard has become the score card for the game.

(I was the first to throw a bull’s eye last week and rejoicing left many explaining the uproar to various United States residents on the other side of the phone line across the country.)

I enjoy the people I work with immensely. They are a fresh change from their cookie cutter counters of the valley. I love watching and listening daily to find out insight into the minds of many like myself. The jokester supervisor. The brooding threesome. The silent. The family men. The family men who wish they were the bachelor. Ah, sweet reprieve.

Also, I’d be lying to say I wasn’t just peeing my pants in anticipation for the Ireland trip (all of the Emerald Isles really) I have coming up in September. I revere the friends who will be accompanying me. I feel more than financially able to make it everything I ever wanted it to be. Additionally, the fact that it will actually take place is a vast improvement from my last experience.

Finally, who would I be if I didn’t end today’s entry with more song lyrics? Again conscious my life is not as great as I desire it to be, my attitude is that of some Leonard Cohen stanzas.

And even [if] it all went wrong; I’ll stand before the Lord of song; with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

And Then It Rained

2008-02-25T00:46:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t ask for more than I’ve been given the past couple of days. For starters, it’s raining and my heart is rejoicing in this fact alone.

The precipitation of the season still lingers but I’m happy to see the temperatures ever so slowly increasing to the point where the would be snow is rain. It’s easier to get a sense of spring being around the corner when the precipitation mimics it. Where there is rain, there are flowers. Where there are flowers, there is sun. Where there is sun, there is life.

However, rain is the ending to my happy story and the beginning lay in a concerned email from a dear friend. Last Friday, I found a spare moment covered in dust and hidden in the corner of my work life. I brushed it off and relished it in the form of checking email.

I always enjoy getting mail from this friend. She is a most delightful girl and if that alone did not capture my attention, her shared anxiety in any aspect of my life much less the parts I find most uneasy, have always been and are incredibly touching to me. For this, I award her stars. Many gold stars.

When she queried about the nature of my past few blogs, I was immediately forced to ponder the true characteristics of my recent situation. Perhaps the most genius insight she offered was that of perspective. She drew my attention from the obvious past and the not so obviously present and suggested I look to a more scary, more exciting place. My future.

When you are drowning, the most dire struggle is for air. Yet at some point, between the gulps of breath, though the most dire struggle is still for air, at some point a plan must be formulated to get to land.

Most of my wrestle with life has been in determining how I can best take my strongest talents and skills and put them to use for the greater good of mankind. When I finally confessed to some of my desires and dreams, I was met with something I did not expect. Encouragement.

Though I blame no one close to me for that lack of encouragement in my life, conceivably the person most acutely aware of my inner wishes was the very least encouraging. That person being myself.

Then there was a click.

Maybe she’ll think I’m writing this for her. When in actuality I’m writing this because of her. All weekend long, I’ve been deliberating upon a suggestion made in a return email. With each thought, my excitement increased and my happiness swelled. Though the outlet is not quite the perfect fit, the concept truly is and I’m enlivened to imagine a future with options. The largest option being happiness.

The weekend granted a much needed reprieve from work. I savored the new thrill of a secret fresh impression of what could be. My friends were promptly able to add to my proverbial bucket because I seemed to have discovered my personal leak and was able to mend it for now.

And then there was rain. The reviving drops of the firmament which wash the old away and promise a lively prospect.

Stay Where You Are... Or Not?

2008-02-20T17:16:00.001-07:00

When I was child, my parents frequently counseled me to “stay where I was”.

Every summer, we vacationed as a family to our beach house. It was the highlight of our year. We knew there was always one night our parents would leave us to ourselves. We would attend the boardwalk lined with rides and shacks and shops and people.

It was a child's dream come true. We were each given some money (a treat for us kids back then, before every 10 year old had their own cell phone and iPod) and were left to our amusement with merely a meeting time and place for a few hours later.

You can imagine how beside ourselves we were. We had to immediately get on rides which would spin us around ferociously. We had shaved ice and french fries to purchase. THE WORLD WAS OURS.

But one year, I suppose I was younger than an adolescent, I found myself in a precarious position. I was lost. Lost on the boardwalk I had grown up on. Somewhere between riding some wagon-wheeled, rotating, puke inducing ride with my sister and purchasing an ankle bracelet trinket which jingled with my every step, I looked up one way and down the other and realized nothing looked familiar.

“Stay where you are,” rang in my ears. It was a phrase I had known expertly. It had been used many times either in its authentic form or its many derivations. “Stay put.” “Stay still.” “Stay right there.” Freeze, if you will.

The ending to the story matters little. What is relevant is the feeling I have come to attach with it. It’s become synonymous with the solution to danger. To harm. To a threat. To things which would and do hurt me.

Ironically, I find myself in an interesting station in life right now. I’m paralyzed with… confusion. I just watched one of my closest friends get married recently. And though the actual incident had not left me in a tail spin, the idea and accompanied feeling of everyone else indeed IS moving on has.

What’s worse, my notion to freeze in this moment is instinctual though I can think of fewer bad ideas for me than to actually “stay where I am.”

I am weathering through it. I’m not depressed. Not today at least. I’m not dramatically chattering as I have been known to do in times past. I’m trying to keep my mouth shut and man up. Actually, there is an element of ‘ignoring it’ as my coping mechanism of choice for the meantime.

I am learning (or rather re-learning) one thing. There IS value in adversity. The friction of life is generally highly unwelcomed and regarded with even less worth. I have been toiling past the impulse to stay put and am embracing a newer philosophy more appropriately age geared to adults. “Get to it.”

Now, if only someone would hand me a twenty dollar bill and send me on my way to buy a funnel cake.

Where In the World?

2008-02-15T09:04:00.002-07:00

It has come to my attention, people seem to be wondering where I’ve been.

I can’t avoid it anymore. Here I sit preparing for an entire day of meetings. I will either LOVE or loathe this day. I embarked on a brand new job two weeks ago. The rest is as they say history.

You’re still reading? The entry is done. My explanation is given.

Okay fine. On a more seriously note, the previous entries seem completely fitting (and obviously descriptive to me) as to where I’ve been.

The winter break gave me optimism for a new job, new opportunities, and other good new things. The New Year brought me a difficult job, little time for play, and a whole lotta change.

In the midst of all of these trying events, after Valentine’s Day yesterday, I have come to this conclusion. I will be fine. Things will find a new normality from new routine. And in time, I look forward to playing with you all once again.

Additionally for the record, I have been seen. Every morning the gray haired 50 something cross walk guard for the elementary school a few blocks from my house waves at me in my car as I drive to work. Every morning. I can count on him to be the very first one to greet me and he does so with a smile every morning. He warms my heart and restores my faith in humanity.

Smile. This too, shall pass.

Moving On...

2008-02-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
-Ralph Waldo Emereson

All I Need... - One Republic

2008-02-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had one of those weeks? No. No. Before you answer, allow me to rephrase the question.

Have you ever had one of those weeks which was so stressful and so chaotic you thought it might actually kill you? A week who’s presence had a very real physically excruciating effect on you?

Where you found yourself in the shower barely able to breathe and within seconds realized you could faint or sit down and just let the hot water run over you while your tears became obscure in the much greater puddle of heated water?

Did you feel your heart and mind set with the sun and anytime after 6:00 you couldn’t speak or worse you just didn’t want to when forced to continue to deal with the week?

Have you ever had a week where you knew nothing could make you feel better but maybe a touch… one touch from anyone who would hold you, who could help you forget about it and make it all go away or at least provide a hug to your skin dying for attention?

Have you ever found yourself completely irritable over the mundanely annoying? Items which would be annoying still aside from the week but items you would casually and typically deal with and put aside easily in a normal week, yet items which have clawed their way under your skin in a most painful way?

Have you ever found yourself on that Friday BEGGING for the week to end looking for any sort of reprieve but feeling just as anxious about what next week holds?

Still even with your speakers as loud as they will go, you can barely hear Ryan Tedder screaming words completely pertinent to you?

Whenever the end is
Do you think you can see it?
Well, until you get there
Go on, go ahead and scream it
Just say it
ALL I NEED…

Have you ever had a week THAT bad?

Right. Neither have I.

"Show Us Your Knee Caps!"

2008-01-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

Thus screamed the crazy guy, Dave, behind us.

Rewind. Start again. The Sundance Film Festival is going on now and if you have four wheel drive, or at least access to it, then you have a place to go.

I made an executive decision last week to my friends. "We're going to the festival next week. What day is good for everyone?" So last night we found ourselves in Park City.

After the laborious task of finding a parking space (thank you “he” and “she” from Park City for driving a truck and being so generous), we marched our way to Main Street, aka “where the party’s at”.

We started trudging through this fatal mixture of snow, slush, and ice on the sidewalks. A clear indication many have gone before us and this was the byproduct. We were hungry and commenced an immediate mission for satiating our hunger. Two words. Moose Grill. The girls ate buffalo burgers and I stuck with traditional cow.

A certain venue had my attention from the moment I stumbled onto it. There was this VIP industry insider venue featuring a “Where Music Meets Film” event put on by Warner Brothers. I wanted to check it out.

I was brutally rebuffed by the bouncer no matter how rough my powers of persuasion were. Yeah…rough. I was pretty much as unsmooth in my attempt as any empty minded 16 year old would have been.

We continued our meandering down Main Street and literally the beat drew us in. We followed the music and the music lead to a band, a crowd, and some boys. There’s a longer story. In a short amount of time we worked our way up to the front of the crowd being literally less than 5 feet away from the lead singer at times.

We made friends with Ben, who obviously couldn’t hold his liquor very well. He wasn’t a total goner. Just wasted. He was fun and affectionate and the first one I started talking to. It was only a matter of minutes until we met Neil, Brandon, and Dave. There were others but their impressions on me were as memorable as their names. I got nothing on them.

The scene: Lights. Loud music. A three person band sounding precisely like U2’s would be “mini me”. The drummer. A guy you could just miss in the band if he weren’t so adorable. He took off his jacket early in the set and was left wearing a white thermal shirt. Reason to notice him… he sang his beat. “Dah dun. Dah dun. BAH dah dun dah dun dah dun dun.” What did I say? So cute.

The bassist. Easily the best choice of the three. Pretty, without being metro. Great jeans. GREAT JEANS. Not rocking the mic enough for my taste and definitely not enough for my cute pixie of a friend who might have been his soul mate. She desired. I wholly approved.

The lead vocalist/lead guitarist. A mildly short, athletic bodied guy with carefully coifed hair. Every piece had been perfected tended to with precision pomaded fingers. He wore tight yet decent jeans with holes in the knees, a blazer and two scarves.

The best part: A little game I like to call “heckle and counter heckle”. It consisted of this. Lead dude removes the first of two scarves. A red beautiful scarf. He played with it on stage during a song which reminded me a bit of ribbon time in elementary school gym class. Mind you he’s STILL left wearing a gray one.

Me: Please can I have your scarf? (This was the phrase of the evening. Because of our propinquity, we had opened up an extended correspondence with the band.)

Lead Vocalist: (Smiles a giant grin at me thinking he’s the shiz in this venue at the Sundance Film Festival)

Dave: She wants your scarf. (His condescending tone was masterful even to me. He belittled in one snappy phrase better than anyone I’ve ever met.)

M: Please PLEASE can I have your scarf?

LV: (Picks up scarf and displays it on the drummer’s stage for me to salivate over. Sings another song.)

M: PUH-LEEZE may I have your scarf? I’m your number one fan. (All lies on my part.)

D: No I’m your number one fan. Give it to me. (Post ceded by many woo hoo’s.)

LV: We’ll see how this works out.

M: What do I have to say?... Or do? Just tell me.

LV: (Another nonsensical quip to me whist explaining the next song.)

M: I love your dimple. Can I please have your scarf?

Crowd: (Tons of laughter by now. Everyone is in on it. Random people yelling, “C’mon, give it to her.”)

LV: (Singing a song titled “Revolution”. Now the themes are even a dead match for U2. Removes second scarf. His hairless chest revealed at the presence of what appeared to be an unusually low necklined shirt.)

D: His blouse… (What Dave said here is still a mystery to me as I immediately seized at the words, “his blouse.” Song ends.)

M: Please? I look great in red.

LV: I bet you look great in red.

M: I just want the scarf? This is my final… you know what? No it isn’t. I’m not giving up. I NEED that scarf.

LV: (He removes his blazer. Feeling the positive energy from the crowd is literally forcing his clothing off of him.)

D: SHOW US YOUR KNEE CAPS.

Everyone in earshot murmuring: WTF

LV: (Quizzical gaze at us. Clearly ALL eyes with any history to the concert’s past half hour focuses on Dave and me… including LV.)

M: What are you talking about, Dave?

D: His ripped jeans. Clearly he wants us to see more. HE’S TEASING US WITH HIS KNEE CAPS, (spoken loud enough for LV to now hear.)

M: (Hilarity forces me to erupt into a gut wrenching, starts in the toes and ends in the brain, maniacal laughter which literally won’t stop.)

LV: (Too much hair gel has seeped into his head making it impossible for him to fully capture the bull’s eye patronizing jibe at his expense. Smiles. Takes his fingers to his knee, separates his jeans exposing his… knee caps.)

Could anything be better than that, I query?

Thus was the pinnacle of the evening. My voice was hoarse. My feet were freezing and my toes had long since gone numb. We were down by one in our ranks as she took off for the closest coffee shop 30 minutes previously. We said our good-byes as the boys were bailing and we followed closely behind them.

Back to the car. Back to warmth. Back to the everyday hum-drum.

Here and There

2007-12-28T13:05:00.001-07:00

A few days before going home for Christmas vacation, I made a trip to a certain red store looking for an everyday product I needed but wasn’t finding stocked at my usual blue store the past two or three visits.

I was frustrated and exhausted and the season was starting to wear on me. The consumerism was avidly outshining the festivities I typically enjoy. I calmed myself remembering this always seems to happen the week before Christmas, unless you have already snuggled into the site of your merriment.

I walked through the front doors of the red store musing to myself. Why is there such a rivalry between blue and red? I was comforted to see a mild difference in the lighter crowd at the red store though my time of day may have had something to do with it. The rest of the excursion left me with a mindful of giggles.

I made myself chuckle when I thought; the blue store people wear an array of jumpsuits. Then I passed a woman buying eggs and laughed at her velour jumpsuit. OBVIOUSLY a difference between the blue and red store.

Well, I considered, the blue store has that fast food restaurant in the front of it. Maybe that’s why all those people… Then I looked up long enough to see this fast food restaurant instead.

I thought of the blue store’s populace allowing their children to run amuk screaming. Then I walked passed the fitting room of the red store and listened as a sullen teenager addressed her mother, in no hushed tones, as an “out of style bitch.” I shuddered.

What is the difference between here and there?

I attended a party in Utah before I left for vacation. “Christmas Under the Mistletoe” and it was one of the most fun parties I’ve been to in awhile. I looked around at these people I’ve been spending the bulk of my time with lately and I was happy. We kissed. We laughed. We took pictures. And my favorite, we talked.

I had been homesick the past couple months (something I rarely feel anymore being ten years out of the gate) and in that moment, I felt my soul eased.

I went home to Pennsylvania for the break. The day after getting in, I attended a party with my high school friends. I was super excited to see the people I once held as the best friends I would ever make. We laughed. We took pictures. And my favorite, we talked.

The homesickness I had been harboring hit with the force of a tidal wave and I felt I couldn’t return once more. I had to ask myself.

What is the difference between here and there?

I hammered it all out in my mind. The pros and the cons. I even pitted the types of people I associate with in either place against one another. The diversity remaining acute. And you know what I came up with?

People I went to high school with ARE some of the best friends I will ever make. But so is my college crowd and everywhere I ever turn, I will always be confronted with a paradigm of dichotomies peppering why I love and loathe anything or anywhere.

So what is the difference between here and there? So far, nothing. Just a whole lot of various somethings put together differently. However, I’m open to re-evaluations.

A Spirit of...

2007-11-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

It was late and I was home lying in my bed. The Rockefeller Center Tree had been lit. The drive to look at Christmas light displays in the community was over. I left my friends. And there I lay.

I picked up the book I read every night before I go to sleep. I read. It was a simple and pleasurable day.

Although it usually does, my mind wasn’t winding down. Yet I was completely exhausted. I debated watching a little TV. Instead, I tried an unusual outlet.

I turned on my stereo as I relaxed in the dark. Thank goodness for remote controls. I switched it to radio. I kept flipping through all of the stations looking for something I didn’t know.

I heard late night disc jockeys playing their stations’ requests. 80’s music. Rock. Even now, I was a bit surprised to hear people still call in and make requests. Tons of stations have turned into ‘round the clock Christmas music stations, while others throw in a mix to their usual playlists.

Then, there it was. A duo of guys bantering back and forth witty enough to catch my attention. I stopped surfing immediately. I was surprised. A decent radio show instead of music. It reminded me of the countless Saturday evenings my family spent listening to the radio while growing up. I smiled. Then I felt it.

I fell asleep listening to the show. I woke up to the remote falling off my pillow the next morning. I, of course, had set the sleep feature and so the radio had turned off in the night.

I felt good. The kind of good which comes from knowing you resisted doing something stupid. (That’s my secret.)

Tomorrow is the first of December and there will be many who flip, like a switch, into Christmas mode.

Now they will purchase and decorate the tree. Now they will listen to the seasonal carols. Now, for a limited time only, they will allow the Christmas spirit to permeate their souls. Kindness starts to prevail in a world full of hearts which have waxed cold otherwise.

There are years when I feel this spirit more than others. Sometimes commercialism satiates my appetite but only momentarily until I’m left feeling empty soon after.

Then there are years with the spirit of last night. When the spirit is a slow building sentiment. A sentiment based in gratitude.

Peace fills my mind and my heart in spite of my external worries. I think back to better times. I look forward to better times.

Again, I remember still and quiet can pierce and penetrate with the strength of a thousand swords.

So what do I hope for tomorrow, this first of December? May the next month be filled with less hustle & bustle and more calm & hushed moments.

Fueling on Dreams

2007-11-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember, I have been a dreamer. Both in the literal sense and in the idealistic sense.

To declare I am a romantic person would probably be one of the very largest understatements in this world. There are those days when I wake up feeling certain no one else on earth can feel like THIS. As stated in a previous blog, I feel confident my body just may explode with all of the emotion it’s consistently forced to contain.

As fate would have or probably the eternal plan of Deity, I have found myself in a position in life where I have nothing wretched to report and I have nothing encouraging sustaining me.

As a romantic, this may quite possibly be more tragic than either extreme. As a note, I have spent the past decade developing my more logical and rational side. This part of me is entirely blessed to be sitting in the position I sit in currently. There is peace in the mundane and heaven knows I appreciate the calm.

Lately, I’ve been completely concerned for my station in life. I feel as though I sit at a crossroads. I am deciding right now whether I choose to be average or whether I will step up, work hard, and strive to be exceptional. I have heretofore opted for distinctive.

However it seems as peeled as I have kept my eyes for opportunity or guidance, I frequently find myself at day’s end with minimal results for what feels like maximum effort.

I have consulted on high for aid. I have prayed to find solace from my own attacks… from the daily barrage I wage on myself for having little of what I desire in my life. I know there are few to blame and I am positioned number one in the rankings of responsibility for what is.

Nonetheless, I now express gratitude on high for what I deem only as a gift from the Divine.

Each night of late, as I have retired to bed, I have found myself waking up next morning from vivid dreams. Dreams full of detail. Dreams full of imagination. I have experienced wonderful fantasies. I have traveled to many places. And most importantly, I have found myself in company with many magnificent people.

My dreams have felt so authentic; I have been privileged to be left with the lingering feeling of satisfaction, as though I have actually experienced it.

Lest you question my mental state, rest peacefully knowing I am clearly aware of the lines in my life between reality and make-believe. Still again I feel appreciative for the endowment of such an active night life.

My gratitude stems from a necessary fact about me. I need dreams. Whether remarkable achievement in life or passionate desires of the heart, I need dreams.

These nights from this past month have been fueling my existence. As I assume my Maker is aware of this for me, I may only assume in my life also, these dreams to be a gift from Him.

I’m saddened to awake stated perfectly by Mr. Oscar Wilde.

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

What's In A Hug?

2007-11-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

Last night, after an evening indulging in our more feminine sides, my friend and I turned off the tivo’d Oprahs, said our farewells, and prepared to part ways. With a ‘thank you’ and ‘drive safe’ uttered, we embraced.

In that electrical instant, my skin seemed to scream at me. This is good. This has been awhile.

I sighed in the night air and my breath was immediately apparent in the cold. Her front door closed behind me and by the porch light, I started to reflect.

How long had it been, I wondered. Surely not too long. I mean, I made out with John* last week. Still in that moment, I realized one of life’s secrets.

Kissing is not hugging. Kissing is not holding.

And to be held. To feel another person in this world. To take them into your arms and embrace.

It’s a thousand fires right below your skin. It’s warmth in your heart and in your mind. It’s feeling tangibly secure. It’s the serenity of dark with the intensity of light. It's the lightheartedness of a laugh and the complexity of a cry. It IS the physical manifestation that someone is there to witness your life.

It’s a squeeze. It’s a clinch. It’s a clasp. It’s a snuggle.

And no matter the relationship, I’m surprised to each time feel the intimacy of it. The parent. The sibling. The friend. And when life allows (and he remembers), the boy.

Jacques Prévert said, “millions and millions of years would still not give me half enough time to describe that tiny instant of all eternity when you put your arms around me and I put my arms around you.”