Category Archives: be yourself

Kicking it old school

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A flash of white, a black soft-top and four black tires rolled by the only window to the world outside of my office.  I was mesmerized.  This 1976 Triumph TR6 rolled by my mundane, paper-pushing existence and I have to admit I drooled slightly when I saw it.  I was afforded the opportunity to get a closer look and I am wont to say I immediately developed a school-girl crush.  It was in great shape and sounded even better as the throaty engine responded to the shifting gears as it pulled away.

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(image credit)

I love classic old cars.  I don’t know what it is that makes them so much more enticing than the cars of today but I have always been attracted to their sleek styles and rugged good looks.  There is something so alluring about a car that has so much character and doesn’t blend in with every other make and model on the road.

I have always said if I ever win the lottery, I am going to spoil myself and buy a Morgan Roadster.  It has been a dream of mine for a very long time and one that I hope will come true.  Oddly enough, I truly fell in love with the Morgan when I watched the movie “The War of the Roses” with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.  His Morgan was his baby, his pride and joy, and as soon as I saw it I knew I loved it.  It would be years later that I would discover my father in a frozen-in-time photo in Florida standing in front of his dream car – a candy-apple red Morgan Roadster.

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1957 Morgan Plus 4 (image credit)

There have been many moments of my day-dreaming when I pictured myself tucked behind the steering wheel, the feel of that wheel held firmly in my left hand and the gear shift comfortably in my right.  The wind-stream billowed over the top of the windshield and my hair blew in the breeze. (okay, I have really short hair but you get the idea)

I am a firm believer that if you put the right energy into the universe, that energy will come back to you.  I have been, and will remain, a person inspired by positive energy and will continue to live in the hope that this energy will come back and my dream will come true.  Six glorious gears, British Racing Green and open roads for miles – the energy is out there and now it just needs to come back.

 

To bake, or not to bake? That is the question.

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Once upon a time I had a cake decorating business that I ran from my home.  I made wedding cakes and novelty cakes and I really loved the creative escape….not to mention the fantastic smell in my house.

I slowly phased myself out of that cake business because “real life” didn’t want to make room for the enjoyable moments of,  not only creating extra income but, embracing another journey of artistic freedom.  But I’ve missed it.  And I knew I missed it but I didn’t realize how much until I agreed to make a cake for a 50th birthday party this weekend.  The birthday girl loves sailing and this was the cake I made for her surprise party.

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Just spending the last two days in the kitchen reminded me how one avenue of imagination can create a wider road of happiness.  This is one of my true passions and I made the mistake of ignoring it.  I put obligation and responsibility ahead of creativity and contentment.  And if the picture of the cake above wasn’t enough to make me rethink my decision…..

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….the photograph of the rapidly disappearing remains of the cake certainly solidified my decision to put up my sign that I am back in the cake business.

Sometimes having to make a choice is difficult.  Sometimes we think we are doing what is best but maybe the best thing is to hang on to the things we really love and throw the rules out the window.  Life it too short to make decisions based on what we think we should do instead of making decisions based on what we really want.

The me that is me

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The sun peeks into my room at dawn,

and I greet it with a smile.

The morning brings the songs of life

and I do nothing but listen for a while.

I smile knowing that all is right

as I prepare to greet the day.

I feel like I am where I should be,

sadness and happiness equally weigh.

Every part of my life right now

is exactly what it should be.

I wouldn’t change a single thing

for these moments have brought me to me.

I have loved and lost and cried my tears,

my heart has been broken before.

But mending those breaks only fueled my fire,

left me stronger and wanting more.

 I know what I want, I know what I deserve,

and that I will never second guess.

It may be elusive and difficult to get

but I will never settle for less.

 The sun peeks into my room at dawn,

never knowing what it will see.

But I greet it every day with strength

and the confidence to believe in the me that is me.

 (image credit)

Screw it, Ray Bradbury….something GOOD this way comes

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For the first time in my life, I feel like I am in the right place at the right time.  Something good is about to happen.  It may not be news-worthy to the world but it will affect me immensely.  I feel it.  I feel it like the Earth feels the tidal pull.  I feel it like the horizon feels the sun rise being birthed from its shores.  I feel it like the night sky feels the first star burning its light into the blackness.  It’s there…..and I can almost reach out and touch it.  I just don’t know what it is.

Many things have happened to me throughout my lifetime.  Some of those things have been wonderful and some have been stored in the vault of memories titled ‘lessons’.  The culmination of all of those events has brought me to where I am now.  Because of those situations, I have gained confidence where I used to wallow in self-doubt.  I have achieved a level of comfort in who I am as a person.  And I have grasped the definition of what I want in my life.  It took me 46 years to get here but the journey was worth it.  I have finally allowed myself to be the person who was hiding in my own shadow.

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Sure, there are moments I fall back into the secluded darkness of that shadow but those moments are fleeting.  Those junctures of time only serve to remind me of who I once was and who I have since become.  I feed on the strength I have gained.  I thrive on being the person I was meant to be and I hold fast to the lessons that each of those bumps has etched into the road that is my life.

There will always be moments that I shall forget the tenacity that has brought me to my now.   There will forever be junctures in my life that I may lose sight of the higher roads that I have taken.  But I can only take comfort in the fact that the skin I am cloaked in now fits me as it should.  I can take solace in the conviction that I have learned from each lesson I was taught.  And I can count on the feeling that I am where I need to be and that something good IS going to happen…..and it’s going to happen to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes you just want to be the biggest loser

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After many months of prolonging the inevitable torture, I am finally ready to admit it is time to be serious and get myself into summer-shape.  And by summer-shape, I don’t mean round.

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It’s time to hold myself accountable for those invisible pounds that crept into my room at night and methodically attached themselves to parts of my body whilst I slumbered.  My wardrobe has begun to mock me while threatening to abandon ship.  It’s time to get a buddy and make the goal a reality.  It’s time to put the spring back in my step instead of breaking the diving board.  It’s time to get back what I’ve lost.  No, wait.  It’s time to lose….what I….got back.  Now I’m confused.

A few years ago, I went on a very noble quest to get healthy.  And that I did.  I diligently tracked my food choices and the only processed food I ate was food I had processed myself.  There was no bread involved, nothing packaged and nothing I couldn’t pronounce.  I simply ate whole, natural food and at the end of my journey I had lost fifty pounds and felt amazing.

As reality is wont to do, it came stomping in and replaced my determination with dejection.   It exchanged my willpower with weakness and it magically turned me into a shape-shifter.  I went from healthy and happy to fleshy and faking it without even putting up a fight.

Well, the gloves are back on.  I remember what it felt like to be so proud of my accomplishment.  I recall how wonderful I felt being so healthy and I wish that for myself again.  Since I began my first journey on May 1st, I shall do the same again this year.  The lemons will be stocked, the spices abundant and the determination back and in high gear.

Cooking has always been a passion so now I shall choose a much more intelligent selection of ingredients before I lift the “mystery box” and delve into the long-lost world of cooking with the right food.  I may not win a million dollars at the end of my arduous journey but I will be The Biggest Loser….or the smallest loser…..why is this so confusing??

 

 

 

Gazing into your own eyes isn’t weird, it’s necessary

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For us to be ultimately happy, we need to take the time to understand the person that we truly are, blemishes and all. It is not very often that we allow ourselves that pause to face ourselves and spend a while gazing into our eyes of truth.

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(image credit)

 

It takes a great deal of honesty, and some humility, to admit to ourselves the things that are important in our lives and what will make us truly content – to embrace the person that we are and to love everything about ourselves. We are each born with unique qualities and characteristics and understanding what really makes us tick is half the battle. Being able to accept those things and allow ourselves to be satisfied with those traits is the other half of that battle.

Contemplating our own thoughts and feelings is a daunting task. But to really reach into the depths of our souls and seek what is most important to us means we are required to admit to ourselves the truths that we avoid on a daily basis. Sometimes that revelation is uplifting. But sometimes realizing who we are and what we want makes us really understand the distance between our reality and our true bliss.

Before we can be honest with anyone else, we need to be honest with ourself. Mirroring someone else’s happiness will only delay our gratification. If we take the time to really delve into our psyche, to look deeply into what makes us who we are, we will come to terms with what gives us the greatest pleasure in our life. So many people spend so much of their time trying to be something they are not. They only try to present the image they feel others want to see. But they do themselves a grave injustice by not being their genuine self. Maybe our warts are what make us truly special and by ignoring those so-called inferior qualities we lose our individuality.

We are all truly unique but embracing those true parts of ourselves means we have to go face to face with nothing more than our honest perception of who we are to the core. In no realm of our reality should we give the power of that perception to anyone but ourselves. There is no single person on the planet that has the right to tell us who we are or what we can become.

Hold a mirror to your face. Look deep within yourself and be honest enough to admit who you are and what it is that is right for you.  Everyone has warts – some are visible, some are masked. Being introspective will allow you to embrace those warts and realize that the things others see as flaws make you stand apart from every other human on the planet.

The birthday present that keeps giving

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The first phone call today won’t be my mom or my dad calling to wish me a happy birthday but somehow I know theirs will be the first wishes of the day.  That is how it always was and how it shall remain.  And the first face I shall see when I wake up is the same face (or close to the same face) it has been since I was a child.

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My mom made this Winnie The Pooh for my first birthday in 1970 .  Since then he has helped celebrate my successes, been suffocated in my hugs, saturated in my tears and dragged through more drama than a bear should have to face.  But his allegiance to our friendship remains just as strong now as it was then.

Birthday celebrations would not be the same without Winnie.  It may be a childish tradition but that bear represents a great deal of love and a longing to hold on to the memories that mean so much.  He has seen his share of joy and tragedy.  He has undergone facial reconstruction and some botched plastic surgery (thanks to an over-excitable Labrador Retriever that belonged to a roommate) but he never fails to hang in there to share year after year with me. He and I have weathered many successes and many ominous periods together but he still remains the same source of comfort he has always been.

I can’t imagine a birthday celebration without him.  And now that my mom is gone, Winnie is the strongest connection to her that I can still hold in my hands.  His abiding presence in my life not only allows me to look to the future but keeps me rooted in my past.

Happy birthday Winnie.  May we be together, sharing our day, for many years to come.

 

 

 

An extreme tolerance for all things organized

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I was chatting with a good friend about similar idiosyncrasies we have when it comes to organization and storage of many items around our homes.  I, like him, choose to have vegetables stored in the fridge with other vegetables, condiments belong with other condiments and canned goods deserve to be recognized at first glance because their labels all face outward from their designated cupboard.

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(yes, this is my cupboard)

Having this conversation with him made me feel normal.  What I had deemed to be slightly irrational behavior on my part, we agreed, is theoretically more of a sensible thing than a labelled disorder.  I like things to be organized.  I like the feeling of order and knowing I can find something quickly because it holds a place where it should be found.

I love to cook so having all of my food items readily available and easy to locate makes my life much easier as does my cooking method.  I learned many years ago from a very wise teacher to clean as you go.  As things are boiling or sautéing,  you can be spending those idle moments closing cupboards and drawers and cleaning the dishes that you have already used.  There is nothing worse than cooking for hours only to be faced with a mountain of dirty dishes at the end of the prep work.  This is an unnecessary evil and one that can be alleviated by cleaning as you go and potentially reusing some of those same dishes to cut down on the clean up.

The three letters OCD have been beaten into submission, rendered unconscious and left for dead.  I knew I was bordering on something that could be defined with three simple parts of the alphabet but O, C and D was not the combination of letters that I felt defined my habitual tendencies.

After careful consideration and a willingness to admit that there may be a convenient label for me, I feel comfortable conceding to the fact that I have ATD – Attention To Detail.  This affliction is not discussed in medical journals nor is it recognized as a treatable disorder but I feel confident that, given time, more people will hopefully become afflicted by this chronic need for organization and cleanliness.

The tagline of our first group meeting will be – “Put it back where it belongs and close the drawer all the way”.  We are currently taking well-written and grammatically correct submissions to become part of our team.  Applications should be double-spaced in the font of your choice (Times New Roman).

 

 

 

Hey Pharrell, clap along….I found mine

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We all strive to be happy – in our homes, in our jobs and in our lives.  We yearn for success and money, but how many people take the time to consider what truly makes them happy?

Finding true happiness may not be as difficult as you think – you just have to be realistic about what makes you authentically happy, down to the core of your being.  Happiness is not a tangible “thing”, it is a feeling that comes from deep within.  You can be content with your job, and content with your surroundings, but until you delve into yourself and discover what makes you truly happy, you will never have that genuinely satiated feeling.

The definition of happiness is different for everyone.  The things that make me truly happy – a fine red wine, a perfectly cooked steak, the drippings from a roasted chicken, a good book, closing out the world and just writing – would make others shake their head in disbelief.  But that is my happiness.  And those things that make me sincerely content won’t break the bank (except the wine, sometimes) and are easy to achieve.

I am a simple person when it comes to happiness, but it has taken me many years to realize what the word happiness really means to me.  It does not come in monetary form, nor does it lie within anyone else.  My happiness lies within me and does not rely on outer influences to achieve that state of euphoria.

We each need to step back and really examine what is our true bliss.  Perhaps we have been looking in all the wrong places and the jubilation we strive for is at arms reach.  We owe it to ourselves to seek our true happiness and let other’s judgements be cast aside.  No one person, besides yourself, can define your happiness.  They may be able to contribute to the feeling but your paradise is yours to create.

Find your joy and breathe it in at every chance.  You will be happy you did!