Happiness – Page 2

Surround Yourself with Honey

Thursday April 14, 2016Change, Happiness, Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

While at a dinner party this past weekend, a friend and I got talking about the basic principle that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. In essence you can get more by being nice instead of an asshole. Then this turned to our observations that here in LA that when you treat some people with respect – namely those in the customer service industry – they are taken aback because the gesture is so completely unfamiliar to them. Both of us found this mind-boggling. I mean we’ve both seen it enough that we weren’t blown away by its existence, but just by the sheer fact that there are so many people out there who operate on a daily basis with such vitriol. Neither of us could understand that. I still don’t. Life is so much better when you surround yourself and work with kind people.

Then as if the universe were sending me a test, I woke up the next morning and checked my email to find a rather disquieting message. Before heading out to the dinner party the day before I had sent several messages to publicists to try to get a better idea of what a publicity campaign for a book launch would not only look like, but cost. At first I was thrilled to see that I already had a response from the publicist that had looked the most promising to me. However, when I opened the email, I found this first paragraph:

“You’ve told me absolutely nothing about your novel other than its historical fiction due out in October. So I visited your website and there’s nothing there either. There’s really nothing to chat about at this point. It’s like sending a resume with no information about your job history and wanting to talk to an employer about hiring you. Maybe I missed something on your website but I looked around and could not find a link about your book. If your book is due out in October, now is the time to be contacting reviewers and bloggers. So not only should you be hiring a publicist now, your blog/website should have a lot of information about your book.”

Right off the bat, I had several concerns.

I have no idea how she meant it, but it came across to me as confrontational, which I did not appreciate.
The resume bit – last I checked I was looking to HIRE someone to fulfill a service for ME. I wasn’t aware that I needed to sharpen up my interview skills and prove myself worthy.
If I’m looking to hire a publicist, then one might assume that I don’t know enough about publicity to run my own campaign. Therefore, how would I know that I already need info about the book on my website and that I need to be connecting with reviewers right now?
“So not only should you be hiring a publicist now,” – that’s what I’m trying to do lady. Maybe give me some props for knowing that much?

Needless to say, I did not respond right away. To be completely honest, the email made me upset and I needed to cool down. Then an odd thing happened. I started to explain away and excuse her behavior. Maybe I should have included more information about my book in my initial email? Maybe finding a good publicist is competitive and I do need to compete for their business? Maybe I should have done more research on publicity before reaching out? Maybe I’m the one that screwed up in the exchange and her reaction was totally justified, after all according to her website she’s really good? Wait, what? I was actually thinking this shit! This person first made me upset, and then I made myself feel like I deserved it.

How the hell did that happen? Wasn’t I just talking about how I didn’t understand behavior like this? Wasn’t I just talking about how I didn’t have room in my life for people that treated me this way? Aha! That’s when I had an epiphany. There are other publicists in the world, I don’t have to work with this woman if I don’t want to. I especially don’t have to pay her money to work with her. I don’t care how good she is, I don’t want to work with someone, or have them representing me, if they feel treating people in that way is acceptable. Not just acceptable, but a legitimate way to conduct business. No thank you. I can still learn from her – build out a page on my website for my book is now firmly on my to-do list – but I do not have to work with her.

It took me about a day and a half to figure this out, and shortly thereafter I received another email from her that was much less confrontational and asked question about my book and actually told me a little bit about what she does. In other words, this should have been the first email she had sent, and had I not had the epiphany, I probably would have written her back and had we wound up working together, the entire experience probably would have been like those first two emails, over and over again. Instead, I responded back to her that I had decided to go a different way with my publicity needs, and I thanked her for her time. Done and done and holy crap did I feel better afterwards. jerk whisperer

Not two hours later, I received an email from one of the other publicists I had contacted. Mind you, with the exact same minimal information as I had provided to this first lady. This new publicist’s email was warm and inviting, thanking me for my interest in their firm. She provided an attachment that detailed different book publicity packages that they offer and said that she looked forward to speaking with me and possibly reading my material in the future. Huh? The exact same information with two polar-opposite responses. Yep, I definitely made the right choice. Thank you universe for that affirmation. Needless to say, I’m talking with this second firm.

Surround yourself with honey, people. Life is too short for vinegar. Not to mention, vinegar has sulfites and I’m allergic to that shit.

Blows My Mind

Tuesday March 15, 2016HappinessLeave a comment

I have this co-worker who constantly complains about people leaving the kitchen “A Mess!” This can be anything from leaving the microwave door open, to leaving things on the counter, to spilling/dripping something on the counter/floor and leaving it there. There are two things about this that cracks me up. First, he’s not the one that has to clean it up. I am. Despite this, he’s the one that bitches about it, and he’s generally bitching about it to me. Good times, right! The second thing, is that he is guilty of doing all of these things himself. It cracks me up! I know that when people don’t like something about their own personalities, they usually nit-pick and hate it when other people do the same thing, but this is a little extreme.

Yesterday I was eating my lunch in the kitchen when he came in to prepare his own and then returned to his office. He left the microwave door open, paper towels on the counter and the sink dripping. I can understand overlooking one of them, but all three? I put everything right, but I really wanted to leave it as is to see if he would complain about it later. Then I started to wonder if he walks into his own kitchen at home – he lives alone – and starts bitching about the fact that the microwave is open and there’s crap left out everywhere? He isn’t crazy or anything, but part of me thinks that he does. I really don’t think that this guy is happy unless he has something to bitch about.

As much as his behavior cracks me up, it also blows my mind. I really don’t understand how people can go through life focusing on solely the negative things. I don’t get it. This guy will consistently bitch about something he has to do for 5-10 minutes, and then I’ll suggest a solution that nets the same outcome, without having to do the action he didn’t like. Guess what? He will immediately say that he doesn’t really mind, he’s happy to do it and then he goes off and does whatever it is he was bitching about. Which begs the question – IF YOU DON’T MIND AND YOU’RE HAPPY TO DO IT, WHY ARE YOU BITCHING IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!

Either it’s no big deal and you’re happy to do it, or it’s so horrible it’s worthy of complaining about. It can’t be both! Unless of course, you are simply complaining because that is the only way that you know how to interact with the world. That is a sad statement. I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about that, and paying close attention to my own reactions to things. I don’t think I really complain all that much – unless of course you include the thoughts in my head for the first hour or so after my alarm goes off. Although really that’s more whining than it is complaining and frankly I think it’s justified. If my body wanted to get up that early I wouldn’t need the alarm! At any rate, it might come across as naïve or sappy, but I’d rather go through life as Little Miss Mary Sunshine than a bitchy storm cloud.

Sh*t Sandwich

Tuesday January 26, 2016Happiness, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I think the universe might be trying to tell me something. Over the past couple of weeks, I have come across several articles that all have the same basic principle behind them: even in your dream job, there will be things that you don’t like. I don’t know about you, but that is not something that was ever addressed during career day back when I was in school. A dream job was always painted to be something that would make you so happy that every moment was going to be akin to skipping through dandelion fields, with a puppy and a kitten, while being chased by butterflies to a rainbow’s end. They left out the part where you’re allergic to the damn dandelions, the puppy is chewing on your shoelace, the kitten keeps eating the butterflies, and there’s no such thing as the end of a rainbow. All of my childhood dreams have been crushed. Okay, not really. Mostly because I always hated, loathed and despised career day. I never knew what to say.

I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. Even as an idealistic six year-old, my response was a shoulder shrug and an,

“I don’t know.”

When I was told that wasn’t an acceptable answer, I switched to,

“A teacher, I guess.”

This seemed to make everyone happy as my dad was a teacher and my mom was a retired teacher. So I stored this away and whipped it out every career day. Truth be told, I had no desire to be a teacher, but as it got everybody off my back, I professed my undying love for the profession. This worked great, right up until my senior year in high school when I realized that I had to pick a college and a major and actually do something with my life. Cue major existential crisis! I was right back to, “I don’t know.” And no college I could find offered that. Trust me, I looked. Seriously, I did.

Fast forward 16 years, and I finally friggin’ know what I want to be when I grow up. And now I’m left pondering, what will the crap be, and am I willing to put up with it? As one article put it, what shit sandwich are you willing to eat every day? Pretty graphic, I know, but poignant, and stuck in my head. This is what happens when I read articles online.

It’s a Choice, Not a Destination

Thursday August 27, 2015Change, Happiness, LifeLeave a comment

For a long time I believed that happiness was a destination. If I could accomplish X, then I would be happy. If I could get A, B and C, then I would be happy. I was on this road and happiness was always just slightly out of reach. I always had to finish one more thing, climb over one more obstacle, obtain one more prize. In all honesty, it was a bit like playing Super Mario Brothers. I would get through all the levels and battle my way past Bowser only to discover that I’ve simply leveled up and there’s a whole new world of levels to get through. Only this one’s a frickin water world!

Seriously! WTF?

Happiness was also just out of reach. No matter what I did, I never got there. I saw other people that were happy. I guess I assumed they knew the super-secret-ninja-short-cut to by-pass all of the rigmarole. And they weren’t sharing the secret either! Then I realized that they weren’t sharing the secret, because there was no secret. Happiness is not a destination, just like life isn’t a destination (but that’s a whole other blog post). As it turns out, happiness is a choice. It’s that simple. There’s no secret handshake and no levels to clear. It is a choice. A choice of how we react to our surroundings. A choice of what we say to ourselves in our inner monologues. A choice of how we adapt to set-backs.

I’m trying to remember this right now in order to make the right choices. The choices that leave me happy, instead of the choices that leave me miserable. I’ve been sick, in one way or another, for almost two years now. I’ve seen my regular doctor and I’ve seen specialists, and they’ve all treated the symptoms that were in front of them. Without fail, those symptoms have either come back, or been replaced with new symptoms. I can’t seem to catch a break, or rise above the level of feeling “okay.” For the better part of this year, my weekends have consisted of me sleeping for the majority of at least one of my days off, if not both. It’s put a major damper in my productivity, and thus my mood.

However, I have been choosing to focus on the positive. I’ve been choosing happiness, for no other reason than I can. I have some truly wonderful people in my life, and despite everything else going on, that is reason enough to choose happiness. That being said, I’ve been having a lot of problems making that choice this week. Last week I saw a functional medicine doctor, and she is running more tests then I can count unless I take my shoes off. However, after getting my entire history and looking over my extensive list of foods that I can’t eat, she had an immediate gut reaction of a diagnosis – I’m allergic, or at least highly sensitive, to sulfites.

If she’s correct that sucks BIG TIME! (For the record, I think she is. One of the biggest sulfite culprits is wine, and drinking wine is a habit I took up about two years ago. Coincidence?) If I am allergic to sulfites it will not only take my already extremely limited list of foods I can eat and make it significantly smaller, but it will also take away the one social device I have. When I go out places with friends, I often can’t eat the food, but I CAN share a bottle of wine. Or raise a toast. Now I will be able to eat even less, and I’ll be the one drinking water at happy hour. Not to mention, I’m an introvert with anxiety issues. Sometimes it takes a glass of wine just so I can relax enough to enjoy myself.

I haven’t even begun to truly dive into what that will mean to my diet, because quite frankly I started to do the research it made me want to cry. You wanna know what they spray all over bacon to preserve it? You guessed it, sulfites! Needless to say, I’ve been having a hard time this week choosing happy. True, I don’t have the definitive diagnosis back, but from the research I’ve done, a sulfite allergy explains a lot of my issues. So I’m also having trouble choosing hope at this point. However, I am well aware of what life is like when you choose miserable. So no matter how hard it is, I’m going to choose happy. I might need some reminders though.

Here’s a Quarter . . .

Thursday March 26, 2015Happiness, LifeView all 2 comments

I don’t know why, but lately I have had absolutely zero patience for complaining and negativity. Not that I’ve ever had a ton of patience for that, but lately I’ve been having to bite my tongue to keep from saying things like, “Then fucking do something about it, or quit bitching!” Which I’m sure we can all agree, would not go over well, so I will continue to bite my tongue. Or at the very least use a filter so that sentiment comes out as, “Is there something that you can do to fix the situation?” However, the danger of that approach is that when they respond in the negative and then it spurs them on to complain more, the odds of me banging on my head on the wall go up precipitously. And yes, I appreciate the irony that I am currently complaining about people complaining. And yes, it makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

The problem is that I will never understand how or why someone can be unhappy and not do anything and everything in their power to fix the situation. I, of course, lump myself into the group as well. For years I was absolutely miserable, and while I can’t remember complaining a whole lot about it (my friends might beg to differ, though) I also don’t remember doing anything to fix whatever it was that was making me unhappy. That baffles me. I don’t know if it was due to fear or an inability to pinpoint what the real problem was, but I did nothing. I woke up, went through my day like every day before, and went to bed. At the end of the week I bemoaned the fact that nothing had changed. Of course it hadn’t! Complaining is not an active verb!

Seriously how often does complaining solve anything? Maybe at a restaurant if they get your food wrong. But even here, I have a feeling that you’ll get better service if instead of complaining that it isn’t right, you ask them to fix it. As someone who has worked in food service, there is a huge difference! Complaining that it’s wrong, is a passive aggressive way of asking for it to be fixed. Think about it. You are putting the onus of coming up with a solution on the server, which of course runs the risk of them not coming up with the solution that you wanted, which will inevitably cause you to complain some more. How much easier would it be to simply ask that your burger be cooked longer, instead of pointing out that it wasn’t cooked properly?

Assume responsibility for your lives people! If something is making you unhappy, take actions to solve the problem. If the problem can’t be solved and you are stuck, then find some way to accept the situation and be at peace with it. Complaining and being negative accomplishes nothing . . . except perhaps annoying the crap out of me, and other than my sister, I don’t know of anybody that intentionally annoys me for sport. Or maybe that’s me that annoys her for sport . . . either way there are better ways then constant complaining! My job now is to figure out PC ways of pointing this out to the people around me. Starting with my coworker who has class tonight and complains about having to go every single week . . . wish me luck.

Recognizing Happiness

Tuesday March 10, 2015Depression, Happiness, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I was having a bit of a stress break down this weekend, when a friend said something to me that really hit home, “Happiness doesn’t have to be hard.” What a novel concept. Well, at least it is for someone who battled untreated clinical depression for 15+ years. Being happy was never something that came easily to me. How could it? Environmental factors aside, I didn’t have the right chemicals in my body – or if I had them, they weren’t be used/absorbed correctly. Add to that, the fact that I spent many of those years hating myself, and it becomes very clear why, in my mind, happiness is something that you have to fight for. Something that you have to overcome obstacles to achieve.

I was set-up to be miserable, and therefore I was miserable. I had to consciously retrain my inner monologue to focus on the positive instead of the negative. I had to recognize self-destructive habits or situations and avoid them. I had to learn how to set boundaries and respect myself. I had to learn to say no, and to stand up for what was important to me. I had to learn how to set realistic expectations for myself and for others. The list goes on and on, and then is topped off by medication that allows my body to actually experience happiness and contentment. So you would think with all of that work behind me, I would be able to sit back and bask in pure bliss.

Nope. That’s too easy, literally. I don’t think my brain knows how to recognize happiness unless I’ve done something to earn or deserve it. I finished cleaning my house, therefore I get to feel happy. I completed everything on my to-do list, therefore I get to feel happy. I did a favor for a friend, therefore I get to feel happy. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. How ridiculous is that? Everyone deserves to be happy, and you don’t have to do anything to earn happiness. It is a state of being, not a destination. Yet in my mind I have it set up as a quid pro quo.

So now, I am making the conscious decision to be happy without qualifications. To recognize happiness because of the current state of my being, not the state of my to-do list – happy should be easy. Which, granted, is significantly easier said than done. I feel like I can’t be the only one that does this though. What roadblocks do you put in the way of your happiness?

My Ideal Body Image

Thursday February 26, 2015Body Image, Happiness, Inspiration, Live and Learn, WomenView all 4 comments

In part because it is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, but also because it has really been on mind lately, I’ve dedicated this week’s blog posts to body image. On Tuesday, I talked about Why Do We Hate Ourselves, and in that blog I talk quite a bit about how much it truly matters what words we use to describe ourselves. But really, I think it also matters what words we use to describe each other, and what words we use to describe our ideal. I don’t care how liberated, or free-thinking you are, I’m sure you have an image or a concept of what an ideal female body looks like. That could be skinny, fit, lean, curvy, flexible, resilient or any other number of adjectives. To be completely honest with you, none of those words hold any sway with me. I couldn’t care less which of those words would be best to describe my body. The only description that I care about, my ideal, comes down to one word – healthy.

For almost a year now, I have hop-scotched from one minor illness to another, never quite getting back to 100% in between. I’m still not at 100% and have appointments with four specialists over the next two weeks. At this point, I don’t know how much longer my journey will be until I am at 100%, but through the journey thus far, I have learned two things to be absolutely true:

You’re not a hypochondriac if there’s actually something wrong. Don’t ignore persistent symptoms, get them checked out. Better to be told that you’re fine and all is well, than let something minor build into something serious.
I would choose to be healthy (whatever that happens to look like) over any other physical attribute every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Without a second’s hesitation.

Instead of focusing on being super-skinny, or applauding all of the curvy ladies or that thigh gap that was all the rage (have people finally figured out that that’s a genetic thing, and no amount of adductor exercises will give you one?) I say that we all start focusing on whether or not we are healthy. Instead of obsessing over the number on the scale, how about we obsess over our cholesterol levels or blood pressure. After having a baby, why don’t we strive to get back to our pre-baby 5K time instead of striving to get back into our pre-baby jeans? Instead of focusing on how we look in the mirror, let’s start focusing on how we look throughout the day.

Do you have enough energy and stamina for a full day of activities? Can you run around and play with kids, or easily take a flight or two of stairs if the elevator is out? In an emergency situation are you be able to run away from danger, or walk a mile or two if your car runs out of gas? Can you be on your feet for more than an hour or two (in good shoes) without joints hurting or getting a headache? Can you splurge at someone’s birthday party without worrying about your cholesterol, blood pressure or blood sugar spiking? (Or if the answer to that is no, are you taking active measures to regulate the issue?) Can you splurge and be happy at a birthday party without beating yourself up for the calorie intake? These are the questions that I care about. These are the questions that we should all care about. If you are healthy and happy, why should it matter what your butt looks like in a pair of yoga pants? Why should it matter if you have a “mom pooch,” stretch marks or a few extra pounds?

The smallest size that I have ever been in my life is a size 8, which for my 5’9”, very broad frame, was tiny. And I can tell you right now, both times that I reached that size I was far from healthy. Yes, I looked kickin’ in a mini-skirt, but internally my body was not functioning at its prime. My blood pressure was so low that more often than not I blacked out if I stood up too fast, I was anemic and from my limited food intake, was not getting all of the essential nutrients that I needed. I was also so stressed out I couldn’t see straight. That is most definitely not my ideal.

Right now, at a size 14-16, I’m not at my ideal either. I am however actively working to get there, and none of those actions involve extreme dieting, weighing myself on a regular basis, or constantly exercising. My focus is 100% on getting healthy. Which includes eating foods that are good for me, exercising, taking recommended supplements, and seeking out/following the advice of my healthcare professionals. I want to be healthy, and when I achieve that I figure everything else will have worked itself out to where it needs to be. Maybe it’s because it has been a while since I’ve been healthy, but when push comes to shove, I can’t think of anything else that is more important. So shouldn’t our ideal body type be healthy?

Why Do We Hate Ourselves?

Tuesday February 24, 2015Body Image, Happiness, Inspiration, Life, WomenView all 5 comments

I don’t know why, but I’ve been noticing a lot more than usual how negative women are about their bodies. I don’t think this is because I’ve started hanging around particularly negative people lately, I think it’s more to do with the fact that for whatever reason I have begun to notice it, where before I must have ignored it. After all, it’s endemic. If you stop and pay attention for that specifically you’ll start to hear women in the coffee shop, the elevator, the bathroom (especially the bathroom), etc. talk about how much they HATE some part of their body. Women hate their curly hair, their straight hair, their big noses, their small teeth, their fat ankles, their thick thighs, their non-existent butts, the wrinkles on their forehead, mouth, eyes, hands etc., etc., etc. I truly believe that if you listen long enough to enough women you will hear that there is at least one woman out there that hates every single part of the female body. I honestly don’t think there is a body part that will escape scrutiny, and that makes me sad.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely complained about my own body. For example, my ears don’t match. Seriously, they look completely different, like they’re from two totally different people. How does that even happen? As far as I know, ears are supposed to be a matched set, emphasis on matched! (Also, side note, do you have any idea how hard it is to take pictures of your own ears?)

I also have insanely long and skinny toes. They’ve been called everything from prehensile to gross, thank you to my sister for that one. Not to mention my feet are so narrow it’s impossible to find shoes that fit, so I always have redness or some sort of blister on my pinky toes that is impossible to hide when wearing sandals and always draws notice.

That being said, I don’t hate those things about myself. They are part of what make-up the quirky package that is Kat Michels, so how can I hate a part without eventually hating the whole? Let me say that again. How can you hate a part of yourself, without it eventually creeping in and causing a hatred of your whole self? Hate is an insidious thing, and if you give it purchase anywhere, it will eventually have purchase everywhere. So every time I hear a woman say that she hates some aspect of her appearance, it breaks my heart a little bit, because each utterance and each thought is a hammer blow on the chisel lodged in that woman’s self-worth. We as women determine our own self-worth, it comes from inside us. So every time we disparage ourselves, it gets chipped away a little bit.

I know that a lot of people will argue that they don’t actually ‘hate’ whatever body part it was that they mentioned. To them I ask, why do you say you do then? What do you actually mean if you don’t ‘hate’ it? Do you not like it, or do you wish it was different? How is that better? Why do we spend so much time fixating on the things that we don’t like? Especially things about our physical body that can’t be changed! How can you hate the wrinkles on your forehead? They are proof that you have gotten to spend time out in the sun – some of it hopefully in leisure – they are often times proof that you have smiled, sometimes they are proof that you were gravely ill, but were able to pull through, and they are irrevocable proof that you have lived long enough to get wrinkles. That is a privilege that is denied to so many, that I can’t understand where the hate comes from.

A similar argument can be made for any other body part that women hate, but better yet, let’s stop justifying things based on other people’s misfortunes. Let’s turn the focus on ourselves. Each and every body part, each aspect of our appearance makes up part of who we are. Yes, the total is greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts matter too. Not only do they matter, but how we talk about them to ourselves and to others matters. I truly believe that we need to learn to not only be nicer, but be more positive to ourselves. Instead of fixating on what we hate, we should be fixating on what we love, no matter how small. I’m not saying that you have to love each and every part of your body. That is asking way too much. But I have a feeling that if you shift your focus to the parts of you that you love, you’ll soon discover that those other parts of you all of a sudden don’t matter so much anymore. Because like hate, if you give love a place to roost, it will take over the whole damn place. And to me, that doesn’t sound too bad.

**It was brought to my attention that I should mention that I have not always felt this way or had this kind of confidence when it comes to my body. I spent all of middle and high school wishing that I could walk around with a paper bag over my head because my acne made me feel like I was hideous and gross. Even when I got to college and the acne was gone, I still didn’t have anything nice or complimentary to say about myself or my appearance. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties, with the guidance of a therapist and several years of persistent work to change my inner monologue, that I made it to where I am today.

Operation: Do All the Things

Tuesday February 10, 2015Happiness, Live and Learn, Loss, MothersView all 3 comments

I have decided that this year is getting the code name, Operation: Do All the Things. Why? Because I have decided that this is the year that I am going to do all of the things that I have been wanting to do or get done. Why a code name? Because as Helen Keller once said, “Life is either a daring spy adventure, or nothing.” (At least that’s what she would have said, if Anne Sullivan would have let her play spies when she was kid.)

This is what she actually said . . .

So far, I do believe that I am off to a good start. In the first month of this year, I have, in no particular order:

Rewritten/polished the first quarter of my novel (130ish pages) and sent it off to readers
Delivered my second children’s book to the printer for publication
Maintained my blog schedule (okay mostly, I’ve been slacking on the poetry)
Got a diagnosis and game plan to get my ankle fixed
Hired to do a series of articles with the possibility of future projects
Formed an LLC
Read the first two plays in Shakespeare’s canon (I want to read all of them)
Reorganized my bedroom/closet
Cleaned out my car (My trunk still had stuff from my move 2 years ago . . .)

Needless to say, I have been busy. Beyond the obvious benefit of getting things checked off my to-do list, it has also been a wonderful distraction. Distraction not only from my aunt’s death in December, but also from the anniversary of my mother’s death . . . which was Sunday . . . and I didn’t realize that until last night. I missed the anniversary. My initial reaction was to immediately feel guilty. What kind of daughter forgets the anniversary of her mother’s death? The guilt however, was quickly replaced with joy. For the first time in 12 fucking years, I didn’t spend all of January, and the first half of February bogged down by residual and remembered emotions. For the first time in over a decade I didn’t start off my year as a complete mess.

Okay, I was still a bit of a mess, but I wasn’t paralyzed into inaction. I wasn’t stifled or hindered. Instead I made strides and moved forward. I moved on with my life. Which is both bittersweet and fantastic all at the same time. I feel like I could use a good cry and then a cheers with good friends and a bottle of wine. I’m not forgetting my mother, I’m choosing to leave the pain behind. I’m not living for my aunt, I’m living in her memory. Therefore, I am going to do all the things. It is time.

The Year of the Fool

Thursday January 08, 2015Happiness, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I will rarely give a definitive answer when I am asked about a favorite movie, band, song, color, etc. The reason being that I tend to go through phases. So I generally respond by saying something to the effect of, “My favorites right now are . . .” That being said, I think I really do have a favorite song. A song that no matter my mood, no matter what phase I’m in, it just speaks to me: “Only Fools Rush In.” Of course the deep croon of Elvis makes just about any song memorable, but for me it’s the lyrics, no matter who is singing it. For somebody like me, who plans out everything, there is something so incredibly romantic about getting swept up in the moment and doing something for the sole reason that it feels right. Somewhere deep down inside, you know that it’s the right choice, the right path. You don’t have to wait for time to tell, or to do research, or to weigh the pros and cons. Instead you rush in with a wide-eyed idealism that everything will turn out as it should. It was meant to be.

Or maybe it isn’t. But instead of dwelling on the ‘what if’s’ and the fear of failure you give it a shot. Whether it’s happiness, love, a new career, whatever, you give it a shot. Too many of us live day by day letting fear determine our path. You stay late at work to finish a project. Not because you want to, or because you necessarily enjoy the work, but because you’re afraid that if you don’t get it done you will be fired. You stay at the aforementioned job even though your heart yearns to do something else, because you’re afraid that you won’t be able to make a living following your dreams. You refrain from asking out the person that you really like because you’re afraid that you might get hurt. Fear keeps us from living how we want to live, and I think fear keeps many of us from being happy.

I actually think that some people are afraid to be happy. They dwell on all of the things that are going wrong, and when nothing is going wrong, they invent things that will keep them miserable. Or simply because the people around them are miserable they are afraid to be happy, and so are miserable too. I know that I have definitely fallen victim to that. Which is probably why that song resonates so much with me. It’s a reminder that sometimes you have to rush in. Sometimes you have to be a fool. You have to have faith that you will wind up where you need to be. You have to acknowledge that sometimes the reward is much greater for the fool, than it is for the person back on the sidelines who hesitated and stayed put. Maybe this is the year of the fool.