I don’t know about anybody else, but I am the Queen of jumping back into things too soon. I am a horrible patient. It doesn’t matter if I have the flu and I am laid up in bed wishing for death for a week. The second that I feel remotely better I’m right back at it with a to-do list the length of my arm and attempting to pull a 16 hour day. Needless to say, this never turns out well for me. I usually wind up sicker the next day and reverse all of the good that staying in bed for a week did. You would think that I would learn and stop doing this, but apparently the learning curve of this particular trait is very steep!

It is with this in mind, that my daily mantra has become, “Baby steps.” Last July I was diagnosed with costochondritis – a swelling of the cartilage around my sternum and lower left ribs. For any of you who have ever broken/bruised/dislocated ribs, the pain is very similar and so are the restrictions. For it to heal, you have to stop using your ribs. Funny right? How in the hell do you stop using your ribs? They tend to move every flippin’ time you breath! But never fear, the pain will teach you how to breathe without moving your sternum or lower ribs. Meet your new friend, shallow breaths. And any other sort of physical activity, forget it!

Now I’m not a gym rat. I generally have to remind myself to go, but the second that I was no longer allowed to go, I had a hankering for a Zumba class like nobody’s business! I was, however, good. I followed doctor’s orders and by the end of October I was mostly pain free . . . until I developed a cough at the beginning of November and undid three months-worth of healing. Throw on the car accident in December and I was a hurtin’ puppy come new years. That being said, I discovered a wonderful magic elixir – Nopal juice, get this stuff it’s amazing on inflammation – that has decreased my inflammation dramatically. Subsequently, my ribs haven’t given me more than a twinge for over a week. Whoo-hoo!

Let’s go rowing and take a Pilates class, and play putt-putt golf, and check out the batting cages, and take the puggles on a five mile walk to wear there little butts out and, and, and . . . sit back down and reevaluate my choices. BABY STEPS. How about a short walk with the puggles? Maybe some Tai-Chi. BABY STEPS. Maybe I’m about to go nutso out of my mind because I just want to go DO things! Be active! Work up a sweat! Or maybe some nice gentle stretching would be good. BABY STEPS. It’s my new mantra. I hate my new mantra. But I’m going to be good. Baby steps. Ugh!

I recently came across a blog post – that seems to be making the rounds so you’ve probably seen it as well – that I found very intriguing. It is entitled, “7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose.” Huh? Okay, I’m game. I read through it and found that this guy may actually have something. So I decided that it would be an interesting exercise to answer his questions. True, I’m cheating a bit since I’m already pretty sure what my purpose is, but I’m going to play anyway.

1 – What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich and does it come with an olive?

A solitary sandwich with a pickle on the side. Writing entails large amounts of time spent all by yourself. Not only by yourself in a physical sense, but in a working sense as well. Those words won’t get on the page unless you put them there. The research won’t get done unless you do it, and the problem chapter won’t get rewritten unless you grind it out. Writing can be a very lonely business. I can handle alone.

2 – What is true about you today that would make your 8-year-old self cry?

I can’t remember the last time that I played on a swing. The sheer bliss of feeling the wind whip your hair back, the slight moment of weightlessness, of floating with nothing around to catch you as you reached the top of the arc and then the whoosh backwards as you descend. I used to love to swing, and though I didn’t realize it at the time, that was me time. My time to meditate and center myself. I think my 8-year-old self would cry if she knew that I didn’t have that anymore.

3 – What makes you forget to eat and poop?

Um, nothing. Seriously, I don’t forget. I get all sorts of hangry when I don’t eat regularly. And poop, hah! With my digestive issues, I would pay good money to be able to stop thinking about poop for a day!

4 – How can you better embarrass yourself?

Talking to people in a public venue, like say an interview. I’m a bit quirky. Okay, fine, you can find my picture next to the definition in the dictionary. Add this to the fact that I have very little inhibition and I tend to find myself in potentially embarrassing situations all the time. For example, over the weekend I found myself at a purse party – you know, there’s a hostess and she has a line of products, purses, storage containers, etc. Well I found myself looking at a purse and thinking, “Huh, I bet that would fit on my head like a hat.” Now most people would have had that thought, dismissed it and moved on with their day. Okay, most people wouldn’t have had that thought in the first place. Quirky, remember. However, instead, I found myself repeating the thought, out loud this time, and trying the purse on like a hat. I’m fairly sure that if the future entails me being in front of people, this is just the beginning. FYI – I was correct, it fit quite nicely as a hat.

5 – How are you going to save the world?

I grew up believing that I could choose any life path I wanted and no goal was out of reach if I worked hard enough. The fact that I was a girl never once was a part of that equation. I have since come to realize that not all girls were taught this. In fact, there are many girls out there that believe they only have a select few doors open to them simply because they were born a female. I want to change that. Not with rhetoric and catchy slogans, but by providing examples of women, who were just like them, who did extraordinary things.

6 – Gun to you head, if you had to leave the house all day, every day, where would you go and what would you do?

Coffee shop with books and my iPad. And forget the gun to my head, I’d do this willingly.

7 – If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?

If money were no issue (I’m going to assume that that is part of this question) I would visit and spend time with as many of my loved ones as I could. If there were time while doing this I would finish all of the books that I have started, but really the priority would be seeing those I love. And I would want to be remembered as a loyal, caring friend, who loved deeply. And also wrote a book or two.

What’s your purpose?