kmichels

Thursday May 14, 2015Depression, Live and Learn, LossLeave a comment

I was talking to a friend last week and gave them a piece of advice – don’t borrow from future bother. Which, is pretty damn good advice. I’m not patting myself on the back here, because I didn’t come up with that. I’m pretty sure I read it on a meme on Pinterest*, and I told the person that. I’m not gonna take credit where credit isn’t due. That aside, it is damn good advice. Don’t borrow from future bother. I have also come to realize that I need to take my own advice.

I’m not a huge worrier per se. I tend to be pretty good at focusing on solutions and preparations instead of problems. That wasn’t always the case though. In the past, I tended to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was always expecting something bad to happen. I didn’t know what that thing would look like, or whether it would be big or small, but there would be some sort of crisis. I had every faith in myself that I would be able to handle whatever came along though. I’m great in an emergency. The only problem, is that it is exhausting being on ready alert at all times. Especially since, if I got to the end of a day and all had gone well, it’s not like I would let out a huge sigh of relief and pat myself on the back for a job well done. Oh no! I simply figured that I got by with a lucky day, but tomorrow would make up for it. So I had to be ready. It. Was. Exhausting.

You’re probably thinking that this is a conversation that I should really be having with a trained professional, and you are right. I have already had this conversation with two different trained professionals. I know why I did it. During my childhood, a member of my family died every even year of my life from the ages of 8 – 20. Needless to say, those last couple of months of my 22^nd year were a little hair raising. Every time my phone rang, I assumed that someone had died. I didn’t realize that I had been doing this until I woke up on my 23^rd birthday and a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It was almost as if a curse had been broken.

Unfortunately, I have lost people since then, but it hasn’t been on any sort of a schedule and in 12 years it was only three. Huge improvement! Until last December, when my aunt died. I think it was probably the suddenness of everything that rocketed me back into my childhood, but ever since, I have returned to that old feeling of dread. That feeling that disaster is right around the corner. And I am exhausted. I don’t want to be on alert for trouble that isn’t even on the horizon. I don’t want to keep borrowing from future bother. When a crisis crops up I will deal with it, but worrying about it now, will not relieve any of the stress then. So no more shoes dropping, no more dread. The world gets to be a bright, shiny, happy place . . . until it’s not, and when it’s not I’ll deal with it then. For now – bright, shiny, happy.

I will not bother from future bother.

*Okay, I have no idea where I saw that, but it definitely wasn’t a meme on Pinterest, as I just had to make my own because I couldn’t find one!

Tuesday May 12, 2015DepressionOne comment so far

As anyone who has ever dealt with depression for any length of time can attest, there will be days that you just can’t get out of bed. Not that you don’t want to, but that you cannot emotionally get out of bed. The very thought of arising and facing the world is so inconceivable that your body becomes a leaden weight, stuck in its place. Your brain is stuck, your body is stuck, you are stuck. No amount of cajoling or bargaining that you do with yourself will work. You are staying in bed. Hopefully just for the morning, but more likely than not all day. If you do happen to get yourself up and about, Eeyore will seem like a cheerleader in contrast to your energy and motivation. It sucks. It is a part of living with depression, and it sucks.

I had that day yesterday. I was late to work, but I did eventually get myself out of bed. There wasn’t anything in particular that happened to cause this, just a bunch of little things that had all been adding up for a while. I think mother’s day was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back, but who knows. At any rate, I am know working at digging myself back out. Climbing that hill to get back to the top where there’s sunshine. So until I get my writing groove back on, here’s a compilation of dog fails. Because, with the exception of the slide, Bubba has done every one of these, and that makes me smile.

Tuesday May 05, 2015LifeView all 3 comments

Unlike a lot of people who stay away from big bad gluten because they’ve heard how horrible it is for them, I have a legitimate reason to avoid gluten like the plague. I have Celiac disease, which was actually diagnosed by a doctor. Crazy, I know. Celiac is an autoimmune disorder, meaning that every time I eat gluten my body starts to attack itself. Again, crazy, I know. As this concept is pretty foreign to anyone who doesn’t have firsthand experience with auto-immune disorders, I get asked all the time what exactly happens when I do eat gluten. So, since I am just getting over such an incident, I figured I would take the time to lay out what happens when I ingest gluten. Now keep in mind, the symptoms can be different for each person, and mine were exacerbated this time around by the fact that I had dental work done, but you’ll get a pretty good idea why I have absolutely no temptation to ever eat anything with gluten in it. Not even a bite. Or a taste. Therefore, to be clear, I didn’t knowingly eat gluten. I didn’t enjoy a bite of awesome chocolate cake or something similar. Instead, food that I ate had been cross-contaminated with it. Meaning, something that had gluten in it, touched the food I ate and left a residue of gluten behind. That’s all it took. A residue. So here’s the break-down of a gluten reaction.

Day 1 Night – ate food that had been cross contaminated with gluten.
Day 2 Morning – arrived at the dentist for a filling at 6:30. All went as expected, with the dentist following the strict procedures necessary to accommodate my allergies.
Day 2 @ 2:00 – I finally have full feeling back in my face, which is extremely odd, as I’m allergic to Novocain, and the alternative they use wears off much faster. In the past I’ve had to ask for an additional shot in the middle of a procedure because it was wearing off. It has NEVER taken more than an hour to wear off completely. On top of being numb for over 7 hours, my cheek is incredibly inflamed.
Day 2 Night – I don’t feel well, almost flu-like, and go to bed uncharacteristically early.
Day 3 Morning – my face is still swollen from the dental work, and it progressively gets worse as the day goes on. I start to freak out that the dentist used something I’m allergic too and I’m having a reaction.
Day 3 Afternoon – I go back to the dentist. She doesn’t think it’s an allergic reaction, but tells me to take some Benadryl just in case. She can see that I did bite my cheek, which isn’t surprising since I was numb for 7 hours. This baffles her as much as it did me.
Day 3 Night – I again don’t feel well and go to bed uncharacteristically early. As my mouth is still swollen and itchy I take 2 Benadryl.
Day 4 Morning – I wake up and it looks like somebody has punched me in the face. I am swollen all over, and I have now broken out in hives. Joyous! I call in to work and say that I’m going to be late. I also notice that my abdomen is distended by about 4 inches. That’s when the shoe drops. I’m not having an allergic reaction, I’m having a gluten reaction. My autoimmune disorder has kicked in and because of the trauma of the dental work, my entire body is freaking out and reacting to anything foreign as an enemy combatant. Great. At this point, my only recourse is to stay hydrated, rest as much as possible and wait it out, because, like the Benadryl, anything I take to treat symptoms will exacerbate the issue.
Day 4 Afternoon – I can’t stand it anymore and take some Ibuprofen in the hope that it will get the inflammation down in my cheek. It actually works. Whoo-hoo!
Day 5 Afternoon – I realize that my large intestine has stopped working. I’m not entirely sure when this happened, probably at some point while I was asleep the night before.
Day 6 – I’m fatigued and my large intestine still isn’t working. Other than that, feeling pretty normal.
Day 7 Afternoon – my large intestine starts working again . . . with no warning . . . while I’m in Malibu . . . an hour from home . . . CONTENT DELETED FOR THE SAKE OF OUR READERSHIP. I get home, and spend the rest of the day in bed with horrible cramps.
Day 8 Morning – cramps are gone, but now it’s coming out the other end. I’m horribly fatigued and nauseous. Call out from work. Spend the majority of the day in bed.
Day 8 Late Afternoon – I start to feel like myself again.
Day 9 – Nauseous, but so far so good. Still overly cautious, sticking close to a restroom, and hoping that I don’t run into anybody who is sick as my immune system is compromised at the moment. If I could get myself a bubble, I would.

Day 10 – For the most part, back to normal.

So to answer the question that invariably gets asked, no, I never have any desire to cheat and eat some gluten. This is what happens when I get cross-contamination. I’m fairly certain that “just a bite” would send me to the hospital.

Saturday May 02, 2015Top TenLeave a comment

By now we all know that California is in the midst of a really horrible drought. So I have come up with 10 ways that I can help conserve water.

Instead of using water, I will have the dogs pre-rinse all of the dishes.
In fact, I’ll just bypass the dishes completely and start getting take-out.
I will intentionally stop watering the plants – I definitely won’t forget and then realize they are dead a few weeks later.
I will sleep in and skip my shower every other day. This is definitely an intentional choice and not just me sleeping through my alarm.
All bathing, that I am up in time for, will be done in sprinklers from here on out. In fact, in order to avoid being arrested for indecent exposure, this is also how I will be doing my laundry.
To reduce my laundry needs, instead of going out, I will stay in. Fewer clothes to wash.
In fact, I believe I will institute a “No Pants” rule at my house to cut down on laundry further.
Actually, instead of doing any laundry I’ll just buy more clothes.
I will stop washing my car . . . or, continue to not wash my car.
Instead of drinking water, I will be switching to wine and hard cider exclusively.

In all seriousness though, PlanetSave has some great ways that you can actually conserve water.

Thursday April 30, 2015Change, Characters, WritingView all 2 comments

I had a great conversation with a fellow writer last night and one of the things that we discussed was the difference between a character in distress and a damsel in distress, and how, as a feminist and I am sick and tired of women always being damsels in distress. I have no qualms with a female character being in distress, or any character for that matter, distress is the cornerstone of drama. My issue comes when the female characters turn into damsels.

The specific scene that we were discussing was of five characters, four men and one woman, who were surrounded with the enemy closing in. Characters in distress, awesome! One of the men gets singled out and beaten. He ineffectually tries to defend himself, and one of the other male characters tries to help him, but they both wind up injured. To subdue a third man, who is rather large, the enemy tazes him, and again one of the men ineffectually tries to go to his aid. A lot of distress, a lot of drama, perfect! But you notice, so far the woman has done nothing, until it is decided that the men will be killed on the spot and the main bad guy is going to take the woman home with him, you all know why. Finally, our woman does something . . . she screams out for the men to help her. She knows, can see, that all four of them are thoroughly subdued and injured and have no way of helping her, yet she cries out to them. Instant damsel.

Throughout all of the previous action, which includes all four of the men being struck and injured, not a single one of them calls out for help. They try to fight to back, and I’m sure would have gladly accepted help, but none of them expect someone to help them, much less call out for help. Whereas the second the woman is grabbed – not struck, not injured, grabbed – her first instinct is to call out to four wounded men to come save her. WHAT?!?!?!? No! She just went from the fifth member of an outlaw gang, where she is purportedly a contributing member, to a damsel in distress.

Yes, characters need to be in distress, but I am fed up with male characters in distress “taking it like a man” while the female characters transform into damsels. It is only after the woman has been successfully dragged away – it does say that she is “fighting back” – that we discover she had a switchblade on her the whole time! WHAT?!?!?!?! Long story short she isn’t able to do anything profound with the blade and winds up being saved by a man. Classic damsel in distress. I’m tired of seeing it, and I told my friend just that as it was her book that we were discussing.

Now I’m not expecting every woman to be Xena the Warrior Princess and take out every threat that comes around like a badass. Although that is fun to see. All I want to see is women who try to help themselves instead of immediately turning to men to save them. The four men mentioned above, had to be saved by somebody else. It happens, there’s nothing wrong with that. But fight back and fight dirty if necessary, and from my experience* ladies, it is always necessary to fight dirty when up against a man. Even if he is your size or smaller, the odds that his upper body is physically stronger than yours is practically guaranteed. It’s just the way we are built. But if some guy is intending to make me his sex slave I can guarantee you the only way that he’s going to be able to drag/carry me away is if I’m unconscious or completely bound. If he’s got a gun on me, I’m going to fight back even more viciously. It’s really hard to hit a moving target, especially one that just kicked your knee out and is attempting to gouge out your eye.

As authors and storytellers we need to show that women can do more than cry out for help. Women can help, or at least try, to help themselves. Will they get hurt? Most definitely. Will they still need to be saved sometimes anyway? Yes. Will some of them still wind up captured or dead? Yes. But it is about time that this notion of the damsel in distress went away. Literature and entertainment is completely saturated with this character. Let’s create a new one, shall we?

*My experience consists of several self-defense classes and hundreds of hours of stunt training in a variety of weapons. I have never encountered a man who couldn’t at least match my upper body strength. To come out on top, you have to fight dirty, but if you’re in a situation requiring you to fight, he deserves it!

Tuesday April 28, 2015Depression, Live and Learn, PermissionLeave a comment

I read an article today about how people feel the need to tone down emotion. Whether it be happiness, sadness, anger it must be expressed in moderation. When I first read that, I scoffed. What good does toning down emotion do? Then, the more that I thought about it, the more I realized that I do believe this article is entirely true. Some people become disconcerted when emotions swing outside of a normal, “acceptable” range.

I have never been that person. Well, that’s not true. I was forced to be that person for many years and I was miserable. But I have never inherently been that person. If something makes me happy, or excites me I’m going to express that with a joyously ecstatic fervor. I guess I figure if you’re going to get excited, GET EXCITED! The same goes for concentration. If I truly want to accomplish something my focus is on that and that alone. The room could come down around me and I would be clueless. I can’t tell you how many times I have been at dinner with friends and been industriously trying to dig the cherry out from the bottom of my drink only to look up and discover the entire table looking at me with mirthful smiles. Which officially begs the question, why do they put the cherry on the bottom?!?!?!? Okay, that’s probably not the first question that springs into your mind, but I would certainly like to know!

At any rate, reading this article made me aware of just how much my life has changed. Throughout my childhood I was admonished to squelch this side of my personality. I was told that it was, that I was, inappropriate. Because of this I became afraid to express myself. I doubted my ability to appropriately react in situations and I felt the need to constantly wear a mask, pretending to be someone that I was not. It sucked! It wasn’t until I began to venture out on my own and question the precepts of my upbringing that I discovered that there was nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with feeling and expressing emotions outside of “normal” ranges. If that makes other people uncomfortable, then that is their problem, not mine. My feelings and how I choose to express them are legitimate and correct for me.

Now the people that I spend my time with are not embarrassed when I drag them over to another aisle in Smart and Final to show them the epically large can of ravioli – those things are ginormous, you have to check it out some time. They think it’s funny, they think it’s ridiculous, actually who knows what they think, but they don’t disapprove. They don’t tell me to knock it off, or tone it down. They smile, laugh, or sometimes join in my excitement and generally accept me for who I am. That is a state of being that I never fathomed could exist. Being surrounded by people who accept me and love me for who I am, in all of my quirky goodness. So I guess the point of all of this is to say to the outcasts, to the people who feel like everything they do is wrong, stay strong and hold on to who you truly are. There are people out there in this world who will love you for you, not a modified or “corrected” version of you. Be joyously ecstatic, or dorky, or quirky, or whatever, and don’t let anybody tell you that it’s wrong. Your people are out there, you just have to find them.

Thursday April 23, 2015Life, Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

I have been a super stress monkey lately with the release of my second book, and have been giving myself a hard time about it. After all, it’s my second book, this isn’t my first rodeo and all of those other clichés. I finally realized this morning, that while it may be my second book, this is the first book that I’m publishing through the new company that I launched this year. It’s my first time working directly with a printer, and dealing with fulfillment and distribution. So while it is my second book, there are a whole lot of firsts going on. Essentially, this isn’t simply the release of my second book, it’s the launch of my business. Holy shit. I feel like the stress may be justified.

Though at the same time, are the moments of near panic really doing anything productive? Is fixating on the paltry online sales and staring at the boxes of books in my living room that are not dwindling fast enough to ensure that I’ll be able to pay the printer for them when the bill comes in, doing any good? No, they’re not. All it is doing is keeping me up at night and causing me to use my asthma inhaler more often. Which, FYI in case you were curious, a couple of puffs of albuterol will help shortness of breath caused by a panic attack. You learn something new every day! Look at that silver lining. I can find them anywhere.

Aside from that little tidbit of knowledge there, no good has come from the freaking out. In fact, I’ve noticed that instead of motivating me to problem-solve, it has actually motivated me into a cycle of self-sabotage. Good times! Over the past two weeks I have been so overwhelmed with stress that I have lost track of how many times I have sat on my couch and actually thought to myself, “Kat, you have plenty of time to get X done. If you don’t get it done tonight you’re pretty much shooting yourself in the foot for tomorrow.” Logic says that with that realization I would get up and go do whatever task X was. However, stress-monkey-self-sabotage Kat said, “Okay.” Then cocked the gun and shot myself in the foot. At this point, both of my feet look like Swiss cheese – figuratively of course because no one in their right mind would give this klutz an actual firearm!

Because of that, on top of having a whole slew of books in my living room that I need to sell I also have:

A box with an unassembled organizational unit (to more neatly store the aforementioned books)
Four loads of laundry
Two sinks full of dishes
A half-finished birthday present
A half-finished baby-shower present
A half-finished article
Two unread manuscripts with author’s waiting for responses
7 chapters behind on rewrites
And a partridge in a frickin pear tree

Okay, I don’t have a partridge, but you get the point. Now all of that isn’t that bad, except for the fact that I’m scheduled to get an injection in my ankle today which will require me to stay off of my feet for two weeks. Hence, the shooting myself in the foot analogy above. Some of that stuff I can get done sitting on my butt, but some of it I definitely can’t which means that it will drive me batty for two weeks, which I know will increase the stress-monkey-self-sabotage tendency that I have fallen into. So I am putting my foot down, the good one, and ending the cycle. I’m not exactly sure what that’s going to look like, but I know that it’s going to start with me finishing my article tonight. From there I’m gonna have to make it up as I go. Any advice, or suggestions on strategies that have worked for you are gladly appreciated. And should you want one of the books that are piled up in my living room, the links are below.

To Purchase Domestically Click Here – You can also browse custom, hand made jewelry here!

To Purchase Internationally Click Here

Tuesday April 21, 2015Life, Live and LearnLeave a comment

Okay, so we all know that I’m a bit of a “Prepare for the worst” type of person. Which is why I have 3, count them, 3 earthquake kits. One at home, one at work and one in my car. People make fun of me, but when the shit hits the fan people are gonna be freaking out, and I’ll be hunkered down under my tarp tent, making lentil soup on my portable stove, and perusing a crossword in my comfy pants. We’ll see who’s laughing then! Just kidding, I wouldn’t laugh. I would probably be helping someone make their own tent . . . even if it’s just out of duct tape, which I will also have.

At any rate, I find myself reading quite a few articles about preparedness and then patting myself on the back afterwards, because I’ve usually taken the majority of the steps mentioned. Then somebody sent me an infographic about how to prepare your car for emergencies and I realized that I don’t actually have anything in my car to help with car-related type emergencies, with the exception of jumper cables. So needless to say, I have some work to do on that front. Since I found it helpful, I figured that all of you might as well. Here’s a link to the original post, but here’s the graphic that I like:

Pretty cool huh? Now if you will excuse me, I need to do some research on seat-belt cutters and flares!

***10 Cheeky Monkeys is now available for purchase. Click here to order today!***

Thursday April 16, 2015History, Life, Right vs WrongLeave a comment

I have been doing a lot of research lately on a truly remarkable woman, who is known for a simple thing. Like every mother out there, she loved her son. What makes her remarkable is that she publicly stated – in a letter to the editor of the New York Post – that she loved her homosexual son. It was 1972, and this was a first. I don’t want to go into detail because she is the subject of my next Heroine of History, but this research has been weighing on me. As much as I am inspired by her actions, I am upset that they were necessary in the first place. I am more upset, that they are still necessary.

For years I used to proclaim that I didn’t care if a person was black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, bi, trans, etc. I cared if they were kind, if they were trustworthy, if their presence in my life made my life better. Labels were just labels, and I paid them no heed. While I still very much believe in the latter, I have come to discover that I was wrong about the former. I lied, I do care. I care very much for my friends of color and my LGBTQ friends. At times I find that I care more for them, because it makes me sick to see the things that are said and the things that are done to people because they look or love differently.

It broke my heart when a black friend made a request that should he ever be killed by police and painted in the media as just another thug, that we, his friends, stand up for him and try to set the record straight. To make sure that somebody was talking about the kind, generous, intelligent and incredibly talented artist. That somebody was talking about how much this well-rounded member of our community would be missed. That somebody was talking about more than the color of his skin and how he must have deserved what he got. This request shook me to the core. It made me realize that I do care that he is black, because I care very deeply that he ever had to have that thought. That he ever had to dwell on that thought for so long that it became a need to express his feelings. No one should ever have to feel so devalued as a race, or as a person that they have to ask for advocacy. Because of that, I care.

Because of the fact that this country is in a state-by-state battle to legitimize same-sex marriage, I care. Just the thought of that pisses me off. The fact that there are people out there who seriously believe that there is anything wrong or illegitimate about one person loving another makes me see red. The fact that my friends, and their community, are exposed on a daily basis to descriptors like – wrong, unnatural, gross, immoral, etc – makes me want to punch people in the face. Do you want to know what’s unnatural? Judging and condemning people that you’ve never met. I honestly can’t think of anything more unnatural than that, and yet people do it all the time. Because of that, I care.

I care because I was asked today if I thought my open support of equality would negatively impact the sales of my new children’s book. To that question I have only one response – I am proud to be an ally, and you can expect to see my Heroines of History article championing gay rights later this month. Perhaps I’ll be able to find a black lesbian to feature next. Challenge accepted.

Tuesday April 14, 2015Change, Inspiration, Live and LearnView all 2 comments

For years I was one of those people that would scoff at the thought of having a mantra. I guess to some extent I considered the practice to be too new-age, mumbo-jumbo-y for me. Or maybe I thought it was silly and felt embarrassed at the thought of repeating self-affirmations to myself. Who knows? Even after going through two different therapists and seeing great results, both of whom had me primarily focus on retraining my inner monologue, I still found myself looking down my nose at the thought of having a mantra. Perhaps I watched Stuart Smalley on SNL a little bit too much. At any rate, I was anti-mantra for no discernable good reason.

Then a couple of years ago, a friend and I started to get together for “Goal Nights.” We each came up with our own list of goals (both personal and professional), then got together for dinner and discussed the goals and how they could be achieved. It was empowering, liberating and scary all at the same time to see what I wanted to achieve written down in black and white. Okay, truth be told it wasn’t black and white, I used colorful markers, but you get the idea. Then every month or two we would get together to discuss how we were doing, and after about a year we reevaluated. Lo and behold, we had each achieved a goal or two, made strides toward achieving others and come to realize that some weren’t important to us after all.

So the goals were revamped, using our new found knowledge of what we wanted. This is when I stalled out. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what needed to be done, that was right there in front of me. My problem stemmed from the fact that I was getting in my own way. My self-doubts and emotional hook-ups were preventing me from taking the strides forward that I wanted to take. After much soul-searching I came to realize that I had three main issues that were holding me back.

I had no faith in my writing ability. Every time I wrote something and worked up the courage to share it, I just KNEW that it was horrible and whoever was reading it would say so. If I happened to get a compliment back, I assumed that they were simply being nice. It’s really hard to achieve goals that involve large amounts of writing when you believe that you suck at writing.
I believed that the only reason anybody would want me around is because I could provide them with something. Some skill, some service, some knowledge, something more than the pleasure of my company.
Then to compound the above belief, I felt the need to prove myself. It wasn’t just that I had to be able to provide something for a person, I also had to prove to them that I could be helpful. Prove that I was good enough.

I realized that until I got over this, I would remain stalled out on my goals. I then did the heretofore unthinkable; I turned each of those hurdles into a mantra.

I am a brilliant writer.
People love me for me.
I have nothing to prove.

Now, I would be lying if I said that I felt like anything but an utter and complete fraud when I wrote down those three sentences. There were laughable and egotistical and so far from the way I felt I was writing pure fiction. But I wrote them down anyway. I wrote them down on 5” x 7” cards in bright, impossible to ignore, colored markers. I made three of these cards then posted them all in my bedroom. At first I made a concerted effort to read through them at least twice a day – morning and night. Then that slacked off to once a day, then only whenever I found myself standing in front of one. However, as my room is not that big and I had made three cards, it was impossible to enter my room without seeing and at least subconsciously recalling what they said. “I am a brilliant writer. People love me for me. I have nothing to prove,” became as much a daily part of my brain as saying, “Zoey don’t eat that!” (For those of you who don’t know my dogs, I say that particular phrase a lot.)

I have had those cards up for probably close to two years now, I don’t know for sure, and I realized this morning, as I stood in front of my vanity and read them, that I don’t need them anymore. I believe what they say. They worked. Don’t get me wrong, there was a whole lot more work involved than simply repeating a mantra over and over again, but I feel that by repeating the mantras I tricked myself into believing that they were true. By believing that they were true, I started to act as if they were true, and by acting as if they were true, they actually became true.

Which I guess means that I am now a believer in the power of mantras and I would like to apologize to anybody that I openly, or secretly, scoffed at or made fun of for having mantras. I was an idiot, and failed to recognize the profound wisdom of your ways. But I see the light now, and find myself in need of some new mantras. I’ll have to do some soul-searching.

What’s your mantra?