this is me

escape

2010-04-16T00:06:00.001-07:00

I've suddenly gotten this incredibly dense claustrophobic feeling coupled with the sharp sense of being lost amongst the millions in this city. And my fight or flight instinct has "flight" stamped on its front page. Emblazoned in red ink, glowing fiercely from its counterpart, I suddenly want to escape from Los Angeles.

I didn't run away to this city. I have been told by a few from home that it is the general consensus that it was escapism that brought me to LA. But, no, this move had "FIGHT" written all over it. Black and thick; FIGHT. And it has been such a fight. Never have I been so ravaged and left by the wayside. I'd heard the adage that LA can chew you up and spit you out, but I refused to be one of its victims.

And a victim I am not, but I do so very much desire some space, some semblance of pure rain-watered grass and wild flowers, maybe a prairie. Idillic it may be, but thats where I want to be.

Yet on the flip side of this ever two sided coin of my life, I wouldn't be happy with such simplicity. No, I want and desire a stage where I can play my songs. And not just to prairie dogs. I have a reason for living in the City of Angels, even when I feel like all the angels have abandoned me for somebody else, I still feel a draw to put my up dukes and fight. Even if I'm just fighting myself.

So, taking my cue from a Disney princess, I'm in search of the best of both worlds. How can I be a country girl in love with green grass and running room and still survive in a city of traffic lights and pot-holed concrete? 3 years and I'm still searching and not giving up. Until that ever-lovin' whistle blows or that fat lady sings, I'm still shadow-boxing, flailing my fists at whatever I think is there that needs hitting, hoping I make contact with whatever that feeling is that's trying to bring me down.

being sick

2010-01-10T17:38:00.000-08:00

Oh how I love when I say one day that I'm going to be so proactive and be amazing and do amazing things and then BAM!! Out. Sick. For a week already.

Yes, that's right. For all my rallying up, I've not been able to do one thing on my list of amazing things to do. As a matter of fact, I had to go backward and cancel everything. I feel like now I have to re-rally, but wait, I can't, I'm still stuck in bed.

However, I am doing some interesting reading. I just got Donald Millers newest book - "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years". I'll give you at least one good reason to read it - the authors note:
"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you'd seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you'd feel robbed and want you money back. Nobody cries at the end of a move about a guy who wants a Volvo.
But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either. Here's what I mean by that..." and then into the book you are thrust. If you resonate with those two paragraphs like I do, you should read it. In the past, I've caught myself staring out my front room windows, just staring, and when I wonder what I'm thinking aimlessly about I usually realized I was lamenting over the lack of substance in my existence. So I changed it. And I'm still changing it. So this book is just another narrative to encourage my evolution into a world-changer.

Book 2 was a gift from my dear friend Ruthi. "Sufficient. A modern guide to sustainable living."
First of all, its a gorgeous book to look at. Secondly, of course its printed sustainably. Third, it really just a guys ramblings about his experiences growing his own food and living at his best. I love it.

And I watched a good movie too.

Food Inc. - highly recommended viewing. But it will make you mad, so get your dukes up and take notes of what to get all riled up about.

The more you get to know me, the more you see that I have a problem with the big food companies. I disagree with how they make their food. I disagree with how they treat people. I'm frustrated that they don't care that they create diseases. I disagree with how they control my elected officials in government just because they have money. And I hate that there is nothing much I can do about it outside of my own home.
Plus, you should read Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" because he is passionate about food and about health. Its educational but not preachy.

Being sick has been good for my mental well-being but I'm over it. I'd enjoy a little sunshine and some interaction with friends.

looking back

2010-01-03T21:20:00.000-08:00

As per the usual New Year tradition, I've taken a look back on the past year and made some goals for the new year ahead. What I found is that I have had a very stunted year. For all my trying I've nothing much to show. I have a few things I could blame it on, random issues out of my control that might have something to do with it, but that would be the wrong way to view this past year. What I've allowed is nothing short of negligence.

No, this is not negative thinking or self-loathing, its the honest truth and I'm happy to admit to it. Why am I happy about this? Because, as much as it hurts, I can feel it pushing me to achieve my purpose. And the moment I forget what it felt like to realize the lack of accomplishments over the last year is the moment I lose that urgency I feel.

There have been some great things I've done - I planted my garden & became more active in the eco-community, I road-tripped thru Baja in my VW van, I rescued my amazing boxer Dani and I played some great music with some very talented people. However fun and memorable 2009 was, 2010 is the year that things explode, because I said so.

Carney

2009-11-29T20:25:00.000-08:00

I've always been a local band kind of girl. Back in the Washington it was Static and Soul Food 76 and little band called Shale - I also happened to be dating Shale's drummer so of course I was a super-fan. I pushed my way to the front of tiny venues filled with grungy, sweaty people, stood at the edge of the stage and sang every word. I'm a swayer, not a rocker. I sway.

Arriving in L.A. threw all my local band love in a tizzy. I didn't know who to love or where to find them. Of course L.A. is just chock full of music, but I love a band that brings more to the table than just a song - I want emotion. I want honesty. I want mistakes and new tries and old tricks and something that is real. So, I began my search. One random night years ago at Hotel Cafe, a hub of amazing music, one young guy got on stage to play one song. Just one. He played that one song with so much honesty and integrity. His name was Reeve and he was amazing. And so it began.

Back when Carney was known as Reeve Carney and the Revolving Band I fell in love with their music - how the band (whoever was available to play that night) would improvise for minutes on end, Zane would wipe the neck of his guitar with a handkerchief like an old blues master, the delivery of the songs was honest and stirring, moments where you forgot where you were because you've been swept into the music. And I just went to their farewell to L.A. show and spent 2 hours watching them play to a sold out crowd at the El Rey and reminiscing of the days watching them outgrow the capacity of Molly Malone's. While their musical style has grown edgier the old soul is still there.

They closed their set with Testify, one of my favorites, and I still got excited when I heard the opening riff. And for the encore, just as always, Reeve played the same song he played all those years ago with that simple, beautiful, haunting melody.

This is a band that I will miss being my local hero's.

so... this is me

2009-11-18T20:02:00.001-08:00

I realized, while looking back on what I've written so far, that this bit of a blog is less about observations and looking around and more about me - selfish I know, but, basically, I'm writing about what I know, and I know me. And any observations that I do make are painted with my perspective, so it would essentially be about me anyway. Therefore, a change in title was needed. I could think of nothing that could mask the nature of this blog, so I gave it the most blunt name possible so there is no question of what this bit of writing could possibly be about. So, I hope you don't mind getting to know me a bit, and when I do have some interesting observation or interview, you'll have enough knowledge about me to enjoy my take on things.

UPDATE!!!

2009-11-16T23:06:00.001-08:00

I've decided that I pretty much am horrible at keeping up with anything, much less writing about my life. But, here are a few snippets and snapshots.

I like to bake

As much as I can be modern and current, I am at the same time nostalgic and old fashioned. On any given evening, I have on an apron, old blues and jazz are setting the mood and either a glass of wine or a cappuccino is on hand while clouds of flour rise from the counter.

I am a messy baker. I'm not sure how, but I always end up streaked with flour. I just hope that it makes you happy when you walk into this lovely picture of hominess that I am so drawn to creating and that we stop regular life for at least a little while to enjoy these moments of baking and listening to good music written well before my time.

I write music

My days are spent in front of a piano and computer screen writing songs for other people. On good mornings, I sit on the edge of my couch with a guitar and my notebook & pen writing the beginnings and middles of songs that later on in the day will be worked out and scrapped and re-worked in front of that piano. I love writing songs. I love the challenge of trying to put the pictures in my mind into words that fit into a melody that somehow is magically plucked from the air and put into my imagination. If I am painting a quaint picture of song writing, its not a lie. For me, it is a very picturesque life-calling that I am leading. However lovely it is, it is also lonely. Spending your time day-dreaming of love lost, love renewed, love found, betrayed and cold or honored and winning and then spotting just your own reflection in the computer screen in front of you as you record these heros into a mic is a shocking reminder to me that I don't like doing this alone after all.
I am a collaborator, a person that would rather spend time with you than without you, a songwriter that, though shy of showing my newest creation with all its flaws and issues, would rather you hear the flaws than you not hear them at all. I never wanted to be a solo act. In all of the dreaming of being a "singer when I grow up" I was always in a band. Unfortunately, the hand that I drew in life has always played the same - I have to plunge ahead alone and later people will come along. Not that I am in need of support, I have so much, - thank you thank you my dear friends for loving me - I just dream of the time when I get inspiration, write it and then give it to my many musically talented friends to work, scrap and re-work with me. I have a wish that I lived in a huge house with all my friends and we all worked in our respective fields of talent and also tended a huge garden and ate popcorn and watched old movies at night all together. In this house we have a huge old grand piano that faces a large open door to the fields beyond and thats where I write songs and you play your guitar and Nick plays his drums... Oh, if only.

More on the Garden
This summer we planted a garden and enjoyed many tasty treats from it.

Baby Tomatoes

Baby Cucumbers

Baby Zucchinis

A very tasty sandwich featuring herbs, cucumbers and baby lettuce from our garden

This fall we began the composting.

Somehow we waste a lot of food: the outside part of the onion, leftovers we never eat, toast that falls butter side down, those things. I have always felt bad about wasting food and now we have a solution to the problem. We are turning waste food into plant food into good food.

sometimes I make things: chocolate chip cookies

2009-10-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

These are my favorite "I want cookies but I don't want to fuss" and "I'd really like them to not be über bad for me too" time tested, best ever chocolate chip cookie recipe (or white chocolate dried cranberry, or walnut butterscotch, or whatever else strikes your fancy. pictured are oatmeal rasin)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter (softened)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup cane sugar

1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 cup chocolate chips

2 cups whole wheat flour*
1/2 cup ground flax seed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cream together butter and sugars until smooth.
Mix in salt, baking soda and vanilla extract.
Mix in eggs until well blended.
Mix in four and the flax until well incorporated.
Mix in the chocolate chips.
Drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet.
Bake for 9-11 minutes, until edges are lightly browned and middle is set.

*alternate: 2 cups oatmeal + 1 1/2 cups flour

And really, these cookies are so easy that I've just tossed everything into a bowl and used a hand mixer to mix well and they turn out fabulously.

while overwhelmed

2009-09-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

Right. Apparently if everyone on Earth lived the way I do, it would take somewhere between 1.67 and 3.01 planet Earths to sustain them all. Breaking this down, it means that I flush my toilet too often, I drive too much and I occasionally enjoy a nice steak. On top of this, the lovely moisturizer with SPF that I slather on my face is a mid-level toxic creme sending chemicals through my skin that have been linked to cancer and organ failure. The frustrating part of all of this is that I feel completely used and abused and unable to really make much of the change that is needed to sustain human life on our planet. After all, I'm only one kid!

After the depression caused by information overload was warded off with a good kick of willpower and a glance at my thriving tomato plant, I realized that yes, I am only one kid, but its not just up to me to try to save the planet all by my lonesome and lots of really interesting people are doing really interesting things to help us enjoy living better and living healthy lives.

Section 1:

Have Netfilx? Watch these entertaining and educational shows for FREE! I LOVE the watch instantly option of Netflix!

http://www.sundancechannel.com/ecotrip/
The real cost of living. A British man who looks like a sweater clad Jesus wanders around the consumer industry exploring the environmental impacts of many of our standard products (like a white cotton t-shirt and chocolate bars) and then shows us some amazing people doing it the right way.

http://www.sundancechannel.com/lazy/
This guy wrote a book. And then he made this show. Basically, he finds people in business and education and real life who are skeptics of the environmental movement. Skeptical? This show is for you. Why? Because he makes being a little bit green a little bit easy.

http://www.sundancechannel.com/big-ideas/
Design, Music, Eating, Architecture... thoughts from smart people and examples of other smart people bringing green concepts to everything from designing furniture and buildings to making dinner and recording music. Brilliant.

Section 2:

How did I find out that my lotion could kill me? A fabulous little, well, huge, website database created by people concerned with the use of toxic chemicals in just about everything. www.cosmeticsdatabase.com This particular branch of the Environmental Working Group independently tests as many cosmetics as they can and gives each a safety rating. Be prepared to drop off quite a few of your products to your local Hazardous Waste collection facility - its shocking how much big business gets away with.

Yes, I'll point you Josh's direction again: http://www.lazyenvironmentalist.com/products/ How convenient! Want new jeans but not sure where to buy an environmentally conscious pair? He started making us a list. Sweet.

Sustainable Works Workshop. www.sustainableworks.org Nick and I just finished up this class and we miss it. All the information, the passion to live conscious of our environment and ways to get involved in greening up your lifestyle presented by a lovely woman named Nancy - inspiring. If you feel drawn to learn more, are skeptical about the science behind the Green Initiative or think you could squeeze out a little more green in your lifestyle, I highly recommend this class. Trust me, you will enjoy the process of illumination.

Globalfast. www.globalfast.org/gfx/index.php Give up one meal a week and give the money you saved from that meal to help provide water and freedom to those in need. This is just one of a million causes to get behind.

Toms Shoes. http://www.tomsshoes.com Buy a pair, give a pair. So simple, so good.

World Vision. www.worldvision.org It really doesn't cost much to send a child to school and provide medicine for them. I love sponsoring my kids and I'm so thankful for organizations like World Vision that help me give them what they need.

To sum up, I love living on Earth and I don't want to leave anything less than the best for my grandchildren and their grandchildren and I don't want to force them to live on a giant spaceship and get so fat they can't walk, thanks Wall-E.

while gardening

2009-08-26T18:51:00.001-07:00

I love waking up in the morning and looking out my window. Outside my window is my vegetable garden. Growing, flourishing, producing, living. This is my first garden as a grownup, and I’m attempting to grow it in Los Angeles. I’m not the only one either. If you take a walk down my street you see grape arbors and mini orchards and a few houses that have ripped up their entire front yards to grow vegetables and fruits of all kinds.

Growing up in the Northwest for me meant every spring we planted a garden and every fall we tried to find and dig up all of last years potatoes, which never happened. Now, as an adult trying to re-capture the essence of my semi-rural upbringing, I have taken a small plot of land and stuck my flag in it, claiming a bit of serenity and simplicity, attempting to sidetrack the disdain I sometimes harbor for living in the hustle and bustle of city life.

As the little plants grow up and start blooming and the little veggies start appearing, I’m just so proud of them. Like they fought the odds and won. I tend take anything even slightly tangible and translate it to my own life, and so my little garden has become a reflection of my own ability to survive and grow. Not that if they die then I too shall wither, that would be dramatic.

Not only am I happy to have a little place of Zen in my yard, I am happy to add to my local Farmers Market produce my own home-grown tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, garlic and herbs, snap peas, string beans, spinach and lettuce and soon strawberries and whatever else I fancy to grow, answering the question of “what should we have for dinner” with a handful of freshly harvested food. Knowing that I’m doing the best I can to live responsibly, both economically and environmentally, is a most fulfilling thing.

Sustainable living has become a popular thought, Prius’ and organic food and hemp clothing being a few of the commercial responses to the idea. Attempting to go beyond pop culture and maybe a bit more extreme than many city dwellers, I’ve made my own granola, hugged a tree and gotten out my thread and needle to do my best to live in a way that my First Nation ancestors would be proud of.

If being human means that I take from the earth to live, I’m going to do it, but I’m going to try to eek out every drop I can from every moment and every item I’m given. And I’m really enjoying the challenge.

while i forget who i am

2009-04-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

...and here i sit, staring at my computer screen, hoping that getting lost on facebook will somehow help me fall asleep and drown out the noise of the nagging drama that seems to have taken over my heart.

i have drama about my family. i have drama about my apartment. i have drama about my career. i have drama about parking in los angeles. i have drama. and who doesn't have drama? my real beef with drama is that its just drama, and yet it bears so much weight on my shoulders.

here's how i look at drama: i weigh my drama against that of say, a person who lives in Somalia, a country currently at war. not only is my life so much more privileged, so much easier and so much healthier, if i would just look up from my dragging feet, the going promises to be easier. not merely because of where i was born but because, coupled with the fact that i have some fight in my gut if i could muster it, i can take this negative drama and turn it into something good.

yes, there is sadness and hurt in my family. but as for me, i will not hold onto that and whither and break under that weight. instead, i will take it and learn from it and find joy and hope.

yes, there are many issues with where i live, but with the economy as it is, maybe i'll move closer to the beach and pay what i'm paying 45 minutes away from it. i would love that.

yes, the career i have chosen is a rough one, close to impossible to achieve anything much less pay your bills via singing at people, but the challenges i face in writing music and communicating something valuable are lessons that translate into moments just like this when i feel the weight of my current troubles vying for first place in my mind.

these things are valuable. and i am learning that. although the child i sponsor through world vision has a difficult life, one where he wouldn't have his medication or education without help from someone who lives far away from him, my troubles are also valid and worth investigating, not for shoving away in some dusty corner of my mind in a file labeled "crap". because, regardless of whether or not i picked him out of the thousands and thousands of faces of children needing help, he would have had a wonderful life. he has hope. he has community. because, as oscar wilde put it, "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." and trust me, this kid looks at the stars. as for me, its a clear night in L.A., time to look up.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. - winston churchill

www.worldvision.org

photo copyright nick ocean photography, 2008
nickocean.com

while thinking of my dad

2009-02-05T19:08:00.000-08:00

this entry is from December 22nd, 2008

my dad died the other day. i have to admit that it affected me more than i expected, though i knew it would happen someday, it wasn't supposed to happen this way. my heart hurts, this i know.

our father/daughter relationship had been severed. its been broken, complicated and painful.

i've wished for many years that we could have a relationship. i wished that we could heal our relationship. more than anything else, i wished and hoped and prayed that he knew that i loved him. to have to give up the hope of this is like taking a layer off of myself.

this is exposing a lot of who i am - my make-up. my dad is a part of my vocabulary. i tell a lot of funny stories about him, add him into conversation often, use him as an illustration. how he wore 70's short-shorts and tall striped tube socks when he played softball 20 years after short-shorts and tube socks fell out of fashion. how he only knew 2 jokes that didn't use curse words. how he used to smoke sweet pipe tobacco in his big brown easy chair and when he was away on business, i could sit in that chair and not feel so far away from him. and how i once told him that i couldn't continue our relationship in the way that it was currently existing and that i would always be waiting for him when he was ready to be my dad again. that time never came.

i will always wish things had been repaired. that he had been able to understand how much i cared about him. that i had never had to watch him walk away on that rainy day not knowing if he'd ever come back. but i'm thankful for the choice to remember him as the wonderful man that he was, not the man that he became. i can leave a legacy for him.

while shocked that its been 2 months already

2008-09-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I take a few short moments to actually take in what's going on around me. Most of the time, these moments are paired with a cup of good coffee. I recently read a book entitled "How Starbucks Saved My Life". An appropriate book for a Seattle native to read. Not that the book is about a literal cup of coffee saving someones life but on how the experience of working at a Starbucks branch in New York city changed one mans view of the world and the people that are its make-up.

Ever since my first cup of espresso at 14, I realized that coffee is so much more than a tasty treat intended to wake you up and swig as quickly as you can to get your morning going or re-vitalize you in the late hours... No. Coffee should be a meeting point. A time of reflection. Yoga for the palate. Like tea is for the Britts, coffee is for Americans, which we borrowed from the Italians.

At 20 I took my first step into Barista-hood. I got a job working the mid-shift in a tiny shack of a drive-thru espresso stand supplying the masses of Conway and freeway drivers with the ever addictive stimulant of espresso and a short conversation. I do not exaggerate when I say that in the 2 minutes I spent with these people each day I became the bar-tender to their emotional lives. I knew more about them than their mothers did. Mike, with his iced 20-ounce (that's a Venti for those who only speak Starbucks) Irish Cream Breve, lost his job and I was the first person that knew about it. Mike came at the slow time of day just so that we could chat for a few extra minutes each afternoon. Glenn always came twice a day, brought his beat up Dad-mug and while I filled it with a frothy Hazelnut Latte, he would share his idea's of sustainable farming and give the barista's fruits and vegetables from his farm. He'd talk for hours if we let him, but he always saw when we glanced up to see someone lining up behind him and he would always continue his conversation without pause as he drove off. I never did finish a conversation with that guy. Raine brought her 3 year old daughter with her for a decaf mocha in the mornings and we chatted about life thru the car window. These people have stayed with me and I think about them often.

I always played my mix CD's when I made coffee. I had the "Vintage Mix", the "Smooth Mix" and the "Kick A** Mix". We had a rule at the coffee stand I worked in: No country music, no Rap or hard rock music allowed. I just can't imagine handing someone a cup of coffee thru the drive-thru window at the same time as "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" is floating out the window as well. Gross. I'm sharing life with these people and that life is classy. Oh yes. Ella, Billie, Aretha, Ryan and Bruce. These friends of mine got me through long days and enticed people to share with me. Even now my house is like a cafe. You walk in, I say "Hi! So good to see you! Can I get you anything?", my espresso machine already primed and ready to pull shots - decaf, half-caf, breve, latte, vanilla, chocolate... Long day and need a shot of Kaluah in that iced latte? I'm on it. All the while my favorite artists are wafting thru the house, enticing conversation and pulling at our emotions, creating a sound-track to our lives. Music has a connection to the emotion like nothing else, and caffine has the unique ability to break down the barriers of even the most timid guest.

I feel like the training of attitude and speech that I learned as a barista has infiltrated my every-day life and it is a good thing. In 2 minutes I can get a lot of information out of you and you won't think anything of it and I'll order your drink for you at Starbucks and make sure its just as you like it and as I walk out the door to wherever I'm going, wish your sister better health and tell you I'll see you around. I think we all have that ability in us and many of us use it to our advantage while others say they are introverts or too shy to serve people in this way. Personally, I no longer believe in intro- or extroverts as we think of them today. I believe we are all just people, differing looks, differing opinions, differing lifestyles and political views but still just people. All of us have a story, all of us have something unique to share and often, if we get over our said "shyness" we'd learn a lot from these people that we walk shoulder to shoulder with in the grocery store. As a recovering "introvert" ( I was painfully, overly self-aware), it was always nice when I'd spill a cup of coffee on myself and some "extrovert" would give me a handful of napkins and tell me that I'm not the first person to do that and certainly not the last and to have a wonderful day. I learn a lot from these people. The ones that take the extra 2 seconds to make sure I have a good day despite the coffee stained shirt and 2nd degree burns. And I love them for it. I learned that if it makes me feel this good to have someone care about me, so randomly and so easily, that I could do that for other people and it doesn't hurt me one bit. Quite the opposite.

I have a particular friend, Adrian, who lives and breathes amazingness in interacting with people. I have learned so much from merely watching him say hello. He very naturally yet very purposefully draws people into comfortable conversation and finds a way to connect you to what you are most passionate about, what you need most or who you would identify with best. Quite a few of my close friends I met thru an introduction from Adrian. He purposefully lives in a part of town that has more of the homeless and the urban poor than most communities. It allows him to interact with them every day and learn how to serve them better. Adrian heads up an organization called ServeLA (www.servela.org) to assist the large community of people that, for any number of reasons, struggle to gain what most of us take advantage of everyday; education, food, job, shelter or a place to lie down at night. I am inspired by him to do more than I am now, to be more and to do more to purposefully serve those around me.

I find myself talking a lot about bettering our community, about doing more for the people we live around, about changing the world. These things can happen. Your dream for your life and the lives around you can come true. You can repair a broken relationship. Life may not be like it is in the movies, but I don't know if you've noticed - most of the time great things happen to people in movies because one of the characters isn't afraid to ask the first question, speak the first word, give the first smile or, when the occasion comes along, to save someone's life. We're here for a purpose. I don't know if you know that. You, yes you, are where you are for a purpose. So do something about it.

While in my car

2008-07-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

Its an odd feeling when I’m sitting in my car waiting for the stoplight to turn green and just in front of me I’m watching a gas station employee put up the new price for a gallon of gas. It feels like being a little girl again sitting helplessly as somebody takes the change from my piggy bank. The only issue is, I’m sitting amongst 100 other cars with all the drivers watching the same thing. And when the light turns green, we all push our gas pedals and listen as the sound of our acceleration turns into the “cha-ching” of an olde timey cash register and we all just continue driving. I envisioned as the ring of the register faded in my ears, all of us turning off our engines, getting out of our cars and staring as the man somberly took down the 4 and replaced it with a 5… slo-motion and very epic, like an M. Night Shyamalan film.

The feeling hit me again a few moments later. I was in need of a few of those thin plastic garment bags you get from the cleaners when they finish dry-cleaning your shirts. I went to the first mom and pop cleaner I could find and asked for 2 bags. Pop gets them for me and tells me its $2.00. I joke, “Two bucks? You’re killing me here!” as I’m handing him the quarters. Pop apologetically explains, “The gas prices, they go up. The gas prices…”. Yeah, I know. Why do you think I’ve only got quarters to use?

It’s not so much the gas prices or the economy or any of that. I’m struck by my feelings of being stuck, the inability to create and further positive change. I’m the product of youth rally’s and summer camps that encouraged us to be history makers and world changers. Much of my parents generation have been the ones to host such events for us only to tell us when we get home that we should stay safe and keep our heads on our shoulders. It was a confusing time in life. Not that it’s much better now. In what world do our dreams become realities? In what lifetime does our plan for World Aid actually come to fruition? And in what mind-frame do I need to be in to not let my frustrations of my “normal” life side track me from my calling for life?

The predictable reality is that only if we all decide together to be history makers and world changers is the world ever going to change. And, if I get so hampered by the changing of the U.S. economy and the fight over oil, I am never going to join any group of people for long enough to see that change I so desire.

The truth is, we have to live fearlessly. We have to shake the dust off our feet and run toward whatever it is that we are passionate about. If enough of us run in the same direction, the world will be redesigned.

while walking

2008-06-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

I have tried to be many things in my life, yet disciplined is not one of those things that I have achieved. I recalled recently a list I created when I was 18. It was supposed to be my morning routine. I worked as a music teacher as well as working a late shift at the Boys and Girls Club and felt that waking up "early" was important for personal time and well-being. What I had done to appeal to my senses was draw, yes illustrate, my alarm clock with a flashing "8:00 am". This was supposed to give me enough time to perform my complete list of disciplines before heading off in the early afternoon to guide little ones thru the design of music and then off again to supervise other little ones as they played with scissors and billiard sticks. Yet, I contain the talent known to many as Procrastination. This talent is in direct opposition to Discipline. I could not, for anything, get out of bed before 9am. Could not. Most often I'd be pushing it to 9:45, 10:00. This always left me rushing to get that list finished, or rather, rushing to leave everything as it was.

I'm a stacker. When I was in school, I would take all of my homework and projects and research papers and stack up all of the books in front of me so that I could stare at my huge pile of work to do and fall into depression just before trying to write my speech on Productive Perspectives for Mrs. Frisk's class. Not productive. I would do it on purpose thinking that it would jump-start me into a fury of amazingness, high grades and happy looks from my parents and teachers.

The stacking, the list of daily tasks, the white board up on my wall right now that's supposed to encourage me with check-marks when I've completed my day's duties... these all are supposed to grant me discipline... and always, these things intimidate me to inactivity. What I should have written for my speech was something titled "I Just Peed My Pants in Panic, a Biography."

I currently have an early morning routine that I would love to stick to. Basically, I get up, eat breakfast, chew my chewable vitamin, grab my iPod and go for a walk in the morning. The walk is multi-purposed: limber up before morning yoga (if you've ever tried to do yoga after sleeping all night, down-dog is the meanest most torturous form of waking up ever), get my vitamin D from the sun (because chewables can't provide all of natures goodness), say hello to the world of West Hollywood and think my thoughts. I cannot tell you how many issues I work out in my head while hearing Chris Martin croon in my ears.

It was on such a morning walk that I realized my disability in discipline was all in my head, not in the list or written on the wall. I always say that we have been given the tools to achieve anything, yet I never applied any of the proper tools. Intimidation is a tool, useful when working for the mob. Intimidation obviously makes me pee my pants.

What I had previously considered as a tool of discipline was actually equivalent to Michael Scott carbo loading on an huge dish of Fettuccine Alfredo moments before starting a 5k Fun Run. The Office. Always good for life lessons. The obvious: apply the wrong technique, end up with the wrong result. The morning routine that I had just started applying for the more selfish reasons of enjoying the early morning sunshine and a few moments to myself with some good music was completely outside of any stack of stuff to do, any check-board or any pictorial lists that I could conjure up. The result is that thing that I had, for all these years, been unable to achieve - discipline. However, I call it by another name: "Get up early, eat some breakfast, chew my chewable vitamin, grab my iPod and go for a walk."

What it is is that we tend to give labels to things we want, things we struggle with, things we can't attain, goals, dreams, whatever. What we should be doing is just that... doing. Acting. Living. It is in simply doing what I know is right that I achieve greatness. It is in encouraging others to do what is right that they achieve greatness. It is in doing what is right that we will change the world.

while sitting at a cafe

2008-06-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

Have you ever taken the time to just sit and observe the social activity around you?

I think society should affect us, make us take a reflective moment and hear what our surroundings are saying and then what we are supposed to do with our new-found information.

So often I feel as though I am walking through social happenings, playing the part of a non-speaking role, not seeing or participating.

Here I sit, overhearing a conversation behind me in which the person speaking never stops talking, therefore never listens, never actually participates in that conversation. I know that sounds inaccurate, that he's talking and therefore he is active. However, he is not affected. He is not allowing the person the space to influence him.

I also observe from my seat that the Beat Generation is not dead. Running past me was a 20-something guy, with his unlaced leather boots, tapered tight black pants shoved into his burnt red scrunch socks and that certain hat that only a beatnik would wear. He was running back with some money to buy a book of original poetry from a bearded gentleman wearing a forlorn look.

How am I affected by this situation I am in? Do I look at it and appreciate its uniqueness? I won't lie. I am completely distracted by loud Mr. Talker guy behind me, but he is also part of the landscape I have found myself in. I decided to sit here and be inspired.

A) Never give up.

We've heard this so many times - Nike in the 90's just wanted us to do it, Diesel promised successful living with their clothes and Honda apparently held the power of dreams. But how does one continue pursuing something when the world distracts us from our passions? Take the older gentleman selling his poetry. It is something he loves, you can tell. I had walked past him on the other side of the street. He was sitting on a bench and his very low almost muffled "Poetry?" barely caught my ear as I walked past the books displayed in his hand. I wondered, as I saw him again on this side of the street, leaning against a tree waiting for the beatnik kid to come back, how many times he went to wherever it was he considered his home to fill the pages of some journal with more rhymes. Does he live alone? And what kind of determination does it take to come here or there just to sell one or two books of his thoughts in verse?

B) Stay creative.

As I look at Beatnik Kid, I so want to see something of myself in him. I love that he not only bought a book of poetry by some unknown guy, but he ran, literally, to the ATM and back to support the unknown art. I love the very faintest of smiles that was brought to the face of the Gentleman Poet, so slight underneath that beard that you almost didn't recognize it as a smile. I love that Beatnik Kid is who he is, probably fights for his uniqueness. I wanted to get to know him, if only to find out where he bought his hat.

C) Take the time to shut the heck up.

Don't get me wrong, Mr. Talker guy had some words of hard-earned wisdom, but I was so frustrated by his lack of consideration that I stopped hearing his words. This, I felt, was probably happening to the listener on the other end of the phone conversation. Sometimes I feel that we just love the sound of our own voices so much, or we are too insecure to hear others say we may have faults, that we just don't shut up. There were plenty of great words spoken, but just imagine if the questions he asked were of a genuine curiosity of the other persons answer and not of a rhetorical nature? He would then listen, be affected, gather correct information and then, encourage, exhort or simply... agree.

Imagine if we stopped talking and started acting? And really, how dare I just sit and observe when I could be a part of any one of these lives and be affected by them... oh, and motivate them to continue on in greatness. I don't know if Mr. Talker would listen long enough, but there's nothing wrong with being a sneaky encourager.