Take Back Your Life!

Hey creative thinkers,

I want to start off this post by thanking all of my fabulous commenters. Your insightful comments take what I’ve written and stretch it one rebel step further!

According to this Newsweek article, American creativity has been declining since 1990. Possible culprits? Increased television watching, less life hardships, standardized school curriculum and nationalized testing. Teachers say there’s little time for creativity due to curriculum and testing requirements.

The best part of the article?  The demand for MUSES will be way up! Gave me some great ideas for my biz. I’m gushing creative excitement here! (more…)

Hey folks who want to live while you are alive,

I love the greeting cards that marry quotes and pictures. The latest one I bought showcases a woman wearing white heels sailing off the curb into a muddy, watery mess. You know her shoes will not survive this gooey “crossing” and she’ll be calf-deep in mud. Yet from the bounce in her step, I can tell she’s going to enjoy ruining those shoes. The following quote accompanied the picture, “Ever notice that ‘what the hell’ is always the right decision?” ~ Unknown Hollywood script writer.

From my own experiences, I’d have to agree with the script writer, sometimes you need to throw caution to the wind and just do it, whatever the it challenging you is. (more…)

Dear Status Quo Changers,

Recently, a friend asked where I get my blog post ideas. Honestly? They find me. I pick up a greeting card, overhear a conversation, visit someone else’s blog, open a book. Sometimes I have more than two posts that want to be written at the same time. The one yelling “pick me” the loudest usually wins.

Two days ago, I looked out my upstairs bathroom window around 6:30 am to see three cottontail bunnies chasing each other all over the yard. (I thought it was three but it’s probably more like 33. They just look similar.) Up and over our small hill, through the giant hemlock grove, under the blue spruces. Round and round they went. It looked like they were having a grand time. (more…)

Dear great idea folks,

I’m bombarded with great ideas. They flow freely through by brain and also freely out of my brain if I don’t write them down. So, I carry an “Aha” notebook around with me. Even wrote “Aha Notebook” on the front. I write essay ideas, column ideas, life shop ideas, recipe ideas, logo ideas, blog post ideas and anything else I want to remember, but know I’ll forget.

If you think about it, all the products you use and the songs you hear and the movies you see and the books you read, they all stared with someone’s “Aha” moment. The difference? That person acted on their “Aha” moment. (more…)

Hey courageous ones,

Recently, I saw one of my favorite up and coming singer/songwriters, Kim Jennings. The city of Worcester, Massachusetts, voted her its best female vocalist for 2010. If you ever get a chance to hear her perform in person, you’ll know why. She’s dazzling, daring and dynamic. Because I look for everyone’s life theme, I couldn’t help but notice that two of her songs both contained the same line: nowhere left to hide. She’s definitely come out of her hiding place. Have you? (more…)

Hey questioning ones!

Yesterday, Jimmy and I drove by a field filled with lots of children wearing red and blue shirts doing some kind of organized exercise. Simultaneously, we turned to each other and said, “Mao’s Cultural Revolution?” Something about it left me with a unsettled feeling. The same feeling I get when I bike by a pre-school in a nearby town where the children spend 6+ hours a day “learning/playing” inside a chain-link fence. It feels like captivity has become the new childhood normal, a radical departure from my own. (more…)

If you’ve read my Skirt! essay, River Talk, then you may recall that I don’t remember much of the information stuffed into my head in high school. In addition to Siddhartha, I’ve recalled the basic premise of the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting For Godot. Two guys, Vladimir and Estragon, wait on a country road by a tree and talk about how they are waiting for Godot. But of course Godot never comes. As a high school student I thought, “what a dumb play.” Now as a middle-ager, I think, “wow, that play’s brilliant. It’s a commentary on life.”

Do you have a Godot (or Godots) in your life? Something that you’re waiting over and over for that never comes? (more…)

Hey life renegades,

Life can seem like an endless slog or a magical love affair. It depends on your ability to answer the question, “What makes you get up in the morning?”

During my childhood, I couldn’t get enough of life. I raced out of bed to explore the natural landscape near my home. I scaled the face of Bald Rock (o.k. a small hill a few roads over), I climbed pine trees, I waded in brooks, I watched butterflies, I taught riding lessons in my back yards without the aid of actual horses.

That love disappeared when society shoved me onto the tracks headed toward conventional adulthood. By my late twenties, I kept asking, “Is this all there is?” I’d broken up with life. We’d gone our separate ways. I had no real reason to get up in the morning. I guess I had stumbled onto some kind of career track. Yet, the notion of a generic career never appealed to me. I always felt like a caged animal in a work zoo. If we lived in this free society I wondered, how come we can’t leave until 5:00? I began saying to colleagues, “Let’s bust out of here and sit at an outdoor cafe and drink salty margaritas.”

They’d say, “Oh, that sounds fun. Too much work today. Maybe next week?”

Those weeks turned into years and finally into a decade and still no disobedient margarita hookey.

I realized I had to help myself if I wanted to fall in love with life again. I volunteered at a theater in the next town as the curtain puller. This simple act of opening and closing an unbelievably heavy curtain led to me opening a new act on my own life.

One of the actors introduced me to karaoke and returned me to hiking and bike riding. With life once again coursing through my veins, I also reconnected with my rebellious roots.

I fell in love with life again. We’ve been going strong ever since.

Muse thx,

Giulietta

p.s. A few years ago I celebrated my birthday drinking salty margaritas at an outdoor cafe. As wonderful as I’d imagined. How about you? Have you had your margarita moment?

Hey readers who like to shake things up,

A few weeks ago, I left a comment on a blog and won a DVD called, The Hustle for Worthiness, by Brene Brown. I enjoyed the entire DVD. It’s excellent. Some advice Brene passed along from a friend reinforced something I’ve been talking about for years. (I don’t have the exact quote cause I lent the DVD to someone!) The gist of it was, if you want to save the women, you have to save the men, too.

Makes sense, right?

If women are oppressed by their roles, then men are too. Not all women agree with this. I did a lot of research and wrote a paper on liberating men in grad school. My female teacher slammed it. I got it back covered with unflattering comments scrawled in red and an unexpected B-, the lowest grade I got on any paper in my three years of study.

Did I produce an inferior paper or did I choose an inferior topic? Got my own theory.

I know that a lot of men out there have dreams too. They’ve told me. The problem being men and women both get locked into the generic American Dream to work and consume, work and consume. It doesn’t leave men a lot of options once a family gets entrenched in this cycle. Then folks succumb to the “it’s too late now” or “I’ll do things once my children graduate from college.”

I wonder if sacrificing your own life for your children, who will then presumably sacrifice their lives for their children ( and so on), if this model really creates a happy adult society? Wouldn’t a thriving society filled with active participants of all ages be more vibrant?

Yes? No?

If you’re woman, would you be willing to reduce your standard of living so your husband can try something new? Have you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on saving the men too …

Muse thx, Giulietta

Hey rebels,

I read somewhere that people feel there aren’t any real heroes any more. I don’t agree.

About two years ago, I went to the wake of an elderly relative. The man’s son-in-law gave one of the most beautiful unscripted speeches I’ve ever heard. He told us that his father-in-law had been an “everyday” hero to him because of his devotion to his family. It changed forever my own definition of a hero.

Before that wake, I thought a hero had to be someone who ran into a burning building or something else extraordinary. I know that a lot of folks look up to sports figures as hero’s for breaking records or to billionaire’s for making tons of money.

Now I believe that a hero can be the person next door who takes care of his or her ailing parent or the person who reaches out to someone in need with a kind word. It can be you or me. We can all be heroes and heroines.

My husband is my everyday hero. He can fix anything that goes wrong in this old home of ours, from electrical to internet to plumbing. He keeps this place running and from the enthusiasm he does it with, I can see that it’s one of those labors of love people talk about. Thanks Jimmy!

Who are the everyday hero’s in your life? I’d love to know!

Muse thx, Giulietta