Take Back Your Life!

Hey complex thinkers!

I intended to write about the Late, Great Penn Station. Then I picked up a greeting card with the quote, “Life is messy, wear a smock.” Can’t find attribution for it, so I’ll thank the company that designed the card for their genius: Seltzer Goods.

My childhood friend A. and I spent many summer days exploring the large stream in our neighborhood. I’ve mentioned it several times in essays. Although I was not familiar with the term “rebirth” as a small child, something about the clean, flowing water kept me coming back day after summer day. It fed my spirit, that’s all I can tell you. The other thing I can tell you is that I never left that river without falling in and getting my clothes “dirty.” Something about leaving dripping wet, covered in sand and dirt completed this rebirth process. If I didn’t fall in, I didn’t feel reinvigorated. (more…)

Hey folks!

I’m going to be disobedient and start my post today with a shameless plug for my upcoming on-line essay writing class. To learn more about it, please click on “Secrets of Personal Essay Writing.” Once you learn the secrets, writing a publishable essay becomes a whole lot easier. My in-depth comments on your writing assignments are well worth the price of admission.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about being a “grown up.” The title of this article is a quote by Andre Malraux, a french novelist. I found it in a fab book I’m reading called, “Last Child in the Woods.”  Real juicy if you like to hang out in forests, talk to animals or look at the stars. (more…)

Hey cerebral readers,

The other night, I happened to watch a movie called, “My Life In Ruins.” Georgia, a college professor with man troubles, comes to Greece to be a tour guide when she loses her teaching job back in the states. Her tourists find her Greek history talks to be dull and boring, so they consistently give her bad evaluations. She doesn’t learn from her bad evaluations and continues to be out of touch with her tourists and herself.  She complains that all the Greeks do is dance! If their lives are going well — they dance. If their lives are going badly — they dance.

Then she gets assigned a bedraggled bus driver named Poupi who doesn’t speak English. (more…)

I’m so tired of reading in the paper that consumers have to “hit the malls and shop more” to get this economy going that I’ve decided to write my next newspaper column on that topic. This article will be a warm-up.

One of the reasons the economy tanked before was because we all shopped until we dropped. Only we couldn’t get up this time. We’d hit the shopping wall. In all my years of being a consumer trained to buy stuff I didn’t need, I’ve never seen such a shopping frenzy as I did during the years leading up to the crash. People maxing out on 5 credit cards and borrowing against the equity in their homes to buy endless amounts of stuff. Or getting a raise/promotion and running out and buying a new, more expensive home — thus, negating the raise and then some. (Saw this many times.)

I’m sure many of you know that buying junk we don’t need is an addiction. The “high” doesn’t last very long and it’s always followed by the scary and depressing realization that you have to pay for it by prolonging your stint as an indentured servant to a corporation, a credit card company or someone else. (Not to mention it all ends up in the landfills and/or the oceans.) (more…)

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…)

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 risk takers!

Last Thursday night at karaoke I sang, “I’ll Always Love You,” by Taylor Dayne. Remember her songs from the 80’s? Needless to say, it’s what my mind considers a hard song – maybe equal to one of those double somersault reverse inward pike Olympic dives with a 3.2 level of difficulty. Six months ago, I listened to that song and said, “no way,” snapping it back into the CD case.

In the interim, I started going to a local karaoke night every Thursday. No matter how I felt or what excuse my little mind tried to come up with to worm its way out of the adventure, I showed up with at least 1 or 2 new songs to perform. Needing to sing a new song each week pushed me into unchartered singing territory. (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…)