Take Back Your Life!

“A lifetime isn’t forever, so take the first chance, don’t wait for the second one! Because sometimes, there aren’t second chances! And if it turns out to be a mistake? So what! This is life! A whole bunch of mistakes! But if you never get a second chance at something you didn’t take a first chance at? That’s true failure.”

~ C. Joy Bell

I love taking chances, especially emotional because I find those are harder than taking physical or or financial ones. Trying something new that pushes me emotionally keeps me feeling alive and kickin’. Has really helped me step out of my protective shell aka prison.

But I know that isn’t the norm. Folks have been conditioned to be frightened of taking chances, of trusting their own guts, of taking leaps into the unknown.

Yet, the irony is that life is one BIG unknown, so why we get afraid of the unknown inside the unknown can get perplexing.

People seem to be terrified everywhere of doing something new, of breaking some tradition, of making someone angry. I am convinced most of the strife in the world happens when folks feel so bottled up by not taking chances that they explode and do horrible things to each other. (more…)

About 3 years ago, I wrote a blog post about the masks I’d worn, taken off and still have fragments of to remove. I got nervous right before hitting the send key because I thought, it’s too rad for folks. Well, that post got more comments than just about any post. It spoke to readers.

Yesterday, while patrolling the supermarket aisle in search of organic items (or was it meaning?), the title for this month’s newsletter popped into my head. Everyone Is Beautiful When They Take Off Their Masks.

If you take off your metaphorical mask, you will expose the underneath you, the one you’ve been taught to hide or hold in check or be ashamed to reveal.

The beautiful human you. The vulnerable you.  (more…)

Dear Reader,

Today is Day Five of the 12 Days of Love Letter Writing, a terrific holiday program started by the kind and caring Hannah Brencher. You can read about Hannah, the genesis of this program and listen to her Ted Talk at More Love Letters. These are not gushy love letters. They are letters of encouragement and support written with love.

Hannah asked me to write a love letter to Johnathan. His friend described Johnathan’s situation as follows:

“Johnathan celebrated sixth months sober just a few days ago. In his short two decades of life he’s seen parents divorce, a brother die, and numerous friends stunted by drug addiction. He was just recently promoted at work and is finally feeling better about his life and his self. His letter requester wrote, ‘I believe that I will not always be a part of his life, although we are both major supports for each other right now. I want for Johnathan to learn and always remember that no matter how many people he loses, there will always be more love to be found and that he will never have to be alone as long as he remembers never to stop searching for the light.'” (more…)

I sometimes pick up Origin, the conscious culture magazine. It’s got alternative viewpoints on a wide variety of topics. New ways of thinking about old things. Interviews with folks whose ideas lives closer to the fringes.

The article “Subterranean Cathedral” stopped me in my skimming tracks. James Ramsey and Daniel Barasch heard about the vast, abandoned underground spaces that lie dormant under New York City and approached the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to turn it into an underground park illuminated with their invention of redirected sunlight. Fascinated with how they will do that. The forgotten world reminded me of the 1987ish show Beauty and the Beast. In that show, The Beast and a bunch of other folks lived under New York City. (more…)

I’m reading Improv Wisdom and the subtitle is “Don’t prepare, just show up.”

It reminded me to live my life unscripted as much as possible.

For example, last night I went to a stacked Town Meeting knowing I was going to speak against the crowd. It was for more money for an athletic complex that has gone way over budget because they stuck with the plan when they hit significant financial issues early on. Many voters felt like they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. We’ve spent millions and they wanted another million and say they will come back again for even more. (more…)

Magic has surfaced as a theme for the writers taking my latest Story Circle On-line writing adventure: Grab Life By The Writing Gusto.

I believe Magic exists, we just learn to filter it out on our slog to the “Real World,” which of course is anything but real. Truth continues to be stranger than fiction, so I’m not sure why we continue to train the young for the real world when that’s not in our best self-interest.

Someone said to me that the title for my class wasn’t possible, that you couldn’t grab life by the writing gusto.

Why not? That’s how ingrained folks are to sort everything into real and not real. (more…)

I read Amanda Hocking’s latest blog this morning. She titled it, “The Lost Art Of Blogging.”  She says that blogging has lost something for her. It wasn’t fun anymore. She thinks it might be because her blog had devolved into something less random and rambling and more cagey.

What I’ve noticed is the cadre of experts who’ve cropped up to tell you that you need to provide “useful” content and it needs to be in a certain format, etc. Guess one might call it the professionalization of blogging. I’m all for blogging from your heart and whoever needs to hear what your heart says, will find you. (more…)

I enjoy reading the blogs of others. Gives me great ideas for posts, essays, programs, life adventures. Yesterday, I visited Judy Clement Wall’s newest site, “It’s A Human Thing,” where she continues her love affair with showing love, especially in her writing. It always feels like she’s hugging the reader with her beautiful words.

J, as she likes to be called, has written a new love manifesto/poem that encourages her readers to choose love. Here are the first four lines:

Choose love.

In your relationships,
in the art you create,
the words you let loose,
the causes you take up, (more…)

Hello caring and loving readers,

I’ve been asked by the lovely and compassionate Hannah Brencher to write a love letter to “Elizabeth” during the More Love Letters “12 Days Of Love Letter Writing.” Hannah and I met on one of our blogs several years ago and discovered that we cared about the plight of others. After college, she went to NYC to do an internship concerned with poverty.

There while riding the subway, she got an idea to write anonymous love letters. On her site Hannah says, “I was struggling to get out of bed every morning and I needed an escape from my own sadness and loneliness. So I began writing letters on the train to individuals who seemed like they, too, could use a boost. And it healed me. It really healed me.” (more…)

Hey friends,

Went on a two-week vacation, a cruise on the eastern Mediterranean with shore excursions. Something I’ve never done before. Looking out onto the vast, seemingly endless sea from my balcony reinforced the reality that we have control over nothing and it’s best to just go with it whatever the it is.

That said, I’ve stopped trying to control my bra strap. (more…)