Take Back Your Life!

Valentino, my cat, has been after me to do a guest post on Take Back Your Life. He’s one of the most fearless creatures I know. Thought you might enjoy his life philosophy. Please welcome him.

Hello humans!

Finally, Giulietta lets me speak. Now I can stop meowing into her ear 24/7.

Here’s my approach to life: I want to have a good time. We cats live way shorter life spans than most humans do so I don’t have a lot of time to waste on things I don’t care about. (more…)

Hey friends,

A few years ago, I tried to come up with a gift to give my dad. He’s done well for himself financially and had everything money could buy — in triplicate. Made it hard to find something conventional — I kept striking out with my ideas. Then, on my way into the gym one morning it hit me.

Write him a thank you letter, thanking him for everything he’s done for me. Why do gifts have to be of the material kind? Who makes up these rules? (more…)

Hey thinking ones,

I used to watch tons of TV in my twenties. Somehow I got involved in the usually miserable lives of the folks in the sitcoms and dramacoms and mini-series — to the point where I wasn’t involved in my own life. I’d refuse to go out on certain nights to ensure I didn’t miss an episode. I swear my brain started to get numb. If you recall the movie Repo Man, Otto’s parents sit like automatons in front of the TV set whenever the camera pans into the home. Not convinced it’s a stereotype anymore.  (more…)

Hey folks breaking out of your moldy molds,

I just responded to a tweet on twitter with the above sentence. And it hit me like a giant idea log, “good blog post title.”

Way too much of life is backwards. It makes no sense.

Are you carving time out of your must do life to actually do something you’d like? Seriously, who made up this script we’re all following? If it were a movie, no one would venture into the theaters to see it, the screenwriter would be out of work and there wouldn’t be any sequels. (more…)

Hey folks who want to feel alive,

It’s that time of the current year when folks talk about setting goals for the upcoming year. The problem with goals is that once you slap things you want (or someone else wants you) to do with the word goals, you’re even less likely to do them. It’s got to be one of the ugliest words in the English language. And backwards it spells “slaog,” which is way too close to slog and slag. It reminds me of the sludge produced by “clean coal” in a great documentary I saw last night called, “Burning Our Future.” Will be talking about Mountain Top Removal soon. The movie got me so worked up I started writing my next newspaper column on it. See, if something moves me, I take action – I don’t need to “slaogify” it. (more…)

Hey rebellious ones!

It’s perseverance.

When I set my sights on something, I take a personal vow not to give up. 99% of the time, whatever I want to happen does indeed happen. But only because I didn’t give up. I didn’t give in to that human tendency to “run back to mommy” at the slightest bump in the road.

It wasn’t always that way. I used to throw up my hands in fake disgust and give up really easily. I gave up jobs and boyfriends and hobbies. I gave up living my best life. Looking back I can see that either I didn’t really want those things or I didn’t really want to fight for those things because I could have had them with a bit more determination and grit. True grit, that is. (more…)

Hey Rebellious Ones,

I want to introduce you to some courageous girl rebels at Girl Effect. It’s “normal” in developing countries to marry or sell young girls by the tender age of 12, who often die during childbirth. Unfortunately, girls are often seen as a financial liability to their families. (The underlying cultural problem.) We can get all mad about it and stomp our designer shoes over here, but it would be more effective to step up on our bare tippy toes to start the wave of change here we want to see over there.  (more…)

Hey wild ones,

Nothing like a provocative title to capture someone’s attention. I scribbled this title idea on a scrap of paper 4 months ago and tucked it in my idea folder. Thumbing through the folder, “Strip!” jumped into my brain’s arms and said, “take me.” Not sure where I’m going, but I’ll find out. Want to join me? (more…)

Hello warmhearted folks.

For much of my life, I tried to hide my tears. Somewhere along the line I learned that tears were bad. Tears were weak. Tears were failure.

Instead, I counteracted the emotion that wanted to come out by thinking happy thoughts. Breathing in and out quickly. Turning from the person. Letting my hair droop over my eyes. Excusing myself to go to the bathroom. (more…)

Hey friends,

I wasn’t popular in high school. Just kinda did my own neurotic thing. Yet I remained keenly aware of the popular kids. Usually, they were cheerleaders or athletes, rarely theater folks or geeks or the dead languages-speaking crowd. They all looked good and inter-dated. Once one of the good looking athletes broke up with his cheerleader girlfriend to go out with a brainy girl. Man, did he and his new girl take a lot of abuse for dating outside the flock!

That’s one of the main problems with being popular —  to keep the label you have to conform to what the group wants you to do. So much so that I believe it may have driven some popular kids off the deep end a bit later in life. (more…)