All posts tagged: personal

The Perfect Poem

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When you find the perfect poem at 7am, you just have to share it.  I look at my life, and believe I have done what I could in the best way I knew how.  We were not perfect, but I damn well tried and so did he. We will continue to do what we can in our lives, but have sadly agreed it will no longer be in a life together.   Perfection in love is not possible, but in a poem it sometimes is.  Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.   Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This …

Resolutions

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Resolution #1 Stop hitting the snooze button  The alarm goes off and I immediately hit snooze. I usually set it for 5:25 AM to give me time to slowly rise before 6:15 AM yoga, but I inevitably snooze until 6:05 and miss my class altogether. I did remedy this the other night: showered and ready for bed, I slipped into leggings, a yoga tank, and bra instead of my light flannel PJs. At 6:05 AM Tuesday morning after “snoozing” for 40 minutes I turned off my heating pad (yes, I sleep with one) rolled out of bed, brushed, rinsed, and ran out the door. I made it to the studio in a respectable 13 minutes only slightly late and ready to roll, but started wilting at the 40 minute mark in class, leading to my next resolution … Resolution #2  Keep swimming  My yoga instructor is tight in body, instruction, mindset, and in discipline. Girlfriend also uses a heck of a lot of metaphors and motivational lines during each class. “If you let go of the toe, …

Today is Her Birthday

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Welcome to my 5, 5, 5 series. The objective of this exercise is to write five lines five times a week for five weeks about anything at all.  Habits don’t create themselves, after all. The frequency & length remains from post to post, but the topics will be varied. Read my introduction here.  Wk 1 Post 2 I was in sheer disbelief when I found out she was gone. When someone you love decides to privately fight an illness for several months & die in absolute secrecy you feel confused. You scramble trying to heal and to piece things together, seeking company to share in the devastation you feel. I remember her dry wit, her Strawberry Shortcake bedspread & our hand written letters when she moved away after college. It’s one thing when your friend is far away, but it’s quite another when she is gone.  

Lately … 09.15.2015

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Lately I’ve been having lots of random thoughts that are good fodder for posts. In turn I have ended up only building my drafts folder with single lined entries, but can my excuse this time be that it’s been my birthday week – come on, the best ones are always celebrated over several days – so there’s no chance I could’ve sat down long enough to develop anything substantial?  Your ongoing forbearance, dear reader, can be your gift to me. Lately … I have been thinking: On getting anything done: I’m not overwhelmed, I’m just underfocused. On drawing, fiddling with a piano tune, etc etc: I’m not as bad as I thought, just not as wonderful as I’d wished. On kids: I’m having a love-hate relationship with kids lately. I adore them, from a distance. Someone told me it may be a coping mechanism… Either that or I’m just a b*+€h. On making green smoothies: By now you’d think I’ve got these down to a science. Makes sense because lately they taste like a laboratory experiment. On …

Summer Stories 2

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Click to read Summer Stories 1 here. I am great at packing as long as I can bring everything with me. If that means checking two bags instead of one, or jamming an extra pair of shoes and another sweater into my personal item so my carry on isn’t too heavy, I will be fine. In the case of my summer story, I did all of that, plus sent a heavy box via media mail days before lift off. Though I had a couple of days to prepare before heading away for the summer,  I didn’t pack my suitcases until the final few hours before leaving.  A girl can learn a lot about herself when she is prepping to be away from her day to day life. In my mind, I needed very little.  All I cared about were the essentials. Absolute essentials. When faced with having to decide on what things are most important to us, we hear things like “photographs, my mother’s this, my father’s that.” Since I wasn’t just going on a trip, but taking an indefinite amount of time …

Summer Stories  1

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At the end of last year I felt a pebble in my shoe, but thought nothing of it. The new year started off like any other, welcoming 2015 with little fan fare. No big trips planned, no milestones up the road, and nothing of immediate note in the horizon that might add strain or stress. That being said, I rolled through the first month just fine, but starting in February, I felt an emotional sensation similar to being repeatedly poked. I’d oddly twitch while standing still and feel digs in my side while in motion. That tiny pebble was still in my shoe, annoying me with each step, so to speak. Not at all physical, they were those nagging gut feelings you have, those whispers in the back of your mind that become very loud the moment you try to get very quiet. “Go away!”  I’d say to these irritants, “It’s all in my head,” I told myself point blank, “This is nothing.”  There is something I call the negative side of optimism, when a normally positive person like me shakes things off …

This Is 40

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There is so much I am looking forward to learning in my next forty years.  So far, this is what I already know: You can confide in your mom without judgement. Now that I am an adult and my mom is in her seventies,  I find that I can talk candidly with her about my life, my thoughts, and my fears and she no longer makes any judgement.  She worries less about what she thinks I should do and is more concerned with what will make me happy.  She now taps into what’s in my heart and holds it lovingly in her hands. You can be your sister’s hero, and like it. My sister has always been independent and self reliant.  I lived through my youth with her telling me what to do.   Now she calls me for entertainment and inspiration, for venting and for seeking my two-cents.   I often come to her rescue as she always has to mine.  I am her confidant and godmother to her children.  I am proud that I …

Frozen … When You Can’t Just "Let It Go"

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It is embarrassing to address once again how much of a procrastinator I am, especially when every time I talk with a friend or share a piece of unsolicited advice I consistently lean into the ‘no excuses, get over yourself, move it or lose it’ camp.  I may have said before that one cannot possibly worry about where she is going to end up if she doesn’t even show up at the starting line. What do you do though, when you know what responsibilities are in front of you, are aware of where taking care of some things may lead you, know how to start getting there, but choose to slouch in bed with your MacBook in your lap and write about not doing anything about it instead? I know what it is like to feel stuck.  I know you do too.  I also know how it is to be “over” it all, but still holding on to anger, anxiety, hang ups, or tension.  If I am so over something why can’t I just let …

Going With The Flow

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I am just going with the flow. I cannot control a 14 hour delay for an international flight, nor can I control the typhoon that caused that delay.  I cannot control the power being off in some parts of our neighborhood.  I cannot control the damage done to our wifi cable.   I cannot control if people I love are hurt by people I do not know.  I cannot control my mother’s memory.  I can control how to make things easier for her.  I cannot control when people need to leave before I am ready for them to.  I cannot control so many things that I want to have control over. But I have control over my perspective.  I have control over my attitude.  I have control over the rate at which I inhale and exhale.  I do not have control over my mood, but I have control over whether I am crabby or kind.  I have control over the things I choose to do.  I have control over the company I keep.  I have …

Connecting the Dots: The Paper Boy

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There is hardly a way to complete a succession of blog posts like my Connecting the Dots series in one fell swoop as I had foolishly deemed possible last February.  I don’t sit with a playback reel of my love (and lost) life constantly going in the background.  Life has its way of switching that projector on and off when it comes to thoughts of the people who shaped our love lives. That’s my opinion, at least. Once in a while there will come a trigger that brings to mind memories of past relationships. I don’t believe anyone who denies he or she ever experiences this.  It doesn’t have to mean there is anything unresolved.  I firmly believe like any life experience, the old feelings and emotions we lived through back then shape who we are for better or for worse.    Being the sentimental fool and writer I am, I often think about what happened in my life to make me staunchly stubborn about certain views while compassionate and non judgmental in others.  What conversation prompted …