live your life with purpose
The place you go do die. That’s what she called it. That’s what she said. Was she ready? Is anyone ever, really? She had no choice. It was what was happening. The train was rolling. There was no stopping. My heart hurt. She was so …
Every day. I look at it. I can’t help it. It’s right there, at work. On my desk. I leave it there. It reminds me to live each day. It reminds me that nothing is to be taken for granted. It reminds me that we …
It’s Sunday. I’m looking out the window in the library. Hello December. Snow. Lots of snow. The wind has subsided and we are no longer having a blizzard. December you are coming in mad. It is calm and pretty. The snow is deep. The trees are covered. I am drinking water and listening to the TV as John is out in the living room watching something. I hear him talking to the animals. Koko the cat and the dogs, Jack and Nora.
I am contemplating my workout for the day. Getting ready. Motivating myself. Pushing weights and walking on the Tread is what I have planned. I am in a good place with my workouts and with my health. I feel strong. I feel good.
Thanksgiving is over. My favorite month is over. It flew by and I feel like I was present for it all. Sometimes the months are a blur and it seems like I remember nothing about them. Sometimes I don’t care if I remember anything about them. So many things to do. So many things to get done. Slow down child. Slow down.
Now I am in the kitchen making crack snack. I can hear the oven fan and Nora barking outside. Peaceful Piano is on the speaker. I am thinking.
I see things or hear things and I write them in my notebook or in the notes app on my phone. Phrases I can’t push away. Phrases that remind something. Phrases I want to use in my writing or things I want to write about.
Today something is going through the maze of my brain. If looking above it is like a corn maze. The word. It’s a word traveling through the maze. Boundaries. I pause to check my email. I pause to collect my thoughts. Jack is the at the door, starting at me. He wants in. My coffee tastes good. Luke warm. Not hot. Decaf so I can sleep.
Back to the word and what I am thinking about. Boundaries. Learning how to say no. Learning what to say yes to. Learning to take control of my work. Feeling like it is okay to say no to everyone’s requests. I feel I have earned my boundaries. I have said yes to so many requests. I have said to so much free. I need to make boundaries. I need to keep boundaries.
I have to have limits. I have to tune in to what I want. I need to be direct. I give myself permission to say no to things. I pause again. Checking Facebook this time. Thinking more. Rolling the words over in my mind. Listening to the music. Thinking how much I love piano music and how relaxing it is.
I feel good about where I am going in my business. I feel like I have earned every single boundary I am putting in place. I have earned the right to say no to things. I feel okay about that. I feel good about that. I feel at peace with that.
When I went to feel all the feels, I find a song. It has to be a thinking song. A song that makes me cry. It makes me think. It makes me grateful. A song that makes me feel things. Today was a day like …
I think my favorite house our family lived in while I was growing up was the Prospect House. Green stucco, nice porch and unique features. It was an old house and my parents remodeled it when I was in junior high. The upstairs had three …
I had no idea I would react like that. Least expected. The smell was amazing. The bite. That’s what did it. One bite was all it took. The memories came flooding back. The tears came. Running down my face. The lump in my throat, trying to stop them. But why? Just live them I told myself. Just let them happen.
Trigger. I prefer a different word. That word always seems negative to me. I will call them reminders. Reminders of things happy. When a simple acorn squash was enjoyed. The smell, the taste, the memory, and then so many years later, the reminder.
It is the holidays? That seems to press the reminder button for a lot of things. Missing loved ones. Missing the gone ones. Missing the memories. Not being able to make new ones. Cherishing the ones we have.
The squash did it to me. Dad loved squash. The minute I took the bite I was with him eating dinner at the kitchen table. The Prospect house. Him saying my name the way he did. Talking, discussing, laughing. The best squash and the best way to cook it. The best memories and the best reminders.
Never knowing when a reminder will appear. Letting it play out when it does. I’ll take that. Enjoy the squash up there.
At night, when the air is ever so clear, a million things go through my head. A million ideas. A million what ifs, a million thank Gods. Because, really, this is when you feel things more. It’s when you tune in to your body more. …
Sometimes I have written about a topic and then months later something sparks the topic again. I will have a fleeting thought or a solid, stick around and wallow around in it thought. This thought was exactly that. I may have touched on it in one of my previous posts, or I may not have. I don’t know what prompted it or why I thought of it. I just did.
It was junior high. It was at the YMCA. The Y was at the Masonic Temple building beside the Zesto. The Y was in the basement of the building and that is where everyone hung out. It was fun, it was social and it was discovering. We didn’t know who we were yet. We didn’t know what we wanted to be or where we wanted to go in life. Life was carefree and fun. Teenage angst and teenage problems.
It was a time in life when body image for me started to rear its ugly head. A time in life when it seemed like everyone around me was skinny. I was athletic. I felt bigger. I was muscular. I felt huge.
I try to trace back the lines. They are too jagged and too convoluted to follow. I want to know what started it. I can’t find it. I want to know why. I can’t see it. The trace starts here and the thought shoots to another time and then another.
I was talking to a friend named Dennis. I was sitting on the wall and he was standing talking to me. I was wearing shorts and I looked down at my thighs. You know how thighs look when you are sitting down. They looked massive. They looked fat. They made me feel insecure and they made me feel strange. I immediately put my hands underneath my thighs to the side of my thighs so they wouldn’t look so big. I know he didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t care. I wasn’t trying to impress him, we were just friends. I was trying to impress myself, I guess. The thoughts, so strange and now they seem so foreign. I am past that point, thank God. I am past that point of caring what people think about me. I can own myself. I can own my own skin. I don’t have to feel validated by anyone.
The next thought from there travels to the football field. Behind the football field by the railroad tracks in the trees. Dennis is there again and a few other people, Pat and others I can’t remember. We called the valley in the trees California and Czechoslovakia The drinking place. The place where kids went to drink. I had my first beer there. PBR or Pabst Blue Ribbon if being specific.
The next thought thread travels out to the dam. Swimming and having fun. Same people. Same carefreeness of teenagers. Good times with good people. Remembering being self-conscious about wearing a swimming suit. Wondering how I looked, feeling and emotion tied in with the wonder. Trying not to care. Always caring.
Fleeting thoughts of always wanting to look better. Fleeting thoughts of always wanting to fit in. Always better friends with the boys than the girls. Fleeting thoughts, still trying to trace back the lines.
This picture could be taken a number of ways. One could be asking me, “What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know that stuff is crap and is terrible for you?” The other could be wow, she is really enjoying herself and eating what …
