live your life with purpose
Do you ever get sad when you look at pictures from a long time ago? Recently, a friend posted some old class pictures from grade school. I noticed my brother in them. Second grade Jeff and third grade Jeff. I instantly became emotional. I really …
The garbage can was tin. That coppery color tin, about 12 inches high. It was my sister’s. David Cassidy or Three Dog Night was featured on it. The house was the Prospect House. Green stucco was the style. The drink was sloe gin, with orange juice and …
Because sometimes I think about weird things. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. For the past week or so I have had this Hemingway quote rolling around in my brain. I can’t get it out. I actually don’t think I will get it out until I figure out my sentence. The quote:
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. – Ernest Hemingway
I think about things. This is one of the things I have been contemplating. I am sure I am overthinking it, but it’s what I do sometimes. I am pretty sure the quote refers to writing and getting started writing, but I am actually having a little bit of fun wading through the murky waters of its meaning.
What would your sentence be? The truest sentence that you know. What is it? Does it feel hard for you to do that or hard for you to think about that? Does it scare you? What does it mean to you?
I have been thinking about this a lot. It’s hard for me to do. I don’t know for sure what it means to me. Would it be something bad, something good, something indifferent? So hard. I don’t know why. How can writing a true sentence be so hard? I think I want to overanalyze it. I want to think too much. I want it to be something. It has to be SOMETHING. I want it to be definitive, but then I think it can’t be. It shouldn’t be. I should just be. I should just stop thinking.
I had a super weird dream the other night. That has nothing to do with my true sentence, but I didn’t want to forget it and I was too lazy to open another page, so I will get it down here. But, who knows, maybe it does have something to do with my true sentence.
In my dream, I was walking. I think I was looking for or was going to meet John somewhere. There was a bunch of water that I had to walk along. I had three cats and a duck. The cats were gray, the duck was Mallard. I kept walking, looking for John. I didn’t know where I was supposed to meet him, only that I would know when I came to the place. It seemed like we, meaning me, the cats and the duck, walked forever. We walked along the water for a long time and then the water was coming to an end and it was just land, sidewalks and a parking lot. I had to let the duck go. I had to put him back in the water. I kept the cats and then went to the parking lot. That is when I woke up. When I woke up, I felt so weird. I kept thinking about it. I knew I wanted to remember it and I wanted to get it down on paper so I wouldn’t forget it.
Bizarre? Ummm, yeah! Weird? Ummm, yeah. I wonder if it has anything to do with my true sentence. Like I said, I can’t get that phrase out of my brain. I know I am supposed to be doing something with it. I just don’t know what it is yet.
My dream must have something to do with it, but what part of my dream? The duck? The cats? Me not finding John? I wonder about things like this. I can’t help it.
So, as I finish this blog post, I will continue to contemplate my one true sentence. I will continue to think about it. I will continue to wonder about it. I will continue to think and wonder. It’s what I do.
There’s a broken bird on my deck. A robin. I can’t quite tell what is wrong with him. He has a feather stuck in his eye and his leg looks broken. He keeps trying to get up. He keeps shaking his head trying to get …
Why is fire so fascinating? It’s mesmerizing. I love it. Whenever we sit out at the fire pit, I find myself staring into it and getting lost in the colors. The dancing and jumping of the flames is fascinating. The colors are rich and vibrant. …
Do you ever just spend time by yourself. I mean completely by yourself. No noise. No distractions. No nothing.
Go ahead. Find a quiet place to relax. I’ll wait for you. Either your bedroom or another quiet place in your house will work. Turn off all the noise. Tune out all the noise. No TV. No music. No anything. Take some deep breaths. Let’s do five. Now you can either just hang out here or open your eyes and just be in a relaxed position. What is relaxed for you? For me it is lying down on my bed or even just sitting comfortably on the floor. Okay. You there?
Now, I want you to start thinking about how you feel. Think about how your body feels. Let’s do this for five minutes. Feel everything. Feel your feet and legs and hips and chest. Feel your arms and hands and head and neck. Feel uncomfortable yet? What are you noticing? Anything feel tight? Is it hard to relax? Quiet your mind. Count backwards from 100 if you need to in order to turn off the noise.
Next up, I want you to explore a little more. What emotions are you feeling? Do you feel content or irritated? Do you feel anxious or sad? This is the time to feel. This is the time to explore this stuff. There is no noise. There is just you and your thoughts. What are you thinking? When is the last time you did something like this? When is the last time you were completely alone with yourself? By completely alone I mean with absolutely no noise. Does the silence irritate you? Does it drive you nuts?
See, most of us can’t handle ourselves. We can’t handle being alone with ourselves because it makes us think. It makes us reflect. It makes us wonder about things.
Do you even like yourself? When we don’t have the outside distractions, it forces us to face ourselves. Sometimes it’s hard to like ourselves. Do you find that is the case?
In our everyday lives we create a billion different distractions so we don’t have to deal with ourselves. We are always busy with something. And, when we are alone, we have noise on, such as the radio or the TV or spotify or pandora.
We distract with noise. We distract with music. We distract with TV and we distract with our phones. We distract so we don’t have to deal. We don’t like to deal. It’s hard to deal.
I want you to deal. I want you to face yourself and deal. Relax and think about things as long as it takes for you to start dealing. Write down some goals. Make the goals financial goals. Make the goals fitness goals. Make the goals relationship goals. Make the goals life goals. Once you have done that, go find a mirror and look in it. Look at yourself without judgment. Look at yourself with confidence. Look at yourself. You are beautiful. You are competent. You are adequate. You are capable. You are enough.
I received a box in the mail with some essential oil perfume samples. The samples of the perfume oils are Vibrance, Love, Passion, Calm and Grounded. The quote on the outside of the box, interestingly enough, has everything to do with this post. Here is the quote:
Every move I make in this world is done with Vibrance. I am open to giving and receiving Love. My life is full of Passion. My thoughts are at ease and I am Calm. I speak my truth and I am Grounded.
I love that quote. Start practicing being alone with yourself. Take once a week or more and shut out the noise. Shut off the noise and learn about yourself. Don’t be afraid to like yourself.
Your path. Your rules. Your pirate map. What is your path? What are your rules? Are you just washing out of life and not living it? What I mean here is your fitness and nutrition path. What does that path look like? What do your …
As I am getting ready to post this, I am sitting at my kitchen counter checking to make sure I have everything I need. I have my carry-on packed. I have my backpack packed. That’s my go to when I travel. I have my ticket. …
The dress was white. It had a nautical pattern. There were blue anchors and gold-colored boat steering wheels. There was also the color red on the dress. I was only four or five. Blond hair, freckle faced, tan legs and knock knees. I was such a tom boy, as far back as I can remember. I’m not sure how or why I was even wearing a dress. Tom boys didn’t wear dresses. For some reason, I liked that dress.
I was playing with my cousins. If you’ve ever seen the movie with Kevin Costner, called The War, we were probably like the Lipnicki family, always looking for an adventure. Translation, always getting into trouble. It’s a great movie by the way. One of my favorites.
Some parts of this story I don’t clearly remember, but at the same time other parts are crystal clear. It is so strange how our brains let us remember and how our recall of certain events happens. The dress, for some reason, is pretty clear.
We lived in a super small town. The town was Hurley, SD. It is near Sioux Falls, the biggest city in South Dakota. The population of Hurley, today is 415. See. Super small. Not much going on there. There was Main Street and a park and a school. We lived in a little house that was white with brown trim. Like the Euclid house, this house also had a fire. That’s a story for another time. In all fairness, I have never tortured animals. 🙂
There was a big tree that had a fort in it. I wanted so bad to climb that tree and get in that fort. We walked there from someone’s house. It must have been from our house. It seemed like the tree was far away. Our driveway was laced in rock and everything else seemed like it was dirt. I don’t think there were actual sidewalks. It sure didn’t seem like it. There were brown and gold leaves with curled edges on the ground too. It must have been fall. We got to the tree. It was a tall tree and it seemed like it was way up to the sky. It was so exciting.
My cousins went up and I talked them into letting me go up too. The ladder steps to get up consisted of a little piece of wood with a nail in the center attached to the tree. I remember getting up there and feeling like I was on top of the world. It was amazing. I could see everything. It was so cool. I felt as free as a four or five year old could feel. Heights were never a problem at that age.
Pretty soon that rush was gone. Pretty soon I looked around and nobody was there. Pretty soon I was scared. They left me. I had no idea where they went. I was stuck up there. I was stuck in the tree fort. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to get down or if anyone was coming back for me.
I sat down and cried. I was yelling and yelling, but nobody came. It was getting cold and by this time I had to go to the bathroom. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no idea how I was going to get down. I didn’t know what to do. Nobody was coming to help me. Nobody was coming to get me down. I was so scared. I peed my pants in my pretty dress with the anchors. I felt terrible.
The symbolism of the anchor may be why I remember this story. In tumultuous times the anchor is a sign of stability and strength. It is a symbol of security and being grounded. I remember looking at the anchors on that dress. I think the anchors helped me that day. I think the anchors gave me strength. I think the anchors helped me have the self confidence and courage to climb down from that tree fort. I can barely remember climbing down. I must have run home after that. I just remember being so scared, but more than that, I was so upset about peeing my pants in my pretty anchor dress.
When I started gymnastics I was in 6th grade. Actually, the summer after 6th grade. I learned about it from a friend in my grade. She had been in it for quite some time and I was immediately curious about it. I had really never …