Category Archives: Uncategorized

Character, Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Leadership, Travel, Uncategorized

Vacation!

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Vacation.  Vay Cay  Shun!   I have been contemplating taking one.  In fact, I am on one.  In the days and weeks leading up to this time, it was my goal to put everything in order at work – to leave the office and the store turnkey so that the workers taking on extra hours in my absence would have a smooth time of it.

Forget leaving disarray so you are missed.  That goes against my grain.  I am nearly as bad as the mother in Night Crossing who wanted to mop the floor before the family escaped so the officials would not find evidence of slovenly housekeeping when they came in to investigate the disappearance.

Besides, when things fall into chaos in your absence, others usually blame you for being gone anyway.  They accuse you of not caring – whether or not you have accumulated so many vacation hours you are required to take a few before the busy season arrives and no one can be spared.

To complicate matters, work  – and holding it together personally – has been so busy I have had precious little brain cells working in the background to plan an enjoyable get-away.

Breath deep.  Here I am on the threshold of departure with only one load of laundry to finish and an oil change to complete before I am off.  But what do I want to do most at this very moment?  Write.  Play the piano.  Vacation has a way of doing that; bringing into sharp focus the things that really matter.  So after I write; after I play; after the oil and laundry and maybe even after some leisurely work communication; I’ll be off !  Yes, I am going to explore some beautiful places in beloved Colorado.

And when I’m gone?

Character, Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Metaphor, Uncategorized, Work

Caution: Brain Storm Warning

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Stand back everybody. I am having a brainstorm.  Shelter in place, close friends and family.  We never know what sort of cataclysmic result to expect, but one thing is sure; our world will never be the same. Please, oh please, don’t try to stop me or rain on my parade before you have seen the final result of my intellectual fury. In my mind every delectable thought worthy of my attention that wafts its way into my brain needs a thorough analysis and creative planning session to determine the feasibility.  I get excited about planning and analyzing and dreaming big.

Are you tired of cloudy weather on your horizon?  Ready for a change?  Need a breath of fresh air? Here is a tip on seeding the clouds.  Follow up on every interesting opportunity that crosses your path.  Those opportunities are meant to be whether a particular job opportunity comes to fruition for you or not. What matters is what you learn and think and dream while pursing those opportunities.

Recently, I followed up on a career opportunity that some thought was above me and many others thought was a good fit. I didn’t get the job, but I got plenty of professional respect and experience. Guess what? I get to keep every shred of self-awareness and skill learned in the process. Ruminating on that higher level job has opened new levels of possibility right where I am.  More brainstorms. Not only am I richer after a go at it, but my imagination is expanded, my output for my current employment has increased.  I am a better manager, a more innovative employee for having jumped outside the box and visited other options in my mind.

Character, co-dependence, Emotional Health, Uncategorized

For Better For Worse, For Your Own Good

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I was one of those people who married in haste and had 11 years to repent at leisure.  But, I didn’t repent.  Instead I poured every ounce of emotional and physical energy into keeping that relationship alive.  I flexed, I smiled, I acquiesced, I became every woman in the world he could possibly desire.  It was not enough.  He genuinely needed every woman in the world to thrive. Possibly the only position that would have sated his boundless drive was the Oval Office.

When he left, he said it was for my own good. I cried. I pleaded.  How could abandoning me be for my own good?  All I wanted was for him to love me enough to be loyal.  Is that too much to ask? He assured me to the last I was attractive. It was not about me. It did not mean I was unlovable.  He was leaving for my own good. During the initial years of separation, I sensed this dimly. The tragedy of sexually transmitted diseases – particularly AIDS- became well known.  I escaped.  Yes, but, I argued, that would not have been an issue had he committed to monogamy. Besides, what is the use of living disease-free if you are also living love-free?

It is for your own good.  As a child, I hated that phrase. In retrospect, I see there were times it was for my good – for my safety. But many times it was for the good of the person in authority – a dominant person insisting he or she was doing it for me, but in reality, getting their own adult way.  That’s what I thought my first husband was doing: getting his own adult way.

It has taken me 25 years to understand fully.  Yes.  It was for my own good.

When I thought I had healed enough, when that first husband had joined himself to another marriage, I felt freedom to love again. So I married. Raised a family. Enjoyed poverty-laced tranquility.  Twenty years later, I left. Not because of sexual infidelity. Not due to physical abuse. Because of financial co-dependence and a complete withdrawal of communication and relationship of any sort.

Some will ask, “Where in this scenario is unconditional love? Where the Proverbs 31 concept that a woman will do her husband good all the days of his life?”

Another woman pointedly said, “You need hang in there.  Take control. Just tell him how it has to happen. Save that marriage by taking charge.”

But, I knew my man. I knew that his phrase, “I can’t,” however faintly or despondently uttered, was true. I resisted the urge to force him to change into someone he could not be. Nor could I remain in that situation without my knee-jerk reaction of taking responsibility for issues that were not my own. In my removal of myself, I gave him freedom to step up to the plate and take responsibility.

It was for his own good-and for mine-that I leave.

Only then did I understand my first husband. Yes.  It was for my own good. He knew  himself. He did not have the moral fortitude to change. Rather than make empty promises, he set me free.

I knew myself.  It was impossible for me to stay without continually picking up responsibilities that were not my own. Rather than coerce change from my second husband, I walked out, leaving the gate ajar behind me, hoping, hoping, he would follow.

Love allows choices.  To allow another person to choose and to take responsibility for their own actions -for better or worse – is for their own good.

 

Character, Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Uncategorized

Solitary, Solitude, Single – Conversations with the Ghost of Christmas Present

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Ah, ghost of Christmas Present, you are inescapably linked to the Ghost of Christmas Past!  Everything in the past informs the present. Even the peanut butter fudge of the past casts an appearance on the waistline of the present.  And so, precisely because there were melancholy times in the past, I am alone in the Present.

Yet, precisely because there were good times in the Past, I am melancholy in my aloneness. Ghost of Christmas Present, let us linger for a moment over the fabulous times in memory and why they inform the loneliness of the present.  See the children, beautiful, talented, sensitive, intuitive children frolicking in the snow. See them performing in candlelight and on stages; watch as they open a crazy kind of warm winter clothing called cabin cozies in anticipation of acquiring a cabin.  See the giggles and hugs and thank yous received for just the right gift – just the right need met with some thoughtful act on Christmas Eve or Morn.  Ah, Ghost.  Did you even consider that the deep joys of that present would cause the deep yearning of the empty nest?

No.  Because, rightly so, we were present in that moment, not straining ahead to the future. Because I was a big part of that planning and anticipation and acquiring of a cabin, two children now have a quaint little cabin in which to make merry for the holidays, though I am no longer included in that merrymaking. Because I had children early in life, I now have grandchildren- and they are near enough to enjoy weekly.

So, Ghost of Christmas Present, what do I want today? 

  • To be present in my life as it is now
  • To be at peace
  • To be happy

These are not things you merely wait for, cloistered in your room. Admittedly, there are times I have to make myself go out – make myself take my fun like medicine.  To be at peace and to be happy requires large doses of beauty. I needed beauty recently so I made myself go to The Nutcracker.  I took time to dress up and I am glad I did even though nobody dresses anymore. The casting was superb, the dancers exquisite, the music soothing. Have you considered what an advantage it is to go out alone, to the symphony, when there is a single seat available front and center?

There have been other successes this year as well. In daily life, I manage a bookstore / gift store – a most covetable position for a writer, author and people-watcher. Over two separate weeks of vacation, I entered heartily into travel, visiting Zion, Bryce, Mesa Verde, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, Hovenweep, Canyon of the Ancients, Black Canyon, and Petroglyph National Parks and Monuments. I slept four nights in my Subaru. I hiked all 46 miles of trails in Colorado National Monument as well as trails in the parks mentioned and numerous trails the length of Western Colorado.  This is good, for there is nothing quite like hiking for keeping me in the present, at peace and happy – unless it is music.

Music continues to engage me in the present as well as bringing peace and happiness.  The public performances have been fewer, the private more numerous. However, the public performances of my three grown children have increased and the young musicians I raise in the present are my grandchildren.

Walk on, weary traveler, in search of truth and beauty. In that way will you find peace and happiness and the ability to be present in your life as it is now.

 

 

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Look at the Lights! The Ghost of Christmas Past, part II

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The Ghost of Christmas Past accosted me without warning again the other night as I was leaving my parent’s house. Sure enough, the Christmas lights are up- – a little lower this year so Dad didn’t have to teeter precariously on the ladder.  My parents are in their 80s.

Ah, the lights.  They play a part in nearly every Christmas memory, don’t they?  When I was very young and we lived in the old house next door, the lights were important to both Mom and Grandma. Back then we had one ancient string that went dark each time one bulb went out. Those worthy matriarchs got rid of it and the next success was actually placing the colored bulbs in a pattern.  It was important to my mom to have them arranged just right – the same importance as choosing a symmetrical tree.

One year Grandma got electric candles to put in the window, not the standard group of three, but a special grouping of seven – in her thinking, the perfect number. I never did quite understand the blue bulbs for flames, but blue was the fashionable color that year-and for a decade thereafter until the bulbs finally burned out.  We children would start looking for the lights the minute we crested the 12th Street hill.  Lights in the window meant Grandma was home.

When we moved to the new house, a string or two of lights went with us. It took several years, but finally my folks had a strand long enough to border the entire roof.  Multi-colored lights on the tree cast a warm and romantic glow.  Is it the tree, the lights or the warm romantic glow that figures into memories of courtships and beaux?  Dear to memory are the morning conversations and guessing games with my little brother, late evening hot chocolate and fudge and sharing our fondest wish lists – all of which took place in the warmth of Christmas Lights.

Lights.  Music. They may be a bit out-of-date and shabby, but when the Ghost of Christmas past takes you by the hand unbidden and escorts you down memory lane, what warm and sentimental scenes do you revisit?  Look at the Lights

DSCN1310lookatthelights

Uncategorized

Two wrongs don’t make a right

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Two wrongs don’t make a right.  This is probably the deepest bit of wisdom I learned from a grandmother who was so full of religion and maxims I was convinced, if at first you don’t succeed, was a bible verse.

People, people, people, just because your president does something wrong; does it give you the right to disrespect or pray evil on him? Two wrongs don’t make a right. People who say you follow Christ, why are you stooping to that? Was it not your Christ who said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you”?

Yes.  Evil must be stopped. Is it not possible to do that through right and peaceful means; without glorying and gloating over the downfall of another human being?

People can and should be held to account, voted out of office, removed from position.  But this should be done without petty disrespect and jeering -Or breaking many laws just to uphold one law. Your cause may be right; but your actions are all wrong.  Let kindness, nay, let love govern your actions.   Only then will you remain untainted enough, undegraded enough to champion what is right.

So, before you forward another ridiculing, stigmatizing,  slanted, disrespectful post about your political enemy; question your motives.  Sure you are feeling mistreated and abused. Your sense of justice has been severely offended.  Are you feeling angry and mean? Out for revenge? Meanness does not fix the problem.  It only degrades you.  (It also causes me to hide your posts)

Triumph over evil is different than revenge on a person. Or worse, revenge on an innocent person. There are heinous things afoot these days. I cannot even begin to fathom the depth or darkness of the injustice. Choose forgiveness rather than revenge. Forgiveness does not mean acquiescence.  Speak out!  Use cogent language.

Rise to the occasion rather than lowering yourself to the occasion. Act like humans with a soul – not like mad menial beasts.

Work with all your might to eradicate evil – but remember, two wrongs don’t make a right.

 

Uncategorized

Keep ahead of the melancholy

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As the major holidays approach, may I take this opportunity to remind you:
Keep ahead of the pain.
Keep ahead of the hunger.
Keep ahead of the Melancholy.

When someone is recovering from a serious injury or surgery, doctors often tell them, “keep ahead of the pain.” If you wait until the pain is severe before you do something about it, no amount of medication can trick your nerves into over-looking or denying the grievous injury.

Those who are dieting are well advised to keep ahead of the hunger. Eat something nutritious and low calorie. Once you begin to feel hungry, you soon perceive yourself to be starving and it is easy to binge or gorge on the first food item you see, to be insatiable for the first aroma of savory food that wafts across your path.

So it is with melancholy. You have to keep ahead of the loneliness. Prepare yourself to enjoy the wonderful warm memories of holidays past, but fortify your emotions to carry you through the memories of holidays lost.

You will want to go back. Back to the good times as you remember them.
Then you will chafe and wail inside because you cannot go back. Ever. You can go only forward.

Have a carrot stick. Take a long walk in the great outdoors. If the sun is out, you go out too. Cultivate gratitude for where you are at this very moment. Surround yourself with safe friends or family as needed. Read happy books. Watch beguiling movies, enjoy jubilant music. Read happy books beside a full spectrum lamp.
The darkness falls. Keep ahead of the melancholy.

Emotional Health, Family, Health and Long Life, Uncategorized

Waking up is hard to do

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My first husband and I listened to (and sang) a variety of music – predominantly of the pop, MOR, easy listening genre.  We were attracted to music with melodic and harmonic qualities.  When our son arrived 13 months into that marriage, I swung into compose as you go, lullaby on demand mode.  Maybe the grown son is passionate about rock as a rebellion – or maybe just as an extension of being rocked to sleep. I made a favorite rock-you-to-sleep lyric of the song that never ends variety. It was challenging to sing only because it ascended in pitch at each turn around.

There are times in an infant’s life they nod off to sleep peacefully and other times they fight taking a nap;

Times they wake placid and times they wake hungry, soggy, uncomfortable or discontent.

Believing music a great antidote for whatever ails you, I began to employ a wake-up repertoire as well as a go-to-sleep song list.  It took the leap of a nanosecond to adapt Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” to “Waking Up is Hard to Do.”

They say that waking up is, hard to do;

And I know, I know that it’s true;

After all you’ve slept through;

Waking up is hard to do.

I am a morning person.  I love waking up with the sun and having two or three hours to myself to walk, create or organize before the duties of the day kick in.  Maybe it is the season, or maybe old age, the cares of life – or perhaps the decreasing hours of daylight.  Whatever the reason, waking up these days is occasionally depressing, overwhelming or lonely.

No problem.  I still have music to console me – with little, very little adaptation.

They say that waking up is, hard to do;

And I know, I know that it’s true;

After all, I’ve been through;

Waking up is hard to do.

Emotional Health, Metaphor, Uncategorized

Mud Writing

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This is it.  This is the place. I never pass this way but what I say to myself, “There, that is the corner where you wrote Terry’s name in the mud, hoping it would last forever, but knowing the river would wash your secret away.”

Then again, this may not be the correct location.  Highway 65 does look like the place, but perhaps it triggers a memory of Glenwood Canyon.  Mom, Dad, Me, my Brother -we were on the way somewhere.  To Grand Mesa?  To Denver?  Who knows?  I was so burdened with my desire for that tanned, blond, talented boy, that I took a stick in hand and told my love to the river putty. I wonder, is it rare to feel as strong a connection as I felt at 10?

Puppy Love, they call it.  Infatuation.  Crush. But tell me, do you have a similar story? Has there ever, since that time, been a relationship, a desire so strong, pure that it had to be spoken, admitted, whether anything came of it or not? Is requited, completed love ever as strong as the secret and unrequited?

Perhaps that is what I love most about a sandy beach. You can walk and scribe and tell the world of your love or your pain and then let the tide and the ocean carry it all away and provide a blank canvas.

sandsolstice258582_1962291831306_1137265_o

 

Health and Long Life, Uncategorized

The Math is Killing Me

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Ann took a 40-hour per week job at an hourly wage half that of what she was making for a 20-hour workweek while self-employed. She loved her new position and was good at it. As a result, she soon promoted to additional responsibility and a raise in wage. This was good, because the fee for Ann’s internet – which she needed both for self-employment and the work she brought home from the job – went up. In addition, Ann was trying to pay down her IRS income tax bill in the amount of roughly $1700 which she was awarded for working her fingers to the bone in self-employment the previous year and grossing $16,000. Meanwhile, Ann’s compassionate employer offered medical insurance – at the same monthly rate as Ann’s home lease. How could Ann say no? Medical insurance is required. Besides, the employer was generous and offered to pay all but $200 of the insurance premium each month. The budget would be tight, but it could be done. Concurrently, Ann’s student loan payment skyrocketed from $112 per month to $360 per month and the car needed repairs.

Please solve and find how Ann will go to the grocery store.
Students of life have attempted to solve this problem in diverse ways.

Here is Ann’s Solution: Ann moved out of her rental house and into a house share. She renegotiated a lower student loan payment for the next 12 months. She was happy to be able to give gifts during the heavy birthday season for her family and to pay her portion of the split ticket when dining out. Now she needs tires for her car.