I wish my book were finished (and published, and available for purchase at your local indie book store). ~~~ In fact, I wish you were holding it in your hand so you could read it right after you finish reading this post. Or before you finish, if you couldn’t wait. ~~~ I wish you couldn’t wait.
I wish I were planning a trip somewhere warm and beautiful.
I wish I worried less about what other people think. ~~~ And then I wish I were spending all that time I used to spend worrying what other people think dancing instead. And eating pineapple. And drinking inexpensive champagne. ~~~ I wish I liked pineapple and inexpensive champagne.
I wish I lived in a more peaceful, tolerant world, and in a culture that valued wisdom as much as it does youth and beauty. ~~~ I wish I were wiser. Okay, and younger, and gorgeous. But mostly wiser.
I wish I had a kayak. And a hot tub. And a motorcycle license. ~~~ I wish I’d invested differently, got my MFA, traveled the world before I had kids. ~~~ I wish my book were finished.
Oh, wait, I said that.
I wish Lexi played well with other dogs. ~~~ And I wish she knew how to make cheesecake. And vacuum. ~~~ I wish she could teach me how to love as unconditionally as she does.
I wish I didn’t find myself so often tongue-tied in moments of truth. ~~~ I wish my friends were happier. ~~~ I wish I understood physics and chemistry and people and wine, not necessarily in that order. ~~~ I wish the people I loved most lived closest. ~~~ I wish more people were in love with the person they married. ~~~ I wish there were no such thing as insomnia.
I wish love were as prevalent in the world as fear.
What do you wish?
Wild
First of all I wish that all of your wishes come true. I see that many of them will. I have my crystal ball right here and you’re in really great shape!
Some of my wishes are similar. I have so many, if I ever started to write all of them down I may get a little discouraged. My children are healthy and happy. We have great relationships and they do too with eachother. I wish to be remembered someday for the writing I’ve done, that is very important to me, it’s my number one, secret wish so shhhhhh. Other than that, I’m ok.
Bake a big cheese chake (or have Lexi do it), put candles on it equal to your number of wishes, blow them out and voila. Works like a charm.
Very sweet, bittersweet and honest blog. I loved it.
<3 Joanne
I like to put my pineapple IN my inexpensive sparkling wine (Barefoot Rose). Maybe you could try that (its very yummy) and that would help with two of your wishes is you ended up like it.
Happy Monday!
It may sound cliched, but I do wish for peace around the world, that no one be without clean water, enough food, shelter, education, good health care. I wish everyone could have enough to feel secure. I wish we all could find work that we are passionate about, or at least take pride in doing well and end our days satisfied. I wish there were no pedophilia, no rape, no murder, no violent crime, no one in fear for their or their family’s safety. I wish that all governments, corporations and individuals did everything in their power to protect our world and return it to health. I wish we all had someone to love, who loved us just as much. I wish no child or woman or any other person or animal suffered abuse. I wish no one died alone or unloved. I wish we all had someone to hold us.
Joanne, Okay, I won’t tell. I wish that too. Let’s share the wish. Maybe it’s more likely when it’s shared.
Terre, I can see where combining might make all the difference in the world. I will try it before the weather changes! Stay tuned.
Dani, That is a beautiful list of wishes. Would that they could all come true.
I wish I could stop wasting time. Have done so for too many years, and it’s ‘a wasting. ;)
What a lovely post, sweet and poignant and thoughtful.
I “wish” to follow you!
BrunchAtEleven
Just loved this… What a great way to start the day — wishing and hoping and dreaming.
I wish that you receive everything that you wish for, especially the publishing of your book, and the rest will fall into place.
I wish more people were like you.
I wish I had your book in my hands.
I wish there was a quick pain-free cure for stupid.
I wish everyone was as good a driver as me.
I wish being better was easier.
I wish I knew why adult book stores exist — wait… no, I don’t want to know. Nevermind.
I wish Micheal Franti lived with me because he makes me sing — loudly.
I wish I could come up with profound words for I good “I wish”.
I wish waiting were easier.
I wish one morning I would wake up and the mayor of everything would declare the day an automatic do-over.
I wish I had more time.
I wish you would do a post where you make our wishes come true like you made our fears disappear.
Marisa, Me too. I wish that every day.
BrunchAtEleven, Sweet! I will look for you!
Julie, Thank you. Adding your blog to my blog roll today, hoping everyone reads your sweet, funny, touching, articulate confession.
Ralph, I wish more people were like you too. Thank you!
Becky, I have to google Michael Franti. Still love me? And yes, I wish for more time all the time.
Excellent post.
I wish for you that your book were finished and published and stacked on a table at my local bookstore so discerning people could be attracted to the cool font on the cover, pick it up and be inspired to purchase it, take it home and read it in their comfy chairs.
At this moment I wish that all of us could stop worrying about things over which we have no control. My ancillary wish for me is that I could address the things over which I do have some control with less procrastination. I’ve been working on it. *sounds of hammer and tongs* :-)
I wish your book were finished and in my hands because I know I couldn’t wait to read it.
I wish you were planning a trip to warm and beautiful Austin so I could see you.
I wish pineapple agreed with me because it really sneaks up on you, appearing in random places like it does.
I also wish I invested differently. And that I were wiser.
I absolutely wish more people were in love with the people they married- that’s an amazing goal.
And don’t even get me started on the insomnia.
In related news, I wish I was a morning person.
I wish I wasn’t afraid of failure. Crippled by it, even.
I wish I wasn’t so damn good at procrastinating.
I wish I could accept a compliment.
I wrote a piece similar to this a couple years ago. I called it “I Imagine.” I went looking for it this morning after reading this. I found it to be still relevant today as nothing has really changed.
What it comes down to is the individual. I can wish for and imagine many things, but those things will never happen because the world seems to be uncaring now. Individual rights have become lost in corporate greed that cares more about the bottom line. Those less fortunate, jobless, homeless and in need have become demonized by politicians and in turn by the general public. These things are unlikely to ever change. Sorry if this is too serious and political, but it is what’s on my mind.
As for my personal wishes, right now I wish for clarity of purpose. I wish for direction. I am, admittedly, a little lost. So lost, I am not even certain what I should wish for. Maybe it is something as simple as a quiet place away from it all.
The fates of our wishes, however, lie in our individual efforts to make personal change. Wishes can become real if we have the courage to go forward and follow our dreams without fear of what others might think. In the long run does it really matter what others might think? What matters most is what we think of ourselves. The question is do you have the courage to pick a wish and make it real?
Judy, I believe you have already done this by writing your book. You should be proud of that. And I personally think you are awesome.
Dearest Judy,
I want you to rewrite this list and instead of the word WISH, use the word WILL. You’ll have to change up the sentences a bit – but watch what happens. And I have such faith in you that I WILL pre-order your book. Watch your mail. ;)
Love,
Bryan
Pam, Wow! I love your book wishes for me! I wish all that too! Over the weekend in my morning pages I was writing about my difficulty in accepting what I can’t change. I am one who tilts as windmills. I’m working on it too.
Allison, Ah, I wish I was visiting you! And that fear of failure thing… Getting over that one is the only way to make my first wish come true.
Mary, No kidding, I’m listening to Pandora, and as I read your comment, John Lennon’s Imagine came on. Feels important somehow. I wish you didn’t feel so lost. I know how horrible that feeling is. I wish for you… a path that feeds your soul, and many wishes coming true along the way. xo
Bryan, You made me cry. (I reworded the list in my head. “I will” is powerful. Thank you.)
Beautiful wishes, all. The world will be wonderful when our wishes can come true. I have the same wishes about investing, decisions, and family. Great post!
I hope all your wishes appear before you. And…I wish to “steal” your idea for my blog post! :)
I can teach you about wine in about 15 minutes. One wish down, many to go.
Marsha, Thank you. Just clicked over to check you out, and I LOVE your No Man’s Land piece. Glad you showed up so I had a chance to read you. Feel free to do a wish post. In fact, I hope you come back and tell me when it’s up.
Patrick, 15 minutes, huh? Okay, but the wish isn’t fulfilled until you make good on the promise, darlin’.
Yay I’m finally at a computer…
I wish we could all live close to each other and that we would hang out often
I wish I could say yes when I want to and no when I want to and not have to live within others expectations so often.
I wish I was finished reading your published book so that I could promote the hell out of it – by citing my favorite passages and discussing it at book club.
I wish for all of our wishes to come true, especially the end of war and suffering, imagine what could be invented and accomplished if all the world did not have to worry about food, clean water and shelter??!! Blows my mind when I think about that one.
I wish I could express myself when I want, how I want.
I wish…
(I leave that one for all of the other things I cannot think of, yet).
Love this post J!
xo
I wish I could wake up EVERY DAY with the same smile I have now after reading your wishes.
I wish good things for my sweet friend j.
I wish I had an autographed copy of her book in my hand, and I could snuggle on the couch and read it all weekend while it rains and I drink tea with sugar.
XOXO
This post made me cry . . . and I share every wish you made, except replace the name Lexi with the name Ginger and go back a number of years.
Love you, love you, love you . . . and I absolutely do wish I had your book in my hands right now. How sweet it will be on the day that I do have though . . . it will be as sweet as Pineapple and Champagne ;-)
Caroline, I so love your comments. I will definitely take you up on the promote-the-hell-out-of-j’s-book offer when the time comes! (You see what I did there? When, not if? I’m learning.) I wish I could say yes and no exactly when I mean them too. Maybe if I kick that pesky habit of caring what people think…
FOW, Ah! Thank you, lovely! Your wishes for me are yummy and perfect. Someday, you’ll have to tell me your wishes for you. xo
Carey, Love you right back! (In fact, if my wish came true, you’d live on my block.)
oh yea a kayak. used to kayak when i lived in santa barbara, great fun. even got some lessons from a passing scout troop of kayakers & it really improved my launching & landing skills – was able to spend more time right side up instead of upside down when landing thru the surf.
yea we could learn some friend making skills from dogs.
what no pineapple?
This was wonderful. After reading it, I felt not only a lightness, but a sense of gratitude. Sometimes wishing can cause us to focus on what we don’t have. But I didn’t get that sense from this. It was like each wish was an acknowledgement of something wonderful or dear, and the wish amplified it. And I also felt grateful that we are fortunate that our wishes don’t have to include the need for food, clothing, shelter, a job. We have those needs covered, and have the luxury of wishes that encompass a more enriching life, more broad and expensive. Thanks for sharing your wishes with the world.
Judy,
I love the list and I love Bryan’s idea to change each “wish” to “will”. Reminds me of a dear friend’s very wise words for me to Act Like I want to be, to make my dreams happen.
Articulating and sharing wishes sounds like the perfect way to get it started. What a lovely post!
Keith, No pineapple. I think it’s yuckier than broccoli. (But I might like it better in champagne. We’ll see.)
Sue, Thank you so much for that! I love how you read the wishes, and you’re absolutely right. We are fortunate to be able to wish for fuller, more enlightened lives.
Jane, It affected me, reading it with Bryan’s suggestion. And thank you for that reminder about acting how I want to feel. You should definitely stay in touch with whatever wonderful friend told you that! <3
such a beautiful flow of wishes
and seeing as I have a magic wand
complete with sparkley star and streamers
all yours wishes will come true !!
all you have to do is ‘BELIEVE’
I believe in you
I believe in me
I believe we shine
and today is all we have
do what makes you happy
share your heart and soul
let fear go
it never takes you up, it only pulls you down
if you make a mistake,
start all over again :~)
your smile is an amazing wish
and Judy yours is sooooo big
it is reflected in sooo many places
and we reflect it right back at you
the book will manifest in our hands
and daily we read your words… and share…here, there and everywhere
and all we have to do is reach out with our hearts and minds and those who live half a world away are instantly beside us.
Sweet June. I am going to print this out and hang it prominently to remind me how very lucky I am to have such amazing people as you in my life. Thank you for this!
Love all your moments of honestly like this one on top of the page :) I wish for so many things… you’ve inspired me to make a list myself and maybe even post it over at Life’s a stage. (If not, I’ll come back here later and add my list.)
That should’ve been *honesty and inspiration
If you do post a list, come get me. xo
Dear J,
Again I’m mesmerized by your words……………………………………………
I wish indeed that love would be as present in this world as fear.
I wish that everyone who has a neightbour would walk out their door right now and go to this neightboor and tell them they are happy to have them as their neightboor.
I wish we had les men as dominating worldleaders….Although Obama seems to be a step in the right direction….and more housewifes as worldleaders…housewifes with kids who know nothing about politics.
I wish I would understand my wife better…at least to the point why I can’t seem to listen to her…
I wish more people would read my blog…..and leave a comment…..now it feels I’m writing to ghosts….cowardly ghosts……ore ghost who do not know how tho write..
I wish I knew how to make my work as an artist more succesfull ..
I wish I could make people understand of what they are..sincerly are..
I wish we could spend as much time on loving one another as we spend time on critisizing eachother…
I wish I could care more about others ……
Alexander, Wow. Your list of wishes is so honest and touching, it stopped me in my tracks. Thank you for writing it here. I think you speak for every blogger, and, maybe especially, every writer. If the purpose of writing is to connect (which I realize it isn’t for everybody, but it is for me and perhaps for you), then feedback from the people who read our words is invaluable. We need it more than they can ever know we do.
But I think we have to write no matter what. With or without the outward signs of connection. You remind me of this quote from Michael Chabon: “Art… asserts the possibility of fellowship in a world built entirely from the materials of solitude.” We write (or paint, or photograph, or dance, or sing, or play an instrument) because we believe we have the power to communicate and connect through our art. Maybe the hardest thing about what we do is not the art itself, but keeping the faith.
Keep writing, Alexander. You certainly touched me here, and I’m grateful that you did.
Dear J.
Thank you for your beautiful words. Somehow being mesmerized by your words seems to have a longer effect then just for the moment of reading it.
Your words go deep.
I, indeed, can relate to the words from Michael Chabon. Faith is importent to do what you want to do in art. The use of words isn’t actually my first choice to do so, I’m a painter, but for some time (1998 till 2001) I did write a lot. For me it gives a pleasure to play with words in such a way that it becomes more then just a follow up of words. It becomes just that what your words have been doing to me…..mesmerizing someone’s attension.
THANK YOU SO MUCH.
Dear J. Have a great day today.
Much oblidged,
Alexander
Alexander, I so wish I could paint. I think “much obliged” suits your picture perfectly. I have a big smile. Thank you right back!
Dear J,
Again its me..
For the last three days, since I read your wish-list and I made my wish-list, This whole thing kept buzzing in my head. Actually, what I should say; buzzing in my being. For the whole vibration, which I earlier described as being mesmerized (still counts, though), caused me to feel a kind of happiness, a sincere happiness,….gentle and persuasive.
It’s a way of feeling that I hadn’t felt for a long time. Due to some decisions I made in life I choose to bitter my flavour of life. But it wasn’t always like that……..I was, still am, a dreamer. I only saw beauty around me. I enjoyed everything to the fullest just as to be there present.
I’m not sure what happend, and it is actually irrelevant to ask, but somehow by reading your wish-list and writing down my own it triggered my own acknowledgement for the happiness in life again.
Next to that, after I read your personal essay where as you discipline yourself to give smiles to people, I started to do just that.
What a man can forget………….
Dear J, Thank you so much.
As a token to my appreciation I would like to give you the following writing which was written that long time ago……………hope you don’t mind me doing so…It was written for a friend back then while I was working in a basement.
Hello eva,
tremendous boredom has struck the domain of seven plus one lost hours. The delightful incense of budding leafs and twigs develop an irresistible desire to take a dive into the green, flirting and swaying grass. The protective roof with its soft colour blue and white cushions and cherished fluff that are slowly passing by, giving the melancholic sense to never get up. A feeling of delightfulness makes its return. the feeling of experiencing again the plessures of existence, getting up and be present in the all consuming and forgiving flow of being human.
The rays of the incredible fertility caressing the soft skin with a tenderness which only few were able to witness. It gives a shudder which penetrates deeper then the shiffer from standing in to cold water. They penetrate through the heart of the inspired one, till the soulness of the heart and breaks all defences that are found on her way.
Captured by a deep sense of innocence, a sense of loneliness which nest it self with the most utter friendlyness in your soul, filling its surrounding completeness with warmth and tenderness.
Every coming step that will be taken will be one of joy, happiness for everything that is found on its way. The gentle soft gras will forget its presence with the utter most modesty and open itself with submissiveness to the warm skin of the descending feet. the sweet encounter of these two matters won’t scream over differences between skin and vegetation but will instead sing the utmost delightfull songs ever heard. Duplicity becomes one, division will become unity.
The soft blue sky which gives her richness to see over and over again with each breath that is taken, the clearity it gives and the beauty with which it moves is unreachable. only to admire for her grace and frankness. This beauty never will close her inpenetrable doors but open them unconditionaly when a approach is at hand. The assembly of these two elements is one of harmony and will give an afterblow of inpacable undescribebility.
It’s becoming a long day in which these words are only but a welcoming distraction. It gives the sense that after this there will be room to enjoy of what sets my heart in fulfillness. the superbness would say at such a moment as this that each moment, good or bad, deserves the act of full enjoyment. Nevertheless, this superbness isn’t a reality, at least not mine and not at this moment.
dear woman with the name where everything has its beginning, with these words I tell you goodbye and farewell. As to see eachother again soon……..
With kind regards,
Alexander
I don’t mind you doing so. I’m honored. Thank you.