Category Archives: j’epiphanies

I was here

Posted on December 12, 2011 | 47 Comments

I don’t want a life without regret.

There. I said it. I know there will be push back. I know it’s a popular phrase, “no regrets.” It’s a brand and a bumper sticker, in addition to being a big, badass thing people aspire to. I’ve heard people say, “I have no regrets,” and I wonder about them. I wonder how that’s possible.

What does it even mean to live a life without regrets? And why would anyone want to?

I’ve written on this topic before, clumsily, hitting all around what I’ve wanted to say, attempting to make a case for regret, just as I’ve made a case for the value of a broken heart. I’ve never quite found the words. But last week I watched Kathryn Schulz’s TED talk on regret and she said this…

Here’s the thing. If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly; it reminds us that we know we can do better.

I’ll go one step further. Regret often reminds us of the risks we were willing to take – however ill-advised, however misguided. There is magic in that, in daring to be wrong, in caring about someone or something enough to be hurt, enough to be stupid. There is beauty in our awkward, floundering progress to become the people we aspire to be, our best selves.

But beauty (especially the imperfect, searching kind) and regret aren’t mutually exclusive.

If somehow you’ve managed to live a life where you never hurt someone you loved, where your own stupidity never caused damage or loss, then you’re lucky and amazing, but I have to wonder what kind of life have you lived, how engaged in the human process have you been?

I have regrets, little ones, and the big, ugly, gut-wrenching kind that I’m not brave enough to blog about; the kind that result from the actions I took, and the kind that are all about what I didn’t do, what I didn’t say, the moments of opportunity I let get by me.

My regrets don’t remind me that I’m imperfect; I’m painfully aware of that already. They remind me to pay attention. They’re like “I was here” signs painted indelibly in places I shouldn’t have been, places where I got hurt or hurt someone else, places that fucked me up but also taught me truths about myself and the world that I might not have learned any other way.

I don’t have, and don’t aspire to have, a life without regret. What I aspire to is a life so full of passion, creativity and daring that failures are as inevitable as successes, and a life so full of love for what I do and for the people who do it with me that I can’t help but feel the pain – and yes, sometimes the regret – of things going wrong.

Okay, your turn. Tell me about a life without regret. :)

→ 47 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, love

Tagged , , ,

A dozen different versions of me

Posted on December 1, 2011 | 35 Comments

I’m becoming a fan of “the pause.” Between notes and pages and words and breaths, between thought and voice, between action and reaction. In that momentary stillness, in that space between before and after, there is possibility, a  myriad of paths that can be taken, a dozen different versions of me.

I’m not good at the pause. That’s what I’ve realized about myself. I tend to rush through it. I get excited, or angry, or nervous, or restless, and I erase the pause, just like that, and only later do I think of it, often with such yearning.

“If only” thoughts are some of the hardest thoughts of all.

I’m sorry for the pauses I’ve missed, the times when I could have stepped into that stillness, breathed, found the best part of me, uttered something different than the thing I did say, caught up as I was in the heat of the moment. I’m sorry for the times I rushed through it, that chance to be more thoughtful, more receptive, more giving. I’m sorry for the people I may have bowled over in my exuberance or anger, the ones who were maybe only pausing themselves, in search of a path, a better version of themselves.

I’m late but I’m learning, and I can spot them now, the pauses between things, the opportunity to get quiet, to still everything else, if only for a few seconds, and  just activate my heart.

→ 35 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, love

Tagged , , , ,

Life (love, soul and cheesecake) by me

Posted on November 3, 2011 | 30 Comments

One of the most popular pieces on the New York Times website this past week was a “A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs.” It’s beautiful, full of poetry and love. You should definitely read it, but there was one line in particular that reached out and grabbed me by the heart…

He was willing to be misunderstood.

I’d been reading the piece aloud to someone else and that line stopped me. It was as if I’d been tapped with a tuning fork and for a few sweet seconds, my insides hummed with clarity, a pure and precise tone. I read the line two more times before moving on.

There is such power in that willingness, I think, both in art and in life. Being willing to be misunderstood means that you are willing to speak your truth, willing to stand your ground, to brush up against the edges and beyond what people expect. Of course that’s the hallmark of innovation, that willingness to challenge, to be different, but I think it’s also the secret to real communication.

A willingness to be misunderstood reflects a strong sense of self, a certain kind of fearlessness that paradoxically leaves you vulnerable. Whether the subject is something big, like politics or faith or global warming, or something much more intimate, like the particular topography of a lover’s heart, that willingness to be real, to say what is true even at the risk of being misunderstood is, I believe, the first step (on the only path) to being truly understood.

~~~~~~~~~~

According to the big fat Love Project master plan, November is the month of gifts. I don’t know what I was thinking it would look like back in January when I decided to do it, but now I think it’s about being present and responding with heart. No doubt that means more letters and cards and hugs, more moments of undivided attention, more reaching out or reaching back, more doodles and (strange, unidentifiable, slightly scary) crafts by j. And cheesecake. Someone’s getting cheesecake in November. Count on it.

~~~~~~~~~~

In case you missed it, “A Waltz,” Pickled Amygdala’s first big film project (and my first script), is ready for post production. The new pitch video is up at KickStarter. If you can donate, every dollar helps, but even if you can’t, go watch. Dillon and the boys are hilarious, I make a (speaking!) cameo appearance, and the clips from the actual film are gorgeous.

~~~~~~~~~~

I am a big, big fan of  Life By Me, a website that invites lots of people to answer one question: What is most meaningful to you? They’ve asked “world leaders, Nobel Peace Prize recipients, moms, fishermen, teenagers, designers, prison inmates, media moguls…” and now me. I’m honored (and ridiculously stoked) to share my answer, which is, of course, all about love.

(Thanks to all of you who commented over there. You’re the best!)

→ 30 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, j's love project, love

Tagged , , , , , ,

What the detox taught me

Posted on September 27, 2011 | 37 Comments

So, just as I told you I would (in hindsight, perhaps inadvisably), last week I embarked on a one-week Yoga Journal detox program. It involved the same recipe for all my meals, abstinence from caffeine and alcohol, daily prescribed yoga practices, two guided meditations performed four times during the course of the week, early risings to accommodate Ayurvedic abhyanga (self massages with oil) followed by a shower, and all week long, an underlying question to ponder… what do I want to hold onto and what do I want to let go of in my life?

Before I go into what I learned, I have to confess that I lasted only two days on the one-dish-only diet. The dish is called kitchari and consists primarily of rice and secondarily of mung beans. I wasn’t crazy about it, but more importantly, on the diet, I felt very out of control. I had enormous energy swings… and with the fluctuating energy came fluctuating moods. At the end of Day 2, I realized that my overriding emotion was sadness and a terrible sense of futility. Plus, I had headaches. (I totally missed the part in the magazine where it said you should wean yourself from caffeine in the days or weeks prior to starting the detox.) I decided it was time to get off the diet.

For the remainder of the week, I ate small portions of healthy foods and I drank green tea in the morning. I kept up with everything else though, and here’s what I learned…

  1. You (and by you, I mean I) should have a reason for doing something as radical as a detox or cleanse. In the last few months, I’ve eliminated meat from my diet, gotten much more serious about my yoga practice, started meditating, spent more time unplugged and made huge, evolutionary decisions about the direction of my work. I wasn’t feeling out of balance or full-o-toxins. I wanted to do the detox more out of curiosity than anything else, but when push came to shove, curiosity wasn’t enough to keep me on track when the going got tough.
  2. I don’t like being told what to do. I kind of knew this about myself, but it surprised me how… well… resentful I felt. I didn’t like being told when to shower, what to drink, what asana sequences to practice. I spent most of my meditations thinking, “I can’t wait until I can meditate the way I want to.” And then, “Oops, I wonder what she just told me to think about.”
  3. That said, having spent a week being told what to do, it is clear to me that I don’t always know what’s best for me. On Day 7, during my yoga session, I moved reluctantly from one restorative pose to the next. I don’t like resting poses. They stress me out. I lie still and my head fills with all the things I could be doing if I were not lying still. It’s so unpleasant, I almost never do them. And yet… At the end of that practice, for the first time in months, my shoulder and neck were utterly relaxed. I felt a looseness I’ve only been able to get with Vicodin.
  4. I like green tea. I’m still drinking it. I haven’t had a cup of coffee in over a week. Or a chip, for that matter. This can’t last…
  5. The most important thing I learned from the detox was about letting go. It came to me as I made the decision to stop the diet. It was hard for me to let go of the thought that doing so would mean I failed, that I’d have to come back here and write a why-I-failed-at-the-detox-thing post.When I made the decision anyway, deciding that feeling better was worth being embarrassed, it felt right, and weirdly freeing, like stepping out of a costume or putting down a mask. It made me think about other changes I’ve resisted making in my life because they don’t coincide with the definition of myself I’ve had for years, a definition – a costume – that I think I’ve outgrown (if it ever fit at all). I’d love to tell you that right then and there, in that brilliant flash of insight, I dropped the old worn out view of me and leaped -  naked, new and badass – onto a brave new path. Turns out, at least for me, it’s a bit more of a process than that, but I’m definitely heading there, shedding the stuff that doesn’t fit as I go.

→ 37 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, j's lists

Tagged , , , ,

How do you want to feel?

Posted on August 30, 2011 | 74 Comments

Danielle LaPorte says a lot of wise things. One of the wise things she says is that we’ve got success all backwards. We tell ourselves that if we do this, and this, and this, we’ll feel that, and then we’re surprised when accomplishing what we set out to do doesn’t make us feel the way we thought it would.

She says we need to go at it from the other direction – decide how we want to feel, and then do stuff that makes us feel that way. It sounds easy to me, in that way that logic makes everything sound easier than it is. For instance, “If you want to be a writer, write!” is the best advice I’ve ever gotten on the subject of writing. That’s some irrefutable logic right there, but there are days when I think sprouting giant pterodactyl wings and taking flight from my balcony would be easier.

Still, I’m in the middle of an exhilarating transition, personally and professionally. It seems a good time for me to turn old assumptions on their heads – assumptions like the one that says if I accomplish great things (a big, bold, expanded Love Project for example, or a book deal, or a happy marriage, or a ginormous shiny platform), I will be happy.

The idea of deciding first what “being happy” even means, and then, second, doing the stuff that makes me feel that way appeals to my leaping, skittering genius, the part of me I most want to engage and expand. I think Danielle LaPorte is onto something.

So over the weekend I wrote down a bunch of things I want to feel. Words like alive, connected, inspired, brave, soulful, and compelling spilled out of me and onto the page in a stream-of-conscious flurry of self-examination. When I was done, I stared at the page and, following Danielle’s advice, I narrowed my list down to three. Three things I want to feel all the time, because if I’m feeling these three things, it will mean I’m successful and happy (two words that are so general as to be utterly meaningless).

Here are the three things I want to feel: wildly creative (the adverb is important here – I want to indulge my most playful and daring impulses in everything I create); abundant (never operating from a place a lack, but rather from a place of knowledge – absolute and cellular – that I am enough, I have enough, I do enough); and immeshed in meaningful (rooted in my connection to others and to the planet, bullshit free).

Now, as I decide where to focus my energy, I think “what things can I do today, this week, this quarter, that will make me feel wildly creative, abundant, and immeshed in meaningful?” I know it won’t make every moment of my life kickass and evolutionary, but it will make more of them feel that way, and who wouldn’t want that?

Okay, so now it’s your turn. Even if you just do it to play with me, I really want to know: how do you want to feel? And what can you do today to feel like that?

→ 74 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , ,

Stones

Posted on August 23, 2011 | 57 Comments

Last week, I participated in Kellie Walker’s twitter chat. She holds one every Wednesday, and she covers some pretty weighty topics like fear, acceptance, forgiveness.  Last week’s chat was on betrayal. I arrived about 20 minutes late and had to scroll through what had been said. I was surprised at how out of sync I felt with the comments. So out of sync, I couldn’t quite figure out how to contribute to the conversation.

Eventually I looked up the word “betrayal” so that maybe I could find a place of entry. It didn’t help. According to Dictionary.com, betrayal means “to disappoint the hopes or expectations of; be disloyal to.” There are other definitions as well, but they’re more severe, involving “enemies” and “treachery.” I think most of the people involved in Kellie’s chat were talking about being disappointed or deliberately misled.

By that Dictionary.com definition, I have definitely been betrayed. I doubt many people can say they haven’t; it’s pretty broad. I have been disappointed and I have been the disappointer more times than I care to think about. And yet…

If you’d asked me before that chat if I’d ever been betrayed, I’d have said no because to me, “betrayal” is a really strong word. It implies a great deal (that apparently is not part of its official definition); cruelty, for instance, the demeaning, willful disregard of another person’s feelings. And even if you disagree with that, I think it’s safe to say that labeling something as “betrayal” definitely  indicates judgement and condemnation. A perpetrator and a victim have been established, and blame has been assigned

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because I was so clearly out of the mainstream in that chat. I’ve been wondering about my reluctance to assign that term to the hurts and disappointments and heartbreaks I’ve suffered. To say they are the results of betrayal feels inaccurate to me, a pronouncement that takes me off the hook, when, in reality, I had my part to play in every incident. Even more than that, the label – betrayal – is easy, like all labels are. It denies the humanness of our relationships, the degree to which we are broken and flawed and ill prepared for much of what life throws at us.

I’m certain that I will get comments on this post that explain to me what constitutes a betrayal – affairs, spying, backstabbing, etc – that accuse me of living in my little bubble of happy without a clue about how true, wrenching heartbreak works. I can tell you that I do know, I can tell you my stories and we can all nod our heads and say, “Yes, you were betrayed, j,” or (worse) “Yes, you have betrayed.” But to what end?

And maybe that’s the point of my post. I think words like “betrayal” are dangerous. The people I know who feel they’ve been betrayed have a hard time moving on from that. When it comes up, they roil in all the emotion of the event almost as if it’s happening to them again; they carry their betrayals with them, from relationship to relationship, like stones in their pockets, weighing them down.

It makes it hard to do things like dance. Like leap. Like fly.

I remember once, sitting across from my closest friend, crying, telling her how alone, guilty, hurt and, yes, betrayed, I felt. She said, “You had a lock and key relationship. In a terrible way, you and the person who hurt you, fit together like a lock and a key, bringing out the worst in each other instead of the best.”

I like that, not because it’s an explanation that fits every bad relationship (or even most), but because it isn’t black and white. It’s about humans being human, sometimes making each other better and sometimes fitting together in destructive ways that are nobody’s fault. In the moment she said it, blame seemed beside the point. I felt myself getting lighter, setting down the stones I’d been carrying around with me.

Well, some of them, anyway. It’s a process. I get lighter all the time.

…. Okay, your turn. Tell me why I’ve got this all wrong.

→ 57 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, love, on my mind...

Tagged , , , ,

The Thing About Soaring

Posted on July 12, 2011 | 36 Comments

Last week, someone wonderful sent me “The Poetics of Gracelessness” because, she said, “I thought you might love this.”

I did. (And I loved that she knew I would, though we’ve never met in person.) In the article (which you should read… especially if you’re a writer… especially, especially if you’re a poet), Ellen McGrath Smith makes a case for awkwardness. In writing, and in poetry specifically, awkwardness is rightfully frowned upon. Syntax matters. Precision, grace, rhythm, language that is vivid and arresting and sensual and clear… well, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?

“Making something beautiful,” Smith says, “is, of course, the goal in every art. But what defines ‘beautiful’?”

That is the question, and (thank goodness), there is no single answer. I could write a whole post about beauty and art and how important it is to take risks in your presentation of beauty because what is art if not a risk? … It’s pretty. It’s safe. We can, as artists, do so much more than pretty and safe. But I won’t write that post because Ellen McGrath Smith already did, and she did it well.

Instead, I want to make a case for awkwardness in life, those terrible, wrenching, graceless moments when what we say comes out startlingly wrong, and what we do is surprising, in a bad way, uncomfortable (and occasionally even hazardous) for ourselves and everyone involved. Smith uses the term “graceless moments” to describe those lines in a poem that trip you up a bit, like a little patch of uneven road in an otherwise smooth stretch of highway.

Smith quotes child psychotherapist, literary critic and essayist, Adam Phillips.

There are fundamentally two kinds of writer… the immaculate and the fallible. For the immaculate every sentence must be perfect, every word the inevitable one. For them, getting it right is the point. For the fallible, ‘wrong’ is only the word for people who need to be right. The fallible, that is to say, have the courage of their gaucheness; they are never quite sure what might be a good line; and they have a superstitious confidence that the bad lines somehow sponsor the good ones.

I love that. I think there may be, fundamentally, two kinds of people, and I want to be the kind that has the courage of my gaucheness. I think living (as opposed to existing) requires that. It requires me to risk being wrong sometimes, in the service of reaching higher than I think I can. It requires being a beginner, over and over again, being clumsy and asking for help. It requires trying something new – a whole bunch of something news, in fact – knowing full well that my lack of experience will show, that “polished” and “savvy” are beyond my beginner skill level, and someone might actually see me for the (gloriously) imperfect human that I am.

I’m still learning how to do this, mastering the art of exuberant imperfection, but Ellen McGrath Smith’s question about what defines beautiful has led me one step closer. We’re beautiful when we try. I know that. We’re beautiful when we search, when we struggle and when we soar. And it’s a fact that in order to soar, you have to be willing to crash. And if you crash, it doesn’t make you wrong, it makes you brave.

“Wrong,” after all, is only the word for people who need to be right.

→ 36 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies

Tagged , , , , ,

YES

Posted on June 14, 2011 | 26 Comments

Over the weekend I read the post, “Simply Say YES” by Julia Corvallis (whose poem, “Unleashed” I shared with you last Friday). Here’s what she said…

I’ve decided to say a big, bold, brave YES to all that is calling me, all that is moving me closer to my own light and to yours, all that has been crying for my attention for f-ing ever.  I’m moving toward what moves me, what quickens my pulse, what excites and enlivens and invigorates and calms and quiets and inspires and whispers and nudges and empowers.  I’m saying YES to all that makes me giddy and all that makes me want to twirl and spin…

I’m saying YES to my intuition and my desires.  To Love.  And gratitude.  And kindness and softness and surrender.  And presence.  And deep breaths.  And moving slowly and accepting fully.  To giving and healing and opening and allowing and receiving…

To feeling the fear and doing it anyway.  And Trusting.

When I first read that, I felt my insides hum, as if I were suddenly close to something I’d been looking for, and all my internal navigation equipment – my heart, my soul, my imagination, my innate sense of hope and possibility – was vibrating in response.

For 41 days, Julia said yes. You can read about her experience here, but what fascinated me most as I read through her day-to-day chronicle was how often she returned to a single theme: stillness. Over and over, what she felt most strongly was the pull to slow down, be quiet, listen to the voice inside her that knows what she really wants. It didn’t result in the kind of inertia that I’m always nervous will happen if I slow down. It resulted in an abundance of ideas and energy and connection. It resulted in action. Rather than analyze her ideas and intuitions to death, she simply executed them.

Over and over again, Julia said yes.

So, of course, I’ve been thinking about what it would look like if I said yes to the things that matter most, and not just yes, but a big, fat, resounding YES, a jump-all-in-because-I’m-not-here-to–dip-my-toes-in sort of YES. For the last three days I’ve been trying it out – trusting my instincts, not overthinking, plugging in meaningfully, but then unplugging completely to write, plant, play, workout, submit my work, walk, connect, read, MAKE GRAFFITI LOVE. (Wait ’till you see!)

It’s only been three days, but already I can feel a difference. In attempting to say yes to the things that really matter to me, I’ve realized how much time I spend on auto pilot, or worse, focused on what I lack instead of what I have (which is a whole hell of a lot). Whether I’m working or playing, racing forward or holding (imperfectly) still, I’m more conscious, more attuned.

I think maybe the most important thing we can do for each other (and ourselves) is show up, be present. And showing up, I absolutely believe, starts with some well placed (big, bold) YESSES.

→ 26 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, on my mind...

Tagged , , , , ,

Badass Love

Posted on May 29, 2011 | 58 Comments

As the Love Project’s month of self-love comes to a close, I’m faced with a decision. I can write  the easy post, or I can write the hard one.

The easy one would be all about how good this month has been for me. How I carved out time for me and consciously lived those moments being kind to myself, generous in a way that, all to often, I’m not. I played more, walked more, read more. I met new people, and wandered over physical, emotional and intellectual landscapes that took my breath away. The easy post would talk about the things I learned – that downtime makes my up time more productive, that self-forgiveness is more powerful than any amount of external validation, that being kind to myself opens me up, allows me to connect with my world.

The hard post isn’t so pretty.

The hard post is about our dysfunction. The hard post is full of thorny questions like, why do we feel guilty when we do something that’s just for us? Why do we so often feel a need to defend doing what’s right for ourselves, while martyrdom seldom requires justification?

On one of my posts this month, a commenter accused me of having no children, abundant time, and more freedom than she could ever dream of. I’m using the word “accused,” not because I think she was actually accusing me of anything, but because that’s how it felt to me. In the face of her reluctance to do anything for herself (even feel sadness for the effect it might have on her children), I felt guilty, selfish, defensive of the time I was giving to myself. (A stupid reaction that is about me, not her.)

I wanted to explain my situation to her, point out all the ways that my life is not the carefree adventure she envisions. I wanted to tell her, in infinite detail, all about raising my boys, getting my degree, writing a book, the hours I work for not nearly enough pay, the commitments I meet, the heartbreaks I suffer, the times when I (like every single person I know) put my needs last, until, inevitably, I crash and burn and relearn the lesson of self-love.

I didn’t do that – inundate her with ridiculous detail – but I wanted to, because no one questions martyrdom. In our culture (maybe in every culture), selflessness is celebrated. Sacrifice for your children, your parents, your friends, and we will all applaud you. Take a moment to breathe, to push back, to say no to one more commitment, and suddenly you’re on the defensive. God forbid that you let the laundry pile up, the house get messy, the kids eat delivery pizza so that you can do something you love – your art, your work, your cause – the thing that lights you up inside.

Ask most people about self-love and they will tell you that they are in the habit of putting themselves last. I believe it’s true. I also believe that it’s easier to admit suffering than it is to admit that you are kind to yourself every day. One of my favorite comments this month came from Pam Carlson who wrote, “I’m quite permissive with myself (it’s one of my not-so-secret weapons in life)… I’m allowed to have the best time I can with the time I have.”

I think Pam’s brave. I think in the same way that choosing love in a world full of cynics takes courage, choosing to value yourself in a world that considers it selfish is… well, badass.

And beautiful.

And here’s the amazing thing. When you do it, when you choose to love yourself in tangible ways, to give yourself permission, to say no, to consider your own needs as carefully as you consider the needs of others, you get happier. You feel less trapped, more open. Less resentful, more generous. Getting good at loving yourself makes you better at loving others. It’s true, cliché or not.

… And yeah. I decided to write the hard post.

→ 58 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, j's love project

Tagged , , , , , ,

Our Wild, Precious Lives

Posted on April 13, 2011 | 36 Comments

I’ve had a number of sad reminders recently about how sweet, fragile, and fleeting life is. We only get this one shot at it. It matters how we spend our time…

Last month, after weeks of going full tilt to finish my book, expand the love project, write my freelance stuff, collaborate with some wonderful, creative people on a number of very cool projects, I hit a wall. I was utterly depleted, and for a week, I couldn’t even look at my to-do list. The stress I felt about tackling any of my projects was actually greater than the stress of not checking items off my list.

I cannot emphasize enough how unlike me that is. Something was definitely wrong.

I took some time to regroup. For a week, I wandered. I unplugged for big portions of each day. I met with friends and didn’t worry about what I wasn’t getting done. I read whatever I wanted to and (except for things with deadlines) I wrote whatever I wanted to too. I meandered, and fiddled, and explored my curiosities. I prioritized myself with this question: what feels good to do right now?

It was one of the weirdest, best weeks ever.

When I returned to my regular life in progress, I felt different.  I wrote my to-do list in colored pencils. Alongside the meetings and tasks and notes and chores, each day I wrote things like “sing… loudly” and “play” and “surprise yourself” and “tell a long and gloriously terrible joke.” Every time I checked the lists, these things, written in big loopy letters (or crooked, or sideways) caught my eye. Made me smile. I wanted to check them off just as much as I wanted to check off “confirm Friday’s mtg” or “compile interview notes.”

Last Friday, I invited you all to do something over the weekend that you’d never done before. I thought of it because, on vacation last week, I did a bunch of things I’ve never done before, and doing them made me giddy, made me feel expansive and present and alive… just like doing the odd things on my to-do list made me feel.

Here’s a list of the things I did on vacation that I’ve never done before…

  1. I spent most of a week wandering by myself, asking locals where I should go, and then punching their answers into my GPS without hesitation.
  2. I waited out the rain under the shelter of a tree on top of a hill in Patrick’s Point. The tree kept me so dry I could write in my notebook. The rain beyond my tree’s limbs was soft and steady, as were the ocean waves rolling onto the shore.
  3. Bundled against a cold wind, I laid down on a dune and watched clouds float overhead.
  4. I ate lunch on a stone wall overlooking a rocky shore.
  5. I read a book in the middle of a forest.
  6. I was the first, and for a while, one of only two people on the dance floor in a crowded bar (and still, I surrendered to the music).
  7. I rode a luggage cart through a lobby, up an elevator, and into my third floor room.
  8. I hiked the prettiest forest trail I’ve ever been on, 10 miles, till it opened up to the sea.

I guess my point is this: don’t forget to live. We all have so much to do, so many dreams to achieve, so many milestones to pass. Don’t forget all the magical, beautiful, messy, spaces in between. Fill them with care… and wild abandon. And love, of course.

And now, I have to ask, did you do something last weekend that you’ve never done before? Will you today? Tomorrow? What crazy thing can you add to your to-do list right now?

→ 36 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, j's lists

Tagged , , , , ,