My motto this year Be Brave

Another Christmas has come and gone.  I don't know why that thought makes me a little sad??  I have no idea why that is?  Maybe the thought of time passing and knowing that my days are numbered?  Haha.  I have no idea.  I normally don't think of death and its implications, but I guess underneath it all I feel it.  We were eating at Pei Wei today and I looked over at my husband and thought "this is what heaven on earth feels like".  The thing about my life is I've worked so hard to make it look the way it looks now, that sometimes I remember all the work and I allow myself to reflect on the fruits of the work. I think I should do it more often, really.  As soon as the thought enters my mind, I also think, that perhaps if people knew that's what I think, that they would not understand and think I was crazy for thinking that.  Truth be told, I think it IS a crazy thought.  We are not taught to believe that we can have paradise here on earth.  Most of us, I would assume, are taught that this life is the testing ground to see if we make it to paradise at the other side of death.  As much as I believe there is a beautiful world waiting for us, that shouldn't mean that we don't make the life we have now as beautiful and as "heaven on earthy" as we can make it.  What does that look like for me?  Feeling healthy in my body, having great relationships, having a clean conscience, having a rich spiritual life, learning new things, experiencing new things, enjoying beautiful things.  So I pursue things that touch any of these things in my list. If they don't touch the things that I want in my life then I have no problem passing them up.  For example, if there's an activity that someone wants me to partake in and I don't feel like it, or it doesn't bring me some sort of satisfaction, then I can easily say no.  Most of the time, though, bringing happiness to someone makes me feel good, so I don't think I say no very often.  I love people and I love to help them help themselves. I enjoy hearing them out and giving advice when asked.  If no advice is requested, then I enjoy just listenening.  It's fascinating to learn how people think and how all of our minds work and think so differently.  I think we all tend to think that people think the same way we do and it is so hard to understand that ...nope....people see things super differently than we do.  They come from all kinds of different experiences, backgrounds, ideas, etc., that provides them a whole set of different palettes that differ from ours so that it allows them to paint their worlds so much more different than how we paint ours.  Therefore, seeing things as others see them is truly interesting to me and that is why I love to hear people out.
So onto the new year this week and see what experiences and learning this new year will bring.  I am excited and I want to welcome it all with openness and positiveness in my heart and mind.  I can say that I've never really experienced so much anxiety and fear about the future as I have in the past few months, and I just have to relearn how not to do that.  I remembered my favorite saying today,

"Be brave and mighty forces shall come to your aid" - Basil King

I will remember and apply that this coming year. Shop Amazon's Holiday Toy List - STEM Picks

The Amount of Toys Doesn't Matter At The End

Today I had a very nice conversation with a coworker about all things Politics.  I must say it was rather cool to be able to hold my end of the conversation!  This is so brand new to me to be able to talk about politics.  I learned that Paul Ryan is the speaker of the House, Mitch McConnel is the majority leader in the senate and that is wife, Elaine Chao is the new transportation secretary.  Although I already knew that last one, I gained a little more information on what my coworker thinks of her.  I work at an airport, so this one particular appointment is important to us there at work.  I do appreciate that Trump has said that he wants our airports to be up to speed with the rest of the world and I would like to see that too.  I just don't know if he'll be able to do productive things during his time as president.  I see him as very unfocused, narcissistic, undiplomatic...blah, blah, blah...I'm not trying to speak ill of this person, I just don't see how he can be productive at what he's going to be required to do.  But I guess we'll all have to wait and see.  If he can appoint knowledgeable people then he can be a little successful.  I hope he gets the bad apples out, like that Steve Bannon guy seems like such a dark and negative figure.  Is it power hungry and good god, when is enough money, enough?  Would they like to be the only ones on this earth with money and with no other people as rich as them to interact with?  How boring would life be at that point?

  They still believe that the person with the most toys wins, I guess.  Sorry to burst your bubble but we all die in the end.  No one gets to stay.  

So you have all the money and the power..then what?  I've said it before and I'll say it now...money doesn't hug you at night.  Guess what?  You still have to sleep and be able to sleep with yourself at the end of the day no matter who you are.  Although, it seems that some people don't have the same conscience settings as mine and they seem to be able to sleep no matter what bad choices they make.  Good for them I guess.  As for me, I still have to feel good about myself at night and I like going to sleep with a clear conscience and a happy mind knowing I did the best I could that day.  I started reading this sweet little book The Secret of Letting Go by Guy Finley.  I like this author and his teachings.  He writes about the different negative spirits that want to gain life through us.  They can manifest as thoughts in our minds, or come to us through different people.  They are muckrakers, gloom and doom people or thoughts, the life haters, the mud dwellers.  It was a really good excerpt of this book...heres the link to the article.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  

I'm off now to view Catastrophe...omg I just started watching it and I'm enjoying it so much!  If you can you should watch it with  Amazon Prime.  You can get it free for 30 days.  I love it!!  

How Not To Be A Lady

My beautiful Lolita sent me this link today: A Cup of Jo and I laughed and smiled and almost cried at some of these quotes!  Oh how beautiful we women are when we choose to be brave and authentic.  It is a breath of fresh air to be balls out and completely the woman you are meant to be!  My favorite quote from this article was this one:

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.

—Nora Ephron

I have a surge of joy in my heart and my chest when I read it and reread it.  A bubble of joy just immediately blows up inside of me and then bursts throughout all my insides and through my limbs!!!  Why??!!!   Because this is how I want to live my life...this is how I want all the women I love to live their lives!  To not be afraid of what others might think or say or smirk at...and just do that which makes you shine and rock on.  Why should we stand there and think that we are not good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, special enough?  Who are these "meters" that we are comparing ourselves to, that we think we are below them?  Maybe celebrities, people who have money, younger women, more "accomplished" (again, what is the meter?), or any other person that we believe are in some way above us?  Oh how wrong must we be.  I look around at those I call my friends, my family, my coworkers, people on the street and I see women who are unique and special and wondrous and so then what I try to do is reflect that back on me and tell myself, that if I can see that in others...then why would I be so unique as to not have those same beautiful qualities?  The answer is that as different as I am to others, I am just the same and I, too, am special and wondrous.  I just love paradoxes!!  

A lady is proper, perfect, formal, polite, and I would say probably very uninteresting due to her lack of depth in her presentation.  This does not mean that the lady is uninteresting, it is to say the title and what it implies is.  So to not be a lady is to be deep, not afraid to be criticized, not afraid to stand out, interesting, speaks her mind, but I would also want to add that due to being deep, not being a lady means to empathize with imperfection, have compassion for others and be non judgmental.  This is what all those sparkly pieces of joy that burst inside of me look like.  Imperfect, shiny, interesting, tiny pieces of love flitter about my insides like confetti.  This is why I want to live my life like that. "I hope you choose not to be a lady."