I was talking to this guy the other day, and I said I'd like to take a week or two and go on vacation this summer to Costa Rica. I've never been.
He looked like I suggested moving to Jupiter or something.
"A two-week vacation?" He asked, horrified.
"Yeah. Is that so crazy?"
He scoffed. He made the noise of one scoffing. "Wouldn't that be nice."
"You don't have two weeks of vacation time at your job?" 
"Well, yeah, but... I mean, I use them for other stuff." 
"Well then that's your own damn fault."

Vacation. 
It is mandatory.
Take one, people.

It is unbelievably easy to get sucked into your job, to make it your life. But you are not your job. I feel like here in a America "what you do" defines you as a person. It's not necessarily like that elsewhere (like France, where you get five weeks of vacation a year.) Your job is how you make money. It is not your life. It is not who you are. 

You need a vacation to rest and just be yourself.
Just be.

In the meantime, every day try to give yourself a mini vacation. Get some fresh air, paint your nails, play basketball, drop $75 on lunch. Something to remind you how sweet and cool life is, and that your job is not the be-all, end-all of the entire universe. 

"Don't take it personally."
People say this, usually after they have said or done something totally asshole-ish and rude, and frankly, you're upset.

But actually, they're kind of right.
You want to be an asshole? Fine. But it ain't got shit to do with me.
I used to take EVERYTHING personally. Like it was my job to make everyone feel good, like if they weren't happy around me or didn't like me then maybe I was doing something wrong. And I should change something. I should change myself.

Fuck that.

You can't control how others feel. If you could, you'd be God. Or Hitler. Or some other master manipulator.
What you can do is choose to feel good about yourself. All the time.
If they don't like it, fuck 'em.

Be the best you you can be. Enjoy yourself.
Be responsible.
Be productive. 
Be happy. 
Be pretty.
Be the one who has her shit together.

If they don't like it, fuck 'em.

 You've only got your life. Your self. The only thing that is for sure and for real and that you can control: You.
Don't take it personally when someone gives you shit. If someone says something trollish to try and undermine your happiness. Just laugh it off. Twist it into a positive. Make them think about what they just said to you. 
Be cool.

If they don't like it, fuck 'em.

Let them go fuck with somebody else's head. Because you're confident in who you are and nothing anyone else can say will change that.
Go get 'em tiger. 
Rawr.

Say it with me: I love myself. I love the good things and the bad things and the superficial things and things only I know about myself. I love my quirks and my insecurities, my accomplishments and the things I've learned from my failures. I know I'll never ever give up. I know I get sidetracked and distracted I know my willpower and self discipline are usually somewhere in between non-existent and barely-there. But hey, I’m working on that.

Maybe I'm not perfect. But I am me. I'm like Tigger. The only one. And that's something to celebrate.

Especially on VALENTINE’S DAY! The day of LOVE!

On Valentine's Day, I shut my phone off, drank lots of coffee, and cleaned the hell out of my apartment. I cleaned EVERYTHING. Everything I touched, if it didn't excite me, I got rid of it. I noticed the energies of everything I was letting into my life.

The closets in particular. In feng shui, your closets represent what you keep hidden, what you are ashamed of, what you are holding on to, who your really are, what you are afraid of, what you present to the world, your private relationships, how you relate to other people, your ego.

Think about it. Closets are really important. If you want to let cool people into your life, are you afraid to let them see your closet?

Think about it. Celebrities have huge closets full of gorgeous sparkling clothes and shoes that they know they are going to be photographed in. Yours should be the same. You think Madonna's kids have broken dressers in their closets? You think Leonardo Dicaprio has an old TV in his closet? Does Paris Hilton have a bunch of shitty clothes that don’t fit and shoes she hates? Hell no. The closet represents the ego and the part of yourself that you present to the world. Do you have secrets? Are you ashamed of anything? If you met the love of your life (or just a really awesome person you wanted to be your friend) would you be ashamed to let them see your closet? If the answer is yes, you have some work to do.

Get crackin’, kid. Get cleanin’. Be ruthless. Throw out anything old or broken or useless. Any clothes you don't want to be photographed in. Anything you don’t LOVE wearing. Throw out old pictures and love letters. Have space for memories, sure, and your suitcase, duh. But your closet should be as open to everyone you allow in your home/life as any other room in your house. You don't have to give them a tour, but if you die, don't you want your closet to reflect your best self? 

Your closet, like everything else in your house and car and life, should reflect your best self and be a manifestation of the awesome person you are striving to be everyday.
 
GO.

You can have your experiences and draw your conclusions, form your hypotheses. You can attempt to predict future outcomes based on prior experiments.
But you have to allow for being human.
Which means, actually, that you can't do any of those things.
You can think you've got it all figured out. You've seen it all before.
But the endless combinations of human emotion and experiences, environment, nature, and the wisdom of the Universe will always always be able to show you something new.
If you are open to it. If you don't stubbornly cling to the scientific method to make sense of your surroundings. To make sense of other people. 
People can say and do some dumb shit. This doesn't mean you are better than them. This doesn't make them unworthy of love. This doesn't make you unworthy of love. 
What is more important is the direction they are heading. 
Prove them wrong. Be the exception, the outlier to the rules and formulas and statistics they have painstakingly figured out for themselves.
People aren't perfect. But people are good. 
We are all doing the best we can with what we have been given, with the experiences we have had. People aren't simply "dumb" or "smart." They are people with beating hearts and active minds, and they, just like you, want only to be happy. 
Try to help them. Help them find their own way. Which may or may not be the same as yours. 
The world doesn't need more people pointing out how dumb and wrong and broken and hurt other people are. The world needs more love.

I remember reading some article a while ago called something like "Are You Too Sensitive?" It described characteristics of HSP's (HSP = Highly Sensitive Person.) I don't agree or disagree with the author of this article, but I do recall that these people, when watching commercials, or romances, or even children's movies, cry and experience the same emotional reactions/symptoms as the characters in them do. They feel personally a friend's rage or disappointment, oftentimes taking it to heart.
I know do. All the time. I thought everyone did. I thought that was the point. Then I read this dopey article. 
Apparently, I am  mistaken. Apparently some people feel nothing at all. They are...unaffected. They just... are. (I think these are the same people who enjoy horror movies. I'm just spitballing here...) 
But, yeah, since when is "being an HSP" a fucking condition? Something that means to be managed, remedied, or counseled out of you? I think anyone who is any kind of artist must be a damn "HSP."
I have a thin fucking skin. I admit it. If you are feeling it, if you notice it, guaranteed I am aware of it and feeling it. Times ten. That's just who I am. I notice things, I inuit them and I feel them before plenty of people know what to call them. I won't make any apologies for this. I get to feel things sooner and more deeply than most people? I guess I'll bear my cross. 
Callousness is not becoming on anyone. Ever. I hope I am always naïve enough to recognize when my fellow man is hurting, or , for that matter, feeling euphoric. I will try to fix a situation most people are afraid to acknowledge even exists. I will help you realize it's ok to still think about getting raped as a child, when most people will avert your eyes. I will cry in front of you. I don't care. Life is too short. 
Don't be ashamed of feeling, and of acknowledging the joy and pain of your fellow man. And remember, life imitates art (which imitates life), and art allows you to feel things you might not otherwise be able to. And yes, I am counting the movie Cars. 
Go ahead and live. Fully and deeply. Don't be afraid to feel everything there is to feel.

On Monday, while I was waiting for my oil change, I wandered across the street with Cam to a decrepit little white house with a sign out front that read PSYCHIC.
I was bored. And a barfly once told me that everyone should have his palm read. It would sure be interesting to hear some outside perspective.

It took this lady all of one minute to declare that she sensed a lot of negative energy about me and that she could could cleanse it with a crystal for $750.

Seriously?
I mean, I'd already given her 45 of my hard earned dollars to LITERALLY BE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, from "you're not married?" (ok, well, I am divorced), to "I see a change in residence," (I had renewed my lease that morning), to "I see health problems, if you haven't had them, you will (how vague is that?"). Plus she kept twisting everything I said into a negative so she could "cleanse" me of it.
Al right, so maybe I've been guilty of being naive and even gullible in the past, but I was expecting to meet a kindred spirit, someone who understands and intuits and perceives like me. Someone who loves the mysteries and the blessings of the Universe.


She was not this someone. She was short and tan and old and wore a dusty old cardigan and a patronizing smile.
"I sense a lot of negative energy about you. From others. I can help you with that."
"How?" I asked.
"Crystal chakra cleansing for $750." She looked straight at me, holding her breath, one hand reaching slowly under the (glass) table for a xeroxed paper that read "Crystal Healing with Hope."
It was all too cliched. I felt like I was in a bad independent movie.
"Well. I don't have money for that right now, but I have plenty of ideas of how to rid oneself of negative energy," I offered.
She leaned back, a little defeated, then asked, with her patronizing smile,"What are your ideas?"
When I gave her the jist of my ideas (which included candle meditation and gratitude lists), she said, "You shouldn't dabble. If you dabble and you don't know what you're doing, then you could be dealing with the devil." (BTW, Rainbow Sparklers, the devil doesn't exist. The devil is man's personification of fear and the total absence of love. You can't just "make a deal" with him like he's Monty Hall).
I assured her I was most certainly not dealing with the devil. And I asked her if she saw anything else. She did not look down at my hands again and said, "No. Palm reading's only the basics, I told you that." (Yeah, I know, Tarot is $65 and  "full psychic" is $100. You mentioned the palm reading very dimunitively becuase you wanted more money out of me. I got it.)
I thanked her for her time and held out my hand for her to shake. She told me good luck as I left. I picked up my car and drove aimlessly for about twenty minutes, thinking about what had just happened. 
And you know what?
I was fucking pissed. I bet that lady told everybody that walked through that door that she sensed a lot of negative energy that she could cleanse with a crystal for $750. This, I decided, was wrong. And I drove back there to tell her so.
I knocked on her door, and when she opened it, I said, before she could speak, "I am not 'dealing with the devil.' I know my own power. I am a beautiful wonderful part of a beautiful wonderful world. I feel obligated to tell you that it is wrong of you to tell everybody that comes through your door that they have negative energy that must be cleansed by you."
"I don't tell everybody that."
Meaningful (oh really?) look from me.
"I don't. Only the people that have it." 
(You should have seen me that day: new hat, short skirt, pretty lipstick, productive, well-rested, holding my sweet little boy's hand on a blue-sky clear fall day. I was about as negative as a Teletubby. Or a unicorn. Or the Nyan cat.)
"Didn't I say YOU were postive? (Must've slipped your mind, sister.) "It's other people that are negative. Other people are what you have to watch out for."
"No. There is good in everyone, and you should look for it and try to cultivate it when people come to you."
"People aren't good. Maybe back in my day, when I was your age. The world was lighter. But people are much more greedy and jealous now, and other people don't want to see you succeed. That's why you have to fight, you have to battle."
All at once I felt very sorry for this sad, bitter old lady. I immediately vowed that I would not grow up to be like this. I would always believe the world is beautiful, and always believe that people have good in them.
"I'm glad you came back so you could leave with a more postitive feeling," she said in her patronizing way.
"Yes... well... have a nice day," I said. I looked at her with pity.
And I left.

I just want to tell you,  a true healer willl not try to make you feel bad about yourself. She will remind you of all you have to be grateful for, of all the beauty and love in your heart and in the world around you. She will help you focus on the good in your life so your positive energy naturally increases. She will help you name for yourself the things you already know deep down in your heart are negative in your life and you need to get rid of. You shouldn't have to fork over X amount of dollars for her to get rid of it. 
You are a beautiful wonderful person and you have goodness and love in you. We all do. Even people who do fucked up, selfish, stupid, mean things. Sometimes repeatedly. You know how I know? Because I've done them too. I have done awful, hurtful, selfish, cruel, stupid mean things to myself, to my loved ones, to complete strangers. And yet I know without a shadow of a doubt that there is goodness and love in me. How can I not believe the same about everyone else?
Even this lady. Maybe she is just another victim of the recession, trying to get money the only way she knows how.
("You get to keep the crystal," she had gandered. Sorry lady, no dice.)

You are a beautiful wonderful part of a beautiful wonderful world.
Tomorrow I think I'll drive back there with flowers and tell her that. She needs to hear it.