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.

It's never too late, you know.
Maybe you lost your way.
Maybe you overslept, caught in a world that wasn't real.
Maybe you got distracted and started thinking other things were more important.
That your dream could wait.
(It can't wait anymore.) 
While you were fucking around, getting lost in the dark, wandering in the forest of apathy and fear and distraction, you let your dream slip from your fingers.
And now, you think, you noticed, it's gone. Gone forever.
It's not.
It's right where you left it.
Your dream is waiting for you.
Find it. You can.
It's not too late. The sun is still high overhead, illuminating the way.
Find your dream again. 
Retrace your steps. Somehow you left your path. 
You were lured off it with promises of an easier route, something better, something you didn't even know you wanted.  
(You didn't want it, you know now. You never needed it.) 
Find your way back. Find your dream. 
Pick it up, brush it off. Resolve never to lose it or set it aside again. 
It's not too late. It's never too late.
You can still make all of your dreams come true. 

It Thursday. And I love:

the way we were


it doesn't matter who was prettier
(
most of the time)
but i felt
                 pretty
&              
_________
around her because 
i knew she wouldn't have been my friend
if i wasn't
(was i
&
she knew i was)
was she

Once, I got rearended by a boy who had had a tracheotomy. I don't think that was why he rearended me. He rearended me because he was around 19 years old and not paying attention.
We were waiting to turn right. A long line of cars outside the college at the end of my school day. For which, in my typical fashion, I was late that morning and scrambling to finish assignments in the 15 minute breaks between classes all day, hungover as hell, and answering emails from a divorce lawyer. It was also grey and rainy.  But I was wearing  a short skirt and high heels and lipstick (which I always recommend when you're having a shitty day) and now I was going home.
But then it hit me. A bright red 2010 Honda Accord.
Used to be I'd be scared I was going to get in trouble, or intimidated by cops or whatever fool had just done this to me. I used to think I was always on the verge of getting caught for something (thank you  deeply implanted Christian-school perpetual guilt.) Not today. Today I was going to be a a fierce hell bitch. He couldn't have picked a wronger person to hit that day. I came roaring out of my car, claws out, teeth bared, and fangs flashing. I pounced. 
"WHAT THE HELL?" This is all I managed to get out before his window was all the way down and I saw a terrified-looking skinny as hell kid sitting there with a pipe sticking out of his throat. 
Surely my eyes grew wide and I leaned back. I don't remember. 
"Are you okay?" I asked him, trying to be kind and gentle but still remain dominant and put-out. I think I chose the right tone. 
"Yeah," he answered. His voice was froggy and robotic and he was clearly shaking.
"Good," I said in the same tone. "You have your insurance information?" 
He nodded.
"Don't worry," I said, my tone softening even more. "As long as we're both okay, it's ... okay." 
Genius, sure. And yet what a tiny event, that started off as me being pissed at finding myself the unfair victim in some stupid accident, turned into me being ever so grateful I had my neck in one piece and was still able to sing like Christina Aguilera. In the shower. Plus I hadn't just wrecked my parents' car. I had never had a tracheotomy and I could drive my car home fine. I was grateful to be me. 
But what kills me is it took me noticing his tracheotomy before I was thankful no one was hurt, and calm and forgiving with him. 
I should have been grateful I wasn't hurt, and determined to be nice to the poor sap who hit me before I knew he was handicapped like that. Tracheotomy or not, it wasn't a situation worth the raging anger I originally felt was justified. It wasn't. 
I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt at first. I'm going to control my temper. I am going to be grateful for my health. 
"If you only knew the day I had today," I rolled my eyes as the cop wrote down information.
"I have had way worse days than this, ma'am," he said.
I thought of rapes and murders and child abuse and tracheotomies. Point taken. 

Fine.
You can wallow for a while; you can cry. 
After a while, you'll realize that wallowing has lost its appeal.
If it ever had it, that is.
Sometimes you can't help wallowing.
(And then sometimes, you can't help being happy and content and peaceful, when you weren't even trying.) 
I think it takes a certain amount of wallowing before you can get happy again.
Scary, but true. 
It happens when you convince yourself you have nothing to lose, and you don't give a fuck anymore.
Because other people do care what others think of them. 
But not you.
You see things in crystal clear focus, you know them for what they are. You will notice every beautiful little thing there is and yes, all the horrible ones too. 
But you will have the power to just be.
What else can you do, really?

"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable." 

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.

Don't forget to always say please and thank you. Something small, I know, but it makes quite a difference. Don't simper, don't apologize, don't begin with, "Is it ok if...?" or "I don't want to be a bother..." and a grimace. That just plants the idea in people's heads that it might not be okay, and well, yeah, now that you mention it, it is rather a bother. Just say, "I'd like..." or "I'll have..." then "please." That's all. They'll be happy to help such a confident, polite person. And when you get what you've asked for, smile, look them in the eye, and say, "Thank you." And mean it.

I am thankful for my big strong boy and my wonderful cat. 
Autumn is beautiful! Look up at the sky, take a deep breath of fresh fall air, and be grateful to be alive and healthy on such a lovely day as this.