What did you EAT today?

Whoever, and whatever, received your...

Energy

Attention

Time

...is what you truly consumed today.

Was the situation nutritious to your soul?

Did that interaction fortify your well-being?

Did the conditions satisfy your hunger for connection, peace, and love?

Let

Only

Value

Evolve

Be aware of the value of what you're EATing, and make adjustments, as necessary.

If whatever it is doesn't hold deep value to you, don't EAT it, don't let it evolve into a stronger, larger portion of your life.

EAT only that which holds true sustenance for your own, individual Soul, and you'll find a whole new experience begin to emerge.

It's Soul Simple©

Sex Is Not A Four Letter Word

I just can't remember when or why the U.S. got so ass backwards about everything! Or, maybe it always was, but I just didn't notice whilst growing up in So.Cal.... either way, it's time to pull our collective heads out of our collective butts and grow the hell up!

Just another thing I've been saying for decades - talk to children while they're young (around the time they start asking questions) about their bodies and love-making (sex), let them explore BEFORE they can get pregnant (I know, no one will go for that, but puleeze, you didn't played "doctor" when you were little?)... remove the TABOO and you remove the intrigue, remove the intrigue and you remove the fervent desire to simply find out what all the fuss is about.

Has no one ever heard of reverse psychology? Keep telling our kids to be abstinent., because that is working SO DAMN WELL! How about the straight-forward psychology of telling the truth and not treating our kids like they're idiots? Remove the taboo, in age-appropriate ways, and I swear, our kids will make their own good decisions. All that any of us need, under any condition, is information and understanding; those two things always promote good decision making, and it's no different for our children.

Time...

I have all the time in the world, but, there is no time in space.
...
Time is tricky. While it is structured and finite, it is also subjective and flexible. Have you ever been deep into doing something you love to do, only to find that, when you become aware of your surroundings again, several hours have gone by? How did 4 hours go by when it felt like only 20 minutes? That's the subjective and flexible part of time; our perception during the minutes ticking away, what we're focused on and how we're feeling.
...
The trick, methinks, is to consciously decide to focus that way on any/every task. Everything Zen.
...
Which brings us to the subject of Attention.
...
It is always within my power to decide what I will give my attention to, and what quality that attention will hold. When I give my attention to things that please me, I am fulfilled and relaxed. When I give my attention to things that don't please me, I am cranky and unhappy. It seems like a no-brainer to choose the former, and yet many of us don't bother to exercise our right to choose at all.
...
Whether the activity is something we want to do, or something we think we need to do, or something we feel we have to do, it is still our choice to decide how the doing-ness will progress. Our attention to how it progresses determines the quality of our moments, and thus, our whole lives.
...
Doing the dishes is not my favorite thing. They're just so non-stop! However, I have been around long enough to know that I can enjoy almost anything, if I just decide. So I put on some good music and get my hands into that warm-soapy water with a conscious decision to enjoy the work. I take the doing-the-dishes time as a little meditation space. I gaze out my kitchen windows at the beautiful sky and just let my mind wander.
...
Sometimes I muse about my life, sometimes I wonder about who has stood in this same spot, doing this same thing before. What was their life like? My apartment was build in the 1920's, so nearly 100 years of people have stood here doing this exact chore, looking out this same window. Wow. That's big. Sometimes I think about my latest interactions with the kids, a client or a friend. Sometimes I think about how blessed I am to have this beautiful view to keep me company. Sometimes I think about how blessed I am. Period.
...
Doing the dishes takes definable, finite time. It takes time away from things I'd rather be doing. But it is always my choice to decide how that time will feel to me, and the determining factor of that decision is what kind of attention I'm offering while I'm inside the task. The bonus of putting my attention on enjoying the process is that the dishes seem to be done so quickly!
...
Everything in our lives boils down to moment-by-moment decisions about how we will show up, what type of attention we will offer, and how present we will be in our time-space reality.
...
These decisions are the only true influence on our quality of life. They are the sole-factor of a life well lived, or a life squandered in turmoil, stress, frustration and sorrow.
...
Starting today, decide to decide that you will bring attention to the intention of enjoying whatever you're doing. You'll be so glad you did!

One little change...

I think on some level I knew that changing things would bring up old-leftover-from-somewhere emotions. Changing even one little thing in my daily routine has already started a ripple effect in my emotions and my beingness. The change was writing every morning, and this is only day 4. I think yesterdays little melt-down was a sign that I'm moving forward in a bigger way than just being up earlier and doing something I love to do. 


Most of us have very regular routines and habits, some of which serve us and some which are so auto-pilot we don't even realize that they have developed as a buffer to some emotion or situation that happened a long time ago. The really interesting thing is that there really isn't a direct corrolation between the habit and the emotion/situation. In other words, I cannot make a direct link between getting up earlier to write for an hour and feeling like I don't matter anymore. It's not a logical connection like if I start exercising, I'll lose weight. At least not at first glance.


I do, though, sense a deep connection between these things. We are whole packages, body, mind and spirit. I think it must be impossible to change anything in any one of those aspects and not have the other two shift into a different space as well. The cool thing about this concept is that we don't need to start with full-on overhauls of our selves to step into the life we really want to live. One little change-for-the-better at a time will send us flowing in the direction of all the "better" we could possibly want.


I've always thought that life is very complex, that people are very complex, that emotions and the thinking process and the world are all very complex. I loved the mystery of it all; the big theories and philosophical wonderings of that complexity. Big theories and philosophical wonderings keep our minds busy - and let's face it, they're fun fodder for into-the-wee-hours conversation.


The thing is, I am coming to realize that those "bigger" ideas are not nearly as helpful to our daily lives as the smaller ideas are. I had a small idea... it really was a teeny-tiny thought... and I'd been having it for a long while, well, consistantly since September 2011. It was soul simple, I need to start writing again. Back then I wrote: 

This is just to start... just to see if I can get the juices flowing again. I know I'm a writer, and I've been away from writing for so long, I thought maybe if I just started -- it would flow back to me.

I used to have so much to say! So many opinions and ideas of grandeur... seems the older I get, and the more I embrace a "live and let live" attitude, the less interested I am in spouting off about how I see things.

But I love the hand-to-keyboard process -- the pen-to-paper equally satisfies -- and maybe if I just put something down here every day... something worth saying and sharing will emerge?
One can hope ;-)

Then, I wrote a few more times in October, nothing in November or December, and twice in January. Now, in June, I've written four mornings in a row. I owe much of this week to Jeff Goins. His little ebook that I "stumbled" on (I don't believe in coincidence) entitled, "You Are A Writer, So Start Acting Like One", was just the well-written, charmingly toned, practical, reasonable, yeah-I-do-that-too reminder that I just needed to make a decision and stick to it... because the one thing about being a writer is  - well - you have to write something.


So this decision to write daily, dropped a little pebble in my pond, and one of the things that hit the shore was this feeling of non-importance with my children. And the cool thing is that after writing all of this this morning, I actually do see a corrolation between those two subjects.


I've been a mom for 34 years. It was just early last year that all the kids were out from under-my-roof (the first two were out on their own when the youngest were just in 1st & 2nd grade), and then a month later my sister moved in for a-few-months-to-get-on-her-feet-in-Long-Beach but didn't move out until a year later... that was last month.


There is bound to be a transitional space of big changes when you stop doing something that has defined you for 3 decades.


All those years that I spent meeting all the needs of four other souls, or as many as I could humanly meet, and now I'm out on the other side. Of course they have their lives, and of course they don't need me (much), and that's the way it's supposed to go/flow/be. I've raised some strong people; some really independent personalities; some good-hearted-almost-to-a-fault people... and I did that intentionally! And I did a damn good job!


Writing every morning has simply stirred-up the new reality that the chapter of my life called "Motherhood" has closed. The constant sense of being "on-call" and ready-when-needed has ended, and the excorsism was a few hours of pity-party that brought a clear realization of something surprising... freedom.


So bring on the Crone years, the Me years, the Being-who-I-always-wanted-to-be-when-I-grew-up years. I'm ready to consider my own needs first for a while. I'm ready to investigate all the little things I can change to make my next chapter more fun, more successful and more interesting.


A mom never really stops being a mom ... and, it's kind of trippy/cool/scary to move that long-held Life-Title from the top spot, down to the Previous Work Experience section of my new bio.

Write now...

I'm up at 7am to write. Yesterday I discovered Jeff Goins' "You ARE a Writer, So Start Acting Like One", in Amazon kindle's free list. Within 5 pages I was already feeling the nudge; page 8 brought the prod; page 15 the desire and by page 30 I was inspired to make a commitment to this thing that has hovered around me for decades... writing.


I especially resonated with the words he wrote in the section, 


Cancel Contingencies. 


"There’s a trend amongst writers. Most have more ideas than they know what to do with. They have hundreds of half-written articles and a few books started. How many of these projects have they finished? None. I was the same way. Once a month on a Saturday, when the wind was blowing just right and I felt inspired, I would write. I’d write for hours at a time — long, drawn-out essays about who-knows-what. It felt beautiful and precious, but really it was a waste of energy. I would come up with imaginative ideas and potential projects —websites and communities and other brilliant creations. Some of them I’d actually start, even followed through with a few. But I finished exactly none." 
Goins, Jeff (2012-04-27). You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) (Kindle Locations 258-261). Jeff Goins. Kindle Edition. 


Wow, this guy is speaking my language! With any luck, I thought, as I started to flip-the-screen (as opposed to turn-the-page), he's going to give me a quick and easy remedy for this problem. Oh yeah, he was going to give me a remedy alright, a smack of reality right up-side my excuse-filled head...


Fear


"Fear of finishing. Fear of picking one thing and sticking with it. We think, what if it’s the wrong thing? What if I mess it up? Here’s the truth: There is no wrong thing. Just begin. Once you learn how to finish, you’ll be able to start again. Cancel all backup plans, pick a project (it may be a book, blog or whatever) and move forward. Start writing. If you don’t, all you’re doing is waiting."


It's not even like I hadn't heard this type of information/advice before. It sounds kind of familiar, but apparently the previous presentations just didn't stick. This one did, and here I am at 7:25 a.m., out of bed to be a writer... write now.


My writing has been published and produced. It's not like I don't have a small, but impressive (to me, at least), writing history. All of those accomplishments were during a time when I had a lot to say about a lot of things. I was a new lesbian, a full-time mom earning part-time wages, an ex-Mormon seeing the world I'd been raised in from a completely new perspective and a too-early-menopausal woman (37). I didn't need any help working myself into a tizzy about a multitude of issues. Yet, as I wandered further down the lane-o-life, I began to see that there was just nothing important enough to get that riled-up about.


Truth is, I'm more in a live-and-let-live place than I've ever been before. With that softening of opinions came the feeling that I didn't really need to write anymore. Writers must have convictions! (right?) Writers must have something important to impart! (right?) Writers must have a need to put their perspective out there for a reason! (right?)


Well, maybe. And maybe not...


...because I am a writer. I've known it for a long time. And write now, I'm just going to start and see where it leads me.


It might be boring; it might be full of queen-of-run-on-sentences jargon; it might be dangerously personal; it might be delightfully engaging; it might have questionable content; it might piss some people off; it might bring ridicule and rejection right to my doorstep; it might ignite my true passion; it might ignite yours; it might be too much; it might be just right; it might accidentally inspire someone... it might be okay after all.


This is my first blog post in nearly 3 years. My new goal is to write every day, pick the best of the week and update this page every Sunday. I'm putting it out there with intention, feel free to hold me to it.


This entry is on Monday, because, with writing, it's important to Just Begin.