“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”- Epictetus

​Why write? Why draw? Why yoga? I’m in the process of reinvention (again). I must not be the only one thinking about this though because both the January issue of Psychology Today and the March issue of Outside magazine are about change and reinvention. Change in the self, change in the global workplace and change in how we define ourselves is in the wind. This sort of thing used to be devastating for those in past generations who really bought into the idea of a single lasting career for the husband, or a single husband for a wife. And, for some, this was a reality. For others, who built their personal identity around this external thing called “career” or “husband”, it was crushing. 

I can’t romanticize that past too much, however, because as I get older and see how the 70’s and 80’s are romanticized now I can attest it was not ‘safer’ then to, for example, hitchhike around the country or for children to run free in the streets around the town. It wasn’t smaller then. It wasn’t simpler. People weren’t happier. There weren’t more fields of green (well, maybe there were more fields of green). 

"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." --Stephen R. Covey

I open with this quote because most people know Stephen Covey for his smash hit 7 Habits. The fact the book series was such a success is attributed to our inner desire to improve, to grow and for personal advancement.

In Arianna Huffington’s book, Thrive, she says that empathy is being able to listen and to take the time to actually put ones self in a place of understanding for what is being told.

Not only would this help us build empathy, but by stretching our minds it is like studying text or reading a book - we learn and imagine and expand our thought.

So, why is it so many do not listen? Our ego takes over and before time runs out we must assert our opinions and be right or be heard and get noticed. Patience has no place in this hurried society. This is how we get ahead in the world, not by understanding, we justify.

"Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking." --Bernard Baruch​

After my yoga class yesterday I did the usual: I dropped my towel and mat in the bins for cleaning, entered the locker room, searched briefly for my locker (as I almost always forget which one is exactly mine since they all look alike with digipads rather than individual locks), changed and went outside to unlock my bike. There was a girl on her phone with her back to me while I was minding my own business looking up the address to the New Movement Theater and getting out my lock keys. 

"Hi!" she exclaimed enthusiastically with a bright smile, "I'm J - I was helping out in class today. How did you like class?"

"Oh, hey!" I returned and I thanked her for her assists.

The instructor had given a metaphor about his flowers looking kind of sad at home and how his mom told him he should just talk to his flowers to perk them up a bit. Like Masaru Emoto spoke to water, she suggested he speak to his plants.

I'm laying in my bed, awake, staring at the ceiling. The sun is up and peeking in my blinds. I want my book to focus my mind on something, but it's on the desk. I don't want to disturb the dogs by getting up and getting it.

Want.

To want. The implication of lacking or needing something outside the moment, that the moment is not perfect and to accidentally instill a cycle of dependency.

"I want to feel better." 

"I want to be healed." 

"I want that book."

"I want my mind to be still."

It is perfect, however, this moment. Everything is how and where it should be right now, right here, right in this moment.

May 19, 2017
I'm realizing as I sit here how it is time for a shift. Maybe it's going to sound selfish or petty or obvious, but I am realizing how I need to be strong for me.

It's isolating to say that, but at the end of the day, we die alone. Honestly, I feel alone anyway so I might as well work on me cultivating the things and person I want to be. If I look at myself and my habits again, am I happy with where they are? Am I treating people well? Am I as elegant as I want to be? Am I versed in the things I want to know about? Am I growing spiritually and intellectually and am I sharing that with others in a loving way? Am I drinking too much? Am I eating enough vegetables? Am I exercising enough?

For so long and yet still I care for others. I hide a lot of the work of that from others as I think we all do. But that has been my primary work for the last twenty some years. When that shifts, for you see my youngest son is graduating high school and my mother just died May 10th, I have to ask myself who I am and do I like it? Believe it or not, I don't like confrontation. I feel I have been polarizing in many instances in my life especially in the last ten to fifteen years, but I don't like confrontation. I cannot even imagine being a politician where that happens all the time - where you have to fight to be heard and you become the target of so much ridicule.

I say this, yet I long for positive change in society and in myself - yet it often defeats me. The world violence, the societal prejudice, the quiet domestic abuse, the lack of respect for life (animals and the wilderness is very much included here), the unbending opinions of pontificators driven by politics and religion, the self abuse, the addictions, the short sightedness, the greediness - it all overwhelms me at times.

Well, I am here now to validate for anyone who feels this way - it is overwhelming. Some people ease the feelings of being overwhelmed by suicide or smoking or drinking or some other addiction. The term "having fun" isn't fun at that point. I saw it in people close to me - and that is why I had to leave.

June 3, 2017
So this is the first time I am sitting at my antique claw foot tiger wood desk in my new home - a home not a house and a desk I haven't sat at for about two years. I'm looking at the title of my entry: in lieu of flowers. When I first wrote that, I wrote it because in lieu of flowers, what my mother and I want is for you to be good to each other and to be good to yourself. Just be self aware enough to listen to those healthy choices always. Sometimes, it is not easy. And for some, it's not natural habit - but trust it will be habit and it will become natural. Just stick with it. I have had some people ask me about how to change habits - because that's what it's all about right? Living the best life ever right? Then, suddenly, you realize you're caught in habit's web. A friend of mine I met climbing accidentally ordered two of the same book called Vertical Mind - As I read it I realized there is much more in there than just how to retrain your brain for climbing. And that's the thing, isn't it? A great sport - or maybe great athletes in the sport - provide this depth, these metaphors and useful wisdom for life not just the sport. I've read Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald which is also good, but you have to glean the psychology and same with Push by Tommy Caldwell which isn't a training book at all, but rather a really great story that is just raw and honest. Through watching Caldwell obsess as well as soften and make the various changes, I aspire to push also more than I would have had I not seen his struggles and how they were overcome.

All that said, I still have moments where I'm sad my mom couldn't have come here with us. You see, I'm emerging from a two year darkness which I didn't know I was entering into at the time. I have flashes of memory of sitting at Potter's Place having a conversation which would be the start of witnessing a fluidity of bourbon and pills and self denial. It caused such a rift in myself to be so physically close to something I could not change and could not help. The lack of influence I had on the huge amounts of wasted restaurant food from random take outs or styrofoam in the fridge not to mention the shock I felt when I saw the boxes of bleach and round up ... from someone who claimed to be a 'no excuses' environmentalist. Then there was the drunken hovering over me ranting hot breath in my ear while I tried to watch a tv show or movie. Just stop. Couple this with an aging demented mother who eventually would break a hip and require 24 hour help.​ At least she was so thankful and sweet ... even if she did yell at me because the water IS cold when you first turn it on. But it warms up. Doesn't it? Then it's okay. I did what I could to keep my cool. In the end, it was ten thousand square feet of hell. There is SO MUCH MORE crap (haha literally .. as in dog and cat) to tell, but it's time to move on. Just goes to show, you can take an insecure, twisted human to money, but you can't make him rich. Prayers to St. Jude, patron saint of the hopeless. May this experience humble me and leave me thankful.

The fun little things that have happened since being here is watching my dogs completely adjust and my son become an accidental cyclist. There are so many things that I just take for granted having all the thousands of miles riding around Illinois and Wisconsin and a few other places. Being a bike commuter in Austin with my son means carrying a backpack a lot, possible rainy rides, keeping computers dry, bike cleaning, keeping a chain clean, minor tuning adjustments, keeping eyes on the bike lane of the road which isn't always swept, teaching non verbal communication, definitely wearing eye protection and learning new territory. It's good hot sweaty fun and I am sleeping better than I have in a long time.

Have to say I had a very smooth and easy move down here despite my worry. The first weekend here was full of friends and family and was just lovely. I feel like we got so much done not only for the household, but filled ourselves with soul food. I was so glad my daughter could be here and also that my lovely sister in law and my children's great aunt. It was really a special time.

One of the things I love is the idea of getting up and out regardless of the weather. I am loving the heat. I guess there was a reason I was at a hot yoga studio for five years. I am also loving the cacophony of birds all day every day and the smells of the jasmine or honeysuckle or whatever weird plants I walk past. Sometimes there's a nasty smell - I mean it is a city. And sometimes it can be dirty or unorganized in some places. But I kind of like it - and my neighbor has chickens and ducks and a pig and I can probably grow vegetables in the one small patch of sun in the FRONT yard if I wanted to .. because, you see, there are HUGE oak trees in the front and in the back yards which keep us a little cool in the shade. I still have much straightening up to do inside and out and I have way more stuff than I'd care to admit to, but it'll all get done. Right. After. This. Run.

Drinking more water. Drinking less coffee, beer and wine. Eating less quantity, but more quality. Being honest and outright. Exercising more. Sending loving vibes and being kinder - to myself and to others. Forgiveness. All these things are coming together now along with your daily tasks and errands. Lastly, my mothers ashes arrived in the mail yesterday. In lieu of flowers, be good to yourself and to others.