Things To Do This Decade:
• Dance more dances
• Do good deeds
• Climb towards the stars
• Tango in Buenos Aires
• Settle in Seattle
• Skydive
• Walk the Chinese Wall
• Learn Arabic
• Get a job in Jordan
• Own a horse
• Write a book
• Write more books
• Make a living writing
• Make my life matter
• Make you matter more
Friday, January 01, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Walking In New York City
Abandoned, injured umbrellas with decrepit, twisted batwing limbs reach out helplessly, littering street corners. Driving rain and icy winds fuel fast walks along avenues of holiday-delighted visitors and irritated locals.
To enter a friendly, organic French café with an enormously long Viking-sized table running down the middle and warm aromas of freshly made bread and caffeine-bean brew, where one may thaw out frozen limbs with WiFi and pleasant company, is bliss. Long conversations later donning your armor against the cold once again and steel yourself for the certain frigid onslaught once exited, is fresh. To enter an IMAX theater, basking in the aesthetically stunning film experience of the year, is sweetness. Later, entering a student apartment brightly decorated by artwork found on these very streets, joining the company of family for friendly competition in the world of board games, is priceless.
From the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan rises like a diamond under the icy sky, a shimmering gray mass of gritty granite in the cold, metallic sun.
Every dog on the street is dressed to the hilt in fashionable overcoats to protect against the cold. There are many bulldogs. Pigeons and squirrels scavenge. Part of the squirrel population is black or dark brown, and appears to be perfectly integrated with their lighter counterparts whilst nibbling on the decorative cabbages in neat rows about Peter Cooper Village, a dozen or more red brick high-rise apartment buildings with green trim. Trees stretch their naked trunks towards the meager light in stark contrast with the white sky.
Yellow cabs pass patches of dirty, rotten snow while maneuvering brusquely through grids of human enterprise. One walks for miles and miles and see strips of faces show through bundles of coat lapels pulled up over ears, scarves, hats, even the occasional ski mask. If you look carefully, you can see that the faces of pedestrians are not entirely unfriendly, only guarded with hardened expressions to shield from the bitter wind.
Soon enough, spring breezes will thaw these faces with gentle touches, features will fade into softness and frowns melt with the vanishing snow. And new life, hope and fragile happiness will sprout with the budding trees in Central Park. The stark monochrome schemes will be assuaged by a touch of green. I will be gone then.
Friday, October 02, 2009
My Snooze-Button Life
Sitting at the coffee shop sipping my *scratching Americano* Mint Tea… it’s early… early for me anyway. The fact that I’m here before business hours, before I’m due at work, I consider a major accomplishment these days.
The thing is, I’m a recovering addict.
I’m finally ready to acknowledge that I’ve developed a major addiction to the snooze button. I mean I simply cannot keep myself from hitting the button, knocking back a few, as it were. So I’m trying to get clean. Which is no easy task when you’re as deeply and desperately addicted as what I am.
The withdrawal symptoms are excruciating… Just to mention a few: shivering, heaviness of the eyelids and sometimes the entire body, stumbling in the dark to find the obnoxious alarm clock one has hidden in increasingly more creative places so as to keep oneself away from the snooze, fumbling in search of one’s glasses, inability to focus without consuming massive amounts of caffeine, sudden bursts of acute afternoon sleepiness…
So far, I’ve been unable to practice total abstinence, and I’m trying to manage my addiction – with varying degrees of success. I know the only way out is to go cold turkey, but until today I just haven’t gotten myself to do it.
It started innocently enough during high school with just a little snooze here and there, and became more pronounced during my college years. Everybody was doing it. And before I knew it, I was hooked on the button as well.
Truth be told, looking back at it all, it should have been clear from early childhood that I had a strong propensity towards the condition, and had I known better, I would never have as much as touched snooze. Addictions run in families, and I’m afraid I carry a genetic predisposition towards snoozing.
My Father was said to be able to snooze standing up in his younger days, and had a penchant for sneaking away for an afternoon nap – especially while at tedious social gatherings – and could be gone for hours. He’d return red-eyed and rumpled, and nobody would say anything, but we all knew.
Even my Mother took to snoozing during the day, and her naps gradually became more and more compulsive, to the point of debilitating. She was dealing with some very challenging things emotionally, and snoozing simply became her means of escape.
When I was a child, my Father would work very hard to get me up in the mornings; I was a difficult child in that way and would simply refuse to get out from under the covers on chilly Norwegian winter mornings. Once, he went so far as to carry me into the bathroom and turn the ice cold shower on me – while I was still in my PJs! I actually thought that one was funny, even as shocking as the cold water was, but the time he squirted water in my face while I was still in bed, I got angry.
To be continued...
The thing is, I’m a recovering addict.
I’m finally ready to acknowledge that I’ve developed a major addiction to the snooze button. I mean I simply cannot keep myself from hitting the button, knocking back a few, as it were. So I’m trying to get clean. Which is no easy task when you’re as deeply and desperately addicted as what I am.
The withdrawal symptoms are excruciating… Just to mention a few: shivering, heaviness of the eyelids and sometimes the entire body, stumbling in the dark to find the obnoxious alarm clock one has hidden in increasingly more creative places so as to keep oneself away from the snooze, fumbling in search of one’s glasses, inability to focus without consuming massive amounts of caffeine, sudden bursts of acute afternoon sleepiness…
So far, I’ve been unable to practice total abstinence, and I’m trying to manage my addiction – with varying degrees of success. I know the only way out is to go cold turkey, but until today I just haven’t gotten myself to do it.
It started innocently enough during high school with just a little snooze here and there, and became more pronounced during my college years. Everybody was doing it. And before I knew it, I was hooked on the button as well.
Truth be told, looking back at it all, it should have been clear from early childhood that I had a strong propensity towards the condition, and had I known better, I would never have as much as touched snooze. Addictions run in families, and I’m afraid I carry a genetic predisposition towards snoozing.
My Father was said to be able to snooze standing up in his younger days, and had a penchant for sneaking away for an afternoon nap – especially while at tedious social gatherings – and could be gone for hours. He’d return red-eyed and rumpled, and nobody would say anything, but we all knew.
Even my Mother took to snoozing during the day, and her naps gradually became more and more compulsive, to the point of debilitating. She was dealing with some very challenging things emotionally, and snoozing simply became her means of escape.
When I was a child, my Father would work very hard to get me up in the mornings; I was a difficult child in that way and would simply refuse to get out from under the covers on chilly Norwegian winter mornings. Once, he went so far as to carry me into the bathroom and turn the ice cold shower on me – while I was still in my PJs! I actually thought that one was funny, even as shocking as the cold water was, but the time he squirted water in my face while I was still in bed, I got angry.
To be continued...
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Health Month
After feeling depleted for weeks and ending September flat on my back for 24 hours, I figured it's time to kick that immune system into high gear and boost overall health and vitality. So, October is going to be health month. First challenge: No caffeine for the entire month!
Day one: so far, so good.
Day one: so far, so good.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Own It!
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.-Mark Twain
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Things To Get Rid Of
- Shoes that hurt my feet
- Clothes I don’t wear
- Archaic makeup
- Excessive bags and purses
- Negative thoughts
- Piles of paper
- Bad habits
- Inability to say no
- Compulsion to please everyone
- Bad luggage
- Old baggage
- Unnecessary things
- Moldy food
- Rotten remains of good intentions
- General garbage
- Inclination to start new projects without finishing them
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Lethargy
Stuck in the mire of my mind
Gratuitous guilt feeding on itself
Buried in the rubble of wrecked practicality
Incapacitated by shrapnel from emotional land mines
Recycled insecurities surface and create
Sustainable energy drain
Gratuitous guilt feeding on itself
Buried in the rubble of wrecked practicality
Incapacitated by shrapnel from emotional land mines
Recycled insecurities surface and create
Sustainable energy drain
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