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Dreams…Dusted Off

05 Sunday Jul 2015

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6_RL_June2015Well, my dear readers and followers…this has been the longest I’ve gone in a loooong time not posting in here.  Been kind of a nice break and breather.  Sometimes I just don’t feel compelled to post every week like I’ve typically done the past few years…wow, this blog will be SIX in September!  Life has transformed in so many ways since that first “I don’t know what’s going to happen in here” post in September 2009.

So what’s been going on lately?  A HOT HOT HOT Seattle summer…mind blowing and record-breaking!  90s temperatures (32-33 degrees C)…before the 4th of July???  Yes.  And I love it.  I embrace it and relish in it.  So I have sweat running down my back upstairs here in the townhouse sometimes?  Who cares.

And I’ve gone to the dark side these past couple months…yes, I’m getting into cycling.  As in bike riding.  I was fortunate to stumble upon a great (free) offer to take a bike from a friend and former co-worker…one of those classic “I got a bike and I only rode it 6 times in 3 years” stories.  And I’m hooked!  Wow.  I’m discovering the freedom and flexibility (not to mention great exercise) provided to your mind and body when you ditch your car and hop on your bike.

I started right away doing some urban biking with E.  Along the Duwamish trail.  West Seattle to Georgetown.  West Seattle up to Fremont for the annual Solstice Festival.  And the bus system provides even more flexibility, as they come equipped with bike racks.  What could be easier than this?  Just hop on the bus, clamp your bike on the rack and voila!  Actually, E’s been helping me with getting my bike up onto the bus racks until I get the hang of it. I’ve got the upper body strength to lift it up, but the mechanics of it aren’t quite there yet for me.  I’m super happy for the help meanwhile.  And discovering the joy of (re)discovering my hometown on two wheels!

I’m glad my first ventures out were straight away into urban environments like Georgetown, Beacon Hill, Columbia City and other Seattle neighborhoods.  You really have to be on your guard watching for cars and large trucks…this is the industrial heart of Seattle where it all happens…neighborhoods you might normally zip through and not pay much attention to in your car.  Now, on a bike…you savor them.  The scenery.  The sounds.  The smells.  Bakeries.  Truck Fuel.  Urine. Flowers.

And when we switched to riding in more suburban or paved bike trail environments around here, I felt so calm, like it was no big deal.  Going super urban and through downtown right away…well, I didn’t have any time to second guess myself or feel nervous.  Just GO!  Now THAT’S awesome.

We’ve beaten the heat getting outta Dodge for some beautiful hikes…the latest was Rachel Lake, just over Snoqualmie Pass.  It’s a challenging one with some steep switchbacks and a couple of small rock scrambles.  When you get to the top (see the pic above) you’re at around 4600′ elevation (1420m).  Amazing.  Even at that elevation it was warm…but the breezes were cool and I was ready to cannonball into the lake!  But dunking my feet in was bliss.  I highly recommend this hike – it’s not an easy one, fair warning, though.  And bring your bug spray.  The mosquitoes are rampant, but when I was doused in spray I managed only 4-5 bites over a 6 hour hike which is pretty amazing.

Sometimes dreams reawaken with a crack of rotten wood and a SNAP.  That’s just what happened when E put his foot through the rotten dried up wood on one of my deck balconies.  Thankfully it was intentional and not an accident (eesh).  So a trip to the lumber yard is on the list soon to replace the boards (it’s pretty small , about 65 sq feet).

And with that, a dream from 20+ years ago reawakened from its long slumber…I need to live in the city and get out of the suburbs.  For real.  Now that I work downtown and spend most of my free time in the city as well, I’m realizing how my townhouse has morphed into a crash pad.  A crash pad screaming for more repairs and updates.  Things I’ve put off due to confusion or just pure procrastination and fucking laziness.

Oh yes, you’re intrigued now, right?  Stay tuned for much, much more on this new (reawakened) dream!  The wheels are in motion to fix this place up and find me a new place to live.

Shifting

05 Sunday Aug 2012

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Last night I had a really cool flash of inspiration – a catchy title for today’s post.  Now of course I have zero idea what it was so it’ll be “shifting” for now unless something more awesome pops into my head.

It feels like AGES since my last post…but nope, sure enough it’s been a week just like my usual routine.  Which I adore, by the way…fivenineteen’s been such a great outlet and solace for me – and hopefully some entertaining reading for those of you who stumble in here by accident or follow along (thank you and thank you, by the way!!).  I love the slower pace of Sunday…time to mentally recharge, refresh, dream and wonder.

And for the past near week my gut has been both whispering and shouting at me that it’s time to make some changes (no, it’s not the voices in my head).  Starting with hockey.  The game that has changed my life these past nine years – my God, 1/5 of my life!  I’m going to take a sabbatical after our summer season playoffs wrap up – which could be as soon as tonight if we don’t win our game.  I have so many memories of all these years of hockey I could ramble on forever about it (and I have occasionally in here I’m sure). 

Know that feeling when you KNOW what you need to do and then talk about it…and you can’t help but be so happy and excited because it’s the right decision and you sound so goddamn authentic?  I had a great chat at the rink with my team Captain last Monday…and it felt so wonderful to tell him!  I have a ton of respect for him too – he’s fairly young (24) but far beyond his years in leadership and organization.  Hockey is a big time commitment and big financial committment too – believe me, I would never spend as much time or money as I have on hockey if it was not worthwhile to me. 

9 years.  NINE – OK, well almost nine, as it was some time in September or October 2003 that I suited up in brand new hockey gear and took to the ice, joining an adult beginner hockey clinic on a total random whim!  I had absolutely NO idea how much fun I would have, the amazing people I’d meet along the way, and all the crazy experiences of late nights and weird hours (11pm faceoffs on Sunday nights…in the dead of winter?  That soon became ‘normal’ for me.)  The charity games, benefitting our local Ronald McDonald House.  The off the chain tourneys in Vegas…fantastic!  And I had no idea I’d still be doing this all these years!

Along with so many fabulous memories, what hockey has provided for me is the incredible benefit of Sunday night exercise.  I used to stress out on Sunday nights, restless and squirmy on my couch watching TV, or sometimes having dinner at my folks’ house.  I’d stress out about stuff coming up at work mostly.  Skating my ass off Sunday nights broke that spell – so freeing and joyous!  When I’m on the ice nothing else matters.  And getting great exercise with great people, along with the bright lights and cold air at the rink…just an amazing experience.

Now I’m going to continue this glorious tradition of Sunday night exercise…back at my gym!  Which I have not set foot in in…probably a year and a half.  Ridiculous, right?  It’s like flushing money down the toilet every month.  And I’m going to take the money I normally budget for hockey league fees and get back to working out with a personal trainer.  I contacted B, and we’re going to meet later this week to talk about my goals and put together a plan!  I’m so excited!  B trained me for a few months 3 years ago, and I had to pull the plug when my work contract ended. 

That all seems like a long time ago…I was out of work but still in the gym every other day, training for my very first 5K.  And just trying to keep mentally sane through the unemployment.  I was so grateful for hockey during those months too, as I always knew when it was Sunday (because that was usually our game night).  Unemployment was awful in so many ways…and not knowing what day it was when I woke up was bizarre.

So now I will focus on improving my physical fitness.  Nine years ago I was, well, nine years younger and probably 30 pounds slimmer.  I was also skating 3 or 4 times a week, dropping in on various practices and scrimmages.  How the hell did I have the time and energy for that?  Nowadays, skating once a week is about all I can manage, and that’s definitely not enough to maintain fitness or improve my game.  Life is different for me now – I’m busier in different ways, I’m probably not as energetic and it’s harder for me to get home from work and springboard back out the door to a weeknight practice or scrimmage.

Working out at the gym with B will help me tackle the groan of middle age weight gain and improve my muscle tone.  My core is not anywhere near as strong as it used to be – my back hurts if I’m on the ice too long during a shift.  My abs and upper body need work, and I’d sure love to find more of my waistline again!  The plan is to work out with him twice a week, and then work out on my own on those all so important Sunday nights.  Maybe it’s time to get back in the pool or try yoga?

Yes, I guess my life really HAS changed a lot in nine years!  Seven different jobs (I do contracting/consulting work), new friendships, a few romantic relationships, a few 5Ks, the launch of this blog in 2009 and a totally new stretch starting my Silpada jewelry business.  I’m definitely not a slacker!

And yesterday I took a look at the clutter here in the home office.  This room pretty much looks like it’s barfed, as everything from the 3rd bedroom is moved in here while L and I finish up the popcorn ceiling scraping work.  Ugh.  Books piled up everywhere.  It suddenly dawned on me that a lot of these books have been just sitting in my bookcase (and now on the floor) UNREAD!  I haven’t opened a lot of them in 15 or more years…and probably never will!  So I jumped out of my chair and grabbed a few grocery bags.  Voila…35 books off to Goodwill – hurray!!  It’s still cluttered in here, sadly, but at least I made a small dent in it.

Tonight I will head to the rink with a smile…it’s our first playoff game and given it’s single-elimination playoffs, it might be my last time on the ice for a while if we lose.  Whatever happens is what was meant to happen…and either way I’m so excited about the rest of summer and fall and my plans…new adventures await!

Don’t Take Anything Personally

27 Sunday Nov 2011

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This calls for a cup of coffee! 

And this is the second part of The Four Agreements book I’ve committed – joyously – to read and blog about over the next four weeks.  This book is compelling enough that I know it will be well broken-in and loved even after I am done with my first read through.

The author, Don Miguel Ruiz, summarizes this chapter:  “Nothing others do is because of you.  What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Wow.  Just, WOW!

Why do we take things personally?  If someone random dude on the street yells, “hey, you stupid bitch,” without even knowing me, it’s not about me, it’s about them.  If I were to take that random mudslinging personally, then perhaps I believe I am a stupid bitch.  I might even wonder “…how does he know?  Is he clairvoyant or does everyone else out there see how stupid – and bitchy – I am?”  The minute I choose to agree with this I’ve taken the ‘poison’ as Ruiz calls it, and I’m trapped…trapped in a dream of Hell.

Why eat others’ emotional garbage?  Emotional garbage…ah, love that term too. 

Oh man, I remember getting teased a lot as a kid. Painful.  Kids can be absolutely verbally brutal to one another, don’t you think?  I’d come home in tears sobbing about this and that, crying on my Mom’s shoulder.  And I in turn picked on others I saw as ‘weaker’ than me.  I remember my Mom saying stuff like, “Just ignore them and it will go away,” or even the doozy, “Don’t take it personally.”  That’s a LOT for an 8 or 9 year old to process…when you’re young all of that playground politics IS your world and nothing else matters.

What if someone insults us, truly hurts our feelings deep down to our core?  Ruiz responds by saying, “…it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said.  You are hurting yourself.”

So THAT’S it.  Oh, and how did I come across this book, on a side note?  Remember the “Two Surprising Ds” post I did recently?  I am really enjoying this new friendship with D, the woman I used to see ‘squatting’ in a building cafeteria where we worked – as did I.  (Consultants without official workspaces get to eek out space wherever we can!)  Thank you Michael Kors for getting us officially acquainted – she recognized me waiting in line at the store in Bellevue Square and I am so glad she said hello!

One night at a happy hour I was venting to her and a few of her friends about how I got my chops busted a little at work.  I was still fuming a bit and feeling taken down a notch or two.  Vulnerable.  I strive to be open minded, open to feedback from co-workers around me, but when it’s delivered in front of another consultant I have just met, well, that’s NOT OK in my book.  The energy in that small meeting was jacked up and just overall way off.  And I felt cut off at the knees, embarrassed, and in my defense, got, well, admittedly, defensive.  Hate to admit it, but I did.  There, I said it.  So D immediately cut to the chase and said ummm, you took it personally and oh you SO need to read this book!    

There’s something about a double whammy back at me when people tell me to not take things personally.  I get stubborn and feel like lashing out with well hell I will feel however I want to, so NEENERS.  Yeah, that’s mature, right?  It’s been a lifelong process for me to shed that, grow up, and even take things to the next level by reading this book.  Nope, it’s not about me.  Nothing is.  Not even when people get mad at me.  My truth is only my perception – no one else’s.  I let someone push my buttons and I fell off my ‘stance.’  I got defensive when someone told me to not be defensive!  Whoops.  

Now I can breathe and learn through that recent experience and let it go.  And it feels fantastic!

What about the flip side, say when someone says “you are wonderful.”  Ruiz explains:  “…they are not saying that because of you.  You know you are wonderful.  It is not necessary to believe other people who tell you that you are wonderful.  Don’t take anything personally.  Even if someone got a gun and shot you in the head, it was nothing personal.  Even at that extreme.”

OK wow, I had not even taken it that far in my mind but alrighty!  But let’s back up to the compliment of “you are wonderful.”  What’s wrong with acknowledging a compliment like that with a genuine THANK YOU in return?  I was always taught to appreciate compliments and not brush them off.  I’ll have to keep mulling over that one.  Perhaps he means that – let me read my paragraph above again – that if we already feel that way we don’t need others to tell us?

When we take things personally, we set ourselves up to suffer.  To suffer for nothing.  Ruiz even talks about abuse: “…if you have the need to be abused you will find it easy to be abused by others.  Likewise, if you are with people who need to suffer, something in you makes you abuse them…they are asking for justification for their suffering.”

If we don’t take things personally, we will never be hurt by what other people say or do.  How freeing is that?  We are not responsible for the actions of others…we’re only responsible for ourselves.

So my goal is to really, truly incorporate this mantra into my daily living and breathing, even moreso on top of my tough lifelong journey to shed that old skin.  I know I can do it and I won’t judge or beat myself up when I slip either.  Onward!

Next week’s post:  Don’t Make Assumptions.                

Half Dreams

17 Sunday Apr 2011

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I didn’t do it.  It didn’t happen. 

This morning was supposed to be my first 5K of the year…the Bellevue 5K/10K which starts and ends in the Downtown Park.  My good friend T, fellow 5K’er and partner in crime for all things shopping and all things fabulous sushi, asked me to join her and a few others to do this one.  Why not?  She and I did two last year, and we were excited to try a different route!

For some reason I had a gut feeling early on that it wasn’t meant to be.  And it was for something as silly – and frustrating – as the registration process.  I went online a few weeks ago to sign up and the damn system put me in the most bizarre loop.  I kept getting prompted to register and create an account, starting with my email address.  So, after creating a new account, I got an error that my email address was already registered and that I just needed to sign in.  Huh?

OK, OK, no problem.  Perhaps I did create an account many moons ago with this registration network.  But try as I might with a handful of the standard passwords I use, no luck.  I then hit the ‘forgot my password’ button, but got yet another error that ‘this email address is not on file – please register.’  REALLY?  And the same thing happened with three different email addresses.  So, the system was hosed.  Thankfully T registered on my behalf after I’d tried this a few times to no avail.

If you know me in real life or perhaps read my ramblings here regularly, you may recall I’ve been under the weather, battling a lingering cold and cough since about February.  It’s pretty much gone (dang I say that every week…longest decrescendo ever eh?) but it’s very apparent how it’s sapped my energy level – moreso my voice.  I was talking with T yesterday on the phone to figure out timing and where we were going to meet this morning and she asked, “Are you feeling OK?  You don’t sound so good.”  I was feeling good, but my ravaged voice sounded otherwise.  I guess I’ve gotten so used to how somewhat raspy it is right now.  I told her no, I’m fine, looking forward to tomorrow and all.  And I was!

It’s a little frightening how horrible a morning person I am becoming.  The race started at 8am, which meant I’d have to get up even earlier – on a Sunday – than I typically do for work, to allow enough time to drive, park, pick up my registration packet and all.  So I forced myself to bed a few hours earlier than normal, but I tossed and turned like a dumbass.  Did I have my alarm set correctly?  Did I turn off its weekend sleeper cycle so it WOULD go off on Sunday?  DUH.  I NEVER worry about that on weeknights!  Anyway, I remember this tossy/turny feeling the nights prior to 5Ks, so I tried to just laugh it off and relax.

Normally my adrenaline kicks in and I bust through my inner fog and get up.  But today, that didn’t happen.  Around 6:30am or so, I stumbled out of bed and went downstairs to text T that I was a no-go.  Feeling oh so very turdlike.  But I knew deep down she would understand.  And she was doing this race with her boyfriend and a few others so I wasn’t leaving her high and dry.  

Then I went back to sleep.  I had no idea how much – or little – sleep I’d gotten the night before, but I sure needed more now.  Alarm…off you go.

But in the fuzzy purgatory-ish moments between laying awake and falling asleep, I started having what I call Half Dreams.  I’m not fully asleep in a dream when these happen.  Rather I have two visions in front of me.  First, whatever I would normally see, like the bed blankets, the ceiling or the window…and then an overlay of whatever the dream scene is.  Anyone else ever experience these?  I’ve only just noticed them recently.  They are mostly very brief scenes of recent memories – things that have happened at work or just hanging around the house here.  And even the memory of the flashing lights in my rear view mirror when I got a speeding ticket last month.  Ha.  Somewhere there’s some irony and humor about getting a speeding ticket going TO work.

I finally crawled out of bed around 10am.  Sweet freakin’ bliss.  THAT cleansing sleep (and a few Half Dreams) was exactly what I needed.  And as I went downstairs a second time to start my day (Take 2!) I smiled as I checked my phone and saw T’s text:  “Totally understand! Love you!”. 

Now THAT’S a true friend alright. Can’t wait to see her later this week and get caught up over fabulous sushi.