ellenoutloud's Blog: everyday wisdom

John Ruskin says: “Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are'. Hmmmm. Interesting thought, let’s give that a try --

I like windows, lots and lots of huge, paneless, sparkling windows to see outside and let the sun shine in. I like color – brights and royals and jewel tones. I love music – all of it, with the exception of songs without melody. I like dogs, especially puppies with big feet.

I like stars and moons and planets and every shining object on a clear night sky. I like laughter and out-of-control giggling that makes breathing impossible and causes your facial muscles to ache.

I like strong, cool breezes and the sound and smell of the ocean. I love the ocean. It is my very favorite place to be. I like dying campfires and that one hand in mine.

Which is to say, I like transparency and the kinds of people that let me in to see them, that add color and song and rhythm and laughter to my life. I like to dispense and receive great joy!

I wish you a day of giggles, breezes, song, and stars!
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I ‘d love to hear what you like and who you are…

Ever notice that what bugs us most about other people we’re often guilty of ourselves?!? I know of what I speak! Well, come peek over my shoulder for just a sec and you'll see what I mean...

The phones were crazy at work yesterday. I was on the line with a, shall we say, “long-winded” fellow who had decided right then would be the perfect time to detail his entire medical history beginning with that nasty illness back in ’79.

Suns rose, moons set, still he talked. And talked. I listened patiently (for me) through all of his recap of the 1980’s and most of the nineties, while my other lines rung off the hook. Several times I would excuse myself from Mister “But-Wait-There’s-More” to take another call.

The last time I put the gentlemen on hold I ended up on another call for longer than I expected. When I finally returned to him I heard: “(deep sigh) …and that’s how I ended up in Arkansas!”

I stuttered, and sputtered, and started to explain how I had been on the other line and hadn’t heard a word, when he said: “Thank you SO much for listening to me. You don’t know how much that means. I guess I really needed to say all that. Thank you.”

Dirty worm that I am, I said, “you’re welcome. My pleasure.” But I promise, I am really going to make a better effort to both listen, and hear. See? Watch. My head’s going up and down. I’m listening.

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What can you do today to make someone feel really
"heard?"

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about choices – how we make them and whether we really have them. You know, having those ‘deep thought’ conversations with myself. As I struggle with the paralysis that often accompanies decision-making, I am wrestling with right choices. I haven’t always made them in my past.

In fact, I have made a lot of poor choices, and I’ve certainly suffered the consequences of them. Sometimes I chose poorly not understanding the consequences involved, sometimes despite them.

Choice-making was easier, I think, early on. I was either more courageous or more naive, but I didn’t go ten rounds with options like I do now. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to “what if?” myself right off the deep end. Usually, when I struggle THAT hard with a decision, either I don’t have enough information to make one, or I know what the decision must be and I don’t want to do it.

I miss the days when I could jump off the high dive of decision-making without first check to see if there’s water in the pool.

Maybe the difference is that in our early years our choices are teaching us and later on we choose based on what we’ve learned? Or, not.

Guess I wouldn’t make a very good contestant on Let’s Make a Deal. After all, it’s only a 30-minute show. Maybe, just maybe, I’m over thinking things, and the only real decision I need to make is where to take my nap!

I wish you all a happy weekend. May your decisions come easily and your nap opportunities often!

I wonder how we would behave if we REALLY knew how many people were watching us? My dear friend and writing partner is getting ready to move across the country. (AAACK! Is she crazy??)

I am absolutely in awe of her focus, organizational skills and stamina since “Move”, at this particular juncture of my life, has taken on the mantle of swearword. I have found that moving, in terms of physical relocation of one's belongings, is a practice best left to those with the chronological age of about twelve, with the emotional and physical stamina to match. Yep. Moving is best left to a super, strong twelve-year old.

I’m still recovering from my last move two years ago. I find the whole, "where is my bra?" adventure tremendously unsettling. There’s a perfectly good reason most of my packing boxes now double as end tables. I didn’t think I could survive one more day as the answer-woman. How did I get appointed “The One Who Knows Where EVERYTHING IS.” Clairvoyant, clairaudient, I can see through moving boxes! They speak to me. By the time we were done I thought "couldja,didja,what-didja-do-with" was my new Indian name.

Back to topic, my friend is practically whistling through this seachange of life! She’s powering through all the tough stuff with nary a whine on her lips. (I said whine – with an H. It took me a pantry full of the red grape variety to get me moved.) I watch her attack each task with gusto and grace and frankly I want to slap her! C’mon, be a grouch. Bitch. Moan. Carry on about how hard this is.

Nope. She’s going to show me how to tackle the hardest tasks with a positive attitude and spirit. She’s going to demonstrate exactly how you do the tough stuff. You make it fun. You dive in. You laugh. You dance. Funny thing is? She doesn’t even know she’s setting a good example or how high she’s raising the bar – or even that she’s being watched --

she’s too busy dancing.

-- I'd love to hear how you are Tango-ing through the tough stuff...

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I was barreling down the freeway last week when I saw a highway alert sign that read: Rough Road Ahead. Thanks for the heads up, I thought.

Wouldn’t it be great if life came with flashing roadside alerts? “Warning: tough patch coming”. “Fasten Your Seatbelt, It’s Going to Get Bumpy”. Or, for those of us in the midst of relationship angst: “Use Extreme Caution When Exiting.”

I know, I know. We should always be prepared for life’s big emergencies. Still, we’re humans, and we tend to get pretty comfortable driving down the road, minding our own business, or at least somebody else’s. Then WHAM… screech…. Out jumps the unexpected ___________________ (fill in the blank) illness, layoff, break-up.

A little warning before we have to slam on the brakes and take corrective action would be appreciated.

It’s funny, I used to be so fearful of what lay ahead I was overly cautious – like one of those driver’s you honk at going 35 mph in the fast lane. I was always braking as I got to the on-ramp. Now I’ve probably over-corrected, and anxious to cover a lot of ground I go careening down the expressway.

I guess we can’t prepare for every eventuality, but it does help to keep our emergency kits packed and at the ready. I suppose it’s the near miss of the hurricane that’s got me thinking. Bottled water, check. First aid kit, check. Phone number of best buddies on speed dial, check.

What’s in your kit?

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I wish you a happy, productive, enlightened, bump-free week!

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Okay, Law of Attraction fans. This one’s for you! Just yesterday I posted a piece about ‘emergency preparedness’, and how we never know what’s waiting for us a little further down this road of life we’re on.

Right after that I blew a gasket. No, I don’t mean I blew a casket, my Buick did.

Now I’m not going to do a blog on Auto Mechanics 101, but I would like to stress that there’s really only one thing that’s super hard on the engine. Heat. Repeat after me: Heat bad, Tarzan, Cool good. So when the pretty little red thermometer symbol thingie turned bright red? That was the clue that the car was pretty hot.

Hot enough that said car decided the struggle wasn’t worth the effort so it decided to die mid rush-hour when apparently the flow of traffic likes to run about a gazillion miles an hour. Okay, maybe just fifty, it’s hard to tell when you’re stalled, they’re not, and all you hear is the whooshhhhhhh as everyone flashes past you.

Ever notice how good your hearing gets when your eyes are closed?

I opened mine just in time to see the sweet thing behind the wheel of the car rapidly approaching mine, who was really, really involved in that text message she was crafting. You know, I’m all about writers, but there is such a thing as right time, right place.

I’m not sure how effective honking the horn is to those in back of your vehicle but I leaned on that sucker with everything I had. She looked up, in time. I’m blessed.

So…

I don't really think that just because I wrote about roadside emergencies I had one. I like to believe my guardian angles were sending me a big metaphysical "heads up". Still...

Today I’d like to focus on prosperity. Abundance. Lots and lots of abundance. Abundant prosperity. Yes. The open source…I'm visualizing how winning the lottery would only enhance the warm, generous, loving, human that I already am… ah…
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May all of your wishes be happy ones, and may all of your wishes come true!

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Good day, Bravehearts! Just so you know? There’s very little I haven’t messed up, few mistakes I haven’t made. Seems I’ve misstepped, lock-stepped, twelve-stepped and quick-stepped through this life of mine – which means I’ve been stepped on, I’ve stepped upon, and often just stepped in it. The good news is, since most of my rough edges have been knocked off, I’ve learned a couple of things along the way.

The biggest mistake I ever made was selling myself short. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to morph in to somebody else – somebody approvable. I did a poor job of living up to the person other folks wanted me to be, or the one I thought they wanted.

I’ve tried to be quieter, thinner, softer, sweeter. I’ve put up, shut up, let up. No matter how hard I tried I still ended up the loud, sensitive, frizzy-haired chick with a big heart and thighs to match.

I would have been way ahead of the game early on if I’d put down my makeover list, worked with what I had, and developed my strengths – my humor, compassion, and ability to communicate. When I finally focused on that? My life turned around dramatically. I get it. I wasn’t real good at being some one else, but it turns out I’ve done a dandy job of just being me.

I highly recommend you enjoy today, and I encourage you to just be you! As Carly Simon sings: “Nobody Does it Better!”

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I’d love to hear if you are being you, yet?

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There is great serendipity in mistake-making! Sometimes, mistakes and accidents turn out much better than some of the things we do on purpose. Like a typo you hadn’t intended that actually makes more sense than what you’d planned.

I have a friend that misread one of my promotional pieces where I talk about being a motivational speaker, a natural born-encourager, and an exhorter. She read that as “extorter”. Kind of changes the whole meaning. Extort comes from the root word “torture”. Well, having reread some of my writing, perhaps she’s on to something…

My point is, sometimes what we say and what we see may not always be correct but it may still be just right!

My niece was raised to enunciate words very clearly – in doing so she often puts the emphasis on the wrong syllable. I remember when she said she found something in her refrigerator she hadn’t expected and she was startled, only she hit the first syllable really hard. It came out START-ulled not start-ULLed .

At first I was going to correct her, but then I thought, “huh, seeing her favorite food in the fridge surprised her, it gave her a start – she probably was START-led.” And if you were to take a peek in my Kenmore Side by Side? Trust me, you’d be startled too!

So hear this: Everything that happens today may not go the way you had planned.

The universe may have cooked up a whole mess of surprise casserole for you.

Whatever happens today?

o You are MORE than equipped to handle
o You will undoubtedly learn from
o You’ll never forget – IF You choose to make it
memorable!!

Have a blessed and memorable day -- Get Started, or Start-led!

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I'd love to hear what starltes you? What mistakes made turned out better than your plans?

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One of the features of the community I inhabit is “minimal maintenance”. That means most green, growing things, like grass, have been replaced by gravel. It’s everywhere. Our backyard is gravel on concrete.

Fortunately, gray goes with everything so we’ve brought in huge planters and stuffed them full of fuchsia oleanders and hot pink Roses of the Desert and Purple something-or-others that will thrive in their pots. Okay, maybe not thrive, how about stay alive.

In two years we've learned which plants have the temperament to withstand the incessant upwards-of-ninety degrees this climate provides. They do better than their gardener!

In these stifling climes “gardening” becomes an aerobic activity – you’ll break a sweat watering. You can’t let a day go by without tending to the flowers or the sun will burn them up in a day.

So last night, as I was moving the hose around the steamy cement, I marveled again at the revelation that the prettiest, lushest, most abundant flowers we have we never even planted.

You should see the periwinkles. Beautiful, purple, lavender, lilac vinca and they are everywhere – they grow in the gravel.

I should say, they FLOURISH in the gravel. Carried on the winds, nurtured by the rains, tenacious in the droughts - they were planted not by intention but by fate. No matter where they’d hoped to be, they landed where they were blown – adjusting to their circumstances and flowering like mad!
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I pray wherever you’ve been blown today you adjust, flourish, and flower like crazy!!

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As my sister tells it, when we were 4 and 6 years old, our parents would have us stand up on the fireplace together and entertain our grandfather by belting out show tunes from Camelot, Sound of Music, My Fair Lady. I don’t remember this at all but she swears that I would beg to perform, shrieking: “Lemme! Lemme! Le-meeeeeeeee!"

Hmmm. Perhaps I still do.

I do cautiously admit that I’m a bit of a stage hog, and limelight is my favorite color. While I’m afraid of needles and I don’t think I have the guts to get a tattoo, “Drama Queen” does appeal to me. It’s taken me a long time to get comfortable with that.

No doubt, if you are my polar opposite, shy, and uncomfortable in groups or in the spotlight, just reading this is bringing on a bad case of hives or some minor hyperventilation. I have the same reaction when I think of being alone, or worse, ignored.

I am only starting to accept me for who I am, and I still wish I were quieter. But that’s not in the cards, nor my DNA. So I may not have a fireplace to sing from, but I’m going to sing show tunes at the top of my lungs until I get it right – as Dolly Levi might say -- before the parade passes by.

-- Here's hoping today finds, well, if not a song from your lips, a song in your heart. I'd love to hear what you're singing about today?

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Long before that weird, media grabbing, attention seeking, celebrity-wannabe couple stalked and crashed that White House dinner, I went to a party uninvited, too.

I really wanted to go to my Senior Prom. It was less than a month away, and I didn’t have a date, when my big, serious crush of all crushes, my one-kiss wonder pseudo boyfriend who had been dating the same girl for two years came over to my house. I remember we were in the den, and we were standing, facing each other. He was staring at me, getting real emotional, and struggling for words when he finally got out, “uh, I was wondering, if you would go to the Prom with me?” (long pause).

Can you imagine how thrilled I was?

So, I said to my BIG SERIOUS CRUSH, “I’d love to go to the prom with you”. And he said: (wait for it) “That’s good to know.”

See, as he explained it, he wasn’t inviting, he was just wondering. He was just curious. Just checking to see if I would go. You know, like taking a poll or a survey.

Ow. Ow, ow, ow, yes that hurt. But did I mention I really, really wanted to go to Prom?

So, I did, along with a handful of other folks, “the un-asked”, one of which had a sailboat. The prom was held at a beautiful pavilion right on the southern California coast. My friends and I sailed right up and walked right in like we knew what we were doing.

Okay, yes, we were asked to leave, we were making a scene – but we also made a memory.

I learned a lesson that night. It’s stuck with me all these years later. You know, we don’t need to stand around and wait for life to invite us to participate. We can always jump right in. Or sail right up, for that matter.

Hey it’s always great to be invited but there’s no need to stand on ceremony, if you want to go somewhere, go! Make a move – heck, make a scene! Make a point, but make a memory.

Invite yourself!

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I’d love to hear where you’re taking yourself today!

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If we were to search this website for the word gratitude, we would get 3,177 hits.

And, I think I know why.

A lot of us are probably wondering, how in the world do I practice an “Attitude of Gratitude” when my husband just died? Or I just lost my job. Or I’m still out of work after two years. Or I lost my child. Or my child’s on drugs. Or I’m addicted to alcohol. Or _________ fill in your own blank.

It’s pretty easy to be grateful when we first fall in love, we just won the lottery, our tests results were great, and it wasn’t cancer after all.

I don’t have life’s answers. Heck, I’m still working on the questions, but I think we learn gratitude like we learn anything else, but practicing it, and we start right where we are.

A thousand years ago when I was trying to put myself through school and working two jobs, taking a full load of classes, and a long way from home, I called my mom. “Mom,” I started bawling, “This has to be the worst day of my life! It’s finals week, they’ve cut back my hours at the bank, my car broke down, oh, Mom, I’ve been on the beach all morning crying!”

After a pause she said chuckled softly and said: “Hmm, sounds like a pretty wonderful day to me.”

“WHAT?!?” I asked.

“Baby, anytime you can spend all morning crying on the beach? You’re having a wonderful day. You don’t believe me now, but one day you’ll know what I mean.”

And in the thousand years since I learned what she meant. BY COMPARISON to the things I have had to deal with, that day at the beach, was, well, a day at the beach. I learned there are worse things in life than final exams, problems at work, and car trouble.

Maybe every day we wake up – no matter what we face – we woke up. Maybe we need to remember life could be so much worse and it is not. Could that be the secret to blessing counting? We just take baby steps towards gratitude. We just thank God right where we are, and maybe even whisper, “Mom, you were so right”.

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I'd love to hear what small steps you are making towards gratitude. I am grateful for this site, and for all who come here.

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Before the humbling fairies came along and knocked it almost completely out of me, I was a pretty cocky chick.

In my youth I was "all that", knew everything, reeked of confidence, and as they say in today's vernacular, 'tude. Truth be told, I was a self-absorbed twerp.

I made my way up the corporate ladder quickly. I did what it took, if it meant stepping on another rung or another person, it really didn’t matter – onward and upward. I’m not real proud of my climb.

For years I have struggled to balance my desire to be a Godly, compassionate, serving woman with my need to be a powerhouse and force to be reckoned with. A hire wire act might be easier to master.

In penance for a life not so well lived, I gave away a lot of my power to others. I'd blown my chance at starlight and success. Better to stay in the shadows and let others have their day. Somewhere I confused gentleness with servitude.

An extremist, I see now I threw a lot of confident babies out with the egotist's bathwater and went from having a servant's heart to abject subservience; from Diva to Doormat.

Perhaps the balance I'm seeking lies not in compromise but in degrees of gentleness. It's okay and essential to carry some of that old swagger when I’m righting wrongs, tilting at windmills, battling my own dark-talkers. Strength is fine when its force is measured.

There is a quantum difference between self-assuredness and self-absorption. Quite the high wire act indeed. Better bring in the safety net!

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I'd love to hear what tight rope you are walking on today?

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You might not know it to look at me now, but beneath this cool, collected exterior beats the heart of a surfer chick! Born and raised in southern California I spent a lot of time playing in the Pacific, and while I never even got up on a board properly, I would body surf like I knew what I was doing. Which I didn’t. At all. More times than not my encounter with the next, big, wave ended with my face in the sand, saltwater in my eyes, and kelp in my hair.

There’s an art to surfing – by board or body. I think the secret is in the timing. You have to exercise patience. If you try to catch the wave too soon you’ll miss it completely and find yourself upright and watching it go on ahead of you. If you wait too long you are likely to get schmushed –a technical term involving grit and a lot of swallowed seawater. As patient as I am, you understand I spend a lot of time head first on the shore with sand in my mouth!

A good wave is worth the wait. If the wave is right it’s not going to upend you gasping for breath and sprawled on the beach. A good wave will lift you up, up, up, and carry you on its back all the way in. The ride, when it works, is really indescribable – it’s what prompts inept swimmers like myself to endure many a mishap just for the thrill of a good run in.

The secret is you have to let a lot of waves go by. You have to be watchful, vigilant, and ready. You never can tell when the next wave will be THE WAVE.

Yesterday, Braveheart Hassena posted the poem “Youth” by Samuel Ullman. In it he wrote of having our aerials up, to catch the waves of optimism.

I am reminded that there is an ebb and flow and rhythm to life that assures us, if we are patient and EXPECTANT– if we keep our aerials up -- we will catch that next great wave and we are in for one more wonderful ride. C’mon ladies, keep your eyes on the shore and get ready to paddle like mad!

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I'd love to hear about the wave you are ready to catch!

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I wanted to title this post: "I'll Cross That Bridge When I Come to it, As Long As You Are Driving Over It!"

See, I am just a tad bit gephryphohic. I was relieved when I ran across an article in USA Today that said I'm not alone, a lot of folks share the phobia. It’s comforting to know you aren’t crazy all by yourself.

The article pointed out that crossing a bridge creates such anxiety for the phobic that they fear the ensuing panic more than the bridge itself.

In my life, I don’t have any near-miss memories that would engender such illogical fear or anxiety. I don’t know what it stems from. Perhaps it’s another latent “control” issue, or the combo platter of heights and often water.

Whatever the “trigger”, I don’t like crossing them at all. They don’t have to be the world’s highest, like the Millau bridge in the picture. Little bridges are scary too. And it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm riding over as the driver or the passenger, scared is scared, but being alone is always worse.

I manage the white-knuckling by focusing on my goal – what lies on the other end of the span. I psych myself with all the great things waiting for me just on the other side.

I do the same thing when I have to cross those metaphoric bridges in life. I may not always look forward to the process but I hold a clear and positive image of the outcome. And then I cross. I cross.

That's all that matters, isn't it? Despite the anxiety, just cross.
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I’d love to hear what you are courageous enough to do today! What bridge are you willing to cross to get to the reward on the other side?

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