I, 38

Since my last birthday, which was only 2 days ago, I realized a few things...

1) You can’t expect others to make you happy. Other people/things can make you smile, bring you joy from time to time. But only YOU can make yourself happy. This aha moment hit me when I saw a video of Wil Smith last night talking about a conversation he had with his wife Jada. 

2) If you fill a jar with ping pong balls, would you say it is full? If you add beads, does it become full then? If you add sand, is it really, totally full? If you add beer, wouldn’t that make it full? The jar is supposed to represent your life and everything you put into it. The balls represent your relationships. The beads represent things that matter a lot to you like your job or your home. The sand represents everything else including your possessions. If you fill the jar with sand or beads first, you won’t have any room for your ping pong balls. At the end of the day, no matter how full you think your jar is, there is always a little room for beer. The lesson? Put the people that matter most in your life first. Everything else can wait. Yes, even the beer. Watched a video about the whole jar thing this morning. Blew my mind.

3) “It’s not about you.” We spend most, if not all, of our days with ourselves that sometimes we tend to forget that we are not the center of the universe. I consider myself fair and logical, but I do feel like my melancholy is mostly rooted in the idea of people not getting me, people not giving me the time of day, people not seeing me. I know I deserve the same or even greater than the love I send out into the world. But I realized that the world doesn’t really owe me that love. It doesn’t owe me anything really. The world has bigger problems to deal with than little old me. So, it really isn’t JUST about me. That was the painfully harsh yet necessary truth I learned while watching Irreplaceable You on Netflix last night. 

4) Kindness, above all. I feel that loving comes easily to humans. We find something in common with someone and instantly there’s a connection. A field of shared experiences has just been created and we build walls around that, trying to preserve it every way we can. But love, truly, is so much more. Should BE much more. And kindness, mindfulness, selflessness are at the core of it. When you’re stuck in traffic and a car is making a signal to get in front of you, let them. When someone does something good, acknowledge them. When your kid looks at you while you’re on your phone, stop what you’re doing for a moment and smile at them. By doing these things, we’re not selling out, we’re not being pushovers, we’re not devaluing our own time. We’re making time. For kindness. And it fills holes in your heart you’ve never imagined could be patched up again.

5) Everything you ever want, everything you ever need, is here right in front of you...These are the last lines of The Greatest Showman. My husband, daughter and I caught the sing-along version of the movie on the night of my birthday. I’ve seen it 3 times before, but never the sing-along. The whole movie rocked me to my core. Every. Single. Time. But on that particular night, when those last lines were being played and the words were shown on the screen, the floodgates that were my tears just opened and I started nodding along. Big sigh. Of relief this time.

I asked God for a sign on my birthday. He sure gave me plenty.

What About What I Want

I want a Louis Vuitton Speedy Bandouliere 35 Monogram or Damier Ebene. I want to go all around Ireland and live there for free for at least a month. I want to eat and watch movies for a living. I want to lose 50 lbs. and look good in tight fitting clothes and swimwear. I want to have radiant, flawless skin. I want a celestial body named after me. I want to wear heels all day everyday and not feel pain. I want to travel to Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, the UK, Cambodia, Vietnam, Italy, France, Czech Republic, Brazil. I want to fly first class. I want to take a selfie with Ethan Hawke and Henry Cavill. I want passion. I want to be good on the drums. I want to have a decked out home office. I want a free lifetime subscription to Netflix and iFlix. I want the perfect little black dress that will make me look like a million bucks every time I wear it. I want to take a long, leisurely shower with absolutely no distractions and interruptions. I want to hibernate in a 4-star hotel room with a king-size bed, round the clock room service at no extra cost, and the fluffiest pillows and duvet in the world. I want the latest iPhone and MacBook Pro. I want to use a skateboard with no fear. I want to sing a duet with Gary Lightbody and our song goes to #1 on iTunes and the Billboard charts. I want perfect-fitting, flattering jeans. I want a kick-ass kitchen. I want to go to the supermarket and fill the cart without having to worry about how much it's all going to cost. I want to be adored, acknowledged, complimented, desired, loved. I want to go shopping whenever I want. I want Luna to grow up responsible, respectful, grounded, successful, healthy, beautiful. I want more kids. I want a happy home. I want to want for nothing.

Giddy Up

My name is Fritz and this is my first attempt to writing anything in the last, err, I don't know, I can't even count anymore. I've been with Blogger since 2007 and I don't think I've blogged about anything remotely interesting since, well, let's call it "The Great Depression." Go to my old blog, you'll know what I mean. I'm a website copywriter, too; website owners pay me to write original copies for them. So, you can see how that's a problem for me.

No, it isn't writer's block. It isn't just writer's block, to tell you frankly. It's a slew of things; excuses, reasons, happenstances really. I was working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Until I downgraded to just 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. THEN I started missing deadlines and, as a result, I was not getting paid for work I wasn't doing. Rightfully so. I tried to get my groove back, but it was too late at that point. I got pregnant, which was nothing short of a miracle. But the whole experience, no matter how happy it made everyone, just made it hard for me to get any work done. Life, the good and the bad side of it, got in the way. I know that doesn't justify anything. But that's what happened.

I miss writing, that's another motivator right there. Lately, I've been feeding my brain with so much fiction, so much stories from other storytellers that I kind of forgot how to tell my own story, my own non-fiction. I'd like to change all that. I have no idea how, but this is a good place to start, I think. I'm bidding adieu to my old blog and starting a new one. A fresh start. A clean slate. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes. A bajillion tons of ashes.

Consider this as the first step to get back on the horse. A wee tiny horse, sure. Like a cob - those cute chubby Hobbit horses they used in the Peter Jackson movies. Ok, fine, a donkey (happy?). I just want to get out of this rut. I don't want to be idle anymore. I want to make my mark in this infinite cyberworld. I want to wake the sleeping dragon, revive the creativity and the eagerness I once had, and write. Write exceptionally well. LIVE exceptionally well. I would very much like for my daughter to look back one day and tell me, "You're a friggin' amazing writer, Mothergoose." Yes, those exact words.