I slept a few hours last night. I had so much on my mind and managed to even dream a bit. I worked and went to the gym. Yesterday was just awful…. as Annie would say… today I made sure I smiled and stayed awake. I worked out really hard… tends to happen when I get knocked down… I get up and go hard. A very attractive guy got on the bike next to me in the room of 50 empty bikes. Why does that happen? I hate letting hot guys see me sweat. My chest gets tight and I start over-compensating my breath. I ended up getting up early and switching to the stairclimber. Downstairs I’m rowing and a buff guy asks me if I’m circuit training and goes on with his unsolicited… advice? I don’t know what it was, but it seemed like it was masked in some sort of confession about how he used to be out of shape and wanted me to know it…I asked him if he was a trainer and if he was trying to sell me training sessions and he laughed and he introduced himself and asked if we could meet sometime. What a weird day. What a weird week. When I’m fighting some self-imposed misery… I must give off a vibe that I’m available. It just adds to the challenge to keep my eyes on the prize.

Today I also think I said something prejudiced… well, I was really paranoid about it for sure and called my friend to tell her I was sorry if she was offended etc. to that she responded… “huh?, you know me… don’t worry”. I just forget sometimes… who knows me and my heart… who knows what I’m about and that’s what scares me…. because when my words could potentially have hurt someone or made them feel like less than they are… that did not elevate them, it can eat me up inside.

When someone rejects you, do you tend to mind your P’s and Q’s… or do you rebel against it all? Amidst all the people I encounter and seek and stumble upon…. I listen for myself in a person…. I’ve heard myself so loudly recently and then just like that…. dead battery.

I can say that I’m definitely back in my music mode, but it took a lot of doing and although I didn’t get to save that song, I’m grateful for the ability to dream in music. I wish I could say my best “work” was done when I’m happy and giddy and blissful… but in retrospect, it has been when I’m in strife or working through something. As someone who writes and also makes music…. I communicate the best in the heat in the moment. Where other people might be so overcome with what is actually going on, this is when I feel the most clarity about how I feel… like, when someone slaps you in the face… you’d probably feel shocked and then upset and maybe cry or yell. I feel shocked, and then I write it down. That is if I have access to my outlet….

You’d think… well, how hard is it to find a piece of paper and a pen? It’s called… when writing doesn’t control the damage… it doesn’t smooth things over…. it doesn’t let the person know you even better, know you for you, know your soul and who you truly are. It’s when words don’t work and you no longer have access to the person you want to communicate with. It’s when your presence is most important and for someone who finds it difficult to be there… it’s an internal battle.

I want to go all the way and check the things off my list that went by the wayside so many times that they’ve become even more mysterious….and important like a key that’s going to unlock a door to things that I have only seen in premonitions and visions. I want to not focus on the time I wasted in between my attempts and just do it. I want to do it and feel like I’m not missing out on the world outside myself. How do you do that?

For some reason and I never got the whole story as to why… but having something to prove carries a stigma. You’re told not to walk around with something to prove. I’d like to say… I have some things to prove to myself and because of that, it’s okay… better than okay, it’s important. I’m making pudding and I want to see it.

I can say that the major contributing factors to my lack of pen to the pages of journals thus-far was a change in day jobs and …. Facebook. Facebook is not for self-centering. Facebook doesn’t really help me share my music either… the biggest way I’ve always been able to share my music and gain connections was playing shows. I’ve come to realize that without writing in my journal and just sort of free-writing anything… I had lost touch with what’s going on and that left me vulnerable to people telling me what they think is going on. Not to mention, my handwriting has gotten horrible.

I have quite a few goals I’ve set for this year. I started on them back in May when I was in a lot of physical pain and was really freaked out about all those other factors when you are trying to recover from an injury. My first priority was my health and I told myself that if I made it to certain milestones in recovery, that I’d owe it to myself to be in the best all around health I’ve ever been … to continue beyond my pre-injury level. So, that’s one thing I’ve been really focused on. I believe that it’s all connected …. so it ties in with making my brain feel good also.

There are random sources of motivation I can come up with…. a lot of the times it’s a person who shares some traits with myself, but I feel they are excelling on a level I am not, but that I think I can get to. And sometimes it’s a person that doesn’t have the advantages or opportunities that I have… and I guilt myself into pushing through. Sometimes… I just envision certain aspects of how I think life will be better once I get closer and closer to I’m working towards.

There have been a couple rough times where I just didn’t feel like hanging in there and I thought of my friend who had passed right before she turned 30 (we were 4 months apart) and how she’s not here right now and how she fought really hard for years trying to beat cancer and she’s not here… and I really heard her voice telling me “are you fucking kidding me… you better do it”.

In other circumstances… i’d say, don’t compare your life with others if you are the one feeling lacking or deprived or unfortunate…. but, when you know someone doesn’t have as much as you… you better take full advantage of your life. It’s not about merely being grateful.. it’s about showing that all you have is not in vain and really playing those cards you’ve been dealt. At least… that’s how I’m seeing it and that’s what keeps me going.

Inspiration is that initial spark that gets you to move… motivation is what keeps you going till you get there. Right?

A really important personal action for me… is to make sure I’m not extending myself to any new commitments while I’m still making the good things stick. Not sticky enough to where it becomes a good habit? Then it’s probably not good for me to get distracted.

So, on another note… I was searching online for a height-weight chart for women my height. Unfortunately, it deviates within 85 lbs which is a big range. What is a healthy weight for a woman 6ft and above? Anyway… I started to think of tall, healthy women and I thought of Gabby Reece and I’ve been looking at her site: Gabby Reece 360 and I really like it so far. I think because it’s been up for so long… I don’t have to wait for new content so, that’s partly why I can access it. Also, when she puts up food comparisons like… mexican food meals at certain restaurants… she doesn’t outright tell you… el pollo loco is the best choice… she gives you the breakdown of several different places and lets you compare the data yourself and decide for yourself. It’s not dumbed-down.

What’s been motivating me with music is just by consistent playing. My friend told me about a book that discusses that success in your field is achieved by putting in the hours… 10,000 hours minimum. When I think about that…. it makes me want to get to work.

my buddy margarita sent me this via facebook

It’s kind of the classic example of being given the opportunity to learn something about yourself when something bothers you about someone. We learn from each other, after all.

I’m having some ups and downs… highs and lows. Have been fighting through, but very hard to sleep and my body is just angry from all the well-intentioned “let’s kick-ass today” exercise and my heart is just starting to scab from a little scrape. Sometimes the small scrapes hurt pretty bad… you just never can tell. This is what you call…. pre-mature burn-out. I won’t burn out… since I’m aware of what this is, never the less… it’s tough. I know what I’m doing and I know what I want and now I have to do all the work. Lots of work.

I’ve told people what I’m doing and how I’m doing it and it’s funny how people will quickly ask doubting questions like “Are you sure that’s going to work?” etc.. and it’s great to know that I don’t doubt it “working” at all. My brain is bitching and moaning that I have to work so hard and thinking about how much it sucks that for what I specifically want… I have to work very hard when others don’t have to work at all. And thinking about how wonderful it would be if even my closest friends truly understood how hard it is. Those are the bad moments ya know…? Those are the times when I allow myself a few minutes and then snap out of it. You get older… you start learning what triggers these moments and the time to do it gets shorter… you basically get sick of your own crap and know how it affects others to be around the debbie-downer.

So, I will be as positive as can be today… look at the sky and let someone else guide me.

The more I’m focusing on the day to day tasks I need to do to get where I want to be, the stronger I feel and the more I feel like I can stear clear instead of swirve or panic stop when someone or something gets in my way…. or rather, I get in my way.

I feel more positive that things work out for the best and my instincts are leading me the right way.

Regressing…? Or just acknowledging who you’ve always been.

I feel like letting something go that you really wanted to keep is putting your trust into something that I personally don’t have the answers to… the course of life. The Dalai Lama wrote or said or whatevered that you should remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck. It’s true, isn’t it? You just never know.

It’s so situational and you have to consider the source and the context of every situation and decide if this is a time where you should apply what you have learned, if you should prove to yourself that you’ve learned by putting it to action for the first time, or if this is a new situation and you should just go with the flow because you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing anyway. This is why… I can’t say I’m so sure about the course of life.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life fighting for other people, making excuses for their actions, trying to save them from themselves and standing up for them against their own adversaries and internal demons. I’ve spoken for people who don’t know how to and cried for them because they won’t let themselves open up. Some days I think about it and I feel disgusted with myself… because I feel as though I haven’t fought hard enough for myself. I haven’t stood up for myself. I haven’t made myself the number one priority.

I don’t know who told me this… but I know it was an older man and it was when I was very young… a kid. It could have been my dad or some other dad-like person… but, I remember it. The guy told me… “always remember to vote for yourself… you could be the tie-breaker”. I’ve been thinking about this all week. It’s so interesting now in the context of my life and my goals and what I want right now.

I thought to myself at a certain point I guess after I ended my last relationship that it’s a shame that after all I’ve been through… and all the lessons I took away, that I got so forgetful of all that work and study and deciding what I believed was truth that I didn’t pull it out of my back pocket when I felt that gut instinct to pull it out.

Do you believe that when one door closes another one opens? A friend of mine’s wife once told me that you’ve got to get rid of the 3 inch fish because if you’ve got a fish already on the hook, a bigger fish won’t come bite at it. I feel like, it’s an unfair analogy… because I’m never looking for better… I’m only trying to be a better fisher-woman or just woman, or just person or be the best me. It’s never about the people around me, it’s always about myself… finding my grounding and building upon the good things I already have. It takes awhile to learn how to not hurt people along the way… but I believe in one life you only get to decide what you do with yours, not anyone else’s.

Some people are soaked in their personal bitterness and can’t let go. The thing is, as human beings… we weren’t made with handles. Why do we hold on to each other for dear life? I don’t ever feel comfortable being held back or holding someone back from what they want. It hurts when something that was once in-sync get’s timed-out but, I for one am excited to see what happens. “if you want the ball to bounce you’ve got to let it go”.

High Bounce by RobertKrampf

So anyway, I used to read my old diaries and feel really embarrassed or amused because it was so naive or just… very youthful thinking and the voice was just, YOUNG. And it was nice to read things just from a few years ago and not have that feeling anymore. I was kind of connecting with thoughts that make much more sense now and hold even more meaning or give me a sense of peace.

I’m going to continue to blog. I’m going to post blogs I wrote while this site was down later tonight but just wanted to immediately… get something down.

In 2004 I went on my first visit to Enoshima, Japan with one of my best friend’s older sisters. We met at the train station in Shinjuku in Tokyo. It took about an hour to find each other because my sense of direction was very poor in that big station with many exits and entrances and half-way points and her English was nonexistent. In the end we got there and I loved it. We ended the day on a pier/jetty thing where fishermen were grilling oysters while the sun was going down. I was sitting on the steps looking at the silhouette of mount Fuji and a Japanese man with a camera around his neck approached me and asked if he could take a picture of me. i usually hate pictures being taken of me but for some reason I said okay right away even though I didn’t understand his motive. He snapped a couple photos, said thank-you and handed me a four-leafed clover.

It’s 8 years later and I randomly thought of this, wondering what that picture looks like and what he did with it. It’s weird thinking about how if you just take one more step, you don’t have to be strangers anymore.

For real though… it was not pleasant. Although I love this song… MGMT’s Electric Feel instrumental was looping for hours and hours, my heart was pumping so hard and I was thrashing around.

An hour before I was supposed to be hearing my alarm song, I decided to give in a little to the mania in hopes it would wind down in my brain and I could push through it. I started to take stock on the things I have… the things I am grateful for and got in the shower.

I was in my car and saw the beautiful sunrise and I still couldn’t shake my stress and worry shame and disappointment. I also broke out on the side of my face with a nice archipelago of red spots. Nice. My mom says if I still get zits I’m still young. My hair was still wet. Whoops. I told myself just got to get through the day and be open to its surprises. Something good might happen today…

Well, I fought for it all day and I couldn’t shake it. I was walking to my car and my very good friend sent me a photo of an wow-ing set of waves from surfing the past few days up the coast. It made me smile. He reminded me there is still swell.

I went to the gym and the men next to me kept looking over at me the way a person would look over when they are going 3X your speed… it looks clownish… like you’re obviously being emotional instead of being cool. Yeah, I must have been skipped when they passed out that gene. At least I wasn’t panting… I was still upset so breathing very shallow.

I drove home and caught the amazing sunset.

The other day I asked my friend in Japan what she loves so much about living in L.A. as opposed to Japan and she simply said, “the weather”. I remember feeling like… people always say that! I wish there was more to love. I wish I could hear something new and wonderful that I could latch onto the idea and feel like I love it too. But, the weather?

Man, I do this so much… I underestimate the things that I already know make me happy. Yes, the weather. Yes, my guitar. Yes, singing. Yes, writing. Yes, having beer and mexican food with a friend, going in the water, yes yes yes. I don’t understand why when I’m not feeling myself or elevated that I don’t turn to the things I know that are readily available to me until I’ve wasted a lot of time being inside my head, worrying, stressing, and worrying stressing the people around me. I already know what works for me, I already know what I love and what lifts me up.

I say this now because I’ve hit all bases and I’m on high elevation. I’m still getting over a bad virus in my throat but it’s slowly dissipating and I’m praying on the daily it leaves me soon. I’ve been playing guitar since I’ve gotten home for hours a day trying atleast to get reacquainted with old songs and fine-tune new ones. I’ve been looking for new music to listen to also. I’ve been going outside into the last 2 days of warmth! Please remind me my next trip out of town must be to warm weather only and I must bring a friend.

The weather forecast says it’s going to warm the next 2 weeks. I will be making the most of it after the other morning last week my windshield had an ice layer that I could only get off by pouring my coffee then water bottle on it. Not normal here and I’ve spent the last month… with a cold body. I’m so over it. I realize that not everyone can just skip town or lives in warm climate, but putting the snow jacket on and turning up the sunny happy music makes a world of difference. Change your space. It’s time.

The weather is a bit… hard for me to stand while still sick. Outside butt-ass-cold, inside the train… HOT!, inside the station shops…. warm, inside the station, COLD! It’s enough to confuse the heck out of your body. My god-send today is something that I’ve never noticed in Japan… I don’t know how long they’ve been selling beverages this way… but they sell hot drinks in cans and plastic PET bottles right out of the vending machines!

This is my favorite so far…. hot lemonade… forgive me if you’ve ever heard of it. I have never! Simple and perfect for a sore throated commuter.

Hello from Japan. I delayed my flight here almost 2 days thinking I had some sort of allergy infection but, arriving here deaf from cabin pressure, and spending the last few days suffering through some sort of bug, not being able to really taste the flavors that I was anticipating on this trip and then waking up this morning with laryngitis… I guess I can admit that I’m still sick.

Luckily this is a walking bug… I’ve been able to go out and I feel pretty good that I’m here. I haven’t been back here since a few days before the earthquake/tsunami. A few of my Japanese friends have been doing volunteer work in the Tohoku region. I don’t really notice too much of a change in demeanor or feel like much has changed other than when you go to the grocery store, they will sometimes have pictures and stories about the regional farmer that was affected by the disasters above the produce from the region. Other than that I feel like the spirits are still high here or at least business-as-usual.

I was wondering if there is really a difference beyond semantics when it comes to not being ready for someone/something or just not being right for someone/something. I mean, how can you recognize when you are not ready for anything?

Fear is what makes you unready, unsteady… etc. and does the fear not make things right or is fear always something that we must recognize and overcome?

I feel like, I’ve been very strong and brave in many ways that count, but in one particular area…

Fear-based on experience is hard to ignore… just as much as very powerful magnetism that draws me back into fearful situations. I feel like… it’s just the course of life that keeps putting me back willfully challenging me to answer the call…

Hopefully I can also remind myself to bear in mind that every person and situation is different… don’t take things for granted and let greatness get away…

I prefer my hands clean before I start digging into something new. I’ve noticed along the way, many people do not share this view. Actually, maybe it’s half and half. Some people can carry the weight of the world and keep moving… keeping throwing things on the pile.

A lot of it for me is… I like knowing why things happened, and how it can be controlled. Scream “control freak”, I’m being honest here… but, on the other side of that, I get to know myself very well and in turn maybe others don’t get to because I already poured it down and flushed it away, never to be seen or thought of again. This is an old view… I used to have.

I don’t walk around with people who haven’t witnessed my personal failures… it’s more like, if I know that a relationship is not going to evolve or is keeping me from moving forward or simply, making me feel guilty, I used to get rid of it any way I could.

People come down on themselves for holding certain patterns and avoiding certain types of people and make it seem like it’s a horrible thing and the same mistakes are doomed to be repeated just because things feel familiar.

I don’t think this…

We act as though we all have mental problems because relationships don’t work out, but you really can’t do the same thing twice the exact way. There are nuances to every situation and person. It’s all essence and momentary and beautiful things are possible even through bad historical data. We are not robots and every experience whether or not it is attached to a person and a series of events, is a part of you as a whole.

I think that there is someone for everyone and you come across certain souls for a reason and are drawn in even closer like a magnet to others and it’s to gain experiences, get richer, get deeper, play show and tell and immortalize your spirit with someone.

I come back to the idea and belief that even within myself, everything is connected…. body mind and soul to the point where I can’t distinguish thoughts from feelings and dreams from feelings and premonitions from physical manifestations. Wow, I sound crazy trying to explain it. But, it’s true. I will come across an example one of these days and explain it less crazy.

Lets face it… in developed areas of the world especially, we’ve become all too sterile and we forget that we’ve got to get dirty, hurt, used, abused to build strength in our character. The heart is a muscle, not a bone.

(This is a pep-talk to myself… btw)

I’ve met many sweet-talkers. I’ve been around people who say I’m great the way I am and to never change…. and then, they realize that me being me screws up their plans and I feel extremely sad that I can’t be who they want me to be… and then feel sad for myself that I want to change to be who they want me to be. This is human.

My mother has started to embrace her age by not dyeing her hair. I didn’t like it… but, I don’t blame her either. It’s expensive and a pain in the ass. Plus toxic. She said that for the first time in her life, people in the airplane cabin acted very concerned and helped her lift her carry-on into the overhead bin. Hilarious.

So anyway, I used to say this because of the vanity issue or some pseudo feministic view or just out of worry for friends going under the knife when I already thought they were quite beautiful and wonderful… I don’t like plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons and to look more youthful. But, now that I’m even older yet still of baby making age… I still say no.

My reason: The body has a way of always knowing that something is not right… something is not supposed to be in there…. the body rejects foreign objects. I don’t believe in designer bodies… I believe in bodies that mark a part of a story and are fully-functioning! It’s your choice and the technology is certainly providing you options as to cutting something off or putting something in… but, if this is some deep-seated I’m not good enough feeling… then it’s going to take more to snap out of it, isn’t it?

It’s crazy sometimes to think about how much you can move forward if you just let go of the past and remember you aren’t really driving the car, you’re just floating your boat.

weird old photo of my eye ball

A musician-friend I met a few years ago used to talk about the one day he’d create a masterpiece and I started to like that word, or the idea that you could create this one beautiful, amazing thing and you could rest on your laurels….
As much as I feel like making music is what I’m meant to be doing… I still don’t believe I will make a masterpiece in the form of a song. Secretly (not so much now), I believe that my masterpiece will be a chain of connections…a family? A great love? Maybe. I see and feel this strongly.

Reminds me of a discussion with my buddy Robb (painter, artist) during a pretty hard time in my life about how he felt during when he was of a similar age at the time of the discussion during his starving artist period… how he had some vision and knew he would be able to keep going. This validated a lot of what I felt when I was even younger… and I’d push myself into situations where I was really terrified and looked-it, but I had some sort of fore-sight, premonition… whiff and kept doing it over and over hoping I’d someday get over the fear? VISION of what was to be and meant to be and where I was supposed to be.

The strongest block I have is myself. You can be on go-go-go-mode and that nanosecond you doubt yourself, it can ruin your whole master plan if you let it. It’s pretty amazing to me how many times this has happened to me… even after all these years of plugging away. I find myself in danger of it happening usually when I start thinking about other areas in my life that I haven’t factored-in to the main ‘vision’… who I’m neglecting, and who/what I’m missing out on… and I go into this lonely, gloomy, scary, panic!

I think this is where most people start hitting the bottle or the pills or whatever….or just end up giving up. I usually go searching…. and checking in with that vision…. is it still here? What do I see now? Am I revisiting old mistakes? How much is this worth?

I love taking super macro shots…. getting in really close to see all the details of a subject and then pulling way back and picking what I want to focus on. As in life, I’ve gone in and looked really close at many things I was interested in and then I’ve stood back and chosen what I’ve wanted to concentrate on. I guess the easiest way for me to explain what having vision is like, is like when someone asks you how you know you love a person or you’re in love… “you just know”. That must be so annoying for someone who hasn’t experienced vision or love. What the hell is wrong with you?!!? Kidding….

The strength of my vision is really starting to bug me! It’s really smacking me around! So much so I’m sort of longing for the days where I was in a scouting mode. Who knew that knowing what you want and knowing it so deeply that you can get what you want if you keep at it would be so frustrating. Would be so exclusive… would be so hard to explain to people who just want their ideas of what is good for me factored-in. Who knew? I can say I never saw this part coming.

I’ve told many a person and opportunity “no” or, sorry, you are not part of what I see and you’re going to do me a lot of story-boarding to convince me that you are. It’s part of making all the threads stronger in the rope attached to the chain to the anchor that sinks to the ground where I’m supposed to call home.

I guess?