I refuse to water down my perdonaliy just to make it more digestible to you... You can choke :) I know my worth. do you?

I may not ever do great things in life, but I know that the little things I do mean something to someone...

I was waiting for the bus to go to town, wearing way too many layers in a gorgeous sunny 5 PM sky and it dawned on me that I hadn't experienced that before; the weather before had always been cold or rainy. Once in town I realized I had some extra time before my meeting so I decided to go get a smoothie down the street. I saw an old friend on the street and stopped just enough for a quick "hey, good to see you, I'm sorry but I gotta run!" and started actually running so I wouldn't be late.

Then I noticed a man in crutches dragging a suit case and a bag full of groceries while trying to walk at the same time and I offered my help. I set up his bags in a way that would be easy to carry but instead of letting him carry them, I asked him where he was going and told him I'd help him there; not really caring if I was late after I saw his face light up at my offer. Dressed in big black pants that allowed enough room for his leg cast, a nice button down shirt and vest, a plastic document pocket hanging from his neck, blue eyes and scruffy blonde hair. He seemed well educated and had a sense of serenity when he spoke.

In between dodging other people and making sure I wasn't going too fast for his pace, on our 6 block walk to the bus station I learned about the man's condition, why he's in crutches. He told me about his mother passing away 5 years ago, some of his struggles and how he really doesn't have much hope for himself, but he keeps going on every day none the less. I walked alongside of him, not feeling like "I'm helping this poor man," but rather feeling like we were just two good friends trying to get somewhere. We stopped at the news stand machines and he told me when he was a young boy he and his friends would go around looking into anything that took change, like pay phones and such cause sometimes money would get stuck and some times they'd get lucky and find a quarter and the habit just stayed. When we got to the bus station, I positioned his bags at the proper stop and he stood there looking at me with a blank stare trying to understand what had just happened. He said just the fact that I noticed him had been enough, but to give him the time of day and help him without looking at him with pitty or thinking of him as a lesser person was something he had never experienced since his condition started. He didn't ask for money, didn't even ask my name even though I told it to him along the way. He was just grateful.

Nothing I did the rest of the evening, no one I spoke with and nothing I heard topped that. Complaints, gossip, yelling, people fighting over parking spaces, someone's manicure being ruined, their coffee wasn't done right... all sorts of meaningless things! Things that made me feel like maybe I should have just hung out with the guy instead. Someone who can appreciate life even when life has been hard on them. Someone who is perfectly aware of their limitations but is not limited by them. Someone who I started out "helping" and appreciated it not knowing that he's the one who helped me. Funny how the universe works.

I once heard someone say that there are two important days in our lives: the day we are born and the day we discover why. I'm not saying I'm out to save the world and that's my mission, but damn it if it doesn't sometimes feel like my heart is bigger than my body and I want everyone to have a piece of it.I made it to my destination some hours later and emptied the cat litter.

Positivity

I wrote this blog entry because I enjoy observing people and how they take life, react to things, situations or other people; and I've found that a lot of times people choose the negative side as opposed to trying to see what good may lay underneath.

I'm no preacher and no teacher of always seeing the good in things, sinner and guilty as charged of taking the negative road often and allowing negativity into my life. But I do believe in the good of the universe and people and how even in the shittiest of circumstances, and no matter how hard it may be, as long as we're breathing, we might as well let one of those breaths be one used for laughs.

Sometimes the things that happen to me are so ridiculous. Everything from things I have no explanation for why they happened to things that happen out of me just being absent minded and prone to trip on air hahah!! Many times I get upset or frustrated or angry at the universe and other times, I can't do anything but laugh at the situation. The following two are some examples:

Not long ago, I was giving my then roommate a ride to work and I got lost on the way back home.I accidentally ran over the curb while trying to make a U turn, only to find out two minutes later that my tire was flat. I realized my phone was back at the house so I proceeded to walk along the freeway for about 10 minutes to try to find a pay phone (hoping they exist still & have a phone book) to call my insurance. In all of my anger, I couldn't help to laugh at the fact that it was my day off and I had intended to go back to bed after I dropped off my friend. Didn't feel the need to get dressed, brush my hair or put on make-up thinking "who's gonna see me anyway?" and there I am walking along the side of the freeway in my bathrobe, pink pajamas, messy hair, looking like death thinking "thanks life, I needed strangers to get to work & tell their co-workers they just saw a nut job of a woman walking down the freeway. It's what I do on my day off." 

A nice, good looking guy who happened to also have the day off pulled over to help me out, I know he probably thought I had escaped some kind of institution, but he made no judgment & helped me. I bought him breakfast after I made it home to change clothes. We've been good friends since.

Every time I've injured myself, be it on accident or out of my own stupidity, I always wish there had been someone with a camera to capture that on video.

Yesterday, when I had the longest most annoying day at work,I decided take up an invitation to go on a hiking adventure with a friend I hadn't seen in a while and end the day on a good note.

Enjoying great conversation, taking in the gorgeous scenery and laughing it up. Being goofy, I started frolicking down a flight of steps, la la la, only to find my body flying down the  remaining four steps and eating serious dirt a few seconds later. I believe every curse word I've ever known in any language came out of my mouth, being only interrupted by insane laughter at the thought of how funny that scene might have been if anyone other than my companion had watched it happen. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants a little & it made the throbbing pain on the body parts that met the ground more bearable. It didn't matter that I got all dirty and I was in so much pain, that shit was funny as hell and is now another memory for another story I get to tell. Just thinking about it gets me laughing so hard still.

Whenever something, even bad, happens to me I like to say:
 "if my life was a movie or if I was a comedian, this shit would be really funny." 

=^..^=

True Story

A bird flew in the house where I was working and got caught in between the blinds.

The owner of the house tried using a trash bag, then a towel to catch it and set it free.

I suggested using a broom to guide it out, 

but as much as this bird wanted to get out, it was mostly scared by all the commotion of us chasing it around. I got so frustrated after a while and then for whatever reason, I imagined myself as the bird. Confused, afraid, just trying to get out and go on with my life. 

Almost in an instant after this realization, I said to her, "all living creatures are always looking for the light. Let's close the blinds and doors but leave one window open and leave it alone, in time, it'll find his way out and fly away."

And eventually it did.

Life doesn't have to be so complicated.
 If we take the time to stop & think, sometimes the simplest of things are the best solutions. 

random word spilleage

I'm the kind of person who believes in the power of silence.
 I think that sometimes things are so far beyond anything one can say to be able to describe. We just have to close our eyes and feel.

As much as I love the sounds of the city, where you don't even have to leave your house to feel like you're at a party or in a street full of strangers with more lights flashing before you than you can handle, I also love the sound of nature and the peace and silence of just being. 
Watching all the trees & bushes and flowers dancing to the rhythm of the wind while birds fly by is like a full on Broadway production of the beauty of life. Then all the other animals around come into the chorus and the sun or the clouds make their entrance for the grand finale and your mind is just blown. 

I've thought about what I would do if I was stranded on a deserted island with nothing but my clothes and I think I would drive myself crazy. Not out of desperation for wanting to be rescued but more out of the joy I'd find in being there.
 I would spend hours looking for the perfect spot to lay down and watch the time pass me by. I would probably write a novel on the way a tree branch moves, the sounds it makes, what it makes me feel, the way it looks, the smells invading my lungs while I watch it, the flow of the wind and how it graces my body as it passes through me and what it makes me feel as it does so... 
I'm sure no one would read it past page two if I ever got rescued and it was published cause it would be the biggest book written on five minutes of watching a tree branch while laying on the ground.
They'd put me in a home and maybe make me watch MTV all day to burn some of my brain cells and kill my imagination for good just so I would stop describing why I take joy in such little random things, like the sound of my keyboard as I'm typing this. It's like a melody in a sense. 

Someone once said to me that our thoughts and feelings can be traitors, 
but if we disconnect our thoughts from our feelings, 
we will actually feel and know what's true.

moving along

With no worry about how long it would take me to get to my car I parked nearly five miles away the previous night, I hit the road on another walking adventure. 

I normally choose the recreation path but today I was determined to make it there walking along the beach. 

Workout clothes on, water bottles filled, iPod fully charged and nothing else to do the rest of the day. The first mile or so kept me wondering if I should've taken the bus instead, but the second I got to see and smell the ocean, I knew I'd made the right choice. Head phones on, music filling my ears; one minute it was a song that described my life and the next it was something that made my sadness worse and the next it was something that gave me hope or made me want to fly. 

The way that every grain of sand felt on my bare feet as my toes sunk into it with every step I took. The way the wind gently caressed my brown hair and made it grace my face as I tried to sweep it away behind my ears. At one point I lost all my thoughts and the music became more like a soft background sound in the movie of my life. I met and pet about a dozen dogs along the way, I talked to people I'd normally ignore, I saw runners and kids and surfers.

 Halfway on my way, I turned to look back and shed a few tears when I saw the people I had just passed in the distance, but nobody walking behind me. I took off my headphones for a minute so I could hear the ocean and it gave me a sense of peace. I closed my eyes, stretched my arms out, aimed my face at the vastness of the blue sky illuminated by the sun and decorated by the white trail of the plane going by, the sound of birds flying above me and the waves crashing on the shore. 

It was kind of a reminder that people & things come and go, but you can find beauty in letting go and keep going forward with your head up... Headphones back on, I lost my thoughts again and the joy of feeling that crisp blue endless water, the sand and the wind on my face, made me realize once again that all of our every day problems are nothing compared to the size of the world we breathe in. 

I danced around to the next song, skipped and jumped around like a fool and I didn't care who was watching me (even got a compliment on my dancing from the couple sitting by the stairs who had been watching me and enjoyed my freak show.)

On another Saturday night, I would probably call up everyone to see what they were doing and maybe go out and pretend to cure my sorrows with a cocktail or five; today, I'm going to spend it home alone watching at least three chick flicks I promised myself I would never watch, box of tissues in hand.

Part of the joy of being alive is experiencing pain. My favorite saying is that nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to learn. Today I learned a little bit to let it go.

Don't give up on your willingness to be happy no matter what. These days were meant for us to live, to run wild and be free... Enjoy the little things :)

Inspiration Called

I have an incredible gift of dancing to an entirely different beat than everyone else around me... I have been accused of dancing to commercials and ring tones. I have been told to bring my own fence to live shows. 

Yesterday I heard so much great live music on the streets of Pacific Grove and felt an incredible need to dance.. Move like an idiot. Wave my arms around like some stoned hippie at Woodstock. Jump. Bop and pop to every beat. Drum my fingers on my legs and try to follow each instrument as if I knew the song the band was playing.

I tried to make the cutest little blonde haired boy with amazing blue eyes dance with me and he not only didn't care for me or try to dance, but he looked at my feet and then looked up at me with this "crazy lady" stare while his parents looked on with this "yay!" face waiting for him to try to dance with me; or they could have just been enjoying the music for all I know... 

I jumped in the crowd of female dancers at the Latin stage with my blue Guatemalan satchel hanging from left to right shoulder that was filled with random things (including four wine glasses I had bought earlier) and danced. I ran into a lot of old friends and new friends, and although I didn't talk to any of them for more than a few minutes, it was good to see them and what they're doing with in their lives.  

There's a saying that goes something like "never look back unless you're planning to go there."

This morning I woke up feeling so blah and uninspired. I went through old photos and watched this video again. 

Travel back to my dance beginnings in 2005 when I had the biggest insecurities, the smallest waist, the perfect shade of brown skin and the biggest inability to let go on the dance floor and just enjoy the music and be free. Come back to today. Inspiration called.  :)