Hi again! It’s your trusty, if sporadic, Snarkela here bringing you the very latest in news and happenings from around my world!
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
So, yeah. We got a new puppy named Brogan last Wednesday. And yours truly had no damn clue what she was in for with puppy life! He’s full of JOY! and YEY! and ENERGY! and FUN! And I’m not sure if you know this but I. am. not. full of those things generally and definitely not on a sustained basis. 24/7? Aww hell no, man. Hell, naw.
I’ve been tired, overwhelmed and quite whiny about it all even while enjoying his little nutjob ways. Lucie and Sophie have just now started to re-appear on a regular basis (all the while scoping out the landscape for crazy furry things who want to chase them and play!)
Must give Duty MEGA-PROPS for helping me so so so much with all the watching and training. I know that things will start getting into a routine soon and he’s a smart dog, so he’ll catch on quick. Heck, it took him just three tries to learn to SIT! on command so I’m not worried. Just …. tired.
Since the new addition, not much Practically Intuitive work has been getting done. And with all I’ve got to do, that has to happen. So, putting little man on a schedule so *I* can get on a schedule.
And maybe this was what I needed all along. Something to force me to get organized. Ah Universe! You so work in mysterious ways!
Those that follow me on Facebook know all this but there might be one or two of you who don’t so I’ll spill it.
The Dog of Love leaves us
With the heaviest of hearts and a feeling for which there are no words, Duty and I sent Max over the Rainbow Bridge on April 26th. Losing a dog is really very different (for me) than the loss of a cat. It breaks my heart each time, for sure, but this one – well, this just about killed us both. Because I was with him all day every day, I saw this pain and struggle. That last day I cried many times saying to him “I don’t know how to help you.” – He couldn’t walk on his back legs and had diarrhea and couldn’t get outside – oh kids, it was just awful.
No matter how many dogs I will ever have (story for another time), I will always love Max the most. He was a best friend, a companion, a buddy and just a happy little dog. I had him for 15 years and was so lucky he picked me for his mama.
Getting Naked (metaphorically speaking, of course!)
Soon after Max departed and Duty and I hard-core wallowed in our sadness, I ended up stepping into an opportunity to attend a seminar in Richmond VA put on by David Neagle. It was a three-day event in my former hometown, just two(ish) hours away by car. Neagle is a coach to many multi-million dollar coaches out there and he knows his stuff cold. He’s an engaging speaker and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend three days than learning from this man.
This seminar was really about conquering fears head on and coming to understand value and worth as entrepreneurs. This is an area that might as well be Greek to me because I have never really had to address it. When you work for someone else, it doesn’t always come into play other than asking for a raise, getting a 2% one because that’s all they give anyway and tough luck to you. Setting a price for my services has been an interesting experience and watching how it intersects self-worth and whatnot has been enlightening.
What? You want to hear about the nekkid part? LOL Pretty much everyone who was there understands that when you go to a DN event, you kind of throw yourself out there, naked for others to see. And when he’s asking questions like “What’s your greatest fear – the one that stops you dead in your tracks?” and everyone has to read theirs to the group (and for everyone on the livestream too!) well, it gets a bit intimidating.
Yours truly did her best to hide in a group, like I always do. But I really became more conscious of doing it and that helped propel me past the fear. I did speak at the microphone albeit it for just a few seconds (and yes, I cried, like everyone else!) and shared my desire to remain invisible. And that’s a topic I am continuing to explore. In fact, my podcast for this week at PI talks about how I’m willing to let that go (scared but willing!) in order to be more fully who I am doing my woo-type work.
Lots of shifts and changes the past few weeks …. I’m trying to process all of it and keep moving. (It’s the latter part that is often difficult for me, I’m coming to learn.) And here’s the newest piece for me – thirty years of working to a deadline and/or being held accountable sets up a pattern that can make it difficult to keep your own self accountable (she said, pretending it’s not a lot harder than it feels).
So yeah, lots going on. Not much I can put into words now. This is the best I can do.
Shifts and changes, shifts and changes, shifts and changes. I feel like that’s my life right now. And that’s okay (I suppose).
Source: fanforum.com via Susana on Pinterest
Dear three readers,
I wish I had more exciting news to share. I wish I had *any* news to share. Alas, the truth is things are pretty damn quiet ’round these parts which is good, I suppose.
So, here’s a meme:
1) What did you want to be as a child when you grew up?
Well, at times I wanted to be a journalist or a lawyer. Then I took Intro to Psych in my senior year of high school and that was all she wrote. Being a therapist was my dream. Spending 30 years in the financial services arena? Merely a detour. I’m exactly where I want to be right now.
2) Can you bend forward and touch your toes with your legs straight?
I can! My Pilates instructor says I am quite the flexible chick. (Especially for having to deal with the chubs! And btw she didn’t add that part. I did.)
3) What is your most annoying habit?
Duty will tell you it’s scraping the fork along my teeth while eating. I will tell you that my low need for order has probably annoyed a large segment of those who’ve lived with me.
4) What habit would you change of your partners?
Uh, his wee bit o’nagging. Yeeesh. “Honey, can you JUST remember to put the dishes in the dishwasher when you’re done with them?” Hello? I’m 51. I know to do that. If I didn’t, I either forgot (encroaching old age) or I didn’t want to for some reason known only to the duck I tell all my secrets to. Jeez oh pete!
5) Horrors or Chick Flicks?
I can recite all the lines from “Bridget Jones’s Diary” so that should answer it for you, yes?
6) What is the most outrageous thing you have done in the back row of the movies?
Not one damn thing. I am most compliant and don’t (often) do outrageous things in places where I shouldn’t.
7) If you had the house childfree what is the first thing you and your partner would do?
The house is *always* childfree so I’ll answer it as if the question were what we’d do if the house were PET-FREE and to that I’d say SLEEP past 5:45am every day!
8) Have you ever lied to get a job?
No, I haven’t. There’s just no point in doing that – you end up in the wrong job and it makes you feel like crap so, no.
9) What one thing is on your list to do before you hit 30, 40, 50 or whatever significant birthday is next?
Gosh, that’s a hard one. Next significant birthday would be 60 (OH MY GOD!) and I’d like to have my own ‘very successful’ business going strong by then. Working on it now. :)
10) Classic or modern films and why?
Modern, probably. Every time I’ve gone back to watch what’s considered a “classic” film, it’s never lived up to the hype (for me). I know The Gal will disagree. Movies just don’t ‘move me’ the way they used to so I don’t even really know how to answer this. How about we just skip this Q altogether?
11) If you were a vampire who would be the first person you would bite?
Hmm, if I bite them, do they become my vampire lover forever? I wonder if I’d get sick of Cookie if I were with him forever. (hahahahh yeah, right.) I’d choose someone I’d want to hang out with for eternity to bite first so yeah, Cookie might do it for me. He’s got the pretty, he’s got the voice and he’s a genuinely nice person. Okay, that’s settled then.
So, yeah, I stole this from The Gal (something I haven’t done in a while) and it’s actually a harder task than I thought! So, I’ll do it in hunks of fifteen.
In order of how I remember them:
1) Float On – Modest Mouse
This song was out when we found out Lauren’s cancer had come back and it sort of became her theme song. There’s not one time I hear it now that I don’t think of her. The day after she left us, Cousin O’Cool was feeling beyond sad and asked Lauren’s spirit to let her know she was around. When she got into the car, this song was on the radio. She said “Rock on, girlfriend” and to this day, when we hear it, we know it’s La telling us she’s always with us in Spirit. “Don’t worry even if things end up a bit too heavy … And we’ll all float on okay…” – so many bittersweet memories here.
2) Babylon – David Gray
This is probably my most favorite song in all the world. And I don’t even know why. Whether it was the timing of it in my life and what was going on with me, the way he sings “let go your head, let go your heart …”, I have no clue. But this song feels like peace to me. And love.
3) Straight Ahead – David Cook
From his pre-Idol album “Analog Heart”, this one was a huge fan favorite. And when he spontaneously broke into it at the first show I saw him at, I just about lost my mind! I ended up without a voice for a few days from screaming so loud. “Take a minute just to breathe and think of everything you wanted and what you got instead.” This song takes me right to 2008-2009 and my first year of intense Dave-love.
4) Heart of Gold – Neil Young
My dad always called me his “heart of gold” and used to sing this song to me. This will always and forever be a reminder that my dad saw me at soul level. (Neil Young has one of those very distinctive voices and it fits this song perfectly.)
5) And you and I – Yes
Takes me back to 1980ish, just driving my old mustang convertible around Loch Raven with someone whose heart I kept trying to capture (and failed) but we had good times. He liked this kind of music and I liked him so … I liked this song. Even now, it’s really not my style but holds amazing memories for me.
6) Barely Breathing – Duncan Sheik
“Don’t know who I’m kidding, imagining you care” I could listen to this song forever and ever and never get sick of it. It’s part of a tableau of songs from a period in my life that took me to my depths. (Clearly, I resurfaced.)
7) By My Side – Godspell
I saw this play when it came out originally and loved it from the start. It’s such a profound song and one that moves me to this day. I sang these lines to Lauren in my head many times before she passed away, I so didn’t want her to go. (I tried bargaining my life for hers but the Angels told me it didn’t work that way.)
“Where are you going? / Far beyond where the horizon lies / Where the horizon lies
And the land sinks into mellow blueness / Oh please, take me with you”
The night I said goodbye to Lauren before she left us, I said to her: “Go meet your new road” – even though she was in a drug induced haze, I know, with every fiber of my being, that she heard me. And she did go meet that new road her soul had chosen. (Dag, I miss her.)
8) The Closer I get to you – Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway
Oh, I really wanted this to be about me and my sweet high school boyfriend but yeah, no. He had totally moved on from me by then and had come back from college just to go to the prom with me because he promised even though he didn’t want to. Such a pretty song, though.
9) Knocks me off my feet – Stevie Wonder
Same boyfriend, one year earlier – we were sooooo in lurve! He learned the piano parts to this most beautiful song and played them for me and when the band played it at *his* prom, he sang the lines to me “Oh but I love you, I love you, I love you more and more”. (This was before he went to Germany where he met the woman he eventually married. I reveled in being loved like that.)
10) Let it ride – Bachman Turner Overdrive
This song reminds me of being 13 and hanging out at home during the summer. That was also the year The Exorcist came out and the theme song “Tubular Bells” freaked me out like no one’s business. If it even came on the radio, I’d stop what I was doing and run to change the station. For some odd reason, these two songs are linked (not sure why now) and whenever I hear this, I always think of the other song. Weird. I love the guitar in it and always wait for just one particular moment in the song.
11) I can’t make you love me – Bonnie Raitt
Oh, the memories associated with this song. I was 32, so so so madly (and so dysfunctionally) in love with someone I couldn’t have. He bought me the BR cd and this song brings back my feelings for him. The way she sings it is full of longing, heartache and resignation – sums up my feelings for him tenfold. Still one of my favorites to this day.
12) Ghost – The Indigo Girls
“And I feel it like a sickness how this love is killing me / but I’d walk into the fingers of your fire willingly / and dance the edge of sanity / I’ve never been this close / in love with your ghost”
My friend Cindy made me listen to this song one day in a parking lot and said it reminded her of my desperate longing for the guy mentioned above. And it so so did. In fact, this is the song that both he and I remember so clearly as part of our relationship. (Yes, I actually do speak to him from time to time – waves to Hollinger – and don’t think he’d dispute that this song was so much about us at that time in our life.) One of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Poetic and heartbreaking.
13) I’m a slave for you – Britney Spears
Don’t you *dare* laugh at me for this! (okay, maybe just a little) I am not a fan of Brit-Brit but I just dig this song. It’s more the music than the lyrics – anything that has that kind of rhythmic african tribal beat I sort of love.
14) Sweet thing and Ain’t Nobody – Rufus and Chaka Khan
Songs I sing for no one because I’ve not had a real, real love that fits these although I wished I had. (Love that lives in my head – yeah.) I can wail these two songs with the best of them (in my car, of course. Never, ever in public) and can feel these down to my bones. Great songs, both. “Ain’t nobody / loves me better / makes me happy / makes me feel this way ….”
15) Make Me – MWK
“Make me fall for you, as if I had nothing else to do / Let me hold you true to what I thought I knew” - MWK is the band that Dave played with before American Idol along with his buddies Andy Skib and Neil Tiemann. Andy has a really interesting voice and this song quickly became one of my very favorites. Dave and band have performed this now and again on tour and I know it’s heresy for me to say this but this song truly belongs to Andy. I will always choose Dave’s voice over Andy’s in a contest but no one owns this song like Skibbie. It’s a great big bombastic song to blast on your car radio on a summer day.
Source: weheartit.com via Lisa on Pinterest
Now that the newness and excitement of getting out of the day job and into my own thing has begun to wear off, I’m faced with a big “What the hell do I do now?”
Unstructured days are wonky for me and can lead to a wee bit of depression creeping in so I’m making an effort to change it up and keep things moving. Still and all, it’s nice to have free time to create and stuff – problem is: no creatin’ is going on at present. Mostly, I’m hardcore farting around.
Should I be kinder to myself?
Cut myself some slack?
Realize that it’s going to take some time to get a flow going?
Probably.
Will I?
Doubtful.
I am actually so hard on myself that I slam right into a wall and end up doing nothing. Really. If I can’t do it all and do it perfectly the first time, then forget it. I’ll sit and stare at the wall. (As you can imagine, lots of walls getting the stare-down over here.)
Ah! The fun things that show up when your life is tossed like a big salad, right?
I think I will take my ass off to Panera this morning. I have a massage at 12 so it will be a nice change of scenery to go hang out somewhere that farty, loud, ignorant men don’t frequent.
So, finished my first week as a self-employed individual. Here’s all I experienced:
* fear – making my first “enrollment call” asking someone to join my Intuitive Development Mastery Program. Following a script of sorts was hard. Learning how to sell isn’t quite my forte. Still, I did it and she said YES!
* joy – she said YES! Dances around the room
*sadness- she sent an email saying she couldn’t afford it after all. I was bummed out but know that’s what happens and kept on moving.
* annoyance – venture out of house to work at Dunkin’ Donuts. Clearly it’s the gathering place for old farts who are discussing politics from a point of view with which I do not agree. (I live in the only red district in MD.) Rein in desire to scream at them and put earphones in. They disperse eventually but I realize this will not be a place for me to work once in a while. At least not in the morning.
* loneliness – had a weird dream about Duty admitting he was in love with Robert Ohotto (because I fell back asleep listening to an Ohotto meditation) and it made me sad. I wandered around the house all day feeling out of sorts and so very lonely.
* elation – did a webtv program Wednesday night and bathed in the light of the Woo. Despite being profoundly uncomfortable on camera for one whole hour, I just sunk into what I know best and ran with it. It was great and I got lots of good comments on it. The engineer running the program was shocked that I hadn’t done anything like this before because I was “a natural” at it. Host wants me to come back again.
* tempered joy – another enrollment call for program. She says YES!
* untempered joy – money comes into PayPal account for her enrollment. Dance around room and go buy bicycle I desperately wanted with gift money from work colleagues.
* confusion – Duty not happy at all about bike even though I just had the equivalent of a month’s salary from old job deposited in bank account. Tries to steal my joy. I refuse. I know this is hard for him. I get it. And I get that part of my work is to stand my ground. I just wish he’d participate in the joy. He is who he is.
* more joy of the untempered kind – another client signs on to my program!
In one week out from being laid off, I’ve made the equivalent of two month’s salary at old job.
I think I’ve done well. Have more enrollment calls coming this week. Also too: rode my bike yesterday morning just to test it out. Wheee! It’s like Goldilocks – it fits me “just right”.
So, not bad for a first week, eh?
Source: shetakesflight.tumblr.com via Lisa on Pinterest
So, a lovely end to my time at the day job. (Also too: they gave me a wad of cash when I left which was very sweet and more cushion from the Universe!) I danced on outta there and let out a big scream in my car on the highway.
Onward (Christian Soldiers)
Had a call with Andrea last night and hello bootcamp! Goodness. She’s right. It’s time to get active about my business. I’m not nervous about doing stuff or changing stuff up. I know I can do that. It’s not easy – she tells me I give away too much content and that there’s no reason for people to pay me for that information if I give it away all the time. (sigh) I know she’s right.
Today I’m doing chores in between goofing off and looking at next steps. Monday starts bootcamp for real. I am hellbent and determined that I will make this a success and will do whatever I have to so that comes about. Even if it means re-learning how to write so that I’m not giving away the farm. (EEK!)
Expect more snark, more love, more Lisa on these pages. I’m glad to be back.
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