The Life of Words

Peace Jesus! *(more info at end of blog)

There’s something I love and had forgotten it had a name: Etymology, ”the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.”

I often look up the roots of a word to get a more profound sense of what exactly is behind its normal, assumed, mundane meaning. When it comes to words and language, I think it’s important to remember that language is a living thing that evolves. Which means to say languages moves, it rolls, it twists, it changes. It never stays the same, and its purpose is not to stay the same, because that would mean that it’s dead. Like Latin.

So, 1. Language is a living being that evolves and 2. translating changes meaning considerably. If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in Truth, I think it’s of tantamount importance to remember that much, if not the majority, of historical texts we have have been translated, often many times. Take Jesus’ teachings, and the Bible. Both translated over thousands of years, many times. The more you translate, the farther you get from the original intended meaning.

What’s up with the Biblical talk? Well, this morning I somehow ended up in a conversation with a friend about Jesus and persecution… Oh yes – My 34th birthday is coming up in a few days, and this friend mentioned something about Jesus dying at age 33. I quipped, “Well, at least I haven’t been crucified yet.” Yet. I feel like I might be getting close here at the Ashram, as the pressure has been growing for me to make some Choices about what I’m doing here and what path I want to be on.

Anyways, said friend brought up how Jesus, Paramahansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda all said that if you follow god, you’ll be persecuted.

So I asked: What does “persecuted” really mean?

Of course, we think of persecuted as a negative – punished, attacked, abused, jailed.

The current definition is:

1. To oppress or harass with ill-treatment, especially because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or beliefs.

2. To annoy persistently; bother.

I’m not sure I’d classify being killed by having your hands nailed onto chunks of wood a “bother.” Though I suppose if you look at it from the perspective of an eternal infinite god being, it’s not that big a deal.

Then I looked at the roots of the word ‘persecution’:

Middle English, from Old French persecuter, back-formation from persecuteur, persecutor, from Late Latin persector, from persectus, past participle of persequ, to persecute, from Latin, to pursue : per-, per- + sequ, to follow; see sekw-1 in Indo-European roots.

To pursue, to follow. MUCH different from oppressing, harassing or annoying. And ‘sekw’ sure looks like ‘seek’ to me.

So, maybe what was REALLY being said was that if you are true to and follow your innate, divine, authentic nature, others will follow. Yeah, Jesus’s physical body sack got pinned to a tree, but 2,000 years later he’s still one of the most famous dudes in history.

Basically, in modern lingo: Consciousness is Contagious.

*photo description: Gesù Che Benedice statue by Sandro Da Verscio, available for purchase; and Fatima Moonstone Necklace, available for purchase; if interested in more info on either, leave a comment below with your email address.

Journal Entry March 18, 2012

Last year a friend introduced me to a website called Penzu, an online diary. I wrote only one entry, on the eve of my 33rd birthday. At the time I was living in Buenos Aires, and since the seasons are flipped in the Southern Hemisphere, it was the end of summer/beginning of fall.
Here’s that entry, unedited:

Sitting cross legged, slightly damp, on my slightly stinky and sticky pink yoga mat. The birds are rustling and clucking in the leaves that climb the walls around me. The sky is a pale blue above, cloudless, knowing. The cicadas shreik intermittently, the crickets calm and consistent in the background. The brakes of buses squeak in a tire shape, traffic hisses by. My forearms are sore from yoga yesterday with the serious and intense spanish-speaking instructor who smashed a giant cockroach with a wood-colored yoga block. I feel the tightness of my hips stretching down over my knees and into my shins. The dove calls actively, seeking a response. A plane roars overhead – it must be loud at the distance for me to hear its rumble so easily from the ground. The air moves like someone’s walking past, cool on my upper lip. A bus acellerates. I don’t remember how to spell acellerate. How many words should I write? I suddenly crave coffee; the smell of cinnamon haunts my tongue. I remember mornings in Miracle Mile, at the Hauser. I would go to the gym or for a walk in the park; on the way home I’d stop at Organics to Go. They had the best-tasting coffee I’d ever had. No bitter, not burnt, not stale. Smooth, rich, soothing. I’d put a splash of half and half, half a packet of sugar, and cinnamon, bumping the cannister gently so as not to overwhelm the coffee. The fine powder would float in the air. I’d swirl the coffee with a wooden stick, always feeling a tinge of guilt to immediately toss the stick, used for 2.3 seconds, into the garbage; though the garbage was separated and labeled for recycling. I’d begin the walk home, sucking coffee through the little hole on the lid, filling my senses – my nose, my mouth – with the fragrance and spice of the mild cinnamon coffee, the cream, the sugar. I would feel comfort, relief from the facts: I was 31, I was alone, I didn’t know what I wanted or where I was going in the world, I made myself hate my job by framing it as a trap, a struggle, something to rebel against, something I couldn’t free myself from.
A loud bird is rasping. It could be a cicada… Oh yes, it is. The volume on these babies is incredible. He does the build-up, the separate calls, getting closer and closer, until he unleashes one loud long scream. I wonder if he makes that sound with his legs, his wings, his mouth, his throat? What mechanism enables him to produce that vibration, and to expand it at that level?
I am moving to Patagonia. The doubts have been visting. Was I wrong to stop working with Jonas? Am I just running away, giving up, refusing to take action yet again in my life, refusing to do anything challenging and uncomfortable? No matter. I’ve made the choice. I will continue to learn and expand at the pace that I choose. I invite trust, faith. It’s a constant choice, a re-programming into appreciation, ease, joy. I don’t want to struggle anymore. I don’t want to fight. I want to allow. I want to accept. I want to appreciate.
Today Kelly arrives. I must shower, I’d like to drop off my laundry, and then catch a bus to the airport. Her flight is on time. I wonder how long it will take to go through customs. I wonder how much of the stuff she received. I wonder if she’ll have Jonas’s microphone screen. I wonder if she’ll have my boots. I’ve accepted the fact that she might not have the screen, the boots, the largest package from Amazon with my speakers and wifebeaters and lotion.
I’m trusting that money will work out, as it always does. I choose not to stress. I choose not to dwell in the negative. I choose to hire my team of Angels and trust them to handle it. I choose ease, release, joy, trust, faith.
That other site said 750 words. I could go for 750 initially. Or even a thousand? Let’s do 750 for now. The site says 750 is three pages. Three Artist’s Pages. Did that help me? I’m not sure I did. When I got to the magical spot in 2011 I’d been doing rampages of appreciation for a month or two, Abraham’s Vortex meditations and Vortex work. I do feel that I need morning rituals to keep me on the positive, life-clearing and affirming path; or I fall back into fear, self-loathing, guilt, etc.

The leaves that climbed the walls around me…

Blog-a-Day + Dream Life

I think I should do another Blog-a-Day Challenge. I am entirely out of the habit of blogging, and I need something to get me over the resistance/fear that accompanies creating. Plus there’s been so much amazingness going on in my life these past few months, I feel guilty not sharing!!! (I’ve ditched most of my general guilt, but I still haven’t managed to completely shake the blogging guilt…)

So I’ll do a blog-a-day starting today and going through September 20th, when I leave my home of the last month and a half for a trip to Florence and the Ligurian coast.

For the last three weeks I’ve been renting a room with two lovely roommates about 5 kilometeres from the Ananda center here in Italy. We’re an international bunch, me being from the states, one roommie, Calypso, hailing from Greece, and the other, Luigi, an Italian native (obviously… Luigi). A Portuguese woman named Lakshmi normally occupies the three-room apartment; she’d been house-sitting but is moving back in next week.

After a year and two months of Nomad Living, the thought of committing to stay anywhere for more than a month at a time brings up some issues for me. Though I don’t want to keep traveling forever, and I don’t actually enjoy the act of traveling, I haven’t entirely shaken the itch to keep moving. But life here at Ananda is pretty close to my dream life. I’ve got a community and group of close friends who already feel like family. Everybody meditates and does yoga. The community is working towards self-sufficiency, and I’m helping to launch the Academy of Art, Creativity, and Consciousness. I’m speaking Italian every day. The air is fresh. It’s beautiful. It’s quiet. My house is in the countryside overlooking olive groves, and our neighbors make home-pressed olive oil from their orchards, which we can see from our bathroom window.

For now, I’m happy here. Very happy! Yet at the same time, not entirely sure I’m ready to commit to staying… I feel I still need to be following my bliss and inspiration, and I don’t want to confuse myself and my path by making commitments to other people and becoming entangled in their plans… So, I’m sorting through some things, figuring out which is the voice of fear and which is the voice of my soul.

My house! Complete with bunches of grapes and outdoor dining area…

View from my bathroom!

My backyard. I’ve climbed almost every tree.

View from my terrace. Yes, that’s a giant fig tree. Best figs I’ve ever tasted.

Cat and kitten included (Names are Bella and Neve=Snow)!!!

Dinner party!

My roommate loves to bake organic bread. #luckyme

Every sunset here is gorgeous…

I’m moving to Patagonia!

Well, I asked for clarity, and I got it.

I’m on day 15 of my No Refined Sugar Challenge.

Five days into the No Sugar Challenge, with the clarity and energy that you get when you cut things from your life, I decided that I wanted to take a break from all commitments and obligations. I realized that I still haven’t entirely gotten to know myself, and because of this lack of self knowledge I still say Yes to things I’m not 100% sure I want to do. When you’re interested in everything and have problems saying No, this is very easy to do. Most of the time I will commit to doing something because it’s interesting and I feel like I should. But when I do something because I feel like I should, rather than because my heart wants to, I procrastinate. And then I beat myself up for procrastinating.

In the past, people have said to me, “Maybe you’re procrastinating because you don’t really want to do X.” I always thought they were wrong, that I DID want to do X, but that I was just lazy, not disciplined enough, too flawed in some way to overcome my fears and limitations and do what I should be doing.

But now I see that they might’ve been right. So I decided to release all commitments, obligations and guilt, and decided to take space to listen to and follow my heart and do what I want without anyone else’s input, including my closest friends and loved ones.

And it’s not that anyone has ever forced me do anything; it’s just that I end up perceiving every kind of “work” situation/relationship in a warped way, and I turn it into a power struggle, in which I rebel passive-aggressively by dragging my feet. I’ve realized that this is rooted in my upbringing by two very authoritarian teacher parents to whom I was not allowed to say no, or have honest conversations in which I expressed my feelings/wants/needs. (Mom, I know you’re reading this. I still love you!). I’ve been doing a lot of Inner Child healing work over the past few months, using the books Healing the Child Within and A Gift to Myself, and am coming to see how unhealthy my childhood was. Not that that’s abnormal – it’s estimated that 80-95% of Americans have dysfunctional childhoods, and I’m guessing that number runs the same for the rest of the world. I strongly believe that the entire paradigm of how we raise and socialize human beings needs to be changed; I’ll be writing more on this topic in the future.

Anyways, when I decided to take a break from everything, I made a list of what I want:

I want to live closer to Nature. I want to read and write. I want to meditate and do yoga. I want to free myself from debt.

Within the week, a friend who is living in Patagonia emailed me with an offer to come visit the horse ranch she’s living on. I asked if they needed anyone else to help out there. She said yes.

So, I’m moving to Patagonia on April 1st.

I’ll be in the middle of nowhere, helping a woman with Multiple Sclerosis write her memoirs. I will be able to save money and pay down my credit card debt. I will be in nature. I will be able to read and write (especially during the coming winter months, which is June-August down here!). The region gets some snow, but not too much, and the temp is in the 50s/40sF during the day and 30sF at night.

I’ll be in the northwest of Patagonia, the Neuquén Province, just south of Mendoza and near the Chilean border. Here’s more information on the woman and the ranch:

http://creativityheals.org

I’m excited and nervous which, as a friend pointed out, is essentially the same thing; I read somewhere that fear is just excitement without the breath.

Tomorrow I’m going on a 3-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. More connection and clarity.

Thank you to all of you who are supporting me on this journey. Part of my practice of releasing my feelings of guilt and obligation is that I need to release guilt about not blogging “enough” (ie more consistently, like everyone says you should in order to maintain and build your blog audience, and not as much as I should considering I’ve repeatedly promised friends and loved ones that I’d put up more pictures). So, please forgive me. And I forgive myself.

Battling the Resistance

"The Only Barriers Are Mental" Buenos Aires, Jan 2012

I feel like I haven’t blogged in ages. I’ve been struggling with the Resistance.

Not the Resistance to writing, but the Resistance to doing watercolors for a friend’s children’s book that I’m illustrating, and the Resistance to working as a Music Manager and booking venues here in Buenos Aires and in New York for a tour with the artist I manage, Jonisio il Solista. I feel inadequate at painting, and inadequate at booking a tour. One I haven’t done in about 10 years and the other I’ve never done. I’ve been trying to remind myself that every single person who’s ever done something was first a beginner, but I don’t like being a beginner. I don’t like not knowing what I’m doing. It freaks me out and the Resistance steps in and says, “We’ll start tomorrow. Instead, why don’t you stay up til 4am reading Anthony Keidi’s autobiography, or go get a coffee at your favorite cafe, or meditate, or see if anyone loves you on Facebook, or read some fascinating science article about how incense is an antidepressant. We’ll start tomorrow.”

Of course, tomorrow never comes, because it’s always only ever NOW, NOW, NOW, and if I don’t make the choice to start NOW, I never start. And then the anxiety builds, and the time runs out, and people ask, “But what have you been doing?” And I don’t write or blog because I feel like I shouldn’t be writing or blogging, I should be ‘working,’ even though I know it’s only work to my fearful, overprotective ego, and in reality it’s PLAY. I mean, painting and researching music venues????? How retarded can I be, to let myself convince myself that that’s work that I don’t want to do/am afraid to do/can’t do well enough?

As I realized when I got down here, and all the things that I believed were barriers to my ideal life were removed: living your dreams is terrifying to the ego.

And you, dear  reader, may be sitting there saying, “Well, she’s got it made. She’s getting to do all this cool stuff in Argentina. MY life sucks, though. I have REAL barriers. I have a crappy job. If I were in her shoes, I would totally be doing those things, I would totally be happy.”

Maybe you would be. But unless you are already creating, already living your ideal life, I bet if you were freed from the things you feel are currently limiting you, you’d be doing the same thing I am. Because what some Argentinian spray-painted on a bridge in the photo above is true – the only barriers are mental. They are never external. Our only barrier is our ego’s fear.

And every day I’m witnessing what a tricky bastard the ego is. Tricky bastard, but also, at heart, a loving thing that really only wants to protect us from pain and from the “death” of failure.

So, that’s where me and my ego are at right now. As soon as I post this, I intend to put on the audiobook The Alchemist to remind me that what I’m doing here is attempting to live my Personal Legend, and I’m going to sit down and paint.

My first watercolor after ~10 years, Dec 2011

My second watercolor (in progress), Jan 2012

Below is an excerpt and multiple quotes (ok, practically half the book, but it’s just so TRUE) from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, a book that gives me hope and makes me feel less retarded:

There’s a secret that real writers [artists/creators] know that wannabe writers [artists/creators] don’t and the secret is this: it’s not the writing [painting/creating] part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write [paint/create].

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever resolved on a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever felt a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace or to preserve the environment? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease and erectile dysfunction. To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius. Genius is a Latin word; the Romans used it to denote an inner spirit, holy and inviolable, which watches over us, guiding us to our calling.. A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center. It is our soul’s seat, the vessel that holds our being-in-potential, our star’s beacon and Polaris.

Every sun casts a shadow, and genius‘ shadow is Resistance. As powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it. Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, harder to kick than crack cocaine. We’re not alone if we’ve been mown down by Resistance; millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us. And here’s the biggest bitch: we don’t even know what hit us. I never did. From age twenty-four to thirty-two, Resistance kicked my ass from East Coast to West and back again thirteen times and I never even knew it existed. I looked everywhere for the enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face.

 

The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego.

The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. The more you love your art/ calling/ enterprise, the more important its accomplishment to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it.

Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential… Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.

Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe enforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn’t just psychological; it’s biological. It’s in our cells.

The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are… That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity… because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.

Now What To Write?

After posting my most vulnerable and honest blog ever, and getting the most feedback ever, I was left with the question… Now what do I write about?

One thing that came up repeatedly in response to the post was people – many of them friends I’ve known for years – saying: “It’s amazing how similar our stories/our fathers are.” That was one of the reasons I felt compelled to share my (I thought) unusual reaction to my father’s death – while I know I was risking seeming insensitive to the death of a family member by admitting I was relieved, and it made me uncomfortable sharing so much, I figured there had to be others who had the same experience that I did.

Actually, after he died and I downloaded a bunch of Motown music, I started googling around to see if it was ‘normal’ to have conflicting feelings at the death of an alcoholic parent. I didn’t really find anything that described what I was going through. The next morning, when I woke up at 6am, I started typing the blog post on my Droid. It was one of those pieces that just writes itself, that flows out of you intact.

The experience reminded me of the Elizabeth Gilbert TED talk, in which she brilliantly explains writing, creativity and our skewed take on genius.

The Greeks and Romans used to believe that creativity, rather than coming from humans, was actually a spirit that came to people from a “distant and unknowable source.” Some called it a daemon, some called it a genius. A person wasn’t a genius; they had a genius who would come and help them out with their work. To me, sounds like tapping into the collective unconscious. Anyways, Elizabeth points out that this takes the pressure off of artists. And, that the artist’s only job is to show up and work. It’s the genius’s job to make it good.

Ole, Allah, a glimpse of god. A glimpse, a remembrance of the truth we are each connected to.

“Just do your job, continue to show up for your piece of it… Ole to you nonetheless…just for having  to have the sheer human love and stubborness to keep showing up.”

My New Favorite Blog

Idle Words, www.idlewords.com, is my new favorite blog. The posts – essays, really – are well-crafted, interesting, and witty. An inspiration!

Here are a few choice tidbits:

“Why maintaining the elevator should require eleven hours of hammering is something I try not to think about, just as I avoid asking why this particular elevator has to get its inspection certificate stamped each month instead of, say, every three years.”

“I just finished a summer studying Arabic at the Monterey Institute for International Studies… just down the road from a grim military counterpart called the Defense Language Institute, where young men and women learn how to eavesdrop on the nation’s enemies, provided that the enemies speak slowly and limit their conversation to hobbies and the weather.”

“Eating steaks in Argentina feels like joining a cult. You find yourself leaning on friends to come visit, and writing YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND in all caps more often than feels comfortable.”

New Challenge – Limit Internet

I’m trying out a new challenge today.

I’m only going to check email/facebook/twitter twice today; once at noon, and once after I get home from work.

I find myself compulsively checking those three throughout the day for a sense of connection and validation. Mini pick-me-ups, mini mood-boosters.

I don’t want to rely on technology for that. I want to control technology; I don’t want it to control my mood.

I may do the same with my cell phone – just shut it off 90% of the time, and have a specific time that I turn it on and check messages and respond. I seek (and receive) that same sense of validation/connection from text messages.

I’m tired of being dependent, and I’m tired of being distracted. I want to channel my energy purposefully. I want to DO things that will make me happy long-term, rather than RECEIVE things that distract me from my dissatisfaction in the short-term. I want to push my personal boundaries of clarity and progress towards my goals.

I’m excited to conduct this experiment with my life and see how it goes. This morning I did not get online and spend my usual 45ish minutes checking email/FB/Twitter. Instead I wrote my Three Morning Pages, meditated, took a walk around my neighborhood while listening to Philosophers Notes, watered the spinach I’m growing in the backyard, did some yoga, and ate breakfast with my roommate. I can tell this is going to be a great day.

Feel free to join me in my experiment and let me know how it goes for you!

Frustration/Loving Me

Sometimes I get frustrated with myself. I get frustrated at the limits I still impose on myself.

I have so many unfinished blog drafts, and things I want to write. About Vibrams and ChiRunning. About education. About our society. About the Lunar New Year. About all the shifts that have occurred in my life so far in 2011. About all the realizations I’ve had. About the amazing veggie meals I’ve been cooking. About what I’ve been learning from my friendships. About my path towards minimalism. About my progress towards financial freedom.

I feel like I never do enough.

That feeling has been with me my entire life. Never enough, never enough. I’m not going to point fingers but I know that ancestral beliefs, ways of thinking and limitations run deep. I’m working hard to shatter all those, and live an authentic life in which I express my soul. I want emotional and intellectual freedom. I want freedom from limited thinking, from fear, from destructive beliefs. I want economic freedom, artistic freedom, physical freedom.

The funny thing is that the only things that keep me from freedom are in my head.

So, I’m working with what’s in my head. I’m sorting through all the crap in there, looking at it, sitting with it, then consciously deciding what stays, and what needs to go. In the new head space I’m creating,  I’m adding new things – not things that have been imposed on me by society or parents or teachers or peers or media, but things  of my own conscious choosing.

One of the things I’m choosing – to accept myself fully, exactly as I am right  now. And to be kinder to myself. I’m practicing loving me.

I hope you are too.

 

 

*Consciousness is Contagious*

Follow me on twitter @lunasealife

A day without Facebook. OR email!

In the midst of all the other challenges I’m doing right now, I decided this morning to try another little one – go an entire day without logging into Facebook OR email. Quite an impressive feat for me, since I’m pretty sure that I am (was!) a dopamine addict. Check out this fascinating article in Slate about why humans are geared towards internet (and texting) addictions: http://www.slate.com/id/2224932

I check email compulsively; I used to check FB compulsively, but have gotten myself to slow down on that by instituting a no-FB-at-work policy. I used to think of myself as a very undisciplined person; but now that I’m acting like a disciplined person, by setting goals/challenges/limits on myself and committing to stick to them, I’m BECOMING a disciplined person. I’ve heard numerous teachers talk about “Act As If,” basically another form of “Fake It ‘Til You Make It.” Our actions shape who we are. Want to be someone different? Start doing what that someone different would do. And the ultimate cliché (thanks to Nike): JUST DO IT.

I had an extremely productive day. I’ve been feeling stressed between work and my side project and all of the other (wonderful) things going on in my life right now, and I decided that it’s time to stop wasting so much of my VERY PRECIOUS time on FB and email. Of course I love FB and email because they’re validation – that people care, that I’m loved, that others are thinking of me. But I need to learn to need that less. And I’ll learn to need that less by PRACTICING needing that less.

FB and email are also distractions that allow me to avoid and procrastinate on the things I’m afraid of doing – afraid that it’ll be wrong, afraid I won’t do well enough, afraid of failure. But I’ve noticed that lately, instead of putting things off, I’m just doing them. It’s becoming easier and easier.

I’ve decided that I want to use my energy purposefully. And that means getting extremely clear on what makes me happy, and what I want in life, and then channeling my energy – physical, mental, emotional, and money energy – towards those few, high priority things.

I’ve got a Paulo Coelho book of quotes that I just opened randomly, and here’s what that wise old man told me:

“A warrior of light makes decisions.
His soul is as free as the clouds in the sky,
but he is committed to his dream.”

Talk about synchronicity. Thanks, Paulo!