Thursday, December 27, 2012

A New Year of Good Intentions: That You Really Should Follow Through With!

Everyone tries to get by on their good intentions and I’m no different from anyone else. I mean well, just like all the other people that say, “At least I have goals!” For many years I intended to work out more, I intended to find a job I truly enjoyed rather than endured, I intended to finally tell off the people that have really irritated my gentle sensibilities over the years but, here we are, 2013 and all I have to show for it are the IOU’s I wrote to myself in the form of…good intentions. Cash those damn things in woman! Yes, I can hear people yelling that as they read.

new-years-resolutions

have no good reason for not working out more because when I did go to the gym a lot, about four years ago, I often went twice a day, seven days a week. No joke. I used exercise as an escape because I’d rather work off my anger and disappointment than just sit at home stewing in it and, I also just didn’t want to see the person that happened to reside in the same house I did at the time. Avoidance at its best but, I got the healthy pay-off in the deal because when I did come home I wasn’t as irritated to find clothes on the floor and some lazy slob lounging with their dirty shoes propped up on the couch. It acted as a band-aid that hid the oozing sore I had been ignoring for years but the day came when I had to remove that temporary fix and, of course, I found yet another “good intention” gone awry.
I also have no good reason for why I’ve stuck with jobs that drained me emotionally and rewarded me very little monetarily other than the lame excuse, “I’m helping people so there’s that,” when asked why I stayed so long. Sure, I’ve helped multitudes of people in crisis over the years but who was helping me when I needed a boost? When I look back on the years I held human services-type positions I realize now that the only one that truly had my back was the wall and all it would have taken was one personal set-back to shove me over the same ledge I was talking other people down from. Scary, but true. And, as far as the reason why I never issued a fiery verbal assault on the toxic people in my life…well, I can only say that I tell myself I was being the BIGGER person. In reality I think I was just the biggest sucker but given the passage of time and distance I no longer care about having the last word with any of those people because in the grand scheme of things they really mean very LITTLE to me so I can easily set them aside and walk past without a single backward glance.
 
balance-black-and-white-let-it-let-it-go-life-Favim_com-270095
 
When are good intentions nothing more than excuses? When we continually “plan” to do something different year after year only to come to the end of your life’s road to find you truly haven’t even tried to start anything new in decades…you just TALKED about it. Talk is cheap but action is priceless yet we seem to value the “blah, blah, blah” more and put the most effort into talking big rather than actually living big. We talk about doing better for ourselves, finding that spot in the sun that really warms us inside and out and makes us smile so why can’t we muster up the willpower to go do it? I have no fixed answer for that because each person has their own reason/excuse. What are yours and why do you feel the need to hang on to them? Make this year the year we all let go and move forward for REAL.

© 2012-2013 Laura A. Askew, All Rights Reserved

As a gentle reminder: People who steal the creative property of others deserve to be kicked in the tingly bits by a pissed off writer well versed in street fighting. In plain English: Don't steal my stuff!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

I’m an idea person. People with ideas fall into two categories: Organized and driven and scattered and joyfully distracted. I am the latter. Whenever someone asks me if there is more to life or if I think I should be doing something else the answer in my brain is always “yes” because I know I can and will do more. I may not have arrived at my previously planned or scheduled destination but the side trips have been amusing even when sprinkled with light showers of annoyance, self-indulgence and passive-aggressive monotony at times. As the worn saying goes: “shit happens” but I made a promise to myself long ago that even if I should occasionally step in it I’d at least take the time to stop and change my shoes so I could continue on with my adventure without having to smell the old putrid memories with each new step.
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Many, many fanciful thoughts, ideas, images and plans romp through my mind at any given moment. Some are plausible and others border on absurd yet, they remain tucked into the corners to be lovingly revisited at a later date. I rarely write things down aside from my “love letters” to you, dear readers because I’m more of a spontaneous creator, a “doer” who flies by the well-worn seat of her pants to destinations I have no control over but adore none the less. Those who don’t “get it” call it daydreaming nonsense or worse but I know it for what it really is: Imagination. The world lacks this in greater and greater quantities with each passing day and scoff at those who continue to turn original thoughts into reality rather than pulling from the well of the rehashed and overtly recycled. Building on a dream is my preferred method and while it may take me longer than those seeking shortcuts and “cheats” it still gets me to the place I need to be. Always. So, better late than never.

                                   "Keep trying. Eventually you will get off the ground..."

Is there more to life? It depends on what you mean by more. More money, success and fame or are we speaking on a higher, more emotional level? A lofty plane or dimensional space of deeper meaning and understanding about how life really isn’t as hard as some make it out to be? Life just IS, no degree of difficulty is intentionally added just because we breathe, no need for any additional dramatic descriptive, it just occurs whether we are sleeping or awake. It isn’t something that happens to us it’s something we make happen and when people claim, “Life is just a bitch and then you die,” could it possibly be that what’s really the bitch is that they, themselves, created the conflict but are too afraid to take responsibility so they blame life instead? It’s both scary and exhilarating to realize that we truly are the architects of our own lives and when we build with care the foundations we leave act to support future creation, innovation and imagination. When we slap things together with ideas stolen from others and the duct tape of "good enough" no foundation has been built at all, it's only an illusion.
                           
The "things" we accumulate help us hide from our inner calling whether those things are negative memories from the past or material possessions stacked up around us like a fort built on envy, guilt and debt. The walls come crashing down eventually and all we are left with is the one thing we originally came into this world with…ourselves. Yes, we could get off on another tangent, ride a whole different bus to a town that approaches the topic of “the meaning of life” in an entirely different and maybe even intentionally complicated way but when push comes to shove, that bus still goes right back to the same station each night…YOU. There is more to life: we need to live more or better yet live, period! When we see thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people even, just existing rather than living the question that begs to be asked is this: If life is simply about being, living, loving and taking in each daily breath like an intoxicating drink of imaginative excitement then why do we fight so hard to keep from living? What is so frightening about being real? I have an answer, do you?

© 2012 Laura A. Askew, All Rights Reserved

As a gentle reminder: People who steal the creative property of others deserve to be kicked in the tingly bits by a pissed off writer well versed in street fighting. In plain English: Don't steal my stuff!

Friday, September 21, 2012

It's hard to dance with someone that won't dance with you...

This is the time of year when I get all excited and am at the top of my creative game. I write more, I sing more, I laugh more and I just create more delight around me in general. Everyone wants a partner in crime, a yin to their yang and there ain’t nothing wrong with wanting a cool mustachioed Oates to go along with your groovy, blond hair flowing, Hall. That is the way relationships are designed to be. The “better half” is just a misnomer because when both halves are in sync and the music is rockin’ then the connection is a good one that’s built to last. Everyone wants that one person they can unwind with and feel like “yeah, that’s all right” with. Harmony at its best.
But, then there are the duds, the turds, the wet blankets, the fake laughers and the overall poop cloud people who have, “No, I don’t want to,” or “I can’t do that,” playing on a loop inside their head each time you ask them to join in on your reindeer games. What a letdown! The disappointment is palpable and after each, “No, let’s don’t but say we did,” quip you start to feel like jackin’ them in the giblets and leaving them in the dust while you go have fun. (Yes, you can giblet-jack a woman too so don’t bother asking) FUN! Life should be fun. Relationships can’t be all work and no play because after a while you’ll just have a crazy fucker chasing you around with an axe during a long, blizzardy winter jaunt playing caretaker at a deserted hotel. Come on! It’ll be fun you said! Fun like an axe in the head. Lighten up Johnny…or Jilly.

 
Here's Johnny!

Here is the thing, every Halloween for many years, I have always dressed up and really gotten into the role of Ghoul Queen. Because I love it! And, for many of those years, I was with someone who refused to share my childlike glee and attitude that even adults deserved to have fun. It wasn’t their thing and they made sure I knew it and after a while it turned into more than just that one day, it became a realization that every day, we had very little in common. I rectified that by changing up players (for more good cause than just this one example) and finally found a daring soul that was willing to jump into my hobbies and enjoyments and this in turn made me very willing to engage in activities that they enjoyed as well. To find someone agreeable to slapping white, gooey make-up all over their face so they looked “acceptably dead” and then watching them stay in character most of the evening without one complaint made my heart sing! That’s the kind of foreplay that really does wonders for a relationship and helps build positive memories that last.

So, what do you do when the person you’re coupled with doesn’t sing in the same key as you or refuses to sing or play or dance or even have any fun with you at all after a while? Well, I’m sure there are those out there that will say, “Oh, you need to be more flexible and try to understand where they’re coming from,” and “Maybe they are just having a bad day, week, month, year….LIFE.” Yeah, that’s it. I’d say SUCK IT to these people because they aren’t the ones feeling dismissed or devalued. Certainly, allowances can be made for the occasional “bad day” here and there but when a day extends throughout the duration of a relationship and it gets to the point where none of your friends even realize you’re still in a relationship anymore because you two never do anything together then it’s time to regroup, re-evaluate and possibly retreat.

 

 
Create excitement through joint experiences whether they started out as your own or not. Learn about the likes and dislikes that each partner has and make an attempt to join in because reciprocity can be a very rewarding payback. Trust me on this. Build a new experience bank that can be withdrawn from again at a later date when both want to recapture a positive moment of connection and you’ll discover that it’s a beautiful thing when two people can laugh together over shared activities. It’s how we learn and grow and it’s also how we keep from getting axed in the head. And, that isn't how we dream properly now is it?
 

 
© 2012 Laura A. Askew, All Rights Reserved
 
Reminder about stealing the creative work of another: It makes you a douche bag of the worst sort.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

This is my land of reverie...

Let me introduce you to the idea of reverie: Definition of "reverie": to daydream...except I do it in a much more awesome manner and not always during the day. The act of reverie includes short daytime jaunts into the world of fancy but at night, her cousin REM can make things take a different turn. Reoccurring dreams can be confusing, bizarre or even frightening. Let's stick with the day trips darlings shall we?



 


As a form of personal introduction you can call me Reverie and here is a little background:



When I was fourteen, I read Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray numerous times over the course of one summer. The words drew me in, lifted me up, and released me from the straight jacket of DNA dysfunction I experienced while outside of their spell. Six hundred and seventeen pages documenting a world I had never been formally introduced to but had stumbled upon, quite by accident, in the discard box at the local library. I longed to be able to create snapshots with words just as Thackeray had and diligently scrawled my pain and fourteen-year-old desires, such as they were, in dozens of college-rule notebooks. To be the author of my very own “Novel Without A Hero” felt so close to me that I could feel the warm breath of literary success brush my cheek to deposit the words, “It will come true,” in my ear.
 
This is why I write and why I believe in the power of dreams.
 
 
Lovingly yours,
 
Reverie

 © 2012 Laura A. Askew, All Rights Reserved

Reminder about stealing the creative work of another: It makes you a douche bag of the worst sort.