Clinton School Adventures

I've been in Little Rock now for a little over a week and we have been busy. Here are a couple links to The Clinton School of Public Service's blog. I hope you enjoy what you see.

      *We volunteered at the Rice Depot

      *Clinton School students to complete 13 public service projects across Arkansas 

I'll keep everyone posted on all the other exciting things we do. 

Brilliant!

I came across this today and just fell in love with this video: Entertaining and it has a message. 

Just A Great Morning

Am up accomplishing things in this July heat and humidity.  Sending love and light out to everyone today.  Here is some moving music. 

The Beginning

Here is the first few pages of I Have Three Kinds of Hiccups.  I've recently been back at it with having conversations with publishers and thought why not throw it out here and let the universe have it for a bit. Enjoy! 

               A great example of the young adult I was before I was released into the world? Before I was released into the world, I was just a “make everyone happy” boy who wanted to learn and get involved with everything yet wasn’t quite prepared for the journey I was about to set out on.  This was before I blindly moved to Las Vegas, before I attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and before high school graduation.  It was my senior year of high school, when I still thought I was going to go to Hastfra University in Long Island, New York.    My favorite class my senior year was Anatomy and Physiology. It was my favorite for many reasons.  One was that it was full of advanced seniors who wanted to learn and were always in constant competition with each other.  To add to that there were two juniors in the class that wanted to fight right along with us.  There were only two men, me and Dane, that were always being given such a hard time;  Both of us extremely active and with great spirits that always kept the class in constant laughs when opportunities arose.  This extremely bright class was led by Ms. Barth, a woman who always challenged us and brought learning to the next level.  When we exclaimed we could teach simple biology to freshman, she challenged us to make an instructional video. This video was called Gregg Nye the Science Guy. When we said the dissection of the mink was under us, she found the class a calf to dissect together.  When we inquired the relativity of the calf to an actual human, she got us a bus and brought us to Madison in order to look at cadavers at the university. 

               These great challenges added to the excitement of going to class every day and the desire to learn everything we could.  With that said though, the life of an extremely busy high school senior can only stay organized for so long and once in a while, I would bring other activities into Anatomy and Physiology to sit in the back of class and work on besides the actual class workload.

               On one of these particular days I was sitting in the back of class working on a Key Club fundraiser, getting ready for our spring choir cabaret and sitting with everything else that is on a senior who’s about to graduate’s mind.  The class had gotten into an extreme conversation about the diaphragm and what exactly the hiccup is.  In this detailed conversation, that I was not at all paying close attention to, I announced, “I have three kinds of hiccups.”

               To my ignorance, I kept my head down working on other priorities while the entire class stopped the conversation and all turned around to gawk at my idiotic outburst.  After a moment of watching me continue to make the class conversation the less of my priorities, Ms. Barth asked, “Would you care to elaborate on your unique hiccup situation?”

               I feel that my memory is so clear of what happened next.  I set my pen down, raised my head, took a breath and went on to explain that yes, I do in fact have three kinds of hiccups.  “I have the quick little ones that can easily be resolved with some sort of focusing anecdote.  I have extremely deep ones that hurt the whole of my insides which usually pass after a short time and finally, I have the ones that effect your entire body for a moment, and then again, and again, and again, until I can only focus on my hiccups.”

               With that, the class just looked at me with blank faces until Ms Barth continued with, “OK then.” As everyone turned around and all the attention was taken away from me, I heard a whisper coming from across the aisle.

               “That should be the name of your book.”  The girl who whispered this phrase has just come back into my life.  She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and children running a community fine arts center.  I was at Trader Joes a few months back when I looked down the line of checkout lanes and saw her familiar face.  I had went to our last two reunions hoping to see her and tell her what I had been holding with me for almost fifteen years because of her.  Almost fifteen years later and now, as I quickly approach age thirty two, I know that my voice is clear, and I am ready to share my three kinds of hiccups again: I Have 3 Kinds of Hiccups; the Modern Struggle through Our Post-Modern Twenties

               The most difficult thing about hiccups is that we are forced to stop and resolve that one issue; the hiccup.  Nothing else in our life can be taken care of until these hiccups have left our presence.  Sometimes hiccups can take all of the focus of our lives so bad that I think if I were on a plane, plummeting toward the ground, that the hiccups would still take precedent over getting the emergency door open, putting on my air breather, or finding my life cushion.  They can be just that bad.

               Well, as I ventured through my twenties, and became this person who somewhat has an idea who he is, what his voice wants to say and understands the world a tiny bit better than at age nineteen, I have had my share of hiccups.  I’ve had the tiny ones that just need a small anecdote to give me relief.  I have had the great ones that hurt the whole of my insides and we think that it may be all over.  I have had the ones that just sit, and take all of our energy and concentration to get them to pass.  We don’t know how long they will take up our lives and we don’t know the state we’ll be in once they have passed, but while these repetitive, annoying hiccups are present in our lives, all we can do is put focus on them. 

               Finishing this book and allowing it to finally be read is for me, the final hiccup to hit the reset button on my life, take inventory on what I’ve learned, who I’ve become, and figure out what I do with that?  So many people in my age group are going through this same process.  We entered our twenties with the values of our parents and their parents, and left our twenties with different ideals and brand new global problems.  Our twenties brought us nowhere to take the education, high school to post graduate, we received and find a good paying job with it. The fanfare of our twenties, need us not forget, is the cellular devise; this technological appendage that is now fixed to our hands that really appeared out of thin air.

                 Some may call these newly developed twenties the “Quarter Life Crisis” and some just call it evolution.  I call it life without consequence because no matter the different kinds of hiccups our generation is having, many of these hiccups can probably all be found in the realm of decisions made without consequences.  Our twenties were about discovering ourselves in a newly re-invented world that had no consequence.  We saw that when people were selling us credit cards door to door in the dorms at universities across the country.  With those credit cards, we purchased our first cell phones, trips for spring break, and our fake I.D.s because it was in our twenties that carding became effective absolutely everywhere. 

               I also reference life without consequence to me because I made decisions for me, on what I thought was best for me, in order to conquer my dreams.  I moved to Las Vegas without thinking about what that would do to my little brother.  I bought things and did things that I had no idea how it would affect my credit.  I ran crazy in Los Angeles and lived freely not realizing how the impact would change how I believed I could fall in love, what I deserved from others, and what I really needed to be happy.  The quarter life crisis, evolution, life without consequences, or how ever you want to term it, affected so many of us in different situations.  I saw it festering as well in friends all around me.  Some had children early and some waited after their careers to have children and are now finding it difficult to conceive.  Some set off for graduate school following their undergraduate and some switched schools and majors and dropped out.  Some became single parents and some lost their parents.  Some left home immediately and found themselves in sparkling new environments that formed the adults who they became.  All of these amazing beings I call my loved ones and have seen them also struggle at times in our twenties because of our unique position in history. 

               For me, my twenties come off as a magical time that I feel I watched in a movie theatre somewhere.  Of course there were obstacles but this is a movie about a naive boy becoming an extremely loved and well rounded man. When I leave this movie, I am moved because I do not believe it was me in the leading role.  I feel it was someone else and this main character is so lucky to be touched by all of the supporting characters. It is them who assisted the lead in how he handled his hiccups and it is them who ultimately created him into who he is now with their kindness, compassion, selflessness and direction.  I find this movie that plays in my head unbelievable to have happened to me and it becomes clear why sharing this book is so important.

                Sharing this is for one, a symbol of gratitude to everyone who has been involved in my life. Even if a certain memory or great entertaining moment isn’t included in this group of essays, I am still grateful.  It’s not that our story wasn’t good enough; there is unfortunately only so much room.  With all of my favorite memories, I could write a series of books but those stories might only be enjoyable to the specific people involved. Know that everyone who has come into my life in the past decade is in here.  I am me because of you all.

               For everyone who hasn’t been in my life, I hope you can relate to what I am sharing.  I hope that in reading this, you laugh because you remember a similar incident or laugh because you would never do that. I hope when reading this, you remember how insanely difficult it can be to start on your own or if you are just getting out into the world, find relief that others went through it too.  Our environment is changing so quickly and evolving at such a pace that the urgency of us connecting to each other is more important than ever. If sharing some of my stories can help motivate and inspire this necessary connect in our lives with common ground, they are worth putting out into the universe.  Along with many of you, I somehow got through my twenties and because of these hiccups, I have the tools necessary to accomplish all the goals I’ve made and the ones I have yet not even conjured up. 

               “Turning twenty isn’t for everyone” is what I remember telling myself as I was driving from Madison, past Eau Claire where I was going to college, and the additional thirty minutes to Menominee where I had an audition to work at Disney for the summer.  I had got it in my head that I was actually going to be talented enough to work at Disney at age twenty with the limited experience and training that I had. 

               It was my sophomore year of college and I had decided to do something far away for the summer and get into a new experience.  Earlier in January of that year, I had traveled abroad for the first time.  I wanted more adventure and thought Disney might be the vehicle for that.  So, unprepared and tired because I had been three hours away in a hospital for two days, I was going to audition for Mickey Mouse……..

Just watched and really enjoyed it. Just spreading the word.


 

Facebook Present: Yes, I Was In 4-H

Today I got to working, but not until I did my routine: Check Rachel Maddow, look over the New York Times, and then of course check facebook.  Well I didn't have a ton of my own work to do so I spent a little extra time on facebook.  While I was perusing people's posts and taking notice to what everyone was thinking about what had happened with the recall Scott Walker election, I then noticed that I had been added to a new group on facebook, the Wisconsin 4-H Showcase Singers page. 

We all have moments in our lives that will just stay ours.  A moment where we enjoy time spent, learn a ton, have life changing relationships and we inevitably grow as a person.  I have two moments in which I was forever changed but the events that happened were with people that just came in and out of my life for those specific moments.  Yes, I was able to keep one or two of those connections, but for the most part, these are spots in my life that I keep close to my heart and don't get the opportunity to reminisce with others.  One of those times for me was the summer I studied in Cuba and the other was the two summers I spent with the Wisconsin 4-H Showcase Singers.

I was in high school and had no clue about anything.  I mean no clue, not of the world, not of who I was, not of what I could accomplish and not of how people could impact my life.  I remember getting to our two week workshop on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus and thinking, "does this director know that I have no dance experience at all?"  It was all up from there and turned out to be one of the best experiences from my teenage years.

Other memories that pop out are when I was driving to our first performance in Manitiwoc and the ostriches loose, running across the highway at an ostrich farm outside of Fon Du Lac, WI.  I remember sneaking out one night with others to get peroxide to bleach our hair.  I remember getting a group j-walking ticket on the Madison campus at seven in the morning with no traffic at all.  I also remember being the first people to stay in the dorms at the State Fair Grounds and thinking how great college would be.  I will cherish the moment when in a dance routine, a girl half my size was suppose to pull me off the floor and in order to do so, I had to get my foot directly under me.  I was so uncoordinated that learning the move took me forever to get, but after a couple extremely loud knee pops, I got it.  I'm pretty sure she remembers that too.

Above all though, I remember learning the love of applause from groups larger than my high school could provide and getting in the muck of balancing a job and touring career at age seventeen while taking comfort that everyone with me was doing the same thing.  I get angry at technology and can lecture on how it is taking away from our one-on-one connections but then a gift like this happens and I can only put my foot in my mouth and say "Yank Yoo"

Neil Young Kind of Day

Just having a wonderful day and wanting to listen to a little Neil Young.  Have a wonderful day.

 

Writing Exercise

One of my close friends who has this wonderful blog, Beyondthegreendoor,were talking about how there are so many characteristic that each one of us fall under and how sometimes, it's difficult to acknowledge that we are all of these things, not just one of them.  Not one person I know can be categorized as just one adjective. We are mothers and sons and outgoing and interpersonal and loving and straight and so on and so on.

This conversation though was the catalyst for us to create a writing exercise out of it and I am inviting my readers to join in.  You can send me(gregg@projectkinect.com) your writing or leave it as a comment or comment on what you get out of it.  The purpose of inviting people to do this isn't necessarily that you want a writing exercise, but it was a great task for some self-seeking research.  Both me and my friend got some great things out of doing this.  It is open ending free writing that allows you to put some labels on yourself.  Here is how we did it.

First make a list:  Write down an entire list of every label, adjective or self-identifying word that describes who you think you are.  I was typing mine so I just did a page full but I really think keep going until you feel is good. 

Second, choose three: Look at the list and take moment to think about each word.  How does each one make you feel?  What thoughts do you have? What memories do these words make you think of?  Choose three to focus on

Third, write: Write about what each of the three words mean to you.  It can be a memory, what you see in others, a news article that you read about it..... Anything.  We decided a paragraph or two would be good for each word but once we started writing, it opened up into much larger topics and ideas. 

Have fun with it!  Here is mine because I wanted to share it.  I like to share when I learn a little more about myself.  I also would really love to hear what you get out of it.

Open minded

Flexible
Gay
Well Spoken
Fun
Confused
Parental
Leader
Psychologist
Actor
Uncle
Friend
Confidant
Son
Brother
Decision Maker
Over Thinker
Listener
Correspondent
Host
Soul Searcher
Loved One
Writer
Peace Keeper
Entrepreneur
Hippie
Aimless Wanderer
Ambitious Dreamer
Blind
Naïve
Partier
Monogamous
Philanthropist
Hopeful
Good Seeker
Life Lover
Horror Film Junkie
Road Trip Lover
Radio Host
Communicator
Connector
People Person
Eater
Food Junkie
Thespian

 Well Spoken.

Growing up I always admired my grandmother for being so well spoken.  It wasn’t that she was just well spoken, but that she was able to change her tone, purpose and delivery with the different people that she came across.   I always just was in aww and hoped that I too, one day would have this gift.  As I grew through my teens, I realized that it was not as common as I once thought. 

I came across two remarkable young women when I got to my first front of the house restaurant job.  The first summer at Houlihan’s I had the hardest time talking to Abigail and Jacqueline because I felt years behind them because of their ability to speak to everyone and always be so extremely articulate and precise.  I watched them, listened to them and began to see what it looked like as a younger person to have the same gift my grandmother had.  This gift my grandmother had wasn’t just a gift, it was a muscle that needed to be flexed and worked out.  The gift is a balance of interpersonal skills, intuition and observation skills that once added with a vocabulary and ability to listen, becomes a power more than a gift.

Years later, now that I have attempted to flex and work out this muscle, I hear it in my voice at times and it shocks me to think that I have acquired this thing that I so admired in my grandmother.  I hear it when I go from talking to my boss to a nineteen year old employee and I hear it when I go from talking to my friends at dinner and then to the nervous waitress.  I have picked up my grandma’s gift.

Host.

Host is such a versatile hat to wear.  I see it in a friend who is having a dinner party and I see it in my staff at the restaurant.  I guess it takes a moment to really think about what the definition is and really thing about how we host in our everyday lives.  A host is someone or something that lets another being into their own space.  A person can be the host to influenza.  I can host people at my restaurant.  A person can be the master of ceremonies and in result be the host of that particular event. I guess a host is someone who makes another feel comfortable in a new environment.  That environment doesn’t have to be owned or property of the host, but just somewhere that the host is able to find comfort on a level of self in order to make everyone else feel that level of comfortability or ease. I see why I would have written it on my list of characteristics. 

 Hippie.  

I have always been friends with what we consider hippies in this post-modern world and they excite me.  For a long time I was unable to breath and be calm and I would see my more hippie-ish friends and just revel in their ability to brush it off. 

The last two years I have embraced my inner hippie and realize that I am a hippie in my own way.  I now let life go with ease, for the most part.  We can’t control everything and I can now really understand that.  Sometimes the plan is much different than we plan and we have to have a calm about ourselves in order to get through the “new” plan.  I remember my roommate in college, Katie, telling me, “Sometime we have to sit in a room and wait for what our plans will be.”  She was usually talking about plans to go out but it is relatable.

Hippie for me also makes me think about how envious I was of Sandra Oh’s character in Sideways.  She was just living in wine country in Northern California in a trailer with her child:  Nothing glamorous, just simple and humble.  I always think how a part of me could just do that very thing.  The hippie in me is strong but not quite strong enough yet for me to say do it.

Little Rock It Out

A couple things came up in the last day that I want to point out.  One of them is that Dina made the announcement about her moving to Little Rock with me.  I have some major issues with moving to a new city not knowing anyone.  I did it once and I just don't have that in me to do it again.  This time it is different seeing that I am going into a small group who are are about to go through the same masters program as me, but it is still nice to have someone there with me. 

Little Rock is also different than when i moved to Vegas because I know myself so much better know than ten years ago and I am so much more geographically close to people I love and respect and hold tight in my life.  When I moved to Vegas, I had three people who were all at least five hours away and now in Little Rock, I will have about twelve people with in a five hour radius, not to mention the list that is only eight hours or that my family will only be twelve hours away opposed to the thirty-two in Los Angeles.

Having Dina in the city though will make things a lot easier.  No matter what my circumstances in life, I will always make friends so having a loved one close by can only be a positive. 

With us being in Little Rock, we will bringing the Dina and Gregg Show to a new level.  Not only will we be doing the show a couple times a month, but we will also be keeping a video blog of what is happening in Little Rock and how our lives are going being in the south where "alternative" lifestyles are not so prevalent.  Here is the first vlog...



The next thing that I wanted to bring up was Gay Parenting, namely with Neil Patrick Harris and his fiance, David Burtka.  As I was sitting at my father's house last night watching Entertainment tonight with Patti, a segment came on talking about how Oprah was having an exclusive with the couple and their twins.  My first thought was "awww, how cute" and my second thought was, "look at what we are continuing to see on nation wide, pop-culture television?  The actual version of a modern family that isn't about a gay couple, but about a couple in love who loves their children." 

I can't seem to get the embedded code for the video so here is the link. http://www.etonline.com/media/flash/coincident/popOutPlayer.html?media=http://www.etonline.com/news/122216_Oprah_s_Aha_Moment_with_Neil_Patrick_Harris_Family/home_popout.ctv&playat=3.968

Here is however, the promo for the Oprah special.  Despite what we see every moment on main street media, we are evolving. 

The Importance of a Detour

This last week I had planned on making an exciting road trip across country.  I am a huge road trip person.  Ever since I was twenty, I've taken one, two or sometimes three big road trips a year.  It is the best way to see our country and leads to spontaneity and experiences that we may have not been exposed to if we were taking a different way of travel.


Well this road trip was going from Wisconsin Dells to Austin, TX and then onto San Antonio through El Paso and then finally to Los Angeles for a few weeks and then back through Colorado.  Even though this was my plan, something much greater than me was saying my plan was wrong. 


I should have been more vulnerable to the things happening around me in the days leading up to the trip.  My car is not at the full potential of a car that is going to be driving across country but I didn't focus on that point. I decided to get fixed only the parts necessary to get from point a to point b.  This would mean taking a trip with no cruise control and not air conditioning; not my one of my best ideas. The finish to admitting that this idea wasn't a thoroughly planned trip was that as I was leaving my grandmother's house, my car completely stopped.  I was in reverse when the connection from the battery was interrupted.  I called the mechanic and he rushed over to my assistance.  With no more red flags, I took off for my trip.


I was moving smoothly until I was half way through Iowa.  Just as I was getting into the Des Moines city limits, my car started to lose acceleration.  I was pushing on the gas but the car wasn't moving any faster.  This was also in the middle of a storm and I figured maybe my car was hydroplaning and I just was over reacting but when my car was dead on the side of the road, I realize that I was under reacting.  


I sat there for about three minutes and then began to think of the next thing to do.  I didn't panic, but I couldn't think of what I should be doing.  I should have thought to call 911  but that didn't even come to mind.  Thankfully a man pulled up in his red truck who happened to be a mechanic.  He looked under the hood quickly and then had me try to get the car going but it just wasn't working.  Then the hail began and he jumped in the car and called 911 for me. With this phone call, he also got the emergency road service dispatched.  A state trooper showed up who then waited until my tow truck arrived.


The storm finally let up and before I knew it, I was in Howard's tow truck on my way to an area that had a Firestone, Sears and some a selection of hotels to choose from because it was looking like I was staying Des Moines for the night.  Howard was the driver's name and not the company name.  It's surprising on how much you can learn about someones life in the span of a twenty minute drive.


When I got to the mechanic, I then realized how kind and genuine everyone had been. I will always believe in the kindness of people and this experience just re-affirmed it.

The next day I awoke in my Econo-Lodge hotel room, fully slept and ready to take on the world.  The mechanics called to let me know that my car was ready and as I got to my coffee destination with ideas in my head, I sat down to make an alternate plan that wouldn't leave me in a similar situation of break down.  So, with thought and conversations with parents as well as loved ones that I was going to visit, I made the decision to go up north to my father's cabin and spend the rest of Memorial Day weekend there.   The detour really came when I found myself at dinner in Minneapolis with old friends. Sitting there in the presence of two of the most phenomenal people I know, mean while making new friends with people who had joined us, I became fully conscious that a plan had came about that was perfect in which I made not one decision.  As dinner was ending, I realized that the main purpose of this trip was to get myself together as well as to connect with close friends going through similar situations.  It wasn't the friends I originally thought I would see and surely staying the night in a strange city wasn't the way I thought I would collect myself, but it was exactly what I needed.  As I was going to bed that night in the hotel room, my friend Dina texted me, "it's all working out in a perfect way!" It really did. 

This scene is from one of my favorite movies, Threesome.  It is the closing scene where the lead talks about his college experience and how detours, both literal and metaphorical, can be extremely magical and sometimes the best part of our journey.
 

A Couple Movies

I love movie trailers. If you have ever looked at my website before, you would definitely know this.  I saw these featured yesterday and wanted to share them. 








What are you going to do with your one and only life?

Opportunity Equality

I didn't have a fully functional computer for most of my life.  I was blessed when a friend gave me her used lap top in 2004 so I had something to type my stories on and slowly use the internet.  Because of this, I was never one for technology; Out of sight, out of mind.  You can ask all of my friends, I didn't text until late, never checked my myspace and was one of the last in all of my circles of friends to join facebook.  It wasn't until Thanksgiving of 2009 when I purchased a computer that would catapult me into the technological age, high impact correspondence and a plethora of opportunities that I had no idea that I was even missing. 

This segment from The Rachel Maddow Show with Ezra Klein does a great job of sharing the inequality of opportunity.  It is all about the resources we each have.  I couldn't get the computer until I had a descent salaried job.  The salary and computer has opened up doors that allowed me to quit my job and pursue my own endeavors.  I am blessed; I know this. I am also humble because I am no where near rich and still have found my happiness through the opportunities that have crossed my paths.  I don't want this post to be about how sad it is for those without opportunities or a vent on how the rich are able to get richer. It is just a moment to be thankful for what we all have and continue to bust our asses as we move forward.
 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

LGBT News Besides Obama's News

This was from The Rachel Maddow Show last night.  It is an excellent update of what else is happening on the level of LGBT rights in our federal and state governments.
 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Clarity

I'm currently re-learning a lesson that we all learn over and over again.  The lesson is that everything will work out.  This is so brief and so androgynous, but yet so true.  Obstacles come up and the outcome is going to happen and just going to work out. It may not work out in our favor, but we will have to handle the outcome no matter how difficult yet we will still have opportunities when we get through it.  Getting through the obstacle unfortunately is when we tend to think that these are the cards that we are stuck with.  We get stuck there instead of keeping our eyes beyond that point and acknowledging that what ever is in your way will soon pass.  Today, I send love to all of you out there fighting through something trying to get to a point that is bigger and brighter.  Keep you eyes on the prize and just breath, everything will work out.

The Opportunity of Time

I am back to the place where I love being the most;  Having my days to work on what I feel is the most productive projects that allow me to use my talents in the largest form of influence that I feel possible.  I most identify myself as a writer.  Through words, I feel that I can connect to people the best.  I know we all wear many hats.  The hats I wear under the category "profession"  alone varies from radio host to entrepreneur, restaurant manager, consultant and of course writer. 

Writing is definitely where I feel most comfortable and most fulfilled.  Through writing I get to examine my experiences along with the experiences of the great many people that have crossed my path. I share these experiences, dissect them, and hopefully find ways to establish common ground so that through either reading or writing, we can become greater human beings.  This happens in the comedic moments, the sad moments, and the moments that happen so quickly that if we don't identify them, we will just loose them and the lesson those moments deliver. 

I also write because I am a student of people.  I learn from everyone and every moment I find myself in.  Being a student of people has allowed me to find my own philosophy in a time where it seems that philosophy is something only found in a section of the library.  Yet, the rows of books that fall under this category has a purpose that needs to be transformed into this post-modern, technologically advanced time. For me, my writing helps give reasons to why and hopefully translates to others.  As I write, I still give my thanks to the modern philosophers of our day like Micheal Hardt, Martha Nussbaum and Cornel West.  Even though many of them would never self-identify as philosophers, they very much are. 

For the next two months, I get the opportunity of time to write, re-connect and find my center on where I am and why I write.  I say this with the title of "Opportunity of Time" in an ironic form because time is always there as an opportunity.  Despite what is fed to us through the media and most other outlets, time itself does not actually cost us anything.  Time is the constant and we are the ones who decide how we spend it. 

For the next two months, I will write and connect and share; it is my commitment to myself. As I share, ask yourself, what can I commit to?  What do I want to do for myself that I never make time for?  Give yourself two months, two weeks or two days and share what it is and what you are accomplishing. I repeat sharing because it is the most important part.  Sharing gives inspiration, it allows others to share their stories and it makes a platform for collaboration for even greater things to happen.

For whatever reason it is, make the decision to give yourself the opportunity of time. 

Embracing It

One of those days when I just find myself in a melancholy-sort-of mood.  I am just embracing it and I feel that it is the only thing to do in that state of mind.  I recently contributed to Light of Love-LA and wrote about what to do when in one of these moments in our lives.

I don’t often speak about my faith. I bring it in to conversation from time to time as a side note and it is always extremely “other party polite” but is never direct or fully subjective. When I do braze it into conversation, not only am I careful of what other parties may be feeling on the subject of faith, but I state my thoughts in a “matter of fact” point so despite what other party’s religious beliefs are, they still can relate to my view. On a day where I am coming off of a spell of illness, have a complete loss of focus and a supreme lack of belief in myself, I feel it is a great moment for a self-check on what I believe. By reminding myself of my beliefs, I gain a starting point as how to look at the obstacles as well as the celebrations that are happening and continue to happen.

A few weeks ago, when I was at a much worse mental state, a close friend of mine reminded me that now is the time to be patient and see what the universe is saying. She of course was completely correct and days later I knew why everything was so topsy-turvy. This is something that she and I have to continuously repeat to each other, sometimes on a daily basis. Patience is so important in everything we do yet unfortunately, we are a society that is continuously growing more and more impatient. Patience gives us time to think, time to digest and time to truly see situations as the whole picture they are. Sometimes patience is tested and needed just for waiting for your morning coffee, and sometimes it is a life-long struggle to truly be in a place where we are comfortable. For me, one of my greatest strains of patience has been getting to this place where I know that I want to do everything possible to make the place we live to be better than ever; A place where acceptance, innovation and human connection can flourish. Only patience allows us to get to a place where we know and understand our circumstances.

I believe in patience so severely, that it is probably the most common thing to come out of my mouth. Patience is something known and controllable yet I also believe in the unknown in which we cannot control. I believe that there is an infinite power that we are still completely clueless about. This comes in many forms such as god, the universe, Buddha, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Allah, Isis, or Gaia. This infinite power can only explain the unique harmony that the universe plays through, as well as the treacherous circumstances we continuously find ourselves in all the while, having a unique coincidental routine and irony come in and out of our lives. This great force is not itself a coincidence but something I believe is there and may never be understood or known. I don’t know if when I die I will meet my creator but hope to do so. I am, however, eternally grateful every day that I am here to experience being alive while continuing to believe in the greater goodness of this infinite power I cannot yet understand.

Believing in an unknown infinite power is frightening, so there needs to be something to comfort that fear. Through my conversations and observations in the past five years, I have seen the growing need for human connection. With the technological revolution, we have become more involved and informed in each other’s lives but we are still missing that face to face connection. With the global interface of correspondence that we have access to, we have an obligation to strengthen those relationships not only in our physical address communities, but in all the communities that we find ourselves involved in. We will never know what this greater force is that conducts us, but we do have one another whom have the same needs to answer the great questions like why are we here? How did we get here? What is the meaning of life? Is organic truly organic? We have one another and therefore we need to find communion with one another in any way we can. Communion can be church, over a beer, a campfire, a walk, over coffee, on a boat or in the car on a trip. While communing, any topics of discussion can be incorporated; Love, faith, politics, fashion, sex, food, family, the sky color, music, power tools, hunting. It is completely about being with another person and enjoying that unknown beast that connects all of us. Despite our lack of understanding of an infinite power, I believe we need to be globally responsible for one another. This can only be done through human connection.

Last week I woke up at my normal crack of dawn time and just wasn’t “feeling it” so I stopped making coffee and crawled back into bed. About an hour later there was a knock at my door and when I jumped up and ran to the door I saw that it was my friend Holly and her two youngest children, both under the age of three. I was so raged at why she was just stopping by at such an early hour. Extremely upset, I still went to the door with a smile on my face, said come in and asked if she wanted some coffee. Ten years ago, there would have been no anger in me because it was still common to have people just stop by. Especially with us, as well as other friends, it was extremely common to just stop by in the morning for coffee. I was patient and let my anger on this morning pass because I knew I really needed to sit and visit. Remember the term visit? Just sit and visit? Well, that is what we did when Holly came by; I put on a pot of coffee, made a little snack for the boys and we just sat there and visited. With patience to get through my anger, I had that communion that I needed and saw that the universe had a plan for me that day. That plan was to be late for work because I needed that proper beginning to my day before work. That visit with an old friend was exactly what I needed to be stopped and enjoy the moment.

I write this for you to read not to learn from my experience and not to force my beliefs on anyone, but to encourage you to think about what you believe in. Knowing what we believe is a great part in knowing ourselves. For me, going back to these beliefs helped me to take action on the next step of my life. Not only, as I mentioned before, is it a beginning point, but it is also a way to hold myself accountable and help me to keep my integrity. When the day ends, we can only be as good as who we are and what level of integrity we have. Knowing my beliefs helps to keep that in check.

Articles to Check Out

This last week I came across a couple articles that really caught my eye.  The first one strikes me with a big grin because it is about nuns.  The Vatican is reprimanding this group of nuns for having "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith".  The big statistic that I loved from this article is that these nuns make eighty percent of all nuns in the United States.  Vatican Reprimands a Group of U.S. Nuns and Plans Changes

The second article is an editorial about how the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR) issued a rule for employers to post people's rights to organize.  There was a backlash by The National Association of Manufactures and this article goes into the lawsuit.  It's definitely worth the read. Do You Know Your Rights?

Extreme Happiness

This clip just made me extremely happy and filled me with warmth knowing that sometimes, extremely great decisions are made and people who can create great positive change get placed in the right positions. Lets hope this nomination is received with open arms.

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Impromptu Book Club

I have never been in a book club. I’ve never had the urge and just plainly feel that I will enjoy a book by myself. Yes, there have been a-good plenty books that I absolutely loved discussing with people but still, that never induced a yearning for me to get together with a group of people and discuss the readings from a list of books. I do love the movie, “Jane Austin Book Club” but yet, that hasn’t set me a fire to seek out these like-minded people. Well, two of my friends recently have encouraged me to read The Hunger Games and this has spread across the restaurant I work at. We have now turned our job into an impromptu book club.

In this impromptu book club, we are all at different points in the three books, reading at our own speeds and it is working out completely functional. We talk about the books in and out of our shift and get excited about parts, discuss the change in character development and try to dissect what we may have missed. For the first time I actually see the benefit of having a book club.

Really, at the heart of it, it is to just have a communion with other people who are going through similar emotions while bringing in their different thoughts and backgrounds to the situation. Book clubs are a great way to find some spirituality without being spiritual or making a deal of it.

With the Hunger Games specifically, it works out well because it is a three book series that is so interlocked with each other that the moment you put down the one you’re reading, you’re picking up the next one. For work, it gives us something to get going about besides work. For anybody who has worked in a restaurant, you know how the drama is quick to come around and this impromptu book club has helped by offering something else to focus on.

All I really have to say is, “Book clubs! Who knew?” I may think twice the next time I am asked to join one. I guess Oprah had a hidden agenda with hers. I now see why.

Some Music for Monday

It saddens me every day to think that the idea of the music video is on it's way down. Even though we still have MTV and VH1 and many other outlets for music videos, they still do not come across our viewing eyes as often as they once did. On this random Monday, I thought I would throw some out there for you. New and old, these are a couple that I had to watch today. Enjoy!

Roads and Bridges and Construction: Oh My

This is a clip from the Rachel Maddow Show last night. Just a little schnibbit to remind people what is happening on Capitol Hill and how John Boehner continues to set us back. This video though makes me happy that I voted for Barbara Boxer.

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