Lifestyle choices

The Fear of Falling


I read a blog by a guy named Chris Brogan. It’s about business and promotion. He has some interesting ideas and a good outlook.

Today he posted about the importance of taking a fall or failing. I found his premise quite interesting and valid that it is only through risking failure that success can be achieved.

It’s not a long post and essentially he is not saying anything new. The idea that doing the same thing you’ve always done in the past to no great ends will somehow benefit you if you simply bang your head a little harder on the same wall is a pretty silly one. Do something different. Something you wouldn’t have thought was possible or that would work and be amazed by the different results. Even if the results are not necessarily what you were looking for, they might end up being exactly what you need.

I am reminded of myself. I was 34 and had never really had a boyfriend. I dated here and there but I was waiting for that perfect someone to simply manifest himself in my path the way I saw it happen for other people. For no reason other than it was different from anything I’d tried before, I joined a social network that focused on fund-raising and volunteer projects. That was in December of 1997 and by October of 1998, I was with Will. And even he was a departure. He was too young. He didn’t have a college degree. He liked things that I found only mildly interesting. And the worst sin of all, he was a really nice, thoughtful, considerate guy. If I’d had a list, which I have never had, he would have been cut a million times for reasons so slight they don’t bear mentioning. 

I think lists are the first and best way to keep yourself from ever succeeding at anything.

I totally get the idea of letting yourself fall. Risking. I have risked much in walking away from teaching to pursue a writing career. Salary. Seniority. Tangible benefits. Retirement. But I am happy with what I am doing in a way I never managed to be as a teacher. I am growing as a person whereas teaching was really such an easy thing to do I scarcely gave a thought to the process most days.

Even leaving the U.S. to live permanently in Canada was an out of the box thing to do in most people’s eyes though it makes perfect sense to me and I have never questioned the correctness of it because again, I have gained a sense of completeness and contentment I would not have otherwise. Whatever I may have lost is insignificant in  terms of what I have and continue to gain.

I don’t equate the possibility of something not working out as a good reason not to do something, and I think many people do use that as a rationale for repetitious behaviors that don’t further their dreams or goals.

Have you fallen lately? Perhaps it is time to rethink the reasons why you should.

Friday


I am too tired to properly update on the holiday. In fact, I hadn’t any real plans to post live again until June, but a lot is going on and this usually drives me to write.

First, I have a pen name. It came to me after much thought and back/forth right before we left for the mountains. It combines a distinctly family name, which is also my dad’s middle name, with my maiden name. I will unveil it when I have my author’s website completed and up, but I am pleased with it.

The idea for a pen name for my fiction writing self has been stirring around for a while in my mind, but a speaker at the writing conference I attended finally provided me with a tangible reason to write under more than one name. Branding. When I am Ann or anniegirl, people who read are sure of what they are getting, but my fiction is dark, twisted and not particularly mainstream in a chick lit or even a straight high-brow lit kind of way. Therefore, my alias will brand my fiction. Readers will know what they are getting.

Second, we arrived home to yet another job offer for Rob. The same job he has been offered twice before – the long term project that would have taken us to Houston is now beckoning from England.

“How many times does opportunity have to knock?” Rob asked.

And I agreed. I read Paulo Coelho’s Brida and The Alchemist over holiday (along with three other books – I was tearing up the pages) and the second book deals almost entirely with following the signs the universe will show those who make their wants, needs or desires known to it. Coelho wrote an interesting fable about listening, trusting and having faith in one’s personal legend.

I don’t know that this job is Rob’s personal legend, but I have felt for a while that it is a sign and a step towards it. But more on it as it develops.

Finally, illness stalks the family once again. Rob’s younger brother was in the ICU as of Sunday night. He is chronically ill and had taken a turn. He will not live to be an old man and probably not a middle-aged one either (he is sixteen years younger than Rob) and though it isn’t a surprise, and Rob and he are estranged, it is unsettling. And it is a reminder.

On my side of the family, Nephew1 is quite ill. Deteriorating lung disease (or syndrome – it’s hard to know because my youngest sister was conveying the information and she is not bright). The doctors had been treating his breathing difficulties as asthma for a while but it turns out incorrectly.

“They told me I could die, Grandma,” is what he told my mother.

We may be making a trip to Iowa this summer after all.

My Hollywood Wifestyle


It occurred to me not long ago that I had become the kind of woman that as a single working girl, and then a married working mom, I had scoffed at. My day was punctuated by the odd chore between the pursuit of totally hedonistic self-gratification. I was even hearing myself say,

“Perhaps I should get a part time job for fulfillment rather than actual need of a paycheck.”

Okay, I didn’t say it exactly like that, but it was the subtext. And when your own mother thinks that having a job would “get you out of the house a bit”, which is code for “you need a real life” as opposed to the fantasy life of a writer, then perhaps you do live in La-La Land and it’s time to re-evaluate.

When I ran my theory past my husband, that my life was…..well…..all about me…. in a way it hadn’t been since I was in university, he agreed.

“You are practically one of those Hollywood wives,” he told me.

“No! I am not,” I protested.

But I am. I could totally be Posh Beckham, if only my best friend would marry a questionably balanced Scientologist and agree to split dinner salads with me when we do lunch. Seriously, that’s all that is holding me back at this point. That and a BMI in the double digits. And laugh lines. If only I could get past that irrational fear of botulism injections. In my face. Read Full Article