I Know Like I Know 2013

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If I had to choose one word to describe 2013 it would be milestone.  Blink your eyes and five years of writing about all the ordinary things that will make up a life’s legacy have passed. Time is funny that way, as Gretchen Rubin would say, the days are long but the years are short. It’s a wonderful life here on Stowe Ln with all the things that bread, salt and wine can bring a home.  Joy and prosperity are truly reigning over this household and it is quickly becoming that place where more and more of life’s little celebrations are being held so we try never to run out of wine.

The Jersey Girls are happy and healthy and we continue to do our work and thank God each day for the generosity of those who got us here.  Life would not have been this wonderful if it weren’t for Shawn Stewart and his kindness and pragmatism. I can still remember asking him; on a scale of 1 – 10 just how bad are the girls, how aggressive.  His answer with a smile; a 1 and 1/2.  Fine.

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As many times as I say I know like I know, this has been the year that I’ve tried to come from that place of “I don’t know what I don’t know”.  I’ve shifted my perspective a bit, learned how to be “clenched” and tried some new things.  Photo treasure hunts and seminars with cool people like Seth Castile to force my camera back into my hands and consequently my heart.  Yes I’ve become a nuisance but the end result is a style, a viewpoint, a continuing illustration of the ordinary.  Technical? No. Cool? Sometimes.  I’ve begun to capture moments in time as I see them and it’s not like you don’t know how I feel about moments in time.

I’ve had the courage to stop coloring my hair.  I’ve gone grey and the end result is so much better than I could have imagined.  I have the glintys as I call them.  Not quite grey, headed toward salt and pepper and worry free.  Hours spent at the salon are a thing of the past and the money saved is a huge bonus.  We have abundance here in so many ways.  Once you shift your perspective you are no longer looking for abundance in one place, it comes from everywhere and from everyone.

I’ve met some wonderful new old friends this year.  We share a common point of view and a love of all things ordinary and special.  What a joy to have them in my life.  Sadly some people I thought were friends have gone. Either they or I had gotten what was the best of the relationship and moved on.  A fact of life I’m afraid, I’ve learned that people will come and go.  The important people stay for a very long time and I continue to be grateful for each one of them even if I don’t see them as often as I’d like.

My family and extended family are flourishing. We had many a celebration this year together for little things and big things.  I am still reeling from the wedding of my dear Muriel and Martina.  I had the honor of capturing their day in photos and selfishly that meant I could be with them through it all.  God knows they’ve been with me through it all.

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Luckily Muriel was with me to assist our neighbor into rehab through an intervention.  Five years later it never occurred to me that I might have to put that hat on again.  I’ve been known to say I resent what I know about addiction, but the fact is it might have helped save a life.  It does all come back to you, the script, the facilities, the beseeching from the intended.  Not easy but I was better at it this time, I was removed from the situation and I let it go after it was over.  For the most part anyway, the jury is still out on the successfulness of it.  Like Bob Seger says, “wish I didn’t know now, what I didn’t know then.”  It was a hard life.

And so it is that making life easier has become a mission. You know, like buying a new sewing machine.  It’s cool, it’s light and it does just what I need it to do, I’m not making clothing any more I’m just nipping and tucking.  I must say the one feature that I was so smug about, the needle threader broke.  I’m not surprised, the reason for it was all wrong.  It was just to spite my Aunt Millie who laughed at me a hundred years ago when she handed me a needle to thread for her and I just poked it right through with an eye roll. “I was like you she said”, sent me some karma, and now I’m like her looking for the magnifying glass.

All in all there has been little to bitch about, there was the Aunt Rant and the poopy bag incident, the Match.com fiasco, the cast iron bra epiphany and the crazy colleague who surely would have been the death of me if he hadn’t been reassigned recently.  Thank you karma, I certainly will learn to let you take care of things from now on.

I’ve learned that I never really was a “Jersey Girl” even though I was born here, that’s my sister’s department.  I’ve learned that I no longer have anything to prove, my only inclination at this point is to add value.  I’ve learned that I’m cool, no kidding, it’s true and that what I’m doing with Ordinary Legacy has meaning to some people.

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I’m going to summon up my courage again this year and develop an e-course based on Ordinary Legacy, that should be an adventure. Talk about being clenched. And finally I’m going to continue to add to my body of work.  Can you imagine?  I’ve got a body of work.  I know like I know that my wildest dreams aren’t really all that wild anymore and that makes this ordinary woman soar, finally.

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I hope you’ll take a look back at this year’s posts and see if they plant a seed for your own extraordinary legacy.

Happy New Year.

Kudos

 

Cherry on TopThe art of the compliment, both giving and receiving, is essential to making your way in the world.  It gets you out of your sense of entitlement and brings you a human barometer of how you’re doing.  You don’t have a sense of entitlement you say…do you know how to accept a compliment with grace?  The “all in a day’s work” line isn’t it, the “oh I just slapped this together” line isn’t it, so how does one accept praise from others in the spirit of knowing that’s what you’re working toward while not wanting to seem conceited or dismissive?

Don’t deflect.  If someone is taking the time to voice that they’ve noticed your accomplishment, or found you engaging, or are happy for you or, or, or, don’t insult them by diminishing their praise. Now what do they do?  You’ve put them in an awkward position by making them second guess their choice.  And you know what, continue to deflect and watch the number of compliments your receive decline.

Nothing makes me unhappier than to watch people shy away from compliments.  I love giving them. I met a woman getting into an elevator recently that had the best red shoes ever.  I couldn’t wait to gush about them and she needed the boost to be quite honest. She started at really, you think so? And went on to I can’t believe you noticed them to I love them and everyone else is all they’re not really you.  She walked in head down and walked out all full of her red shoes, she worked them pretty good after that, all the way through the lobby.  Good for her.

I love compliments; it’s truly my barometer of how I’m doing out there. That, and thank you cards, sustains me through the year.  I’ve even got a top five list of them I reflect on when I’m not thinking that much of myself:

5. You never go somewhere the same way twice; you get from one place to the other differently than anyone else.  Love that! Because I am my father’s daughter, he explored every time he went somewhere. If I can take the “long way home” I almost always will because that was such an integral part of being with him.

4. You got a way of looking at things.  I sure do, I learned long ago that perspective is all you’ve got and as many times as mine has changed it has never strayed from the core of who I am.

3. Your home is so three dimensional. There is so much to look at. Our family friend, Jeanette, taught me that if you surround yourself with things you love that they will always match. If all I’m doing in my home is paying homage to her then I am happy but really if you’re not walking into your home and exhaling at the same time isn’t something wrong.  If you’re going to rejuvenate anywhere, shouldn’t it be your home?

2. There is a woman I work with that always greets me in such a way that I know she’s truly happy to see me.  Her compliment sticks with me every day whether I’m in work or not. She said I’m always so happy when you’re here.  It’s like having to go to a family event and finding out that fun cousin that everyone likes to sit next to is going to be there!  If I could have that effect on everyone I meet it would make me so joyful, it would mean I’m doing things right.

1. You can slap someone so hard they think they got a kiss.  I know, it doesn’t really sound like a compliment but it is.  If you can have the hard conversations with people and they can walk away feeling good about themselves, and you, then that’s a compliment.  I received this bit of insight from someone in the Foodservice business many, many, many years ago and it not only stuck with me but became part of who I am.  When defending people who work for you, when defending your position, when “counseling” the most thick headed in the bunch if you can stand your ground in such a way that you get what you need without destroying a relationship or a person’s morale you are indeed blessed.  I summon this bit of wisdom up whenever I can and hope that it will continue to serve me for the rest of my life.

The next time someone compliments you, simply, say, thank you.  Take it in and use it over and over again.  The more of these you receive the better off you, and others around you, will be because you’re doing the right thing.  As an added bonus those people noticing and doling out those comments will continue to do so keeping your barometer steady and on course.  I know like I know.

You’ve Got Mail…Real Mail

usps

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

But here’s the thing, there aren’t enough people sending interesting mail for them to bring on their rounds. By interesting I mean NOT bills, NOT notices, NOT advertisements, NOT coupons, NOT junk.  I mean handwritten notes or letters or cards, or books or anything that doesn’t resemble bullshit. You can easily recognize bullshit when you see it, not like you don’t remember chain letters, so don’t send it.

The art of the handwritten note is dying a slow and painful death and it is breaking my heart. I may have mentioned before that the sight of a colorful envelop in my mail stops me dead in my tracks.  I must open it right there at the mail box and read it over and over on my way back to my door.  Mind you that’s only about thirty steps away and I usual can contain myself from jumping up and down but I’ve got to rip the envelope open immediately.

Joe Baca has said that the Postal Service’s unmatched ability to reach every household and business in America six days a week is a vital part of the nation’s infrastructure.  Blah blah blah, we all get that but he’s talking business, I’m talking love letters, inspirational notes, birthday cards, motivational notes, thanks yous….you remember those.

All the bitching about the price of postage…please.  I once made it my business to send a note every other week to someone going through chemo, all total about eight or ten cards, and the whopping total for that postage came to 3.20 at the time.  Come on, for under four bucks they were surprised with some tiny little note in the mail.  Something that wasn’t a bill or a report or work they could do from home.  It was a down and dirty I’m just thinking about you and sending the love.  I will do that again and again and again.

Then there was the time that I inadvertently read a situation so completely wrong that my dear friend Linda actually said she was done with me.  What?  How could I have done that?  How could I have been so wrong?  She wasn’t taking my phone calls; the idea that I might never see her again devastated me.  There was only one thing I could do, write my mae culpa in a heartfelt letter.  I thought long and hard and poured my heart into a letter that resulted in a phone call from her that said, come home all is forgiven.  I send cards and letters all the time and Linda has been the recipient of many of them. Come to find out she’s saved everything I’ve ever written her; you see the legacy connection, no?

Perhaps you’ve heard of Postsecret?  From their website:

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail
in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
PostSecret, 13345 Copper Ridge Road, Germantown, MD 20874

The concept of the project was that completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they had never previously revealed. No restrictions are made on the content of the secret; only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams. The secrets are meant to be empowering both to the author and to those who read it. Frank Warren claims that the postcards are inspirational to those who read them, have healing powers for those who write them, give hope to people who identify with a stranger’s secret, and create an anonymous community acceptance.

You can see more on this from Frank Warren’s TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/frank_warren_half_a_million_secrets.html

So it’s not just in the receiving it’s in the sending as well.  Speaking of sending, there is yet another project called “The World Needs More Love Letters”.  From the blog:

In October 2010, Hannah Brencher began writing & leaving love letters all over New York City to ward off the loneliness and depression that ambushed her after graduating from college. Knee-deep in student loans and desperate to know her “place in this world,” Brencher’s letter writing efforts grew a platform on her blog after she made a promise to the internet: If you emailed her a snail mail address, she would write you a love letter. No questions asked.

http://www.moreloveletters.com/welcome/about/

Another amazing sender was my mother.  Open your lunch box and there it was:

Enjoy your lunch.

Hope you did well on your test.

Love you.

Making your favorite for dinner.

Have fun today.

That was a hundred years ago and today there are websites to tell you what to say, notes you can download or special paper you can purchase.  She was on to something back then and didn’t even know it.  It just came from the heart in reaction to something we might have been anxious or excited about.

I’ve saved so many different types of correspondence all to the end of having them close to me whenever I want.  There are times you simply must hold something against your heart to get the energy of the words to work.  The beautiful cards from Japan from my friend Harumi’s mother expressing so beautifully our connection from so long ago.  She’s gone now but I can hold her to my heart and think of her.  The notes and cards from all my dear ones, my sister, my summer sister, my bestie, my friends and my family even himself available to me for remembering and honoring.  Most of them were surprises received at the mailbox making them all the more special.

The point is this, if you’re considering your legacy there must be some bit of you left behind.  What better way than to express yourself in your own hand and put a stamp on it for someone to do a bit of a jig at the mailbox?  Just sayin…Ordinary Legacy, 3208 Stowe Ln, Mahwah, NJ 07430