Contents Under Pressure: Look Out, She's Gonna Blow!

Everyone suffers from potential head explosion. We are all just walking around with the pressure building up inside our skulls. This is because we absorb so much that is baloney, clogging our mental processes with a thick, garlic-laden lunch meat. Add to that mix our inner fears, woes, and worries and probably a lack of sleep, and you have a recipe for an explosion sandwich.

Enter your creative outlet – a way for you to avoid the messy head explosion.

Your creative outlet is not going to be about responsibilities, obligations, finances, or chores. It is not going to give you worry, or angst, or depression. It is going to be something that brings you JOY. Joy is something we have little enough of in our lives, and JOY is not really sought after, except at Christmas time, when it is wished to the entire world --  which is a shame. We can experience JOY any time, with no carols involved.  

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This joy is a standalone by-product of whatever your creative outlet might be. It’s not contingent upon rightness, or whether you deserve it, or any such nonsense. For you, my friends, I have gone to the Thesaurus for words that also define joy: happiness, delight, pleasure, enjoyment, bliss, ecstasy, elation, thrill, gladness. Of course, depending on what you are doing, you could possibly experience any or all of these feelings in varying degrees.

All you need to do is find that creative outlet that does it for you. You might like to draw, paint, write, sing, take photographs, sew, play golf, cook, ride horses, visit museums, go to concerts, window shop, read, ride your bike, sit outside and listen to nature, play a musical instrument, chat with a friend over a cup of coffee, take a walk, plant a garden…..you get the idea? Things that just bring you joy for the sake of doing them are worth doing. Not only are they worth doing, you MUST do them, if you plan on keeping your head intact.  

 

 

**Blogger's Note: After publishing this blog, I discovered that my last 3 posts have made references to exploding heads or heads exploding. I see a theme here, a disturbing theme.**

 

 

 

 

Tales of an F-Bomber



I'm a veteran pilot of sorts. I know my way around the skies when it comes to certain things. I’m not bragging, you understand. I am just saying that I have some skills, and not a small amount of experience. No, not small at all.

But the day comes – or it doesn’t – when you decide to take off your goggles and your leather aviator gear, and you just choose to live life from a different place. To be honest, I don’t even know if I can do it. Okay, let me clarify this. I plan to do it, except for extreme circumstances when the situation requires that I return to the skies and once again do my bit for all humanity. For now, the F-Bomber will lay down her wings and live a more benevolent life on the ground.

Can it really be done? Who can say? I heard a story once about a guy in southern Oklahoma – an Okie from the red dirt region. Supposedly, he tried to give up F-bombing. Soon after, when presented with an especially exasperating situation and unable to drop any F-bombs, he was at such a loss at how better to express himself, he burst an artery in his right temple and his head exploded. 

"Frack you!" 

I’m hoping that my advantage will be a healthy vocabulary that will serve me in my hour of need as I walk through the valley of the shadow of no swearing.  Why even try to give it up at this late hour? Oh, because I do it a lot. It is a word that I especially love and embrace and find so fitting to so many life situations. But I’m better than this. I know I am.   F-Bombing has a particularly nasty connotation, and conjures up images of a woman who chews tobacco, spits in the dirt, doesn't shower much, and probably plays a harmonica. I'm  in search of a calm exterior and as such, I probably need to let that word go. Besides, we all know I don't play the harmonica.

Still, it makes my head hurt to think about giving up F-bombing.  Until I get the hang of it, you may hear me substituting all kinds of crazy words in place of that all-encompassing, adjective/expletive/verb/noun. (See what I mean? Versatile!) I may be heard to holler things like, “What the fork?” and “I don’t give a fadoodle!” and “he’s a mothermother!” until I can really get this thing figured out. In the meantime, I still plan to use “bugger” once in an a while.

Noble F-Bombers from a bygone era.

 

Mulligan!

Long before my life exploded, and rained me down in fire and ash

Before my faith in Love eroded, before I walked on broken glass…

  -From “The One That Got Away” by Laura Lisbeth ©2012

When your life blows up it never feels like a good thing at the time. I would go so far as to suggest that everyone probably experiences these explosions in varying degrees at different times. And it’s hard to see your life rain down in pieces around you and feel good about it.

But take heart, oh Disenchanted Ones, because what is also happening is that Life is granting you a giant Mulligan. A Big Ol’ Do Over. That is the way I have decided to look at it. Suddenly I find myself back at the start of things instead of well underway. So what do I want to do? Do I want to just pick up where I left off? How? Why? Nope, I’ll take the Mulligan and get on with it, thank you.

Just so we’re all on the same page here – Mulligan  is a golf term. In golf, it’s a shot taken after a failed shot, which does not count against your strokes. In everything else, Mulligan means a “Do-over.”

All this opportunity awaits: a chance to reinvent yourself, a chance to do something differently, a chance to see your future with a fresh set of eyes.  The time is now.

Oh yeah, baby! I call Mulligan!

The Fire In Your Belly!

A couple of months ago I ran out of gas at a stoplight during the noon rush hour.   I was busy, you know, and while I noticed that the tank was getting low, I kind of ignored it -- I had a lot on my mind! 

So, at this stoplight, my car shuddered and died, and I was completely shocked and surprised and thinking the worst – then I looked at the gas gauge.  Ohhh no.

Every time the light turned green, people behind me were honking, and I kept waving them around. A police officer came up to my window and when I told him, “um, I think I’m out of gas,” he said, “you’ve GOT to be kidding me.”

Cars need gas to run.   A fire needs fuel – something to burn – to keep on burning. For me, inspiration works this way too. If your Car of Inspiration is sitting dead at a stoplight,  what are you gonna do? I don’t know what fills your tank, but here are some suggestions:

• Spend time in nature.  It reaches you at the soul level and reopens that dialogue you have with your innermost self. That’s where the good stuff comes from.
• Read a book.  Reading really gets my brain pistons firing. Sometimes I do this in place of working on writing. I don’t like to force it that much. If I don’t have anything happening in the writing department, I give my brain a little vacation.
• Go out and experience the creativity of others: go to a gallery, museum, or go out and hear live music. Relax. Soak it in. it will put the fire back in your belly.
• Grab inspiration as it flies by – it might not stop or come around again. Write down or record those little lines, words, etc that come into your head at any given moment. Store them up like a little treasure trove that is all yours. Then go back to it when you need some inspiration. You’ll be surprised at some of the things you came up with.  You will inspire yourself!
• Take on a side project that is creative, but not directly related to your main goal: co-write, collaborate, assist, support someone else’s dream. It keeps your creativity flowing until you’re ready to jump back into it again.
• Honor your creative side. Think of yourself as a creative soul, and give this part of yourself its due. This is who you are! This is the real you – the most important you. So give yourself permission to be that person.

Putting My Bears Out on the Table

Teddy bears seem to personify whimsy.  They are benevolent creatures who just exude vulnerability and fuzzy love. They stare out at the world through those glossy, black button eyes,  revealing nothing and everything all at once……… I’m pretty sure they have souls............

I kind of have a thing for teddy bears. I’ve been known to go through periods of teddy bear acquisition, in which I add unnecessary ones to my stable the way others acquire guitars or power tools.  Some of my bears  live freely, uncaged, in my house,  and they’re pretty quiet. They don’t really run amok or anything. But  I’m sad to say that not all of them are this lucky. I have some other teddy bears who have been packed away in a plastic bin marked “TEDDY BEARS” for years. Oh, the guilt I carry around with me.  I can only imagine the conversations that are going on inside that bin.

Perhaps this borders on teddy bear abuse, but what am I supposed to do – put them all out on display? I don’t have room in my life for all those bears – all at one time. I don’t want to deal with them all, so I keep some of them in that plastic bin. What does it mean when we pack our teddy bears away in a box -- when we put away our whimsy, our vulnerability, our fuzzy love?  If I don’t put all my bears out there, am I holding back something important?

 I don’t know but I think I’ve hit upon a new favorite idiom:

“Lay all your teddy bears on the table.”

“She decided it was best to come clean and lay all of her teddy bears out on the table.”

“All right, let’s lay all our teddy bears on the table and discuss this matter.” 

“He brought no teddy bears to the table.”

“But Mary treasured up all of these teddy bears in her bin, and pondered them in her heart…..”

Oops! Sorry, I got carried away for a second there.

Be brave.

Bring it.

Bring all your teddy bears to the table.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Some bears I know...........



Bear-on-stairs

 

Navy Bear

KU Bear - someone has taken his pants

Bear-in-car

Overloved bear

How Far Would You Go For Money?

How far would you go for money?

I used to work at this really crazy place, where the morale was subterranean. To offset this, we used to do things to try to lift us up out of the dark hole of our despair. Sometimes, we would have a contest to see who could do the least amount of work in a day. If you had to answer the phone, for example, you lost a point.  I once paid our first shift production manager $5 to eat a dead cricket – and he chewed it  up and swallowed it down without blinking an eye! But he was no amateur – he also claimed to have eaten a raw chicken leg for money.

Other times, we contemplated absurd scenarios: One day, we got into a discussion about what you would be willing to do for a million dollars. Would you walk down the street completely naked if someone paid you a million dollars? Would you walk all the way down Center Street, past the fairgrounds, for $1 million? The answers surprised me. Some said yes, no problem, are you kidding me I would do it in a heartbeat. Others, like me, said um, no, not on your life or for a million dollars would I do that. I’m way too shy for that.

In retrospect, I suppose there would be several minutes of an uncomfortable situation and the payoff would be huge. So why not? Because there are some things you can’t pay me to do. In general, you can’t pay me to be coerced into doing something I would not normally do. I don’t like to give someone that kind of power. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Mostly, the choice is not so extreme, and the question is couched in terms of Real Everyday Life and might not seem like a soul-killer at the time.

Would you lose sight of your true nature in order to keep a job that allows you to make your house payments? It could happen. Would you set aside what really matters to you in order to buy food and electricity? Probably.  Would you silence your heart every day in order to obtain financial security? Well, certainly not every day…………….. Would you put your soul on hold, say, through the end of the year, with plans to revisit it when you’re not quite so busy?  What? Can you repeat the question? I was busy over here….

We kind of need money sometimes. But when you are true to yourself,  you will find a way to make the other things work.  I’m trying to focus, focus, focus on heart and soul. Always always always. That is where the truth lies.  No matter how far you go for money, it won’t ever return the favor.

The Center of Everything

Warning: this is one of those soul-baring posts that can make you feel funny when you read it. (If I can make you uncomfortable, I know I've succeeded). However, if that you’re not in the mood for that, (PLEASE! Make it stop!!) go grab some chocolate and read my post about the Country Stampede. I won’t be offended!   

There’s a book I really like called “The Center of Everything” by Laura Moriarty. Coincidentally to this post, the book is set in Kansas, and the author – Moriarty – lives in Lawrence, Kansas. But I’m not going to talk about the book. I just want to use the title for today’s blog.

I recently moved back to Kansas. It’s Where I Come From.  It’s been a bittersweet homecoming. Last week, I got my Kansas license plate.  I don’t know why, but it seemed significant. As the clerk set the plate on the counter, I actually had to bite my lip to keep the tears out of my eyes. Maybe it felt like wiping out the final outward traces of a former life as the former me. So many changes. So many goodbyes. So many rites of passage, passing by unnoticed, uncelebrated or unlamented by anyone but me. Another shining moment in my life history, to be sure. If a moment shines in the forest and nobody sees it, does it really make enough light to cut through the darkness?

At the nucleus of who I am, there is a light – it is my creative soul. It is the part of me that is not changed by external events. It is the Center of Everything. In my case, there is music that can never be silenced.  It is the constant that drives me forward, over and over, again and again, through the muck and the mire, through the rain and the fire. It’s the lifeline that carries me over the angry sea to the safety of the shore. So I grab onto it and hold on for dear life when the situation calls for it.

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