The Things We Keep

The second I flipped over the handlebars of my mountain bike and found myself lying on my back in the woods of Virginia, I decided trail riding was not for me. My new Trek bike was only used three times and would sit in the corner of my house in Washington DC and then move to my mother’s garage when I lived in New York and then get moved to my storage unit once I moved to Atlanta. It would sit there for years with two flat tires.

And then I met Javier.

I had seen him 100 times. Every morning working at my local coffee shop…every morning with a smile on his face. He was kind, friendly, and took care of each and every order. It felt special and unlike Starbucks. When the coffee shop closed, he moved to a local restaurant and was, once again, a model employee. I continued to visit the establishment on occasion to get lunch and coffee. Really it was because Javier made everyone around him feel welcome. On one such visit, he told me his bike was stolen and he was at a loss with how he would get a new one so he could get to work.

And then I realized why I had met Javier.

I told him about the mountain bike collecting dust in my storage unit. It isn’t anyone’s first choice for biking on the streets of Atlanta, but I was willing to give it to him at no charge. And, free is great. He only needed to add air to the tires which were in great condition. He happily accepted the gift.

And, I didn’t think about it for years. The location he was working at closed during the pandemic. He is now at the main location and one of my friends was there this week. She ran into him and he told her he is still using the bike every day to get to work. I don’t even remember how long ago I gave it to him…at least 2007! He has been riding a bike I purchased in 1996 to a job every day for at least 15 years.

She reminded me how one simple act can have such a meaningful impact on one person. She even framed it for me – giving him that bike gave him transportation and changed his life.

It reminded me how everything we do impacts people in some form or fashion – either positively or negatively. One good deed can help someone get to work and therefore help them take care of their family. One angry interaction can cause that person to yell at their child when they get home that evening. Actions have consequences. We are human and can’t be perfect every day, but that shouldn’t prevent us from trying or worse – doing nothing because we don’t think it is meaningful enough.

Life is a series of tiny actions that can have a domino effect on the world. What are you going to do today?

I am so fucking tired

I was listening to a podcast today which, for me, just means it was a day that ends in a Y. The person being interviewed was saying at some point in his life he stopped responding to the obligatory “how are you” question with “I’m having a hard time” instead of “great…busy”. The person responded with some platitudes about being sorry and he admitted that he was actually pretty happy but just having a little bit of a hard time.

Adam Grant wrote a great piece about languishing to describe the feeling of blah experienced by many people during the pandemic. And, Dani Blum followed it up with a piece about flourishing and how we can start feeling better. Languishing vs flourishing. I fluctuate between the two on a daily, ahem, hourly basis.

People are starting to talk about mental health more and more. The stigma is still there because, well, because we still have a lot of old people who feel shame talking about it. And, they raised kids to feel that shame. And, they raised kids who feel it too. But, their kids are talking about it! Thank God for the millennials and Gen Z. They talk about it. All the time. With their friends. With their parents. On social media. They don’t feel ashamed. It is almost trendy to struggle with mental health.

I am a 49-year old (in 9 days, but who’s counting?) woman and I love where we are headed. And, I am also fucking tired. I get up every day and eat healthily and exercise and work and then go to bed and do it all over again the next day. Adulting.

I try to create balance in my life and do the self-care things suggested by experts. I travel. I laugh. I have uncoordinated dance parties in my bathroom. I connect with friends and family. I get facials and massages. I have a cleaning woman. I am a happy and positive person. I am a fucking ray of light.

What I don’t do is share how I am feeling.

And, I am fucking tired.

I have no kids, no living plants, and no pets. I have to make every single decision in my life. It is exhausting. I love being single. I recognize I have little to complain about in the responsibility arena when I look at friends juggling the stress of a job, spouse, and kids. I fully embrace and appreciate having no responsibilities.

As I am writing this I feel pretty entitled complaining about my first world problems. A million women in the world would give anything to trade lives with me. And, yet I am fucking tired.

I’ve done all the things Dani Blum suggested in her flourishing article. And, I am still languishing. I want a day off. Any volunteers to run my life for a day?

What if I said it was easy?

The thing about hard things is they are hard. Unless you’re wired like me. And, then the hard things are easy but the easy things are hard. Negotiate with a used car salesman? Easy. Schedule an appointment with the dermatologist? It has been on my to-do list for at least three years.

Meditate? Fucking impossible. It is literally just sitting there and not doing anything. I’m not even talking about trying to clear my mind. I’m just talking about simply sitting quietly for 10 minutes. Never going to happen. Side note – I finally gave up on trying to be a person who meditates and it was shockingly liberating. Unless I am at Miraval and then meditating just makes sense.

I just completed a 40-day challenge to create new habits. The long and short of it is that you are supposed to pick eight items from a list of 12 and do them every day for forty days. I did all 12 plus I added in an extra one for shits and giggles. Hard things – like not drinking (during day drinking season), walking outside every day (when the weather is either 90 degrees or pouring rain), taking cold showers, and complimenting someone every day while making eye contact. Easy breezy. I even ended the challenge by doing a five-day fast. Effortless.

However, in the corner of my office sit five cardboard boxes waiting for me to break them down and take them to the trash chute. They have been there for a week. That’s a lie. They have been there for three months. The trash chute is fifteen steps from my front door. I’ve counted.

So…as I am looking at my condo and the 3,011 things I need to do in order to organize it, I am trying to find out how I can make such a hard and daunting task easy. Meaning I need to get it all done in one day. And, by one day, I mean four hours.

If you tell someone they have 30 days to clean their room, it will take 30 days. If you tell someone they have three hours to clean their room. It will take three hours.

Humans…a weird bunch.

I have an idea. It is the most insane idea in the history of the universe. An idea for weirdos like me who refuse to do the “easy” things on the to-do list. The things that have been there for months.

The “Do The Damn Thing” Hours 

Join me from 4 pm – 8 pm this Friday to see how much shit we can get done. Spicy margs on me if you accept the challenge.

I’m drinking again.

You'll Look Stupid

Those three words kept me from doing so many things. I am rebellious at heart. I don’t try to be difficult; the tests show it. I naturally resist what everyone is doing and have missed out on, or hopped on the train late to many great things…Harry Potter, meditation, and On Cloud shoes…

My mother raised my sister and me to never get embarrassed. She devoted Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours to embarrassing us as children so we are completely desensitized to it as adults. I can fall down so spectacularly you will be embarrassed for me, but I’ll just laugh.

What did embarrass me was doing things I deemed uncool…I’m not a joiner so things that were uncool to me were anything involving groups. The thought of spending a Saturday in a personal development program or joining a challenge put on by my gym would be the absolute last thing I would ever commit to doing in my life. Flying under the radar was preferred and privacy was paramount. Yet, we are 15 days into 2021 and I have spoken to a group about happiness and positivity and am leading the women’s rowing challenge at my gym.

Enter the 30-Day Challenge.

I have a friend who created the idea to get out of a funk and it worked like magic. So, I decided to try it myself in none other than…New York City.

Guess what? It was the greatest month of my life. I did not give a shit what anyone thought of me. Take a picture with the Peloton instructor? Sure. Ask a stranger to take my picture at a funky art installation? 100%. Pose with the cardboard cutout at the off-Broadway show? You bet! Ask a stranger if I could use his fishing pole in Central Park? I have a picture to prove it.

And, it didn’t stop there. I pushed myself to really expand and explore, which found me…

• Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with Rob Lawless of Rob’s 10k friends

• Kissing a stranger in Koreatown

• Taking a class at Google

• Getting a poncho from Simon Sinek

• Spending an entire day on roller coasters in Coney Island

• Visiting an abandoned smallpox hospital

• Eating Greek food in Astoria

• Taking a live class at the Peloton studio

And, last but not least, eating pizza past midnight with drunk NYU students in the West Village.

I stopped caring if the things I was doing looked cool. I now sing in the grocery store…out loud, go out in Tulum with a friend who carried around a green papier-mâché alien, had homegrown avocados delivered to me from a stranger in Jamaica, and am doing another 30-Day List that started today.

And, so should you.

That’s my hope for all of us. Do more of the dumb things, the fun things, the silly things, and the ridiculous things. So, make a list to expand and explore. 30 things. 30 days. Let me know if I can help with your list. If New York taught me anything, it’s to dream big. Here’s to recreating the magic all over again.

Traded in Fluorescent Lights for Eternal Sunshine

Fluorescent is the only word I can’t spell without the use of spellcheck. I can spell like the spelling bee nerds…sort of. The fact that I can’t spell fluorescent tells me all I need to know about how atrocious they are.

They are terrible, ugly, and depressing. No one looks good under them and they fuck with your brain. They flicker and cause migraines and anxiety.

Between school and work, I figure I’ve nearly spent my entire life under fluorescent lights.

Until 2018.  

I made a list of everything I wanted in a job. I had all of it. I had freedom and flexibility. I could wear jeans and sneakers to work. I worked with smart people who liked and respected me. I was good at my job. I made more money than I could spend. I worked with interesting clients. I was able to work on a wide range of activities – recruiting, marketing, operations, and planning events.

 But, I worked under fluorescent lights.

That will kill anyone. Except for the millennials. They are much smarter about these things. They work from home. They bring pets to work.

So, I asked myself if this was it. Or was there something I could do radically different to find out? I decided on the latter and made a list – a bucket list of sorts to escape the fluorescent lights and bring back the eternal sunshine I always admired. Then I gave myself the permission we all seek but sometimes wonder if we’re allowed later in life – the permission to be happy.

With a bit of savings and bucket list in hand, I entered 2019 with gusto. I never felt more alive. I decided to get off the hamster wheel after 25 years of spinning and explore life.  What would be on your list? Here was mine:

• Spend a month in New York

• Talk to a stranger every day

• Get away on a girls’ weekend

• Make out with a stranger after midnight

• Meet a famous author

• See Hamilton on Broadway

• Live in an Airbnb

• Start a blog

• Take a class

• Help a friend and ask nothing in return

• Watch the dumbest show on Netflix – Thanks, Tiger King

• And 45 other activities that did not include fluorescent lights

And in getting in touch with myself I stopped worrying about a job or my future.

And suddenly new work came in. Consulting projects, collaborations, and co-working opportunities with friends. As did the adventures. A 30-day challenge from a friend, walking enough miles to cross the state of Georgia, day trading stocks, and learning about trillion-dollar firms. Oh, and Tulum. Yes, this path led me and a group of friends to rent out a Villa in Tulum for a month after reading a book Never Split the Difference. We didn’t. We got it for pennies on the dollars and guess what: there are no fluorescent lights. Only sunshine. Eternal Sunshine.

What would happen if you gave yourself permission to be happy?

Oops, I Did It Again

I fucking did it again. I thought I learned my lesson. I feel better when I am active, eat clean, connect with others, and am busy. It took many stubborn years of avoidance to figure this out, but I did. Or so I thought.

I spent a month in New York last year and had both small and large adventures every day. Each one was some form of active personal growth. When I returned home, I was in a funk. How do you bounce back from an adventure? Not the way I did, that is for damn sure. I did not spend Sunday morning chopping vegetables. I did not go for morning or afternoon walks. I did not go to the gym or take a single yoga class. I watched tv while playing on my phone at the same time so I didn’t even enjoy the show I was attempting to watch. I ordered shitty food from Uber Eats. My Apple watch thought I was dead. 

At one point, I was lying in my bed and had the thought that “if this is going to be my life, I might as well kill myself”…I am not now, and have never been a suicidal person, but I recognized what I was doing wasn’t living. I needed to build some momentum and take that first step. Literally and figuratively. So, I started walking…and walking…and walking.

Ten miles a day.

I was rebuilding myself as one would build a home; walking became the foundation. The framework began to go up as I started to expand my mind by listening to educational and motivational podcasts on my walks. I started prepping healthy meals on Sunday and all of a sudden had drywall. I brought in experts to help with the counters, floors, plumbing, and electrical work as I participated in a 30-day group coaching program. Before I realized it, I only needed to add paint and finishing touches and started doing yoga. Like a good general contractor, I created a spreadsheet to track my progress and, unlike most construction projects, I finished ahead of schedule.

How do you build a house? Brick by brick.

What is your first brick? Your first step? Your first move to get going again?

It is the 1st Monday of the 2nd half of 2020. If you read this, you laid down the first brick. Grab the next one. 

If you go to Coney Island, go with reckless abandon!

Danny and I headed to Coney Island around 11am. It takes about an hour to get there. We had 7,000 stops on the train from 14th Street. There were four people on our car. NO ONE was taking the train to Coney Island. We did zero research about it, had no plan, and barely knew how to get there We just knew we had to go!

After an hour on the train, we got close to Coney Island and started to see the Ferris Wheel. We jumped up and down on the train like little kids. We continued to act like children all day. Children who are old enough to drink tequila.

It looks exactly like you would expect it to look. Like you stepped back in time. Rides that should have been shut down decades ago with a spectacular boardwalk along a particularly ugly beach. It was a gorgeous day. Sunny but cool outside. We figured we should get the “lay of the land first” and wandered around for a bit. Our excitement got the better of us and we bought the $100 ticket so we could get the extra $40. Side note – Danny and I are both chicken shits and scared of roller coasters. How were we going to spend $140 without riding any rides? Danny asked after we bought our card, “does this cover rides, games, AND beer?” It did. Success!

We decided to start with the simple Ferris Wheel. It was not covered on our card. It was part of a separate park. Should have done our research. We bought our tickets.

Do you want the swinging or non-swinging cars?

Swinging, of course!

Our car showed up and we jumped in. The carney closed the door and I asked if he double checked to make sure we were locked. He replied, “Ma’am…this is Coney Island. Not Disney. You’re lucky we checked at all.”

Feeing safe. It’s a Ferris Wheel. Kids ride it. That became our mantra for the day.

It was a combination of a Ferris Wheel/roller coaster. We were not expecting the roller coaster part but we survived.

Feeling confident, we ran over to the Cyclone. It was built in 1927 and is a wooden roller coaster. Yes…WOODEN! People have been trying to shut it down since the 1970’s due to it being a piece of crap. Until some people invested millions of dollars to repair it…sort of and it is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Without thinking about it, we hopped on. Clicky clack is what it sounded like for the entire ride. WOODEN ROLLER COASTER. You are held in by a flimsy metal bar…no seat belts or headrests. We caught air at one point. Soaring through the air at 70 miles per hour. Charles Lindbergh said it was better than flying. No one has died on it since 2007. We survived. Barely.

I was sort of hyperventilating but trying to be a badass. We decided to slow down a bit and rode some sort of cup ride that looked like a more advanced version of the teacup ride at Disney. Safe. It was not. It was also a roller coaster. When we got off the ride, the people behind us shouted at us “we thought this was a kid’s ride!!!” Same.

Then we went on the swings. The swings that are way up high in the air and spin around so you are swinging at a 45-degree angle. Another flimsy bar to “hold us in”. No seat belts. Feet dangling in the air. I got through it with deep breathing exercises. In between repeating to Danny that I was ready for it to be over.

It was time for drinks. We went to a really old dive bar on the Boardwalk and ordered Palomas…in a can. The bartender opened up cans of grapefruit San Pellegrino and poured out a third of it, filled the rest up with tequila, salted a lime, and popped it into the top of it. Brilliant. But, not strong enough for us. We drank a little and then doubled up on the tequila.

Full of liquid courage, we decided to ride another roller coaster. I think it was called Steeplechase because you sit on a horse and lean forward like you are a jockey. I freaked out while we were in line. I told Danny I couldn’t do it. The woman buckling in the riders said it was her favorite ride and so much easier than the Cyclone. She said the Cyclone is terrible but this was fun. Fine. She was right and we were actually finally sort of properly strapped in to this ride.

More drinks to celebrate our bravery…overcoming fears…for both of us! We stuck with the tequila and went to an even more divey bar than the last one. The tequila we drank was so cheap, it wasn’t even kept behind the bar. Or on the bar. It was somewhere under the bar. When I told the bartender it was gross, he gave us free shots of Patron. The bar was closing up around us so we went out on to the Boardwalk for a little impromptu dancing with strangers. And then a little more dancing. And then hot dogs. Nathan’s Hot Dogs. And cheese fries. When in Rome…

Quick break to ride the go-carts.

Then we played some ridiculous games and I won a lewd eggplant and Danny won an oversized pickle dressed as a man. 

We were finally ready for the Superman ride. I can’t remember what it was called…maybe Soaring Eagle. You are completely strapped in with your arms in front of you like Superman. The ride turns horizontal and you are the roller coaster. So, you fly around directly above the tracks…until the ride turns upside down and you are directly beneath the tracks. I asked the woman checking us in what she thought about it and she said she was too scared to do it. We were afraid of it ALL DAY and had to work up our nerve to do it. It was the best ride of the day. We loved it!

The park was shutting down and it was time for us to leave. As we headed to the subway, we saw the Superman woman…she RODE THE RIDE! She had been too scared to ride it until we did it.

Coney Island is cheesy and ridiculous. It is slightly unsafe. It is a day I will not forget for a long time!

A Month in New York

I lived in New York in my late 20’s to early 30’s. I thought I was too old to move here at the time but did it anyway. New York is one of those “too cool” cities. It is also full of tourists. If you live here you do NOT want to look like a tourist. You must perfect your “I’m too cool for that” look. Everything. Facial expressions. Hair. Makeup. Clothes. It is not easy to look like you actually live in the city. In order to do that you have to perfect the understated cool “I woke up like this” look. No one wakes up like that. It takes a lot of work to look like you just rolled out of bed and achieved the perfect messy hair with a touch of makeup and clothes that are supposed to look like you just grabbed whatever was at the top of your laundry pile. I spent years here avoiding all of the tourist traps. I’m visiting all of them this month. Except Times Square. It is terrible and makes me break out in hives.

I am currently sitting in a room with portraits of old people who lived in the 1700’s. The room is full of people quietly working. It is freezing in here. The New York Public Library. It is really a beautiful building. The ceilings are really high. I have no clue how high, but really high. Someone just slammed a book and it echoed like…well…like a library.

Working from the library is one of the only things I’ve done so far that is FREE. That and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with a stranger. I met Rob, of Robs10kfriends, last week and walked across the bridge with him while sharing stories about life. Rob is trying to meet with 10,000 people. Very cool project and even cooler guy.

Back to New York. I am exploring the city in a very different way than I did when I actually lived here. I came up with a list of things to do to push myself to not only get out of the apartment every day, but to also get out of my comfort zone. I went to a cool digital art exhibit yesterday and spent two hours there. I don’t really appreciate or get art or museums, but I stayed there long enough to get it. Well…the really nice guy I met there explained it to me and then I got it. If I didn’t speak to strangers or rush through things like that I would have missed out on a great experience. I’m learning to slow down in a city with the fastest pace of life.

Does Veronica Mars Count as Self-Care?

What do you do when you’re in a funk? How many days do you allow yourself to live there? Four. It is four days. Max. It is more than a weekend but not an entire week.

I had a lot to do last week. Periods of extreme motivation combined with periods of extreme binge-watching on Hulu. 

I always eat super clean and healthy and find movement more effective than therapy. Running and yoga are my faves. I’m addicted to/obsessed with my Apple watch. Last week, I ate popcorn and bananas for most of my meals. I didn’t even put on my Apple watch for days.

I told one of my friends I wasn’t feeling super motivated to do anything and she asked if I was journaling. Nope. Meditating? Not even a little bit. Reading? Negative. Then she asked what I was doing for my self-care. Binge-watching Veronica Mars. Doesn’t everyone do that for self-care?

I watched all FOUR seasons of it plus a movie. In a ridiculously short period of time. It was aggressive. I am hardcore competitive about everything and was “all in” with this too. It is possible I didn’t shower every day. Ok fine…I skipped two showers.

It was only on the fourth day that I started to feel guilty. I was doing a crazy cleanse designed to mimic fasting so I rationalized my lack of activity to the cleanse. But, the truth is I just needed a break. The previous two weekends were packed with events. And drinking. And dancing. And more drinking. I needed to recover and have some alone time. Introvert. 

I chose to get to know Veronica. I somehow missed the show when it originally aired. Watching more television in four days than I have watched all year is not exactly healthy. But…Veronica Mars is a badass. I love her. I want to be her. She is strong and smart and sassy and totally fearless. She doesn’t care what people think about her at all. A little damaged but aren’t we all? I don’t know if other people think of her as a female role model but she was exactly what I needed.

And, now I’m back. Getting shit done. Asking myself…What Would Veronica Do?

Dance like no one is watching

I spent an entire weekend being followed around by the most adorable photographer. Paparazzi.

I was at my nephew’s Bar Mitzvah and Brad was hired to document the whole thing. I had never met him before but loved him right away. My family is what you might call strong-willed. And, I have even been called stubborn. But, Brad was such a pro. We trusted him implicitly and listened to him when he told us stand, where to look, and how to smile.

He also loved my tattoo so obviously he was ok by me. My family, on the other hand, is not so in love with it. Bygones.

At some point on Saturday, Brad informed me he had an entire album’s worth of pictures of me making weird faces. Sounds about right. I don’t know why, but anyone who has ever taken a picture of me can say the same thing. I either don’t know where to look, am making a strange mid-sentence face, or have my eyes closed. He also said, “I have been doing this for a long time and you are my favorite kind of person to have at one of these things. You make the event fun.”

It is such a fun experience to be around someone who sees you in a way that is different than the way you think of yourself. So…I was still on that high when the Saturday night dance party started…

And, I spent the entire evening on the dance floor. The dance floor was full of people either thirty years older or younger than me. I did not stop moving for ten minutes the whole night. Every song. Every silly hat and glow necklace. Hot pink socks with the word LOVE written on them. Sweating…shiny face with my hair in a ponytail. Jumping up and down. Cameras and iPhones all over the place. I did not care. I am a terrible dancer. I did not care. I am 112% sure Brad tripled the number of pictures of me contorting my face in ways in all sorts of unflattering configurations. I don’t care; I had a blast.

I danced like no one was looking, but the truth is people are always looking. Maybe they laugh at you, but just maybe the night ends with the DJ’s hugging you and thanking you for all the dancing. And Brad…well, Brad told me I had to come hang out with his wife and take her dancing!

I would rather be reading about serial killers

For the past year and a half, I have been working with a men’s group called The Exchange. What is a men’s group, you ask? I could describe it using the words the creative marketing geniuses used to describe the group or I could tell you it is simply a group of guys getting together to talk.

What usually happens when I say that is that the person I am speaking to about it leans in and tells me how interesting that sounds to them. They are right. It is interesting. It is fascinating and encouraging.

In a time of toxic masculinity and #MeToo, it is amazing to see this group. They encourage each other to be better human beings – run marathons, perform stand-up comedy, travel the world, or climb mountains. When I first started working with them, I heard so many things from women about how men don’t talk about anything and how they don’t ever seem to need anyone. I also heard that men seem to gravitate towards solo activities or that, due to the nature of their careers, they are often making decisions alone.

That’s true. But, what I have seen these guys do is build an actual community. These guys have learned they don’t have to do everything alone. They are connecting through shared interests, but also opening each other up to new experiences. They set goals, share them with each other, and hold each other accountable. They read books. They meditate. They write in journals. They go to yoga. They talk about gratitude and balance. They also run successful companies. They write books. They play sports. They speak to large crowds. They are so positive; these guys are the cheerleaders you want in your corner.

They don’t just push each other. They push me too. Some of them encouraged me to start a blog and tell my story. After some prompting, because I naturally resist everything, I finally did it. And, I didn’t die. I got support from people whose opinions I value. I got emails from people I haven’t heard from in years. Including one from my childhood Sunday school teacher. She has a business helping students write college essays. No pressure.

Being a woman involved in a men’s organization is an interesting place to be. I can observe them from afar and learn from them. It has helped me connect with my female friends in a different way, and has even helped me to meet some pretty badass women. All great things.

But, sometimes you just want to be comfortable. I finished the second season of Mindhunter last night. It is a fascinating look into the mind of serial killers. It is set in the 1970’s and focuses on some pretty well-known stories (Atlanta Child Murders, BTK, and Charles Manson). After running a few errands today, I was prepared to do a deep Google dive to learn more about the back stories of some of the lesser known serial killers profiled on the show.

Until I got a message from one of the guys in The Exchange. He is constantly nudging me to do things I don’t want to do. Or things I don’t think I can do. It was actually a series of “encouraging” messages: 

Quit doing useless shit and write a blog.

Every blog you write is going to be terrible.

Are you willing to post terrible blogs?

Post one before midnight, you pansy.

Fine. There you go. I did it. Now, I can go back to Google!

Find people who encourage you to do the things you don’t want to do. It will likely mean you find yourself doing things like posting terrible blogs on a Saturday night, but you will also find yourself feeling strangely liberated and experiencing a freedom you never thought possible.

It's Just a Blog, Stupid.

I have been dreading starting this blog. I’ve been talking about it for weeks. Months, actually. This is my second version of this post. The first one was terrible. It wasn’t terrible; it was just safe. I did the same thing I always do and carefully controlled my narrative. I said I was scared to write about myself and mentioned how much I hated to be raw and vulnerable, but didn’t go deeper than that.

So, here we go…close your eyes, hold your nose, and jump into the deep end. I almost drowned once as a kid during a swimming lesson so I have always hated jumping into the deep end. I don’t like being a person who is afraid of things so I learned how to get over it.

Why in the hell would I write a blog if I hate it so much?

I like writing. And, I actually can write. I have always written and rewritten for myself and others…professional articles, nationally-recognized blogs, resumes, cover letters, proposals, and marketing materials. All of that writing and I have never written about me.

I didn’t drown that summer afternoon in the pool at the Dothan Country Club, and I am not going to drown today. That feeling of panic after miscalculating how long it would take me to get my head above water still lives with me. The top of the water wasn’t where it was supposed to be and I felt stuck…I couldn’t breathe. I could see the sun and the shadow from the diving board, but didn’t know how to get there. Even worse was that my instructor didn’t even notice. I was in full on panic mode…dying…and he had no idea.

Maybe it didn’t register with him because there were too many kids for him to pay attention to at one time. In reality, a more likely story is that he never even knew I was freaking out. I didn’t kick my legs or flail my arms like one thinks they would do when they are drowning. Apparently, that doesn’t actually happen when you are drowning.

I am generally able to appear calm when my insides are in knots. Racing thoughts, heart palpitations, stomach flip flopping…you would never know it! I may get a little quiet, but I am generally a listen first, speak second type of person so it seems like pretty normal behavior.

So here I am sitting on my bed furiously typing away on my laptop and it looks like I know what I am doing. On the inside, I can’t breathe. I can see the sun and the water line, but I can’t get there.

I coach people to get over their fears and convince them to do the hard things. Hypocrite. So, I am going to do the scariest thing I can do and let people see the real me.

I am going to share MY story here through this blog. This year has been one of massive change in all aspects of my life. Everything I have been doing has pointed me in the direction of writing things down. I am going to start writing. A blog. A book. An article. A journal. Just writing. I am going to open up and get raw and vulnerable on this site. Stick around. I am going to jump into the deep end and keep doing it until I can jump without closing my eyes.