Posts in the “personal” category

Carlos Castaneda meets Denali: “Does this path have a heart?”

For me, the path that led me to Alaska had a heart. For others, that path may have no heart, but another path does.

“Long, uninterrupted, alert practice is the firm foundation for restraining the fluctuations of the consciousness.”

~ Patanjali (via Iyengar)

Some properties one can gain from practicing yoga, from the The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Think I’m going to work on “invisibility” in 2015. :)

We walked the narrow path,
Beneath the smoking skies.
Sometimes you can barely tell the difference
Between darkness and light.
Do we have faith
In what we believe?
The truest test is when we cannot,
When we cannot see.

~ Lyrics from a pretty (but sad) song named It Can’t Rain All The Time, by Jane Siberry, which I first heard in the movie, The Crow.

I think I’ve discovered the secret of life: you just hang around until you get used to it.

~ Charles M. Schulz

New book/story idea: Life is a bit of a game, and as a result you’re put in the vicinity of your soulmate. Not right next door per se, but somewhere within your range of life such that you will encounter this person, such as the friend of a friend, someone you work with, a person you run into at a store, etc. So the game is, out of all the people you meet as your life unfolds, can you identify your soulmate? And maybe as a secondary plot, how do you handle it if you get get close but make a mistake ... say you marry a person which creates circumstances that put you in the vicinity of your soulmate, and you later realize your mistake?

“The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life. In a vital sense, perception is reality.”

~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

(Or, as I wrote many years ago, all you are is attitude.)

I don’t know who created this image, but I’m all for it. Make America kinda again. Make America compassionate again. Make America smart again. Any sort of intelligent, enlightened leadership in this country would be wonderful.

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I’ve been a fan of Joe Walsh for a while, especially since meeting a friend back in 2013 that had a drug and alcohol problem. Here are a few quotes from him from an article titled, Creating While Clean (Sober musicians on how to thrive creatively without drugs or booze):

Most of my buddies are dead. And for some reason, I am not.

I would say I’m a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have 25 years of sobriety. But the important thing is, I haven’t had a drink today.

How do you say it? “A huge ego with no self-esteem.”

I was that scared little kid again. And I managed to get some consecutive days of sobriety, and I went to some AA meetings, and I realized, “I can’t say my life got better, but it stopped getting worse.” And that was huge. So I stuck around. And I realized that I’m not one of a kind and unique and different from everybody else. I’m an alcoholic. And a big light went off, and I didn’t feel alone anymore.

I can’t say this to you in ink. I can pencil it in: I know I’m good today.

My life has got better beyond my wildest imagination.

(And if you’ve never heard it before, here’s his song, One Day At A Time.)

Tina Turner talks about the power of love in this LionsRoar.com article.

Worked on pickup lines with my nieces in Illinois last night. I usually go with, “Excuse me, do you know how to bake cookies?”;  “Oreos: Regular, or Double Stuf?”; or the classic, “What did you do when Hostess went bankrupt?” But thanks to them I’m working on my repertoire:

You’re so hot you must’ve started global warming.

Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?

If you were a booger I’d pick you first. (might be best used in grade school)

Is it hot in here, or is it just you? (may be good if the woman appears to be having hot flashes)

Do you have a map? I just got lost in your eyes.

Stop, drop, and roll, baby. You are on fire.

Woo baby, you’re hotter than donut grease. (works best at Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts)

~ a Facebook memory from January 24, 2014

I love this short video of a primary school principal leading his students in a dance, in an effort to get them exercising and off their computers.

If you’d like to donate some money to a worthy cause, my niece is studying to be a nurse, and she’s helping to raise money for sick and injured children. Here’s a blurb from that page:

“I'm on a mission to help sick and injured kids in my local community and I need your help. My local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital treats thousands of children each year, regardless of their illness, injury, or even their family’s ability to pay. These kids are facing scary stuff like cancer, cystic fibrosis, and injuries they may get from just being a kid.”

Any help is appreciated!

“By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another … has even less worth than if he were a mere thing … makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.”

~ Immanuel Kant (via Dan Rather)

This fangraphs article also mentions the pitching concept of “tunneling.” I’m sure it’s as old as baseball itself, but it’s a good name for the concept. When Fernando Valenzuela first came up he was brilliant at this. He would throw his fastball and screwball to the low, outside corner of the plate, and presumably the spin on the ball looked the same, so right-handed batters could only guess which pitch was coming (which made him incredibly successful).

In high school I did the same thing the best I could: I threw fastballs high, and then a curveball off of that, with the curve starting on the same trajectory, or with this terminology, “in the same tunnel.”

Once upon a time I was recommended for a college baseball scholarship.

Back in the 90s I was a Unix admin on a NASA project. Rumor was there was going to be a 14% layoff. The next day my boss tells me to go to HR. I’m thinking, “Me???”

I get there, and they tell me they can’t print their Postscript layoff reports in landscape mode, ask if I can help. In the end I got a great Pico de Gallo recipe out of it. :)

“Keep grinding man. If you’ve ever been down, misplaced, overlooked, just keep grinding baby. You’re dreams don’t die until you give up on them. Just continue to keep working.”

~ CJ Anderson, let go by the Broncos, Panthers, Raiders, and now a star in the playoffs with the Rams

When you worry about where your words land or how others digest or perceive them, you are clinging (and not allowing space for more to come through the channel). Continually create, let go, surrender to more. Create, let go, surrender to more. It is a divine dance. Respect your own story. Remain inside the rhythm.

~ Victoria Erickson