The Day I Turned 50

     The day I turned 50, no one knew except maybe my mother. Even if they'd known, no one except maybe my mother would have cared. There's no love in corporations, not compared to the love I feel from people when I perform music. As a corporate technical writer, my satisfaction came from within me as I realized my highest mental potential, my competency as a learner, prevailing over everyday challenges to turn out the Navy deliverables on schedule.

     When I turned 50, no black balloons fluttered around my office door; no jokey birthday cards predicting my demise waited to be opened. No one sang "Happy Birthday," or gave me presents. No one baked a cake for me with my name on it. I wore sunglasses to hide intermittent tears. I didn't tell anyone it was my birthday, fearful I would cry amidst happy birthday wishes. For me, it was a day of mourning. A day marking the passing of my youth--the crossing of the peak of the mountain and the beginning of my descent down the backside.
     When I turned 50, my choices were between two courses of action that would eventually kill me. Menopause had already begun two years before, and I'd read every book I could find on the subject. I knew my choices were to take the estrogen hormone pill that would stop continuous hot flashes, keep my bones strong and cause breast cancer--the disease of my mother and her mother--or to get through it without medical intervention. That would be the certain path to heart disease, dementia, osteoporosis, and the wrinkled face of an old woman. I chose hormone replacement for the highest quality of life, strength, and good looks in the moment. No more fanning away my hot flashes with paper plates. The predictable threat of breast cancer would not require action for another 8 years.

Pookie and I, Oct., 2012

     When I turned 50, I lived in a small apartment with only my young cockatiel Pookie for companionship. He was practicing daily to learn to communicate with me. He rode around on my shoulder talking to me and singing with me. He would lay his beak on top of my nose and emit a long, raspy kiss sound from his throat followed by a high-pitched declaration, "I uv oo!" I didn't believe humans were meant to live alone, and the thought that I might have to live the rest of my life alone was intolerable. Pookie couldn't take the place of a life partner. Today he's still with me, and he's managed to do just that.
     When I turned 50, my heart's propensity to choose undesirable, unattainable men had left me bitter and cynical about men and my own ability to choose a loving partner and sustain a loving relationship. When Ron (not his real name) stopped speaking to me 6 months before, I had no choice but to move out of his home. I vowed then that no man would ever again break my heart. Ron was still my employer, the project manager of the team of 40 engineers I worked among. Throughout the long office days, he stayed away from me, while still keeping me employed, thankfully. Some days I watched him walking down the hallway along with my co-workers, all headed out to a restaurant to enjoy lunch together. I wasn't invited. Once he appeared on a Sunday morning and caught me in the office packing up my personal belongings. My intent was to finish up one of the deliverables, write a resignation notice, and disappear from his life forever. He talked me into staying.
     Both of our jobs ended when I was 52, when the Navy closed down our project. Ron helped me pack and waved good bye as I drove off to Milwaukee, to my new technical writing job. A month later he left for Malaysia to help build the airport there. Ron turned out to be my last passionate love. Every time a new love possibility came into view, I remembered what Ron did to me, and turned away from the opportunity to start again. Today Ron and I love each other, but it's a different love, a separate love--separate paths down the backside of that mountain. We know our vast differences, and love is unconditional. Loving him doesn't hurt. Or does it?
     When I turned 50, I was grieving alone for the loss of my mother. My sister who lived in the DC area and my mother's husband John were in denial about Mother's dementia. John refused to attend my Alzheimer's support group with me to learn how to care for her. She got lost when she drove to the beauty shop in the car; she fell off her bicycle on rides around her neighborhood; she fell off the ladder when her husband left her home alone. She stopped going to church and spent her days sitting by herself in the living room while her husband rebuilt computers in another room. On Fridays I joined them for their evening card game of Hand and Foot, listening to Mother's constant chatter that circled back around to the same subject, her questions to me repeated in the same inflectional pattern as though she were asking them for the first time. "Are you working anywhere, honey?" she would ask me again and again, while John expelled exasperated bursts of breath and rolled his eyes. Once when Mother left the room, he whispered to me with intense conviction, "She does NOT have dementia. If she would just TRY HARDER to remember instead of asking me everything. . . ."
     When I turned 50, I didn't go to visit my mother. The day before, I did something so painful and destructive, I will regret it for the rest of my life. I was in a face-to-the-wall depression, the flip side of my bipolar mental illness that neither the  antidepressant nor my skilled and caring psychiatrist could avert. Mother was still remembering to look at her calendar every day and gave me a small birthday gift when I visited her the day before. As I was walking back down the driveway to my car, Mother called from the doorway. "Won't you come to see me tomorrow on your birthday?" "No!" I shouted back angrily. "You brought me into this miserable world and I hate you for that!" I slammed the car door and sped away. I don't know if she remembered me on that birthday, but I remembered her and what I'd said to her. Mother didn't remember my birthdays after that year. As the years passed, I could see the confusion in her eyes when I visited her. Once when a nursing home attendant told her I was her daughter and asked her my name, Mother stared at me for a few moments, and in her characteristic dry humor, blurted out, "Yoo-hootey." I don't blame her for forgetting me. I've wanted to forget me, too! She died 15 years later, two months before I turned 65.
     In a recent interview with late night show host Carson Daily, Depok Chopra said that when a loved one dies, you become aware that "the Prince of Death is stalking you. It throws you into the present and gets you out of your dream." There's nothing like a Mother's death to awaken her daughter from the dream.
     When I turn 69 in a few months, I'll spend the day alone in my apartment, or maybe with a few friends. My extreme mental highs and lows have evened out to manageable levels without the need for medication. Memories of my mother's and my painful lifelong dance have dimmed, replaced by a new understanding of how we each reacted to the other. I've forgiven myself and her. I hope if there's an afterlife she's forgiven me.
     I'm no longer driven to achieve my highest potential. It's okay to sit for hours in my recliner chair watching "Long Island Medium" or "Storage Wars" and clicking numbers into the Sudoku game on the iPad in my lap. While I still sometimes mourn the losses of my singing voice and mental organization skills, I can look back and say, "Wow! Was I ever good! And to think I did all that!"  While I still sometimes long for the freedom I enjoyed when I was young, I also see how that freedom fed my mental illness, and I'm grateful for a quiet mind and uncomplicated lifestyle. While I still cry when loved ones die, and I'm deeply saddened by wars and mass shootings and extreme weather events that cause casualties and leave people struggling across the planet, I also accept their fate and mine as part of life.
     Like all living creatures on earth, every human being's life has an ending, including mine. My natural curiosity makes me wish I knew exactly what will take me out, but my imagination always shows me an unlikely sudden death riding in an elevator that snaps loose, or crossing a train track. I no longer feel an intense drive to continue to make my life count for something to justify my existence. It's okay to leave my life as it is, a quiet whisper in the universe.
     When I turned 50, I wore sunglasses to hide my tears. These days I still wear sunglasses, but only outdoors and only to protect my eyes from sun. Whether I'm alone or with friends or volunteering to help out somewhere, life in this moment is only sweet. I look back at my years in a hectic, productive life with a thankful heart for the opportunities that opened to me. I look ahead and say, "I'm up for it." I look at this moment and feel the presence of a grace that wraps me up and lifts me over my own daily struggles and physical pain. Life is not a dream; it's gritty and real; it's all there is; and for just right now, it's still mine.
    
  
    
    
     

Stepping Away from Team Politics

Throughout the Republican campaigns, I've been watching media personalities making references to "Team Romney." "Team Santorum," etc., and I'm thinking these knock-down political races are more like sports shows, with each team and the sports fans vilifying the candidates and each other.

I'm a non-believer, but has politics taken the place of religion for me? And then I ask what does all of this political drama matter to me? It shouldn't matter. The younger generations will go on living on this planet. My body has become a land mine, and taking care of myself has become more difficult. I sleep more, and find I don't have the energy to accomplish tasks that will maintain my life or fulfill obligations I've made to myself and to others.

If I were in Congress or in a place of influence where my voice would count for something, I would use it, but in my station in life, all the words I could write in a lifetime will not change anything.

I do not want to, nor will I, spend the rest of my life thinking and writing about these political issues that are polluted with bigotry and attempts to legislate morality and extremist Christian religion. I've openly stated my beliefs in my writing over the years, and now I rest my case.

I pass my passion for justice and equity on to the leaders who have a moral sense of responsibility, and on to younger generations who have good health and energy to make of this country what they believe will best serve them. And may the best team win.

Life of the Artist

"How can I know what my real personality is when I feel depressed for months and then suddenly, for no reason, feel very happy?" my friend asked me this morning.

"We can't really know ourselves, ever," I answered.

In fact, I've come to believe that like diamonds, we're always expressing fragments of ourselves, depending on where the light is shining--in other words, the combination of the situation we're in and who we're interacting with, our inner life and the billions of impulses streaming through our brains without our awareness. But within our consciousness, it's impossible for us to behold all of our millions of facets at the same time.

So if it's true that we can never know ourselves, how can we expect to know who we are as artists? This is one of the American Idol judges' most frequent comments to the contestants--the compliment: "You know who you are," or more often the criticism: "You don't know who you are."

What adjectives would you use to describe yourself? I think every adjective that exists would probably describe some facet of my being that expresses itself fully or in part in any given moment--serious, silly, intense, apathetic, afraid, fearless, ecstatic, depressed, happy, sad--even simultaneous opposites. And yet, my friends will say to me, "That is SO YOU!" And I'll say to myself, "Sometimes."

I believe we're all artists and creators, expressing in our unique ways, and like everyone else, I've done my share of creating throughout my life. Whether it's drawing cartoons few people have ever seen, or writing and recording songs, practicing and performing music, or writing a book or this blog, the artist's life makes me feel so happy. When I'm in the act of creating, I'm in love with that magical part of me that expresses itself. It doesn't matter that I don't know who I am.

What got me thinking about all of this was a letter my sister wrote to me back in November 1977. She was in Clown School in Orlando. She included with her letter this poem her teacher had given her that she said was written by rock guitarist Terry Brooks and Strange.  Here is what he wrote:

Life of the Artist
by Terry Brooks and Strange

If you have chosen the arts
To be your life's profession
You have started an endless voyage
Into time and space
That has no beginning or end
You are suspended in a void
Of thought and magic
And you will walk to the end of time
And to the edge of insanity
And you will search for yourself
In the mirror of life
To understand your own reflection
Only to find you are translucent
And you cannot concentrate
On your own existence
Because the you of yourself
Is beyond time and dimension
You are a fragment of thought
Or an extension of all existing things
We are all children of the universe
United as one, we are free to play
The symphony of life.

My 7 Life Principles--What Are Yours?

     "I'm nominating you for induction into Canton's Women's Hall of Fame in the category of The Arts," Marilyn announced to me in our phone conversation just before Christmas. I was honored by her resolve, but knew that residence in Canton, Ohio, where she lives, is a requirement for nominees.
     Canton is my hometown where I returned for four years to take care of my elderly stepmother and autistic, retarded stepsister. While there, I wrote and recorded a theme song for the Women's Hall of Fame awards banquet and for two years in a row, I provided the dinner music during the banquet and listened to many acceptance speeches. In 2008 I moved back to Florida to be with my mother in the final months of her life.
   Just knowing I wouldn't qualify as a nominee wasn't enough to keep me from fantasizing about having such a high honor bestowed on me by my peers, and I wondered what I might say in an acceptance speech. What follows is what I would have said to them and what I would say now to the readers of this blog.
     I know you don't need my advice on how to live a successful life, especially since I'm not in the ranks of financially successful or famous people. Among all of the songs I've written and recorded, my song, "Sunday Blessing" was the only one that found its way to prime time TV, in an ABC "World News Now" broadcast. I don't know how they found my song out of the millions of tracks on the Internet. I learned they'd played it when BMI sent me a check for $60 with the details of time and place written on the check.
     My cockatiel Pookie and I are in a segment of "Planet's Funniest Animals" in 2002. He's on my shoulder and I'm saying, "Pookie? How does the rooster go?" He lowers his head, then raises up and makes a throaty crowing sound, "er  er-er  er-errrr," that I taught him. Then I say, "Good boy!" Together, my song and Pookie add up to 2 minutes of TV-time "fame."
     Although I doubt that anyone would look at me and my life and consider me to be happy or successful, I share the following principles as a way of giving you an opportunity to reflect on what has brought you to this time and place in your life--what has worked for you. Here are seven principles that have allowed me to be a better creator throughout my life.

1. I woke up on the dark, rainy morning of May 20, 2007, with a heavy, sinking feeling in my body, a feeling of dread and shame, an absolute certainty that what I was about to do that day would be a failure that would make me the target of ridicule and shame for the rest of my life. I couldn't know for sure exactly why, or what might happen, but I knew this would be a very bad day!
     Still, I put on my slinky silky silvery showgirl dress from my years in my Las Vegas showband in the 1980's. With bobby pins and barretts, I anchored my long-haired wig to my pony tail. I glued false eyelashes to the rim of my eyelids. I carried my amp, speakers and tape recorder to my car, groaned as I heaved them into the trunk, closed the trunk lid, and headed for the Civic Center, to the Spring Senior Fair.
     A few months before, the staff at The Pines, the nursing home where my stepmother was being lovingly cared for, asked me for my ideas for their booth for the fair. They'd won the prize money for the most outstanding booth the year before, and the only idea they'd thought of for this year's fair with its New Orleans theme was to have me sing. I suggested they set up a storefront for a stripper's club in the French Quarter.
     So there I was on the morning of the fair, slinky and a bit bulgy, singing stripper songs to music tracks I'd created, in a gaudy booth surrounded by ladies of the night serving lemonade to passers-by. As smiling people gathered to listen to me, that bad feeling changed to a euphoric "Wow! This is FUN!" "How old are you?" younger women asked me throughout the day. When I told them I was 63, they all said, "I hope I'm still sexy like you when I'm your age!" At the end of the day, The Pines won the top prize for the second year in a row, and one morning a few weeks later when I drove up to the nursing home to visit my stepmother, a bunch of the staff women were leaning out an office window calling me in to surprise me with a generous check.
     This true story illustrates my first principle: I shake hands with my demons and step over them. They're here to stay, but I don't have to base my actions on them. I do my life anyway, no matter what.

2. I say "Yes" more often than "No." I'm always surprised to find unexpected opportunities in the most unexpected places.

3. I see myself as a life-long learner, and I've been willing to spend the time and focus my attention to develop skills that will help me to be a better creator. I regret that I haven't had time to learn more, but what I don't know has forced me to seek others who do know, which allows for the all-important collaboration with others (see #5).

4. I look for the truth in everything, realizing that my own thinking often deceives me! When I'm sure I don't know the truth, I resist making up a story about it. I'm comfortable living in the mystery of the unknown. Living in the mystery has brought me a new peace of mind. It takes energy to have to explain every unknowable thing.

5. I cannot accomplish my best work alone. It takes others. We're walking the paths of those who taught us, lifted us, supported us, enhanced our visions. Creating requires focus, intent, vision, teamwork, and time alone. Others have to bring our work into the light. And once in the light, those who experience our work become the critics and determine what happens to what we've created.

6. I love my creations into existence. Much like a parent adores a child, I create with an attitude of unconditional love, not only for the creative process, but for the end result of my efforts, even as I strive to perfect that result. I will never give a perfect performance or write the perfect story, but a decision to love my work opens a window of happiness in my heart. My inner critic has a specific role in the creative process, not to make me miserable and filled with disgust and disappointment for my work, but instead to give me the humility to always strive to do better and to always ask for help. Depression will cause my inner critic to become too prominent and "believable." At those times, I continue to work on my projects to make them better and release them when I believe they're ready.

7. We're all the creators of our lives. For me, writing songs and stories, performing music, and drawing cartoons is like breathing. Knowing I can still do these things makes me want to go on living. My final principle is that I must continue to create. Every single day.

What speech would you give if you were given an achievement award for your life's work? What are the principles that guide your life, that make you a better creator? 

Yes! I Can!

     If you try to use the hammer in your toolbox to paint the kitchen, you probably won't like the end result, and no one else will, either! Like a hammer, positive thinking, that voice in our head that says, "Yes! I can!", is a tool in life's toolbox, but it's only one of many tools for creating a written work deserving of praise and recognition by those who will read it.
      Many people believe that the concept of positive thinking is an umbrella attitude, necessary for the success of every undertaking. Granted, everything we do, whether it's buying a lottery ticket, running for public office, gambling with mortgage holders' debt or writing a novel, begins with something in our brain that says, "Yes! I can!" But that statement is always about what "I" can do, not a prediction of the result of our efforts to write a great story. The results have to do with other factors (our marketing/negotiating actions and outside circumstances) that come together to create the perfect sunburst. And even "Yes! I can!" can be the construct of an unrealistic imagination (known as "delusions of grandeur" in bipolar language), not based on truthful perception.
     There's no clear-cut, predictable path to get the masses to recognize and reward our talent and efforts. If there were, it would be a well-worn freeway ending in financial success and fame for everyone. Many successful artists would tell you they are not positive thinkers. They walk hand in hand with their demons, always certain that the worst is going to happen, unable to explain or understand how they ended up in the realm of the renown. One season's winner of "American Idol" believed every minute of every day throughout those three months that he would be eliminated in each next round.
     Positive thinking by itself is not a magic pill that will ultimately make everything wonderful happen. If positive thinking were a pill, a dose too high, or taken at the wrong time, or combined with the wrong food could be fatal. If not used wisely, positive thinking, and its buddy, the touted belief known as the "Law of Attraction" can actually hinder both the creative process and the result.
    As much as possible, it's wise to keep a tuned ear on the constant patter of those little voices in our heads, always listening and ready to challenge our positive thinking beliefs that would hinder our creative process. Here are some to watch out for and the sorry truths that will alert you to take a different course as you write to your highest potential. 

1. PT Belief: You're absolutely certain without a doubt that your story is so good that a Hollywood producer is going to make it into a movie.

Sorry Truth: I believe every person has one or more great stories to tell. It's the way the story is told that makes it come alive for the reader. A good story is not enough. Continue to hone the craft of story writing by reading everything you can and practicing the techniques.

2. PT Belief: You're certain that you're a "good writer," even if you don't know the basics of English grammar, punctuation, and sentence mechanics.

Sorry Truth: If you didn't listen in junior high English class, it's impossible to know what you don't know now. Find the many excellent interactive online sites that teach basic writing skills and get to work!

3. PT Belief: Because you're an educated writer and know the craft of storytelling, you believe that you can write a great story and do the line-by-line final proofreading without the help of professional editors. After all, you're a better writer than anyone you could find to help you.

Sorry Truth: Even if you're a college English teacher and a professional editor yourself, you cannot critique your own work. You will need to hire a professional editor who will give you feedback and content guidance, and then a professional proofreader who will be able to root out all of the errors in the final line-by-line edit before you send your story off.

4. PT Belief: Your story is so great that everyone who reads it will love it, so you send your drafts to your already insanely busy dearly-beloved friends and family members who you're certain will give you support and honest feedback.

Sorry Truth: Instead of honing a story that nurtures the readers, by sending your drafts to your friends, you're soliciting favor; you're asking them to coddle you, rescue you, and make you feel okay. Chances are, your friends won't find the time to read your drafts and will be ashamed to admit it, but if they do read them, they might form opinions as biased insiders who already know and love you. They may focus on what interests them and be unable to perceive a balanced perspective on your piece. If they don't like your story, but love you, they won't tell you their honest opinion; if they're secretly mad at you for something else, they might tell you they don't like your story, maybe for reasons that don't even make sense to you. If they try to give you honest feedback, they likely won't be able to articulate exactly what doesn't work for them, or how to correct it. Unfortunately, your writing needs the objective scrutiny of an unattached critic who doesn't already adore you, but who will advocate for the reader by identifying the problems in your piece and giving you suggestions for fixing them.

5. PT Belief: Your writing is channeled through your brain from a higher intelligence, which could be your Higher Self or an outside Higher Power, and therefore, what you write shouldn't be changed or tampered with and doesn't have to meet the requirements of logic and reasoning.

Sorry Truth: Writers know that words and sentences often fall onto the page, and characters form themselves so mysteriously and effortlessly, it seems as if someone or something else is doing the writing. Neuroscientists know that our brains are constantly working in the background, beyond our conscious reach. Our consciousness, like a newspaper article, writes down what our brain has already debated and voted on. I'm not refuting the possibility of a higher intelligence dictating our ideas to us, but I'm suggesting that some readers might not find your story credible if it's lacking character motivation, reason, and, yes, common plain-folk horse sense. A famous writer--can't remember which one, maybe Erica Jong--wrote that words have to be wrestled to the page. Even after the words go onto the page, the writer must always be matching them to the vision--sights, sounds, tactile sensations, smells--he or she sees playing out in imagination and memory.

My piano teacher in Delaware was a concert pianist who was once quoted in a newspaper article saying, "The simplest piano piece is difficult if it's done well." Good writing requires hours of hard work, of concentrated thought and focus. It requires knowledge of English basics and story crafting. It requires soliciting the skills of other people. It begins with YES! I CAN! But it doesn't end there.

Simply Magic!

Remember the song from the movie Smokey and the Bandit? I sang it in my nightclub act back when it first came out.

"Eastbound and down
Loaded  up and truckin'
We're gonna do what they say can't be done
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there
Just put that hammer down and give it hell!" (last line from another verse of the song)

If there was any theme running through my life, it would be those words. Looking back over my 68 years, I've gone a long way in a short time, and I've done what no one, including me, would have predicted I could or would do. Like the last line, borrowed from another verse, I let 'er rip and the power and momentum of life took over. Even today, hours, days, weeks, and months continue to whizz by as life works its own magic.

I wrote my testimony to the working of this phenomenon in three previous blog posts titled "Perchance to Dream," ("Perchance to Dream, Pt. I") which also became the first chapter in my book, Life with a Buckskinner. It's the story of how a vision, a fantasy I had came about exactly as I fantasized it, but not until I endured eight years of consequences of poor choices and painful, unpredictable events. Most people I've talked to have had something like this happen in their lives. 

If I were into explaining the mysteries of life as "facts," I'd insert concepts like "God" or "the Universe" in place of "life." I'd say that I "let go and let God," and "God works in mysterious ways." I'd say that I'm a co-creator with God. I'd believe that events happen for a "reason," implying some other entity's reason that gives a meaning to life that I can't yet comprehend, or might become aware of in time. I'd say that things happen "on God's clock," in "God's time," in "God's way."

But I don't explain life like that. That isn't to say that what I don't know doesn't exist or isn't someone else's reality. It's just that I try not to spin my own explanations for things I don't know anything about. I can see how events in my life strung themselves together into a great story. "Better than the Best" is the song I wrote about that, recorded on my Spiritland album. I simply say, life is what it is. There's acceptance in that, and yes, resignation.

I have New Age friends and energy healers whose views I respect but don't hold for myself. They might believe, even if they don't say so aloud, that my diagnosed leukemia is an illusion that I've somehow allowed into my life, either by submitting to the belief of its reality, or by some unconscious consent, or by a contract I made with the Universe before I was born. In other words, leukemia is not real. I caused it or allowed it, and therefore I'm to blame for being bothered by it. If I would just eat the right foods or allow them to do Reiki on me, or commit to a multitude of other practices and beliefs, leukemia and maybe even old age itself would magically disappear. To them I say that every person has a lifespan. All humans and non humans will eventually die. Stop blaming yourself and others for that fact and focus on living in your best story.

Twelve-step programs teach us to not manipulate circumstances. I look back and see my misguided, futile struggles to turn other people and my own life events around to fit my mostly-distorted beliefs. Even without struggling to manipulate ourselves and others, there are challenges we must take on in life for no good reason except that we're passionate about them. They are simply ours to do--things that are difficult, things we do because we can and because our hearts tell us we must. Lining up our action and intent with our passion and love is different from manipulating, I believe. Following our hearts gives us happiness and a sense of fulfillment, while efforts to manipulate, even our attempts to get others to love us, cause confusion and chaos for ourselves and others.

One good example of this dilemma is the presidential election coming up. Do I vote for the candidate who speaks the exact language of my values and beliefs, or do I vote for one candidate who might more represent me than the other, even though both have proven they can't be trusted to speak for me? I have a friend who wants to support a candidate that he will not vote for, just to get that candidate nominated in the primary, in order to give his actual choice of candidate a better chance of winning the election. I'm sure others are doing the same, but I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler on the psyche just to financially support and vote for the exact candidate you want. If everyone did that, we could turn over some tables and chairs in our system that might lead to our taking back our democracy from large corporations, by whom most of our elected leaders are paid and for whom they are working. My choice, for my highest and best, is to live a straightforward, simple life from my heart, knowing that I alone can't control or redirect the course of the flowing river of life.

A week before Christmas I wrote a check to pay my property taxes. The last thing I remember is licking the envelope flap and pressing it down to seal it. Hours later I remembered that I wanted to pay my property taxes on that day, but what did I do with the envelope? The mail had already been picked up, and the envelope wasn't with the new mail. I looked everywhere in my house for it and finally gave up. I don't remember putting that envelope in the mailbox and raising the red flag, but a few days later, my online checking account showed that the check had been received and cashed.

This isn't the first time I've lost something or not remembered. I could be scared, but instead, I choose to acknowledge the gift of this period of my life as I slide down the slope. I now have absolute proof of what twelve-step programs, organized religion, and great spiritual leaders have always taught: life is and always has been a big magic trick. It happens without my memory, understanding, or consent. I don't have a crystal ball to predict my future, but living life can be just as simple as doing what's mine to do next. That won't make everything comfortable or okay, or even my way, and I won't survive this life, but hey, I'm still on a full-speed run with the hammer down, givin' it hell!