My Aha Moment

repeatedly doing, originally uploaded by emdot.

Holy shit I just figured this out. It's fairly simple but also very big for me in my life.

Here goes.

There are lots of people who hate to work out. Hate it. Even Jillian Michaels, my current beatings-beating-and-more-beatings virtual dream coach, even she hates working out.

I don't get that. Me? I LOVE working out. I love running and walking and hiking and spinning and lifting weights and yoga and classes and the whole gamut. Love it. And, I have to confess, I have complete disdain for workouts that don't really work you out. I mean c'mon people: break a sweat! Push yourselves. Get dirty. Get out of breath. Don't give me this little Curves for-women type of weight machines. Puh-lease.

No. Work out. Work out hard and love every moment of it. Choose to love every moment of it.

And for those people who don't like to work out but who do it every day... that is some kind of determination and commitment. And I don't relate to it, but I seriously admire your ability to do something that you hate.

Okay. That was the background story. Where I'm coming from.

So, what do I hate? I HATE COOKING. I hate cooking; I hate shopping; I hate meal planning; I hate packing my lunch; I hate figuring out what I'm going to have for breakfast. And dinner? Seriously: too much pressure. Please don't make me think. I hate figuring it OUT, much less cooking. I mean cooking? Why don't you just poke hot rusty pokers into my eyes.

My attitude is typically, you cook and I'll do the dishes (because I love doing the dishes). And if you don't like to cook -- yea! -- we get to go out! My kinda meal preparation.

But when you are getting healthy, losing weight, creating a new lifestyle... it doesn't really work that way.

Eating out is the equivalent of working out at curves. Having someone else prepare food for you is kinda like doing the mamby-pamby don't break a sweat workouts.

And that was my aha moment. I don't like to cook, but I'm going to have to suck it up and do it anyway because this is about me reaching my goals, turning things around, and accomplishing what really matters in my life.

So you guys who don't like to work out but do it anyway? I salute you. And I am about to join your ranks. I will plan my meals. I will go grocery shopping. I will cook dinner. I will pack my lunch. And you know what? I'm going to choose to love it because this is what I want in my life. And what I want in my life, for my life, squarely trumps my "food, meh" attitude.

overheard (aka guess you had to be there)

I'm pretty sure that my twitter super fave, Soupy Sales, is not the real Soupy Sales. Could the real Soupy Sales who is well over eighty and supposedly ailing really have such a wonderfully crafted twitter background and several other octegenarian twitter pals? I like to think that is true... but...

Me: Hee! Listen to Soupy on Twitter... (dons Soupy-twitter voice and reads aloud).

Steve: Poor fake Soupy.

overheard

Me: I've never been to Venice. I've never been to Italy. Don't you feel sorry for me?
Steve: No.
Me: No? Not even pity?
Steve: I didn't say that. I pity the fool.

... maybe you had to be there ...

Today's Post: Revisit 2004: Henry Miller

LIFORN, originally uploaded by emdot.

To keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously.

— Henry Miller

Originally posted August 18, 2004

Aside: August 18, I believe is one of the best birthday's around. It is the birthday of Austin, Jijnes, Remington, and Oliver.

Today's Post: Revisit 2004: About Los Osos

hello you beautiful world, originally uploaded by emdot.

"I really have no idea how I ever got to work at 8 or 8:30 in the past. These days I'm lucky to get in before Noon. Right. Like that happens. But I LOVE working in LO. Love it. It is so pretty here.

"I wonder if it is a pretty not available at first glance? But this is my home town so I know its glances, its movements, its nuances. I know where to look to see the beauty. God -- everywhere. But if you are the sort that equates nice towns with similar homes (aka tracts) and sidewalks and stoplights and groomed anything, this is not the town for you.

"LO is sandy. And a little weatherbeaten. Its trees are scraggly and you won't be hard pressed to find a car on blocks in someone's yard. But there is the bay sitting at your feet and the sand spit stretching out and the pacific holding it all together. There is the smell of ocean mist and and a slight breeze. The sky is robin's egg and the cypress trees reach up to meet it while the pigmy oaks stay low like little gnomes gathering together. The people are Down To Earth (exclamation point) and quite an honest, sincere bunch. There's hiking and mountain biking and surfing and sand boarding. People go for walks every single evening -- post-dinner walks are a given here. There are two bars (Sweet Springs, aka Meat Swings and The Merry Maker, aka The Marraige Breaker). Excellent thai. And a kickass locals cafe where you will run into damn near anyone you care about and/or see their kids (and when did the kids grow up?)."

Originally posted August 19, 2004

wednesday plays dress up with saturday's clothing

cactus flower, originally uploaded by emdot.

This morning, instead of following my work-morning schedule I have been so dutiful about, I threw caution to the wind and had a Saturday Morning instead. I drank two deliciously dark and strong cups of coffee with just the right amount of cream and I caught up on some Internet reading (o newspaper, someday we will reunite).

Person I stumbled upon on Flickr and then happily enjoyed her photos and words: Evany.

I don't know Evany from adam, but I used to read her regularly in Web Monkey Back in proverbial day. She cracked me up then. She cracks me up now. And I found out this morning she's got great fashion sense/style. :)

Evany is who inspired the Overheards I used to crank out so often back in the Web Ass days. So yea for Evany.

And now I'm more than an hour behind schedule. I think my Morning Pages have been kissed off and right now I best be focusing on doing a mad scramble. I've got a 9:00 meeting.

Ciao lovelies!

Overheard (at Pirates of the Carribbean in Disneyland)

At the sight of a pirate with a lit bottle...

Boy: Look! He's got a Mazaltov!!!

I'm still laughing. Mazal Tov Cocktail? What is that? Something they serve at special events? Ha ha ha!

me shooting dan

P1020503, originally uploaded by Twinmama.

i love this photo!

dan and i now have matching cameras (longish story that is more fun to tell than to hear). friday night the cameras got to meet each other. and angela took a shot. ;)

Week Three

Week Three, originally uploaded by emdot.

So, I guess I will take an early break this morning and tell you guys what I've been really into, really focused on these last couple of weeks.

Getting Fit.

A couple of months ago I was lamenting not having a group of people to lose weight with.... I mean, yes, I am surrounded by very supportive people. But I wanted partners in CRIME. I wrote about it in my Morning Pages (am doing The Artist's Way) and that was that.

Cut to three weeks ago.

See, I've been thinking about blogging my getting fit plan, but c'mon, how many people wanna read that? (Not even my mother raised a hand). But the type of person I am, to get into something, I kinda sorta mostly have to go overboard. Hog wild. Full steam ahead. And many other funny little phrases worthy of a maniac.

So, I used Backpack to create an intranet where I could spill my getting fit guts. Pages for food journals, checking off water intake, my workouts, meals I liked (so I can remember) the whole shebang.

And then, I invited a few friends to join in. In total, there are six of us (three couples, coincidentally... it didn't have to be that way). We weight in on Monday nights. And during the week we work out, write down what we eat and try to be healthier.

About two days into it I realized that I had created what I was wishing for: partners in crime. How cool is that? Plant those seeds, people. They grow.

The other thing I'm really extremely super into right now is listening to Jillian Michaels on her KFI radio show. You can download each one a day or so after it airs. I upload them to my iPod. What I love about Jillian is that she is both very motivating and very educational. I learn a lot from each show I've listened to. I've decided she's my Virtual Trainer. I heart her.

And finally, the irony. It used to be that The Biggest Loser night at my house was synonymous with Pizza Night. I know. I know. But every Tuesday night Steve would make an amazing pizza (from scratch; my man's got skillz) and we would eat it while watching TBL and loving the contradiction. Perhaps it's because TBL finished (yea Ali!) and we had to fill our evenings with something else... so now we go to the gym. And no pizza.

So that's my story, morninglories. I may actually keep a Get Fit blog, but it'll be at my wordpress blog instead, if I do it.

Meanwhile, if you want to listen to Jillian Michaels (and who doesn't?!), you can download her show at KFI640.com Click OnDemand. And then scoot yer mouse over to the Sunday column. Right click on her shows to save to your desk top and voila.

The Verbs

mirror, mirror, originally uploaded by emdot.

In the silence the verbs surround me
like faces of strangers,
            the verbs,
famished verbs, naked verbs,
essential verbs, deaf verbs,
verbs with no names, mere verbs,
verbs that live in caves,
speak in caves,
are born in caves,
under the shifting levels
of the universal optimism.

They go to work every morning,
mix cement, haul stones,
build the city. . . No, they erect
a monument to their own solitude.
They recede as we disappear in the memory
of someone else, they keep in step beside words,
and with their three tenses in line,
the verbs climb the hill Golgotha.

The sky is above them
like a bird above a cemetery.
The stand upright
as though in front of a closed door
and a man lifts his arm and drives nails
into the past
into the present
into the future.

— Iosip Brodsky

Not that I'm bitter

37signals speaks the truth yet again with this post about why it's good to have employees that have a life beyond the workplace. "Constraints" in general provide better outcomes... because you have to be more smart and more clever to come up with them. It's not anything goes. It's what is smart and worthwhile goes.

And can I say (again) how much I love where I work now? Dear Where-I-Work-Now: I LOVE YOU.

never going to let you down?

Me: This girlfriend Rickrolled her boyfriend's birthday. She made a fake birthday cake with a Rick Astley cake inside.

Him: That's bad.

Me: Yeah, cuz that real cake is so much smaller.

this morning i walked to work

this morning i walked to work, originally uploaded by emdot.

Okay, I guess this is Dharma Friday! ;) I read this a couple days ago and it was something I wanted to share.

Warning:
It uses some words that could put you off of the message. For me, those words are "warrior" and "victorious." I have to watch it because if I don't like the terminology, I might dismiss the message entirely. But, I put my biases aside and took the meat of the message instead.

For the Shambhala warrior, the actual, basic notion of victory is not so much that you have one-upped your enemy and therefore you are victorious. Rather, no enemy exists at all; therefore, there is victory. This is the idea of unconditional warriorship and unconditional victory. In connection with this, the concept of sacredness is that fearlessness is carried into everyday life situations, even brushing your teeth. So fearlessness occurs all over the place, all the time. Fearlessness here is also unconditional. In this way, fearlessness becomes cheerful and very light. There's no need for cowardice or fear at all, or any moments of doubt. Actually what we're talking about is doubtlessness, we could say, rather than fearlessness. There's no doubt. There are no second thoughts. Everything is a complete warrior's world. So here victory is not having to deal with an enemy at all. It is the notion of no enemy. The whole world is a friend.

— Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The same day while driving to work I heard an NPR segment about the Dalai Lama's visit to Seattle. (We are so lucky to be alive while this guy is alive. Seriously.). The basic jist was

"Destruction of your neighbor or enemy is destruction of yourself."

I agree with that so much.

I really hope we can all get a little more sane and a little more open-handed and open-hearted and brave and all the rest. Wouldn't that be something else?

trite. true.

To contemplate impermanence on its own is not enough: You have to work with it in your life. Let’s try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents the object at which you are grasping. Hold it tightly clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your grip, you will lose what you are clinging to. That’s why you hold on.

But there’s another possibility: You can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still yours, even with all this space around it.

So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.

— Sogyal Rinpoche

Ok Em, where do we send this?

Ok Em, where do we send this?, originally uploaded by rkevwill.

I have the coolest flickr friends. RKev and his wonderful Cyd framed my photo.

... wow! i knew they were doing this but still, the words escape me. just.... so cool!

thank you kev and cindy!

Sherley Anne Williams

(This one so knocks me out)

Straight Talk from Plain Women

Evangeline made her
own self over in
'65, say she
looked in the mirror
at her face saw it
was pretty (her legs
was always fine and
she'd interrupt a
dude's rap to say how
it was a common
characteristic
amongst our women

Did
the same thang with her
neck pointin to
its length, its class. And
we dug where she
was comin from specially
that pretty part, how
she carried herself
with style, said go'n girl
so be it

Evangeline made her
self over and who
eva else didn't see
We is her witness.

— Sherley Anne Williams

Favorite Flickr Flicks

Flickr added video this week and I love it. :)

Here are some of my super faves:

• helvetica neue's self portrait in the making
• narcoleptic cat
• tippity tappety tip tap click!
• Jspaw's RickIt

I know I'm missing some, but those are the ones that I would make you watch if you came over to my house and/or shared my office space.

First Name, Last Name

If you know me, you probably know I am a Name Nut. I love names. And I sometimes hate names, too. So I almost always have an opinion about them, one way or the other.

Which is why this is a link I had to share on my blog, not just through del.icio.us or through the Google Reader (which damn, now that I think about it, I should have shared it there, too).

» dynamic name creator (via Kottke)

Oh, and also, where in the hell have I been that I didn't know about PopURLs? (Actually, I know the answer to that, and the answer is "in information overload hell," which should explain a lot).

And, one of my photos was a blip on reddit yesterday... and where I might average about 100 or so views for a photo on a given day, this one garnered about 10,000. Jeesh. Put fat ass, environmental anonymous, and flyers together and you get a lot of page views.

the hardest thing to decipher

Wrong views and wrong convictions can be the most devastating of all our delusions. Surely Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot must have been convinced that they were right too? And yet each and every one of us has that same dangerous tendency as they had: to form convictions, believe them without question, and act on them, so bringing down suffering not only on ourselves but on all those around us.

— Sogyal Rinpoche

That is so true. The quote goes on to talk about "the true view" in Buddhist speak, but man, who can't relate to that? By either being someone caught in it or being affected by someone caught in it. It's very tough.

Derek Mahon

Everything Is Going to Be Alright

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

— Derek Mahon