A year of living lease-lessly

I gave up my apartment in Brooklyn last May. It had been a slow build to leave, but I knew that it was time to head back home to the West Coast. I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to land, but I figured I'd work it out as I went. I packed up my apartment into 2 u-haul pod containers, and shed the weight that belongings can sometimes have on us.

My intention was to find my new home. Past that, I didn't have many firm plans. I'd filled my bags with enough clothes for various climates, but also a few familiar things; a couple of my favorite mugs, a few little paintings, my french press, a nice sauce pan for cooking. I didn't know how long this journey was going to take, and something inside of me had the good sense to keep some of these pieces of home with me.

Since that day, I've slept in over 20 beds. There have been a few nights when I felt lonely and homeless, but mostly I've felt free. I've found myself staying in some amazing places, rented Airbnb apartments, couch-surfed and sublet. My wanderlust has taken me from a tiny hilltop town in Southern Spain, to a gorgeous apartment in SF, to a tree house in Tomales bay, to a hilltop mining town in Arizona.

Today I find myself typing at a desk, overlooking the golden gate park, watching a San Franciscan bike past with his surfboard strapped to his bikes. And I count my lucky stars for my good fortune, for the generosity of friends, but also for learning the lesson of how to let go a little and follow the current.

The Road Ahead

I find it really interesting how ideas take form; how they start as a little seed, they brew, gestate, get packed away, pop up again, and then, sometimes, are born.

About a year ago my ex-boyfriend and I went out to dinner at one of our favorite Manhattan restaurants, BackForty.  The future lay ahead of me like a terrifying/wonderful blank canvas. I'd just quit my job and made the commitment to try to live a life more authentic. Jacob asked me what I wanted to do next, and I started day dreaming out loud about a dream I'd had for a while: to buy a vintage trailer and travel across America. I turned the paper menu over, and scribbled a little canned ham trailer with me as a stick figure, smiling ear to ear. It was an silly idea that would never happen in a million years.

A year earlier in England, I'd picked up a cook book called The Wild Gourmets, written by a couple who traveled across England, hunting, camping in their VW bus, and cooking amazing gourmet meals. It was the sort of thing that I dream about when NY felt dirty, smelly and covered in asphalt.

I pinned the sketch to my inspiration board to be forgotten.

This month I decided it was finally time to pack up my home, and say goodbye to my life in NY.  The sketch is still pinned to my wall, calling to me with absurdity, but also a little bit of 'Why the hell not!?' When in my life time and I going to be untied down, with no rent, mortgage or real responsibilities? Why not take my sweet ass time to get to my destination? Why not take the long road? Why not see what America looks like on the ground? Why not get inspired by the people I meet? Why not travel to see all my friends across America, cooking them yummy meals out of the retro kitchen, drinking wine and watching the sun set from our deck chairs?

Stuff

My mum came for an impromptu visit to Brooklyn this weekend. We were riding the subway home after a day of relaxed city wandering, when mum said out of the blue, 'You like making things, don't you?'

Well, yes, I suppose I do.

I realized a couple weeks ago that I cook when I'm sad. and that I also cook when I'm happy. If I'm feeling anything, the best remedy is to make something. It's what I do.

This morning, I was reading this article by Graham Hill, about Living with Less, A Lot Less, it started me thinking on a conundrum a lot of natural makers have; our environmental impact. We are the people inventing shit, and then putting it out into the world. It brings us pleasure and joy to create something new. It satiates an itch. But then what happens to all that stuff?

I used to work for a very big US manufacturer and I would literally have nightmares about all the stuff we produced. The million units that would get dropped last minute because of some mistake. Knowing full well were it would end up eventually made me feel very sad and guilty.

The dilemma for those of us who love making things, who want it to be their job, is how to do it without adding one more thing to the environmental pile of stuff.  I'm trying to make better things. Things that are made to last. It might be one more thing for the pile, but hopefully it will take a lot longer to get there, and you'll be able to compost it at the end.

Hallelujah!

By the end of my tenure in corporate fashion, I would approach each oncoming season with dread. Not that I didn't still love inventing things (as my friend, Katie sweetly put it), but that I was bracing myself for the rounds of bullshit that came with each new season.

If that statement sounds jaded, that's because it is. I became deeply jaded, to the point that I really didn't even want to talk to myself at times. All the passion that I'd come to my career with at 21 had been slowly wrung out of me. When I went shopping, all I could see looking a the clothes was the stress, heartache and anxiety that I imaged was their back story. How had something so joyful and silly as fashion given me a case of PTSD? How had I let that happen to something that was once a passion?

I probably shouldn't admit this publicly, because it surely means no HR department will hire me in the future, but I say it because it seems to be something echoed among much of my peer group- not just in fashion, but in other creative fields. As a youngn', we opt for a career that rewards in creativity, (and not so much in money), but by our late 30's we are just spent. We've just seen to much.

Which is why this week I have to say Hallelujah. I'm preparing to head out to Minnesota tomorrow to design Fall '13. This is my third collection for Bryr, and to be honest I can't wait. I am filled with nervous butterflies about what it will be. Excited and nervous like a 16 year old before her first date. I have found my joy again, and I feel so blessed to be given a second chance to follow this passion.

Halle-fucking-lujah!

Revolution in a little wrapper

WWII Army issued condoms

It's easy to think history is a linear progression towards a natural outcome, but it really isn't. That can be said in our personal lives and as well a globally for politics. We can have sudden moments of huge transformation that nobody ever would have expected. Situations and inventions that change everything for ever.

I'm reading this book right now called Vagina, The new biography, by Naomi Wolf. It's a riveting read, and I would definitely recommend it not only to other women, but also for men out there who want to know what's going on downtown.

Much has been said about the role of the Pill, and how it revolutionized our society and brought about massive changes to the 20th century. But, reading Wolf's book, I came to understand that the little-talked about underdog, the lowly condom. The changes that came about between 1880 and 1930 are pretty staggering. I know we imagine that we are living in a time of huge change of i-phones and social media, but really that that really pales in comparison to the turn of the 19th century. In one life-time, normal women went from wearing whale bone corsets and having 'hysterical fits' if they talked about anything beyond the weather, to working in factories and standing on the front-lines for suffrage.  Pretty amazing really.

As someone completely not qualified to talk about this, it seems to me that the invention of rubber and then latex had something to do with this transformation.

People always say that war-time inventions are what propel history forward. By the second world war, every soldier was given latex condoms (German soldiers were issued rubber ones during WW1!) Imagine that! Going from a society where sex was only sanctioned within marriage, to one where an entire generation was given the tool for protected sex! No wonder by the 1920's women were dancing the charleston and having a grand old time.

Aging

There's something about this time of year, with the barren trees and cold winds, that naturally lends itself to contemplation of mortality. Sci-fi plot twists not withstanding, we are all going to die.

"You are older at this moment than you’ve ever been before, and it’s the youngest you’re ever going to get."

You have the option to look at this statement as glass is half full, or glass is half empty. I turned 38 this year. I've realized that most of my life plans have been focused on the under-forty mark. That I'm not really prepared for what comes next. This might just be me being short-sighted, but I have an inckling that it also has to do with how our culture prizes certain market-friendly age groups.

But the thing is, if I'm to live to my grandfathers age (99!), I'm not even half-way there yet.

In my thinking about aging, I've come across a funny taboo in conversation. It makes people uncomfortable to talk about women aging. It makes them bristle to admit that it's not an equal proccess. They squirm and conversationally side-step the issue that there is a big difference between a women at 40 and a man at 40. That his social power is on the upswing, while her's is on the decline.

I keep being told that age is a state of mind. But if that were honestly true, would there be a
291.9 billion dollar beauty industry hell bent on making us stay young forever (or at least look that way)? To get back to sci-fi plot twists, I've been wondering about what kind of social revolution we would experience if women were to get full reproductive freedom, not just to stop pregnancy but to control it. Would we finally reach an equality of the sexes?

There's a few really interesting theories about why women live so long after menopause, when it seems to fly against the laws of natural selection. I personally love the idea of the power of the grandma- that she's defending her genetic lineage. (Just watch most grandmas, and that you'll see it rings true). But what if women women's bodies were like most other mammals (Elephants have babies in their 60's!!!), and we could safely, successfully keep popping out babies til we were old and gray.

It would give a new meaning to silver fox.

Throw-away culture

I live in a very kid-friendly, upper-middle-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. I'm always struck on garbage day how many perfectly good things are out on the street, especially kids stuff.  Now, I know that it's illegal to re-sell carseats, but when I see kids toys and books out there I wonder what the hell is going on.  In a time when nothing non-organic passes the lips of kids, where recycling is almost religion, why aren't we re-using more? Why aren't we passing things on to our friends, family or goodwill? Why are we throwing more plastic crap into the land-fill?

When i was a kid all the toys and clothes made the rounds of the neighborhood. You had to watch as your out-grown favorite party dress was handed off to your neighbor down the road. (And god-forbid you had a tantrum about it, because then you'd never get another one) Toys were yours, but you were expected to share.

I'm not a parent yet, but I think we hold some responsibility here. I think your child isn't going to appreciate something really nice if they get is always the best. They are going to think they deserve it, and not understand that there are some things you have to work for. As a parent, you shouldn't feel guilty about giving your kids second-hand stuff, you should feel proud that you're doing the right thing ecologically and ethically. That you are helping to create a person who values things and isn't part of the throw-away culture.

Blood and Salt

For me, salt is a serious business. I grew up in Essex, where they've been harvesting salt from the marshes for about 1000 years. I'm so evangelical about it, that I've been known to corner friends at dinner and have them blind-taste-test regular table salt against Maldon Salt. They dip their finger into the crusty white flakes, place it on the tongue, and their eyes widen. This is what salt should taste like.

It's hard not to eat it straight out of the box.

So, the other night I was home watching this super nerdy British history series on Netflx about the history of the British monarchy. I was really getting into it, learning about Saxons, Vikings invasions and all that good stuff. They got to about 991 AD, when apparently there was this incredibly bloody battle between the Saxons and the invading Viking Danes called the Battle of Maldon. The crusty old presenter is talking about all this blood being spilled in the causeway between the marshes, and I can't help but wonder... 1000 years later, are we tasting their blood?

It's probably not at all possible, but I honesty love the idea of this. That sprinkled over my soup today are DNA particles of my viking ancestors. Because, whether or not it's true, it is true. We are all part dinosaur, part asteroid, part star, part giant sea turtle. Nothing is made from nothing.

Running up that road

I'm a crap runner. Honestly. I've done 2 triathlons, and finished both with the over-60's. I am S-L-O-W. Training for the events, I discovered a few things about myself, the least of which is that I can be a whiny little brat sometimes. Also, don't drink coffee before going for a long run. Seriously.

Yesterday I was running along the magnificent new park that they are building along the Brooklyn waterfont, and it occurred to me that there are some things about running that are really true for life;

1. Relax, it ain't a race.
2. If you get tired, slow down but don't stop. 
3. Why not take the scenic route?
4. It doesn't really matter how slow you are (however cheesy it sounds) it truly is all about the journey.
5. Everything's better with a good sound track.
6. The beginning always sucks, but half-way through you're going to be loving it.

Walk about

After reading this article in the Atlantic, I can't help but be struck by how little our American culture supports the desire to let go of our lives and explore the spiritual journey. It's so easy to see our western culture as 'normal'.  But really, it's just a construction of what we've all agreed 'normal' should look like, how normal should behave, what normal values should be. Go to work, have a family, be a good citizen.

This week there are 10 million individuals at Kumbh Mela, washing in the spiritual waters.  To these people, this is normal. These individuals are called Sadhu and Sadhivi;

"The Sanskrit terms sādhu ("good man") and sādhvī ("good woman") refer to renouncers who have chosen to live a life apart from or on the edges of society in order to focus on their own spiritual practice."

How can it be that there are hardly any structures to support walking away from it all in our culture? We have glimpses of it, a weekend in the Nevada dessert here, a trip yoga retreat there.  There are a few who dedicate themselves to it seriously, but for most it's more entertainment than enlightenment. I think it's something that could enrich everyone's experience.

Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think.

Last night I went to see a few friends play in a band at The Cake Shop. The Mixer matched some poetry readings with couple bands. I was sitting at the bar alone, drinking read wine and eaves dropping on the girls next to me. They were talking loudly in vocal fry and I was picking up words like Sarah Lawrence and Right?

I was feeling judgemental.

My friends showed up, looking harried and stressed, wondering where amongst the sea of co-ed poets they were supposed to play. The sound guy hadn't been seen.

We went downstairs, and I found myself a comfortable seat, with a view of the stage. The first poet started and I strained to listen (Sound-guy: still MIA). By this time, I'm two merlots in, and feeling a bit more comfortable in my surroundings. The poets poeted in their usual cadence that's lets us all know it's poetry. Then slowly, about 3 poems in, it dawned to me that this is the last time you get to do this.

However good or bad the poetry is. However cheap the red wine is. However awkward you feel going to a bar on your own. This is the last time you get to do this, so enjoy.

The January Blahs

Argghhh.... I've got the January Blahs. The I-feel-gross-achy-fat blahs. The I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-I'm-doing blahs.  I should go for a run. I should do my taxes. I should make a plan for 2013. Instead I seem to be holed up in my apartment eating vegi chilli for the third day in a row while Billie snores loudly next to me. Blah.

In addition to her other talents, my sister is an excellent artist. Last year, she did this blog called doodle every day. Through it, she explored these little creatures she's been drawing for a while.  Milla's really good at capturing those inexplicable body/mind/relating to others discomfort feelings we all experience but don't often talk about. Her little creatures are so visceral and honest and sad, and that makes me happy. Happy to have that human feeling expressed by someone else, to prove that we are all more same than different. Even in our dark, moody places, we recognize each other.

Why the hell not?

It's been a really long time since I wrote, but this morning on the second day of 2013, I thought I would read over the entire thing and take stock of 2012. Sitting on the top of Bernal Hill yesterday, my sister-in-law asked me if 2012 had been a good year. Honestly, it might have been one of the best years of my life, but also one of the hardest.

My brother and sister-in-law have a really nice tradition. Every January 1st, they climb up to the top of Bernal Heights hill. They bring along a list of goals they wrote last Jan 1st and take inventory. Then, they write goals for the next year. Very practical and sensible, just like the two of them.

I'm not good with goals. I have a tendancy to break them and then feel bad. Instead, I like guidelines. Last year, I decided during a drunken new years party I decided that my 2012 mantra would be 'Let it be what it is'. At the time, I had no idea how my life was about to dramatically change and how that mantra would actually get me through the whole thing in one piece.

I was sitting there yesterday on the top of that hill, trying to come up with a zen-like mantra, a new guide for whatever life throws at me for 2013, when Margie piped up with her 2013 mantra. They had gone on a trip to Turkey about 5 years ago, and their guide was prone to saying 'Why not!?', and she'd decided to adopt it for herself this year.

"Why not!?"face your nay-saying, flinching mind squarely in the eye? "Why not!?" say yes to life and embrace the possibilities? "Why not!?" act a little more youthful and irresponsible than you think you should? "Why not!?" travel across America in a vintage Shasta trailer?

"Why the hell not!?", my new 2013 mantra. Let's see where it takes me.

Kinesthetic Intelligence

On Monday, night I was at the pottery studio. My friend has joined me for this term of pottery. It's her first time at the wheel, and she's experiencing the frustration and challenge of learning something new as an adult. The reality that you can't cognitively learn to throw, you have to have your hands learn.

She said something on our walk home that stuck with me: "I'm frustrated because I'm usually really good with making things."

I feel that way, too. I have a very vivid memory from kindergarten when I realized that I was good at making things. It's something that I absolutely know about myself, and has been a source of confidence throughout my life. So it was so interesting to hear Erin also voice this understanding of herself. I'm good at making things.

I spent this morning searching the internet for more on this idea, and I finally came up with a word for it... kinesthetic intelligence.

"Kinesthesia is our movement sense. It simply refers to an awareness of changes in momentum, balance, pressure and body position in general. It tells us all about how we are moving our bodies. Kinesthetic intelligence includes control of the bodily motions, the ability to handle objects skillfully and the gift for using whole body motions...This sort of high kinesthetic intelligence is what creates scientists, writers, artists, musicians, dancers, performers and other creative people that allow their minds and hands to move without any pre-planned format. While some are blessed with athletic abilities, others are gifted in fine-motor skills, such as drawing and crafts."


Discovering this word for me is like discovering the word dyslexia or feminist. It rings so loud and resonates so clearly. I feel like it's what I have been searching for writing this blog. Why designing on a computer feels like phone sex to me... totally distant and unsatisfying. Why I get my best ideas while running or swimming. Why making anything... dinner, a pair of clogs, or a new dress makes my brain light up and feel happy.

The Kinesthesic: we are the dancers, the builders, the surgeons, the yogis, the knitters, the engineers, the naturalists, the tailors, the cobblers, the cooks. Are you one too?

Normal

I remember when I first moved to America, I was struck by how everyone's teeth looked the same. To an American, English teeth are notoriously bad. But to English people, American teeth are generic. They have no personality. American's argue that teeth are put in their wire straight-jackets for health, but how often do you really hear of people dying from bad teeth? Are we to believe that British life-expectancy is shorter because we have crooked teeth. Teeth are straighted here because we've been taught that conformity is better.


Which leads me to think about this article by Michelle Roberts, talking about mental illness and it's relationship to creativity. According to the study, mental illnesses such as anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse are linked to creative people. Writers are twice as likely to commit suicide than regular people.  Roberts suggests that the medical profession's tendancy to try to wipe out all irregularity is not doing the individual justice. That perhaps the ups and downs of bi-polar disorder are in fact useful to an artist.

I'm not saying that mental illness should be disregarded, but I do think it brings up a good point that perhaps we are trying to mentally 'normalize' people too much. I know that when I get a creative spark, I'm not totally sane... there's a sort of giving in and going with it that has to take place in order to find flow. I think most people who are creative for their profession would agree with this.

What worries me is if we are indeed over-medicating our children, what works of art, novels, inventions, machines, theorums and medical discoveries are we loosing forever? What is the cost of everyone being normal to society?

Physical Intelligence

I spent this weekend with my friend, Jenny and her family. Jenny and her husband are marine biologists, and both possess a temperament that is solid, grounded and real. For their work, they go out on tiny fishing boats for weeks at a time, studying marine life, catches and the environment. As you can imagine they are both very physical people.

Their son, Lincoln, is nearly 4. He is grounded in the world, so strong and present. Watching him in the playground, I sit on the edge of my bench as I see him fling his body off the highest reaches of the structure. Jenny and Warren sit calmly, not even flinching as he takes yet another dive, lands with a splat, picks himself up and carried on. This kid is tough.

I think the four of us share a specific physicality. We all relate through the world through touching, feeling, making, fixing, categorizing: pushing against things. We are all physically strong, the sort of people who 150 years ago would have made it across the Prairie in a covered wagon. 

We get into a conversation about university and how scary it is to raise the funds to send your kid there.  There's this belief these days that everyone HAS to get college degree- and with it the $150,000 price tag. I'm a child of academics, but I feel like this is bullshit for a lot of people. Instead, I think we should be elevating the Trades to a higher level.  I recognize that the trades used to be about class (upper classes went to explore their minds at the universities while the working classes were stuck in metal shop with a limited future).  My dad grew up very poor in Liverpool, and it's pretty much a miracle of class progress that he didn't end up a mechanic, and instead became a esteemed professor. That is definitely progress, and we should support it. But what of the kid who longs for making, fixing, tinkering, and is instead is pushed by everyone to go to college to theorize? Is one really catagorically better than the other, or are we just leaning up against unexplored classist beliefs? Matthew Crawford talks about this eloquently in Shop Class as Soulcraft.

If and when I have kids, I'm going to support them if they want to go to university, but it's not going to be required. I don't think you need it in order to be a fully realized person. Or, indeed, to make a good living. 

like living in the middle of the ocean

When I was 26, my sister and I went to Burning Man for the first time. We drove out there in a rental car with her boyfriend, wide eyed, excited and totally unprepared for what was about to happen to our lives (we would go many more times and build an incredible family of friends around it). My sister had made me a mix tape that summer, and on it was the song Central Reservation by Beth Orton.  It's just a silly pop song, but it reminds me of that time in my life- the feeling of open expanse that you get at dawn in the dessert after a night of partying. That feeling of open expansiveness that you feel when you are in your 20's.

It's funny, because that's exactly how Beth wrote that song,

"Apart from specific songs." Central Reservation, she recalls with a smile, the title track of her breakthrough 1999 album, "was written in Cartagena in Colombia after a different kind of night with no sleep. I had been doing what you do in Cartagena with some beautiful boy and snorting a stupid amount of coke and the song came from the joy of sitting in the sunshine the next day with a glorious hangover. I do remember that…"

Beth is forty now. She left the music biz 6 years ago after getting dropped from her label(she'd just had a baby), bought a farm in Norfolk, and raised her daughter as a single mum. She quit music... and then slowly learned the guitar and started writing again. She went through a bit of a dark, lonely time and then came out the other end and released a new album called Sugaring Season.

Today is my 38th birthday. It feels so strange to be this age. I'm not really sure I know how I'm supposed to act. Thirty-eight-- properly grown-up. A real adult. Nearly forty. Holy shit. Will there be more dawns after nights of dancing? Will there be more open expansiveness?

I certainly hope so.

The Axeman Cometh

Sarah's new wardrobe

My sister and my friend Sarah have a lot in common. They are both sensitive, and by that I don't mean touchy, but that they are more engaged in the world than most people I know. They are the closest thing I know to real artists. Sarah is a writer and playwright, and Milla is a historian and painter. I love these two ladies for reals.

I don't know if it's a coincidence, but they both also struggle with the weight of things. To them, objects and clothes a lot of meaning. In contrast, I'm more unemotional... I try to keep what's loved, and let go of what's not (and I admit, sometimes I cull too much). They are hoarders, and I'm a purger. It's a perfect symbiotic relationship. I am their axe-man.

On Friday, Sarah and I attacked her bedroom. It took us about 7 hours. We were loving but strong. We culled. We sweated. We felt emotions. We pushed on. We saved (she now has a vintage box of her grandmothers treasures under her bed).  And under all those piles of clothes that didn't fit, were broken, had stains, or where just plain wrong, we discovered a beautiful collection clothes and shoes that she loves, that she looks amazing in, that are truly her.

Now her closet looks like a super-hip Williamsburg vintage store.

The Kitchen Sink

I was having drinks with my good friend and incredible writer the other night. We were sipping whiskey (she: bourbon, me: Jamesons) and pontificating. It was a well-needed chat after we'd both had a hard week, with lots of ups and downs and feelings.

My friend has recently hired a cleaning person for the first time in her life. Now, she supports herself completely and works harder than anyone I know in NY.  Plus, she still makes time to write and drink whiskey with friends. So, paying hard earned money for someone to come clean her place once a month is a big deal.

A while back, I'd mentioned a seemingly superficial practice I had to her and she told me that night how much of an impact it's had on her: The simple act of always cleaning the kitchen before you go to bed.

I recently discovered the joy of waking up to a clean kitchen. Those early morning moments when you're half awake, walking barefoot into the kitchen, putting the kettle on, setting up the coffee grinds in the french press. The light is grey and the sun is shining into the window. This is my ritual every morning and it brings me pleasure every day.

Sarah confessed to the fact that she'd always though tidy people just didn't have enough going on, that if they had time to tidy, then they weren't thinking deep thoughts. She believed in the concept of the tortured artist. Art through struggle, blah blah blah... and how can you do that with a spotless apartment. Surely mess equals artistic depth?

But then you experience the early morning clean sink, and a light bulb goes off. And the next night, as your washing those dishes and wiping down the counter, you're thinking of the future you (8-odd hours away) and how you're doing something nice for her. It's so simple and so dumb. You're giving yourself a gift.


And the amazing thing is, once you start doing this one simple good thing for yourself, other decisions follow. You start treating that future you like a friend.

Beginner's luck

I've had the most amazing week. When my friends ask me about it, I throw my hands  up in the air and laugh, shaking my had with puzzled gratitude. I read somewhere recently (and for the life of me, I can't find where it was) this idea about beginners luck. The idea is that the universe, this beautiful, strange and mysterious thing we all live in, is actually rooting for us to succeed. It wants us to be on our authentic path, and so when you step onto it, it give you a little bump. It's way of saying, 'Yes, that way!'

Now, I'm not sure I'm really that spiritual, but something out-of-my-control is definitely happening. As a recovering control freak, seeing what happens when you let go of the steering wheel is amazing. Letting things unfold naturally, responding to opportunity and challenges, rather than pushing for it to be the way you think it should be. (Oh, that word Should is such a tricksy little bitch) It doesn't mean that you're not working, you're just not working against the tide.

My ex used to say I was lucky, and my blood would quietly boil. I'm not lucky! I would pout, I've worked hard to get where I am! Which is true from one point of view. But from another, perhaps luck is our way of explaining the phenomenon that seems like chance, but is actually the culmination of many years of working towards something. Perhaps it's a little like Malcomn Gladwell's theory on experts: It seems like they just 'know' when actually it's just knowing so well that the concious mind can step aside.

However it's happened, I'd like to say, Thank you Universe for the Bump. I appreciate it.

Here's some of the crazy shit that happened this week.