Upcoming posts you won’t want to miss

I’m returning to my regularly scheduled posts. Cancer and chemo took over my family’s life; featured on this blog. If you recall, I was on a break from blogging back in October. And then came cancer.

So, I wrote about those hard times. Here. For anybody to read. I still have words to ponder and publish on this site. I can’t just forget what my life has been like since October. Thoughts will linger and new experiences will be blog-worthy.

For now though, I am focusing on not only my real life (and now that I finished The Hunger Games I can go through a day without interrupted Tribute thoughts) but on some real life stories of people I know you’ll love.

Facebook messages have been exchanged. Texts have been sent. One date is set, another in the works.
I’m interviewing two incredible women. Different women with different stories and experiences.

You won’t want to miss these interviews. Bear with me as I transition back into my blogging groove. And be sure to check back in a couple weeks (give or take) for some health tips and stories!

Instagram infatuation.

Remember when…

You had to buy film?
You could only take 24 photos before changing the roll?
You had to wait 24 hours before you could see if your photos turned out?
You exposed film and lost your precious memories?
You could say “Kodak moment” and people knew what you meant?
You had to mail pictures via snail mail?

I remember those days.

And sometimes, for fleeting seconds, I miss those days.

But then. I punch a super-secret code into my phone and ta-da – I
am in someone else’s world.

With one touch, I am viewing photos from around the world or staring at an image I have viewed up close and personal. These foreign and familiar objects pull me away from wherever I’m standing and for an instant, I allow myself to take in the beauty that some complete stranger captured with their camera phone.

The images shared by amateurs and professionals are breathtakingly beautiful and downright odd. Photos of people and food, shoes and hands, sunsets and trees. It’s all their. For the world to see, your take on the people and places you love.

And this form of photo sharing excites me. Not because I have, or even want, a million followers; rather, I want to open my eyes to what other people see. I want to experience places I’ll probably never visit and bask in their light and beauty for just one moment.

Back when I used film, I didn’t know what I was missing. But now, with Instagram, I know that the world is big, round, and full of beauty everywhere you bring your phone.

@mnmeditations if you want to follow me on Instagram.

Sitting here. Wanting there.

MN Meditations Original photo

Post-Christmas thoughts are hard for me to wade through. Always have been. [I'm assuming] Aways will be.

Knowing this about myself, I try to prepare for the feelings and funks I know I’ll struggle through. This year was no different.

Chastising myself for not being the typical over-achiever I know myself to be, I sit here.

I justify.  I’m unwinding from a crazy December.

Who am I kidding? Crazy came to town at the end of September and hasn’t left yet.

Between the Cancer and Chemo, a trip to Norway, a busy-as-a-bee-end-t0-the-year at work, and celebrating Christmas, I am beat.

Rightfully so, I sit here. Trying not to do anything.

I loathe laziness.

Yet, I purposely took off time from work to do nothing but sit here. That and I had PTO burning a hole in my pocket. And I like to pretend that I’m still in college with all the perks of Christmas break.

So, I got my wish, er, my PTO was accepted.

And now I’m stuck. Sitting here.

Trying to relax. Trying to enjoy.

But all I can think about is how much I have to do.

The laundrying. The cleaning. The de-Christmasing. The Christmas thank you-ing. The facebook updating. The LinkedIn-ing. The Shutterfly photo booking. The magazine and book reading. The erranding.The car oil changing. The check book balancing. The blogging. The running and exercising.

It is the list that goes on and on, like the song that never ends.

It is a list that can’t be stopped or ignored.

A list I had to conquer bit by bit on Monday and Tuesday. A list that needs to be tackled tomorrow.

Because as much as I want to just sit here. Doing nothing. I can’t.

I just can’t pull myself together to do nothing.

I can’t watch the  clock tick. I can’t watch my time slip from my finger tips.

Besides all the things I must do, there is one thing I should do. It is a must, in my mind, but is trumped by life’s necessary “to do’s.” It is something I have done before, over breaks and vacations. Passionate about this area of my life hardly shows in my real life – my “to do list” life I lead – because only a handful of people know about it. And I haven’t spoken of it since August. It is not a topic I venture into on a regular basis. Definitely not a piece of me that I reveal.

This is not the part where I confess that I am a spy.

No, it is something far less exciting. For you, maybe.

But for me, it is the world. My world.

More like a voice. A voice I must let out. A voice that needs to meet the page.

A person who has much to say; who lives and breathes a full life. Someone I think about every single day. Someone I met almost four years ago when she entered my life and wouldn’t leave.

Unlike the crazy who showed up at my doorstep in October and hasn’t packed her bags yet, I arms-wide-open-welcome this visitor.

I don’t know how long she’ll stay, or if she’ll ever venture into the world. I don’t know if she’ll be welcome in your home. I don’t know if her story will make you as happy and frustrated as it has made me.

Because I just don’t know if I’ll have time. For something I care so much about, you’d think I’d have more giddy-up in my step. More urgency.

The thing is, I’ve had the urgency before. And I still have it.

But Cancer and Chemo, career, and life pull me further and further away from her voice in my head and my heart.

Sitting here, I try to be still. Wanting there, wherever or whatever there may be, I know I cannot.

Who knows what I’ll accomplish on my Christmas break “to-do” list before January hits with a blizzard of more “to-do’s NOW.” Who knows how much of her voice will squeak out before January or at all.

All I know is that I’m sitting here.

Sitting here. Wanting there.

Rock. Hard place.

_________________________________________________________

I ask. You answer.

1. How do you do it? Do you sit here? or do you want there?
2. What does it take to get you to put the “to-do” list away?
3. What do you regret not “getting done” on your “to-do” list?
4. Do you have things you must do but can’t do due to time, family, life, career, and oil changes?
5. Any advice for me as I sift through my lists and longings?

Advice I gave, but never got.

As I age, I find myself saying advice-like words. Most of the time the advice is solicited, sought out by individuals who I swear I’m the same age as. Until I realize that I am no longer eighteen or twenty-one. Hence why I can give out advice (is there actually an age at which you are “legally allowed” to give out advice?).

I try not to hand out advice like the women at the mall with their stinky free fragrance samples that they force under your sniffer whenever you accidentally make eye contact. Please stop me if I ever do that to you.

Sometimes I gag out cliches that are silly and stupid. Words that I kick myself for actually knowing and saying.

Sometimes I surprise myself with the insight and wisdom I am capable of dispensing. Words that come from me – my brain, my heart, and my experiences.

And sometimes, like on Monday, I spill out advice that I wish someone had dumped on me so I could have soaked it up once upon a time.

I oozed advice and enthusiasm to a group of bright students. College students. At my alma mater. The purpose of my visit: sprinkle a handful of need-to-know-information pixie dust and stand tall in front of students who most likely don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. To stand in the classroom I once sat in and say, “I did it. You can do it.”

The visit brought me back to my junior year of college. The year when so many fun and frustrating events occurred in my life. I smiled as I parked in a lot I used to fight tooth-and-nail for a parking space in. I awkwardly opened doors that I no longer had a student ID card for the scanner to read. I signed in as a “visitor” to a building I used to spend my life in. I inquired as to the class room number, even though I knew it hadn’t changed. It was all the same.

But totally different.

No one knew me. Not like I was Miss Popular back in the day, but in my college days, I knew enough people that I could typically see someone I knew.

Somewhere.

But on Monday, I knew no one. No students looked familiar. I wasn’t going to run into my friends, classmates, roommates. I wouldn’t see my friends studying at tables. No one would bump into me and say they were glad to see me or wished I had come to the movie night the night before.

Even though I knew I wouldn’t see anyone I knew, I still looked.

When I walked up the stairs to the classroom where I spent hours and hours listening and learning, I looked in the window and was pretty sure I’d still see a friend. It was very Christmas Carol-y. Because I saw us – my classmates and friends – sitting in that room four years ago. I saw us listening and learning; working and studying. And then I blinked. And the only person I knew was my former professor.

She is a woman I respect. A woman who taught me life lessons. Someone who challenged me and cheered me on. And in my years after college, we have kept in contact – exchanging e-mails and meeting randomly for tea and talks.

When I arrived, her class was just returning from some in-class group work. As they settled back in, I caught up a bit with my former instructor. She knew what I was planning to talk about; it had been cleared ahead of time. She knew the advice I was going to toss out to her current crew.

And we talked about that advice.

We discussed how the mindset of my class had been different. Due to the economy and job market, we never really heard the advice I was about to dish out. Because it wasn’t as necessary back then. Yet, had someone told us, we probably would have been much-better prepared. But back then, no one told us the advice, because no one knew it would be necessary. It was a confusing reality we sadly noted before moving onto the here and now; the students we can now properly prep.

My former instructor turned to the present and introduced me to a younger version of me and my classmates. I stood in front of the students, staring into their young faces with their wide, bright eyes. I presented my advice. I told them that at one point, I had sat in their very chairs. I pointed to the student sitting in the non-assigned seat I always sat in and said that had once been my spot (the spot where my friend sat on my left the first day of class and grabbed my knee in shock and fear when she saw the 30 page plus syllabus – I was more shocked when she death gripped my knee than at the size of the syllabus).

I told them I know. I know what they are thinking and feeling. I know what they are up against and capable of.

But most of all, I gave advice that I had never been given. Advice no one had ensured that I hear. Things people didn’t encourage me to follow.

Because no one knew I’d need it. No one knew we’d (classmates and graduating class) need to know it.

My advice to you – young high schoolers and college students – take it, whatever we give you, from us. We’ve walked in your shoes (very recently). And we know what it takes. We’ve seen our friends make it and break it.

And make sure that someday, you also give advice that you never got. Because there will come a day when that occurs. I’m just preparing you now.

*The advice I doled out was super specific – but what I can tell you is to get as much real-life-on-the-job experience NOW. Don’t think that your degree alone will get you in any door.

For more information and advice on this topic, head over to Bennis Inc (Stephanie Bennis’ site) for some great advice for college students.

_______________________________________________________

I ask. You answer.

1. What advice have you given but never heard?
2. What would you like to tell current students at your alma mater?