A very dear friend of mine gave me for Christmas a book called “642 Things to Write About” in an effort to encourage my editorial aspirations.  So in my second attempt in 2014 to produce a blog post I turned to a random page and selected a topic, How do you feel about love these days?

I instantly thought this will be so easy to write about.  Love surrounds us everyday of our lives, this will be a snap.  Then the definition flood hit my brain.  There are so many descriptions and thoughts that a simple little four letter word like love evokes. Grand stories have been told about true love or love lost.  Love has been blamed for horrific tragedies and decade long feuds. Love has served as a scapegoat from time to time. From coffee ice cream to my children I experience love in so many different ways.  Can love wear many hats and come in a variety of shapes and sizes?  How can I summarize the complexity of a feeling so strong that sometimes it is barely felt?

 I love to travel.  Give me a plane ticket, a lodging reservation and I am out the door.  As I sat staring at the computer screen a light bulb flashed above my head, to me love is a journey. The trip of a lifetime complete with a roadmap full of twist and unexpected turns. There are the long, never ending paths that require a few stops.  And if you are lucky a few out of the blue detours. Love is the process not the destination. To love or be loved requires constant movement.  Love is challenging work that requires sincere thought and navigation and an ultimate goal to never reach a final destination.

We are always in a hurry for the next big thing in our lives. We dream of a new house, a new job, a new adventure, looking around every corner for what is going to happen next.  Maybe just maybe if we can learn to stop and enjoy the experience of the journey we will not only discover love but pure, genuine happiness.

A truly happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour. – Greeting Card Cover

Happy New Year!  Well here we are again, the one day of the year that we all indulge ourselves the opportunity for a new beginning.  Imagine a giant Monopoly board and here we come screaming around Boardwalk and hit Go.  We do not receive $200, instead we collect fresh thoughts, unlimited opportunity for change, and an open minded state where anything is possible.

First move for many of us is to make (and then soon break) the annual New Year’s resolutions. You know the drill, all the bad habits you want to quit or the holiday weight gain you wish to loose. If we announce these messages of change on January 1, then we are sure to succeed.

I have a somewhat different take on the process.  To me the chance to reflect and motivate is a gift and the way I create my list is simply to write down “In 2014 I Inspire to…”  Actually this process of seriously considering the New Year as a tool for achievable actions began in 2005.  As I celebrated my birthday at the Mercedes Golf Tournament (currently known as Hyundai Tournament of Champions) in Maui looking out to the ocean from the 10^th hole the world looked as though anything was possible. I thought to myself, “Why not aspire to be more?” But I didn’t want to take the negative approach of breaking a bad habit; I wanted to focus on the positive side of the coin.   That year I vowed to learn the game of golf and tackle the obstacle created by a stick, small ball and yards of green grass.  I even went as far as taking lessons.  Needless to say, my golf game is nothing to boast about, but I can play a round or maybe just a half of round!

So what is number one on my hit list for 2014, well for me it is pretty simple.  I inspire to live in the moment.  During class, at home, or even reading a book, I want to spend less time worrying about everything I am not accomplishing and just enjoy the process.  How many quotes have you read that basically point out the fact that the journey is more important than the destination?  Technology, multi-tasking, society in general encourages one to accomplish as much as we can in a single day and then get up and do it all over the next day.  But what is the point?  Why do we mow through the rose garden and never stop to smell the darn flowers? 

Now many of you that know me realize that this feat will not be as easy as learning a new game.  So what will be my strategies? The first and foremost enemy of being present has to be the cell phone. A cell phone is really not an appendage of ourselves.  We can remove the device from our space and we will not begin to hemorrhage technology tidbits of communication gold. My Blackberry and I will be taking some space from each other daily and developing new relationships.

But the best piece of advice I can give myself, it just be aware of being in the moment.  Last year on New Year’s Eve Day, Lilly and I spent some time exploring art galleries along the coast.  I bought a painting for my wall.  The words inscribed basically sum up my 2014 inspiration.

“Her favorite moments were those when she let go of all expectations and worries and just simply celebrated the very moment she was living”

Cheers to the 2014, may we all find the inspirations we desire. 

PS – I also inspire to write in my blog more frequently, I have a plan let’s hope it works!

I have been very bad at writing in my blog and at times it deeply depresses me. I started this project over a year ago in hopes to train myself to write often. My ultimate goal is to write a book…….someday. My thought was if I can get in the routine of writing, bing bang boom before you know the infamous words of my bestselling novel would pour out onto the page like a rain storm in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Yet as one can easily view, I have not accomplished much in the last year.

As I celebrated the first day of 2013, in my usual Type A style, I graded my accomplishments of my 2012 goals and created a 2013 agenda. As expected my writing rated poorly in 2012 and made the top five of accomplishments for the coming year.

So what strategy will I employ for better success in the coming months? Well I have been pondering this very dilemma and came up with a new strategy. I love to read. I love to read for lack of a better word, “self-help books”. One novel I really enjoy is The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. There are many great lessons discovered in these pages, but for this example I am going to focus on “daily strokes of effort” as created through William James work. Basically it honors the old saying “practice makes perfect”.

The theory is to create the habit of doing something. Making an effort to do something daily, until it becomes second nature could be the key to my writing predicament. But I needed a simpler task than pen and paper. My solution was found in a piece of fruit.

I recently read that a healthy lifestyle should include eating an apple a day. I figured if I could get myself to consume an apple a day for 21 days, I could test the habit forming hypothesis. There were two reasons for this challenge. One it would require little effort and time and two how guilty could I be if I didn’t eat my apple.

Well I am over 21 days into this experiment. I will confess that I did not eat an apple every day, but there were few days I did skip. I also find myself thinking every afternoon that I need to go have my daily fruit snack. I might have just discovered how to take a bite out of my writing issues. Either way, both duties do nothing but better me as a person. And who can feel defeated about that!

Have you ever realized when you need to solve a problem, either big or small; it often helps to approach your thought process from a new vantage point?  Time and time again I find some of the biggest struggles I have had in life, were resolved once I stepped away from the issue and looked upon it in new light.  The ancient catch phrase of “trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole” is a trap we all fall into during our daily life. We are taught if we are given the proper tools and a proven plan of attack we should be able to come to a sound conclusion.  But once we walk away, clear our head and then approach from a new vantage point (a point that might not be proven or completely new), miraculously the clouds part, the sun shines through and we have the answer.

So where in the world am I heading today with this blog, well I am tackling the blog I posted a few weeks back.  One of my life goals is to write a book.  I have ALWAYS wanted to write a book.  And I thought to accomplish this task it would require me to get 50,000 – 75,000 words constructed into fictional story.  Come to find out, I was going about this all wrong.

During my time at the Content Marketing Conference (which by the way was amazing) I sat in on a seminar by accident that changed my perspective.  Not only was it by accident that I was in the seminar (I had the wrong room number), but the speaker scheduled cancelled at the last minute and we were greeted by Jim Kukral.  Jim has written a book titled “Write a F*$%’ing Book Already: The Insider’s Guide To Increasing Your Sales & Improving Your Career With A Book”.  At this moment I knew it was a sign from above and this was a message I needed to hear.

I was mesmerized by his presentation.  Jim pointed out that a book does not have to be 75,000 word fictional best seller. A book can be about anything you feel comfortable enough to write about.  And it needs to be only a fraction of the word count that I had been focusing on as a target.  Furthermore he suggested great ways to self-publish and tools to help the writing process.  But his message was simple and clear, write a book about what you know in a word processing program.  The end.

Could it really be that easy?  Have I been fighting this demon since college to only discover I was already full on countless books that just need to find the written form?  And the answer was “Yes”. So I have begun a new book titled the “ABC’s of Marketing… for Fairs and Festivals”.  It will focus on audience, branding and content.  I downloaded a trial version of Scrivener (a book writing helper) and I am happy to report I am well on my way.

September was the month to embrace your passion.  Little did I realize that I was holding onto my passion all wrong.  Once I released my grip and let it go, I finally discovered a way for my passion and I to truly cuddle.