Sunday, July 31, 2016

Sleep Some More

Sometimes you need a throwback thirty-six hours, so you hit the road with your besties from forever and remind yourself why it's called the city that never sleeps.

Here's what so.much.glee - pure glee really - looks like:



Basically, pure glee looks like a helping hand pitching in so you can at least attempt to pucker up like a pro.

We went "so New York" and saw Sleep No More, so now I can say I've done that.  (I can't believe it was four years ago I caught wind of Emma Stone loving it).  And I wasn't the biggest fan, but I'm awfully glad to have gone when we did.  Because who's to say it'll be here another 5 years from now?    Time flies, after all.

Two 2 AM nights back to back are officially my limit this side of 30.  It's fun to know you've still got it though.




Thursday, July 28, 2016

Why I didn't vote for Hillary - a chauvenistic feminist's confession

*Note: this post is a day late and a dollar short and a combo of a post I started writing months ago and some thoughts I've had in light of this week's DNC.

You guys - WOMEN ARE CRAZY*

Humans in general are crazy.  Life is crazy.  Everyone I love and have ever loved is crazy**.  And so on, but I have concluded that even when Leaning In, even when running things like the bosses they are, even when winning at life, women are just cursed by being prone to behaving more crazily than men, and that's just unfortunate.

I have no idea how valid THIS ARTICLE is, but it's being presented here for all intents and purposes as EXHIBIT A.  And I'm using it to launch into my point.

Remember Hamlet slaying Ophelia and all women thereafter with a single line?  "Frailty, thy name is woman." I love a good conspiracy theory, so I'm gonna go ahead and hop on the Prince Tudor train, and say that line was inspired by "Shakespeare" believing his own mom to be whackadoo and helpless insomuch as she couldn't even own up to him being her son. 

And I'm not sure that helps or hurts or validates my argument here, but I work in a field that is predominantly women run and have seen the CRAZY come into play more times than I count.  And I was just informed by a friend that works in another field predominantly women run that she got smacked in the face with CRAZY this morning.

I'm talking irrational, unprofessional seeming, blind siding, the likes of which Michael Oher wouldn't have been able to protect someone from

And this friend of mine, called me in tears, because she had been hurt and confused by the outrageous antics of her female employers.

So to diminish her despair I turned ultimately to a "joke" I often tell: "this is why I didn't vote for Hillary."


*******okay that's where the initial post stopped, so picking up at present:

Make no bones about it, these days, I'm With Her.  This November, I will probably cry casting my vote for the first women with a real deal shot of setting up shop in the Oval Office.

Eight years ago, I had yet to start working remotely, so I was in a bubble of estrogen 40 - 60 hours per week and pretty sure that not liking having a woman boss meant I would not like having a woman be the boss of the country.

I was young, and I was inexperienced.  And in my defense, Obama had the zeitgeist in his corner.  How could I, as an aspirational millennial not look to his youth and optimism and think it was what we needed to bounce back from the banality of Bush being puppetted through his second term?

I wanted the sure thing.  Obama was the sure thing.  Hillary, what with all her hormones, didn't strike me as the sure thing, she struck me as a wild card.

The thing is: hormones shmormones.  Let's talk about putting in the time.  And being, as so many have acknowledged, over qualified for the job at this point.  Let's talk about a ceiling in need of crashing through and  let's talk about the type of people that crash through ceilings:

CRAZY PEOPLE.

I think I just brought this all back to home, no?  You'd have to be crazy to want to smash through a ceiling made of glass.  So bring on the crazy.  Bring on the first Gentleman.

This world is crazy, but I'd take Hills' crazy over TheDonald's any day.

Let's get to work, and let's see this lady's crazy love for these United States do its thing.

*Full disclosure, I am making sweeping generalizations here and exaggerating (to some extent) because it's helpful to do so when ranting "comically."

**Note: I like that crazy can be defined as both "mentally deranged, especially as manifested in a wild or aggressive way" and "extremely enthusiastic."  It's not necessarily a bad thing!!!

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Pink hatted, full hearted

I spent the afternoon at Fenway Park, in good company.

I gave fair warning though: I know nothing about the team right now, other than that I love them today as much as ever, which has been unconditionally for as long as I can remember.

My first trip to the park, I was all of three.  There with my Great Grandpy and Great Nana Dougherty, who loved all things Americana, especially the songs of John Philip Sousa, the Red Sox and the Camelot Kennedys.

If that doesn't lay the foundation for a lifetime of fandom, I don't know what does.

And I don't know that I ever have or ever will be a real fan of the team to the extent of knowing averages, jersey numbers, positions... but I am sure there will be series that familiarize me with most of the names on the roster, the way the 2003 and 2004 and 2008 post seasons did.

Because I'm a proud proverbial pink hat wearing full heartedly bandwagon fan.

You know what I like the most about baseball?  It's a long game.  You can't rush it.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Fears

I'm so anti-fear.  I don't like to say or admit I'm afraid of anything.  I'm not really afraid of anything.  I think getting out from under the fear of death we're basically all born with has helped me get to a perpetual place of "this too shall pass."  It's a perk of being catholist (a combo of Catholic and Buddhist).  This writer gets it.

But I have to confess.  I was scared shitless twice while away earlier this month.  Once when a riptide  made me reckon with how I've always said "I'm not a great swimmer, but I could swim to save my life," and that is true but by the grace of God.  My aunt sent me this article after the fact with a note: "we're glad you're still here."  It was that close a call.

And once when a bird of prey swooped down and nearly took my curly topped head off in his successful attempt to snag half my sandwich.  I have been sent articles pertaining to this horrifying incident as well.  Get this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stop-feeding-seagulls_us_578cc60be4b0867123e1be2e?section= AND  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3175036/Now-seagulls-cunning-Packs-birds-target-women-develop-new-tactics-steal-lunch.html

Basically... the fear is justified.

Sunday

I was all. over. the. place.  Ask the people I barraged with a wider range of crazy than I like to admit to still being capable of.

I missed posting after a day spent going from mass to a wake to a gospel choir concert.

I sang - and I mean, I still sing - but I sang a lot growing up.  In a bunch of choirs.  In musicals.  In the car with my siblings.  At my dance recitals.  Because the owner of my dance school so loved my rendition of 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed and the fact that I looked like the second coming of Shirley Temple she decided to spotlight me for 15 of the first 18 years of my life.

And anyway, while I was hardly ever going to be the next Whitney Houston, or even Mariah Carey, or even Christina Aguilera, I wound up in a gospel choir in high school and a jazz choir in college.  I always love sharing the fun fact that I've twice been to Idaho for the sole purpose of competing heart & soul style at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival hosted at the University of Idaho each spring.  You want dissonance?  I can hold that soprano 2 harmony line like a boss-a nova.  What?

Speaking of soul though... man if gospel isn't so darn good for it.  Chicken soup.  It was HOT out Sunday, but given my crazy and the crazy we find ourselves faced with daily in this country, a warm dose of the chicken soup that was Kuumunity was just what the doctor ordered.

They didn't sing this song, but this is one of my faves from the conductor (and choir)'s repertoire.  Treat yourself to a listen.


Wednesday, July 13, 2016

I May Never Be Satisfied, but I Will Always Be Content

and this is the biggest secret to my joie de vivre.

I don't know if I came up with / upon it during my new age reading journey (so somewhere along the way from A New Earth, to The Big Leap, The War of Art, The Artist's Way, and You Are A Badass, or The Alchemist round 2, The Four Agreements, The Fifth Agreement, and The Mastery of Love) or if I've always had it in me.

But while content and satisfied are synonyms, they're so entirely far from each other at the same time.

In this big wide world we're all hardly going to have a chance to see more than a sliver of at best, how can ANYone ever be satisfied?  There will always be more people to meet, more money to make, more places to go, more mountains to climb, more bridges to cross, more magic to be mystified by, more revelry to be tempted by, more mayhem to feel the need to reign in, more loose ends to wish to tie up.  Life is gloriously unsatisfying, and it's also a gift.

So every day there's at least one ray of sunshine that peeks through the clouds, every day there's breath in my lungs, and strength in my legs, and agency in my being, voila, I can call myself content.

Wise words my dad used to tell us Naugler kids growing up (maybe I could have saved money on all those books I bought years later, but they've been good reads, so no regrets).... "you can have everything you want if you want only what you need."

Simple is sweet if not satisfying.  But life's best seasoned with both the sweet and the salty.

Is this making sense?  I may still be in an Island haze...

Sunday, July 10, 2016

I went to my happy place

Spent a week working, beaching, relaxing, hanging out with friends and family and generally loving life as I know it on my happy place - hence the vacation from my regularly scheduled Sunday and Wednesday posts.

I'm all about momentum, and I've definitely been building mine over the past month or so... Manifesting, making moves, and motivating myself even more than usual, so I was remiss to miss posting, especially in light of the new traffic from my first Thought Catalog piece.  Still,  I have to admit it felt good to be on Island time these last 7 days.

And keeping hold of the concept of time as so totally relative has helped immensely as I've attempted my own version of muddling through the muck America seems caught up in at the moment - reading article upon article, swallowing heartbreaking news update after heartbreaking news update, engaging in complicated and heavily charged conversations.

Thankfully, I have hope, faith, and utter belief this is a season we're struggling through.  (Have I mentioned this book before? Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way by Shauna Niequist)

   

We read it in my book club before my book club went on its now-going-on-eight-month hiatus (it happens).  And Shauna Niequist, the author, introduced me/us to the concept of seasons to be lived through.  Like a winter over staying its welcome well into April, a season of life can feel horribly hard, and terribly dark, and daunting, and cold, and even scary.

But spring always comes.  And summer too - in all its sunbaked, fact of the matter glory.



So we won't necessarily enjoy it, and we will likely be uncomfortable, but we are citizens of the world, and we will weather this.