Honey Help YourSelf

No two ways about it, ruts suck. Whether physical, mental, spiritual, categorical or slightly implied, sometimes you just can’t win against the sleeping, creeping threat of otherwise harmless ruts appearing along your path every now and again. Okay, ma...

When you're standing at the baggage claim in a big city airport and your suitcase pops open as it's coming down the chute–spraying your dirty laundry, private journal pages and sundries nobody but you ever needs to see all around the carousel—the last thing you want to do is pretend it doesn't belong to you. Because things will only get worse if you do. Your bag will spew more of its contents as if to spite you, and embarrass you in worse ways than your mama ever could until you've turned four shades of purple. Naturally, I know from whence I speak since it happened to me. The night before my return flight from Toronto I jam-packed my wheelie bag with all of the free books and literary magazines I'd snagged at my first writer's conference. To me, it was a pretty big deal since it was an international affair, and everyone seemed so attentive and interested in what the published panelists had to say. Over the course of that oh so literate weekend, I pored over the writing advice of the textperts and dog eared poignant passages from soon-to-be remaindered books written by sexy youngish authors with cool glasses, devil-may-care dispositions, and just enough world-weariness to hold my rapt attention. In my hotel room, I fantasized about the type of writer I was going to be when I got back home and stared down the intimidating blank screen of my computer. No more playing it safe, I vowed. Promising myself I'd be no less than brilliant, highly sought after and privy to the innermost thoughts of my creative muse, I was going to write my way out of the uninspired rut I'd been intermittently languishing in since high school. Then all hell–in the form of my exploding Walmart luggage special–broke loose. Much to the disbelief of my fellow travelers, and myself, I wound up chasing my crap around the baggage claim carousel trying to discreetly stuff my drawers and journal pages back into my busted disappointment of a suitcase. Thoroughly crestfallen and cursing the mother lode of literary freebies that caused my cheap-o luggage to burst at the seams , I hung my head and avoided all possible eye contact as I pressed, shoved and smashed my belongings back into confinement. Suffice it to say that by the time I got back home, I couldn't have cared less about writing, reading, or appearing half as brilliant as the up-and-coming authors I'd brought home with me. In fact, I privately chided them for my airport debacle as I trashed the publications and the luggage, and shut the lid on my writerly aspirations yet again. Fast forward from my public shame of 2004 to Valentine's Day, 2010 and a conversation I'm having with my girlfriend Sharon. In the midst of our chat, she tells me she's disappointed again this year because her partner didn't do anything special for her that day or for her birthday, she adds. And not on their anniversary, either. I felt for her and said as much before we hung up. Little did I know how just much I was feeling for her. Shortly after our conversation, my mood took a nosedive for no good reason, and I wanted little more than to fling myself across the bed and burst into a crying fit. It didn't take long to figure out I was experiencing some of my friend's disappointment in a way that felt as real to me as if her sadness was my own. Granted, Sharon and I are close, and have been for more than twenty years. Add to that the fact that recent years of energy work have rendered me way more receptive to what's going on around me, especially when I'm paying attention, and I knew something was up: baggage. What happened next surprised both Sharon and me. I called her back and told her how sad I got after we'd hung up earlier that day, and urged her to deal with her feelings honestly. Otherwise, I said, they'd only be hanging out in her space–circling like unclaimed baggage on a carousel!–unless she finally faced them. I also told her if she didn't want to process her feelings for her own sake,

I used to dream of being an Olympic figure skater. Outfitted in an asymmetric one-armed mini-tard, I cut a winning picture in my mind’s eye. Daring, lithe, and perfectly rehearsed, if only you could have seen me! I was in a class by myself—nailing high-altitude back flips, saucy kick splits, executing mesmerizing double triple axles in time to the music. The crowd roared through my performances every time and littered the rink with long-stemmed roses well before my first bow. The thunderous response of my fans said it all: I was the only show on ice. And then, as the saying goes, “I woke up.” In truth, I’ve only been ice skating once in my waking life and it took everything in me to stay upright while making tracks around the rink. Despite my flawless routines and feats in dreamland, my weak ankles wanted no parts of it in ‘real life.’ The dream analyst in me says those repeated scenes were messages from my subconscious telling me I was really good at skating around my issues and that, no matter how good I got at it, I’d eventually have to step out of the act and get on with it if I really wanted to live out loud, which I did. As it was, I was skating on thin ice in more than a few areas of my waking life and I knew it. I also dreamed of being a professional singer. But, unlike my sleeping prowess as an ice dancer, for a time I actually was living the dream of being paid to entertain audiences in song. I pretty much spent the nineties gigging my way through New York with my jazz band. You name it, we played it—indoors, outdoors, rooftops, basements, weddings, clubs, cabarets, gardens, holes in walls, we were there. I backed up reggae bands, neosoul vocalists, and rock groups when they called. Whether we were playing to packed rooms or to a lonely bartender and tired cocktail waitress slumped over a table in the back, it didn’t matter. After awhile, in another burst of awakening, I quit. Tiring of the big city hustle and seeing far too little cash in hand at the end of the night, and fearing I was frittering my life on a love that didn’t seem to love my back, I packed up my P.A. and called the whole thing off. While I still love to sing and do so on occasion, I don’t hold out hope of making it Big or of making it pay these days. That’s because there’s no more sure way to drain the life out of a love than by trying to wring money out of it. Having learned that, I finally saw I could still hold my music dear without forcing it to be the reason I got out of bed each day. If I’d known the freedom I’d feel from that, I probably would have moved on a lot sooner. But I doubt it. My point is this: sometimes it’s important, crucial even, to let go of the dream, or to stop clutching it and give it room to breathe and evolve, so that something else more suited and juicy can come through. And because it’s an immensely difficult thing to do, I don’t say that lightly. Letting go of something you've wrapped your heart strings around in a pretty little bow requires lots of introspection and courage. What’s more is you’ll have to call up a heap of fortitude when you’re left with the void created in the release. Not to worry though, because I’ve got just the thing to help you get acclimated to the task. Here’s great way prepare yourself for the experience of saying goodbye to a beloved dream—or job, or relationship, or living situation, or anything, really—that you suspect is going nowhere, in just three steps: 1. Have a baby. 2. Hand that baby over to a band of lawless marauding bandits. 3. Leave town and never look back. Because everything is energy, it makes sense that your unrealized, unacted-upon dreams and dusty old getting-around-to goals—or dream jobs, dream relationships, idealized living situations, or you-name-it again—they're are running on energy, too…yours. And because we’re human beings with finite physical resources, we’ve only got so much energy at our disposal at any given time,

Contrary to what you might think, this post is actually not about big hair, glory days, fashion disasters of the ’80s, or whatever the male equivalent of a cameltoe is called. This post is about faith. And, whether they know it or not, Journey helped lead me back to mine. This story takes place on an ordinary day in Chicago. As I recall, it was summer because people were outdoors in short sleeves and weren’t ducking for cover when the wind kicked up. It’s not a slam on the windy city to say there only seems to be two seasons in Chi-town—winter (8.25 months) and summer (3.5 months). I’ll allow a couple of weeks for that in-between time that some might generously call Spring. It was late afternoon and I was cruising my neighborhood for a parking space when I spotted a most miserable woman. By all appearances, she seemed okay in the way most mildly disillusioned city women at the outskirts of their prime do: they bear up and hunker down against big city rigors without as much as a backward glance, silently resigned to pay their toll for living where they did. The woman’s eyes were blank and her feet barely lifted off of the ground as she trudged heavy up the avenue against the midday sun. I say ‘up’ because, even though the street was flat, to my eye, she was trapped in an upright struggle to keep herself going. I get some of my best insights and motivation from food, and if I had to reach for an edible analogy right now, I’d say the woman was the fallen bittersweet middle of a soufflé left too long to cool. The American grandfather of gourmet cooking, James Beard, once said the only thing that will make a soufflé fall is if it knows you are afraid of it. Make no mistake: living in fear of living will cause your life to sag, droop, and collapse just like that woman who, by the way, could be—and is—every one of us. If you knew me at all, you’d know I’m a chronic optimist. I’m the one with a generally upbeat take on life, which I’ve been told can be annoying, and even when I feel shitty, I’m simply a natural at finding laughter in virtually any situation. I’m better at it—or should that be worse?—than a pig hunting truffles. Mind you, I’m no willfully blind Pollyanna who resists bad news, personal upsets, and life’s inevitable disappointments of up bad timing. It’s just that one thing I know is how to navigate my way to the bright side of the street. Here’s another thing I know: we're a whole lot more than the meat jackets we walk around in. Like Sting says, We ah spi-rits in the ma-ter-ial wooorld. And yet. Witnessing that woman dragging her burdens up the sunlit street like she had no inner anchor or place to call home, no place to truly be, stayed with me. She never saw me seeing her, but those few seconds I spent taking her in impacted me in the days and, consequently, years that followed. I couldn’t shake the heaviness of her. More to the point, what I couldn’t shake was the idea that maybe she was on to something. What if all my happy anecdotes and optimistic observations in the face of 'reality' were just platitudes void of substance, fuller with hot air and sweetness than any soufflé? Had that woman identified me as the soufflé—puffed up and so delicate that I’d topple at the thought of an unlovely gust? I wondered. And what if my worldview was just a bunch sugary, regurgitated hand-me-down armchair drivel that just didn’t matter to anyone else but me? What if that woman really was on to the secret of life that had somehow escaped me in all of my happy aspirations? These are the thoughts that turned me inside out for the rest of the day—and night. The next morning I awoke feeling sluggish and grim. Even while showering, I was  still stuck on the experience, not wanting to believe succumbing to misery and world-weariness was the inevitable conclusion for us all. Because if it was, well, let's don't go there. Just like I get lots of motivation from food,