Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Perhaps you have been feeling a little off lately. Or, for a long time. Maybe the life you once knew to be flowing so marvelously well suddenly feels different. Or, you simply sense that you are being asked to do something else--with your "job," homelife, relationships and more.
Maybe you are not alone.
Look around. Many people seem to be feeling as if they are in a profound transition, both professionally and personally. For many us, it may feel as if we have been placed on a cosmic see-saw, especially this summer. The breeze blowing across our faces on the way "up" feels just glorious--new ideas, new insights, new, new, new. However, on the way back down it has been a mixed bag of emotions--butterflies in the tummy every time we receive a vivid reminder that one era of life seems to be ending and that the new one ... well, just has not emerged.
A similar thing has been unfolding on my end. It seemed to amplify around the release of my memoir "Grace Revealed," back in Chicago in February. I was acutely aware that the subject matter of the book--my journey uncovering my Polish family's journey surviving Joseph Stalin's mass deportation of Polish people during the 1940s and the events that followed--was deep and, at times, haunting. I knew that I most likely needed to, for lack of a better word, "recover." But my growing discomfort at that time felt more than just your garden variety burnout. I had also come off of a 14-year tenure running a newspaper in Central California. Maybe the combo of the two events triggered something within? There was something, too: I had grown weary of having to morph into my own über publicist and search for Twitter Followers, Facebook comrades and Instagram fans.
Well, truth be told, it felt as if The Gods had picked me up like a ketchup bottle, turned me over, unscrewed the cap (my crown chakra?) and waited for its contents (the Me that I once knew to be Me) to be emptied out--completely. And, perhaps, explore something new about the idea of home and place.
I recall asking for (more) signs for guidance.
I received them.
In fact, I did something that some would call rebellious: I diverted taking on a new corporate media job and accepted a colleague's offer to oversee 293 young olive trees in an olive grove on their property in, of all places, Maui. (Something only The Gods could have coordinated me thinks.) I left everything I knew back on The Mainland and showed up for several months of care-taking. My task, it seemed was, simply to officially step into uncharted territory without any real road map and--what's this?--Trust?
Yes. The T-word.
I suppose that's a fine roadmap to have and if you're going to keep asking The Universe for signs and the only one it keeps giving you begins with the letter T then, well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it all out.
Trust.
Well, this did wonders for my active mind. I left "corporate media" on the 20th anniversary of my midlife crisis--which I launched long ago to get out of the way (alas, it lingered)--and woke up in Maui's upcountry, where I have been for six weeks.
I meditate--more. I breathe--more. I watch my mind--freak out (occasionally).
As I have previously written, tending to the olive trees affords me an opportunity to slow down--more than I have ever slowed down before--and pay attention (in a new way). The olive trees are good teachers, after all. They take years to grow and come into fruition so it's not as if one day you wake up and suddenly--boom, bam, there be olives on the trees! Eureka! No, Mother Nature knows what the heck She is doing. She can take her time. And so, I monitor the trees every morning and evening. Like a sheep dog on a prairie, I watch--and, me being me, I send off a blessing to the grove every now and then.
Why not? Good juju is good juju.
As a result, in just a short amount of time, I have realized that the life I had prior to coming here was often filled with a never-ending swirl of "doing." In the past two decades, I penned five books--two which are published--oversaw creative direction of a newspaper for 14 years, wrote articles about Hollywood for magazines, covered red carpet Hollywood events, took three to four Bikram yoga classes a week, breathed in, out, and God knows where else, and taught a series of fitness classes, dripping in perspiration to arrive somewhere every step of the way (more o
Clik here to view.
Perhaps you have been feeling a little off lately. Or, for a long time. Maybe the life you once knew to be flowing so marvelously well suddenly feels different. Or, you simply sense that you are being asked to do something else--with your "job," homelife, relationships and more.
Maybe you are not alone.
Look around. Many people seem to be feeling as if they are in a profound transition, both professionally and personally. For many us, it may feel as if we have been placed on a cosmic see-saw, especially this summer. The breeze blowing across our faces on the way "up" feels just glorious--new ideas, new insights, new, new, new. However, on the way back down it has been a mixed bag of emotions--butterflies in the tummy every time we receive a vivid reminder that one era of life seems to be ending and that the new one ... well, just has not emerged.
A similar thing has been unfolding on my end. It seemed to amplify around the release of my memoir "Grace Revealed," back in Chicago in February. I was acutely aware that the subject matter of the book--my journey uncovering my Polish family's journey surviving Joseph Stalin's mass deportation of Polish people during the 1940s and the events that followed--was deep and, at times, haunting. I knew that I most likely needed to, for lack of a better word, "recover." But my growing discomfort at that time felt more than just your garden variety burnout. I had also come off of a 14-year tenure running a newspaper in Central California. Maybe the combo of the two events triggered something within? There was something, too: I had grown weary of having to morph into my own über publicist and search for Twitter Followers, Facebook comrades and Instagram fans.
Well, truth be told, it felt as if The Gods had picked me up like a ketchup bottle, turned me over, unscrewed the cap (my crown chakra?) and waited for its contents (the Me that I once knew to be Me) to be emptied out--completely. And, perhaps, explore something new about the idea of home and place.
I recall asking for (more) signs for guidance.
I received them.
In fact, I did something that some would call rebellious: I diverted taking on a new corporate media job and accepted a colleague's offer to oversee 293 young olive trees in an olive grove on their property in, of all places, Maui. (Something only The Gods could have coordinated me thinks.) I left everything I knew back on The Mainland and showed up for several months of care-taking. My task, it seemed was, simply to officially step into uncharted territory without any real road map and--what's this?--Trust?
Yes. The T-word.
I suppose that's a fine roadmap to have and if you're going to keep asking The Universe for signs and the only one it keeps giving you begins with the letter T then, well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it all out.
Trust.
Well, this did wonders for my active mind. I left "corporate media" on the 20th anniversary of my midlife crisis--which I launched long ago to get out of the way (alas, it lingered)--and woke up in Maui's upcountry, where I have been for six weeks.
I meditate--more. I breathe--more. I watch my mind--freak out (occasionally).
As I have previously written, tending to the olive trees affords me an opportunity to slow down--more than I have ever slowed down before--and pay attention (in a new way). The olive trees are good teachers, after all. They take years to grow and come into fruition so it's not as if one day you wake up and suddenly--boom, bam, there be olives on the trees! Eureka! No, Mother Nature knows what the heck She is doing. She can take her time. And so, I monitor the trees every morning and evening. Like a sheep dog on a prairie, I watch--and, me being me, I send off a blessing to the grove every now and then.
Why not? Good juju is good juju.
As a result, in just a short amount of time, I have realized that the life I had prior to coming here was often filled with a never-ending swirl of "doing." In the past two decades, I penned five books--two which are published--oversaw creative direction of a newspaper for 14 years, wrote articles about Hollywood for magazines, covered red carpet Hollywood events, took three to four Bikram yoga classes a week, breathed in, out, and God knows where else, and taught a series of fitness classes, dripping in perspiration to arrive somewhere every step of the way (more o