62 LIFE LESSONS LEARNED IN 62 YEARS OF LIFE

Tags

Dasein, Happiness, humor, Learning, life lessons, postaweek2011, Samuel Ullman, snapshots, The Art of Being

“Nobody grows old merely by living

a number of years.

We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin,

but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

  ~Samuel Ullman

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Think anything longer than 140 characters is a homework assignment? Sometimes I do.  In fact, there’s a good chance your eyes glazed over around the enthusiasm/wrinkle line. (Except for you, Devoted Readers, that is.)

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I do like lists.  Think:  Ellen, Oprah and Cosmo. The specific promise of the headline. The simple outline format that’s easy to skim. Social media is about generating conversations and a list fascinates everyone I know.

I like to see what’s on it and whether it affirms what I think or is completely wrong.  Like the 7 accessories that will change your life, 10 ways to beat the high cost of living, or the 12 secrets of better lawn care. (Lots of sprinklers.)

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I try to take a list for what it’s worth – not much.  But if you’ve gotten this far, the choice is yours.  Here’s  my ‘list’ in 62 tweet-able characters …..

Identify what’s most important 2 U;

eliminate everything else.

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…….. or 62 linkable lines.

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62 life lessons learned in 62 years of life

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1. Be the change you want to see in the world.  Ok, let’s get this one out of the way.  Yeah, it sounds a little frou-frou. But it’s powerful. Inspire others with actions, not pamphlets.
2. Spend your money with awareness.   It’s the experiences that make you rich, not the stuff.  Unless we’re talking iAnything, that is.  No kidding, Apple rocks.
3. Speaking of money, it doesn’t buy happiness.  Just everything else…like a secure life and resources to share with others.
4. But really, the best things in life are free.  Take a hike.
5. Show some love.  Go out of your way to thank people. Pick someone up on their way down.
6. Be a problem solver.
7. Seek out the company of inspiring people.
8. Focus on your strengths.  Do what you love.
9. If you want something, ask for it.  The answer isn’t always no.
10. Say no when you mean no, don’t say maybe.  Just be nice about it.
11. Embrace play.  Skip the sitcom rerun.  Join a community project.
12. Recognize how fortunate you are. 
13. Keep learning new things.  Exit the comfort zone.
14. Cherish your old friends and introduce them to your new ones.  The last word in ‘lonesome’ is me.
15. Run towards adventure.  Transform yourself.
16. Look inward.
17. Be brave.  Play on a swing set at least once a year.
18. Face your fears.  Don’t waste your energy on worry. Lose the guilt.
19. Think for yourself. 
20. Grow your own food.  It’s judderingly awesome.
21. Go places.  Anywhere will do. Ask Dr. Suess.
22. Be persistent.  Inch your way there.
23. Just be.  Sit, listen, let your mind wander, feel the peace.  Breathe.
24. Create...music, words, art…and share it with the world.
25. Enjoy a simple pleasure every day.  The slow sunrise, a long shower, berries on your Kashi.
26. Go on picnics.  Preferably, on the beach.
27. Journal.  Blog. Get it down ~ on paper or in pixels.
28. Watch movies in your bathrobe.
29. Nap in the afternoon.
30. Bake.  Anything with chocolate.
31. Tell jokes.  Write the punchlines on your hand, if you need to.
32. De-clutter ~ in short time chunks or long ones.  Be merciless.
33. Back up your computer.  Better yet, spend some of that money for a Time Machine and go do #23.
34. Google it.  What do you want to know?  It’s all there.  Shocker.
35. Use your best stuff every day.
36. Cook dinner.  It’s a ritual worth celebrating.
37. Avoid roundabouts.
38. You can have carbs at night.  Eat protein all day.
39. Spend part of every day outside.  Yes, even in winter.
40. Get up in the middle of the night and eat peanut butter with a spoon.
41. Pump iron.  It beats dieting.
42. Street performers beget joy.  Add something to the tip jar.
43. It’s OK to be different.  Note: you’re not as different as you think.
44. Try everything.  Even stuff that scares you.
45. Read books.
46. Take care of the earth.  And it might take care of you.
47. Learn the rules.  Then it’s OK to break them.
48. Sing.  If you can’t sing, sing anyway.  Especially at karaoke.  Or belt out Amazing Grace at church.
49. Give away something you love. 
50. Make life simpler.  Embrace technology.
51. Marry your best friend.  Hold hands.
52. Believe in miracles.
53. Tell the truth.
54. Learn from your mistakes.  To err is human, to share is divine.
55. Don’t settle.
56. Focus on what you have.  Be grateful for the goodness.
57. Smile. See #4.
58. Be honest. 
59. Keep a ‘To-Don’t “ list.  You know what goes there, don’t you?
60. Find a mentor. Or five.
61. Family is everything.
62. Take a walk with a camera.  This little film tells me that a more creative life ~ in whatever way you break from routine and for as much time you can spare ~ is one worth living.

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Toni 3/13/12

TWO YEARS AND A TITANIC TUB OF WORDS

Tags

Apple, Apple Store, Art Plotnik, blog, Genius Bar, Happiness, Jane Yolen, Macintosh, postaweek2012, second blogaversary, Ted Kooser, Titanic, WordPress, writing

And in the beginning was the Word……

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Flash Back : April 2010

Today we start our blog. For years we’ve met as a group, sipped coffee, nibbled tasty treats, talked through life’s dramas, and read our writing to each other. Frequently we have a silent partner in all this: Ted Kooser, Jane Yolen, Lary Bloom, Art Plotnik, Wordnik of The Day. We read their books about writing and let their wise words inspire us. This blog is going to be another silent partner, we think, but right now getting it going is a bit like trying to get clear, cool water from the faucet. We need to run the water for a while to swish out whatever’s been lodging along the old pipes. Sometimes those pipes clank and the water sputters. Sometimes we curse and talk about whether or not the plumbing’s ever going to be right. And then it happens. Luscious, clean, boy-is-this-well-good-or-what water. That’s the way it will be, this fussing with a writing blog. Just keep the tap on we’ve decided. It’ll come.

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Patty and I sit at a table in the Apple store, and various Mac Geniuses tutor us in how to set up the blog. For several hours we get pointers, run with them, hit a speed bump, sink into that uh-oh-we’ll-never-get-this funk, and then plow ahead ~ again ~ after another quick tip from a passing Genius. There are tons of things the Geniuses can teach us, but they zero in on That One Exact Skill we need next.

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Flash forward.  April 2012.

 

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It’s almost time to celebrate our Second Blogaversary. We’ve come a long way, baby.  Actually, we’ve come a dirty huge way.  And still, we go to the Apple store, sit at the the happy-go-larky project table and schmooze with the drive-by Genius who continues to feed us what we need next. There’s a continental-shelf-sized Skills-We-Need list, an infinite goozle of things to learn and, lucky us, a mother lode of time for us to learn it all.

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So, the tap is on. The water flows. The words come.

Readers, we’re glad you’re here.  Second Mad-Glamorous Blogaversary ahead ~ our cup-runneth over-ish, do celebrate with us.  But how?  Send us your Superbissimo Idea.  Who knows where it might lead.  Wink. Wink.

Toni 3/6/12

WHERE SUN MEETS CITY AND EVERYBODY READS

Tags

Baby Boomer Billionaires, Cafe on Fifth, Fifth Avenue, Florida, Happiness, joie de vivre, Naples Florida, National Reading Group Month, postaweek2011, Ralph-Lauren, reading, Uptown Express

Naples, Florida.

Genteel beach town….

with the turquoise Gulf at avenue’s end.

 On chic Fifth Avenue., high falutin’ living…

where joie de vivre is the local sport.

Sophisticated, Ralph-Lauren types…

 share swanky Naples with Baby Boomer Billionaires.

Serene sunsets, and then…

dancing in the streets with the Uptown Express ~

tunes from the golden era of 35 cent gas, tailfins,

jukeboxes, loud mufflers, Motown and Rock & Roll.

 When it rains, there’s the Naples library…

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and the palace of print.

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October is National Reading Group Month.

Both the library and the bookstore have the 2011 list of

recommended selections. What’s your book group reading?

Add yours to the list….

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb

(The Penguin Press, 978-1-59420-280-3)  Maggie Ly returns to Vietnam, searching for information about her father’s last years in Hanoi. She meets the old pho-seller Hung, whose loyal customers of his rich, steaming soup help Maggie summon up those terrible times after 1975. Gibb paints an indelible portrait of loss and redemption in the aftermath of conflict.

Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber
(W.W. Norton & Co., 978-0-393-06461-2)
Brian and Avis Muir’s daughter Felice ran away from home at age thirteen, creating a fault line in the family that has never healed. The author’s portrait of gorgeous, corrupt Miami mirrors the spiritual emptiness of the Muirs as they struggle with guilt and self-indulgence.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
(Knopf, 978-0-307-70000-1)
Otsuka gives voice to the Japanese women who came to the U.S. as mail-order brides in the early 20th century. Uncertain of what they would find, they endured difficult lives in communities that had no place for them, and banishment to internment camps in World War II. Told in the first person plural, this is a riveting, poetic testament to their strength and resilience.

Dance Lessons by Áine Greaney(Syracuse University Press, 978-0-8156-0984-1)

When Ellen Boisvert’s husband Fintan dies, she travels to the seaside Irish village where he grew up, to meet the mother he never told her about. Ill and embittered, Jo Dowd reveals the tangled life that Fintan fled. Greaney’s empathy for her characters and her depiction of their emotional lives is compelling and nuanced.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo
(Free Press, 978-1-4165-8393-6)
In this lyrical memoir about food, love, and war, journalist Ciezadlo takes us to the dangerous Middle Eastern cities where she and her Lebanese husband work. In the midst of the violence, food helps her unravel the culture, history and behavior of the people she meets. Recipes included.

The Good Sister by Drusilla Campbell
(Grand Central Publishing, 978-0-446-53578-6)
A mother’s trial for the attempted murder of her three children is the startling opening of this tale about a sister’s responsibility for her unstable sibling. This is a gripping tale of family dynamics and mental illness.

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell
(Mariner Books, 978-0-547-42318-0)
Two stories alternate and intertwine in surprising ways in this vivid novel set in the 1950s Bohemian London art scene and today. When Lexie Sinclair ran away from her dull country life, she set in motion a chain of events that resonates in the lives of Elina and her husband Ted, fifty years later.

If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter
(Sarabande Books, 978-1-932511-94-9) In 14 linked essays, Van Meter describes with grace and humor, the pain and heartbreak of his childhood, when he knew he was different, but couldn’t comprehend how. Poignant and insightful, Van Meter asks us to think about the ways in which we use language to define others and ourselves.

The Memory Palace: A Memoir by Mira Bartók
(Free Press, hardcover 978-1-4391-8331-1; paper 978-1-4391-8332-8)
Bartók and her sister were forced to sever relations with their gifted but schizophrenic mother, changing their names and using post office boxes to collect mail. Year later, Bartók suffers loss of memory from a brain injury and tries to reconstruct the landscape of her childhood as her mother is dying of cancer, in this disturbing, gorgeously written memoir.

My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira
(Penguin Books, 978-0-14-311913-5)
Midwife Mary Sutter yearns to become a doctor but has been turned away by the all-male medical establishment. The Civil War offers her an opportunity to work in a field hospital, where her courage and talent help her through the hard work and heartbreak in this realistic narrative of early medicine and a woman’s ambition.

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

(Algonquin Books, 978-156512-990-0)
Dana is the secret daughter of James, a bigamist; in the Atlanta of the 1980s. As she grows up, struggling with her shame and anger, she secretly watches Chaurisse, the legal daughter, until their paths inexorably cross. A troubling coming-of-age novel about the obligations of love and family.

The Soldier’s Wife by Margaret Leroy

(Voice, 978-1-4013-4170-1)
For Vivienne de la Mare, living on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, the German occupation during World War II brings privation, unexpected romance, and a moral dilemma. Leroy effortlessly weaves the history of wartime Guernsey into this historical tale.

The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
(Picador, 978-0-312-57060-6)
When poet and professor Mia Fredericksen’s husband Boris announces he wants a “pause” from their marriage for an affair, Mia heads for Minnesota, her childhood home, to recover her equilibrium. She encounters women of all ages and temperaments; the insight she gains from her time with them provides food for thought for Mia and reader alike.

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson

(Other Press, 978-1-59051-466-5)
When 12-year old Blessing is uprooted from middle-class life in Lagos, Nigeria, she learns some hard lessons about politics, love, and the old traditions. A strong coming-of-age novel with an unusual setting.

To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal

(Little, Brown and Co., 978-0-316-12739-4)
Judith Whitman, unhappy with her current Los Angeles job and husband, decides to reconnect with an old love in small town Nebraska where she grew up. When he responds with an urgent plea, she is drawn back into memories of her earlier life.

Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton

(Harper Paperbacks, 978-0-06-200134-4)
When Martin Owenby learns that his older brother Leon is missing, he’s drawn back to the North Carolina mountain town of his boyhood. For the fractured Owenby clan, the search for Leon is also a search for healing and redemption. Told in four voices, this is a melancholy Southern tale, filled with memorable characters and family secrets.

When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

(Bloomsbury USA, 978-1-60819-534-3)
Elly and her older brother, Joe, appear to be just like everyone else, but heartbreaking, sometimes shocking secrets lurk below the surface for the siblings and their friends, and the weight of those sorrows reverberates through their lives. Leavened with humor and insight, this deeply felt novel is rich in characterization and sense of place.

Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr
(Akashic Books, hardcover 978-1-936070-86-2; paper 978-1-936070-71-8)
When 9-year old Michelle, half Japanese, moves in with her grandparents in rural Wisconsin in 1973, she encounters prejudice so ingrained that violence is certain to erupt, especially after a black teacher is hired at the local school. Michelle’s strong relationship with her grandfather, who shares his love of nature and baseball, contrasts sharply with the senseless hatred and ignorance around her.

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson

(Simon & Schuster, 978-1-4391-7588-0)
Between two wars — Vietnam and Iraq — we follow members of an Iowa farming family as they age, grow, and chase after happiness. Each chapter focuses on a different character, building to a rich portrait of Middle America in a time of confusing social and economic change.

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
(Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 978-0-399-15720-2)
A haunting collection of linked stories about the women who wait on a military base for the soldiers who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Burdened with their own fears and secrets, the women await the return of husbands who may no longer be the men they knew and loved.

Sun, city, a book and a sidewalk table.

The Cafe on 5th ~ Awesome and then some.

http://www.thecafeon5th.com

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Toni 10/20/11