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So it’s early and there is much to do today but let’s start with a Joseph Campbell quote just to kick off a true TGIF – below is my favorite of all quotes by Campbell because it is the greatest struggle that I’ve encountered to let go on what I had planned to happen versus what is happening in my life. It’s not that I am not known for switching gears when I need to and moving onto the next thing, it’s the constant moaning about it that I am imperiled with – when I was a kid we would say I should’a, could’a, would’a – but forget all those gremlins in your head, and think about this day as a blank slate where you are allowed to turn your direction towards the sun and feel pleasure deep down to your toes and that is all you are after today:

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned,
so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

We’re getting up earlier around this household because the little prince gets up an hour and a half earlier and that means, no rest for the weary. So I was traipsing through the park while it was still dark this morning – do you know that City Park in New Orleans is the fifth largest park in the U.S. and one of the safest? – and I was looking around at all the moss and branches that Tropical Storm Lee left scattered around and trying to figure out why the lagoons seemed to have been drained dry when Lee had brought so much rain. It was a subtle reminder of how far City Park has come since the Federal Flood of 2005 when the park was a wreck and how right before Lee it was almost pristine, well as pristine as a natural environment might be.

I saw ducks gathering for a conference over where the playground meets the lagoon, and I saw an egret sitting on the same branch with a cormorant, black and white feathers all preened and pretty. I saw a heron chuking across the grass headed to the tennis courts. And I saw butterflies and squirrels a plenty.

If every morning of a person’s life could begin with a walk in the park, it would make the world a better place. It’s a microcosm of life – change is constantly occurring but beauty is always there to behold.

On the drive to school this morning, Tin and I were listening to an audio book of Winnie the Pooh stories and we landed on the one about the heffalump trap. This is a day that has circumnavigated the whole mental globe, it started off with me trying to just be and beating myself up for not being able to – I had awakened at 3 am with ruminating thoughts of did I do this for the Re-Bridge gala list, did I call this source for my OTR work, did I forget to tell this person this about that and I had to put myself back to sleep by chanting Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram. Tin is down to two binkys, which both are road weary, and we told him when he goes through those, it’s curtains for the binkys, but I wish I had a binky and I then wouldn’t have to say Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram – I did after all suck my thumb until I was almost 14 years old and needed braces. So today while walking with a friend I told her my inner voice is such a meanie that when I stop and think about it, I wouldn’t talk to a mere acquaintance the way I talk to myself.

So I dropped Tin off, got back to my desk and heard from a source/friend I had hoped to see in San Francisco who was asking me a question, and turns out has left the company he was at to go to divinity school and he is also studying to be a life coach. We corresponded back and forth and he asked if he could use me as an experiment for his Happiness Project. Our digital conversation ended later in the day with me taking a series of tests and most with outcomes that I would pretty much expect except for the Optimism one where I looked to be a dyed in the wool pessimist. I told him I think it is just situational. Like I’m chasing a heffalump and setting traps and one never comes. Metaphorically speaking.

At the end of the day, I accomplished all the work I set out to do and more, I got a good tip for someone who might help with the Gala, I have a new life coach – ha!, and I was able to stick to my detox program and eat only enormously healthy food items today, although I did add some chia seeds to my shake that a friend had recommended and they gave me a stomach ache (note to self, soak them first). Then towards the end I picked up my Yom Kippur book – the one where I journal about my past year’s milestones and think about where I am and where I want to be and I noticed the entries all began the same way since 2003! The common theme is being overwrought by overdoing, overindulging, overspending, overthinking. I don’t have a single year where it says, “This has been a pretty relaxing year.”

Maybe a relaxing year is as elusive as a heffalump? I spoke with Tatjana about maybe just buying Tin another binky because he comes home from nursery and wants his binky and wants to sleep and why shouldn’t he have a binky, especially since he doesn’t know how to chant mantras yet.

I’ve always been attracted to the cerebral types, the ones who seem to be able to retain vast knowledge and pull it all together into a cogent thought, but honestly I’m on another educational path these days. That of trying to simply be. This may sound easy enough but it’s hard. In order to be you have to believe in a few tenets such as 1) you are worthy of simply being and don’t have to produce or take care of or accomplish, 2) that in simply being the construct of the world you have created won’t crumble around you, and 3) just being is actually an achievable goal.

I was at a meeting last night and a woman was speaking to her recent experience of changing careers. Years working in the inner maw of the City of New Orleans and now suddenly she’s shifted to academe to which she says, “My toes aren’t curling about this job, yet, but it’s nice not to know every gory detail of what is going on in this city.” She said she had been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell recently, not page by page, but rather randomly dropping into his writings. One note that hit home for her was he said when you are confused about what to do in life take a step back and remember what it was you loved doing as a child for fun. I said, “Hair!” I loved doing hair, cutting my dolls’ hair, cutting the stuffed animals hair, just doing hair.

This morning while walking the dogs a friend joined me and confessed she was trying very hard to just be. Wow, I said, so am I. Tough, isn’t it? Yes, indeed.

I saw this quote by Joseph Campbell today and it resonated. You can never have too much Joseph Campbell in your life.

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Joseph Campbell

I made it to yoga today and my body begged the question, where have you been old friend? And I responded, old, is the operative word. A week of road warrior left me bloated and stiff much like a poisoned pregnant dog on the side of the road. The message of the day, expanding one’s kula, Sanskrit for community. I likened this to what Rick Reynolds said many years ago when he was going to be the next big thing, a comedian the likes of Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor, only he was given a television show contract that put the kibosh on his rising star. Nevertheless, he had a list he made every year around the holidays where he would determine who was worth staying friends with and who wasn’t and he was very attentive to his list, agonizing over the details that went into each decision.

Only that wasn’t exactly the message of enlarging your kula today in yoga, but it’s close, it’s about making room for more and different people, those you wouldn’t normally let in because you have become so used to those who look and speak just like you, but if you open up and let your world enlarge, your kula gets more interesting and generates more excitement in your life. The good kind that is (well, hopefully).

So today, twisting all the bad chemicals out of my body (and mind) and trying to find my shape-shifting moment of pose and repose, I thought about my list and thought about how it would be nice to enlarge my kula, but whoever has the time? I barely saw the people I wanted to while in SF as everything was hurry up and mostly business based, and whatnot, that it seemed almost impossible to envision having tried to see someone new, unknown, and not already on the list.

The good news is that by the end of class, I felt the world had stopped for a period of time and there did seem to be room for new without throwing out all of the old.

I have a perpetual smile on my face in the past few days brought on by the absurdity of ever thinking I know what is around the corner. I flew miles and miles back to a place I started at twenty two years ago and found what I was not looking for much in the same way I found it back then. It’s always startling to find out just how much you don’t know the older you get.

A Buddhist proverb says, when the student is ready, the master appears. I say there is no more rain in this cloud.

It’s hard not to start thinking about Mardi Gras since in about a few weeks the holiday season in New Orleans kicks in for real with Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Years, and Three Kings’ Day and well Mardi Gras. So last night Tin and I were experimenting with some possible costume ideas. It could be we are going to be the Dead Dangermonds, the punk band that never happened. We need a lot more details but here’s the start:

I just read an email I drafted October 2010 after attending a large media conference to send someone that I never sent. I’m keeping it because everything in it is more meaningful to me now than it was even then when I was compelled to write it. I then came across this commencement address from Steve Jobs and perhaps his words resonate now more than they did then because of his new awareness and mine.

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

… more

Five days in San Francisco and I came back feeling like a tick on a pregnant dog. Lord today, I need to get back to detox and meditation. A friend from Spain sent this photo she had taken of us on the beach, I think it encapsulates what has helped me ride the waves of 2011 that have been fraught with many uncertainties and unanswered questions – the Hanged Man was the most poignant card in my tarot reading the other night, it’s the one that says, just be Rachel, you are not going to make this happen any faster than it is and you are going to miss some of the really terrific moments if you are living for something to happen.

This is an easy task for many people except me – I’m fighting my learned nature to simply be – but I’m trying hard and beach time, friend time, family time are all reminders of how moments are better spent in the moment. So to borrow a saying from the 70s, Just hang in there, baby.

Attending Dreamforce 2011, I listened to Marc Benioff piggybacking off of the Arab Spring calling us to imagine a corporate spring, a CEO spring, a consumer spring. Later, in a conversation with Marc and Eric Schmidt I listened again with fascination to two leaders in the U.S., and thought if you are not interested in watching the Republican debate on Wednesday because the level of mediocrity has fallen to an all time low, then watch this video.