amy rocks, okay?

I get so antsy sometimes. And in a life long ago, I would tamper the antsy-ness with baking. Which then turned into cooking after I got smart and purchased some out of this world cooking books. Discovering recipes that were extremely challenging and had lists of ingredients I never heard of before, were an utter joy. A challenge to accept. A reason to drink a bottle of wine and dance around the kitchen! Anyway, my loving man has found a new favorite thing - cooking. You would have never guessed it. I would have never guessed it! But coming home and busting out his defrosted protein and whipping up an accompanying veggie is his new favorite thing. As such, mine too! But then comes a time when the itch starts to kick in again and all I want to do is cook. I want to chop and wiggle my hips and stir and mix, and sting my eyes with the scent of onion and hydrate my face with steam from beneath the lid. I want to YouTube "how to slice fennel" and wait not-so-patiently as the seed...

Never shake hands with a clenched fist.

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

This could fall on my shoulders and I may look past it years from now and regret how I handled the situation, but like all other times in my life when I didn't know what to do or where to go, I took what I knew at the time, made the best decision I could based off that information, and powered forward. It doesn't hurt to check in now and again to reevaluate where you are and make sure you're on the path you intend to be and can be proud of, but at a certain point, when you're just getting started, sometimes you just have to pick up your bags and go - because the alternative, staying still, in the moment, in the head-space, is more dangerous and detrimental than the move. I have always felt that if you weren't moving forward you were moving backward, and any direction is better than no direction. Or, as my cousin once told me, always have a plan. It doesn't matter if you stick to the plan, but you always have to have a plan. Because if you don't, you'...

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily.

This time it's just that my battery is threatening to take my mac to nap land. And I'm already down at the shop with no charger, but I want to get these few quotes preserved before it's too late and they go in the trash with the rest of them. The hazards of being a member of a daily quote calendar. "To hide the key to your heart is to risk forgetting where you placed it." - Timothy Childers "The giving of love is an education in itself." - Eleanor Roosevelt "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a doctor! He was a doctor. It's not that I never knew that, but I suppose I hadn't really ever given it much thought. And it's quite the achievement. I wonder what kind of doctor he was. My thoughts are clearly unable to go much deeper this early in the morning, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.

I. Love. This. Dog.

Purchased this book from a list . Tyler Knott's book was on the list. And the title of the list is absolutely right up my alley. 5 Introspective Books On Life, Love, And Finding Your Way That Every Old Soul Should Read The first paragraph chapter, was slightly overwhelming with it's talk on the paradox of self-denial. There were a lot of words like self-renunciation, exaltation of consciousness, insight degenerating into another precept, etc. It's chock full of sentences that you have to read over and over, or you can skim and find yourself at the end of the chapter not with the ability to say "this is what the book said" but more, "this is how it made me feel". You follow?  Anyway, the second chapter, which is feeling like the actual introduction, was hands down, rock my world, soup for the soul, the warm hand that affirmed why I purchased the book in the middle of holiday shopping when I spent $800 more than I had intended to. Fuck.  So...

No one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth.

One heck of an impactful clip. A story I won't spoil in my own words. It's worth the 6:43 you'll spending watching. And the extra 10 when you go back again to hear certain parts of his story because they move you and inspire you and make you want to be a BIGGER, deeper you.   I am fortunate enough not to have a terminal disease, but where it forced this man to go, is the same reason I love to travel. To explore. Adventure. Because we live in a beautiful place and we are such a tiny piece of it. To spend time fussing about the unimportant things is laughable when we could spend our time enjoying it. Appreciating it. And sharing our love for all the living things. Give yourself a quickened heartbeat this morning and listen to his story. "I want to be vulnerable in life. I want to be in places that scare me and be in situations that scare me, and bring me closer to the things I love." "...give up control on the beach, I saw my thank you's and step into...