daily diary – MeeshyD

Daily Journal, I

November 17, 2019

On the drive over to the Berkeley Marina for a walk this evening, I heard the song Heaven by Beyonce. I normally skip the track because it brings me to tears over the memory of Mas, but tonight I let it play. He’s been on my mind a lot lately. The other night at dinner with friends, we talked about how many people in the Philippines don’t know how to swim. My friend suspects it’s because people have so much respect for the ocean there that they think you’re a fool for trying to dance with the water. I added that most of the people I know in The Gambia also didn’t know how to swim. I left it at that, but it brought up a memory for me that I keep repeating over and over.

Mas came to visit us in my posh corporate apartment. It was a gorgeous facility right on the ocean with the most beautiful infinity pool. We hardly ever swam in it because Ras didn’t know how to swim and the pool didn’t have a heater, but for whatever reason this day that Mas came to visit we got in the water. I had him in the pool with me and I must’ve looked away for just a moment. When I looked back at him, he was quietly and slowly drowning. I pulled him to me and saved him, scared but also reassuring. I think about the look on his face that day and I wonder what was going through my head. I wish I could return to that moment and will myself to realize that he needed to learn to swim and that, even though I can barely swim myself, I was probably the most qualified person in his life to teach him.

I know in my logical brain that there is no use ruminating over the fact that I had a chance to teach a boy to swim who eventually drowned in a big puddle of water. I know that it’s silly to live in a world of shoulda, woulda, couldas. I don’t really hold myself responsible, especially now that the sting of the pain of his death isn’t so visceral.

I guess, I just can’t help but wish for a different outcome. I wish I could go back to that day and try to teach him. He was so smart, I think he could’ve learned quickly. Maybe I could’ve planted a little nugget, a little muscle memory that could’ve helped him.

Oh, well. There’s no sense I can possibly make of it, no way to end this post on a high note other than to say:

lately I’ve been missing my little buddy Mas. Tonight I heard a song that made me think of him and I allowed myself to stare down the road not travelled. It’s still ridiculously unfair that we lost him, but at least he was deeply, truly loved. Last week, my friend Alison, who I traveled to Africa with, and I were talking about how people could look at the photos we took when we were in Africa with all the kids, including Mas, and think we were just some wacked out white folks with a savior complex. Maybe we were a little bit, at least initially. What I do know is that my connection to Mas and to my life in Africa are among the realest things I’ve ever felt and my friendship with Mas was and continues to be one of the biggest joys in my entire life. Loving him and losing him defined me in ways I can’t really unpack. I think my dogged determination to live a full and happy life comes directly from him. If he doesn’t get to live a full life, I guess I’m trying to find a way to live an even bigger one on his behalf?

daily diary, just for fun, Uncategorized

Mediocre at best

September 22, 2019

I recently read through my last few posts and resisted the urge to delete them. They’re just so…dramatic. I am trying to convey the most painful moments of my life (which, spoiler alert, is a decidedly un-fun undertaking) and it comes out so silly and empty, so I’m taking a break on that project for a bit until I feel like continuing it which probably means that I’ll never come back to it, just like so many projects I’ve started with gusto and then lost interest in completing.

A few months ago, I listened to Cheryl Strayed on Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations and identified with Strayed’s urge to just embrace being mediocre and to write anyway. That’s my new writing motto. I basically suck at writing, but it is the thing I like to do the most of all and so here I am, showing up again with my mediocre at best effort and trying to get a few words on the page.

With an opening like that, let’s just keep the random train thriving and I’ll just share everything that’s on my mind on this sunny Sunday as I wait for my French Onion Soup at La Boulange in Oakland.

I went to Santa Fe this week for work and fell in love. It’s like where I grew up in Arizona, but not hot. The average age and temperature was around 72 and I felt right at home. I wanted to go to the Georgia O’Keefe museum, but instead had to go on an intense hike with my coworkers that left me literally gasping for air at 7k foot elevation while trying to keep it profesh, pretending like I didn’t feel completely panicked inside because I couldn’t catch my breath. If I had unlimited funds, I would rent an amazing house in Santa Fe for a few months and just, like, eat Mexican food and buy expensive blankets. Maybe take up horseback riding.
Sometimes I think I have what it takes to succeed in this age of personal branding, especially when I get sucked into the Instagram vortex and I convince myself that it’s not even hard. Other times, I just want to throw up at the absurdity of people cultivating a following by acting on the internet in specific ways that they know will generate clicks. I vacillate between wanting to delete my Instagram app and then reading up on how to be a ‘like to know it’ influencer. Tell me I’m not the only one who feels this way?
I’m continuing on my spiritual growth path, reading Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment. GUYS, holy shit. To say those books are mind-bending is an understatement. I basically realized that I am making my own self miserable in my brain because I have decided that the only way I can be happy is if the external circumstances in my world that I have almost no control over line up in a way that satisfies me. Absurdity! I also listened to the Untethered Soul at Work audiobook. Talk about a punch in the gut. Choosing to view work as an act of service, where your only job is to do your job to the best of your ability, will rock your entire world. Do you realize how much brain power and energy you waste at work complaining about decisions that are made way above your pay grade? What about the energy drain that comes with hating your work and wondering if you’re wasting your life? Deciding that you are where you are and that the best decision is to make the best of it will literally change your damn life. I can’t do these books justice. Read them for yourself and let’s have a book club.
I saw a fireworks show last night at the A’s game and it made me so happy. I was like a giddy little child. The theme was ‘pop music’ and when they synchronized the fireworks to MMMBop by Hanson, I almost lost my damn mind!
This morning, Jax hurt my leg when we were playing with his ball while I was trying to pretend-meditate and I lost my cool and grabbed his nose in an aggressive way and I feel so bad about it still that I could cry just. An interaction like that proves to me that I still have a long, long, long way to go to be the person I want to be.

The original purpose of writing this post was to remind you that homemade cookies are ALWAYS a good idea on Sunday. I like to save part of the dough and make a fresh dozen mid-week when I really need a pick-me-up. I don’t bake as often as I’d like, but when I do, I tend to make these cookies. They are the Ghirardelli Grand Chip cookie recipe printed on the back of the bag. A bit of a pain to make, but they turn out so good when you follow the directions precisely.

Okay, friends. Signing off for now. I really enjoyed writing this post because it felt like I was just being me. Probably not something that anyone wants to read, but who cares? Almost no one reads this blog anyway!

How’s your weekend going? Any other random bits or bobs you want to share?

daily diary, deep thoughts, goals

I’m Tired of Searching for Someone to Save Me

August 30, 2019

This morning, I realized that for a long, long while I have been looking for an escape hatch from my life. In a world of overnight successes, I wanted my writing to blow up or to win the lottery or any number of crazy fantasies to come through for me so I could avoid the hard drip, drip, drip process of growing as a human.

With my debt, I’ve been looking for a solution where I could be out of debt in less than a year. Not going to lie, part of that plan literally involved winning the lottery. It came from a place of desperation because I couldn’t fathom having the discipline and patience to work through a multi-year plan that would erase it all. I’ve spent years looking for a quick fix, when I could’ve spent years doing the steady work instead.

With my writing, it’s the same. I write consistently for a couple of months and then get obsessive about the numbers and fall prey to internet marketers and their promises of ‘my ten easy steps to write flawless articles that go viral’. I write one blog piece that I’m proud of and then start wondering why the book contract isn’t coming.

I had to travel for business this week to Minneapolis, Minnesota. I bought David Sedaris’ book ‘Theft by Finding’, where he shares excerpts from his diary over the years. What struck me is how hard he worked, how much time he put in to be successful. He painted so many walls, cleaned so many apartments, spent countless nights in IHOP working on his writing. He is one of my favorite writers ever, but I had never really thought about how hard the journey was for him. His success wasn’t linear. I figured he always knew what he wanted and he got his big break and that was that. How could someone so talented do anything other than write?

My spiritual awakening over the past year started because I wanted a vegan business I was working on to be successful. I found the law of attraction and thought I could believe my way to success. I still do believe in the power of the universe and that our thoughts become our realities, but I don’t think that the universe or god or whatever you call that spirit that creates our souls is a short-order cook churning out our dreams. I think that the universe shows up when you’re serious about your goals. I think that the work you do in good faith calls your angels forward to guide you, but that the way you activate the universal guidance is by seriously showing up to do the work.

I also realize that my spiritual awakening has brought so, so, so much more than the law of attraction. It put me back in contact with my own soul, it connected me back to myself in a powerful way and it helped heal the parts inside of me that were broken. I look back and think that it was funny that I reconnected to my soul through my own egoic desire to have my business be successful when the business is now on the back burner and my own spiritual growth is shining so bright. Life is funny like that, right?

I see so clearly right now that, for me, I no longer want a ‘quick fix’ to come in and overhaul my life to bring me my desires overnight. I want to dig deep and be my own savior, going through the sometimes painfully slow process of doing it for myself. I’m not going to say no if my spiritual guides step in every once in a while with a little fairy dust to move things along, but I’m now buckled up and ready for a longer journey. I want to do my writing everyday and find a community of people who want to follow along with my antics. I want to stick to my plan to pay off my debts and feel the joy that will come when I send in that final payment knowing that I alone did the hard work to pay back the money that all of these institutions loaned me. I want to find the joy that comes with fully living and embracing every moment of life, from the mundane days in the office while I work on my dream to the little flings of joy that come when someone leaves a comment on something I’ve written.

It’s easier said than done, sure. But now it’s said, let’s get it done.

What is one dream that you have that you are avoiding doing the work to accomplish?

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