So much for the holidays! It’s on to 2010. We were traveling just before Christmas. On a business trip to Oakland the week before, I saw this graffiti on the men’s room wall at Luka’s, a really wonderful local taproom (Anything with roasted beets there is fabulous. It is an oasis.). The three key ingredients of a successful holiday season were there on the wall: make it merry, make sure you tip and Michigan rules! Well, two out of three. I know I felt merrier after reading it. I suppose the blurred ‘I heart…’ phrase could represent goodwill – but that might be stretching it.
Next day, we left for New York for a week and landed just in time for the blizzard. Living in Southern California, we are less often affected by something like a blizzard that can literally shut down an entire seaboard. The sign was literal – and being snowbound for a day really made me think differently about stuff I take for granted, like mobility, easy access to resources, business as usual.
As we enter 2010, this is my watchword – a prompt to notice what is going on. Stop the usual assumptions, fears and pre-conceived ideas. Challenge them. Stop and notice what is really going on. Like in the photo. It is pretty, but because of the distractions. There is the clear message to stop, the graffiti tag that does not obscure it but upstages it/ the snowflakes that, again, are attractive and distracting and the darkness beyond. It is important to notice it all. The beauty, the vagueness and the real message.
This is how I am going about 2010, or at least starting to. Got the fitness regimen back in play. Got my new journal and to-do lists. Got the list of a zillion things I want to do differently, and better. And being more laid back about noticing what is going on around me and less about driving my own agenda. So far so good.
