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Travel Outside Of Your Comfort Zone

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travel-quote-hero__main

Traveling abroad is a wonderful way to break out of established patterns and comfort zones, become exposed to new cultures, and press the spiritual reset button. I have always been interested in doing more international travel, but because of financial and time constraints, the extent of my visits to other countries has been confined to Mexico and parts of Europe. I don’t feel challenged culturally when I visit Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Sacramento, Columbus or Chicago, because the primary language is still English, and American customs are relatively consistent around the country. When I return home from any of these places, I don’t feel a shift in my perspective like I did when I visited Europe.

I will be traveling to Europe, Australia and Indonesia within the next two months and am exhilarated and somewhat terrified. What will I encounter in these places? What kinds of people will I meet? What will I learn about myself? Even the process of gathering information on my upcoming trips to Hungary, Sydney, and Bali is causing my life’s perspective to shift. I have mostly been focusing on the trip to Hungary since it is scheduled a month before the other two locations, and have been making a concerted effort to learn the Hungarian language before I arrive there. In my efforts to learn Hungarian, I have experienced a shift in my cerebral cortex which not only helps me with the language, but to also think like a Hungarian, at least to a certain extent. When I practice the speaking drills, I imagine being in the middle of Budapest, having to ask for directions, struggling with a very difficult language to make my thoughts understood.

In addition to the language barrier, I have no idea how to navigate through Budapest and imagine that I will need to learn the public transportation system or take a taxi to certain areas, while backpacking and walking through other areas. This will be an adventure unlike any other I have experienced. Things I am incredibly reliant on like clean food sources and a gym will be somewhat hit or miss when I am out there. I know I will feel a bit like I got drop kicked into a very unfamiliar territory, and I know I will be well outside my comfort zone during the trip.

Some of the greatest breakthroughs have come from challenging existing patterns. Perhaps I will have an epiphany while in a foreign land, trying to find my way and struggling with a language which I am rather unfamiliar with. I am certainly up for the challenge and the adventure. It has been far too long since i have thrown myself out into the big wide world, at risk of stumbling over every little thing. It certainly doesn’t help that my brain is more like a stone than a sponge when it comes to learning languages now. However, I have made a concerted effort to learn Hungarian. At least I can say things like “szeretnék valamit enni” (I would like something to eat) while in Hungary and hopefully understand the response I will get to that statement.

I am excited for the adventures ahead and fully expect them to influence how I view the life I have built for myself. It’s always good to shake things up a bit!

Teddy Bears

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My early days...see the white bear on the right? This is the bear that started it all...

I got my first teddy bear when I was a baby (see photo above), and it seemed to spark a teddy bear obsession, particularly white ones. Though I don’t like collecting stuffed animals per se, I do have a small teddy bear collection, which features a 42 inch tall white bear named “Grandma Fresca” by the manufacturer. I am very attached to this giant bear, primarily because my mother gave it to me.

Grandma Fresca teddy bear

Grandma Fresca teddy bear

My collection is tucked rather discreetly in two small nooks in my bedroom so as not to disrupt the design flow of the room. Though I don’t consider myself a stuffed animal fan, and don’t pay any attention to my bear collection, I feel a very strong sentimental attachment to the largest bear, and to one of the smallest in my collection, which served as a litter mate to a three week old rescue kitten who is still very much a part of my family today. I find it rather touching that there is a mother-child asociation associated with both of these teddy bears.

My little rescue kitty with her teddy bear littermate! Shima is 5 years old now and a sweet and wonderful cat...

My little rescue kitty with her teddy bear littermate! Shima is 5 years old now and a sweet and wonderful cat…

I Will Be At The Muscle And Performance Booth At Olympia This Week!

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Muscle & Performance

Come to the 50th Anniversary of Olympia! I will be at the Olympia Expo on Friday, September 19th, and Saturday, September 20th, working at the AIM Publications booth, which features magazines like Muscle & Performance, Oxygen, MuscleMag, and Black Belt. Be sure to stop by to say hello, and get some free magazines!

2014-OLYMPIA

Here we are at the AIM booth from the Arnold Sports Festival earlier this year:

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And from last year’s Olympia:

Olympia 2013

Comedy And Tragedy

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robin-williams_1Robin Williams’ suicide brought attention to the depression that often strikes entertainers, but sadly, he wasn’t the first comedic genius to take his own life. Freddie Prinz died at the age of 22, and Richard Jeni died right before his 50th birthday, both from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Evidently, comedy can serve as an outlet for severe depression and psychosis, but the danger lies in the fact that making others people laugh can hide a dangerous secret.

I worked for Richard Jeni for over four years as his personal assistant, and as always blown away by his wit and his brilliance. Being a personal assistant required me to wear many hats, and it was not an easy job, especially when Rich was in one of his moods. He lived in a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills which I had to maintain, and which, despite all of its creature comforts, always felt very empty. I helped Rich with everything from household related issues, to assistance with booking gigs and organizing travel, serving as his personal stylist, organizing recordings of sitcoms he studied, and traveling with him for Caroline’s Comedy Hour and one of his cable specials.

Rich never married and had no children, and I honestly couldn’t imagine him with a wife and kids because, he was frequently out of town on gigs, and HAD to have everything his own way. There were numerous times that I would find myself greeting a new girlfriend who suddenly was one of the fixtures in the house, only to see Rich’s outlook on life darken when the girlfriend eventually became the ex. I knew that though Rich was incredibly funny, and kept me in stitches when he would dictate his bits for me to transcribe, he was never happy. I knew so much about him, where he was born and raised, how he left law school to become a comic, what foods he wanted in his fridge at all times, what interior design aesthetic he preferred, where and how he wanted his clean laundry distributed, what wardrobe items he wanted me to scout out, etc., but I never knew the depths of his loneliness.

Though I quit working for Rich to embark on my medical education, we stayed in touch from time to time and in this way continued our friendship. The last time I had seen him was in 2005 when his cable special, “A Big Steaming Pile Of Me” premiered. He was paranoid and disjointed during the premiere, and exhibited bizarre behavior which turned out to be the early stages of paranoid schizophrenia.

I still remember seeing the headline on AOL News on March 11, 2007, which announced that Richard Jeni had shot himself in the face and was dead. It stunned me. It was also extremely strange to find out via the Internet, but with Rich’s modest celebrity status, it was appropriate. I still can’t fathom how he had come to the point where he took the gun and pointed the barrel at himself, but I also cannot understand how a family man like Robin Williams chose to wrap a belt around his neck and cut off his own life breath. Both deaths were tragic, unnecessary, and highlighted an insidious mental disease which lurks among people from all walks of life. No amount of money, success, or fame can ever guarantee the happiness of a human being.

In honor of Richard Jeni and Robin Williams, both of whom were brilliant comics, I am posting these videos for you to enjoy:

Pumas And Cougars, Oh My!

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I am the kind of woman who could to some extent be labeled a cougar, but I cringe at the negative connotations which this slang term has accumulated. Shows like Cougar Town certainly don’t help with the sexual overtones which this term suggest either. Here is the definition of COUGAR from Wikipedia:

Cougar is a slang term that refers to a woman who seeks sexual relations with considerably younger men. It typically refers to women aged 30–40 years old.[1][2] ABC News states that these women pursue sexual relations with people more than eight years younger than they are,[1] while The New York Times states that the women are over the age of 40 and aggressively pursue sexual relations with men in their twenties or thirties.[2] However, the term can also refer to any female who has a male partner much younger than herself, regardless of age or age difference.[3][4]

I have a major issue with societal conventions which expect the man to be older than the woman. With only a couple of exceptions, I have always dated men who were younger than me, yet never sought them out. It always boiled down to common interests and mutual attraction, and the age of a man never concerned me. My first younger man was eight months my junior, and we met while we were in our teens. Some of you may think I had some strange influence which pushed me to have an attraction to younger men, but that was never the case. I believe a major factor, though, is the fact that I look, feel, and act much younger than my chronological age would suggest. Besides, the concept of an older woman with a younger man is not a new one, as films such as The Graduate prove. Before you start thinking that this particular film may have colored my view, it was released in movie theaters when I was a year old.

In the United States, women who are in their 30’s who like younger men are referred to as pumas. In stark contrast, Linda Lowen states that the term puma is used quite differently in the UK:

http://womensissues.about.com/od/cougarwomen/f/What-Is-A-Puma-Definition-Of-Puma-Woman.htm
020-cougar

I began to dig deeper, and found this scale:

Age 0-12: Housecat
Age 13-17: Bobcat
Age 18-21: Wildcat
Age 22-29: Lynx
Age 30-39: Puma
Age 40-49: Cougar
Age 50-59: Jaguar
Age 60-68: Panther
Age 69: Pussycat
Age 70-79: Cheetah
Age 80-89: Leopard
Age 90-99: Tiger
Age 100+: Lion

(from urbandictionary.com)

I find this hilarious. Hopefully you will too. Who knows? Maybe I will make it to lion. 🙂

The Nose Knows

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I have never had rhinoplasty or any other form of facial surgery, yet I am asked frequently if I had anything surgically “done” to my face. Apparently if someone is born with a nice nose or other nice facial features, no one wants to believe that Mother Nature was responsible. A couple of people have actually called me a liar when I informed them that a scalpel never touched my face. On a more positive note, I have had a number of patients tell me that they intend to show their rhinoplasty surgeons a photo of me so that they can get a nose like mine via surgery. I find that incredibly flattering.

For those of you who don’t believe that my nose is free of any surgical intervention, look at photos of my face from the time I was very little. Don’t be thrown off by the ample facial fullness I once had, because we lose that over time. I hope this clears up any doubts.

Age 2-1/2

Age 2-1/2

me at 17

me at 17

25 years old here

25 years old here

Age 45

Age 45

Education Is VERY Expensive!

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My mother struggled to send me to excellent schools because she wanted me to have the best education possible. I know that she borrowed money from her family to send me through my senior year of high school, which back in those days was pretty expensive at around $4,200. Had she opted to pull me from the school I had been at from fourth grade on and put me in public school during my senior year, I probably would have been really screwed up from the shift, so I am very grateful to her for what she did.

It has been 31 years since I graduated from high school. I figured the cost of an education at my alma mater had risen, but when I checked out the school website to see what tuition was these days, I got the shock of my life. Here is the current tuition schedule, not including books and other fees, for the 2014-2015 school year:

TUITION 2014-2015
Elementary School (K-6) $27,690
Secondary School (7-12) $32,690

How does anyone begin to afford such an expensive education?

For those of you who are curious about my alma mater, you can click on the link here:

http://www.campbellhall.org/index.aspx

Ditching Chapel

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Many of you don’t know that I attended an Episcopalian school for nine years, from fourth through twelfth grade, and that part of my daily school experience included attending chapel. During chapel, we would sing hymns, recite the Lord’s Prayer (just hearing “Our Father, who art in heaven…” triggers the rest of the prayer in my well programmed brain) and listen to a daily sermon from our dean. Every year during the school’s Homecoming, we would visit St. John’s Cathedral, and though I enjoyed the beauty and majesty of the church, it was all sort of lost on me because at my core, I wasn’t an Episcopalian. Every year we observed Lent, and I agreed to give up something during that period that could be considered a vice for a child.

By the time I reached high school, I was fed up with being force fed a religion I did not practice outside of school, so I gradually began to rebel. When we were in chapel, I would refuse to sing the hymns or recite the Lord’s Prayer. By the time I was a junior, I had fallen into the occasional habit of completely ditching chapel and taking that 45 minute period to hang out in a quiet spot on campus with my best friend Diane or with my friend Shari. Though there were a couple of occasions in which we nearly got caught and spent a few tense minutes standing on toilet seats in the bathroom stalls and stifling nervous giggles, we never got caught. Diane was my best friend, soul sister, bad influence (according to her mom and mine), partner in crime and fellow bad Christian, whereas Shari was a defiant Jewish girl forced to attend a strongly Christian school. Between these two girls, I had rationalized the chapel-skipping behavior quite convincingly.

Looking back at the nine years of chapel which helped to shape me, I am actually grateful for the experience. I may not be a religious person, and I may not attend chapel or go to church, but I truly believe that the Christian environment I was exposed to gave me structure and discipline and helped me to find my way spiritually. Even when I dodged chapel, I learned a great deal about friendship. Teenagers need to challenge constraints every once in a while to help them find their own way.

Loose Change

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Image-quarters-on-a-table

A few days after my dear friend and meditation teacher Rob died, several people told me that those who have recently departed will often leave loose change as a way of communicating. I thought it was interesting but didn’t give it much attention, partly because I was too busy grieving and reflecting, and partly because I had never experienced such a thing. My heart was heavy over Rob’s passing, and I was trying to adjust to the emptiness I felt, knowing I would never see Rob as a living being again.

About two weeks after that, I came downstairs to the garage, and when I grabbed my handbag from the office, I noticed 3 quarters sitting near the edge of my desk. I am not the type of person who ever leaves change lying around, so when I saw the quarters, I chuckled and said Rob’s name. A couple of days later, I came home from the gym, went upstairs to my bedroom, and saw 3 quarters at the foot of my neatly made bed, in a deliberate triangular configuration. Again, I chuckled and said Rob’s name.

Another week or so passed with no change lying around. Then one day when I had been in the house most of the morning, I walked into the garage, got into my car, and noticed two quarters and a dime on the passenger’s seat. No one had sat in the passenger’s seat for over a week, and my food bag was the only “occupant” of that seat since then. Yet the coins sat on the seat in plain sight, not wedged in the crevice but squarely on the seat. If you ask me now whether I believe in the idea that those who have died visit us and leave signs such as loose change, I will emphatically say that I do.

While writing this blog I did a search to see what other people had written on this subject, and came across this incredible post. Please read it if you want to read a remarkable story of one woman’s experience with finding dimes.

http://www.thedailyawe.com/2011/09/spiritual-significance-of-dimes/