May 2013
2 posts
Jo →
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February 2013
0 posts
January 2013
5 posts
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living, I want to know what you ache...”
– Jon Blais (via rainydaysandblankets)
Words to get through a hard day
The Desiderata by Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself...
“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with...”
– Tom Waits
December 2012
5 posts
Children wake up,
hold your mistakes up,
before...
The times, they are a changin'.
It’s that time of the year again - the time where we take stock of the high and low points of the preceding year and pledge to make something more of ourselves in the upcoming one. January is a blank canvas, an opportunity for reinvention, for washing out the old, and fostering in the new. Call it mundane or cliche, but we all do this to a certain degree. We are conditioned for it. 2012 was good...
Self-talk
I will never be a size 6 It’s not very likely that I will ever be comfortable in a bathing suit I will be forever camera-shy But….. I have run a thousand miles I have lunged a million lunges
I have skated more laps than I could possibly count I have done things I never thought possible and that outweighs any negative self-talk that I can come up with
Listen
November 2012
7 posts
Inspiration shortages
It was Ernest Hemingway who famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”. Oh, Ernest. You make it sound so easy, but then, you were a scoundrel and scoundrels have the luxury at looking at their own lives for material. You were a womanizing drunkard. You were selfish and jealous of others talent. I still love you though.
Listen
I'll start my diet tomorrow.
The new and improved Amberlee will be a force to be reckoned with.
There will be more:
Reading Writing
Picture taking
Roller skating
Follow through
Water drinking
There will be less:
Social networking
“But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty...”
– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Consolation prize
My pre-adolescent years were nothing if not awkward. I was a tomboyish sort with ill fitting jeans and grubby hands. I had unruly hair and zero interest in learning how to use a curling iron. I had no sense of style, unless you consider baggy flannel shirts and high tops to be passable which I suppose, for the early to mid 1990s, it was. To make my situation even more cringe-inducing, I didn’t...
“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you...”
– Ernest Hemingway (via -jamesfrancospenis)
October 2012
4 posts
“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.The...”
– Into the Wild, John Krakauer
“The brain may take advice, but not the heart. And love, having no geography,...”
– Truman Capote
Back on point
With summer neatly tucked away and hibernating until further notice, it is high time to get back on the proverbial horse and re-focus. I have been somewhat of a stranger on tumblr as of late, but I’ve been swept up in a flurry of activity. If you have been following the course of this blog, you will know that the summer season has long been a source of inspiration for me. I flourish in the warmth,...
September 2012
1 post
“Throughout August, with almost sadistic joy, I watched summer slowly die. I...”
– Henry Rollins: The Column! Summer Be Gone! - Los Angeles - Music - West Coast Sound (via rbateson)
August 2012
9 posts
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I’ve...”
– Georgia O’Keefe
A new routine
The surge of August heat has encouraged water and lots of it - for drinking and for basking. My weekends have been all about venturing out and finding a new water source. Give me a lake, a river, an ocean, a reservoir. It doesn’t matter. As long as it is fit for swimming.
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald (via highflyinbirdd)
“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most...”
– Henry James
Are you there, Tumblr? It's me, The Things Left...
Hello, kind friends and readers. It’s nice to see you again. I haven’t posted in so long that my writing muscles feel stiff and crotchety. In fact, I haven’t logged on in weeks and have had no way of knowing what my virtual friends and not-so-secret Tumblr crushes are up to. It isn’t fledgling interest that has kept me away, but rather a lack of time. I’ve been rushing through my work week in an...
July 2012
6 posts
RIP Ray Bradbury
Dear Ray, Can I call you Ray? I mean, I hate to be presumptuous, but I like to think that it would be perfectly acceptable to be on a first name basis with one of America’s most revered authors. Our relationship is and always has been one sided, but I suppose I feel a powerful connection to you, or at least to your work. I have lost count of the number of times I have lovingly held my trusty...
Clean slate
Who knew that famed 80’s actor/comedian Bob Goldthwait was so bitter? I certainly didn’t, or at least not until I watched God Bless America. It wasn’t a particularly good movie, but the point was apt. Frank, a down on his luck 40 something leads a lonely life and is hit with one stroke of bad luck after another. As an insomniac, Frank spends his nights watching television and not just any...
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
– C.S. Lewis
June 2012
11 posts
I must have done something pretty amazing because...
First world problems
Imagine my excitement when I saw a random facebook advertisement for an upcoming Pearl Jam concert. Pearl Jam. My band. A long-standing item on my life to-do list. Most of the time, I really hate how facebook and their staff of geniuses have me, my preferences and the desires of my heart pinned down so perfectly. How dare they track my every movement with their complex algorithms? How dare...
Is it too late for a do-over?
The desktop picture on my computer used to be a Post-It note that read “Remember: working here means that your dreams are slowly dying”. I liked the dark humor and in no way did I think that the message was aimed at me personally. At least not at first. Over time, whenever I fired up my computer for the work day or found myself staring at the screen while waiting for a client to...
Reaching into the vaults
Would the 18 year old version of yourself like the person that you are now? This is a question that I consider often and one that I posed to the world of facebook earlier this afternoon. If you are being completely honest with yourself, you should be a bit uncomfortable when you dig down deep to find your own answer. My 18 year old self was excited and hopeful for things to come. In 1998, I was...
“…..It struck me that when you’re asked your favorite day of the year, there’s a certain hubris in giving any day in June as your answer. It suggest that the particulars of your life are so terrific, and your command over your station so secure, that all you could possibly hope for is additional daylight in which to celebrate your lot”. Amor Towles, The Rules of...
“In these bodies
We will live
In these bodies
We will die
Where you invest...”
– Mumford and Sons
All quiet on the Western front
I am sad, friends and kind readers. I have been wrestling with a difficult decision for some time and I pulled the metaphorical trigger. There is no going back and despite the sadness I feel now, I am relieved that I am no longer torn to such a degree. Details to follow, but first, I need adequate time to lick my wounds.
“In Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound”. It’s a...”
– Don Draper, Mad Men (via 4788)
Oh, Monday. Why can't you be more like your...
The weekends lay before me, like a languid, never ending event. So rife with expectation and possibility. What do I do instead of carping the diem? I log on to facebook, tumblr and pinterest and then before I fully realize what is happening, the weekend is over. Social media is such a fickle, tricky beast. How can I be social in real life if I am spending all of my time being social via the...
