Life

Road Trip, Day 4 – Detours, Drinks, and Dining

~ Kim Olgren ~ Leave a comment

My, my how time flies. Day 3 of our trip was kind of rolled into day 2 of my Road Trip blog entries, touring the southern casinos on the strip like Mandalay Bay, Luxor, and Excalibur as well as losing the guys in M & M world. Yesterday was a pool day, relaxing and relatively uneventful except for some minor sunburn and some very tipsy ladies at the pool providing entertainment for all. I make it a policy never to do writing at the pool it’s usually the one and only day I get to relax on vacation. Now that we’re all caught up, onward-ho!

One of the ceilings at the VenetianToday we toured some of the pricier casinos on the strip. We began our excursion at the Venetian, one of my favorites for over-the-top impersonation of a real location (complete with canals and gondoliers). After parking the car we immediately went to Harrah’s, one of the older casinos on the strip (we saved the Venetian for last, because that’s where we parked, of course). I wanted to try Paula Deen’s new restaurant so we headed to Harrah’s. It wasn’t until we stopped and asked for directions then double-checked information on the web via my smartphone that we realized that there were other Harrah’s besides the one in Vegas, which doesn’t have a new Paula Deen restaurant. Who knew? Not me. I guess I haven’t been far enough south yet. Plan B then, right-o? Plan B became the buffet at the Mirage, but not before we got ourselves lost outside somewhere in no man’s land on the long side of Ceasar’s Palace.

It started out innocently enough; we were at the shops at the forum and followed a hallway to a door going outside.

H&M at The Shops at the Forum at Ceasar's Palace, can you pick out the real people? Hint, they are not floating in mid-air.

We ended up in a parking lot and my hubby just thought we’d walk down a little ways and go around the corner to the front of the building. You know, just a little detour. Of course nothing in Vegas is what it seems. After what seemed like miles of walking and several staff back doors to which we could not gain admittance, we finally lucked out and came across a public door which led us down another hallway and back to the shops at the forum. The entire time we were walking outside, the Mirage was mere steps away, mocking us with its singing birds in its heavily treed gardens from the other side of a great wall. In hindsight, if you have to hold the door open, deciding whether you really want to be on the outside of it before you let it close and lock –  you probably shouldn’t be going out that door if you’re not an employee of the casino. I’m just sayin’. Please, learn from my hubby.

After we finally arrived at the Mirage we found we weren’t all that hungry yet (probably due to the harrowing detour adventure). So we sat in the Sports Bar and had a couple of much needed drinks. Now this seems innocuous enough but anyone who has visited the Las Vegas strip south of Circus Circus knows that casino drinks and food can get quite pricey, especially in casino restaurants and bars. Our couple of drinks each at the Sports Bar cost us a pretty penny. Sure you can get coupon books and stuff, but sometimes you get stuck with a stiff bill anyway. I already knew the buffet was, by far, not the cheapest in town, but this was why we had saved up for this trip for a year. Now that the boys (and by boys I mean my hubby and my son) were sufficiently buzzed we headed to the buffet.

The buffet at the Mirage is quite probably my most favorite place in Vegas to dine. I try to eat pretty clean most of the time, but we’ve found that doing our own cooking in our condo is not conducive to the run-around-like-a-chicken-with-it’s-head-cut-off kind of vacations we take. So we end up eating at local restaurants or worse, casino restaurants or buffets. After a couple days of this my body is literally screaming for fresh veggies, fruits, and other good stuff. The buffet at the Mirage is one of the few places I’ve found on strip that has fresh food such as this. Not just a salad bar with some cantaloupe, honeydew, salad greens and your choice of three dressings, but custom mixed salads from fresh ingredients you choose, a raw bar, a small sushi bar, meats such as truffle roasted chicken and prime rib, and international selections. I love this buffet so much I could eat there every day. I’ve also noticed that other casinos have followed the Mirage’s example and changed to somewhat of the same format. However, no one comes close to the Mirage’s buffet although I haven’t tried newer places like Aria. I guess that’s a testament to how well the Mirage’s buffet works. I’m not going to kid you, it’s not cheap. Dinner is around $30 USD per person, but more worth it than any other buffet and most restaurants on the strip.

Once we finished our late dinner we headed back to the Venetian, tooled around the shops and casino then headed down south to the condo at the Grandview. Hubby and son went across the street to play poker and blackjack at South Pointe while I stayed behind at the condo to do some writing. You have probably noticed by now that I don’t talk a lot about gambling. I’m not much of a gambler and I’m perfectly content to let the guys go do their thing and stay at the condo and write or wander. I’ve gambled one time so far, on an Aliens slot machine and it gobbled up $15 in a matter of seconds. I know that’s not a lot of money, but I really detest feeding my money straight to a one-armed-bandit. There was one machine at the Luxor that would pay me every time I played it. My hubby would sit me down in front of it when he was running low on craps funds, but I haven’t been very lucky this trip and I haven’t been to that particular machine. There’s more to do in Vegas than gambling, there really is!

Day 6, we leave for L.A. We’re doing and overnight side trip for our son (an aspiring movie editor) to see the town and check out a studio on a tour. He’s never been to a city this big and he’s never seen an ocean so this should prove to be a very interesting side trip indeed. The water may be a little cold, but it’s supposed to be in the upper 70’s so the weather should be good. I’m looking forward to seeing my son’s reaction to the ocean after growing up landlocked in Colorado. I was 40 before I saw an ocean and although I love the mountains and they are in my blood, and I couldn’t dream of living without them, the ocean proved itself quite powerful too. Stay tuned…

Do you have a favorite vacation destination? What makes it your favorite? If you could travel to any destination in the world where would it be and why?

Road Trip Day 2 – Craters, Canyons, and Casinos!

~ Kim Olgren ~ Leave a comment

After a somewhat restful night at the new Best Western in Winslow, AZ. We arose at the crack of dawn to grab some breakfast and head back toward the open road and the Grand Canyon, but first, we had to make a stop at a key location in one of the books I’ve been working on. Meteor, AZ, home of the largest confirmed meteor impact site in the world, is truly a big hole, which would lend perspective to our next destination that hubby had deem a “big hole in the ground”. We arrived at the site of the meteor impact a half hour before they opened. Once inside we took mass amounts of pictures of said hole in the ground and I gained some details that are usually left out of most reports on the place (for my book, yay!). As we were snapping picture after picture of the crater in the desert, it occurred to me how many pictures of a big hole in the ground does one really need? This begged the question Why DO tourists have to take so many pictures of stuff? I guess it has to do with trying desperately to make memories and to get that perfect shot. This is as close as I could get of the meteor crater in Meteor, AZ at 8am in the morning.

Once we saw this big hole in the ground we were on to see an even bigger one that was millions of years in the making as opposed to the ten seconds it took to make the meteor crater. This was my third trip to the Grand Canyon and I was still looking forward to seeing it. It’s never the same and always beautiful.

This time there was some snow and clouds were curling over the north rim. We went up to the top of the watchtower and stopped at many of the viewpoints along the way. We came in from the southwest this time so we got to see the canyon that the little Colorado River was carving too, plus we got to drive through part of the painted desert. The vistas at the Grand Canyon are so magnificent that pictures, I don’t care how professionally done they are, never do it justice…and there are some gorgeous pictures out there. We spent a mere three hours exploring some of the southern rim. One day I would like to go down to the bottom.

Leaving the Grand Canyon behind we headed to our time share in Vegas that would be our home base for the next week. Our drive to Vegas was nearly uneventful except for a fox that ran across the interstate in front of us looking at us like we were the ones that were in the wrong place. The terrain went from desert to mountainous and we managed to squeeze in a stop at the Hoover Dam just before sunset. Whew! It had already been quite a day!

Having a slushy with my sonWe stay at the Grandview Resort, it’s about eight miles south of the main strip so when we want to get away from all the hustle and bustle of the strip and get some peace and quiet by the pool, we can. The Grandview is located next to an up and coming hotel/casino called South Point. Time shares have their pros and cons, but this one is nice, has worked out pretty well for us, and we got it dirt cheap. After settling in, we took our newly turned twenty-one son on a quick drive up and down the strip. Then we stopped at New York, New York for some New York style pizza after which we promptly went back to our rooms after midnight and crashed. Hard. Until morning. Ryan, our son was wide-eyed and somewhat overwhelmed, I think, by all the glitz, glam, and people on the strip, but that hasn’t stopped him from going off on his own to find his dad over at the casino as I write this. Good for him!

Stay tuned…more later….

Have you been to Vegas? What’s your favorite thing?

Blizzards, Broke Vehicles, and Big Birds. Oh My!

~ Kim Olgren ~ 3 Comments

Flying vehicle parts, blizzards, and giant black birds that won’t move from their meal in the middle of the interstate. Such are the hazards of road trips. Still, we are having a good time.

Dust haze, northern NMWith a serious storm heading into the northern mountains of Colorado hubby thought that we’d avoid any adverse weather because we were swinging far south, heading over Raton Pass, through New Mexico, and into Arizona. Weather reports were predicting the storm would be well north of us. Nope. We ran into severe, high winds in southern Colorado and New Mexico. We had a headwind of 40mph, which was seriously screwing with our gas mileage, but it was about to get worse. Somewhere in the middle of the New Mexico desert we lost the plastic cover of one running board. It blew clean off the truck, but not before clipping the back end and scraping up the side of my pretty, red Trailblazer. We’re hoping it will buff out. As for the running board, it became a highway casualty (memorial service time and date to be determined).

Blizzard Central NMWe came to accept that the high winds were going to be with us for the day and cautiously passed semi after semi (the double-trailer FEDEX trucks were especially scary) as we continued from Las Vegas, NM and on to Santa Fe where we stopped for lunch. We walked around the downtown shops, my son and I snapping pictures of anything that caught our fancy. We asked one of the local shop owners for a suggestion for lunch. She suggested a Mexican restaurant a little off the beaten path that was about a block away. The air was a chilly 50-something degrees so we were kind of thankful to get inside. We were not disappointed La Cocina De Doña Clara was clean, the service was good and the food was wonderful. Great chile rellenos! Thank you!

La Cocina De Dona Clara

Back on the road outside of Santa Fe, my son now driving, we ran into more bad weather. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a blizzard that wasn’t supposed to be happening. Visibility had been bad with all the dust kicked up in the wind between Colorado and Santa Fe, but now we were driving in near white out conditions for nearly four hours. My son was ever the trooper and handled the adverse driving conditions like a pro (so proud!). The storm finally let up somewhere near Gallup, NM.

With hubby behind the wheel once again, we headed for the Arizona border. He thanked our son for driving through all the crappy weather for him. Ha! We ran into intermittent brief snow showers but the drive to the border remained mostly uneventful. Of course that changed once we crossed into Arizona.

About thirty minutes into Arizona we ran across some birds feasting on some road kill that happened to be just left of center on the two-lane road. As we sped closer and closer to the group they refused to budge. We were now playing chicken with…well…anyway the birds scattered at the last possible second. I was sure I was going to have another bird versus vehicle trauma only with a lot more, larger birds. The first episode being a small bird that was split in two right before my eyes on the antenna on the front of our vehicle as we traveled down a Kansas highway. Yuck. These huge black birds (I’m guessing crows or ravens) were apparently both much larger and smarter and managed to get the heck out of our way. Whew!

We were now in the final stretch of our trip with only about 3 hours to go until we got to our destination for the night in Winslow, Arizona. All along there have been Indian shops, billboards for local attractions like ice caves in volcanoes, petrified forests, and fossils. We have so far managed to avoid these tourist traps. I figure since our ultimate destination is arguably the largest tourist trap in the country, we probably don’t need to stop at every roadside shop.

Eagles fans! Look who's standing on a corner in Winslow AZ!Finally safely ensconced in our hotel room in Winslow after dinner at the El Falcon restaurant we all went to our respective laptops. I don’t know what the other two were doing, but I put the finishing touches on this, the beginning of a great road trip story. Can’t wait until tomorrow!

Tune in tomorrow for news and stories from the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, NV! Have you taken any road trips? What was your favorite stop? Why?

Road Trip! Is There Such Thing as a Vacation From Writing?

~ Kim Olgren ~ 2 Comments

From Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way to Stephen King, author of On Writing and many a creepy tome, to Alan Watt, author of The 90-day Novel and founder of the L.A. Writers Lab, the general consensus of most writers seems to be “write everyday”. Being a brand new blogger working on two novels while job hunting I became a bit concerned about how this was going to work with being on vacation for about a week and a half. I didn’t want to lose momentum on my novels and I sure as heck didn’t want to disappoint the modest following I had worked hard to build on my barely-off-the-ground blog. In short, I don’t think that writers get, nor do they really want, vacations from writing. Eek! I just figured out something new about myself…I’m one of those writers! <Panic! Danger Will Robinson. Danger! Beep! Beep! Woop! Woop!> Wait.

This is where the Online Learning System (OLS) I chose for obtaining my college degree came in ever so handy. With the exception of a vacation in Mexico, I attended school on holidays, weekends, and while on vacation. It wasn’t that hard because my virtual classroom allowed me to attend school almost any time and anywhere I wanted to. Of course there are caveats, price being one, of course. However, successfully completing a degree program online also requires a tremendous amount of dedication and discipline. Coordinating far-flung teams of people to work on papers and projects through online chat threads was both quite challenging and quite rewarding (you try coordinating the completion of a 20 slide PowerPoint presentation in four days on the pros and cons of a free economy for a team consisting of people in three different U.S. time zones, a soldier on a ship in the gulf and someone who barely types in English in Dubai, whew!) . The pressure was constant with compressed courses lasting only five weeks and an individual assignment as well as a team assignment due every week. Papers averaged 1500 words and had to original and APA formatted, with proper references and citations. Who said all online schools are diploma mills???

As I thought about the similarities between OLS and writing in general I found the task of keeping up with my writing much less daunting. Hey, looky there, the $300,000 education is finally paying off (yes, that was sarcasm). True, there are certain environments that are more conducive to creativity, but the same can be said for studying. Where I’ve found I could concentrate on studying with grandkids, kids, dogs, cats, and barely controlled chaos going on, when writing I needed a lot more quite. Many of the tactics I used for school on the road I’ll be using for writing. I have some tools that will be helpful and there are others, such as an I-pad, with its 8hr battery life that I can only wish I had.

Our road trip begins in Colorado Springs heading to the Grand Canyon. The next leg of our journey takes us to Las Vegas, NV. A two-day side trip during our week in Vegas will take us to Los Angeles, CA. Then it’s back to Vegas for a couple of days before we drive home.

Here’s my plan:

I will use certain downtime to my advantage much like Brian Johnson’s mother told him to do in The Breakfast Club. Only when I’m relaxing by the pool or in the ocean or at the black jack table; that is just what I’m going to do. Relax. Hours of riding in the car and getting up a little early, and hanging out in restaurants will give me plenty of time to write on my laptop, in a notebook, or jot down flashes of inspiration in my mini notebook I keep in my bag.

I will not allow myself to stress about writing, word counts, or anything else of the sort and hence ruin my vacation.

I will allow my vacation to keep my creative fires kindled by enjoying all the things I will get to do and see, then writing about them.

Three simple rules, that’s it. I’m not looking for balance here. As Danielle Laporte, one kick-a$$, gorgeous, accomplished woman with her head screwed on straight, tons of charisma, and a fabulous spiritual philosopher says, Life balance is a myth, and the pursuit of it is causing us more stress than the craving for balance itself. I almost got caught up in the life balance trap planning for this vacation and my writing. Instead I’ve chosen to go with the flow, write when I can (because I love it and…well…it’s fun!), and have as much other fun as I possibly can (because…well…it’s fun!). I am a reserved person most of the time which is often mistaken as disinterest by the people around me, but inside my head is a myriad of thoughts and feelings spinning all manner of stories from what’s going on around me. To me, this is great fun, whether I’m in a casino, on the road, in an airport, on a plane, at home, by the pool, working, etc. the stage in my head is always active.

I’m looking forward to vacation and sharing some of what I see, think, and eat along the way. I’m also looking forward to writing about it.

How do you stay on track with writing while away from home? Is it hard or easy to stay focused? Do you tend to procrastinate? Suggestions welcome!

What’s your favorite place to eat in L.A.? In Vegas? I’d love to hear from you!

Where Have All the Good Mannered People Gone?

~ Kim Olgren ~ 3 Comments

 Warning! The following is a rant and may be offensive to barbarians, heathens, savages, and other people your mother may have accused of being uncivilized and possibly used in comparison to others.

I’ve been wondering where common manners have gone. I feel like I’m some kind of old-fashioned relic just because I expect people to have manners. I’m not talking about middle-ages chivalry here or some strange guy throwing his brooks brothers down so I can walk over a puddle, just the everyday stuff, like holding the door for the next person or for someone who obviously needs it because they are handicapped or have their hands full. I’m talking about a simple please and thank you. I’m talking about asking instead of demanding, responding with a simple yes or no when you are asked to attend an event. I’m talking about dencent table manners and chewing with your mouth shut. Where have all the good mannered people gone?

Here’s a story from when my kids were younger, before I had a real cell phone and when many of my friends didn’t have one. My Daughter was about 12 and my son was about 9. We were on our way home from a school function. I was wearing a dress and heels and the kids were tired out. It was dark and the roads were a slushy mess from a recent snowstorm. We were barely a block away from the school when my tire went flat. Now let me just say that I am in no way some damsel in distress that doesn’t know how to change a tire. My dad made sure of that. Thanks dad! 🙂 However, I was in a dress and heels and had two young children in the car.

I pulled off onto a neighborhood side street, a cul de sac, I think it was. A few minutes later a few men came out of one of the houses to see what was up. I couldn’t believe that not a one of them lifted a finger or so much as offered to change the tire for me even when I had a little trouble with one of the lug nuts and told them I had the little ones in the car. Although one was kind enough to hold a flash light for me. After all, they were in jeans and boots and I was now squatting in the slush, ice melt, and muck ruining my dress and my heels. I certainly wasn’t going to ask since I was perfectly capable of changing the tire myself, but where were the manners?

On more than one occasion either my husband or I have invited someone over or out somewhere well in advance so that they had time to plan and RSVP only to have them hem-haw around and never hear a definitive from them and find them absent from wherever said invitation was to. Sometimes we’ll even try to make contact a day or two before to no avail. I ask you, where are the manners? A simple yes or no will do people.

When my kids got old enough to attend birthday and slumber parties at their friends’ houses I consistently received high praises from parents about how polite and thoughtful they were. Kids would come to my house and say “I want this” or “I want that” no please, no “may it”, just “I want”. Really? No wonder the other parents thought my kids were a joy to be around.

Don’t even get me started on the way kids dress in public with their saggy pants and wearing their pajamas and slippers in public. I wasn’t even allowed out of my room until I was fully dressed except on Christmas day when I got to wear the pj’s that were picked out by my mother and given as presents to my sister and I the night before.

Yes, I admit, I was raised to have impeccable manners and that is in no way a bad thing. It’s a very good thing. Should good manners be taught in school? No way! Teachers have enough on their plates. Parents should be teaching and showing their kids good manners.

Instead of eating in front of the TV or worse, leaving the kids at the table alone to eat – sit down with them (and don’t get up until they’re done). Show them there is a time and place for everything. Show them how to eat without waving their fork all over the place dropping food all over the floor and playing at the table. Help them learn how to use their utensils and not shovel food into their mouths with their hands before they enter school. Show them how to use their napkin. Don’t let them get away with not saying please and thank you. Be consistent. Show them how to behave in public and enforce consequences when they don’t (hint, the rest of us shouldn’t have to be subject to the temper tantrum of your toddler because he didn’t get a nap before you took him to the high-priced, two hour King Tut exhibit). Suck it up and exit, with your child, stage left. Show them why wearing clothes that are inappropriate in public is rude (hint, the rest of us don’t want to see your son’s underwear or his crack while walking around at the mall and we don’t think hello kitty pajamas are the cool thing to wear to the grocery store). Teach them to take off their hat at the table. Teach them how to look someone in the eye when they speak. Teach them to use words and phrases like please, thank you, excuse me, may I, and sorry.

Show them how far a little bit of manners will take them, because manners is also the beginnings of tact, negotiation skills, communication skills, empathy, and learning to appreciate others.

Here’s the thing, kids should be encouraged to grow and explore and to be anything they want to be, but not at the expense of others and not as ignorant savages. Kids should have parents that care enough to show them how the world truly operates and how to function properly in it. Despite the fact that we all want our kids to be free, there are simple social frameworks required within society to facilitate healthy and productive relationships. Good manners are an essential part of this training.

Anyone else care to add their two cents?

An Attitude of Gratitude

~ Kim Olgren ~ 3 Comments
"Dancing with the Goddess" Original Artwork by Kim Olgren

When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears. – Anthony Robbins

As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary gratitude is the state of being grateful: THANKFULNESS. Well that cleared things right up didn’t it? Like many seekers, I believe the effects of gratitude are so much more than what this simple definition provides. Gratitude sets in motion wondrous and varied reciprocal actions for the person who sent out that little bit of gratitude to begin with. It’s truly amazing what a little gratitude can do.

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say ‘thank you? – William A. Ward

We don’t even have to wait until something happens to grateful for it. We can be thankful in advance for whatever it is we are envisioning for the future, in fact gratitude helps manifest the things we are working on bringing to life. Gratitude lightens the heart, helps to keep us grounded, and focuses our attention on the positive rather than allowing us to dwell on the negative. Life has its ups and downs, the trick is to find the things to be grateful for in the downs as well as the ups. If nothing else, we can be grateful for the lesson a down time has shown us.

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. – Oprah Winfrey

Gratitude is an essential requirement of healthy spirituality and a healthy mental state. Gratitude is an integral part of the life of every person who has had, is having, or will have a positive effect on humanity. Gratitude is one of the cornerstones of greatness. It doesn’t have to be the kind of change-the-face-of-humanity greatness of Mother Theresa. If you’ve managed to teach your children true, heartfelt gratitude or managed to touch someone’s heart with gratitude, you already possess greatness. You have an attitude of gratitude!

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” – Melody Beattie

Daily, mindful practice of gratitude changes our perspective on life and everything around us. If you keep a journal try incorporating five things you are grateful for every day. Another way to practice gratitude is to think of five things you’re thankful for before you go to sleep each night. Taking time to meditate on the concept of gratitude and the things you are thankful for is another way to bring more of it into your life. Make a point to say thank you…and mean it. Show genuine appreciation where it is due and show gratitude for the lessons you’ve learned.  It’s quite easy to find a myriad of ways to practice gratitude all through the day and it only makes each day, each life, better for you and those around you. How do you practice your attitude of gratitude?

For each new morning with its light, for rest and shelter of the night, for health and food, for love and friends, for everything Thy goodness sends. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can’t You Just Sit Still For Five Minutes!

~ Kim Olgren ~ Leave a comment

Did anyone else’s mother ever utter these words, or was it just me? What a concept. Life seems to expect us to be busy, busy, busy all the time, but what about purposefully being still? What? You mean meditation? Who has time for that? Perhaps this is part of what’s wrong with the world today. Many of us are buzzing around at light speed noisy and constantly focusing our attention on things outside of ourselves, our jobs, other people, grocery shopping, how badly the dog needs a bath, the kids are due for vaccinations; you name it, never taking the time to check in with what is going on inside. I know. I used to be one of those people. If more people spent just a little time being introspective, the perspective of the whole world could change. No, I haven’t been into the punch. It’s true.

Being still (meditation) is hard. Being still is not about activity; it’s about noticing, listening, breathing. It’s not about control; it’s about letting it all go. It’s not about thinking; it’s about being. It’s definitely not boring, but you do have to get out of your own way. You literally only have to sit still for five minutes every day to make a profound impact on your life and the lives of those around you. I’m pretty sure most people can make time for five minutes, but five minutes is an awfully tiny amount of time to keep track of, or is it? Heck, back when I was a lot younger and worked at Pizza Hut you could get a personal pan pizza in five minutes. That was when I first learned that five minutes was a lot longer than I thought it was. I could get a lot accomplished in five minutes. I could wipe down the salad bar, check on a couple of tables, and drop off some dishes in the kitchen, all well within five minutes.

So how come it’s so danged hard to sit still for five minutes. Well, what happens when I try to sit still is all these thoughts come rushing at me from all directions. Shoot, I still have a load of laundry in the dryer to fold, did I send off that email to mom, my boss, a coworker, writing ideas, my nose is itchy, where did I leave my water bottle, what am I going to make for dinner, what do I want for lunch…all flying at me at once. Trying to send them away only makes it worse. So I don’t send them away. These thoughts are only rushing at me because I’ve become quiet enough to listen. Each time a thought goes by I acknowledge it and say “okay” and go back to my meditation.

Meditation requires 6 easy things:

  • A quiet and safe place to minimize distraction
  • A willing attitude and spirit
  • Breathing
  • Acknowledgement
  • Letting go
  • A little chunk of time

When I was first learning to meditate and was only doing it for five minutes (and believe me, five minutes is plenty to start off with, work up to where you’d like to be in five minute increments). The first four minutes or so went something like this: Okay, breathe. Intention: feel the love… Momdaughtersonlaundryhusbandshoppingguiltyaggrivateddiabetesyuckyfeelingwarmfeelingohthat’sbetter breathe…what a mess! This is why meditation requires daily practice if you want to get results. I got better at letting go of the thoughts that weren’t my intention focusing on my intended target and my breath in a relaxed way. I was training my mind that it was time to meditate and telling ego that it was time to step aside and that I was in charge, not it. Soon I was meditating for much longer periods and/or more than once per day.

Some of the benefits of meditation for this average human include:

  • Better focus on tasks because my mind is better organized
  • It got easier to identify what I wanted out of a given situation because I’d focused on it through meditation and could identify every detail in an articulate manner
  • It got easier to use my intuition because I am more connected to my higher self and/or higher power (this is not about religion)
  • Clearly defining goals and issues got easier because I’d given them the time and consideration that they deserved instead of pushing them onto the back burner
  • Communicating my intentions, feelings, actions, etc. got easier because I could approach decisions from a place of power and confidence rather than fear, such as a fear of saying the wrong thing or what would happen if I made the wrong decision
  • Helps me stay calm and focused under pressure or in emotional situations

There are lots of different meditation techniques and yes, there’s an app for that. Most people find it easiest just to start with concentrating on their breath, in and out, in and out and going on from there. Go on, try it. As a mother, I’m asking you, “Can you just sit still for five minutes?”

What are your experiences with meditation? Have you tried it? If not what do you think about it?

Finding Truth

~ Kim Olgren ~ 2 Comments
The-Holstee-Manifesto
The-Holstee-Manifesto

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity. Having been unemployed for quite some time now, I’ve been given the opportunity for some serious self-exploration and introspection. Part of what I found is that I had moved away from my authentic self. Much like Joe Banks in the movie Joe vs. the Volcano, when I thought about myself I found I was boring. Now before I move on I should probably give some definition and background here. In this case we are talking about philosophical personal authenticity. Nah, that sounds too high falutin’ to me. How about I just didn’t feel like I was being true to myself anymore and that I wasn’t living anywhere near my potential. Although I suppose coming out of earning a bachelor degree in my 40s, attending full time classes online while still working full time could cause anyone’s head to spin off its axis. But it was more than that…I didn’t feel like “me” anymore.

The me I knew was happy, fun, and loved doing silly stuff like dressing up in full Renaissance attire and attending the local renaissance fair or feverishly finding new ways to irreverently celebrate the holiday season such as planting a seven foot tall Grinch in my front yard facing my friend’s house who never decorates for the holidays. I wasn’t doing anything of the sort anymore. I was going to work, going home, doing homework and sleeping. Once in a while the real me would peek out during a vacation or a visit with my grandkids, but for the most part I was all business, nose to the grindstone, too busy for life. For four years I even dropped my favorite thing, reading books. For four years I read nothing but text books. For four years I more or less disconnected with friends or family. It was just textbooks books and my laptop. I graduated with honors for that, but at what cost?

I find it hard to say without sounding cliché, but losing my job was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. Losing my job caused me to closely examine what I really wanted in life. Losing my job made made me ask myself the tough questions. It was the first time I had ever lost a job and I had a lot of feelings about that too. So in between the usual job search responsibilities I began looking at what I really wanted, what would make me psyched about life again, and get me some joy.

Notice there is no talk about money here. Money really wasn’t on my mind because I’ve always known that money doesn’t buy happiness. Happiness comes from within and truth is personally subjective. The problem was that I thought I had been working toward something that I would be happy doing, but I was wrong. I had failed. Okay, no biggie, not like that hadn’t happened before, this one just didn’t happen on my terms.

Once I figured out where I wanted to go next, why, and how it fit into my plans for a happy and healthy life, I was good to go. Now I’m looking forward to the next open door, curious about what is on the other side and rarin’ for a change, to get back to me. Does this mean that I get to leave the rat race? No, I’m still seeking a decent “day job” because I have responsibilities and commitments (namely student loans and bills to pay), and I accept that. What I will not accept is getting so lost in the forest that I abandon my own truth to wild predators. The way to finding my own authenticity and truth for me was to be still and really listen. It was all there, I had just drowned out the voice.

Have you ever lost your way on your personal path? How did you get back to you?