They tell you to breathe. So you do. They tell you not to worry. They’ll tell you that things will get better and you hope that they’re right. They tell you that everything will work itself out and that you just have to keep plugging (whatever that means).
Keep plugging?
Is that their best advice?
It is amazing to me. People are in the midst of so much. Pain hurts and at that moment, that’s all we feel. So, although the intention is great, it’s uncomfortable to be uncomfortable. However, my point is it’s okay to not be okay.

We live in this world that connects us to ideas and thoughts and feelings, which carry a sense of energy and direct us through our day. How we think or how we feel becomes the source of energy that gets us through the day. And here I am, with you, and off we go on this journey we call life. In a short while, both of us will be on our way. Each of us will experience life on an individual and unique platform.
In the simplest form, I introduce that today is another day on Project Earth. Once more, we are swarmed by people, places and things. We are surrounded by various ideas and different opinions. We are influenced and inspired by our social and professional circles. We have friends and loved ones, each with their own levels of importance and degrees of intimacy. Both you and I have our own intentions. We have our own intuition, suspicions, influences and agendas. You and I are part of a huge machine which is nothing more than the system of living.
This is life and, in this life, we will engage with all types of encounters. We will meet new people and compare them to old perceptions. We will undergo changes. We will grow. We will learn. We will come back to old ideas and say, “Ah, I had it right the first time.”
We will adapt and create a working narrative in our mind which has been formed by us through a series of experiences, opinions and assumptions as well as subconscious programs that exist beneath the surface level of our thinking.

Before I go on, I have to address the title of this entry. I say this because I have always wanted to be beautiful. I have always wanted to be wanted, to be included, invited and desired. Then again, I am all of this to some people. However, to myself, I struggled with this for years.

Who to be? How to act?
How to dress or what to wear?
These questions are bigger than we think.

There is a feeling that comes when someone who could not talk clearly or stand straight has somehow turned a corner and their eyes open in a way that was wider than before. It is of course by no one else’s doing or because someone urged or supported but instead, morning comes and it’s like a new day. The sun is shining. The wind is calm and suddenly, yesterday is gone.
The pain or the fears are overrun by a sense of reconciliation. Or better yet, this is when the mind comes to a specific realization which is impactful enough to spark a change. This is when people come to a moment of clarity. This is when people identify and understand and it’s like EUREKA!
“I got it now.”

Before getting to the trick, there was a lesson taken from a mental health first aid course that was memorable to say the least. The lesson came from a woman who broke down the 8-hour class into a four word process. She explained that our mental health is the way we live, love, laugh and learn. She called this the “4 L’s.” She explained anything that affects the way you live, love, laugh and learn is something that affects your mental health. I thought this was a brilliant explanation. In fact, I use the very same explanation in some of my own presentations.

It’s amazing how the morning comes and the sunrise can do beautiful things in the sky and I, me, or the long day ahead with all the compounded facts and misinterpretations are nothing more than a series of misunderstandings. But still, morning comes. No matter what the night before was like, good or bad, the sun rises. It’s been doing this for a really long time. The sky clears and here we are, facing another day down on Project Earth.

I remember an afternoon of my younger days and ah, the City, ah the City life, the variation of beautiful people and a walk from the Eastside to the Westside. I went from Downtown to Midtown still dressed in my outfit from the night before. I was on the verge of a new fascination or as it were, I was at the threshold of a new chapter. I was unaware that I was about to turn a page and that my life was about to unfold.
This was strange because this was on a Sunday afternoon which, to me, is a day like no other. To me, Sunday comes with shades of yellow – it’s a day in-between or better yet, Sunday is half weekend, half preparation for the week ahead and part recuperation from the long crazy nights of a man who faced his 30’s. But this particular Sunday was different.

I want to make friends with an unknown person, maybe somewhere down by the border between Texas and Mexico. Maybe we can sit somewhere and find a place to have a good bowl of soup. I can think of a thousand things like this as dreams or ideas, stories, or pieces of my next project as a work in progress. I say this because I, myself, am a work in progress. I am a body that continues to change. I am a mind that learns and grows. I am a child too. I am a dreamer in the heart of a person who is on the verge of turning 50.

It is March on Earth. Our side of the hemisphere is circling around to move closer towards the sun. Soon enough, the warmer months will lead to longer days, which I appreciate. However, there has always been a madness to me in the warmer months.
There is a strange sense of connection between the beaches and the sands and bodies who forget the oceans in the colder times. Friends out of convenience is how I view this. Of course, this is only an analogy between us.
Either way, I am here with you now. I am a person in the world. No better. No worse. I am writing this as an open letter to you, with hopes that this finds you at the perfect time. 

I had an idea for a long time but I never acted on it. I suppose my reasons are the same as why I never acted on most things that were out of my control. Safe to say that I am not alone with this.
Safe to say that my reasons why I failed to launch or resisted to dream were the same reasons why so many of us give way to the doubts in our mind.
However, in an effort to reach you (and I mean to really reach you) I would like to share a dream of mine which is slowly evolving and somehow coming to light.