Broken—and set free

Last year my weighing scale broke when I bumped it ungently with the vacuum cleaner. I swear I hadn't meant to demolish it. But ever since then I've had a peculiar sense of lightness...hehe. What I don't know can't weigh me down.

Never one to toss anything without first examining it for possible repurposing, I decided the shattered pieces were suitable for a mosaic in some distant future. In this imagined future, I have ticked off everything on my queue of projects. Everything I have ever hoarded has been upcycled and listed in my etsy shop. I know, I dream big.

The present moment, however, gifted me with a doozy of an insight. Behold! Broken glass (tempered glass?) breaks in a pattern similar to dragonfly wings! What intelligent design ; )

If I'd sat there with a Sharpie and doodled, I wouldn't have come up with such a pretty pattern. The attempt at intricacy would've driven me nuts. My hand would cramp. And I'd get a little high from inhaling Sharpie fumes, because it seems to me every time I break out the Sharpie stash the wind is crazy blowing out there and I don't want to crack the window open. I am not imagining this. See what happened the last time? Read this.

Anyway, my mind went where my hand wouldn't. That sounds like it might have erotic overtones, but no, I wasn't going there. I merely mean I did another free association in my head, and connected the following dots:

• A pane of glass seems smooth and perfect. Then it breaks, and all that strength is revealed to be an illusion.
• All the shattered pieces lie there rejected, waiting to be swept into the trash bin.
• The hand that swoops down to gather these wretched pieces can just hold on a minute there, and maybe admire the fascinating shape the glass has taken on in its new "normal."
• There is a similarity between the painful breaks in this smooth, formerly perfect life, and something in nature—a dragonfly's wings.
• The life that does not resist the bad breaks has a more graceful glide into the moment's ease. There are worse things than finding out you have it in you to fly.

Why not April Cools Day?

Click on the picture to enlarge enough to read those blasted tiny words on the right.

Stream of consciousness blogging. I had this near-creepy picture from a site for free images. I knew I'd find a use for it someday. April Fools Day is that day.

I went through the alphabet to pick a word that rhymes with "fool." Drool came to mind first, then ghoul, mule...I was sidetracked. So I went back to A and started over until I settled on "cool."

The mannequin's hair reminds me of wool roving. How I even know the term is because I've wasted the vestiges of my youth perusing etsy too much.

As with many blog posts, I started out intending to do a Facebook status update. Then I thought, "Well, it will get likes, but those are cheap and tawdry because they may be liking the picture, which I didn't create, instead of the caption. I'll not be able to separate the true likes from the cheap likes. Also, I haven't posted on the blog in a while."

So this is appearing on both blog and Facebook, as I seem to have very little crossover in readership between those two platforms (look at that, I sound like the social media self-proclaimed experts, spouting "platform" like it's part of my daily vocabulary.) If you're seeing this on the blog, you're seeing the behind-the-scenes of its posting. See, better to read the blog than skim Facebook.

Do you still send paper greeting cards? Do you spend way too much time picking the one that says just the thing you want to say, only more perfectly? And then do you hover over the blank inside, agonizing over what to write in your own words? This is how to start writing: You do free association. This is how this blog post was written.

The difference between courage and confidence—and which is better

The other night at the dance studio, a co-teacher and I were discussing his professional dance partner, an immensely talented young woman. She can sing, too. Boy, can she ever. I've seen videos of her performing, and I am blown away by her stage presence and full-bodied voice. So I was surprised when he said she's not very confident about her singing. You'd never know from watching her.


I am timid about a lot of things. Networking. Selling. Asking for a favor. Meeting someone new. Accepting charity. Cooking for a crowd. Driving with my husband in the passenger seat. Diving into the deep end.

Despite that, I've done all of those things out of necessity. I've also done things that scare other people—without hesitating. Jumped out of a plane. Ziplined at 140 feet up across seven miles in a pine forest in Alaska. Given countless speeches in public. Danced in the middle of a mall in broad daylight. Eaten snake, frog's legs, boar, and fermented duck eggs. Stood up to a bully. Abandoned everything familiar to move 8,000 miles away from friends and family, without job prospects or a plan.

I am not a confident person. That makes everyone else seem so sure of themselves next to me.


But I don't need confidence to do things I need to do. I bet you have a few things on your list that you'd really, secretly, want to try. If you ever get the nerve up.

A timid person like me would risk my own life to save another's. Because it needs to be done. Because it's courage that will propel me forward, not confidence.


See, that's the difference between confidence and courage. You can't afford to wait to develop confidence. Not with the things you've got to get done. It's in the getting them done that your confidence blossoms.

Courage, though, is already in you. Maybe you're too cowardly to admit it. What a paradox.