Trust the Universe

I'm kind of a control freak. Don't look so shocked! Surely you knew this about me?

Over time I've found that the Universe has this annoyingly cheerful way of providing me with countless opportunities to learn the same lesson over and over again until it finally sinks in. Here's how it goes:

Universe: (presents something to me) Are you ready to deal with this? 

Me: Nope, not yet. 

Universe: Okay!

...time passes...

Universe: How 'bout now? Ready yet?

Me: Nope.

Universe: Okay!

...more time passes...

Universe: How 'bout now? Ready now?

Me: Definitely NOT now.

Universe: Okay!

...and so on and so on until FINALLY, I decide that I'm ready to deal with whatever glorious lesson the Universe wants me to learn.

As a control freak, the big lesson that I keep having the opportunity to learn is "Trust the Universe" or, for the religious folks out there "Trust God." Me, I'll take the Universe option...it rings truer in my brain.

What this looks like right now is me knowing, not just in my brain but in my heart, that everything ALWAYS works out. It may not look like I think it should, and it may not look like I want it to look, but really, it all works out exactly the way it's supposed to.

When I'm planning my husband's 40th birthday party and can't find a suitable venue after searching for a month, it will all work out.

When I get my period after our eighth month of attempted baby-making (doh!), it will all work out.

When I'm still getting horrible headaches even after almost seven weeks of upper-chiro treatment, it will all work out.

And deep down inside, I know it will, because it always has. I just have a hard time remembering sometimes, that's all. And so I know that the Universe will keep providing me with opportunities to remember. Thank you, Universe! :)

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Ultimate Blog Challenge!

The Universe has a funny (and awesome!) way of supporting me in having what I say I want.

I haven't been writing much lately, which has come up twice in the last week. The first time was last Tuesday, on a follow-up call with my winter writing group. I admitted to not doing a whole lot of writing, and noted that my coach and I were working on my schedule for April, and that I could incorporate time to write while doing so (which I didn't).

The second time was today in my call with my coach, when I owned up to not scheduling any writing time in my April schedule. My coach and I talked quite a bit about writing and in the end I committed to writing nightly (for the next week) about one thing I am grateful for in my life.

Fast forward a couple of hours and I'm trolling around on Facebook when I see my friend Deb post something about the Ultimate Blog Challenge, which started today. What's this? I asked myself, and did a Google search to find out.

A 30-day blogging challenge! Just what I need to get back into the groove of writing!! Thank you, Universe, for looking out for my needs and thank you, Facebook, for giving the Universe a way to communicate with me!

I hesitated for a few seconds before signing up. Do I really want to commit to 30 days of blog writing? Is this a good month for me to do so? Should I write on my personal blog or my coaching blog, or both? After all the necessary(?) hesitating was done, I signed up. Woohoo!

So fasten your seat belts and hold on...it's gonna be a fun month!! :)  Day one, DONE! Who wants to join me?

What Happens When Your Head's Not Screwed On Straight

A couple of weekends ago I was at a coach training, and I met this really cool lady who told me about how her head is literally not screwed on straight. She was having these chronic headaches for a few years and had seen a chiropractor and a physical therapist to no avail. She ended up going to see an upper cervical chiropractor who did some x-rays of her head and saw that her skull wasn't sitting on her atlas correctly, which could cause the headaches. At the time that she told me about this, she had been in treatment for about a month and was already having fewer headaches.

As she was telling me this, it was all sounding very familiar. The chronic headaches, the pain in the back of the head, the inability of other professionals to help ease the pain...

The Monday after that weekend, I Googled upper cervical chiropractors in San Diego and found one that I liked the look of. I got in to see them the next day for an evaluation. As part of the evaluation, they asked a lot of standard questions about the pain that I experience: how long has it been going on, how severe is it, how does it interfere with my life, etc.

What I realized from that appointment is that I've really compartmentalized how much pain I deal with. Most people (possibly including you) have no idea that I've had these chronic headaches for several years. It's not something I really talk about, unless you're in a helping profession and I'm hoping you can make the pain go away. And even then, I may downplay it. Mostly I just deal with the pain, take Advil when I need it, and go about my business.

But as I sat there describing all of the symptoms and details to the chiropractor, I found myself on the verge of tears. I think that in that moment I finally allowed myself to grasp and acknowledge how much pain I deal with, and how it affects my life. I sometimes joke about how the only thing that seems like it would bring relief from the headaches would be to have someone pound an ice pick into the back of my skull. As my physical therapist says, it's not normal to want that.

It was gratifying to find out that there is actually something going on with my neck/head. Things are rotated and tilted in ways that they shouldn't be. And not only are there arteries that carry blood to my brain that are possibly being squooshed, there could be all sorts of other things (including my jaw issues) being caused by these imbalances. The good news? It's FIXABLE!!! I've started treatment, and will be going three times a week for the next 6-8 weeks and should hopefully start to feel some relief soon.

So here's to getting my head screwed back on straight, and getting rid of the chronic pain once and for all!!

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Coaching Really DOES Work!

Well, duh, right? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be a life coach if I didn't believe that.This is really more of a reminder for me than a revelation.

For the last few months of 2012 I was in the "intellectual pursuit of coaching" (as Marni likes to say), meaning I was caught up in (or...stuck in??) the details and business end of coaching. As such, I've felt pretty disconnected from coaching itself.

In the last few weeks I've joined a coaching circle with some colleagues, so I'm both coaching someone and being coached by someone else. Additionally, I've started coaching a few of my friends for the fun (and practice!) of it.

From both sides of the coaching relationship, I'm reminded that having someone call you on your shit and hold you accountable for what you say you want in your life is extremely effective! I'm watching the friends that I'm coaching making great progress toward their goals, which is awesome and very gratifying. And on my own end, I'm seeing forward motion in areas that I've been super stuck on for months! (Hooray!!)

Here's the thing about coaching. You have to be willing to play full out and be a little uncomfortable in order for things to change. If you show up ready to push yourself, look at what's stopping you, and be held accountable, it's amazing what can happen!

Very excited to be back in the swing of things!! :)

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Scary Moments

I watched my husband get in an accident yesterday. It was scary as hell.

We'd left the house about the same time, me in the car and him on the scooter which he hadn't ridden in probably a month because of the cold weather. We pulled up to the left turn signal to get onto Mira Mesa Blvd. from our street, him in the inside left turn lane, me in the outside left turn lane.

Both of us were in the front of our lanes, and when our light turned green, we both started to turn left. At the same time, there were two cars on the opposite side of the street turning right onto Mira Mesa Blvd., and they both turned right on red, just as we were turning left at our green light. The woman in the outermost right turn lane turned across three lanes into the lane that Donovan had just turned left into, and she almost hit him. He managed not to get hit, but lost control of the scooter and went down, rolling over a few times after he hit the ground.

I watched all this happen.

I had seen the two cars turning right on red as I started to turn left, and I watched as the woman almost hit my husband, and then I watched as my husband hit the ground and rolled several times. I doubt that I'll ever be able to erase that image from my mind.

I had no idea what to do, and was scared out of my wits. I stopped my car in the middle of the lane and just honked my horn for what seemed like forever. I watched as Donovan lay on the ground for probably no more than two or three seconds, but I'm telling you it seemed like an hour.

With the help of some good Samaritans, we managed to get the scooter out of the road and got Donovan and my car off to the side. The woman who had almost hit Donovan had stopped a few hundred feet down the street but never got out of her car to see what happened. After a couple of minutes, she took off. One of the women who had stopped to help us took off after her and said she would bring her back.

We did our best to assess the damage to Donovan in the meantime. His jeans had ripped at the knee, where he had a big abrasion, his right hand was all scraped up on top, and the palm of his left hand was banged up pretty good. The thing that worried me most was that he said his chest hurt right in the middle and he'd had a little difficulty breathing at first.

I rinsed out his wounds with my water bottle as best I could, and it belatedly occurred to me that we should call the police. Donovan wouldn't let me call 911 since it wasn't an emergency, so I called the local police number. I was waiting to get through to someone when I saw a cop turning right onto Mira Mesa Blvd. I flagged him down and explained what had happened. He wasn't thrilled at first since he had been on his way to respond to another call, but he stayed and helped us anyway.

Our good Samaritan did in fact catch the woman who almost hit Donovan and brought her back to the scene. A HUGE thank you to her because without her we didn't have so much as a license plate number. What an amazing thing to do for a total stranger!! I hugged her before she left and she told me that she has a husband too, and she couldn't imagine what she would do if she saw him get in an accident.

To make a long story short (too late!), we did eventually get Donovan to Urgent Care. They x-rayed his knees and his chest (all good), cleaned out some of his wounds, gave him a prescription for Vicodin and sent us on our way (after about three hours). He's sore, and has some pretty bad pain in the knee area, and we didn't sleep much last night (thank God for HBO on Demand!).

I'm clear that we were VERY lucky that nothing worse happened to him. And as traumatic and scary as it was for me to witness the accident, I'm SO grateful that I was there and was able to take care of my husband. Still, in the quiet moments when there's nothing else going on in my head, I can't help but replay the sight of him rolling down the street, and it's still really scary. Hopefully it'll stop soon.

The Generosity of People

The generosity of people inspires and amazes me.

This holiday season I organized a gift drive for the homeless teens at the StandUp for Kids center in San Diego. I wanted to actually DO something out in the world instead of just talking about it, so I contacted the director of the San Diego StandUp for Kids center and arranged for her to get a needs/wants list from all the kids that were expecting to be around the center on Christmas. My goal was to make sure that each and every kid on that list (23 of them) had gifts to open on Christmas Day.

Once I had that list from her, I sent an e-mail out to almost everyone that I know, requesting their participation in my holiday project. I offered many ways to participate, from spreading the word to making a holiday card to donating money to buying a gift for a homeless teen to buying all the gifts for one specific homeless teen to buying gifts for the center. I also created a Facebook event and invited most of my Facebook friends, and we sent an e-mail out at Donovan's work, too.

I had my qualms about sending the e-mail out to some people on my list, either because they are Jewish and my letter talked about Christmas gifts for the kids, or because I didn't want them to feel obligated to spend money when they don't really have much to spare. I've struggled with this same thing in the past when doing fundraising, and I've always been surprised by who my largest supporters were.

At first the responses were slow to trickle in, and I had my doubts about whether we'd be able to fill all the requests on the wishlists, but Donovan encouraged me to have faith that it would all work out. More and more people started to respond, some sending in checks so that we could do the shopping for them, and some buying gifts themselves. My parents, supportive as always, made a very generous donation that allowed me to buy many things off the center's wishlist.

By this point I started to see things all coming together, with the enormous generosity of the people in my community. Then the wife of one of Donovan's work friends volunteered to post our project on her Facebook page and within an hour of her doing so, four of her friends contacted me and wanted to donate gifts. One woman involved her mother and mother-in-law, and another involved one of her friends from work. They more than filled up the back of my car with all the gifts they bought for homeless teens, and I was completely awed and inspired by the generosity of these total strangers!!

We delivered the gifts to the StandUp for Kids center in San Diego on Christmas Eve, and the kids were thrilled. Some of them even put on some of their new clothes and shoes immediately! Thanks to all the people that participated in this project, these homeless teens got to experience the generosity of strangers firsthand, an experience that will hopefully impact them in positive ways that we may never know.

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Benedict Ankle

My right ankle has turned on me, quite literally.

Yesterday during my tennis lesson, as we did the same drill we've done twice a week now for I don't know how many weeks, my right ankle bent under me and I felt something snap. Down I went, onto my ass, in an extreme amount of pain. Doug, my amazing tennis instructor, watched in horror as we replayed an eerily similar event from three years ago when my left ankle did the same thing. Last time, I got up and kept playing. Three years older and perhaps a little bit wiser, I decided that staying on my ass was a good idea, and I sat there while Doug went and got me some ice.

my swollen ankle (and pretty Christmas toes!)

I put on a brave face for Doug, since I could tell that he was feeling really guilty for my injury (which was totally not his fault!). We talked and laughed while I iced the ankle, and then I hobbled to the car using my tennis racquet as a cane. On the way home I called Donovan, and that's when the tears came. Mostly, I was just really pissed off at my body for betraying me this way, again. I work so hard to keep myself in good fitness, and my body is usually so willing to do just about anything I ask it to. The idea of not being able to walk, let alone play tennis, made me very very sad and angry.

We decided to go to urgent care to rule out any kind of break. It took a few hours, some x-rays and some time in a wheel chair (which Donovan got a huge kick out of) before we found out that I had a "second-degree sprain," meaning that I had torn many of the ligaments in my ankle, but not all of them. They put a removable splint on me, prescribed ice, elevation, Advil as necessary and staying off my foot as much as possible. They also gave me crutches, which I am thus far not particularly fond of.

in the waiting room at urgent care

So far my preferred method of transporting myself to and from the bathroom, bed or couch is crawling. It's just easier than using the crutches, plus we have stairs. I'm realizing what a good thing it is that I'm as strong as I am as I do one-legged squats and pull up my entire body weight with my upper body. I'm not sure how long the whole "staying off it as much as possible" thing is going to last. I'm really not good at just sitting still and not being able to do anything!!

And God bless my amazing, patient, loving husband. Not only is he taking awesome care of me by making sure that I ice my ankle and have everything I need at all times, but he's also taking on wrapping all the presents for the homeless kids that we're going to be delivering tomorrow. And it's no small job!! He also gets to chauffeur me around and he'll get to do all the loading and unloading of the van when we go to StandUp for Kids tomorrow. The man is a saint!!!

All told, I'm not a huge fan of this injury, and I'm doing my best to take good care of it so that I can heal all the way and get back on my feet and back on the tennis court! Hopefully we'll still have a great holiday vacation, bum ankle and all!

The Host

We recently went to the movies, and one of the previews we saw was for "The Host". I knew that Stephenie Meyer (she of Twilight fame) had another book, but I hadn't really had any interest in reading it. The movie preview brought the book back into my consciousness, and after my mom told me she got the audio book this week, I decided to give reading it a try.

I started it on the plane home on Wednesday night, and right away I wondered how they were going to make a movie out of it when the whole book was told from inside the head of the alien who takes over a human body. That aside, it was initially pretty readable and made the flight go by quickly. With only an hour of flight, I didn't make it that far into the book that night.

Last night Donovan had a dealing gig with Casino Magic, and he left the house about 5:15pm and wasn't going to be back till around midnight. I sat down with the book (on my new Kindle Paperwhite!) and read for about four hours straight. This morning I couldn't wait to pick up where I left off and I read for most of the day until I finished the book just a little while ago.

Just like with the Twilight books (say what you will about them), I got completely and totally sucked into this universe that Stephenie Meyer created and the lives of the characters who inhabit it. I lost count of how many times I teared up and cried, and I know that I laughed out loud at least once.

It's interesting to me how wrapped up I get in certain books. The Twilight books were that way for me, as were the Fifty Shades books (yes, I'm admitting this publicly), the Hunger Games books, and many more that I can't think of at the moment. I finish these books and I just want to go back and read them again so that I can stay in their world. They may not be literary masterpieces, but they keep my butt glued to my chair, my eyes on my Kindle, and they transport me to their magical worlds to the point that I have a hard time coming back to reality. That, to me, is the sign of a good book.


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Attitude Adjustment NEEDED

 

Last night I found out for the third month in a row that I am not pregnant. Sigh...

I went off the pill when we left for our trip in August. We took one month "off" to give my body time to adjust to being off the pill, and then the baby making began in earnest (read: lots of sex!).

Over the years I have watched friends go through the getting pregnant thing, and I always told myself that I wouldn't be one of those people who stressed out over getting pregnant. I don't want to chart my cycle, take my temperature, have sex according to a calendar, etc. After all, as everyone will tell you, it's when you're thinking about it and worrying about it that it usually won't happen. So, you might ask, how'd that work out for me? Yeah, not so well.

Having spent years waiting for the right time, watching people around me doing it, and being so excited to experience it for myself, I'm now very very ready to get pregnant! The problem is, I haven't figured out how to be in the process of making a baby and not be attached to the results. And the worst part for me is the waiting each month. Waiting, waiting, and then...disappointment.

Donovan and I had really hoped that we would make a baby while we were in France. The idea of buying our kid a "Made in France" shirt was just too much fun! So when we got home last month and found out that hadn't happened, I was bummed. Still, onwards and upwards and all that, right? So for month three we decided to not worry about day counts, positions, superstitions and all that, and just have lots of sex. I made a very conscious effort not to think about things too much and just go with the flow, and I was doing okay until the last few days. As it got closer to the end of my cycle I started wondering, checking, and finally...hoping. The hoping was what made it all the worse to find out it hadn't happened, and I had a bit of a melt-down last night.

See, as much as I want to be pregnant, there's still a part of me that doesn't believe it's going to happen. Though my body has never given me any reason to doubt it, and has always risen to the challenges I have presented it with, there's still a question in my mind. Being a strong believer in the mind-body connection, I have to wonder if my fears and disbelief are preventing me from getting pregnant. And this is where the attitude adjustment comes in. I need to get these fears and disbeliefs out of my system and get to a place of KNOWING that I WILL be pregnant.

Probably a good place to start would be to get all the crap out of my head about getting pregnant. So, here goes:

• I'm too old (I'm thirty-eight and a half), and getting older can cause fertility issues.
• I'm too fat (I'm 40+ pounds overweight), and being overweight can cause fertility issues.
• I work out too hard and stress my body out too much to create a hospitable environment for a baby to grow.
• I put my body through too much pain with physical therapy and deep massages to create a hospitable environment for a baby to grow.
• I want it too badly and haven't let go enough.
• What if my eggs don't work right?
• What if Donovan's swimmers don't work right? 
• Pregnancy happens for other people, why can't it happen for me?
• Our friends are dealing with fertility issues...what if that happens to us?

A friend suggested that I collage all of the noise in my head. Should make for an interesting collage, huh? I also think that some good visualizations will help. In any case, I am committed to getting my head on straight about this in the next few days so that I can go into month four with a knowledge and certainty that pregnancy is in my very near future. Wish me luck!!


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To Niche Or Not to Niche...

That is the question.

All throughout my iPEC training to be a coach, one message was sent loud and clear: pick a niche! On subsequent calls and in other related programs, the same message was sent louder and clearer: pick a niche!

What does this mean? Picking a niche means narrowing down the group of people that I am targeting with my coaching, preferably as much as possible. Kind of like picking a specialty. It's not enough to say, "I'm a life coach." The more specific my target audience, the better.

Picking a niche is a wall that I have been banging up against for months. I see the logic in it; the more specific I am about who I coach, the easier it is to market myself as a coach. It makes sense. And yet when it comes to actually picking my niche, I get stuck. I know I don't want to be a business coach, a grief coach, a divorce coach or a dating coach. I don't want to be a corporate coach, a weight-loss coach, a speaking coach, or a parenting coach. But who DO I want to coach?

What I've got right now after many hours of talking to people and hashing it out, is this very rough version, that quite honestly, I find a little intimidating: "I'm a life coach who helps women in their thirties and forties - who are tired of not living up to their so-called potential, can't seem to get past their own perfectionism, and want to be making a bigger difference in the world - realize how amazing they are so that they can get out there and be the game-changers they know they're meant to be." 

It scares me, this whole picking a niche thing. What if I pick wrong? What if I pick *too* specific and nobody comes to me for coaching? And in the meantime, as I've spent months and months struggling to narrow down my niche, what I haven't been doing is coaching anyone. I'm not introducing myself to people as an awesome life coach because I'm not sure who I'm targeting. I'm not working on my branding for my website because I'm not sure who I'm targeting.

I became a coach because I want to make a difference in the world, one person at a time. And right now, I'm. Not. Doing. That.

I have what they call "analysis paralysis". I've been stressing out over this thing for a couple of months now, which is no good (especially while we're in the process of making a baby!). And, as my sweet, ever-supportive husband pointed out, while I struggle and avoid and bang up against walls and stress out, I am depriving the world of me as a life coach.

So maybe there's a happy medium. Maybe while I work on narrowing down my niche and figuring out my branding I can actually start introducing myself as a life coach, one who empowers people to achieve what they want and to live a life they love. Who wouldn't want a little bit of that?

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All Good Things...

...Must Come to an End.

Our time in France is almost over...we fly home to San Diego on Monday.

I can't believe we've been away from home for over nine weeks already, and that we've been here in Villefranche for almost eight of those! It has been an *AMAZING* adventure, and as it winds down the feelings are bittersweet. On one hand, I'm super excited to be going home. Home to our comfy bed, home to our friends, home to good sushi, home to our dryer (seriously!), home to our cars, home to awesome San Diego. And on the other hand, I'm sad to be leaving this beautiful place we've called home these last two months. The picturesque views, the cruise ships in our harbor, the three-day weekends of adventure and fun, the fresh bread, the buses and trains, the freedom from our "things-we-have-to-do" syndrome.

We have both learned so much about ourselves and each other this trip. What we like, what we don't like, what we'd do differently the next time. And really, that was the whole point of this adventure. To go out there and do this thing we've said we wanted to do for so long, see what it's like, and see if we'd want to do it again (yes!!).

Probably the biggest lesson I learned about myself is that it's really important for me to speak the language of the place I'm living in. Not just so I can have bare-minimum-to-get-by communication, but so that I can actually socialize with people! I am a social creature by nature, and to not be able to just shoot the shit with people was really missing for me.

Almost as big a lesson is realizing that small-town living is not for me. My whole life I've really only ever lived in suburbia, first in Silicon Valley, and then in San Diego. Villefranche sur Mer (which is not necessarily as small-town as you can get, I grant you), though quaint and gorgeous, just doesn't have enough life to it. This was never more apparent to me than after we spent a few days in bustling, amazing London. So maybe next time we'll have to try big city living (I vote for London!), though I imagine I'd get tired of that as well.

All in all, this has been the adventure of a lifetime, and I am SO VERY THANKFUL that all the pieces came together so that we could do it! We are so very blessed!!

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Where's the Magic Button?

I'm looking for a magic button. I know it's out there somewhere. If I just search hard enough and do more work on myself, I'll find that magic button that I can push and suddenly...

Wait, let's back up a minute.

I woke up yesterday with a feeling of doom, overwhelm and, let's face it, more than a little bit of self-pity. While my husband slept soundly next to me, a jumble of thoughts were tumbling around in my head. I'm no stranger to that nasty little voice in my head, but it must have been on steroids or something yesterday, because it was LOUD. And it was screaming about how I can't seem to create success around my weight and my career.

I've been feeling fatter than usual these past several weeks, starting eight weeks ago in Israel. I don't have a scale here, so I don't know how much weight I've gained in the last couple of months, but I know I've gained some weight. And with all the rich tasty foods we've been eating on this trip, that's not a surprise. Nor is it the point of the loud screaming in my head. My weight is something that I have been dealing with for as long as I can remember, and I've had my share of victories and defeats. I've armed myself with knowledge and support, worked with nutritionists, therapists and coaches. I know exactly what it takes to be successful at losing weight and maintaining the loss. And yet something is stopping me from creating that success for myself. And *that* is what the voice in my head is angry about. As I read stories on Facebook of friends who are achieving great successes with weight loss, the voice demands to know why it is that they can do it, but I CAN'T.

As you probably know, I'm in the process of building up my coaching business. In fact, I paid $2,000 to be in a program that's meant to jump-start the process. So far I'm struggling through the program and bumping up against a lot of walls as I do. Who will I work with? What will I offer them? What's my compelling story that lets them know I've been where they are and made it through to success? Do I even *have* one? What's going to make this business building experience different from the last business that I started and failed to build to success? And while I struggle to find my path to confidence and success, I watch my classmates and other people I know achieving all manner of successes in their own coaching businesses. They publish articles, they give interviews, they find clients, they ink book deals, they create partnerships. And that little voice once again wants to know why they can do it, but I CAN'T.

See, this would all be so much simpler to explain if I were stupid or incapable. But I'm not. Not even close. Here I am, an intelligent, educated woman with countless gifts, talents and resources, and I can't seem to get out of my own way long enough to allow myself to succeed in these two areas. And the voice wants to know WHY.

There's a part of me that knows that I need to be going through all this to get to the success that's waiting for me on the other side. That I'm exactly where I need to be, and this is all part of the process.

But I'm so tired of this weight on my shoulders. So tired of feeling like a giant failure when it comes to this, of feeling like I'm not living up to my potential. So tired of letting this interfere with the amazing, blessed life that I am living. So tired of wondering if I'm even qualified to *be* a coach with so much crap floating around in my head. So tired of hearing myself whining about the same things over and over again (aren't you?).

And that's why I'm looking for a magic button. A button that I can push and suddenly I'll be motivated and willing to do what it takes to succeed. I'll know that it's possible and I'll let myself do it. And I'll be happy and at peace.

Now if I could just find that damned button...


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Too Much?

A couple of months before we came to France, I had an opportunity to sign up for a course that would jump-start my coaching business and really help me focus on my target audience. It was definitely something I was interested in, but it was scheduled to start in mid-September, and I wasn't sure whether I wanted to take on something fairly work intensive while we were out of the country. I eventually chose to sign up for the course and figured that I'd make it work. For the first three weeks of the course I was doing okay. Then came London, Italy and my parents' visit, and I found myself falling behind. Mind you, I'm clear that it's because of choices that I made. I chose to spend all my time in London and Italy seeing the sights instead of working on my homework, and I chose to spend some quality time with my parents while they were here, and I chose to sort through pictures from our trips and post them on Facebook.

What else did I choose to do? I chose to sign up for not one, but *two* writing courses that both started this past week. I'm feeling a strong pull toward writing lately, and I want to cultivate that. Both writing courses strongly recommend daily writing, and one of them has assignments. I want to take full advantage of what both of these courses have to offer, and at the same time I need to remember that I made a much larger investment in and commitment to the building-my-coaching-business program.

So I have to ask myself, "Have I taken on too much?" 

The reality here in France is that I'm only spending four days a week doing "work"-type stuff. Friday through Sunday are our explore-the-area-and-have-adventures days. Another reality is that I'm having trouble focusing on the coaching business program because it's "hard" and I have to make some big decisions about which direction I'm going to go in. In other words, my inner three-year-old is screaming "I don't wanna!" and I'm indulging her by spending my time doing pretty much anything else.

So no, I haven't actually taken on too much. It's completely within the realm of reason for me to invest appropriate amounts of time in all three of these programs. I just need to put my big-girl panties on and stop making it so hard for myself. Simple, right? We'll see...

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Homesick

 

I think I'm homesick.
 
Tomorrow is seven weeks that we've been traveling, and I'm starting to feel the pull of San Diego and home. Don't get me wrong, this trip has been ridiculously amazing so far! Spending ten days in Israel hanging out with family and traveling around was so much fun, and we have had so many fabulous experiences and adventures living on the French Riviera for the last five weeks! Still, there are some things that I definitely miss. Like English.

Last week we went to London for a few days, and being in a country where everyone understood me and I understood everyone was a huge relief. And though I knew that I was struggling with the language barrier here in France (the last time I studied French I was in fifth grade), I'm not sure I realized how much it was affecting me. After London we were back in France for a day, and then we went to Italy for three days. I *love* the sound of Italian, so it was fun even though I have even less of an understanding of Italian than I do of French (though we found that you can get by with Spanish sometimes). Being back in France after a week of being around other languages, I actually found myself thinking that the French I heard being spoken around me sounded ugly. I know, I know...that's a horrible thing to say! And yet, there it is.

Three months before we came here, I had every intention of going through all 90 Pimsleur French lessons that we had, so that I would have a much better grasp on the language by the time we got here. I got through about 16 of them, and that was it. So I'm definitely responsible for the experience I'm having here, and now I know that I would do it differently the next time. When we first got here I felt really stymied by the fact that I couldn't communicate with people. After a while I started getting more comfortable with it, and now I think I've regressed. Or given up. I almost don't even want to make the effort to try to speak French, and just go straight for the English. I've become *that* person!

Language aside, I also miss hanging out with our amazing friends in San Diego! It was really fun to get to see my best friend Sheri in London last week, and I miss all the going out for lunches and dinners with our friends that we do when we're home. I miss hugging my friends, too (I'm a hugger)!

And as great as our apartment is here, I miss our super-awesome newly remodeled home in San Diego!! I miss our amazing new kitchen, our fabulous bed, our giant project-on-the-wall tv screen...I even miss our silly cat, Franz!

Still, we're here for almost three more weeks, and I don't want to spend it longing for home instead of experiencing all there still is to experience here. So...I am committed to having an amazing remainder of our trip here in France! Hold me to that, okay?

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Life in France and Other Musings

I have the best, most supportive husband in the world. More on that later...

We're in France! I'm sitting here at the dining room table, looking out at the water and the cruise ship that is docked in our bay for the day. How crazy is it that we're actually doing this thing we've talked about for so long?

The view from our apartment in Villefranche

After spending ten fabulous days in Israel (I'll probably write about that soon), we arrived here in France on Monday night. We're getting more settled in, and definitely want to do more exploring of our town and surrounding areas.

While we were in Israel, we were on vacation. No work, no coaching business, no nothing. And truth be told, I didn't do a whole lot the week before we left, either. Now that we're in France, it's back to normal life, albeit in a most amazing setting. So, back to "building a coaching business", which is what I tell people I'm doing nowadays. I'm definitely slow on getting back into things. I've signed up for a program that starts next week, called the Confident Coach Blueprint program, which I've put a lot of stock into as far as really moving me forward with my coaching business and helping me suss out who/what I really want to coach. We have pre-course homework, and as I sit here pretending to work on it, I'm hearing that fabulous little voice in my head again. "Am I ever going to have a successful coaching business? Do I even remember how to coach someone?"

I think partially I'm feeling disconnected from coaching, as it's been quite a while since I was coaching anyone with any regularity. In fact, while we were in Israel, the subject came up, and it was almost physically jarring to me to realize that I'm a coach. It was so completely out of my reality!

And here's where my amazing husband comes in. I share all this with him, and he says to me, "You are a little girl who moves mountains." I am? He gives me a couple of examples of me making things happen, like us living in France for eight weeks, or remodeling his house from top to bottom to turn it into our amazing home. Yes, he says, "You get shit done...if you want to." Hmmm...If I want to...interesting. And what pops into my head as I stand there in my husband's arms is "If I want to, and I think that it's possible." Which makes me wonder...

Do I truly believe, deep down inside, that I can have a thriving coaching business? That I can discover my message, reach out into the world, and make a real difference with people? Through coaching, through speaking, through writing a book...do I believe that??? Because yes, I am a woman who gets shit done. And of course, I have everything I need to be successful, in spades. Except maybe the belief that it's possible. Which is kind of the key.

So what now? For starters, I'm going to sit here and enjoy my amazing view of Villefranche, and think about what it's going to take to truly believe in my future success as an amazing, inspirational coach.

A Night at the Symphony

Ordinarily, a night at the symphony would probably not interest me too much. Not that I don't enjoy classical music, I just have a fairly short attention span for those types of things. Last night, however, was a night at the symphony that I doubt I will ever forget.

Last night Donovan and I went to see a performance of the San Diego symphony's Summer Pops series. These events are held outside on the Embarcadero, on the grass down by the water. The show we saw last night was the music from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, played by the symphony while the movie was shown on a big screen.

The view from our seats

A few months ago, Donovan and I did a Pirates marathon and watched all four movies. I completely fell in love with the music from the movies. It's so powerful and exciting, and it gets totally stuck in my head. So when I found out that the symphony was going to be playing the music live, I simply *had* to go.

I knew that it was going to be a cool show...how could it not be? I don't think I was prepared for quite how amazing it was, though. First of all, we're outside at night, by the water, and the weather was nice. The moon was just a sliver, about a quarter of the way up from the water. The symphony was playing the soundtrack for the movie as we watched, and the movie itself is just so much fun! I hadn't really thought about it, but there are many parts in the soundtrack where there are men's voices singing Ahhs in accompaniment to the music. Lo and behold...on stage with the symphony was a men's choir to sing those parts! SO cool!!!

I found it was easy to get wrapped up in watching the movie and forget that the orchestra was playing. Every few minutes I leaned over to Donovan and said "They're playing that music right now!" I was like a little kid who couldn't contain my excitement. And as amazing as the whole show was, it really hit me during the credits when I wasn't distracted by the screen and could really give my whole attention to the orchestra. They played the song that I most love, which is the most exciting and powerful out of the movie, and it was simply *spectacular*!!

I am so very happy that we went to see that show! If you have a chance to see this, I highly recommend the experience! :)

The Abstractness of Pregnancy

I had lunch with my friend Emily today, and we got to talking about getting pregnant. We're both planning to make a baby in the next few months, so it was fairly inevitable (especially given how I've got baby on the brain right now) that the topic would come up.

I've been experiencing an interesting phenomenon around the topic of pregnancy lately: it seems completely abstract to me...not real.

I've been fascinated by pregnancy for most of my adult life. The fact that the body does what it does to create life is beyond my comprehension. When I'm with a pregnant woman, I can't really wrap my brain around the fact that there's a living being inside of her. And experiencing being pregnant is something I've been craving for years and years. Not so much the pain, discomfort and potential (likely?) nausea, but the opportunity to feel life growing inside me and the idea of bonding with the little creature from the beginning.

And yet for me, pregnancy has always been a "someday" thing.  Back in 2006, I (delusionally?) thought that Brian and I were getting close to the point of having a baby. Then we broke up. During my three years of being single after that, I would tell myself that if I didn't meet someone, I could always go the artificial insemination route and have a baby on my own. Then I spent some time around people with kids and decided that I really didn't want to do it on my own. When I met Donovan, he didn't want to have kids, and I wasn't sure anymore. Then came clarity, and the realization that I did indeed want kids. Lo and behold, Donovan was amenable. Someday. We got engaged, we planned our wedding, and a year ago we got married. And it became a "we should wait at least a year until we get pregnant" thing.

So here we are, a year (next Tuesday) after getting married, and four weeks from today I will take my last birth control pill and we will make a baby. And it's STILL...NOT...REAL! I've spent so long having pregnancy be a "someday" thing that I'm not sure what will actually make it real for me. Clearly not the knowledge that I'm going off the pill in four weeks. Will it be the plus sign on the pregnancy test? Will it be the first ultrasound when I see (hear?) the little heart beating? Will it be the first time I feel a kick? Guess we'll have to wait and see!

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My New Tattoo (or...Figuring Out What's Important)

A couple of days ago I went to San Francisco to get a new tattoo.  For just about a year since we got married, I've been wanting to get a tattoo to commemorate our wedding day and our marriage.  I knew that I wanted Jacek Minkowski, the artist who did my koi tattoo on my left calf, to do this tattoo, and he now works in San Francisco.  A few weeks ago I got in touch with him and set up an appointment to meet with him to get my new tattoo done while I was up in the Bay Area visiting my family.  I had a vague idea of what I wanted the tattoo to include: a flower (either a hibiscus or a lotus), two wedding rings, the date of our wedding, and the Kanji symbol for "forever".  Jacek said it would be better if we designed the tattoo together in person, rather than trying to do it over e-mail.

The night before I was going to get my tattoo, we had dinner with my brother and his family.  When my sister-in-law found out that I was going to get another tattoo, she spent the next two hours trying to convince me not to.  She was cute about it, and funny, but she was serious, and very very persistent.  She didn't change my mind, but I think she did get into my head.

Wednesday morning I woke up and I was definitely nervous about going to get my tattoo.  Would we come up with a good design?  Would I be able to stand the pain?  Would I be happy with the tattoo?  I say nervous, some would say excited.  Two sides of the same coin, yeah?  All in how you look at it.

I arrived at the tattoo shop a few minutes late, and Jacek was ready to get started on the design.  Right away he let me know that he thought that including our wedding date in the tattoo was unnecessary and could take away from the design.  Okay, I wasn't stuck on that detail, and could see letting it go.  He spent quite a bit of time coming up with a box to house the Kanji symbol, a box that would include the wedding rings in its design.  He came up with this cool box outlined in rope, with an infinity knot at the bottom and our wedding rings at the top.  It was really cool watching him work, seeing the drawing come to life under his skilled artist's fingers.

Once he had that done, we started trying to figure out how to lay out the tattoo so that we could have the lotus flower and the box with the Kanji in it.  And this is where it started to feel like banging my head against a wall.  In order to keep the artistic integrity of the tattoo, there was a certain balance that needed to be maintained.  And we could not find a balance that didn't include three lotus flowers and pretty much an entire half-sleeve on my upper arm, which was way more than I wanted to do.  After much back and forth, Jacek suggested that maybe I give up the rings and the Kanji symbol and just get a flower tattoo, saying that I could assign any meaning I wanted to it.  This was two+ hours into the design process, and I was super frustrated.  At that moment, I really just wanted to leave the shop and not get a tattoo.

I went outside and called Donovan, pulling him out of an all-day training that he was in.  I filled him in and shared my frustrations.  I was really upset that Jacek wanted to take out all the elements of my tattoo idea that were wedding/marriage related, and at the same time I got where he was coming from with the layout issues.  And I didn't want another tattoo that was just pieced together, I wanted a cohesive work of art.  Talking to Donovan had me feeling better (as usual), and I went back inside with the intention of thanking Jacek for his time and leaving.  I didn't want to burn any bridges, and was fully intending to pay him for the time he spent on my design.

I told Jacek that I really appreciated all the time he'd spent so far, and that it really felt like we were banging our heads against a wall.  I told him I didn't want to burn any bridges, and I didn't know if we should continue working on the design.  He said that I really needed to figure out what elements of the design were important to me.  I teared up as I realized that what really mattered to me out of all the elements I'd originally suggested were the rings and the Kanji symbol.  The flower was just decoration, but we'd spent over two hours trying to figure out how to make it the centerpiece of the tattoo.  Now that we understood my priorities, Jacek got to work on designing a tattoo that had the Kanji symbol and the rings as its centerpiece.  He had already spent all that time designing the really cool box for the Kanji, and now it was just a matter of incorporating some pretty things around it to soften it up.  We went with cherry blossoms, which I already have on my koi tattoo that Jacek did for me.  This time, though, instead of going with the more traditional cherry blossoms, we went with a more organic design that he had. 

As he put the design on my arm with the transfer sheet that they use, it started to really come to life.  Finally, after almost three and a half hours, we were ready to start tattooing!  He started with the outline, as usual, and it was so cool to see the tattoo shaping up on my arm.  The upper parts of the tattoo were definitely the most painful, especially the flowers on my shoulder.  Once the outline was done (about 50 minutes?) he started on the color, and this is really what Jacek does SO well.  His shading and choice of colors is absolutely amazing.  I really had no idea what it was going to look like, but I knew there would be pinks and purple in it.  We took a small break after about an hour and forty-five minutes, and then got back to work.  After a total of two and a half hours, my tattoo was finished!  Looking down at it, I was in awe.  And when I got up and looked at it in the mirror, I had no words.  This is exactly what I wanted, and I had absolutely no idea!

The finished product!

Though we went through some super frustrating (for both of us) moments in the design process, it's clearly exactly what we needed to go through for me to figure out what was really important to me in my wedding/marriage celebration tattoo.  Jacek was so great through the whole thing.  He's a no bullshit kind of guy, and he told me when something wasn't going to work.  But he stuck with it, and was determined to create a tattoo that I would love.  Which he SO did!!  I'm so in love with my new tattoo!!!  :)

Life Is Good!

It's no coincidence that I love the Life is Good brand.  Theirs is such a simple statement, and it's so powerful!  It's been my unofficial motto for years now, and at random moments in my day, you can hear me say, "Life is good!"

The last three days have been awesome!  On Thursday we drove up to Laguna Beach and saw Pageant of the Masters.  We stayed overnight in Santa Ana at a very nice DoubleTree, and on Friday late morning we headed into Newport Beach for Donovan's jetpack experience (see the video of Donovan's flight here).  He had a blast (pun intended), and afterward we walked along the beach, had burgers at a highly recommended local joint, walked out on the pier, and generally had a great time.  We drove around Balboa Island, went shopping at Fashion Island, which is a really nice mall, and then had an excellent dinner at a restaurant my friend Sheri recommended.

Then last night, Donovan took me out for a surprise evening that has been on the calendar for weeks.  I didn't even try to figure out what the surprise was ahead of time...I let myself be with the unknown!  :)  He took me to this little restaurant in Little Italy, Bencotto, that we'd been to once before together.  We had a super yummy dinner, and then we walked over to where the real surprise part was.  There's a place in San Diego called Anthology; it's a three-level small indoor venue that serves nice food and has events.  I'd never been there before, so when we walked up to it, I was excited to get to finally see what it was all about, even though I still didn't know what we were there to see.

As we walked up, there were a few different corrals to line up in, and at the front of the corral was a little sign that said "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, line up here" (or something like that).  As soon as I saw that I started jumping up and down and screaming "Are you f-ing kidding me???"  I *LOVE* Big Bad Voodoo Daddy!  I can't actually tell you how many times I've seen them in concert, but it's a lot.  Brian and I used to go see them every time they came to San Diego.  If you're not familiar with them, they play big-band music and are just super fun performers with great on-stage personalities.  There are five guys on horns, a drummer, a bassist, a pianist, and the lead singer, who also plays guitar.  Their music is so much fun!!

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy onstage

I was SO excited!!  I haven't seen them in several years, and Donovan found them for me!  We had a great time at the concert, and really enjoyed the venue.  I would definitely go back to Anthology!

On the way home last night we replayed all the amazing things we'd experienced together since Thursday afternoon, and summed it all up with a resounding "Life is good!"  :)

Pageant of the Masters

Today we came up north to Laguna Beach to go see Pageant of the Masters. For those of you who don't know, Pageant of the Masters is a show with live human reenactments of various paintings and sculptures set to symphony music.  Van Gogh, Rodin, Seurat, Rockwell, and many more.

I've heard about this show for years, but have never seen it before today. Let me just say...it's mind blowing!! It's unreal how you see the people getting into position and then they light up the painting on the stage, and you can't even tell that there are real people in the painting!!  Definitely something worth seeing. They are running the show through August 31, if anyone wants to go see it!


Laguna Beach is a really cute town! I don't recall ever having been there before. I found us this great little Mexican food shack on Yelp for dinner, and we walked around some little shops for a while before the show. All in all, very worthwhile! :)