Being More With Less

My new favorite blog is Courtney Carver’s.

She is the woman who edited her clothing choices to 33 items used every 3 months.

I’ll link to her website at the bottom of this blog entry.

Her latest writing is about the Italian ethic of Dolce Far Niente or sweetness of doing nothing.

I’m proud to be Italian American.

Before Carver scheduled time every so often to do nothing in her own words she:

“Ran at an unsustainable pace, multi-tasking my way through the day and enjoying or being present for very little of it.”

That’s exactly what happened in my own life.

Everything changes when you go through “the change.” This is no exaggeration.

Sometimes you need time by yourself to rest and recharge your batteries.

I get what Carver is saying.

More imperative is what she outlines as the Truth:

“Recognize the difference between nothing and numbing.”

“Escaping your busy life with substances and activities that help you numb out does the opposite of intentionally doing nothing.”

Right said Courtney.

In coming blog entries I’m going to talk about my own strategies I’m adopting as a way to Be More with Less.

My new mantra is Go Slow to Move Forward.

Rush, rush, rushing around isn’t good for a person’s mental health. Slowing down and pacing yourself is the solution.

Coco Chanel told women to look at ourselves in the mirror and take off one thing before leaving the house.

I say remove one item from your to-do list before you leave the house in the morning. Better yet remove two items.

Women shouldn’t have to keep doing double the work to only wind up getting half as far.

Won’t you join me and Courtney Carver in enjoying Dolce Far Niente–the sweetness of doing nothing?

Be More with Less blog

Spring Cleaning 2019

Spring arrives in only two days.

The weather in New York City is going to get better–the meteorologist promises.

In keeping with the theme of cleaning out your closet I want to recommend one genius option for storing things: the InterMetro storage rack that’s on sale as of this week from the Container Store online.

Two years ago I bought the InterMetro storage rack to hold more clothes and a trio of hat boxes on the bottom shelf.

Though I’m only five feet tall I was able to assemble this nifty item on my own. I put it together on the floor and lifted it up and wheeled it to where I wanted to keep it.

It doesn’t cheer me that I have a ton of clothes.

Only the storage rack with the canvas cover can give you extra room for your clothes. You can buy an extra shelf to insert at the top or bottom of this rack.

I still haven’t discovered the remedy for storing pocketbooks so that they’re easily viewed for quick choosing and using.

Taking photos of the pocketbooks can help. Otherwise when they’re not stored out in the open you tend to forget which ones you have.

I’ll have to think about the pocketbook dilemma more and report back in here on a solution.

Hope and Healing

My agenda is to advance my vision of recovery, from whatever it is a person is in recovery from.

I’m confident that it’s possible to recover from whatever disadvantage–an illness; a setback; whatever–that has derailed you.

My message of hope and healing is what people need to hear.

Every beautiful person living on earth has the right to be endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Free from hate and oppression; free to be who they are without having to live in fear.

Here’s to us square pegs in round holes.

Here’s to the dreamers among us who envision a better life for ourselves and others.

What I really intend to do in this blog is to give form to the beauty of recovery in all its definitions and manifestations.

My version is Left of the Dial.

In a coming blog entry I’ll talk about this more.

My Vision for 2019

There’s a lot of negativity in the world.

We don’t have to dwell on the negative in our minds and in our beliefs.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about this topic in the early days of the New Year.

The Artist’s Statement I live by is this:

To act as a Chief Joy Officer to create things of beauty to share with others to make them feel good.

I urge you if you are an artist or a creator of any kind or simply a human being to focus on the positive.

I’m 53 years old. I firmly believe that dwelling on the negative is only a good way to age yourself faster.

And how do you feel interacting with a person who is bitter or judgmental about you or other people?

Spending only fifteen minutes listening to their negative beliefs has the power to drain your energy and put you in an ill mood.

My goal is to empower, educate, and entertain readers, followers, and audience members.

The lesson I offer you in all of this is:

Consider focusing on the positive.

A blogger might get thousands of followers by advancing negative rhetoric.

I’ve decided I cannot and will not water down what I write or compromise what I write to make it acceptable to millions of followers.

I will not change my cheerful voice in here.

My vision for 2019 is to write blog entries that continue to be in the vanguard.

What is the point of dwelling on the negative?

My story is not the exception to the rule.

There are others out there who have recovered and have full and robust lives doing what they love.

All my life I will advance my vision of Recovery for Everyone, from whatever it is you’re in recovery from.

In here and elsewhere I will continue to offer hope for healing the illness in society.

And I will continue to write about my latest finds at Sephora : )

Living for Today

I’ve figured out that becoming happier is possible when you commit to living for today.

What you want to achieve could be far off on the horizon.

Having gratitude for where you are in your life in the present moment is the antidote to the holiday blues.

Again it can be as simple as going to a clothing store and trying on items that fit and flatter. This can put you in a good mood.

It’s possible to be happy right here right now.

Regardless of what your bank account balance is. Regardless of whether you’re single or part of a couple. Regardless of whatever pain you’re in.

You can still be happy even when your life hasn’t gone the way you planned.

I’ve figured out that living life on life’s terms not my terms is the way to feel happy.

Doing this it won’t matter that life isn’t fair.

Life can be good living in recovery. You can have a better life post-breakdown than you had before the illness.

In the coming blog entry I want to spread more cheer.

Enjoying being yourself is the secret to having a good life.

I’ll talk more about how to become happier.

Sometimes you just have to slow down and pace yourself.

Today is the greatest day. It’s the only one we have.

Obtaining Confidence

venus williams

Last week Venus WIlliams wrote an article in the New York Times about the 3 factors in obtaining confidence.

When you don’t feel good about yourself and your prospects it can be hard to have confidence.

At 53 I haven’t yet gotten what I wanted. My love and literary prospects haven’t panned out yet. Operative word in the last sentence: yet.

Venus Williams is on to something when she eschewed setting goals in favor of asking yourself: “Do I feel good?” This makes perfect sense to me.

The question “Do I feel good?” is relevant to whether you succeed.

The Dark Horse authors whose book I wrote about in the Flourish blog think achieving success doesn’t lead to happiness–it’s the pursuit of fulfillment that makes you happy.

Again, it’s the process not the outcome that counts.

Which ultimately reinforces my perpetual claim that fashion isn’t frivolous. If you feel good, you’re empowered to take on the world.

In terms of the fashion freedom I hinted at in a recent blog entry I don’t think you can feel good in ill-fitting clothes that aren’t becoming on you.

To know your style and flaunt it guarantees you will be a success in whatever you do.

If you don’t feel good–about what you’re wearing; about the people you’re working with; about an aspect of yourself or your life–you have the power to change this.

This is the truth: you can be happy even when you haven’t achieved the goals you set for yourself. Venus Williams is right and she’s a champion: the goals are irrelevant.

In the coming blog entry I’ll talk about living for today, which is the ultimate method for feeling good.

1985

1985 was the year I started my first career as a disc jockey on the FM radio.

This labor of love was chronicled in Left of the Dial.

Every two months I get a few radio show cassette tapes converted to CDs. They can be played back on my SONY boom box.

Not a lot of people have an actual recording of who they were when they were in their twenties.

Listening to my radio shows I’m struck by how chatty I was on-air. Talking to my audience in a hip, upbeat fashion.

The point of this introduction being that you can reclaim yourself after illness strikes.

I was diagnosed when I was 22 years old. That cut my life as I knew it short. In one night in an instant my life was forever altered.

Do you feel like you’re not the same person you were before?

Most likely a breakdown happened because something wasn’t working. You have the chance to heal what’s broken.

You have the ability at any point along the road in your recovery to change an aspect of yourself or your life that you don’t like.

Why wait until you’re 40 or 50 or older?

Though making changes in mid-life is also possible and highly recommended.

For me it started with the decision to wear makeup and dress bolder and yes shout louder.

As with any kind of change a person wants to make I recommend using the tactics outlined in Changeology: A 5-Step Method for Achieving Your Goals and Resolutions.

The technique is a 90-day plan that can work.

I’ll end here with this realization:

You might not be the same person you were before illness settled in.

That’s okay. You’re always a person of worth equal to others in society who don’t have an illness.

It takes courage to set a goal and go after what you want to get.

This doesn’t get easier at mid-life. Yet my hope is that in reading these blog entries you can be empowered to make your own resolutions.

I respect and admire anyone who has the courage to want to change their life for the better.

The only real failure is the failure to try.

As long as you give your goals your best shot, there can be no shame if they don’t work out.

I’m 53. My goal is to continue to champion my vision of Recovery for Everyone, from whatever it is you’re in recovery from.

I’m not going to back down in advancing that getting the right treatment right away results in a better outcome.

What’s your goal? Go for it.

Winning

In an upset victory Max Rose beat out Dan Donovan for Congress for the the Staten Island/Brooklyn seat in Washington.

I was quite surprised by this win. Yet under Dan Donovan’s DA rule the cop who killed Eric Garner in a choke hold was acquitted.

The district that covers Staten Island/Brooklyn (Bay Ridge Brooklyn) has been Republican for decades.

Max Rose’s victory is a stunner to me. I hadn’t expected he would win.

Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez won her Congress bid elsewhere in New York City.

In the U.S. we have elected 2 Muslim American women to Congress as well.

We have elected a Native American woman too.

From the New York Times:

“Women shattered records and precedents. One-third of the female nominees for the House were women of color, the highest ever. A record number of women faced off against other women, from Arizona to New York. Ms. Pressley in Massachusetts and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York were among women who defeated long-serving white male incumbents in party primaries and won tonight.”

In the same New York Times article:

“Despite being more than half the population and the voters, women were still less than a third of all candidates for Congress, the governors’ offices and other statewide executive seats.”

We have a way to go. Yet we can be proud of these gains.

One day I’m confident we will elect a woman president.

Ladies, start your engines.

Acting True to Yourself

I’ve learned a life lesson courtesy of having interacted with the jewelry vendor.

It’s a lesson I’m reminded of because on my job I deal with books and people every day.

The life lesson comes after years spent trying to conform by working in cubicles in corporate office jobs.

Mid-life is the time to get this schooling right once and for all. You won’t ever be happy trying to be someone you’re not.

This is a FACT in my book of life:

Taking joy in being who you are is the greatest gift you can give yourself. To be who you are when others don’t want you to be this person takes guts and grit. The glory of being you lasts a lifetime. To squander this gift is the greatest tragedy.

Remodeling Your Self At Mid-Life

The book The Happiness Curve talks about the myth of having a mid-life crisis. Apparently, people are happier in their fifties sixties and beyond. There’s an uptick in joy in our later years.

We have the balls or breasts to defy other people’s expectations:

We go back to school, remodel our kitchen, get a divorce or do any number of new things when we’ve had enough of life as it’s always been.

Today I reckon with this new requirement to stop caring what other people think.

It’s true no one’s going to like you or approve of you for speaking out, for having a diagnosis, or whatever you do or have that they can’t wrap their head around.

Only here’s the truth:

No one changed the world for the better (or even just their world for the better) by sitting on the sidelines and waiting to be called into the game.

Readers, mid-life is our game to play. We own this particular playing field at forty and beyond.

Only you have to be okay with your newfound bravado.

The secret to success at mid-life is indeed doing what gives you joy that comes easy to you. Other people might be envious that you’re happy. That shouldn’t concern you.

The older we get our time here becomes shorter. To steal the Maxwell House Coffee advertisement from the 1980s, we need to make each moment: “Good to the last drop.”

At 40, at 53, at however old you are, it’s time to pay attention.

Life will tell you what to do, if only you stop to listen.

So, remodel your kitchen or your self. It’s all good.