Cheers, August

I ended August with an adventure that I had not planned on: a backpacking trip with Jenn and a group of wonderfully badass women. It was just one night in Jefferson Park here in Oregon. And although it sounds quite simple – hike in 5.5 miles, pitch tent, sleep on ground, then hike out 5.5 miles – I became profoundly anxious after I agreed to go.

This was my first backpacking trip and I didn’t know if I could hike with a 28 pound pack on my back. I was intimidated by the task and made it worse with self-criticism because I didn’t want to hold up the group or make some unknown backpacking blunder.

I worked myself up in my mind to the point of making myself pretty sick a few days before. So, of course, I added that to my reasons why I couldn’t do it. Then I remembered myself. I remembered that I am highly trained at this point in my personal development and I have a CHOICE. I can walk around telling a false story of: “I have anxiety and I can’t do this.” Or, if I like making up stories so much, why don’t I say, “I am strong and brave. This is the adventure I have been waiting for.”

As soon as I changed the story in my brain, the knots in my stomach started to subside and I went to the store to purchase some Gas-X to make sure I wouldn’t be facing problems on the trail. I packed my supplies and made some food then got a few hours of sleep before the 5 a.m. alarm.

Jenn and I set out that morning with our friend Kristina for the trailhead about 2 hours away. We would hike in and meet our other friends who had gone in the night before to scout a campsite. As you may know, the wilderness has seen a major uptick in visitors as our cities have become less desirable places to hangout and campsite accommodations are slim pickings. (All of my friends in the Adirondacks know the perils of city folk flocking to the mountains.)

After I steadied my nerves and my legs (I nearly tipped over when I put my backpack on). We set off on our trek. Immediately, the Universe sent me a sign that all was to be well: We passed a dog on the trail who was a German Shepherd named Rufus. When I was little, we had a German Shepherd named Rufus, so this was all the comfort I needed to know I could do this.

Thankfully, the incline was gentle and I only needed one snack to get through the hike in. We met our group and settled in alongside a lake at the base of Seekseekqua (its Native American name) also called Mount Jefferson.

We took a very brisk dip into the lake. For me, I just splashed in quickly then ran out again. My friend Jess (who is from Oregon) insists that the lake was warm. I vow to take her to Florida and get her in the ocean in August so she can finally know what warm water feels like.

Then we all bundled up and ate our dinner by the lake and took about 1,000 photos of ourselves at sunset. Right here I want to pause and acknowledge that we were perhaps “annoying” to the other people around the lake enjoying the sunset. But as I said there and I will say now, “We paid good money to be here.”

And I mean that. Each of us has paid real money, blood, sweat, tears, and long hours at work to get to this point of our lives to this dream that we were realizing right before our eyes. So, I am going to laugh and take pictures and be annoying because I was not going to allow my critical inner voice or the disdainful glances of strangers (who don’t know how much I truly paid to be there) steal my joy.

At the end of January, I packed up my life in San Diego on the hope that this dream was waiting for me. This dream of being in the wilderness with people I could be myself with, with people who love the same things I do, with people who dream REAL DAMN BIG. I am living my dreams right now and I am so grateful to these women for being part of my dream. I didn’t know who you were before I got here and you have exceeded my every wish. Thank you for making this August magical.

I could end this post right here, but I want to brag about the fact that Natalia lead us out of the wilderness at a blistering speed of 1 hour and 47 minutes. I don’t think I will ever be nervous about my physical strength again.

Dream of a new reality

A few weeks ago, I climbed Table Mountain with Jenn and two other lovely ladies. It was 18.8 miles and 10 hours of hiking. It was not easy at all but the journey was more than worth the physical and emotional toil. It showed me how strong I am and how determined to keep going that I really am and it is providing me a useful analogy for this year.

Suddenly, it’s Aug. 1, 2020. I am sitting on my bed with Buttercup a-snooze near my feet. I’m still in my PJs and I have my headphones on listening to the few songs I have on my August playlist.

August is usually the month of the year that I look forward to celebrating all the joys of my life. I live it up and immerse myself in frivolity. This year it snuck up on me while I was pushing through the indescribable turmoil of 2020.

I have no grandiose plans this month. My plans are to stay healthy and safe and sane by whatever means that takes. And I suppose those are the same plans I have had every August, they’re just simplified now.

This year there are no concerts to wrap myself up in. There’s no trip planned anywhere. There’s just the perpetual act of facing reality every day. I am also determined to get really creative and really grateful. One of my assignments for a seminar I am taking via Zoom is to cultivate a sense of awe and wonder in every area of my life, so I will do that too.

I’m wishing I had more to offer everyone right now. However, there’s just so much going on in the world that the only thing I have to offer is to keep enjoying life. Do the hard work of standing up for justice and then make time for the joy of life – whatever that looks like for you.

Start by giving yourself grace. Heaps of it. We’re all operating at a new level of stressed out that we’ve adjusted to and forgotten that we’re in full-on survival mode. I’m committed to switching gears. Obviously, I’m surviving. I’m still here. I am helping my communities and I am working every day for a better future. So good, check that off the list. I am surviving a massively chaotic year.

Now it’s time to thrive. What does that mean? For me, it means I won’t be looking over my shoulder in fear. I won’t be worrying about what is going to happen next. I will practice being present in the here and now. That sounds overly simple and a little played out, but it remains all I have. Me and a cat a-snooze on the bed.

This week I started thinking about goals and dreams again. I realized I gave my power away to the pandemic, to the chaos across the country, to the antics of the government. These things do not define my life and it is my job to remain faithful and to keep dreaming. A few days ago, I wrote in my journal: “A goal is a dream of a new reality.” Or as Cinderella put it, “A dream is a wish your heart makes.”

This is important because I had stopped letting myself dream. I was only surviving day to day. Dreams are essential to thriving, it gives me a reason to make it through the day to day living. I remember many times I have read about people in the most dire of circumstances saying that they held on to their ability to dream and that is what got them through extreme and life-threatening experiences.

My dream of a new reality looks like everyone being treated equally; it’s kindness for all; it’s abundant opportunities for everyone; it’s peace; it’s health; it’s fairness for every living organism. It’s an uphill climb, no doubt about that. And it’s the climb that I am on. It’s the climb that I have committed myself to and it’s the climb that I absolutely will not quit.

As always, I send you my love. I wish to send you hope and faith, too, and the ability to remain resilient even when the chips are further down than we’ve seen before.

For August, I am bringing back one of my favorite things: The Casual Sunday Beer. If that’s all I do to celebrate this month, well then that’s simply enough for me because it is a huge blessing to afford it and enjoy it.

Note: Thank you to Abe for texting me a rocket ship yesterday and saying it was “because we are going for our dreams!” You reminded me how important that really is. Casual Sunday Beers on me.

Freedom for 2020

A lot happened from September until today and I will loop back and write about those adventures in the near future. Unrelated, I have been fighting a Florida Swamp Flu for the past week that I picked up while visiting my family for Christmas.

The delights of Florida Swamp Flu are not what I have come to discuss, though. The New Year is what I am contemplating right now. I am such a fan of the start of the year. I am ready for fresh starts and nothing feels fresher than Jan. 1.

Last year, my goals were to let go and create. And like anything that you ask the Universe for, those opportunities showed up in spades. 2019 was challenging and heartbreaking but to frame it positively, it was full of learning, growing and expanding myself beyond who I knew myself to be. I am grateful for it and proud of myself for moving through it all. Gracelessly at times, yet with courage to mess up and try again.

Freedom is the name of the game in 2020. Photo by Ranger Holly.

For 2020, I am putting my focus on one word: Freedom.

Freedom of all sorts. Financial freedom, spiritual freedom, freedom with my time, freedom to travel, freedom to authentically express myself, and much more. More freedom in all areas of my life. After last year, I am interested to see how opportunities for freedom will present themselves throughout 2020.

I am also giving myself the freedom to let love find me. I am letting go of the looking for love around every corner. I don’t just mean romantic love. I mean work that I love, friends that I love, coffee shops that I love and adventures I love. This year, they will all find me. I won’t search, struggle or try to control or grasp at people, places or things. If it doesn’t flow, I will let it go.

Another thing that I am thinking about at the start of this year, is something that my Faux Pa Tom quoted to me from Teddy Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena.” In full, it reads:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The part that Tom quoted was “his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” I may not succeed at everything I have done or will do but I have felt the distinct joy of victory and I am determined to have that feeling as much as possible.

Victory and freedom feel quite similar to me. Standing on top of any mountain I have ever climbed. Stepping on stage or to the front of a room and making people laugh. Being at the front of the crowd at the concerts of my favorite bands. These all feel like victory and freedom to me. I am looking forward to digging into these experiences and feelings throughout the year. I accept that this means I will also experience some failures. I know that these failures are temporary and do not define me and that I can keep going.

Cheers to 2020, everyone. Happiness, fun and infinite adventure are available to us all, we just need to get in that arena.

Holly's back

If you read my previous post about signs, you know that I had been experiencing a crisis of faith. No big deal, it has to happen once in every epic journey. Ask Lucy in the Chronicles of Narnia or Santiago the shepherd boy in The Alchemist. Both characters experienced moments when they asked themselves, “Why the bloody hell am I following these signs only to get my ass handed to me repeatedly?” Clearly, I am paraphrasing, because Lucy is too sweet to use curse words – I am not.

I suppose that is why it is called an epic journey and not a short jaunt around the block. An epic journey requires setbacks, reroutes, periods of darkness and being dutiful little students of life and jumping off unknown cliffs. It’s just part of the game. It requires getting metaphorically smacked around to build strength and character. Who wants to be a boring character in their own story? That won’t be interesting to talk about around the campfire.

We all know the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” right? I believe it to be true in many ways, but I also think I needed my friends and family to remind me of who I am this year. I have always been the one pointing out signs and rallying the troops to continue to believe that this is all going to work out, but darkness overtook me this year.

I am going to try to walk myself and you, my dear readers (hi, Mom), through this. Hopefully it makes sense in the end.

Last December, I was on a flight from Daytona Beach to San Diego. On that flight I made fast friends with the man sitting next to me in the middle seat. (I think I hold the land speed record for making friends on flights.)

His name is Chris and the two of us got into a conversation about faith and believing in God and the bigger picture. Chris and I were carrying on and on for probably the better part of an hour when the man sitting at the window took off his sunglasses and looked at us and said something to the effect of, “Man, I have been listening to you two and I am really inspired. I wish I had as much faith as the two of you.” It was a beautiful moment. That was me at my best, wrapping people up in the love I have for this world.

In January, I started a personal development seminar aimed at discovering what was subconsciously keeping me from having a successful relationship. That was like the start of both an archaeological dig and the demolition of an ancient fortress. I was utterly clueless about the Pandora’s Box I was opening. Upon completion of that seminar, I signed up for another one. Maybe out of gut instinct that I knew I had not uncovered everything in the first one.

At this point, I had torn down enough of my subconscious structures and detonated enough bombs around my proverbial fortress that I felt completely exposed.

Quick side note: I learned how to demo things from my dad who once tore the front porch off the house by attaching one end of a chain to the porch and the other end to his pickup and then driving off. Separately, he used a chainsaw to cut a hole for a picture window in our house. That’s demo, my friends.

So, this month, I was surveying the rubble of my long-held beliefs and thought patterns. Granted, they weren’t the good or effective thought patterns, but they had kept me really safe for 34 years. Basically, they were comforting. And suddenly, I felt like I was standing naked in a snowdrift.

Then somehow, amid this demolition and ultimate exposure, I got all twisted up. I didn’t quite know what to make of everything. Had I wasted all these years chasing pipe dreams? If all those belief systems had been holding me back, am I really this faithful believer in the Universe? I got scrambled up real bad. It took me down, I was a far cry from that woman on the airplane inspiring strangers to believe.

Most of this year, I was in a place where I was functioning but I had lost sight of what for. I made many tearful phone calls to my mom. I relied heavily on my friends who believe and I made list after list of the things that I am grateful for. I was fighting like hell to pull myself up by my bootstraps.

Luckily, every time I reached out, there was a hand to hold. No one let me fall through the cracks. There was tough love, there was nurturing love, and there was the love that reminded me in no uncertain terms that I was stronger than the illusions that were playing with my head.

These eight months of 2019 were me dealing with my darkness. Finally, I found my way out thanks to the biggest and best cheering section in Heaven and on Earth.

The thing that grabbed me by the hand and yanked me right out of the last bit of this battle was going to see the Avett Brothers concert in San Diego. There is nothing like the healing power of live music but especially when it’s the Avett Brothers. I have been following them since I saw them in 2006 at the Social in Orlando with Nina when we paid the tidy sum of $7 to have them change our lives.

I went by myself to see them last week and danced and sang my heart out. Every lyric reminded me that I have come a long, long way and that I am not alone in the way I have felt battling the darkness. By the end of the show, I had made pals with a woman who said to me, “I don’t know who you are but you’re awesome.”

Safe to say, the true Holly is back.

Signs?

I’m in a period of disillusionment about the Universe. I have always been a big believer in signs and that the Universe has been sending me signs to guide me along my path.

Some examples: My cat caught my eye in the shelter because her name is Buttercup. That’s my favorite wildflower. I was born Dec. 7, so 7s indicate to me things are flowing in the right direction. When my favorite obscure songs come on wherever I am, it stops me in my tracks. I have been stringing things like this together like clues and points on a map guiding me to some unknown destination.

I compulsively followed these signs and I’m rather certain everyone has thought that I am crazy. And I liked it that way. This communication between me and the unknown made sense to me.  I collected all the signs and synchronicities like little jewels made just for me and precious only to me.

Movies like “Fools Rush In” and “Serendipity” were rare parts of mainstream entertainment that spoke of following the signs from the Universe. In both films, the female lead characters come to a point where they say they don’t believe in signs or fate or destiny anymore. That’s where I am today.

I’m at the point of my own rom-com where I don’t know what to believe right now. I am stamping “Return to Sender” and “Address Unknown” on all the signs from the Universe. Like, “Thanks, that’s cute of you. I remember when I whimsically thought that meant something.”

I remember following my heart all over this country and all over this world. Leaning in to the learning and the experimentation. Willing to come up with dead ends some days and beautiful fistfuls of treasures on others. For most of this year, I was completely convinced I had stumbled into a major part of my plotline.

Two years ago, I went into a metaphysical shop in Huntington Beach with Penny. Penny asked if I wanted to get a reading, so I did. I tend to follow most any suggestion that Penny makes. At that time, there wasn’t much that I wanted or needed in terms of guidance. I had just two burning questions: One was about a necklace I had lost and the other was about my cat, Kitty, who had died in April.

When I asked the psychic about Kitty, she looked at me with eyebrows raised. “You want to know about your cat? Ok… are you sure you don’t want to know about your career or romance?”

I truly wanted to know if Kitty was at peace or reincarnated as Buttercup, which is what I believed. She said that Kitty had gone and come back within the span of about six weeks. Which is about the time between when Kitty died and when Buttercup was picked up by the shelter.

Then the psychic again insisted about telling me about some man. Ok, whatever. Go right ahead. I truthfully didn’t want to hear about any man. I was not in the mood for men. She then proceeded to tell me that in two years I would meet a man who would be very tall, with blue eyes and dark hair. He would be a sailor of some sort and financially stable and he would love me. “When you meet this man and you know it’s this man, call me,” she said.

“Yeah, sure, I totally will,” I thought. And I walked out dismissing it all but the part about Kitty being Buttercup. However, I scribbled down that information about the man in my journal that year, put it on a shelf and forgot about it.

Then in February, I met someone who fit this description. It took me about two months after meeting him to realize he fit this description. I knew the night we met things felt very guided by the Universe and there were so many signs that I had to not think about them too much in the moment otherwise I would have gone careening off the planet. To illustrate, when I saw him, the thought in my head was, “There he is.” That’s, like, not the normal thing I think when I see a perfect stranger. (“The Ballad of Love and Hate” by the Avett Brothers is playing on shuffle on Spotify. Formerly a sign. Perhaps just an algorithm.)

Let me cut to the chase, as now it is months later and this man is not here with me. It utterly makes no sense to me. The signs were all there. Heaps of them. I was like Scrooge McDuck in his treasure vault, sitting atop my millions of signs.

I learned a lot about myself this year. I learned how many things have been holding me back and I learned about subconscious fears that were ruling my life. I learned so many things that have propelled me forward and reshaped me into a better version of myself. Is that all the signs were meant to make me see?

So what do I do? I am grateful for all the signs, experiences and lessons. There is a little pit in the bottom of my stomach when I think of this prediction and how convinced I was that I had met this man. Sure, none of it made sense. It didn’t have to make sense by any logical definitions. In my heart it made sense, in my soul it made sense and that’s all I care about.

And yet, I am standing here in front of the Universe with my jaw dropped and my hands empty except for these words hastily scrawled on a page of my journal. Time hurries on and I must go with it and for now I will be looking at signs with nostalgia and always a bit of hope.