Advice for Day 50: Sometimes you need a slow song and some effin sentimentality

In the air the questions hang
Will we get to do something?
Who we gonna end up being?
How we gonna end up feeling?
What you gonna spend your free life on?
Free life.

Let's fall in love again with music as our guide
We'll raise our ready hands and let go for the ride
Down into unknown lands where lovers need and hide

We got these lives for free, don't know where they've been
Don't know where they'll go when we are through with them
Starlight of the sun, dark side of the moon

-Dan Wilson "Free Life"

Advice for Day 48: Makin' Mistakes, Makin' Decisions

So why did I suddenly decide to go all hippie and get in touch with the inner boho? The truth is I feel, i've felt, trapped with the decisions of tomorrow. Yes, i've been over analyzing per usual. I've been wanting to take the right steps instead of just moving. I've always been so obsessed with not making any mistakes that i usually end up not even making a decision.

When I was 16, I got stuck in an intersection. I was taking my driving test and I was so nervous my hands were shaking at their proper position at 10 and 2. I was turning left at a light and i couldn't decide if i should scoot up into the intersection to cross at a break in cars or wait til the light turned red and i got an arrow. I froze and waited and then got the safety of a green arrow.

The instructor marked off 8 points for what amounts to unsafe hesitance. unsafe hesitance. it turns out over thinking it isn't always helpful in driving or life. I failed my first driving test. The next one i passed with only 3 points off. I just drove, I didn't think.

The problem is you don't get a redo at life. If i keep waiting, I won't be living. If i make a decision i might make a mistake. But that is really what i want. To make a big huge effin mistake.



So the reiki, my attempt at hippiehood, was really suppose to give me some clarity as to what i wanted to do with this potential of a life. But it just made me realize I need to just do what i feel and stop trying to stop myself from making mistakes.

So I'm moving to Chicago January 3rd and I'll plan the rest of my mistakes from there.

Advice for Day 47: Note to self: There are no nervous hippies

Have you never noticed that there are never any nervous hippies? No groups of dread-locked, tattooed, flowey skirt flower children gulping lattes and bemoaning the economic crisis in increasingly higher frequencies. No hippies got zen or pot or something that makes them immune to the useless feeling of anxiety and nervousness.

Needless to say my panic attack ridden self has never been a hippie, merely a proud faux hippie aka wearing bell bottoms in 7th grade and signing a legalize marijuana petition sophomore year of college.

But on Wednesday, i took one more step towards hippie heaven when i partook in the highly bohemian activity of reiki. You know, reiki- energies and chakras and healing without touching- everything hippie in one convenient activity.

And what was the soul revealing conclusion of my brush with hippie heaven?

That i am indeed a nervous person- ridiculously and painfully nervous.

It took the reiki master a good 40 minutes to rid me of my nerves. As i laid down on the table i was completely relaxed but as soon as she put her hands to my head, lord, my heart sped up and my mouth went dry. I could feel the nervous energy running along my skin but i couldn't let it go. It just ran along my skin like it was being chased.

And then i let it go and it felt really damn good. Like floating without the realization the gravity exists. Like being calm without remembering the sensation of panic. Like happiness without thinking about what might lead to sadness. Like the future without fear.

It was a rare gift that makes me want to be a full fledged for real boho.

It was also makes me wonder what my nerves have stopped me from in the past. How different could my life be if i didn't live with this tightness in my stomach? If i could let go of the anxiety what could would my world be? And can I ever really let go of nerves that have been part of me for so long?

Wow for those counting that was four rhetorical questions for a self proclaimed rhetorical question hater. And I'm not even freaking out about it...well maybe i am, just a little. Damn there goes hippiehood.