Flicka Blue, Flicka White

Well, one month into the new year and I’m not writing as much here as I’d planned. But this morning, as with many other mornings, I did write something real and important and good and it’s for the book and that’s just the trade off. Flicka makes up for it, right?

Snippets

Interesting turn of events: the Rooster Pouf must have telepathically received all the suggestions of “chicken soup” in response to my recent post about him, because he has been polite to me ever since. Really truly.

I spent my midday break-in-the-sun brushing and cutting frozen diarrhea blobs from an ailing horse’s tail. It was simultaneously disgusting and rewarding. Sunshine, who is nearly 30 and is having digestive issues, appeared to be in a state of bliss during the 40-minute procedure and I must have lightened his tail by ten pounds {icky face!}. His condition has vastly improved over the past two weeks, and he is in great spirits, so I, of course, have hope. He’s living in the front yard and wears a thick bed comforter under his horse blanket for extra warmth and looks like Merlin in horse-form. The other horses hang out on the other side of the yard fence, so he’s never lonely. His tail is now slightly shorter, but clean, and my hands still smell gross.

I have finished all my tax prep. You know I love doing it. Done!

I’ve also been watching Making A Murderer. I’m up to episode 9, just a few minutes in, and I’m stuck there – watching Brendan in court (and, previously, with police and investigators and LEN) feels like watching state-sanctioned child abuse and I just can’t deal. My cortisol is through the roof.

Mellowing out with an old pic of a cool cloud……

A Horse In The Snow

Is there anything more wonderful than a horse in the snow?

YES.

It’s not 2015 anymore!

THAT is more wonderful!!

Here’s Kota, demonstrating my feelings about 2015:

Happy new year, all y’all. I’m excited. I feel inspired and enlivened, two of my favorite feelings. Both of which have felt out of reach, hanging out on the horizon, for far too long. I’m planning to share more long-form writing here each month, plus a video blog, plus smatterings between. Plus organizing this brain chaos into another book. Plus a few *BIG NEW* projects, which shall debut soon.

Thank you all so, so much for sticking with me these last two tumbling, heart-wrenching years. It’s been rough, and I’m excited to turn some of these life-whammos into creation.

It’s been a while.

What are your plans, as of now, for 2016?

The Words

Slowly but surely, I’m catching up on all the things with which I’ve fallen behind this year (which is everything). Back in May, I got requests to post the written words of my commencement address. Finally, here they are. Please feel free to share, print, re-post, facebook, etc. I’m honored and happy that my words have had an impact on so many. There’s a lot of backstory to the speech itself, which I’ll share in a later post. In the meantime, the words…

. . .

I’m going to tell you one of the secrets of life. You can’t avoid pain. You will lose money. Probably more than once. You will lose a loved one. Probably more than once. Your body will fail you, in some way, at some time, possibly more than once. None of us are exempt from the hard times and the heartbreaking times.

Now why would I make such a dour declaration on this day of celebration? Because, when you understand this truth – and accept it – you are immediately granted a very special kind of power, which brings extraordinary freedom. When you stop making decisions based on what you think will keep you free from pain (which is a false assumption to begin with), you start making decisions that are aligned with your unique truth. The hard times will find you whether you follow the rules or you follow your truth. So why not follow your truth?

I realized this a couple of years after I graduated from college. I was in Death Valley, alone, in May. It was 111 degrees, and the only other person I saw was the guy working at the gas station jiffy mart. I had gone to Death Valley because I was in the midst of my quarter life crisis. My health was failing, my finances were failing, and the things I felt like I was “supposed” to be doing weren’t fulfilling to me. And I had a big chip on my shoulder about it. I felt like it was all really unfair. And out there, alone in the desert, I realized this truth, that you can’t avoid pain. And that it’s not necessarily a mark of some kind of failure. It’s just a mark of life. And as I drove back home to San Francisco, I felt OK for the first time in a long time.

While camping in Death Valley, I was eating little more than trail mix, and this helped unlock the mystery of my health crisis – it was celiac disease. Ten years ago, “gluten-free” wasn’t part of the lexicon, and as I healed, I wrote one of the first books on gluten intolerance, the book I wished I’d had to help me. A few days after I signed my first book contract, my apartment building burned down in the middle of the night. Barefoot, out on the sidewalk, my neighbors and I huddled together, watching the flames. Suddenly, I possessed nothing but the few boxes of film negatives I’d grabbed as I ran out. But I held on to that Death Valley truth. And this time, while I certainly felt the shock of another Hard Time, I didn’t take it personally. I moved to a tiny studio and, instead of replacing my furniture, I got a Vespa. I loved riding my Vespa around San Francisco, and when I decided to move back to New York City, I rode my Vespa across the United States.

That ride lasted two months and exactly 6000 miles. I took the scenic route and spent nights, sometimes several days, with people I met when I stopped for milkshakes or directions. That ride changed the way I saw the land and the people around me, and it changed how I saw myself. By the time I reached New York, the country had put its spell on me and I turned around and moved to Wyoming, with no job, and knowing no one. One day, out of the blue, a new friend brought an orphan coyote pup to my door. I was not expecting this, nor prepared for it, but Charlie moved in with my cat and me, and he is now eight years old. Caring for Charlie gave me a crash course in commitment. He anchored me, and this opened the door for more animals, another book contract, and work I love and am challenged by.

Each opportunity was born from a previous choice I had made, choices that were aligned with my unique truth. With each choice, a very large percentage of my friends and family said “DON’T.” They were worried about the potential pain. And each time, I said, “the hard times are going to come whether I follow your wishes or my intuition. And so I’m going to pack in as much good as I can in the times in between.”

Each one of you knows what this means for you. You will always know what this means for you. Stay in touch with your truth, and allow it to inform your every choice.

— Shreve Stockton, Colorado State University Commencement Address, May 2015

. . .

Also by demand, I’ve created mini posters of the text, signed, printed on heavy stock, and available here.

This, That, & the Other

My nasopharynx was deflowered last week. After huffing a numbing solution that tasted like diesel and wasn’t particularly effective, a long tube with a light and camera on the end of it was sent up my nose and down my throat by my laryngologist so she could see my vocal cords live and in action. I get to do this again tomorrow, with the added bonus of gigantic needles! My doc will send the camera back up my nose and down my throat, then go straight into my neck with said needles, and, with the aid of the live video, inject the musculature behind my left vocal cord to poof it up. Hopefully, this will help me talk longer, louder, and more easily. It’s craaaaazy how much I took my voice for granted before all this.

Charlie calendars are coming!! They really are. I’m still running behind in every aspect of life, but the 2016 Charlie Calendar is at my printer and I’ll have previews and the shop listing up next week. Stay tuned! And thanks for your patience. It’s a little bit late but as fabulous as ever.

Thanks, also, for all the Eli love. I cannot believe I have to actually type the following, but: Charlie did not kill Eli. Got a lot of Qs about this. They lived together for nearly a decade; if that can’t squash the cynicism, what can?

To end on a more frivolous note…. my latest Netflix binge is The Great British Baking Show. It’s the antithesis of Top Chef (which I also love). It’s so friendly and polite, though the matriarch judge makes a spectacular WTF face, and she makes it often. It’s full of strange bakes such as three-tiered pork-prune pie. The tiers, here, not meaning layers within one pie but three giant stacked pies, like a wedding cake of savory pie. Sounds disgusting to me, but it’s fun to watch.