Yesterday, when I let new adventures begin by checking out a venue in Cambridge for my 2024 concert/live album recording, I saw this greeting card at a supermarket:
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Doing something new can feel scary, so I appreciate that attitude of “let new adventures begin.” Can you see new adventures begin in my other images for today?
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Let new adventures begin here as you listen to Tuba Skinny performing at Lilypad in Cambridge.
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Thanks to all who help me let new adventures begin, including YOU!
Lately, I’ve been stepping outside my comfort zone — taking Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice to do something that scares me every day.
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Yesterday, Joan the cat was stepping outside her comfort zone while walking further down our street than ever before.
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Soon after stepping outside her comfort zone, Joan hurried back to the safety of familiar territory.
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Will we be stepping outside your comfort zone in my other images for today?
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Making new friends while dressing like a dork might be a great example of stepping outside your comfort zone (not to mention evaluating your life).
Here’s “stepping outside your comfort zone” on YouTube:
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Thanks to all who help me step out of my comfort zone, including YOU!
“I’m afraid to look” is a phrase that can pop up in my mind, most recently right before I started writing this post.
“I’m afraid to look,” I thought, before I used my home monitor to discover my INR results after returning home from Halifax, where I was away from my usual routine. “I’m afraid to look,” I thought, as a good INR range for me is between 3.0 – 3.5, remembering how a year ago, when I was on vacation and away from my usual routine, I had a mini-stroke because my INR range was too low (2.4).
Before I conducted the home test this morning, I decided to counteract “I’m afraid to look” with “I need to look and whatever it is, I’ll deal with it.”
I realized that “I’m afraid to look” is a very old thought and feeling for me, related to a traumatic experience I had when I was 10 years old in the hospital, right after my first cardiac pacemaker implant. Nobody told me the pacemaker was huge and was “going to stick out like a sore thumb” — a description my surgeon shared with my parents but neglected to share with me. When I first saw my pacemaker after a nurse removed the bandages, I was afraid and asked, “What’s that?” The nurse, for whatever reason, lied to me and said “That’s your hip, swollen from the surgery.” My fear went away, temporarily. However, when a doctor removed the bandages a day or so later, I looked and was afraid to see the big protrusion still there. I asked again “What’s that?” and the doctor said, very casually, without any questions or further explanations, “That’s your pacemaker.”
I assume that doctors and nurses today would handle that situation much better with a child, so that child wouldn’t grow up being afraid to look.
When I did my INR test this morning, I decided I would not be afraid to look and also — for the first time — take some pictures of the process. I hope you’re not afraid to look at these four photos. (If you’re very squeamish about blood, you might want to scroll quickly past them.)
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Yay! 3.1 is a great number for me and better than my INR number two weeks ago, which was high. My coagulation nurse and I decided not to adjust my medication before my trip, because we were afraid that might result in my INR becoming dangerously low again.
Is anyone afraid to look at my other images for today?
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It looks like the Daily Bitch is afraid to look outside a six-foot radius.
Afraid to look on YouTube for “afraid to look”? I need to look and whatever it is, we’ll deal with it (here and here).
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Thanks to all who were not afraid to look at today’s post, including YOU!
Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I tweeted something to see on Twitter and got this here information back:
There may be nothing to see there but there is something to see here, thanks to all the great experiences I’m having with my son Aaron and my sister-in-law Deborah in Nova Scotia.
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There is always something to see here at the end of each blog post — gratitude for all my readers, including YOU!
Where words fail, you can always use pictures.
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Where words fail, music speaks, and I used no words and failed music yesterday when I deliberately missed notes in front of three guys whose opinion I respect.
When words fail, it often means emotions are strong, and I have so much love for the guys in that photo, one of whom is having a birthday today!
When words fail, it might mean that cats are involved and today is also Joan’s birthday!
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Where words fail because your jaw is making clicking noises, you can try different remedies to fix it.
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Where words fail, you can just share more pictures of a wonderful day!
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Where words fail, you can always celebrate Senior Citizen’s Day (with someone who is turning 60) and Stay Home with Your Kid’s Day with your only kid who is moving to Halifax next week.
No cupcake on Cupcake Day, but an eclair, a cream puff, and a cannoli never fail.
Where words fail, body language and noises can convey what you want for your birthday.
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Where words fail, I can end with an image of gratitude for YOU!
I’m realizing that I have a fear of not being there for people. Not so much a fear of people not being there for me — which I got used to as a child in the hospital during the dark days when parents weren’t allowed to stay with their children.
I’m aware of the fear of not being there for people, here and now, because
This reminds me of the Doritos Cure that my manager came up with years ago about my fear of not being there for patients immediately if they needed me. Because I was imagining them painfully and anxiously waiting for me to get in touch with them, she proposed that I imagine them being less pained and able to do things other than just waiting for me, like eating Doritos. (If you want to be there for the blog post about the Doritos Cure, you can find it here.)
While I’m not being there for people on Twitter today, I’m going to imagine my 30,000 followers eating Doritos (or maybe something healthier) rather than anxiously waiting for me to show up. Also, my not being there for one day doesn’t mean people will decide I’m unreliable and therefore not worth following.
While I’m not being there for people on Twitter, I am being here for my blog followers with my images for the day.
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My not being there for people on Twitter today means that if they want to know about today’s holidays, they’ll have to find those out for themselves. And they can!
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “not being there.”
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That reminds me about Pee-wee Herman/Paul Reubens not being there for us in this realm any more.
Here’s Paul Reubens/Pee-wee Herman being there.
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What are you thoughts about this not-being-there post? And thank you for being there.
Kenspeckle is a word that appeared in yesterday’s blog. I assume that “Kenspeckle” is NOT kenspeckle to most people, so here’s the definition again:
In my coaching session on Wednesday, Jeff Leisawitz and I spoke about my ambivalence about being kenspeckle, which originates from my experience as a child expressing my talents and then ending up in the hospital for much of the time. Even though that’s magical thinking (a little girl’s musical and creative talents do not cause her to undergo painful surgeries and other traumatic experiences; her congenital heart condition does that), I’m still afraid of being kenspeckle.
My most recent unpleasant experience of being kenspeckle was a year ago when I shared my song “Everybody’s Somebody’s Asshole” with enthusiastic strangers on a trip in Georgia, and ended up the next day in a hospital with a T.I.A.
My fears of being kenspeckle are also related to growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family, where people were afraid of attracting the “evil eye” if they were too conspicuous and easily recognizable.
I am working on letting go of my fear of being kenspeckle. In the meantime, is there anything kenspeckle in my images for today?
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Let’s get gnarly and be kenspeckle all day!
Here I am trying to be kenspeckle in Edinburgh several years ago.
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Thanks to all who help me have the courage to be kenspeckle, including YOU!
In group and individual therapy, many people discuss their difficulties in asking for what they want.
Sometimes, people aren’t sure what they want. Other times, they know what they want but they dread the experience of asking for what they want and not getting it.
Even though asking for what you want and not getting it actually leaves you in the same situation as not asking at all, people dread the experience of rejection.
I can relate. I often have trouble asking for what I want, for fear that both the asker (me) and the askee (you?) will feel worse after the asking. Also, I’m afraid of being perceived as being
Today, I am going to throw caution to the wind and ask for something that I want.
I want more people to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
There, I’ve said it!
Are we still okay?
Now I’m going to take this one step further and share the link to my YouTube channel so you can subscribe.
https://youtube.com/@orangecat53
Wow! I did it. I asked for what I want. And no matter what happens, it’s good.
Now, because that felt so good, I’m going to ask for something else I want: could you look at my images for today?
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Here’s what I find when I search for “asking for what you want” on YouTube. (Hey! Maybe I should write a song about asking for what you want and publish it on YouTube!)
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After watching that video, I feel even more comfortable asking you to leave a comment, below.
And in case you need to know how to subscribe to a YouTube channel…
Thanks to all who are here for this asking-for-what-you-want post, including YOU!
Today is Nothing to Fear Day!
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Do you see anything to fear in this blog on Nothing to Fear Day?
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There’s nothing to fear about people’s anger, envy, or bitchiness, which is like cellophane tape. It’s sticky, but you can always peel it off.
Here’s what I find when I search for “nothing to fear.”
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There is nothing to fear about watching another video on Nothing to Fear Day.
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I have nothing to fear about that 5-second fear-killing technique, so 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
I woke up wondering what the focus of today’s blog post might be and then I thought, why not focus on focus?
These days, I have many centers of interest and activity (including group therapy for patients and providers, parenting, friendships, home repair, self-care, social media, writing, the news, word games, my original songs, travel, and cats), which makes it difficult to focus.
Now, I’m going to focus on quotes about focus.
That’s my cue to focus on my images for today.
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “focus”:
Now I’m going to turn the focus to you: what are your thought and feelings about focus?
Many people recommend that we focus on gratitude, so thanks to all who help me focus every day, including YOU!
