Instead of doodling drawings, sometimes I doodle words. This is what I came up with today as I was reading through people's fb statuses, the ones that are so passive aggressive. These little word doodles are the way I live my life in relationship to others on a daily basis:

Never try to change someone, it's futile and narcissistic. 
Don't try to persuade someone to see your point of view, ultimately, they are doing the same.
Lead with empathy. Always try to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
You can't control another person's path. Don't get involved, they will work it out on their own.
It's not always about you, it's usually the stories the person is telling themselves in their head.
What frustrates you about someone, is probably what frustrates you about yourself.
Don't worry, it's a waste of energy and won't matter tomorrow.
Money is nothing but a token for goods. It means nothing. Your right to be loved by someone should not be based on your monetary worth. Money is nothing.


....my little hippy views.

I haven't caught up on my google reader in ages. I had 700+ unread blogs to thumb through. I decided to forego Mashable, as the posts were getting excessive and most of the social media info I have grown bored with. Recently, I'm into blogs that have to do with interior design, mostly about designers who buy flea market and estate sale items and make art with their home decorating. It reminds me of me, or the "me" I used to be in my little cottage home that I made my art project. 

My bestie's wedding is in almost a month. I can't believe a year ago she just started to date him. It was last Valentine's Day she came to Chicago with her man and announced that after a month of dating, they were in love.

She brought this boy of hers to me, telling him he had to pass the approval of two of the toughest most important people in her life... her Dad (rough and rugged, a scary guy) and me (soft, sweet, and small). He starts off the initial meeting by buying me my favorite beer, hugs me, I shoot him a line of sarcasm and he takes it with a sense of humor. I watch the way he looks at her and decide he is good and I am satisfied with this union.

I like that she found him. They were two people who wanted the same thing. Two people who were tired of the dating scene, two people who probably passed each other a million times at the gym, two people who just wanted to find someone and they just fit and instantly worked. It just was simple and not complicated, so utterly easy.

I was thinking back to when she started dating him and she imparted these wise words: if you have to seek out the advice of your girlfriends about your boy, he's probably not the guy for you. It's simple and true. It means there is comfort and trust already established in the relationship and no need for outside opinions not even from your best friends.

I remember the years I watched her date various guys, I sat with her for hours over drinks discussing the behavior of the guys she was dating and/or why they were acting a certain way, and she probably knew they weren't right for her, but her ego wanted justification.

With her fiance I have never once had her ask me what to do when he does this or what does it mean when he does that. We've never pondered over the intricacies of his inner mind and how it works. We never hashed out his motivations for his actions. To me, this means it's the real deal. Simple and easy love, just how it should be.

So, this V-Day blog post is for my bff and her man. So happy to see her happy with someone that makes her happy. I love love.

Things that I'm into now:

I started doing yoga when I was 19. I was on this prolific hippie inspired journey and naturally that fit in well. I did it religiously, everyday, sometimes three times a day. I had moments at work, when all the guys would leave for lunch, and I would do yoga in the conference room. I was obsessed.

I love music. I love the Grammy's. After watching said Grammy's last night (with amazing pizza in my lap and wonderful company by my side) I felt myself begin to question the general public and their inability to recognize true talent. I begin to lose faith in the "arts" when I see Taylor Swift win album of the year. This to me, is like seeing Nicholas Sparks win the Pulitzer Prize, it just shouldn't happen.

People really dig things that don't make you think or feel. If people did like to feel, we'd be listening to legendary greats during their reign instead of decades later when they dropped out of society. Artistic genius needs to sit and ferment for long periods of time, so we can appreciate it when they have drank themselves to death for non-recognition, or watching people like Taylor Swift win awards.

Does the girl have a talent? Sure, a little. We see glimpses of it in her cutesy little diddies about falling in love at 16 and we float back to that time and connect with the song. We see brief moments of it while watching her onstage playing her guitar easily with synchronicity. We see it sitting there underneath the soft careless breathy voice, hiding deep in the caverns of her vocal chords.

But dear lord, give that girl some vocal lessons. Watching her trying to keep pace with Stevie Nicks was like watching my best friend's dog try to howl along to a soft melody of violin strings, just painful and you wish the howling dog would be taken away to that magical "farm".

I find it startling to know that there are female vocalists out there who can shatter your soul with their voice and lyrics, *cough**Imogen Heap** cough, cough*, and get little public recognition. If you put America's sweetheart, Taylor Swift, on American Idol, she would not make it past the first round.

But, everyone loves a rags to riches story, everyone loves a comeback queen, everyone loves to see someone pour themselves into their passion and have their dreams fulfilled. We love those stories. Why do we love them? Because we want to be that story, we want that dream. We want this blonde haired angelic creature to be our idol to worship.

Give this girl 10 years to become affected by the limelight. Just wait it out until her heart becomes deeply broken, until the record labels use up every bit of her blood, and until she becomes jaded by society. This is when we'll see if true genius surfaces and can pull out any real artistic little dna. Fuck, send that girl to Haiti to see life without rose colored glasses and the minor torments of being a teenager who gets overlooked by the boys for the cheer captain who wears short skirts and high heels. That should shift her sense of reality. Ah, but the public wouldn't understand if her words moved from fairy tale love to the desperate needs of mankind. They wouldn't be able to hum along, the song's a little too deep for them.