Tag Archives: life

I Love My Life

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Why I love my life — and how you can love your life, too.

I love my life.

That’s the thought that struck me last Saturday afternoon, as I walked across the transient parking area at Lake Havasu Municipal Airport, from the FBO office to my helicopter, swinging a plastic bag full of BBQ takeout.

I love my life.

The sudden thought amazed and exhilarated me. It put a skip to my step and made me smile.

I love my life.

This was near the end of a busy day when I’d spent 2-1/2 hours flying an aerial photographer and videographer over six different target vehicles in the 2013 Parker 250 off-road race. It had been hard, challenging flying, sometimes dangerously close to the ground, performing maneuvers that pushed the helicopter’s capabilities as much as — if not more than — I’d ever pushed them before.

This was the same day I’d been up at 5 AM and had gone out with just a half a cup of coffee and some oatmeal in my belly on a 31°F morning. The same day I’d preflighted my helicopter and pulled off its doors in the predawn gloom with just a Mini Maglite to light the way.

This was the day after I’d spent the night in a houseful of strangers — all men — sleeping in a bed on sheets that someone else had slept in the night before.

And it was only 24 hours — almost to the minute — after being offered the aerial photo gig 80 miles across the desert from my home.

It had been a most unusual and challenging 24 hours.

And I had enjoyed every minute of it.

I love my life.

I realized, as I walked across the airport ramp, smelling the aroma of my BBQ dinner and looking forward to the fried okra I’d nibble in flight on the way home, that I needed to blog about this sudden realization, I needed to document how and why I felt the way I did. I needed to capture the moment in my blog to remember it forever, just in case the feeling should fade due to events in the days or weeks or months to come. I needed to share it with others who may also love their lives but not really know it. And to share it with the folks who are missing the point of life — the meaning of life, if you will — in an effort to help them understand and set a course that would enable them to love their lives, too.

What I Love about My Life

In thinking hard about this, I think what I love most about my life can be broken down into several things: freedom, time, variety, travel, challenge, and friends. Bear with me while I address how each of these affect my life and personal philosophy.

Freedom.
Because I don’t have a “regular job” and I don’t have kids or a husband to answer to, I have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want. If I feel like getting up at dawn to photograph first light over the desert, fine. If I feel like eating leftover Chinese food for breakfast, great! If I feel like hopping in the car with my dog and spending the night in Prescott after a pot-luck dinner with friends there, wonderful! Anything goes. My only limits are time (see below) and money.

Time.
Not having a “regular job,” kids, or a husband also means I can make my own hours and do things when I want to do them. Obviously I’m not completely free — I still have work to do and appointments to keep — but my time is extraordinarily flexible. For the most part, I make up my day and week and month as I go along. If something I’m doing needs more time, I take it. The only time of year when my time (and freedom) are restricted is when I’m on contract for agricultural work — but that’s only 11 weeks out of the year. (I don’t know too many people who would find that a hardship.)

Variety.
Back in 1987 (or thereabouts), I took a job as an auditor with a large residential developer. I did construction project audits. Every single audit took about two weeks to complete and was exactly the same. After two months, I started looking for another job. The lack of variety in my work was driving me insane.

I feel the same today — I thrive on variety. I like the fact that every day of my life is different. I wake up at different times, I do different things, I see different people, I eat different things, I go to different places, I go to bed at different times. Unless I’m elbow-deep in a book project that consumes 10 hours a day, no two days are the same. And that’s very nice.

Travel.
One of the benefits of time and freedom is the ability to travel. I love to travel, to get out and see different places. When things get dull — when I feel as if I’m slipping into a rut at home — I shake things up with a trip. I’ve been home in Arizona since September and have managed to take at least one trip every single month since I’ve been back: Washington (twice), Las Vegas, California, Florida, and Lake Powell (by helicopter). That doesn’t count the day trips and overnight trips I’ve squeezed in on a whim: Prescott, Phoenix, Winslow, Parker, and Tucson. And I already have my next three trips planned out.

I don’t travel as a tourist, ticking off items on a list of things to see. I travel to experience the places like someone who lives there. It’s a much better (and usually cheaper) way to experience the world.

Challenge.
What can I say about challenge? Simply put, a life without challenges is simply not a life worth living. I need goals — realistic and achievable goals — and I need to be able to work toward them.

My entire life has been a series of challenges and achievements, some minor, like learning to ride a motorcycle or horse, and some major, like building a successful career as a freelance writer or building a profitable helicopter charter business from the ground up. I’ve always got a handful of goals in my back pocket and am always working toward achieving the ones that mean most to me at the moment.

I’m fortunate to have a good brain and good work ethic — two prerequisites for success. I’m also fortunate to have good health, which makes everything else a lot easier. But I know plenty of people who have all these things and still don’t challenge themselves. They skate through life, doing the least they can do to get by comfortably, never challenging themselves to go the next step. I simply couldn’t live like that.

The best part of always having challenges and goals to work toward? I never get bored.

Friends.
It wasn’t until this year, when my marriage fell apart, that I realized how much my friends mean to me.

When I was married, living with my husband in Wickenburg or Phoenix, I didn’t have many good friends. I couldn’t. There was no room in my life to build and maintain friendships.

But when I went away to Washington for my summer work, my husband stayed behind. I began building strong friendships with some of the people I met. I also kept in touch with other friends from all over the world by phone, email, Twitter, and Facebook. This network of friends was amazingly helpful and supportive when my husband called me on my birthday in June and asked for a divorce. And they were even more supportive when I discovered, in August, the lies and the woman he’d been sleeping with. The pain of his betrayal is sharp, but my friends help ease that pain.

Even now that I’m home, dealing with harassment from my husband or his lawyer on an almost weekly basis, my friends have been extremely helpful, showering me with invitations to get out and do things together, offering me their homes as destinations for trips, or simply sharing words of encouragement and support. They not only take the edge off my divorce ordeal, but give me a great outlook on life.

Without good friends, no one can truly love their life.

How I Got Here

I got where I am the way most people get where they are in life — but with an abrupt turn and an important realization along the way.

The abrupt turn: career change
Raised in a lower middle class family, divorced parents, stepdad that brought us all up a notch and offered my family the financial security we never really had. High school, college. 9 to 5 job with a good employer and good benefits. A new job that wasn’t a good match (see above) followed by a better job with a Fortune 100 corporation. Things seemed pretty sunny for me.

But they weren’t. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like the work I was doing. I didn’t like the way the hour-long commute — each way — was eating away at my life. I didn’t like corporate politics and game-playing. I was good at my job, I made good money, I kept getting raises and promotions, but I dreaded getting up in the morning.

Been there? I bet you have. Many people have.

Trouble was, I made a bad decision back in my college days. I always wanted to be a writer, but I was convinced by my family that I needed a better career path. I was the first in the history of my family to go to college, so it was a big deal. I was good with numbers and math so we figured accounting was a good course of study. I ended up with two scholarships in a great business school, Hofstra University on Long Island. But in my junior year, at the age of 19 — did I mention I started college at 17? –I began realizing that I really didn’t want to be an accountant. I wanted to be a writer. I called home and told my mother I wanted to change my major to journalism. She had a fit and told me I was crazy. That I’d never get a job. That I’d be giving up a great future. I listened to her. I was 20 when I got my BBA degree with “highest honors” in accounting.

I’ve always regretted listening to my mother that day. Indeed, that was the last time I took her advice on any important life decision.

I always wrote — I kept journals and wrote novels and short stories that were never published or seen by others. And I always remembered my dream of becoming a writer. So in 1990, when the Institute of Internal Auditors was looking for someone to author a 4-1/2 day course about using “microcomputers” (primarily 20-pound “laptops”) for auditing and there was a $10,500 price tag attached to it, I sent them a proposal and got the project. I asked my boss for a leave of absence to do the work but was turned down. So I quit.

And that’s when I began my freelance career.

Believe me, leaving a job that paid me $45K/year plus benefits (in 1990) at the age of 28 was not an easy decision. As you might imagine, my mother absolutely freaked out.

Looking back at it now, this abrupt turn in my career path marks the day I stopped skating through life and started challenging myself to do better.

And I did. I had some rough patches along the way — the first full year freelancing was pretty tough — but I worked hard and smart and picked up momentum, mostly by working multiple jobs as a per diem contractor while writing articles and books. By 1998 I had my first best-selling computer book; the second came the following year. By then, money was not a problem — I finally made more money than I needed to live comfortably. I saved, I invested, I put money away for retirement.

And I used my excess time and money to challenge myself again: to learn how to fly helicopters.

By 2001, I’d bought my first helicopter and was trying to start a business with it. In 2005, I took that to the next level with a new, larger helicopter and FAA Part 135 certificate. In 2008, I found the niche market — agricultural work in Washington State — that finally enabled me to turn a profit. As publishing began its death spiral, I was already prepared with a third career that could support me.

People say I’m lucky. I disagree. The only thing I’m lucky about is having a good brain and good health — and even that’s something that I work at. It’s my work ethic — my deep-rooted philosophy that the only way to get ahead is to work hard and smart — that made everything possible. I truly believe that if you have a reasonable goal and you work hard and smart, you can achieve it.

Being able to make a living doing what I really love to do — writing and flying helicopters — makes it possible for me to love my life.

The important realization: the meaning of life
On my journey through life, I also made an important realization that changed everything: I discovered the meaning of life.

No, it isn’t 42.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no meaning to life. Life just is. But there are some undeniable facts about life and careful consideration of those facts should guide you to get the most of your life.

I guess I can sum it up my realizations about this in a few bullet points:

  • Life is short — and your life might be even shorter than you expect.
  • You only have one life. (I don’t believe in an “afterlife” or something like reincarnation.)
  • You should live your life as if you’re going to die tomorrow. That means not putting off until tomorrow what you can do today. It also means skipping the “bucket list” and doing what you want as soon as you can. And, by simple logic, it also means not waiting until you reach retirement age to start doing all the things you’ve wanted to do. You might never reach that age.

I think the light bulb came on back in 2008. When my friend Erik got sick and died unexpectedly at age 56, I realized that life can be taken from you at any time. I decided that I wanted to live life now — not when I turned the standard retirement age of 65. I realized that I never wanted to retire — that I wanted to do some kind of income producing work for the rest of my life. But I also knew that I didn’t want to be a slave to my work, now or ever.

I realized that in order to really enjoy life, I had to ensure my current and future financial security. That meant shedding assets I didn’t need and the debt that went with them. That meant paying off debt on important assets I’d always need, like a roof over my head. That meant building my business while paying off debt on its assets so that the business could support me without taking over my life.

And I’ve done all that. My house was paid off last February; I made the last payment on my helicopter earlier this month. I haven’t bought a new car since 2003 so I have no car loans or personal loans. Everything I buy now is by cash or credit card and, if by credit card, it’s paid off in full at the end of the billing cycle. I live within my means. I have no debt.

Do you know how cheaply you can live when you’ve got a paid-for roof over your head and no debt?

Go back to my discussions above about freedom and time. I mentioned that I don’t have a “regular job.” I’m proud of that fact. I worked hard to become debt free so I’d never have to get a regular job. Being debt-free gives me time and freedom.

Being debt-free makes it possible for me to love my life.

Don’t Get Me Wrong — My Life is Not Perfect

I don’t want you to come away from this blog post thinking that my life is perfect and that nothing ever goes wrong. That’s simply not true. My life might be good and I might love it, but it’s far from perfect. It’s worth taking a look at what’s not quite right.

Personal failures
I mentioned above that I need challenge to enjoy life. You might think that I always succeed at what I try. The truth is, although I have a pretty good track record, I don’t always succeed in what I set out to do. Sometimes it’s my fault, sometimes it’s the fault of others I trusted or relied on — which is ultimately my fault for trusting or relying on them. Sometimes it’s just the fact that what I was trying to achieve wasn’t really possible for me to achieve.

One example is my stint as a landlord. Back when I starting making good money, I started investing in rental properties. At one point, I owned a condo, a house, and a 4-unit apartment building. The idea was to run these as a business that generated enough revenue to pay the mortgages and possibly a little extra. But try as I might, I simply could not succeed in keeping the units full with tenants who paid the rent on time and respected my property or their neighbors. There was never enough revenue to cover all the expenses. There were headaches with complaints and repairs and cleanup. It was a miserable ordeal that I hated. I wound up selling my properties before the housing market tanked. One of them resulted in enough of a profit to put a healthy down payment on my second helicopter, so I guess I can’t complain. But as a landlord, I was a complete and utter failure.

Then there were the aerial video projects I attempted back in 2008. I hooked up with a video production company based in the San Diego area. I’d worked with the owner and liked his work. He came up with a proposal and I signed up, giving him a chunk of money. I then spent at least another $10K on flying and related expenses to gather footage. And paid another chunk of money for him to start turning it into something. Then I saw the footage and what he was trying to pass off as a “trailer.” I realized that he was simply not capable of creating the products he had contracted with me to produce. I threw another $2500 at a lawyer, trying to get some of my money back, but the video guy was unreachable and I soon got tired of throwing good money after bad. Finally tally of money lost: about $40K. Ouch. That was an expensive lesson.

I’ve also had failures getting contracts for book ideas and books that simply didn’t sell very well. I’ve failed to get certain writing or flying or web creation jobs I wanted. I’ve made bad (or at least regrettable) decisions on purchases of RVs, vehicles, and property. I’ve trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted and said things I shouldn’t have said. I’ve dropped the ball when it was my turn to play it, thus making a successful outcome impossible. And I’ve even let other people down when they expected or needed my help. I’m not proud of any of these things, but I can’t pretend they didn’t happen.

There are two things I need to say about personal failures and bad decisions:

  • There’s no reward without risk. If you don’t take chances, you will never achieve anything. This all goes back to the idea of skating through life. People who skate do so on a flat surface, never moving up or down. Nothing ventured, nothing gained (or lost). People who take risks can either climb or fall — by taking measured risks and putting the right effort into achieving goals, they’re more likely to climb.
  • We must all take personal responsibility for our own decisions and their outcomes. While others might advise you based on their own experiences or agendas, it’s up to you to make the final decision. Once made, you must take and keep ownership of the decision. Yes, I’ve made some bad decisions in my life that have led to disappointment or failure, but I alone am responsible for them. And I can live with that.

Life partner
And that brings up the second big thing that’s not perfect in my life: I don’t have a life partner.

I did — or I thought I did — for 29 years. We met in 1983 and hit it off almost immediately. We began living together only six months after we met. He liked to use the word “partner” to describe our relationship, but the partnership began to get tenuous not long after we got married 6 years ago.

It took me a long time to realize this. For years I think we were life partners, a real team that shared the same interests, dreams, and goals. But as time went on, that changed. The man who had been my leader became my follower and then my ball and chain. It happened slowly over time — so slowly that I didn’t even realize it was happening. And even when I began to realize it, I couldn’t believe it and remained in denial. I loved him too much. I didn’t want to believe it. Even today I’m having trouble believing that the man I’m in the process of divorcing is the same man I fell in love with and began sharing my life with 29 years ago.

I think part of the change had to do with our outlook on the future. Where I wanted to shed unneeded financial burdens to gain freedom and live my life now, my husband didn’t share either goal or philosophy. His purchase of a second home in Phoenix put a huge financial burden on him, but he refused to sell it. (And I won’t even go into how his living there with a roommate four days every week drove a wedge between us.) His worries about saving up for retirement and paying his bills put him in a string of dead-end jobs with employers who didn’t appreciate his skill set or compensate him properly. He’d become a slave, working primarily to satisfy his huge financial responsibilities and refusing to take steps to improve his situation. He was frustrated and miserable — and, in hindsight, probably jealous of my freedom. He took it out on me, with a never-ending string of put-downs and arguments and “the silent treatment” that wore away at my self-esteem and made me bitter and angry.

Even after visiting a marriage counselor (at his request), when I went back to Washington for my summer work last May, he immediately began to look for my replacement. He found one on a dating website: a typical desperate, middle-aged woman who would do or say (or share photos of) almost anything to snare a man who could ensure her financial future in exchange for sex and ego-stroking. His birthday call to me included the announcement that he wanted a divorce and a series of lies I honestly didn’t think he was capable of.

The transformation of life partner to vindictive and hateful enemy was complete.

And while the pain of his betrayal is probably — hopefully — the worst pain I’ll experience in my life, it does free me from the only thing still preventing me from loving my life: him.

But it also leaves a void in my life, an empty space I thought I had filled. While I enjoy my life, I think I would enjoy it even more if I could share it with someone. Still, I know I’ll be very careful about who I invite to share it with me; I’d rather go through the rest of my life alone than to trust and rely on the wrong man.

Been there, done that. Ouch.

I Love My Life

But as I walked across the tarmac at Lake Havasu Airport last week, swinging my bag of BBQ takeout, I wasn’t thinking about the things that kept my life from being perfect. Indeed, thoughts of such things never entered my mind. Instead, I felt a surge of happiness — exhilarating and exciting — that overwhelmed me when I suddenly realized that I love my life for what it is.

Sure, I have some rough patches ahead of me. My financial situation will take a bit of a hit when I lose half the house and have no place else to live. But I still have my brains and my good work ethic and my health. And I have the business I worked so hard to build over the past ten years. And I have my imagination to think up new ideas and new challenges. And my willingness to take risks to move forward and up — and accept the consequences of my decisions and actions. And I have all those other things: freedom, time, variety, travel, challenge, and friends.

My life is ahead of me — not behind me. And I embrace it because I love it.

Found: Journal from the Past

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I find a handwritten journal with entries from 1991 through 1993 that brings back memories and foreshadows the future.

I’ve been packing on and off for my upcoming move. I’ve been in this house for 15 years and, in that time, have accumulated a lot of stuff. As anyone who has moved can tell you, it’s best to weed out the junk before packing to minimize what you pack. That’s what I’ve been doing since I returned home in September.

Along the way, I’ve been finding all kinds of lost treasures.

The Journal

Journal Cover
The journal I found in my closet on Tuesday.

While cleaning out my “stationery closet” — a closet in the room I used as on office on and off over the past 15 years — I stumbled upon a hard-cover “blank book” that wasn’t blank. I opened it up to discover a journal I had begun back in 1991 that had entries spanning through 1993. It was basically my blog, before blogs existed — a journal of what was going on in my life when I found time to write about it.

I didn’t have much time to look through it — I was leaving shortly to meet some friends for dinner — but I did read enough to realize that I’d found something special: a look into my past life. And, as evidenced on the very first paragraph of the first page’s entry, dated September 10, 1991, it hinted at the difficulties I was already having with the man I’d later marry:

Yet another in a long line of “Nothing” Books. When I bought this in Williamsburg last Saturday, Mike told the people we were with that I’d never write in it. So begins my efforts to prove him wrong.

Open Journal Page
The first page in my journal, dated September 10, 1991.

Yes, I really wrote that more than 21 years ago. Even then, Mike was putting me down.

One of my biggest gripes with him over the years was his habit of putting me down — almost gleefully — in front of family and friends. It usually came out of the blue, totally unexpected, usually on a day when we were getting along just fine. We’d be with other people and he’d say something about me to point out one of my weaknesses or something dumb I’d said or done while alone with him. Something I thought he’d be smart — or kind — enough to keep to himself. It was belittling and embarrassing and the cause of more than a few arguments over the years. It was one of the reasons I didn’t marry him until much, much later, when I thought — mistakenly, it seems — that we were really life partners forever and that I could trust him.

(Yes, I’m an idiot. I’m sure he’s pointing out my stupidity for trusting him to his girlfriend and his friends regularly, even to this day. Love is apparently not just blind, but stupid.)

I remember why I called it a “Nothing” book. Back in the 1980’s I got my first blank book, which was actually titled “The Nothing Book.” (I’m sure I have it around somewhere; I don’t throw anything like that away.) I don’t think I wrote much in it at all.

But this book was more than half filled. A gold mine or stories, full of accounts of traveling for work and pleasure, camping and motorcycle trips, and my freelance career. It’s a diary where I documented what was going on in my life in occasional entries over a two-year period when I was in my early thirties and just beginning to realize what life was all about.

It will make interesting reading and fodder for future blog posts.

THIS is What Life is All About

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Experiencing the wonder of the world with someone you love.

Last night, I went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. While I’ll likely use another blog post to debate the wisdom of stretching Tolkien’s classic into a three-part movie, I cannot criticize the movie makers for the breathtaking scenery throughout the movie. Filmed in New Zealand, this — and the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy — showcases some of the most stunning backcountry locations in the world.

There’s a scene in the movie when Thorin’s Company (13 dwarves, a hobbit, and a wizard) are traveling along a ridge in the mountains, high above the clouds. The scene, obviously shot from a helicopter, reminded me of two other scenes, one from a movie and the other from real life:

  • One of the closing scenes in the 1965 classic, The Sound of Music, when the Von Trapp Family is escaping the Nazis by hiking through the alps.
  • A particular moment on my July 2012 helicopter flight over the Cascade Mountains, when I crossed a specific rocky ridge surrounded by low clouds within sight of Mt. St. Helens.

That entire July flight was amazing, but it was this rocky ridge that popped into my mind while watching The Hobbit in a crowded Florida movie theater:

Cascades Ridge

And it brought me to tears. Even as I write this, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in my mother’s kitchen on a Thursday morning before dawn, I’m all teary-eyed thinking about the amazing things I see and experience almost every day of my life — usually alone.

As I blogged after that flight:

I also felt more than a bit of sadness. There’s no way I can describe the amazing beauty of the remote wilderness that was around me for more than half of that flight. And yet there I was, enjoying it alone, unable to share it with anyone. Although I think my soon-to-be ex-husband would have enjoyed the flight, he was not with me and never would be again. I felt a surge of loneliness that I’ve never felt before. It ached to experience such an incredible flight alone, unable to share it firsthand with someone else who might appreciate it as much as I did.

Over time, I’ve come to learn that it’s more important to experience life than to be a slave to the material things we think we need to survive. I’m not independently wealthy — I do have to work for a living. But I’ve learned to work hard and smart and to live somewhat frugally so my money goes farther. By staying out of debt — and I’ll be completely debt-free (at least for a while) when my helicopter’s final loan payment is made next week — I’m not stressed about having to generate enough income to make credit card and loan payments. I can take time off to enjoy the experiences that make life worth living. In a way, I’m in a sort of semi-retirement where I mix work with play and really enjoy life.

Unfortunately, I’m one of the few people I know who are able to do this.

Reflection Canyon
Another example of the great places I fly for work; this shot was captured by my helicopter’s “nose cam” during a photo flight at Lake Powell.

My choice of career has also enabled me to enjoy amazing life experiences while working. I can’t begin to list the incredible places my work has taken me — or the incredible things I’ve seen from the air and on the ground while simply doing my job. That dawn flight across the Cascades is just an example — I did it for work, to reposition the helicopter for a required maintenance. In other words, it was part of my job. Not only did it entail a pair of amazing flights on consecutive days, but it also included a day spent wandering around Portland, a drive along the coast, a great dinner of oyster stew and fried oysters in an oceanside restaurant, a walk along the beach with my dog, a night in a beachfront motel, a beautiful foggy dawn, breakfast in a historic hotel, and a scenic drive back to the Portland area. What some people might do on a pair of days off, I was able to do as part of my work. How great is that?

What’s not so great is doing it alone.

Although my soon-to-be ex-husband promised me he’d join me on the road during my annual migration to points north — and I worked hard for years to build a business capable of supporting both of us — he backed out with excuses about needing to save more for retirement. I always hoped he’d see the light — and I was somewhat patiently waiting for him to do so right up to the end. The end came, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, when he replaced me with another woman — someone who apparently doesn’t mind watching him be a slave to his material possessions and debt, enjoying life on weekends and during two weeks of paid vacation time each year.

It’s a shame, really. While I feel that life is all about experiences, those experiences are somehow better when they’re shared with someone else. For nearly 29 years, some (but not all) of my best life experiences were spent with the same man who I really thought appreciated them as much as I did: A road trip down the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Francisco. A motorcycle camping trip down Skyline Drive and the Shenandoah Parkway and back up the Atlantic Coast’s barrier islands. A dash across a mosquito-infested field in the Everglades to a rental car, followed by an intense swatting session. A sunset soak in abandoned hot springs along the Rio Grande, watching wild horses graze in Mexico. A jet ski journey up the Colorado River from Lake Havasu to Laughlin. A river rafting trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. A horseback ride on the beach in Costa Rica. A hike up a slot canyon with friends on the shore of Lake Powell. Time trials at a Bridgehampton race track in my Toyota MR-2. A day spent exploring the ruins of Chichen Itza. A sunrise at Montauk Point, followed by a nap in each others arms on a flat rock overlooking the Sound. An afternoon spent snorkeling in Cozumel. A view of the broken clouds of a marine layer moving in beneath us during a helicopter flight down the coast of Oregon. Long walks on beaches in too many places to count.

These are all memories I cherished, experiences somehow made better at the time because I shared them with someone I loved. Someone I could talk to about them long afterward. Someone who could browse photo albums with me and reminisce about the scenes they captured. Someone who could say, “Remember when we…” and I could remember with him.

That’s all gone now. Yes, I still have those memories, but they’re no longer shared, no longer cherished. Instead, they’re a reminder of how things change, how people grow apart without even knowing it, how love dies, and how easy it is for some people to replace a “life partner.”

I’ll have new experiences and build new memories of the amazing places I go and things I see and do in the years to come. Maybe I’ll have someone to share them with. Maybe we’ll stay together for a long time — long enough for the word “forever” to have meaning to me again.

But I’m certainly not going to wait for that someone to continue enjoying what’s important to me in life: experiencing the wonder of the world. The world is out there now and it’s not waiting either.

Life Lessons

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How many have you learned?

The other day, one of my Twitter or Facebook friends linked to a blog post titled “10 Life Lessons People Learn Too Late.” I clicked over to it and gave it a quick read. And I realized two things:

  • I had already learned many of these life lessons.
  • The lessons I’d learned defined who I am and how I conduct my life.

(I also realized that while I’d already learned most of these lessons, my soon-to-be ex-husband had not. In thinking this over, I realize that this was part of the reason we’d grown apart over the past few years. I was motivated by many of the the lessons I’d learned in life; he was not. (Actually, I’m not sure if he was motivated by anything.) But since there’s nothing to be done to help him, enough said.)

In this post, I’d like to explore these ten life lessons, how I learned them, and how they affect my life. Maybe it can provide some insight for people who still need to learn. I won’t duplicate that blog post here; you should read the original either before or after you read what follows here to fully understand what the author was talking about. I’ll just list the first line of each bullet point as a discussion heading.

1. This moment is your life.

Carpe diem. This reminds me that I really need to re-watch The Dead Poets Society. Seeing that movie might have been when I first became familiar with the concept of “seizing the day” and making every moment count.

What does this mean to me? It means not wasting time with meaningless crap when you can be doing something better. The opening lines of one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs, Time, comes to mind:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t make the most of every moment of my life. I don’t think anyone can. Life is too full of the piddly bullshit that we need to do just to get by. Not every moment can be perfect, something worth remembering forever.

But understanding that each moment of your life is your life is the first step to having a better life. And if you approach each moment with that in mind, each moment will be better.

2. A lifetime isn’t very long.

Time
Ticking away the moments
That make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours
In an off-hand way

Kicking around on a piece of ground
In your home town
Waiting for someone or something
To show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today

And then the one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

And you run and you run
To catch up with the sun
But it’s sinking

Racing around
To come up behind you again
The sun is the same
In a relative way
But you’re older

Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation
Is the English way

The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I’d something more to say

Time lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., T.R.O. INC.

I always knew this, but the knowledge of it didn’t become a driving force in my life until 2008. That’s when my friend Erik, at age 56, was diagnosed with cancer. Erik had everything going for him — a family, financial security, and a helicopter business he really enjoyed. But a year later, Erik was dead.

What did this teach me — in no uncertain terms? Not only is life short, but it can be taken from you at any time. Why would anyone put off life goals to some later date — or retirement? Erik never had the opportunity to retire. If he’d put off any life goals until then, they were goals he’d never achieve.

If I had to make a list of the top 10 things that affected my life, Erik’s illness and death would be on it. That’s how profound it was to me. From that point forward, I began thinking about how I wanted to enjoy the rest of my life instead of working my ass off to save money for a future I might never see. I turned down book projects that I didn’t want to work on. I got my spending under control so I wouldn’t need to work so hard. And I started planning a future that included plenty of leisure time to travel and just have fun.

As for “bucket lists” — well, I don’t believe in them. Although it’s nice to have an idea of the things you want to do, building a long list of “things to do/see before you die” so they’re stored for some vague time in the future is pretty silly. Want to go skydiving? Do it this weekend. Want to see the pyramids? Plan your trip for your next vacation. Keep your list short by crossing off things on it as soon as you can.

3. The sacrifices you make today will pay dividends in the future.

Wow. Does this one ever hit home. I learned pretty early on that in order to move forward, you had to pay dues — or make sacrifices. Just coasting along wasn’t going to help you get ahead in life.

Sacrifices come in many forms, but for me they usually come in the form of time or money. I’ve made many investments in my personal life that have paid off for me.

I bought my first decent computer in 1989 for a whopping $8K and spent hour after hour teaching myself to use it. That, combined communication skills I already had (through time spent reading and writing) made it possible for me to make a good living teaching others to use computers — in classrooms and in books and even in video training material.

I spent thousands of dollars and many, many weeks of my life learning to fly helicopters. I took a low-paying tour job in 2004 to build experience — when I could have stayed home and worked on various book projects that paid out fast. The experience I built made me a better, more confident pilot and helped me get the skills I needed to build my own charter business.

And over the past five summers, I lived in a trailer, parked on the dirt so I could be close to my cherry drying clients and their orchards — when I could have stayed in a more comfortable condo or even stayed home, satisfied with the occasional hot summer charter. The good service I provided to my clients earned me their respect — and more business.

These are just three examples. I think my life is full of sacrifices — along with their eventual benefits.

4. When you procrastinate, you become a slave to yesterday.

Although I’m often guilty of procrastination, I understand how completely idiotic it is. If you have something to do, do it. As soon as possible. You’ll be glad you did when it’s done.

Maybe I’m being dense, but I don’t exactly get the “slave to yesterday” concept. When you procrastinate, you simply add more things to your to-do list. It’s only by doing things — not procrastinating — that you get things done. So my lesson in procrastination is that you can get a lot more done when you don’t procrastinate.

5. Failures are only lessons.

This is another really good lesson that a lot of people just don’t get.

Too many people — and I can name a few that have touched my life — are too afraid of failure to attempt some things that can take them forward in life. I am not like that. In fact, I’m the opposite — sometimes I simply try to do too many things.

My record speaks for itself. I’ve succeeded at many of the things I’ve tried to do: building three successful careers, getting published (back when that actually meant something), investing in real estate, building a helicopter charter business, learning to ride motorcycles and ride horses and fly helicopters. I can list dozens of things I’ve tried and succeeded at.

But I can also list plenty of things I tried and did not succeed at. Being a landlord is one example — it was probably the most grueling and unrewarding thing I ever tried. Failing to do as well as I wanted to was quite a learning experience. I learned that residential real estate is a bitch to rent, that good tenants are few and far between, and that certain tenants need you looking over their shoulder all the time just to make sure they don’t trash your place. I also learned that it simply wasn’t worth the headaches to me.

There’s no reward without risk. In other words, if you don’t try to do something, you can’t succeed. I live by this creed. And I’ve learned that sometimes success has all kinds of great rewards.

But the main point is this: even when you fail, you learn something that you can use to guide you in the future. Failures are lessons.

6. You are your most important relationship.

This particular point refers to feeling good about yourself and not needing anyone else’s approval. I learned part of this lesson — I’ve been my own person for a long time and don’t really care too much what my peers think of me. I have a lot of confidence in my capabilities and, with confidence, comes self-esteem.

Unfortunately, however, I did care what my spouse thought. And since he apparently didn’t think very highly of me in the final days of our relationship, my personal self-esteem took a bit of a beating which, in turn, began to affect my health. Once I was away from him at my summer job, I was able to recover. (And now I obviously don’t give a damn what he thinks of me.)

Still, this is a lesson I need to remember on a go-forward basis. Living a relatively isolated existence — as I am now, waiting for my life “reboot” to finish so I can start the next chapter — makes it easy to forget my self worth.

7. A person’s actions speak the truth.

Sad to say, this isn’t something I learned until recently. I can thank my soon-to-be ex-husband for teaching me this one.

For most of my life, I’m afraid I was very trusting. No — I was too trusting. Silly me — I thought that when someone told me something, it was the truth or that they actually meant it. And when it was someone I’d been living with for 29 years — well, how could I possibly not believe that what he was telling me was true?

But the actions did speak the truth. When I discovered the betrayals, I learned the real truth. Needless to say, this was a valuable — although painful — lesson. I’m a lot more careful about who I trust now. And there’s one person I will never trust again.

8. Small acts of kindness can make the world a better place.

How can someone not know this lesson?

You’re walking up to the post office door, arms laden with packages to be mailed. Someone walking by — not even walking into or out of the post office! — changes course to open the door for you. A small act of kindness. Doesn’t it make you feel good? And don’t you think it makes the other person feel good when you say thanks?

Or you’re in the supermarket and a vertically challenged woman is having trouble reaching something on the top shelf of the aisle you’re walking down. You offer to get it down for her, she accepts, and you hand it to her. A small act of kindness. Don’t you think it makes both of you feel good?

These are tiny things. But they really make a difference. Do ten of these things a day and you’ll feel great — while making others feel good, too. The world can be a better place.

9. Behind every beautiful life, there has been some kind of pain.

Until recently, I felt “blessed.” Mind you, I don’t mean that in the religious sense. I just mean that throughout most of my life, things have gone very well for me. It wasn’t luck — I worked at it and made a lot of good decisions. But it mostly worked out and things were good. You could argue that I had (and still have, for that matter) a beautiful life.

I guess I shouldn’t have expected the run of good fortune to last forever. Things are different now. Losing the man I loved was a huge heartbreak for me, one that I’m still struggling (with professional help) to deal with. There’s a lot of pain in my life right now.

There’s also been some pain in the past. Losing loved ones, including cherished pets, leaving behind parts of my life that I wished I could retain.

But pain is part of life. If you’re fortunate, the good times far outweigh the bad.

10. Time and experience heals pain.

This is something else I’m just learning now. My grief counselor would argue this point — she’s given me a “workbook” full of exercises to help me deal with my loss and resulting pain. But I do believe that time and experience are the primary healers — as long as you’re open to be healed. I’m getting there.

What Do You Think?

Which of these lessons have you already learned? How did you learn them? How do they affect your life? Share your thoughts in the comments for this post. It would be interesting to get a good discussion started.

Maria 1.0, In Photos

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Going through some old photos brings back memories of a former life.

While I was away this summer, my husband gathered up huge bunches of my things and stored them in boxes or cabinets, likely to keep them out of sight. Among these things were photographic prints and slides. Unfortunately, some of them ended up in cardboard boxes that he put in my hangar; a summer flood destroyed everything left on the hangar floor — photographic keepsakes and so many other papers and books are gone forever. Others were spared destruction by being simply crammed into a cabinet or box and mercifully left in the house.

I’m going thorough these photos now. I’m finding mostly vacation photos from years and years ago — the 1980s and 1990s. I used a film camera back then and usually shot print film instead of slides. (My husband was dedicated to Kodachrome.) There are also some aerial photos from our aborted attempt at providing aerial photography services. Most of those are trash.

But I’m also finding a few random photos taken from way back when — in the days of what I’m now calling Maria 1.0. That’s the version of me from birth right up until the point I started my relationship with the man who would later become my husband.

I thought I’d share a few of the Maria 1.0 photos with readers. Keep in mind that these are scanned from very old prints, so the quality and color is somewhat questionable.

College Days, with my Cat

The date on the back of this picture says June 1981. That would be about a year before I graduated. This is me with my first cat, Fig Newton (or Figgy). It’s probably in my summer dorm room. By 1981, I’d moved out of my parents home and was living year-round at Hofstra University. I worked for Facilities Management and, because I had a job all summer, I could stay in the dorm rooms at a reduced rate. Figgy wasn’t legal to have as a pet, but that didn’t stop me. He was just a kitten here; he eventually did grow into his ears.

Maria and Figgy

I didn’t start wearing contact lenses until the fall semester. And it wasn’t until about two years later that I finally got fed up with long hair and started wearing it short.

As for the cat….well, when my future husband and I began living together in 1984, I had to find homes for him and the second cat I’d gotten not long afterward. My husband has asthma and is allergic to cats. Giving up Figgy and Rover was the first of many sacrifices I made for him.

Rooftop, Seeing Double

I got interested in photography when I was in my sophomore or junior year. I even dated a photography student for about a year. I had an Olympus OM-10 35mm camera. You could probably consider it an entry level SLR. It certainly had limitations.

But even back in those days, knew how to work around limitations. The image here is the best of only a few examples of a double-exposure shot within the camera. In other words, I shot two images on the same film frame. By masking one side of the frame for one shot and the other side of the frame for the other shot, I was able to create a double-exposure that shows me on both sides of the photo. (Of course, nowadays a shot like this is easy enough to make in Photoshop.)

Seeing Double

This was done on the roof of the apartment building I lived in in Hempstead, NY. I lived there for about a year and half, right after college. It was on the border of a nasty neighborhood that occasionally had shootings. But it was all I could afford, so that’s where I lived.

The dress I’m wearing is unusual. It’s actually a long, wrap-around skirt. I discovered that if I fastened the waistband under my armpits and put a belt around my waist, I could wear it as a dress. This is one of the many items of clothing I made for myself back in those days. I was pretty poor and couldn’t afford to buy new clothes, so I made them.

The date stamp on the back of this photo is December 1983, but I suspect it’s either a reprint or I just held off on getting it printed. No way I’d be on the roof in December without a jacket. The year is probably right, though; 1983 is the year I met my future husband and I know my hair was wild from a growing out perm back then.

Asleep in his Arms

I guess it’s appropriate to end the photo show of Maria 1.0 with a shot from the end of that era. When I met the man I’d share 29 years of my life with, I was only 22. Odd as it may seem, back in those days it wasn’t unusual for me to fall asleep in his arms, often on a rock or some other hard surface outdoors. The first time it happened was at Montauk Point, where we’d gone very early one morning to watch the sun rise. Afterward, we lay together on one of the big flat rocks making up the breakwater and fell asleep. There aren’t any photos of that, but this shot from later in 1983 reminds me of that morning, too.

Asleep in his Arms

Back in those days, we did a lot of outdoor activities with friends. I’m pretty sure this photo was taken at Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains, possibly during a Columbus Day weekend trip. I remember taking the gondola ride up Gore Mountain and hiking down to enjoy the fall colors. I vaguely recall being there with our friends Bennett and Marion, who also met that summer and later married. One of them must have taken this photo.

I really miss the guy in the photo.