"I Did It My Way."

It must have been 1997, when RIDES had their karaoke Christmas party and John Hirten, the ED, sang "I did it my way" to the staff. It was a priceless moment. He actually sang well, but I think most of the staff had one problem or another with him. This is the same ED who made my boss put in my performance evaluation that my laugh was "unprofessional". Anyway, I am back working at RIDES, in my old boss's job, and after one day, I love it to pieces. I love it just as much as I did the first time.

Meanwhile I am trying to create this life for myself that involves spending a lot of effort keeping control. Maybe you'll disagree with me, but I find myself an incredibly easygoing person. I have to be pushed pretty deeply into something that doesn't work for me before I take any action to fix it. This is not a quality I am proud of. So, I am really really trying to keep hold of the reins of my life, and not many people do that. They seem to think it is strange.

I met K at summer camp when we were about 13. Cazedero Music and Arts Camp. We were both theater people, though neither of us has any idea how we became friends. She's a public interest lawyer now, working in NYC. She's here now to celebrate her Birthday, but she returns on Thursday for reasons relating to her fertility.

K is single, and has been more or less most of the time I have been aware of her relationship status. And she wants children. At nearly 35, she has identified three possible choices:
1) not have children
2) marry the wrong guy just to have children with him, or
3) have children on her own.
She considers option 1 and 2 unacceptable. So, as a highly-skilled, highly-educated, self-actualized, professional single woman who still believes in true love, she has decided to get pregnant through artificial insemination and have a baby on her own. As of today, it is looking really good for this cycle, which is really exciting because over the past year she has had three pregnancies and 3 miscarriages. She told me that she knows 5 other single women who are doing the same thing. Two have newborns.

I know another woman who decided one year that she would meet the love of her life that year. Through the internet, she met 47 eligible men over about a 6-month period. Number 43 was the right one. They are married now. Charlotte on Sex and the City decided to get married one New Year's eve, and she did. But he turned out to be the wrong guy; her divorce lawyer was the right one. A former best friend cheated on her fiancée and this resulted in their separation. A few years later she married the brother of her former illicit lover.

The point I am trying to make is that there is a lot we can control, and a few key things (love, passion, fertility) that we can't. It's a path. There are a few things we can do to be as fantastic as we possibly can be:
1) live a life we love with all our hearts and souls and minds,
2) listen closely to our hearts and souls and minds for direction,
3) pursue what we want with everything we have inside us,
4) accept our disappointments like the gifts they truly are, knowing that the universe loves us and is trying its best to steer us on to the right path, and
5) do it now, there is no other time.