Welcome to (my) ONE, BIG, (little) itsy-bitsy life.

This is me with my fan club.

This is my BLOG.

My attempt at...

Balancing

Life,

Observing

Growth.

I am an OLD SOUL writing with...

Openness

Learning

Dreaming

Simplicity

Oneness

Understanding

Love.

About (my) ONE, BIG, (little) itsy-bitsy life.

inspiring &

thriving through

simplicity;

yielding

-

big

improvements through

tiny

steps, and

yearning for

lasting

internal

fulfillment

everyday.

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This blog is about living bigger by living smaller.

Who am I to tell you about this concept? I am a somebody-nobody.

I am somebody who has survived a few traumas. I am somebody with a lot of education and credentials and still a lot of self-doubt. I have raised two humans to young adulthood perfectly imperfectly. I am a librarian and a veterinary receptionist. I've been a server, a teacher, and an entrepreneur. I am a recovering MLM addict (I would really love it if everyone stopped ghosting me, as I am no longer trying to sell you anything).

I am somebody with dyslexia and ADHD. Which is just fancy-schmancy for, "I am creative as #$%^, but my spelling is atrocious." I am social and challenging to shut up. Still, I am also introverted and suffer from Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) and a world-class level of awkwardness.

I did not go to school specifically to study the idea of finding immense fulfillment, though small, shifts in perception. I am an expert on this concept, having learned through 46 years of life experience. Still, I am also an imposter (or at least; I am somebody with imposter syndrome).

I am a nobody. I am nobody famous. I don't have a huge Instagram following. No one has bought my book yet (I hear you have to write it first?) Despite efforts at creating passive income, vision boards, affirmations, and prayers to win the lottery, I am nobody anyone would really notice in a crowd.

I have a nobody's income level and hence have only had the freedom to do a nobody's level of traveling. I am really nobody to everybody.

I am sure you and I are nothing alike, but if we hung out, we'd discover many things in common. Maybe you're a somebody-somebody? IDK who you are, but somehow, I know we aren't that different.

We like dichotomies and neat little boxes to check. Are you this or that? Would you rather do this or do that? Yes or no? Naughty or nice? Cake or ice cream?

Dichotomies are boring, famously false, and everywhere.

Has anyone ever told you to figure out your work-life balance? Don't waste your time listening to their advice.

Are work and life are diametrically opposed?

No, no. Nope. The advice should be to tip the scales in your life so that you are spending more of your time on things that bring you purpose and joy and less on the things that you find tedious and boring. If work is drab and dull, you have something that needs shifting.

I am someone who completely fails to understand how anyone can say, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Eating the cake is how you have it. If it goes stale in your refrigerator, it isn't much good to anyone. I am a both-and-er.

Yep, I am a somebody-nobody, a both-and-er. Therefore, I am starting this blog about living bigger by living smaller. A big life and a little life aren't opposites. They are the same, or at least they can be. This blog is an attempt at exploring that idea and the art and science that support it.

In my faith tradition, there is a story about a rabbi with two pockets. The story goes that Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Pershyscha carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one, he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha-olam—"for my sake the world was created." On the other, he wrote: V'anokhi afar v'efer"—"I am but dust and ashes." He would take out each slip of paper as necessary to remind himself of the shift in perspective he needed to make.

For three centuries, this teaching of the two pockets has been shared, and indeed, people of many traditions (religious and secular) find that balancing these concepts of our worthiness and humility can help us navigate a healthy life.

While the ideas that one is the center of the universe and also that one is nothing but a speck of dust seem utterly devoid of similarity, they are both true. I contend, these ideas are arguably more accurate when taken together than apart.

This blog is also an attempt at something else: bravery. I have a goal to get bolder in my writing. I have a book of questions in my library that I ask my volunteers daily.

Yesterday, the question was, "What would you do differently if you weren't afraid of what other people thought?" Sometimes, the questions stump me, but this time, I immediately had an answer:

I would write honestly without fear.

So here I am, writing. One goal of this blog is to create with little filtering or editing. I may not polish the posts on this site as I do on my Medium page. This lackluster quality is intentional as I aim to write as raw as possible for my audience on these pages. I intend to write here with the same honesty that I wrote when I kept a public diary in a diary circle back when online diaries. Of course, back then I wrote anonymously.

In the early 2000s, I wrote about my struggles with my self-esteem, my relationships, and navigating young adulthood while I was struggling to come out as bisexual. Apparently, coming out isn't something you do once, but repeatedly for the rest of your life. It was exhausting, and I was concerned about who knew what about me and how they would react to my thoughts about life. I wrote about finding out I was pregnant and the choice to be a mom and leave school, missing nothing but my thesis to finish my Master's in Education. I wrote about my weird dreams and my fears about what I would be correct in identifying as my parents' impending divorce. I wrote about being the oldest child of four and what that meant to me. I wrote about my life, inner and outer--all of it.

I had some regular readers.

One of them commented that her life was so very different than mine. Yet, she returned to my pages regularly feeling that she needed to hear what was happening next with me because she felt deeply connected to my experiences and thoughts.

Her comment stuck with me because it affirmed that what I had to say, especially when I wrote uncensored, impacted others. Some people who shared my struggles wrote to me to encourage or commiserate.

I am not sure what fear caused me to silence myself and stop sharing, but I have long since abandoned those pages.

I hope that these new pages will encapsulate that same spirit of rawness as I write aim to write as raw as possible for my imaginary audience.

So now that my intro is done, I hope my simple blog about everything and the complicated entries about nothing intrigue you. Please come back and read some more.