ADVICE - january edition

in the midst of all the resolving and resolutin' going on in the blogworld,
i got to thinking about the two single most powerful pieces of advice i have ever heard.

i find these two quotes may help you this year,
they save me quite often:

after 911, joyce carol oates gave a speech.
in it she started by saying that years hence,
when children or grandchildren asked her what it was like to watch the towers falling,
she would only tell them that "it was like watching the moon fall from the sky".

and that after,
the only thing she would tell people,
the thing that would get them through no matter what,
was "action is the antidote to despair".

i LOVE that. i USE that. i say it OUT LOUD TO MYSELF when times are hard,
and it chills me and makes me push on through and get to it.

and,
when i had just broken up with a model i had been dating (gorgeous, made sheep look smart), and was despairing of ever finding love,
my younger sister (who was SIXTEEN at the time)
had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years.

i asked her why, and she said

"well, i decided it really only came down to two things:
does he make me happy? and does he treat me well? and if i could say yes to those two things, nothing else really mattered."

made the whole list of things i wanted in a guy kind of . . . stupid.
so i thought i'd try it. you know, put it out there.

and damn her, if two days later i didn't meet tim.

just some grist to keep in the mill as you ponder this year.