FAILURE

So today I made a list of all the failures I’ve had over the past ten or so years. Yeah, I know. It’s not something a person would normally want to do. It’s a tad masochistic. (“Ya think?” yells the peanut gallery that sits in the back row of my brain.) But sometimes a chick can’t help it. Sometimes I just have to stare it all down and see what I can decipher. Maybe a comforting metaphor is lingering just beneath the surface. Maybe not.…

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The Rob Brezsny Challenge

This is my latest horoscope from Rob Brezsny: Gemini (May 21-June 20) English model and TV personality Katie Price has been on the planet for just 37 years, but has already written four autobiographies. You Only Live Once, for instance, covers the action-packed time between 2008 and 2010, when she got divorced and then remarried in a romantic Las Vegas ceremony. I propose that we choose this talkative, self-revealing Gemini to be your spirit animal and role model. In the coming weeks, you should go…

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When Sh*% Hits the Fan: 12 Tips for Survival

Shit can hit the fan in a variety of ways: your angry bosshole impulsively fires you; your sweetheart walks out the door; you’re hit with a crushing unexpected expenditure; a project you've poured your soul into falls apart; you make a big mistake that you have no hope of fixing. These are just a few examples of the tumultuous boulders that the universe can hurl across your path. Sometimes, a lot of shit hits the fan at once. It seems trouble is often a package deal.…

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Our Creative Lives: Resilience

Someone I care a lot about has been going through some hard stuff this past year. She’s taken hit after relentless hit. It’s been brutal. We were talking things over the other day and she wondered out loud “How much more resilience do I have?” Fair question. Knowing her as I do, I’d say she has a lot. Although I totally get that she might not be feeling it. There are so many ways that life hurts us. And contrary to some opinions, there is…

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Our Creative Lives: Rejection

  Last week, a local organization announced the finalists for an annual vocal competition that it hosts. These finalists will sing at Jazz Alley for a shot at winning a trip to Japan. Throughout the afternoon after the announcement was made, I received emails and texts from a handful of vocalists, friends who did not make the cut. Their reactions ran the gamut from perplexed to downright miserable. (I should add that all of these women are great singers.) We talked about a lot of…

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