Riding in cars with boys

When you live on an island in the caribbean, fabulous as this may sound, things tend to get really tiring. The same places and faces at the same hour and day. Monotony is a big issue when you live in a place where it does not matter how far you drive, every 4 hours you are going to hit water.

Come Thursday on the island one tends to start dreading the monotony of the activities that you may already have an invite to or those that you will "spontaneously" be attending. Even the clothes can be dull, boring and repetitive if you are paying close attention to the whole scene. However who you share these moments with can make all the difference.

There comes a point in the evening, when the lights, magic and cheap vodka buzz start to wear off and turn into blabber mode, confession mode, get the annoying guy who wont shut up away from me mode, doze mode or reflective mode, depends on how cheap was the vodka you got served, when either sharing laughing, crying or whatever your reaction might be takes the form of a group of people with whom you feel comfortable and at home with. People who managed to beat the tony out of monotony (and also managed to make the same tony finally shut up by telekinesis) and have managed to make this weekend the best one you have had all year. Until the next one that is.

These people with whom you ride in the car with and share your last, precious moments of drunken disinhibition with, be them the bitchy one, the drunken one, the eternal optimist one or the uptight let-loose of the evening, they are the unsung heros of all our weekends year round. These are the people who deserve to be over thought of, over zealous with and super good to because they are the ones who have your back no matter what.

So this weekend, when the lights and buzz start to dwindle, make sure that your car contains the four essentials: Air bags, air freshener, hand sanitizer and 4 full seats of the people that matter. this one goes out to riding in cars with you guys. Thanks for making this the best one I've had all year!

Sincerely,

JMI.

The Jest Jump

Its been a while since my last post but I have decided that it is time to just lay the cards on the table for all to see. Since my last blog post, which may have well been in the ace age in blogger years, many things, have come and gone, many barriers been knocked down and in all honesty allot of new ones have now come up.

Like coming out of the closet was not enough of a change back in 08' I decided to throw in there an entire career change....you know, just for the fun of it. Now I am a full time fashion student, full time call center rat, full time shop attendant and part time person.

I never realized how easy it could be to loose one's self in an attempt to find the very thing you most strongly feel you have lost. However I have decided to stick to the old saying that "..it is never darker as when light is about to break"... or whatever that saying was.

For a while now I have been questioning my self and feeling more out of place than a Canal street bag in a Stella Mccartney boutique. Am I good enough? did I make the right choice? For months I have been boasting, mainly to my self, that I have taken the leap of leaps! a plunge greater than marriage. After a long BB talk with my friend Ana and today as I rode in the car with my friend Ali talking about this, it suddenly hit me. I had never jumped at all, I am merely standing on one leg. Exhilarating? YES! adventurous!? Most Def! but it does not come close to the thrill, the joy, the adrenaline of the actual jump.

So there it is kitties, feels like much a-doo about nothing, two years wasted.... or are they!?resolution time. Take the plunge with all the glory and\or shit the splash might make or die trying. Either\Or (always good to have options).

So take this as an invite to join this event, Dinner Jacket mandatory.

Hopefully I have peeked your interest and hopefully you will keep coming back for more of whatever it is I am supposedly doing on this thing but more than that hopefully I have inspired you, if even a little bit, to at least consider a change in your life.

Cheers to jumping!

For those short on dreams

In Life we have : Possibilities, probabilities and oportunities. We feel compelled to build on these without realizing that 9 out of 10 times they will turn out to be quicksand traps.

Possibilities are sometimes far feteched, probabilities are based on speculation and oportunities are scarce now a days.

Mediocrity and negative energy are all over the place and prevail every day more and more.

I say build on quicksand..the struggle to get out of it will only make you a better person at the end of it all. Dare to dream out loud and bask in the fact that it is based on nothing more than hear-say and is only the product of a grand imagination, because at the end of the day our dreams, be them of perfection or imperfection, are all we´ve got.

Dreams made the 20th century what it was and I firmly believe it will make the 21st century what it should.

I believe that dreams will also bring us what we mant the most, or who we want the most...or both. so dont despair its only the battle with the quicksand making you despair, remember the more you move the more you sink....dream harder, wilder and louder.

In my case I will dream for me, for you and for us untill the day I think I cant anymore and then I will dream harder untill we can all do it together and make of our lives not what they should be but what we want them to.

To be alive is...

“Those who danced were thought insane by those who could not hear the music...”

For Carmen Lousia - who lived it, breathed it and loved every secon of it!

Convention is a dangerous thing. It puts those who dare think outside the box in a position of oddity in the eyes of others. Haven’t we all seen someone doing something out of the norm and just thought to ourselves "Is he/she for real ???" or "is he/she nuts?" … Yes convention sets the bar for mediocrity to feel comfortable.

I am reminded of the story of the Wright brothers who dreamed of a flying machine and were mocked until the day the first plane, the kitty hawk, drew wind under its wings and flew for 12.5 seconds, for a distance of less than that of a modern day jet.

I am also reminded of every person who has inspired me (or YOU!) by marching to the beat of their own drum; maybe an aunt labeled crazy or an uncle previously believed to be odd or whichever type of unconventional character who might have inspired you. They all, you see, had things in common: They thought outside the box and they also had an unquenchable thirst for life. They drew inspiration from it and were happy every single day they were given. In my opinion these characters had tapped in to the secret of life.

We constantly see these people walking around, not able to hear the "tam tam" of gossip that surrounds them and completely oblivious to the fact that they are being mocked by others who lack the energy and openness of mind to be different, to be unique. Originality has its price; it just never concerns those who have it, only those who think they can’t afford it.
So as you make it through your walk of life (whichever you might have chosen, it makes no difference) I beseech you to listen deep and hard inside yourself, for the very instrument from where, traditionally, All feeling emotion, and passion is derived from has also been equipped with a beat. A beat that is yours and no one else’s. Follow it! Dance to it like no one is watching! And rejoice every day to it. There will be no victory sweeter than that of having lived a life as only you could have done so!

Just another day...???

Hello! And welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!...so what are you planning to do with it???...
As we go through life we have many a moment of clarity and many a moment of dimness (lets just say at times we might be a French fry short of a happy meal if you know what I mean). We make choices everyday that alter the course of our lives as we knew them. We constantly miss these intersections when left to our own devices so we end up making these choices at the very last minute when it is forced upon us.

When faced with the possibility of changing something in our lives, whether it is major or minor, we find any and every possible excuse to NOT proceed with it rather than looking at the pros of the whole affair. This, in turn, leads to our lives becoming monotonous and just a day-in day-out automatic thing which we complain about nonstop yet do nothing to actually get out of.

As I walked home the other day I found myself in one of those moments thinking UGH this walk again!...looking at the same cracks on the sidewalk, same cars parked outside the same houses everything seemed …synchronized. I took a moment right then and there, looked around and decided that it must change. I proceeded to cross the street (even though I actually live on the side of the street I was already walking on) and was welcomed by a beam of the last rays of the day as the sun set and the sky became a haze of purple and orange. I closed my eyes and let the light bathe me and as I opened them there was a half moon like a big smile (which due to high trees on the other side of the street I cannot see) and, to my surprise, a star right next to it. As I looked down I saw the same street I walked down every day in a whole new light and everything was different with new possibilities just waiting to be discovered.

In life it sometimes takes one split second for everything to change, a decision made in a minute turns in to friends meeting; lovers’ crossing glances for the first time. Maybe today its your turn to get a new lease on life be it by greeting a stranger in a friendly manner, picking up the phone and calling a loved one or just by crossing the street and seeing life from a diffrent perspective.

Lessons in Customer Service and embracing change

New beginnings are tough, scary and just flat-out rough. Change usually comes in right in the middle of the thought “isn’t everything just perfect!!”…and then, all we know is turned upside down and all the things we had as certainties are challenged. Sometimes, however, change comes just in the nick of time, when we think that the world is coming perilously close to complete and utter decimation.

I once read a book that stated “...change does not happen all at once or in one abrupt minute, as people usually think, it just seems that way because we were too busy taking everything we had at the moment for granted to notice the slight hints of change in the air…” this, to me, seems harshly true. How immersed in our own lives at the moment is directly proportional to how unaware we are to things that happen around us.

Change, however, should not be viewed as a bad thing. Sure it’s tough to not be with that someone with whom we thought we would spend the rest of our lives with any more or have a loved one pass away suddenly. Nor is it easy to make bonds with people and places like, say, a work place, or a circle of friendly faces that have shared our triumphs and moments of terror for the past few months or even years. Only to have them there no more. I have learned that change is not without reason, for it knows far better than we do when it is time for us to move on and pursue other boundaries. Sometimes we must just trust our gut and go with the flow.

One personal experience brought change about in the form of a person. A friend, who showed me many lessons, allowed me to recognize my strengths and weaknesses and in the end showed me that the fear of change is much bigger than the actual change itself. After these lessons were learned that person faded out just as easily as they had come in to my life.

As agents, many of us can relate to this for we are given but a few, brief , precious moments to change a life by showing the person on the other end who we are and what we stand for (after all this is why our vibe section on the legend has a personality question, so show it and be proud!. it might just make someone’s day and make this call the one that changed their lives forever) and the opportunity to have ours changed, I assure you it will always be for the better. i.e. An Irate customer will show us how NOT to EVER call in to customer support the same way the customer who is calm and friendly will show us how precious life is by letting us know how much they will enjoy their radio and boogie down to their favorite song before they head down to their oncologists office for treatment for the cancer they have.

We are faced with change every single day of our lives. The question is do we want to just let it blow past us and mildly affect us because it inevitably affects our environment or do we want to be an active part of it? The next time you are faced with change I suggest reassessment of what we have and what we want and total acceptance of it changing. Embrace the change that is about to happen. Have the good sense to accept and find the positive side of what is about to transpire and learn to not be sad because a stage in your life has ended but to be happy because it happened.

Control or ilusion of it.....

Lesson of the week: Take a deep breath, exhale, let go and open your eyes. I mean REALLY open them… see how everything looks better!?

Simple is better! Why complicate things by over thinking them!? What has been done is done and there is no turning back now. We sometimes nearly burn our brains out trying to think of different ways to do things or to react to them. I say revel in this simple fact: it’s all said and done. NOW the key is to not stop there because that bus stop is called mediocrity and we don’t want that to be our final destination.

Pause there for a minute and realize that all your thoughts have been organized and shaped by your mind as it reacted to an environment that strictly dictates to stay in the box. By “box” I mean convention, the norm, what has been previously established as proper train of thought or way of thinking. We need to cleanse ourselves of this and let go of all need for control. By doing this we gain new perspectives on the world around us…a “new pair of eyes” if you will. After we stop being afraid of not being in control we actually start enjoying the ride we have chosen for ourselves. At this very moment we are taken outside the danger zone or “box” and are thrust out in to a universe of endless possibilities, where there are no bars, no limits and every and any idea is a good one. Our brains are freed from any mold previously established once we learn to ignore the need for this control.

You see when we let go of control of ourselves and all the miniscule problems we don’t even have a say in we are able to really asses our choices in life and also see ahead to what it is that we really want. Think of it as a car ride, when you are in the passenger seat, you really get to enjoy the ride. I say give in to this feeling and apply it to life. Maybe as you look at everything and everyone that is around you, free your mind, and really open your eyes to it you might just realize that you are the one who has been holding the steering wheel all along.