my very own Silver Linings Playbook
Finally!!!!!!!
I’m looking back, a little nostalgic, and still jet-lagged today, so bare with me……… I am officially dedicating the first Anniversary of my Blog to – Silver Linings Playbook. Here’s why………
The day before I left for Paris was the day, one year ago, (March 26, 2012) on which I wrote my very first blog post. For some weeks earlier in February and March, I had pondered writing some celebratory post about having so enjoyed doing this for one whole year – how getting off to a rocky start evolved into me sitting down on many days and just letting it pour out – taking copious pictures and baking and cooking and reflecting and traveling to learn about food and great food places. But, alas, getting ready for my trip precluded this and now I am just getting around to thinking about this little milestone, again. Here’s a little story about how I got here and how I’m feeling, one year and about 1 week after I first started Kitchen-Inspirational.
I have had the occasion to watch the movie, Silver Linings Playbook on an airplane twice over the last several weeks. I was inexplicably drawn to this movie, but not just for the obvious reasons. I got to thinking about this this morning and suddenly realized why. My life, and I will not bore you with the details, has been busy and productive, but it was driven, always, for 50+ years by what I “had to”or “should” do. (amateur psychologists, have a chuckle). But, this was just not working for me. No tears or sobs from anyone here – we all know how common this is, and for most people, their entire lives are driven by fate and they have few, if any, choices. It just is. Let’s just say, I spent many years thinking about all the things I have been through with my family and trying to come to terms with the feelings, frustrations, failures, regrets, and heal from them.
Today, it occurred to me that I am indeed in, my very own, Silver Linings Playbook. And, just as Pat Solitano found a new road of healing and happiness, born out of misfortune and trauma, so have I. Silly little analogy, but so be it. So, for me, it turns out, it is now so totally valuable that I grew up the way I did and traveled the often painful road through much family illness and collateral damage, because it makes what I am doing now all the better, satisfying and joyful! Not trying to be soppy here, just saying.
Let me back up for a minute. Very early this morning – I’m still waking up at 5am – I asked myself a question – am I indeed the luckiest person in the world right now or have I indeed lapsed into some totally self-indulgent lifestyle – having the luxury to research and study things that just interest me on a whim or on an impulse and, at the same time, continue to pursue my life-long passion for cooking and baking, gardening and travel? I pick the “lucky” scenario. In an instant I made a choice – I could feel guilty about this and try to dedicate myself to some much more valuable vocation, like curing cancer, but this is highly unlikely. (I’m shedding my “I feel guilty” skin like an old snake. The guilt thing never worked for me either.) Or, I could try to engage fully in what is going on in my life now and go with it.
In essence, my awakening to my extreme level of what I will call, ignorance, for lack of a better word, of a whole lot of things (history, architecture, food culture, culture-culture, languages, just to name a few) at this point in my life, has become a great gift. It has occurred to me that I may indeed be something of a “ninny” as I find myself often thinking “where have I been all my life, what was I doing?” when in fact, I never had an opportunity to think about the things I am “in love with” now. Two things have crystallized for me – one, I have a great absence of fundamental knowledge about so much of the world and two, I have apparently dedicated myself in these mid-term years to accumulating little bits of knowledge about a bunch of, maybe, random things. So, ninny though I may be, I am a happy ninny and I find writing these feelings and thoughts down as yes, totally self-indulgent, but also yes, very beneficial for me in some as-yet unexplained, if not misguided, way. And so, as I do have the luxury of doing so and because it is making me happy, I am going with it – totally and minute by minute. After all, I am going to be 59 in a few weeks, and as I look around me at all the sad and bad things that could and will happen, regardless of my existence, caring and effort, I feel all the more compelled to go for it, before the magic that is now evaporates and I’m either incapacitated or gone.
Sorry, this is all kind of rambling, but I am going somewhere with all of this – bare with me……….
Another thing I have realized about myself, particularly after this latest trip, is that I am basically an “ignorance-driven” person. I’m not using that term in a negative way. I am, in fact, driven by my absence of previous knowledge and experience, to go in directions – like when one person would say, I am going to Paris so I need to study up for a while before, to learn all about it so that when I get there I will know, well, I am the opposite – I go and see things that I don’t understand and then make a list of what intrigues me and what I want to study up on afterwards. Weird? I know. But, that’s just me and again, I am totally happy with this approach as it continually is expanding my exciting “to do” list – a concept I have discussed here before about having so many fun things to do between now and the time I leave this earth – food, flowers, travel…….fun!
Ok, all that by way of background in explaining where I am going with the current evolution (mostly associated with the inception of this blog) of my very own Silver Linings Playbook. Ok, so you know I have been home from Paris since late on Tuesday. Each day since, as I struggled to clear my head and reorient to Eastern Daylight Time, I have been re-imagining myself back in Paris, sitting up and looking down upon the arrondissement layout and trying to ingest properly. When I travel, I always return with the eerie feeling that makes me question, particularly on the day I arrive home of, “was I really in that other place this morning?” Does anyone else do this? I have now been doing this everyday – was I really there last Saturday? What was I doing? Sorry, little digression….
I am a notoriously bad travel planner – that is I am always running around in the days before I leave for a trip, making sure I have enough dog, cat and bird food, looking for nice slacks that fit and a decent pair of shoes to walk in for days on end. While all the while I have questions and ideas and “hopefuls” swirling around in my head before I go somewhere, I am always rushing around doing unrelated things and preparing to go up until the last minute when I zip up my suitcase. I don’t know why I do this. On one hand it is very annoying to play catch up when I touch down. On the other hand, it gives a freshness and innocence to the experience of walking around which increases the wow factor as I discover each new fact, place or experience. Interesting approach to travel – don’t know if this is so logical to others but it works for me (and it sets me up nicely for my next trip there – Ha!).
In this trip’s case, as I have commented in previous posts, I came home with a more intense desire to more fully understand the Paris city layout and how it got that way – as I am so enamored with this result. In Rome, for instance, you can drive around today’s city and, splat, there is the Colosseum, sitting among all sorts of out of context surroundings. I guess this is why I was intrigued with Paris so much – not only it’s beauty, but because it makes “sense”. It looks like it was supposed to be that way vs the hodgepodge scenario in so many cities. And so, I came back with a desire to understand who did this, why and how. This led me to the story of the great Baron George Haussman. And, to add the subject of urban planning, now and through history, to my “to-do” study list.
I found some very good books on Amazon. They were very inexpensive and so, I got a pile. Off to read up and educate myself. I know, kind of backward. Any reasonably intelligent person would have begun a research project such as this about 3 months ago. Oh well, I am what I am. And I actually like that my ignorance ignites certain initiatives. And so, today, I plan to go off and learn all about Baron Haussman and friends, and what they did and how and why. This is fun for me and I am now motivated. Crazy, huh?
Ok, so I am totally torn today – but only in a good way. It is now 10:14 am and I am wanting to write and read – but I also have planting to do. The sun is out and it is going to be a nice day and so, priority #1 is get outside in the sun – I can write and read later. And so, Kit and I are off to indulge in some other pages of the Silver Linings Playbook – to the The Farm again and to have some fun outside.
So, thanks for sticking with me everyone, and here’s to the second year of the blog! The first year was fun with lots of learning….. More and more to come…….Could life be any better?
Here she is – the best gardening helper ever:
Breakfast this morning – Broccoli, Shallot, Porcini Mushroom and Swiss Omelet……. (well, kinda messy, but tasty)
