They’re the ex-whatevers who only message you when their Xfriend is out of town or they’re suddenly single.

When you end a relationship, they’re the people who think it’s OK to go from fucking in love to friend in 90 seconds flat.

Here’s a little Bitch Slap for you: people don’t come a la carte.

And it’s not YOUR decision on how you’ll have them in your life. It’s THEIRS.

It’s been a nutty as hell 2010 and I’ve had a litany of friends give me deer in the headlights stories about dickwads who want them on their terms.

No communication for days, but a last-minute text asking for a date in 2 hours. (RUDE)

I call bullshit.

A guy who had my friend, lock stock and barrel but went back to his ex-fiance. And then proceeds to pout because my friend won’t respond to his texts or make travel plans with him for the fall. (Seriously?)

I call bullshit.

A guy friend who’s had something going with a girl for three years, can’t say anything nice about the girl, but yet continues to keep her shit in his garage because she hasn’t found a place yet. (See? There are two sides.)

I call bullshit.

The beauty of relationships – professional, friend, family and romantic – is that they’re an exchange of ideas. Lines of communication. Fabulous ballets of give and take. It’s not for us to decide how someone will interact with us.

It’s for us to earn.

When you buy into a relationship, you’re getting a person in all of their tragic glory. And it is tragic glory. It’s the balance of their good and bad, strengths and weaknesses, dances on kitchen counters and vomiting sick with the flu in bed. You can’t just pick the good stuff.

And you can’t just be in a relationship (or pretend to have one) when it’s convenient for YOU.

I try so hard to reach out to my friends…connect, travel, visit, make time, drink, eat, laugh, listen and cry. It’s the least I can do for all they do for me. Some days I’m more successful at giving than others. Fuck knows, I’m not perfect. But it’s always at the front of my mind. When you invest in others, they’ll invest in you. If a time comes where you need to dissolve your holdings (aka end a relationship), you have to give that relationship time to heal. And sometimes, they never do. You can’t just order people off a menu and get what you want. You get what you get. And sometimes it’s fucking awesome.

If you’re the dickwad (and yes, girls can be dickwads, too) who:

• Wants a friendship immediately with the person you just dumped
• Thinks your dates will be available at a moment’s notice
• Only visits your coworker when you need something done
• Pings someone online only when you need something promoted
• Will call 73 people just to get a ride from anyone to the airport
• Always asks your colleagues for “favors” (i.e. free shit that they charge everyone else for)

Get bent.

Anyone who is there for you on a moment’s notice is one of two things:

• Someone who loves you, OR
• Someone too stupid to realize that you’re using them.

Quit treating the people in your life like a dim sum spread. I’m nobody’s condiment. I’m the entire entree – and so are you.

Which meant there was guacamole on the table.

For a kid with an imagination, it reminded me of something off that stupid You Can’t Do That on Television show, where some girl named Moose was always getting slimed. I also imagined it was brains, guts or pistachio pudding. (Note: after a pistachio pudding OD incident, I shunned the speckly dessert with fervor). It was evil incarnate in a white Corningware bowl. I’d never tasted it. Never wanted to. And frankly, I’d rather do math than eat it.

I spent thirty some-odd years thinking the worst of avocados, wondering how they kept finding their way into my sushi (slices which I poked-out with a chopstick), why people would purposely order a sandwich with Green Evil on it and passing over menu items left and right that noted the evil in the list of scrumptious ingredients. I would even make guacamole for parties, yet never ate it.

And then I finally tried it. Age 36. It began with a chip, a dip

And OMFG.

My life changed. This morning’s breakfast? Homemade chilaquiles with uncured turkey bacon and avocado sliced on top.

How often do preconceived notions color – or taint – our journeys? I have no idea what prompted my chip-in-Green-Evil incident, but if I hadn’t put aside my preconceived notions, I’d be missing out on killer fish tacos, unbeatable nutritional benefits and the incomparable yet silly joy I feel when I score an avocado perfectly and the pieces pop out with a perfect plop into a bowl.

It’s the joy I’m after. Avocados, while not life-changing in and of themselves, changed my life. By opening myself up to some freaky, squishy, fatty fruit, subsequent doors have opened and damn, am I glad.

When one door closes, another one opens. While we’re occasionally stuck in the hallway (written May 2006), I’ve become more a fan of thinking that when one door opens, you walk into another room filled with doors. The ones you open from there are your choosing.

Preconceived notions keep us from opening doors. So does fear.

I’m asked more frequently than not how long I’ve been writing. The answer? As long as I can remember. I recall a day in some English class or another when I wrote a story about a dick of a businessman and after I read it out loud, Diane Blair yelled, “I want to date that guy!” A character brought to life before I’d lost my virginity, yet it took until age 34 for me to say:

THIS. I want THIS and I’m going to do THIS.

I was supposed to work in an office and have two weeks of vacation, medical and manage other companies’ sales operations. I was supposed to live in California, Nevada, Virginia, Tennessee. I was supposed to like being a part of the Navy Wives’ Club (and if you though Desperate Housewives was ruthless, this trumps any socioeconomic politics out there).

I don’t know who told me I should do (or even want) any of those things.

Shedding preconceived notions and taking a walk on the wild side – so close to the edge of the cliff that you’re scared shitless of the fall yet far enough away that you know you’re not going anywhere…

for me, that’s living.

My work-life balance isn’t unlike my avocado journey: a tall glass of “Really? What the hell – it can’t hurt” and embracing whatever follows. I mean, shit – I found out that I like avocados. Here are some other things I’ve discovered that I like:

• Crab-stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon
• Cross country skiing
• Snowshoeing
• Ice climbing
• Mountaineering
• Cycling, cycling, cycling
• Teaching (who the hell thought I’d ever become a teacher of sorts?)
• Loose leaf tea (its developed into a bit of an obsession, I must admit)
• Writing flash fiction while sitting at cafes, airports and anywhere I can watch people
• Traveling (this, coming from a woman who never took a vacation other than to Florida until she was 28-years-old)
• Art (another borderline obsession)
• Historical fiction from the Elizabethan and Tudor periods of English history
• Gadgets and analytics (I am a geek for this… I suckle at technology’s breast)

As I’ve been writing today’s post, I sat here and wondered how I’d describe myself as a kid growing up.  I always played sports (volleyball, mostly. And bowling. Shut up.). I loved history and won tons of history fairs. Speech, theatre and debate were tops. I hated being told what to do and where to be and cleaning my room was Teh Suck. I absofuckinglutely loved essay questions on tests.

And somehow, I chose an early adult life that included none of these things.

I don’t pretend that my journey is special – I could fill up a basket with people who each have had their avocado moments and said fuck it – THIS is what I want to do.

Life catches us. It’s the reality of the Personal Legend. If you’ve never read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, pop it in your Kindle and report back. When you set out to follow your dreams – and if those dreams are truly yours and your purpose – life has a way of making sure we achieve them.

I was meant to love avocados. Each day brings me closer to my Personal Legend and further away from Preconceived Notions. It’s bliss, I tell ya. I get all teary-eyed and kumbayahfuckinghugme just knowing that I’m lucky enough to live this path. There is not work-life balance: there is only life and it’s best thought of as a bouquet. What you put together makes it work and when you do it right, no one passing by can do anything but stop and gaze at the beauty you’ve created. They want to be near it.

And when you try to cram any ol’ bunch of crap into it, it’s a mess. It’s out of sync. There’s no harmony. You won’t throw it away because you need something in the middle of the table. But what you won’t admit is that you don’t need that. And so by not throwing it away, you’re taking up space that could be occupied by something lovely. Inspiring. Awe-inspiring.

What’s your avocado?

It sits next to you in medical waiting rooms with his wife, knowing that while he’s blind the woman next to him is all he sees.

It finds you. While it might not be yours, it senses you’ll understand. And you do.

You’ll clean out your closet. Your basement. Dead wight. Your life. When it tells you it can’t breathe.

It consistently surprises, holds you down and kisses you. Thanks you for merely being and giving it a place to feel safe.

On a Wednesday afternoon, it comes tearing in from the backyard, does a lap on the sofa, yanks your Mac power cord out and dashes right out the back door.

It holds you hostage – delightfully so – until you feed it. Pages in a story, notes from life and words that won’t let you go until they rest on your page. Hungry for a page to call home.

When it’s silent, it’s asking you to be silent as well and help it find the right words.

It’ll fight you when you ignore it and look for the easy way out and despises being made to feel mediocre.

But it never cries. It laughs. Sometimes it screams when you choose to ignore it.

(It occasionally holds your head in the toilet, but that’s really more of a retching sound.)

Most importantly, it belongs with you. And if you can’t see it by your side, stop.

Turn around.

Figure out where you left it.

And go get that shit. Pronto.

***

What does YOURS do?

This is not a human being.

While catching-up this past week with an ex-boyfriend who’s become a friend over the past year or so, I mentioned that we should get together and chat about life, real-time.

The he mentioned that, yeah – that wasn’t going to happen because his girlfriend would flip her shit.

I said, “Bring her!” He responded that BP would buy us a brand-new Gulf of Mexico before that happened.

I really hope she’s worth it.

How often do we dick around with things in our life and let them run US instead of the other way around? Since when can people forbid us, prevent us or otherwise act an a barrier to what we want? Let’s think of this from a business perspective:

You had clients and customers long before your current ones rolled into your cash flow (kinda like friends, ex-significant others and whatnot). When something or someone new comes along, it should be a compliment – a delightful addition – to a business that you love and the reason you say “Shit Howdy!” when you head to the office each day. It should be a state of symbiosis where you each give the other what you need and want. You indulge in compromise. And while I’m not saying go out and say “shove your NDA where your ass hair grows,” it’s a relationship based on mutual respect.

I like yas. I’ll help yas.

Perhaps there are some pompoms.

When something or someone new comes along, that’s not a sign from the divine to scrap everything you’re doing, love, like and cherish to become their bitch. While the example that prompted this week’s bitch slap was a romantic relationship (not mine, though I’m guilty), take a good, hard look at your life.

Life is multi-faceted. A glimmering jewel reflecting prism-cast rainbows on every wall we pass, rain or shine. I don’t believe in the word impossible and I think we each have within our grasp the ability to bask in happiness. There’s nothing that can keep me from what I want, aside from my predisposition to walk around with my head in my ass.

And it usually has to do with the power I’ve allowed another person to have over me and my subsequent downgrading of what I WANT on the list of WHAT’S IMPORTANT.

Stop it. For all that’s chocolate in the Godiva shop, just stop it. Please. If you’re too much of a pansy to say, “I like my life and my business! This is me and my very own Legion of Awesome! If you want to be a PART of it, that’s soooo pimp. But hey – if you want to consume me and be my only priority, I’m not taking off my Super Suit just so you can feel important…”

then maybe you need to think of why you need someone else to define who you are and what you need or want.

When you let someone else take the reigns of your life, you’re saying, “I can’t think for myself.”

Really? You can’t? So sorry – my bad. I didn’t realize that you were a quivering, non-thinking mass fashioned of orange jello and fruit cocktail. You appeared to be human.

Because when posed with the question: is it worth it?

The answer is, most inarguably, no.

Here are three things you can do today to keep your Super Suit and stay at the helm of your Legion of Awesome:

• Think about compromise versus sacrifice (I covered this way back when in The Hallway).
• Pen and paper – do it now. Tell YOURSELF what’s important. Seal it in an envelope and attach it to your fridge. Each time you forget, threaten to open it and prove yourself wrong. Then you’ll have to go find another envelope. Pain in the ass. Be honest with yourself and keep from opening it.
• Get some front-stabbers. These are friends who will tell you to your face when you’re being an orange jello mold instead of a person. While I’m a huge fan of block party jello creations, I don’t really want to establish relationships with them. And you can’t, really. (It’s JELLO, for fuck sake – it has no backbone or personality aside from being “wiggly jiggly fun.”)

You’ve been slapped. Awwyeah.

It’s a rare thing in life when we get second chances – to say things, do things, BE things. I’m still toiling over the fact that I can’t remember if I happened to tell Vibrant “bye” when he left our training session at the velodrome a week ago Saturday. But I do very distinctly remember the quality of every conversation we ever shared during the short time I was lucky enough to know him.

When you speak, when you act – do so like you have to earn it. And by “it,” I mean the person on the other side. It’s unfathomable, but you really may not have a second chance for your words, actions and intentions to be interpreted. We think we’re being clear, kind, grateful. You think the other person is being an asshole. It’s all in the interpretation. We’re all guilty as charged – myself included, having ended a professional relationship with a firm whose work is…breathtaking…yet whose communication style simply wasn’t a fit for me or my clients.

You’ve been slapped – earn it, people. When you treat your clients, friends and lovers as if you’re consistently re-earning their business and value their place in your life, both sides win. You might even find they begin treating you the same way. And it’s not about jumping through hoops or following the bouncing ball of expectations. I have four reasonable expectations of anyone with whom I do business:

Step back.

Think.

Offer solutions.

Approach with kindness.

Wash-rinse-repeat. I think those are pretty good steps for my personal life, too, and how I try to handle my friends and other relationships.

Maybe you’ll find those four things useful as well. Now – go earn it.

Redhead Riding - photo by Mark Woolcot (click to visit his site)

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with bicycles. There are days I love them more than they love me, so in an effort to eke every last drop of love out of my body and bike over three days, I entered my first bike race series EVER this past weekend. Three days, and it went like this: Street Sprints (300m), Criterium (40 mins), Road Race (37 miles). Street Sprints? I got 3rd in my heat when they advanced 2. Criterium? 4th from last. Road race? 2nd from last.

(check out a fun pic from @java1guy’s Flickr stream – can you find The Redhead?)

And I loved it.

Now, for those watching the Redhead Riding, I’ve been on a track bike since October and a road bike (for all intents and purposes) since February of this year. While I’ve had a short relationship with a road bike while living in Las Vegas prior to my Kilimanjaro trip in 2008, it was nothing serious (kind of like a fuck buddy but it was a bicycle). I’ve honestly never loved anything (activity-wise) so much.

Here’s what I learned from coming in (almost) last:

• You never have to come in last again.
• There’s never another first.
• There are always more discoveries.
• I wasted a lot of energy when I didn’t have to.
• I met some great people.
• Apparently guys like to hit on girls in spandex.
• SPF 50 does jack shit for a pasty white girl in the sun for 8 hours.
• There are some things I do GREAT!
• Inevitably, there are things at which I epically suck.
• Eggs are not a good pre-race meal.
• I am apparently recognizable as “Redhead Writing” while in my bike gear wearing sunglasses (and a shout out to @TashaDA, @johnincolorado, @java1guy and the volunteer named Chad – who happened to be a reader –  for the nods over the weekend)
• Working together when things really suck make things not suck so much (and thanks to Gillian from the Big Ring team and Janie for making the last lap of the race MUCH more fun!)
• I can’t wait to do it all again.

I like failure. Its an “f” word that some people find really dirty, and to that I say lighten the fuck up. Embrace it. Hug it. Give it the reach around, will ya? The chance that you’ll suck as bad as you did when you think you failed AGAIN is miniscule. We find new ways to suck – and that’s called learning. If you keep sucking the same way over and over…well, you’re just an idiot. I look forward to making new mistakes. Being in new situations. Having new opportunities to fail. Each time you don’t fail, you succeed.

So yes, this weekend I failed three days in a row – but I never have to fail that way again. And that is a success.

PS: A hearty thanks to the GS Boulder team gals who are not only friendly but talented. Thanks from a redhead who looks forward to hanging on to your wheels very soon and – no offense – letting you stare at MY ass a little bit during some races later this year

PPS: And on a completely selfish note, one of my blog posts is up as a finalist in Trada’s Best Online Marketing Post contest – I need your votes! Voting ends tomorrow and if I win the votes, I can win an iPad! Click here to vote and my post is the Copywriting 3.0 post on the top line — thanks in advance!

“There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light
In the fine print they tell me what’s wrong and what’s right
And it comes in black and it comes in white
And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it.”

Avett Brothers – Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promises

Life’s fine print. All the rules that govern our daily doings, whether social, emotional or practical.

Always say thank you.

Don’t be clingy.

Use your turn signals.

Stop being the asshole with 22 items in the express lane at the grocery.

I think the fine print is exhausting. I don’t subscribe to it.

This past week, I returned to Texas after a year and a half to visit family and catch a quick visit with a friend or two. After not having seen my parents for a bit, I was blindsided.

My parents are going to die.

Both in their early 60s (and divorced since I was in 6^th grade), they’re both moving slower and my father looks 70. Mom’s hit menopause (or “minnow paws” as a middle school biology teacher jokingly said), her body’s changed shape, she still smokes and the lines in her face remind me that my growing pains are responsible for half of them. Knees that don’t work right, medications, wrinkles, weight gained and filed away in new places, but the same laughter, same smiles, same quirks.

But facing my parents’ mortality wasn’t what I was expecting as I landed at Hobby Airport last Wednesday.

And it’s another reason I think life’s fine print is bullshit.

When you tear down everything you’ve built around you through however many years you’ve been on this earth, there are two thing that remain:

You.

And love.

The things we accumulate have nothing to do with love, but love for our work is what makes it possible to do the accumulating. The things we love have nothing to do with what we have, yet our ongoing ability to build better Yous is what makes it possible for us to love.

After you’ve stripped all of the rules and fine print away – the shoulds, the coulds and woulds – what you’re seeing is what remains. What persists. The reason people are remembered, whether they’ve left the room or left life.

You and love.

There are times I feel that I tell the man in my life I love him/miss him too much. But to hell with it. When something bubbles up within you, there’s nothing wrong with letting it out. Sharing it. Love is life’s scrap cookies: you bake them from ingredients, few of which you bought on your own and most of which were given to you. What’s left is a sweet medley of gooey goodness that’s always better if shared. So if he tires of hearing that I love him, he can go find someone who loves him less, tells him less, shows him less. Because that’s ME. The Me that realizes what I can’t do is walk a tightrope and fear the fall. The Me that’s embraced that not being afraid of the fall means I have the exceptional opportunity to land on my feet or fall flat on my ass. Both are special and neither would I trade for the world.

But my Me becomes better through love. Love’s painful and the ever-present teacher that tells us when we should apologize, try harder, let go and move on. It’s the hand that touches our waist when we least expect it and guides us when we’re at a loss for where to go. A specter of salvation. If you separate the You and the Love, you’re left without a vessel to fill on both sides. Love comes from you and we’re made of love.

A hypnotic symbiosis. And a realization brought about because I realize that my parents are going to die someday.

I live without regret. Without shame. I’m getting better at humility and failure. Some days are better than others. What I’m most proud of after 37 years is my ability to love.

I love me.

I know what it feels like to love someone else.

I know what it feels like to be loved.

To find it, to sleep beside it, hold its hand. Lose it. Rediscover it. To have it pick you up from school after everyone else has already gone home. It puts everything on hold because you’re in town. It arrives before you get home and does you a favor. To see it, appreciate it and wonder how you ever got so lucky to be on the receiving end of such love.

So the next time you think you’re speaking or acting in a way someone else would consider “in excess,” just laugh. Give your love. Everything we have over the years passes us by in one way or another. It stops by, stays for a moment or a lifetime (someone’s) and when it moves on, we’re left with the memories. It’s the You and your Love – and how you choose to express them when you have the chance – that’s memorable.

You can keep the new TV or the iPad. I’ll take a child’s hysterical laughter, a thank you from a stranger and the unexpected kiss. Don’t even wrap them and skip the card. As somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we’re told to stop telling people what we feel.

Have you ever been in an elevator with a child who says, “I love you, Daddy!” eleven times during a 30-second trip between floors?

When we’re born our parents whisper, “I love you” over our heads at night.

As we grow into our words, we develop the ability to say “I love you” in return.

Then we’re fully aware we can speak and start initiating the “I love yous.”

But as we grow older, it becomes uncool to say those three words in front of friends. We don’t even want our parents to say them in front of the general public.

Then we begin to crave saying them to another audience: our crushes.

We feel adolescence’s surly, static-filled charge and we mistake it for love.  We’ll say it to a boy or girl we’ve gone steady with for three weeks.

Then comes adulthood – leaving the nest, and walking into a world where we have endless potential to fall. We’ve learned the perfunctory and ritualistic “I love you,” giving that to our parents, siblings and relatives as we’re now “old enough” to have had our hearts unevenly broken by the other I love yous.

We date, we find The One (or in my case, The FIRST One…and Second One…if I’m lucky, the Last One) and now we’ve laid our cards on the table with three words. It’s tragically uncool to be in love. Guys start going to Bed, Bath & Beyond and girls…well, we begin to become our mothers though we do our damndest not to.

It’s here that we can fade. I love you becomes something we say instead of something we do and feel. We begin to wonder where the love went and why it seems to have walked away. But if we take a moment, we’ll see that we are the ones who played our cards wrong and left the front gate open as we thought telling and showing the one we love that we actually love them was tragically uncool and annoying.

If we play our cards right, we find the joy in sitting on top of our loved one on a random Sunday morning, smothering them with kisses and ticklings as we say, “Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou” between each attack of the lips and fingertips.

Eleven times in 30 seconds is good. And it’s fun. And if you find it annoying, you need to lighten the fuck up. Because when will you again have the chance to assault or be assaulted by three words that mean so much at the hands of a YOU that makes you feel smarter/more handsome/prettier/better/more special/thinner/taller/tidier/like a better cook?

Maybe never. I’ll run the risk of being annoying any day over the regret of not doing or saying something. Screw the fine print. Colorado says I can’t drive without glasses, but the one thing I don’t need to put on my glasses to see is love.

“When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it.”

If you know me (hell, even if you don’t), you know I’m not the country club type. Joan Slaughter, founder of the foundation, had asked me to be her guest. That’s why I was going. (If you’re new to RedheadWriting, check out my post on ARTMA – my first introduction to Joan’s foundation.) I walked up to the club with blue toenails and a fucsia dress. One look at the fellow attendees …oh shit. Why the hell was I here? JOAN! Right! I was here for Joan. I didn’t measure-up to the Brooks Brothers suits and tweed-tastic clad ladies. I found solace in HootSuite on my iPhone before the breakfast began.

And then for the next hour, I was overcome with an understanding of what’s really important.

I was given the gift of sitting in a room amongst families whose lives have been changed, for better and for worse, by pediatric cancer. They’re right here in Denver. They may even be your neighbors, your children’s classmates. I heard a man whose toddler son was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor talk with a straight face about the $2 million tab for his son’s treatment protocol after “experts” at Johns Hopkins told him to put his son on terminal care, as there was “nothing to do.”

What’s really important?

Hope. Passion. Ambition.

It’s not that your plans for last night didn’t work out to your liking.

It’s not that you’re running late to a meeting.

It sure as hell isn’t that you stained your favorite blouse.

It’s hearing a woman’s voice crack as she talks about putting her 5-year-old daughter’s hair up in a ponytail during her chemotherapy treatment because she thought that…somehow…the ponytail would keep her hair together. Help it not fall out.

It’s hearing her introduce a young lady in the room who was receiving treatment at the same time her daughter was – and one’s here today. One’s not.

It’s listening ravenously as you hear three pediatric oncologists talk about being told they were crazy for wanting to commit their lives to a field where kids die. Die. But how they wouldn’t be satisfied until they, as medical professionals, did better and upped the odds for kids who are told there’s nothing left to do.

That’s what matters.

Hope. Passion. Ambition.

I literally get PISSED when I hear about a diocese in Pennsylvania donating $1.8 million for Haitian relief and then I hear about a national debt sitting at $12 trillion. We piss and moan about taxes and health care legislation and we keep sending our money overseas. We drive by the homeless people on the corner who need a dollar yet we’ll text $10 to The Red Cross to help people way beyond our borders. Yeah, I see the compassion in there. Somewhere. But why do we look so far beyond our own backyards for causes worth our $1 or $1.8 million? I simply don’t understand.

Not only is life entirely too short to deal with crap that doesn’t make your life better, it’s much shorter for some than others. Something to think about as we determine what’s important and what’s not. Strange…I’ve suddenly moved quite a few things to the “not important” list.

It’s been a sappy couple weeks for The Redhead. But today, I learned what’s really important. Maybe you’ll stop by the Morgan Adams Foundation site and see something important there as well. And a special thanks to Joan for inviting me to breakfast in the sea of tweed today. She didn’t see me drop my glasses in the back during the video because I was wiping the tears from my eyes. I’ve never really heard her talk about her family’s journey with Morgan until today. I’m very glad I heard it – from her.

If you’re inclined, follow the Morgan Adams Foundation on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

PS: This post isn’t to guilt you into making a donation or taking an interest in this particular nonprofit. I know there are many worthwhile causes out there in need of support. This morning, however, I was lucky enough to know that the dollars I donated to a cause were going somewhere and for a certain purpose and that those dollars made a difference. And I think it’s damn lucky that other families who find themselves faced with pediatric cancer have a foundation like Morgan Adams dedicated to funding research that matters.

Saturday musings. Random shit pops into my head and today…it’s one thing that annoys the everloving piss out of me:

YOU.

You pedestrians, cyclists, walkers, dog walkers and motorists…yeah, YOU. Entitled, the whole lot of ya.

Mr. Pedestrian - There you are crossing the street in front of my car. Hi – I have a car. I could crush you. A felony, albeit, but maybe instead of acting all self-righteous and entitled, you could scoot your caboose across the street. You move, I move. Sense of urgency. I remind you: I could crush you.

Mr. Cyclist – Share the Road (I even have the license plates on my car). Share the motherfucking road. Two wheels are not better than four. They’re all wheels. Stop riding two or three-wide into traffic lanes, bike paths and zipping through stop signs. I ride, too. Don’t be a dick and make the rest of us look bad. You want to take rides without stopping? Head to the hills.

Miss/Mrs. Walker - You and your mobile coffee clutch are in my way. You stroll three wide across Wash Park paths and your collective ass is so big that (1) I can’t see around you, and (2) you’re in the bike lane. I have a bike. I could hit you. It wouldn’t feel good. I could wreck into your collective ass and that would suck even more, because my bike costs more than your Merona-by-Target stretchy pants. Stay in the pedestrian lane. Please.

The Dog Walkers – You are walking around with an animal on a string. I have two dogs – I get it. But when runners and cyclists are using the same path as you and your herd, get that shit under control. Walk your pups on the RIGHT SIDE (for fuck sake), which puts them out of the passing lane. Save a pup, save some legs, save some wheels. Don’t be a pretentious animal-on-a-string person.

Motorists - I am one of them. I give three feet to pass (even though it’s kinda hard when you’re riding two or three wide). But you – you think you’re special with your ignition, fancy motor and blinking lights. Cyclists share the road as well – it’s law here in Colorado – whether you like it or not. Go ahead and drive like a vigilante, teaching those snotty little spandex-clad cyclists a lesson. It’s all fun and games until you hit one. Game. Over.

No settling...Wind-up and let it fly.

Sit down.

No, I’m not going to kick you in the nuts, though it might feel that way in a second.

What the hell are you doing?

It’s a new year and you’re sitting there dicking around with the same shit that didn’t work last year. People, relationships, business “strategies,” bullshit MLM schemes, cat litter that doesn’t “trap odor” worth a fuck…

Life is fleeting, so why are you giving Mediocrity the reacharound? Mediocrity is anything but fondle-worthy. It’s a prick little kid in the school yard that stole your kickass superhero lunchbox with stickers all over it. It’s the twat cheerleader who pointed and laughed because your shoes weren’t Keds. Mediocrity is a thief of your time, self-esteem, energy and inherent value.

Look around you – I’ll bet that there isn’t a single one of you who hasn’t lost someone or known someone who’s lost someone in the past year. That life is gone, left to be lived through the hearts and minds of friends, family and loved ones. They have no tomorrow. They don’t even have a today. So why are YOU fucking off with the one life you have?

Mediocrity is a give-up. It’s like telling yourself and everyone around you that you’re fine with being a sloth and you’ve got another life hanging in your closet to live when this one has a few holes in it. Seriously? I want to go through your closet, because for all the shoes and shit I’ve got lined-up in there by color, size and style (a little OCD), I’m pretty bleeping confident that if I get hit by a bus, I’m am straight-shit out of luck. End of story, no more adventures and there’s a world out there that won’t have me clawing at it in an effort to get everything I can before my big bus comes along.

It’s January 2010, prime go-time for winding-up a leg and giving mediocrity a swift kick to the nads. It’s not even unkind – it’s the smartest, most compassionate thing you can do for yourself and anyone in your life.

There are three reasons in life to dos something (and three reasons only):

• Because you aspire to be the best you can possibly be
• Because you love how you feel when you do it
• Because the people you love need what you have to give

None of that can be achieved when you’ve got one (or both) of your hands down Mediocrity’s pants.

Wouldn’t it be a beautiful place in life to be if all three of those things ruled your day-to-day? The next time you enter a room, look around at the people in it. How many are going through the motions and doing the minimum to get from dawn to dusk? Are YOU one of those people?

I owe this post to Margo Talbot, a shining light in any room she enters. I had a few minutes to sit down with her last weekend, and she’s the inspiration for telling all of you to kick Mediocrity in the nuts. It’s a gift to be in the presence of someone who doesn’t tolerate and lives each day as an adventure, the expedition of their dreams and surrounds themselves with only those who are committed to the same path. I’ve taken inventory – I’m doing some shedding. It’s incredible to see how much brighter the sunlight becomes when you get the shit out of your eyes.

Take inventory. Wind-up a leg. Get to kickin’. Imagine what you can make room for in your life when mediocrity (which no longer deserves a capital “M”) is writhing on the ground like the punk bitch it is. And if you happen to see Kumbayah, kcik it in the ‘nads, too. I fucking hate Kumbayah.