cher

when turning 50, Cher is a great role model, maybe. i heard that she's getting ready to pose nude for playboy for her 60th birthday. in hawaii. i'd like the hawaii part. it's been interesting to think over the last year of role models on how to age well... there's so much terror for so many people. i've been doing this envisioning work around the next decade, two decades, three decades... plus. someone who mentors me says that only by having a vision of a future that exceeds the past can one move forward; this, he says, is the reason so many people die after they retire... not sure if he's right about that. people say the darnedest things. someone, when i was very sick and scared, told me that it couldn't possibly be my time to pass away - i hadn't yet found my true purpose or expressed all i had to express. i thought of all the people, children, young people... so many people who don't get to express what they are, who don't get to find their purpose. in ft. lauderdale the other day a young black gay man, dressed as a woman, in an area of drag prostitutes, was shot in the head and killed. he was 17 and had just passed his GED exam so that he could go take a cooking course and become a chef. i googled his name and found a photo of him - so beautiful. his drag name was Beyonce.

and then there's cher - reportedly one of the world's nicest and unassuming people. after so many interviewers had asked her about plastic surgeries she finally made one single comment: "getting old is hard work."

Quitting smoking

this is me in my http://www.threadless.com/ "more reasons not to go camping" t-shirt, feeding Rufus his third birthday kibbles-cake.

earlier, i was thinking about writing about relationships for a project i've been working on and wrote about New York instead... here, i was going to write about quitting smoking... i better resist writing about Rufus, the Irish Terrier Little Brother...

after so many attempts to quit smoking and then this sort of sustained 8 months of trying to stop or at least cut down hugely, i seem to have stopped. and i'm not crazy or even cranky. i am a little bored but oh well. i went to a great hypnotherapist for an initial appointment and have been listening to her cd every night... the one night that i forgot, i did have a bit of trouble the next day. but, as she says in her cd, "this is so simple, it is so incredibly easy - all you're doing is letting go of something that you no longer want in your life." so that's been pretty exciting and fun and i have great faith in the process... it really has been incredibly easy. i think it was just time to let go of it.