"You pick up bits and pieces of treasure and trash, pain and pleasure, passions and disappointments, and you start throwing them in your bag, your big bag of experience. You do some dumb things that don't work out at all. You stumble excitedly on little gems that you never saw coming. And you stuff them all in your bag. You pursue the things you love and believe in. You cast off the images of yourself that don't fit. And suddenly you look behind you and a pattern emerges.

You look in front of you and the path makes sense. There is nothing more beautiful than finding your course as you believe you bob aimlessly in the current. Wouldn't you know that your path was there all along, waiting for you to knock, waiting for you to become. This path does not belong to your parents, your teachers, your leaders, your lovers. Your path is your character defining itself more and more every day, like a photograph coming into focus."

- Jodie Foster
Actor, director and producer
University of Pennsylvania

How disconcerting is it if you go to see a psychic and their read is to urgently advise you to see a therapist immediately?

I was discussing business with a friend of mine last Tuesday evening.  He explained the "Four Bucket Philosophy" to me.  This model is basically a tool to help one prioritize and focus one's efforts first on the tasks at hand that are both important and urgent (bucket 1), and second on everything else.  I thought about this later on in the week as I worked on my music (that seem to grow tentacles by the dozens), and again in a much larger scope, this morning.    

Today in Chicago, my friends are holding a life celebration for their son, Mark Alan Sinclair, who passed away late in the evening on Friday April 14^th, 2006 from a brain aneurysm.  He was 34 and was already the kind of guy many aspire to be.  He was quick-witted, intelligent, compassionate and dedicated.

I have a small chalkboard just to the right of my stove on which I have written the word "IMPORTANT."  It is no longer a To-Do-List, but more, a reminder to concentrate on what matters most; those things that would fit in both the important and the urgent bucket.  Obviously, this can be difficult to do with the clip of society as rapid as it is along with how frighteningly susceptible I am to focusing on trivial concerns that are easy to complain about, and even easier in which to get lost; but, as I thought of Mark and how much he is missed already, I realized again that the first things that should be in bucket 1 are those closest to me.  That is important.  That is urgent. (Note To Self)

How bad does your diet food have to be that even your Golden Retriever spits it out?

I've recently reconnected with some friends of mine that I havent seen in 15 years.  It's fascinating to me the way in which life is full of connections, disconnections and reconnections and how it remains a constant large scale connect the dots.  I keep thinking about the tiny details of life.  The ones that are so small, you wouldn't necessarily mention them to anyone, but it seems it is those details, that keep you closest to the people in your life.  While by themselves, you would give them no credence or worth and it would seem unnecessary to tell anyone about the person that cut you off in traffic or the super sale on toilet paper you found but, without those details, life becomes just a grocery list of facts you report when people call to check in.  If you agree that what is important is the connection you make with people, then that sort of grocery list is unacceptable.   Time is always an issue as it is always stretched too thin whether youve gotten married, a new job or a new baby and I will readily agree that in the throes of that sort of adjustment anything not at the very top of the priority list gets thrown out the window.  However, the dust of readjustment always settles in a few months and if you still find that you aren't connecting at all with the people you once did, there must be a greater reason, maybe even unbeknownst to you.  So after this hodge-podge of verbiage, my thought today is to hold a little tighter to those still in your corner who do care when the moon is breathtakingly full above your home or if the dogs rolled in mud right before your needed to leave for work, those who will be your witness that you are living and breathing and that your life matters.

I suppose it is now officially tornado season as a few ripped through the Nashville area on Sunday night and again last Friday obliterating whatever was in their path.  Born and raised in the New England, I was not acquainted with the proper tornado protocol when I came to town, so my first tornado warning had me panicking immediately.  The very mention of the impending twister and I wigged out completely.  I began running around my apartment in small circles as I watched the storm approach on the Doppler radar.  The news anchors were advising to find an innermost room without windows on or below the ground floor.  In my apartment on the second floor, every room had windows which just added to my hypersensitive state of anxiety.  After nervously pacing back and fourth, in all my well founded wisdom, I decided to put on a rain coat (because if a tornado did hit, who would want their shirt to get wet?) and get in the bathtub along with both the dogs who looked at me with puzzled expressions.  There we sat for 45 minutes until my heartbeat returned to normal and at least part of my brain resumed functionality.  Now out of my hazy fog I thought about my ridiculous safety precautions and wondered what on earth I was doing; thankful that the tornado didn't hit us and thankful that no one was there to witness my quick thinking emergency procedure, I helped the somewhat befuddled dogs out of the tub.

At the last minute I was able to get a ticket to see the incomparable Cheryl Wheeler perform at the Belcourt Theater Saturday March 25th, here in Nashville.  It was no surprise to anyone who has seen Cheryl before that the concert was incredible.  She entertained all with hysterical anecdotes offset by the tenderest of songs (including my favorite Gandhi/Buddha). 

It was her introduction to This Is Me, however, that stuck with me long after the gig ended.  She introduced it as a song she had written about her ex who had called her, extremely upset, shortly after they had broken up.  She explained that while, she was fairly angry with the person on the other end of the phone line, it was clear that her ex was having a very difficult time and that, in the end, she was pleased to say that love was the overriding emotion (even when she was still feeling somewhat betrayed by her ex). 

She went on to wonder, as I think we all have, how exactly it happens that one can be so in love with another person at one time and then, miraculously, years later, find that, not only are they no longer in love with that person, but they vehemently hate them.  They feel contempt and resentment toward the very same person for whom they would have risked their lives years earlier.  This led me to wonder if relationships actually do change, or if, the relationship simply wasnt what you thought it was in the beginning and what has changed then, is only your perception of it.  I started to think about my own relationships and if we can ever truly know where we stand in relation to another person.  There were some that I once thought were unbreakable and now they are barely discernable.  We all move forward and move on and, I suppose, we can only hope that when we think of past loves, now in our own separate worlds, we remember what we added to each others lives instead of the reasons it deteriorated.  I'm still working on that, but at least it is something to shoot for.