I don’t usually write half-baked blogs to be finished later when I stumble across a concrete illustration from daily life to flesh out my point.

But I’m trying out new writing processes and this half-baked process even fits my subject matter – the value of stretching ourselves, getting outside the comfort zone we sometimes put ourselves in to avoid humiliating and embarrassing situations.

The actors in “Me and Orson Welles”, a new movie directed by Richard Linklater, were discussing on the Charlie Rose show today the risk and courage that actors must muster up. Claire Danes said “It’s always humiliating…Walking across a room is plenty embarrassing.” (Incidently, this comment underscored the look on her face and on mine when I spotted her, celebrity spotter that I am, on an escalator in Crate & Barrel in Soho in New York a few years ago.) Christian McKay said ”There’s something watchable about the quality of vulnerability” when you have a story to tell.

How great that vulnerability can be appealing to an audience!  Because making myself vulnerable is how I choose to live and how I plan to write about my life. Risk making a fool of myself; falling on my face. I can’t be satisfied with something half-hearted. Daring to do something a new way - seeking out a new way of being - is anything but half-baked or half-hearted. Courage is critical to the creative process: diving in, flubbing up or being brilliant, being willing to reveal.  If we attract, please, or help someone along the way, then our goal will have been achieved. But the process must have an intrinsic pureness about it, regardless of outcome. And because of our sincere and gutsy intention we have a better chance of succeeding. 

Isn’t this kind of commitment true of all the passionate initiatives we undertake and hope to succeed at, personal or career? Where we are grounded? Our source of pure, unadulterated, sincere and complete effort? I think so. Risking everything - the shirts off our backs, our hearts. Giving everything – the shirts off our backs, our hearts and our souls. Pretty wonderful when you think about it. Does anyone succeed by holding back? By editing oneself because of fear of censure, self or public? By living and feeling and breathing half-baked anythings?

Through it all, the one thing we must give completely is compassion – for everything and everyone we touch. When we give our whole heart we give our best selves, our whole selves – strong and vulnerable, shaking and steady. But when we only give half a heart – even by not being able to be present in that very moment – we risk losing our shirts and hurting others’ hearts. In short, we fail.

There must be hundreds of poems with this theme, and hundreds of monologues on Broadway alone. Good stuff. Embodying the same guts and gumption that allowed me to get myself out on that limb in the Outward Bound course 22 years ago, walking the balance beam six stories off the ground. My knees were shaking and my mouth was dry but I did it without even daring myself. Without committing through words. But my feet knew I was committed. They weren’t waiting for my command or the instructor’s that said, “GO!” One foot just moved forward to take that first step out on the beam. And the other one, not wanting to be left behind and deprived of action and fun, followed.

Aah, bliss. The bliss of knowing everything was risked, everything was given. With it comes the satisfaction of sleeping sweetly with the results. Let it come - success, failure, feeling in limbo, the whole nine yards. I am prepared. I am living in the moment with no thoughts about the future. Doing my best on this rainy, soggy, good for writing and good for risking day. Giving my all to everything I love doing.

Action is bliss. And so is acceptance of the consequences. Living knowing we tried is heaven. I can’t imagine living a half-baked, half-hearted life. Vulnerability, embarrassment, humiliation, and success, here I am. I’m alive!

Some of the most helpful insights that come my way occur during heart to heart chats with friends, in locker rooms no less, which seem to rank right up there with hair salons as effective soul-searching venues. Last night at the gym some of us stumbled on the value of letting go of needing control over our lives. I’ve heard the argument before, “Let go and let God,” but this time I heard it with new ears. I was changing my work habits, so for me this conversation was not a stumble but a dive into affirming the destructiveness of fear in keeping me from achieving my career and relationship goals.

My friend from New York said, “For all the worrying I’ve done in my lifetime, it got me no further. The problem was still there. I had a job with the government for 12 years. The negativity of the environment was dragging me down. I had to get out. And you know what? I quit the job and never missed a mortgage payment.” I felt a surge of hope and excitement that mindset could bring about such speedy change, which I knew, but I didn’t have enough examples.

I get so much from working out with women from all over the world; their experience of tough times gives me a wider range of viewpoints, along with proof that my problems are not unique. We are more alike than not, despite our differences.

I know I need positive-thinking people around me, and finding them involves choices. I can control those choices, but I need to leave their outcome to God. He does what is right for me in His own time. My job is to hang on to patience and flexibility. And faith.

This locker room story addresses a strategy I had adopted that very day, speaking to me in a new way because I was ready to hear it. This strategy – revolutionary for me – was to reprioritize my goals. My children and significant others have always come first. And yet at the top of my TO DO list I always wrote “Career” because I have less demonstrated experience. I’ve been a volunteer for more years than I’ve brought in income. And without greater trust in myself, I feel more urgency for my publishing goals to work out fast. But I sabotage myself; the pressure to get it all done slows me down. Then a few days ago, something made me pull out an index card and write ” Kids and Boyfriend” first and “Career” second. I was finally listening to my heart, not my fear. It wasn’t impossible to achieve because I already had number one! I was reminded of my neighbor who shouted to me over the fence that the reason she worked so hard was so she could play – take her kids on trips. But until yesterday, I didn’t plan play time. I felt I had to put career first, not seeing I already had abundance, in and from those I loved. Relaxation didn’t have to happen by default, by diverting from my goal and then feeling like a slouch. I had been stuck. Making career my top priority had only pulled me down.

Yes, mindset is critical to success. The book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol Dweck, was suggested to me by my friend Paula, a former academic dean of a girls’ school. My understanding is that it’s about raising children to take risk and achieve, and how praise can make them satisfied and not keep striving to grow. I bought a copy today for a baby shower this weekend. A gift of knowledge lasts longer than a box of diapers, thankfully.

My new mindset is not rocket science. I expect it to motivate me to work harder and take more risk, so the weight of my goals won’t paralyze me. With family first and career second, when I send off a query and proposal, I will remember that rejection by an agent isn’t anything when you have family behind you. This makes it easier to ignore the negative voices in my head that say, “This is too hard; I’ll never get there!” I can let go of wishing I could control the outcome.

A few hours after I started writing this, I was driving out of a parking spot when a man I’d walked out of the building with came up to my car. With a big, curious smile he blurted out, “What do you think is going to happen with health care?” He told me he was a surveyor, had gone through his savings and now was using up his 401k. He said, “Even if health care doesn’t pass (after the President’s speech tonight) we will be OK.” His faith was so unshakable, it stunned me.

We need faith whenever we find the courage to start over, whether it is creating and advocating a new health plan or adopting a new way of looking at our own priorities. And between us, we really can devise ways to get there that motivate and sustain us all.

I could not watch the Kentucky Derby as much as I used to glory in the beauty and exhilaration of the Triple Crown. 

Ever since Barbaro broke down, I’ve sworn that I could and would not support horse racing.

My son asked me if I was going to watch and I told him no. And I didn’t. But I checked the results online. Despite fearing the worst, I was stunned to find that the worst had indeed happened. Again, and multiply that by thousands. The runner up, a filly named Eight Belles, broke two front ankles and was euthanized on the track.

How many deaths will it take before this sport of bringing beautiful animals into the world to suffer and die is halted? It’s like bringing Olympic athletes into the world to face death. Russian Roulette: salvation or death. What kind of rush could such odds bring anyone? Sadistic, truly.

What does it take for you to hear us, breeders, owners and trainers, who indulge in this cruelty? If you don’t have hearts, think of those of us who do.

Larry Jones, Eight Belles’s trainer, said in a Reuters article ( 5/3/08 ) published in The New York Times, “We couldn’t be more proud of her effort…. The main thing was she never had to suffer. She just went out in a blaze of glory.” I can’t believe breaking two ankles and literally breaking down wasn’t painful. Just proof that denial is what keeps the industry alive.

Hear us, Larry Jones, and Eight Belles’s owner. Hear us, Gretchen and Roy Jackson, and Michael Matz. None of you are exempt. At the very least you are guilty of a grave injustice and withholding of compassion. Cruelty to animals is cruelty to your fellow man. How dare you think we feel as you do, that it is alright to subject animals to the torture that is horse racing. 

I can’t take it. It hurts unbearably. Another talented and beautiful life gone. Wasted. Thrown away. Ravaged. Do you not see that you are waging war on the animals you profess to care for? Why is pain and death the ‘life’ you choose for them?

Nothing hurts as much as the deaths that didn’t have to be. In Iraq and Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, and on city streets. Do you not see that our country is on overload? It takes the same amount of work to create something constructive as it does to tear down, whether from violence, apathy or neglect. The effect is the same.

Your actions, horse racing industry, diminish all of us. This is indeed a tragic day.

In celebration of Earth Day, I’m writing about my friends the aphids. They are attacking my New Dawn rose bushes. These two rhapsodic rose bushes are climbers, growing higher every year. If you count their spilling over the trellis and arbor, which I keep adding on to, they are about 16 feet tall at this point, with more life in them than all the new trees and bushes I have planted in the last four years. The buds, only visible the last few days, are growing. It will be a few more days before they open.

I was so excited at dusk last night to see if they’d started blooming that Mocha cat and I went out onto the screen porch after dinner, and I noticed – horrors of all horrors – that the aphids had returned. I’ve been looking for them, while trying to think positive thoughts that maybe they’d stay away this year. I really thought I’d headed them off with a few preventive whiffs of rose bug poison. But no, there were a few tell-tale headless stalks visible but undeterred, thankfully, from reaching for the sun.

If I’d been successful in ordering liquid garlic to spray instead of pesticides, I’d probably be OK. But the company turned out to be fraudulent. And I’m just not willing to load the air with pesticides, so it may take a few more years to conquer this battle. But, in the meantime, I’ve decided to be at peace.

“Live and let live!” my husband used to say about vermin. The kids and I didn’t pay much attention to this bravado until he said it one evening about the roach crawling across our map of the world in the family room. Then we cringed at the grossness. I said it seemed a little irresponsible to be that passive, even though I hate killing any creature. “World traveler,” the kids named the poor little guy, groaning and giggling at the same time it made it across several continents, safely.

That memory is now long gone, as I breathe in and let the pale pink roses warm my heart. I asked the protecting guardian of wildife and nature, Ariel, to spare me a few blooms. 

And so in a spirit of compromise on Earth Day, I am conceding to the little bugs. We share a gentle love and discriminating taste. I should be able to give up a few decapitated stalks in the midst of boundless beauty. As for the carpenter bees that have been digging holes in the arbor, I’ll tolerate them, too, until I find a green solution.

As life so often brings us full circle, I am reminded of ninth grade when we had to memorize a poem. I chose Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall” which I still remember after all these years:

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower–but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. 
 

Now that I’m wiser, I don’t yearn to know so passionately why things are the way they are in the universe. I’ve fought too many battles, demanded too much control, and sought too many answers. I just want to enjoy my roses.

With triumph over the aphids no longer my priority, I can settle in quite nicely to co-existing with both aphids and bees. It makes me wonder how they adapt to making do with humans. Maybe setting an example of mutual respect is no effort to them at all. Maybe they, too, think that it only takes a handful of pink patches at dawn and dusk to fill their heart’s desire, and their stomachs.

Looks like my husband had it right all along by picking the important battles. A few missing rose buds are the right savory touch to enticing me to contemplate changing my position on how much I fight with nature. Or how much I resist anything unwelcome.