Looks fun, huh?

I love going to the beaches in Bali and watching surfers.

I mean, sure, there are lots of surfers who are pretty to look at. It takes a fair amount of physical prowess to haul yourself around the ocean by paddling and then balance yourself on a piece foam while riding along a curling wave.

But surfers are fascinating to watch in their process and execution. Having lived in Maine my whole life, my experience with surfers and the surfing culture is limited to stereotypes from the Valley movies of the late 80′s and most Saved By The Bell references.

In other words, meatheads or burnouts who laze about life focused only on getting to the beach to laze around on a surfboard and play in the ocean.

I’ve come to learn this is SO not the case.

Two days into our adventures together, Jenny and I were the ones lazing about while my friend Tommy (who took the insanely awesome surf photos on this post) was out tearing it up on his surfboard.

This adventure began after Tommy had pulled up a dashboard rivaling NASA’s simulators on his computers to explain the conditions he looks for before heading out, surfboard bungee corded to the rack on the side of his motorbike. Things like water temperature and wind and ocean swells and phases of the moon. Not in the weird “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah maaaaaaaaaaaan….just look at the charts. Today is gonna be gnarly, dude. Totally gnarly” way (told you I have a very limited experience) but in the “I could possibly give a dissertation on oceanic science and technology after I catch a couple waves today” way.

A total science geek myself, I was (of course) glued to the screen learning about the method to this madness.

Will This Be Perfect?

Which is how Jenny and I came to be sitting  in beach chairs at Balangan Beach on the Bukit in Bali (alliterate much?!) watching the legions of surfers a few thousand meters away. I turned to Jenny, fixated on a thought that emerged from watching them sit on their boards. “It’s funny the different ways you can look at those surfers sitting and waiting. You can either assume that they are wasting time bobbing along, constantly waiting for the perfect wave to come along. Or you can realize they are stringing a mass of computations about the current wave, the upcoming wave, the ebb & flow of tides, the surfers around them, and a bajillion other things…a congruence of factors that brings the perfect wave.”

Who would have thought surfers were so deep?

It is important to note that I know nothing about surfing nor was I even one smidge drunk at this point. If you come sit on a beach with me for an afternoon I will likely unleash these little nuggets of speculation on you as well.  And if I am interested in what you are doing I will likely grill you ad nauseam to understand more.

Some waves last just a few seconds before cresting, others are hundreds of meters long. Still people drop their boards into the waves every day. How do some succeed while others wipe out?

• They Know Their Shit – Sure, some people hit it lucky and catch a fantastic wave as a rookie on the fly. These people are exceptions not rules.
• They Do The Work - I’m fairly certain that Tommy has about 736 other things to do than monitor reports on ocean tides, but pulling all that data and making an educated plan at the best place to set down his board pays off in dividends.
• They Recognize The Opportunity - You don’t get the ride of your life by sitting on your board and waiting for some omnipotent voice to tell you when to pop up. See all the pieces coming together and go for it.
• They Make It Happen -  Ride that wave, baby!

That last point is the most important and what I observed sitting with Jenny on the beach. Looking out at what was happening it would be easy to assume that the surfers were just sitting there. Waiting. For the perfect opportunity to ride off into the sunset. Which happens maybe MAYBE once every session. That’s the thing that separates them.

The people who execute. Who stand up and ride their perfect wave.

Tommy told us before we left how cool it is to think that the perfect wave he was going to catch that day was already manifesting out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

We all have perfect waves manifesting for us somewhere.

What are you going to do to catch yours?

Photo Credits – Tommy Schultz

This was the topic of conversation a couple nights ago over Italian pizza with some folks from the Dynamite Circle mastermind that I am a part of. We were discussing a recent post in which someone was telling the story of the risk they had taken and the happiness that they had found as a result of this risk.

The thing is, they left out a huge part of the story. They positioned their story of risk as an adventure that they had engaged in solo and persevered through by the grit of their own determination. We, however, knew that the part they were omitting was that a mentor had helped immensely by creating a process to aid the near seamless transition to their new life.

It can be hard when sharing stories to outline every single detail. We often end up telling little white lies by omission, merely because there isn’t enough time, space, attention span to share EVERY GORY DETAIL.

This was more though. This was someone altering the facts of their story to make themselves sound more impressive.

I often get emails from readers and friends saying things like (quoted):

I really wish I could be as brave as you.

There’s this fallacy in the world of non-conformed exceptional living that you have to take a deep breath, pull up your big girl panties, and leap off cliffs to make changes in your life that are worthy of being admired.

This is a total lie.

Sure, I took a big huge MASSIVE risk moving to Bali to life in a house with a couple dudes I totally didn’t know while writing and strategizing for their brand. Hell, I had to get my first passport ever to even get on the plane. I had never lived outside my home state (let alone my home country!)

Is my story somehow less exciting when you add that Dan and Ian (the boss men) put me up rent-free in a gorgeous villa with a killer backyard garden and pool for six months?  That they provide me with a monthly contractors check for the work I do for their companies? How my housemates had a full circle of people (both local and ex-pat) already living in Bali for me to become friends with?

Do these things make my risk less meaningful?

We come up against so many challenges in our lives.

Not everything has to be.

If you are able to live your story by accepting the help and support of others who believe in you…do it.

Great stories are not merely the stringing together of a series of events and facts. They are the journey that a hero takes. A great story is great because you yearn for the hero to succeed.

Who the fuck cares if they didn’t go it totally alone? Supporting characters are pivotal to most plots!

When I applied for this opportunity, I quoted Paulo Coehlo:

When you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. (The Alchemist)

People talk about how lucky someone is. Or how talented/smart/ambitious they must be. That an average person could never manifest the lifestyle and story that this extraordinary person managed to create for themselves. But often it is simply that those people are able to recognize and seize extraordinary opportunities when they present themselves.

More often those opportunities come with the aid and conspiracy of the universe and people around them.

Don’t be afraid to take your deepest darkest scariest risks out for a spin.

Even if the first few times you have to use training wheels to do it.

photo credit: hugojcardoso via photo pin cc

Admit it. Good grammar is sexy.

If I had to name the one love of my life, it would be language and literature.

I’m sure any future significant others will be slightly saddened to learn that tidbit of information

There are times that I simply eat/sleep/live words. The way that they sound, their meaning and etymology, their symbolism and value, their beautiful simplicity and complex constructs. Words tumble around my mind in a swirling symphony befitting a grand concert hall.

The street term for my particular affliction is “Word Nerd” and I’m more than comfortable with the title. Nerdery is not exactly something that is new to me, grammatical or otherwise.

The hair on the back of my neck prickles up and I have a physical reactive need to correct errors when I see them appear. It’s an affront to my lover’s purest character.

Knowing a lot about grammar and spelling and sentence structure might get you a job pushing paper as a copyeditor or mixed with some other skills might bank you a swank gig as a editor at a publishing house or publication.

Yet most people with this skillset either spend time curled up with books and manuscripts, creating the content that other word nerds devour, or being complete and utter pricks to those people without the skillset.

The thing is, especially in this online world of point-and-click-immediate publishing, it is easy to drop a typo or misplace a comma. Heck, with all my spouting off about words and writing, I guarantee most word nerds worth their weight in Webster’s can find at least 5 in this post alone. Furthermore, with the conversational tone of blogs and editorial articles, proper grammar is sometimes forsaken for sentences that make sense.

For example, who the eff uses the word FORSAKEN in actual blog posts?!

There are few things that bother me more than blatantly incorrect grammar. Yet one of those things is people being condescending jerk for the mere thrill of appearing smarter and thus, somehow better,  than someone else.

Does it make you feel special to prove you found a mistake someone else made?

Absolutely cannot stand seeing the English language mutilated?

• Email The Guilty Party Privately Or Post A Helpful Comment - In an articleon my column on Forbes I misspelled “pedestal”  - in a copy headline (the really big bold text in an article). Talk about YIKES! Fortunately a reader emailed me quickly to say “Loved the piece, wanted to give you a heads up that there’s a typo.”
   
  See, this is a USEFUL correction. “I cannot even stand to read your article because I saw your typo and now I want to go kick puppies” is not useful at all. (Yes, I have seen a similarly worded comment before…)

 

• Do Not Assume That A Misuse of Grammar Indicates a Person’s Intelligence - Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” This is from a man who spent the majority of his schooling being told he was lazy, insubordinate, and careless.
   
  Just because someone does not know the proper use of an Oxford Comma does not mean that their idea or opinion has no value.

 

• English Is Not Everyone’s First Language - Ah, privileged first world problems. We can get our rocks off pointing it out when someone stumbles a bit over the English language, but that person may have worked their ass off to be able to communicate with your mono-linguistic mind. As I spend more time with people who have taken the time to learn an ENTIRE SECOND LANGUAGE (I certainly can’t say that…I can barely say “I would like iced lemon tea, please” in most of my second language attempts!) it is obvious how much of an accomplishment that is.
   
  One of my FAVORITE bloggers out there is Carlos Miceli. He is an Argentinian guy who blogs in English, and started his first blog (Owl Sparks) as a way of getting more comfortable writing and communicating in this second language. Dude has great things to say, even if it sometimes gets me riled up and argumentative.

Finally…

If you still would like to get yourself worked up over the grammar mistakes and misspellings of another person, I have some suggestions for you. Please follow these steps carefully:

1. Close Your Eyes and Take a Deep Breath
2. Count SLOWLY to 27
3. Close Your Laptop/Turn Off Your Screen
4. Step Away From Your Computer
5. Go Outside And Experience Life (hug puppies, don’t kick them)

There’s way too much in life to care about. A few typos or mistakes should not be among them.

Being A Word Nerd Does Not Establish Your Credibility

But it sure can establish that you are a person no one really wants to hang out with anyways.

Note – If a piece of writing is laced with horrible grammar and typos and a general disregard for intelligent conversation, judge away. Those people are probably asking for it!

Ok, fine. Jeez. The guy I was dating was in love with the book and I wanted to impress him am always looking for new things to read.

ANYWAYS

It ended up being a great read, even if it was super science fictioney and kinda ridiculous. In the book, a really long time ago a bunch of wicked smart alien folk decided that they wanted to learn The Answer to The Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. So they built a super-computer (Deep Thought) that would be able to collect all the data and metrics and LOLZCATZ pictures of existence and schmush them together into one comprehensive absurdly intelligent algorithm that would finally give them The Answer.

It was so complicated that the most brilliant super computer ever created determined it would need 7 1/2 million years to figure it out.

Fast-forward 7 1/2 million years, and the uber-intelligent pan-dimensional descendants are ready to get  The Answer. The Answer to The Great Question. Crowds of people gather. The excitement throbs in the air palpably, as everyone will FINALLY have The Answer. That which they have been seeking for millions of years.

The pan-dimensi’s approach Deep Thought and ask it again for The Answer.
 

“The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.” (H2G2)

 
So there you have it.
 

The Answer is 42.

 
Doesn’t that make you feel better? Knowing The Answer to The Great Question. That which we as humans base our entire purpose and being on.

Your life, in the end, probably means 42.

Of course the pan-dimensional beings are obviously quite pissed and kind of embarrassed. I mean, this was THEIR super computer that screwed The Answer up so royally. They got angry at Deep Thought (mostly cause they were not really stoked to go share this answer with the throngs gathered outside) and questioned the computer’s process. Was this all they had to show for 7 1/2 million years of work?
 

“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

“But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!” howled Loonquawl.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one, who suffers fools gladly, “but what actually is it?” (H2G2)

 
The book spins out after that, with a new (better) super computer constructed to determine what The Great Question is/was. With The Great Question, perhaps The Answer will finally make sense. Then there’s an explosion, a galactic-highway project, bugs in ears, Hitchhiker’s Guides, and a whole lot more stories and adventures that both baffle and engage.

I’ve been noticing this trend cropping up more for my circles in the past few years. I suppose it has always been there (The original Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy radio show aired in 1978, and they were pondering this then) but somehow I’m experiencing it more now.

We are all desperately seeking out The Answer.

Not necessarily THE Answer, but we are constantly seeking out Answers. Somewhere along the way we stopped caring about what The Question was to begin with.

We become obsessed with The Answer.

The magic bullet that will help us shed pounds or make money quick. The 5 Easy Steps to achieve fame and success. The One who will swoop into our lives and somehow make us complete and whole.

Fixated on a stationary destination, we put our head down and hustle and shuffle to occupy ourselves until we find The Answer. We might even build our own Deep Thought that will figure it out for us. Or gather en masse outside the temple, waiting for someone else to get The Answer for us.

Give me The Answer and it will all finally make sense and I will finally be happy.

Sorry, cupcake, but that’s not how it works.

Even if you get The Answer (I just told you The Answer, in case you’ve already forgotten) what does that mean if you didn’t really know what you were questioning to begin with.
 

The Answer often isn’t The Answer.

 
Which is why often it feels shallow and confusing when we finally get The Answer.

It just leaves us with more Questions.

That now need their own Answers.

One person commented “Wow that is a HUGE smile!“

The thing is, I’ve gotten the “What a great smile – you must have been very happy” for as long as I can remember. In college, one of my friends used to tell that you knew it was going to be a good day in our little Student Government offices when you walked in to Lord Hall and could hear my signature laugh from down the hallway. Course this laugh almost cost me what I thought was going to be a dream job in public relations and tourism (in hindsight I should have realized that my boss’ hesitance to hire me based on a loud and hearty laugh was spoke volumes to the working environment in the organization).

I know as a girl this is not always the most flattering thing. When I smile my eyes seem to squish in to my face and get all crinkled around the edges. If my spine is not perfectly aligned the veins and muscles in my neck pop out to look all weird. Plus, my smile is crooked anyways. My lower lip does this weird pull dip thing that was probably a result of my many street fights (or, you know, my baby sister breaking my nose and face 7 times before I was 20).

I enjoy being happy and it usually shows.

Beach Day at Uluwatu (Went swimming in riptide, no surfing yet!)

We can waste so much of life scowling or rolling our eyes or languishing in the rough and tumble parts of human existence. Heck, in 2011 I spent a majority of the first 9 months of the year with a dark cloud hovering over the deepest parts of my personality and psyche, desperately struggling to get the sparkle back in my life. Sadness and frustration are not exactly easy emotions to simply overcome and fight past.

The past eight weeks I’ve talked to a lot of people about the importance of a good attitude and how it can make or break your spirit and recovery when fighting illness and injury, especially in a foreign country.

It sounds cruel, but survivors laugh and play, and even in the most horrible situations–perhaps especially in those situations–they continue to laugh and play – Deep Survival by Laurance Gonzales (h/t Carlos Miceli for the excerpt find)

I was not always this shining beacon of positive optimism. And it is important to admit that, because it is important for us to acknowledge and embrace those imperfections that make us human.

The past two months of my life have been hard.

The posts I’ve written, while being informative and super “let’s do this!!” motivated, have not been the whole story. In my illness, injury, surgery, and recovery I’ve also:

• Laid in bed at 2:30 AM pleading with any spirit available to just let me sleep through the night and wake up alive the next morning. If I didn’t, please let my sister remember where all the documents are for her to come in to a landslide of money
• Felt a complete turning off of all emotion and rational thought while I lay on a stretcher in the emergency room and let Dan & Ian take over making all decisions for me
• Woken up from a surgery to remove some gauze and drains from my first surgery (after I specifically asked not to be put under fully-sedated anesthesia) alone in a hallway with a tube sewn in to my leg and no one around to explain what was going on
• Looked down at my stitched-up knee (WARNING – don’t click that link if you aren’t prepared to see a pretty messed up knee!) after my doctor unwrapped my bandages and proceeded in simultaneously crying hysterically and hyperventilating, which scared the crap out of the nurses assisting him.
• Texted my boss at 8 PM asking him to come back to the hospital and keep my company because after crying my way through half a box of tissues I was exhausted, broken, and did not want to be alone in a hospital room after my knee’s grand unveiling
• Called my Dad after getting released from the hospital to let him know what happened. Then got transferred to my sister where I proceeded in sobbing to her for approximately 7 minutes straight. Later that night I Skyped with both my parents and begged them to let me come home. My Dad told me no, unless I was willing and wanted to give up
• Stood in the kitchen one night with my friend Tom as we examined my knee and infection and swelling to determine ‘how bad it was’ and if the yellow puss emerging from one of the wounds was something I should be be worried about. Note – I was really worried about the yellow puss.
• Skyped with my parents again and told them I was moving home in August, that I couldn’t stand being in SE Asia, and I was never going to get on a motorbke again because the thought made me want to throw up in fear. They told me I needed to wait until I wasn’t so emotional and for the love of god get back on a motorbike BUT BE CAREFUL.
• Got my stitches out and went through the entire procedure with my hands covering my eyes singing “lalalalalalala” like a 4 year old because I was so mentally squeamish about the idea of 40+ stiches being strung out of my body
• Checked my forehead obsessively for fever (the first sign of my infection returning and an immediate “Go To The Hospital – Do Not Pass Go – Do Not Collect $200) at the slightest indication of being tired or feeling pain in my knee
• Rode a motorbike with my housemate and cowered dangerously to the left (when you are a passenger you should NEVER react physically to the things you see) every time we approached on-coming traffic (re-creating the accident scene in my mind every time I saw a motorbike headlight) whimpering and apologizing for being such a wuss

I could probably go on and on and on but you get the point. At least I hope you get the point.

I haven’t been perfect in my attitude towards my injury, surgery, treatment, or recovery.

I’d say at least 25 % of the time I’ve been a whining, bitter, melancholy ball of excuses and irritation for those around me. In all honesty, I’ve wanted to pull my covers over my head and pretend that the entire thing had never happened while begging the world around me to just humor me in my foolish avoidance no less than 47 times.

But as my Mom would remind me, based on this nugget of wisdom from a childhood movie: “It’s in the past”

There was absolutely nothing that could be done to change the things that had already happened.

That the thing with the events of our past. They’ve gone by us now, memories and lessons implanted on our minds and hearts. The only thing we can control, the only thing we have power over, is the way that we react to them and the decisions we make moving forward.

It is not easy to choose being happy and pushing on when you want to give up and be miserable.

And I didn’t always execute on it well. My poor housemates, family, and friends have had to endure more stories, breakdowns, whining fits, and paranoid speculations from me than any human should have to sign on for in the friendship agreement.

Sometimes we need to let ourselves into the dark place to find the light.

Otherwise, we stop dead on the path, susceptible to the creepy-crawlies and terrors that dwell in the night.

I promise you it is not easy.

Sorry for anyone I gave that impression to. And to everyone who had to put up with me over the past 8 weeks.

I think part of the reason I get so angry, though, is not because I always disagree. The same way I think a lot of guys can be jerks sometimes, I find that women can be pretty bitchy. In fact, I often find myself nodding and agreeing that I don’t spend as much time with girls as guys because I had been too privy to mean-girl bullying (as grown ups, ladies, come on now!) in my years.

Take, for example, a recent project that a fashion designer reached out to me about on Kickstarter. Having seen a couple things I had Tweeted about my slightly more active lifestyle here in Bali (meaning not in a bar drinking bourbon Thursday-Sunday nights and eating White Cheddar Cheez-Its Monday-Wednesday nights) and my unfortunate near miss involving almost losing my swimsuit bottoms in the pool (best fad diet ever, this whole massive-leg-infection-emergency-knee-surgery-rack-body-with-antibiotics plan I went on), Christy reached out to me about a new bikini she had designed that was specifically made to stay in place.

Interested, and not trying to endorse anything at all since I hadn’t seen an actual product (though Christy did kindly offer to send me a pair of bikini bottoms so I would be able to dive into the pool or feel safe frolicking at the beach without loosing my briefs!), I posted the link a few places and said “Pretty cool idea, check it out.”

OT Surf - Wardrobe malfunctions be damned! (My guy friends were devastated)

With the link came the image above to the Kickstarter campaign video, and on the campaign page itself were more photos of 3 very different body typed models. One with an average body, one fit and big-busted, and one so toned she could probably hold her own in a Thai street fight.

With the link also came a few responses that raised the hairs on the back of my neck and re-affirmed my complete belief in the whole “girls can be so bitchy.”

Women questioned how the swimsuit could possibly do what it claimed, because the girls in the pictures were way too skinny to model anything that a “real woman” could wear. Completely bypassing the whole this-woman-designed-a-swimsuit-to-fulfill-a-need-she-saw-and-is-trying-to-build-a-business-now-to-help-other-active-women-what-the-eff-are-we-doing-with-our-lives aspect of my posting. Forgetting that women come in all shapes and sizes, even fit and skinny ones

I’ll admit, I used to be one of those mean girls. One of my signature phrases to “too skinny” women was “Someone feed that poor thing a Twinkie.”

The truth is, I used to do that shit because I was so insecure about the way *I* looked. How I looked , how I felt (tired, lethargic, sore when wearing pants that squashed my stomach at the waistband), how other people in society saw me (the 23-year-old I dated last summer (Ladies, special note, if you are over 30 and single, get to dating a 23-year-old who is a little more mature than my 23-year-old (you are welcome!)) asked me late one night why my arms were so toned on top and so “floppy” underneath). and how unhealthy I knew I was. Swimming against the current in a genetic pool that rivals the dirty water of the Charles River, being uber-fit is really my only hope against illness at a very young age.

Eating Cake and #Ogling - Different Worlds

I have not been so severely unhappy with myself since the summer of 2009, when I weighed nearly 100 pounds more than I do right now. That was probably when I was the bitchiest to other women. Somehow thinking that those skinny and fit girls were in the wrong made me feel more in the right.

Looking back, I wonder how that belief is any worse than a company thinking I’m lazy and will steal all the morning donuts if they hire me cause I’m too chunky to fit in to an office chair in my interview. Or guys always viewing me as the friend they have to endure to hit up the hot girl. Or shopping in completely different stores than everyone else because regular clothes don’t fit you.

It is almost funny to me, as I type this from my room in Bali, where all my girlfriends are tiny little adorable waifish Asian girls that make me look like a gargantuan albino Sasquatch with a Twinkie problem. If anything, I should be angrier and meaner now. There’s no way I fit in here. I’m not an idiot. I know I am the size of two of my friends put together. Maybe even two-and-a-half of them (where’s my sitcom, CBS?!). In reality, I should probably feel worse about myself. But I’m actually pretty happy.

If we have society, men’s sex dreams, magazines, advertising, Hollywood, and a plethora of other stresses tearing us apart at our stretch-mark laden seams, why are we further cutting each other down by hating other women?

As I said, I don’t know much about Christy or her product. Heck, she could be sitting on the beach pointing and laughing at every chubby woman in a one-piece while injecting ephedrine straight into her blood system.

But I don’t get that impression.

She seems like a sincere genuine girl who loves surfing and traveling and hates having to constantly adjust her bikini top every time she moves more than 2 inches from staid upright position. This suit probably isn’t for me. I haven’t owned a bikini since I was approximately 12 years old and my huge rack wouldn’t fit into those cups if they were goblets.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t admire the hell out of her for chasing a dream and doing what it takes to make that happen.

And it hurts my heart a little that anyone would rather focus on what a couple models on a page look like than the fact that this girl is trying to make something happen.

Ladies, let’s not give people a reason to think we’re bitchy.

Stereotypes exist for a reason, and there’s no need for us to reinforce that one.

Ok, it probably wasn't this bad...

As I lay in my Indonesian hospital bed fighting back tears post-surgery, after my doctor showed me my mangled knee for the first time, I did not think that there was any way I’d be able to bounce back.

I wanted to go home, curl up in my Dad’s lap while my Mom made me hot tea (most likely with honey & whiskey) and my sister braided my hair, and pretend that this whole bike-accident-leg-infection-emergency-surgery-hospitalization thing had never happened.

But it did happen.

Wishing it away was never gonna make it so. I had an important decision to make. I could either:

• Continue being all emotional and defeated, running away from SE Asia and giving up
• Decide to fight back and do whatever it took to get myself healed so that I could begin loving Balinese life again

When I took the time to stop being all mopey and weak, the decision was obviously quite easy to make. Between a bullish (and let’s face it, stubborn) nature and a resolve to get back the elated happiness I felt being here pre-motorbike-accident, I knew the time was coming for me to fight and recover.

In less than a month after a digestive surgeon (you get whatever you can take here…I figure if he can splice together intestinal tracts I’m good with him doing some superficial leg surgery) sliced into my knee four times with a scalpel and drained out all the infectious liquids, I was cleared from continued medical treatment.

As I sat in my final follow-up appointment, my doctor explained my recovery process. “I didn’t want to scare you that morning in the hospital, but you leg infection was…bad…” he said hanging his head and shaking it from side to side. That is universal doctor language for “I wasn’t sure if you were gonna make it out of surgery with a leg.”

“Yet in less than a month you are walking and no more infection and swelling down and skin shedding like snake. You have healed faster than any patient I have treated with this injury.”

Then he said what has become both a chuckle and badge of honor for me.

“You like to win at everything, don’t you?”

How does one bounce back with such ferocity?

• Attitude Is The Most Important Thing – You hear that all the time from people who accomplish great things or overcome serious adversity. That their spirit pulled them through it. I almost roll my eyes even doling this out as the first piece of advice. Yet as cliche as it may seem, it is vitally important to recovery. You must force yourself to be happy, see the positives in your situation, and push through when you you honestly don’t feel like you have anything more to push with. Otherwise a bad situation will chew you up and spit you out. I definitely felt myself get crunched by misery’s sharp pointy fangs multiple times during this process – but I never let her really crush me.
• Laugh - Is there a better medicine? Even when I was crying talking to family on Skype or laying flat on my back in excruciating pain, I tried to keep things light for the people around me. I didn’t want anyone else getting bummed out about my bum knee. In trying to make sure everyone else was ok, I made myself ok.
• Surround Yourself With A Great Support System – Being in a foreign country on the other side of the planet, I will admit that I was worried if I would have to go through this alone. That was a totally foolish assumption. Between the doting nature of my housemates (“the boys”) when I first got out of the hospital to my friends Tom & Dian who took me in to their home for a week and went to all my doctor’s appointments with me without hesitation to “the girls” who stopped by whenever I was alone at the house to make sure I wasn’t feeling alone to Tanner (the friend I got in the motorbike accident with) and the couchsurfers texting me every few days to see how I was doing, I found that the people I have surrounded myself with here are great people.
• Reach Out Across The Ocean When You Need It – Yep, I needed my Mommy & Daddy after this happened. I talked to them at least 3-4 times a week by Skype. And my sister. And my bestie in Portland, Melissa. And my SPIRLBFF Jenny, who also sent me the most adorable hot pink teddy bear (Recovery Bear) that I sleep with every night. Don’t judge, Recovery Bear is a great snuggler, and sometimes in situations like this you really need someone to snuggle with.
• Know What Is Going On With Your Treatment – When I was released from the hospital I took one look at my 1500 MG antibiotic dose of amoxicillin and saw a huge problem.  I’m allergic to amoxicillin. Like anaphylactic shock allergic. Even though it was noted on a separate bright red hospital bracelet, my IV bags, my hospital record, and my patient folder, the pharmacy still prescribed me a medication that might kill me. Fortunately the hospital continued to be amazing and sent a driver up to our house with a corrected dose of erythromycin, which would not kill me and instead would heal me. (Note – This is not an Asian hospital thing, you hear about this stuff happening all the time in Western hospitals as well.)
• Commit To Your Treatment – Every time I went to meet with my doctor, I brought a notebook with questions that had come up during the week between visits. When I got assigned my physical therapy exercises, I went online and found some additional ones. Then I created a Google Doc (I know, you are shocked by this) to track my exercise completion and notes on how I felt or any milestones from the day. I could rattle off to anyone what my assigned healing tasks were for the week.
• Don’t Be Afraid To Push Yourself – During my second check-up, I went in armed with one question after talking to my parents: Could I increase my antibiotic dose to kill off the infection faster? My doctor checked a few things and sent me to the lab to get a blood test checking my cell count and kidney functions. When all was clear he increased me to a dose of 3,000 MG daily of erythromycin. He warned me I would be tired, nauseous, and not feel great while I was on the dose. And he would only put me on it for up to 10 days. Did I really want all that? Oh, you better believe I did.
• Be Willing To Acknowledge When You Are Overwhelmed and Need To “Slow Down” – The other nugget of wisdom my doctor gave me during my final appointment was not medical advice, but instead life advice. “You need to learn to slow down sometimes.” Like yesterday when, after 4 days of running around Seminyak without crutches, I was so exhausted and sore I slept for 8 hours the night before then 6 hours during the day then 9 hours last night. Or if I had listened to Dan the first five times he told me I should go to the hospital. You know, things like that.
• Look For Positives - I still have my leg. I’m healing like a rockstar. I have great friends helping me, making me laugh, and reminding me I’m not alone. I can feel my family’s love 12 hours into the future. I have a hot pink teddy bear to snuggle with at night. I’ve lost considerable weight and the crutches totally worked on some of my upper arm toning (if you are looking for a new fad diet the massive-leg-infection-major-knee-surgery-high-dose-antibiotic plan really works, though I personally would recommend against it). I finally got down to the Bukit. I am very fortunate to work with people who were willing to let some of my responsibilities slide for a bit so I could recover like it was my job.

Today, March 21st, is one month from the day of my surgery. I’m writing this sitting in my favorite non-villa office space (Grocer & Grind café). I have no stitches in my knee and am not hobbling around on crutches. Sure I can barely bend my knee more than 70 degrees (way up from 30 degrees two weeks ago!) and I still limp around eliciting stares and whispered comments, but I’m here and continuing to push through.

After all, what other option is there? 

photo credit: otisarchives3 via photopin cc

February 2012 is possibly the worst month I have experienced in nearly 32 years of existence.

To sum it up quickly it involved a bar fight, motorbike accident, sprained ankle, infected knee, searing pain and bouts of unconsciousness, emergency surgery, four-day hospital stay, enough antibiotic to sterilize a Thai strip club, eating at least my weight in oranges, and questioning/confirming every decision I made that brought me to February 2012.

The longer version (and it is long, sorry!) goes a little something like this…

At the beginning of the month, I watched my friend get into a motorbike accident as we were heading to dinner and gasped in horror. Crashing metal and plastic, people tumbling and flying, helmets bouncing off asphalt…it was terrifying.

Less the 30 minutes after another friend and I confirmed our busted up friend was home and ok, we were driving down a side street to Jalan Legian on his motorbike, on our way to dinner yet again.

I can barely describe the next 20 seconds because in my mind the entire scene plays out in simultaneous slow motion and like I’m blinking. I saw the motorbike in the opposite lane of the road pull directly into our lane to pass stopped traffic and I knew that there was no way we would be able to avoid him. My friend screamed and then I felt the hit. Jolted hard, we bounced backwards and sideways and began to spin out.

Like the accident I had just watched a half hour ago, I heard the crashing of metal and plastic, felt my friend throw his arm around me to try to push me away from the ground and out of traffic as we tumbled and flew, and scraped my helmet and right side of my body along the asphalt of the street.

Instinctively, I curled in a ball and tried to go limp in a tuck and roll move that I think I once saw in a Smokey and the Bandit movie.

Dazed, I felt a group of locals grab me under the arms and pull me back off the street. My friend came running over to make sure I was ok while another group of people brought his bike over to us. I started shaking and crying as one of the locals grabbed my friend and told him to bring me to the apotek (pharmacy/clinic) immediately as I was bleeding excessively from the road rash on my right shoulder.

Once we got to the apotek and met up with another friend, I called Dan in tears and told him we had just gotten hit head-on by another motorbike. As the pharmacist poured a bactine-like antiseptic over all my cuts and bruises I alternated between deep breathes and cries of anguish as the dirt and puss washed out of me with a horrible sting.

The rest of the night was a mish-moshing of texts to confirm everyone was doing alright, picking dirt out of my abrasions and pouring more of the bactine-like antiseptic over it, and crying randomly as bursts of adrenaline came and went from my body.

I spent the next two weeks tending my sprained ankle, twisted knee, and road rash on my shoulder that easily tore off at least 2-3 layers of my skin. Things seemed to be progressing well as I tried to fall asleep and not have flashes of hitting the road and my bloody shoulder and sobbing in the clinic infiltrate my dreams as they were the last things I saw on the back of my eyelids each night.

As I began to feel better, I started venturing out to different places that I had been countless times before. My ankle swelling went down and my shoulder worked at growing new layers of skin. My knee felt funny, but having never been in a motorbike accident that twisted my knee before, I assumed the feeling was normal (given the circumstances).

I went out to lunch with Dan & Ian (my bosses, in case you didn’t get that part of the story), walked to the ATM to learn that my debit card was “no longer in use”, met up with them at the supermarket to buy bottled water, and wandered back to the house. Stepping off the curb onto our street I felt something in my knee pop or snap. This most definitely could not be good.

Ten hours later I was laying in my bed writhing in agonizing pain as my knee swelled and throbbed. Whatever I had done to twist it just got bammed up another 20 degrees. For the next three days I lay in bed, alternating between consciousness where I was pleading with whatever spirits or deities wanted to listen and fever-induced bouts of unconsciousness that lasted 4-5 hours a piece.

Not wanting to let anyone know how bad it really was I toughed it out with as much of a smile as I could muster and continued posting and emailing and working. The guys rose to the occasion of my bed-ridden state and checked in throughout the day to take care of anything I needed. All I wanted was oranges. I couldn’t eat enough oranges.

Then Sunday night/Monday morning I was changing the bandage on the abrasion on my knee at about 12:30 AM. As I took off the gauze and released whatever pressure had unknowingly been building inside my knee, the scab broke open and a pinkish-reddish bloody liquid erupted from my leg. When I say erupted, I mean it looked like someone had been murdered in my bed. Shaking I reached over to pick up my phone and call Dan. “I think I’m ready to go to the hospital now. I was just changing my bandage and something happened and now there’s blood everywhere.”

Knowing I had to hold in the volcano that my knee had become, I looked around my room. Grabbing a package of women’s maxi pads I wrapped them around my leg and held them in place with an ace bandage. Hey, those things are made to absorb liquid, right?!

We tore to a hospital in Bali known for emergency situations. As I was wheeled into the ER about 5 nurses leapt to their feet to chase me into the exam room. They unbandaged my knee, took one look and told me “You have a massive infection in your leg. We need to do surgery immediately to drain the liquid from your leg, clean out your knee to find what is causing the infection, and you will have to stay in the hospital because we need to give you high-dose antibiotics through an IV.”

My brain and body went numb.

I was told to wait for the orthopedic surgeon to arrive at the hospital to do a full assessment. Dan went back to the house to call other hospitals and see what they could offer. I laid in the examination room by myself fighting back tears and cursing myself for being stupid enough to let this happen. I laid out the entire course of events of stupid decisions in my mind that brought me to this exact stupid moment in time. How this entire situation was, in my mind, 100% my own ridiculous fault.

After meeting with the orthopedic surgeon (which involved him coming into the exam room, poking the abscess that had formed on my knee to re-start the volcano twice, muttering something in Indonesian to the nurse with him, and then looking at me and saying “Yes, I will need to do major surgery on your knee”)  I determined I did not want treatment at this particular hospital.

Hobbling to another taxi we made our way down to Kasih Ibu hospital, based on the recommendation of friends and a call to their ER for information. I was admitted to Kasih Ibu at 4:15 AM according to my medical bracelet and by 9:30 AM I was being wheeled into pre-OP to meet my surgeon (Dr. Yoga – I cannot explain how happy I was with the Universe in that moment) and my anesthesiologist (one of the most attractive Asian men I have encountered on this Balinese adventure, sporting a glistening band of gold around his ring finger).

There they explained that they were going to make 2-3 incisions in the sides of my knee to drain the liquid that had formed as a result of the infection. Then he was going to make an incision in the top of my knee to clean out my wound as that was most likely the cause of the infection. Overall the procedure was set to take two hours. I tried not to focus on the fact that this was my first surgical procedure ever or the fact that people kept saying to me “Just say the word and we’ll get on a plane to Singapore to go to a real hospital.” Mostly I focused on the fact that putting any weight on my leg was so painful I almost passed out walking to the taxi 12 hours before.

I told my anesthesiologist that I wanted to be loopy for the procedure, but I didn’t want to be put out. I had enough wits about me to know I didn’t want to go under in a foreign country. And boy did he make me loopy. I have vague memories of the surgery, hearing the machine they used to suck out the infected liquid, discussing with the anesthesiologist who sat near my head the whole time my adventures thus far in Bali, and the blood pressure cuff squeezing my arm every few minutes.

After they wheeled me into a post-OP room to sleep and be pumped with mass amounts of morphine. Eventually, when I came to and confirmed that I was not in pain they brought me back to my room. For the next 3 days I slept, ate bad hospital food, and was wheeled in and out of the operation room for further care of the incisions and continued draining of my leg. Because I have tiny little veins in my hands and wrists, I went through three different IV locations for my antibiotic. Including one very painful burst vein.

Fortunately I had a good group of friends that ventured down to the hospital daily to visit and keep me in good spirits in spite of the situation. Though scared to death of what each day would bring, with my spirit crumpled up and tossed thoughtlessly to the floor, I continued the smiling and laughing to make sure that everyone else was ok with my situation. Even if I wasn’t, there was no reason that they should have to endure a similar angst.

Then, on Wednesday night they pulled back all the bandages to show me my stitched up knee which had a drainage tube sewn into it. Well I *say* it was my knee. It actually had no shape or semblance, a bruised and swollen mass of skin with blue plastic stitches strewn across like a character from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I immediately started crying and hyperventilating at the same time, which is a difficult task. Nurses rushed around to get me water, lay me flat in my bed, and do guided breathing inches from my face. My doctor just held my hand and smiled at me, telling me it would get better and that everything would be ok. I accepted that finally I had hit my breaking point.

(Note – you can see my knee (a little less scary two weeks later) by clicking this link – but don’t say I didn’t warn you)

I texted Dan and asked him to come back to the hospital if he was still in the area, I couldn’t face being alone after they had bandaged me back up. I picked up the box of tissues the nurse had given me and proceeded to cry myself through about half of it. By the time Dan got my hospital room (toting ice cream, Sprite, and a movie about blogging – I have great friends here in Bali!) there was a mini-mountain of tear-stained kleenex on my meal tray.

“Sorry,” I told him. “I think I finally lost it.”

I was released from the hospital the next day, and sent home to tend my wounds and practice bending my knee, a difficult task with over 40 stitches in it. I dutifully did as I was told, took my medicine at exactly spaced intervals, ate my weight at least in oranges (Vitamin C baby…and man was I still craving them!), elevated my leg whenever I was not hobbling around on crutches (except when I was sitting and working on bending my knee), and tried not to make any major life decisions in my current state of mind.

I called my parents as soon as I got home, they did not know I had been rushed to the hospital. I figured, like the guys visiting me at the hospital, I didn’t want to worry them unless there was something to worry about. They couldn’t get to Bali before I would have been released so there was nothing they could have done but freak out. That isn’t fair to impose on someone!

I told my Dad, sniffling and fighting back tears that were ready to stream down my face “I don’t know if I want to stay here.”

My Dad told me a story of a bike-a-thon we did together when I was 10 or so. Apparently as we were pedal-biking a huge RV went by close to me and I fell over. Scraped up and bleeding and hurting I whined at him that I wanted to stop. He wouldn’t let me, he told me I had started this and I was going to finish it. And I did. (It is important to note that my Dad is one of the sweetest most teddy bear huggable humans on the planet so I was half expecting/hoping he would support my desire to chicken out and run home)

That story has now stuck in my brain for the past two weeks as I stayed with friends to recover (awesomely amazingly wonderful friends who not only took care of me while I was all hobbley but took the time to be my friend and hang out and be supportive which mattered even more. Oh, and they brought me brownies practically daily!).

Between their super care and my over-achieving Type-A driven spirit (which I had now picked up from it’s crumpled mass on the floor to begin straightening out and putting together) I have been healing up at super speeds. As my friend Nate said “You can’t even heal your knee without doing it in an epic way.” This was after my doctor told my friend who had come with me to the hospital that my healing at 2 weeks is where most of his patients are at 3-4 weeks.

Stitches came out Friday and I’m down to one crutch to walk around the house (two if I go out just to be safe). Started swimming in the pool today, meaning I cling to a floatie while treading water around whomever is in the pool with me for an hour. Still working on the bending thing, doing some ridiculously painful physical therapy exercises (real killers like “Lift your leg 5 inches off the bed”), and only occasionally taking the pain pills my doctor prescribed if it got to be too much. He calls every few days (yes, I have my doctor’s cell phone number (my surgeon, not the hot anesthesiologist (hey, a girl can wish!))) to see how I am and give me new instructions in my care. My shoulder is healing, though the new skin remains a bright pink color, indicating that there are still some new layers to be added.

Dan told me while I was in the hospital that I was one tough girl. At the time I smiled at him, thinking I was anything but.

With just a couple weeks under my belt, looking back, I’m beginning to believe him.

Photo Credit: Unseen Portland

I’ve come to realize I’m like swiss cheese. I have significant holes in my self-perception and I want them back. Because these holes are not the bad stuff as you might imagine (blindspots, shortcomings, warped perceptions) – it’s the good stuff. And I want the goods.

Because without seeing the entirety of me, how can true love for myself exist? It can’t. And that’s where I’ve come to at the age of 43. Hello, my name is Lael and I’m a conditional lover of me. And I so want the “un” for myself. That’s my new quest this year. To find my “un”.

This realization began a couple years ago when I came upon a group of women who were talking about me. Only I didn’t recognize this woman as me – even after ten or fifteen minutes listening to them talk quite animatedly about this woman and her accomplishments, her love of life and her way of being in the world. She was enviable. I was entranced. I wanted to meet her and knew that we would instantly be best friends.

When I could stand it no longer, I inserted myself and asked, Who IS this woman?

All of them laughed. I was confused, had I missed the joke? One of them turned to me, realizing I had no clue, and said quite simply and gently, as if she was pulling back this curtain that would let in a blinding light: It’s you, Lael.

Even sharing this story three years later, I feel shame. And then I wince because it feels vain to relay such a story. It not easy to admit you fell in love with yourself when someone else was describing you.

But it’s an important part of my story. And one of the central drivers for why I felt compelled to do whatever I had to do to find my “un” and fill in the missing pieces of myself so that’s I’d recognize me in a crowd.

In reading this story, you might imagined I was flattered. After all, these women were talking about how much they admired me. Hell, I had admired me. There was that, flattery. But like so much of my story, that sensation – of being proud, of savoring, or self-acknowledgment – was just outside my reach. And that made it almost worse, because I realized this was the very behavior of mine that had gotten me to this point. This was me, making myself invisible to myself. It wasn’t about being modest or coy or humble. It was about closing my eyes to me. It was about not seeing me. And that was terrifying because I knew better.

Clearly I had holes in my self-perception. Big ass holes.

That event was the catalyst for me to get to the root of my own behavior. My hope is that I would be able to see, appreciate and , well, love myself as fully and as unconditionally as those around me did. I knew quite well the traps of relying on others to offer that insight for you – while it is lovely and affirming, it is external. I wanted to open up the channel for that same energy – that same love – to come from the internal. From me.

What I discovered is that I had become (or perhaps I always was) a foul-weather friend to myself, not seeing to good parts of myself, but zeroing in on the less savory pieces. There were holes where the good pieces ought to have lived.

I was swiss cheese.

I often joked with friends about my tendency to “flog” myself – beating myself up again and again for my short-comings and or mistakes. I had been told time and time again – stop that! But somehow it was ingrained. So much so, I didn’t even feel it. It just had become a way of living, as embarrassing as it is to admit.

The unfortunate consequence of this habitual flogging is that those moments I felt pride or love for myself – were overshadowed. They were transient. They didn’t get printed for posterity and tucked into the corners of my mirror. They flashed into my consciousness and then fleeted, resurfacing occasionally or not at all.

That sad truth is, I saw it happening. But I had this wonderful and noble justification that I had buffed and polished over the years. I called it “learning” and it gleamed like the holy grail on the mantle of my life. I love learning and always will. It wakes me up in the morning like a golden retriever that’s ready to go out and pee and keeps me up until the wee hours of the night like a great novel. That quest to learn, to grow, and to suck the marrow from the bone of life is a powerful force in my life, no doubt. But it had gone unchecked and, at times, had run rampant to my own detriment.

I’ve come to believe this is the story of how I made myself invisible. Like swiss cheese, I had developed holes in my self-perception, and so I couldn’t see my whole being. My eyes were naturally drawn to the holes, and what was missing or flawed, which is ironic, because isn’t that what makes a good swiss cheese, the holes?

Upon this realization, I made a commitment to myself: I wanted to learn to love all of me more. I wanted to find my “un” and put it in its proper place – snug up against “conditional”.

I am stubborn and have a dog-on-a-bone tenacity when I put my mind to something. I have become committed to seeing every ounce of me – all the corners, the beautifully rounded valleys and expansive plains – trusting (hoping, really) that if I see myself more fully, I will fall in love. That is my fervent wish.

All You Need Contributor: Lael Couper Jepson

Lael Couper Jepson partners with women to create change. She is a committed, fearless and creative champion who rides shotgun to individuals as they create change. She’s also the secret weapon to organizational leaders and small business owners, bringing her passion for the art and the science of change and her depth of experience to the table for them to feast upon. She creates dynamic and engaging experiences for women and is skilled at creating space that is compelling, meaningful, expansive and relevant. www.SheChanges.com

Song: Just A Ride by Jem

photo credit: arbyreed via photopin cc

It’s difficult to write about love without being a little self-indulgent. It’s personal. It can be difficult. But, it is also universal—we all love someone or something, and we all go through the same experiences and responses.

Love Is…A Battle

I love the girls (represented by this cat) who will be my lifelong friends, collaborators, conspirators, and inspirations. It’s a tired cliché, but the three of us went through a war together. Those scars will always be our bond. We will carry them through our lifetime. Even when they fade and heal, our friendship will remain. Love is a constant force in the chaos.

Love Is…A Lesson

They say that you should never meet your idols. I learned that lesson through the war. However, the good ones remind you why you love them and why they continue to inspire you. Love may fade, but it will remain…and even grow stronger.

Love Is…Discovery

By mid-year, I was falling out of love with myself. Again. But, I ended up back at the thing I always loved and never considered. Sometimes despair can lead you to the place you need to go. Love is persistent and will find its way back into your life.

Love Is…Sacrifice and Commitment

I love you (represented by Talula) for letting me choose this path instead of suffering the same fate, or suffering through equally horrible jobs. It hasn’t been easy, but I found my place. Love allows for the pursuit of dreams.

Love Is…Bravery

I love this set for the bravery it instilled in me. It inspired me to pursue the impossible. To embark on a new journey at thir—ahem—twenty-five. Love will lead you down a path where the rewards frequently outweigh the risks.

Love Is…Gratitude and Joy

I love what I do. I am terrified every single day—but it’s the kind of terror that excites and pushes me to work hard. I’m happy. I’m thankful for so many incredible opportunities. I’m looking forward to all of the scary and amazing opportunities ahead, both planned and unplanned. Love, both given and received, is the reminder of how wonderful life is.

Love Is…All You Need

All You Need Contributor: Jennifer Broski

Jennifer Broski is a freelance photographer and writer in New York City. She’s currently enjoying life as a photographer for Broadway World and as a Jill-of-All-Trades sort at Grizzly Mouse Merch. She lives here and here. She is equal parts snark, sass, and wine, cleverly disguised behind a shy smile. She really is twenty-five…with a few years experience.

Photo Credits: Jennifer Broski