So the search begins, again...

In Search of the Juice

For years, my life felt like it was made out of cardboard: bland, consistent, and soggy when it got wet. I had a life-supporting job, enrolled in my first mortgage, consumed my share or more of unleaded fuel to transport myself around, and participated in the life-affirming activity of getting food through a drive-thru, as my life was so busy and full of stuff, even my nutritious intake had to be prepackaged and quick.

But the weird thing was that my job wasn’t life-supporting beyond the paycheck; it was life-sucking. Mortgage literally means “death pledge,” and despite my excitement of owning my own slice of America, and that often touted American Dream, signing those papers felt like signing ownership of my life and freedom to a bank. And fast-food might be prepackaged and quick, but it leaves out the nourishment of my body, for which it is consumed. Then, I began to get an inkling that my life too, full of busyness and stuff, might be missing the chief ingredient of its existence. And that’s how my life came to feel like cardboard.

What to do when I am doing all the “right” things I learned in order to live a wholesome, happy, fulfilling life, and it’s just not doing it for me? My answer to that question was this blog. I determined that I would find a way to put magical and magnetic fun back into my life, what I saw as “juice”. That was in 2009. I found the book You Can Do It! The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-up Girls and went with that. The intention of this book still brings tears to my eyes. Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas had the intention of writing this book but died on September 11 on United Airlines Flight. Her sisters completed the book in honor of her memory. Please hold while I wipe the tears from my eyes.

I read through the book and created an impressive to-do list, which included learning to fly a plane, getting a graduate degree, and go to Costa Rica and surf. That is how this blog started. Seven stickers in, I realized the juice had been sucked out of my intention and all I had was yet another cardboard to-do list. In frustration, I deleted all of my documented adventures. Now I only have my memories, which are faulty. I was so busy documenting my progress that I forgot to enjoy myself long enough to actually make memories of what I was doing.

One I do remember was an encouragement to become a wine connoisseur, sort of. I had a wine party with different kinds of wines and had my guests guess the type and describe the flavors (Activity 29 and page 232 of the book). I couldn’t tell you shit about the wine we drank, and I still cannot tell the difference between a Cabernet and Sauvignon. I can tell the difference between red wine and white wine! But what I do remember is planning the event, going wine shopping with my friend’s then-boyfriend (now husband) with a culinary background and developed palate. I remember my friends and acquaintances coming over, giving them cards to fill out, getting slightly buzzed, laughing and having a truly good time, and feeling the contentedness of a well-hostessed party. That is what I remember. It was magical and magnetic.

I never gave up on the journey, although I stopped my documented and observant stance on the whole thing and instead got sucked in to the story of it, tumbling around like a wet garment in the drier. And now here I am, looking back and resurrecting this online chronicle of an unexpected journey. In the days ahead, I will need to recover what was deleted and add the new.

It’s funny. I forgot all about this blog until a random Facebook post from one of the juiciest humans I know of, Bernadette Pleasant (just check her out on www.bernadettepleasant.com ) got me thinking about it and reflecting. This prompted me to not only revisit the whole search of juice thing, but write about it. You see, the good news is my life no longer feels like cardboard.