Today’s writing prompt asks:

What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?

How much time do you have?

Seriously.

I tried to think of the answer, and that lasted approximately eleven seconds.

I’ve lived too much life, made too many mistakes, learned too many lessons, changed my mind too many times, loved too many people, fallen down and gotten back up too many times to reduce an entire philosophy of living to one sentence.

Maybe that’s my answer.

I don’t have one.

I have a collection.

Some were taught to me. Some I picked up along the way. Some came through difficult experiences, while others developed through years of practice. A few have changed meaning as I have changed.

And apparently, some started forming before I was even old enough to realize I was developing a philosophy about anything.

I Have Apparently Always Been This Way

When I was about five or six years old, my family lived in Minnesota in a townhouse where I spent a lot of time outside with the neighborhood kids.

I didn’t have my own bicycle yet.

My best friend did.

She would let me ride hers whenever I wanted, which was incredibly generous considering she would later pull a knife on me because I won a giant Easter bunny and she didn’t.

Long story.

Actually, that’s pretty much the whole story.

Childhood was wild.

Anyway…

I wanted to learn how to ride that bike.

So I would take it to the top of a hill, get on, and let it roll. I fell into the grass countless times, got back up, pushed the bike to the top, and did it again.

Eventually, I wasn’t falling into the grass anymore.

I had learned how to ride a bicycle.

I never needed training wheels.

Obviously, five-year-old me wasn’t standing at the top of that hill contemplating perseverance or the educational value of trial and error.

I just wanted to ride that dang darn bike.

But looking backward, I recognize her.

I have been doing some version of that my entire life.

Sometimes Somebody Shows You Where to Put Your Fingers

Many years later, I somehow managed to peck at a keyboard fast enough to pass a typing test and get a job at First Data Corporation.

I did not actually know how to type.

Thankfully, their requirements apparently weren’t too outrageous because somehow I got through the door.

I worked as an operator handling all kinds of operator-assisted calls, including international calls.

And for my fellow people of a certain age, here’s a fun little piece of nostalgia:

Remember 1-800-COLLECT?

Hi.

That might have been me.

There is at least a nonzero possibility that somewhere in the distant past I helped place your collect, first-party, third-party, or international call.

You’re welcome.

One of my best friends at the time could type incredibly well, and I wanted to type like that. She showed me where my fingers belonged on the keyboard and how they were supposed to move.

Then I practiced.

Call after call after call.

Typing and ten-key became part of the job, and eventually I became fast.

Really fast.

I didn’t figure it out entirely by myself. Someone showed me where to put my fingers, and then I did the practicing.

I think that’s true of most things we call self-taught. We aren’t learning in a vacuum. People teach us. Books teach us. Experience teaches us. Mistakes definitely teach us. We pick up pieces from everywhere and keep practicing until something that once felt foreign begins to belong to us.

Process of Elimination

There is another voice that has followed me through much of my life.

My mother’s.

Whenever something seemed complicated or overwhelming, she would remind me:

Process of elimination.

It isn’t particularly fancy advice.

Maybe that’s why it’s so useful.

Start somewhere. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. Eliminate possibilities. Learn something from it and take the next step.

Keep moving.

Eventually, things get done.

My mother has demonstrated that philosophy in her own life, too. She spent years carrying, researching, writing, and returning to the story that eventually became her published book, Zeke of Goingsnake: Based on the Life and Times of Ezekiel Proctor.

Somewhere along the way, “process of elimination” became part of the background programming in my own brain.

Which is useful because lately I’ve been doing a lot of things I don’t entirely know how to do.

CherryCoBiz 2.0 Is Happening

Regular readers may remember that I have been working on CherryCoBiz behind the scenes for quite some time.

Well…

I’m doing it again.

Actually, I’m going considerably deeper this time.

I’ve been working on what I’m calling CherryCoBiz 2.0.

I’m learning Netlify. I’ve created a staging environment. I’m working through structure, design, content, migration, and how I want this space to function as it continues growing.

Before anyone reads the words Netlify and staging environment and mistakenly concludes that I know what I’m doing, please don’t.

I’m feeling my way through this.

There are learning curves, and there have been moments when I’ve stared at my screen wondering what fresh hell I’ve wandered into.

And then I start working the problem.

Process of elimination.

My first attempt at having someone help redesign the site did not ultimately become everything I envisioned, but that doesn’t make the effort wasted. I learned from it.

Now I’m taking the bicycle back up the hill.

Soon enough, you’ll get to see where it goes.

Quiet Does Not Mean Idle

That brings me to something I want my regular readers to know.

If CherryCoBiz ever feels quiet, please don’t mistake quiet for absence.

I wrote something similar almost a year ago while working on an earlier evolution of this site, and apparently it remains true.

There is almost always something happening here, even when you can’t see it yet.

I’m working, thinking, cooking, reading, researching, talking, watching, questioning, meditating, learning, rebuilding, or whatever-ing my way through whatever comes next.

Sometimes that becomes an article. Sometimes it becomes dinner. Sometimes it changes my mind or sends the website in a new direction.

And sometimes, apparently, it becomes a book.

About That Book…

SLIVER — The Light Between Us is getting very close.

I wrote a book.

That sentence still feels strange.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure I could actually write one.

Then I did.

Now I’m learning the next part: publishing it.

The more I’ve thought about what I am building, the more I’ve realized I want SLIVER to come into the world through CherryCoBiz.

And I don’t intend for it to be my last book.

I’ve already started another, and there are more waiting behind it.

Perhaps I’m not simply learning how to publish one book. I’m building the place from which I intend to publish books.

That realization is both exciting and slightly terrifying.

Which probably means I’m exactly where I usually am when I’m learning something new.

Peace. Love. Happiness.

Not every philosophy I carry came through falling down or solving problems.

Some came through becoming still.

I’ve been practicing meditation for at least thirteen years now.

My practice wasn’t always what it is today. The early years were less focused because I was learning. For roughly the past seven years, meditation has become a much more intentional part of my daily life, and I put myself into that space at least twice a day.

One phrase has traveled through countless meditations with me:

Peace. Love. Happiness.

I’ve probably repeated those three words quietly to myself thousands of times by now. They have been there on peaceful days, difficult days, ordinary days, and days when peace felt considerably more aspirational than descriptive.

Meditation is another thing I learned by doing it.

I returned. I adjusted. I observed. I kept practicing.

Funny how often life teaches the same lesson wearing different clothes.

Holistic Means All the Pieces Count

That also helps explain CherryCoBiz.

The “Co” in CherryCoBiz literally stands for cooperative.

After more than three years of building this place, I think I understand even better what that means to me.

CherryCoBiz is a collection.

Holistic health and wellness live here, but so do food, meditation, V-Trucker, QuietQuest, Cerasina, Avon, books, reviews, entertainment, research, personal stories, civic conversations, beauty, loss, humor, questions, occasional righteous frustration, probably more food, and whatever else wanders through my curious little brain.

It may look like a mixed bag of tricks.

It is.

That’s intentional.

Because human beings don’t live in categories.

Holistic means all the pieces count.

I don’t stop caring about wellness when I’m thinking about employment, and I don’t stop being spiritual when I’m laughing.

I certainly don’t expect you to agree with everything I write.

You don’t have to agree with me to belong here.

Come curious. Take what serves you. Question what doesn’t. Maybe learn something. Maybe teach me something. Maybe laugh. Maybe shed a tear once in a while. A few of you have told me you have, so apparently we’re doing that here too.

Bring your experience.

I’ll bring mine.

That’s the cooperative part.

And Then I Got Fired

Regular readers already know this part.

A couple of weeks ago, I got fired.

I told that story here because another WordPress writing prompt asked how you write what people actually want to read.

My answer was:

Truth.

So I told mine.

I’ve had more time to think about everything that happened since then. I may never know the whole story behind why it ended, and I’m making peace with that.

What I do know is that I had become deeply invested in that job.

And here’s the complicated part:

I liked being busy.

I liked being challenged.

I liked solving problems.

After leaving a job that had been far too slow for me, I managed to swing the pendulum completely in the other direction.

I wanted busy.

Boy, did I find it.

I was regularly putting somewhere between 60 and 80 hours a week into work, and somewhere in there pieces of my own life started disappearing.

Walking. Water aerobics. Wellness routines. Writing. CherryCoBiz. My book. My projects.

Before taking that job, I had spent months developing one of the strongest health and wellness rhythms of my adult life. I’ve lost more than 110 pounds, and I still have work I want to do.

But gradually, I was giving nearly everything I had to somebody else’s dream while pieces of mine sat waiting.

That experience gave me another philosophy I intend to carry forward:

A job can support the life I am building without becoming the life I am building.

And I do want another job.

I’ve been applying my butt off, which is unfortunate because after losing more than 110 pounds, I don’t have that much butt left to spare.

I like working, being useful, having people around me, and having something meaningful to accomplish.

I’m looking for my work home.

I’d love to find the place where I can contribute, grow, be challenged, go home at the end of the day and actually be home, and maybe someday retire knowing I found the right place to spend that chapter of my life.

Which brings us to this week.

Carpe Diem

Earlier this week, I had my first interview since getting fired.

It went well.

Today I had my second.

Different company. Different opportunity.

This one lasted two hours.

No joke.

Two hours.

And somehow it didn’t feel like two hours. After a while, it barely felt like an interview.

I sat down with the owner of a local business and we talked. Of course we talked about the position, but we also just… talked.

It felt less like sitting through the longest interview of my life and more like sitting across from a real person and getting to know her.

It was lovely.

So was she.

The job sounds reasonable, and regardless of what ultimately comes from our conversation, I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet another wonderful business owner right here in my own community.

Next Wednesday, I have another interview.

Company number three.

Do I know where any of these roads lead?

Nope.

And perhaps that’s where one more philosophy slips into this collection.

Carpe diem.

Seize the day.

Not the outcome.

I don’t know which opportunity, if any, becomes my work home. I don’t know what Wednesday will bring, and I’m trying not to make today’s good conversation responsible for answering questions that belong to tomorrow.

For whatever it is worth, today was a good day.

I met someone I was glad to meet.

That’s enough.

Sturdy Boots, Strong Bootstraps

Another philosophy I’ve carried is one I once turned into a Cherry Tip during a difficult period in our family’s life:

Sturdy boots and strong bootstraps are essential tools for life’s journey.

I still believe that.

But perhaps I understand it differently now.

Resilience isn’t always about pulling harder. Sometimes it means stopping long enough to ask whether you’re still on the road you meant to travel and being willing to change direction if you’re not.

Sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Sometimes it makes you wiser.

Sometimes it makes you tired.

Sometimes it teaches you never to do that again.

And sometimes it gives you a really good story.

Love to Live and Live to Love

After all of that, maybe there is one philosophy sitting underneath most of the others.

Love to live and live to love.

That has been my motto for a very long time.

Maybe it’s the one the others live inside.

Truth matters because I care. Wellness matters because I love to live. Curiosity matters because there is still so much I don’t know.

And other people’s perspectives matter because SLIVER has taught me to remember that none of us sees the entirety of another human being.

We see pieces.

Slivers.

Maybe that’s part of why I keep writing.

I research because I want to understand. I meditate because I need the quiet. I cook because I love food. I work on my health because I want to live. I question things because I’m curious.

And I write because something inside me has always needed somewhere to put all of this.

Then I share it with you.

Maybe something I’ve learned saves you a little time. Maybe something I’ve survived makes you feel less alone. Maybe you make one of my recipes, discover something you didn’t know, laugh at something ridiculous, or disagree with me completely and leave thinking harder about what you believe.

That’s okay too.

I don’t have all the answers.

Thank goodness.

How boring would that be?

The Bicycle

Maybe I’ve been answering today’s writing prompt since I was that little girl standing at the top of a hill in Minnesota with somebody else’s bicycle.

She didn’t know how to ride it.

She got on anyway.

And I suppose I’ve been doing that ever since.

So, what’s a personal mantra or philosophy I live by?

I don’t have one.

I have a collection.

Process of elimination.

Peace. Love. Happiness.

Tell the truth.

Keep moving.

Holistic means all the pieces count.

You don’t have to know everything before you begin.

Love to live and live to love.

And today?

Carpe diem.

All of them have been collected through trial and error, just like everyone else’s.

CherryCoBiz is still becoming.

So am I.

Tomorrow can have tomorrow.

Today, I’ll take today.What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?

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