Everything Can Change in a Second...

The day started with a four hour training session in Healthcare. My head was inundated with information but it didn't end there, I had to go back to my School and get four more hours of training, added to the eight I had the day before.

It didn't go by fast but at the end of a productive long two days of Information Overload, I felt content, grateful it was over for now and even a bit more confident!

I got home and found a delicious meal being served by my loving husband. I had this enormous feeling of gratitude to live in a beautiful place, have a loving family, surround myself with a great group of people who work as a team to make a huge difference in the lives of so many families. Can life get any better I thought to myself?

At that moment my phone reminded me that I had a voice message I had received while going around from training to training. The call was from the Radiology nurse. I was actually looking forward to the call, last week the doctor had decided to do a biopsy on a tiny spot he'd been watching, he just wanted to be certain. I'm sure it's scar tissue he said, I agreed, there's no cases in my family, I take care of myself and am very healthy, so I picked up the voice message on a speaker for my husband to stop worrying and we heard the nurse saying "Mrs. Shaffer can you please return my call I'd like to discuss the results of your Biopsy."

At that second I knew that my life was about to change....

Soon my physical body will change and I'll have to endure some very unexpected pain, but that's just the car that I decided to drive during this Life Adventure. My Spirit however will hop on the Shooting Star I'm about to ride and soar with it wherever it takes me.

Because Everything Can Change in a Second...

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

The Storyteller...

It's been a while since I wrote, for me writing takes mostly inspiration, in other words I have to be "In Spirit", but it also takes time, commitment, passion, heart or at least a couple of those components and lately my life is undergoing many changes, twists and turns and I'm focusing mostly on that.

I get inspired to write about something all the time, but lately when that happens my mind is either too tired to let the words flow or I'm doing something else at the moment.

I'm convinced that I was born to be a "Storyteller". I believe I've always known that but what I didn't know when I was growing up was that you're not supposed to postpone what "You're Born to Be", judge yourself for the way you do it or compare with others that do it as well. I grew up knowing that I had to do better than I did, I was told that by my parents, teachers, surrounded by others who did do it better than I did, I just got by. Looking back I realize that one of the reasons I never became passionate about anything while I was growing up like others did was the way school was taught and my own personal abilities to learn.

Now that I've been working for the school system and see how diligent they are at addressing every single child and teaching them the best way the child learns better, I realize how much of the education I was offered I missed because I just couldn't focus on all that information they offered me, I could retain some things but others I couldn't, my mind would wonder into this Magical World of Storytelling.

I could make up stories about anything as far back as I can remember. I believe that if school had been taught in a Storytelling manner I would have learned better, but it took me till I was living alone, on my own for the first time in my life, in my late 50s to realize this and now in my 60s I've only begun to scrape the surface of all those stories that I've held inside for so many years that seem like so many lifetimes ago, now only a handful of those millions of stories are still somewhat clear in my mind.

There are many ways that we engage in stories, it can be something as simple as someone next to us riding the bus home at the end or the beginning of the workweek, a total stranger we had never seen before or most likely will never see again, he or she has a story to tell like we all do, all that story needs is an audience other than yourself so it can be told, so if you were to engage in a short conversation with that stranger you may know things about them that could change your instant interpretation of them while perhaps identifying with a part of their story. And just by you listening to their story you are allowing it to be told. The person telling their story will get some sense of relief because having a story in your mind can weigh you down or excite you and by being able to tell someone about it you're either sharing on the burden or the excitement while connecting through it with another soul.

This is more evident than ever in this era of Technology, all you have to do is look at almost any site, especially those with platforms that lend themselves to the telling of one's own personal story which are in fact the most successful ones, ie. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Instagram, Youtube, any dating site, but it doesn't even have to be just Social Media it's also any company that has created a Website,

I know at least for myself that if I'm going to look at a company I have the habit of looking at the area where it says ABOUT US and the reason I do that is because I like humanizing the experience no matter if it is to buy a pair of shoes, some business cards or deposit at the Bank, I feel more of a connection when I realize there is someone behind all these words on a screen that are offering me a product or a service. Just like we did before the Internet changed the way we live our lives.

The other day I came up with some quotes that made a lot of sense to me:

"The plain fact is that the Planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restores, storytellers and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people with moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success the way we have defined it".
~ David W. Orr - Ecological Literacy: "Educating our Children for a Sustainable World".

"The purpose of a Storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon".
~ Brandon Sanderson - "The Way of Kings".

We all have a story to tell and we all have the need for someone to listen to our story and at least for myself I want my story to be an ADVENTURE!

 Envision your story on a large movie screen and ask yourself "Would I go see that movie, is it interesting, will it hold my attention, is it going to make me laugh and cry and feel every emotion intensely, do I like how the music in the background makes me feel, did it teach me something, was it worth my time, how do I feel when I walk out of the theater, uplifted and energetic, sad and drained or perhaps with anger, fear or despair?

Would I read the book and buy the movie when it comes out on video so I can watch it again and again or will it be one of those movies that we see once when it comes out on TV in the weee hours of the morning when there is nothing else to watch and when you're 1/2 way through the movie you realize you already saw it once and didn't care for it?

Go make your life what you want it to be so you can be in total harmony with the story you tell. Believe me it's worth it, I know, I'm The Storyteller....

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

Where is The Music?... by @nit@

Before I have to go through the 'EXIT' door I promised myself I would write my story and I always keep my promises. Just so it's there to attest that I was here, that I existed that my life mattered,  that it was an "ADVENTURE" and that the power of one ordinary Mexican, Jewish, American, Israeli, British Citizen and soon to be Italian and Argentinian can be huge without even being noticed. (I should find out who is the person with the most Nationalities in the Guinness Book of World Records. maybe I'm it! ;)

But let's start at the end and we'll go backwards, because if anyone should take the time to read my Adventure needs to know if it's worth it to them because of the outcome, maybe you can identify with something and consider a different perspective for your Adventure.

I've always had thousands of questions about life, parenting, relationships, how to be in harmony with what is, acquiring tools and skills to be someone, to have things, how to pick yourself up if you fall all the way to the ground or should you catch yourself halfway? will you learn as much if you do that than if you fall all the way down? Is there anybody out there who really cares? or are we all just there when we get something back? What does that something need to be? I read the books, took the courses, read the articles, then I even started to write them, I began to understand but couldn't quite get the results I wanted, or at least the ones I thought I wanted.

I had no idea how to find out so I went and looked for the answers in my decisions, in my travels and in my many Adventures. To most it might be just an ordinary life but to me it was a Roller Coaster of Feelings and Emotions. Most of the time nobody knew anything that I was doing or feeling and yet at one point in my life I would have been petrified of being on my own. Agoraphobia, Depression, Anxiety Attacks, OMG I was invaded by Aliens! I had to go find out Who I was and What I was capable of , but I was older when that happened, I felt tired, defeated, so one day I picked up my suitcase and I just did it "I left to find the Music in My Life's Adventure".

So we are going to start at the End then you decide if you want to read on to how it all got me to this moment in "The Adventure of My Life" ...

Even if nobody ever reads my story, I can cross "Writing My Story" off my Bucket List, and isn't that what life is all about?

Off to Work for now helping someone with whatever talent or knowledge I might have acquired on my Journey, My Adventure...

Stay Tumed...

Hugs xoxo
@nit@