Tibetan monks creating a intricate mandala that they will soon wipe away and throw into a nearby river.
No matter your worldview, I think we can all agree that 2016 was a defining and likely transitional year in the United States of America. From politics (Clinton vs. Trump, moderates being squashed between the extreme “right” and the extreme “left,” to the passing of iconic celebrities (Prince, Carrie Fisher, George Michael, etc.), to radical, miserably unhappy short-sighted people, countries & groups (ISIS, Turkey, Syria, Russia), to witnessing some of the most generous acts of kindness towards refugees and others humanity has ever seen. Plus some pretty good comedy and music about all of the above!
I’m putting “changing the world” on pause for a bit to spend most of my energy on my kids, doing a good job at work, and keeping sane by spending time with my numerous great friends. Maybe if others did the same, we’d have less crazy, upset people in this world! #veryblessed
Life can be is challenging, and I’m grateful that I can randomly write my not so insightful thoughts on this blog. I’m grateful for good health, family, friends, an awesome job, as well as for cute animal photos and videos.
I’m not into new year resolutions any more, but I am into moving in a meandering, yet at the same time vague direction toward some positive outcomes. So, I’d like to make a point of having more music in my life by listening to more, writing lyrics, and creating melodies for at least one new song to complement the two already out there posted here and here.
And, of course, I’m going to try to eat healthier, exercise more, and lose a few pounds without giving up red wine, whisky, chocolate, cheese, peanuts, chips, or queso. 😀
Here’s to us all getting better at playing the crazy cards life deals us as well as continuing to learn & grow from the harrowing, yet joyful game of life.
Bring it on 2017…but please use wise and kind judgement when doing so!
Tibetan monks creating an intricate mandala they will soon wipe away to illustrate impermanence. Later they will throw the colored sand into a nearby river and start the process over again.
Life seems to have a lot of rejection, failure, and unmet expectations in between occasions of blissful acceptance, success, peace, and happiness.
But it’s all part of the human experience and according to Pema Chodrin we need to Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better: Wise Advice for Leaning into the Unknown (Amazon link). I heard about the book from Seth Godin’s blog post Failing, again. It’s a quick, easy read with a nice analogy of how we build resilience, understanding, and acceptance over time as we get better at dealing with the big waves that life sends us that sometimes knock us down. We struggle to get back up only to experience the next big wave trying to knock us down again! I also recently read her book Practicing Peace in Times of War (Amazon link) and found it insightful.
The Top 5 Stressful Situations (1. Death of a loved one, 2. Divorce, 3. Moving, 4. Major Illness, and 5. Job Loss) can leave us feeling like a failure and/or rejected. I’ve experienced 4 of those 5 events personally and two of them at the same time. [major stress emoji] Based on my experience, it takes a great support network, a positive attitude, and not being afraid to ask for help (even if you ask for it in an imperfect way) to navigate these life changes and come out the other end with most of your mental faculties still in tact. 😀 You learn pretty quickly who your friends really are during those tough times. And if you take the time to learn from those experiences, you build resiliency to weather the next big wave and are able to help others get back up too!
Here are some great articles I’ve read recently that can help all of us put feelings of rejection, failure, and lack of confidence into perspective.
In Defense of Being Average – Mark Manson. He is such a funny and talented writer! It is okay to be average, because most of us are.
The Confidence Gap – The Atlantic. This article discusses the unique challenges even the most talented and accomplished women face on the topic of confidence.
On Marrying the Wrong Person – The Book of Life. Will the way we pick our spouses evolve yet again? I hope so. This article discusses how we should pick our mate. The method they suggest makes more sense than how we humans have typically done so in the last thousands of years.
What a historic week it’s been here in the United States of America! Whether you agree or don’t agree on the rulings, the research, the findings, the laws, and/or the songs sung, I think we can all agree that it was historic. Check out Fred Wilson’s post called What A Week for a better write-up than I have time to create about the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rulings on the Affordable Health Care Act, Marriage Equality, and President Obama singing Amazing Grace at Clementa Pinckney‘s funeral.
My absolute favorite hymn is Amazing Grace. I sing it to my kids often. To hear President Obama unexpectedly sing it with a voice less than the almost perfect ones we typically hear on mass media, reminded me how vulnerable and human (not perfect) we all are. We all deserve and should offer grace and forgiveness to others. I think it took courage for him to sing that wonderful hymn (video link embedded below) for so many reasons.
Here’s to experiencing more amazing grace for our country and the world…
I remember a time in high school where I was trying to tell someone who was about 5 years older than me “something about my life” (just like the Indigo Girls Closer To Fine song begins). He was a college aged Sunday school teacher. I was in awe of him for some reason that I can’t exactly recall why now. When he saw that I was struggling, he said “some things are better off left unsaid.” I figured he was older and wiser, so after he said that I decided not to tell him what I was trying to confess about my atypical life. I’m not sure if it would have changed the course of my life if I had told him, but I wonder to this day if it might have.
Although most people who know me think I’m fairly outspoken and direct, I believe I’ve left many critical things unsaid or unwritten leaving some to think I did not have thoughts or feelings about certain things or maybe even cared. I try to be as open as I can with my kids so they always know I care about them and love them even if I’m upset about something. I hope they always know that. I cherish the fact they still tell me they love me…sometimes even unprompted!
I’ve only had one person in my life tell me that I wore my heart on my sleeve, but I think that may be because he was the only person who saw it “standing there” or maybe he liked the shirt I was wearing that day. 🙂 It reminded me of the lyric by Barenaked Ladies in One Week: “I have a tendency to wear my mind on my sleeve. I have a history of losing my shirt.” I think at that time in my life I was desperately wishing I could change into a sleeveless shirt because having an exposed heart on your sleeve is a really weird sensation!
What prompted this random post you might ask? I was looking at the posts I started that are saved in the Draft section of my blog and was wondering whether it was good or bad that those went unwritten (or should I say unpublished)? I’ll never know. It also made me wonder about what people don’t say at work to their bosses, to their employees, or to their co-workers as well as at home to their spouses, kids, parents, friends, love interests, etc. Are they/we afraid to say what’s really on their/our mind for fear of being fired, punished, judged as stupid, abandoned, or something else? Or maybe they/we just don’t care.
Chances are if I had published those draft posts, I would have forgotten by now that I did.
Entrepreneurs can be a little conflicted at times. Some of us are very analytical and logical. Some are very creative (artistic, musical, etc.) and conceptual. Some are both. For those of us who cross the corpus callosum often, it can cause some interesting right brain/left brain integration challenges and short circuits. I know this from personal existential experiences…we can sometimes be misunderstood. We know how to use a spreadsheet, but all of our ideas and feelings can’t always be confined to a logical process of deduction. Maybe it’s like wearing bi- or tri-focals when the switch happens…seconds or sometimes hours or days of disorientation?
Back in March 2014, I put two Songs In The Wild and although I’m light years away from being rich off of them, the experience and the journey of creation were huge learning experiences for me. I think creating music is an entrepreneurial endeavor fraught with danger, risk, fear of rejection, as well as a low chance of a big or any payback.
My kids created iMovie videos of my two songs in the wild: Save Me From Myself (YouTube) and Soul Escape (YouTube) a month or so ago and I’m finally finding the time to blog about them. They did a great job under a lot of pressure, with very little direction from me on a very low budget. I gave them an extension on their mini-contract because we wanted to use photos from our recent trip to Sri Lanka. We had some breakdowns in negotiations and delayed deliverables (mostly due to my lack of proper oversight of the process), and I had to tell them that whining, crying, and feigning ignorance doesn’t help when you are trying to finalize a deal. 🙂 A good life lesson!
The videos will hopefully make you smile and laugh at the sometimes random, funny images they chose for the songs. I love them and I love that they and their friends have told me (they could have been lying to protect mom’s fragile ego) they liked the songs. A couple of my son’s friends even purchased them on iTunes! Please watch the videos and let me know what you think. They are embedded below and are on YouTube. Thank you in advance for taking the time to watch and listen to them! Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MetaphorMania
Co-written by Aruni S. Gunasegaram (lyrics & singing) and Brett Jason Wintermeyer (musical arrangement). Produced, arranged, & recorded by Ron Wikso. Chris Tondre (Guitars and Bass), Derek Morris (Keyboards), Chad and Natasha Hudson (Background Vocals), Ron Wikso (Drums). Album cover designs by Marla Shane .
Below are some really great, entertaining, and thought provoking posts & articles. Please check them out and let me know what you think.
Good at math (Seth Godin) – This post arrived in my in box after my 9 year old daughter told me she wasn’t good at math. I told her she was too young to make that decision. I told her that only after she has taken Calculus that she could she tell me she didn’t like math or it wasn’t her best subject. She then asked me what Calculus was and she, her brother and I laughed out loud at that silliness. 🙂
Get Lucky (Fred Wilson) – Fred appears to be one of the luckiest people I know. A famous VC and blogger, great family, good health, etc. He links to an article Richard Wiseman wrote on lucky and unlucky people. He said the money quote was “My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”
Yes, the elephants did strike back! The trip was amazing and despite me thinking I might have time to type up some blog posts on the plane, sleep, kids, and other distractions (free movies) got in the way.
I think we took close to 900 photos in the many cities and tourist sites that we went to on the island. The kid’s impressed me with their ability to tolerate the long travel and long days with different eating schedules. I guess that means it was the perfect age for them to go!
Last Friday I hosted a slideshow for the folks where I work (Querium). Lots of people showed up in person and virtually (via http://join.me). They said they enjoyed it and didn’t confess to being bored. 🙂 My boss was able to “mirror” my iPhone on his Mac and hook it to a projector so I could flip through the photos for everyone to see. It was pretty cool!
Now I have tons of new photos to use in my TBD future blog posts and for my kids to use in finally finishing up the YouTube videos of my two songs!
The title of this post comes from my son with affirmation from my daughter. We are on a journey back to my homeland and plan to see and ride an elephant or two. As usual, life has been busy and all the blog post ideas that fleet across my mind, never end up making it into a proper post. I’m hoping that while we are on numerous airplanes and airports that I will have a few moments to write up some posts to share after we return.
I’m writing this post from the Dubai airport in a lounge that has WiFi included. Thank goodness for WiFi and modern technology!
We are on our way to my birthplace: Sri Lanka. I’m such an American now (and I never knew the language) that they will view us as tourists. It’s been 19 years since I’ve been there and that was when my grandfather passed away. I still miss him to this day! He was such a brilliant, unique, and funny individual whose humanity I only came to know about and understand as I got older and after he was gone so I never had the opportunity to talk with him about so many things I wanted to.
This is the first time my kids have traveled this far away from their home and so far they have been amazing travelers!
One of my next posts should include a photo of an elephant. The photo in this post is of a high tech phone booth in the very modern looking airport in Dubai.
My son’s 6th grade class at the Magellan International School, that was founded 5 years ago, is attempting to win a 3D Printer in the The Great Big Gigabot Giveaway! Their video entry is on Vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/97991510. I was trying to find a way to embed the video, but it doesn’t work like YouTube so I included a photo of one of their 3D printers instead.
Please watch the video to learn how they plan to use the 3D printer to design and create toys for children at an area hospitals or shelters as part of their community service endeavors. Then please go to to younoodle.com/podium/jr/great_big_gigabot_giveaway_judging/public_voting#0 to create an account and vote for their entry to win. Their video is in the bottom row on the left. The decision is based 40% on popular vote, so please vote and share this post with your friends. Thank you!
Oh, and Happy Father’s Day to all you wonderful fathers out there! You know who you are. 🙂
I finally faced a bigfear of putting my “art” out there for the world to judge, hate, like, love, or be indifferent about. It’s been a multi-year endeavor, and I published them online via DistroKid back in March 2014. Getting them on the sites below was the easiest part of this whole endeavor and apparently I’ve made $10.50 on them in March and April! There’s a two month lag in reporting sales via DistroKid. I wasn’t sure I’d even get $5, so I’m excited about the extra $5.50 that I can use to buy lottery tickets!
I didn’t create the songs for money. I created them to stay partially sane during a very strange and eye opening period in my life, and I wanted to see if I could actually go from nothing to something consumable (darn entrepreneurial genes) in the world of music. From what I hear in the music business, if I recoup my investment in a decade, I’ll be lucky. To me the pay back is my kids humming my songs as well as some of their classmates telling me they downloaded them because they liked them…priceless!
Here’s the sparse facebook page for what I call this haphazard musical endeavor: Metaphor Mania. You can find the songs here:
Co-written by Aruni S. Gunasegaram (lyrics & singing) and Brett Jason Wintermeyer (musical arrangement). Produced, arranged, & recorded by Ron Wikso. Chris Tondre (Guitars and Bass), Derek Morris (Keyboards), Chad and Natasha Hudson (Background Vocals), Ron Wikso (Drums). Album cover designs by Marla Shane .
I posted the song links on facebook a couple of months ago and received some encouraging feedback. Just like I like, love, hate, and don’t care for some songs, I suspect others will feel the same about these, but I finally did it! And, as they say, “beauty is in the eye (ear) of the beholder!”
My kids are helping me create YouTube videos for the songs since they know how to use iMovie and I have no clue how to make a video. We are still searching for additional appropriate random photos so it’s likely the videos won’t be ready until after summer’s over and we return from some photo worthy summer trips.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to them and share them if you like them. As always, I appreciate all of you readers and friends who have stuck around for so many years through my entrepreneurial, parental, and musical endeavors…
We participated in Lemonade Day again this year on May 4, 2014 (May the 4th be with you). It was so much fun and a great entrepreneurial lesson for the kids last year (see Lemonade Day Austin – May 5, 2013 – Entrepreneurial Kids), that we did it again at the same location. The three girls made over $165 in profits this year compared to $91 last year. We changed our product mix and provided coffee, muffins, and lemonade versus lemonade, sport bars, and muffins last year. Since we were at the Rookie Triathlon, there were already sponsors that were providing free Power Bars!
My son did it again with two of his friends at the same location they did last year. I haven’t heard the results yet, but they think they made a good profit as well.
The only downside of doing the stand at a triathlon is having to get up at 4:30 a.m. in order to be there by 5:30 a.m. (hence a photo of the stand in the dark) to get set up before the race started! A true entrepreneurial experience: odd hours, lots of work, and you have to wait until the end of the day to see if you actually made any money. I’m guessing more money is made in some simple lemonade stands than in many businesses who attempt to get up and make lemonade every day…even when there is a shortage of lemons, or currently limes (The lime panic of 2014). See also The Lime Shortage: Still Messing With Your Margarita.
I’m not a big football or groundhog watcher, but this year the days have collided. I don’t plan to watch any groundhogs, but I do plan to see part of the Super Bowl. Because my son loves sports, we will be going to a friend’s place to the watch the game so he can be with others who like to watch football. Ah, the things us mothers do for our kids that we don’t have the patience to do for other sports fanatics in our lives. 🙂
I’m hoping with the recent WordPress update, there won’t be spam links in my email feed, but it’s a crap shoot. I haven’t been able to figure out the reason after asking several people and doing some research. I think it’s beyond my technical expertise to figure out a fix in the near term. I’ve managed to post about once per month mostly because I haven’t permanently fixed the spam issue and secondly because I’m still working on interesting topics to post about. Here are some good reads:
¡Feliz Año Nuevo 2014! Another year has passed and boy/girl what an entrepreneurial year it has been! I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix the spam (stupidity) hack that someone has done to my email feed, but after checking feedburner, feedblitz, WordPress, and staring into space, a solution/fix hasn’t surfaced. Thank you to all of you who replied to my email feed noticing the insertion of random, annoying spam ads. The emailed version of this post may have spam inserted, so please don’t click on the spam links…unless of course you are “looking for a good time via potency drugs.” Fortunately, the post itself as it shows up on my blog and the RSS feed do not have spam links, just the email feed and I have no idea why!
While I am writing this post, I’m listening to final mixes of two of my songs: Save Me From Myself and Soul Escape. Pretty soon you can sing them in your shower without worries of copyright violations! 🙂 It’s been close to a 3 year process to get to this point, but I can check “having a professional song produced” off my list soon…
Just like Fred Wilson, I am Unresolved this year, and I couldn’t feel happier about it. When you think about it, it’s almost kind of stupid to make resolutions when so much of life is out of your freaking control. Sure, I can eat better, exercise, laugh more, cry more, make sure I have the best career ever, piss off more people, etc. but it seems to me it’s best to just “Go With The Flow,” be as honest as you can be, and “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.” Why humans don’t get this simplicity (see Scott Adams’ article below) after thousands of years is perplexing. We must be a slow species that likes to complicate things.
To copy what I posted on facebook: “Happy New Year! May 2014 be full of love, laughter, joy, and mind blowing (lovely) adventures with good health and peace mixed in for good luck!“
I’m hosting a giveaway for the first time in a long time. I think Michael Jackson (link to the post I wrote after he died) and his family are really talented so when someone reached out to me to see if I’d write a post about the newly released DVD and host a giveaway if they sent me a free review copy, I said “Yes, thank you!”
The kids watched all of the 23 episodes and really enjoyed them! I wasn’t able to watch all of them due to regularly scheduled “mom duties” and work related stuff, but I did see many of them. Despite hearing the “ABC-123” song way more times than I have in my entire life before now, I really enjoyed them too. It was neat (a.k.a. groovy) how they took classic fairy tales and turned them into shows that had a “hairy godfather,” “The Wizard of Soul,” “Michael In Wonderland,” “Jackson and the Beanstalk,” etc. Michael loses his glass sneaker when he sneaks out to the ball and the pretty girl finds him in typical “Cinderjackson” style. In another one, Michael eats a poisoned apple and needs to be awakened by a princess’ kiss. Their pet mice (Ray & Charles) & snake (Rosey) join in on the antics and the episodes even teach nice lessons about topics like taking care of nature. The episodes were a fun flashback to the 1970’s and the songs that made the Jackson 5 (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael) famous.
Here’s the blurb from the folks giving away the free copy: “For the first time ever, the famous Jackson 5ive Cartoon DVD is on video … available to the public since January 15, 2013! Introduced in 1971, the cartoon takes the Jackson brothers on a colorful journey, teaching them a life lesson along the way of all 23 episodes. Making this DVD extra special is that each episode features two digitally re-mastered tracks from the Jackson 5ive! We think this is something that all Jackson fans, music fans and the 1970’s in general will love, as the cartoon brings back the glory years and celebrates the immense talents that each Jackson possessed. Not only do I think you will enjoy this DVD, but believe your kids will be captivated by the incredible music and colorful animation of the Jackson 5ive!”
How can you win? Just leave a comment on why you (or someone you know) like Michael, The Jackson 5, or any of the other talented Jackson family members, and the kids and I will sort of randomly select a name on Friday, March 29, 2013. The lucky winner will be put in touch with the promoters of the video and will receive a free DVD directly from them. It’s as easy as A, B, C, and 1, 2, 3!
I wrote a post on October 19, 2009 when my car reached 100,000 miles. I don’t know why I wrote that post, but it was a milestone for me since I’d never owned a car with that many miles on it. Oddly, I remember a few minutes of the morning of the day I went into work after writing that post as well as what I was wearing along with a conversation I was having with the office manager at the time. Here are a few quotes from that post updated for now:
“And now here it is 8 [11.5] years, 2 kids, 3 [5] jobs, several written articles, 381 [600] blog posts [1,977 comments], and one mid-life crisis later and the car has been solid (knock on wood).” I did just have to spend about $1,500 to fix a timing belt tensionar pulley issue and a side engine mount thingamabob a week ago…the timing (pun — or whatever — intended) wasn’t great from a cash flow perspective, but hey it’s still running!
“I was too busy chatting with my [best] friend [driving to/from SXSW] at the time to notice when it hit the 100,000 [150,000] mile mark.”
“I wonder for how many more miles I will own this car…”
Not that 99.5% of most people really care about my car or it’s mileage, but let’s just say these last 50K miles on my car have felt like a 100K miles in my life. The amount of change that has happened in my life personally (myself and my kids) and professionally has been astounding. And sometimes I’m surprised I’m still standing, but since the kids and I have regular check ups with friends & doctors and an active social life that keeps us driving around, I guess the life maintenance plan is working okay so far… I think I need to get an oil change. How does one get a personal oil change? 🙂
I’m not into new year resolutions any more, but I am into moving in a meandering, yet at the same time vague direction toward some positive outcomes. So, I’d like to make a point of having more music in my life by listening to more, writing lyrics, and creating melodies for at least one new song to complement the two already out there posted here and here.
m going to try to eat healthier, exercise more, and lose a few pounds without giving up red wine, whisky, chocolate, cheese, peanuts, chips, or queso. 😀
(Amazon link). I heard about the book from Seth Godin’s blog post 
(Amazon link) and found it insightful.
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