Monday Storytelling: I took a road trip

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I believe there is a constant war going on in our soul. It’s the war between shrinking back or rising up to the challenges that come our way. One day I took a much need road trip because this war was just becoming a little too much for me. I needed to get away and figure things out.

You see, I’m normally someone who doesn’t have the best habits or discipline; however, lately, I’ve been doing really well. I have a couple of awesome jobs I really like. On top of that, I’m pursuing my dreams and using my gifts and talents. Things are going great. When things go great, I notice that I sometimes I want to change things up. I don’t get this.

I’m also someone who likes to control things and I wanted to figure out why I do this so I can eliminate this problem in my life. In essence, I wanted to figure out a formula to control life. Because truth is, life can be messy. If you don’t experience struggle or hardship in life, you’re probably living life in a bubble and not growing, challenging, and reaching your potential.

The thing is: “There is no solution to life. The only way to go through life is to live it. To go through the ups and downs and learn from it. @LnLRevolution.” To grow into knowing more and more of yourself, so you can learn to master your weaknesses and capitalize on your strengths.

I wrote this song, War, after my road trip. Once I realized I couldn’t figure out how to avoid the struggle, pain, and drama in life, I realized that’s just life…we experience struggle, pain, and drama. However, I’m not going to leave it there because that’s not the main point.

The main point is that we can decide to either shrink back or rise up to the challenge to whatever life throws our way. We are more powerful than we think and if we decide to use the powerful spirit and mind we all have, we can win this war in life by becoming stronger and wiser and becoming exactly the amazing and talented person we were meant to be.

Lyrics to the song:

Another day the sun is rising
Hit the road
Turn on my tune
On the radio

Wide open space feel like I’m free
Hit the gas
No place to go
Just drive to anywhere

Taking time
Need a break from myself
There’s a war inside
Ready to break out again

This war
Will last all of my life
Need a way to getaway
From the insanity

Woah…there’s a war inside my very soul
Woah…constant drama for the rest of my life

I’ve wondered what is wrong with me
Am I going crazy
Losing it
Or acting out

They told me it’s all in my mind
Go to bed
When you wake up
It will all be fine

But all hell broke loose for me
All my guts
Spilled on the floor
Could not contain myself

I said there she goes again
Here’s to the cycle
Of the circus
Playing in my mind

Sail Through Everything

You are the lovely sound
That fills my ear
Nothing but butterflies
A sense of peace

You and I inseparable
I see you even in my dreams
You and I will ride the waves
We’ll sail through everything

How lovely it is
That you will always love me
No matter the day
You’ll always love me

You and I inseparable
I see you even in my dreams
You and I will ride the waves
We’ll sail through everything

When I lose the touch
To live up to who I am
No matter the time
You lift me off the ground

You and I inseparable
I see you even in my dreams
You and I will ride the waves
We’ll sail through everything

These are the lyrics to my song “Sail Through Everything.” If you’d like to listen to it, click on this link.

Monday Storytime: Magically Collide by Jamie Pennelly

I write a lot of songs. They are all based on an experience I’ve had whether it was an actual situation or just a feeling. I love that process. I’ve decided to start this thing called Monday Storytime to give me some space every Monday to share the story behind one of my songs.

The first story I want to share is how I came to write my song Magically Collide. I decided to share this one because just today, as I arrived home and got out of my car to go into my house, I caught a glimpse of the sky and the stars. They were so beautiful. In just that glimpse, a sense of peace came over me. I just got back from work and felt a bit stressed and my stress went away even for just a moment.

There have been so many instances where the sky was able to give me that feeling of healing. This song shares that experience. This specific song, “Magically Collide” was written on a day where the sky had colors I don’t see too often. It caught my attention because it was a mix of like a soft peach color on top and then it blended with some light purple, then ended with a nice darker purple. Those two colors are actually some of my favorite colors, so of course seeing it put a smile on my face. =)

Right when I had a break in between jobs, I penned “Magically Collide.” The first part of the chorus goes “Let the skies above light up. Put a show for us to see. Let us see the colors magically collide.” I went on an awesome month long road/camping trip with my husband and we stayed at a campground. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night and again caught a glimpse of the sky and was in awe. It was so clear, so blue, and filled with so many stars. I think of nature sometimes putting on a show for us.

Despite all the craziness that can go on in our world or in my life, pretty skies have the ability to bring me back to a good place. I like that.

What’s your one thing?

I read this amazing book that is organizing all my efforts, The One Thing. I did a talk on this topic and the line that stands out to me is…

“You can cut through the clutter of life by admitting to your one thing and organizing your life around making that happen.” @LnLRevolution

I just finished my first round of hustling ever these past couple days. I finished my first album, created all my platforms, and promoted myself to start putting my work out there. Afterwards, I wrote out a list of what I did to celebrate my accomplishments for the day. Now I’m back home spending time with my hubby.

I got inspired to write this post because just a year and a half ago, I wouldn’t ever think I could accomplish this much in just a couple of days. Man, my life was so different just a year and a half ago. I was completely directionless in life and missing out on something big…realizing my true potential.

Fast forward to now, thanks to all these awesome books, people, and content, I have been empowered to realize my true potential.

Back to the beginning of this post, “What’s your one thing?” My one thing is to spread my message for people to Live and Love Again. That means to simply live your best life and love what you do. I do that through what I write and what I sing. I’m able to do this because I’ve cut through all the clutter of life and focused hardcore like on what’s most important to me.

What’s most important to you? Do whatever it takes to organize your life around making that happen and magic will start to happen. =)

How To Get Started

To be honest, it’s really simple, just get started. I used to have learned helplessness and I listened to some motivational audio tapes to help me and the light bulb went on. When the speaker said to “stop whining and get out of your feeling sorry for yourself boat” and that no one else can give you what you want in life but yourself, I woke up. It was quite comedic actually, I literally stopped crying, stood up, and went on with my day.

I don’t know where we got the idea to think it’s alright to feel sorry for ourselves. We’re screwing ourselves when we do that.

Now I feel I’m being kinda harsh. I’m really not a harsh person, but when it comes to hearing people say that they can’t or give a hundred excuses why they can’t start something, I really have a hard time sitting and listening. I tried to be a therapist, it didn’t work.

Yes you can! How? Just take the first step. Don’t make it a whole ordeal by thinking that your whole life has to change suddenly and on a large scale. Your heart desires to do art, get some crayons and color; you want to sing, sing in the shower; you want to start a website, mess around with some free simple website creating software. Make it fun, easy, and welcoming.

I wanted to sing and play the guitar. I bought an affordable guitar and started teaching myself some chords. I started thinking I should get hardcore, take some classes, learn all the theory etc. etc. That’s good and works for some people, but for me, I know if something is not fun at least in the beginning, I won’t want to stick to it. Knowing that, I made it very easy and fun for me to start just picking up a guitar and making some noise. I did this fun, noncommittal type stuff for one year, then I got hooked. On year two, my desire has grown to get a little better, but still just focus on having fun and doing what I can with what I know.

Soo…have you been wanting to start something new? Pick a day where you’ll do something fun and simple related to that thing. Explore and see where it takes you.

Looking to the future

I attend mass almost every morning. I like it because it provides an excellent anchor for my life. In his book Uncertainty, Jonathan Fields writes about the importance of certainty anchors for people pursuing creativity on a long-term and large scale basis. What was so cool about mass this morning was that the majority of the church was filled with grade school kids from kindergarten to 8th grade. At the end of mass, the children’s choir sent us off with a song that’s called “Go Make A Difference.” I actually had to leave mass early this morning, but I heard them singing the song in the distance which had a powerful effect on me.

Just last week I decided I love being what is called a millennial. In short, it’s a term coined for people who would be growing up in the millennial year of 2000. It roughly includes people born in the early 1980s to early 2000s. These are normally your folks who are into social media, apple products, design, and not having what people call “a real job.” Don’t quote me on this, it’s just something like that. But this post is not about the definition of a millennial. It’s about me looking to the future.

While sitting behind all these millennials and deciding to start the Live and Love Again Revolution last week right after I attended Jonathan Field’s webinar Revolution U, I realized we truly are the future. From the song they ended with to send us out into the world, we really can make a difference. We get made fun of being superficial. Stuff like “All these kids do all day is text on their iphones, wear headphones in their ears, and buy expensive shoes.” Okay to an extent, we may be very into designing how we look on the outside and I’ve realized the missing piece. How about being as into designing how we are on the inside. In addition to looking freaking fantastic, how about also being equally or even more amazing and brilliant on the inside.

We all know the main problems our world has. Some off the top of my head is world hunger, homelessness, poverty, obesity, education, racism, disease. Over and over again people keep on trying to come up with solution, but many have fallen short. Then the prevailing attitude is that these are things that you just can’t really solve, you just live with it. How about telling that to people who have to live with it.

I notice this dead spirit in the world. People who are just not alive and living dead lives. People are much more amazing than that and we really need everyone to come to life and do what they were put on this earth to do.

So looking to the future, I’m calling each and every one of you to think hard about what you’re passionate about. That’s what you’re here to do and now we have the resources and the platforms to make it happen. If you are fortunate enough to have access to education and the internet, you can’t not do something good for the world in the most specific and literal sense.

Change the face of education so the future can actually be mobilized to make a real difference as adults. Stop world hunger. It’s stupid there’s no need for it. We have way too much food in the world and it’s not going where it should. Figure out a solution and rally us on to support you. Racism is not a thing of the past. Figure out a way so that it just become something we no longer do.

My job? It’s to start this live and love again revolution so all of us are emboldened to think big and see to it that our big thoughts turn into big actions that turn into real outcomes in the world.

One Year Later

Hi Everyone!

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I’ve been on here. I’m so happy that I’ve continued to work on pursuing my passion a year later. So year one was about having fun, exploring…kind of like being a kid in the playground. Julia Cameron calls it nurturing your inner child. I was doing something completely new and something creative that I had to make it fun and very attractive for me to start doing it. Now I’m on year two. I definitely have to continue the fun piece or else there would be no reason for me to do what I’m doing. But on year two, I’ve decided to truly commit and actually hold myself fully responsible for nurturing my gifts and talents and doing what it takes to get really good at it and to get it where people can benefit from it.

For the whole first year, I haven’t really told anyone I know personally about what I was doing. During the first year, I’ve put things anonymously online and got little sprinkles of encouragement from awesome strangers. This year, since I’ve committed to do this and I’m committed to being genuine and have congruence in my life, I’ve started to share my passions and ideas with people I know. To my surprise, no one has flat out told me that I shouldn’t do the things I’ve set to do. This is very encouraging to me.

Just today I spoke to my husband about wanting to get his support to stick to this for 5 to 10 years before anything starts to really become anything. He’s on board! Soo cool!

Even now I’m a bit vague about how I share what I want to do. I believe in meeting myself where I’m at. This is where I’m at and I’m okay with that. When it’s time to go full out, I’ll know that time. =)

Finding Little Miracles In My Day

I came across a post several days ago that wrote about finding little miracles in your day. It didn’t have much of an affect on me that day, but today that idea just popped into my head and has become very relevant. I’ve been having some pretty awesome days and just recently I started noticing myself getting anxious about whether or not I was going to continue to have awesome days or not. At the start of the day, I would hope that I would have a similar good day and when tiny things started to go wrong, I would start to get anxious. I think a part of that anxiety was worrying that I’ll lose the lucky touch or good vibes or whatever. I definitely did not like feeling and thinking like this. 

The concept of finding little miracles in my day has become relevant because looking back at these past days, I’ve noticed little miracles occur. Sadly, the streak of awesome days have indeed gone away. I started to have bad days at work for the first time. I’m again in a phase of trying to find inspiration and motivation to be excited about my dreams and life. But I’m actually glad things aren’t always perfect or close to perfect. Life feels more real, and I want to learn how to enjoy life with the ups and downs. 

I had that first bad day at work happen early in the morning, but then in the afternoon, I had an interview for a second part-time job and got a second interview right away. First little miracle. And then, they asked if I wanted to wait around in the area to have the second interview in the same day, but in a couple hours. I said sure because I don’t like prolonging the interviewing process. I like knowing right away. So I went to a coffee shop to wait. I ordered a drink I enjoy, which is steamed milk with a mint flavor shot, loaded of whip cream and Andes mints on top. Second little miracle – it put a smile on my face. When I went back into my car to drive back for my second interview, I saw a middle aged man walking down the street holding a sign and walking through cars while they were stopped at the traffic light. I called out to him and asked him what he needed. I drove to Walgreen’s across the street and drove back to him to give him what he needed. He was super appreciative. He said he didn’t think I would really help him out and then he said, “God bless you…” and then continued on saying, “I mean that from the bottom of my heart.” Third little miracle. Went to the second interview, got accepted the job as long as my background check comes clean. I shouldn’t have anything bad in my background. Fourth little miracle. Chatted with a very close friend who I haven’t chatted with in a while. Fifth little miracle. 

As I write about that day, I’ve realized that calling it a bad day doesn’t fit anymore. It was a pretty awesome day actually. At the start of the post, I called it a bad day because that’s what I remembered first. I think it’s because the times where we experience pain just stand out more and we forget to remember all the good stuff that happened. I’m really excited about this new way of thinking because I can be hopeful and wait expectantly for little miracles even if my day doesn’t start off as I hoped it would. I don’t need to write off the whole day (which is something I do) because who knows what the rest of the day will bring. I’m excited about this new way of thinking because my life will start getting much sweeter. The old way I thought ended up giving me tunnel vision. Even if little miracles came my way, I wouldn’t even notice it because I would be so caught up in the drama of the morning or whenever it happened. There could be a gorgeous rainbow in the sky, but I probably won’t see it if I’m in my mind ruminating about how horrible my day was. Now, I can have an attitude of wonder and curiosity, looking out for little miracles coming my way.

Today was a so so day, but the little miracles I’ve experienced so far was going into a resale shop and finding something that I’ve been looking for and running into a co-worker and being able to be give her my time for her to talk about what’s going on in her life. I’m no longer anxious about whether I will have a good day or not tomorrow because I know little moments like these can turn around a bad day pretty quickly.

Changing Things Up

I just started singing and songwriting several months ago and I was already feeling unmotivated and bored. This didn’t make sense to me. I had such enthusiasm when I decided I wanted to learn how to play the guitar better and write inspirational songs about living your life to the fullest, being you, and all that good stuff. I was writing one song a day, day after day, I was so inspired, I was having a blast. Then a little over a month ago, I lost all the zest. When I would share my songs at open mics, I would just go through the motions. I wasn’t having fun anymore. I decided to pursue this passion because it made me come alive, so this was a problem I needed to understand and fix. 

I was skimming through The Artist’s Way which is a book I just finished on learning how to unleash your creativity, and I noticed something I underlined. The author was making a point about how it’s so easy to fall into the trap of following a formula including your own formula. I came to understand this as doing something a certain way because it worked in the past and continuing to do it because it worked in the past even if it’s not working in the present. Pretty much, sticking with what you know. When I saw that, the lightbulb went on. I was sticking to what I know and holding onto it and not wanting to let go. My formula was this: write songs about the inspiring experiences and lessons I was having at the moment. I was going through some major changes in my life just several months ago and I had a bunch of experiences like that to sing about. But now things are starting to settle down. The new life is setting in just fine and things are pretty stable at the moment. The old formula doesn’t apply.

I didn’t want to give up that formula because I felt I was giving up on the reason I decided to pursue my passion – to sing songs that call people to wake up and live. But at the same time, I would be giving up on my passion for singing and songwriting because I currently am experiencing something different at the moment. I decided to shake off the feeling of having to do something a certain way – having to follow the rules. I’ve never been fond of following rules. I’m not a typical rule breaker or law violater, but I’m just someone who doesn’t like to follow the crowd when it comes to doing what you know is right in your heart for you. I feel many people fall into conformity and don’t live the life they want to live, have the job they want, think what they want to think, or say what they want to say. In that way, I break cultural or personal norms.

So, I’ve decided to allow myself to change things up and write songs about whatever my heart wants to write. Over the past several days, I’ve written songs about sweet treats, singing in the morning, and also wrote a couple songs with a different style than I normally write in. The result, a happy budding artist. I’m letting my creativity run free. =)

What makes you come alive?

One of my favorite quotes is:

 “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” – Howard Thurman

I saw this quote on my friend’s facebook page about 6 months ago and it’s provided me with inspiration and direction ever since. I can’t help but think how much of a happier place our world would be to live in if more people did things that made them come alive. And the thing that makes you come alive doesn’t even have to be your job. It could be doing a hobby or treating yourself out to something nice on a consistent basis. Sometimes I think we feel we should be miserable or be very serious in life, but that just makes other people we come into contact with potentially miserable because we’re not really nice to people when we’re not happy.

When I don’t take care of myself and my happiness, I know I act pretty crabby with my husband. I just finished the 12 week course in the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and one of the weekly exercises is to take yourself out on an artist date. The artist date is a time where you take yourself out by yourself to do something really fun and exciting for you. After these artist’s dates, I feel so energized and happy that my husband totally benefits from it as well. Normally I’m never a crabby person when I take care of myself. I’ve taken myself to a botanical garden, explored for hours, then treated myself to some yummy pizza and pie. I’ve gone to a quiet beach on a nice sunny day and stayed there for hours as well reading a fun magazine, going in the water for a bit, and then creating fun art out of rocks on the beach. I’ve had massages, grabbed a yummy treat from a bakery, and the list goes on from things that were free, inexpensive, or once in a while splurging on myself when I had the money. I had a blast!

What makes you come alive?

Currently, singing a song I recently wrote about sweet treats is making me very happy and feel alive. =)