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Category Archives: love

Happy New Year, 2018

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by Loree2e in Art, Fearless, Flying, Inspiration, love, Parenting, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

fearless

As we often do at the end of a year, yesterday I reflected on my vision statement from 2017 and how much I was able to accomplish and what didn’t get done.

While I was able to achieve more things than I believe I would have if I hadn’t written a vision statement, it occurred to me that despite a shit-ton of therapy introspection over the past few years, I am still letting fear guide too much of my life.

I am still afraid of…

making bad decisions.
looking stupid.
hurting someone.
falling in love again.
hurting myself physically.
failing the people I love.
and probably several other things I haven’t listed. Blockchain technology, for example.

So, while I did write another vision statement for 2018 (which I will have to post separately because Quip is being uncooperative at the moment – shocker), I want to also commit to a guiding word for the year.

Over the past few years, I’ve used Explore, Stretch, Mindful, Forgive and Create. But for some unexplained reason, this year I feel I need to up-level the bad-assery of my inspirational word-of-the-year. Maybe it’s because I turned 50 a few months ago and so my mortality is more top-of-mind. Perhaps it’s because I find that the older I get, the fewer fucks I give about a LOT of stuff. Like my potty mouth, for example. During my years in the navy, my creativity in the fine usage of colorful metaphors approached artisanal mastery but has since degenerated to the point now where I can barely manage to drop an f-bomb when I need my teenage son to take.the.fucking.garbage.out.NOW.

But I digress.

For me, 2018 is about being FEARLESS.

  • It’s about stepping up for challenges at work that scare me, because I know I will figure shit out, somehow, and I’ll be supported by the best team I’ve ever had the honor of working with.
  • It’s about engaging more with friends, instead of using my INFJ-ness as an excuse to not comment on a post, or go to a party or take a stand on an issue.
  • It’s about encouraging myself to be vulnerable and open, hopeful that I will meet someone I can trust and find a partner whom I adore and who feels the same about me. Or maybe I won’t, and I’m okay with that. #dontsettle
  • It’s about getting back behind the stick of an airplane (a stick, not a goddamn yoke. Fuck that shit.) because I love flying and I miss having my head literally in the clouds.
  • It’s about continuing to loosen the grip on the two people I love the most, who are pulling slowly away from me (as they should) as they look toward that beacon of adulthood beckoning to them more brightly, while still supporting them and loving them every day. Even when they don’t take out the fucking trash.
  • It’s about sharing my writing, rather than worrying about what people will think, or how they’ll judge me. Ditto for my encaustic painting work.
  • It’s about getting stronger physically. After years of recovering from a fat childhood, I’m no longer afraid to own this. Sorry, Mom and Dad, this might be the year I take up pole dancing.

So there it is. My first fearless act is to share this publicly and ask you, my friends and family, to remind me that in exactly one year I’m going to have to answer up to myself about whether or not I followed through on being fearless. Hopefully you will at least have received an airplane ride out of it with me somewhere along the way.

Happy New Year, everyone! Except you, Fear. You can fuck off.

 

 

 

The mathz

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Loree2e in Art, Flying, love, Math

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goldenratio

I’m on a long flight from LHR-SFO, reading a great book called The Divine Proportion, by H.E. Huntley, published in 1970. It’s about the relationship of aesthetics and mathematics, so of course if focuses a lot on the Golden Ratio.

In the first chapter, the author describes how he fell in love with mathematics. It was at a lecture, during his freshman year at Bristol University and the lecturer, Peter Frazer, wrote a theorem on the chalkboard and became enamored by the simple elegance of the set he had drawn. He paused, then proclaimed how exquisite it was, becoming animated in his exaltations of the theorem’s beauty. The class laughed, but the author was moved.

I get it. I had a similar experience in my freshman calculus class, when Professor Zukowski, who most mornings reeked of alcohol, wrote on the board the first differential equation I’d ever seen, and proceeded to explain how calculus could explain so many parts of our world…it was like I had received a decoder ring for the universe. I had loved trigonometry in high school, mostly the graphing of the curves, but this was adding a new dimension, literally.

In the book, Professor Huntley gives advice to those who might be reading it and thinking of pursuing mathematics as a career. One bit of advice struck me as sad, yet true. He writes, “You may be lonely. Scarcely anyone will understand your work because few will be capable of understanding it.”

I feel that deeply. Perhaps my greatest failure as a parent has been my inability to stir in my children the same love I had for math. Granted, I didn’t fall in love with math until I was in college. And friends will tell you that it wasn’t math I fell in love with, but David Carpenter.

I’ll explain… I was in NROTC, so I had to take calculus. And in my calculus class was a cute, suntanned, shaggy-haired boy with awesome dimples, named Dave Carpenter. He kept to himself, which added to his mystique. One day, he came to class in an Air Force ROTC uniform and I about died…my secret crush was also in ROTC! I finally mustered the courage to ask him about it, and we struck up a conversation. He had dreams of becoming an astronaut, so he was enrolled in AFROTC. I started researching the space program. Most astronauts were former military test pilots who had technical degrees. So I switched my major from art to mathematics. My friends accused me of wanting to become an astronaut so I could have sex with David Carpenter in space.

After the second month of school, I didn’t see him in class. I never saw him in a uniform on campus again. His enthusiasm for the space program had apparently dissipated, or maybe it transferred over to me. I went on a field trip to a few naval air stations over the holiday break and fell in love with flying, too. David Carpenter had been replaced.

It’s funny, I was reading this book about numbers, and then the in-flight TV show I was most drawn to was a show about online dating and algorithms. I took a few notes; my next exercise after writing this blog post is updating my dating profile. On the show, the host mentioned the mathematical formula about rejecting 37% of options and then dating the next suitable person (also detailed in this article). I’ve been keeping a list of the dates I’ve been on; I think I’m around 28, so I feel like I have extra incentive to hop to it and get out on some more dates.

I was also super inspired by the images and figures in the book. I cannot wait to get my art studio in order so I can start a mathematically-inspired series of paintings. I want to do a bunch that are inspired by the golden ratio, and also a series of chessboards. I love that math continues to inspire me in so many ways, which gives me hope that maybe my kids will also eventually learn to appreciate it.

Hope

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Loree2e in love, Movies, Relationships

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Tags

heartache, hope, love

ingvild-deila-as-princess-leia-in-rogue-one-lucas-film

I saw the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, this past Tuesday. I loved it and felt it stood on its own as great entertainment, and even better as the prologue to Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope. I felt all tingly when I saw the X-wing Starfighters onscreen. I remember watching the original Star Wars movie in theaters in 1977 and thinking the X-wings were the coolest things ever. That was probably my first exposure to “aviation” (is there a space version of that term? Spaciation?) and it certainly planted the seeds for my career as a pilot.

The movie also struck me in a different, non-nostalgic way. In the last scene of Rogue One, a CGI-enhanced Princess Leia receives the plans for the Death Star, thanks to the sacrifices of the rebellion:
Captain Raymus Antilles: [after handing Princess Leia the Death Star schematics] What is it they’ve sent us?
Princess Leia Organa: Hope.

I choked up at this scene – Carrie Fisher had died that morning. I felt like she was speaking directly to me through the completely coincidental timing of my viewing of this scene.

Let me back up…I’ve been recovering from a broken heart…from repeated heartbreak at the hands of someone I was deeply in love with but who had strung me along, who wouldn’t commit to a monogamous relationship with me. I’d been feeling down lately; wondering if I’ll ever find a similarly deep connection with another person, if I will be able to trust someone with my heart again. And then, unexpectedly, this scene in Rogue One reminded me about Hope.

Hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” For a long time, I had hoped my former love would choose to build a life with me. He gave me every expectation that it would happen…”eventually.” He asked me to respect “his process” and give him time.  I certainly desired a partnership with him, and I thought he wanted one with me, too. He told me he had never loved a woman as much as he loved me, but after years of waiting for him to choose a life with me, I realized those were just words, and the love I had hoped for with him was never going to happen, even though he would tell me he loved me “always.”

For a while, I made the mistake of giving up hope on finding love, not just with this one person, but with any partner. I didn’t think I could ever be so lucky again. But fortunately, by getting back on the dating circuit and some pep talks from friends and family, I’m feeling better. I’d like to believe the scene with Princess Leia was another nudge from the Universe to not give up. I find inspiration in many places, from Instagram to music to art. All these serendipitous reminders help to convince me that hope is not lost.  I know that I will find love again, and this time with someone who is ready to be loved and treasured. I have hope, and I’m happy to live with that until I have love.

 

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