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I remember tacking up a handwritten note on my fridge that simply said:
You can have a good day or a bad, it’s your choice.
Kinda scary being in charge of your day, huh?
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
We were happy to see my mother pull into the driveway and eager to help her bring bags of groceries into the house.
In the kitchen, she unloaded two bunches of bananas and placed them in a bowl on the counter. I immediately reached for one and she snagged it out of my hand.
“Don’t eat that,” she said. “I just bought them.”
This made no sense. Were we supposed to look at them?
What is the waiting period between when food is purchased to when eating it is acceptable? Logical answer: None. Eat the banana today.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
We joke about bad hair days, fat days and sagging skin. No matter our age, despite how informed we are about touch-up, Photoshop and air-brushing, we still compare ourselves to what we see in magazines. Can we stop this, please?
We’re intelligent and smart enough to at least judge ourselves with people who graduated in the same decade as us. “She’s a few years younger, but looks great for someone voted Most Likely To Grow Saddlebags,” we say, and then check the mirror to compare hairlines and underarm flaps. Yeah, let’s stop doing that, too.
Face it, by the time our 40s come around, it’s best to make peace with Mother Nature. Graying hair, wrinkles and boob slump? Signs you’ve weathered the storm and arrived to the other side. And the soft belly that refuses to budge no matter how many Zumba classes we take or miracle green shakes we choke down? Not much defense against binge watching Making A Murderer or downing a sleeve of Oreos (with the green shake).
To combat the aging process, we’ll try another lotion or potion; sure this one is the Holy Grail. After all it’s endorsed by a celebrity and she looks ageless! We try it for a week, look in the magic mirror and over-analyze the results. Disappointment usually follows.
I’m all for slowing things down and keeping things in place.
I once tried a Miracle Undergarment that promised to contain, lift and shape what time had undone naturally. The thing cut off blood flow from under my rib cage to my thighs. All this torture to fit into a really beautiful dress two sizes too small. Okay, it was on sale. There wasn’t another in my size and I truly believed I’d lose the ten pounds before the event. Can I get an Amen Sistah?
When I ordered a Champagne cocktail, the bartender asked if I needed a paramedic. “You’re very pale,” he said, “and you’re winded. Can you breathe okay?”
No asshole I can’t. I’m too busy trying to impress everybody with my old lady figure jammed into a straight jacket. If he offered a pair of scissors I’d have cut the thing off right in front of him.
What happened to the days when everything stayed tight and perky in place without help? Time happened. I understand a loose wrapping comes with the territory, and I’m burning daylight by obsessing over it. Enough.
Swap out the negative words to describe your beautiful aging body. Giggle and sway. Grunt when you pick something off the floor and groan when you manage to stand back up.
We are distinguished, silver foxes with mature figures. Check that out in the mirror. It’s the sexy look all the secure, sophisticated and accomplished women (and men) are wearing these days.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: Courtesy: Marta Powlik
Let’s assume you were all Gung Ho to start a house project, a new business, to write a book, an extreme exercise program, etc. You got up early every day, couldn’t wait to get to it. This went on for a few days, weeks, or months.
One day, your interest wasn’t there anymore. So you went on to something else. And something else, and something else. I’m guilty. There are multiple DIY projects scattered around my house in various stages of completion. I don’t consider myself a quitter. I prefer multipreneur without boundaries!
During my years publishing a small community newspaper, a dear friend hand wrote this note for me: “It takes no talent to quit”. For probably twenty years it hung on the wall behind my desk as a reminder that starting something required a commitment. And if I planned to quit because things got hard or didn’t work out how I’d planned, perhaps I shouldn’t start at all. The note seemed to wag its finger every time I wanted to quit the very thing I couldn’t wait to start.
But here’s the thing. Of course if were easy everyone would do it. You may be so close to success you can practically taste victory. People may be on your back or talking behind it, analyzing and criticizing, not understanding why you started this thing in the first place.
Sometimes to bridge the gap between beginning to end you need to fight through the hard times.
This is true whether it’s related to your work or it’s, as they say, personal. Whatever you started may (or not) have a natural course and suffer a natural death, outside your control. Beyond those, you are the driving force of your success.
To keep from becoming a serial starter of projects and finisher of none, give yourself a private pep talk. Remember what made you so jazzed in the beginning, and why you will beat yourself silly if you quit before reaching a successful outcome.
Today, give some thought to whatever it is you want to quit.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Happy New Year 2016!
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year!
Today is our youngest day on Earth.
Digest that for a second.
Because it’s true.
The idea behind BE F.A.T. started as a casual conversation that grew into a simple mantra that freaking changed my perspective on life.
Instead of signing off my emails with ‘Have a nice day’, I started writing: B.A.T. (Be Awesome Today). A friend was having a less than stellar day so I added an extra punch: the ‘F’, which got a laugh. In a skinny obsessed society I hope you get the tongue-in-cheek of BeFAT without being offended.
Which almost happened at a convention when a rather large woman got all in my face and pointed to my name tag. “Explain that.” I’d written my name, drew a smiley face and in big letters, #BeFAT. She Bobbleheaded me as I explained the evolution of BeFAT. Satisfied, she smiled. “Well, that’s f-g awesome.”
When I get pissed off (rare these days) or become impatient (uhm, sometimes) or feel lazy (too often!), this little voice in my head says: “Shut Up!” followed by “BE F.A.T.”
Today I sign off emails and end phone calls with #BeFAT and #FYA (Find Your Awesome).
It’s a short, laser pointed kick-in-the-pants reminder to Be Fucking Awesome Today, before the sand in the hourglass runs out. To appreciate the finite time on this planet and LIVE your life.
Let’s face it: Life is a crap shoot. Any day the knock might come on your door, and just like that, the party is over. You’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen it happen. None of us is special enough to escape the inevitable. But we’re all great, wonderful creatures, special enough to grab this short-term existence by the balls and run with it.
No matter your path in this life you will affect somebody’s life. It might not be big or newsworthy, published or screened. You may not get your name etched in stone on a building (except a headstone!) or have a bridge named after you, but your life matters big time to someone. Enough that you should want to squeeze in as much as you can and love as many people as your humanity is capable of. Even if it’s yourself.
Not sure about you my friends, but there’s lots I want to do before I go TITS UP.
BE F.A.T. forced me to list my blessings, for real this time. To try to make TODAY matter, which is especially hard on days when unpleasant things happen. And if we live long enough, shitty things and sucky people and ugly situations always happen.
The silver-lining, and there’s always one, is the ability to choose to shift our thinking. Make the experience, good or bad, count for something.
Agree to practice less pissing and more praising.
I don’t know much, but trust me on this one: If you let it, BE F.A.T. will become an acronym that haunts you every time you want to hurl something, punch somebody, give in or give up. So basically, it’s your daily reminder to go for it!
Screw the little voice in your head, the naysayers, Debbie Downers, self-loathing talks, man/woman-created obstacles, all the junk, and let this be the time you take a chance on YOU.
Let the little voice call to you, my friend. Be Fucking Awesome Today. And every day.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
#FYA (Find Your Awesome)
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
The laughter of small children is contagious. Peek-a-boo games or weird noises by animals or adults (ripping paper or blowing your nose) send kids into hysterics.
You can hardly watch a child in full out giggle mode without being drawn in. The next thing you know you’re laughing too. I dare you not to be childlike.
The distinction between children and adults who laugh out loud is a matter of self-control and decorum. Due to their lack of world experience, children have neither. They will laugh wherever and whenever anything tickles them. In adults, when alcohol or pratfalls are involved this distinction becomes moot.
A few years ago, several very mature women, and myself, got the giggles at a wake. Most inappropriate, I agree.
We had visited the family, given our condolences and left the building, like proper adults. So far, so good.
It’d been a while since we’d seen each other. Outside on the newly installed front porch we caught up on each others’ lives. As one of the women said her good-byes and stepped away, a loose floorboard sprung up towards her face, just like in the cartoons. Although she managed to avoid a plank to the face, one of the women snorted. I tried to squash my laugh, which came off like a cross between a fart and a burp. That sent another woman into tearful hysteria, and in no time, the train roared out of the station.
What could only be described as rude behavior by a pack of ignorant hyenas, actually was a huge release of pent up sadness. To regain our composure we averted each others’ eyes until one side look and an off-handed quip started the engine all over again.
If you’re around the right kinds of people, prolonged and uncontrollable laughter is childishly fun.
Dressed in black at a wake, well, we drew some interesting looks. A lovely gentleman put his arm around my friend in an effort to comfort her tears. This sent two of us into a wail. One of us whizzed, and the train circled once again.
Remember the Chuckles the Clown Funeral episode on the Mary Tyler Moore Show?
Yeah, this about sums it up. We were Mary Tyler Moores, laughing like children.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and prose: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: Pixabay
Original graphic and prose: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: Mayur Gala/Unsplash
Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas.
Be F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Let’s sit down to an old-fashioned potluck dinner and open a few bottles of wine. You bring your favorite dish, the special one you make for your family during your religious holidays or regional celebrations, and I’ll bring mine. I hope you will love the Mudiga steaks – breaded and fried beef cutlets. I’ll spoon on homemade tomato sauce, grated Parmesan cheese and serve it on a fresh Italian bread roll made by a local baker, who also happens to be a relative of mine.
While we pass around the dinner plates and open another bottle of wine, I listen while you tell me everything about your life -– your parents, the house you grew up in, the kids in your neighborhood, your longtime friends, your siblings, and crazy relatives too. I learn how you spent summers, places you’ve traveled and places you hope to visit someday.
You tell me the music that makes you want to dance and we agree that 70s music still holds up. You tell me about a particular song that gets you every time you hear it on the radio. The artist must have crawled inside your head to write lyrics. Every word, every note, perfectly reflects the feelings of the day you lost someone close to your heart. I reach out and take your hand; the same song speaks to me too.
What do you like to read? Historical fiction? Courtroom drama? Satire? Biographies? What kinds of movies do you watch? Goofball comedies? Anything with a Superhero? Sappy Rom-Coms? Really? There’s so much we have common!
We tell a few funny stories about our work life; from the first job we had as a kid to our secret dreams to start a business.
You tell me a joke I don’t get but once you translate it we come to the conclusion that knock-knock jokes are terrible in any language, in any country on Earth.
Our meal is ended, our bellies satisfied and the wine bottles empty. We have run out of conversation for now except to admit, to our surprise, that we are more alike than different. We are both sensitive, kind, conflicted, fallible, loving, vulnerable, engaging, needy, compassionate, interesting human beings trying to live our lives in the best way we know how.
It’s not always hearts and flowers and sunshine and lollipops, this world of ours. But our children and the generations that follow deserve a place of kindness and peace, a place where their dreams and hopes and aspirations are given a fertile foundation to grow. We both believe in the future. We know we can do better. We must.
Before our dinner, before we laid eyes on each other, separated by miles, it was easy to mistrust you, despise you, and misunderstand you. We feared who and what we did not know. But sitting across from me, sure, we look different, wear strange clothing; you smell unique, our speech has a lilt or a twist that takes a bit of concentration to understand.
During this dinner you served me and I served you, like we would any friend. When I spoke you listened to me; then I listened to you. And when I didn’t understand your point of view, you explained it. When you disagreed with me, you were polite and allowed me my position and I yielded to you. Like real friends.
After this dinner we concluded that we want to live in peace, in harmony, in tune with one another, to accept each others flaws and points of view with the respect humans offer each other. Because we are all people on the same planet. Because that’s what humankind does to keep the planet alive and well.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Festive Holiday Lights
Wherever you live there is sure to be the neighborhood where the light displays rival the Las Vegas strip. Pile up family and friends, grab a few treats and take a drive or walk to see the lights. Something magical happens to one and all when the best show in town is free. Nix the commercialism for a night and marvel at the wonder of the simplicity of Christmas. Perks from the homeowners — like hot chocolate and cookies — make it an extra holiday tradition.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Image: Pixabay
Copyright 2012-2016 Stephanie DelTorchio All rights reserved.
Thanks Joe. See you soon. Cheers! Stephanie