Tag Archive for: “melissa pierce”

My husband went for a guy’s weekend with his friends, they take a trip together every year. It gets increasingly more complicated for them to get together as they build careers and make families. I mostly give him my blessing, it’s important for men to keep their male friends after they get married. I read a paper about this once, how men drop their friends after marriage but women don’t, anyway, I think it’s important to have a support group outside of your marriage, friendships that don’t depend on so many details…

A few of these trips have been bachelor parties, which of course, is unnerving, but manageable.  I have to trust that as long as my husband plays by the house rules and doesn’t do something he will regret for the rest of his life, these things aren’t anything to worry about.  I did NOT feel this way about bachelor parties when I was pregnant and nursing, back then, they were most definitely off limits. You can blame it on the hormones of pregnancy if you like, but it doesn’t invalidate the way I felt.  That’s the funny thing about marriage, as it matures, as the hormones and feelings work it out, the house rules change, if just a little.

Our calendar says that my husband’s flight home was last night, I remember him telling me he’d be home in time to help take the children to school in the morning, but… he wasn’t. I called his phone but there was no answer. I had to decide between denial, worry, or anger to get me through this morning. I chose the first as my exterior expression while the other two ran through my mind in the background, setting fire to every senario. I rented a car to try delivering both children on-time to their schools (which are across the city from each other, and start within 15 minutes of one another.) This is so much easier when my husband is home, weekday mornings don’t work well without him.

On the way to the car I found a four leaf clover, a common mutation I am told, not that lucky at all, but I held onto it for a while, just in case. I opened the door to the rental car and the alarm went off. The car wouldn’t start. While the rental company tries to fix it, it becomes apparent we’re going to be late for at least one child’s school. We leave the car broken and beeping, I left the four leaf clover in the front seat, it was an accident, I considered retrieving it, but left it, telling myself it meant something to find luck and leave it in a stalled car. One child made it to school on time, one child stayed home with me. The fires of worry and anger in my mind are too mentally exhausting to withstand the bus trip and necessary school office interactions to sign the kid in as tardy. I’ve already pictured every ditch my husband’s body might be found in, there is no way I could walk into that school office alone without the weight of thinking I might always be alone bearing down on me.

After 8 hours of wondering what happened and twice as many connections to his voice mail, Mr. Pierce picks up the phone, relief washes over me. “Where are you?” I ask. “Venice Beach.” he says. “I thought you had a flight home yesterday.” I say. “It’s tonight.” he mumbles. “That’s not what you told me and that’s not what’s on the calendar.” I say. “Well, it’s tonight.” he says. “Thanks for being alive, mother fucker.” I growl in anger before hanging up the phone.

Somewhere in Venice Beach is a man half awake, probably hung over after a long weekend with his best guy friends, the ones he hardly ever gets to see. In his fog he’s probably wondering what he did to deserve such a pleasant 6am wake up call, he’s probably wondering if the house rules changed while he was snoring. But if he’s smart he’ll realize love is an unfeeling bitch at the other end of the telephone line, a really… lucky… bitch.

 

 

 

Today, someone I never met took his own life in front of his neighborhood church. Today I looked at all he presented himself to be online, a helpful, wonderful, productive citizen – and I would have never guessed he would ever have wanted to take anyone’s life, much less his own. Every piece of his online persona was so warm and wonderful. Today people that knew him are grieving, and baffled, and angry, and my heart hurts for them. Read more

From the archives: 5/7/2008

Mr. Godin,
I would like to interview you for a documentary I am compiling exploring the evolution of purpose (personal, social, technological).  Actually, I would be ecstatic honored and quite possibly wet my pants if you said yes to an interview for my film.  It’s working title at the moment is “Life in Perpetual Beta“.  We have an interesting line-up of creatives, techies, life coaches, authors etc. that we are interviewing [ Sidney Levy, Nova Spivak, Dan Pink to name a few].  I think that your personal style would really kick ass and fit with our message. (ala Dan Pink “there is no plan” or Yoda “there is no try only do”  – how social networking and collaborative economy is changing the shape of society and shifting the way we think about work).  It may turn out to be the irreverent whorish bastard child of “the secret” with a heart of gold, thus making it world famous or it may just be another blurb that gets put up on Youtube, but all the same, I’d love to get a few moments of your time to interview you.  Please do let me know if you would grant me the honor of an interview.

In gathering information for Life in Perpetual Beta the book (common’ you knew it was coming) I looked through my old interview pitch emails. I didn’t know Seth Godin from Adam at the time to tell you honestly, but my tribe told me I had to have him, so I made an impassioned plea… was even ready to pee my pants… then had the audacity to mention honor… still hard to believe, I did eventually get the interview, You can see it here.

Shadow Effect

(Amazon link)

I was recently given the movie The Shadow Effect to review. Actually, I was given the movie back in June to review now. Actually, I was supposed to review it two weeks after I received it. The deal being I get the movie for “free” and in exchange I review it and post an honest opinion about it on my blog, anything I wanted to write, as long as I post this link as well as this link (an affiliate link in case a reader wants to buy the afore mentioned movie – not mine).
And as the FTC now regulates  I should tell you that not only did I exchange a free movie about how dealing with my demons can liberate me from suffering and help me achieve all my goals and dreams, I should also tell you that the exchange is the direct result of my relationship with the folks at Debbie Ford (least the FTC fine me $11,000 for a $23.96 DVD set)

Stop mouth breathing

Stop mouth breathing

I must apologize to the lovely folks at Debbie Ford who honestly deserved a more timely and more reviewish post in exchange for thier $23.96 than this one. I can admit that of course, because I finally watched the freaking movie and went through the interactive DVD with journal in hand.  As it turns out, I’ve got procrastination and authority bashing demons out the wazoo. Thank you, back lit, black and white Debbie Ford, for the meticulously manicured inspirational movie complete with time-lapse dance scenes and Deepac Chopra for showing me the shadow and light. And Debbie, you can thank the mouth breathing FTC for instigating the writing of this long overdue review.