La Morenita Nómada

This week will be a good one. I have a lot of good intentions and a lot of good motives. I intend to get a lot done for work and personal matters, and my motivation is myself, my faith and my family. I have a lot to give thanks, and this morning I realized that as I sipped my green smoothie for breakfast. However, I tend to focus on the negative more than the positive, and the negativity tends to overshadow the good things I want to do and have. A few weeks back, a dear FB friend, who is also a very strong Christian woman, suggested I do "Soul Detox" on the Bible App, which is a bible devotional about how to think positive thoughts. I did OK on the first 14 days, then fell off from it (Sorry, Bonnie!). Well, this morning, I decided I would finish up the devotional. Sometimes what is considered negative or pessimistic is actually being realistic. And there's nothing wrong with that. However, there needs to be a balance and I, for one, tend to focus on the negative o...

I am the type of person that likes to get to know people on a personal level, sometimes for the sole purpose of finding out if they do something that I like enough to emulate. Some people might consider that as lame. Why not be original? My take is that there is nothing new under the sun ( Ecclesiastes 1:9 ) . Since there is no such thing as original, I might as well find out what works for others and see if it works for me. And for me, there is a certain level of excitement that comes along with exchange of ideas, especially when ideas are of value.   As of late, I’ve been reading Gretchen Rubin’s “ Better than Before ” and “ The Happiness Project ”, books focused on research-based ways to form habits. In her book “The Happiness Project” she lists her own version of the 12 commandments to live by. So, in honor of one my own commandments, Emulate the good in others , I have decided that today I’ll post my own version of my commandments to live by. 1.    ...

I was once told that not everyone is meant to go to college. I was told this by a Chilean Jew who had beautiful curly blond hair and nerdy glasses to go with, what seemed to me, her snarky intellect. She told me this as a matter of fact after hearing me chatting excitedly to my co-workers about a group of girls from Hispanic farmworker families I had recently formed as part of my special project for community development. My plan was to engage these high school girls and inspire them to graduate high school and pursue higher education. Maybe she meant no harm by it, but that day onward I lost any interest in trying to impress her. Why couldn’t she have just let me be fueled by my inspiration? And what was the point of even telling me that?   Why was she more deserving than my group of friends who may have come from what most would consider impoverish backgrounds, yet had a lot of potential? I was determined to make a difference in their life. Unfortunately, the group disbanded...