"Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you."
— Rumi

Book/World Trip Project Update....

So, I've been dragging my feet on finishing and launching The Green Wagon's online store. I couldn't figure out why I had lost steam and motivation for something that I used to feel super-charged by, so I started asking myself what I have been feeling passionate about lately. I do have passion for the book project/world trip project I've written about on this blog so far.

I was talking with The Green Wagon web guru, D'nelle, two days ago about this, and it all suddenly clicked together. I'm forming a non-profit that will (through donations and a % of sales from the website), fund the projects the grassroots environmentalists are working on all over the world....the grassroots environmentalists that I'll be interviewing, volunteering with and writing about on that trip around the world!

So much has changed in my life since I first opened the doors to the first Green Wagon almost three years ago, and I need the whole thing to evolve a little bit with me. Fusing these two projects together creates a symbiotic relationship that just plain makes sense & infuses both with more meaning and with the passion and motivation I've been seeking.

It is funny how if you sit with something long enough and patiently, it will start coming into focus! So, I'm introducing to you the non-profit branch of The Green Wagon that I am tentatively calling (until the paperwork all goes through & I know I can use that name) The Lorax Fund. This is my next step. I am as sure of it as I was of The Green Wagon when it was just an idea in my little ole noggin. Feeling happy and inspired today...and now I get to go play with Mister J, Miss M, and Baby N. I'm sure they'll give me some hilarious and insightful words of wisdom today that I can share later with you. Stay tuned.

Last night I met a dear friend for dinner at this amazing new restaurant called The Wild Hare on White Bridge Road. We've been meaning to have dinner for months, but both are in financially difficult situations right now. We are also busy, feisty small business owners, but we managed to make time last night. At the end of our meal, the waitress came up to us and told us that someone had taken care of our tab. It was such an unexpected and wonderful surprise that meant so much to both of us.

What I am reading right now...

I enjoyed the Chopra book on Buddha so much that when I saw The Book of Secrets at the used bookstore for a couple of dollars, I had to get it. There is a lot to think about in this book. It isn't a quick read through like Identity was. Here are some things that have really struck me so far:

"To read this sentence, several million neurons in your cerebral cortex had to form an instantaneous pattern that is completely original and never appeared before in your life."

I keep talking about this period of my life being one of transformation or metamorphosis, so this passage made me smile. I have obviously thought about metamorphosis before, but until reading this, I had never really thought about metamorphosis.

"What goes on invisibly inside the chrysalis remains deeply mysterious. The caterpillar's organs and tissues dissolve into an amorphous, souplike state, only to reconstitute into the structure of a butterfly's body that bears no resemblance to a caterpillar at all.

Science has no idea why metamorphosis evolved. It is almost impossible to imagine that insects hit on it by chance--the chemical complexity of turning into a butterfly is incredible; thousands of steps are all minutely interconnected. (It's as if you dropped off a bicycle at the shop to be repaired, and when you came back the parts had become a Gulfstream jet.)"

Horoscope Update

So, it is after midnight. I think I'm officially in the clear of my daily horoscope I posted earlier this morning, which stated that something "stranger than fiction" would happen to me today. I am glad to report that nothing particularly all that strange (this is of course relative to my bizarre life) happened today. Whew.