“Your real work in life is to fill yourself ‘til your cup runneth over so that you’re never grasping and needy, clamoring and insecure.” - Oprah Winfrey

I struggled over many years without a vision for my life, and in those times, I only knew to move forward the best I could with what I had in front of me. Though I desired progress, I had no direction. Those years taught me that there is no true progress without direction. The only way to know the right direction is through understanding and accepting your own truth. Once you understand it and accept it, you can walk in it.

“Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something.”

- Peter Drucker

Grams had a dream to attend Mississippi Industrial and to sell her designs into the top department stores, but she never had the opportunity. Sometimes the past, and the world, gets in the way of your dreams, and the only way to lessen the blow of disappointment is through acceptance. Acceptance means that we acknowledge the disappointment we feel that our dreams didn’t quite work out as planned, but that we also recognize that life itself is not only about achieving them. Sometimes life’s circumstances dictates and controls, but we can still give life to the remnants.

I’m a daily coffee drinker, and my cup of coffee is like a hot companion sitting shotgun in the front seat of my accelerating life. Coffee has been my steady since I sipped my first brew as a college senior during my study abroad in Alajuela, Costa Rica, and it’s been riding with me ever since. In contrast, tea time is a taste I acquired just a few years ago. Tea time is a restful moment for reflection and connection, which I’ve come to acknowledge and respect as I’ve grown older. Consequently, this traditional tea ceremony was a very intentional stop on our stimulating but restless itinerary.

It’s that feeling around 7pm that we’re running out of time again. We can squeeze in a run on the treadmill, but that means dinner won’t be ready until 8:00 and the kids need to be in bed. It’s the law firm partner who circles the hallways every day at 6:00pm to check who’s still working, no matter how early some might have arrived in the AM. Many of us find that we don’t like the rhythm we’ve been dancing to for years, but it’s moving so quickly that we don’t know how to change it. But I did, and you can.

“The whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. The Japanese people are simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.”

— Oscar Wilde

It’s troubling to see that people who would be excellent leaders are choosing not to lead, electing instead to remain as individual contributors. Leaders, leadership structures, and unreasonable expectations have given these roles a bad name. Leadership isn’t about the glory of the leader and earning several times as much money as the people who report to you for the sake of being on top. Leadership is about bringing added value, and that’s why you get paid.

I’ve learned that dreams hide. Dreams get put on hold. Sometimes they arrive, evolve, and sometimes they go. I’ve learned to quiet my mind and listen to my soul because, while ideas and direction originate in the mind, the actions making it all possible are fueled by the soul. To accomplish a dream, you must know in your soul, without a doubt, exactly and unequivocally where you want to go.

Someone, somewhere right now, is prying open a watery can of fruit cocktail and about to take a bite. In between the toddler-sized chunks of pear cores, triangular bits of peaches, and olive colored, halved grapes, that sad someone is surveying the can for a single crushed piece of scarlet, red cherry. A little infusion of carmine turned the cherry redder- than-red to a color found nowhere in nature. Yet, to that someone, the brilliant red cherry is a delightful distraction from an uninspired life.

Despite many special memories, I left for Washington DC at the age of eighteen and never returned to live in Ohio. I remained in DC for the next eighteen years walking the hallways of government offices, museums, courthouses, and law firms. My infrequent brushes with nature were limited to occasional escapes to the Annapolis Inner Harbor, the plains of Charlottesville, or the waterfalls of Great Falls, Virginia, Biannual visits to my grandma were grounding for me. Though I couldn’t articulate it at the time, the absence of opportunities for creative expression and nature’s inspiration had a demoralizing impact.

“When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.”

— Tecumseh

Temperatures on the range dropped into the 50s at night which made for real good sleepin’ between the hours of midnight and 7am. I headed back to my room around 7:30pm after communal dinners each evening, at which time I leaned up against the wooden headboard and a stack of fluffy pillows on my cozy white sheeted king sized bed. I read and journaled until I drifted to sleep somewhere between 11pm and midnight.

Clyde was more powerful than me, and I imagine he knew it, but he never tried to intimidate. Though I held the reins, at times we’d get a bit separated from the group, and I had to let him lead me through the brush. He needed a bit of steering, but many times he knew exactly where to go. I learned to trust him, relax, and follow. Clyde was my tour guide through his land, a majestic wide open space of grasslands, cool streams, sand dunes, and pine forests. Clyde walked slowly so I could take it all in. He knew there was no need to rush because where else could we possibly need to go?

All checked in at the ranch, and alone, I sat down at a picnic table and closed my eyes to take in the warm breeze. The table was weathered from years of hosting guests at the ranch as they flocked in, one small group at a time, with their denim jeans, long sleeved sun shirts, and wide brimmed hats. The scorching summer sun, flash storms, and cool rain had left their mark. My presence at the table would leave another.

I relished being a business-minded, analytical, problem-solving professional, but I also wanted to be a successful creative artist. It felt as if each side was preventing me from moving full speed ahead in those respective directions. Forging ahead with one side didn’t feel right when it would cause me to abandon the other. What was my career without the balancing effect of music and creativity? What was my creative life without my work, my interest in business, and my oversized, idea-provoking approach?

Far too many of us wake up and allow regrets over what we didn’t do, or what dreams haven’t come true, to unsettle us and disrupt a spirit of gratitude and contentment. I used to be plagued with thoughts of how I could’ve landed this opportunity in Nashville, or achieved this or that success, if I had just networked more or tried harder. I realized this: revisiting the past with present day awareness is fruitless because it can’t change a thing, but the opportunity to use the new awareness in the present is pure gold.

Mark Twain said, "The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." Honestly, I spent a good part of my 20s and early 30s searching to figure out who and what I should become, and where I should fit in, as if life held a secret that I needed to uncover. But I had a problem: I never believed that God would make our "why" a secret that caused us to struggle an entire lifetime to find.

Here In The Highlands is a compilation of the u-turns and pathways I’ve discovered toward creating the life I’d always wanted. It typically begins with a trigger that leads to a courageous journey into one’s truest, deepest self. It then evolves into acceptance, momentum, and meaningful steps to a better life. This is my personal journal, the recording of my stories to share these revelations with you. My hope is that if you’re in need of a little push, my story will help get you moving too.