Pieces of Me...

Image by timfotography.com via Flickr

So anyway, someone asked me what it is about a person that makes me feel he/she is worthy of being hired in our company...I got a chance to really think that through and can comfortably say that aside from the interviews--the questions asked, body language, eye-contact, gestures and the reference checks, in addition to the initial review of qualifications, at the very end, usually it boils down to one thing--gut instinct!

Of course during the interview, I'm also checking for evidence or whether the candidate is likeable, self-aware, have a sense of humor, is rational, flexible and in tune with his/her surroundings. A quick handshake in the first few seconds is also key. Of course, not all final decisions are made by me, but those whom I had the final decision to choose, usually ended up working out very well. Truth is, I also think that there were some aspects of their personality that either fit well with my own or with the team they will join. Sadly, ever so often one snags a con-artist.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine during which we agreed upon the awesome power of silence. The {photo }captures how powerful, beautiful and golden "Silence" truly is. I think there are times when a little self-imposed silence can truly help us to reconnect with ourselves.

Image by ...-Wink-... via Flickr

“Every cell in my body is loved and healthy” Your aura is simply an extension of you. When strong it acts as a protective shield. When fragile or damaged it can leave you drained, unwell and feeling disconnected from yourself.
~Carole Fogarty~

I spent most of Halloween weekend and then some, in bed with a cold. I watched Final Destination 4, Jeepers Creepers 1 & 2 and the cult flick Carrie which aired on TV. Two days off from work of this icky illness had me ready to tackle the rest of the week by wednesday. The morning started out with me having an icky sporadic cough and some sneezing but, a quick airing out of the house and letting some fresh air in was as welcoming as the fresh air I met when I walked outside. The rest of the day I felt completely rejuvenated.

By HAL NIEDZVIECKI

One day this past summer, I logged on to Facebook and realized that I was very close to having 700 online “friends.” Not bad, I thought to myself, absurdly proud of how many cyberpals, connections, acquaintances and even strangers I’d managed to sign up.
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But the number made me uneasy as well. I had just fallen out with a friend I’d spent a lot of time with. I’d disconnected with a few other ones for the usual reasons — jobs in other cities, family life limiting social time. I was as much to blame as they were. I had a 2-year-old kid of my own at home. Add to that my workaholic irritability, my love of being left alone and my lack of an office environment or mysterious association with the Masons from which to derive an instant network of cronies. I had fewer friends to hang out with than I’d ever had before.

So I decided to have a Facebook party. I used Facebook to create an “event” and invite my digital chums. Some of them, of course, didn’t live in Toronto, but I figured, it’s summer and people travel. You never know who might be in town. If they lived in Buffalo or Vancouver, they could just click “not attending,” and that would be that. Facebook gives people the option of R.S.V.P.’ing in three categories — “attending,” “maybe attending” and “not attending.”

After a week the responses stopped coming in and were ready to be tabulated. Fifteen people said they were attending, and 60 said maybe. A few hundred said not, and the rest just ignored the invitation altogether. I figured that about 20 people would show up. That sounded pretty good to me. Twenty potential new friends.

On the evening in question I took a shower. I shaved. I splashed on my tingly man perfume. I put on new pants and a favorite shirt. Brimming with optimism, I headed over to the neighborhood watering hole and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Eventually, one person showed up.

I chatted with my new potential friend, Paula, doing my best to pretend I wasn’t dismayed and embarrassed. But I was too self-conscious to be genuine. I kept apologizing for the lack of attendance. I looked over my shoulder every time the door opened and someone new came in. Paula was nice about it, assuring me that people probably just felt shy about the idea of making a new friend. She said she herself had almost decided not to come.

“And now you have me all to yourself,” I said, trying to sound beneficent and unworried. We smiled at each other awkwardly.

We made small talk. I found out about her job, her boyfriend, her soccer team. Paula became my Facebook friend after noticing I was connected to a friend of hers. She thought it would be interesting to drop by and meet me.

Eventually we ran out of things to say. Anyway, she had to work in the morning. I picked up the tab on her Tom Collins and watched as she strode out into the night, not entirely sure if our friendship would grow.

After she left, I renewed my vigil, waiting for someone to show. It was getting on 11 o’clock and all my rationalizations — for example, that people needed time to get home from work, eat dinner, relax a bit — were wearing out.

I would learn, when I asked some people who didn’t show up the next day, that “definitely attending” on Facebook means “maybe” and “maybe attending” means “likely not.” So I probably shouldn’t have taken it personally. But the combination of alcohol and solitude turned my thoughts to self-pity. Was I really that big of a loser? Or was it that no one wants to get together in real life anymore? It wasn’t Facebook’s fault; all those digital pals were better than nothing. For chipping away at past friendships and blocking honest new efforts, you really have to blame the entire modern world. People want to hang out with you, I assured myself. They just don’t have the time.

By now it was nearing midnight. My head was clouded by drink, and it was finally starting to sink in: no one else was coming. I’d have to think up some other way to revitalize my social life. I ordered one more drink.

The beer arrived, a British import: Young’s Double Chocolate Stout. I raised my glass in a solitary toast and promised myself I’d spend less time online. Then I took a gulp: the beer was delicious but bittersweet. Seven hundred friends, and I was drinking alone.

Last weekend was all about birthdays. So many intriguing Librans...It was a time to celebrate, to give thanks, to realize the power of love that one derives from the special people in our personal spheres and to recognize the well-wishers near and far; it was a time to hope for many more to come. My soul-mate and I celebrated our birthdays together. We equally spoiled each other to the max with lovely gifts and dazzling memoirs. Special thanks to Bunny and all of you who sent birthday cheers!

Hello All! It's me, { Carla ☺ }again. How was your day? Mine started out a bit blah. It was as if the morning had already entered mid-afternoon, that time of the day when things seem to drag on. I needed rescuing and so I sought inspiration by listening to some ♬♬. Seriously, music has so much power to change people...Jimi Hendrix once said: "Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music."

............Words of Wisdom
"Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human."
- Anthony Robbins............

A friend of mine asked me about things I ♥. Having asked several times, I decided to put a list together.It could be longer but this☟ is what I compiled so far:

............Some things I ♥:
Freshly baked wheat bread
Hot-Cross Buns
Coconut cookies
Being cuddled
Nina Simone
Hazelnut Coffee
House Plants and fresh flowers
Milkshakes, sundaes with caramel & nut topping
Geometric shapes and polka-dots
Black and white movies (anything with Audie Murphy)
Period Dramas
Cushions
Gothic clothes
Ribbons
Sound of rain while sleeping
Love letters
Music
Magazines
People who listen to me
Art & Architecture
Gargoyles and other mythical creatures
Earrings
Christmas Eve in Jamaica

Jessica Hische's Daily Drop Cap project illustrates her creative typography skills which you can see via her elegant drop cap designs. Jessica even allows bloggers to use her 'caps, provided the usage limitations are adhered to.

The current obsession on Poppytalk in celebration of Fall is "yellow," as evidenced by the gorgeous collection featured. Visit and click through to more photos by the contributors to this dreamy Yellow-Monday collection.

I'm totally loving the images served up for the Weekend Edition at {Creature Comforts} - Title: "a delicate repose"

Carla's Bubble Tweet

Not sure if I can recapture my youthful tush but hey, some things might be worth a try. There's no beating around the bush {here}.Simply put, you might be able to

{restore} your tush to its former glory (or to heights previously unscaled). Check it out!

{Blog}

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college adult person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I'd become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that's when life will really begin.

And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.

I love movies about "The Big Moment” the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn't what it looked like in the movies.

John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat. The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearls. And strung together, built upon one another, lined up through the days and the years, they make a life, a person. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies.

But this is what I'm finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I'm waiting for, that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets. This pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience.

I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without even realizing it.

I don't want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That's the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don't even see it, because I'm too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting.

The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it.

I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage and parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look.

Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you've been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you're having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull off the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted.

Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is.

You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural.

I love this DIY bouquet shared via Design*Sponge.

I'm loving the paintings of Ben Walker. They're so unique! Have a look at his gallery here.

I came across Toolwi at Killer Startups. It's a whole new way of adding elegant bling to your blog. Check it out!

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Books In New York: Books of Wonder: "Books of Wonder"






Via Eric Heywood's Books in New York
Books of Wonder is New York City's oldest and largest independent children's bookstore, as well as the city's leading specialist in children's literature both new and old. They feature a gallery of rare and original prints and illustrations from classic children's books in the back of the store, along with a beautiful assortment of vintage kid's books. Plus: The in-house Cupcake Cafe provides the preferred stimulants for all ages: caffeine for parents and frosting for the kids!"