If you live in any big city you will understand that to get to work it is all about commute time…Well…My commute to work takes me 23 hours a day and has no car pool lanes ­­ I travel half way around the world just to get ready for work! Lets see anyone beat that!  (Wait is this a good thing record to want to hold up? Maybe if your going for The Glutton Award for 2011 “and the Punishment nominees for most traveled Jacka** are.

‘Yes that is correct, you read me right… all of last year I would routinely board a plane from my hometown here in sunny Palm Springs Ca. and three flights and a total of 23 hours four meal services and countless movies and a taxi ride later my commute would end and my work day would BEGIN. “What the…”  Then after 4 to 6 weeks in India I would do the same thing in reverse and come home “Honey I home…Sorry I’m late for dinner the traffic was just horrible!”  Home began to seem more like a transit lounge than a real home as I was always sub consciously keeping an eye on the departure board thinking I wonder if I have enough time to do this before I fly?  I was perpetually preparing for the next flight to go to work half way around the world.  Ahh the Joys of international job sharing.

When you consider home to be a transit lounge, which by it’s brief and purely functional definition is-

Transit lounge-noun

a lounge at an airport for passengers waiting between flights.

(That’s all it says in the dictionary 10 words nothing more) and you do not embrace it as the clichéd “sweet place” you begin to understand that your missing out on a lot of these vital “Homemade Benefits” the kinds of things I am sure we all take for granted, those ordinarily extraordinary kinds of everyday goings on that are insignificant to even wonder why you are so lucky to do them…they are just the needed bridge to bring your bigger and more significant moments of your life together.  Some of these forgotten, taken for granted privileges you have forgotten about and take with a nonplused irreverent attitude are;

A place you can unpack, relax and unwind,/A place that houses your own car that you can get into and go anywhere on a whim

A place where they speak your native language to anyone for any interaction with people in any part of your day. /A quiet safe place to read a book or magazine,

Connect to the Internet with your home wi-fi (no passwords or usernames to recall), /A place to revive and energize one that never closes

The only place you can get to sleep in your own bed!

These are to name but a few “Homemade Benefits’.

I cannot do most of the above list while working my day job in another country because of the simple fact that these Countries speak a different language so both the written word and the spoken ones were in a style and a manner that I could not understand. When buying anything from newspaper to a new car you traded in a different currency, worshiped different Gods and lets not get into the food!  So, there I was working and living in a place I could not tune into and when I did get home back here to California I was not using my “Homemade Benefits” to their full upright and locked position, as I always consider myself getting ready to go to the next job journey away from home. I was forever in life a transit traveler at the mercy of an authority far greater than my own.

As a transit traveler you forfeit your “homemade benefits- because I was on hold for the next trip half way around the world where I would arrive to that place and not engage because I could not communicate, so, while I have done a heap full of wonderful events truly extra-ordinary things in my life…I realized last year that I haven’t be able to collect any homemade benefits the the everday ordinarily extraordinary things in life that make everyday ordinary…extraordinary.

Last year after 30 years I decided that while I was having a killer time doing all of these wild and wonderful extraordinary events. I was not in the total me vision benefiting from that which can provide a perspective a balance and simple perspective to ones life. “Homemade Benefits” for instance.

Not having had this skill set ever put into sub conscious practice I forget they existed for regular people.  I turn going to the corner market into an event of a lifetime. Damn, I forgot how to do all the ordinarily extraordinary things you take for granted.  So it’s either a grand production or I can’t make it happen, it is the only way I know how to live.

Flash forward to present day March 4^th 2011

Now, I travel a mile and a half to work everyday  not halfway around the globe (Yes…I have stopped dancing with my day job for a short spell to give the time needed to get my solo art career up and running and more importantly  to see how you other guys do it) I wish to have my fill of “Homemade Benefits” the kind made from everyday natural ingredients that make a tasty ordinarily extraordinary.  I think I am going to need your help and maybe along the way as you teach me that less can be more and you don’t always need to make a production of going to corner store,I could pay you back by showing you just how ordinarily extraordinary you are and keeping it close to home can be!

Hey neighbor!

PS  is this too over the top?  have a loo

<iframe title=”YouTube video player” width=”640″ height=”390″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/77VghSRybtA” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

The Universe told me today (via e-mail) that-

“Thinking brand new thoughts that you’ve never thought before Doug

is wildly more conducive to creating big life changes than just thinking different varieties of the same old thoughts you have everyday.

Think about it -The Universe

I shot back a reply- “Pardon my glibness oh great Devine Miss U. but I beg to differ…just a wee bit about what you just said!

The Universe (only mildly surprised) replies- “Excuse me Douglas, what is this your saying? Are you disagreeing with Moi?

Do you wish to stay locked on the same level of the game, NEVER achieving more?

Is this yet another excuse to not be all you want to be? Cuz, I have heard them ALL before trust m Bro!”

Trying to be insightful, I continue with – “No, your great U-ness not at all, what I am eluding to is, I do not think you need the to be so radical in your approach; going out seeking a brand new vocabulary to have “thoughts you’ve never thought before” to achieve these great life changes. (Read more…)

“Days of Significance”

This morning, as I begin to rise and greet the day, I am becoming conscious and alert for the very first time in my life.  I have this beginning of an understanding that gently washes over me, it enlivens my inner being bringing me to a point of blissful alertness. Wow, this is better than Christmas!

Today will be my 1st Day of school & also my Graduation from it, it will be the day I am born (my true 1st Birthday) & my most recent Anniversary of that day. It’s the day where I will fly out on stage (for the first time ever) as that tenacious little bumblebee & the day of my 7^th Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies where I will “Thank” for the last time my 4000 volunteer cast-members. The day that I hear that I am voted “Most Talented” at my High School (a place I thought, thought me invisible) & the day I receive an Emmy Award.  It feels like the day I am going to meet Ron and Judy for the first time ever & the day I know that they are gone from my life forever.  Finally, it feels like the day I “Get it” that I will finally meet the Universe face to face… on even ground…as equals, friends and fellow Gypsies..

In short, (a little too late for that don’t you think), as I wake to consciousness this morning I feel I have reached the day of why I AM HERE, my understanding of the totality of… well, ME! I realize I am at my Being Point.

By derfinition; THE BEING POINT^TM is the always present moment of truth at which we are most fully alive and aware, at which love is chosen over fear, at which humans and organizations take control of their own destinies and give deliberate direction to their own evolution. (Read more…)

Stepping back the pace a little today.

While most people like to Power-Up for Monday, I think today I will power down a few gears and try and focus my energies on one thing and not Cosmic multi task which is what I am so used to doing, so much so that it seems normal to me. Until I start to see the people in my daily life begin to flinch when I speak to them, or they start to lag behind and are too tired or fatigued to have the desire to keep the pace with me, saying that they will catch me on the next lap just as soon as they catch their breath. (Read more…)

Wow, I just read yesterday’s blog. It is no wonder I have been having a feeling of déjà vu on steroids.

For the past week, I mean not just a feeling like this moment I have lived before but ALL OF LAST WEEK, EVERY SECOND, EVERY MINUTE, EVERY DAY… I felt, no, I KNEW, what was going to happen next.

I absolutely without question knew. It got to a point where I was telling the Universe what she forgot! (Read more…)