Thoughts

Lettuce, Turnip, The Beet.

I went to a dinner on Wednesday and got this fortune.

What’s red and green and sweet? Christmas of course… and beats beets!

There was a time not too long ago, where every meal I ate was exclusively made by someone else. I subsisted on seamless.com for 2 out of 3 of my meals. My friends and Failure Club producers would constantly make fun of me because my kitchen was out of use and I never cooked. I took cabs everywhere. I never turned on my stove. My kitchen was exclusively coffee pot and potato chip storage.

It’s not that I don’t know how to cook. Honestly, I am a PHUCKING PHENOMENAL FANTASTIC cook. Being the oldest of three kids, I often took the after school cooking duties. Friends in college often asked me to make food for them. I love food. I grew up with Chinese, Filipino, Jewish, Puerto Rican, Italian and Greek culinary influences.  It’s simply that my life didn’t leave me the time or energy to cook.

It was a vicious cycle.

Eating takeout food made me feel lethargic and is clearly not very healthy. Being stressed and constantly in a rush made me drown in happy hours and zip around in taxis. In fact, for most of last year, I had a driver, Abdul — Who I shit you not… was a Muslim born on Christmas day. (*Side story: Abdul told me I would definitely achieve my Christmas dream because he was born on Christmas. He had decided it was my fate, because a Christmas born person was brought into my life to drive me around.)  Plus living in Manhattan and eating takeout is crazy expensive. When you lack time, you end up paying for it in the end. I did. Out of the wallet and arteries.

My previous job left me little time to cook fresh food, go to the gym or have the time to take walks. I took taxi cabs and rushed everywhere.  The consequence was that at my young age, I had high cholesterol and was suffering from bad health – although not completely obvious extrinsically.

I often say that my life has completely changed. Most people think its just my career. Not working in a corporate environment. I mean everything about my life is 180 than it was a year ago. In a more positive better way.

Changing my career and being a fulltime holiday songwriter has helped to change the bad habits that took a toll on my health. Habits I’ve wanted to change for ages!

• I’ve started working out regularly. It helps to keep my voice and mind in great shape.
• I sleep better! No waking up at 4am because I am reviewing meetings had, emails read or bullshit that I used to stress about that today seems not to matter so much.
• I have time to listen when people speak to me. I enjoy the stories more.
• I take less taxi’s and walk around! I love New York City and being able to enjoy living here, even though its the only city I’ve ever known.
• I own my hours and aren’t in a constant perpetual rush. I’ve learned how to take subways, because it took me decades to realize, IT’S FASTER. When you own your own time, it’s good to optimize your travel time.
• I justified taking taxi’s because it was the only alone time I would have to listen to new music on Spotify or satellite radio. Now that my life is all music, I don’t need that taxi time anymore 🙂
• My creative mind has extended into cooking my own meals! So yes, I am still like Sandra Bullock from “The Net” and my life is mostly controlled by computer — so when I go grocery shopping, I’m often clicking new vegetables to be delivered.

I feel better. I laugh more. I smile more. I write HAPPIER music. When I started writing Christmas music in 2011, I was such a ball of stress, all the songs sounded sad and mopey! 🙂 Everyday I see the work is really becoming something quite wonderful. I spend more time with my friends, family and my puppy.

I guess I’m meandering now, but sometimes we don’t change our lives until its too late. Sometimes we endure the things in our lives that we think are good – that are really just slowly killing us.

Living Christmas everyday wasn’t just the start of chasing a dream, it was the start of improving my life. I can say that only now that I’m approaching my 1 year mark 🙂