Climb every Mountain...even tho it sucks sometimes

Morning!

It's a beautiful day in Los Angeles. There is a cool breeze coming through my window, the sky is bright blue, and the sun is reflecting off the terracotta shingles. It's all good.

Plan for today is to have a voice lesson, practice guitar, work out, make some important calls, possibly play around with the show poster, and hopefully record the 'Amen' for my Unity church album. There is a lot to do, but I am full of energy and ready to 'git her done' as they say.

Although my mind and spirit are up and atom, my body is a little slow and achy today. Probably because I enthusiastically went hiking yesterday. Hiking is the LA trendy pastime. There are mountains all around us - reminding us to climb them at any minute - and yesterday, I answered the call. I was all dressed and ready to go to the gym and just ran out into my living room and said to my roomie: Let's go for a hike! Poor Evelyn could not resist my enthusiasm. We got water bottles and headed off to the 'see and be seen' hiking spot in West Hollywood, Runyon Canyon. It is a beautiful, deserty, peak with multiple trails and lots and lots of hot shirtless men running up and down it. Not a bad setting for some exercise.

But as history has shown - fran is not at her best on a mountain. All my enthusiasm faded as the trail got a little steeper and my breath got more and more shallow. I actually stopped at one point and looked at Evelyn and exclaimed: "This is hard!" haha. that makes me laugh. She loves to hike and was out hiking me by a long shot! We reached the top - and of course it was worth it. It always is. The view of LA is absolutely amazing. I've never seen anything like that. I thought, ok working hard can sometimes pay off in the end, right? Good lesson. Well, the worst part had not come yet.

We made our descent.

Now, I"m sure for most of you with normal, rubberbandy knees, going down on a hike is the easy part. You just sort of hop from rock to rock, walking/jogging your way to the bottom. For me, this part is torture. I have a long history of knee injuries and as we started walking down the hill, I began to feel more and more like an old lady. I had to take my time, testing each footing, stopping a few times to rest my knee, stepping to the side to let the agile athletes whizz past me. It was a bummer. My 'I can take on the world' attitude from the morning was somewhat shot.

But we made it down, I stretched, and dutifully iced my knees when we returned home. It was worth it, but I learned something. It's really good exercise to try to 'climb every mountain' - to face challenges head on with confidence and go toward your dreams - but no one is promising it is going to be easy. And when you get frustrated that the good part hasn't come yet, or that each step feels unsteady, or that you have specific weaknesses- you have to have PATIENCE with yourself. You have to breathe. You have to just stick with it and put one foot in front of the other. That hard part is going to pass and there is probably a great view or a candy bar or some sort of excellent experience on the other side. But whether you're walking or running towards your goal - the destination stays the same. You just have to make sure you are still grounded when you get there.

Song and quote!

How Can I Tell You - Cat Stevens

(This quote made me laugh out loud when I read it. There is something so simple and hilarious in the truth of it)

"If you have given up hope of ever being happy, cheer up!" - from Paramhansa Yogananda's book "How to Be Happy all the Time"