Last month, Nike Women presented a few different topics to choose from for the Nike Women Make Yourself Movement campaign, which I began writing for this year.  The options were:

1. Tell us about one person in your life who has inspired you to Make Yourself healthy and fit.

2. How do you maintain your fitness/health routine while traveling?

3. What was your biggest regret or mistake when you first started exercising? What tips would you give others looking to adopt a lifestyle of fitness?

I immediately gravitated toward number three. The words “biggest regret” resonated. Why? Because I write about learning from my mistakes often, perhaps too often. This form of writing is sometimes referred to as confessional journalism. Of course, I do find catharsis in creatively confessing my most unforgettable failures to the Internets, and pouring all my flaws onto the kitchen floor like they’re some sort of platter waiting to be feasted upon by the vipers of innocence and freedom. But here’s the thing; while we should learn from our mistakes, thinking too much about them can lead to regret, and regret gets really old and boring after awhile. In short, I’m over it.

The worst thing we can do to ourselves is beat ourselves up repeatedly over mistakes we made in the past. Guilt kills. In my book, guilt is every bit as tragic and lethal as greed. Like greed, guilt makes us myopic and closes us off from opportunities to give and receive.

While I see value in confessional journalism and love the sentiment, I’m beginning to see greater possibilities for achieving positive results from celebratory journalism. (It’s a new thing I just made up:-) What would happen if the bloggersphere became inundated with posts about all the tasty personal accomplishments we make on a weekly basis? What if we proactively celebrated how beautifully human we are at least twice a day? I think good things would happen.

In April, my friend and brilliant writer Carol Quinn wrote a post about learning from success versus learning from failure. In her post, Carol highlights the behavior of her two beloved canines, and she writes:

Why not learn from our achievements instead of our failures? Isn’t that a better path to take for self-education?

While it’s impossible to avoid failure, I have learned the fine art of the “sidestep.”  I delay action until my chance of success is high. And if I take a leap and fall flat on my face, I make sure to reward myself.

I love this.

When was the last time you rewarded yourself?  I’m not condoning gluttony, but maybe some of us could benefit from rewarding ourselves more on a regular basis. I know I could. The reward could be as simple as listing all the positive actions you took in building your business, writing down all the characteristics you like about yourself, or counting the times you made someone smile in one day.

Celebrate yourself. Reward yourself. Make yourself. It’s what you were born to do.

In case you’re wondering, my tips for adopting a healthy lifestyle of fitness are:

• Exercise in the morning. Whether it’s running, stretching, yoga, or hula hooping, do it in the morning if you can. Getting into the groove of a morning workout regimen is challenging at first, but it becomes invigorating in a short amount of time. Your metabolism will reward you kindly if you start exercising more in the a.m.
• Drink water ferociously. I know having to use the restroom frequently is a pain, but dehydration headaches are greater pains and can lead to illness. If it feels like you’re drinking too much water, you’re probably just at the cusp of drinking enough.
• Stretch before you go to bed. After a long day of sitting at your laptop or behind your car steering wheel, your body is more than likely all crunched up in a ball of clogged energy. Turn on some mellow music, and take 15 minutes to S T R E T CH your limbs before you lie down at night. You’ll rest better, which is good news, since you’ll be waking up in the morning to exercise.
• If you’re having problems relaxing when you go to bed, take 10 deep breaths, and exhale each time in counts of 20 seconds. Works like a charm.
• Dance naked in your house. Just do it. It feels good.

Here is my favorite ode to learning from love and success. It’s great for doing those night time stretches I just mentioned.

The bass line began to vibrate harder against the back wall of the smoke filled room. I smirked lightly and raised my right eyebrow. “I try to be.”

When we walked outside to get some air I thought at any minute someone from his entourage would come scoop him away. But he stayed.

He (we’ll call him Chance) was different than I remembered. He was relaxed, gave impeccable eye contact, and wasn’t twitching for a cigarette every two minutes like he was when I’d interviewed him at the junket for a political thriller he was promoting the previous year. His voice was deep and calm and slow. He said my fast-paced sharp New York tone scared him. A few people in the crowd approached us to shake his hand, as we exchanged dreams in the corner outside by the heat lamps. When they began to stumble over in droves, we exited stage left.

He grabbed my hand. “I’ll call you when I’m back in the country,” he said, opening my car door.

“That’s three months away,” I replied softly. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Why would you say that?”

“The whole world wants a percentage of you. You’re busy. It’s ok. I’m really happy we met again.”

He put his hands on my shoulders and gazed down at me. “How someone so elegant and graceful can be so devoid of trust baffles me.”

***************************************************************************************************************************

Three months later, I found myself waltzing with Chance outside a row of dive bars in Los Feliz. He hummed a song by The Zombies while stepping in three-quarter time.

“I studied dance for 15 years,” I said. “I’m great on my own, horrible with a partner.”

“Why’s that?”

“I have control issues.”

“Everyone does. The question is, ‘are you going to give yourself a chance to trust for once?’”

“If I trust someone who doesn’t lead me the right way I could fall, or we both could for that matter.”

“If you learn to trust yourself it doesn’t matter what I do. You’ll stay standing, regardless. And don’t worry about me. I get chased, shot at, and tortured for a living.”

It was after that particular Chance encounter that I realized how much I second guessed myself. I was constantly doubting people professionally and socially, because I didn’t have faith in my own ability to follow through. I wasn’t always of that mindset. I believe a few personal tragedies, hard layoffs, and bad deals triggered a mentality laced with excuses and debt. Afraid of failure, I often stopped in my tracks along the way to what could have been the summit. Sure, I’d done some interesting things in my career during that time in my life, but I hadn’t created anything of my own. In my mind, I hadn’t made any meaningful contributions to the world around me, and I desperately wanted to more than anything.

After our moment on the sidewalk, I learned how to fall. The night was warm and fluid. The streets were wet, almost as slippery as ice. I suddenly thought to myself, ‘if we’re going to walk across thin ice, which we often do, we may as well dance.’”

*************************************************************************************************************************

Nike Women recently asked me to participate in the Nike Make Yourself Movement by writing a blog post about how I’ve made myself into who I am today.  Truth be told, I’m only just starting to feel that I’m applying the life lessons I’ve faced over the years. One of the fundamentals is trust – trust in the calling that my heart has bestowed upon my head and hands to exploit the convergence of capitalism and activism for everything it’s worth, and trust in the good and beauty I see in people every day.

I regularly tell friends to chase their dreams until they’re close enough to swallow them whole. “Your visions and goals need you,” I say. “They need you as much as you need them.”  This much I know is true. You wouldn’t have the desire unless you could manifest the desire. If you trust in yourself, you can stand on your own, show up and follow through. And if you can stand on your own, you can dance with or without a partner as elegantly and gracefully as any chance encounter with inspiration will allow.

I plan to write a few more installments for this blog series. First comes trust. Then comes…a whole lot more.

to the lake in the East lit with Silver that I’ll bathe in until my hair no longer weaves through the rugged hands of your hard time.  

LA,

 I surfed your unicorn-rippled waves, and I sank in your velvet smog. 

It’s true, I tried to leave you.  

But we both knew I’d be back, my joie de vivre, because no one in this world wants to love and fight me like you do.

 You – offroading my dangerous curves with the arms and wheels of a soldier and the eyes of an innocent young man. 

You knew I ran with wild horses when I was the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. 

A Los Feliz dance of second chances…

Pulp Fiction eyes painted on the wall….

As a child I knew I’d come to you, and you’d be waiting for me to make mountains fall.

LA,

I know at times you grow weary because they’ll never stop running to you for gold and a glimmer of candy-appled fruition.

LA,

in spite of a demoralized market, you’re still the place for dreamers and magicians.

LA,

you may just be a cowboy with poetry and a majesty for all the lost boys, and when I hike through the canyon, I summon the Duende with your sweat,

your wings,

your noise.

LA,

you may do your best to drink me under the table, where I vibrate naked, asleep and dreaming, but if you recall, you painted love on my arms - red-lettered, rhapsodized and seething.

(Rendering a warrior for all the wild at heart)  

We’ve come a long way LA,

from facing the mugger of Miracle Mile, who yanked me to the ground by my hair, to throwing fire at the paparazzi, to singing with sex-waxed jazz and savoirfaire.  

We’ve come a long way LA, 

from the healing hands of Venice that opened my third eye to serendipity and November sand, to another soldier, cowboy, and lost angel, who may risk breaking open again.

-Melissa Jun Rowley

I was 12 years old when I smoked my first Marlboro Red and chased my first pint of Jack Daniels with Mountain Dew.  I began practicing these habits regularly with my friends, who were all three to five years older than me, at a place down the street from my house called the Dead End.  It was called the Dead End because that’s exactly what it was, literally and metaphorically. The spot was essentially the stone pillar remains of a train bridge that ran across the river in my hometown.  After the bridge was torn down, the remote space left behind made for fantastic stomping grounds, in which to make noise, avoid doing homework, and hang out with boyfriends.  During my time at the Dead End, my era of ripening adolescence, I learned what it is to be self-destructive, and why being bad feels so good. 

I am sure there are several sophisticated psychological theories as to why I shoplifted, hitch-hiked, and snuck out of the house late at night to go to heavy metal concerts, where I would sit on the shoulders of strange men twice my age, and wave my cigarette lighter in the air to the latest and greatest ‘90s power ballads.  Some say boredom was the culprit.  Others say this bittersweet rebellion was born of pain.  I don’t dismiss either charge as a possibility.  However, I believe the core of my angst mainly stemmed from an insatiable longing to feel free.  Aside from love, freedom is the most exhilarating force one can have the pleasure of embracing.

Many years have passed since my Dead End days, and I have long outgrown the penchant for Marlboro Reds and Jack Daniels/Mountain Dew.  But I don’t think it’s coincidental that several of my most memorable tastes of freedom have come laced with drops of danger.  I don’t believe the seemingly random attraction I had for men with lethal addictions during my 20s was random at all.  I associated love with freedom (and still do), and up until recently, I associated love with darkness (and barely any light).  

One day I woke up and decided that I wanted to change.  I wanted to become a magical sorceress of light, who could bestow nothing but good tidings on all the earth and unto myself.  What I didn’t take into account is that there is no light without dark, and that any kind of positive transition like the one I was initiating takes time, more time than I wanted to allow.  Patience is not my strong suit, especially when it comes to my own self-evolution. 

Not long ago, I promised someone who showed me what it is to bask in freedom without darkness or danger that I would always be his lighthouse on the Bay.  I failed.  Miserably.  He sailed far out to sea, where I loved to hear the fog horns calling for him.  A storm rolled in on his way back to shore, and instead of shining brighter, I let a torrential downpour distinguish my flame. The air filled with a June gloom so heavy that there was no way he could have made his way back to me.  The old black rituals I practiced back when I stood face to face with danger came into play, and my someone nearly drowned. Forgiveness over time is not unimaginable, but the damage done is irrevocable. 

My first great mistake in this journey to finding and maintaining a healthy balance of light and dark, and knowing the difference between danger and freedom, was promising to be HIS anything.  We do not need to be anyone’s light or anyone’s rock or anyone’s peace.  This cannot be the sole purpose for wanting to evolve. We must strive to be all those elements for ourselves, and let all the beautiful horizons that will present themselves as a result do so naturally. 

My second error was projecting the past onto an innocent bystander.  My third is dwelling on the first and second.  So now…I focus on the lesson learned from expecting too much too fast, and I try to turn wrong to right.

If I have learned anything over the years it is that the pendulum swings both ways, and if you do not learn how to slow it down it knocks you on your ass.  I’ve also come to accept that I will always have a dark side.  I will never be the girl next door.  And I may not be anyone’s lighthouse on the Bay, but I will undoubtedly forever be that girl waving her cigarette lighter in the air, carrying a little dark, a little light, and a whole lotta love.   

The first time I met Michael Franti I was leaning against a sweat-covered swaying wall about ready to pass out from exhaustion inside the classic live New Orleans music venue the Howlin’ Wolf during JazzFest ’03, the best vacation of my life to date.  It was 5:00AM, and I hadn’t slept in at least 48 hours.  I was down south promoting his group, Michael Franti & Spearhead, as well Jurassic 5 and Blackalicious.  Franti and company put on what was probably the most energized, soul-diving, heart-pumping, love-juicing show I have had the pleasure of seeing.  Mountains moved, the Red Sea parted, the stars aligned, and the crowd jumped with the power of one core.  

After his performance, Franti approached me to say thank you for helping out with the merchandise booth.  I was so out of it that I didn’t even realize who he was at first, until suddenly I felt an ominous other-worldly aura engulfing me.  It was him.  It was this human shaking my hand, who emitted such a positive inner-light that I almost couldn’t see straight.  I felt dizzy.  

“Wow, I want what he has,” I thought.  ”I want to possess that kind of magic.”  An influential activist, an earth-shattering performer, and an angel’s soldier among men – Michael Franti is the genuine article.  I’m just glad I was able to meet him at the 11th Power to the Peaceful Festival, and make up for the first time we met when I nearly fell on top of him six years ago.

You made a woman out of me, Manhattan.  You – with your iron will, mammoth hands, and enchantingly unforgiving height.  It’s no wonder you were a soldier in another life, possessing the best and worst of times, purple triumphs, and the most lurid crimes.

Unwittingly, I fell into your fold twice when I most needed lessons in humility.  Fearless and unstoppable, I stomped through the hot heart-beating streets of SoHo with all my dreams in front of me.  Two months later, I lost my innocence on the corner of Broadway and Houston, where the offices were just dorm rooms dressed in corporate blue.

I have never been so tired and tireless.  I have never cried as much or ever been as humbled, surviving the dot com blood bath, and seeing the Towers crumble.

How I resented you and clung to you, Manhattan, for seducing me but not keeping me safe and warm.  Being with you was like being romanced by a rock star, exhilarating and exhausting, enticing and extreme, decadent and deadly, and oh so much fun.

You are one giant magical organism, Manhattan, a microcosm of the Universe itself.  The rats and cockroaches kept me company when I trudged along the subway tracks during the Blackout of ’03.  And Times Square was so still and magnificent, as we sped through traffic lights on the back of David’s motorcycle at 4AM.

I will always love watching the boys shoot hoops on W. 4^th Street, listening to the Sounds of Brazil, feeling the ghosts groove at Terra Blues, playing telephone through the secret passage ways of Grand Central, and smiling at my favorite fortune teller in Chelsea.  I still think about that rock I perched myself upon in Central Park, the day I sank into the ultimate pit of despair when Missing Person signs covered the City and fumes from Ground Zero filled the air.

I cannot speak ill of you, Manhattan.  You – the greatest survivor to teach me to survive.  One day, we’ll come full circle because you brought me back to life.

LOS ANGELES

At the end of the day LA, you’re still the basin of all my aspirations, the stream of consciousness that keeps the wine in my blood flowing, the waterfall that cascades “This May be Love, “ so says Jimi like “one of those daydreaming fools.”   I’ll come back to you someday, because anything worth doing once, I do at least twice.

You’re still the line that runs down my center, keeping me close to the edge of surrender.  I’m yours until we break off into the sea with all of our Hollywood secrets that even the spirits up on Mulholland Drive cannot forget.   The coyotes and the black widows will someday spill my stories.

Guess what…they haven’t yet.

SAN FRANCISCO

We played hide and seek some years ago the first time I left the east coast, and even though our time was brief,  your expressions, your buildings and bridges, your sounds pierced me most. The first time we moved as one I thought I had to turn you into something you’re not, while I became someone I didn’t want to be, but had to be for a while in order to become who I am now.

So many places and spaces have sheltered me, but you – you feel like home.  You’re the castle in Europe I daydreamed of as soon as I was old enough to read about romance and magic and elegant simplicity. You’re the sun-rayed dock in the lagoon in my backyard, where my father keeps the family sailboats.  You’re long top-down drives along the Embarcadero on a summer night when half the city is starting to slumber and the other half is about to awaken.  You’re the fog weaving from the Marin Headlands through the Golden Gate Bridge when the rest of the sky is clear.  You’re a chance encounter that made me want to change for the better as soon as you opened the door.

It may be too soon to tell if this time around is merely a short-term visit or an era to keep record of in the books.  Any way, no matter where I go, you’re my home.  How groundbreaking it is to know I’m no longer a rolling stone.

Experience, explore, embrace.  I will try, even if it’s too dark to see, and I will always be the lighthouse in your Bay.

“Your decade of solo dance training has made it difficult for you to trust your partner,” he said.  ”Relax and follow my lead.” 

For most of my life, I have been highly uncomfortable following someone else’s lead in anything and everything.   

“I don’t think I know how to do that,” I said.  ”What if one of us messes up?”  

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.  ”We’ll still be dancing.” 

A few years after that, a good friend of mine told me I would end up alone and unhappy if I didn’t let my walls begin to crumble.  He pleaded with me one night after liters of wine flowed through our veins. 

“Melissa, the older you get the harder it’s going to be to let your guard down,” he said.  ”If you love him, why don’t you just find a way to tell him?  He’s waiting for you.” 

Suddenly, red sirens began to blare obnoxiously in my head and heart.  That was my first wake-up call that I needed to change.  Throughout adolescence and my twenties, I had created ocean-deep barriers so treacherous that not even the most cunning casanovas could navigate their way to my shore.  The dichotomy between my mind and my movements is laughable because lack of out-word expression doesn’t make one’s feelings any less valid or real.  It simply renders them unnoticed.  I can write about the objects of my affection like there’s no tomorrow.  I can sing and dance about them as if it’s going out of style.  But sharing my emotions with the person that needs to experience the sentiment the most has always been difficult.  

For awhile, I thought that perhaps I was emotionally challenged, and that maybe I just wasn’t meant to be in a relationship.  But that’s just a cop-out.  I relish relationships and interpersonal communication.  I forge deep friendships often and wherever I go.  I have soul-mates around the world that I’m in touch with on a regular basis.  I had a six-year love affair that encompassed three cities, a marriage, a divorce, a reunion, and finally an end.   For the most part, I  go after what I want without thinking twice about it.  My fire for excitement, bonding, and bliss has always burned unforgivingly.  It’s my inability to just rest-easy, feel comfortable and safe, and be in a situation that doesn’t need to be fixed that blocks my heart and mind’s synchroncity. 

Luckily, I’ve grown weary of wasting time.  I’m understanding that to be hard on the outside merely projects how soft I am on the inside, so I may as well be soft on the outside, for better or worse.  Deep within my heart’s trenches I have always known this.  

Before I decided to move to San Francisco, a dear friend of mine said to me, “fear is the opposite of love.”  I instantly realized that so much of what I’ve done with regard to my past relationships has been done out of fear.  From now on, whenever I am fearful, I will try my hardest to act only out of love.   I’m finding that it’s not nearly as scary as it looks, and it actually feels pretty good. 

Sometimes it just takes a moment, a gesture, a touch, or a word to turn all the grayness into amber and yellow rays.  I just made a friend who moves me simply by looking at me with the most distinct, pure, present, and perennial passion living in his eyes.  There is no pretense.  No pre-meditation.  Nothing needs to be fixed.  There is only joy.  All the walls are crumbling, and for the first time in my life I have no desire to rebuild them.  This is my “emotional culture.” 

The following passage was written by Los Angeles-based writer AV Flox.  It is one of the most beautiful, honest, and romantic truisms I have ever read.

There is so much to be said for those moments that catch us with our guards down.  The walls of the cities of our interior take a long time to build up again and sometimes in our haste, we build them so they topple at the touch of wind.  You are strong, darling, and worthy of love because you do not regret…(continue reading here.)

Before I venture off into a great beer and barbecue abyss on this lovely 4th of July, I’m going to come right and say something that I haven’t felt compelled to express since I became an American citizen a good 14 years ago.  I feel profoundly blessed to be in this country, to have all of my dreams still in front of me, and to be inspired by countless thinkers, creators, and good samaritans, who motivate me to continue seeking the truth.  The soldier of change is in the air, and he’s become my newest dance partner. 

I have made a number of mistakes professionally and personally over the years, but I haven’t lost my edge. It’s razor sharp, and it’s gleaming stronger than ever.  When I left the madness of Manhattan for a second time 4 years ago and landed in Los Angeles, I took a high dive into the entertainment industry.  As all of my fellow entertainment producers and journalists know, covering the latest breaking news and events in Hollywood appears much more glamorous than it actually is.  But it is easy to get caught up in the pretty-packaged gift-bagged couture chaos of it all…and it’s pretty damn fun.

In under a year, my career began to revolve around what famous celebrity was doing what, dating whom, dancing on tables where, drinking himself/herself into oblivion when, or doing something decadent or disasterous on the red carpet or up in the hills, and how often. I was starting to feel like I sold my soul to the devil, and if I didn’t get out of Hollyweird soon the gossip ghouls of the industry would swallow me whole. 

Then one day I met a high roller, a big wig in the industry, up close and personal.  We hit if off.  We held hands and made plans.  We shared the same passion, the same sweet pain, and the same stubborn strengths.  To say our first meeting was as heated as Mount Kilauea would have been an understatement.   At that time in my life, he possessed all the qualities I found unbearably sexy in a man.  He was brilliant, sensitive, tragically romantic, powerful, self-destructive and dangerous.  We were a match made in heaven.  

After our fifth or sixth date, as we sat on the kitchen floor talking until 6:00 AM, he told me I’d “saved” him.  If that’s not romance on crack I don’t know what is.  So I thought that maybe,  just maybe, this thing we’d conjured up, this cataclysmic ball of flying fire was real.  No matter what happened, I knew we’d always be in each others lives.  After all, I used to watch him make magic on the silver screen when I was a little girl.  I was meant to meet this man. 

 A few months later, an incident occurred that put his name all over the headlines.  When I went to work the next day, I was asked to do a write-up about what was to become of him.  I couldn’t do it.  The line that so impudently ran right down the middle of me began to grow thicker, and it soon covered me whole.  I’d always wanted to be an active participant in the genre of journalism I’d entered.  But after I’d faced the consequences of being involved with someone whom the whole world wanted a percentage of, I quickly understood what the proverbial saying “careful what you wish for” meant.  For the first time, I got a real behind the scenes look at what someone of his stature deals with on an hourly basis – very little peace and even less room to trust people.

A day before the mishap occurred, we’d had an argument about the apparent conflict that existed between our two careers.  His publicist and friends told him he was sleeping with the enemy.  After media coverage of him took off with a vengeance, I knew he was gone.  Avril Lavigne’s voice wouldn’t stop ringing in my ears: “All this time you were pretending, so much for my happy ending. Oh, Oh Ohoh.” 

And there I was.  Lost.  Disillusioned.  Confused.  Embarrassed and saddened by the argument he and I had, and frustrated with the half-heartedness I felt about working in the “news.”  Less than disenchanted with the film business and with my job, I had forsaken all the reasons I wanted to be a writer in the first place.  I couldn’t stop feeling sorry for myself.  I even chopped off all my hair and painted love on my left forearm to prove it.  After all my years of wanting to be a successful broadcast journalist, and wanting to be in love with a true artist, a real Renaissance man who “got me,” I was nowhere near being the kind of calm cool professional or mature woman I should have been.  The man I’d had a crush on since I was eight years old was forever gone, and  I was reminded of it every time I turned on the TV, got online, or walked into Blockbuster.  

He’s doing quite well now.  And I’m doing better than ever, balancing my time between the wondrous whims of Hollywood and the foggy mist of San Francisco.  I love LA.  I will always love LA with all my heart, and I will be back.  But getting away to gain some perspective, is healing me in ways I didn’t think possible.  I feel young and innocent again, and I’ve been around enough to know the most special moments in our lives are fleeting.   I realize now more than ever how blessed I am to have been where I’ve been, and I know it is nothing compared to where I’m headed. 

How lucky are we that we live in a world filled with second chances?  I’m not talking about second chances to seek approval from others.  Screw that.  I’m referring to the second chances we have the liberty to give ourselves – in work, in play, in spirit, in cause and in love.  

I still get chills when I get to interview a prolific Academy Award winning director.  I’m still awestruck when I stand in the greatness of any brilliant musician or actor, who creates masterpieces for us all to absorb.  And I’m still inspired by the industry that I fell away from for awhile.  It’s not the media’s fault that I wore my heart on my sleeve.  

These days, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the beautiful change makers, activists, philanthropists, and new colleagues I’ve met through my recent lunge into “cause reporting.”  They humble me and make me feel honored to be an all-American journalist seeking the truth.  I guess what I’m really trying to say on this grand national holiday that takes me back to my innocence in all its glory, is that for the first time in a very long time, I’m not only proud of my country, I’m proud of myself.