Daily Reminder # 142

No matter what your life situation may be, new and interesting experiences can still find you. Open your heart to them.


Well I had an exciting adventure that began today.  I got interviewed by a writer for the New York Times, named Penelope Green. How cool am I, I ask you.  Well, not very, really.  She was interviewing me for an article about someone else - a very interesting and talented photographer named Corinne Botz who began a series on agoraphobics back about 5 or six years ago when I was writing my column on Agoraphobia at Suite101.com.  I was Corinne's first subject for the study and used my column to connect her to quite a few other volunteers.  So maybe there will be a sentence about me in the article if I'm lucky. But it's still kind of cool to be interviewed. And Ms. Green complimented me on my writing, so she's on my list of good people. I starve for compliments. I love them. Compliments are good. (There are times when I may doubt the sanity of the complimenter, but I still love the compliment.) There's nothing a writer wanna be (at least this writer wanna be) loves more than to have a real writer say something nice about her ability to write. Resisting the temptation to bury the poor woman in reams of words is a bit of a challenge, but I imagine that since she works for the New York Times, she's pretty capable of dealing with lonely writers.

Of course our conversation - which will continue tomorrow - stirred up some things. Old memories of when I first injured my legs, the dreaded spectre of my brother, thoughts about my last days in New York City and of days when for no reason I would find myself unable to breathe, of days when stepping out my front door (which I still did then) caused a kind of physical paralysis that was humiliating and terrifying and exquisitely physically painful.  But even so. I got interviewed by a very good writer from the New York Times. I am cool. At least for today. And it was a nice change of pace to "meet" someone new.... 

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• compliments
• sweaters
• Dr. Jim
• new experiences
• friends
• water
• my microwave
• my home
• mail
• email
• laughter
• curiosity
• interesting experiences
• Corinne Botz
• photography
• people who care about the struggles of their fellow humans
• orange-pineapple smoothies

Have a Great Day!

May the Day Offer You 

an Interesting and Rewarding Experience