Push yourself towards your most outer skin… Do you even know what that means? I don’t, yet I just wrote to someone that that is a 2014 goal I set for myself.

I just couldn’t come up with other words to describe it.

Since most of us only know each other online, let me fill you in on a little secret. I talk with my hands. I know. A New Yorker who talks with their hands. What’re the chances? But truthfully, I REALLY talk with my hands. As a kid this often meant getting excited while speaking and accidentally knocking something out of the hands of the stranger standing within arms reach. (Who am I kidding, this still happens as an adult.)

And when I was working as an art director in the fashion industry, I’d often give direction by illustrating the feeling I wanted a product to have by moving my hands, arms, shoulders and whole upper body (Sometimes legs too— if I really wanted it to kick butt) in a way that spoke the words my mouth couldn’t find…. though it tried….. (My best artists and assistants understood what I meant when I sometimes just used sounds— “that’s too arggg,” I’d say while making some pycho looking motion with my hands. “I get it” she’d say and boom- she’d get it. God, I miss having assistants…)  I’ve also been accused of speaking to people like they are 4 years old, repeating the same thing 3 times just using different words to say it. That’s just the way I process…. especially when I’m on the phone and the other person can’t see my less than gracious but very expressive body motions.

I am totally off track here. 

As I mentioned, I didn’t set New Years resolutions. They just feel like a recipe for disaster. You create a platform of routine and then the minute you slip up, you fall right on down that slippery slope. It’s been the same way since second grade when I made a resolution to always do my homework and have a sharpened pencil in my backpack. As my most frightening teacher of all time, Morah Golumbeck can attest to- I didn’t, in fact, follow through on that resolution.

But, as the second week of 2014 rolls in I’ve been thinking about day-to-day choices I need to make in order to get where I want to go and feel the way I want to feel…. and frankly, I want to get to some crazy-ass places and feel like a bad-ass Muchness machine.

Those are big wants.

And they are not going to happen if I allow the parts of me that are shy, insecure or afraid to fold me up into a protective shell and let myself play small. I need to hold my arms back like a clichéd woman in a commercial for some pharmaceutical drug with horrible side effects, and instead of just taking in the beauty of nature that surrounds me in a field of daisies, I need to push my own light out from my core towards my outer most skin and beyond.

This entire post was written with me stopping every few words to hold my hands in front of me and then extend them, trying to find the words to really describe what I’m trying to convey. Is it working?

So this year, my wish for youand for myself is that you are able to reach in to your core and find all the muchy goodness that resides there, and then make choices that help you pull that towards your outermost skin so other’s can see it too.

It’s exactly that which you are put on this planet to share.

Isn’t she lovely?

Pushing yourself means not hiding from what you really want, so lets start here. How are YOU gonna push yourself to your outermost skin this year and pull your Muchness to the surface? Inquiring minds wanna know!

I have a confession.

Once upon a time, before all “this”-

…back in the days that felt most muchless to me, when I’d stopped thinking or caring about myself, when I’d given up on the entrepreneurial dreams I’d held since childhood, when I rode the bus exhausted to work day in and day out, wondering what had happened to the excited and colorful girl I’d used to be. …back in the days when I felt so blessed to have an amazing husband and to be a new mom of my first beautiful healthy daughter, and didn’t really believe I had a “right” to ask for more.
…back in those days when I wore my attitude on my sleeve, when cynicism and snarkiness were defenses I wore to keep my insecurities at bay….
…back in those days, I was also pretty fierce.

I was working as the art director at a clothing and accessory company. I’d built the business basically with the owner, starting as the only design or production employee in a company of 3 people, (myself and the boss included.)

I was on the ball.

I made shit happen.

I had an idea and I could execute it, knowing all the answers before the questions were even asked.

I created stuff and stored mountains of detailed information neatly and precisely in my head. My boss could wake me from a coma-like sleep at 3am, ask me about the velour pajama pants that were made 3 months ago by such and such factory in china and I could spit the details out to him as though they were the names of my children.

Together with my former boss, who himself was a very creative man, I built that design and production room into a team of amazing creative people. I taught my team members how to do things, and how to do things smarter and quicker than anyone else could teach them. I taught them how to think about products more intelligently. I taught them how to come to work with a positive attitude and a strong work ethic because we were all working towards a common goal, and that was to make stuff that we could be proud of. And I loved it, and was really, really good at it.

And then, everything changed. My babies died, and with them, every ounce of strength in my body. There is simply no way to hold yourself up when the bones in your body can’t even stop you from melting into a puddle on the floor.

8 weeks after they died my boss pulled me aside and told me I was carrying a lot of anger. I needed to let it go and get back to work. He said my loss was a result of doing something that pissed God off, but now we were “square” again and so I could get back to business.

I stared at him, willing myself not to cry, yet somehow afraid I’d burst into laughter.

I then dismissed the entire conversation as something that had absolutely no significance to my life whatsoever. He was a man. A man who had no idea what he was talking about and saw the world in an entirely different way than I did.

Three years later I finally left that job. It was hard. I felt like I’d  built what was now something like a $250,000,000 company. I’d imagined being there for a long, long time. It was like family (dysfunction and all) I made a great salary. I worked 27 hours a week. I had great insurance.

But I couldn’t stay.

I’d changed and I needed to honor the person I was becoming.

I remember a conversation I had with my boss shortly before I pulled the trigger. He told me I’d gotten soft. He said I used to be so incredible. That I was worth the salary of two people (which some may suggest I was earning) because even at part time (I left at 3:15PM and didn’t work fridays) I was able to accomplish more than two other people would be able to accomplish working full time. He said I owned that town (The NYC Garment District, an industry I grew up in) He said they just don’t make them like me anymore.

But I wasn’t incredible anymore. For years I’d been less than incredible. I’d been lazy, distracted and unreliable.

And part of me knew he was right. Another part of me, the part connected to my face, told him to go screw himself. (We had that kind of relationship. It was like a marriage. Except I got no alimony)

The truth is I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t deal with the pace, the details. I couldn’t care less about a pair of velour pants that were being made in China and sold to the lowest bidder when my babies were dead and staying optimistic and sharing my happy shoes on social media and making other sad women happy was the only way I could get through the day.

It’s been almost 4.5 years since they died. I miss the part of me that kicked ass like that. The me that was focussed and detailed. The one that knew the answers and made quick, smart, confident decisions. The one that could look at a to-do list of 25 things and know that I could cross them all off by 3:15 and remember exactly what I had accomplished that day.

Now I feel lucky if I get 3 things done and swiped off my list…. and that’s often only if I can even find my effing list.

Even at my most Muchless I suppose there was some level of Muchness in me. Muchness of a different kind.

I miss my bad-assness. I want it back- just a hell of a lot muchier. I think it’s time for the best of all of the “me’s” to hit the ground running and do what I was put here to do.

What parts of you do you miss? The good parts that were hiding in the background of the bad parts, or maybe even the bad parts that were hiding in the good parts? I don’t know. Us people, we’re pretty complex, ya know?