Linda Francis Lee in NYC Webisode #9 Going Off Broadway

Thanksgiving Dinner Gone Awry

Over the years I have cooked in spurts and bouts like some people exercise and diet. Ha! I'm like a Weekend Warrior of Cooking - do it like crazy, then Monday morning wake up sore all over. And I blame Thanksgiving.

It happened the first year I was married when I decided to make a big Thanksgiving dinner for friends. It wasn't Thanksgiving Day, but just before so we could celebrate our small running groups' friendship. I slaved over turkey, dressing, gravy and string beans. I also made a pumpkin pie using my mother's amazing pie crust recipe. Mike added his mash potatoes, for which he is famous. The amount of work was staggering, but I was excited.

Finally when the six of us were seated around the dining table, Mike carved the turkey. With the first slice he got a strange look on his face. "Mmm, looks great, honey," he said, with the sort of false smile of a man who doesn't want to disappoint his new wife.

Soon plates were served, and my husband and good friends tried their hardest to eat what I had to admit (though reluctantly) was an inedible meal. The turkey was well on its way to being turkey jerky. The green beans were still crunchy, the gravy filled with lumps, the dressing like saw dust. I chewed and chewed and attempted a fake, completely-in-denial smile while our good friends pushed their food around their plates. Though let me just say, they were scarfing up mashed potatoes like there was no tomorrow. But finally my disappointment (and maybe even my pride) took a back seat and I said, "If I'm not going to starve to death, you better pass me the potatoes."

Everyone's eyes went wide, then they burst out laughing like an audience at a play. After that we had a good laugh and fought over the last bites of mash potatoes. But let me just say, despite the disastrous main course and my husband's fabulous potatoes, my pie was perfect.

During this Thanksgiving Season, I feel thankful that I have such lovely friends and family, in person and here on this home I have found on the Internet! I'm also thankful for someone other than me cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Changing

You hear people say that it's impossible to change. But scientists will tell you that we are made to change, every cell in our body regenerating every seven years. And if our bodies change, why can't we? I think people don't change because change it is hard. It's uncomfortable, it takes effort. More than that, it takes looking deep and seeing what you may or may not be doing right. Change must be precipitated by the acknowledgment that we aren't perfect. While most people do lip service to this idea, it is just that. Lip service. Most people like to think they do everything perfectly – NEED to think they are doing things perfectly. That speech? Awesome. That presentation? Never better. That last purchase? That last conversation with a loved one? Perfect! But every once in a while something happens and we are forced to look deep. And when we do, if we see that we could be better, I believe the measure of a person is in what they do about it. Simply move on? Refuse to recognize what is there? Or attempt to do the hard work involved in becoming a better person. Because change truly is possible.

Of course POSSIBLE doesn't mean it is EASY. Behavior is in large part caused by a series of habits, and habits create neural pathways in the brain. Neural pathways help a body do things repeatedly easily. But when the habit is bad, it's hard to break that neural pathway, break the habit. In order to change, the habit must be broken, the neural pathway erased. Breaking neural pathways takes patience, perseverance. But it seems to me that a life well lived is one where at the end of it we have grown, we have not been stagnant. We have truly lived.

Night on the Town

Linda Francis Lee in NYC Webisode #2 is up and running . . . A Night Out on the Town

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFZsTDWM0PE

A Question of Happiness

I'm always thinking. Analyzing. Figuring out. The fact is that's what a writer does: make sense of something then find a way to "show" it in fiction or nonfiction. However I have wondered if I do this because I write, or if I write because I do this. The whole chicken or egg question. I suspect for me that writing is the outlet for all my thinking, a place to channel or process all the thoughts that spin in my head. My very first memories are of trying to figure out, to make sense of a world I didn't understand.

I've been aware of this for a while. I've been on a quest to make sense of the world for decades. Quite frankly, for me, I think half the joy of writing is the puzzle of it all. I'm enlightened! That makes me happy! But recently after finishing up one of the Linda Francis Lee in NYC video shoots, the mystery cameraman and I stopped at an outdoor café for a drink and given the crowds we ended up sitting with a couple from out of town. We began to talk about life, aging, happiness. What struck me was that this lovely gentleman said that he had been perfectly happy until it was pointed out to him that he was not. I can't get that out of my head! My unquestionably existential question is: Was he really? If someone pointed out to him that he didn't appear happy could he possibly have been happy? Could he not have been aware of his "grumpy" state? And if he wasn't aware, was it possible that the way he acted didn't affect him, only his partner who admittedly wasn't happy and searching, questioning? Moreover, if the gentleman truly had been happy, is it possible that people who don't spend time thinking, analyzing, figuring out are happier than people who simply exist on the surface?

I doubt it, but of course I would think that! How could I afford to NOT think that? But as a writer, the question circles in my head. I probe it from different directions like a scientist trying to make sense of a conundrum. And, of course, I will use whatever nugget of truth comes out of the analysis in a book!

How I Write

Given that I'm a writer, for years I have spent more time alone in front of a computer than with people in an office chatting at the water cooler, or even gossiping in a social setting. And when I write I don't really see the words on the screen. I actually "see" the story unfolding like a movie playing in my head. My job is to find the words to express what I see fast enough not to lose the image . . . which means that I spend a lot of time staring, seeing something that no one else is seeing. This came home to me the other day when I was on the subway, thinking through plot, lost in my head. When I finally blinked out of the scene I was staring at the person across from me . . . and not the sort you really want to find yourself staring at in a New York City subway. I've lived here long enough not to show any emotion, just shift my eyes away ever so slightly, then start staring at the space next to the guy's shoulder. As if I wasn't intimidated. As if I hadn't been staring at him at all. As if I could care less if he started channeling Robert DeNiro with a slightly altered, "You lookin' at me?" But it has made me wonder if other writers write that way, seeing what is in their heads, and if they do, how do they break the habit of staring!!