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May 15, 2016 In Inspiration, Links, Live the life you want to live, Today Is The Day, Videos

lets just kick the shit out of option b

It’s Sunday morning, May 15th and I just had a much needed long slumber after a busy week. I woke up missing some people I love, some living and some not. This is an everyday thing for me. In the quiet, all snuggled up in my fleece blanket staring at the blue sky out the window I thought for the gazillionth time how strange it is to consistently feel so happy, excited, and lucky, and yet so heavy-hearted, too.

As I sipped my coffee, I texted a few friends about this book, just published. My sweet friend Sam wrote it. This was a huge dream of his, and how I wish he was here to hold the actual printed version in his hands.

This time of year is my favorite; Warm temperatures, lots of exciting summer plans to be outside in the fresh air and sun, BLR Play It Forward is coming soon, and of course, commencement speeches. I never went to college, so I’ve only experienced commencement speeches online or at some else’s graduation. I wish these kinds of speeches happened all year around, and not just at universities during graduation month. I dig inspirational messages from people who’ve pushed through a bit of life’s minefield keeping a hard-earned smile, and then share their lessons.

I got a phone notification this morning as I was snuggled up, about Sheryl Sandberg’s Commencement Speech at UC Berkeley. She talks about grief, loss, and what she learned in death. Well worth the 26 minute watch:

My favorite parts are at around the 9:45 and 18:45 marks and towards the end when she says “Now I celebrate always.”

My Blue Lollipop Road mantra has always been to live simple. That “stuff” doesn’t matter…people and time do. Our theme for Play It Forward is Remember. Celebrate. Live; Remember where you came from, celebrate memories and what you have, and live like today is the day- don’t wait.

I know like Sheryl and many of you, I will wake up tomorrow still missing. I will always miss someone, a hug or holding that hand. I will always miss seeing some certain smiling faces or a laugh I remember that always felt so good to be around. I will also wake up tomorrow celebrating, because no matter what we’ve been through, we’ve got to keep kicking the shit out of option B. I hope all of us continue to love hard and leave it all on the field.

If there were only 11 more days left…what would you do?

#Celebrate #TodayIsTheDay #HopToIt

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May 11, 2016 In Freedom, Inspiration, Links, Live the life you want to live, Videos

live simple, do more

This video will be just one example in the gazilllion that are coming here on BLR about how living simply and less wasteful is not only good for the environment and your soul, but your pocket, too!

Why do we think things like traveling or using/eating homemade or local products is so unaffordable? Not true! Moving forward, I’ll be sharing a whole bunch on how to live big on a minimal budget. (And how to get yourself unburied from all those bills.) Blue Lollipop Road is all about LESS STUFF. MORE FREEDOM. HAPPY LIFE. It’s not about deprivation, It’s about choices, and being conscious about how, when, and where you spend your hard-earned loot!

Do you want more freedom from personal, physical, and financial “stuff” so you can do more of what you love?

Yes, please!

Awesome. Keep following along here, and sign up to get these blog posts in your inbox. Just scroll to the bottom of the home page and “SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG VIA EMAIL.”

Blog post subscription

Life is way to short to waste so much of our time, energy, or money…on all that stuff that’s weighing us down.

Ready to make some changes? Yeah! I love working with clients who are sick of feeling buried. Drop me a line:

Diane(@)bluelollipoproad.com

804.339.6514

#StopWastingStartLiving #LessStuffMoreExperiencesHappyLife #LiveBigSpendLess

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May 9, 2016 In Do good, Inspiration, Links, North Carolina, Operation Charlotte, Photos

why you should always hold the door open

I love holding the door open for people. While we all live in all too fast-paced reality of the work day, there are few ways we can experience such a happy interaction with a stranger like we can when we wait that extra few seconds to simply hold the door.

Funny I posted about doing good earlier today. Doing good feels so good! I love the look on a strangers face when I hold the door open- the absolute surprise for such a little thing.

I just walked into Starbucks to camp with my laptop for the afternoon, and a couple guys followed me in. I held the door. (I had to count to three-one-thousand for them to catch up to me, so perhaps I looked awkward, but I didn’t care.) I got a big thank you, then walked into the restroom before ordering. When I came out I got behind these same two guys in line as one of them said “…and whatever she’s having for holding the door open for us!”

Whoop!

They thanked me again, complimented my dress, (hello blue!- my favorite color…wink wink:), and I thanked them again.

Thank you fiesta!

I’m still smiling now as I type. That 3 minutes made my day. People being nice to each other. How easy is that?!

I hope you will join me, and hold the door please, (on everything) just for a few extra seconds. Make sure you smile at a stranger when you can. What you put out, always comes back in some form or another. (At least, I keep still believing.)

Starbucks office

Thanks for my coffee, guys!

#DoGood #BeNice #LessHurryMoreDoorHoldingHappyLife

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May 9, 2016 In Be active, BLR Memorial Travel Scholarship Fund, BLR Play It Forward 2016, Blue Lollipop Road Memorial Scholarship, Do good, Inspiration, Links, Strong Mojo, Today Is The Day, Travel, Vermont

get your give on

Hello, Monday!

Today is May 9th. This means exactly 2 months until our 5th Annual BLR Play It Forward Event & BLR Memorial Travel Scholarship award, July 9 2016 weekend. (FIVE years!)

We’ve been doing good on our Remember, Celebrate, Live promise since 2012 and couldn’t be more proud. We love playing forward to give back.

Inspired by us? Well thank you…but we wouldn’t be able to do it without YOU! So how do you get involved?

1.) If you’re MAU Women’s Soccer Alumni, you can register here for just a $35 donation to play in the game, Saturday July 9th at Willow Park in Bennington, VT. 100% of registration fees go to the scholarship fund.

2.) Get an event shirt for yourself or your kiddos here. Shirts come in blue and pink, youth and adult sizes.  Just 20 buckaroos donation! 100% of that loot goes straight to the scholarship fund.

3.) Rally your friends, family, neighbors, former teachers, coaches, strangers on the street, or anyone else you like, to come join/hang out/socialize for our Friday night (July 8th) open Welcome Back Party, and Saturday day and night (July 9th) Alumni game, scholarship announcement, and Celebration Cocktails.

4.) Sponsor! We’d love any sponsorships, and promise if you do, we will give shout-outs and love on all print & social media, along with on the BLR website here and more. (We’d especially like to to find a jersey & t-shirt sponsor this year to cover that huge cost. Please call 804.339.6514 or Diane(@)BlueLollipopRoad.com if you’d like to sponsor.)

5.) Donate! 100% of all donations go straight to the Blue Lollipop Road Memorial Travel Scholarship Fund. This fund supports deserving high school students to travel and do community service work. (Wha?! Yep, students doing good while getting a chance to see outside their everyday world. Exposure! Service! Character building! Building a badass next generation! Super awesomeness:)

If you’re a regular reader or BLR follower, you obviously know this Blue Lollipop Road is my life, my passion, my everything, and Play It Forward is by far the work I’m most proud of. I can’t do it alone, so I present a challenge to you readers who I know and strangers I don’t:

Donate $5 now! 

I figure $5  for 5 years of playing forward so we can give back is not too much to ask. Everyone can afford 5 big ones. Won’t you support what we are doing? Click here to donate through PayPal, it is secure, easy, (and dare I say, fun?), or send a check made payable to:
Blue Lollipop Road Memorial Scholarship Fund
PO Box 34661
Charlotte, NC 28234

…or

…simply pass this post on! My Christmas wish is that some one, some where, some day, who’s big time, will notice what we are doing and say “Hey! You are spectacular BLR Play It Forward! Here’s some ginormous media and/or a million bucks for your scholarship fund! What you’re doing with your event & scholarship fund is like…totally awesome!”

(Hey- it could happen. It WILL happen.)

So won’t you send some love and spread the love? Oh how important it is, to…

Remember where you came from.

Celebrate the memories and time you have have together.

Live like today is the day.

BLR Play It Forward

BLR Play It Forward

BLR Play It Forward

BLR Play It Forward

BLR Play It Forward

Image

Boom-chicka-boom!

Together we can do so much good.

#RememberCelebrateLive #GetInspired #TodayIsTheDay

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May 5, 2016 In Articles, Inspiration, Links, Live the life you want to live

don’t forget your pads

I’ve followed Mark Manson for a while now. Today’s post cracks me up. Read it here.

Basically what he is saying (what we all know but try to deny), is that life’s just one big shit show. This is not a bad thing, it simply means the circus, the roller coaster, that whirling dervish is there and always will be- even when we try to make sense of things. Every single one of us humans is messed up. If you are over the age of 5 and reading this, you’ve been through something (if not a lot), and likely have more baggage than a holiday weekend at JFK.

Thanks for joining the club with me and all of our other homies!

What we do, what we practice, every single day to protect and/or heal our beautifully battered and bruised smiling selves is what makes all the difference in the world.

I say wake up in the morning, (picture you’re a kid here playing imaginary dress up) strap on your football pads and helmet, and run out in the world ready to get it, see it, be it, do it. Remember where you came from, knock some stuff around, get a little knocked around, be a little sore after the clock runs out at the end of the day, but know you have tried your best to make some kind of sense, and some kind of fun out of all the madness in this crazy awesome life.

Yep.

How’s that for a shot (of tequila?) in your arm for Cinco De Mayo?

Cheers!

#DontStopGetItGetIt ##Effort #WhenInDoubtNikeItOut

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March 27, 2016 In Links, North Carolina, Photos, Recommended reading

check yourself before you wreck yourself

Thanks to modern technology, this was my office for a couple days this week:

Beach Life

There hasn’t been nearly enough of the above in my life during the past few months, which is just totally not cool, and pretty much against everything I stand for, so sand in toes and connecting with a few important people had to happen.

Needed it. Did it. Wanted to smack myself for not doing it sooner. Translation; Check myself (breathe/give myself some space/take a “minute”) before I wrecked myself (exhaustion, frustration, etc. – that beast that creeps making us feel at times like crispy fried bacon.)

In Googling the title for this post just now, this link popped up. I dig no bs writers who aren’t afraid to throw a little weight in truth around, and the occasional f-bomb:

Get it

We will all learn eventually how to take better care of ourselves (without feeling guilty), so we can in turn be better at taking care of others. We will all learn eventually how to take breaks (without feeling guilty) so we can remember who we are and be badass in our personal and professional lives.

No more crispy fried bacon. No more victim. Much more creating a life that has a shit ton of joy everyday.

How do you check out so you can check back in?

#StepBackMoveForward #Perspective #HappyLife

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March 20, 2016 In Inspiration, Links, Live the life you want to live, Quotes, Today Is The Day, Uncategorized, Videos

the things we think, and do not say

This Jerry McGuire scene is one of my absolute favorites, and pops in my head weekly when the same conversation with everyone in my personal and professional life, seems to play on repeat mode:

“Do other people think about this stuff?”

(Forget the sports specific theme here, and roll with this for me.) And scene:

Many of us live in pain, locked in and loaded with fear of being judged at every turn, we suppress huge parts of who we are or what we want because we think we’re going to disappoint someone else. We’re convinced the wheels will fly straight off the bus of life going 100 miles per hour if we speak up about what we really think is right. We’re adults. We’re supposed to stay in our lane, act like it, and not ruffle any feathers.

What a bunch of crap that is! I’m thinking we should all be a little more like Jerry.

“I had lost the ability to bullshit.”

“It was the me that I’d always wanted to be.” 

“I was 35. I had started my life. 

We should bullshit a lot less, be who we want to be, and start life now if we haven’t already, at 35, 45, or 85 because we can and It’s never too late. We should shout from the rooftops about what we’re passionate about, stand up for what we believe in and speak up about what matters. When a “who’s with me!” fails (because it sometimes will) and when it seems like everyone around us thinks we’ve lost our minds (which they sometimes will), we will at least sleep good at night knowing we left it all out there on the dance floor.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a beer bellied old man at the end of his life on any porch I’ve ever sat on, who’s told me he wished he’d never spoken up.

Today is the day. Show yourself “the money,” baby!

#ThinkItSayItDoIt #LessFearMoreActionHappyLife #ThanksJerry

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March 10, 2016 In BLR Memorial Travel Scholarship Fund, BLR Play It Forward 2016, Blue Lollipop Road Memorial Scholarship, Do good, Inspiration, Links, News & Updates, People, Photos, play, Strong Mojo, Vermont

things that fill my heart

Today is March 9, 2016 and that means it is exactly 4 months until the 5th Annual BLR Play It Forward Event in Vermont.

WHOOP! 5TH ANNUAL! 

In 2011 when we (a couple of my amazing alumni soccer soul sisters from back in the day) came up with the idea for an alumni soccer game which then turned into a full-scale community event and scholarship fund, I spent months in my Old Town Chicago apartment, floor 23 overlooking The Second City entrance, in my pajamas trying to figure out how to make it all happen. I remember some days I’d go to the gym for an 8 or 9am class, come back home all sweaty and yucky, wrap myself in a towel intending on getting in the shower, and start working only to find it to be 8 or 9pm and myself sitting there, 12 hours later stinky, starving, and still working. It’s kind of amazing how time flies when you’re in your zone working on something you’re so incredibly passionate about. I’d eventually shower, and often times take the elevator downstairs to Chipolte (which was in the same building as The Second City across the street), get a veggie burrito, sometimes a beer and by 10pm be eating my one meal of the day on my couch in quiet. Rinse and repeat this is how those few spring months of 2012 went before our first big event happened on August 18, 2012.

Check this out! I just found a photo of my little desk area in that great high rise apartment I had:

BLR work space

Small work space that cranked out some dreams. I can’t even remember what I used for a chair! Not fancy. It didn’t matter. Boy those are good memories. This scene is where Play It Forward was born. To this day, my best work and what I am most proud of.

I’ve got buckets of photos from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 – but I will share just one from each year for space sake for today.

2012, balloon release in honor of our friends to kick off the inaugural event:

BLR Play It Forward 2012

All hands in before game, 2013:

BLR Play It Forward 2013

The Blue Lollipop Road Memorial Scholarship award, 2014:

Blue Lollipop Road Memorial Scholarship

Me and “Mr. B” last summer, 2015 – one of our most loyal fans and supporters, cheering us on each year in his same white t-shirt:

Mr. B and I

(That sweet guy was my 6th grade teacher!)

There’s no way I could share here, all the photos and words I have that would illustrate properly the amazing impact we make. This day is so special you have to be there to believe it. (I hope whoever you are reading this, you will join us this summer in some kind of capacity!)

On July 9, 2016 we will once again come together to reconnect, reminisce, play soccer, cry together, laugh together, and give back. I already know it will as usual, be my favorite day of the year. A bittersweet day in this “brutiful” life, where nothing else matters other than coming together to remember, celebrate, and live.

What do you do, to make sure you never forget where you came from?

#RememberCelebrateLive #PlayForwardGiveBack #StrongMojo

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February 24, 2016 In Links, People, Photos

adventures in humans

I try not to do this, but I just can’t help it today. Mostly because this has happened twice within a week and on the most extreme level, so I must share…

We all know the scene; “that guy” in the coffee shop. The one just-a-chattin’ away on his cell phone for 20 minutes straight as if he’s in his private office. Not a care in the world, and completely clueless about anything and everything around him.

I’ve come to know “that guy” very well over the years on the road and now in my home base city hopping from coffee shop to coffee shop as my office so often. Once every few weeks there’s a real doozy “that guy” who babbles so loudly on his phone that everyone around him can’t help but to give that evil – ummm, can you PLEASE shut up?! stare. Usually it is kind of funny and entertaining, and I giggle a little or shrug it off thinking, I’m might not be perfect at a lot of things, but at least I’m not THAT guy! 

Yes, I usually just shake my head and laugh, wondering how “that guy”‘s mom didn’t teach him to know better. I’m pretty numb to “that guy” as he seems to be a regular no matter what state I’m in. I do my best to ignore and type away on my computer. This past week however, there was no ignoring. “That guy”- two of them, have been real pieces of work.

This particular Starbucks, one I never come to, I happen to be at today for the second time in 7 days. They must have a sign I missed out front that reads:

Enter here, circus show screamers! Step right up! No rules here! Yell on the phone for an hour about your company sales team! Talk to your coworker at a screech level that reminds us of that scene in in the movie Teen Wolf when Michael J. Fox can hear the dog whistle piercing in his ear! Take your mangled stinky sneakers off and hang out like you’re in your living room! Anything goes! Welcome to the freak show! 

I’m not joking or exaggerating when I say that last week, after a full HOUR of “that guy” in a suit sitting next to me, absolutely screaming (like someone call the police screaming because there must be something wrong screaming) – I could’t take it anymore and had to lean over with a Excuse me sir, um, could you just like- stop, please? You are unbelievably loud. I honestly was so dumbfounded I didn’t even know what to say, and I’m rarely at a loss for words.

He apologized, still on his call, then simply turned to the wall and kept scream-talking!

Seriously.

The fact that Ashton Kutcher didn’t jump out of a plant and tell me I was Punk’d, still baffles me.

And then there’s today.

There sits a man across from me (no shame, straight up in his UPS uniform I might add) who was for his entire stay, talking at about that same scream talk level as the previous guy on one phone, while texting on another. Lunch/lunch bag spread out on the table, full-on lounging like he owned the place, and just chilling out with his shoes off. Nice Gold Toe UPS browns, buddy.

Did I mention he had sunglasses on too? Of course he did. You always need sunglasses sitting inside at a table for an hour. That brought my scene on a full-circle crazy train loop.

No shame UPS

Clueless UPS

I love talking. I love noise. I love animated characters. I love when humans let their freak flags fly. Do I care if people are chatty around me? No. Do I think there should be a SHHH!!! Silence please! This is Starbucks! rule? No. Do I kind of enjoy that life so often feels like I’m in an episode of Candid Camera? Yes. But, still- peeps…can we open up our eyes a little, pretty please? 🙂

A part of me appreciates anyone who lives in this kind of level of la la land. It must be fun there! And I suppose I wouldn’t have funny things to write about if adults didn’t misbehave so much.

Thanks “that guy!” You make chatty, no filter, sassafras girls like me, look so quiet and demure.

#ThePeopleAtStarbucks #EverydayAdventure #NeverADullMoment

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