Sleep Before Waking

I’m almost tempted to keep these photos and post them on my other blog, because a good amount of them are almost too pretty for even my tastes. We shall see. Expect more cruise shots to end up there, when I can get my act together and post the dang things.

When you meander off the cruise ship at the end of the trip, there are a few strange things to contend with – first, the overwhelming despair of leaving the wonderland that was your floating hotel. Second, the sudden influx of local tour guides and peddlers who have something remarkable to offer you as you arrive on land. Now, unlike our travel companions, my mother, daughter and I had decided to save two plus hundred dollars on plane tickets (per person) by waiting to fly home until Monday.

Yeah, we know how to save a buck.

We were waved down by a local tour guide who offered the same tour the excursion desk on board had offered for less than half the price, AND offered to drop us off at our hotel afterward. We jumped at the chance.

Can you blame us? We disembarked during a torrential downpour. First sign of rain on the trip. Well, save for the freak sky dumpage on Dominica.

He drove around Old San Juan, brought us to the gorgeous capital building (responsible for the marble staircase pictured above. I mean wait, that staircase is in my Summer mansion. Yeah, that’s the ticket), and then brought us into the Don Q Tasting House for Dulcineas.

Now, I hear your thoughts here. What the hell is a Dulcinea, you wonder? (Not you pompous highly literate bastards who are thinking, why it’s obviously a reference to Don Quixote’s love interest. You know everything, there you happy?) Why, it is the name of the house drink of the Don Q Rum Factory.

Dulcinea = Pina Colada made with Grapefruit and Orange Juice.

It was ice cold delicious sex in my mouth. I could drink seventeen of them. Right now. In fact…maybe I will.

*here is where drunkenness took my ability to type for six hours*

I’m back!

After the tour, we settled into our hotel, shot down to Old San Juan for supper at the Hard Rock Cafe, meandered past the Sunday evening market stalls that turn Old San Juan into one big pedestrian market, and then walked along the water across the street from the hotel eating rainbow candied popcorn which I miraculously found at the local convenient store.

My childhood in a bag of crap.

The night was warm and the air was thick, but the views were spectacular as the sun was setting in San Juan.

Oddly, the entire city seemed to have been overrun with post cruise travelers (one of which recognized my daughter from the on board magic show that she had stolen out from under the magician himself). We enjoyed the last night of our vacation with not a little pang of reminiscence when we drove through Old San Juan that night at 10PM, catching a glimpse of our boat enjoying their evening sail away party as they departed.

Had I the choice, I could have happily climbed back on that ship for another week.

Instead I’ll have to settle for the oodles of side trips and travels I’ve taken since, and plan to take in the near future. Life is really fabulous, ladies and gentlemen.

If you don’t believe me, take a weekend somewhere at least two hours drive from your house. It renews you.

Well, we finally reach the last of the boat days on the epic cruise that took me somewhere around five months to actually write about. For shame.

I don’t need to explain my lame excuse for an excuse to you! Read on!

By this day, I was officially beginning to resent the idea of leaving the boat for good. I knew the day was coming close, but man was I having more fun than a person should be allowed to have. Sure I’d gained ten pounds that went directly to my tummy, but they were ecstatic pounds, of joy!

I left the boat in St. Maarten for yet another activity excursion (I’d grown addicted by now). I left the gorgeous pier and walked just a little ways to a smaller boat dock, hopped on a pontoon boat with an expatriated Limey and he carted us away through the choppy waters of the bay only to settle alongside a floating tiki hut.

A tiki hut of snorkeling doom.

The short boat ride from the ship to the hut was quite possibly the closest I came to sea sick during the entire trip. Odd, that.

I was surrounded by people who thought the short jaunt across the water in super proximity to other people made it the perfect time to light up a cig. Well, let me just tell you – anyone who smokes around non-smokers is a raging schmuck. Not to mention anyone who smokes around children, especially their own. You know who you are. If you smoke cigarettes in close proximity to others, your balls will fall off. It’s karmic justice. I’m just warning you as a public service announcement.

Doing my duty here, people.

Look at the color of that fecking water.

Would you call that cerulean?

I’d call that cerulean.

Moving on.

So they gave us our flippers and masks and a quick run down of what not to do, informed us of which underwater beauties wanted us dead and which ones simply wanted us to feed them niblets. I jumped in without a life vest, just to give it a whirl and good grief was I bouyant. I’m not sure if it is the high salt content of the water or just the sheer will of my boobs to live, but I floated like styrofoam! I attempted to dive a few times in order to shoot some fish just out of range and the water just laughed in my face as I shot upward foot first.

Yes, the easy floating was a plus, but the full length back and ass sun burn wasn’t so much a plus. Just ask my snorkeling buddy Sarah. She’ll tell ya.

Yes, I explored the art of underwater photography once again, to even further depths of Fail. There’s nothing like having to buy a second $15 lump of shit for the chance to capture blurred browns and grays. I captured as many of the aforementioned browns and grays as I could before I felt the urge to lounge on the floating pontoon. I swam for the platform, keeping my camera out ahead of me and my eyes on the life beneath. The bottom grew further and further from me.

Finally, when there was nothing to see under me, I looked up at the approaching ladder and saw the silhouette of a FUCKING BARRACUDA idling just under the tiki hut.

Apparently he comes there quite often. Something about the niblets attracting all his favorite meals might be what interested him. If it were possible to scream underwater I might have, but I refrained. Barracudas – they eat your fear.

Here we have a shot of the highly rare “Jackass in a Bathing Suit.” Not my best shot ever, but worth remembering that I was in fact there.

You might note the already present sunburn. Thank you Sun Gods for never passing me by.

You can also see the “HUT” aspect of this Tiki inspired location. Really, it’s just a floating bar. More people sat on the platform the whole time drinking and NEVER went in the water than did. I’m still not quite sure why they didn’t just go to the beach with a keg, but who am I to judge? More business for the expatriates!

So, St. Maarten – made of win, almost impossible to drown in (and I’m a poet! And I didn’t even… you get the idea).

By this time I had learned my lesson – Always, always, always get off the boat. There is too much of life spent watching from windows as the more impressive pieces of the world pass by unexplored. How dare I allow the island of Barbados to go by unexplored. Never again.

I will inner tube in the rivers of Dominica, I will zip line and explore the caves of Barbados, I will sit in Volcanic pools on St. Lucia, and I will eat like an effing pig. I hereby vow to live my whole life as though I am on a cruise.

Though I still don’t embrace the buffet. It’s just unnatural.

Man, does he have to come into the room with such a fucking spunk about him?

I was walking along, minding my own business, thinking about my daily writing quota needing to be met and the song Catch My Fall by Billy Idol comes on my mp3 player while I’m out for my nightly walk.

So what, you ask? So what indeed.

The fucker planted a story idea in my head – a story idea that now chirps and beeps and blips at all hours of the day, only growing stronger with every time I hear the song (and let me tell you, I hear it a lot cause I’m really fucking fond of it. God damn it!).

I am now still in the 360′s with my first novel, which is set in medieval England and requires a certain amount of ancient sounding madrigal music and Irish ditties to keep me in the right frame of mind for it, but guess what? That gets old, am I right? Yeah, I’m right.

I am now hereby looking forward to writing my second book, which will take place in the modern world, where Billy Idol is king.

Or queen…his choice.

Well, it’s happened. Stephen King, I hope you’re proud of me – despite having never met me or cared whether I got anything out of your “On Writing” book or not. Well, I did. One of the many – let me emphasize, MANY – things I took away from that masterpiece was the quintessential (and not uncommonly balked at) rule for Writers to Be: Read. Constantly.

Well, though I may have revolted against that advice when I’d heard in my earlier life, apparently I’m actually ready to get serious. I’ve had a pile of books by my bedside ever since.

AN ICE COLD GRAVE by Charlaine Harris is the third novel in the Harper Connelly series. The series revolves around a woman who, due to a lightning strike at fifteen, can now feel and sense the dead. Not like the Ghost Whisperer, ladies and gentlemen. She can find and read corpses. Her existance consists of roaming the country hunting for the lost and deceased of the nation with her devoted Stepbrother, Tolliver, at her side. Though the first two books in the series were centered around mysteries that I solved relatively quickly, the main characters were drawing me in enough that I wanted to keep following along. By the third novel, I loved Harper and Tolliver without a shadow of a doubt. I had all four books on the bedstand before I even started GRAVE SIGHT (the first in the series), which made it easy to devour their adventures one after another. Still the third book was the clincher. AN ICE COLD GRAVE signifies a great event in my newfound reading life. I finished this book in one sitting.

That’s right, one. I started it at dusk and lied in bed reading until six in the morning when I devoured the last page. Undeniable.

Charlaine Harris has a knack for series writing. She has a way of creating tension between characters that can carry for several novels, keeping the reader desperate to see these hints and tensions come to fruition. As a result of seeds planted in the first two Harper Connelly novels, I knew a great event might take place in this novel. And it did.

This book had a love/sex scene that carried more satisfaction and excitement for the reader than any within the ten novels of the Southern Vampire Series (Sookie Stackhouse Novels). The resolution of tension in that one scene blew the Sookie/Eric/Bill triangle out of the water for me. When I was halfway through this book I had a smile on my face and a curiosity to see how the relationship of the two main characters would evolve as a result.

Now, I am one chapter into the fourth book and have just finished researching the series to find that the Fourth book, GRAVE SECRET, is apparently the last of the Harper Connelly series.

“If I write about a character when I don’t feel like I have any ideas left, I have failed the readers.”

That’s the gist of Charlaine Harris’ reasoning on why she would stop at four. My opinion – if you have a character that hooks people, you could write about anything and people will devour it as long as you let them. Still, when you’re writing novels about their bowel movements in a nursing home, one might say you should have let go by now.

So, to sum up this novel – yes, I solved it before the end, but it still kept me turning the page just to see the characters I cared about come out the end of the tunnel. Way to go Charlaine.

We continue with the insurmountable endeavor that is me catching up on my travelogue from four months ago, but whatever.

The next stop on the Cruise that was and will always be – St. Kitts! I assure you, this time I brought my damn camera.

We start it off with proof that apparently St. Kitt’s has cloud kissed mountains. Win.

This was my second solo excursion on the trip. Yes, they had the option to horseback ride in the ocean again, but I’d already done that in St. Lucia so I couldn’t justify going at it again when the first time had been so moving and so undocumented. By now I had cemented my love of excursions that require exercise. There’s something so fantastic about actually taking part in your activity. Sure, there’s double decker buses and five star restaurants, but those don’t compare to getting off your lazy ass and doing something!

I went kayaking.

It isn’t the first time I’ve kayaked (I actually own a kayak. It’s orange, because the hardcore kayaker knows that if you’re in an orange kayak, they’ll be able to spot you more easily when the coast guard has to come rescue you after you cock up and lose your oar. Words of wisdom people. Suck em up, they won’t always be free.)

Just the monkey infested roadway that led to the kayaking location was breathtaking. There was little in the department of overpopulation. Lush landscape and beautiful beaches…and super ritzy resorts. On top of resorts. I found that interesting given the high local population I’d witnessed in St. Lucia and the completely under populated (but overgrown rainforest covered) island of Dominica. This was a strange melange of the two and odd given that my honey had just returned from St. Kitt’s with stories of landfills (yes landfills) at every turn. Apparently St. Kitt’s charges an arm and leg to dispose of trash, so when a ritzier house produces more garbage than they want to pay to dispose of, they drive the bag to the poor part of the island and dump it in a front yard.

Keeping it classy, St. Kitt’s.

This is my kayak. (Notice I chose orange. I’m no fool, ladies and gentlemen.)

We arrived on a bitch of a beach which was all stones and pebbles and awesome. They sent us into the water with snorkel masks and a warning that some fire algae and sea urchins were present and had been informed of our arrival and were ready to kill. I chose to refrain from touching aforementioned haters, but I took underwater pictures of them, that’s for damn sure! (Not sure what I did with said pictures now that I am writing this. Damn! …wait.)

FOUND EM!

Prepare to be astounded with mediocre underwater photography, but first -

This was one of the friendly guides that helped us discover the joys of kayaking. There were three of them and they were all quite friendly, helpful young fellows who were happy to make their money on the tourist trade. One of them was blatantly a relocated American who’d found his niche in the carribean, snorkeling and kayaking and making merry. He actually directed me to a stingray that was hiding a dozen feet under water. When I told him he was bat shit crazy and I didn’t see a thing, he dove to the bottom of the ocean to rouse the bastard.

It was real.

It wasn’t imaginary.

No, I did not in fact get a picture of it, but I did get a great picture of nothing whilst pointing the camera in the general direction of the stingray, so that will have to do.

We now commence with the mediocre underwater photography!

See how the fish are completely out of focus? Totally intentional!

This excursion (and the one to follow) are a good part of the reason why I have sworn to buy a QUALITY nikon underwater camera within the next five years. I’m tired of taking pictures just on land. It limits me! No more, I say!

So after the near hour of time they let us waste just snorkeling around the beach area, dodging the random charge of some angry fire coral here and there, we were to lay waste to the water in our kayaks – of doom! We were all paired up with someone and sent on our merry way. The guides told us to let the strong rower sit at the back of the two person kayak. Since I am conveniently out of shape, but still utterly badass and have experience behind a kayak, I took the rear.

Oh the jokes one could make.

We quickly took off like a shot, rowing like beasts at a startling clip of -1 mile per hour, heading toward the far off beach that had been declared our destination. We meandered, catching glimpses of caves, empty cliff side beach houses, and cliff dwelling goats and we decided we needed to get a closer look. We dillied and dallied, zigzagging our way through the water. Before long we noticed we’d not only taken a strong and ever growing lead ahead of the rest of our excursion buddies, but one kayak had already been relieved of its riders due to Fail.

In those hours of free time that my kayak mate and I passed together, with my riveting dialogue directed at the back of her head, I found out that I was partnered with a dear and personal friend of Jackie Chan, my fecking hero. We talked about the man, the fact that we were all Aries and that I loved the Jackie Chan comic that she had actually been a producer of. Despite the conversation, I never learned her name, or at least didn’t remember. I know, my bad, but hell of a story to tell my friends who are fully aware that I would have Jackie Chan’s babies.

Oh by the way, the previous shots are of the shack where we perched after our three mile kayak was complete and the delicious layout that was left for us by our kayak guide whose name was something like Winston or Harrington or something equally fucking awesome. These were fresh coconut, mango candies, pineapple, and of course, my absolute favorite, ice cold passion fruit juice. After doing most of the rowing on a three mile kayak, I was ready for a swig. So amazing.

After sitting for a spell and joking about the distance and the time it took us to complete our beautiful row, we piled into our shuttle bus and headed back to the ship (where I discovered I’d magically missed my knees when slathering on sunscreen. That was a hoot, but I digress).

Whether this island has a landfill side to it, I never saw it with my own eyes, so I don’t know. But the world from my eyes while on St. Kitt’s was gorgeous.

And I’m thinking of claiming that abandoned beach house.

Wouldn’t you?

To all the world’s fellow scribes, I’m here to spew forth my heinous truth (while listening to Bryan Adams, so brace yourself, it might affect the prose).

I’m thirty years old, ladies and gentlemen. Not a huge deal, I’m not cro-magnon by any means, in fact the average baby boomer would still refer to me as a young adult, but let’s be honest, I’m ancient compared to the woman I was when I first sat down in front of a typewriter and clicked and clacked my way through a night, just to hear the sound of my own typing. (Yes, I wrote on a typewriter, and when I am brilliantly rich and worshiped I will own an antique one and I vow now to write an entire novel on it…one day – not that I am not worshiped now…and wait, I am already rich. Using the Secret here, Damen und Herren. Try to keep up.) I was maybe ten years old when the tendency to write for the sheer process of it began. I was fifteen by the time I had decided I wanted to be a writer (and rock star actress, but I digress).

Why am I considering all of this now, you ask? Well, because I am 357 pages into my first novel and I am feeling a little overwhelmed. (Yes, I said FIRST! Fifteen years later and I’m finally getting my shit together.)

Professor Doobis

Now, I feel it imperative to share a few of the nuggets of wisdom I’ve received this year that helped me get this far:

ANDRE DUBUS III

1) Don’t cheat on your novel. Write it until it is done and don’t stray…unless it dies on you, then you’re pretty much fucked. (Not a direct quote. I never quote directly because I’m pompous enough to think I can add something to their wisdom with some sentence enhancers. Like fuck.)

2) Don’t make shit up. Imagine it.

3) Stay the fuck away from outlines. Let the muse lead the story, not some regimented time table of events.

4) Knowing the end before you write it is boring.

Now the only thing I will say I didn’t get from Andre was my work ethic. Andre is a busy guy, a rock star with fantastic feathered hair, a master of the written word and of anecdote, and he has novels that have taken him years to write. Well, I’ve got at least 100 books to write, I don’t have time to take four years per book. (Despite the fact that I will live to be 143 years old.)

My other unexpected mentor (as evidenced here) is Stephen King. Never met the man, feel no need to, but I read his book “On Writing” and as a result I’ve learned to bust ass.

Stephen King

Best Picture of King Ever

1) Don’t be a fucking slacker. Write everyday, 2000 words. Or 1000 at least.

2) No outlines.

3) If you don’t read you’re a fucking hack and you shouldn’t even pretend to be a writer.

4) You should be pumping out a book every three to five months…. bitches.

(…….my daughter just came in the room doing an interpretive dance to Final Countdown by Europe. How does this five year old woman expect me to concentrate when she’s flooding the room with awesome?)

Anyway, so the point to this tirade – I’ve reached 357 pages of a novel that I thought I knew the end of and I’ve: 1) been tempted to put it aside because another idea wanted my attention, 2) followed blindly, letting the story unfold as it wished, 3) just had an epiphany that completely changes my entire fucking novel and I’m 357 FUCKING PAGES into it. Lesson here?

I have the opposite of fucking writer’s block! The more I write, the more ideas I have, the more inspired I am, the more stories I plan to write NEXT unfold. Now, the story I am in the middle of is veering in a thousand different potential directions and I feel completely terrified, overwhelmed, and awed. Shit is going down and I’ve realized why Magic Kingdom’s Space Mountain was always my favorite ride – because not being able to see the dips before you drop makes the feeling of falling all the more fun.

Mmm…alliteration. Join me, won’t you?

I hereby acknowledge the raging fail that was my delayed cruise album. Blogging and I haven’t tangoed in a while, which can be entirely blamed on the fact that the blog refuses to go back to our ballroom dancing class because HE thinks the instructor was giving me the eyeballs. Well, whatever blog, if you wanna be that way.

This is St. Lucia.

And this is my future swimming pool. As a part of the “Historic St. Lucia Tour” (which I wouldn’t really recommend) we visited a mountaintop homestead of a transplanted English doctor who had fallen in love with an island beauty and decided to move to be with her. Now the bastard is living in my fucking house. Don’t worry, I’ll just build one that’s better, then fly taunting flags in his general direction.

Anyway, at the man’s house we were treated to a delicious array of Island cuisine, including some shit, some other shit, and some delicious shit dipped in banana ketchup. Who knew that would taste like God’s own saliva? The juice was alright, but it was nothing compared to the fresh passion fruit juice I chugged in the sweltering heat on the Isle of Dominica.

This is my daughter having a freak out over the sweet two way dolly I bought her at a road side vendor. She’s not two way because she bats for both teams you dirty monger, she’s multiple personality. If you flip her skirt she changes outfits, and faces, but that’s beside the point. There are jokes I could make, but I won’t.

The landscape beyond the fence in this shot was quite possibly the most breathtaking landscape I have ever seen. There were colors and hues in the sunlight here that were unlike anything I had ever seen. Truly beautiful.

Which made it entirely all too possible for the following goats to maintain an unprecedented racket over the gathering hordes of tourists.

“Hey look Mommy! Goats of varied gorgeous colors standing over a cliff that frames the heavens. Can I feed them Banana chips that are conveniently for sale at the table directly across the street here?”

How can a mother say no, I ask you?

Trick Question. She can’t.

You try saying no to these goats. They’ll just flash you a gold filigreed Bleet that echoes across the rolling landscape and you’ll cave.

Oh you’ll cave.

Now, St. Lucia didn’t stop there in its pursuits of making me its bitch. Oh no.

After the somewhat (well no, let’s come correct, the completely) disappointing Historical tour, I returned to the ship in time to take my first of several solo excursions. (I’m an Aries, I don’t need backup to start shit, friends. Know this.) I’d been warned that I would end up on a beach in my bathing suit and nothing more, so I decided to leave Sundance (My Nikon D90 for the new readers. For my returnees, you should fucing know by now!) in the cabin and go completely free of material belongings (how spiritually profound of me). I left my camera, my phone, all but my soul, my manners, and my sarcasm back at the ship and headed out for my Horseback Riding Excursion.

Now as you may have caught on, there are no photographs of this day from this point on. I rode along in a bus with the couples and families to the ranch where we would be riding and was assigned a horse named Lessa. The dreadlocked tour guide was stern and intense. He would make you listen with force if need be, but his intentions were good. Be less than jovial, people will fucking listen to you. I was told Lessa would try to test by pulling on the reins three times (three times exactly). I would need to hold strong or she would completely ignore my instructions for the rest of the ride.

She pulled once, twice, three times…then she even tried a fourth because I wasn’t playing. I gave her a pat on the neck and a scratch along the mane. She turned to look at me. I mean really look at me. From then on, we understood each other.

We rode with ease down a dirt road through a banana plantation, listening to the panicked sounds of other riders losing their cool as the cows on leashes wandered into their horses path, causing a bit of a clusterfuck. I rode with a calm horse and a serene outlook and soon found myself on the most perfect beach I could have imagined. It was set away from the rest of the world by high cliffs on either side. There was no way to access this beach by anything other than horseback or boat. We tied the horses to nearby trees and went for a swim.

Then I did the most profoundly awesome thing I have ever done. I rode a horse, bareback, in the ocean. That’s right. Tell me that isn’t one of those ridiculously moving and profound experiences and I’ll call you a dirty fucking liar. The tension you have to keep in your thighs to keep yourself on the horse and to protect your nether regions from bruising on the horses vertebrae is remarkable, and unexpected.

Now, the real clincher of this trip…turned out there WERE people there to watch your stuff at the beach. I could have brought my camera, or my phone, or both if I’d been so inclined. I don’t regret it though. All the more reason to repeat the endeavor on a future cruise. Some experiences are meant to be captured by memory alone. I captured it alright, and it changed me. I will never fear to do anything alone again. The crowd may be off sitting in sulfur baths by an active volcano, which sounds magical in and of itself, but the horses were calling my name. Had I ignored their siren song…I would have more pictures from St. Lucia – but FUCK pictures! Experience trumps pictures here folks. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

So I hereby post a picture to help you enjoy the profound soul changing experience I shared with a horse alone. Well…and a bunch of other tourists with cameras. Whatever. Now, suspend disbelief and just imagine this is a picture of me.

This is exactly what it looked like, except Optimus Prime was riding along the beach beside us.

Now, the title of this blog might make one think I’m hiding in the corner keeping my dork status under wraps, but if you’ve read this blog in the past you know I wear my Dork badge with pride. Instead, what I’m actually doing is crouching in the corner naked, holding a copy of “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, mumbling “My precious,” when anyone happens by.

You can make fun of me for it, but I am coming out of the Secret closet. I can control the Yuniverse wif moi Moind!

Now, if you’ve seen the first few moments of the film version of the Secret, you know it feels like a Kool-Aid and love in type cult propaganda film. After you get past the silly montage of compelling-images-of-various-sinister-and-excited-looking-era-appropriate-archetypes-rushing-and-dodging-the-powers-that-be to keep the-tablet-that-most-certainly-holds-the-answers-to-all-things a secret, there’s an overwhelming amount of cool to be had.

(The chinese food just arrived, so give me a moment while I gorge… God that was delicious)

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah! The Secret is made of win. It’s focus is positive thinking, positive visualization and the like – concepts that are preached to us from childhood by any good teacher or parent. Anyone ever heard the phrase, “You can do anything you set your mind to?” When you were a kid you bought it hook line and sinker if you were lucky, but as you grow up, the people around us, the examples we see most often, they affect our sense of wonder and devout self belief. The Secret is basically the reinstatement of those childhood beliefs – you really can do anything you set your mind to. If anyone else tells you you can’t, it’s almost certainly because they don’t believe THEY can and seeing you have faith in yourself just makes them feel worse about themselves.

Let no one tear you down, let no one lead you astray from what you want because of their doubt or naysaying. If someone doesn’t believe in you, its on them alone.

So my suggestion to the world is that everyone should read this book or watch the movie (preferrably both) at least once and try it. Even if it feels weird or strange to have that much faith in something so concrete as one’s self (you’d be surprised how hard it is for someone to have faith in themselves. I actually have a theory that religion was originally created by people who realized that the inherent self doubt in almost all people could be combated if they were given the belief that there was something outside themselves that could do it for them. Faith is faith. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you, it’s powerful stuff.) So yeah, go be a postive motherfucker for a while and see if your life gets better or worse. I’ll make a bet right now I know the outcome.