I’m at LaGuardia. David got me a ticket to Toronto to meet the parents. My mom advised me to smile a lot because I have good teeth. I hope that’s enough because I’m not great in new social situations. I am dressed to kill, however. And I mean that literally. I look a little like Johnny Cash. Plus, I did my eyebrows up with the new Anastasia kit from Sephora. Anastasia does Oprah’s eyebrows. Her kits are a fortune, but really worth it. It’s like I have a new face. I hope the “in-laws” will like it.

I met with my career coach David Dowd yesterday. He was so great. I’ve been struggling with my ego lately at home and at work. I am surrounded by egomaniacs, so I want to either a) run away from it all or b) bomb everyone to bits. If you’re the FBI, I don’t mean that literally. It’s just that I have a lot of frustration – anger/rage -- inside of me that doesn’t know how to fight other people’s egos without bringing my own to the surface.

David Dowd pointed out that my ego is revving in full gear right now. We’re going through a re-org at work and I’m operating in survival mode. I want to see myself as separate from all the egomaniacs around me. And "separateness" causes me to want to defend my turf (not that anyone is trying to annex it. Just feels like people are trespassing a lot lately). But, alas, turf wars are nothing more than egos running the show from survival mode. I need to put down my weapons. And it’s tough.

We also distinguished that my ego is an expert at morphing. Morphing so I can’t find her! It’s like the entry I wrote over Thanksgiving. That face of “nice.” Of course, that was before these new rockin’ eyebrows. But I digress.

The ego (desire for self alone) lives off of intensity and duality. It needs drama for intensity. The resulting experience is a placebo for the authentic self. Basically, drama provides a nice distraction from having to deal with yourself.

So, who is “self”? Who are you? Well, you're not your past. Not your future. Not your thoughts. Not your emotions. Not your body. Not your health. So who?

Who YOU are is the choosing. Strip away everything else, and you’ll see that who YOU are lives at the impulse, that beat of the 'Now' ... that choice between feeding your ego or feeding your authentic self.

That’s why alcoholics especially have to focus on taking it one day at a time. Because we’re hardwired to want to just “fix” it. And then we say “Done. It’s fixed. No more addiction. No more problem.” That gives us the very comforting illusion of being in control. But life is not a series of problems to be fixed. We convince ourselves that there’s something wrong that we can fix, and then our egos have us by the balls. That’s the mind game. And it’s hard to win it because the ego is so clever.

In the war against my own ego, I lose as often as I win.

David (my coach) offered up a good strategy: Give up being who you were. It’s not real anyway. You are not what you know, what you have, what you do. It's so true. I meet so many uninspiring people who think that those things are who they are. And it's all they talk about. They are extremely boring to be around.

The healthier focus is to turn your attention on who you are becoming. And while you're at it, notice who the person across from you is becoming in your presence. That’s an authentic life, and an exciting life to live.

My coach and I do a lot of work on the various tenets of freedom, one of which is to “Face everything. Avoid nothing.” I positively suck at that tenet.

It means dealing with your own truth...a lot of which I haven’t wanted to touch because it seems so inconsistent with the world around me. But, that’s no way to live, so I foresee lots of changes in the year ahead. Or, maybe the only change will be me. I dunno. I’m not setting out to fix anything anymore....intentionally anyway. I choose to live my truth....or at least be more aware of it.

Oh, cool! Bono is being knighted in Dublin for all the work he’s doing on Aids in Africa. They say you can’t call him sir because he’s not a British citizen. I will anyway. That’s a great honor, Sir Bono! You so literally rock.


Ok, so I should probably go to the gate now and see if it’s time to board.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good flight!