There Is More Than One Way to Tell a Story

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Sandi LoConti

There is a thing you do, Makes you uniquely you, What is it about you?

Your special talent for keeping everyone informed and documenting life?

Your annoying thing like bitching about a lost hour? It’s a true thing I’m not the only one.

The way you do this….

Or that

Or you refuse to do this….

Someone’s got to hold the pocketbooks.

What’s your signature dish?

Glasses?

Look?Or phrase…just sayin.

What are the things you let people see and the things you keep to yourself.

Your dark moments that could vanish if only…

The lives you touch

Who wags their tail for you, was it always so?

What makes you laugh out loud?

What do you collect?

What’s your guilty pleasure? Carmel Cone Ice Cream? Butterscotch fudge? Frozen Thin Mints? You detect a trend here?

What’s on your list? Love? Travel?

All these bits add up to your story even if you think you don’t have one, you do. You just have to add up all the isms and scraps and tidbits and ah ha moments and there it is. You are no accident you are a deliberate life with a story worth telling and a legacy like no other.

Slowly very slowly a trust is beginning to grow. People are sharing their stories. Some of their own, some of the one’s they love. They are recognizing legacy in the ordinary and sharing in this little community. The gift of hearing or reading someone’s story is worth more than anything money can buy; to be granted permission to share it and preserve it in the space of time is humbling. There are wonderful stories coming soon to this tiny place on the Internet. For this, and so much more, I am grateful and jazzed and encouraged. I believe I’ll make that my new word…encouraged.

Stay tuned…

The Power of Collaboration

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Sandi LoConti

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up. —Oliver Wendell Holmes

This has been an interesting week in terms of collaborating, from business to personal there have been many heads together sharing ideas, enlightening one another or just plain brain storming. I found myself in “meetings” of all kinds that proved very satisfying. As you know that isn’t often the case.

It seems that most misunderstandings start from lone assumptions, yeah yeah I know you’re shocked. You’d be surprised at how long someone can carry an assumption around before they consider its validity. Such was the case between two mothers who, up until just recently, seemed to make their blended families work just fine. You know the old adage about assuming. Each believed the other was conspiring against them until one had the courage to call the other and they sat down to join forces and try to understand where things ran amuck. There was a culprit; it turned out it was neither of them.

Sometimes someone’s burning question becomes a thought provoking discussion. A Facebook friend had just been informed that one of their former clients had passed. The question, should they delete that person from their phone? All manner of opinion sprung from that question, all manner of spiritual beliefs and pragmatism showed up in the comment section of the post. I don’t know what they decided but there was certainly enough food for thought.

Meals and drinks shared with friends were end to end this week. I was a bit amused at three different women sharing lunch talking about a TV show we had all seen. I mean we are three distinctly different women, yet there was that one strand, aside from the fact that we were colleagues, that ran through us. Even tiny moments like that blow me away.

Erma Bombeck once said, “It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else”. I’ve had the distinct honor and pleasure to be part of a friend’s burgeoning new venture and she has been an amazing supporter of Ordinary Legacy. This week each of us has played devil’s advocate, creative genius, or soothsayer to the other. The results are always enlightening, encouraging and creative, this week was no exception.

The point is no one can come into their own without others. I say this as the daughter of a man who considered himself a loner and may have passed some of those genetics along. I can certainly be social but I have spent much time on my own and tend to ruminate on things myself. I am learning that “no one can whistle a symphony” as someone once said. I started to really understand this just a few years ago, but it actually came home when a dear friend sent me a TED talk by Boyd Varty. It was about the African concept of Ubuntu: I am because of you.

I hope you’ll be more aware of the collaborative moments in your life and know like you know they make you what you are, good, bad or indifferent.

I Know Like I Know 2013

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Sandi LoConti

If I had to choose one word to describe 2013 it would be milestone. Blink your eyes and five years of writing about all the ordinary things that will make up a life’s legacy have passed. Time is funny that way, as Gretchen Rubin would say, the days are long but the years are short. It’s a wonderful life here on Stowe Ln with all the things that bread, salt and wine can bring a home. Joy and prosperity are truly reigning over this household and it is quickly becoming that place where more and more of life’s little celebrations are being held so we try never to run out of wine.

The Jersey Girls are happy and healthy and we continue to do our work and thank God each day for the generosity of those who got us here. Life would not have been this wonderful if it weren’t for Shawn Stewart and his kindness and pragmatism. I can still remember asking him; on a scale of 1 – 10 just how bad are the girls, how aggressive. His answer with a smile; a 1 and 1/2. Fine.

As many times as I say I know like I know, this has been the year that I’ve tried to come from that place of “I don’t know what I don’t know”. I’ve shifted my perspective a bit, learned how to be “clenched” and tried some new things. Photo treasure hunts and seminars with cool people like Seth Castile to force my camera back into my hands and consequently my heart. Yes I’ve become a nuisance but the end result is a style, a viewpoint, a continuing illustration of the ordinary. Technical? No. Cool? Sometimes. I’ve begun to capture moments in time as I see them and it’s not like you don’t know how I feel about moments in time.

I’ve had the courage to stop coloring my hair. I’ve gone grey and the end result is so much better than I could have imagined. I have the glintys as I call them. Not quite grey, headed toward salt and pepper and worry free. Hours spent at the salon are a thing of the past and the money saved is a huge bonus. We have abundance here in so many ways. Once you shift your perspective you are no longer looking for abundance in one place, it comes from everywhere and from everyone.

I’ve met some wonderful new old friends this year. We share a common point of view and a love of all things ordinary and special. What a joy to have them in my life. Sadly some people I thought were friends have gone. Either they or I had gotten what was the best of the relationship and moved on. A fact of life I’m afraid, I’ve learned that people will come and go. The important people stay for a very long time and I continue to be grateful for each one of them even if I don’t see them as often as I’d like.

My family and extended family are flourishing. We had many a celebration this year together for little things and big things. I am still reeling from the wedding of my dear Muriel and Martina. I had the honor of capturing their day in photos and selfishly that meant I could be with them through it all. God knows they’ve been with me through it all.

Luckily Muriel was with me to assist our neighbor into rehab through an intervention. Five years later it never occurred to me that I might have to put that hat on again. I’ve been known to say I resent what I know about addiction, but the fact is it might have helped save a life. It does all come back to you, the script, the facilities, the beseeching from the intended. Not easy but I was better at it this time, I was removed from the situation and I let it go after it was over. For the most part anyway, the jury is still out on the successfulness of it. Like Bob Seger says, “wish I didn’t know now, what I didn’t know then.” It was a hard life.

And so it is that making life easier has become a mission. You know, like buying a new sewing machine. It’s cool, it’s light and it does just what I need it to do, I’m not making clothing any more I’m just nipping and tucking. I must say the one feature that I was so smug about, the needle threader broke. I’m not surprised, the reason for it was all wrong. It was just to spite my Aunt Millie who laughed at me a hundred years ago when she handed me a needle to thread for her and I just poked it right through with an eye roll. “I was like you she said”, sent me some karma, and now I’m like her looking for the magnifying glass.

All in all there has been little to bitch about, there was the Aunt Rant and the poopy bag incident, the Match.com fiasco, the cast iron bra epiphany and the crazy colleague who surely would have been the death of me if he hadn’t been reassigned recently. Thank you karma, I certainly will learn to let you take care of things from now on.

I’ve learned that I never really was a “Jersey Girl” even though I was born here, that’s my sister’s department. I’ve learned that I no longer have anything to prove, my only inclination at this point is to add value. I’ve learned that I’m cool, no kidding, it’s true and that what I’m doing with Ordinary Legacy has meaning to some people.

I’m going to summon up my courage again this year and develop an e-course based on Ordinary Legacy, that should be an adventure. Talk about being clenched. And finally I’m going to continue to add to my body of work. Can you imagine? I’ve got a body of work. I know like I know that my wildest dreams aren’t really all that wild anymore and that makes this ordinary woman soar, finally.

I hope you’ll take a look back at this year’s posts and see if they plant a seed for your own extraordinary legacy.

Happy New Year.

No, You Can’t Buy Christmas Spirit

Image

But I found it everywhere this week.

In my wood bin:

From my oven:

Catching up with Fran:

Putting up the tree:

I even found it at the doctor’s office. Sorry no picture available for that one. I’ve had a cough for weeks, a bark actually, and it’s plucked my last nerve so I decided to investigate with someone who actually went to medical school. The thing is there’s really nothing wrong, no pneumonia, no sinus infection, not a smidge of temperature, just this nagging bark. Perhaps it’s residual from an upper respiratory infection he said. Wouldn’t I have noticed an upper respiratory infection? I’m a huge believer in stresses manifesting themselves in the body…just saying, person who keeps touting misinformation all over the company about things you don’t understand. But I digress, the Christmas spirit appeared as Advair, which is very expensive, but came in the form of a two-week SAMPLE.

Christmas spirit is giving, service, love, sharing, and human connection. It’s not material, you should never have to buy it for the sake of the season. Simply send someone home with cookies for their morning coffee.

I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year….Charles Dickens

Just Enough Rain for Luck

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Sandi LoConti

Had anyone told me I would be quoting Steven “Dude looks like a lady” Tyler I would have said they were smoking what he smokes…the thing is he’s got this when he says “If you have a candle, the light won’t glow any dimmer if I light yours off of mine.”

I have been the recipient of more generosity than I ever could have imagined. From my family, from my family, from my family especially my Father. He didn’t have much, he didn’t know much but he shared everything from stories to lost dreams to insight to the yolk from his over easy eggs salted just perfectly to wint-o-green lifesavers. We spoke a similar language that only we could understand.

So many generous people have shared their knowledge with me throughout my career that it’s hard to list them all. Most notably my friend Cookie, a rare breed in the car business that thought it was ok, no more than ok, to share his vast, been there done that, know where the bodies are buried knowledge with a woman of all people. I’m not talking about the read the financial statement kind of knowledge I’m talking about the watch out for this trick, keep an eye out for this on the bill of sale kind of knowledge. It was invaluable but beyond that it was the same kind of knowledge my own father shared, the real life, you’ll get kicked in the ass once in a while knowledge in a kicked up more educated went to college version.

Over the course of the sixteen years I worked with him, he was my mentor, he was my friend and he became my confidant during a time when not much was going right. You can’t help but know an awful lot about each other’s families working together every single day. He knew my relationship with my father and I knew his relationship with his children especially his Muriel. So it was no surprise to me when my father died he could see the future.

In the infinity of life that we all share, I have to believe that a promise kept is more important than many other things. If something happens to me, he said…you’ve got Muriel. Of course I would, and so I do. Through the miracle of universal alignment she lives four doors away on our little Stowe Ln. It’s been an easy friendship full of shared experiences and memories of both her father and mine. It’s my hope that one day she will think of me as one of the generous people in her life and fulfill her promise of helping me grow old with a sippy cup of wine in my hand…just sayin

I had the honor of seeing her married this past weekend, of chauffeuring her in a shiny BMW the way her Father would have, of authenticating the day through photos that were beautiful but regrettably missing one of the most important people in her life. We didn’t speak of it, we didn’t have to.

It was a joyous day none the less, had I had a daughter I would want her to be exactly like Muriel. Beautiful, real, take after her Father in that sarcastic listen closely so you don’t miss anything kind of way. We will always share the Father’s Daughter mentality, sentimentality although she will poo poo being capable of any such thing. What we know like we know is that they are exuberantly watching from somewhere and even if they’re not they have shared so much that we will never run out of all that they have left behind for us.

To that end the lesson for both of us from our Father’s has been to share what we know, not just our knowledge but our way of looking at things, our perspective if you will, our sense of humor, our sense of family and our friendship so that we too can leave behind bits of ourselves.

My dearest Muriel and Martina no amount of love and health and happiness can ever be enough for you. Know you’re loved, share your lives fully and leave behind all that makes you what and who you are, as individuals and as a couple, so that many can benefit from your having met and married. Like your wedding day I wish you just enough rain for luck I know like I know it will be a breathtaking life.

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