A Little Story From My Childhood
We were only in the 6th grade. I had been friends with Angie since I moved to the area in the 1st grade. She was my first friend, as a matter of fact, which is why when I walked into the locker room to change for gym class [...]
Okay.
This is huge.
Bigger than an elephant on steroids.
Bigger than MC hammer pants.
And quite possibly, even bigger than that Inception movie that everyone’s talking about. Yeah, that’s right. I said it.
MAKE US YOUR BITCHES FOR THE DAY
Most of you know by now that I’m touring across the United States with Colin Wright & Andi Norris, stopping [...]
A Sexy Story With a Lesson
We sit in near silence, the only interruptions being an occasional mojito-induced outburst of nervous laughter, the sound of my silver chandelier earrings gently clinkering together, and the relentless tropical rains that steadily pelt the top of the canvas roof of the 4×4 automobile we are in.
It’s shamelessly cliche, where [...]
Why Not Take The Leap?
I’ve been meeting a lot of truly smart, savvy, remarkable people lately. So many are saying to hell with the safety net, and are leaping toward their passions, and haven’t looked back since.
On the same token, however, so many of those smart, savvy, remarkable people are not.
Frankly, this makes [...]
I’ve got little patience for excuses.
I proactively call myself out whenever I catch myself making excuses in order to either procrastinate or invent reasons why I shouldn’t put myself out there.
Why?
Because sometimes, putting yourself out there is nail-bitingly, blood-curdingly, will-drive-you-to-drink, flat-out terrifying at times. It’s far easier to continue doing what we’ve always done, [...]
I can vividly recall the first time I wrote a resume.
I typed away on our clunky, oversized HP desktop, silently muttering words that shouldn’t appear in any resume each time autoformat would sneakily attempt to take over my painstakingly-created bulleted list of achievements.
To this day, autoformat and I remain sworn enemies–and with reason, might I [...]
I’ll admit it–I’m a tad embarrassed.
I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed in light of the nonchalant display of nudity that is currently lounging alongside of me–quite proudly, and with reason, if I do say so myself–on this clothing optional beach, or if I’m embarrassed for another reason–perhaps at my own relative prudishness, something that seems [...]
Sometimes, you just know.
Just like I knew, the very first time I heard the most beautiful Spanish being spoken by a blonde-haired, USA born girl who had studied abroad in Mexico, that I, too, would someday have foreign adventures fueled by a lustful curiosity, a carefree spirit, and heaps of naivety that would eventually turn [...]
This Isn’t Actually a Love Story
In a strange sort of way, love has been one of my greatest teachers of life.
It has taught me patience.
It has taught me compromise.
It has taught me dedication.
It has taught me intimacy.
Not to mention the importance of a snappy comeback.
But perhaps most of all, love has taught me something that [...]
See that baby face up there? That’s my friend Karol–pronounced like Carl–who is a writer, traveler, & all around adventure-seeking bad ass over at Ridiculously Extraordinary. Right now he’s living in Poland, but before that he was downing noodles in Thailand, dodging kangaroos in Australia, and doing the zen thing in India, to name a [...]
We hear it all the time:
FIND MEANING IN YOUR LIFE.
It’s become the advice du jour. The magical solution to our woes. The on-call prescription for disappointment with life. The hope we hold onto, when our own has abandoned us.
In a sense, the search for meaning has become a religion of its own.
We [...]
Q: Who’s Your Daddy?
A: Novelty
In the last year, two of the countries I’ve lived in are Chile & Costa Rica. In both places, I did a number of things, kissed met a number of people, and learned a number of lessons.
Many people advocate the value of travel–that’s nothing new–but what they’re really advocating is [...]
A Personal Story AKA Scared Out of My Damn Mind
I was 20 years old when I started watching her slip away. Normally during the summertime, she would spend all morning and a large portion of the afternoon out in our garden, diligently tending to every last petal, stem and root. Her forehead would glisten with [...]
“Quitters never win & winners never quit.”
Excuse me, divine gods of all Protestant work-ethic – inspired proverbs, *takes drag of imaginary cigarette* but I beg to differ. *Apathetically exhales and flings cigarette to ground before grinding it with the ball of not-so-imaginary fire engine red high heel.*
We’ve heard these types of statements all our lives: [...]
My friend & fellow blogger Carlos Miceli of Owl Sparks once told me that he was relieved that I never waxed on about relationships here on the site, which I had sort of made an unspoken rule.
But what can I say? I’m a rule breaker, baby. Even when they’re my own.
And with that, [...]
In this post, I talk a lot about my own personal journey, and how I’ve gotten to where I am today. If you just want to skip to the end where there are resources that will show you how YOU can get rebel against mediocrity and take your life & career into your own hands–sans [...]
If you clicked on this post, you either:
a) Need to get a grip.
b) Want to reclaim your life.
c) Have no time to do either.
d) Googled “mating habits of porcupines” and this just came up.
e) You read everything I write because you’re secretly plotting my demise.
With the exception of letter E, I completely [...]
Most of you reading this website are here because you want more. Tried and true may be comfortable, but boring. The traditional life path may be safe, but uninspiring. The status quo is average, but nothing extraordinary.
You know there’s something missing, but you can’t pinpoint what, exactly, it is.
We’ve essentially been told for years that [...]
Dear Anheuser Busch,
I’m sorry for throwing you under the bus after all of the good times we shared over the years. Even though we must part ways, we’ll always have Freshman year.
Dear Reader,
If you’ve been hanging out here for a while, you know that topics can tend to get a little heavy. And while [...]
Here’s a little something to ponder:
Band Aids.
What comes to mind? Perhaps a small, rectangular piece of flexible plastic with adhesive that sticks to your skin and pulls at your little hairs when you finally tear it off, bringing back unpleasant memories of your last Brazilian wax.
No? I should leave the Brazilian wax out [...]
Do not be alarmed. This photo will make far more sense in a moment.
Look, Ma! I Named My Very Own Pandemic!
If you’ve been reading The Middle Finger Project for some time, you know that I’m not shy when it comes to making bold claims.
Today is no exception.
I’d like to share something that’s been tormenting me [...]
So, I may or may not have recruited a friend to write an article for The Middle Finger Project. And her name may or may not be Katie. And I may or may not have met her while wrangling the likes of five men at once in Chile.
Okay, so maybe it didn’t exactly happen like [...]
A harsh look at the unflattering reality that we live and die by, day in and day out . . . without even knowing it.
A discussion on how erasing the lines that divide us can be beneficial in more ways than we imagine–complete with 18 examples to get you started.
Here in the U.S., we’re all about go-go-go. It’s a fast paced lifestyle, and if you don’t keep ahead you’ll soon be left behind. It’s a race to the finish. It’s the survival of the fittest. It is time-is-money, and the early bird gets the worm.
Time, in essence, is a something [...]
It’s not easy being freesy: Unconventional doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
Your life is essentially the outcome of a never ending series of decisions. Make sure those decisions are truly in line with your goals by using a commonly overlooked factor beyond simple pros and cons.
When your guilty conscience is your enemy, Ayn Rand & the tension between the moral values and the capitalistic values that define us.
A breakdown of the motivations for the things that we do, and which category we should be focusing most on in order to start living more inspired lives.
You wanna challenge the status quo? Here’s your shot.
The negative effects of socialization. AND…An introduction to the HULA HOOP CONTEST 2010! (Get out your video camera and get ready to free yourself of unnecessary inhibitions!)
For my readers. With love & a high five, Ash.
Fellow blogger Kristin Norris of Instigationology publicly challenges me to a month of no-drinking. Check out the link to the official video.
There’s a converse relationship between authority in the real world and authority in the blogosphere–but regardless of context, does actual authority actually exist? Or is it all just a matter of perception?
We’ve got a love/hate relationship with the word “success”–by standard definition, it’s measured as a black & white outcome, but perhaps that’s the wrong way to go about it.
A rendezvous with culture shock in Costa Rica–how can we determine right or wrong, if we’re judging using a separate set of rules for truth?
At what point did productivity become worth dying for? At what point did we stop feeling, and just start doing? At what point did our lives turn into a never-ending assembly line, where the work is never done and we are never done? And at what point did we become okay with it?
Is the battle for self-improvement an elusive one?
The distinction between desires versus dreams, and why it’s important to remember which is which.
A career is a glorified version of a job–you aren’t the product of the tasks you perform, but rather, the experiences you’ve had. You are not your career.
Common “absolute truths,” such as our version of what an education should look like, a good job should look like or even a good person should look like are all just one model of reality and as such, aren’t absolute at all.
Part II of the sarcastic, silly list series that might indicate whether you’re an unconventional thinker. Can you relate?
A letter to my future self where I ask some big, life-changing questions–are the things I ultimately expect out of life in line with my actions today?
There’s no such thing as luck, and if you’re banking your life on getting lucky, you might as well plan for the worst. In terms of lifestyle design, the word “design” implies “deliberate intention.” So if you want control over yours, it’s time to get up, get out there, and BE DELIBERATE AND INTENTIONAL.
You don’t have to travel to have the life of your dreams; lifestyle design places an arbitrary emphasis on travel, but it’s not the be all end all solution. A smart, sassy, hard-hitting guest post by Andrew MacPherson, author of Rules Optional & Sail to Trail.
Think critically about the things you do in your everyday life–does everything you do actually make sense, or do you do it just because that’s the way it’s always been done? I argue that it’s an unfortunate case of the latter.
