Lana Maryé Morelli

Holy Hiatus! With Christmas and New Years falling on the weekend this year, I just couldn’t get my life together enough to sit down and blog… which I think is okay, because you readers probably couldn’t get your lives together to sit down and read either… We’re even! So during this hiatus, winter decided to rear its ugly head. Here in the Northeast we didn’t have a white Christmas, we had a white day-after Christmas. Whether you like snow or not, many Holiday/Christmas songs of a “ White Christmas, ” end up making most people long for it, even if they don’t particularly like snow. In short, had the storm arrived just 12 hours earlier, it could have arrived to open arms… but truthfully, instead, it was greeted with a groan. I guess at some point, snowstorms have had to stop being personally offended by the adult – hatred toward them. “We have to get to work”  “We have to reschedule everything now”  “I don’t want to shovel”  “Oh No, Look at the roads!”  ...

I have always loved “colorful” words. When I was a child, I called big words or rare words “foo-foo” words. You see, my love affair with words started very early on. I was the youngest in my family and running after my brother and sister, screaming, “wait for me” in every aspect possible. So as I struggled to keep up and be taken seriously, I looked to language to help me. I knew that words and correct phrases could aid me in communicating and getting my point across; but even more, these “foo-foo” words made me sound like a “real big kid.” So here is a true “big-kid” “foo-foo” word: Neotony—Pronounced ( Knee-ot-Knee ) It is a 50-cent adjective for describing someone. Literally defined as “the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood.” Decoded: it means to be youthful-minded . Now, neotony is a funny thing. It needs to be balanced. For some people the idea of neotony is laid on too thick. They have retained too many childlike attributes and carried only those attributes ...

In our 20something years we are figuring ourselves out and trying things on for size. We are interviewing people we meet. With new friends it’s to decide if they are the type of person we want in our inner circle. With dating, we interview people to decide if we want a relationship with them. For work, we interview for jobs to see if we want a particular career. So, with all of incessant Q & A circling around us, we have heard that dreaded question time and again. The one that makes our palms sweat and heart race. Where as soon as the words are uttered, we feel instant anxiety. It’s awkward and heavy and most of us cannot conceive to think about the answer… but it is frequently asked anyway. “So where do you see yourself in five years?” [GROAN!]   We stumble over our answer while frantically trying to organize our thoughts. With trepidation we try to formulate an “acceptable” answer. I want to stop here and point out that I hate this question. So I am taking a stand, an...