I had mentioned as mantras the 3 A's in the book. AWARENESS, ACCEPTANCE AND ACTION. But initially forgot an equally important one! ADAPATABILITY!

I was fortunate to be part of a club and a localized scene back in the 80s that was so different in a Dallas,Texas world, and brought all the crazies there out of the woodwork as well as from around the globe.

Come on everybody let’s GeT reAL!!. Let’s set the phone, tablet or whatever electronic device DOWN NOW. (of course, after you read this...haha) Then take a deep breath. We all need to spend way less time with that stuff.

The holidays direct us to gratitude and emanate from self-formed /taught/learned and possibly partially borrowed adages.

My first are my Four A’s. It used to be my three, but added one on the end recently as my children advanced into their teenage years and this became required for sanity’s sake.

They are Awareness, Acceptance, Action, and Adaptability.

Walk through each step. Anytime we lose center, go back and think through those A’s. It works!

Reading Pearl S Buck’s book, The Good Earth in 10th grade brought appreciation for the value of the land and real estate ownership at a young age. Little to know then that the real estate business and its rough-and-tumble road would be a major part of life in the future. Real estate without greed and with purpose would also become a life mantra.

Huh? No, I wasn’t a punk rocker, but I was for one Halloween night when my friend Arly, King of Punks and pictured below, let me borrow his leather jacket that I think weighed about 100 pounds with all that metal and those doodads attached. Insane that he trusted me with it. It reminds me of the energy of the scene in the Deep Ellum Dallas world in the early 80s.