Learning very slowly

OK...I tried something else new. Tried my hand a freelancing a web design. Bad idea. Crashed and burned. The client hated it and my self worth is completely smashed.

Wow. I didn't see this coming.

So what have I learned from this?
a) I need a thicker skin
b) I need to hyperfocus on the things that I know I do well, not the things that I kinda do well.
c) Never, ever do work for friends. You'll not forgive them if they don't appreciate your work with the same urgency you do.

Funny...I've been yelling at myself for not writing. This latest failure has been instructive in that I need to listen to the authentic voice in my head. Disregarding it like it's a bag lady on the street holding a cardboard sign ("pay attention to me") isn't smart.

I'm also comforting myself by remembering what happened to Terry Gross. She famously failed before finding her niche.

It's Sunday. Cranky much?

As I read the digital copy of the newspaper, I am aghast at how there are so many people who write well, with authority and skill and copious amounts of talent. I’m amazed that most of those people:

a) are not me,
b) are younger than me,
c) are not in the food line or on welfare.

Also, I imagine most of those people to be women and to have working husbands that support them…that their writing isn’t enough to sustain the family or even one family member. And then I think of the fact that this is a Sunday and I have to work at someone else’s behest in a cubicle the color of burlap for at least seven more years (of course to have a job is to be lucky. To only have to work for seven more years is lucky. What a dunce I am) before I have that type of freedom.

And then I just get cranky.

Clarity

Answering some questions from previous entries:

1. Why am I not writing? - Because I'm afraid I won't be any good at it anymore. Because I'm afraid I'll be good at it and then discover I'm bad. Because then people will know what I really think and who I really am. Because it gets in the way of television couch surfing.



2. Why haven't I taken tests for a promotion? - Because instinctively, I know that to promote means to commit to a higher level of dedication and responsibility at work and I don't want to go there. I have other dreams I want to pursue. If I promote, everything else must come second.
   



3. Why don't I call my mother more often? - Duh....because she's your mother! She's never satisfied and you always end up wanting to eat your weight in pie after you hang up.
   



4. Why have I stopped going to the dentist? Obviously because it hurts. Less obviously because it's overwhelmingly expensive.
   



5. And why is my office reminiscent of the wreck of the Hespers? Because you are afraid of the Dimensions of Paradise. What would happen if you could actually work in there? Then you would want to actually work in there and challenge on your addiction to being a sheep-like cube junkie who depends on her employer for her wherewithall. You'd have to take care of your own financial well-being.
   

Tarot readings as therapy

My head is screaming...you need to write, you need to write. But up until now, I've just done a series of obsessive tarot card readings, talking myself through my conflict by compressing my issues to a string of yes/no answers. Sigh. I'm convinced that the thing I want the most is almost always the thing that I avoid. This is instructive in a backhanded kind of way...all I have to do is look at what I have been secretly preoccupied with and voila, there they are...my underground desires.

Digging down

Apparently I was not done posting today, because I've got more thoughts here that I've got to get down. My whole kick to lose weight is symptomatic of my desire to change my life somehow--to make it feel more fulfilling. Some things (like not being monied enough able to afford to move away from a ghetto, or not being able to retire early) are unmovable. They simply are and there isn't much one can do at a particular point.

However there are some things that if not overturned, can be shifted and one of these things is weight. So I'm dieting and exercising and some things are changing for the better. Yay. But not enough things.

Like what?

Like I haven't been writing. At all. I haven't paid attention to my mind, at how it questions certain things at how it laughs at life or wonders at it. I've simply been mute. This isn't good. Historically, I've been at my best after a long period of writing and rumination. But note--best doesn't necessarily mean happy. I stopped writing in part because it made think...made me start peering deep into my roily soul for answers that I've been avoiding for a long, long time. Like why haven't I made writing a basic part of my life? Basic as in I do it everyday, not as in I am taking an expensive class. Basic as in I write in my blog regularly, I develop essays regularly. I submit articles regularly. All these things can be accomplished without any extra outlay of cash on my part...just an outlay of time.

Sigh. And writing is just the tip of the iceberg. Why haven't I taken tests for a promotion? Why don't I call my mother more often? Why have I stopped going to the dentist? And why is my office reminiscent of the wreck of the Hespers?

Messy, messy, messy. I'm going to stop here. All these root issues out on the table at once are very off-putting...

1/16/10 Update on weight. And I have gone to the dentist since this post (to the tune of $1,500 dollars!). And I'm redesigning my office with custom bookshelves and real curtains. And I finally found a test I'm willing to take.

not satisfied with first world issues...

I'm lucky. I have a house, a partner, some nice friends, a family. I have clothes to wear, cars to drive, a job to go to and generous health insurance. My pension fund is still up and running and I have the great fortune to have more than enough to eat.

But I am unhappy. And from the looks of it, I'm not alone. I'm not going to into all the reasons posited in the article, I'm just here to relate that I've got a profound sense of discontent going on that

1. I haven't been successful in kicking,
2. That I don't feel I deserve.

So I've the continual ennui of a person who has enough but can't feel sufficient gratitude to make themselves happy. Oh I've read that an important factor in dealing with such angst is to help other people and to that end I now work in a job where I'm almost continually helping people. It is diverting, yes, but at the end of the day, I still feel unsatisfied and lucky all at the same time. Hmph.

Maybe I'll go eat an apple.

One clue that I have identified is that I've recently gone on a diet. And not eating what I want and forcing myself to exercise when I'd rather masquerade as a couch cushion lays bare any sort of immediate gratification. As I've mentioned before in my tweets, chocolate croissants go a long way toward improving my mood...much farther in fact than a 50 minute work out. At least in the short run.

Sigh.

new job, different day

Well, I did it. I changed jobs yet again. When it came down to it I simply couldn't stay in the old job...it was just too far from my core interests. I wanted to like it because I adored the people, adored what they talked about, where they went for dinner and where they traveled to on vacations. I loved where they hung out, admired their hobbies and the fact that they were very literate and witty. Their jokes were funny, their analysis of current events insightful and multi-layered and they were by and large an extremely articulate bunch. But I hated the career...and for all the stellar social connectivity, the work was, in the end, much too dull.

Now I've rejoined a cadre of workers that are mostly unlike me, less educated in the book sense, less pretentious probably (!)--more like the plumbers union. Don't get me wrong...there is nothing wrong with plumbers...I love plumbers and they are vital. Just like the job I'll be doing, plumbing work is more essential in terms of performing a necessary maintenance duty such work has a wonderful symmetry to it: a beginning, middle and end. And like plumbers, I'll get paid better too, which was also an added incentive to return.

But the brotherhood and sisterhood of plumbers don't populate my social group. I have little to discuss with other plumbers other than the work at hand. Tried though I have, I will never be an intrinsic part of their confederacy, never will I be 'brethren'. There's no sense of natural belonging like I felt with the "non-plumbers".

And that is a fact of life that I've chosen to live with until I can figure out how to change it. The work is cool but after only three days on the job, I sure am lonely.

Dang that's funny isn't? But it does explain why I bopped between these two careers so many times (temperament vs. talent?).

I know I need to start connecting authentically with my co-workers asap. I may not ever find myself at the same gathering with them outside of work, but I must, must feel like I'm connected to them in some way. It's really the only way I can finally settle down and work the rest of my time here.

It's a question of time

I wish I were prolific or at least consistently disciplined. I've got all these pseudonyms I can use if I need to shield how productive I am...if I needed to protect the world from my great work. But that's not the case. Actually, my creative output is rather puny, stolen away from days where I'm at work and don't feel guilty about "not spending time together".

It's a funny thing that has developed now that we are on different tracks. My love for her hasn't slacked but my time with her has. And since the new job, my time with myself has too. So there are fewer occasions for me to spend in quality activity with both of us.

When the weekends come, she's had sufficient time with herself, sufficient time to be productive or creative if she chooses, sufficient time to slack off and read a novel or be artistic or undirected.

But not so for me, myself and I: the kind of work I like to get into...reading online or writing, or setting up websites or working through big projects in my office is done only in stolen moments after work in the four hours I have between leaving work for the day and my mandatory bedtime. Regrettably, these solitary pursuits get short shrift. Love that she is, she wants to be out in the world doing stuff with me (really I am so lucky), whilst all I can think about is my big stack of New York Times book reviews waiting for me in the corner.

It's worse now that I hate work --it is not aligned with what I want to do this lifetime other than building a financial nest egg. I have no curiosity about my job so undertaking it feels unrelenting. And when I'm free of it, selfishly the first thing I think about is running to my writing or reading. Immersing myself in a sequestered project. But when I return home she figuratively comes to stand by me and says with that delightful coltishness "What do you want to go do?"

Shamefacedly, I realize I hadn't even given that a thought...all I could entertain was my time by myself, the luxury of no outside obligation other than feeding the animals. But that's not reality. Couples that do best, do things together but the things we used to do...go to restaurants and go shopping, European travel and expensive daytrips (lifestyle sampling I used to call it) those things evaporated when she and the boom boom economy retired. Her current hobbies that we might do together (golf and gambling) are so far removed from anything that I'd consider fun that we're left adrift trying to figure out how to connect.

For a time I tried halfheartedly to figure out how to make my work my play...because then I'd satiate my obsessions...enough to let me feel fulfilled in that realm. Then I'd seek her joyously (and perhaps learn to love golf?) without the niggling feeling that I was leaving some master vocation undone.

But that hasn't panned out...the majority of my most tender dreams live in the territory of jobs that pay very poorly. That country is populated by men and women who have no intention of those pursuits being their sole economic support.

So off I go to a deadening job, begrudgingly lavishing my time and energy on dreck only to return home and deprive both the things I desperately love of attention. How pitifully hollow.

There must be a way to reconfigure the equation here (the new job possibilities in a radically different field on the horizon), to reshuffle the choices available for us all. Because none of us are happy.

Money

Yesterday I took a class that I've been meaning to take for nearly 5 years. One of the topics of discussion was on controlling one's career. A young woman stated early in the day that by following the precepts laid out in this class, she was taking a step forward in her own self direction.

The teacher, an old hand, said "no matter what you do, it's a step toward self direction."

We all had to sit and think about that for a while.

And it's true. No matter what we do, we are creating a path, a way...even if our path is to stand still in one, blame place.

The class---more of a workshop really---was on learning how to be a freelancer; how to run your own business. It was for a particular type of business and the people in the class were all in this particular field where they made almost no money or OK money but with almost no raises---for decades. The field is populated with those who live in small cramped apartments or with room mates or with their parents. Or with husbands who support them. Few have employer paid benefits and there is no talk of pensions or retirement.

I was one of the very, very few who had a conventional job that gave me a modicum of security. High irony was when the instructor said..."you've planned well. You have set yourself up in a very enviable position for this field because you can slowly start building your freelance side. And when you do retire early, your initial freelancing won't feel so desperate since you'll have some income and essential benefits at your back."

Hah! How "lucky" I've been. How well I've planned. Funny. It was all out of fear of being a bag lady. Surprising that my fellow students did not demonstrate this same fear...they willingly flung themselves toward poverty for love, not money. For the integrity of choosing and following a path that had meaning to them.

And here I have been feeling like I've wasted my life when in fact I have been choosing and following a path based on my essential principles...the essential principle of not being an abject pauper or depending on my own wits to find the next gig, forever.

I had a revelation similar to this last week when in conversation with a colleague at work. I was recounting a quarterly meeting I attended during my very brief tenure in the private sector. The meeting was held in rather large and well-appointed auditorium, catered by an exclusive local restaurant. And there was an open wine bar.

To begin the meeting, a huge JumboTron screen descended from the ceiling. A video began, showing Steve Balmour, now head of Microsoft, standing at a podium in yet another auditorium. He was smiling and screaming, pumping his hands in the air to the rhythm of his bellowing.

"Make money, make money", he roared.

The crowd in my auditorium rose to their feet, as the real Steve Balmour walked out onto the stage, joining his image in the rallying cry.

"Make money," people shouted around me, emboldened by the wine bar, no doubt. "Make money". Many punched the air as Steve did.

Peer pressure forced me to stand up but I could not join the chorus. I was horrified and knew I had to leave both the auditorium and the field. This was a long time ago...during the tech boom-boom years and ever since I've secretly felt ashamed that I was not quite up to the challenge of being one with the crowd.

"It sounds awful", said my colleague, himself a serial bureaucrat. "...a bit like an assembly of capitalistic automatons!"

It was at this point in retelling the story that I realized why I was a civil servant.

For over a decade I've hated myself for not following my dreams; for not living up to my potential; for not following what I thought were important life principles.

How silly I've been.

I have followed my dreams (albeit unconscious ones). I have explored quite thoroughly vast swaths of my potentials even in my-dry-as-toast but noble field. And in following my career path I have cleaved rather closely to my principles...the principle of security and the fairly creaky notion of public service.

But people do change...they evolve. And I am aware now that my dream for freedom is trumping the old dream of security. Maybe it's that I've explored all the potentials I care to in public service or perhaps I'm simply searching for a different way of approaching it. I just know it's time to start preparing for a change.

What an interesting weekend it's been so far.

Just say no to yuppie angst!

This last week I've been filling in for my boss. No I'm not a glutton for punishment nor am I a suck up. I did it because I wanted to see if I could do it.

I've known for a while that I haven't actively pursued promotion even though others have clearly thought me ready for it. I've hesitated because I've seen so many people regret the decision.

1. Promotion caused a huge spike in their stress level.
   
2. It caused them to be different outside of work.
3. It made them hate their jobs a lot more than when they were mere worker bees.
4. It forced them to care about stuff (boss stuff, subject matter stuff) that they would have preferred not to waste their time with.

Based merely on this brief list, I figured promotion was a non-starter for me.

But I had to be sure.

So I did it for 4 days, clearly not enough time for a representative survey...but enough...enough for me to know that it would siphon the life right out of me. So instead, I'm going to try to train myself in a related discipline and figure out how to do some freelancing on the side. That way, perhaps I can make a little more money without bringing more yuppie angst into to it...

I lived four lives...

Well, that last post wasn't very spiritual (or unique...I think almost every woman on the planet has mother issues!) but perhaps it was cathartic. And I'm only airing my issues here because they've been an obstacle to my getting to where I want to be.

In that way, that last post was successful because it helped  me understand how my writing actually serves many masters:

1. One master is my therapist oversoul who wants to help me out by listening and occasionally critiquing my world view.  This master is often frustrated  by my lack of insight.
2. Another master is surreptitiously entrepreneurial. She wants me to make money off of my writing and doesn't care too much for the soul searching, unless it improves my ability to sell something. Of course, she vehemently denies that money is the end game because she considers it too crass.  That lack of self-esteem is a problem.
3. Yet another ruler is my pragmatic side.  It's the aspect of my personality that says just continue to produce and practice, keep writing, learn how to be a better craftsperson, organizer, and communicator.  She's the taskmaster.
4. The final  boss is my creative self...who simply derives a great amount of pleasure from the process of writing, from the work of imagining to the act of committing thoughts to a page or screen.  This master is typically the one that encourages me to write but gets short shrift when I shift into another mode.

With all these conflicting messages and roles rolling around in my brain, I find it very easy to get sidetracked and discouraged.  But perhaps now that I'm aware of these very diverse personalities, I'll be able to proceed with less confusion...at least that's the operating principle I'm going to try to work with!

Mine, mine, mine

There is a habit that my mother got into whenever we had the infrequent phone call.
“Well," she said, "you could always put this in your book!”

“This” refers to some incident she was recounting about a student she worked with or a relative that she’d recently visited back east. Or it was in reference to an experience she had at the store when inserting herself into the life of a stranger or engaging with a previously seldom referenced neighbor.

No matter what it was, I was uniformly uninterested in her well-meaning suggestions, her insistent desire to insert herself into my “writing process”.

A natural promoter she’d say, “You should get together with this person. They are fascinating. Can I introduce you when you fly in next Tuesday? You could write about them.” Of course the answer would be an unambiguous no.

“I don’t understand how a person who wants to be a writer can be so uninterested in people,” she’d say with obvious frustration. “How can you write fiction if you’re not interested in meeting people? I’m feeding you these wonderful stories…how can you not want to use this material?”

How indeed? But I wasn’t interested in the people my mother wanted me to be interested in. I didn’t want to talk to her myriad of diverting friends and acquaintances. And I had no desire to be displayed to her friends as “my daughter the writer” and then later pimped out to profile her pals as characters in an anecdotal narrative, a benefit as it were to her associates for being her confederate.

Out of frustration, one day I finally said, “Mom, I’m not a fiction writer”.
“You aren’t?”
“No. I don't write stories”.
“Then what kind of writer are you?”
I struggled to come up with something.
“I’m a technical writer. I like writing help texts, manuals...and maybe and reviews and publicity”

“Oh…well sorry all this time I thought you wrote fiction.”

The next time we spoke she said. “I have a wonderful project for you. I’m trying to put together a cotillion for girls of color, a societal coming out party for them and I want you to do the PR. Won’t that be a wonderful opportunity for you? Plus we’ll get to work together!”

“No Mom. That's not what I want to write about.” I had no intention of publicizing an event that taught little girls how to dress up and be pretty prizes for boys. I think she must have had temporary amnesia about my 14-year marriage to a woman.

“Well, then what DO you want to write about?” Apparently if she couldn’t see it, couldn’t sing my praises about it to others, and couldn’t get it for free, then my writing seemed more fiction than reality.

---

Later, she privately wondered to my sister if I were passionate about anything.

Well, I am. But these conversations got me thinking about my writing and why I so loathed her trying to put a name to it.

My writing has always been an escape, a very personal shelter that I rarely let others into. It is unequivocally, in all it’s flawed execution and stilted phrasing, in it’s inexact and imprecise use of language, in it’s self-referential and dubious thematic structure (almost done here) in it's damaged, broken and warped way, MY misshapen offspring. And I don’t want to share my ugly baby with my mother right now, no matter how desperately she wants me to share it with her.

It’s one of the chief reasons I blog anonymously. I then get to devote a small portion of my universe to exploring me without the confines, obligations or designs of anyone (read especially my mother).

If this makes me a hateful child, so be it. But this is a singular act of defiance for a daughter who was the good girl for most of her formative years.

A return to letter writing...I hope

I hate being on the phone. In the age of digital mobile technology, it’s awkward. It’s hard to hear the other person and often stymieing in terms of useful discourse. I like to think about what I’m trying to say before I say it and being on the phone short circuits that process. It also has the regrettable consequence of violating my privacy. Anyone within earshot gets to hear what I’d usually prefer to keep to myself.

That’s why when email and then the rise in texting emerged I was thrilled. The emphasis is in trying to communicate ideas and concepts via words not little, pre-rehearsed sound bites. Plus I’m way too distracted by life to actually spend time in a one-on-one conversation by happenstance. If I want to communicate with someone face to face (or receiver to receiver) then I like to plan it, not get stuck in it by default when I’m in the middle of taking a shower, cleaning out my office or enjoying Battlestar Galactica. I consider timing…my timing… to be primary to me, not the province of the person calling me.

This week I’m taking this asynchronous communication model even farther. I actually took pen to paper and wrote a letter. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday and it clearly wasn’t a holiday. I just felt that the distance engendered by a letter slowed down the whole discourse game. That distance gave me some room to breathe. Allowed for some time between the call and response.

I appreciate that psychic space afforded by written dispatches. As a fairly defended person it allows me to discuss things more thoughtfully rather than being placed on the spot (and I say this despite the recent spate of Twitter bashing. Actually I love the economy of language that Twitter imposes. Such constraints are not always a bad thing.). As a life-long introvert, writing gives me the ability to consider and then address a more comprehensive platform of my ideas, examining them for flaws, and misrepresentations. Even as we dive headlong into the twilight of books, newspapers, letters and the like, I still believe there is a place (as was found for radio) for the old tools of connection, if only as a tool to narrow down the clamor of our many trains of thought.

I hope today’s letter will be my first of many.

Novel thoughts

I started to think about my mother after finishing the book “ The Time Traveler’s Wife”. In it, there were two templates of mothers (other than the maternal episodes experienced by the eponymous main character of the novel.). Both were very artistically gifted: the former, an opera singer was exuberant, generous and tragically short-lived. The latter, a secretive but virtuoso poet was the wife of an indulgent businessman. Petulantly mercurial, I think she reminded me distantly of my mother.

The take home point from that train of thought is that my mother’s story doesn’t start with my own story. It stretches far before and beyond my own. As I daily forgive her for our baggage (you know the imagined or real transgressions that mothers and daughters have between them, not the least of which are expectations), I have to remember that she is her own person first, and (no matter what she tells me) my mother second.

My newest economic reality

How does one reconcile the keenly honed inquisitional instinct with the sour stench of the recession/depression? There have been many articles of late detailing the slaking of the consumerist habit…and perhaps that is the case with the unfortunate masses who have completely lost their jobs. Graciously, I haven’t lost my job and I still want stuff, with a passion.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve lost an enormous amount of buying power…my salary as been cut, my pension system is in peril and the value of my home has been slashed by half. But, as I mentioned in a previous post, I still want a new computer. I still want to learn how to use new, expensive software. I still lust after Paul Green loafers and I still don’t want to buy the cheap olive oil (gourmet extra virgin olive oil only thank you).

Yes, I have cut back on some things…going out to eat almost every night being the principle sacrificial lamb. The cable bill has been restructured and downsized, my clothes shopping has been greatly curtailed and my Amazon addiction has been curbed considerably. I’ve stopped taking expensive classes and going out to movies. I get by on cheaper wine, eschewing expensive jaunts to the wine country; I actually steer clear of most travel beyond that necessary to connect with family. My paid off cars, both of which are older will not be replaced with new versions but will last as long as I can make them continue to run. I’ve stopped thinking about moving up and out of my very affordable but transitional neighborhood to more affluent digs. I’ve also set aside my desire for upgraded furniture and various and sundry optional decorations from the likes of Pottery Barn and Z Gallery.

But I’m still purchasing many things I really want. Books (albeit second hand) and personal services (a house cleaner and a gardener) still populate my debit column. I’ve also upgraded my phone to a blackberry this year. And my home office, which has been a shambles since I first moved to this house over a decade ago will get a frugal but stylish makeover so that I can create an additional revenue stream in form follows functional fashion.

It’s a case of wanting what you have. Of having what you want, just not all at the same time or in the case of moving, sometimes never. I’m working through this new economic reality by simply making some things mutually exclusive, cherry picking and choosing which things will make me still feel like I have some economic choices and which things now deserve the moniker “superfluous”.

The pessimist in me wonders how far I can make this ride last.

Trying to find my Angle of Repose

Just read the latest Outpost from the NY Times on the slighting of writer Wallace Stegner.

I was struck by the comments. Each of the short passages were written in lucid, clear-tempered prose. These folks were all well read enough to know of Stegner and his competitors and literate enough to voice their own fully functional treaties on his lack of recognition.

There is no writer alive or dead to whom I can mount such an impassioned, learned defense, even if I wanted to.

I’ve got some work to do.

Future Twin

So as a woman of a certain age, I’ve started gaining some weight. It’s in that pattern that all the female mags describe…a couple pounds here, a pound or three there. And now, I’m at least 40 lbs over what I should be…maybe more.

No surprise, the weight gain impacts my wardrobe, putting some of my cutest outfits right out of reach. I’ve been tempted to go on a shopping spree but you know…the economy and my pocketbook are pretty battered right now.

As a result, I’ve whittled down my food intake and consciously made better food choices. I stopped having dessert. I’m trying to eat more salads and vegetables. And I’ve stopped getting a chocolate croissant in the morning.

This latest sacrifice has been the hardest to sustain. In fact this morning my resolve failed and I fully intended to buy a sweet treat of some kind, because my work load had been so enormous this week and I’d actually made it to my desk on time. Right before I planned to zip down to the cafeteria, I clicked on a link to read a bio on a writer who sounded a bit like me: zany, a book lover and an aficionado of fantasy and supernatural genres and a Latina. When the web page came up, her picture stopped me dead in my tracks. Not only did she look like me complete with glasses, short hair and a big toothy grin…she looked like me with an additional 40 lbs hoisted onto my extra 40. She was talented, working in a field I wished I were in, a published author and she was my future fat self.

I ran downstairs and bought an apple.

Wish

It’s getting harder to hide my antipathy for this place. This morning someone said...”You know you should promote or go for this or that temporary management position” and I answered I didn't think I would. Then they asked me why since I seemed very capable. I impatiently replied...”because it's so incredibly boring”.

Perhaps I should not have been so candid because they were rather surprised. Then this someone tried to helpfully suggest that I might find another related agency or department more interesting (gag).

“No”, I said. “I think I'm just ready to do something else.”

And I am. And so mote it be...this is my statement to the universe.

Welcome Back to Me

I haven’t placed a thought here in a while mostly because they were too raw and overwhelming. Now that the holidays (and I include Valentine’s Day in the holidays) are finally over, there are considerably fewer emotional landmines ahead masquerading as days for celebration. Here’s to a calmer progression into spring.

Into the flow...

I spent the morning pouring over the electronic pages of apartment therapy, domino and Ikea, looking and searching. I’ve got this idea…that if I can make over my office then I can figure out how to make a home business work. It’s as if looking into the rooms of others, I can divine my own path. I know this sounds silly and incredibly consumerist in this dismal economy…but during this astrological Mercury Retrograde I am reviewing and sifting through what is important and what is not (yes, I follow astrology too, especially when it comes to world events. Here’s how I use it…numerology for focus on the warp and weave of a person's life, astrology for the overall backdrop of universal events). And besides, I’m a visual as well as a literal person. Having a concrete picture of what I’m trying to accomplish focuses my energy.

Due to a pending refinance we have decided we’re going to stay in our beautiful little urban mid-century (our new mortgage will fall well below $400 dollars a month.). It’s a bittersweet decision since I don’t live in a perfect city and discussions over the civic problems that we’re currently plagued with can work me into a dither. However, I’m trying to bloom where I’m planted as is part and parcel of my personal year energy (3 – joy of living). Yesterday I made a step forward, gratefully giving away those pieces of furniture that others dearly need (a desk that is pretty but too small for my business needs and an extra bed) and actively making a plan to release to the universe some of my library.

What I’m trying to practice here is giving back. Outflow is as important as inflow as we’ve all discovered in this shrinking economy. And if I want things good things to cascade toward me, then I need to do my part in providing others with the same. This is by no means easy but if we all hold too tightly to what we have, then everything becomes calcified and stagnant…and no one profits from that. Plus, in January, it’s very, very important that I build a strong foundation…one that will steady me in the heady weeks and months to come.

A lapse and what it means

So I was working yesterday when a co-worker brought to my attention a lapse in consciousness when preparing some paperwork...and not just a little lapse, a big one. It was clear that I was communicating on a different frequency from everyone else. At first I was embarrassed...it was such an obvious gaffe but then I had to look closer...what did it mean?

I've been contemplating a job change for a while now...but in my previous year, it was better to stay rooted and bide my time. But now...I'm fully in my three year, an expansive cycle in which I'm having trouble making the old tried and true ways continue to work. The error I'd made...it was clearly due to my leaping forward mentally while still rooted in my old environment. That's how life often is...we don't even know we're playing catch up with our lives until the signs start showing in uneven, and in my case, humiliating ways.

Wanting a new job when many are getting laid off completely, that seems rather counter intuitive. But, I can't deny it...I really don't want to work here any longer...but that doesn't mean I don't want to work.

Right work/livelihood are terms often bandied about in times flush with prosperity...not in economies that are devolving. But we are called to make the best use of our energies in whatever time we find ourselves in and truthfully, I think I'd serve better as a writer, editor, and document specialist than as a full time low-level bureaucrat. Squaring that with the ability to make enough money to pay my bills...that's the rub...but it's not an impossibility...just a very large improbability with my current mind set. So...my first active acknowledgment of my three year (in numerology it is synonymous with the joy of living) would be to *change* *my* *mind*.

I oughta be in pictures

It's not everyday that a gal gets her face painted. I just commissioned a portrait from Christine Courington and I'm truly pleased with the results. I know that photographs with the obligatory Photoshopping are all the rage on the web...but I'm completely enamored with portraiture, mostly because the painter can often place emphasis on the quirkier aspects of personality.

Painting certainly can subtract things but it can also add and enhance things that air brushing can't. And thank god for that.

Blogger vs. Typepad vs. Wordpress

So...we're almost done with the holidays...good. The expectations (and disappointments) of this season were rather overwhelming. Apart from the days off from work, I'll be happy to get back to a time where the obligations and responsibilities of family are lessened somewhat.

And refocusing, I've just done my third redesign on my business blog as I'm just not happy with what I'm getting from Typepad. I wish I were since I've been there so long...but...I'm seriously considering a move to Wordpress. I particularly am intrigued by the function where one can set up lots of pages...and have the blog be an adjunct aspect. It's what I've wanted all along but was too lazy to build myself.

As for blogger, nothing beats the ease of personal blogging with blogger. I'm here for the duration!