Sunday, January 18, 2009

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.

Friday, January 16, 2009

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*.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

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.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

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!