New Years's Choices :Re-live, Re-boot, Re-fresh, Re-frame, Re-new

Ok...so it's time to really do this. Regular blogging. Reliable blogging. All three blogs. Good content. Spiffy presentation. etc. etc.
The problem is I just can't follow those marketing formats and 'do this and stratigize that. Would you follow me or listen to me if all I did was just talk?

I  just want to share what's it's like to fully bloom, fully live, fully experience, fulling dine on the banquet of life and serve up encouragement and my own personal wisdom of life that may resonate. And I want you to know that whatever it is that you are trying to do that uses the good within you and adds to the good of the world, don't quit.

Of course, if you are doing bad, stop right now! That's a joke. No it's not. The best way to undo a bad habit is to do something else and make that the focus. Otherwise it's like trying to not think about pink elephants.

The challenge for me as I moved through this latest period of growth during the last two decades has been living life so I could hear the still, small voice, or 'the thin silence' as the Hebrew directly translates. But I did indeed capture some life lessons and strategies about doing that.

Bouyant hope is a necessity and I've gleaned some habits for insuring the essential element of keeping your head and opening your heart.

When I teach I talk about Spiral Curricula. It means you circle and recircle and recircle up and up and up through an issue and each time you see something a different way.

Re-living means looking a the same history with a different connection and different perspective and that opens oneself up to new thinking.

Re-booting means just shutting down everything that isn't working and going for the same goal in a different way.

Re-freshing means putting some fresh energy into something you are doing that is habitual or tradition.

Re-framing means giving a different metaphor to the same declarative statement.

Re-newing means putting new input into content or a lifestyle that will cause a catalytic response that reworks the DNA of a situation.

If you listen very quietly to your insides, it's easy to figure out which action is necessary in your life right now, and shoot... I just did a mini outline of another topic I'd like to teach and/or write about.

Pick your potion. What do you need? Choose the right action and it isn't just a resolution, it's forward motion in your life.

I have this desire to make my blogs look spiffy and visually contemporary, but I don't think clip art or public domain photos have these in their coffers. For right now...can words be enough?
Happy New Year
Love,
Deborah

Keeping On....

For whatever reason it seemed the right time to reconstruct the quarter collection.

Since 1999, I had been filling in the red white and blue folders with a place for each state's quarter-- both front and back--as a kind of historical travelogue. Feeling a little confined and committed to making my dreams come true and fulfilling my call, they represented opportunity in the future to me.

Then the day came in 2012 when, desperate for any money I could find, I took out all 96 quarters--both front and back-- and used them , for gas I think.

Empty for years, today I pulled them out of my top desk drawer and carefully emptied the zippered coin section of my wallet checking for the right quarters, the commemorative quarters. There were four: Nebraska, Rhode Island, Missouri and New York. It was a wonderful start.

In a few minutes I'm going to start working on my holiday column. The topic is "Greed".

I have had to learn to be a stander-up-er in the last two decades. I have had to learn to not fear it, standing up for myself. It still doesn't feel comfortable to me.

Yet, if I am to be honest about a world where there are people so empty  inside they would do anything to keep their world in deceptive order, then I must learn to stand up for doing those things that add good to the world from the inside out.

For several years now, I have believed that life is just about one piece after another slipping away because I was not able to stand up and on the things that would steal my life.

I found that I could make the changes necessary to be stronger in confronting "eeldoer's" as 'Nell' called them in the movie of the same name. I CAN stand up and still maintain that core part of myself that plants hope for the future by collecting quarters.

I am a gentle person in a dog eat dog world. Primitive, still, in confronting and setting limits, life has taught me there is much to be said for focusing on my little hobbies that keep me grounded and nurturing.

If someone has touched your life in a positive way, be sure and share that with them. I think most everyone is just keeping the riverbanks loaded with sandbags and a little bit of good that would lower the floodwaters of narcissism with which most people have to deal, is a great idea.

Ninety two quarters to go. Keeping on....
Love,
Deborah

And life is still life....

This past week I had my eye treatment which always takes me out of play for a few days. I developed a vascular edema and they treat it by shooting a tiny amount of this drug that actually was created for use with colon cancer but they found collateral uses, one of which is shrinking retinal edemas. After only two doses, the thing has reduced itself so now they stretch it out to six weeks instead of four weeks and see if it will stay reduced even though it isn't getting any medicine. Hope springs....

After each shot in my eyeball, I have fallen into an overly cautious routine of sequestering myself because, a. I feel like crap and my eye hurts, and b. it makes me more aware of my hands so I don't rub the eyeball or keep my hands dirty through careless inattention.

I had an opportunity to housesit and took it.

I truly wonder what it would be like to have had one home and the same routines all these years of my adult life. It is amazing to me that I am in my early sixties, have never had my own home and have moved so many times I've lost count.

I said to myself during this time of isolation --which also becomes a time of introspection between naps--
"What if I never have a home? What if I live like this for the rest of my life?" And I found myself oddly OK with that. The domestic and work routine I have is probably better than about 80% of the third world. My sense of self is entirely internally defined. I'm not hurting any of my kids by having the bits and pieces of life ascribed to different geographical settings.

Is it my first choice? How I'm living now I mean... Heck no. I want what everyone else has. Is it the worst a person could experience? No.

So, with my faith intact, I will suck it up and continue to be disciplined about a path that, I do believe, will lead to more domestic stability and put my life all in one place.

What it does that is good is keep me in touch with just today and no further ahead, or behind. Because of that I feel less constrained to have plans that may or may not be necessary. That is always a good thing.

Life consists of work, eating which involves food preparation and clean  up, staying in touch with friends, enjoying social activites, hygiene and recreational reading, and sleeping, laundry and errands, TV shows and films. That's about as normal as transitory gets. Life, is still life....

A regular life with better menu choices

Knowing what I'm doing is unique to middle class and upper middle class society, it is not unique to immigrants and entrepreneurs starting at ground level. You do what you have to do to get your product out there, to get the business started.

Now, my product is words. The part that has made the journey unique is going from essentially being a nun, which meant some weird kind of unspoken vow of poverty, to a businesswoman.

Fortunately, there is a class that started at one of the two churches I align myself with in a regular way. It is a study of the book, "Money and the Meaning of Life". It explores the spirituality of money.

As I mentioned before, the hardest part of my journey has been to figure out the place of money in my life. I know how to manage money, I didn't know about the grass roots character of it in confluence with how I , particularly, was raised and my family heritage and my calling and my dreams.

To me, you just got your education, got a job and managed your money well. But I came from an incredibly white upper middle class dysfunctional heritage and that is not a straightforward route if you want to be healthy and whole at your core. Layer in any kind of spiritual aspect and look in the dictionary under "confusion" and there is the path.

So, I had to revert to the life stories of my grandfathers and there was where the key lay. My foundation was/is my own spiritual walk but beyond that, and built on top of that, was this question of how do I reconstruct my life when plan A gets blocked by people who are less interested in whole and healthy than I am.

It is almost a month since I started The Grand Adventure. I am, everyday finding that this most radical way of life has, in fact, given me more stability and forward motion and strength and promise than any of the many domestic situations in which I have lived in the last twenty years.

My car has become Murphy bed and closet. That's all. It still functions as a car. Yesterday I got the big tubs given to me as part of the move a year and a half ago out of , what I came to call, 'the crazy house', and simply have the three laundry baskets that act as dresser drawers/closet. Today is sunny and so later this afternoon, I will organize the back even more into functional areas.

The only 'problem' has been trash. I don't have trash delivery and need to off load trash more than often than once a month in a dump run. Costly and impractical.

And I am still trying to find a home for the cats.

But my choices during the day consist of those at my desk and office area. Will I work on Website Stuff? Parenting Stuff? Theology Stuff? Memoir Stuff? Good menu items. Forward moving menu choices. Finally. Daily. In a way that builds. What I have longed for since a decade ago when I first felt called to this work. Cleansing breath. Deep sigh of relief. Carry on.

Cooking and shopping

Using a communal kitchen has been teaching me all kinds of lovely new disciplines and totally clearing my system of the "years and years I cooked for six people and never quite go over it" syndrome.

First of all, I miss having a big family. They were some of my happiest days. I even loved the challenges. So in the ensuing years as the kids ( and husband) have peeled off, I have kept the tradition of cooking ahead big meals and eating off them.

Suddenly finding myself with minimal refrigerator space and even smaller shelf space, I have had to rethink everything. Oddly enough it has generated better eating. I pay attention to each meal with more consciousness. What I'm eating is space related.

So, making sure I have more veggies and fruits than other carbs becomes easier. Variety is more rotatable --to create a new word.

And because others are involved in the kitchen, I have had to be very aware of when I'm cooking big and when I'm not so as not to add to the burden of other people as they speed about the details of their lives and also prepare their food.

Learning how to cook with others rhythms and still feel like I have a routine has been a work in progress, but this week I think I have it. I'll have to 'cook down' a bit with my inventory this week, but I think I'm getting the equation of how much to buy/how much to eat in proportion.

It all reminds me of when I was seventeen and keeping a household with family in England. The daily shopping trip was just part of the rigors of having a postage size fridge and a hungry family consisting of grown man, myself and elementary age children.

So this week, I stood in front of the deli counter and calculated that while $7.00 seemed extreme for a gigantic hoagie, it was in fact the cheaper way to go than buying all the individual ingredients, condiments and bread and storing them awkwardly in the kitchen. I also reminded myself that eating off it for four days would not be unpleasant. Done and done. check. lunch.

This morning I really wanted my lazy Saturday big breakfast and realized with fewer people working on Saturday, it probably would be an OK time to fix French toast with a side of vanilla yogurt and thawed frozen blueberries. Ta Da! One relaxing brunch before the daily type fest, all consumed while listening to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me".

Thoughts drifting to the future, I realized when I get a forever home, I DO want to have a breakfast bar. I like eating at the one in the kitchen in which I now cook.

So with some leftover ground turkey still to cook, a fully cooked half breast ,onion, bag o' baby carrots, already cooked noodles from pasta with Parmesan last night, I see the makings of stroganoff and some turkey noodle soup for early in the week.

It will be interesting to see what vestiges of these habits I take into my forever home, whenever that happens. For now, I have the luxury of thinking only about the words that have been inside of me longing to find their way to print. It's a life I currently love!

Communal Working/Living

One of the great energizing factors of The Grand Adventure has been moving into a space where there are multiple people. For most of you, I suspect, a moment or place with more isolation would be a joy. But I have spent much of the last decade alone on a daily basis. I work in people's homes caring for their children and streamlining and supporting their situations.

Here, for the first time in ages, people pass in casual contact. Getting lost in my thoughts, focusing on my work and getting things done all become more plausible because of the internal push against the limits of those casual contacts.

Yet, I am grateful for the thousands of hours I have spent alone in previous days. It gave me a chance to truly experience myself as a separate entity in the world. As the third of four children, married at 21 the day before graduation from college and mother of four, 'alone' was not anything I thought I would ever experience for any extended time period.

Now, with the functions of my life separated into work, personal life, possessions and travel, I carry a consistency of self throughout the days that used to be a bit transitory depending on how I was reacting to my environment. I am, in fact, living life from the inside out.

Iron does indeed sharpen iron and I find, for all that I have been through, I am stronger for it and clearer about who I am for it.

That means one very good thing. I project much less of my own unconscious baggage on the world. The alone time has meant I have become very much more aware, more conscious. The benefit continues as I reconnect with people ten fold in the hours of my days. I am truly able to see them as they are rather than through too drastic a filter. I can see the unhappy ones, the peaceful ones, the satisfied and the discontent as well as those who are presently unconscious for who they are and have a stronger encounter for it.

At night, when I am alone, truly alone in the car with the world only inches, not a hallway or a staircase, from my life and my experience, I can savour the 'me' of life resting, truly resting to absorb today and prepare for tomorrow.

I like it.

They call it 'anointed'

OK... so bear with me. Hear gentle but firm in my voice. I am NOT homeless. I sleep in my car sometimes. I pay no money for sleeping. Except when I rent a hotel room after my eye treatments.

This thing has started so I want to clarify.

After five lousy money sucking rentals with rotten landlords who wasted much of my money in seven years in a row, keeping me from getting my writing projects completed and to the market place, I made the adventurous decision to split apart the pieces of my life. I rented an office that a comes with so many amenities both physical and social that I told one co-worker today it feels decadent.

My things, which I don't want to pay attention to right now because it would distract me are in two storage units, one for furniture and one with boxes of possiessions.

That is not homeless. That is organized to accomplish a certain goal.

I am too old to get a regular job. I have been blackballed in the church for over twenty years and so all my training and education is only useful in helping me write. I have been working as a family care specialist and I'm getting too old for that.

I have interesting projects I am working on which will make the world a better place. I have wonderful volunteer commitments that enrich my life.

The only sad part has been about the cats and I will write about that another time.

So.............please do not look at me with sad eyes and ask how I am. I will startle you and tell you, "I am having the time of my life and it's getting better every day.!!"

Many thanks to my daughter Caity who is supportive of my adventure in that she doesn't get on my case about it or criticize it as a bad plan.

And how do I know I am making the right choice? Because everything having to do with writing and getting things to market is on green light fast forward. Case in point. Today for the first time I  needed to have the printer connection that hadn't been hooked up yet. No sooner do I say to myself, "Shoot, I wish I could print this out" than around the corner comes the tech guy who one of the co workers had seen out in the parking lot. Twenty minutes later, I'm printing stuff. It's like that all the time.

Am I angry that I have been subjected to what I've been through for the last twenty years? Absolutely. Am I bitter.No, just pissed. So I move on from it immediately? Always. Hence, The Grand Adventure.

Today was a typical writing day. I came to the office after morning liturgy and fixed a nice breakfast and watched a little TV. Then I went through two of the totes to start to sort out two different projects. A co worker asked if I wanted coffee. She had figured out the machine. We chatted for about forty five minutes about writing goals and our processes. I went back to work.   The tech guy came. I called Pet Protectors about the cats. Went back to work, wrote some more. Then I fixed dinner and watched the national news. Looked at facebook, and now am closing down for the day. My biggest problem right now is figuring out how to wudge the keyboard so I can lean back in my incredibly comfotable office chair.

The gold anniversary clock on my bookshelf says bedtime is nigh. I'm thinking actually I will not clean off my desk tonight because I will be back right after my morning shift.

When I sleep, I will nestle down in very comfortable and cozy fleece blankets, watch an episode of 'Blue Bloods that my aunt and uncle got me hooked on and snooze away in quiet and peace until the alarm goes off.

Hopefully this next month I can start to offer my classes and increase my income. The goal is to get income increased now that I have reduced expenses. $210 in new tires last Wednesday and over $400 in pet expenses before I'm done, will set me back a bit. But...I am undeterred.

So when you see me, or if you want to make a comment here, please...look at me with Joy and say, "Wow! We are so proud of you for having the guts to do this!! Can't wait til the books are out!! You go girl."