Twighlight Zone moments

I am starting to draft my post earlier in the day I have noticed. I just started working out again and I no longer have to set my alarm, the charlie horses in my legs usually wake me up now...I can't believe it's gotten that bad...

Anyhoo,

The other day I was talking with my mom who noted that around the 1960's when t.v.'s started showing up, social activities declined. Then I asked her if she hadn't noticed a much larger decline since the Internet and satellite cable were introduced. While technology came fast and hard for us the last decade or so, it also took awhile before everyone got sucked in, I mean caught up in it.

I mean, I am sure we can all agree that technology is wonderful in so many ways, we wouldn't be here reading and wandering through each others blogs if it was not for it. But am I the only one who notices a more acute sense of isolation when I am out and about? People seem really cozy in their cars that never break down and their cellphone on their side. Casual conversation seems to have dwindled as many are already talking and/or texting to someone else in the grocery store line up. I know that over the years I have sensed that something was amiss but couldn't really nail it down as I myself had adapted to the progression of high speed everything in my own life.

Now that I have been introduced and seduced by technology myself, I know that if I were alone for extended periods, I would rely on my Internet to make me feel still connected to the world. However, 15 years ago, when everyone else wasn't feeling that way too, I would go find a coffee shop and join a table, my laugh ringing harmoniously with theirs and I may leave with a hug or a pat on the back, the soothing element of human touch. And I would feel more energized and part of the greater good.

Two things I have noticed recently:

1) I rode public transit awhile ago. It's been years. I used to ride the bus all the time when I was in the city and I also used to ride commercial buses for travel. I used to meet all sorts of interesting people and had some good laughs along the way. The day I took the bus, everyone was very stoic. There were a lot of teens coming home from school and every single one of them had iPods and were starting straight ahead. Not saying one thing the whole ride to the person next to them. I felt like I was in an elevator. I don't know if it was the particular day or if that is really what it is like now.

2) One day in the summer the power went out during the day. We all sat around for awhile not expecting it to last long. However, it did and we were soon all getting fidgety. So, we thought maybe it would be a good time to go do some yard work. Apparently everyone else in the neighbourhood felt the same restlessness and they were outside too. Everyone waved over the fence, joked, laughed and got a lot done. It was eerie in that I honestly don't think I have seen that much action in the 10 years I have been in the neighbourhood. It made me feel circa 1980 or so. And it felt strange. Good strange. It was the real time that the change in our socializing techniques had registered so strongly.

Right now, as I am finishing this blog entry. My girlfriend is over. I am checking things on my laptop and she is pecking away at her iPhone. Social ineptness at its best.

Well here I go....

I don't know how much more I need to know, I want to know lots. I just want to stop agonizing over my newly obtained knowledge. Once you learn something, there is no going back, good or bad, too late baby....

All I know for now is that I would like to follow along my path which has been more or less made up as the years meander along, sometimes good, sometimes, well you know. I will resign myself to speculation but not seriously. Epiphanies however are welcome. Sometimes I feel a little lost. It's like I am always studying but I never take the test.

The mental snowball

Sometimes for fun and sometimes torture, I pay close attention to my thoughts.

Often when we feel icky we will attribute that feeling as "coming out of nowhere" or wondering why we all of a sudden feel a certain way. I have noticed through this quirky observation just how quickly we can manifest the most bizarre sequence of thoughts without noticing the middle, often just the beginning or the end result. So, for fun and as I stated, sometimes torture, here is what roughly ten seconds of thought can look like:

The other day a friend was telling me about doing some yard work and was explaining to me this rather elaborate assortment of nuts, seeds and plants he had found in these various parts of the yard. These goodies had been slowly accumulated by a resident squirrel who had recently disappeared and thought to be prey to another animal. End of story.

My thought process:

Awww...poor squirrel, driven by his biological instinct to hoard, spent all of his life storing these goodies for the future just to be eaten. Well, I guess if he hadn't been eaten he would have been well prepared. Smart squirrel. (should have been end of story but no..)

Mmmm..come to think of it, humans are a lot like that, we spend all our time slaving and accumulating stuff we probably don't need or perhaps will never use. Where is the joy and meaning in that, it's really kind of pathetic how we often do it unnecessarily. Mmm...that kind of reminds me of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich, or About Schmidt which is sort of a modern day version of Tolstoy's story. What is success anyway? Who defines it and why do we let others define it for us? I should read Man's Search for Meaning again, I think it had the answers. Man, what is the meaning of it all anyway?...

This went on sadly much longer, however I think it is good practice to see where we can go from point A to point B and maybe we could dissect and revise our thoughts. Either that or slap them around with a little reality. It seems that somewhere along our process we get attached to a certain thought and we think it is our reality and we don't often spend the time trying to figure out just how we got there, we just sort of blindly accept it.

My revision:

I wish I was a squirrel, then I wouldn' t have to deal with all these thoughts.



re-blog from previous writing as this is how today went

Things I think -Inspired by peach pie

This is an excercise I like to play with. Taking whatever I am doing an trying to make an anology to life, love, whatever. This made me kind of chuckle.

Once you have baked your own pie, with your own hands, nothing from a store will quite comfort you again in the same way. Yet in a pinch, it can still satisfy a craving but will offer minimal comfort. The same can be said about the difference between true love and companionship. They diverge at the moment when your soul is not wholly involved in the process.

Even when I still resided in the city, you could find me, in a flowing skirt, flat shoes and an apron, recreating the days on the farm by spending my week-ends baking after I spent a a week with the souless concrete beneath me. In the country, everything has soul, it is alive, it’s essence can be found beneath your feet and in the wind that blows. it is all alive. In the contry you bake to enhance your health, your family, your relationships,the community and your soul when it is feeling down. it is an enhancement and not a replacement. Rebound lovers are often an attempt to recreate an aliveness that occurs naturally when you cup the chin of your true love in your feathery gloves on a cold winter’s day.

New Rules

1) Set boundaries and stick by them even when it's hard, in fact, especially when it's hard. Idiot compassion is not compassionate at all

2) Balance learning with doing

3) Love, laugh, know when to let go

4) Be the change..

5) Let your freak flag fly, it is a service to humanity because if we are all conformists, we will never be the change.. (see "Being the sideshow..)

It's all easy until you try to do it...

Finding Forty -Challenge to myself

I started looking for 40 long before it arrived. Pushed forward by the social pressures that reminded me that there was no escape and perhaps my own mind, which liked to dwell in the the future a little too much more than the present, where it could serve me much more effectively. I have under a month to go and I am a woman obsessed. It’s not even physical, okay, once in awhile I look at what looks like a droop around my mouth and the word filler crosses my mind...but really it’s about how to bring meaning into the second half of life. I have played and pondered and worked and done it all as though I had forever to do whatever the big “it” was for me.  And what happens as the time goes on is that you realize the doors are closing on “you can be whatever you want.”  Realistically, you can still do and be most of whatever you want but at this point of the journey it requires more thought as there is less opportunity for a “do over” and no matter what way you cut it, it’s going to be a little bit harder and may take a little bit longer.  And well, no you probably will never make astronaut or rocket scientist so this is where an awareness of crossing things of the list makes you aware of the limiting of options. It seems as though, not too long ago, I was adding possibilities and not deleting them. It’s sobering. I don’t want to fight it, I just want to feel like I am ready to be a grown up. So many days, I still just don’t feel there yet.

Facing forty has been hard. Mostly because I have decided to face it gracefully as opposed to fighting it. It’s not like I am going to win anyhow, the day will come and go regardless of my feelings for it.

I need to clean up my act. Those last bits of bad habits and various past conditioning that holds me back. So now that I am about to become the illustrious 4.0 version of myself, I hereby challenge myself to tie up the loose ends and somehow feel accountable as I put it out into the big cyber void.

Free images from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Being the sideshow in the circus of life

I grew up in a small town that accepted, or at least tolerated, character. I am not talking about chivalry, loyalty, honour and that kind of character. I am talking about the old drunk at the end of the street with an undisclosed and unmedicated  disorder who talked more or less incoherently about women and farm animals and pissed on the side of the local theatre in broad daylight. It was great.

We are a society that is all about empowerment and independence. Our notion of that seems to include a lot of conformity, denial and lack of acceptance.  “You can be whatever you want!” Uhm..no you can’t, in fact, what you do will more than likely be mediocre or slightly above average. ( All the super cool people, with super cool results, were just this. They were just really good at focusing their energy) If this were not the case, we would all be living our dream, and a lot of people aren’t and those who are, had to alter their thinking or views or dream to some extent. Dreams include nightmares and living one has it’s fair share of them, it is called life.  Even if your dream was to be an astronaut or a doctor and you are one, you probably are not the best one or the greatest one. Someone is, but it probably isn’t you.  And if you are one of these things and you are living your dream, you have seen death, and rejection, and pain as well as life and awe and wonder. But I bet you think a lot about changing all the things you hate about your dream, how to stop the nightmare.

Part of this is because you don’t  get acceptance or practice it, or both. Acceptance means you stop resisting what is happening right now, where you are, what is going on, hating it, cursing it, resiting it. That takes up a lot of energy, energy that could be used towards being the best or at least better at whatever it is you seek to create, do, become or cope with this moment, this situation, this experience.

Maybe I am anxious crossing bridges, maybe I am afraid I will panic and shit my pants. I could spend a lot of time trying to resist and change how I feel about shitting my pants on the bridge. Or, I could just say, “ Dammit, I feel like I am going to shit my pants. This fucking sucks but there really isn’t anything I can do.” Oh well, if I shit them, I shit them, fuck it.” And that’s it. That took 30 seconds of energy as opposed to the anticipatory thoughts of how to not feel that way prior to crossing the bridge, beating myself while I am on the bridge and hours, days, and years afterwards avoiding bridges. Accepting what is, makes it easier to change your reality. It’s positive reinforcement as opposed to negative reinforcement, which is not a good long term motivator. It creates avoidance and avoidance is good sometimes but not a lot.

Conformity is not acceptance. It’s denial. If your doing what everyone else is doing, then nothing can ever be different. For all that we spout about individuality and independence, we are a pathetic group of conformists. We LOVE to bash people who do things differently and I think this has a lot to do with our own insecurities and needing to feel approved of among our peers. We hate to admit that we are possibly one divorce, perceived failure, or death away from a trip to a liquor store and the nearest back alley .  This need for approval is a normal social human being need. I don’t believe though that it is necessary to hide all aspects of yourself in order to meet this need. I know lots of crazy fucks who are well regarded and even respected despite their eccentricities. This is because they accept their weakness, neurosis, brilliance etc and because they accept these things as well as their current situation,experience, etc.. they have more energy to gain the regard and respect that they have. They aren’t spending hours contemplating their craziness, they are spending hours on what is important to them on their journey through this life. And you know what, they make your life, my life more interesting as a result and just the fact that they are who they are with no apologies, makes it easier to not be a conformist. All of a sudden you don’t feel so alone and approval is out there, there is someone who is as crazy as you. Letting your freak flag fly is a service to all of mankind. So, let all that wasted obsessive energy go and save the world, piss on the side of a building, whatever it takes.