Tonight watched some great short films by local filmmakers at Excelsior Branch Library. Two stood out: One was about a semi-violent tradition in the Bolivian Andes amongst natives and the converted Christian natives who condemn it, and one was about how much Fresno sucks and that the only redeeming thing about being raised in one of the three worst places to raise children in the US was the fact that once you made it through high school by entertaining yourself with sex and drugs that you had a strong appreciation for how cool other places are and you develop a sense of creativity to cope with the concrete, bleakness, and nothingness given to you. Oh! The other film I appreciated was called White Walls, about a local club manager-turned-cdrug-dealer-turned-art-gallery-owner-turned-convicted-drug-dealer-turned-even-more-successful-gallery-owner. That was quite a cool true story.

Life continues its strange trip. I’m in the middle of a phase of experimentation (aren’t I always?) with livelihood and relationships. The subjects I find myself drawn to currently include: leadership, success, spiritual wealth building, astrology, polyamory/monogamy/orgasm/birth control/pregnancy, connectivity/relationships, and social science. Wtf.

I’m being more and more moved to stop my compulsive hair-picking. I’m thinking at this point I will need some kind of barrier separation for a good 7-28 days, as it’s turned into quite an automatic habit. I think I will start by fixing my hair very nicely early every morning, starting tomorrow.

Next on the agenda, getting rid of sore throat that is looming. Sleep! Water! Vitamins!

Then, getting paperwork organized for taxes, filing, etc. There’s quite a backup at this point. I have a feeling the pace of life will really pick up in the next 30 days.

Really been enjoying my newest relationship, so far, fits like a glove. Ahhh, how nice.

Studied up more on javelin and discus technique tonight. I’m committed to mastering the art of coaching these events a bit more. They are still complex to me, which means my understanding is not full yet. Excited to do some deeper training this year with some good coaches later on.

I’m becoming more and more aware of just how little can be “accomplished” some days, in my personal list of to-dos. It is amazing that with eating, sleeping, and obligations to others that the amount of stuff you can advance on the side by yourself is quite minuscule. But maybe that is pronounced by my virus-induced lethargy today. Had enough energy to sweep the mess my cat made toppling a house plant to the other side of my room. That was about it.

Perhaps I’m suffering from a bit of hedonic happiness disorder. Dr. Aymee Coget explains that when you go after something you think will make you happy, after you get it, you will be unhappy again within 3 months. She says you adapt to your new environment then crave more change. This is a “hedonic treadmill.” This may explain what happens to me every 3-5 years. I get really flatlined about the work I’m doing or the way my life looks and want to just shake it all up. I must be extremely impatient because the moment I realized I had hit the environment I wanted after my first “real job” (a nice house, landscaped back yard, nice car), I IMMEDIATELY quit my job. No three months waiting for me!

So I’m wondering how much of my esteemed “ambition” is just hedonic, pointless pursuits of something “outside” myself that I think will make me happy, and how much is truly me searching for my own authentic expression in the world. This is where I’m tripping up today. Hmmmmm.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard

I heard this great quote yesterday in the book “How,” and it made me think about the freedom and anxiety I’ve experienced since quitting my job at Chevron in 2006. When I left my job, I, for a split second, experienced total freedom. I could do ANYTHING I wanted, go ANYWHERE I wanted. I say a split second, because once I was opened up to trillions of possibilities, I became paralyzed. If I could go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING (barista in New Zealand crossed my mind!), that was extremely exciting but also extremely daunting. I experienced total dizziness when I thought of how many things I had to choose from, which moved into a bit of anxiety.

So I narrowed it down. What do I have? I had a romantic relationship based out of San Francisco, I could use that as an anchor for my freedom. I had an engineering degree that I wasn’t keen on using in a traditional way, so that was out. I liked government, massage therapy, hammer throwing, so I moved in those directions.

Lately, I opened myself up to more dizzying freedom, with extreme anxiety right on its heels. I decided late in 2010 (you might recall), that I was tired of being broke and wanted to instead try being filthy rich. I figured it was worth it as a chapter in my life’s experiences. 2011 found me heading in the direction of filthy rich, which meant climbing out of a valley of business/personal debt via a bankruptcy and starting fortune-building from scratch. All I knew was how to put my intention out there and start tuning into possibilities for income to come my way.

It has not been a snap-your-fingers-and-it-appears process, nor would one expect it to be I suppose, given my long, varied, and sometimes sordid relationship with money. It has meant different things to me in my life throughout the years and I suppose I’m still orienting myself so that I can actually be very useful and receive money (appreciation).

Anyway, late last year I had set my sights on two business endeavors that might start to bring in the kind of income I am shooting for. Unfortunately, they didn’t produce the kind of results I was looking for right off the bat so that outcome put me into a bit of an anxiety attack. I opened myself up to the possibility that these things may not be where I should be focusing all my energy, which again opened me up to the “dizzying” feeling of having “freedom” once again to decide where to put my efforts. It feels so nice to have a plan, and so awful to have a destination but be map-less.

As Thomas Jefferson famously said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” When you put yourself 100% in charge of your financial future (as opposed to relying on a job with a set income), the responsibility and vigilance is your burden to bear, and you must become more closely attuned to the energetic signals the universe has for your choices and direction. It requires massive creativity, sensitivity, and courage.

Dizzying at times, but, O, the places you will go…

To learning!

I wonder how valuable all this blog stuff is. There are so many good books written by people who took their whole lives to synthesize, sort, and filter their experience, and distilled it into nuggets. I realize that my blog posts are more like the thoughts you have on the way to a conclusion. These could potentially be helpful to someone, as they are more relate-able perhaps, but they are really just noise with hints at wisdom.

There’s some kind of transition in the air toward reserve, discretion. This is really challenging for me. I’ve never liked the don’t give the pearls to the pigs approach. I guess because it assumes a disparity in spiritual growth that cannot be bridged immediately. And I am realizing how immediate my demands are in general. I hate waiting. When I receive information, I want to immediately spray it around my universe with a fire hose.

What an amazing opportunity we have been given to explore life through a very specific lens. My lens being that of a human woman, with unique experiences and tendencies. It’s hard to reconcile this experience with the innate memory of being one with the entire universe in omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. The contrast of that oneness with the human experience feels extremely limiting sometimes. I’m coming to a place of knowing what my highest qualities could be, and yet also knowing exactly how big that gap is in my practical application. It’s daunting, and brings back the “God is a cruel game-maker” analogy. All the more reason to be kind and loving toward each person you meet. If you go through what i go through in terms of mental anguish sometimes, you could use a lot of support and compassion too.

I seem to be experiencing a strange mix of emotions. If everyone goes through the same existential crap that I go through it truly is humbling how much joy and stability exists in the world. I am typing this from the mountains of eastern New Mexico, where the air is possibly thin enough that I’m just enough oxygen-deprived to be experiencing my emotions through a slightly more negative lens. I’m reflecting on my life to date, my education, jobs and relationships, and trying to make sense of it all. I feel like I’ve truly been through so much as a person: A rocky childhood spotted with hunger, cold, poverty, violence, transience, and religious absolutes. Leaning heavily on my academic and athletic achievements as a means to a better life. The pursuit of an education for the purposes of material prosperity and intellectual stimulation.  The striving and exhausting of my body to achieve physical feats beyond my capacity. The relationships:  the ambitious, materialistic, mama’s boy jocks; the aloof, unavailable, intellectually fascinating targets of seduction, the passionate one-night stands with perfect god-like archetypes, intense loyalties destroyed by mistrust or financial inequalities. The failure to plan for long-term happiness in career. The physical readiness to be married with kids at age 18, the agonizing delay of that gratification for over a decade.

A manifesto on the meaning of life:

A disillusionment that every conception is holy. To ask, what frees my heart? What makes me feel free? What is my bliss? To engage in a partnership and yet have the option at any minute to pull the plug and run away, knowing that you are perfectly capable, if not miserable, on your own.  What do I dream of? How do I bring others into that dream?

I needed to do some research at this point, and found this great list worthy of my meditation for today:

“For our purposes, I will define spiritual health as a condition evidenced by the presence of several of these characteristics:

1. sense of inner peace

2. finding comfort and/or strength in one’s spiritual beliefs and values

3. a belief in divine or perpetual goodness

4. a belief in one’s own worth and/or goodness

5. ability to receive and offer love and care

6. strong connection to people

7. sense of place or purpose in the world

8. ability to forgive self and others

9. hopefulness in the future

10. sense of some control over one’s own life

And conversely, a lack of spiritual health may be evidenced by the presence of several of these

characteristics:

1. persistent fear

2. excessive guilt

3. addictions

4. inner turmoil

5. sense of hopelessness

6. frequent conflict with others

7. victimization of self and/or others

8. judgmental, punishing, and/or harsh behavior toward self and/or others

9. needing constant approval from outside one’s self

10. excessive anger

11. sense of worthlessness

12. rigidity

13. And perhaps most significantly, the tendency to justify any of the above negative behaviors with religious teaching or value”

http://www.abortionconversation.com/SpiritualHealth.pdf

To spiritual health…

I attended the Dia do Los Muertos in the heart of the Mission this year (Nov 2nd) for the first time. To be honest, I was a bit taken aback by how many people were there seemingly just for a party. I suppose I expected a more somber, traditional event, something I would feel slightly uncomfortable intruding upon. To the contrary, it felt more like Bay to Breakers if it were held at night and everyone painted their face to look like a skull.

I got some of the depth I was searching for in the park where the altars were erected.

This was the first one to provoke some heavy emotion – I assumed it was meant to be an altar to the lives lost and mutations altered due to the Hiroshima nuclear disaster. I extrapolated it to be a memorial to everyone and everything lost in humankind’s fairly recent exploration of chemical power. To me this means what we’ve lost environmentally (destroying ozone, water sources, hormonally altering animals, effects of nuclear radiation) and personally (deaths due to drugs, side-effects and deaths due to prescription medications).

The first disturbing altar I actually saw was a memorial to Steve Jobs:

I can’t explain why it was disturbing except that the altar itself really stood out amongst the backdrop of a traditional Mexican holiday as something very, well, white, and simple and technology-forward. The two contrasted so much it was hard to reconcile them both existing at the same place and time.

Another moving altar was the clusterf*** that was this altar:

There was some kind of trancy low-frequency humming sound playing in the background and the sheer span of cultures and items in the altar brought forth a lot of emotions around tradition, culture, family, etc. It left me feeling as one person on Yelp said: “Much like dream catchers hanging from the car rear view mirror…no relevance….only stealing another culture because the culture of the U.S. is entertainment & thats why people go to this event..they have no real culture of their own.”

I actually felt this loss very deeply at this event. It reminded me of how little “culture” or “tradition” I have, and how rich and deeply meaningful the traditions of other cultures are. It must feel weird for a Mexican native to have a hollow, traditionless, white, European-American help them celebrate a holiday we have no blood-connection nor memories toward.

It shows there is something to be said for staying put long enough to create something beautiful and meaningful.

But speaking of traditions, another very elegant altar honored the original Burning Man Black Rock City architect:

I guess this goes to show that Americans are capable of producing traditions, odd and interesting as they are!

One of the creepiest sights I saw was a mother in a long skirt and skull-painted face pushing her child on the swingset in the park in the dead of night. Really haunting!

Altogether a worthwhile experience, one of my favorite parts being a raisin tamale I bought for a dollar :-) Ay, ay, ay-ay, canta y no llores…

Keeping current projects afloat
-not much planning time, mostly action/adjusting

Trichotillomania
-back with a vengeance, feeling mentally active and time-limited, burning candles at both ends and sleeping when possible (8pm bedtimes, 2 hours sleep/6 hours/11 hours/naps)
-picking at hair when mind is holding more than 2 directions without action, thumb blistering/peeling, new friend on plane stopping me gently and shaking head like don’t do that
-hair growing out-reminded why it was easier for me to keep it pixie short, less of a distraction
-drank a lot two nights in a row (Mon/Tues), felt very helpful for mellowing out, very rare for me to use drugs that way but body too tired for yoga, not in habit of meditation

Instant Facebook/texting/emails becoming a distraction, losing time/focus for tasks; lost my phone one night and felt much calmer, decided to go out and just be present. Was nice. Might establish dead times throughout day where I can’t respond instantly to inputs.

Had a massage and walk Wednesday morning, really healing-feeling.

Exploring quite a few simultaneous romantic connections, all feels balanced somehow in intensity and connection with what everyone is offering each other. Many physical/love interests making an appearance back in my life within one week. Learning to have a full love plate and pondering the implications and responsibilities around that. Curious in observing how sustained stress affects the letting-go and experience of love-making/orgasm. Experimenting more with verbal communication.

Feeling saddened by physical limitations of others: Allergies, acute and chronic injuries, medications, can’t relate to any of that. Feeling like health is such a birthright and people aren’t spending enough time there. Feeling very healthy without effort.

Balance needed in my mental efforts/focus so that relaxation/calmness in the mind can be achieved without swinging between overdrive and lethargy.

Feeling very drawn toward astrology and writing. Still feeling very connected to the idea of networking, finding and growing relationships, getting my messages out into the world, staying positive and fruitful, learning and soaking up lessons from others. Feeling very curious and understanding.

I’m wondering if relationships are like religions, in that it’s best if you just choose one and be really sincere and devoted in your path. My yoga tradition emphasized this wisdom.

It’s also present in athletic coaching. While getting inputs from many coaches might inform or inspire an athlete, it can also confuse them and keep them from advancing as far as they could with a particular coach if they just stayed with them and learned their lessons.

But at what point do you forsake your coach, your religion, your relationship?

Tonight seems like a good night to vent.

On “vacation” in Montana for my cousin’s wedding. It was a truly beautiful event, the third fantastic, love-filled, happy wedding I’ve attended this year. One of the highlights for me was being asked to dance by a cute little 3-year-old blonde thing. She was shaking it on the dance floor all night long like she just didn’t care, quite an inspiration to me, and to the many in the room who didn’t risk dancing for fear of looking “silly”. I got rid of that filter a LONG time ago, but it was still refreshing to see the exuberance and innocence of someone completely lacking any filter and just dancing for the pure joy of it (always my goal).

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about courage and being useful in the world. The world seems to really reward people who have the courage to pursue their passions ardently. The world certainly doesn’t need any more wallflowers who wait their whole lives for someone to wave a magic happy wand over their stagnation. I’ve reached a new point of
decision. I’m coaching athletes at the university level, I started up a massage referral service, I started an athlete promotion/education business, I educate and offer affordable legal plans to friends and family, I lead hiking tours of my neighborhood occasionally, and I park cars valet for special events around the city at least once a week. However, I’ve managed to set up my life so that I cannot pursue any one of these interests with full passion and dedication, which inevitably leads to me feeling like a wheel-spinning headcase. This may turn into a scheduling opportunity, or a delegation/leverage opportunity. I cannot let myself become extended, broke, and unhappy once again. My new game is to be wealthy, and damn it all to hell if I can’t figure out some way to be ridiculously abundant in my life. :-D

I’ve been feeling extra grateful for the men in my life, particularly those I’ve dated in the past year since entering the dating game again. Each one has opened my eyes to deeper happiness in a different direction, and I’m just so grateful to have had the experiences I have had. I had to wait nine years to have the courage to date around, and I’m so glad I took that plunge with an imperfectly patterned mind, but at least with an open heart. Sometimes I feel like I’m driving a machine without a manual or a map, but I just don’t care :-) It’s important for me to learn to love deeply, freely, and passionately. I believe once I’ve come sufficiently back into myself that way I will be given the chance to be blessed with a family to share and propagate that happiness with.

Taking in the hot tub under the chilly, starlit Montana sky one last time…to really living!