I FINALLY FOUND A REASON TO VOTE!!

No rock star took the stage in a blaze of smoke and mirrors. No infamous for fifteen minute of current culture appeared out of a pre-fabricated fog. No showman, full of pomp and flagrant circumstance, devoid of substance.

He was just a man -

Ladies and gentlemen, this is our time.

Our time to make a mark on history.

Our time to write a new chapter in the American story.

Our time to leave our children a country that is freer and kinder, more prosperous and more just than the place we grew up. And then someday, someday, if our kids get the chance to stand where we are and look back at the beginning of the 21st century, they can say that this was the time when America renewed its purpose.

They can say that this was the time when America found its way.

They can say that this was the time that america learned to dream again.
http://www.barackobama.com/main.php

He is just a man.

A simple man who has lived a not so simple life.

He was just a man who followed his heart. Who made decisions by asking himself, "What is the right thing to do?" Who turned his pain into purpose, his losses into the wider world's gain. Who turned his successes into progress, his unfailing optimism into infectious, spirited energy.

And when he raised his right hand to wave good-bye before exiting stage left with the confident stride of someone with places to go, things to accomplish, an emboldened, resurrected, palpable passion stirred within the newly faithful, leaving little doubt that every man, woman and child present this day would stand willingly and follow, whenever, wherever, he chooses to lead.

He gives us hope – I urge all to listen to him.

I’m Bored and it’s only Friday

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Portent: a sign of something about to happen. Well I’m still waiting for that “something” to happen. Do you ever feel a restlessness deep down in your bones? I do. I liken it to the wolf, knowing winter is coming and they need to find shelter! Food! Sex!
….something.

In conjunction with all the busy-ness, there is a restlessness writhing in my veins. Were it not for the presence in my life of a handful of people who seem to stand on solid ground more often than I do, there is no doubt in my mind I would have made one or two rash and stark ragingly stupid decisions over the past few days. Damn those two feet solidly on the ground people, anyway.

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Two men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I'm tired.
~ Mae West

Boredom is an emptiness filled with insistence.
~ Leo Stein

HOUSE HAUNTING (er…hunting)

Ever try to buy a house and find out your not worthy. Well I’m in the process. My credit never really was that important to me or the owning a house mode. To me you buy a house to give your kids stability – my kids are all gone. So does that mean I then give my pupper dog stability!! HA! No – I have found in my older (yew that word) age that I need to start thinking about retirement. Where the hell was I going to get the money to be happy in retirement? Answer – A house. So we are trying the buy the worst house in a very expensive area and then renovate it, and then in 20 years sell it for a large profit and WA LA – retirement!!!!

YEAH RIGHT. Now I see my credit score did mean something and I’m feeling like shit…..the mantra for the day “I think I can, I think I can….”

Keep your fingers and toes crossed!!

HUMP DAY AGAIN!!

Feeling a little blue, grey, not sure if it’s a black week. Well check out this website and think of what color you would like to be if you came back in this life as a crayon!! I would come back as weeping willow green. I want to come back in my next life as a willow tree.
http://www.crayola.com/colorcensus/index.cfm?mt=colorcorner

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
~ Pablo Picasso

IT'S HUMP DAY (GET YOUR HANDS OUTTA YOUR PANTS)

When I first starting visiting my thoughts it was to help find myself now almost more than a year I feel as if I am still looking for me. Who am I, what do I really want in life. My greatest fear other than losing my precious girls is to grow old and find out that the only thing in life that I had actually done was to grow old. I want my life to be a story - I want to never be forgotten.

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril.
~ Laurens van der Post

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
~ William James

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked."Where do you want to go?"responded the Cheshire cat."I don't know," Alice answered."Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~ Lewis Carroll

MOANING MONDAY

Self-control is vastly overrated. Don't believe me? Let's see *you* resist.
Think you can?

DO NOT PRESS THE RED BUTTON.
http://img252.echo.cx/img252/8159/006wo.swf

I said DON'T DO IT.Well??Did you???Told you.

NO FEAR

"Everyone has potential…It is an infinite resource that cannot be exhausted, but can be lost in the clouds of fear and complacency. It may take courage to embrace the possibilities of your own potential, but once you've flown past the summit of your fears, nothing will seem impossible."
~ Michael McKee
_________________

On more than one occasion recently, I've had the chance to stand up to my fears and take a healthy swing at defeating them. On more than one occasion recently, I've made the conscious, deliberate decision to step away from the challenge instead.

Complacency?

Cowardice?

Does it really matter? Is fear by any other name less debilitating? Less awesome in its power to inhibit?

I've been thinking about this a lot of late. About the experiences, significant or otherwise, I've deprived myself of in the name of fear, all neatly justified away with an array of built-in excuses that are nothing more than lies told to avoid exposing, or confronting, a lack of confidence in my own courageousness.

I've been thinking about all of the things I want to do, the things I would do, if fear weren't the largest, sometimes even the only, obstacle standing in my way.

The list is a long one. And I've been thinking lately about how many of these things on my list are really stepping stones toward broader dreams. Dreams that will never see the light of day, if my senseless, unfounded fears have anything to say about it.

So I've been thinking.

What am I so afraid of?
Maybe it's time to find out.
Maybe, it's only me.

FREAKY FRIDAY

I am not very good at giving or receiving compliments.

When i receive a compliment, my first impulse is to explain in great detail to the complimentor why, exactly, they are wrong. And that is a really sucky reaction, designed to annoy the complimentor and ensure that they don't make THAT mistake again.

I don't do this out of false modesty. I feel realistic about myself and my abilities and talents. I am not the best in the world at anything, nor the worst. There are billions of us in the world (and we keep reproducing) so how many of us can be the best at anything?

Maybe i can hear my mother's voice in my head. She did not compliment me, and one of her frequent comments was "Are you fishing for a compliment?" One must never in any way appear to be asking for a compliment.

Giving compliments is also difficult for me. I spend time trying to talk myself out of it. They'll think i'm trying to suck up, they won't believe me, they've heard it before, i might annoy them. Will the recipient understand that i really mean it? I want to give more, but i don't want to be perceived as insincere.

This, annoying even to me, little exercise in self-consciousness has got to stop. I will practice giving compliments as i think them, and not concern myself with the reaction, over which i have no control. I will also just say "thank you" when i receive a compliment, and then SHUT UP

My Defect is Revealed
When i was 12 years old, my mother took me to the doctor and i did not know why. When he had me take off my underpants WITH MY MOTHER IN THE ROOM, i did not know why. When he looked at my privates with his creepy goateed face, i did not know why.Back at home, left with no information, my mind went wild with speculation. I was born without one, whatever one was. (You have to understand my level of ignorance about my own body. I did not know that there were any inside bits. I mean, i had heard tell of these bits, but i had not located mine.)

My parents never told me anything about sex, ever, and thus i was left to my own devices to try and figure it out. I knew that this horrible thing happened to women at a certain age, and that while it was still ok to go out in public at this terrible time, i must make sure to eat my vegetables and get plenty of rest.

(This was learned from the movie that all the girls were herded into the lunchroom one day to view, after our parents had signed the permission slip. Oh god we were sorry for the girls whose parents had refused to sign, and who had to go and sit in the library during this momentous event.)

My defect had become so apparent that my mother had to take me to a specialist. He gave me pills to take, and they made me sick. Maybe these were to help me grow whatever it was i was missing. I lived in fear and shame for about a year, in which time the “secret” did its thing and i "became a woman".

********************************
I should be able to look back at this and find some humor, but i can still feel the ignorance and the shame of it. I still wonder if that doctor knew what the hell he was doing. And i still wonder what i would have decided to do if i had been asked. My guess is that i would have been all for it, i didn't want to be a candidate for the circus.

Between the Lines

Inside my head, there has been the internal dialog going something like this: You can't handle the truth. Do you dare tell it? How much truth?

You can see, clearly, that I'm a tad psychotic. But that's not really the point of this post.

I can't help that, really. It is what it is, and this space here? Well, if it's not the most vividly arrogant bit of self-aggrandizement known to the modern world, then you can call me Uncle Jake. Which would be somewhat odd, seeing as it's not my name.

See how that 'distract-delay' thing works? Besides, I'm right. This is pure drivel, silly and stupid. Borderline disgusting.

But it's something else, too. An honest display of what goes through my mind.

Lately, this space has taken on a ethereal aura.

The truth is, lately, this space has begun to intimidate the hell out of me.
I'm not sure why, really. Or maybe I'm absolutely certain about the whys, but am unsure of the words to use to express it in a way that you - as someone living decidedly outside my head space - can understand. Words that you can read and think, "Ah. Yes. I totally get it."
I'm not sure those words exist. If they do, I'm quite sure I don't possess them.

The dare is to try anyway.

Because the truth is, it has come to be very important to me that you do get it.
The truth is, that is the reason this place has come to intimidate me, right down to my fingertips, paralyzing them before they can issue forth a single keyboard stroke.

When I started, it was a simple exercise in transferring my daily habit of writing in my journal from pen and paper to keyboard and computer screen. Nothing changed at first. I wrote the same things I always had, in much the same way. Letters to my girls, stories for safekeeping, random streams of consciousness, or odd snippets of thought. Joy and rage, love and hurt. My own peculiar perspective transcribed for all eternity. For spotting growth and spotting obstacles. For recognizing trends in my regular cycle and for uncovering issues, previously unknown, and so, unaddressed.

Journaling has always been a lifetime struggle for me.
People will read all that I have written some day and that made me want to be as honest as humanly possible in dissecting my life and times. Made me want to dig even deeper. Made me willing to pour more and more of my heart and soul out in words.

And lately, that's where this has become oh so different from my little coil bound cardboard journal with tumbles of words scratched across its unlined pages in blue ink.

I come to this place, knowing amazing people will float in and out of its existence, and I am stopped cold in the death grip of intimidation. Afraid that what I have to say today will not live up to an unspoken, but intensely felt, expectation. Afraid that whatever you think you saw in my words yesterday will never show itself again.

Afraid I will never live up to whatever it is I think you think I am, or am supposed to be.
So I begin to fidget, struggling to force words out anyway, clicking the publish button on posts that are less than me, and therefore less than honest.

The truth is, you didn't do this. You never set expectations that felt like constrictive restraints around my brain. I'm the idiot solely responsible for turning my own perceptions into a suffocating reality that never, really, was.

The truth is, this is not about you. The truth is, it speaks volumes about my own insecurities and over eager willingness to fall into the trap of performing, rather than just being.
The truth is, that is never what this was intended to mean. The truth is, my own warped sense of self turned it into that, despite every good intention to fight against it.

Do I dare quit tap dancing, to the beat of a non-existent drum?

I dare to try.
And that's the truth.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
~ Samuel Butler
And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
~ Confucius

We Could Be Heroes

I sometimes wonder what I'll think years from now when revisiting these days on these pages and take note of the glaring omission of any commentary about topical events. The absence of discussion cannot be blamed on a lack of awareness, certainly. It seems these days that "all the news that's fit to print" is either devastatingly awful or crushingly demoralizing or a nauseating combination of the two.Maybe I suffer information overload, and am lucky enough to disseminate the data in my own head and heart, let alone attempt to comment on it quasi-intelligently here. Who knows. The point is, I am keenly attuned to what's happening, despite my silence in this forum.

Sometimes I wish I didn't care so much. It can be so disheartening to attempt to comprehend the vastness of the various ills that have entrapped our global village. This planet has been made vulnerable enough by its own self-induced misery to make a hostile takeover by aliens from another world wholly unnecessary. It could likely be theirs for the assuming. Assuming they'd even want anything to do with it after watching the self-destruction as reported via the morning news.

Fortunately for my own peace of mind, I do have enough life experience to know better; to know that it ain't all bad. But we're force fed a marketing driven 24/7 menu of tragedy, deceit, murder, sickness, psychosis, mayhem, and hopelessness day in and day out that is debilitating enough to make a person shrug with exhaustion, asking, "How the hell am I supposed to make a difference in this catastrophic mess?" It is my strongly held belief that being bombarded with the negativity day in and day out is at the very root of the growing mass of apathy that exists among us today. Evidence exists to suggest it is human nature to mirror behaviors reflected back at us. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the media devoted a hunk of their daily airtime to blitzing us with good news. Stories about heroes righting wrongs. Simple folks living simply. Youth showing promise. Concerned citizens taking action. Politicians living ideals based in principle, not polls. People helping people.

If they would dare to be brave enough to go against the ratings drivers and give us a healthy daily dose of positive news in between the tales of ruin, maybe the tide of apathy borne from defeatism would take a turn. Maybe those screaming for help, justice, and a better way to a better day wouldn't be considered the rogue fringe element anymore, shouting uselessly into the wind. Maybe they'd become the standard bearers, leading the way.

Show us it doesn't matter, and watch us stand by, watching.

Show us it can matter, and watch us make a difference.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
~ W. Edwards Deming

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
~ Margaret Mead

Change your thoughts, and you change the world.
~ Norman Vincent Peale

Wishing for a Different Direction

These past few months, I've come to appreciate the way an astronaut must feel orbiting the earth, looking down on what used to be his life, forcibly disengaged from it to the extent that all focus is centered elsewhere. It seems the only thing I have to look forward to these days is my boss not being in the office.

Called Tina up this morning on my way into work and just vented on the shit I have to put up with. I guess you could say I felt better but I know at the end of the day I have to go home. I at least I got him to take a shower this morning but the bed is crappy - at least his side.

I am back on track with the diet and I have to succeed this time, I am tired of being a failure. I haven't been going to the LA Weight Loss meetings with any regularity since probably July, and it shows. The meetings grew to become one of *those* things. I figured, "you know? I don't have to deal with this one anymore." *slough, slough* It was the easy excuse to vacate a thing that had become unbelievably important to me. A meaningful one hour a week where I committed - both internally and to everyone else - to take care of myself.

Sloughing it off?

Self-destructive with the best of intentions. As always.

It seems with my surgery also came lots of reasons to “not” I was somehow hoping that when I awoke from surgery I would be in a different world and actually be happy….silly me.

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.
~ Charles F. Kettering

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.
~ Carol Shields

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
~ G.B. Shaw