CAN YOU TELL YOUR INNER WISDOM FROM OTHER VOICES?

Photo: Hoverfly, by David Short
Creative Commons Attribution License
Eristalix pertenax on Mexican orange-blossom.
Taken 5/20/2011 using Canon Digital IXUS 70.



"We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other,to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity." - Paulo Coelho, "The Alchemist"

Still at my 1,000 words a day, which is about all I'm writing lately, much to my dismay. I don't count journaling, which I do every day for hours--that's therapy.

I just can't seem to get it together to write articles for the two publications I freelance for, AlignLife.com and Examiner.com.  I have no readers at the Examiner yet, although I just started there recently.  I'm thinking I should have become Chicago's Bob Dylan Examiner (they really have one)  or the Ecstasy Examiner instead of Alcohol and Recovery.  Who wants to read about alcohol and recovery?  I try not to preach, but drinking people dont want to hear anything about their drinking habits.  I asked to be the Addictions Examiner, but I have to wait until I prove myself on just alcohol or something.

There's a really exciting new publication on addiction, alcoholism and recovery called The Fix.  You find articles on topics you won't find other places like this one on addiction and skin picking.  It's called trichotillomania and they say it's not as serious as cutting, but it's still in the mental illness or neurosis family of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).  Oh ick, you say.  There's reviews of swanky rehabs, ads for stuff I never knew existed like marijuana spray for pain, and serious articles about the top ten experts in the field of addictions. 

I finished my "Developing Intuition" book by Shakrit Gawain,  and I really do mean to keep at following my intuitive messages each and every day. She writes about all the people or voices we have in our heads.  I know I have Miss Perfectionist, Mrs. Gumblehortz, my inner critic who wears her hair in a bun with not one stray hair coming out of it.  Then there is Ms. Weatherhardy, the responsible one, who believes she is a human doing and not a human being.  There is Mary Melon, the vulnerable child who gets scared by the risks of taking a leap of faith and following intuitive wisdom without knowing where it goes.  And, of course, there is the rebel who doesn't want to even follow her own gut feelings like it's some kind of scam.  There's more too.  Figure out who yours are.  The inner critic and the perfectionist make my life a living hell if I don't tie them up and put duct tape on their mouths.

So far I haven't seen any big changes in my life. I still spent two hours researching and writing a book proposal project bid yesterday only to have the Linux Live Knoppix CD crash and the letter disappear, although I spent hours looking for it.  If I had intuitively known that was going to happen, I wouldn't have written the damn letter in the first place.  I guess turning a business book into a fable is not the job for me, although I sure thought it sounded like fun.

I am currently helping my brother edit his book for teens, "A Fairy Tale Life Is No Fable," by Michael Grady, and he has done a bang-up job incorporating fables in his book that he plans to publish on his website.  It definitely will be of interest to teens.  He is a CPA, retired, and a professional speaker, who used to travel the world doing the accounts for Dun & Bradstreet.  He knows about things teens will be helped to learn and that should hold their interest like how to give a good speech, investing, money management, learning to write well, staying healthy, taking responsibility for yourself, sex, drugs, and some rock 'n roll.  I made up the rock 'n roll.  It seemed to go with sex and drugs, at least it did in my generation.

Yeah, I saw some decent jobs at Elance.com, the agency I use to get my freelance gigs.  For a while there I felt like I had walked into the wrong place.  Suddenly articles were being priced at $2-$4 and shit like that by clients, where they had been going for up to $50+.  They seem to be running from being categorized as a content mill like Demand Studios, and now AOL Seed, and Bright Hub, and now there are jobs for $500-$1,000.  I was invited to bid on some "Course in Miracles" type articles and to bid a healthy amount.  I was also invited to bid on meditation articles for good money, but I felt like too much of a hypocrite since I haven't been able to make myself meditate any more recently.  My mind is like a wild monkey.  I just want to get going on making my dreams a reality and learn grant proposal writing so I can start my own business doing that, write my self-help book on adult AD/HD (ADD), and edit my brother's book.

Oh yeah, and I also want to learn website design so I can freelance at that as well.  About.com offers free courses in that as well as the other stuff you need with it like HTML, css, java, I think, and cascading sheets.  All of it might as well be in Latin for all I know, but I figure there are a lot of hotdogs that have taught themselves how to do it and I am a good learner, I hope.  I think it would be fun to have another creative outlet.

Today I went to the thrift store and bought a stack of dime magazines to get new pictures for my vision board I want to make.  I need to update one according to my current five-year plan of dreams.    I finally found a how to do it article that didn't suck with materialism and phoniness.  My idea of my future does not revolve around a built-in pool and owning three houses, and I'm not about to glue gleaming materialistic pictures of crap and call it my dreams.  Here's the article I was looking for.  I wanted something to help me do some creative visualization on my dreams and some affirmations work.  This article came from Oprah, where else.  Here is the dream board made by Martha Beck that they refer to:

Let me know how it goes, and how you felt as you were making it.

Is anyone joining me in the 1,000 words a day challenge?  Just a reminder:  It could be your daily discipline that will end up being the springboard for the e-book you always meant to write, or the novel, play, non-fiction book, memoir, or blog.  Get going.  I spent a lot of time at college studying creative writing.  I wanted to know what the secret was that would make me a good writer.  I finally heard it from one of my professors who simply wrote on the board:  "Writers Write."  That's the secret.  No one gets good at writing by trying to drink like they're one of the American writers in Paris during the 20's like Hemingway or Fitzgerald.  You don't become a great writer by talking about writing in bars, clubs and every chance you get to impress somebody.  Writers write because they must.  It's a drive.  If you are a writer and you don't write, you feel funky, even depressed.  Follow  writer Julia Cameron's advice from her book "The Artist's Way," and this website, and write  your morning pages when you wake up and aren't yet sure what's on your mind and in your heart.   It's so much cheaper than therapy.  I get more out of it than I do therapy too.

I journaled for a couple of hours today.  I did some journaling exercises from the Joy book I told you how to get for free yesterday.  I wrote lists.  I love lists.  I wrote ten things I love about my life, ten things that are unique about me, ten things I could fix or change in the world, and ten things I'd like to share.  Do those and you'll have your 1,000 word challenge met for the day, and it will be therapeutic.  I learned some things about myself and my soul's mission/life's purpose from doing these lists.

Time to go see how many words I've got here: 1,176.

See you tomorrow.

Maryellen/MsRefusenik

1000 WORD CHALLENGE HAS MANY NEW, BRILLIANT, BEAUTIFUL WORDS

I am not counting a missed day just because it is 1:15 a.m.  These are my normal operating hours.  I have been busy learning about dreams, the unconscious, the conscious, the selves, the intuition, how to tell when an intuitive guidance message is the real thing, and more.  Carl Jung also taught me the best new word I have learned since I read some articles on untranslatable words and bringing back obsolete words in Matador, one of my favorite publications.  In fact, they are such good articles, I will share them with you right now.   How about that--"20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world," and in case you didn't bother to click, here's the first one to give you an idea of what you're missing:

1. Toska

Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of soul,a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”  

If you liked those, here's 20 more awesomely untranslatable words from around the world. 

We can always get back to what I learned tonight, but I do want to tell you my great new word.  If you already know this word like you know the words ignorant, unread, stupid, uninformed, forgive me.  I went to a state school.  This brilliant black opal of a word is:  MISONEISM.  I don't know how I struggled through this world this long without it, and you really do need to invent a word like it if it didn't exist.  It means a deep and unreasoning fear and hatred of the new, especially of new ideas; a deep and superstitious fear of novelty.  We are plagued with misoneism in this society.  It's a wonder the wheel was invented, and I never knew of this word before.  God bless Carl Jung for sharing yet another important finding.

You wouldn't believe what I had to go through to get those two links for you.  I am on a different operating system than when I started these 1,000 words.  Something is wrong with Linux's Wary Puppy Live CD.  I think it definitely has the mange and it might be rapid.  It keeps taking me to the backs of these closets where there is nothing, and dumping me there to figure out a way out.  The damn Sea Monkey can't stay open on a web page without getting a cramp that makes it suddenly close.  It's a nightmare I tell you.  And don't even get me started about my Windows XP with its dueling Internet Explorer and Google Chrome browsers that both pop up so they can try to take over, although I will say Chrome has more manners in this regard than I.E.  So I'm back home on Knoppix, but it's not the old Knoppix 6.2; this is 6.4 and it's flashy with it's fractal art on the landing page and it works, so far, like a well-oiled bicycle chain, something I rarely get to experience because I'm a lazy fuck.
Oh so much for computers and their headaches.  It started off being a great night.  I am reading this fantastic book I got from the library about keeping your dream alive and what you need to do to make it happen.  It's not a bunch of the usual doggerel--it's really mindfully written and it speaks to me.  I was wishing I didn't have to take it back to the library, when synchronicity stepped in and I found where I could download a free copy.  I'll give you a couple of quotes from it and you can decide if you would like a copy too. 

The author, Susanne Falter-Barns, hopes that people will use the book, "how much joy can you stand?" to start joy clubs where friends spur each other's dreams on and celebrate together when they happen.  The book, she says, are short essays meant to pick up any flagging enthusiasm.  And, I'll tell you, the book gets me dreaming like I'm 20 years old and just graduated from college, and have inherited a million bucks to do whatever i like.  She makes it all seem within grasp.  She helped me get in touch with my personal power that I am forever pretending not to have because what would people think if I became the mouse that roared and everything was not hunky dory.  I would have to roar and take my power and use it to take control of my life situation and make sure that it worked for me.  Because I am tired of being nice and waiting for the world to notice that I NEED A BREAK.  I am not going to get a hand up from somebody who takes pity on my poverty and various disorders and diseases that I use as excuses to not further myself to where I want to be.  I need to get up off my lazy, procrastinating butt and take charge.

One way I am doing this is by learning to trust my intuition.  I get good intuitive messages and I immediately rationalize them as worthless or just old tapes or any excuse not to pay attention to them.  From now on I am paying attention.  I am reading an excellent book on how to do it by Shakti Gawain ("Creative Visualization").  It's titled "Developing Intuition:  Practical Guidelines for Daily Life."  It is a super book and right on the mark.  I am right now on the chapter that talks about how to tell your inner wisdom intuitive messages from other voices and other selves.  Today I listed, at Shakti's suggestion, my fears that keep me from taking the risks of following my intuitive messages.

If I had followed my intuition recently and put my bike in the house when I saw somebody had unlocked it and moved it, I'd still have a bicycle.  Now I have divine inspiration, I believe, to write a book that has never been written.  If I don't listen to my gut feelings on this and let this opportunity pass me by, it will be a real shame.  I am going to breathe life into this dream and some other dreams I have about contributing to the world.

Which brings me back to sharing some of "how much joy" with you.  She says you need to stick to your dream and have a "fire in the belly."  Here, I'll let her tell you:  "The fire in your belly comes only when you're willing to work at your dream for no good reason.  You don't pursue the dream because you'll be famous someday, because the work is going to make you rich, or because it will make for better cocktail banter.  You design, teach, invent or serve because this is what you are meant to do.  Getting the fire in the belly means simply surrendering to the truth." (pp.20-21).

I have frequently written in this blog about finding your purpose in life, your soul's mission that you came here to fulfill.  This book is a how-to-do-it on that  It's not about establishing a platform or a brand or how to successfully market via e-mail, it's about how to make damn sure you get to do what you were born to do. 

We know what our talents are, unless we've really been stomped into the ground, and then we need help getting up and recognizing them.  Everybody has talents as great as the greatest artists, composers, scientists, and saints.  We just listened too well to critics who told us we were shy of the mark, even when they were our own parents we listened and believed that we weren't as good at something as we believed we were.  We lost so much joy in  being able to practice that gift in our lives.  Now it's time to claim it, rename it and make it yours for life.

Here's the exercise at the end of chapter, and I love these.  She titles them simply, "Try this," and I do them in my morning pages or journal.  Here's the "Try this," for this:

"You have three minutes.  Make a list of everything that you are truly passionate about.  Include anything you can think of, from eating imported chocolate to having great sex to fly-fishing on the Snake River.  Then think about what characterizes those experiences.  Do you go into a trance and lose track of time?  Does the experience leave you feeling like a better, stronger person?  How often do you let these passions into your life?  Are there any you need to pursue now?  Keep this list and return to it whenever you feel the need to stoke your fire."  (p.21)

There's really too much for me to type that is great about this book.  She is helping me put flesh on my dreams and I thank her.  If you want a free copy of this beautiful, inspiring book, go here. 

And I am going to go check and see if that's 1,000 words, because I have dreams to stoke and I need to be working at them, following my intuitive messages, of course. 

That is 1,735, and I am out of here.  I hope I gave you something you could use.

WANT TO COMMIT TO WRITING 1000 WORDS A DAY?

You can have one of these cool badges for your website too.  The truth is you don't even have to commit to 1,000 words if that's too much.  Badges also come in 250 and 500 word sizes.  The idea is to get writers writing, bloggers blogging, and freelance writers making some money.

I got the idea here.  I was reading a good article by a novelist with ADD who was writing about getting stuck due to his disorder and not getting the novel written.  He included a link to this site.  I seem to have temporarily lost the article, but if you have adult ADD, this is a great website for articles.  They offer more than the usual coping with low self-esteem, impulsivity and disorganization stuff you get sick of reading.  It's like the authors just want to rub it in again, "I'm organized and I was able to write this book.  You'll never be organized enough to finish that kind of demanding, multi-faceted task."  Or maybe it's just me being hypersensitive.

So I am so going to write a book about adult AD/HD (ADD), and I'm starting today and every day this week with 1,000 words a day.  The rules for the badge say you only have to write 1,000 words (or how ever many you choose) six days a week, but I'm going for seven of course.  I'm nothing if not ambitious except when I'm on the couch with my Chocolate Covered Mint Oreos (when I'm lucky enough to find the mint version), watching TV and feeling guilty because I didn't write that day but I was full of good intentions.

It's a secret what kind of book it will be exactly because nobody has done it yet and I want to be the first.  I am hoping to get enough written to send Hazelden, the big recovery publisher, a book proposal soon.  I would consider self-publishing it as an e-book but I am too broke to afford even that.  BTW, writers, have you seen the fantastic software Adobe will drop on you for a 30-day free trial?  Check them out.  The Dreamweavers and desktop publishing equipment cost $400-500+ and you can download one right now.  Watch out though.  Some of the final publications they produce can only be read on tablets.  You don't want to limit your e-book or what have you like that, do you?  And remember--you better have your manuscript ready to roll because you only get 30 days of the free trial, and then you either have to buy the software or say goodbye to it.

That was a brief, unsolicited, unpaid, commercial announcement.  I think it's really great of Adobe to do that.  If you're a student, look into selling at one of their educational stores too.  It's a good deal.

My 1,000 words a day will be about writing, writing books, self-help books in particular, AD/HD (ADD), addiction, alcoholism, and subtopics like coping with impulsivity, using your natural born creativity and not limiting it, learning to listen, money management, becoming addicted to AD/HD stimulant medication, which all the books say rarely happens, but I don't believe that for a second, and things along those lines.

They might also include novel writing since my second novel is currently in a state of unpleasant limbo with everybody in the book knowing what's happening and going to happen and no ending or resolution in sight.  I got bored with my novel and the characters, and in that very distracted ADD way decided I was moving on to new, more interesting projects like teaching myself grant writing.  I am currently working on that goal too.  In fact, some poor misguided individual on my Elance agency jobs list wants a grant writer who will work on contingency.  Freelance grant writers charge about $75/hr. so you tell me why one would take a job on contingency.  I am seriously considering bidding on it for the simple reason that I have been going pie-eyed reading about how to write a grant proposal, but I have never done anything except type them when I worked as an administrative assistant for the U of I - Chicago, Dept. of Education.  I have been planning to learn enough to go volunteer to work as some nonprofit grant writer's free intern just to learn the ropes, but writing a grant on contingency sounds equally beneficial.  The only problem is that he wants videos and video components, and it's hard, I believe, to find grants to individuals for businesses that aren't nonprofit.  But he may turn me down flat, so I'll worry about that later.

Sure, like I worried about what knowledge management was after I signed up, paid the tuition,  and bought the books for the first of many courses in what was to have been my M.S. in Knowledge Management.  My ADD had me really going off half cocked that time.  I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, but I was too impatient to get started to thoroughly research what exactly I wanted to study, and I'm no kid.  I was on about my fourth career change at the time, and actually was unemployed, so what better time to get into grad school, right?  My B.A. is in English, and not with anything practical like education courses.  No, I specialized in creative writing and literature the better to read Henry Miller and write two unpublished novels that may sit mouldering the rest of my life.  Who knows?

It turns out, as I learned two weeks into the most god-awful, boring class of my life, that KM, as they like to refer to it, is not a groovy sort of information management resources thing.  I was confusing an MLS and library sciences with capitalism, gross, and, P.U., business schemes to make more money.  Borrrrrriiing!  To top it off the professor had an accent and I couldn't even understand three-quarters of what he said.  He had written our textbook, so there was no use hoping for a reprieve from monotony from that corner. It was duller than a John Wayne retrospective showing of his war movies, and I opted to leave with my failing grade emblazoned on a transcript I will never claim.

How's that for impulsive?  I couldn't be bothered to find out what the hell I'd be studying for the next two years...  AD/HD can really make your life ridiculously impossible if you let it.

Let me see how many words I've written so far:  1,076.

Reminder, if you don't make your quota in a day, the badge rules say you aren't supposed to try to make them up the next day or that's cheating.

I made mine.  Now go start your novel, blog or e-mail to someone you haven't seen in a while.

WHAT WILL THEY DO TO US NEXT WITH THESE ATYPICAL ANTI-PSYCHOTIC DRUGS?

"Killing of the Nemean Lion," by Orin Zelest
Creative Commons Share License

Now they are willfully and purposefully killing seniors in nursing homes with anti-psychotics.  Everybody who has ever had the misfortune of being so much as introduced to Mr. Risperdal et al knows that this class of drugs is strongly not recommended for persons with dementia, or even those over a certain age.

Look at the news flash that I came across today.  I cannot tell you how sickened and appalled I am:

Audit Finds Widespread Use Of Antipsychotic Drugs In Nursing Homes

';

• Topics: Aging, Mental Health
• By Scott Hensley, NPR News
• May 11, 2011
• This story comes from NPR's health blog Shots.

• About 1 in 7 elderly residents of nursing homes receives a so-called atypical antipsychotic medicine, a federal audit finds, despite an increased risk of death when the medicines are used to manage dementia in older people.
• A review of medical records found that most of the atypical antipsychotics were being used outside the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the medicines to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
• Indeed, 88 percent of the Medicare claims for the drugs show they were prescribed for elderly people with dementia.
• "Despite the fact that it is potentially lethal to prescribe antipsychotics to patients with dementia, there's ample evidence that some drug companies aggressively marketed their products towards such populations, putting profits before safety," wrote Daniel Levinson, Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, whose office did the analysis.
• The top three drugs, based on the number of claims found in the 2007 audit, were:
• 1. Seroquel from Astra Zeneca
  2. Risperdal from Johnson & Johnson
  3. Zyprexa from Eli Lilly.
• To Levinson's point on marketing, nursing home pharmacy chain Omnicare agreed to pay the federal government $98 million in 2009 to settle charges it took kickbacks from J&J to boost sales of Risperdal.
• The OIG made some recommendations for improvement, such as better education and halting payments for unnecessary use of medicines.
• Despite the risks, the prescription of the medicines isn't likely to disappear. As psychiatrist Daniel Carlat told the New York Times, there aren't very many other good options. "Doctors want to maximize quality of life by treating the patient's agitation even if that means the patient will die a bit sooner," Carlat said.
• Indeed, as NPR's Joanne Silberner reported back in 2005 when warnings were raised about both the newer, atypical antipsychotics and their predecessors it treating the elderly, a doctor told her he would continue to use the medicines carefully and in low doses because they still carried benefits.

They just don't want to deal with the old people acting out because they are bored out of their minds, have no human company many of them and that includes the callous, bored medical and nursing staff, have to follow a constrained daily schedule that they had nothing to do with setting up and that probably doesn't make much sense to them, have no one to speak to about their fears and concerns, and so on.  So, like moms putting toddlers in front of soap operas or cartoons on the TV, or drunks dragging the kids they are in charge of into bars for the afternoon, or... no... wait... It's like none of these things.  None of these examples is the same as killing a person because you don't feel like dealing with him or her any longer.

There is an excellent blog that everyone should read if they have ever had the remotest interest in mental illness and mental health, and the courage and intelligence and guts it has taken one woman to survive the drug damage done by psychiatrists with their killer pills.   It's called Beyond Meds.  You can read much more that than the triumph of the will that let this brave woman survive years of withdrawal from psychiatric drugs like Risperdal (I'm on it), Lamictal and the Benzodiazephines. She does so much good by spreading her message of hope.  She is now collecting statements to present at the conference of the American Psychological or Psychiatric Association.  Forgive me, I forget which.  Everything on her website is both unbelievable and obviously true and chilling to the core.  These people practicing medicine are ruining others for life, sometimes just ending their lives like those in the above article.

I have been on the three drugs mentioned:  Seroquel, Risperdal and Zyprexa.  I have been a rebel all my life, refusing to conform to very little that didn't fit my personal values and beliefs.  I am 60 years-old now.  I have no doubt that should I ever end up in a nursing home, which is likely to hear my grown kids tell it, they will label my bipolar disorder a bunch of goofy things, assume I have dementia too, and feed me the very drugs that have been the bane and future nightmare of my existence.  Lamictal, a drug that the author of Beyond Meds unbelievably got off of, has an allergic reaction on some people that begins with a rash or a sore.  If it's bad, the reaction can prove to be fatal.  I had an open, gaping, hideous wound pop up out of nowhere during my first week on the drug.  I was hospitalized at the time and no one said a word or cautioned me.  Even the doctors could hardly stand to look at me because the sore was so ugly, but it was a clear sign I was having an allergic reaction to a newly prescribed drug and could die.

But then that's how mentally ill people are often treated.  The rules of decent behavior towards them don't seem to apply and aren't practiced by everyone, even doctors.  Go fill out Beyond Meds' form for the APA about your psychiatric experiences and read while you're there her letter to feminists and liberals, which I am both.  She is, I hate to say it, right on.  These supposedly open-minded subsets of larger groups are just as quick or quicker to label the mentally ill and treat them like non-thinking, monsters of attack as soon as they hear the diagnosis.  It must stop.  The stigma causes suffering in people long before they are diagnosed.  The stigma begins to destroy the mentally ill when they are first feeling something is wrong but wouldn't dare tell anybody about it, not even their family physician.  Like that ever does any good.  If you just want an anti-depressant or a tranquilizer and call it the end of the day and that's all she wrote, perhaps.

I have to go look to find out who is protesting these deaths and what is being done to stop them. This article makes it pretty clear it will continue to be business as usual in that particular nursing home, even if Medicare/Medicaid stops paying for the drugs used.  They'll find a way to siphon the money from M&M, and the killing of innocent people will go on as it has for years despite huge legal settlements brought against the drug companies.

Blast and Chicago's number one binge drinking rate on national survey

Blast and Chicago's number one binge drinking rate on national survey I sweat real blood and tears over this monster mother, but it's a serious problem in Chicago and elsewhere. Somehow the prevention people just haven't gotten across that the consequences that come with binge drinking aren't flukes that happen to someone else. They can happen to anyone who drinks more than a glass or two of beer or wine or spirits on any day of the week. Read it and make a decision. It will make you feel good about yourself.

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means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
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the term "modification".)  Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
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is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

  1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

  2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

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    b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
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    c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
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These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.  If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
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Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
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In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of
a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under
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  3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
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implemented by public license practices.  Many people have made
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This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to
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certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
original copyright holder who places the Program under this License
may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding
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       NO WARRANTY

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FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.  EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
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TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.  SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING,
REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

  12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

       END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
 
     How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

  If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

  To do so, attach the following notices to the program.  It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

    
    Copyright (C)   

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA


Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:

    Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year  name of author
    Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
    This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
    under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate
parts of the General Public License.  Of course, the commands you use may
be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be
mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if
necessary.  Here is a sample; alter the names:

  Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
  `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.

  , 1 April 1989
  Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs.  If your program is a subroutine library, you may
consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
library.  If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General
Public License instead of this License.

It's the Summer of Love, Just Kidding, It's Google's Summer of Code

I swore I wouldn't learn code--not Java, not C+, not Perl, not Ruby on the Rails (but I like that name), and I still am sticking to my guns.  I also said you would not find me,
MsMonolinguinal Ignorant American (studied three years of high school Spanish and three years of college French and a crash course in German, all for naught)  translating Wiki docs.  But when I see logs showing 12 and 13-year-old kids translating from both Finnish and Russian on one project, I am ashamed. 

I swear I don't know how they do it at Wiki, but they make translating into and out of a language you don't know any better than your high school sweetheart's middle name at this point (and that was supposed to be such undying pure true love), seem like rolling out dough for biscuits.  Lay it down, roll it out, crease where necessary and you're ready to read Nabokov  in the original Russian.  It's some kind of alchemy.  Of course you've got helpers, and watchers, to make sure that some poor Croatian teenager doesn't get arrested for attempting to take Russian money out of Russia--A big no-no.  I  might have translated that you were expected to give money to every person who handles your luggage.

Today they (the Wiki nymphs  or elves or whatever they are who leave missives aplenty, but aren't seen or heard from to my knowledge.  They led me down some document about the big conference or foundation of the LXDE or some such, and I did some simple editing that was put in front of me that was probably just a test.

I am working on something to do with setting up the quicker, sharper desktop known as the LXDE, but I am dim on what's involved and exactly what the end product is.  I am bummed because I didn't know about this big Woodstock of codewriting until two weeks past the deadline for scholarship applications.  Not that I planned to learn to write code so I could go hang out with thousands or hundreds of  geeks. But the international meeting takes place in Paris this year.  I'd learn enough code to sign up to make a hamster or turtle gadget for a $5,000 internship, and an all-expenses paid trip to Paris.  I forgot to say that everybody gets a mentor to guide and direct them with their project.

GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram2011

Here's the poop on the women's project for the summer.
I also found out that for part of this Summer of Code, they have decided to attract more women to make gadgets and work on documentation.  There is a $5,000 internship to be awarded to any female code writer or even plain writer/editor who wants to sign up for some of their complex and mysterious unfinished projects.   It's a two-page single-spaced list and I went over it carefully with the attitude that there must be something a spaced out clutz without a techno  cell in her brain pan can do, because I sure do need that money this summer.

Some fairy or maybe a gnome brought  me to sign in for Wikipedia late last night after I'd been up for a couple of days.  Right away they start in with the usual same old song that what I thought was my "global" login is worthless, never heard of my user names or e-mail addresses, on and on.  So I say to myself the hell with it, I'll just bite the bullet and register at a Wiki website for the 100th time.  But every username I come up is either already used, as is the e-mail address, of course, because they're mine but just not good enough for this Wiki Wacko.  Then the person starts finding fault with every e-mail address and username I come up with.  I finally snapped and did what I should have done much earlier and just left.

Well imagine how I felt today when I was nosing through the Subversion, Google Project Hosting and Wiki Wacko pages and found a script for what happened to me with the login last night.  It seems they use a special cookie so that even if you check on the login "remember me"  it really won't.  There's also a faulty code of some kind that ensures your login will never be successful.   I am not lying.  I may post some of these scripts next blog.  They have actual scripts with pretend persons written out showing how it should discourage a bad seed from darkening Wiki's weird door with offers of help and voluntary slave labor.  There are dates and actual quotes of what the facilitator said to the poor schmuck minding his or her own business and just trying to login/register.  There's even the sort of snide remarks about usernames that I was getting.  I am publishing it next time.  It has to be seen to be believed.  These people are out of their geeky minds.

FREELANCE WRITING LED ME TO BEING FODDER FOR FOOT FETISHISM

 I just learned about the remarkable cult of the high heel from a practicing foot
fetishist, who almost hired me to write a story for him about the practice.  Could have fooled me.  I thought that because my friends and I had given them up as nonsencical long ago, that most forward thinking, independent women of the year of our Lord 2011 had had a similiar raising of fashion consciousness versus sane walking practices.  Think again.  Want to see the shrine that was just built to celebrate the great passion and worship for the high heel? And not just any high heel.  It's an homage to a Manolo Blahnik stiletto.  .  Check out the size  perspective of shoe vs. person on Broadway now in this picture:

 It has a name, the Priscilla.  The link for the article in Refinery29 by Kristian Laliberte that goes with this picture is here.  I just have to steal  the first paragraph because it encapsulates what I've been seeing in my recent field research of the religion built around the high heel and the enormous popularity of foot fetishism by women as well as men.  Check this out, I thought I was back in the 1970's:

"In a move that isn't too much of a jump from his Sex and the City heyday, shoe guru Manolo Blahnik has partnered with new Broadway musical Priscilla Queen Of The Desert on a silver patent leather Mary Jane high heel adorned with a Swarovski crystal button (portion of the proceeds from the sale of the heels will benefit New York Restoration Project). Billed as the official stiletto of the production, the shoe figures primarily on stage, with drag queens sliding down the arch in a foot fetishist's wet dream. Bette Midler, who produced the musical, can't wait to get her hands on the sparklers, saying, “If there are three things I love, it's shoes, drag queens and live theatre!" Featuring a cast of 27, a score of over 20 dance classics, and more than 500 outrageous costumes, Midler and a whole lot of gay guys are going to be very, very happy. If the shoe fits...a drag queen will wear it."

Google "stilletos" and you'll get 5,720,000 search results including a lot of photos, framed and unframed, and articles on everything from how to walk in them, to how to cook and bake, hike, and rock climb in Teva stilletos wearing them.  I wouldn't shit you.  Yes, climbing in 4" stacked heels, called "the most comfortable, performance high heel on the planet.  ...Anti-fashion at its purest."  You can read all about it here. 
Here's a picture of it in action:

What is the draw that turns normal men and women into crazy high heel fetishists?  I learned it is what heels, especially stiletto heels, do for a woman's body image. Stuffed into the narrow, pointy-toed confines, the size -8-B or -C foot doesn't look like a 3" lotus flower that has been bound the traditional Chinese way, but they do make feet look smaller.  They also make legs look longer, leaner, and raise the chest and cause the breasts to stick out in a provocative way. They lift and smooth the buttocks too, which explains the tight skinny pants wearing that are frequently seen on the artificially elevated.  One might think when seeing a woman past 40 in short shorts or a mini-skirt and stilettos that they also impair circulation to the brain and promote irrational thinking on a fantasy level in which she somehow thinks she looks hot with her skin folds flapping in the breeze and her varicose veins on public display in living color. 

And that's just the Google results for stilettos.  "High heels" has a whopping 53,200,000 results.  Again, with plenty of pictures, and advice on what to do when your feet refuse to wear them another nanosecond without sending you in tortures of the damned  There are quite a few forum posts and e-mails to high heel newsletters and ezines all repeating the same mantra, "No, my feet may be killing me, but I will not stop wearing my heels."

Did you know that if you go on ignoring the pain and just keep propping yourself up there with Band-Aids, epsom salts, aspirin, and massages, eventually the foot shortens and will no longer reach the floor?   Then you have no choice but to wear your favorite pair of lace-up stilleto sandals to pickup your son at kindergarden or to your favorite aunt's funeral.  It's the only pair of shoes you can walk in any more.

Women grow so frantic when they can't wear their heels, that they do unspeakable things to their feet.  For example, when the toes refuse to come unstuck to the ball of the foot after being lodged in their like extra appendages from an alien body unclaimed by the owner,  women actually go get surgery and have those interfering toes lobbed right off their feet.

Here's what one Beverly Hills podiatrist says about high heels: "Doctors of podiatric medicine see no value in high heels (generally defined as pumps with heels of more than two inches). They believe them to be biomechanically and orthopedically unsound, citing medical, postural, and safety faults of such heels.

"They know, for example, that high heels may contribute to knee and back problems, disabling injuries in falls, shortened calf muscles, and an awkward, unnatural gait. In time, high heels may cause enough changes in the feet to impair their proper function. Most women admit high heels make their feet hurt, but they tolerate the discomfort in order to look taller, stylish, and more professional. In a Gallup Poll, 37 percent of the women surveyed said they would continue to wear high heels, even though they did not think them comfortable"*


Thirty-Seven percent would continue?  Amazing, isn't it?  And some are lying because they're too ashamed to admit they won't give up their obsession.

getting back to how my  eyes were popped open to this bizzaro world of the cult of the spike heel, yes, I agreed to write a 1,500-2,000 word story for a gentleman who specified that he would be the only reader of the piece.  I read his reviews by writers who had written the same story he wanted me to write, and they all couldn't say  enough positive things about  how quickly he paid, how easy he was to to work for, and how nice he was in general. His job description said that it was to be a story about a fashion victim who loves wearing high heels, or feels she must wear them to be in style, but they kill her feet every single  day and night.

I knew  her name was Esmeralda.  She came to me as many of my fictional characters do, with a story she dictated to me and wanted told.  She  was one of those flawless natural beauties who believes she is a plain Jane.  She was 27, single, and didn't date hardly at all due to her terrible shyness and low self-esteem. But she had had a good friend at the bank where she worked as a teller for several long years, and this woman, Janie, had left the bank to go make real money as a dancer at a gentleman's club.  When she told Esmeralda how much she would be earning, estimating her tips on what the other dancers  told her, Esmeralda wanted a body transplant.  She wanted to be young and sexy enough to strut her stuff on a pole in front of a room of oogling men, and do lap dances too for extra tips.

She was young and sexy enough, she just was the last to know it.  She lost sleep over the prospect of getting out of the boring bank and joining Janie, who told her that the manager had told her to invite friends who were interested.  Shechalked it off as impossible, and then she remembered her college reunion.

She  went to  the reunion with the same group of women she had hung out with during college and lived with in the dorms.  They were elegant women, she thought, and she made sure to dress up even buying a rare pair of high heel pumps for the occasion.  The high heels had done something to her. It was almost like being under the influence, except she barely drank and she didn't take drugs.  She had loved how she looked and felt in those red patent leather 4"-heels, and she loved the way that people, men and women, looked at her twice or even more.

She grew extroverted at the reunion, and left her shell at home.  She danced with anybody who asked her.  She kept the group laughing until they begged her to stopfor fear they'd lose control of their bladders.  She had one glass of white wine and didn't finish that.  She had a great time.

She really hadn't figured out for quite a while what had happened to her that night.  She thought it might have been just being with her old college buddies, or out and dressed up, a rarity for her.  It was only when she wore the heels a second time, to a family restaurant dinner for the holidays, and she noticed similiar effects, that she attributed them to wearing the "magic shoes," as she had begun to think of them.

Anyhow, you're not paying me big bucks like he was, the man who contacted me about my bid on the job, so that's about all you need to know except that he insisted that the heels give her lots of suffering, including bunions, but she continued to wear them.  He wanted a lot of details about the pain and suffering.

Now I'm not a foot fetishist, and this man came right out and told me he was, in case the theme of the story for one didn't tip me off, but I would have thought all that talk about bunions, blisters, calluses, etc. would be a major turn off.  Not for him.  He asked if we could chat about the story online before he hired me, and I foolishly agreed.  It was then that he confessed that he was a foot fetishist with a twist.  He needed the gory details.  He wanted to hear about the throbbing of the bunions, soaking and massing the feet without getting any relief, putting Bandaids on the latest crop of blisters--all of it. Not at all what I imagined, since I was thinking more of the famous picture of Marilyn Monroe in heels getting her dress blown up into her face.

We didn't talk immediately about the story, although I had some questions and some ideas I wanted to bounce off of him.  No, we started with my own quite painful history of high heel wearing when  I was a young office worker in the Seventies and didn't know any better. Today I have horrible bunions and feet so flat you couldn't insert a dime under them as a result. It was kind of embarrassing to talk about, but he kept asking questions about what the pain was like, whether I kept wearing the heels, how long after I gave up wearing heels until the bunions formed.  It was pretty gross.

Finally he made a remark that we would get on with discussing the story itself.  Now I am ashamed to tell you that we had chatted for perhaps an hour without discussing the story, only my podiatric history.  Suddenly he said he had a meeting that he was going to be late for if he didn't leave immediately.   He was in such a hurry, I thought, that he forgot to tell me what would happen next.  Would we chat again and talk about the story?  Was he going to hire me for sure?

The next real message came from him to me at the agency where I get most of my freelance gigs.  It said that he was closing the project.  He felt now wasn't a good time for me since I was winding up my novel and had been late for an online chat appointment.

But that wasn't it, boys and girls.  He had sucked the sap out of this flower, and having got his jollies listening to my high heel saga of of pain, bunions and suffering, he was ready to move on to a new source.

So there's the rub as well as the twist.  I kept my shoes on the whole time, but it did me no good.  He got what he really wanted from me, and he got it for free. 


*http://www.lafootdoc.com/cosmetic-foot-surgery
 Jamshidinia, Kamran, DPM Newsletter to Patients

IS IT TIME FOR YOU TO COME IN FROM THE STORM YET? IT'S A BRIGHT NEW DAY.

You know the storm I mean don't you?  The one that wages within each day and when you say, "Should I use/drink today or should I try to stop?"  Yeah, that one.  The big storm that takes over your life and puts you on that damned collision course with all those horrible consequences like the breakup of your relationship, not being there for your kids, losing another job and not being able to find a new on. It's hard to find another job because your work history looks like a big chunk  of Swiss cheese except that you could drive a semi through some of the holes where you were  missing and not in action.

The big storm that comes up quickly some days, and blows all your money into the wind just like it blew your friends and family away.  Or have you noticed they aren't standing beside you any longer saying, "He just works too hard."  "She is under a lot ofstress."  "Their marriage is just in a rough patch right now so she/he goes out."  Not even, "It's just a phase," from your earnest, ever-loving and co-dependent  mother.

Today is a new day.  It could be the start.  It's a bright new dawn.  You can change your life starting today.  You could find shelter from that storm as easy as clicking your mouse.  I have every self-help recovery program listed here too for every problem, not just alcohol and drugs.  I've got your 12-step program links in every flavor of drug including crystal meth and marijuana.  I have 12-step anonymous programs for: Alateen, Alanon, Overeaters, Gamblers, Debtors, Nicotine, Emotional Health, Emotions, Depressed, HCV (hepatitis), Obsessive Compulsive, Survivors of Incest, Sexual Compulsives, Co-Dependents, Sex and Love, Families Anonymous, and Anorexics and Bulimics.  I may have missed some.  They are all right here.

Do you already know that you're done fooling around with this nuclear bomb in your pocket, and are ready to check yourself in and take care of business?  There is no time like the present.  It's one less day of regret, remorse and suffering.  Who knows where or how you could end up today.  Make that phone call.  Here's a few lists of detoxes and rehab treatments centers as well as outpatient programs.  They are ready to help you today.  Some may cost you nothing so don't let lack of money or insurance stop you.  Saving your life would be worth whatever you had to pay anyhow so don't worry about that now.

1.Pick up the phone and dial or pick up the  mouse and click.    
This website has everything from fancy schmantzy treatment programs, to 12-step communities, sober living homes, faith-based programs, alternative sentencing programs--you name it.  Check it out.  It's all listed by state and country.  You are bound  to  find something to fit your circumstances on this list, and probably with no waiting.

2. Find what you need in your area.  Drugs/Alcohol Treatment/Rehab.

3.Call now 24/7 live counselors and "affordable" detox and treatment.

There are thousands more, but you can use a search engine as well as I can.  If you don't have a computer, get a phone book or call information.  If you don't have a phone, go to the nearest hospital emergency room.  Even if they won't keep you for financial reasons, they should give you referrals to places that will take you.

Here's about all you need to get started with the

ASK YOURSELF: WHAT DO I WANT TO HAVE, DO, LEARN AND GIVE NEXT.

it's a bitch o be unemployed and have to look for a job.  I am trying to help my 21-year-old son find the first job of his life.  I want him to know that it's an opportunity to reflect on what he really loves to do, and what he'd like to do in his life for those hours of our day that are categorized as "work."  He says I'm way out there in space somewhere.  He is just wants to get some McJob for seven bucks an hour.  Who he really is and what he really would love to do all day seem irrelevant to him and he doesn't think of them as having anything to do with work.


Two years ago I bought him an assortment of well-chosen books on finding out who you are and what you want out of life in an attempt to live your life's purpose. One of those was  What Color Is Your Parachute For Teens.  He admitted he has never cracked it open, but then he has never really had a job either. I  don't give up easily.  What Color Is Your Parachute is the best book I have read and used to find jobs, and lots of other people regard it highly too. 


I went to the library yesterday and checked him out a copy.  The book astounded me.  I don't remember it containing the answers for finding your life purpose,, and the three stages of acceptance and practice of it, but it's all there in plain English. I told Eric that if I knew I had less than 24 hours to live, I would tell him I love him and have him read those ten or however many page there are.  They cover everything you need to know on the subject pretty darn well.  It's all there between the lines--how to live a love-filled, good, happy, productive and rewarding life.   The author, Richard Bolles, writes about God's role in our lives but without any peachy over-religious, dogma-filled  b.s.  He is speaking in universal spiritual terms.  That's real important because my son may be an agnostic.  I don't know.  I don't push.

Although I have been trying to tell Eric since he came to live with me in November for the first time in 14 years, that we all have a life's purpose and once we discover what our talents are and use those we are put on a path of miracles.  Then, as Joseph Campbell , the respected mythologist and writer said of his often repeated admonition to "following your bliss" "doors will open where there were only walls.

 He derived this idea from the Upanishads, the 200 Sanskrit philosophical texts from before the 5th century considered to be an early source of Hindu religion.   Campbell wrote:

Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked.^[1]

He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life:

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.^[2]

Many people have written eloquently and passionately about the miracles that open up opportunities, new ways on creating, inspiration, "chance" encounters and on and on once we are totally involved with the thing we love to do most in the world and the thing we do best:  our talent.  

Because there is no such thing as random in this Universe of serendipity and synchronicity, I asked the Universe what I should read for my morning inspiration  for the day.  The book turned out to be one of my read and re-read favorites, Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness and Making Miracles, 

 by Marianne Williamson.  It opened "randomly" to answer some questions I had about starting my own writing website business.   Here's what she had to say about my ideas to start a business for no reason other than to make money:

"...We transform our work into a sacred experience by transforming our sense of its purpose--from that of serving our need as we define them to that of serving the work of God  This shift in purpose--from a focus on ourselves to a focus on God's love--activates a chain of miracles.  For anytime we walk into a situation with a higher sense of why we are there, we are bringing down the light. 


"The decision to adjust our perspective on a situation, seeing as its only purpose the extension of love, automatically illumines it.  For a situation to be illumined, our thoughts must become illuminated.  Within this light, our ideas are more insightful and wise, our personal energies radiate integrity, and circumstances around us unfold along a palpable path of divine right order.  There is a 'flow' we can all feel when a situation is aligned with the peace of God."   (Grace, pp. 100-101)


I have decided once again in my life against doing anything "just for money."  So much is lost in that notion and so high a price of doing business is paid.  I have learned this lesson over and over in the past.  What makes me want to stick my hand in the flame now to see if it still burns?



We follow the flow--and all we had to do each day is show up and be ready to work together with our partner God.

 Each and every one of us believes he or she is going to do something or create something spectacular that the world has never seen the likes of before, especially if we are young.  Children whose self-esteem hasn't been damaged yet have no doubt that they can grow up to be anything they want to become.  They can all be stars that shine the  brightest in the night sky.  Sometimes some of us can hold onto this kind of belief in ourselves for a long, long time despite some considerable disappointments and rejections if we believe in ourselves and our talents enough.

 Those who work each day to know God's will for them and ask to work on what they need to do for that day, the next right thing, take no credit for themselves and give all thanks to the Divine for the good that comes of their accomplishments. Mother Teresa freely talked about her success with God as her partner, and look how much she accomplished.

That is the secret of success hidden in plain sight for all to find. 


If Eric  prefers a seven dollars a day McJob to sitting down with me and doing some evaluations matching his personality with work type of skills and figuring out what his talents are,  I can't preach  to deaf ears.  He doesn't listen--I'm his Momma.  I begged him to read the pages in the book as a favor to me, but the God stuff turned him off and he didn't finish.  People say you can lead a horse...  Try a 21-year-old who knows it all so young.  As my poor dear late father often repeated to my deaf ears, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."

I can only lead by my example of spending every day following my bliss by wriing all day and night and not being a slave to a paycheck and possessions or a job without a soul.  Marianne Williamson reminded me in her book today of the importance of lighting a sacred prayer candle before I start my day of writing.  She writes that otherwise she is trapped in the illusions of the ego, thinking about bestseller status and contracts.  "Only when I begin with a prayer that something I write might be of use to someone does a greater light infuse my thinking.  My mind opens vibrantly to its natural talents and springs free of its bondage of fear-based thought."



I give him two weeks at a McJob.  He's young but he's daily growing.  


-----------------
Sources:
1
Campbell, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, edited by Betty Sue Flowers. Doubleday and Co, 1988, p. 120.

2.Ibid,   p. 113.

In Hell, there is a huge banquet, but the forks are longer than your arm so you can't get any of the food to your mouth. So you spend your time wailing and gnashing your teeth over all he beautiful food that you're missing out on.

Heaven is like a huge banquet as well, with long forks. But everyone feeds each other.


The sad thing is that we really have done that "wailing and gnashing" our teeth bit when a window closes instead of opening the big beautiful door standing right in front of us.  Maybe we were afraid we'd we lose our place in the line forming for `brats having temper tantrums until somebody fixes the goddamn window.

I am writing an interesting freelance article for my part-time gig as a reporter on alternative medicine breakthroughs.  I think you'll find it very interesting tooAA
 According to a study released on January 28, 2011 "participating in community service activities and helping others is not just good for the soul; it has a healing effect that helps alcoholics and other addicts become and stay sober."  This is from a researcher at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Helping Others Helps Alcoholics Stay on the Road to Recovery
Released: 1/28/2011 10:05 AM EST
Source: Case Western Reserve University

Newswise — Participating in community service activities and helping others is not just good for the soul; it has a healing effect that helps alcoholics and other addicts become and stay sober, a researcher from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reports and published in a review article of Vol. 29 of Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly. 
In a review article published in the Volume 29 issue of Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Maria E. Pagano, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, sheds light on the role of helping in addiction recovery, using the program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) as a prime example. She cites a growing body of research as supporting evidence.

“The research indicates that getting active in service helps alcoholics and other addicts become sober and stay sober, and suggests this approach is applicable to all treatment-seeking individuals with a desire to not drink or use drugs,” Dr. Pagano says. “Helping others in the program of AA has forged a therapy based on the kinship of common suffering and has vast potential.”

Dr. Pagano's reserch  focuses on  the helper therapy principle (or HTP),  a concept that is one of the fundamentalmental beliefs and practices of the A.A.  Program, as well as other 12 Step Recovery Programs ograms such as Narcotics Anonymous (N.A.), Sexual Addicts Anonymous (S.A.), Overeaters Anonymous (O.A.) and all the rest of them.  She points out that in A.A. it is seen  as an opportunity to diminishi egocentrism or selfishness, a root cause of addiction to some minds.  The HTP is based on the theory that, when a person helps another individual with a similar condition, they help themselves.

Well,  I had to laugh.  Not at the good doctor who