Help Me Write You A Free Ebook You Will Really Love and Get Something From

It's 9 a.m. and I haven't been to bed yet.  I am too excited over the gold rivulet I found among the fools' gold on the Internet last night.  I have some real gifts for anyone who writes, wants to be an entrepreneur in a non-conformist way, wants to be a really good as well as successful blogger, is interested in traveling the world, wants to know more about the state of publishing in these digital times, and more.  Get your clickers out and clear your storage space--some of these are pretty big pdf's.


First off, as a result of all the freed up, wild, non-conformist, passionate writing I was reading all night, I am ready to write an ebook and give it away for free.  I have my book from "Plain Language At Work Newsletter," and i give up trying to get the web address right on that. Just Google it and it comes up right away. Then among the many interesting facts about writing in clear, easy to understand English, on the right side of the newsletter cover in the second box down you'll see "The Principles of Readability."  If you write much, download this free pdf file. It is like taking the gauzy film off your eyes when you see how simple it really is to make sure your writing is clear and understandable, and you are not talking down to your reader either.


If you are a writer who for most of their life has written for print mediums, do yourself a favor and order "The Yahoo Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World."  It has got everything you need to become digitalized and not turn readers off because you have dense, packed words with no empty white spaces that help the skimming digital reader feel he can quickly make short work of speed reading your content.  You also have to learn about navigation, coding, that "e-mail" is actually "email" and the old rules that no longer apply: (hold your hats on now).  The old "rules" that no longer apply in this cyber world of fast, loud music and most of your information in audio and video form, are:  1. Never split an infinitive.  2) Never end a sentence with a proposition. 3) Never start a sentence with a conjunction.  What a relief to step out of those chalk lines, especially since I frequently do all three.


But get this book, which if I have a criticism, and, of course, I do, it's that the generation digitalizers that wrote this book don't know how to write for print. In print there are no links to click on, but these writers don't let that stop them from giving you whiplash damn near as each sentence you read in the order that the book was supposedly written, the conventional order of page one to page 509, from front to back, sends you on a hike off to Chapter 11 or Chapter 14 or somewhere other than the next sentence.  It is maddening.  It's as if I am writing here to you and I tell you, wait, there's a better explanation and more examples of what I'm saying on page 295, and page 302.  Go check those out.  So you shuffle through the damn book, look at the measly little extra information or examples, come back to where you were and try to get your concentration back, and the very next section sends you scurrying to Chapter 14 and Chapter 16.  I tell you it's maddening.


Otherwise, I recommend you buy this book, but write and ask them if they plan to release it online anytime soon first.


I have been getting email from this guy for over two years I bet, and I have always meant to read one of his free ebooks, and finally last night something I read struck a chord in me, and I began to read in earnest. I'm talking about Chris Guillebeau, world traveler, writer, and guy who by his wits and non-conformity has never been anything but self-employed.  Go Chris.


I used to think he was sort of a wack job, but now that I want to do exactly what he's been doing these past years--writing for himself, making a little money but not selling out, and traveling around the world, he sounds like the first time I heard "I Am the Walrus."  I will be giving you some links to get his free books. If you've got money, maybe you'll buy some of his carefully selected products for sale that he lives off when he's not giving everything away.


He wrote this.  I like it's boldness. It's fresh.


Ways to Be Unremarkably Average


1.  Accept what people tell you at face value.

2.  Don't question authority.

3.  Go to college because you're supposed to, not because you want to learn something.

4. Go overseas once or twice in your life to some place safe like England.

5. Don't try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English.

6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it.

7. Think about writing a book, but never do it.

8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for, and spend the next 30 years paying it off.

9. Sit at a desk for 40 hours a week to do an average of 10 productive hours.

10. Don't stand out or draw attention to yourself.

11.  Jump through hoops.  Check off boxes.



If you haven't read what this free spirit has to say about ethically making a living by using your talents, and avoiding office cubicles like Tramp in Lady and the Tramp avoided the dog catchers, you get inspired like I did.  He also introduces you to some very interesting people who are characters in their own right.  Here is 279-Day Overnight Success.


I really think he is a visionary, and i respect what he's doing.  I hope to follow my dreams as courageously as  he.  I want to travel worldwide solo couchsurfing.  I want to support myself by doing photojournalism and travel writing.  I hope to soon learn how to write a grant proposal, and start a little home business writing grants. Then I'd like to choose a world problem that touches me like hunger, homelessness, untreated alcoholism and addiction, corruption of our food by Big Business, BigPharmaceutical pushing their poison on the innocent who don't know what's coming...  oh, there's so many.  Then I'd like to be like my hero, Scott, who went from whoring and partying his life away to starting a nonprofit charity called charity: water that has provided clean drinking water in so many countries and got contributors to give so much money for the cause.  

Until then I continue in my dream of recovering from alcoholism, addiction, ADD, depression, and bipolar disorder and feeling better and stronger every day.  I am sober two years this month.  I once was sober 15 years, and another time 5 years I think it was. I am not going back to hell this time.  The thing is you stupidly lie to yourself and say "I'll just have two beers," and you don't set that drink down for 5 - 7 or 12 years.  Time flies when you're busy leading a double life, retching, falling down, alienating your kids, and being a slug that just takes up room on the planet unnecessarily.


So I want to write an ebook and give it away.  I want to write about something  that I know well, that will benefit others and give them hope and maybe even joy.  Please help me choose a topic.  Again, here are the conditions and diseases I experienced, overcame and continue to heal from:

1. Bipolar disorder.  Diagnosed at 42. I am furious about the horrible drugs they give "crazy" people, even when they know like they did with those with dementia in the nursing homes that the drugs they were feeding these patients to keep them quiet and manageable were most likely going to kill them.  I call that murder.  I want to write about how a person with bipolar disease can get off the worst of the poisonous drugs.


2. Adult AD/HD (ADD).  I am thinking of writing a journal of recovering thoughts they can add their own insights to. I don't want to say too much because mine would be the first or one of the few.


3. Coping with depression.  I used to spend weeks and months just lying in bed too depressed to get up.  Today I don't go through depressions like that any more.  I want to help others who are told by friends and relatives to just "snap out of it" to find peace and some joy.  Healing is possible.  Snapping out of it isn't.


4. My heart aches for non-custodial mothers. I lost custody of my children when they were small because I had a bipolar breakdown and then I relapsed on alcohol and drugs.  My heart broke so badly I felt the rip and the hole.  One thing that helped me get through this dark, horrible, hell on earth period was the support of other non-custodial mothers in an email organization just for that issue.  I got help from so many women whose hearts were  also broken, but  who still could care about others.


5.  I know a lot about herbs and smart drugs.  I would like to put together some "recipes" for things like fatigue, lack of concentration, fogginess, distractibility like those of us with AD/HD suffer from, insomnia, chronic fatigue syndrome, PMS, and other physical, mental and mood disorders.  It's a crime what we have to go through to get smart drugs known to be safe and effective but unavailable in the U.S., although some are but only by prescription.  I want to track them down all over the world and find safe, secure distributors.


6.  I know a lot about alternative, complementary and holistic health.  I would like to write a book of remedies and advice for various conditions and complaints.  The medical doctors don't let you in on information that is not traditional and standard, even if it's been used  in Europe for decades and proven to be safe and effective.  Also, I would list all  the various branches of these schools of medicine and outline what they are, how they work, what the pros and cons are, and how to find a practitioner. These would be things like energy medicine, chakra cleansing, meditation, the mind-body healing connection, Traditional Chinese Medicine, some of the many successful uses for acupuncture, and much more.  I can't get enough of healing and medicine and have been interested in it all my life.


7. I want to write some kind of book to help lonely people find a way out of their self-created prisons.  I want to give them some hope.  I would not tell them, like most of the books, to go volunteer, get out of themselves and give to others and get a pet.  Sure, that's all good advice, but you have to understand that a really lonely person suffers from such self-loathing, and lack of self-confidence in social situations, they are almost paralyzed by their own inner thoughts and feelings and cannot do things like reach out to others.  They are in too much pain. I have been there, and I was blessed to climb out of that pit.


8. I studied creative writing as my specialization in college.  I have written short stories, poetry and now novels for most of my life.   I also took classes that taught how to do it.  I could write about some aspect of writing.


What would you like to read about that couldebooks about:  SEO, keywords, entrepreneurship, start-ups, making money online.  Although I could write about how to get freelance writing jobs that pay enough to be worth doing and are about your niche  areas of interest.


Let me know.  Write me an email at msrefusenik@gmail.com or leave a comment.  Thanks a lot.

TIME TO GET BACK TO FREELANCE LANCE WRITING TIPS AND RESOURCES

Photo: 

Books behind the bed, by zimpenfish

Creative Commons Share and Share Alike 

What happens if you want one from the bottom?

That's what the Vasoline is for.

Better in full size, about 390 books, about 40% zimpenfish

I am as a fired up about a new freelance writing blog I discovered in my email today, and I was the first time I read "Make A Living Writing," which I did not even know at the time was a top ten writing blog winner from a national contest held by Men with Pens.   Perhaps for best writing blog of 2011 we will see Writer Profits.  Susan Carter, author and blog owner, certainly seems compassionate and committed to seeing freelance writers get decent payment for their work.  If you doubt it, sign up on her blog for your free report on what to charge for your writing services.  This relatively short .pdf book packs a mighty powerful punch, and doesn't leave anything out  that I can think of offhand except I wished she had given editing rates.

 I am telling you, I have only done a handful of press releases for my own support group, but I am once again brushing off my free ebooks on how to write them.  It's remarkable what you can charge for writing a press release, and there really isn't all that much to it.  I can't imagine what they teach in courses on it.  I read one free ebook and was off sending them out to free distributors to the newspapers.

I am now going to make your trip down here worthwhile by sharing some of my best links.  I collect them in address books after learning the hard way, several times, that bookmarks drift away and disappear.  The last free bookmarks system I used went out of business and took my bookmarks with them.  The company offered to let me have some of other people's bookmarks, but fussy me, I wanted my own damn bookmarks back.  Now I write them down in my address books.

I collect links on everything I think is useful, interesting, will come in handy, or I might need down the road.  Here's a sample.  I will set them up as links so you can just click on them:

40,000 free online books.

Top 20 blogs for writers 2010.

Free Books & Articles, World Catalog

Alltop: Blogs By Category

Newsletter-Plain Languge-Everything You Need to Be A More Readable Writer.  Be sure to download "Principles of Readability.pdf"  It's all there--everything you need to know to make sure you are reaching your readers.

Cliche list.  (Hope you don't find any of your old reliables.)

Consumer Action Web site:   Get a free copy of the latest Consumer Action Handbook, invaluable.

Get paid to work as a Digital Journalist.  All the revenue goes in the "money pot" and everyone splits it up. I want to write for them and do photojournalism. No big clips or experience necessary. Just submit.

Mindful, spiritual entrepreneurship that sounds like the real deal.  Subscribe to the Mindful Business Newsletter and get your Free Mindful Business Visioning Toolkit!  It really helps you understand your spiritual/business goals and how they might work together for good.  


Okay, that's all for now.  I want to close by stealing a piece from Garrison's Keillor's "The Writer's Alamanac" for today, June 7, 2011 on Louise Erdrich.   I love how she describes the books, the writing life, and making up children to write about because we all know we can't write about our own.

"It's the birthday of novelist Louise Erdrich (books by this author), born in Little Falls, Minnesota (1954). She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her mother was French-Ojibwe, and her father was German; she and her six brothers and sisters were raised in a close, loving family. Instead of watching TV—they didn't own one—the children were encouraged to write and to memorize poems.

She went off to Dartmouth in 1972, the same year the university started admitting women and the first year of its new Native American Studies program. The program's director was Michael Dorris. Years after she graduated, Erdrich was invited back to Dartmouth to read some of her poetry, and she became re-acquainted with Dorris, and they ended up getting married.

She started off as a poet. Her first book was Jacklight (1984), a book of poems based on the thesis she wrote for her master's degree in 1979. She said, "I began to tell stories in the poems and then realized that there was not enough room." So she moved on to fiction. She published her first short story, "The Red Convertible," in 1981, and "Scales" in 1982. Later that year, Dorris convinced her to enter a new fiction writing contest, so in the space of two weeks she wrote "The World's Greatest Fisherman," and she won the $5,000 prize. Two years later, she publishedLove Medicine (1984),a novel made up of 14 interrelated stories.

Love Medicine is populated with characters who live in the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, or its nearby reservation. There is Marie Lazarre, who starts out life convinced she wants to be a nun—"I was that girl who thought the black hem of her garment would help me rise. Veils of love which was only hate petrified by longing—that was me." And her rival Lulu Lamartine—"Lulu Lamartine was usually controlled as a cat, and got her way through coaxing, cajoling, rubbing against your leg. An old woman who remained infuriatingly pretty, she bent others to her will before they knew what was happening." And Nector Kashpaw, the man who loved Lulu but married Marie anyway: "Here is what I do not understand: how instantly the course of your life can be changed. I only know that I went up the convent hill intending to sell geese and came down the hill with the geese still on my arm. Beside me walked a young girl with a mouth on her like a flophouse, although she was innocent. She grudged me to hold her hand. And yet I would not drop the hand and let her walk alone. Her taste was bitter. I craved the difference after all those years of easy sweetness." After Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich wrote many novels set in the same fictional universe, and Marie, Lulu, and Nector all reappeared, along with others connected to them. Her novels include Tracks (1988), The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003), The Plague of Doves (2008), and Shadow Tag(2010).

She said, "We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif—books in piles on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are the boxes waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books. They are a sort of insulation, soundproofing some walls. They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables. The quantities and types of books are fluid, arriving like hysterical cousins in overnight shipping envelopes only to languish near the overflowing mail bench. Advance Reading Copies collect at beside, to be dutifully examined—to ignore them and read Henry James or Barbara Pym instead becomes a guilty pleasure. I can't imagine home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you'd longed to fall asleep reading The Aspern Papers, and there it is."

She said, "By having children, I've both sabotaged and saved myself as a writer. [...] With a child you certainly can't be a Bruce Chatwin or a Hemingway, living the adventurer-writer life. No running with the bulls at Pamplona. If you value your relationships with your children, you can't write about them. You have to make up other, less convincing children. There is also one's inclination to be charming instead of presenting a grittier truth about the world. But then, having children has also made me this particular writer. Without my children, I'd have written with less fervor; I wouldn't understand life in the same way. I'd write fewer comic scenes, which are the most challenging. I'd probably have become obsessively self-absorbed, or slacked off. Maybe I'd have become an alcoholic. Many of the writers I love most were alcoholics. I've made my choice, I sometimes think: Wonderful children instead of hard liquor."

I'll Be 85 When I Go To That Mansion In The Sky--Find Out How Old You'll Be

I was born in 1949 and the Life Clock, located on the World Clock, claims I will live until the fairly decent age of 85.  I'm still shooting for 103 as long as I stay in good health.  I expect to be traveling around the world Couchsurfing until I'm 97.  Here:  Look at these actual Couchsurfing statistics by ages of travelers who only need a free crash on somebody's couch somewhere on one of the seven continents:

It's free.  No charge.  And so many of them speak English.  I am trying to take an email refresher course in French, which I studied in college and couldn't talk my way into a glass of wine with in Paris, but I still can't roll my "r's" and it's probably hopeless.  I studied Spanish in high school and finally gave up trying to roll my "r's".  So I took French, and they wanted the fancy tongue moves I seem incapable of performing in a standing or sitting position.  (I wonder if we lay down?)  If only they accepted French kissing as a language skill.  Everyone speaks English in Europe it seems.  And everyone hates you if you don't even try to speak their language.  They can get mean, even vicisious like one German postmaster in Munich that I thought my slap me for my poor Deutsch.  What did he want?  I took a four night crash course in it--one hour once a week--and I was ready, "Ein glass bier, bitte,"  That was all I cared to learn.  Oh yeah, and Danke.

	Ages 50 to 59	63,656	2.2%
	Ages 60 to 69	21,305	0.8%
	Ages 70 to 79	2,856	0.1%
	Ages 80 to 89	516	0.0%

Want to see how old you will be when you move on to that greener pasture?  Go to Life Expectancy Test at Life Clock.

I hope you know your cholesterol numbers to get a more authentic reading.  Hell, I have such good "good" cholesterol for some strange reason that they hardly docked me for smoking.  Unless, of course, they would have said I'd live to 103 except for that.

I'm quitting June 10.  That has been my "Q" date for weeks now.  I got my shrink to take me off bloody awful Topamax that helps "maintain your mood" (yeah, one long nasty depressed one).  It was just featured in yet another study that proves people really do lose weight when they take it.  I'm only on 50 mg. but I keep wondering if the weight I lost this year and last will be right where I left it when I look behind me after a few months off of it.

Here's what the study I read yesterday said.  Even though 7 out of 10 people participating in the study were losing good amounts of weight, many elected to drop out because of Topamax's nasty side effects like tics, numbness around your mouth, strange leg and arm movements which can become a very bad condition called Tarditive Dyskinesia, but, I think, most of the people probably had the same big complaints as I:  It's like trying to function on some kind of crazy psychedelic somebody whipped up in their bathroom and put lots of cyanide and other goodies in.  I had some of that.  It was called, fittingly,"UFO's."  It hurt your cells when you were coming down off of it.  It was nasty, nasty shit.  The people who knew I had taken it before and asked me if they should take it and I said "Go for it," were very mad at me.  There were only one downer in the house, a Seconal, and the men all agreed that as much as they would love to have it for the horrible whips and jangles it should go to the lady of the house.  Nowadays, as feminism has made some progress since the 70's, that would never fly nor would I allow it. (That's a bloody lie. I'd gobble that sucker up before anyone knew we had it.)

Anyhow Topamax will put you in size 8 leather pants but you will be a total space cadet.  You can't think or focus even the day after you take it.  I can barely freelance write anymore.  I keep starting over until I have about seven rough drafts going and then I lose them or can't figure out which ones I've edited and which ones I haven't.  It's rough trying to concentrate on anything when that shit has been in you.

So as of today, Dr. Eyeball (close enough) told me I can stop the Topamax and instead take one of my favorite anti-depressants, Wellbutrin, which doesn't cause weight gain and can help you quit smoking.  I also have to take the second dose early in the evening because as I put it oh so professionally to the doc, "It will jack me up, huh?"  Yes, and that's always good news to a stimulant seeking heat missle like myself.

But for now, I'm living to 85 and I put this old body through some tricks, hairpin curves, chemical and alcohol benders where I didn't come up for air, addictions to everything from codeine, to Seconal, to Tuinal

I entered this old mixed bag blog in the Top 100 Sober Bloggers Directory.  So now the blog needs more booze, drugs and recovery in it.  Just as well. I am itching to write about all the things I have been finding and researching and thinking about on those topics, but I give up, as of tonight, on the Chicago Alcohol and Recovery Examiner pub tool which will not let me even make a simple link or paste my copy from my original to the tool.  And it really is a Capital T Tool. My first week on the job I left my article on the Tool and wrote a note to my supervisor/manager that she'd have to finish publishing it if she wanted it because they didn't pay me enough to deal with that crap.  She told me she had so many thousands of reporters that she manages and couldn't possibly, but she did it.  God love her. Maybe she wants to do the article that has been molding on the Tool for a week now.  We are all just slaves on the Examiner's content farm.  Yeah, they hate Google's new algorhythm which leaves their kind of content farm content written mostly by inexperienced writers who, no shit, write about "Alcoholism and Addition Problems" more than a few times to let you know that they really think that is how addiction is spelled.

• If you want to read good writers, the cream of the formerly sotted crop, stick to reading "The Fix.:  Addiction and Recovery Straight Up."  They always have interesting stuff and information you don't see anywhere else.  It's how I found out about the Sober Blog Dir. and the new blog I'll be reading now "Stark Raving Sober."

HOW BIG OF A RISK TAKER ARE YOU? MORE ABOUT YOUR PERSONALITY THAT IS FASCINATING.

Photo: raYmon's Creative Commons Flickr Photostream
No title given:  Suggest:  Henna Hand (Take a walk on the wildside.)

Have I got some goodies for you today, all brought to via the kindness of the Universe and Intuitive Inner Wisdom gone wild on Internet research.

These aren't your "Magic 8-ball" gimmicks (free question at 8-ball Web site.)  They are scientific, Carl Jung, Myers-Briggs psychological/personality tests and you cannot believe how much interpretation you get, as well as advice for more successful living in reference to your type. 

The test takes about 10-15 minutes.  All are free except for one looking at whether or not you are the entrepreneur type, which is five bucks.  You get pages of interpretation and scores all from taking the Carl Jung-Briggs test.

I learned that I am way up there on the introvert charts, nary an extroverted cell in my body, but don't think I get walked on.  In terms of taking risks, measured at 0-100 percent with the lower the percentage being the lower the desire to take risks.  A real by the rules guy or woman is around 32 percent.  The mean is 53 percent.  My risk taking and desire for cheap thrills puts me near the top of the heap at 78 percent. 

The most interesting part, I thought, was reading about what type you are depending on your score, and famous people who share that type with you, and I'm talking Gandhi (me) category famous, not Lady Gaga or some other flash-in-the-pan using up the end of their 15 minutes of being famous.  I am first of all an "Inspired" type (I must have followers for my world view.  Sign up where it says followers.  Don't worry about the specifics of my view.)  I am #2 the Adventurer type, who in the old days were knights roaming castles and kingdoms, swashbucklers, and the crazy guys who didn't have to do it, but volunteered to fight lions when things were too slow for them.  Today the Adventurer type is most likely a terrorist, drug smuggler, revolutionary or conspirator, all personal dreams for my future.

Excited?  It is absurdly fascinating, unless, of course, you are a 0.3 percent on the risk scale and find it too scarry or revealing.

The main test is the Jung Typology Test.  I won't waste my clicks to tell you what little I know.  The info is there when you click it.  Although I did read some synchronomous (is that a word--"coincidental by divine plan") background on Jung's theories of introverts vs. extroverts while reading "Man and his Symbols." Google it for more, or read this book or any of his other books.  Right now I'm still on dreams and their interpretation. (I have no readers because I write at a 12th grade readability level I learned after finishing an article tonight.  That means I have to completely rewrite, but I have help. If you go to this great little readability utility Readers' Digest writes at a 8th grade level.  The lower the readability, the more the readers.)

Check out these readability stats:

Readability Tests

Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid are reading level algorithms that can be helpful in determining how readable your content is. Reading level algorithms only provide a rough guide, as they tend to reward short sentences made up of short words. Whilst they're rough guides, they can give a useful indication as to whether you've pitched your content at the right level for your intended audience.

Test the Readability of a Website

Website address

URI

Interpreting the Results

This service analyses the readability of all rendered content. Unfortunately, this will include navigation items, and other short items of content that do not make up the part of the page that is intended to be the subject of the readability test. These items are likely to skew the results. The difference will be minimal in situations where the copy content is much larger than the navigation items, but documents with little content but lots of navigation items will return results that aren't correct.
Philip Chalmers of Benefit from IT  provided the following typical Fog Index scores, to help ascertain the readability of documents.

Typical Fog Index Scores

Fog Index	Resources
6	TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
8	Reader's Digest
8 - 10	Most popular novels
10	Time, Newsweek
11	Wall Street Journal
14	The Times, The Guardian
15 - 20	Academic papers
Over 20 - Over 30              You know the government is up to something.	Only government sites can get away with this, because you can't ignore them.
I'm pleased to say this blog comes in at a 7th grade reading level. I've got to run.  Hackers/Google fooling with my Web page.  Margins are all over the place.

SCREW 1,000 WORDS/DAY. I BLEW THAT. I HATE GOOGLE, YAHOO, MY HACKERS, MY SHRINK, BUT NOT YOU DEAR READER

It's all driving me to drink.  Not quite yet, fortunately.  I am sober two years some day this month I wrote down last year and lost.  I really don't want to drink.  I just don't want to go to any more drag-my-ass A.A. meetings.  I have opted out but may go tomorrow, later today, due to my AA cult indoctrination which instills in you the idea that if you are fucked up, and ladies and gents, I am fucked up, you need a goddamned sunshine blown up your butthole A.A. meeting even it is the epitome of dreary, chaired by some old self-rightenous geiser, (sp?) in love with the sound of his own voice and the topic is one of the boring traditions, like it was a few weeks ago when I walked out on "Our common unity comes first," or whatever the hell it is. 

Does that mean I can't reveal the high backsliding rate for A.A. members that everybody knows about and no one talks about.  Go read all about the Achilles heels, sick practices and undesirable thoughts that are drummed into your head by A.A. gestapos, in the Orange Papers:One Man's Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous and Substance Misuse Recovery Programs, and Real Recovery.  Or go read similar vendetta, poison spewing jive about how A.A. is only in it for the money and in cahoots with 12th Step based Hospital and Outpatient Treatment Programs to make "millions off the backs" of alcoholics at Stinkin' Thinkin': Muckraking the 12-Step Industry.  They started out attacking the treatment industry, for whom I once was a whore, but ended up attacking A.A. with some far fetched and some rational blameworthy frenzied writing.

I was warned about wearing two hats and leaving a perfectly good career in magazine writing and editing to go back to school so I could prostitute for the 12-step recovery based hospital and outpatient treatment facilities. It doesn't matter how many books you read, letters after your name you earned or boring workshops you sat through, the first question of every single patient/client is "Who are you to tell me about Alcoholism/Addiction?  What makes you such an authority?" 

As soon as you share your personal story right on cue for so many dollars and cents per hour and prove you are one of them, you're exalted to a state where you almost can't do any wrong until you get to no dating or sex the first six months-to a year of sobriety.  You tell the same story over and over like a fortune teller at a carnival somebody put a buck in.  You feel you are selling out your sacred beliefs for an income, but, hey, everybody is doing it, and some clients say you helped them.

Dirty, dirty business.  I relapsed after 15 years clean and sober time, and in looking back I'm surprised it took a full ten years of counseling alcoholics/addicts to finally get me to pick up that first drink that led right to the worst hell imaginable just like everybody says it will.  Now, today, many years later, I have managed to put together two years without a drink, joint, cocaine, or any old pill or drug that I came across on public restroom floors or skeezers with a desire to get you down in the same hole "he's in." (Bob Dylan.)

I'll probably go to the morning meeting.  It's sort of like chasing the initial high of a drug. You want to get back that first rush of all that synchronicity making miracles happen every single day as long as you don't drink or get high. You want back that feeling of belonging with these people who think like you, act like you and have the same character defects as you.   All the meetings where I cried out of gratitude, genuine love for my fellow survivors, experienced life changing insights, and slowly grew up with the rest of the misfits out on the playgrounds of the church basements, school classrooms, and misc public buildings where A.A. meetings were held.  It was a sweet life.  I worked with others, newer people in the program, because my heart went out to them.  Their pain and lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem was stuff I knew inside out.  I didn't do it for a paycheck or what they might do for me. 

And I ended up thinking I was never as bad as "these people."  I didn't pimp my daughter for money for crack, wake up in crackhouses, or seriously endanger my health.  No, I was the dirty pedophile priest, getting drunk on communion wine and shooting smack, and seducing the youngest altar boys in my lair, the rectory.  One of my last, disturbing memories was one of the last nights I was still officially employed as a substance abuse counselor (C.S.A.C.) and got one of my slicker outpatients to come with me for a ride to try and cash a check of my soon to be ex's that I had performed forgery on with the help of  nail polish remover, I think it was.  Jewel and Dominick's were having none of that larceny, and we ended up just driving around all night into dawn hoping we'd run into somebody who'd give us some drugs for being the good people we were.  It felt definitely sleazy and filthy to expose the addict in me to a man who had once respected me, worked hard at his recovery program, and done a lot of the right things to stay clean and sober.

That's all I care to confess for tonight.  You're not supposed to break your anonymity at the level of the media or press, but who reads this? 

Today, I am happy just to be a mostly unemployed writer. I work as Chicago Alcohol and Recovery Examinder for Examiner.com for a little while longer.  I started in April, and have made $1.52 so far this year total. It is a content farm that employs writers who become slaves and stay on with half-baked promises of more money in the future.  I had hoped I might help at least one person, but you need readers for that.  I made $1.52 on reader clicks, so I guess it's safe to assume my readers are my sibs and friends to whom I proudly, and ridiculously, send copies of my articles.

BTW, does anybody besides me think Yahoo's new Beta e-mail is even more fucked up than the old e-mail that now I can't get back to?  If they show me my 2007 mail again, somebody is going to get hurt. 

Don't forget to donate.  The donate button is on the blog, and the e-mail address that goes with it is: missmarymac0040@sbcglobal.net.  I have to get away.  I have to go be a travel writer or join the Peace Corps or something. The prosaic, mundane and boring are closing in on me until I can't breathe.

Great New Stuff To Read From Digital Publications You May Not Know

I lost the photo credit.  Let's hope it was a "Share" Creative Commons.

I lost the photo credit.  Let's hope it was a "Share" Creative Commons.



Are you doing it?  Are you writing 1,000 words a day?  How about three morning pages every day?  Did you read that link from Julia Cameron.  I tell you it's all true and more. I can only sort out my life by writing my pages in my journal. Here's your exercise for today:


List every miracle you can think of that ever happened in your life in 15 minutes.  Count the small miracles of synchronicity too.  That person didn't just happen to be there when you most needed him or her.  That check didn't have to come in the mail that particular day.  Go ahead.  When the 15 minutes are up, review them and be grateful.  Now write for 15 minutes on the miracles you want to happen in your life now.


"You know that song with the line "I need a miracle everyday?"  That's how I feel most days just staying clean and sober, out of depression, not in a bipolar manic mode or having my heart ripped out of my chest by one of my loved ones; namely, my kids.


I borrowed that exercise from the free book whose link I gave you a couple of days ago, "How Much Joy Can You Stand?"  Give a copy to a friend who dreams or needs to dream.


I have decided to stay on at Examiner.com even though it pays squat.  Maybe I'm just supposed to reach out and help someone with an alcohol or addiction problem.  In that case, I'll work for $1.21/month.  It's so ridiculous.  They keep harping on how they'll give you $50 for every referral of a writer that they hire. Who would do that to a person they knew and probably liked, and maybe was a friend?  I wouldn't send the woman, Kathy, who comes over at 6 a.m. and late at night, it doesn't matter, pounding on my back door like there's a fire to beg cigarettes from me.  I really wouldn't, but she could stand to have a job; I do believe.


What did I learn today that I can share?  I wrote a rough draft for Align.com on the health benefits of mangoes.  They are high in beta carotene and other nutrients like vitamins C, E, potassium, magnesium, copper, iron, antioxidants galore, fiber, selenium, and I forget what else.  They help prevent cancer.  They help heat exhaustion and heat stroke.  They are good for diabetics.  They help with acid indigestion and digestion.  They have iron and are good for women in menopause or those who are pregnant.  They are sweet, succulent and sexy little orange-fleshed ovals from India, Mexico, Pakistan, Florida and Hawaii and other tropical places.

Try this, although it might defeat the health consciousness motive, it's wonderful. Take a fully ripe mango and cut it in half after removing the stone.  Fill that empty space with the best, richest vanilla ice cream you can buy or make, none of that cheap off-brand stuff.  Sit on your front porch or out on the deck with it on a spring or summer night and look at the stars. You will be transported.  No thanks necessary.  Enjoy!


Want to start fundraising for something?  I want to fundraise for myself.  I need a vacation, desperately. Go to www.kickstarters and they will help you solicit funds for individual projects that are not necessarily nonprofit.  You can choose a campaign time period,  and if you don't get pledges equaling the amount you said you were campaigning for within those 30-60 days, then they don't cash in the pledges and you missed your big chance.  They charge 5 percent of each pledge for administrative costs.  It sounds better than a bake sale to me. Or maybe just better than what I'm about to do, and I swore I'd never do it, but my time on Earth is limited.


If you want to donate to me so I can go on the trip I am going to win from a Rhoads Travel (formerly Elderhostel) scholarship,  and be able to travel to the destination of the funded trip and eat and buy a couple of postcards, just push that "Donate" button I installed today without shame and enter my e-mail account at missmarymac0040@sbcglobal.net.  I haven't been anywhere or gone anywhere except one state up for a wedding in years and years.  I thank you from the top of my head to the spreading out of my limitless soul with love and gratitude. It's only money.

I'd like to go to Canada, I think.  I've never been there.  I need to recharge my corroding batteries, revitalize my cells and blow out my stale thinking.  I'm in a rut.  I can't write and there's no inspiration flowing the way it should if I were pumping adrenaline, intuition and God's will for me as a beloved child. Abundance is everyone's.


Don't forget to support your local freecycle..   Give some free stuff you don't want or need away, and get some free stuff that you will enjoy for a while before you pass it on too.  Anti-materialism collecting has no associated guilt or debt.  You never know what that e-mail from your local freecycle will say is sitting under the stairs at a certain address.  It could be a box of puppies or it could be pirates' treasure.  I love imagining what will be next.

I also spent some time this morning reading one of my books on how to write grant proposals.  This one is titled "Grant Proposals Demystified."  I copied many of her extensive resources which I know i will use.  Here's one for a free newsletter for anyone who writes.  From what I saw of her writing tips, she makes a lot of sense in a succinct fashion.


Oh, and i read more of Jung's "Man and His Symbols," I think it's called.  I'm reading about what dreams are and what their symbols mean and where they come from.  He says forget about those meaning of your dreams books.  Every dreamer invents their own language for their dreams and must learn to decode it on their own, or, I guess with the help of a analyst or knows them well.  Here's something reassuring he wrote that i was glad to read after a night of dreaming about poor people with barely standing rickety shacks for homes nailing plywood on the exterior surfaces to hold it together.  I guess they thought they were remodeling.  I woke up feeling like I was one of the shacks and my "remodeling" efforts to change my life according to my dreams were useless and ludicrous.


Leave it to me to find the lowest self-esteem interpretation of my dreams.  Not so fast, Jung writes that dreams must speak in a different language with new symbols to get our attention because we no longer respond to ideas from our everyday life. We "have stripped them of their elemental energy," he says.  So something more is needed to effectively drive home a message to make us change our attitude and behavior.  That is what dream language does.  Its symbolism has so much psychic energy that we are forced to pay attention to it.


Except that he gives two tragic examples of patients of his whom he tried to warn based on their dream content.  They would not change their behavior and attitude and one ended up dying suddenly, just walking off in space while climbing rocks, and the other was beaten and raped in the woods she wouldn't give up walking through.


"How Much Joy Can You Stand" said, "The world awaits your vision.  So when will you find it in yourself to share?"  Free copy right here (pdf file).


Regardless of what your inner critic thinks, people do want to hear what you have to say, and to see what you have to show.  In the end it all comes down to love and sharing doesn't it?  Isn't that the real purpose of all of our lives?  Let's get in touch with those passions and let bliss guide us to what it is that we are supposed to share with the world.


My current dream is to do well at grant proposal writing and have a small home business doing it.  Then I want to apply for non-profit (501(c) 3 status and get a grant and start a nonprofit to help people with a problem I want to solve or at least put some intensive work into.


I read the most inspirational article in Inc.com.  Now I read it regularly and started collecting the back issues that were in my e-mail.  This article was giving examples of innovative social entrepreneurs who were out to change the world.  This one guy, Scott Harrison, a night club promoter in New York,  was 28, and all he did was get high, drink, chase women and have sex.  His life was void of positive contributions he realized while in Uruguay on vacation with friends.  "I thought there would never be enough girls, enough status or money or fame—there would never be enough alcohol or partying to make me happy," he said. He realized he was a "selfish scumbag," and knew it was time to do something.

At 30 he founded charity: water, which brings clean drinking water to developing nations. He set about doing things his way, which was to utilize Google Earth to track projects for donors.   All public money raised went directly to water projects. Operating costs for the charity were raised separately.

As of today, charity: water has funded 3,962 water projects, providing access to clean, safe drinking water for 1,794,983 people in 19 countries. It works in ways that are easy for people to see the difference they are making. About $20 provides one person access to safe drinking water. A typical well costs about $5,000 and can provide safe water for 250 people.  Here, I'm just copying the figures and facts now. You might as well read it yourself and be inspired.  There are similar stories that are also very inspirational.  It can be done if you have a dream and you're willing to work for it.


I promised you new reading material, and you shall have it. I found a list of top digital publications in Matador, one of my very favorite things to read for fun, to satisfy curiosity, to feed my beauty hunger, to feel motivated, to be inspired, to quell wanderlust and more.  This article lists the top 32 publications to writers at Matador.  I wasn't too impressed, but keep reading until you get to the list at the end with just hyperlinked titles.  Here are the good ones.  Check out Granta. costs $45.99/yr in the U.S. to subscribe and that's for only four issues which are published as books.

It features great writing, photos, memoirs, audio, video, and more.   It seems very literary.  They have a free newsletter, and here's me catching truffle crumbs from the wealthy again, they do publish some freebie articles and stories.  I am familiar with about half of the other magazines on the list.  It has always been my greedy literary dream to write a short story for the "Sun."  They pay extremely well.  The magazine doesn't carry ads, and is quite something culturally wonderful.  Check these out for your reading pleasures and submissions.

Time to go write my articles for the non-literary and peanuts.  Let me see how many words I have.  I hope you had fun and learned something.  I learn something new every day.  It's what keeps me going.  I saw the perfect job for me on Elance search of reports today.  Somebody wants 10 hours/week for one or two weeks of a researcher/writer to find out why 70 percent of smokers say they wish they could quit but don't try.  Why are these people still smoking.  The kick is that he's not so much interested in this knowledge, per se, as he is something that parallels it that might be harder to research.  Why does every computer user know they could lose everything on their computers at any given moment and yet still not bother to back up their data occasionally or even frequently?  This is what his inquiring mind wants to know, and what I'd love to research and come up with some answers.  Human behavior fascinates me.  It just kills me.  We are one crazy species.  Wish we intuitive messages as I go to bid on this project.


Words for today:

Words for today: 2,031.  (Did tomorrow's too, except that's cheating.  I'll be here tomorrow.)

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.