I Am Enough! You Are Enough--Now, Not In 5-10 Years

Yes, as the motivational speakers like to say, we truly are human beings and not human doings.  You wouldn't know that or stay mindful of what that beings from the information we are deluged with on the Internet and everywhere else on productivity, personal development and schedules for it,  getting things done, becoming an entrepreneur, doing it, just do it, what we should with any free time,  and the whole "Be All You Can Be" themes of the writing, speakers and culture.  Let's not forget the emphasis in these medium on how to make more money.  That must be the hottest ticket on the auction markets for keywords.

Why can't we be enough just as we are for a minute?  Aren't I good enough as I am?  Why does everyone want to convince me that I'm lacking, a slacker and a bum if I just want enjoy who I am today and what I do?  Who do we have to be and what do we have to do to be loved, which is really all we want?  Can even God love me as I am?



Here are the top 50 productivity blogs for those of you who are human doings.  It wears you out just to read the titles of the articles:  "Five Ridiculous Reasons You're A Couch Potato," (being tired and wanting to rest is no excuse) (Dumb Little Man); "Top Ten Reasons to Upgrade Your Daily Routine, " (Lifehacker), "Tying to Pursue Too Many Goals At Once," (Lifehacker); "Thinking Only in the Short Term Halts Your Ability to Pursue Multiple Goals," (I feel another stern lecture coming on.  Lifehacker); "Putting First Things First," (Get Rich Slowly.  Are you surprised to learn that "first things" aren't developing more compassion, peace, your life's purpose, or anything that can't be measured, seen and touched.  No, things mentioned as coming first are investing as you can as early as possible for retirement, building an emergency fund ASAP, paying your bills as they arrive, being fit and following a fitness program and eating a good breakfast.) 

Oh there's so many more it makes me tired just to read the titles.  Why do we have to spend every free moment improving ourselves by making more money, working out, losing weight even if we aren't obese, building a platform, having good branding, on and on.  It never lets up.

Is it any wonder that there are so many unhappy frustrated people not getting enough rest or sleep who are driving themselves to early strokes and heart attacks because they cannot believe that they are enough as they are? 

The ego is driven.  The ego hates rest and tells you why you should pull another all-nighter on a work night.  The ego wants more money, fame, glamour, beautiful sex partners, and self-importance.  It wants you to make out that damn daily schedule where you write down what time you expect to be brushing your teeth at night and eating meals at six o'clock exactly, and making sure every free minute is scheduled for productivity and self-improvement. 

What do you want?  What does your higher consciousness want for your inner life?  What are your values, intentions and beliefs, and let's knock off goal setting for one day.  I don't want to learn more efficient ways to multi-task.  I have ADD and barely get things finished as it is. 

Don't I get a break at for what I have accomplished?  Doesn't any of the accomplishments we already have count for something?  Maybe only on LinkedIn and our resumes.  Some of us have had to overcome some major obstacles in our life such as alcoholism, addiction, mental or physical illnesses, losing loved ones, losing custody of our children, being homeless, being poor, being unemployed for long periods--just plain playing the cards we were given.  Don't these people get to rest on their laurels just a little bit?  Put that whip down please.  I never joined the Marines.  I don't want to go to boot camps of any variety.  My goals have subgoals and I work towards them everyday. 

I don't know about you, but as a result of all the mental conditioning to be more and do more and get more done, I don't let myself slow down for a minute.  I have too much to do to take the time to visit a friend or even call one.  Too much to do to read all the interesting information that drifts to my browser, but I really wish I could stop and read that.  I have too much to do to be bothered with taking walks, nature, meditation, cleaning and organizing, being compassionate to all, asking to know God's will for me...

Is God's will for me to go to grad school?  I hope not even if I can help others more with an advanced degree because it's more of too much to do.  I am already or planning to work on improving myself by learning French, Web design, digital photography, publishing my two novels, writing e-books, submitting mindful articles to major publications or at least getting the nerve up to query some of them, grant writing, start a grant writing business, start a nonprofit and mange it, find a solution and work towards using it on problems like homelessness, poverty, injustice of any kind, illiteracy, legal rights for only those who can afford them, Big Pharm's latest assaults, the artificial interference with our food, pesticide loading on fruits and vegetables, and more every day. 

What is my soul's mission and what was I put here on this Earth to do?  I hope it has nothing to do with Pilates, running, not eating cookies, shopping at Aldi's instead of health food grocery stores, being frugal till it hurts, having a brand and a platform, owning a second home for retirement, building anything with wood, bricks or paint, or reading more teeny tiny print and government publications.  I hope my soul's mission is to be joyous, learn, help, give, appreciate, develop and use my talents for the benefit of others not just me, provide humor and beauty to my small patch of the world, be a good role model for my children and others, listen to people with concerns and problems, and things of that nature.  Mostly I think I am here to love:  myself and my neighbor and everyone in the world. 

The Dalai Lama says we are here to find joy and be joyous.  I can go along with that.  It is the result of loving and giving.  I wasn't born with a soul and consciousness that are only meant for tangible accomplishments that result in getting more done, making more money or being successful in the business world.

I am enough.  I am enough right now, today, and I am worthy of love as I am.  I am enough in what I have accomplished and persevered to do,  and it's good I have dreams and plan to continue to contribute in a lot of different ways, but I need to make sure that I am not blocking today's self-acceptance on what I have yet to do to win approval by the world's standards.  It's good to  slow down to be attentive to the still, small voice within, and to pay attention to the synchronicity that delights with miraculous wonders and is always on time.

I think that for now I will just row, row, row my boat and be mindful that life is but a dream.  It is not a competition or a race.  There's no prize for who gets there first, wherever "there" is.   I will live in the eternal now or keep trying.

Medicare pays for smoking cessation counseling

Medicare will now pay for smoking cessation counseling. "It is considered preventive service if you haven't been diagnosed will an illness caused or complicated by tobacco use. As of Jan 1, 2011 you pay nothing. They also will pay for 8 face-to-face visits in a 12-month period if you're diagnosed with an illness caused or complicated by tobacco use, or you take a medicine that is affected by tobacco. You pay the doctor 20% of the Medicare-apprived aniybtm tge the Part B deductible applies."

It's all in prevention I guess, but they're mighty cold to those with smoking related diseases if you ask me.

Just Don't Drink Or Drug If You Can't Write and Try These Suggestions

This picture looks like the hills of Southern Illinois just south of Carbondale where I went to S.I.U. on the 10-year "never graduate or they'll make you get a job" plan. I used to like to take bicycle out on the paths through the hills and woods. I like to look at this picture and pretend that's my bike there, and I am off looking at a cave or rock formation.

I love getting comments on this blog, and I got a good one yesterday. It's published somewhere on here I think so I guess it will be okay if I reprint it here to share:

"Don't drink much anymore, maybe too young to die but already too old to die young....Great, visually attractive blog you have here. I'm supposed to be writing, have a 300 page memoir in need of a publisher or agent, and don't seem to be producing much these days, have to work to make the landlord's mortgage payment, keep the credit card companies at bay, subsidize fat bonuses for executives, and make sure the bombs keep falling....this, not writing could drive me to drink, illegal drugs or suicide, although the final option is highly unlikely, no matter how bad it gets, I have to find out what happens in the next episode..."

By D Mage on Writers Drink Too Much and Then They Kill Themselv... on 6/10/11

I can really identify with what this person says. (Thanks for the compliment on the bloc's looks. She's do for another makeover soon.) It's tough when your day job interferes with your passion. I really believe writing is sort of like drinking/drugging in my experience. If you don't write every day, things are not good in your world. If days and weeks go by, God forbid months, and you are only signing checks as far as writing goes, you get in deep shit.

When I don't write for even a day, I get down. I don't get seriously depressed, but I don't feel the surging of the spring of joy I like to have in my emotional fountain. I am just not right. I get irritated by store clerks, annoying phone calls, and focus on what my son who lives with me, age 21, isn't doing. As usual, I am in shit when I start wanting to control other people. It's usually when I am mad at myself for breaking my vow to myself that I will write 1,000 words a day.

Until two days ago I was really feeling bored, restless, negative. I was finding easy rationalizations for why I wouldn't write an overdue article for my alternative health job. Worse, I would not make myself write the articles on intuition and mind programming that I am hired to do. I wouldn't allow myself to go out anywhere or go get together with a friend. I couldn't do that or I'd be breaking the unspoken rule that if I am not writing, and I stuff that I should definitely be writing, then I am not allowed to have much joy or loosen up and have some fun. It's sort of like calling in sick for work. You hang up from talking to the job and start feeling, "Yeah, I am a little sick. I have a tickle in my throat and my tooth hurts." This way you don't feel quite as guilty for leaving the coworkers short-handed or missing a work deadline. Am I right?

So sometimes I must prefer spending my day feeling bummed, negative and guilty. Maybe it's my Catholic upbringing and I just feed the need to feel guilty once in a while. I mean I don't deserve to have a clear conscience. I don't put on stockings and skirt in the morning and report to my job in the cubicle working for the man. I haven't worked outside my home for years. I am sleeping when the employed people in the neighborhood have their lights on because it's some ungodly hour in the morning and they have to get ready for work. Some of them may be trying to get in some writing before they have to shuffle down to the job and put their creativity and inspiration on hold for eight or nine hours. Then they go home and they're too tired to write, or it's time to give the family some attention and time.

And all I have to do is write an article on mind programming, and I stubbornly refuse to do it because I am a life-long rebel and usually refuse to do what I'm supposed to when I should be doing it. No, I enjoy feeling free and joyous at times because I don't have a job to bring me down, but rebel because money is dirty and I'm getting paid to write or I'm not writing what I want to write but what someone else wants.

Childish and not pretty---those are the facts of my twisted thinking. I'm lazy and I procrastinate because I'm convinced I write better when tomorrow is the deadline and I've got nothing to submit. This is a lie. I really write during these all-nighters with acid in my stomach from the 12 cups of coffee I drank, sweating real B.O. sweat, and feeling that I need some drugs, some old-fashioned speeders to help me accomplish the task That was how I got through college as a straight "A" student: writing all-nighters fueled by white crosses.

Anyhow, before I went on an ADD distraction detour there, I was saying that I was recently feeling lousy because I have all these big plans to write a daily reflections sort of book, my articles are due, and I am still not submitting to major magazines so I can get some good clips for my portfolio--also so I know that I'm worthy and capable as a writer.

Wouldn't you know it? Synchronicity saved me again. I do try to keep in mind what the Divine wants me to do with my life, what my soul's mission is (to benefit others through my writing), and to be mindful and listen to the still, small voice of intuitions. As a result, I often get synchronicity shooting me signs, opportunities, reassurances and support among other things.

This time I was at the library getting books on developing intuition, when I happened to see my old friend, "The Artist's Way--A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity," by the brilliant and wise Julia Cameron. I also spotted her "Walking in the World," which I hadn't read. There was nothing for it but to add these two to the 25 other library books I currently have checked out. (Most are on grant writing though so I don't them as part of my greedy total.)

Julia Cameron is famous not for the books, plays, and entertaining gigs she used to do, but for two other things that get written about in every book of hers, I think: The artist's date and the "morning pages." Julia is the one who helped me see how twisted and antsy I get when I don't write. She writes about the enormous difference in the lives of people who started writing three pages by longhand, absolutely stream-of-consciousness, every morning when they wake up.

So I was reading about all the bad things that happen to people who get out of their morning pages habit, and I realized I felt like dog dodo because I wasn't writing. Just wake up, grab your favorite writing implement and get anything from a journal to a notebook to a legal pad, and start putting down whatever comes into your head with no censoring or worries about grammar, punctuation and spelling. You are not supposed to re-read the pages when you are done. No second drafts of from the mind, heart and soul writing.

There's no wrong way to do these. Put down what's bugging you, your worries and why you're mad at yourself like I did this mornings. Even if something pops in your head that seems teeny weeny and too petty to write, put down that you are going to make yourself banana pancakes later in the morning.

Julia tells people how important they are for all writers and artists, anyone who wants to tune into more of their creativity, and people who just don't want to stay in shit all day. Read about it. You can go to The Artist's Way: Basic Tools Web site and download the first chapter. You can buy the book on Amazon for $15.99 hardcover, Kindle $13.99 or pick it up used for around $2.44. You should be able to get your library to get it for you, or maybe all the copies aren't checked out and it's on the shelf like it was for me, right when and where I needed it.

I needed to re-read it for a lot of reasons, but one major one was that I have been promising myself for months to go on an artist's date, but I just "couldn't" leave my work (Internet noodling). I tell you I am going to make a big, mean and menacing looking official sign to put over my desk that says, "Miss, step away from the computer." I may need someone with a gun to force me to step away as often as I should though.

An artist's date is a weekly one to two hour or more jaunt to some other place that you do solo. It helps put you back in touch with someone you haven't seen in a while: the real you. The kid inside you gets to explore, have an adventure, experience something they don't every day or have never experienced, and generally get their juices flowing again. We all need some time alone to get renewed and replenished, especially if you are blocked and not writing.

You set this artist's date on your calendar, and you keep this important appointment to "nurture your creative consciousness, your inner child." And it's just for you time. Don't bring a friend and go shopping because that's not an artist's date, although it's good to "get out and blow the stink off of you," as my dear, departed old Irish Dad used to say to us kids.

Make it a real adventure and take yourself off to some place you've never been: a museum, art gallery, neighborhood, a factory that makes something interesting like stained glass, or an ethnic restaurant you’ve never tried. Or you can keep it low-profile, and do something that tickles you when you let yourself slow down enough to be aware that your doing it. This could be like browsing the books at the book store, checking out what's new at the bead store, going to a automobile showroom or lot.. I don't know what in your world equals cotton candy at the carnival when you were five, but make a list of possible artist's date destinations and put them on your appointment calendar. Keep these appointments with yourself as you would if they were lunch dates with friends or a dental visit.

When synchronicity shined that big light bulb over my head, I realized how overdue I was for an artist's date. The kid in me doesn't like it when I keep breaking my promises to go. By the grace of God I was able to "step away from the computer" with my hands up and free from drafts I should revise. I took myself to one of my most favorite places, the Carousel Shop thrift store. I have wanted to go there for weeks and pick up some shorts and speakers for my computer. They didn't have speakers this particular day but often synchronicity sees to it that you find the perfect whatever it was you wanted.

The Carousel has a deal where you can fill up a regular size shopping bag with used books for a buck. I kept myself slowed down enough to look at every book. I was looking for books and magazines with pictures for the vision board I have started making, but I found a lot more. I also took my time looking at every craft and kitchen item in the store. I found the shorts I needed but in my distracted artist way lost them between the dressing room and the cashier so now I have a reason to go back.

Or you can break a dry period by writing out a weekly schedule and putting down what time you will report to the computer and for how long. Go for long walks every day or 20 minute ones, but get out of the house and into nature.

And don't forget to have a candle on your desk burning for the all the people you hope to touch with your writing by writing something they need or wanted to hear that benefits them in some way.

I broke my 1,000 word article cutoff promise to readers. This is over 2,000 words, but it was an important message to share with my reader who went to the trouble of leaving a comment and all readers.

Why don't you leave me a comment too? It doesn't have to be about the blog post for today. It can be about anything. Good quotes are also always appreciated and vocabulary words I may not know that might come in handy are a joy. Yesterday I learned the word "bedizen" from Julia. Here's the definition if you also don't know it. It's a good word to have in your toolkit:

Definition of BEDIZEN

transitive verb

: to dress or adorn gaudily

— be·di·zen·ment noun

First Known Use of BEDIZEN

1661

Love, Freedom & Lots of Belly Laughs,

MsRefusenik or is it Maryellen today?

Writers Drink Too Much and Then They Kill Themselves or Die Young

I am going back to 1,000 word a day commitment.  It keeps me writing, and it keeps my garrulousness in check, sort of.  I am too windy, I know.  I will really shoot to keep the limit.  I really will.

I've been reading sad things today about how the book is going out of style and soon will be nothing but trash heaps and memories or somethings.  People like Jane Friedman, media specialist, media critic, writer and professor with a new book, The Future of Publishing: Enigma Variations, you can read a free excerpt from on the future of publishing.  You can get 39 pages of the book for free if you follow the directions and go pay $1.99 to Scribed.   She thinks the end of normal published books you just buy in stores is within shouting distance.  She blames Google, Apple and Amazon for taking over publishing and leaving writers in the dust.  She says that multimedia is the future of writer's writing, and look for more online and Web site multimedia non-books.

That is exactly what my brother is intuitively doing with his book that I am editing, "A Fairy Tale Life Is No Fable, by Michael Grady.  It is aimed at teenagers, and he knows from having his own kids, now young adults, how hard it is to get them to read a book that's good for them.  It seriously would save any teen agony and tragic mistakes and show them how to lead a joyous, responsible life and be a contributing member of society.

Listen to this.  Mike was a C.P.A. before he retired and he knows a lot about investing money.  When he wrote the first version of this book, he put in a surprise for his wonderful children whom he knew were just waiting with bated breath to read his book.  He wrote right in one of the later chapters on investments that he was giving each kid a big sum of money to invest as they wanted with the advice in the book.  He also told them where and how to get the money.

Neither kid ever got that money because neither read the damn book their father spent all that time and energy writing. I begged my son, a teen too at the time, to read it.  I wrote him a long letter about all the mistakes in my life that I might have avoided had I read this book as a teenager.  I implored him to save himself some misery and just read the book, which I view as the instruction manual God didn't think to give us when we were born.  He would not read it.  He has a second chance now and not much is different in his sleep all day party all night life.  We'll see what happens.

Jane Friedman's newsletters and blogs are the greatest thing.  She writes about writing for writers.  She also gives away rare nuggets of goodies and information like the old drunk lady on the corner used to give out Halloween candy.  She is so generous.  If you don't get anything else, get these five free ebooks  she recommends and links you up with. If you're a writer or media entrepreneur wannbe sign up for her newsletter too.

About that title of this post...  I just recently submitted this blog to Top 100 Sober Blogs Directory.  The blog has to be about that. Hey, this blog is sober and so am I:  Two years sober this month--today for all I know. I am a proud recovering alcoholic/addict and I do try to instill hope and recovery from several things. I try to  help others find their purpose in life, grow and develop as human beings, and learn more about my personal story, what kinds of things I write in Chicago Alcohol &; Recovery Examiner, and recover from everything that keeps you a slave and doesn't let you be fully human, alive and bursting with joy, and free.

So the title, "Writers Drink Too Much and Then Kill Themselves or Die Young," is about what I most aspired to when I was in college.  I wanted to be like these writers--"Top 10 Drunk American Writers."  Check out those quotes below their name.  At least they were honest:

""First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you." -- F.S. Fitzgerald.  


I wanted to go back in time and hang with all those expatriate drinkers/writers in Paris in the 20's and 30's like Fitzgerald, Hemingway and go visit Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin (not a drunk), and just be wild, free, creative, brilliant and drunk. 


Like this quote from a recent New York Times review of "Midnight in Paris."


"Many a writer or artist has longed to travel back in time to the sizzling Paris of the 1920s, to sip absinthe with Hemingway at Les Deux Magots or dine on choucroute garnie with Picasso at La Rotonde. Imagine the conversation! What has beguiled audiences about the new Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris is that the protagonist, Gil, a disenchanted Hollywood screenwriter played by Owen Wilson, gets to live exactly that fantasy."


It goes on with all the delicious details of drinking, writing and carousing in Paris that I know so well since I think I believed when I was a coed that I was not just some drunken, obnoxious, know-it-all but one of the hippest pack of them all.  If I had to be a woman I would be June Miller or Anais Nin.  I preferred to think of myself as that poor, tragic souse Fitzgerald with his partially glamorous life when he wasn't bankrupt, taking Zelda, his wife, to mental hospitals, or puking on his shoes while trying to get a loan from somebody like Max Perkins.   "Those were the days.  I thought they'd never end."   


My glamorous fantasy fueled by non-stop drinking and drugging (and the occasional college class) came to an abrupt halt.   I had to sober up at 28  or die.  I had to accept my complete ordinariness that came with homelessness, poverty, a liver that stuck out and hurt, an extra 50 pounds of beer bloat, a head so fogged I couldn't remember what address and phone number I was using when filling out job applications, and nursing a broken heart because my true love had just drowned.   Oh, yeah, and I didn't write shit, just as I had written not a whole lot of anything  in college in my creative writing workshops.  I cared too much what other people thought.  I worried the  hip cat graduate students might mock me, scorn my writing and pass swords through me during the public evaluation of my writing.  


What a crock!  


And that's 1,127 words, but some were quotes I didn't write.  See you later alligator.


Peace, 

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.)