Happy Birthday to My Blog—Now What?

“Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.”

Steven Wright

My father always used to surprise and delight me when I was a child when at random times he stated some often inconsequential but fun fact about our family such as “7 years ago this day, Mom and I had to wait in line extra early to get tickets to see Dog Day Afternoon.” Sometimes he’d have more significant milestones to remember such as the day we went on a certain vacation or the day he got sworn into the bar (for lawyers, not drinkers, although I’m sure there are correlations in some circles). He wrote it all down, and as best I can tell, by sticking to the simple facts, he was freed up to keep a very replete record of events big and small.

I don’t know if it’s as a result of that per se or of just being wired so similarly (I wouldn’t make a good lawyer, but then again, it was always a question to me whether his heart was in the law)—but I do enjoy marking time and remembering certain noteworthy events if only in my mind. Thus we have a birthday blog.

I said I was fearful to write one. This quickly gave way to being fearful I’d drown in the vast ether-wasteland of bad bloggers or worse yet, those blogs that get completely ignored for lack of anyone noticing they exist!

That has given way to delight that my very dear friends and some friends I haven’t even met, do read and supply the most affirming encouragement to go on (which is not a nice way of saying you have only yourselves to blame for this blog’s livelihood).

The original inspiration for the blog was having seen the movie “Julie and Julia,” three times in all. Considering how many times I go to the movies (and let’s just say that a full 50% of my movie going times these last 12 months involved seeing THAT movie)—it pains me to say that the only other films intriguing enough for me to break away from my sewing machine in order to see them in the theater had the words 3-D (are those words?) and Pixar embedded somewhere in the advertising.

I still smile every time I think of that self imposed mission of Julie’s, and in a way, I consider myself on such a mission this year—particularly since my formal work as a technical writer ceased in March of this year—2 days before my 46th birthday, another fact mentioned in my first post.

This brings me back to my father’s perceived mixed feelings about his work. I so want to have meaningful work, something that draws me toward it, even if that’s idealistic. I take it as no coincidence that this year brought the occasion of my brother’s graduation from law school, at age 43. 

I know, at least I think I know, that it took great courage for him to walk unhesitatingly toward the drum of yearning for this career, the same one that sometimes seemed to imprison my father, and darn well do it. Anyway. The look on his face when he walked out of the auditorium in cap and gown said it all and I perhaps egocentrically took it as a harbinger of a similar conquest in my life.

I spoke of my training as a social worker and a process of inching back toward it. Well in 48 hours my private office opens for business. I am volunteering at a crisis hotline as well, and am preparing a presentation to give to our couples’ group. It was so easy, really. I asked and they said yes—but what it took to ask is the story I’ve been telling in this blog.

So what lies ahead? Of course, as ever, I haven’t a clue, and I’m becoming more comfortable with as well as delighted by that fact. Writer that I was and am, the words may not come quickly but you’ll find them here as long as they keep coming.

Happy Birthday to my blog and thank you for riding along. 

"I have met the builder and broken the ridgepole. I shall not build that house again."

THE BUDDHA, UPON HIS AWAKENING

Freedom and Yams

"An hour of freedom is worth a barrel of slops." The Goose, Charlotte's Web by E. B. White 
I made the mistake of thinking I could 'just run over' to the community college bookstore at lunch hour on the first week of class and 'grab' the two books John needed for his online project management class. After 20 minutes circling around the wall to wall covered with cars campus parking which looked like a 'Cash for Clunkers' section at a car dealership, I had managed to park on the 3rd level of the new parking structure, go down 1 flight of stairs, pay for a day pass, return to the car to put the permit on the dash board, make my way across a quarter mile of campus featuring a sea of students, wait in a reasonably short line to check my back pack at the 'complimentary' back pack check in, head to the book store entrance only to figure out it was the exit, wind away around to the designated entrance, wait in a small, square entry way of the bookstore, bounded by a student employee holding one side of a velvet rope, equivalent to the foyer of the Haunted Mansion at both Disney parks, but far less enchanting, however just as scary, get let in after "just" 2 minutes with what seemed like a civilized group of about 8 other people, breathe a sigh of relief that the crowd of shoppers was being controlled this way, barely glance at the section where the PM books were located, look to my right to observe another velvet rope cordoning off 50% of the bookstore where some 60 students waiting to buy books were snaked around aisles of school supplies in line, beg to be let out of the bookstore at the entrance which was in no uncertain terms not to be used as an exit even for disgruntled non-shoppers who made the mistake of thinking they were home free *just* because they had cleared the velvet rope, eventually re-enter in order to be allowed to exit (?!), make my way to the backpack retrieval line, wait there for a good 15 minutes with other hot and bothered people waiting to retrieve their backpacks, and feel thoroughly defeated.


This of course evoked memories of my own active college bookstore days as waiting around with people half your age is wont to do, and, to my surprise, all I could think was, "Poor kids!". Not literally judging from the wide variety of nonclunkers in the parking lot, although I'm sure that's the case for some. But of course in addition to being afforded the luxury of a private college where at most you might decide to put your backpack up at the register, mostly so you didn't have to bother with it, your parents sent you off to said school (or mine did anyway) with a blank check for which you were welcome to buy all your textbooks new and they knew the damage would be no more than a one or two hundred dollars at the most.


I'm well aware that in fact, given the flooding of college age students to community colleges, my response might better have been to think, "Lucky kids," because I understand that many students are locked out of classes, but I couldn't turn my attention away from how not-fun it is to jump through so many hoops for such little gain, and I was not the only empty handed book buyer by far.


John headed back to the store this morning when it opened this morning and got the 2 books, used. He continues to work toward career change and productive use of his nonworking time while he diligently works all leads and suggestions for a job that will make use of his sales background. I can't help but be relieved to be out of the cycle of "will I/won't I/don't I" want to leave the job I just left while it occurs to me we could be in this waiting and wondering cycle for a while.


In the mean time, no complaints about having freedom (with decent slops most days) with which I can do things video chat my precious Leo and Peter in Virginia during the 'work day,' photograph orange yams in a blue bowl 'just cuz,' and read The Missing Manual and Zen and the Art of Knitting simultaneously.


"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back." Maya Angelou

Big Box Zen

"I cannot tell if what the world considers 'happiness' is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness..." Chuang-tzu.

Since I'm between jobs (By the way, don't you just love the phrasing implying the next job is just laying there waiting for me to take it up?)-- now seems like a pretty good time to dream up a fun one. So, I keep thinking, since we are talking dream jobs here, how about a fantasy job? Most people who know me will thing full time quilter and that would fit the bill, for sure, but at the moment, I was thinking more like Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. Except I'd be more like the Buddha's trainee and technically in Buddhism as I understand it, we don't try to *get* anywhere, but rather to realize that we are, at any given time, *here* with no need to go elsewhere, so I'd have to give some thought to how that correlates to an angel getting his or her wings (worth noting perhaps that bells in fact are frequently run in the Zen tradition in which I am a participant so whatever the end goal, the ringing of bells would certainly figure prominently as it did for Clarence).

I'd have a name tag of course (Buddhist Guide, Trainee) and the job description would include showing new souls (which would probably be called incarnations) around the karmic world which in my rendering of it, takes on the appearance of Costco, an oversized warehouse with everything you could ever want alongside that much which you never even realized you want.

So I'd take the pre-conditioned human, between lifetimes if you will, and point out a few things that, should he or she awaken with a desire to end suffering in the upcoming lifetime, might come in handy. The largest section of the karmic big box store, would be the huge central area that stores swing sets and barbecues in the summer and Christmas trees at holiday time. "This," I'd matter of factly point out, is your content. Getting stitches, bored rainy afternoons, first days of school on up to family members dying, miscarriages, divorces, and watching loved ones die of cancer and car accidents, drink too much, win a triathalon, get a raise, have an affair, and pay too much for coffee because they forgot the sales circular at home."

I'd go on to explain that the content will forever be competing for attention and shelf space with the inborn knowledge that your sense of well being is not controlled or defined by IT- whatever IT is (thank you ebay!) And I'll do my best to reassure by reminding my charge that most go through their entire lives forgetting that they know this is true, and, when you consider the state of the content, who can blame them.

Next we'll go up and down the aisles on either side of content. Rows of shelves containing toiletries, over the counter medicines and vitamins are just about the perfect location for The Voices in Your Head. "Lots of folks catch on to these babies pretty quick," I'll jovially explain. "They're the things that talk at you all day and all night long, telling you what you're doing wrong, what to say, what to do and think. Sometimes they will throw a complete curve ball and tell you how great you are. But don't be fooled. They live to make you completely forget that YOU aren't THEM and as such don't have to pay one bit of attention."

About this time, the entering soul will probably ask what all the fuss is about. "Why would anyone or anything *care* to throw me off track enough to create all this distraction?" And this will be a test of Buddhist trainee meddle because I'll so badly want to provide the 'proper' answer. I'll want to have something at the ready, like a SOAR story (situation, obstacle, action, result) we're encouraged to prepare by out outplacement coaches, lying in wait for the toughest interview question. Or I'll want to be able to believably explain that the system was actually intended to protect us from the harm of going crazy by coming up with a belief system however bogus.

If my thoughts are properly collected however I'll say instead, "All we know for sure is that there seems to be for every productive forging ahead that we do, an equal and opposite drive to deconstruct our ability to stay in the here and now, seeing it all, not believing any of it, and in that seeing, having the true freedom to attend closely to the life experience we truly want to have."

That will lead us to the section that runs parallel to the cash registers. Where mountains of oversized boxes of candy, pyramids of plastic jars of Twizzlers reside. "Here's where all the action is. Your conditioned responses. Things you do automatically. Sometimes these are perfectly matched to the content and other times, not so much. How much you can stay in your observing self and disconnect from your voices telling you how you should feel about your swing set, I mean your content is going to have a lot to do with how well you can choose what to do when." This conversation will probably require breaking into the Twizzlers for some relief, a perfect example of a conditioned response to hearing voices tell me I can't manage this part of the tour, but that's what training is for I'll realize.

And how will I realize this? Because a thought or feeling in the form maybe of the person who checks what you have bought against your receipt will arise in a moment of clarity, to remind me I do have options-- and lots of them. Like today for example, I can stay in my pajamas all day, skip church, eat junk food (oh, wait- that's what I AM doing!)-- you get the idea.

There are more sections to tour in our Zen Costco-- but first I have to work with someone in customer service on putting on my game face (and realizing I WANT to?!) as I hand over my badge tomorrow.

"I would like to learn, or remember, how to live." Annie Dillard