I've just been reading a post and a lively set of comments about the ego. And of course in such a conversational terrain, there is the usual argument going on ~ that of yes, there is an ego/no, there isn't an ego. It's an interesting and frustrating conversation because I agree completely and utterly with both sides.
This is my personal take, subject to change or variation at any time. I'm sure you have your own and it's probably different to mine. But the way it seems to me out through my eyes and after pondering and daydreaming about it ~ I think that I absolutely do have an ego, and it is part of my responsibility as this particular human to learn to balance it, to learn to love myself no more or less than anyone else, which is, in fact, an entire life's journey the perfected aim of which would be me being totally in love with the entire world because I Am That.
On the other hand, at the same time I feel like my aim is to learn to stop loving myself too much (a sort of love which, if it really is love at all, is a much lower form of it), or else I will forget that I am the ocean and that I don't believe there is any fear in death.
Because in that respect, no, there is no ego. Damn right. There is no such thing as an ego, just like there is no such thing as bloody anything. The full and beautiful void. The no-thing. And you know the drill ... go down far enough and it's just more empty space than molecules.
So I think we can get caught up in these distinctions where different sides say "No, you're wrong. There is an ego," and the other side saying, "No, you're wrong. There isn't an ego." But the way it seems to me is that they are both exactly right.
What a fucking trip :)
For those looking for a pyroluria diagnosis in Melbourne, Australia, I have begun seeing Joanna Hickey in Clifton Hill. She is one of a group of practitioners who follow the Walsh protocol (William Walsh, who was an ally of the late Carl Pfeiffer) for treating pyroluria.
I've just started seeing her, but so far so good. I mean, a doctor knowing what pyroluria is is good enough, right, but then on top of that she actually knows how to treat it. The first visit takes about an hour and a half. Consecutive visits aren't as long. But a word of warning ~ it's a little exey. For the first consultation and the numerous blood tests required, you will be looking at somewhere between $400-$600.
It's an expensive place to be, on the wrong side of the health fence, that's for sure. The good thing about pyroluria is that once you've got the initial diagnostic stuff out of the way, treatment is all nutritional, via vitamins and minerals, and if your situation is straightforward you need only spend 20 bucks or so a week to keep yourself on the up. But supplements can be expensive too. I am taking a range of things to help deal with the copper detox symptoms. I counted 22 separate tablets I took this morning. It gets tedious, and it gets expensive. But I'm glad I'm on the right track. Some of those supplements I will be able to ditch after a while. But in the meantime ~ hooray for iherb.com, is all I can say.
I'm not sure where to suggest for you to go if you are just wanting a barebones diagnosis. My holistic GP that I usually see knows nothing about pyroluria, and while he was happy to refer me for a blood test, it turned out in the end to not be the best one to have. Dr Hickey would have liked me to have had the test done that gives a baseline measurement of my level of pyroluria. I was interested in having this done myself too, but an extra 70 bucks plus the fact that I would have had to have stopped both the B6 and the zinc for three days meant that I passed that over in favour of keeping some extra dollars in my wallet.
I've just started seeing her, but so far so good. I mean, a doctor knowing what pyroluria is is good enough, right, but then on top of that she actually knows how to treat it. The first visit takes about an hour and a half. Consecutive visits aren't as long. But a word of warning ~ it's a little exey. For the first consultation and the numerous blood tests required, you will be looking at somewhere between $400-$600.
It's an expensive place to be, on the wrong side of the health fence, that's for sure. The good thing about pyroluria is that once you've got the initial diagnostic stuff out of the way, treatment is all nutritional, via vitamins and minerals, and if your situation is straightforward you need only spend 20 bucks or so a week to keep yourself on the up. But supplements can be expensive too. I am taking a range of things to help deal with the copper detox symptoms. I counted 22 separate tablets I took this morning. It gets tedious, and it gets expensive. But I'm glad I'm on the right track. Some of those supplements I will be able to ditch after a while. But in the meantime ~ hooray for iherb.com, is all I can say.
I'm not sure where to suggest for you to go if you are just wanting a barebones diagnosis. My holistic GP that I usually see knows nothing about pyroluria, and while he was happy to refer me for a blood test, it turned out in the end to not be the best one to have. Dr Hickey would have liked me to have had the test done that gives a baseline measurement of my level of pyroluria. I was interested in having this done myself too, but an extra 70 bucks plus the fact that I would have had to have stopped both the B6 and the zinc for three days meant that I passed that over in favour of keeping some extra dollars in my wallet.
This guy is rapidly becoming a hero of mine. If we were only collectively to have one ongoing conversation, this in my opinion, would be the one that we need to continue to have.
The Occupy movement received its denigration at the time as being a movement that didn't know what it was on about. But what it always seemed to me like was more of a container than a movement. It was an empty container with a lot of questions. That it was ridiculed only demonstrated the necessity of the question-asking and the discomfort of the people who didn't know what the answers were.
We have only just started having this conversation. In other ways it's been going and unfolding in full force for the past 10 years. It's been a privilege to experience it. When I'm overwhelmed, and my despair is high at the Goliath/Davidness of the situation, still there is always that very small and fervent hope that continues to burn in the hope that love will win.
It's a funny feeling when you discover that you are sort of excited and passionate about something that you never thought you'd ever feel excited and passionate about. Those things that you come upon occasionally that open up the child in you. Little Susie loves messing about with paint. Who woulda thunk it? I certainly never knew I wanted to play with paint, although why it's such a mystery to me that I should feel this way is another mystery in itself.
I know hardly anything about painting. I love doing it. However, I'm not very good at it, and I have no technique to speak of. Here, I'll show you what I mean ~ here's one I prepared earlier :)
There's a lot of things to trip us up from creating. A scan at the interwebs and all those professionals who seem to know what they're doing, producing beautiful things with their eyes closed (apparently), while you're bumbling about in the dark. The starkness of the blank page or the blank screen. But there are various innovative and creative ways to dirty up the situation and take the pressure off yourself so that you can just get onto it and make a start, dammit!
Of course, the picture in your head is never, ever what ends up being the picture on the page, or the sentence. As if there isn't enough to trip you up and stop you painting or writing, even that one simple element, the difference between what you have in your head and what comes out of your fingers, can stall you if you let it.
But the thing is, nothing is as you imagine it is from your head. And sometimes you can get so caught up on what's in your head and how it hasn't transferred that you can't actually see what's in front of you. And then you're done for ~ away from the is, trolling round and round in your tedious mindruts till you remember, again, to climb out.
I'm really quite happy with this thing I've painted. Even though it's nothing like what I wanted to represent (ghost gums at dusk). Even though I've never seen ghost gums like that and those leaves are really sorta crappy. Even though 17 other things I might pick out to not like about it, despite all of those flaws, I still really like this painting. Because I painted it.
I like this painting more than anybody else will like it because of its very flaws. Because it hasn't reached any heights. Because it's not all that good, but I am still impressed with the endeavour I made. Something came from my imagination, out of my fingers and onto the page.
This way of seeing things is a shelf that I climb up onto. I can't always find it, though; sometimes the ledge is hidden from my view. But it sits just above my perfectionism, and from here the world expands outwards and once again, you're riding the wave.
I know hardly anything about painting. I love doing it. However, I'm not very good at it, and I have no technique to speak of. Here, I'll show you what I mean ~ here's one I prepared earlier :)
Of course, the picture in your head is never, ever what ends up being the picture on the page, or the sentence. As if there isn't enough to trip you up and stop you painting or writing, even that one simple element, the difference between what you have in your head and what comes out of your fingers, can stall you if you let it.
But the thing is, nothing is as you imagine it is from your head. And sometimes you can get so caught up on what's in your head and how it hasn't transferred that you can't actually see what's in front of you. And then you're done for ~ away from the is, trolling round and round in your tedious mindruts till you remember, again, to climb out.
I'm really quite happy with this thing I've painted. Even though it's nothing like what I wanted to represent (ghost gums at dusk). Even though I've never seen ghost gums like that and those leaves are really sorta crappy. Even though 17 other things I might pick out to not like about it, despite all of those flaws, I still really like this painting. Because I painted it.
I like this painting more than anybody else will like it because of its very flaws. Because it hasn't reached any heights. Because it's not all that good, but I am still impressed with the endeavour I made. Something came from my imagination, out of my fingers and onto the page.
This way of seeing things is a shelf that I climb up onto. I can't always find it, though; sometimes the ledge is hidden from my view. But it sits just above my perfectionism, and from here the world expands outwards and once again, you're riding the wave.
I have developed a theory about Tristan.
I think he's undercover.
I don't think he's a rooster. I don't even think he's a boy. I don't even think he's a chicken.
I think he's a 16 year old girl from Brisbane. He gives himself away with his upward inflection. Rrr-rrr-rrr-rrrrrRR??? He says. And then it's like he remembers himself, and he reverts back to the standard Rrr-rrr-rrr-RRRrrrr.
Hmmm.
I'm loving my chook-chooks. They are quite companionable little things. Late Sunday afternoon I planted seedlings into the veggie patch, and they were quite happy to hang around, digging into things, being a bit chatty. Luckily the chicken wire went up after only one bok choy leaf was eaten.
Well, that's the end of uni for another year. I must say, I had no inkling of just how bloody hard studying was going to be this semester. I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to academic study. I'm good at it. I'm used to receiving Distinctions and High Distinctions for my work. But it's beyond those sorts of recognitions (nice though they be), that my motivation comes ~ it's internal. I just really enjoy putting in the time and reading it takes to feel like I really get a grasp on an issue. I love that feeling of understanding something, of its breadth and complexity, that expanded feeling of gaining a new bit of insight into the world, into us and how we run, into myself.
I must say, though, I didn't quite realise that doing two Anthropology subjects would entail such a high level of reading. I also didn't really anticipate that in that time my health issues would continue to take up so much of my time. I received my pyroluria diagnosis a couple of weeks into the semester, on a day when I'd been crying because I was trying to read some stuff and no matter how many times I read a sentence, I just felt like I couldn't absorb it. And then all the way through the semester I've continued to struggle with the physical and mental issues that occur as a result of having the biochemistry that I do. I have felt so many times during this semester that I just simply could not cope.
On the weekend I had another meltdown. It's the strangest feeling. I feel like I start slowly shutting down. Talking in this space is almost impossible. The desire to remove myself to a place of safety is palpable. It is like a PTSD shutdown, and all the phobias come out to play. I suspect these issues are so much stronger in me because my body is now recalibrating itself and therefore continuing to discard the heavy metals and other things it has been unable to discard in the past.
This makes it just a tad difficult to study for your exam. So my inner perfectionist has to let go of the fact that it's probably not going to be a Distinction time for Susie this semester. At the same time, I know how difficult it has been being me, and I know that getting a Pass will seem like a Distinction anyway. And anyway, I hope to get at least a Credit for one of them. So all in all, considering what I've been up against, I'm pretty proud of myself for not throwing in the towel.
So my exam has been and gone and with it, the semester. I am so glad. To celebrate I drove to the library on the way home and borrowed a stack of non-academic, non-anthropological books of delicious fiction. And then I went to the local cafe, the Petal 'n Pot, which looks and smells delicious, and ate a baked potato with coleslaw and sour cream and cheese, and didn't even bother to waste time feel guilty about eating dairy.
I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Shoulders which on occasions cannot seem to bear any weight being foisted upon them at all. I can't tell you how much this sucks and how it makes me struggle. Other people are able to work part-time and study part-time. Other people seem able to cope with stuff that blows my adrenals into smithereens and careens me into the side of a wall. Other people are not stress retards, phobic morons, and other related horrible things I say to myself when I have fallen into the vat of self-hatred. Why not, when you're torturing yourself in this uncaring fashion, add to the confusion by comparing yourself to other people? And of course, in this space, other people are the sort that you imagine via their Facebook profiles. Airbrushed, even with no photos involved. Selective. Not readily sharing their issues because society is not a very safe place for vulnerable people to share their stuff. (And probably because Facebook isn't the space to do it, but I just ignore that bit sometimes and share my vulnerable stuff anyway).
I can't seem to help it. Although so often I feel so brittle and fragile that I could burst open if someone looks at me wrong, when it comes to sharing my troubles the vulnerability feels different to me. It is a meaningful vulnerability. I understand people's reticence and boundaries and desire to keep themselves to themselves. There are times when I need to do that too and perhaps I don't. But what I do know is that sharing my stuff, putting it down on a page, redeems it somehow. Taking those experiences that are the loneliest I have ever felt in my entire life, and sharing them, takes the sting out of them. Truly, the only thing to do with those shitty experiences is to take what you can of them and make something from them. They are fertile compost, being composed entirely of shit, and they really do feed other people.
I must say, though, I didn't quite realise that doing two Anthropology subjects would entail such a high level of reading. I also didn't really anticipate that in that time my health issues would continue to take up so much of my time. I received my pyroluria diagnosis a couple of weeks into the semester, on a day when I'd been crying because I was trying to read some stuff and no matter how many times I read a sentence, I just felt like I couldn't absorb it. And then all the way through the semester I've continued to struggle with the physical and mental issues that occur as a result of having the biochemistry that I do. I have felt so many times during this semester that I just simply could not cope.
On the weekend I had another meltdown. It's the strangest feeling. I feel like I start slowly shutting down. Talking in this space is almost impossible. The desire to remove myself to a place of safety is palpable. It is like a PTSD shutdown, and all the phobias come out to play. I suspect these issues are so much stronger in me because my body is now recalibrating itself and therefore continuing to discard the heavy metals and other things it has been unable to discard in the past.
This makes it just a tad difficult to study for your exam. So my inner perfectionist has to let go of the fact that it's probably not going to be a Distinction time for Susie this semester. At the same time, I know how difficult it has been being me, and I know that getting a Pass will seem like a Distinction anyway. And anyway, I hope to get at least a Credit for one of them. So all in all, considering what I've been up against, I'm pretty proud of myself for not throwing in the towel.
So my exam has been and gone and with it, the semester. I am so glad. To celebrate I drove to the library on the way home and borrowed a stack of non-academic, non-anthropological books of delicious fiction. And then I went to the local cafe, the Petal 'n Pot, which looks and smells delicious, and ate a baked potato with coleslaw and sour cream and cheese, and didn't even bother to waste time feel guilty about eating dairy.
I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Shoulders which on occasions cannot seem to bear any weight being foisted upon them at all. I can't tell you how much this sucks and how it makes me struggle. Other people are able to work part-time and study part-time. Other people seem able to cope with stuff that blows my adrenals into smithereens and careens me into the side of a wall. Other people are not stress retards, phobic morons, and other related horrible things I say to myself when I have fallen into the vat of self-hatred. Why not, when you're torturing yourself in this uncaring fashion, add to the confusion by comparing yourself to other people? And of course, in this space, other people are the sort that you imagine via their Facebook profiles. Airbrushed, even with no photos involved. Selective. Not readily sharing their issues because society is not a very safe place for vulnerable people to share their stuff. (And probably because Facebook isn't the space to do it, but I just ignore that bit sometimes and share my vulnerable stuff anyway).
I can't seem to help it. Although so often I feel so brittle and fragile that I could burst open if someone looks at me wrong, when it comes to sharing my troubles the vulnerability feels different to me. It is a meaningful vulnerability. I understand people's reticence and boundaries and desire to keep themselves to themselves. There are times when I need to do that too and perhaps I don't. But what I do know is that sharing my stuff, putting it down on a page, redeems it somehow. Taking those experiences that are the loneliest I have ever felt in my entire life, and sharing them, takes the sting out of them. Truly, the only thing to do with those shitty experiences is to take what you can of them and make something from them. They are fertile compost, being composed entirely of shit, and they really do feed other people.
Futile, futile, everything feels futile.
And I feel like I'm made out of butter when the world requires that I be made out of steel.
How do you live properly in a personal world that has told you for as long as you remember that you are both not enough on the one hand, and are far too much on the other?
And what do you do when you take all of those mean voices, all of those nasty spiteful words from people, and have absorbed them into your own self, so that every time you live, you come from behind and cut yourself off at your own knees?
All of the necessary questions contain answers only I am able to give. Nobody else truly understands, nobody. Nobody knows what another person is going through though they be right in front of you. This is surely a great cosmic joke. One that is only funny when you look through the prism of Oneness.
I have misplaced that prism right now. I am tired of this fight to just be able to get through a day on an even keel. I am so tired of this story. I wish I could put down my own life and take up someone else's to live through for a change.
And I feel like I'm made out of butter when the world requires that I be made out of steel.
How do you live properly in a personal world that has told you for as long as you remember that you are both not enough on the one hand, and are far too much on the other?
And what do you do when you take all of those mean voices, all of those nasty spiteful words from people, and have absorbed them into your own self, so that every time you live, you come from behind and cut yourself off at your own knees?
All of the necessary questions contain answers only I am able to give. Nobody else truly understands, nobody. Nobody knows what another person is going through though they be right in front of you. This is surely a great cosmic joke. One that is only funny when you look through the prism of Oneness.
I have misplaced that prism right now. I am tired of this fight to just be able to get through a day on an even keel. I am so tired of this story. I wish I could put down my own life and take up someone else's to live through for a change.
Even though I am as skint as a flint at the moment, I decided that my first ever payment from having a writing piece published should not be frittered away on bill-paying but should be spent on something good and nice, and maybe even vaguely symbolic. So what did I buy with it? A chook house. A put-it-together-yourself version, the type that has you scratching your head for hours on end while you try and arrange all the pieces together.
The chook house was for Tristan. I didn't realise I was going to be owning a chook until ... well, until it was a few days after he'd climbed through our fence from the yard next door, and still hadn't left. I didn't know a whole lot about roosters until last Tuesday. I'm still learning.
Some neighbourhood enquiries determined that he seemed to have been a street-chook for the previous week, hanging out on random front lawns and back deckings until he crossed into the yard while I was sitting outside. So he was either lost, or dumped.
So I had myself a rooster.
Now the pieces of the chook house are arranged, and Tristan has a lovely new home. He also has a few inhabitants to go with it - a couple of hens - Isa Browns, who I have quickly discovered are one of the "layer" breeds of the chicken fraternity. Tristan, he's a rather more showy Light Sussex. We haven't named the hens yet. The poor things were a little scared. Just like I was about letting them out of their pen. The woman we bought them from said to keep them penned for a week. Other places on the internet said a few days will suffice. They looked so vitamin D deficient, poor things, that at the first sign of sun yesterday afternoon I let them out for a wander and a scratch. I was a bit nervous about whether they would all return to the chook house at the end of the day. When I went out there late yesterday afternoon, before it was dusk, they had rounded themselves up and were already ensconced in their "bedroom".
Before I bought the hens on the weekend, I had pretty much thought that Tristan was full-grown. That was until we saw the giant sized roosters at the chicken place, which did make me gulp. Those buggers were so big, their rrr-rrr-rrr-RRRRRrrrrrr crowing would wake up an entire suburb at a time and have me the hated sleep depriver of the street.
Hmmm. Need to get the crowing sorted.
Some things I have discovered about roosters:
- They roost. Now, this is patently obvious. But the name rooster is so familiar that years of use have rendered its meaning impotent. And so I was interested to see Tristan make his home in a tree before we bought his chook house. Chickens like to sleep off the ground. It helps them remain a little less uneaten from dead-of-night foxes.
- They like a chat. If you say brrrr, they say brrrr back. It's all quite sweet, really.
- They crow. Like, really early. At 4.52.
- There are several ways you can get them to stop crowing. One is to situate a perch in the chook house that is close enough to the ceiling so that they don't have the requisite room to stretch out their neck, a necessity when crowing. So far, this has not worked. He has, however, put off his crowing a little. This is one area where daylight savings is a welcome beast. He doesn't start crowing now till, like, 5.30.
- Another way to stop them crowing is to darken the situation. Put a tarp or something over the hutch. In Tristan's case, there is a little window into the roosting part of his coop. I plan on Blu-Taking something over it today to see if it will keep him quiet a little longer.
- Roosters crow for different reasons. Some to do with impressing chickens, some to do with territory, some to do with the sight of food. Tristan has some morning crowing going in response to a rooster a few streets over. They like a game of crow tennis. Luckily this isn't until sometime after 8 :)
- Eating chicken when you have chickens raises some ethical questions. I have always felt queasy about eating meat. Been a vegetarian for stretches. Only eat meat a few times a week. Can lose my appetite when I consider it is a dead animal on my plate. Eating meat is just plain bizarre. It's just that we are so used to it that we don't really blink twice about it. I read a Margaret Atwood story earlier in the year that was set in the future and in which people ate meat grown on racks in laboratories. I had never considered that thought before then. That made me a little queasy too when I first read about it. Over the months, the thought has grown on me more and more. Turns out it's not fiction, but fact. Once lab-grown meat hits the stores, I will be the first guinea pig through the door to try. So I can have my chooks and eat them too.
“All particles in the history of the cosmos have interacted with other particles in the manner revealed by the Aspect experiments … Also consider … that quantum entanglement grows exponentially with the number of particles involved in the original quantum state and that there is no theoretical limit on the number of these entangled particles. If this is the case, the universe on a very basic level could be a vast web of particles, which remain in contact with one another over any distance in ‘no time’ in the absence of the transfer of energy or information. This suggests, however strange or bizarre it might seem, that all of physical reality is a single quantum system that responds together to further interactions” ~ Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe
(Might have to read me that book, in the long slow summery stretch of non-uni reading time that hangs out before me and makes me feel rich :P Also looking forward to reading The Night Circus. But I digress.)
"Nadeau and Kafatos argue that we live in a non-local universe which is the obvious conclusion from the quantum entanglement experiments. The fact is quanta can exchange information over any distance in the universe instantaneously. These entanglement experiments prove that Eintstein was incorrect in stating that nothing travels faster than light (186,000 miles per second). Quantum information “travels” at infinite speed “arriving” at its destination without any time elapsing. Here we see how the Newtonian/Einsteinian language of a local universe fails to describe our actual reality. It’s not that information is “traveling” at infinite “speed” to “arrive” at another location, but rather that the universe with all its so-called parts and particles is actually One non-local quantum system. Information from one particle to another doesn’t need to “travel” there because the space between them is illusory, as is the language of calling them “separate” particles. As we have seen, before observation quanta are not particles with definite attributes and location; they are merely waves in the One universal quantum ocean until our conscious observation individualizes the wave into droplets of experience" (Eric at The Atlantean Conspiracy)
The mystics and those with their ears and feet to the ground have been predicting for decades and centuries that the scientists will reach the top of the mountain and find them already there.
We are now living in a world where that is happening before our eyes.
You know when you're in love, and you're parted from your beloved, and you miss them, and you've got this big swell of lurve going on in your chest, and you feel that your connection is so strong that surely they will feel it when you send it to them telepathically across the miles?
Well, they do.
Except it's not only the province of those in love (although perhaps they are closest to it, in a way, closest to not forgetting it and entering into it, being all obsessed and floaty as they are).
It's not only the province of those in love. It's the province of all of us.
It's a beautiful thang. Breathe.
It takes time and guts to turn and see ~ really see ~ that a very small proportion of people are running this ship for their
own benefit.
Or else it takes a second.
Once that sinks in, something golden wells up. It can take a while to well, 'cause it can feel a little agoraphobic after the blinkers. It threatens to bubble right out the middle of your chest when you see and hear and read and get to experience a little bit of the creativity and vision of those who have jumped ship.
You realise that the small group of ship-steerers have it in their own best interest to keep you believing that everywhere you turn there is lack. And that you have believed them, though you had hoped that the world was big enough to sustain you all. And then you realise that while they tell you out of one side of their mouths that there is lack, there is lack, there is lack, through the other side they suck in through a straw your riches and spew out degradation into the earth in return.
You realise that these fuckers are insane.
And then you realise, with a flip into the middle of the golden, that what flutters in you as hope and feels like naivety is not pie-in-the-sky daydreaming. It is the hope of creative possibility. Of sanity. Of caretaking. Of a new (old) narrative. It is yours.
And then you start to see how it is possible to be doing pretty much near *everything* differently. And that it is our dream, the earthdwellers, to birth into reality.
Or else it takes a second.
Once that sinks in, something golden wells up. It can take a while to well, 'cause it can feel a little agoraphobic after the blinkers. It threatens to bubble right out the middle of your chest when you see and hear and read and get to experience a little bit of the creativity and vision of those who have jumped ship.
You realise that the small group of ship-steerers have it in their own best interest to keep you believing that everywhere you turn there is lack. And that you have believed them, though you had hoped that the world was big enough to sustain you all. And then you realise that while they tell you out of one side of their mouths that there is lack, there is lack, there is lack, through the other side they suck in through a straw your riches and spew out degradation into the earth in return.
You realise that these fuckers are insane.
And then you realise, with a flip into the middle of the golden, that what flutters in you as hope and feels like naivety is not pie-in-the-sky daydreaming. It is the hope of creative possibility. Of sanity. Of caretaking. Of a new (old) narrative. It is yours.
And then you start to see how it is possible to be doing pretty much near *everything* differently. And that it is our dream, the earthdwellers, to birth into reality.
 |
| Feather by St Stev |
I dunno. Maybe this blog is due to be put on its shelf. It is feeling tired and stale around here. I have writer's block when it comes to finding things to blog about. When I read back on posts of previous years, there is some semblance of life in what I am blogging about. These days, I can't seem to find a thing to blog about that is not complaining or griping. And who wants to read about that, right?
Maybe I'm just having end of university year writing doldrums. I haven't been doing much non-academic writing this semester. Two non-writing-related subjects plus all these health issues have added up for me to a real struggle to keep up, and a real lack of real writing time.
Maybe I'm just feeling the lack of that, and everything will come rolling back in again once uni ends and I have more time to be creative again. But right now, I feel like creatively all dried up and crusty, and that is reflected in my blog, and though it is a therapeutic feeling writing on here and getting out my feelings, it's a bit difficult when suddenly that is all you seem to be doing on your blog.
I miss the cameraderie of days-gone-by blogging. I miss God, whatever or whoever they may be. I feel a bit sad about that.
Do any of you practice meditation on a regular basis? I used to, and used to not be able to imagine ever not doing it. But ever since my adrenal fatigue hit last year, it's like I've been thrown into limbic land and I can't seem to readily and easily find my way back into a regular meditation. Which is crazy, right, because it makes all the difference, and I miss it. But the days keep going by, and I keep realising that again I haven't done any meditation, haven't done any yoga, and I can't work out why!!!!
Thoughts?
Maybe I'm just having end of university year writing doldrums. I haven't been doing much non-academic writing this semester. Two non-writing-related subjects plus all these health issues have added up for me to a real struggle to keep up, and a real lack of real writing time.
Maybe I'm just feeling the lack of that, and everything will come rolling back in again once uni ends and I have more time to be creative again. But right now, I feel like creatively all dried up and crusty, and that is reflected in my blog, and though it is a therapeutic feeling writing on here and getting out my feelings, it's a bit difficult when suddenly that is all you seem to be doing on your blog.
I miss the cameraderie of days-gone-by blogging. I miss God, whatever or whoever they may be. I feel a bit sad about that.
Do any of you practice meditation on a regular basis? I used to, and used to not be able to imagine ever not doing it. But ever since my adrenal fatigue hit last year, it's like I've been thrown into limbic land and I can't seem to readily and easily find my way back into a regular meditation. Which is crazy, right, because it makes all the difference, and I miss it. But the days keep going by, and I keep realising that again I haven't done any meditation, haven't done any yoga, and I can't work out why!!!!
Thoughts?
When it comes to the whole job hunting scenario, I’ve gone round and round the same track in my head for so many years that I think there must be a deep round rut that sits right in the centre of my brain.
It all happens when I get frustrated at the prospect of one more day stuck in front of a bloody computer. And I think that the answer is to go and find something else to do that is not being stuck here. I hate being on the computer so much. I really hate it.
And so then I log onto one of the online job search sites, in the hopes of finding something I can do that is not my current job, only to leave the site with nothing. I begin those searches with a wobbly sort of hope that maybe this time there will be something for me that I won’t hate. That doesn't make my toes curl with claustrophobia. Something that I can do that will leave me with some mental space to write. And then pretty much every time I find myself locked into the corner with one of the only things that I feel that maybe I could do, and I ask myself the question - could I be a personal care worker? And then every time I come up against my own limitations; much as I would like to be able to (because somebody needs to do it) I just can’t, for the life of me, think I could wash the body of a person I don’t know.
I reckon I could pretty much do everything else. I like the idea of being a home care worker, helping someone stay independent in their home is appealing to me. I don’t think I’d mind all that much cleaning for them, shopping for them, having a natter. Old people are one of the most overlooked repositories of goodness, in our society of blindness. But I just couldn’t wipe their bum. I just couldn’t. There are some jobs which don’t require people to do personal care. But even for those, I would need to do a first aid course and a certificate III even before I could start.
You know what? I'm pretty smart when it comes down to it. I know there are job niches that I would fit into that would be a wonderful fit, where I could offer something to the world, and it would recompense me in the payment of money, as is the strange way that we work in this culture. But I am scared. Because I'm getting older, and my memory is so bad, and I am terrified that nobody can see my potential except me, and that I'm unemployable except when it comes to sitting and typing words. And the most frustrating thing about that is that the thing that I most want to do is typing words. It's just that they're a completely different sort of a typing, and a completely different sort of words. And I am very grateful that someone has recently seen fit to actually publish some of my words and actually pay me for it. You would think I'd be more confident, wouldn't you, now I've broken in with the first published piece? I wish I was. I guess it was so hard and took so long to be able to publish that one, the thought of coming up with more is daunting. Let alone enough to be able to do it in a way that would pay the bills. For whatever reason, it is too hard. Whether that is coming from outside - the level of competition from other people who also want to write for a living - or from the inside, due to my own lack of confidence, I'm not sure. Maybe a combo of the two.
I am so abjectly unconfident about being able to find a niche out there for me. And so then after finishing up with the job site I continue travelling round the mindrut, like an ancient donkey with a millstone, and then I start in on the concept that what I really need to do is start to work for myself. That I need to generate the job I want, instead of waiting for someone to dish up to me what is never, ever going to be dished up - and if it was, I most certainly would not have the qualifications to be able to do it.
But then I don't know where to start. And my confidence is so low. And then it's all so hard that I give up in frustration.
How many more people are there out there like me? We have a massive amount to give, and yet we're not quite there in some way. We don't fit in, or we have issues that we feel precludes us from the kind of employee people are looking for - bright and sociable and happy to jump to someone else's command. And experienced. Always experienced.
It makes me wonder - how many inexperienced people are there out there who would be experienced if somebody gave them a chance? Have employers forgotten the words "on-the-job training"? Are they all really so scraping the bottom of the barrel that they can't fathom the concept of training someone? Do they really believe that people are of a better calibre when they gain their experience from a Certificate III in Something Really Fucking Basic You Could Learn in Two Days On The Job?
Employers are in love with the concept of people going out and investing in a plethora of pointless certificate IIs and IIIs because it gives an illusion that people are qualified, and that they don't have to be the ones to do the training. And it gives the RTOs that have sprung up all over the joint something to teach and charge ridiculously overpriced fees for. Which is good, because now Mr Bailleau is sucking the guts out of the TAFE sector, it's not like they're gonna be able to do it.
I don't understand why it is like this for me. But then again, I do. My health issues have brought me here. My lack of confidence has brought me here, and alongside that, an overwhelming, completely overwhelming desire to be doing work that is meaningful to me. And that's what keeps me stuck here, hating the stuff that I have to type while feeling resentful that I don't have the time and energy for the stuff I want to because ... well, because instead of doing the work I have to do, I'm on here typing whingeing stuff that I want to, procrastinating :)
I don't know if this sounds like a pity party or not. Perhaps it is. God knows this blog hasn't been a particularly uplifting place to read lately. But I'm struggling. And maybe I am feeling sorry for myself, but it's borne out of frustration and a bit of sick-heartedness from hope deferred. Still, there is hope there. The dip always rises. I'm a big one for making space to put things into. I feel like I'm doing that with the whole writing gig. It's just that it's taking some courage that I don't always have.
And yeah, I know, I know, in terms of the work situation it's always been like this. Suck it up, right? Every era has its mundane, its tedious, its terminally boring. And yet if you go even broader than that, and swim out into the middle of the solar system and look back at the earth floating there suspended in the middle of nothing, and when you think that humans are the only ones to have to pay money to be able to live on it, you start wondering if perhaps we are patently insane. And then you have more than a suspicion that the clowns running this gig, who have a predilection for it being like this because it serves them, are insane. And we are insane that we keep going along with it.
Because there are different and better ways to do this work thing, but it seems to me to involve breaking off shackles and outdated conceptions about work, what it means, and the fact that we should be shackled at all.
When the Industrial Revolution began, factory owners had trouble getting the idea into their workers heads, newly off the farms, that it was a good thing for them to come in at the same time, do the same repetitive things over and over again, and leave at the same time, and come back in and do it again tomorrow.
In a way, those workers at that time were freer than us by dint of the time they found themselves born into to be able to feel what slavery they were entering into. Now, we are used to being slaves. We just don't see it as slavery because we're not sweating tied to manacles and we're not wearing striped uniforms. But as far as I can see, this is exactly what the tumult in the world has been about in recent years. It's about a desire for things we can hardly even name, a desire to do it differently, a need for meaning. A space where we matter, however we might find ourselves, and a space where we can meaningfully employ ourselves in doing the things that we are good at, and in being able to readily learn and have taught to us new things we might be good at, at any stage in life.
It all happens when I get frustrated at the prospect of one more day stuck in front of a bloody computer. And I think that the answer is to go and find something else to do that is not being stuck here. I hate being on the computer so much. I really hate it.
And so then I log onto one of the online job search sites, in the hopes of finding something I can do that is not my current job, only to leave the site with nothing. I begin those searches with a wobbly sort of hope that maybe this time there will be something for me that I won’t hate. That doesn't make my toes curl with claustrophobia. Something that I can do that will leave me with some mental space to write. And then pretty much every time I find myself locked into the corner with one of the only things that I feel that maybe I could do, and I ask myself the question - could I be a personal care worker? And then every time I come up against my own limitations; much as I would like to be able to (because somebody needs to do it) I just can’t, for the life of me, think I could wash the body of a person I don’t know.
I reckon I could pretty much do everything else. I like the idea of being a home care worker, helping someone stay independent in their home is appealing to me. I don’t think I’d mind all that much cleaning for them, shopping for them, having a natter. Old people are one of the most overlooked repositories of goodness, in our society of blindness. But I just couldn’t wipe their bum. I just couldn’t. There are some jobs which don’t require people to do personal care. But even for those, I would need to do a first aid course and a certificate III even before I could start.
You know what? I'm pretty smart when it comes down to it. I know there are job niches that I would fit into that would be a wonderful fit, where I could offer something to the world, and it would recompense me in the payment of money, as is the strange way that we work in this culture. But I am scared. Because I'm getting older, and my memory is so bad, and I am terrified that nobody can see my potential except me, and that I'm unemployable except when it comes to sitting and typing words. And the most frustrating thing about that is that the thing that I most want to do is typing words. It's just that they're a completely different sort of a typing, and a completely different sort of words. And I am very grateful that someone has recently seen fit to actually publish some of my words and actually pay me for it. You would think I'd be more confident, wouldn't you, now I've broken in with the first published piece? I wish I was. I guess it was so hard and took so long to be able to publish that one, the thought of coming up with more is daunting. Let alone enough to be able to do it in a way that would pay the bills. For whatever reason, it is too hard. Whether that is coming from outside - the level of competition from other people who also want to write for a living - or from the inside, due to my own lack of confidence, I'm not sure. Maybe a combo of the two.
I am so abjectly unconfident about being able to find a niche out there for me. And so then after finishing up with the job site I continue travelling round the mindrut, like an ancient donkey with a millstone, and then I start in on the concept that what I really need to do is start to work for myself. That I need to generate the job I want, instead of waiting for someone to dish up to me what is never, ever going to be dished up - and if it was, I most certainly would not have the qualifications to be able to do it.
But then I don't know where to start. And my confidence is so low. And then it's all so hard that I give up in frustration.
How many more people are there out there like me? We have a massive amount to give, and yet we're not quite there in some way. We don't fit in, or we have issues that we feel precludes us from the kind of employee people are looking for - bright and sociable and happy to jump to someone else's command. And experienced. Always experienced.
It makes me wonder - how many inexperienced people are there out there who would be experienced if somebody gave them a chance? Have employers forgotten the words "on-the-job training"? Are they all really so scraping the bottom of the barrel that they can't fathom the concept of training someone? Do they really believe that people are of a better calibre when they gain their experience from a Certificate III in Something Really Fucking Basic You Could Learn in Two Days On The Job?
Employers are in love with the concept of people going out and investing in a plethora of pointless certificate IIs and IIIs because it gives an illusion that people are qualified, and that they don't have to be the ones to do the training. And it gives the RTOs that have sprung up all over the joint something to teach and charge ridiculously overpriced fees for. Which is good, because now Mr Bailleau is sucking the guts out of the TAFE sector, it's not like they're gonna be able to do it.
I don't understand why it is like this for me. But then again, I do. My health issues have brought me here. My lack of confidence has brought me here, and alongside that, an overwhelming, completely overwhelming desire to be doing work that is meaningful to me. And that's what keeps me stuck here, hating the stuff that I have to type while feeling resentful that I don't have the time and energy for the stuff I want to because ... well, because instead of doing the work I have to do, I'm on here typing whingeing stuff that I want to, procrastinating :)
I don't know if this sounds like a pity party or not. Perhaps it is. God knows this blog hasn't been a particularly uplifting place to read lately. But I'm struggling. And maybe I am feeling sorry for myself, but it's borne out of frustration and a bit of sick-heartedness from hope deferred. Still, there is hope there. The dip always rises. I'm a big one for making space to put things into. I feel like I'm doing that with the whole writing gig. It's just that it's taking some courage that I don't always have.
And yeah, I know, I know, in terms of the work situation it's always been like this. Suck it up, right? Every era has its mundane, its tedious, its terminally boring. And yet if you go even broader than that, and swim out into the middle of the solar system and look back at the earth floating there suspended in the middle of nothing, and when you think that humans are the only ones to have to pay money to be able to live on it, you start wondering if perhaps we are patently insane. And then you have more than a suspicion that the clowns running this gig, who have a predilection for it being like this because it serves them, are insane. And we are insane that we keep going along with it.
Because there are different and better ways to do this work thing, but it seems to me to involve breaking off shackles and outdated conceptions about work, what it means, and the fact that we should be shackled at all.
When the Industrial Revolution began, factory owners had trouble getting the idea into their workers heads, newly off the farms, that it was a good thing for them to come in at the same time, do the same repetitive things over and over again, and leave at the same time, and come back in and do it again tomorrow.
In a way, those workers at that time were freer than us by dint of the time they found themselves born into to be able to feel what slavery they were entering into. Now, we are used to being slaves. We just don't see it as slavery because we're not sweating tied to manacles and we're not wearing striped uniforms. But as far as I can see, this is exactly what the tumult in the world has been about in recent years. It's about a desire for things we can hardly even name, a desire to do it differently, a need for meaning. A space where we matter, however we might find ourselves, and a space where we can meaningfully employ ourselves in doing the things that we are good at, and in being able to readily learn and have taught to us new things we might be good at, at any stage in life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)