far from the empowered voice that i usually have, today i feel anxious and impatient.
sometimes i feel an unbearable need to get through the tough things as soon as i can so that i can know what i already know - that i will be just fine. i sit here in moab feeling pretty low - in debt from moving and starting a new job, lots of bills, not knowing people, jason gone a lot, feeling like i am having to start all over, all over, again again.
it's not really that bad - i look at the tattoo on my wrist that reminds me that right now is all right. i know that in the end it will be. i'll meet people. my finances will smooth out once i start getting regular pay checks. jason is not working at ptr forever. it's the waiting for all of it to come that just frustrates me.
it's like wanting to be at the finish line in the middle of a race - i can't be there and here at the same time.
though i can be all enlightened and thoughtful and aware about it, it still hurts. i still feel kind of sick to my stomach and worry that i might be wrong - that i will have to sell my car to pay for my house and that i will spend most of my days here sitting at home with my dog and a book. i let the critic come in and tell me that i can't possibly be ok. i let it in and i feel ill - i break out, my stomach churns, i have diarrhea, my body feels like lead when i try to do things.
it's awful.
i have no answers. i try to envision things being ok - getting lost in my dreams of being a therapist here and helping people, of owning land and no longer paying rent, of paying off my car so i can buy my new racing bike. i aim for these things and i know i can get there. at least i try to know...
21.3.10
unemployment is the new black
loved the article i read in time magazine this week - 'the dropout economy' by reinan salam. i read it and felt even farther tapped in to what has been going on for me since my arrival back in the states. something that has been brewing in my mind for quite a long time, but is now starting to surface as more real than imagined.
salam talked about how more and more young people in the us are opting out of education, jobs, and the taxable economy. his vision of the future is one of intentional communities, barter systems, virtual classrooms, and a throwback to traditional agriculture. these subcultures are simultaneously local and global, traditional and modern.
they are the very things that i am seeing throughout my life and the lives of my friends. people are heading to the wilds to homestead, staying home to create photography or life coaching businesses, and keeping their kids home to attend online high schools. at wintercount there seemed to be more and more apprenticeships offered for people to learn self-sufficiency. friends' parents are become steadfast to the slow foods movement, shopping mostly at farmers' markets.
if you know me well you know that i am constantly balancing between this world and the mainstream. i struggle with issues of ego that push me to value my experiences and situation on a more conventional scale. at the same time i long to live outside of the chorus that presses me to seek the higher paying job or prestigious degree. it's why i came to the utah desert - to opt out of the 'what's next' phenomenon that i followed blindly through two college degrees and into a closet full of pants suits i tried not to wear. i say this not to dis this way of life, but simply to demonstrate that though for several years i wondered if it was for me, i stayed in it because i felt i had to.
it was a huge deal for me to work in the desert of utah with troubled teens. i took a big pay cut and derailed my career plans. i took phone calls and emails for the first six months or so from people in the student affairs field who thought that tossing job opportunities my way might coax me out of my quixotic journey. i lived in my car and in the basement at aspen.
i loved it.
four years later i sit where the end of my fourth year intersects with my thirtieth birthday. i have spent the past 5 months traveling, reflecting, playing, learning, and enjoying being essentially unemployed. it was a very scary thing for me to decide to take off this past winter. i'd really not been without work since i started taking part-time jobs in middle school. i left aspen knowing i was giving up the job and situation i had built over three years. it was the ultimate in letting go.
getting back into things i realize that i am forever changed by that decision. it slid me farther down the slope i'd been on for years - since my third year at wsu when i switched from pantsuits to cords and sweaters despite the professional warnings of colleagues. when i did that i thought i was a rebel. i was in a way. it was a step away from established ways of being. as i read about postmodern thought and toyed with the romantic idea of subverting existing paradigms i did not realize that i had already started to do so in my own goody-two-shoes way.
so what now? well...i think on the salam article with excitement as it unveils ways of being that i dream about. i want to homestead. i want to work for myself. i want to hunt and grow my own food. i want to live off the grid. i find myself thinking about how i can work less and less in a conventional job and more and more in my own sphere. i want to help people. i want to be involved in a community that is local and global, traditional and technological. i don't know how this is going to pan out, but i also don't need to know. instead i keep dreaming and thinking and subverting and waiting. though i have done some work i am still what the census bureau deems unemployed. oddly enough in the midst of all this opting out i made for damn sure i was counted.
i guess i am still teetering in my own way.
salam talked about how more and more young people in the us are opting out of education, jobs, and the taxable economy. his vision of the future is one of intentional communities, barter systems, virtual classrooms, and a throwback to traditional agriculture. these subcultures are simultaneously local and global, traditional and modern.
they are the very things that i am seeing throughout my life and the lives of my friends. people are heading to the wilds to homestead, staying home to create photography or life coaching businesses, and keeping their kids home to attend online high schools. at wintercount there seemed to be more and more apprenticeships offered for people to learn self-sufficiency. friends' parents are become steadfast to the slow foods movement, shopping mostly at farmers' markets.
if you know me well you know that i am constantly balancing between this world and the mainstream. i struggle with issues of ego that push me to value my experiences and situation on a more conventional scale. at the same time i long to live outside of the chorus that presses me to seek the higher paying job or prestigious degree. it's why i came to the utah desert - to opt out of the 'what's next' phenomenon that i followed blindly through two college degrees and into a closet full of pants suits i tried not to wear. i say this not to dis this way of life, but simply to demonstrate that though for several years i wondered if it was for me, i stayed in it because i felt i had to.
it was a huge deal for me to work in the desert of utah with troubled teens. i took a big pay cut and derailed my career plans. i took phone calls and emails for the first six months or so from people in the student affairs field who thought that tossing job opportunities my way might coax me out of my quixotic journey. i lived in my car and in the basement at aspen.
i loved it.
four years later i sit where the end of my fourth year intersects with my thirtieth birthday. i have spent the past 5 months traveling, reflecting, playing, learning, and enjoying being essentially unemployed. it was a very scary thing for me to decide to take off this past winter. i'd really not been without work since i started taking part-time jobs in middle school. i left aspen knowing i was giving up the job and situation i had built over three years. it was the ultimate in letting go.
getting back into things i realize that i am forever changed by that decision. it slid me farther down the slope i'd been on for years - since my third year at wsu when i switched from pantsuits to cords and sweaters despite the professional warnings of colleagues. when i did that i thought i was a rebel. i was in a way. it was a step away from established ways of being. as i read about postmodern thought and toyed with the romantic idea of subverting existing paradigms i did not realize that i had already started to do so in my own goody-two-shoes way.
so what now? well...i think on the salam article with excitement as it unveils ways of being that i dream about. i want to homestead. i want to work for myself. i want to hunt and grow my own food. i want to live off the grid. i find myself thinking about how i can work less and less in a conventional job and more and more in my own sphere. i want to help people. i want to be involved in a community that is local and global, traditional and technological. i don't know how this is going to pan out, but i also don't need to know. instead i keep dreaming and thinking and subverting and waiting. though i have done some work i am still what the census bureau deems unemployed. oddly enough in the midst of all this opting out i made for damn sure i was counted.
i guess i am still teetering in my own way.
3.3.10
30 rocks
been doing some thinking...of course i have - i was in the field.
when you are in the field things are slow. i appreciated that considering that upon my arrival back in the states things are feeling more like warp speed. the only slow time i got before returning to the utah desert was the three days i spent in bed with bronchitis...and those days went by fast from my perspective, being asleep and all. so it was nice to hop into a truck and drive out to where life moves in the circle of the sun, and everything takes time.
in the midst of making a set of spindles to match my set of defiant girls i let my mind wander, as it has a tendency to do. i came upon a memory from the day before in which one of my students asked me my age. usually when a new staff goes into the field an "intro group" is held in which we all rattle off a series of predetermined bits of personal information - one of these being your age. i generally go out of my way to avoid doing these groups. i prefer to get information from my students by chatting them up rather than watching them zone out to the point of drooling while they hear their group-mates intone the same schtick that they did last week. as a result i had not shared my age with my students.
it is interesting to note that teenagers have no concept of age or time. most see the world as a series of things that are either "cool" (read - around my age) or "old" (read - around my parents' age). my boyfriend has a great tale to illustrate this. in a conversation about bob dylan, the beatles, and the doors, one kid stated to him "wow - music was so good when you were kids." he's 31, and that happened in 2009.
i used to amuse myself by answering the question "how old are you?" with a question of my own, "how old do you think i am?" eventually i got tired of kids telling me i looked about forty...not because i harbor some vanity about my looks, but simply because this kind of assertion is so pathetically unobservant that it pains me. i moved on to simply stating my age as it is and leaving it at that.
so i surprised myself when i answered "i will be 30 in may," instead of claiming my current age of 29.
i wondered why i did this. in the end i came up with a couple of reasons. first, being born in 1980, i generally align my age with the last digit of the year. once the year turns over i start thinking like i have already aged accordingly. i also will find that because at the new year i am more than halfway to my next age that i start thinking of myself as older. perhaps i did it out of wishful thinking while growing up and just never got out of the habit. i also could have done it because there is more shock value in being 30, and it got me the answer "really? you don't look 30," (be still my vain vain heart). i also considered that i abhor the cliche of the woman who always says she is 29. ever since i hit that overused age i have been avoiding telling people for fear they will not actually believe me.
but really i think that the reason i answered that i was going to be 30 was that i have been anticipating what that will mean for some time now. i know that there are lots of women out there who fear aging and are unhappy about a 3 at the start of their age instead of a 2, but i do not fall into that category. instead i have been looking forward to leaving the world of twenty-somethings and being, what seems to me, more substantial.
not that i think that simply changing a number associated with my time on earth makes me wiser or better or stronger. indeed there is little change in going to sleep one number and waking up another. however, the prospect of turning 30 has led me to reflect on my life and who i am growing to be. it seems an accomplishment to make it this far and to look back down the path behind me. i can see all the experiences and epiphanies - the things that make me, me. it feels good to look at all that and feel happy with where i am in life. though i know that i can do that at any moment, i think that completing a three-decades long trip around the sun lends itself to introspection.
of course, the saturn return helps...
though i still have a couple of months until i am thirty in any place more than my mind, i am glad to have this period of thought and self-searching. i feel like i am seeking to embrace a new era in my life. i wonder what will come of it.
when you are in the field things are slow. i appreciated that considering that upon my arrival back in the states things are feeling more like warp speed. the only slow time i got before returning to the utah desert was the three days i spent in bed with bronchitis...and those days went by fast from my perspective, being asleep and all. so it was nice to hop into a truck and drive out to where life moves in the circle of the sun, and everything takes time.
in the midst of making a set of spindles to match my set of defiant girls i let my mind wander, as it has a tendency to do. i came upon a memory from the day before in which one of my students asked me my age. usually when a new staff goes into the field an "intro group" is held in which we all rattle off a series of predetermined bits of personal information - one of these being your age. i generally go out of my way to avoid doing these groups. i prefer to get information from my students by chatting them up rather than watching them zone out to the point of drooling while they hear their group-mates intone the same schtick that they did last week. as a result i had not shared my age with my students.
it is interesting to note that teenagers have no concept of age or time. most see the world as a series of things that are either "cool" (read - around my age) or "old" (read - around my parents' age). my boyfriend has a great tale to illustrate this. in a conversation about bob dylan, the beatles, and the doors, one kid stated to him "wow - music was so good when you were kids." he's 31, and that happened in 2009.
i used to amuse myself by answering the question "how old are you?" with a question of my own, "how old do you think i am?" eventually i got tired of kids telling me i looked about forty...not because i harbor some vanity about my looks, but simply because this kind of assertion is so pathetically unobservant that it pains me. i moved on to simply stating my age as it is and leaving it at that.
so i surprised myself when i answered "i will be 30 in may," instead of claiming my current age of 29.
i wondered why i did this. in the end i came up with a couple of reasons. first, being born in 1980, i generally align my age with the last digit of the year. once the year turns over i start thinking like i have already aged accordingly. i also will find that because at the new year i am more than halfway to my next age that i start thinking of myself as older. perhaps i did it out of wishful thinking while growing up and just never got out of the habit. i also could have done it because there is more shock value in being 30, and it got me the answer "really? you don't look 30," (be still my vain vain heart). i also considered that i abhor the cliche of the woman who always says she is 29. ever since i hit that overused age i have been avoiding telling people for fear they will not actually believe me.
but really i think that the reason i answered that i was going to be 30 was that i have been anticipating what that will mean for some time now. i know that there are lots of women out there who fear aging and are unhappy about a 3 at the start of their age instead of a 2, but i do not fall into that category. instead i have been looking forward to leaving the world of twenty-somethings and being, what seems to me, more substantial.
not that i think that simply changing a number associated with my time on earth makes me wiser or better or stronger. indeed there is little change in going to sleep one number and waking up another. however, the prospect of turning 30 has led me to reflect on my life and who i am growing to be. it seems an accomplishment to make it this far and to look back down the path behind me. i can see all the experiences and epiphanies - the things that make me, me. it feels good to look at all that and feel happy with where i am in life. though i know that i can do that at any moment, i think that completing a three-decades long trip around the sun lends itself to introspection.
of course, the saturn return helps...
though i still have a couple of months until i am thirty in any place more than my mind, i am glad to have this period of thought and self-searching. i feel like i am seeking to embrace a new era in my life. i wonder what will come of it.
26.2.10
meditating on the middle
had an interesting revelation last night while singing at kiertan here in county. i have been thinking a lot lately about going for my phd and whether or not that is a good idea - if i really want it or not. my revelation came to me in the form of a medicine wheel. i thought about how the aspects of the self - mind, body, spirit, heart - are all present in all people, but that quite often we get 'tagged' with one or two of them as the aspects in which we excel. for example, i have been given such great feedback on the mind - school, problem-solving, creativity - people point these out to me regularly. second to that is body - sports, fitness, physical accomplishments. when you get lots of support in specific aspects of your life you tend to lean on those for self-worth and continued praise. what can end up happening is that you miss out on developing the other aspects.
so what does life do? eventually as you get older things start to even out. you get some feedback that demonstrates you need to improve on one of your weaker aspects...or perhaps you realize that you are missing something. for some people a seminal event occurs that creates a paradigm shift - an athlete becomes paralyzed or one has a near-death experience. when something like this happens a person is pressed to reshape their life and lean on new aspects that before was underutilized.
the vision i had of this process was one of a distorted circle. the circle is divided like a medicine wheel into four parts. the aspects of self represent the four directions. each person is born a perfect circle though nature, nurture, environment, and inner-self eventually lead for some aspects to contract while others expand. my circle would have an oddly-shaped protrusion in the mind aspect. the body might also be stretched. the heart and spirit would either be unchanged or even caved in. it's been easy to keep it that way, but slowly things press either in or out, trying to make me a circle again.
there are common phrases and ideas that touch on this topic. the first thing that comes to mind is the 'diamond in the rough.' a diamond needs to be polished and cut to be considered complete and valuable. diamonds with oddities and protrusions are not worth that much. another phrase is 'well-rounded.' clearly this one fits very nicely into my thoughts. it not only implies that a person is thought of well if he or she is multi-faceted but takes on the circle as a symbol for a complete being.
so coming back to the phd. i realize in many ways that i am not as interested in pursuing it as i thought i was. i feel drawn to improve some of the other parts of me. as we moved from song into our meditation i chose to meditate on the middle - pulling and pushing myself around so that i can 'circle up.'
so what does life do? eventually as you get older things start to even out. you get some feedback that demonstrates you need to improve on one of your weaker aspects...or perhaps you realize that you are missing something. for some people a seminal event occurs that creates a paradigm shift - an athlete becomes paralyzed or one has a near-death experience. when something like this happens a person is pressed to reshape their life and lean on new aspects that before was underutilized.
the vision i had of this process was one of a distorted circle. the circle is divided like a medicine wheel into four parts. the aspects of self represent the four directions. each person is born a perfect circle though nature, nurture, environment, and inner-self eventually lead for some aspects to contract while others expand. my circle would have an oddly-shaped protrusion in the mind aspect. the body might also be stretched. the heart and spirit would either be unchanged or even caved in. it's been easy to keep it that way, but slowly things press either in or out, trying to make me a circle again.
there are common phrases and ideas that touch on this topic. the first thing that comes to mind is the 'diamond in the rough.' a diamond needs to be polished and cut to be considered complete and valuable. diamonds with oddities and protrusions are not worth that much. another phrase is 'well-rounded.' clearly this one fits very nicely into my thoughts. it not only implies that a person is thought of well if he or she is multi-faceted but takes on the circle as a symbol for a complete being.
so coming back to the phd. i realize in many ways that i am not as interested in pursuing it as i thought i was. i feel drawn to improve some of the other parts of me. as we moved from song into our meditation i chose to meditate on the middle - pulling and pushing myself around so that i can 'circle up.'
5.9.09
leaving las vegas...ok, not vegas, loa
less than two months from now i will be on my way to a new adventure. leaving my job, the place i've called home for the past 3.5 years, and heading out to do whatever i want for a while in the US and NZ.
exciting.
scary.
god, i have not had this much leisure time in one chunk since i was 11!
this is just when i need to be doing this - oddly not when i have an alternative job offer (have turned down several since i came here) or when i am assured of some great spot in a phd program with a GA that sets me up for the time i am in school. no. it's when i have NOT A CLUE what i am going to do...no idea where i am going to go...and no real way to plan anything because i am going to be in NZ for the 3 months before i have to 'get a life' somewhere.
well...i wanted to come here and learn not to plan too much. wanted to stop worrying about 'what's next' and just be in the now. well it's now and there ain't much more to think about!!!
enjoying the idea and reveling in the void.
later folks...
l.b.
exciting.
scary.
god, i have not had this much leisure time in one chunk since i was 11!
this is just when i need to be doing this - oddly not when i have an alternative job offer (have turned down several since i came here) or when i am assured of some great spot in a phd program with a GA that sets me up for the time i am in school. no. it's when i have NOT A CLUE what i am going to do...no idea where i am going to go...and no real way to plan anything because i am going to be in NZ for the 3 months before i have to 'get a life' somewhere.
well...i wanted to come here and learn not to plan too much. wanted to stop worrying about 'what's next' and just be in the now. well it's now and there ain't much more to think about!!!
enjoying the idea and reveling in the void.
later folks...
l.b.
21.6.09
exterminator in chief
so am thinking about this whole obama killing the fly on tv and have come to one conclusion.
we are obsessed with famous people. so much so that we are unable to realize that killing a fly is not that noteworthy. i know - i do it all the time. this obsession leads us to think that people who are famous cannot do ordinary things. they don't kill pests or snore or watch tv or leave skid marks on their underwear. when famous people do these things what happens?
these things become famous.
and yes, i did watch the fly swatting action on youtube. it was funny. seeing famous people doing mundane things is funny. it's when they do the famous things that we all yawn and ignore them. no one really gets into a tizzy when a movie star makes a movie or a president signs a bill. these things are ho hum in their lives and therefore ours. we expect famous people to do those things and therefore it rarely makes front page news.
i suppose we all get noticed when we do the unexpected. i just think it's funny that we all do those things and expect that famous people do not.
he got that sucker.
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