community

I’m looking for clues about what I want to do next with all this life energy I got going on.

I’m deciding if I want to take a NIA class this summer. I looked up NIA articles online and found one that gave me a sudden tingle in my stomach and get tears in my eyes. That feeling is a clue.

It was an article about creating space in a NIA class:

…the students created the space every morning and afternoon by coming into a circle, and becoming still in body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

I’ve been thinking about how I want to bring movement to more of our everyday lives. Especially ritual. Maybe that is why I got a teary reaction? Maybe it’s the same teary reaction I get at the end of a yoga or NIA class when I finally pay attention to myself? Maybe I’m longing for that?

Or maybe it was this song I was listening to while I read it. (I dare you to listen to the whole thing.)

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Thoughts:

* I have a computer like Carrie Bradshaw now! I saw Sex and the City tonight and when I got home I came over to write about my day just like she does on the show and I realized that I have a little desk with a little laptop on it just like she does in the show! Yay! And I don’t know what all I am, but one thing I definately am is a writer. It’s one of the answers to the question about what passion is right under my nose.

* People are wonderful: I’ve been listening to NPR and listening to these little blurbs about people who are doing good in their little areas of the world and it’s making me feel less like I have to figure out some plan to save the whole world and more like I can just do the good I can and that we can all save the world together. Of course, people are bad too, today I listened to senators or representatives grilling a general about torturing people using water boarding. Water boarding! Our country! Where the hell am I living!? It is so sad. But they were calling his bullshit- democrats and republicans alike. Good job, guys. And a law student is translating for an American man being held at Guantanamo- held for 5 years with no charges. Our government- taking people away in the night and holding them without charges, and torturing them. Um… this started out positive… and I guess the positive thing is, the horror is horrible but what surprises me more is how powerful we all are collectively and that we can really shift the direction of our world. We can have the world we want. We really do have the power when we just step in and do the good we can.

* I was walking on the beach the other day and I had a lovely thought- I imagined us collectively reaching up, taking the military helicopter flying above me, and gently setting it on the ground.

I didn’t have a chance to talk to my mom, so things to tell my mom if she is reading this:

* You would be so proud of me, I was assertive at the dentist even though they were in a hurry and was able to get information from them to make some good decisions.

In other uplifting news:
* I flipped through a book that I bought awhile ago. The author asked, “What’s your next big thing?” and it took the pressure off of me taking my next “career” move so seriously and made it seem more like an adventure.

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Only 9:11 and I’m crying already. I had to close the door to my office. I’m not crying about work though, I’m crying about my roommate telling me that “we are opposite in so many ways” and the implied meaning that I am not her favorite person in the world, and the how that ties in to the pattern that seems to be happening lately of me getting rejected (ejected?) from my old life.

I went from being valued at work and getting good reviews (while my old boss was here) to being disapproved of, undervalued, and feeling bad enough about it to quit. At church, I went from feeling like a part of a loving community to leaving due to actions of our lead minister and staff. Many other young adults left as well, and I left, no one kicked me out, but I still feel rejected/ejected. Also, there has been some kind of shift in my social circle and I feel like I am on the edge in some ways instead of in the middle where I like to be.

Today on the bus I imagined how I would feel if everybody approved of me. It would be such a nice feeling- I could relax and just be myself. I really take how much/many people approve of me as a measure of how well I’m doing as a person sometimes. I thought about it as I was walking from the bus to work, and I couldn’t shake the idea that if more people approved of me, it would mean that I really am better, I really am more ok.

Then I thought of my aunt, who I am a lot alike, and how much I enjoy her, how fantastic I think she is. My other aunt, her sister, often disapproves of her. She thinks she is too messy, too soft, not together enough etc… And when my aunt is around her sister, she does suddenly seem kind of bumbling, somewhat simpering, and whiny. But when I’m with her, she is hilarious, exuberant, smart, interesting, funny, and gorgeous. She is messy, but she is glorious, who cares!

I love both my aunts, and from the outside it is easy to see that my aunt who disapproves is just that way and that her disapproval is all about her preferences and ways of looking at the world. She is cleaner, more direct, more of the things we think of as “together” in our society. So? That’s her deal. My roommate has a similar personality to that aunt and I don’t disapprove of her, but I think she disapproves of me. I’ve been trying to get her approval, and I’m going to try to stop trying. It’s easier to see, looking at the mirror of my aunts, how any disapproval she feels for me is her own deal. It doesn’t mean I’m bad, and if I got her approval, it wouldn’t mean I’d be any better.

I have been disapproving of me lately. Aye, maybe thar’s the rub. Goal for today: list a few things I would feel proud of myself for, and do them.

12/12/07 Update: I have been feeling guilty for writing that my aunt disaproves of my other aunt and that my roommate disaproves of me. Maybe they don’t! guilty, guilty, guilty…arggh… just remember, reality is multi-faceted and it changes, and… did I mention that I like my other aunt and my roommate, and it says more about my state of mind than any objective truth about them, but I think you got that.

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1. It needs to be able to attract people I care about, so it has to be easy and convenient. Because there are so many social networking sites out there, it needs to be able to publish to or from other formats so that people don’t feel like they have to choose one or the other. (Like Diigo can publish to other social bookmarking sites automatically.)
2. No ads. Can not take them.
3. A personal blog like page
4. Tags that automatically link to other people with similar interests.
5. Granular privacy permissions.
6. A front page with public calendar info on it, and all the publicly available voted on posts.
7. A calendar, again, with granular permissions.
8. The front page should be somewhat like a portal with parts of it customizable by people who log in, for example…
9. A page with all posts I have permission to view on it.
10. The ability to have your own domain name and still be a part of the network. (Maybe via ftping the info to another site, while still having the profile page, like on blogger.
11. The ability to vote on blog posts, and music, and comments.
12. Real names and pictures to increase integrity among posters.

This was a list I made in Nov 2006. I’m still searching for the perfect community site, with slightly different needs now. I’m looking into Diigo.

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An Atlanta Unitarian wrote about the UU sales pitch:

I was recently talking with another new Unitarian on how we “sell” our religion to others. My original sales pitch was: “You don’t have to believe in anything in particular to join our group.” Her sales pitch was: “We take the best of every religion, with out taking the bad stuff.”Well I don’t think it takes a genius to see which sales pitch is better. Hers is both better and more accurate than mine. In fact, my sales pitch is so weak I’m shocked I would even say it aloud – that the best we have to offer is a lack of constraints, total personal freedom? Is this what we offer? Why join a group whose main offering is to leave you just the way you were before you joined?

…I think there is a core stance to Unitarianism, or if there isn’t one I think there is something I would like to place at its center, to give it a core stance in my mind…

I think it is a profound difference that we can believe what we want to believe, and think what we want to think, and still be in community with others. That is huge and that is why I go to a UU church. I don’t understand why I read so many UU bloggers who seem to have a longing to have some kind of belief besides good moral code in common.

Also, I don’t think that UU’s are just changed by the communities they join, they also change the community. That is what part of my sales pitch could be:

~*~The UU church is a dynamic community. ~*~
~*~Imagine a spiritual home where you can actually add your voice, energy and vibrancy to the mix rather than suppressing it!!~*~
~*~Pretty radical, huh. ~*~
~*~It’s exciting and alive and you can be a part of it. ~*~

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Community with the real ability to be me
Come together on a Sunday morning.

I avoid God
But find human love
And find it is vast and warm
Like the sun on a lazy sailing on the ocean day
We shall overcome
Sing it sister.
And I sigh and roll my eyes at all the meetings I chair and co-chair.
I am realizing the grown up blessing of contribution and giving to something larger than myself
The Dhali Lama was right after all
And I’m proud that here I am
I made this choice
Another sign of age
When my life is more about what I’ve decided than the hand of cards I was dealt
I saw what I made and it was good.

Feeling my feet on the ground. I made this. I choose this.
And the earth is finally round and small enough for me to see my way clear
To take my next step
The crest of the horizon just visible ahead.
My feet are strong and sure even when the wind of disappointment and sadness blow across my heart.
I come home energized and tired
A day full of letting myself feel and be real,

We gave money to the people of New Orleans today
I honor our open minds, loving hearts, welcoming hands
And my willing
feet.

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There’s a syndrome, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, called Little Raggedy Kid Syndrome (LRKS). You may even know someone who has it. The symptoms appear more often in the young. LRKS sufferers are the little kids in your neighborhood whose parents leave them to fend for themselves. The kid usually has a runny nose and sneezes all the time (kind of like a feral cat). They will push themselves in where they are not welcome, out of necessity. At neighborhood events, they will eat more than their share of food and will always stay for dinner if asked. They might even wrangle themselves a reluctantly given invitation. There aren’t many options for those with LRKS. In severe cases, they will even try and get more hugs than they have coming to them by being inappropriately affectionate.

You can grow out of the syndrome, but it still hasn’t been determined if you can actually be cured. Although LRKS doesn’t usually affect adults as severely, some of the tell signs of a relapse include: always being the person to initiate hugs, calls, and visits; asking people for food and letting people pay for food; and always being the last person to leave the party. A cure may be a ways off, but viable treatments include earning enough money to buy food at restaurants, paying for massages, and most of all, accepting that you are too old to ever find the having-parents-take-care-of-you situation. Alternative treatments have been proposed, but as yet have no clinical data to back them up, they include: asking people for help with no expectations; not asking for help from people more needy than you; taking care of yourself as if you were your own good parent; and sitting in the lotus position with your hands held in a gesture of surrender.

There are always rumors of a possible cure, but the ingredients are so rare as to be untenable for most sufferers. The proposed cure includes many of the above treatments with the addition of a loving, open, affectionate community, plentiful food, and several years of being held and kissed every night by somebody who really loves you.

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Moving can be lonely. (The alternate title to this post.) It reminds me that I am still a wandering troubadour, not the co-house living, bed with my lover sharing, pregnant bellied woman, just got home from the farmer’s market woman I have pictured in my head. So, my small sadness this month has been loneliness. I have so many people, but have not felt that anyone else was sharing my life. I called my mom and she said she is sharing my life. She reminded me of the people at church who complimented me when she was here, and in my uber lonely state the other night I said that they were just being polite.

I guess for me having people share my life and care about me means that they help me, and the meaning of the help (that they really do care and that I can count on them) is more important than the help itself. Sometimes I am so needy and it’s embarrassing. I wanted to call my friend this morning and ask him if I could visit just so he could hug me, but I didn’t know what he would say. I told him later, and he said he wanted to be there for me to support me. Tomorrow he is coming over to help me pack. Other people have offered to help me move all of my stuff on Saturday, and tonight I had the advance decorating crew.

Two girlfriends who I feel really comfortable with came over, ate my very home spun meal with kind words, and helped me move my decorations to my new place. These included scarves, pictures, and assorted knickknacks. We moved the furniture, moved it again, hung pictures, considered fung shui. I needed an advance decorating crew to make this move feel positive. I just had this image of moving into a new place and sitting in a bare room for a month as I slowly settled in. It seemed so depressing after making my current room so cute. Friend S was going to bring sage to clear out the energy of past residents. Friend A was going to bring her baggua book. They both forgot, but they couldn’t have done any ceremony or positioned things more fung shuily to better accomplish what I needed than what they did. To have people really consider, with earnestness, where you should hang your Buddhist prayer flags, and find just the right place for your poseable Aragorn action figure is like a magical dispeller of loneliness.

I wrote this a couple days ago, and the idea of “community” has come up several times since then. This post is about how neccesary for community it feels to have people know and care about the details of my life.

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Thank goodness a lot of smart people are into selflessly serving their communities. Check out Freevolution

The Freevolution is happening now as free and open source software methodology is being brought to the design of the physical world.

Hmmm… sounds exciting. And thanks to my aimless surfing, now you too can hear personal recommendations from PANDORA! VERY cool. I know I’ve posted about Pandora before, but they now have a free version which is supported with ads. I’m listening to “Half a Person” by the Smiths. YAY! This recommendation they gave me is based on one of my favorite songs, “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by …. it’s escaping me right now. Red? Help?

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Check out New Media Musings, “charting the rise of open, democratic, grassroots media.” I found the site because of the article about the top ten tech transformations of 2005. The interesting article and several good links put J.D Lasica over the top to make his blog a blog of the day. Some of the cool links found on his blog:

• The 10 greatest gadget ideas of the year.
• Free vlog: a video blog about making video blogs, for free.
• Node 101: Ok, I am still not clear on this, but I will be. It’s something about a network of video bloggers and how we the people are taking back the world by talking around a virtual campfire and thus freeing ourselves and the world from tyranny. (This link doesn’t properly belong here, because I surfed here from Free vlog, not New Media Musings, but hey.)

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Jo over at Overexcitable asks “How can we give all gifted people acceptance and meaningful work in modern western society?” Like many people who answered her question, I don’t think it is a question of giving gifted people something. I think it is a matter of gifted people learning to give something perceived as valuable.

There are a lot of other factors besides being gifted that affect where and how a person can best fit in and give to society. To maximize the fit of all those variable that make up a person, it’s important to

• know your self,
• be clear about your intentions, and
• be able to regulate your self.

Yes, being different throws in a few more challenges. (And probably everyone knows what it’s like to feel different.) For instance, I often run across the probably common challenge of being in a meeting and wanting to get the best possible outcome for the goal. If I present my ideas and no one has a better idea, so I take control and push my idea, than I lose several of my bigger outcomes. When I’m clear about my real outcomes, which in the case of meetings are usually a goal outcome that works, and happy relationships which will facilitate an effective community, than I will approach the meeting very differently. It is annoying to have to reign myself in, but that’s being a mature adult.

Where self-knowledge comes in is putting myself in situations that most value what I have to give. I think that is good advice for everyone. If you give something perceived as valuable, you will be valued. (Maybe that is part of Jo’s question. Where will gifted adults most be valued?)

That’s my practical answer. I think in reality, sometimes you are bursting at the seams to give your gift, and you must give it, whether or not it is valued. I’m thinking of Van Gogh, and a thousand other musicians and artists and writers. The thing is to know yourself, and be clear about your intentions. I don’t think it will work to tell society, “Please value me!” Nor do I want to do that. I do think that it is reasonable to provide support for everyone to help them learn how to balance their needs, including self-expression and belonging.

How do you balance your needs for self-expression and your need for belonging? Do those needs converge in your life or do they pull you in different directions?

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There seem to be five traits that produce potential interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict: divergency, excitability, sensitivity, perceptivity, and entelechy…These traits seem to be an integral part of giftedness; however, the behavioral manifestations of these traits may vary depending on other physiological and personality factors, such as tolerance for ambiguity, degree of introversion or extroversion, and preference for particular types of sensory input.

Although the traits in themselves are neutral, their behavioral manifestations make them socially and emotionally significant. For example, the trait of sensitivity can be manifested as empathy, commitment, touchiness, intensity, or vulnerability. Thus, in any individual, the sum of the behavioral manifestations may be viewed as positive or negative.

Check out the rest of Can you hear the flowers sing? Issues for gifted adults by Deirdre V. Lovecky, (who I now love forever.) Found via A Mindful Life. And check out the PDF with lots of gifted adult stuff at Gifted Problems. I found the following quote there.

Unique interpersonal challenges that gifted individuals, couples and families encounter during their life span include learning to interact in the mainstream world; manage expectations and pressures to fit the norm; defuse unconscious hostility, resentment, antagonism and sabotage directed at them because they are perceived as intellectually, creatively or personally advantaged; set appropriate boundaries for the utilization of their abilities; collaborate with others, and manage the daily dilemmas of giftedness involving relatives, bosses, co-workers, neighbors, counselors, teachers and other members of the community.

Read more articles about Gifted and Talentedness :) at Seng.org.

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I had another brilliant idea: Churches are like floating neighborhoods in our mobile community. No wonder America is so much more religious than our European counterparts. We need our churches for stability.

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I love reading Andrea’s real life updates over at Roundy Wells. I wish all my friends and family had blogs! So, today I am going to treat you to a real life update.

Men: Nada. (Wow, this is quick!) I theoretically want to get married and if I happened to meet someone that I clicked with, I’d be all for it, but I’m putting no energy into looking. The only reason it has a little half-hearted place on my to do list is my biological clock. Mental calculations of biological clock: “Let’s see, I’m 31 [now you know :)] If I meet someone now and marry them in a year, the earliest I will have my first child is 33. If I want 4 kids, spaced two years apart… ARGHGGGH!!!” That’s how those internal conversations usually go, followed by a panicked: “I must meet somebody now!” or a tremulously reasuring, “Well, people are getting younger all the time, if you just stay in really great shape, it will be almost like you are in your 20’s when you are having kids!” Yeah right!

Job: Just quit! Yay me! In my job-life, I really feel like the airplane motivational speakers always talk about, on the wrong path most of the time but continually making adjustments so that it does eventually get where it intended to go. I know what I want to do: create blah, blah, blah, blah. (That information is part of my secret identity- or actually, my known identity, but this site is part of my secret identity, so my known identity is… this gets so confusing.) But how do I get there? I started drafting a letter to send to a well-known writer and Ph.D to share with him the research paper I wrote that involves his work. Ach! It scared me to even draft it. Do you double-dog-dare me to send it today? It is great thinking, in my humble opinion, but really stilted writing. I haven’t figured how to make research paper writing flow. I HATE that method of writing. eek.

I’m considering going to school some more to get a Ph.d and doing research there, applying for a grant to get my research funded, or… working at a regular job while I work on my own research on the side? This is all up in the air.

For the near future, I have a student loan coming in, so I won’t starve. However, I do want a job during this last semester and I will definitely need a job when the semester ends. As the very talented Andrea has shown, getting a job in a particular field can be challenging. I won’t have any welcoming arms letting me stay somewhere, I’ve already used that option up post bachelors degree. Unless something changes in some other area of my life. (See “Men:” above.)

Jobs I am considering: low paying student job on campus- hey, it’s money, actual full time job in my field if I can get it, or get an internship in my field. In addition, I AM starting my hypnosis practice back up. The website is in the works.

Other dreams: I want to sing and play the guitar and write songs. My grandma has agreed to pay for me to get singing lessons! Yay, Grandma!! I am soo excited to have a more consistantly performance worthy voice. Also, I am going to learn to play the guitar better and learn more music theory. As you know, I don’t want to become famous in that I don’t want my face to be broadly recognizable, but I DO want to be rich and talented. I would love to make money selling my songs and be a slightly known singer in my community- at church and in a local band. That would be sooo fun.

Housing: I want my own house. But I went driving around yesterday and I realized, even if something magical happens, I don’t know exactly where I want to live yet. However, being in a temporary place that is someone else’s house just sucks. No, I am not pleased with my roommates. Today I realized that I just have to clean in front of my other two roommates so they can WITNESS ME CLEANING, then they see that I am contributing my fair share of cleaning. My other roommate, the owner of the house, who I will call Fantasia, just got home today. Disclaimer: all of these roommates are nice. They are not horrible, but still, I am not pleased. So, Fantasia and Tina are chatting about the trip she just got back from and I say, “Hi! How was Florida?” And she says, in a measured voice usually reserved for pre-schoolers, and irritating even then,”Braidwood, I had a nice trip, but I don’t want to talk about it now. If you’d like, I will tell you about Florida later.” What the hell! I wanted to turn all Hustle and Flow * on her and tell her, “Yo, bitch, I couldn’t care less about your trip to Florida! I was just asking to be nice!” Then I fantasized about coming up with something socially acceptable yet funny and mean to say back to her. I could think of nothing. When I am displeased I turn very sincere and tend to say things like, “I really don’t like being spoken to like that.” I did think it would be funny to make up a song about Fantasia to the tune of “I’m living in my own private Idaho” and call it “I’m living in my own private Ashram!” (Fantasia teaches yoga and gives astrology readings and doesn’t think farting is funny.)

*I saw Hustle and Flow with my Grandma when I was in Hawaii, her choice, and the only reason I went. I usually stick to my Mormon heritage and skip rated R movies. Especially if there is the chance that there will be something in the movie that I just wish I had never seen. However, while Hustle and Flow had the trappings of banality, it was not banal. It was an awesome movie and I could totally relate.

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Remember when I was going to tell you all about my plans for my Summer of Inner Transformation? I had actually already written down a complete plan, but instead of my plans, tonight I’ll tell you about my synchronicities.

I was offered 10 free sessions of Somatic bodywork (I don’t know what it is either) from a classmate in one of my NIA classes. Tonight in NIA, our teacher ended the class with Feldenkrais exercises. I felt so different as I started walking after the excercises, lighter but heavier- more connected to the floor. Then our teacher mentioned that she teaches a class in a neighborhood near mine. It’s only $10 a class. I’m going to do it. Tonight I got a haircut which is outer transformation, but ya’ll know it’s inner transformation too. I have CURLY hair and the last (EXPENSIVE) hair cut I got was a mess. I got this haircut as a trade. Rock on, craigslist.

I finished my CD! It took several hours of work for several days in the recording studio and it has 5 songs and totals 12 minutes! Phew! It was fun. Now I’ve restrung my guitar and am waiting for the strings to settle in. Woo! :) I heard about a group starting the Artist’s Way journey and I jumped on the bandwagon. I think it’s just what I need. I’ve been a slacker on my Morning Pages for the last couple of days. How do all you working parents do it?

Categories | My Life, Well Being, Health, Beauty, Links

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[Update: Hi visitors! My meme never took off, but some people are coming by to find out if their myer's briggs types are compatible with another type. Research has found that the more letters you have in common, the more likely you are to get along well in marriage. However, of course, their are good and bad marriages of any personality combinations. You also have to take character, emotional maturity, and shared goals into account. The Tiegers do extensive research about marriages between different personality types and share it in a fun to read and useful way in this facinating book. It was really fun to read about my type and my old boyfreinds' types and also about my type and my mom's type. The book was right on. Warning: other meyer's briggs type books have all different kinds of theories about who is compatible, but most are based on the author's intuition and counseling experience, not research. Now, on to the previously scheduled post...]

Imitating the Friday Five, here’s what you do: Copy and paste the questions and post a link to your reply in the comments.

After reading the descriptions of the Myers Briggs types in the chart, answer the following questions as best you can. (scroll down after you click on the link to see the chart)

1. What type are you?
2. What type are you dating/married to, or would be interested in dating/marrying?
3. What type are your best friends/kindred spirits?
4. Which types are in your immediate family?
5. Which type did you most recently get in a fight with?
6. Which type did you talk to most recently?

My answers:

ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ
ISTP ISFP INFP INTP
ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP
ESTJ ESFJ ENFJ ENTJ

More than one color means that personality type is the answer to more than one question, and I cheated a little on the immediate family answer because I have a teeny, tiny little immediate family, so I expanded to include my uncles, aunts, and grandparents, but no kids, ’cause they are still forming.

You can answer in the usual way, or if you want to answer in graphical form, like me, you can copy and paste these letters, and color and bold as needed.

ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ
ISTP ISFP INFP INTP
ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP
ESTJ ESFJ ENFJ ENTJ

Why this meme? I love typology- ye old temperaments were my introduction, then the Colors, then, the true type love of my life Myers-Briggs, and most recently, the Enneagram. I love typing my family and think genealogical charts should have a spot for the person’s type as well as more mundane things like their birth date. (Although some people think birthdate can be a type indicator..)

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We had a guest minister whose sermon annoyed me so much that I walked out. He said that we need to have a common theological basis for our opinions! It was interesting to talk about it with other people. One person said that we can have a language of spirituality in our church. But allowing a language of spirituality is very different than prescribing what people can base their ideas on.

I found the sermon frightening in it’s uninclusiveness. Luckily our usual minister, who is a theist of some kind or another, includes the atheists and agnostics. In that same conversation my friend, who I love anyway, said that she wishes that people would walk far enough along a spiritual path so they would not have a knee jerk reaction to hearing the word “God.” I think she was implying that I was having a knee jerk reaction to God and thus am not as spiritually mature as she is. But, I wasn’t talking about my own spirituality when I spoke about not liking the sermon. I was talking about not liking the sermon because it was narrowly prescribing what UUs can think. I would not have liked it any better if he had described my exact beliefs, and sources for those beliefs, as uniqely legitimate.

I like the variety and inclusiveness of the UU community. It is radical to have a strong community and allow freedom of thought and belief and expression in it. It’s actually quite amazing and rare. It would be a shame for our UU community to throw that out for any set theology or creed no matter how perfect or wonderful it might be.

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I’m finding such great stuff today! Oh! Check out this graphic novel by Augustine!

Last week I worked.Today I play. Just sitting around in my pajamas exploring the blogosphere. Tommorrow… more work.

By the way, Thank you for all your “anonymous” input. For now I’ve decided to split my blog personality three ways: my “proffessional” blog, Braidwood –partly anonymous, and another TOTALLY SECRET blog, never to be revealed. My initial reason for posting anonymously, by the way, is because of my long standing wish to be “secretly famous.” You might be surprised, looking at my work, that I have a fear of becoming famous, but I do! I like being well know by my own community, but I hate the thought of giving up my traveling anonymity. I like blending in, if you can’t blend in you can never really get to know people. I would hate to be famous – oy. What with the stalkers and what not. On the other hand, I would like to have my songs and poems and art be scattered out broadly in the world. Thus, secretly famous. (I know, a fear likely never to be realized, but still.)

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I sent a not too thinly veiled show of support for Kerry by emailing a Michael Moore article to my friends and family- in the guise of humor. My friend wrote back with a not too thinly veiled request. She said that we should stop criticizing the current President and seek unity as a nation. Does that mean I need to shut up?

It’s the holy grail of community to be able to be yourself and belong to a group, and I know its possible. Falling silent won’t unite us, it will impoverish us. We need to hear each others stories to understand each other, to care about each other, to vote beyond our narrow self-interest.

Learning how to connect while allowing ourselves and others freedom of thought and expression is woo-ha, challenging.

To meet this challenge in your personal life, I recommend: The Dance of Connection by Harriet Lerner.

For our country and the world’s well being, we need to hear a wide array of stories. Let’s get the screaming pundits off the air and demand to see and hear a variety of people talking about their lives and how the issues of the day have affected them. That’s news, and that’s what heals.

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I started this site on Tuesday, October 19th. I’ve been measuring how many people have come to my site for four days. Here are the stats:

Oct 22: 3 hits, 1 unique
Oct 23: 1 hit, 1 unique
Oct 24: 6 hits, 2 unique
Oct 25 by 1:46 pm: 9 hits, 4 unique

Wow, you wouldn’t think so little feedback would make me happy! :) I’m climbing the charts, baby! Unique hits mean how many people have never come to the site before.

We’re a small community.

To get a great, free visitor counter for your site, go to reinvigorate.net

Categories: Blog Talk

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