Practicing

**I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. *An insight must be repeated, and repeated, and repeated again. Only then, when it is fully accepted and understood, do you begin to alter behavior.

I love you. Don’t just say I love you back. Let me know you understand how I love you. And when you tell me you love me tell me in a way that lets me understand how you love me. Or not, do what you want. But no matter what you do, how you feel, what you say, what you believe, whatever it is that makes you you, I love you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for judging you. I’m sorry for speaking to you or treating you in an unkind way. I’m sorry you misunderstand me. I’m sorry I misunderstand you. Forgive me. Please forgive me, I am human. We make mistakes, sometimes for a bit too long. Please do not scold me, please do not try to change me. Please simply love and forgive me. Maybe not so simple, but definitely achievable. We are capable of achieving much more than we sometimes comprehend. Thank you. Thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving you. Thank you for being my sister, brother, father, mother. My lover, friend, neighbor, stranger. Thank you for being here with all of the rest of us. Thank you for being together. Thank you for loving each other. Thank you for being the beautiful, magical life that you are.

*An insight must be repeated, and repeated, and repeated again. Only then, when it is fully accepted and understood, do you begin to alter behavior. **I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

Inspiration received from *Dr. Wayne Dyer and ** the Hawaiian prayer Ho'oponopono.

Hello December

Today is December 1, 2016. We are just past the last New Moon of autumn and our year is coming to a close. The weather has gotten a bit cooler and the sun has been hiding a bit more lately, but thankfully still around enough to remind us it’s there. We’ve had a beautiful year and there is so much to be thankful for. We are quite fortunate, and for those of you who may not be feeling as fortunate I am here for you. Take a deep breath, in and out, let go of all of it—release all the crap, and prepare to move forward. We can do this together, whatever it is. Just do it. And now is a great time to start.

                Frank’s mining season is ending very well! We are looking forward to a relaxing and enjoyable winter. This will be our time to join forces so when the next mining season begins Frank won’t have to worry as much about the office aspect of the business and he can focus all of his energy toward mining (which on a good day he can spend up to 12 hours breaking, moving, and fondling rock—it’s important to be gentle when removing those beautiful formations from the earth). This will also be my time to create.  I currently am enjoying my hobbies of cooking and cleaning and homemaking (can homemaking be a hobby??) and reading and writing and meditating. But what’s my next project? I have a feeling it might reveal itself soon.

    This is our final moon cycle of the year. Don’t waste your time thinking about winter when it hasn’t even arrived yet, spend your minutes in the moment of this beautiful final cycle of our year. Think about everything you’ve accomplished and maybe some of the things you wanted to accomplish but never got around to. Aim to get any of those unfinished things done now or accept that the time isn’t right for those things and move on to what you want to accomplish now. So what’s my project going to be? I plan on reading a collection of Walt Whitman works, I’m pretty excited about that. I have more organizing to do around the house. I’d like to go through everything in the basement. It’s not too much, but it’s in the basement…you know how often we get into our basements. Our home has come together nicely since May when we moved in. The basement is all that is left! A goal for this year was to find a new home, and we did it. Another goal for this year was to be happy with my work. As I’m reflecting on this past year, I just found this piece I wrote back at the end of March:

“I am just at the beginning of my journey. I am just learning how to live the life I really want. I struggled to learn the true meanings of love, self-esteem, ego, listening, learning, letting go, being, and did I say love? I was looking over at my cat, Delano, for that one. He has been with me on this journey since its first awakening. I appreciate all of what is life. Currently I am working a type of job I do not like. The work isn’t so bad. It’s everything else that goes along with it. The time-clock—that I have no control over, the rules, the policies, the owner that has no face or meaning to me, the lack of passion in the mission statement of the company. I don’t like these types of jobs. I have had four of them: McDonald’s, Advance Auto Parts, Hannaford, and M&T Bank. Other jobs I’ve held were: Recycling Technician in my dorm building…this one wasn’t too bad, but it broke my heart to think about the destruction of this Earth, Teaching Assistant for a professor of Psychology, and a Research Assistant to the same professor. She was the first person who I encountered that may have seen something in me. I was too afraid to open myself to opportunity (and I didn’t know how to). I was afraid of this unknown relationship. A relationship where someone actually knows a little about me. I also was a bar tender at six bars within a six-year span. Those were all fine jobs. But none of them are what I believe to be the path of happiness for me. And I believe I should live my path of happiness to its fullest. I am just learning to believe this.

                 A lot of this has to do with bravery. I was brave enough to leave the job I had held for fourteen years. I am quite a bit happier. But I see the underlying truth now that the dirt has been brushed away. I am not meant to work in this type of atmosphere. I am a strong worker. I love organization and making people happy. What am I waiting for? I’m not sure. I’m waiting for an out. And sometimes, we aren’t given an out, we have to make our own. So, I’m trying to figure out my out. It’s like getting out of a destructive relationship and starting a new healthy one, only to realize that you don’t need a better relationship—you need to be single. But how to be a “single” in the work field is what I need to figure out. Is that what it means to be “freelance”? But what would I freelance? My writing? My cleaning? My cooking? All of it? My life? A freelance lover of life?

                 My ideal morning: I wake up between 7am and 9am. I drink some water, freshen up a bit, and get ready for my morning run. I run between 1 and 5 miles, depending on where I am in my pace. I get home and Frank is up and getting ready to begin yoga. We do our morning yoga routine and have breakfast together. He gets ready for the gym as I shower and pick up a little around the house. After he heads out I begin to work, whether it’s on his business, my writing, or the plans for our business. He gets home from the gym and we go on about our day however it emerges itself.

Now, the question is, how badly do I want this to become my reality?

Believe it and you’ll see. I must truly believe this is the life I’m living and I will begin living that way.

I’d like to start selling stuff at farmer’s markets. Veggies, baked goods, snacks, recipe book, chapbook, crystals.

Maybe walk dogs or clean houses.

I’m definitely running and writing every day.

Follow your bliss.

Meditate on what makes you happy. Learn to be happy in this moment. Meditate on this moment being what makes you happy.

Mine is to keep writing."

Well folks, I did it. I bought a book three years ago called “Wishcraft How to Get What You Really Want” (which I never continued reading and just might add to my winter reading list). One of the exercises in the beginning of the book encourages you to sketch out “Your Ideal Day”. I tried to do it every once in a while and this year when I wrote that back in spring it must’ve really sunk in. For the longest time I was trying to find a job that was fitting for me, where I could express my greatest capabilities. Since I graduated from Oswego…just over six years ago, I’ve been searching. At first I was trying to simply get a full time position so I could have health insurance and enough money to start paying off my college loans. Then I got that…just under a year after graduating…at the same job I had been working at for almost ten years. Now what? I wanted to save money to go to grad school. Saving money and paying off student loans don’t go very well together, especially when all I wanted to do was hang out with friends. I was 28, single, college grad with a full time job, and totally clueless to what I wanted to be doing with my life. It wasn’t until I began to settle down around 31,32 (2-3 years ago) that I began making moves toward my masterpiece. I may not have been sure of what I wanted that to be, but I was beginning to realize what I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want it to be doing what I was doing then, so I decided to look for something new. I tried so hard to find something, like I said, where I could express my greatest capabilities (now that I was beginning to discover them), but nothing was coming. I applied for many jobs that I never heard back from and had a few internal interviews thinking that at least getting away from my current work environment may bring some fresh oxygen into my life. But nothing came. Eventually I took a friend up on an offer to work at a bank, which was something I had always thought about trying. It was fun and a great way to move forward without much risk, but it still wasn’t where my masterpiece was going to come from. And I still was struggling to save money. I finally decided that figuring out where my masterpiece was going to come from is more important than paying off my student loans, so I quit my job. With many thanks to my live-in boyfriend who is supporting me while I support him from home with his business. So now here I am, unemployed and happier than ever. The Freelance lover of life.

It’s been just over two months and I couldn’t have picked a better time to do this. I have had some time to unwind and winter is the perfect season to put the past behind you and prepare for the future. The year is coming to a close and we have a fresh start coming around the corner! It’s one of the most exciting times of the year. It’s masked very well by the commercialization of Christmas, but if you look past that at what winter truly represents then you can gear up, buckle in, and settle down for “a long winter’s nap”. I highly recommend being active outdoors. I’ve read that we should get outside for at least two hours a day and I struggle with that. Get outside when you can, even if it’s just for a walk around the block, but if you can get in those two hours or more, go for it! But other than that, make sure you are relaxing. Winter is a time for solitude, quiet, and inner reflection. Winter solstice is less than three weeks away and these last few weeks of autumn really confuse people and tend to make winter feel much longer. Daylight hours are getting shorter but once winter finally does begin, our days will begin to feel longer! YAY!! Until then, embrace the last of our autumn energy and get ready for a comfortable, cozy, miraculous winter

Torn

I feel torn today.

I sit here in my living room with a Hillary Rodham Clinton book that my Great Aunt Muriel gave me in 2003. I never read it because I wasn’t “into politics” but kept it all of these years because it was a Christmas gift from a woman in my life who I respected and looked up to. Ironically, I stored in the pages of this book a bumper sticker I had bought around the same time. This bumper sticker meant a lot to me because it expressed the one thing that had meant the most to me in my adolescence, the one word that I felt was the most important word in my world. Truth. That’s all it said. It was a white oval about the size of my hand and in grey the word, “Truth” was centered in it.

       
Back before we moved here to Loomis St., at the end of April, I did a major clean out. I was getting organized for this move. And as I went through all of my books I flipped through Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton and thought maybe I should read this now that she’s running for President. I looked at some of the pictures, like I have a few times since I’ve had it, and there was my bumper sticker still holding it’s spot in this book. I decided to finally take the bumper sticker out, just in case I decided to get rid of this book instead of reading it. I put the sticker on the inside back cover of my big photo album/scrapbook that holds the collections of my life. I took the “Truth” from Hillary Rodham Clinton, I apologize everyone. Funny though, right? And I ended up keeping the book, thinking maybe I’d read it before the election was over.

       
I had no interest in the political campaign because I’m not really “into politics”. But I was able to be a registered voter and I got to pick which party I wanted to be a part of. I have wanted to become a Green Party member since the first time I registered to vote in high school. But I didn’t know anyone else who was interested in it and because I wasn’t really “into politics” I just did what I thought most people did and I registered as what my parents were, Democrats. Years later I made the change to Independent, still uncertain about fully trusting my instincts calling me toward the Green Party. Every time I voted, which was every four years for the Presidential Elections, and saw the “Green Party” option I felt the calling to it but every time I still wasn’t “into politics” so I just voted the better option of the two big celebrities we had to choose from and never looked into it or thought about again for another four years.

Still back at the end of April, I’m preparing for this move, my twenty-seventh move. I begin to change my address for all of my online accounts and I decide to get an updated Driver’s License with the new address, which I usually only do when it expires. But I was making this move official. I was prepared, organized, and confident in the change happening. So when I was requesting my new ID online I was prompted with the option to register to vote, which I already was, but instead of just bypassing it I browsed the page and was stopped by the words “Green Party.” And I did it, I clicked “Green Party” and then “Submit”. It wasn’t too long after we moved when I began to follow Jill Stein.

So I have this book looking at me today that was given to me by my beloved aunt who obviously respected Ms. Clinton, but would she still respect her today? I can’t help but wonder what Aunt Muriel would say if I could ask her, “Would you vote for Hillary today?”

And for six months I have continually shared and supported Stein’s ideas and goals. The Green Party’s focus and Jill Stein’s ideas are in line with many of my beliefs. I think it’s time we allow for the larger changes we’re capable of handling as a country united. Focusing on our Earth and learning to truly work together and care for each of our fellow humans, even during our weaknesses, will greatly benefit all of our lives and many future generations.

So as you can see folks, today I am torn.

I’m torn between nostalgia and the years of effort I’m sure Hillary put in toward this dream of hers, I’m torn between that and my true beliefs and vision for the future of our lives.

And like I always say, be the change you wish to see in the world. It can be painful, change always is, but like my bumper sticker suggests, follow your Truth.

I am the Green Party. I always have been and I always will be. And for me, my Truth is the Green Party. And today I’m going to take a stand and follow it through all the way.

It’s time we continue forging this new path. The new path that simply says hey this old path has gotten a little worn, it doesn’t seem to be serving us well. Let’s try a different path. Why not?