So I don't know how, but McKain't got ahold of my small business email address. In the month since that horrible horrible event, his campaign (all three email addresses of it) has sent me on average 5 pieces of spam a week. It sux.
Now, today, he seems to have also found a second of my business-related email addresses. And the email I received was titled, "Dear Campaign Supporter." This man is so lost, I seriously think he could find his dick with both hands and a flashlight, but only if somebody paid him to do it. Let's not even get into his sidekick, Palincomparison.
Instead, I'd like to say how much I appreciate the goals and intent that Mr. Obama has highlighted repeatedly throughout his campaign, and the fact that he has NOT sent out spam, has NOT lied, and has actually shown an amazingly high level of moral and personal integrity, social awareness, and intelligence-- for a politician. I really appreciate that man, and many of the things he stands for.
Mostly, I just want America to stop losing individual civil rights, start using wind and solar energy and natural gas as our top three sources for powering cars, and providing homes and businesses with energy. I'd like to see a minimum of 25 mpg for all vehicles on the road by 2010. I'd like a reward program in place to assist folks who make less than $50,000 a year to switch to an electric-powered vehicle. I'd like the vehicles driven (and available for sale) in America to get an average (an AVERAGE) of 50mpg by 2012. And I'd like America to reinvest in education. Both by emphasizing quality and skills and experience over test scores, and by returning to a system that allows people with low incomes to actually AFFORD COLLEGE so they can gain increased skills, and still pay rent. I'd also like to change-up the tax system, so that the only people who pay taxes (or social security, since I doubt I'll ever get any of it) are those whose TAKE-HOME-PAY is over $40,000 a year. And anybody who makes over $1 mil a year should be in the REAL tax brackets for folks who pay up on what the rest of us really can't afford to lose out of our meager incomes. Really now.
Also, while we're on the subject, I'd like to make Yoga and afternoon naps mandatory for everyone over the age of twelve. I'd also like to see a certain withering shrub get implumbed... but hey-- dreams are cheep, and not much else is anymore. Anyway, I'm kinda hoping that I get taken of those dagmn spaminatious political email lists sooner than later. Like-- I don't want to have to wait for November to have the stupidity end. It really makes me ill to see one sitting in my inbox. Every day.
Monday, October 6
Monday, September 29
Nu Nu Nu
The paint went up on the walls today! Special low VOC paint, in Apple Green. The glass shade on the torchier broke in my car on the way there, too, but that's beside the point. Turns out, somebody has two comfortable chairs sitting in her garage because they need a new home, too. So now they're going to be my client chairs. Awesome, but still not the point. The point is-- tomorrow I finally move into my new office. I'm so excited, I could sing. Loudly. Those old tunes they used to play really loudly at the roller rink on Thursday nights.
:"My-mymymymy Miiiiiyyyyy SHERONA!!... Take me on an- ESSSScaPADE...and Let your Body GOOO with the FLOOO, just do ihhht.... and ROCK around the CLOCK tonight, VOGUE!":
Yeah. THAT excited.
It's the funniest little space, too. The only square corners are where the wall meets the ceiling-- an ugly pock-marked drop-down ceiling with really evil florescent lights in it. Which will soon be covered up by a really nice natural cotton curtain I bought at IKEA. We love IKEA. We also love my new officemate with the two chairs for my clients, and my main officemate whose husband did the painting for me today, and the awesome Apple Green paint. Yes! We do.
So now I'm going to bed. So that tomorrow, when I get up, I'll be ALL SET to move into my NEW OFFICE!!!! YAY!!! (and paint a lot of dark green leaves on the walls and find a way to haul one of my bookshelves from my storage unit to my office and find all my packed books about alternative healing that are somewhere in that storage unit-- hopefully in the same place as my flannel sheets are packed. I'd really like to find a second set of sheets for my bed here sometime.) YAY!!
:"My-mymymymy Miiiiiyyyyy SHERONA!!... Take me on an- ESSSScaPADE...and Let your Body GOOO with the FLOOO, just do ihhht.... and ROCK around the CLOCK tonight, VOGUE!":
Yeah. THAT excited.
It's the funniest little space, too. The only square corners are where the wall meets the ceiling-- an ugly pock-marked drop-down ceiling with really evil florescent lights in it. Which will soon be covered up by a really nice natural cotton curtain I bought at IKEA. We love IKEA. We also love my new officemate with the two chairs for my clients, and my main officemate whose husband did the painting for me today, and the awesome Apple Green paint. Yes! We do.
So now I'm going to bed. So that tomorrow, when I get up, I'll be ALL SET to move into my NEW OFFICE!!!! YAY!!! (and paint a lot of dark green leaves on the walls and find a way to haul one of my bookshelves from my storage unit to my office and find all my packed books about alternative healing that are somewhere in that storage unit-- hopefully in the same place as my flannel sheets are packed. I'd really like to find a second set of sheets for my bed here sometime.) YAY!!
Monday, September 15
Self-Offense
I'm becoming more and more aware of the ways in which women often punish and/or defend ourselves in situations where we feel we don't HAVE power or control or even basic rights.
As my business grows, I'm working with more and more women who have used food as a method of having control in their lives. They punish themselves for not being good enough by not eating. They over-eat to feel comforted and to fill an emotional void in their lives; they often become grossly overweight as a defense against rape and other sexual encounters they don't want to face.
We tell ourselves that we are not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not curvaceous enough, not smart enough, not accomplishing enough, not ENOUGH-- and in doing so, we limit ourselves so that nobody can do it to us. We don't want to give that power away, too. We don't want the criticism that women sometimes receive when we take risks, acknowledge our strengths and abilities, attempt change, rock the boat. There are enough critics in our lives already.
I'm learning that these patterns of behavior-- the self-criticism, and self-limiting; the over-eating and the starvation diet-- more and more, these are cropping up among men as well. And since these are "women's diseases" men often have an even harder time admitting that the problem exists, or understanding why, let alone seeking help to make positive changes and enact healthy patterns.
As a society, we cut ourselves off from feelings. From feeling too deeply, from recognizing our emotions and our reactions to our life experiences (especially the traumatic ones!). We ignore the messages our bodies try to send us in the form of felt aches, pains, and nausea. We get so caught up in trying to be smart and world-savvy that we ignore our own inner wisdom. We lose touch (if we ever found it to begin with) with our inner selves.
Sometimes we are so out of touch with our feelings that we fail to react in fight-or-flight situations; we don't get angry when we are mistreated, or we simply assume that we must have done SOMETHING to deserve the anger directed at us by another, the dismissal of our concerns and of our priorities.
And our internal criticism of our own not-enoughness becomes cruel. There is no pause to ask WHY we couldn't do 100 crunches at our twice-daily workout on Tuesday... after not eating for three days and then staying up all night to study for a class that we're taking after our 40-60-hour work week; caring for our households; caring for our families. Caring for everything but ourselves.
When is it time to care for ourselves? When do we pause and ask ourselves who has judged us-- where that criticism we are using as our measuring stick has come from... And then ask ourselves who has the right to determine our individual worth-- our individual definitions of a successful life. Most of the time, we begin by looking outside of ourselves for approval of our choices, our values, our style of dress and our sense of humor. We look outside of ourselves for clues about what we are supposed to do, who we are supposed to be, and what our reward for "getting it right" should look like. And none of it makes us very happy.
You see, until you have a good relationship with YOURSELF, until you like yourself and figure out what sort of a life would make YOU happy-- chances are, you won't be. It is a risk-- taking responsibility for our own choices and our own happiness. Back to the Cinderella Complex again, really. Hoping someone else will come along and save us from all this.
It's a risk to feel all those feelings that you've repressed or didn't even know you were having for so many years. What if they overwhelm you? Why are you suddenly getting ANGRY all the time?? Well... it's your body finally balancing out. All the emotions you ignored didn't go away-- they just got packed and compressed and repressed into this little box, and when you release the catch on the lid, it springs open and all the unfulfilled unhappy feelings come rushing out. ...But then, the box is empty. It no longer sits there oozing poison and secret shames, feeding your bodily illnesses and emotional instabilities and dependencies on people or on substances or on food-management.
There is finally space for you to learn new coping skills, to learn to recognize when you are having an emotion, and what emotion it is, and maybe even begin to recognize that there is probably a GOOD REASON for you to be having that emotion. Listening to yourself. Deciding how you want to act, now that you have all the information available to you. Befriending and trusting yourself. Accessing your inner wisdom. ...learning to love yourself as an imperfect and wonderful individual... Learning the joy of working toward a lifestyle and a decision-making process that will actually make you HAPPY!! Happy to be alive. Happy to be here, and do that, with people who appreciate you for YOU, and who share similar aspirations and a similar respect for you that you are learning to have yourself.
...If you don't learn to respect and love yourself-- to feel that your needs and your goals and your values and your decisions are important... nobody else will either. Make a different choice. And remember that even if the people you love and currently interact with don't support your goal of finding and appreciating yourself... someone else will. You are worth waiting for, worth searching for, worth working to find. Worth listening to. But this time, you get to do the waiting, working, listening and searching for yourself. It is deliciously empowering to put your energy and efforts to work in pursuit of your OWN GOALS-- and very few of the women I know have ever done this consciously. Intentionally.
Live intentionally. Live joyfully. Live your own life.
Dance on top of the world.
Please.
As my business grows, I'm working with more and more women who have used food as a method of having control in their lives. They punish themselves for not being good enough by not eating. They over-eat to feel comforted and to fill an emotional void in their lives; they often become grossly overweight as a defense against rape and other sexual encounters they don't want to face.
We tell ourselves that we are not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not curvaceous enough, not smart enough, not accomplishing enough, not ENOUGH-- and in doing so, we limit ourselves so that nobody can do it to us. We don't want to give that power away, too. We don't want the criticism that women sometimes receive when we take risks, acknowledge our strengths and abilities, attempt change, rock the boat. There are enough critics in our lives already.
I'm learning that these patterns of behavior-- the self-criticism, and self-limiting; the over-eating and the starvation diet-- more and more, these are cropping up among men as well. And since these are "women's diseases" men often have an even harder time admitting that the problem exists, or understanding why, let alone seeking help to make positive changes and enact healthy patterns.
As a society, we cut ourselves off from feelings. From feeling too deeply, from recognizing our emotions and our reactions to our life experiences (especially the traumatic ones!). We ignore the messages our bodies try to send us in the form of felt aches, pains, and nausea. We get so caught up in trying to be smart and world-savvy that we ignore our own inner wisdom. We lose touch (if we ever found it to begin with) with our inner selves.
Sometimes we are so out of touch with our feelings that we fail to react in fight-or-flight situations; we don't get angry when we are mistreated, or we simply assume that we must have done SOMETHING to deserve the anger directed at us by another, the dismissal of our concerns and of our priorities.
And our internal criticism of our own not-enoughness becomes cruel. There is no pause to ask WHY we couldn't do 100 crunches at our twice-daily workout on Tuesday... after not eating for three days and then staying up all night to study for a class that we're taking after our 40-60-hour work week; caring for our households; caring for our families. Caring for everything but ourselves.
When is it time to care for ourselves? When do we pause and ask ourselves who has judged us-- where that criticism we are using as our measuring stick has come from... And then ask ourselves who has the right to determine our individual worth-- our individual definitions of a successful life. Most of the time, we begin by looking outside of ourselves for approval of our choices, our values, our style of dress and our sense of humor. We look outside of ourselves for clues about what we are supposed to do, who we are supposed to be, and what our reward for "getting it right" should look like. And none of it makes us very happy.
You see, until you have a good relationship with YOURSELF, until you like yourself and figure out what sort of a life would make YOU happy-- chances are, you won't be. It is a risk-- taking responsibility for our own choices and our own happiness. Back to the Cinderella Complex again, really. Hoping someone else will come along and save us from all this.
It's a risk to feel all those feelings that you've repressed or didn't even know you were having for so many years. What if they overwhelm you? Why are you suddenly getting ANGRY all the time?? Well... it's your body finally balancing out. All the emotions you ignored didn't go away-- they just got packed and compressed and repressed into this little box, and when you release the catch on the lid, it springs open and all the unfulfilled unhappy feelings come rushing out. ...But then, the box is empty. It no longer sits there oozing poison and secret shames, feeding your bodily illnesses and emotional instabilities and dependencies on people or on substances or on food-management.
There is finally space for you to learn new coping skills, to learn to recognize when you are having an emotion, and what emotion it is, and maybe even begin to recognize that there is probably a GOOD REASON for you to be having that emotion. Listening to yourself. Deciding how you want to act, now that you have all the information available to you. Befriending and trusting yourself. Accessing your inner wisdom. ...learning to love yourself as an imperfect and wonderful individual... Learning the joy of working toward a lifestyle and a decision-making process that will actually make you HAPPY!! Happy to be alive. Happy to be here, and do that, with people who appreciate you for YOU, and who share similar aspirations and a similar respect for you that you are learning to have yourself.
...If you don't learn to respect and love yourself-- to feel that your needs and your goals and your values and your decisions are important... nobody else will either. Make a different choice. And remember that even if the people you love and currently interact with don't support your goal of finding and appreciating yourself... someone else will. You are worth waiting for, worth searching for, worth working to find. Worth listening to. But this time, you get to do the waiting, working, listening and searching for yourself. It is deliciously empowering to put your energy and efforts to work in pursuit of your OWN GOALS-- and very few of the women I know have ever done this consciously. Intentionally.
Live intentionally. Live joyfully. Live your own life.
Dance on top of the world.
Please.
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