Time Marches Ever On…

 

Seriously.

Looking, and seeing that I haven’t written here since April. So much has happened! And yet, things are still a lot the same. Some things. I don’t feel like I am.

I got back from Burning Man last week. The art, as always, was amazing. This is one of my favorite pieces, called “Gaia”:

The description of the art piece is “Inspired by and in honor of nurturing energy…mother energy…love and connection: and the joy we feel when we act on the imperative to take care of each other and our planet. We are all one.”

I feel this, and yet, I also feel….not alone, but maybe that my connections don’t feel to the others I am connected with the way they feel to me.

Here’s another favorite piece:

ATABEY is the supreme goddess of the Tainos, the native tribes who inhabited the Carribean islands, mostly in Puerto Rico. She is worshipped as the deity of fresh water, representing the Earth Spirit, Divine Mother. Their God was female.

We chose to honor ATABEY’S symbolism with a fish coming up for air on the Playa in order to bring attention to the state of the Earth and the dire consequences of today’s dominant world views, those that are legacies of colonization’s victors. ATABEY’s legacy is to respect our waters and land.

I attended an “Ingegration” earlier this week over Zoom, to help decompress from Burning Man. There’s a post that is somewhat poignant that gets recycled every year that advises folks not to “divorce their parakeet” after a transformational time at the Burn. I don’t feel like it’s exactly the same for me, because I work the event. This year I even got paid for working the event. Not the first time, but also not the focus.

What I know is that I have so much love to give, and so much love inside me. Is it wrong to ask to be loved the way one wants to be loved? In a very real sense, I am fulfilled and love myself, and am okay existing within myself. And I have amazing friends and support, and feel very rich in so very many areas of life. It’s not that anything is missing, there’s just connection on a certain level that I read about, but think I am probably not destined to experience or have in my life. I think I’m okay with that, but thinking about it not gives me pause something.

One of the themes of this “integration” was the phrase “I am a conscious being with choice!” There’s so much to unpack with that. Yes, I have choice. And a lifetime of unlearning things we are raised with that are harmful. The messages we grew up with and that are prevalent in our lives. Bad self-talk like “not good enough”, “fat”, “not worthy”, “selfish”. Those are hard things to let go of and replace with things like “worthy of love”, “perfect, whole, and complete, right in this moment”, “enough”. To remove all judgment of self and others.

There is an exercise we did in this integration offering. Three parts. Called a Diad. One person asks, and the other person listens, but is only able to respond in one of a few ways….

The person doing the asking asks, “When it comes to Burning Man, tell me something you think you shouldn’t have done.”

The person listening can respond in a few ways:

If what has been conveyed is understood, say “Thank you”.

If what has been conveyed is NOT understood, say, “Clarify that”.

If what has been conveyed is rambling/looping, say, “Summarize that”.

If you didn’t hear the person or what they said, say, “Say it again”…not say it differently, just repeat.

Once that first question is answered, the second question is, “Tell me how that impacted you and others.”

Same response set as above.

Last question, “Tell me what you’ll do differently, knowing what you know now.”

This is powerful stuff. Then we did an exercise where we practiced what it felt like to close our eyes and feel, in our bodies, thoughts, and feelings, what it felt like to expand…..then back to neutral, then feel what emotions and body sensations appeared to us when we focused on being contracted.

At the beginning, for me, I thought and felt things like “smaller”, “invisible”. Expansion feels like “fullness”, “heart-expanding”, tendrils of energy and being extending out to all…to the universe, to everyone. Slowly, you do this with less and less space in between different sensations, and then realize that it’s like breathing….you have to contract in order to expand. It’s all part of the same process…..the balance, yin and yang, I’m not sure one can exist without the other.

It was an opportunity to give ourselves permission to feel what we feel when we expand and contract, not to shut it off, or not experience it because someone or something else has always told us it is “bad”, “unacceptable”, or that “only positive things” are worthy. That’s just not true.

When we shut off these opposites, we cut off the process of fulling feeling, and it can get trapped in our bodies. The body is a conscious being with choice.

Don’t change what is, be with what is and the change will come.

There is a lot to process with this. More, later.

~Peace

And then….

 

(image submitted in general disgust of what’s occurring in Ukraine)

I started a business in the last quarter of last year.

I had finally thought to myself “maybe I won’t have to have more than one job anymore…..maybe I’m there”. I was not there. And there have been some really, really hard realizations that I’ve had to come to terms with in this process.

I am a giver. I have always been a giver. My big revelation during this time is that there are two people in the world that I would literally give anything to or anything for them. My realization has been that I don’t think they would do the same for me, and that hurts.

In some ways, this is horrible. It’s about money, which is SO not even in the top ten of important things in life. But it’s a reality we all have to deal with. I have often and many times, done without something I wanted, myself, so that these two people could have what they wanted. I made some serious mistakes about this. I have borrowed money with high interest rates and from nefarious places, so that these two people could have things they wanted. And when I was in need and needed them to pay a bit back, they didn’t. They didn’t offer. I was vulnerable to them, splayed myself out before them, begged, asked when that isn’t my nature, told them we weren’t doing well financially, and I needed them to find a way to pitch in. They are both family members, one by “blood”, whom I gave birth to, and one who’s been around for long enough to be family. We’ve been through some shit. No help. None.

So then I think, what can I do?! I don’t want to be a meat shield or work security or something like that again. It’s $10/hr and not a very nice or good job. I need to really think about this. And I need to research. I am so fucking tired of making money for other people. Selling myself short, giving myself away, I have gifts and talents that can help people.

I did all of that, and I decided to start a bookkeeping business.

I never really wanted to own my own business. I like being a government functionary, but the pay kind of sucks. Moreso now than at other times in my life, and really, now paying the most I ever have for way shittier insurance coverage than I’ve had in the past just continues to be depressing….and sad, because it’s “good” insurance compared to what some other people have to do or pay in order to get health benefits.

I think when people start a business, everything goes slower than they think it will. OF COUSRE I will have $1,000 in recurring money earned each month in the first quarter or my business! NOT! I filed all the papers and stuff mid-September. Got my first client in September, but no payments until December. I thought to myself “Perfect! Last quarter of the year, everyone will want to get squared away for 2021!!” No, actually, most of the people who I’d want as clients were squared away before the end of 2021, and wanted to start fresh in 2022. Joke’s on me!

Things are going okay. I do enjoy it, it took some time to get to this place. It’s something I have done several times in my life, and I have learned to be positive about it, but there’s still some negative stuff around it, in my brain, about how I shouldn’t “have” to do any of this. That’s technically true, but I am over being poor. What I make at the day job is enough to exist, but I like travel, music, good food and the arts and supporting them WAAAAYYY too much for the salary of a middle-management collegiate worker. It’s what I need and want to do for ME, but it wasn’t when I started. Now I am determined to succeed in spite of all that’s against me as I hurdle towards retirement.

Although this is not where I thought I would be in my life, I am a survivor. Every day I’m hustlin’…..

Peace