31 July 2008

Changes

Thursday 31July08 5:17pm

We're in Leo now and I have yet to read the write up that Guru Rattana sent nice and early this sign. But there is a new moon both on the 1st of August and the 30th. Two in one month. I wonder if that means anything special? Couldn't we all use special?

So You Think You can Dance gave us the cruel blow of ousting the lovely Will. Of course now he has time to marry me! I wonder if he's a Capricorn...

In recent news, Capricorn men STILL SUCK! I don't know why there are so many of them showing up in my world. It doesn't seem fair. But the good thing is that I dodged the bullet relatively early. And a lot can be said for dodging a bullet.

I've been watching this 27 year old sweet guy with the pain of heartbreak and ache and remember that all too well. I wish that I could tell him some secret of how to get over it quicker but, as we all know, there is no expiry date on emotions.

I've taken Gail's advice (from Til Debt do us part) that she would give me if she ever came to my house to check out my situation and I've got myself a part time job. It's where I met 27 year old sweet guy who is suffering. I get to sit on my ass and get paid to work on my writing. Plus I can pay off those pesky debts that have been getting on my nerves. Pay day is on opposite weeks from my day job which is sweet! And I'm getting paid $1.50 more per hour than originally quoted. Nice instant raise!

I've met a couple new men. So despite my Capricorn shenanigans there are other men out there. Being a Capricorn man may actually become the deal breaker. You know of course that if I ever marry, it will probably be to one. *sigh*

When a man shows you who he is, believe him!

The past few weeks the theme has been about justifying bad behaviour, or better yet, other people trying to get me to justify bad behaviour. It started off with a joke that was made up about me 5 years ago. When it was first said I made my comment about how people could perceive me, if they believed it. You know how people are, they hear a silly thing, they don't verify the info and they believe the shit for years to come. The person laughed at the comment as if he didn't believe that was possible. He continued to tell the fallacy every time we were out with others. Some times I let him tell it and laughed it off, other times I said, 'inappropriate time and place," and cut him off.
The night of the Capricorn dastardly deed (I'm not even sure what dastardly means but I love the alliteration), the fabrication/joke was brought out of the vault. I was already annoyed to find that Carpicorn dastard (ha ha) was not a person of his word so it really wasn't the time to be making up stories. I rolled my eyes and said, "Really? You're still going to tell that tale when it's not true?"

The storyteller didn't read the signs nor see the storm clouds. If I ever say to anyone in conversation, "you're not listening to me," that's a strong indication that losing my temper is not far behind. Leaning forward, I went off on this person stating all the things that were wrong with that story and how it could be perceived and how it could ruin my chances with a really nice guy who might be interested in me should he hear this story. At first every one was laughing because they didn't get my seriousnesss. And then I blew. I tore the person apart strip by strip for such fuckery, for not being aware enough to stop when stop was called and I didn't stop there. He got embarrassed then he started to back away. And I still didn't quit.

When I did quit and everyone looked pale, his wife said, "He's just teasing you because he likes you."
"How long, how many years do I laugh something off and play the good sport until enough is enough? How long do I have to understand that he's just teasing me because he likes me before we can move on and at least tell something funny about me that's actually true?"
No one had an answer. It's like someone telling you that you can't take a joke after they've publicly humiliated you. A good joke is when everyone laughs, not when a person is humiliated. In my humble opinion. Any comedien worth his weight will tell you that if the people aren't laughing, the joke was shit.
And the best part is that I said that they all tease me for being single as if there is something wrong with me and yet tell these tales and any possible interest believes them. That's right, I'm the loser...

Wife also tried to justify the Capricorn behaviour and I had to ask her again, how long or how many times does one person come up with excuses before they can name something bad behaviour. Or I can be allowed to be disappointed in him.
When a man shows you who he is, believe him!

The next day I told Ado that I feel like it's some orchestrated test and I'm the worst person to test. He said that in his single days that he'd test women all the time. hmm! What was aggravating was that dapper dan the dastardly deeder originally went on and on so much that I felt compelled to respond to his passive aggressive request and believe in his over eager yes. *sigh* squared

But again, happy to dodge the bullet now instead of three years down the road of justifications only to find out that when I depend on him to be a person of his word he ISN'T! So maybe that's the thing with the Capricorn men appearances. Maybe it's the test that I come up against almost every single time with them. Maybe it's getting rid of them earlier and earlier until they disappear for good or the ones that appear make me forget that they are Capricorns. Who really knows?

My mom's achilles heel was Aries men.

And I have to give props to my married friend because the next day we treated each other as we normally do. I said what I had to say and it was over and done with. And he got that.

Anyhow it's Caribana weekend and I don't have to work. In my interview for my new p/t gig, I said I'd only need that weekend off then my holidays would be my normal 10 days in October for the Festival that I attend yearly.

My life is relatively relaxed even with the occasional out burst. Our office renovations still carry on... can you believe that?

And there is always something to laugh at and learn. Oh yes and who knew how often you use the letter 's'. My cat climbed on to my laptop when I left it unattended momentarily, as I pulled her off, she took the letter s with her. Good thing I got the new gig, gotta save up for a new lap top. Or start using words without the letter 'S'. he he!

EY

12 July 2008

Stuff

Saturday 10:44am 12July08
I read this article that has motivated me to get rid of my "stuff". For all you pack rats out there, the main question that worked for me is to ask, "Would I replace this if I lost it in a fire?" I gotta whole lotta no's in my apartment. I started sorting through my no's and ruthlessly throwing them out. I couldn't bear to throw out my writer's magazines out right so I've decided to read them one by one and then leave them at a library. I'm going to label them saying something to that effect so other people could read them if they choose.



EY

Distractions

Saturday 8:52am 12July08

I've been busy with a little fun and a lotta distractions this past week. The Fringe Festival is on and again this year I bought the Buddy Pass which gets me into 14 shows. I've got seven more shows to see before the weekend is done. The Tour de France started last Saturday and has two more weeks to go. And as always there's 'So You Think You Can Dance' showing with a lot more really great black male dancers. Oh my Goodness, Debbie Allen's protege Will is something beautiful in looks and in dance. Totally brilliant. You can love him when he gets all proper in traditional dance and when he gets down n' dirty with hip hop. This week's lyrical performance where he was half naked... makes a woman shake her head with joy! Twitch made it through to the top 10, he didn't make it past Vegas last year because they put Hok through. I loved Hok. Twitch has been showing up every week, working his ass off. And there is sweet Joshua with that sweet smile. They've had great choreographers this year and even added a dynamic Bollywood routine. This may actually be the best season ever.

So once all those distractions end we move into the Olympics and I'm always happy when it's an Olympic year. Crying over people winning and whatnot! Yeah I'm a weird bird, I admit it. I spend more time crying during the Olympics it's crazy. One year one of my girlfriends would call me after the results of a competition to see if I was crying yet. I cry during the opening ceremonies, I cry during the closing ceremonies. I said it here, I cry during the Olympics!

I pulled out Gabrielle Rico's (of Writing the Natural Way fame) book, Pain and Possibility, out to read in the Fringe line ups and have been doing the word sculptures, spirals and of course what she's known for, clustering. It's a nice quick n' dirty way to get a little writing done. It's always amazing what comes up that is so unexpected.

I haven't been doing the amount of writing I want to but I'm still managing to fit some in with all my distractions. And as I think about that more I feel that I'm going to put less of a committed effort into blogging and more commitment into my novel writing. Well the blogging commitment fell by the wayside when I had the pain of last year anyway. Plus my writing blogs Writing2Live and Writing Zazen keep crashing my mac, so I haven't blogged on them in ages and ages. And my newest writing blog is a little forlorn...

I'll still be here of course and if you're subscribed through Feedblitz, then you'll always know when I have something new to say. But for now, I think it's time to move into an all consuming committment to writing my novels. I had a discussion with a work acquaintance on Thursday. Whenever he comes into the office he asks me what I'm eating. He is also into eating a lot of fruit and drinking fresh juices and the like. He was telling me about one of his coworkers who apparently is the voice of knowledge on anything to do with healthy eating. My acquaintance said, "I don't know how he finds the time to know all this stuff. He's got a wife and kids, he's an Engineer and he's smart!" We laughed about it and sequed into a discussion about finding time. I said that almost everyday of my life I wonder how women with kids get anything done. "If it were me," I said, "I'd be telling my 3 year old, 'cook your own dinner'." ha ha!

As an aside, my work acquaintance called me a geek! What the heck? We were talking about juicers and I admitted to having more than one, a magic bullit (which I killed) and a blender and he said in an amused voice, "You're such a geek." The nerve of some people's brats, as my mother used to say. I was so affected by that comment that I wrote a vignette about it in my notebook. I've never been 'such a geek' in all my life. ha ha! He stockpiles organic soap and I'm a geek?

But seriously, I'm really starting to see that I have to narrow my focus. I'm passionate about a lot of things and I can spin around jumping from one passion to the next in my special Pisces way, two fish swimming in the opposite direction at the same time. Hello!

The other inspiration that made me think about time, other than Geek Boy's comment ( *snicker* ) came from CJ Darlington's series Advice for Novelist’s . Sibella Giorello's advice is about sacrificing. Let's see where this gets me!

EY

01 July 2008

Jay-Z live at Glastonbury 2008

You have to like when someone can tell you to screw off in a diplomatic way. Noel Gallagher of Oasis infamy was mouthing off that no one wanted Jay Z to performat the Glastonbury fest.

So what does Jay Z do?

He comes out playing the Oasis tune Wonderwall just to let you know who he's talking to. Then says, "I just got one thing to say..." and goes into 99 Problems.

I got 99 problems and a bitch ain't one! An inspiring bitch slap. And a nice mash up with AC/DC. It was the best celebrity giggle I've had in a long time.

EY

We're in Cancer

Tuesday 1July 10:59am

So we're in Cancer now as of June 21st. I started to make notes on the previous New Millenium Beings but haven't got around to completing them. Ah What the heck, if you're that interested in them you know where to find them. I've mentioned it enough.

The last week of Gemini (June 16 to June 21) and the last couple days of mercury retrograde were filled with conflicting energies and all out craziness. Miscommunications were coming left, right, centre and off centre. Our office renovations were a mess. People insisted they'd booked the loading dock when they hadn't, people were trying to book the loading dock but had no information to give me. A couple people at work called me to train them on a certain system we use , because I am the expert, then proceeded to tell me how it should be done or just did it their way and then got pissy because it wasn't working. Hmm, if you're asking me to train you do you think you could just do it the way I've told you? I actually said to one of them, "If you know how to do it, why are you calling me? I have work to do." sigh

Then two of my girlfriends had a birthday and we were celebrating both combined. None of us could seem to make a decision about whether we wanted a psychic reading or not. It was the first time that I was cognizant of the exhausting energies swirling around the change of one sign to the next (Gemini to Cancer). So much so that I took the Thursday the 19th off. I was like, 'screw it, I am not going to be around people today.' ha ha! Oh yeah and there was a full moon in there too!

Work was a short day on Friday, June 20th and instead of my normal Shiastu treatment I came home to ready for the girl's birthdays. I made the mistake of watching Oprah and she had me boo hooing like a maniac! I went to take the bus to the restaurant because I figured I could get a seat rather then taking the subway during rush hour. WTF! The bus went into the subway lot then turned and went back towards my house! It took me two stops to get my bearings and decide what I was going to do. I took a friggin' cab otherwise I'd be late. I got to the restaurant and all of a sudden I was feeling off. They were taking forever to bring us to our table, our waiter took forever to take our drink orders and he had a fucking attitude, the girl I was sitting beside kept moving forward when talking to the girl beside her so I was totally blocked out. The girl across from me kept studying me sensing my out of sorts ness and I'm not used to being scrutinized. I tried to explain that dealing with men all the time can be exhausting and I go through quiet periods because I need to recharge but that I was fine. My two girlfriends, who get me, were fine. I said I didn't need to have a psychic reading but I was on the list. Everything was totally out of whack.

So I have the psychic reading and the first thing she focuses on is how out of sorts I am. Oh fuck! I don't want to discuss this!
But she gave me some ideas on how to get back to my centre, which is a good thing. And then the reading went in to freaky. She clipped into my creativity and just kept telling me stuff that was like the universe giving me permission to commit and focus on it. She talked about the struggles of working full time and trying to write in my spare time. She talked about a guardian hovering around me who I was never close to when she was alive and why she has chosen to be my guardian now on the other side. And all this was said after I sat down and said Hi! I didn't tell her anything about me. Oh and she has a cat named Gatsby! ha ha.

I wrote furious notes, like I do, and my reading was over. Being a person that needs to process what I've heard, what I've seen, what I feel, I didn't want to go back to the table and answer the inevitable questions. I stopped by long enough to say, "give her 2 minutes before you go for your reading," and made a bee line to the washroom. I got back to the table, looked at the table, looked at my empty chair did a full circle like a dog does before he lies down and said, "I'm going outside!" Said in that wacko almost scream, definitely too loud, crazed voice.
The scrutinizer says, "I'll come too?"
I nodded my head and flew down the stairs and out of the restaurant. The scrutinizer and one of the birthday girls joined me and chatted a little small talk and just waited for me to speak and surprisingly I spilled as I burst into tears. It was so weird because I'm not used to people being around when I go through my process. And I'm not used to people getting that I'm about to, I don't even know what to call it. It's like I'm open and there's too many energies coming through at once and I don't know how to put up the shield to control all the energies hitting me. Kind of like being stung by 800 wasps all at once, what area do you cover first?

Overall, it was an amazing reading and it was warming to actually open up and share at the time that my emotions were spilling over. And allow myself to be nurtured. It's not something I do often and I tend to feel embarrassed by it. On June 21st, I slept all day!

In Cancer I'm feeling all about sticking close to home. Cancer certainly is about the home. This past weekend, with a party a mere few blocks away, I stayed home and worked on my writing. I swear this is my first year of not joining in the Gay Pride Festivities. I realize that I don't hang around any gay men anymore. Not like I used to. Lately my life has been about all women. I've discovered that I have a half dozen close women friends. It's different for sure and really needed on the nurturing level, another Cancer thing. Especially since I spend all my work days surrounded by men.

I had those debates throughout the weekend about maybe getting out there and having some fun but I realized that I was having fun. I paraphrased Nelly Furtado's quote about working on her music which was, "When my friends were out on the weekends going to parties and having a fun time, I was at home working on my music."

And for whatever reason I'm facing off waiting. Waiting for friends to be available, waiting for men to decide their interest level, waiting until I have more money, waiting to write, waiting to live a meaningful life. Everything surrounding waiting. I've become so well versed at living as a single person, that's not a problem. But there are things that I think I'd like to do with people or that I think I have to wait to do until I have a running partner to do it with me. Or commitments I think I have to wait to make until the money is available...

A man was recently talking to me about whether he should adopt a couple kittens now or not. His apartment has small windows. He doesn't have a balcony etc. He said, "It's like trying to decide when it's the right time to have kids, it's never the right time you just have to plunge in." The first thing I thought was, 'Holy shit! What guy says that? Kids?"
Instead I said, "Or finding the right time to write."

And he's right we can always find an excuse or a valid reason to wait to do anything from adopting kittens to (the life changing) having kids and all the other wishes and dreams in between. So I'm thinking about waiting and asking myself what I'm waiting for, and I'm processing (like I do)...

EY

Quiet Times and Personal Meaning

Tuesday 1July08 9:59am

Today’s podcast (Episode 4) from Dr. Eric Maisel is on Personal Meaning
His podcast is Purpose-Centred Life - A Plan for Authentic Living. His podcasts and others can be found at Personal Life Media

I've been kind of quiet. I seem to be in a big processing mode, processing all the energies and messages flying my way. It's all good. The messages make me think about commitment level and mine in particular.

It's funny how when I look, so many messages can come my way. This morning I watched my kitten Gatsby eyeing my baby girl Zelda. When Zelda gets worn out from Gatsby and all his energy and bites, she goes as high in the apartment as possible because little guy Gatsby can't jump all that well. He's still a little guy at 4 months old and having started his life almost dying twice. He still has breathing issues, he sounds like an asthmatic at times. But that doesn't really stop him.

Anyway, Zelda gets on top of my stacked storage bins that are stacked three high. It's taller than my shelving unit in my kitchen. It's the place she calls peace. It's one of the three places that he can't get at. "Ha ha," she waves down at him, "you can't get me!"
This morning I'm lying in bed taking my time with waking fully, enjoying the moment. It is a holiday after all. I watch Gatsby run in and out of the kitchen just pissed that he can't get at Zelda. He stops at the bins and stares them down. He runs back into the main room, turns and runs at the bins. His little paws clip into the lid of the first bin and he tries to scale up to the second lid. He doesn't quite make it and plops off. Doesn't the little shit keep trying? Doesn't he scale up to the third bin with his little feet clawing the third lid and I swear he was laughing at Zelda and screaming HI! HI!. ha ha.
He flings himself on to the kitchen table and jumps up to the top bin to harrass poor Miss Zelda.

My immediate thought was, "talk about using your individual way to succeed."

Zelda ran off feeling bitter, no doubt, and Gatsby chased after her. When she ditched him by jumping up into the bathroom window he turned on his heels and ran back into the kitchen. By this time I was in there prepping my fruits and smoothies and stuff. I turned to watch him scale all the bins, pull himself on top and lie down! I swear watching little dude is a daily lesson on perseverance. He rocks!

Eric Maisel's podcast on Personal Meaning didn't leave me with many notes. I wrote stuff like:
"You get to decide what meaning is in your Life."
"Make life mean exactly what you want it to mean."
"What does life mean? Whatever I decide it to mean."
"Commit, 'I intend to matter in my own meaningful way'"

Good notes but nothing to blog about. But it's funny that since the last couple of days of listening to that podcast, examples of meaning have been showing up. Like Gatsby.

And I caught a couple shows on Global this morning. You gotta love holiday mornings when the programmers don't know what to put on television and they end up putting on some stellar stuff, sometimes. I caught two episodes of a show about second chances in life. And it's Canadian! One episode was about a woman who has won a woman of distinction award, Kim Beauregard (I think). She was overweight, stagnant in her life, unhappily married. She found her individual way to success. She's run marathons then after an injury started body building, won strongest woman award, became a nurse, is a personal trainer/coach, dog walker. She went from no where to now here, as Wayne Dyer likes to say.

She made a brilliant comment, "Even when you're at the back of the pack, you're still a runner."
Ah Personal Meaning at it's finest.

The other episode was about a woman who was really successful selling cars, Ferrari's, Maserati's and the like, which she loved. She was one of the crew members for her husband who races cars. She was living a pretty good existence. She got back into painting while on maternity leave and realized that her soul had been crying out for it. She worked out a new schedule at work to enable her to have Fridays off to paint and by fluke showed a guy her paintings, who subsequently got on the phone and was able to bring her paintings to a showing in Chicago and sold them all!

In the episode she discusses the struggle of giving up a comfortable job with benefits to the uneasyness of being a painter.
The scary dream of the artist's life rebounds in my head on a daily basis. How do I matter in my own meaningful way?

EY