I spoke in meeting today

I have been home from Africa/Turkey for three weeks now and I have gotten flummoxed every time someone asked me how my trip was except when my family asked how my brother is and then I just got annoyed. In general though, I traveled across the most intensively different landscape I have ever traveled and felt tongue tied to explain, describe, refer to or anyway capture what that means. A travel writer I am not. That was true until today.

I go to Quaker meeting. I am not a member so not actually a Quaker, but I have attended meeting fairly consistently since October 2007. It is significant that I remember the date or time period as I have an epically awful memory for the timeline of my life, but I remember starting attending Quaker meeting because I went to see if something, anything could help abate my endemic cynicism. The Philadelphia meeting was literally around the corner from my apartment so I could not claim inconvenience for not going, there is no hierarchy to the Society of Friends or a requirement to believe in "God", so I could not claim oppression of belief structure. The purpose of meeting is to listen. You can interpret that any way you would like, but that is what you are there to do and I needed to listen.

This morning, on the way to meeting, I was thwarted by a 10K that had blocked off the roads that would have brought me to meeting. I got siphoned into Chinatown and had to break out the Android to help me get to meeting. I arrived deeply frustrated.

So I tried to listen and tried the chant my friend taught me to get me to a better place. It only kinda worked. Then people in meeting started speaking and it made me think about what it took to get there. That made me think about being in Nairobi and the matatu nearly running my friend over and the checkpoints that were just as likely to be bribe takers as they were to be security checkpoints and I realized that as I was annoyed at being siphoned off into Chinatown by police along with thousands of other car drivers who didn't know how to get out of there without worrying that it was a fix or there to annoy Sunday drivers, it was in fact a moment to reflect on the fact that we do it well. That we can give thanks that there is enough trust and faith in our system that we believe that roadblocks serve a greater purpose than to get us lost and that we can figure our way out of the unfamiliar neighborhood and that we have created a society where the above is the assumption and that is something to notice and be grateful for.

So I spoke in meeting today, trying to convey that and I hope I feel less flummoxed when someone asks me how my trip was. It was amazing.

Constructive activities

Alas, it has been forever since I last posted. Life has gotten overwhelmingly hectic and complicated. I chaperoned a BAGLY dance last night, which felt good but also had the effect of reminding me of just how much adolescence sucks ass. On the upside, I also went to my first woodworking class, which was kind of awesome. I highly doubt that I will ever be a master craftsman, but it felt cool to actually use power tools and get over how scary they sound.

34 and counting

Another birthday passes and my mind checks its internal gauges for insight into the state of its union. Mental, physical, emotional. The goal is healthy balance. The goal is quality of life. The goal is to feel acutely and correctly the experience as it happens and to learn from what has gone before.

That has not always been the goal. Once upon a time the goal was a good story, didn't necessarily care how the yarn was crafted, just that the finished product was a compelling tapestry I would be proud of. I wanted to be 80 on the veranda chuckling to myself about how it all played out.

It is definitely interesting. Hopefully I will chuckle, but I forgot to imagine what it would feel like on the way through,so the way through feels unfamiliar far more frequently than I would like. I thought interesting meant adventure and intrigue. I wasn't smart enough to realize that you don't get to just observe life and tell it as a tale when you are older. You have to live life and life will change your parts around, alter your context and understanding and you have to convince yourself that you know who "you" are both before and after the shifting. Oh, and the shifting, the subtle persistent, pervasive shifting is far harder to grasp than the big earthquakes. You remember the earthquakes. You remember what was before and you can see what is after, but the shifting offers no such reference and no conclusion. So I realized that and I changed the goals and I try to recognize this as what life is so that it might be easier to embrace. Love is a powerful thing, but it is a powerful thing and as with all powerful things, it should be approached with respect for its power.

A widely-publicized study from 2008 in the British Medical Journal reported that happiness in social networks may spread from person to person.^[10] Researchers followed nearly 5000 individuals for 20 years in the long-standing Framingham Heart Study and found clusters of happiness and unhappiness that spread up to 3 degrees of separation on average. Happiness tended to spread through close relationships like friends, siblings, spouses, and next-door neighbors, and the researchers reported that happiness spread more consistently than unhappiness through the network. Moreover, the structure of the social network appeared to have an impact on happiness, as people who were very central (with many friends and friends of friends) were significantly more likely to be happy than those on the periphery of the network. Overall, the results suggest that happiness might spread through a population like a virus.^[11][12]

Updates

The below is a post from October 2009. I was searching for something in my mails and blog and came upon this. I am on vacation (at home) right now attempting to find some sort of balance. I found this and realized I could at least assess my progress based on my objectives before the current exhaustion set in. So here is my score:

1. Nope

2. Indeed, I am consistently growing in my contributions to the community and feel hopeful that these efforts will lead to a more permanent commitment.

3. Success. I am currently worrying on rugs and art work in a place I found that I love with someone I love.

4. Fail, although improvements are occurring.

5. Subjective, not sure, likely fail.

Does that constitute progress?

As I come into yet another holiday season, I struggle with what I did with the last year of my life. SO..this year I am publishing an assignment list that I can either check off or give myself a fail at next year. Same time.

1. Make a list of 50 things that I want out of life. Get input on possibilities from coterie.

2. Explore opportunities for expending energy on making a concrete difference.

3. Make a home for myself. A real, permanent home.

4. Meditate consistently.

5. Improve schedule management.

hibernation

As storms pound the coast and February marches on, I feel as if my body has gone into hibernation. I read stuff that normally would have amazed me and my response is muted, quiet. I wonder if I have made the progress I meant to make, but even with that currently feel as if it will figure itself out regardless of whether or not I analyse it. I hope this is hibernation and not me giving up on things in general.

not so noble reason

you consume data you have no interest in before speaking to the crowd? The crowd's disapproval would have been swift and brutal otherwise. Excellent ROI.

On a Jet plane

Wherever you go, there you are, so they say. Where are you when on a plane reading material on the how the military industrial complex needs to consolidate its organizational management after consuming an issue of adbusters magazine and barely processing a holiday season of family, friends and their (and my) unknowably fascinating interior landscapes?

The recommendation of mindful therapists everywhere is that you need to aware of the present moment in order move forward in a conscious and conscientious manner. So do I assume a limitation of my mind's capacity that I am sitting here absorbing the data necessary to speak knowingly in front of the next crowd, without having access to an understanding of why I expound this effort other than economic autonomy? A concept which seemed elemental until I was faced with an economic crisis that confirmed my worst suspicions about the numbers on the sheet being a whole lotta bullshit and self sufficiency became an acknowledged defense mechanism against the vulnerability inherent in being part of my community.

My efforts at mindfulness awareness have shown me that my desire for an unwritten narrative were naive at best and utterly missing the point at worst. Just live your life. Mind you with this new perspective I only manage to design a new goal of being able to tell the youth I am invested in the memo I'm convinced I never got, only the more the life goes on I realize I got far better memos than most and had built in advantages that were inaccessible to me at the time. So gratitude would seem to be the appropriate response and there is gratitude, but still I swim in frustration that I cannot wholly perceive the fabric that I exist within.

So the future stands still while the present is infinite. My high school year book quote "It's all just a game, we all just wanna be loved" stands as a comforting indicator that even then, despite my cynicism, I saw a reason, a purpose for the effort required to live life well however one defines it. So in this moment I will seek comfort in the belief that I have loved well and am well loved. All I need is all I got.

Family

Last night, I met the family of the fellow I aim to have as my companion. It has nearly a decade since my last meet the family encounter and alas, I have evolved less than I had hoped....

My whole life I have read fiction, non fiction, biographies, philosophies etc in the hopes that somewhere in there I would glean the type of insight that enables a person to see clearly in the moment the tapestry that is being woven and then, instead of just observing the weaving, actually pull a few threads to enhance the overall pattern. There are people who can do this, but anecdotal observation indicates that they do it innately. It seems to odd to them that not everyone can do it. I can not do it. I can imagine it sometimes. I can see nervous chattiness or deer in headlights in the moment sort of. but never in such a way that I can grab hold of the space and allow or enable myself to occupy it in a more dignified way.

There are areas of improvement. That should be said. I do not worry about losing myself this time. I do not worry that I am glossing over inconvenient truths in order to make the picture fit. I have grown up a bit and I have improved, but of course, as life is apt to do, it all get so much more complicated now. The pressure and meaning of decisions, compromises and negotiations will feed more significantly into the meta narrative. I am no longer given the comfort of writing a little written story, which was scary but easier to improvise within, easier to see what defined progress & growth. Now I would pretend to write an interesting story within a nearly universal tale.

Now I have to believe in something in order to see it. Now I have to believe in someone in a way that puts my own well being at risk. Now I do not walk alone and its terrifying. There really had better be some fucking unicorns and rainbows or I'm going to be pissed.

It's that time of Year again

I have been keeping this blog since 2006, which seems such a long time ago. I fear that it has proven less valuable than I hoped and am sure that I have not grown significantly in my capacity to write in a way that conveys my impressions of the world. In fact, with the unending disaster that is this embarrassing attempt at health care reform, I am finding my interest in how the world runs itself waning. It seems that only the utterly corrupt and indifferent get airing and those of us who wake up everyday and get the job done, we are dispensable. There is no ROI on our lives in the eyes of those with the power and money. I will do a self check and if I really have given up I will stop posting. No reason to subject others to my cynicism.

The things that move us

I should go to bed soon. I am tired and have a long day in front of me. Still, I want to know...if you can not ever know your story till it's written, how can you know how well you are writing it? And really, if we are honest, given what we know about how memory works, even when its written, we likely still don't really know. So we live and then die barely knowing what we have done and yet desperate to have done something that will have mattered. Somehow in there, with the pain, struggle, joy and logistics should be a guaranteed quota of peace. Moments where you feel at one with the universe that you can remember in all the other convoluted moments and tell yourself you had a glimpse of the larger narrative, so you don't need to worry so much about your own. It should be a fairly large quota.

moments in time

I am having problems at work. It seems like everything I'm assigned to is blowing up in spectacular fashion. Hopefully it will pass with no significant calamities but it has made me aware of how disconcerting it still is, despite my wizened age, when the ground you are standing on shifts suddenly.

I really thought that part of getting older would be getting better at life. I am beginning to wonder if that assumption in not only flawed but fundamentally inaccurate. There are certain areas where I will get better, but fundamentally threaten my sense of security and those gains can seemingly be washed away with nary a thought. It is disheartening to think that we can only improve our ability to handle the stable moments in life, but have much less chance of improving our handling of life changing moments.

This year's assignment

As I come into yet another holiday season, I struggle with what I did with the last year of my life. SO..this year I am publishing an assignment list that I can either check off or give myself a fail at next year. Same time.

1. Make a list of 50 things that I want out of life. Get input on possibilities from coterie.

2. Explore opportunities for expending energy on making a concrete difference.

3. Make a home for myself. A real, permanent home.

4. Meditate consistently.

5. Improve schedule management.

Thoughts on singlehood- updated

I wrote about being single and its implications on life a little less than a year ago. I was a long time singleton, who assumed on a fundamental level that I would stay single. I am good at being single. I am well suited to having a well developed life and personhood as defined by me and me alone, but alas I find myself once again in a relationship.

So the plans would have to be altered if this were to become a permanent thing. I will have to compromise some level of autonomy in order to experience long term companionship.....and as I dip myself back into the flow of an intimate dynamic, I feel no clarity on the reference point question, middling confidence on having the capability of sustaining/creating a dynamic that mostly enriches, and real curiosity about what happens next.

Being Alpha

I am pretty sure that I have a naturally competitive personality. I have always wondered about the nature/nurture question as it impacts gender identity. Specifically, since there is anatomical proof of structural differences between male and female brains, what of it. Are there traits that are universally female or male?

An interesting study by Gneezy, Leonard, and List (2008) explored the role of culture in determining gender differences in competitive behaviour. They investigated two distinct societies, the Maasai tribe of Tanzania and the Khasi tribe in India. The former is patriarchal while the latter is matrilineal. In the patriarchal society, women were found to be less competitive than men, a result consistent with studies using data from Western cultures. But in the matrilineal society, women were more competitive than men. Indeed, the Khasi women were found to be as competitive as Maasai men. The authors interpret this as evidence that culture has an influence.

time management

I used to be able to manage life. I used to be excellent at scheduling, being super punctual, etc. Now I'm like some crazy lady walking around dropping things and forgetting stuff and unclear on how anything is getting done. I prefer the old me and would like to re-create her asap.

thoughts

It is hard to know one's self. It is even harder to try to dicover the truth of one's identity while allowing new evidence to suggest that your current understanding is not whole. i.e. growing up well is hard.

I have to stop reading the news

From super creepy big brother things to financial chicanery and batshit crazy prosecutors, the news is making me nuts. Maybe if I take more walks along the Charles I'll chill out.

Hives

I get hive outbreaks from an unknown allergen that sometimes will go away with two benadryl and sometimes, will take me out and require IV steroids to stop the reaction. This happened to me last week.  I was walking home when the reaction started and by the time I got home and took the benadryl I knew it was going to be a bad one so I called a taxi to take me to the hospital. Now I am smart enough to know that I should have called an ambulance, but I didn't want to pay for it. As a result, the reaction increased, I passed out on the sidewalk and someone walking by called an ambulance.

Seriously. 

I have health insurance and am not in financial dire straits. I can afford the ambulance ride. But the last time this happened it took six months to setttle all the bills between the health insurance company, the doctors, the ambulance and the ER.  Six months of phone calls, faxes and e-mails with various parties trying to confirm who had paid what.

My friend just got back from Denmark and described their social system of free healthcare, daycare and subsidized vacations.  She got it right on. We do it wrong.  

We construct situations that needlessly add to the anxiety and administrative burden of life and call it freedom or free market. I want to have a conversation with someone who argues that health care should be a "market". I want them to explain how people who are sick and vulnerable should be required to make rational, informed decisions about their care.  It is ridiculous and there should be a way to force the conversation on healthcare to acknowledge that.

Costa Rica Trip Thoughts

So I traveled by myself for a week in Costa Rica. There were several reasons for going by myself, but at a base level, mostly to see if I could do it. Well I did it. I nearly drowned (Thanks for the shitty signage J.W. Marriott Guanacaste) but I did it. I was able to clear my head a lot and think about some stuff that I have needed to think about. No grand conclusions, but I feel less harried. 

Thinking

I had thought that there were things I would know by now. Compassion would tell me to be patient with myself and the time it takes to understand those things....but timing is a bitch. This I know for sure. So there will be things I miss because I missed the opportunity to be in that moment and let that moment bring me somewhere else.