tough monday

Learning isn't about not making mistakes. It's about making mistakes and then taking a good hard look at them.

purpose

For ages, my existence was governed by ideas that held me back. Fascinating new projects could not be embarked upon for fear of failure. Ideas could not be shared with others for fear of ridicule. New skills could not be developed because I was not a virtuoso. There was a basic theme in my life that I lived by for so very long: if you aren't Jimi Hendrix in the first moment, you never will be. I once bought a guitar after dreaming that I could play, and realized about 2 days later, after my warm-up period expired, that there was no skill already in me. Duh. I can see how that's obvious now, but at the time, it wasn't. I was devastated. I could have learned to play guitar, but that seemed dumb when I still hadn't even figured out what I was excellent at. The search for excellence continued. I went through a degree in printmaking, and a minor in mathematics still in search of my secret excellent skill. I spent 10 years as a professional baker, feeling like it came naturally to me, yet I still wasn't a virtuoso. I took some time off. I was burnt out. I was uninspired to create art anymore after suffering the bureaucracy of the collegiate system. Three years came and went. I gave up. I lived without creative comparisons and pressures. During that time, my life changed drastically. I fell in love, got married, and moved several times. All of a sudden, I felt inspired again. One day I went to the art supply store and bought some acrylic paints and a canvas. I wasn't Jimi Hendrix, so to speak, but I had fun with it, and it felt good. It dawned on me that I was good at plenty of things. Maybe I wasn't the very best at any of it, but I could do lots of different things. In the search for my secret excellent skill I had found a lot of interests and my life had become fulfilling in so many ways. I may not have super powers, and I'm definitely not Jimi Hendrix, but I'm me, and that's exactly who I'm supposed to be.

can't give up

Some days I'm a superhero who can complete several projects without blunder. Other days I am incapable of completing even one, and I mess up everything I work on. It is definitely ok to have these days, everyone does, but I can't seem to forgive myself for it. When I wake up in the morning and immediately break the french press, I should have some clue that it might be "that" day. But I don't. I continue in denial, fumbling and failing. The more I destroy, the more driven I become. I have to redeem myself. After a couple of hours of wasting materials, and accomplishing nothing but a record high blood pressure, I am really angry. That might be a good time to take a walk, or a break of some sort, but I won't. I am too stubborn. I will keep right on mutilating my supplies until I run out. Sometimes I do this for hours. After a long day of this kind of perpetual failure, I ought to reflect on what I could have done differently. How could I have saved my materials from this assault? I'll tell you how....take a damn break. Take a day off. Re-purpose the day into an inspiration day, and go out into the world to gather ideas and enjoy life for a while.

musings on time

As I near 30, time is speeding up. It's factual. I can nearly measure to what degree it's happening. Earlier parts of my life seem like another life entirely, while the past week has gone by in a blur. So I suppose it's really more truthful to say that time is warping, and no longer seems linear. Memories from childhood can seem like yesterday while six months ago seems to be years away. I heard my elder family members talk about this when I was a kid, and thought to myself, "You're a moron, time is always the same...it's time, it can't change." Ha! I was absolutely wrong. Time changes as your life does. Time warps and bends constantly to create the oddity of forgetting what you had for breakfast while remembering obscure moments from many many years past. Time also speeds up and slows down according to how much something is enjoyable or un-enjoyable. Even stranger is the fact that we often share similar experiences of how and when time distorts. Examples of this would include trips to the DMV. Time at the DMV passes by so slowly that one visit can seem to last days: days during which you never sleep or eat. Conversely, if something is incredible, it's nearly over before it began. Examples of this might include a trip to Costa Rica, or eating the most fabulous steak of your life. Those disappear faster than the flavor from a slice of fruit stripe gum. So what's a person to do, to try to live in the now when time distortion robs us of the most wonderful times of our lives? What would it take to turn time into a variable that each individual could control in his or her own life? What if you could trick yourself into valuing all situations equally? Maybe time would pass at a steady rate. If that were true, then maybe time could be controlled even further by completely believing that you enjoy the DMV, and furthermore, dislike tropical locations such as Costa Rica. What would be the result of an experiment on this? Would you create within yourself a chasm to divide one part of yourself from another? To tell one part of yourself you dislike swimming in warm tropical waters, while knowing entirely in the other that it is your favorite feeling? Would you be able to turn painful experiences such as visits to the DMV, or even larger more meaningful ones, into more enjoyable scenarios, or at the least, less painful ones? Let's assume that you could use these tools of controlled time dilation in your favor to savor the good times and breeze easily through the hard ones. What would be the results? Would you be the person you are right now if you could have done that? I wouldn't. But some part of me still desires to hold onto good times. I suppose that's only human.

perspective

Since i was about 15, i have died in my dreams repeatedly. I'm a vivid dreamer, so i feel the intensity of the experience, even the physical pain. The experiences have varied, but there are some things that remain the same. Among them, a clear, rich, deep understanding that i can't hang onto back in my waking life. It doesn't feel scary. Maybe that's why i think about death everyday. I know that sounds morbid, but there's something valuable for me there. I imagine everyday that i could die at any moment. A truck could swerve onto the sidewalk and take me out during my daily walk to the grocery store. It's just that easy. The point of the exercise is to make sure that i am living today. It's a way for me to keep things in perspective. For example: if i died tomorrow, would this argument we're having about whether or not to leave the heater on all night really matter. I can't always take my own advice, but sometimes it helps me to accept the insignificance of whatever i'm spending my time on. In fact, i'm realizing as i'm writing this how foolish i was acting just yesterday. We left the house specifically to go to Whole Foods, but when we got there, the parking lot was utter pandemonium. I nearly lost my shit as we sat at a complete standstill for 5 minutes with cars behind us honking because they were halfway in the street and couldn't pull all the way into the parking lot entrance. The aisles were backed up 5 and 6 cars deep. It was going to be hard to park, to say the least. I was panicking. I started complaining, and then drove through the whole horrific scene and right out the other side of the parking lot. Straight home. No groceries were had. But did it really matter? All the anxiety i felt, did it do anything good for me? Was it at all beneficial that i let it get to me? If i died tomorrow, would i feel satisfied about how i chose to react? Nope. I wouldn't. It's not a big deal. It was just a busy parking lot, but i wasted an hour of my life bitching about how it sucked. So the point here is that there's something powerful about remembering that everyday could be your last, and trying to live it accordingly. For me it's about keeping perspective on what matters and what doesn't. It's thinking about death as a teacher, not as something to be dreaded, but something to learn from. A couple days ago, as i was reading, i came across a passage on the subject.
"If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death.I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs." - Muriel Spark
How true. If this life wouldn't eventually come to an end, how would we feel motivation to live it fully?

if It feels like work...

WORK: something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.
Is my field of endeavor basically honest, meaningful, and helpful to myself and others - or at the very least harmless? Is it emotionally fulfilling: financially, psychologically, and socially rewarding; engaging, creatively satisfying, and bringing the best out of me through utilizing and further developing my own unique combination of special gifts, talents, experiences, and interests? Or am I hiding the truth from myself? These are excerpts from a book called "Awakening the Buddha Within." Not that I am a practicing buddhist or anything, but I like this way of thinking about work. If work occupies 40 hours a week or more, it really shouldn't be something we dread. In fact, it should be something enriching. Here's to seeing everyone I know realize this dream <3

another feather?!

Los Angeles is probably not considered a very walkable city. Things are often far spread apart, and there will likely be a seedy area between you and your destination. Despite this, I find it relaxing to walk to as many destinations as I can within reason. Everyday, I walk some place or other, whether it's a single block or 5 miles. It's good for me. I zone out and feel at peace even when the rest of my day is a disaster. This walking habit has been in place for years. Hell, once I got so upset that I walked to the next town, and you know, it made things more clear...I felt better actually.
Everyday for the past week, I have seen feathers all over the ground during these walks. Feathers from very different birds, and not simply concentrated in one area or another. I see huge feathers standing vertically in the tops of hedges. I see smooth grey feathers with strokes of black across them shaped like crude arrows, and arranged exactly in the direction of my motion. I see weathered and mangled black crow feathers, oily with the residue of pilfered meals gone by, yet they still catch my eye. I see feathers used in logos on the backs of Metro buses. I see peacock feathers in the window displays of hip LA boutiques. I see feathers sewn all over the handmade dress of a friend's friend. At least one feather, and almost always several, lie in my path each day, and somehow, my attention is often drawn to the item, as in the case where I was forced over to the other side of the sidewalk by a group of several people walking by, just in time to have to step over the feather. So finally, I looked into the symbolic meanings associated with feathers, and I find that these feathers are a positive sign, and an affirmation of spiritual growth supposedly as well. For the past 4 months, I have been considering a tattoo of a feather to be placed on my forearm, as it related to a life changing dream experience that occurred several years ago. Now I feel prepared to put it there. I'm not sure what exactly is going on, but it sure does seem as if something is afoot.