Category: don’t speak…don’t speak!

This one I feel is a bit risky, but here goes.

I am not having a very good day.

I am letting my brain and maybe my imagination takes over a bit.

I think I’d get it if weed made me paranoid and I’d been smoking, but I don’t smoke. And it’s been awhile since the lack of protein sets me off. (heh, wrote this on 4/20…)

I guess I have to put it out there (or here) so that it isn’t a reality.

But my gut is telling me that someone has said something that is sabotaging my job hunt. I don’t know why, but it just feels like it. It feels like that I go down a bit of a path and then it just stops. Silence. Crickets…actually not even crickets.

I know that people are busy. Even gave one the easy way out by saying she didn’t have to reply. Probably a mistake. But that seems like something I don’t even have to do. They just don’t reply. Even one who reached out to connect have a call then went dead silent. I think that one was the one that sent me down this path. Because it’s a company that someone recommended me to before who has, in my opinion, pulled away. Btw, reached out a second time to connect. Nothing.

In the past, my network has worked so well for me. Did being honest about this company or that person turn into my name on some sort of weird blacklist?

I can’t get my head out of it. Even told two friends last week in the biz that I thought that. I think they are the two I can trust? I hope?

But then as I think about it. Why would I want to work with people who discount me because I told the truth about something? It has to be the fear, for example, as to the reason for my one exit and how ridiculous it was that they don’t want it being told what was said to me. And how I’ve had one job since then and they have had 3 maybe 4.

I don’t know. Truly I’d rather never work with or be around most of them, but I do need to work. And I’m just not sure if that will happen.

I write a lot. But I rarely write here.

So I have decided, in an effort to put or get myself out there, I will move many of my “notes” to here so that the one or two people who might show up here randomly to read will have something new to read.

It also might help in the event that all other efforts to save said writing explode and everything is lost in the cloud…

So…here I go!

You very firmly believe what you believe is right. And to a certain degree believe that it is right for everyone. EVERYONE.

Think about that. I’ll wait.

You are you and I am me. I have opinions as well. Here is where I think there is a difference.

I don’t believe that everything I believe is right for everyone. Because everyone is not me.

I don’t have children so there are lots of things that I either pay taxes for or that I do for children because it’s the right thing to do.

I am not married so my taxes are different than my friends who are married. And different because I don’t have dependents. So I guess I put up with that because somehow that is different. Even though I don’t get it.

I have been unemployed several times in the last 20 years and I have taken advantage of services that as an employee I and my companies have paid into. And while unemployed it is my intention to not just take a “job” to get off unemployment. So I may exhaust my claim being strategic about my search risking the self-righteous saying I am being lazy while not knowing a single thing about me all because someone started a fable years ago about a person of color being a welfare queen. My opinion, this person does not exist.

You think that people using help from human services should have to drug screen to get the funds. Have you taken the time to read that is an enormous waste of the very money you are complaining about being spent? That the number of people or this does not affect the overall results? And if you think these people should be tested, what about the others you are paying the salary for, Senate, Congress, city, state officials, the President! What is the difference? Drug screen and background them all, then maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today. Corrupt up to the eyeballs.

Dear Friend,

Something that’s been rolling in my head for months now, came to light today.

I am a once churched person.

In high school I was, in my opinion, a bit fanatical. I was as I see and perceive it now, headed down a path of extremism. I was judgmental. I was inflexible. I was intolerant. I had a skewed view of my responsibility as a Christian. A skewed view of my responsibility as a human. It was not how I was being raised, but how I was evolving at the time.

Growing up it was church Wednesday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night, any other time in between for anything. At school, President of the chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Much of which I am proud of. What may be a surprise, is that as I look back or had conversations with some since 1979, a few things I am embarrassed about and apologized for. That would be the fanatical side of all of it. (Thanks Coach Black)

My decision in 1985 to do what I had wanted to do all along propelled me into an exploration that was inevitable when I went back to college. Exploration not as an educator, but someone who would express (or wanted to express) themselves through images and words. While the path moved and changed here and there, not being truly realized, the path has been good.

If you take my high school persona and sit it next to who I am today, some might be surprised. Some may not. I’m not sure where I fit into that analysis. Where I am does feel better than where I think I was.

What completely shifting my path did, was bring the beauty of our diverse world front and center to me. While I haven’t yet seen the whole world yet. I had glimpses into it from unique perspectives and experiences through professors and classmates. I think my eye’s were pretty wide to begin with, but what I learned, my mind was also open. And the beauty of humans I have experienced is a lifetime of love.

I’ve been thinking about all of this a lot for many years and even more within the last decade. The beauty that surrounds me in the people that have graciously allowed for me space in their lives. Goodness to last a lifetime.

Some of it is confusing to me. I have often ask my Mom, who took me to that Church 3 times a week, what shifted? What changed? And by the way, took me but I never felt pressured to go to that Church 3 times a week. It was part of me, it was home. With people I loved.

How do you explain, understand or accept the differences that I see today? Some are ideologically, figuratively, metaphorically and literally so different. Not only are we no longer in the same pew, we aren’t across the aisle or even in the same building. Diametrically apposed. Where I feel it now, is in my heart. In high school I now know I felt it in my head. I am certain of that. Certain because of how it feels now. I don’t know who is right or if anyone has to be right. I just know how it feels to me. How it feels in my heart.

College and 1985 was about digging deep. At the time I don’t think I knew that. I know now that there I only scratched the surface.

A lot happened that year. Despite the fact that I was finally doing what I wanted to do, the family unit I had grown up in was kind of crumbling. My ground, my dear cousin died. Then my Great Grandmother. Jung, Nietzsche, Thomas Moore, Plato, Hesse, the Masculine, the Feminine, Symbolism … Religion. Many of my classes were therapy. Deep self refections and vulnerability that now I realize, again just scratching the surface.

During this time I use to spend Sunday mornings at a teachers house talking, Sufism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity … praying together, eating together and talking about religion. Not as a specific, but as choice and exploration. A heart settling knowledge that it was love and compassion that was religion. A religion I wanted. That there was a possibility that there was not just one way. But that we could all come together for the greater good, listen and take care of each other with no judgment, no expectation. Just love.

Now more than ever before we have at our fingertips so much information. We have so much access to each other. We have such an incredible opportunity to share love. To honor and care for another. Yet I read and see so much anger and hatred. A lack of tolerance for difference. Accusations of people that we just can’t know. Us vs. them.

What is it that makes us believe one thing over another? Why the disenfranchisement? What appears as ones attempt to understand something to express the understanding of it, often feels like judgment or reads as hatred. A feeling that often brings tears to my eye’s and weighs on my heart so heavily.

What is happening?

Sincerely,

A once churched person

Lately, most days, many days I am brought to tears by the things I see, hear and read. They aren’t always tears of joy. Lately they are mostly tears of sadness. Tears of confusion as to how we allowed ourselves to…wait strike that. Tears of my perception of how we have allowed ourselves to become.

I see and read such hate on online social media outlets. I see people that I have respected and even admired posting and sharing things that are mean, hurtful, disrespectful and nine times out of ten just straight up false and hold no factual integrity. Again, my perception along with an occasional Google search to fact check.

Kindness and respect seem easy and universal. Yet I perceive to often such scarcity in simple kindness as I scroll here or there, read this or that.

Several weeks ago I started Brené Browns, Living Brave Semester. Half way through this online semester we were required to write a Daring Manifesto.

This experience has been a challenge on many levels. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.” Uncomfortable, yes.

My life feels a strange dichotomy. Often I feel that I am just an observer, sitting back watching life, taking it in. Being silent. Then on the flip side I very often feel I am full on leaning in and living my true north, showing up every damn day. I know that I show up every day. Fully participating and engaging the situation. And absorbing too much. Those are the days, more often than not I get knocked down or a little beat up.

I don’t have all the answers and on most days no answers. But I have insight, thoughts and ideas about those around me that mean so much. Those around me that I want to live a life of pure joy and happiness. To experience no disenchantment or heart break. But I can’t block it all or even stop most of it.

With an open loving heart I have tried to contribute, help and yes sometimes question something that is going on; and make a suggestion of another way. Or question and ask why to get an answer that I am certain I don’t have. But to no avail, have I gotten the answer or in some instances the simple respect and consideration that I am certain I afford those around me unconditionally.

I don’t feel that I am a complicated person or so complex that those who know me don’t really know me. So just in case. Here is my Daring Manifesto for you to ignore or read. And if you read and feel compelled, hold me to it.