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BOOM BABY!

And it always ended with “It just goes to show you, it’s always somthin’.”

Ain’t it the truth.

I’ve had a bit of a rough week since last Monday. Technically, it started before that, but whatever. The 1st was my birthday, and I wasn’t exactly jazzed. I wrote about that last time, I think ~  Well, the week didn’t get a lot better.

The problem with these “b-logs” is that they aren’t really personal, and they’re certainly not private, and once they’re posted, they’re out there for someone to find somewhere, forever. So, unless you’re completely oblivious of that fact, you don’t want to say just anything that pops into your head. And when you keep a blog like this ~ about believing in yourself and creating your own life and reality and destiny ~ you want to be encouraging and uplifting and believing, if you see what I mean.

Trouble is, most people don’t feel that way 100% of the time. So, while I wrestle with myself about my attitude and avoid posting to this blog because I’m not feeling very bright and believing, at the same time, I wonder if it’s fair to let people think that I don’t ever or even often have trouble believing and acting in that belief.

Not that I think people are reading this blog in droves ~ hardly. But I think those who are reading a blog entitled Believing is Seeing deserve to read content that’s uplifting rather than something that bums them out.

But I realize that maybe there are others out there, like me, who feel inadequate or like they’re deficient because sometimes they can’t keep the positive attitude going. Sometimes, no matter how hard they try and how earnestly they put into practice the things they’re learning about creating their own reality and living the life they want to live, sometimes they get discouraged and down on themselves and everything they’ve ever tried to do, because it’s just not working the way the positive-outlook-affirmations-and-belief-will-lead-you-to-the-life-you-want gurus say it does.

And I think, maybe some of those gurus should be telling about their own mistakes and difficulties and failures ~ about their own sojourns into the darkness, and about the weeks, months, or years it took them to finally succeed in achieving the life of riches and enlightenment and confidence they now enjoy and enjoin others to pursue.

The only guru I know who does that routinely is Joe Vitale ~ and you know, it’s funny, but the first time I saw The Secret, he wasn’t the one I thought would be most inspiring.

But I digress. Big surprise, right? You’re shocked, I can tell. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I was talking about how things really work, and how for many of us a positive attitude is not always sustainable. We have our valleys of the shadow, our storms to batten down and weather. And maybe this kind of blog is exactly the place to talk about those things, too.

In any case, like Larry Winget says, this is my blog, so if you don’t like what you see here, go write your own.

Thing is, in writing this post about saying in public that you’re having a bad week or month or year, when your original intent was to encourage and lift up and support people in the pursuit of their own belief and happiness, I find that I no longer feel the need to vent all that stuff all over the place. Maybe that was the point.

I’ve been having a bad week or so ~ I had a really bad day yesterday and I’m still feeling the effects today. It’s been a rough year, one way and another, and of late, several not so positive things have piled one on top of the other. It happens like that, sometimes. People have said and done things that hurt me or someone I love, and there was nothing I could do about it. I have tried and failed at several things, and I am nowhere near where I wanted to be ~ where I expected to be ~ by this time in my life.

Yesterday, the accumulation of stuff just came crashing down on me, and I couldn’t hold up under it anymore. I wrote a long rambling email (which I didn’t send) to a friend of mine, venting all this frustration.  Then I shut off my computer, ate the supper my husband had been kind enough to cook for me, went upstairs and sat on my bed and watched dvds until it was time to go to bed. Thermonuclear meltdown. And that was the second time this week.

So what. It happens.

I’m still feeling the effects of it today, but I’m climbing back on the horse, anyway. It might just be a pony today, or maybe just a rocking horse, but that’s okay, too. When I’m feeling more confident, more secure, more whatever, I’ll trade up.

And in the meantime, I’ll try to remember The Four Agreements ~ especially the ones that say “Don’t take anything personally” and “Don’t make assumptions” because most of the time the things people say and do ~ even when they’re insensitive or selfish or malicious ~ have nothing to do with you, but are a projection of their own “dream” or what they’re going through.

That doesn’t make it okay for people to behave that way to other people ~ but it does help put it in perspective for you, and changing your perspective about things is the first step toward changing the thing itself.

As for the things I try to do that don’t work or that work once but then ~ nothing, or the times when technology baffles and defeats me ~ particularly technology that I thought I had a handle on ~ I’ll try to remember Roseanne Rosannadanna’s philosophy.

It just goes to show you: it’s always somethin’.

By the way: Gilda Radner ~ if you don’t know her, check out some of her work on the old SNL or read her memoir It’s Always Something (she got that expression from her dad, if I remember correctly). She was fabulously funny, bright, and endearing ~ and she passed from this life much too young.

But while she was here, she went for what she wanted, loved at least one man ~ Gene Wilder ~ very deeply, and gave a lot of people a lot of laughs before she had to go. As legacies go, that’s not such a bad one to leave.

It doesn’t matter what age ~ I expect it’s different for everyone ~ but at that point, you realize that you’re not looking forward to what you’ll do when that birthday comes but back at what you haven’t done, and the years between those annual reflections get shorter and shorter as you go.

Now, I’m a big proponent of working in concert with the vibrations of the universe, putting out the positive vibe you want to live in, because what you send out is what comes back to you, magnified. It took me a long time to learn that, and I’m still internalizing it, I think. Any of you who’ve read this blog before know that there are still deep wells into which I trip and fall now and then. What’s changing, I hope, is that it takes me less time to bob back up to the top. It seems so, anyway.

And I think, maybe that has a lot to do with the good fortune I’ve had, in recent years, to be able to surround myself with so many like-minded people, people who look forward and up and out ~ and point me the way when I forget to do the same.

That happened again just a few moments ago, thanks to some of my dearest friends. Don’t get me wrong ~ I’ve been getting well wishes all day (facebook is a wonderful thing for people who wouldn’t otherwise remember birthdays) from family and friends, all people I love ~ and many who don’t have facebook or only remember just because it’s on their page.

But the gifts I’ve been given, both physical and virtual, were all topped by this one just a few moments ago ~ not because it was any more well-meant than the others, or because the sender cares any more for me than many of the others, but just because of my reaction to it, the way it resonated with me. Here’s what she said:

“Here’s the thing about birthdays.  It’s your own personal New Year.  It’s the day when you have the ear of the universe.  So make it known what you want.  Journal, dream, and bring in all the good things you want in your life for next year.  This is your day to make that plan.  I hate resolutions, don’t make resolutions.  Don’t even set goals unless you want to.  But think about what you want and dream it in.”

What a fabulous and inspiring and extraordinary idea. To (as someone else once put it) shine shine shine sit real still.

So that’s what I’m going to do for the next few hours ~ contemplate all the good things I want in my life this coming year ~ and dream them in.

We can but believe . . . and that is enough.
‘becca

I’ll miss writing for that blog regularly, because environmental responsibility and preserving the earth for our children and grandchildren is a subject about which I have always been passionate ~ a bit of the left over hippie in me, as my kid sister says. More the earth-mother thing, I’m thinking, but if hippie it is ~ ah, well. So be it. But I still reserve the  right to shower daily

Still, like the doctor (“my” doctor is the 9th, though I enjoyed the 10th, too), one must be always moving on, and whenever possible, moving forward. That’s definitely the direction I’m tacking toward. The future I envision is green with clean fields and forests, blue with fresh waters and salt seas teaming with life, rosy with good health for everyone everywhere, and it is serene, peaceful, and loving ~ with prosperity, peace, and love for everyone. Okay, maybe the hippie thing is an appropriate designation.  Well, there y’go. But that’s the one I’m setting my course for ~

Pardon me while I catch the wind in my sails ~

‘becca

But outside or in, the trouble remains the same ~ all these diverting little side trails! you go to search for something, or just to find something on your desktop, and the next thing you know, you’re reading old forum posts on how to get and stay organized (that was the one I got to that struck me funny this morning!)

It started this morning with updates to my browser plugins, fer goshsakes! I should just skip them, but then I’m paranoid enough to think that if I do that, I’ll want to do something months from now that I won’t be able to do because I don’t have this grease monkey plug in that I could have updated and didn’t! Actually, I probably wouldn’t remember that I had had the opportunity, or even what it’s meant to do.

Speaking of which, when you get notice of these updates, didja ever look and see what it was they were meant to do? I think programmers make some of this stuff up. Like, who understands that this upgrade will improve your hxmldrip scheme (or something like that)?

And share a holic ~ that’s like all those facebook programs ~ according to their terms of service, you have to let them have access to everything from your contact list to your underwear drawer. Well, color me suspicious, but I don’t like ANYone having access to all my stuff (especially my underwear drawer).

That’s why I don’t reply to those “Kasey is a kumkwat ~ what kind of fruit are you?” invites on Facebook – you have to give them access to all your stuff, like your contact list info ~ uhuh, no thanks (and even if I were a kumkwat, why would I want that to be public knowledge?).

I dunno ~ whatevah (which is one of my favorite retro-words right now). But here’s a good example: I opened my macbook one hour and 15 minutes ago,  and started this blog post (I first typed “bog” ~ hmmm, non-sexual Freudian slip, I’m thinking) 15 minutes ago. What happened to the hour? ’cause other than copy/pasting advice on getting organized from an old warrior forum post, and reading just enough of share-a-holic’s terms of service page to decide no or at least not now, I got nothin’.

Man. I gotta get organized. Sigh . . .

I just happened upon this really cool site, this evening, and I used the first four paragraphs of my last post here (which I didn’t think were too horror-rific! ) as text for the software to analyze, and guess what ~ I write like Stephen King! Color me surprised! (and delighted, actually ~ no higher praise could I receive ~ seriously)

Give it a try ~ it’s a hoot! And have a most excellent day!
‘becca

Into Dust
Well, that’s the way it happens for me, most of the time. Sometimes, like yesterday, it’s not a good thing. I woke up from a horrendous nightmare and as I was making the bed I realized that the song playing in my head was “Into Dust” by Mazzy Star ~ excellent song, and I like it very much (else it wouldn’t be in the jukebox of my mind), but not the kind of song you want to start out your day with.

Usually, I can trace the song to something going on in the waking world, or the dreaming one, like yesterday. I had a nightmare (that I couldn’t trace to anything currently in my reality) that stayed with me on waking, a headache (the two often go together), and our friends, Roger and Helene, who had been visiting from Quebec were getting ready to leave for home.

Between that and the fact that I had basically screwed my little macbook over the weekend, trying to install a windows os with bootcamp, and was (and am) still in the process of getting things back “in order” after Roger (who is a genius, but don’t tell him that, okay?) was able to reinstall the os and recapture most of my data from an external back up ~ well, there was no one-to-one correlation between that and the storyline of my nightmare, but they were the only things I could think of that might have prompted the nightmare/headache/Mazzy Star start to my day.

Fortunately, I’m good at hiding such things and I sent them off with smiles and laughter and hugs and kisses. But the dregs of my shadowed start to the day stayed on ~ not enough to ruin my day completely, thank goodness. I got a lot accomplished, and stopped working for the day at supper time (you have to know me to know how unusual that is).

Accentuate the Positive
This morning’s song was ~ is ~ completely different and prompted this post. Have you seen the movie Blast from the Past with Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone? ~ if you haven’t, do. You’ll love it. Perry Como songs figure into it in a couple of places (which isn’t as lame as it sounds ~ just trust me, okay?), and one of them is “Accentuate the Positive,” which is the song I woke up to playing in my head this morning.

And I think that was for two reasons: 1) I told James, my husband, about my nightmare before we went to sleep last night and he, for want of a better word, banished them.  2) One of the last things I did before I quit working and closed by computer for the night was spend some time reading from Joe Vitale’s book Attract Money Now! which is about way more than attracting money.

The part I was reading, specifically, was the section on Prosperous Spending, and how  our unconscious programming about money is so hard to unlearn ~ especially the sense of guilt we have when we spend any amount of money on ourselves.

The story he told was of a self-made millionaire whose mother had always had to stretch the grocery budget. This was a mentality that he had internalized as a child and which stayed with him even after he had become financially secure. The day he recognized the origins of his guilt feelings when he bought something for himself ~ even something small, like red bell peppers (which he perceived as expensive) ~ he was free of them.

This isn’t what Dr. Vitale says, but it was what I got from the story. Once you recognize the difference between reality and your unconscious perception of reality, you are free of  that perception, free to replace it with one you choose.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a loving husband who will banish your bad dreams, either.

‘becca

Remember chasing and catching lightning bugs and putting them in a mayonnaise jar with a twig and a handful of grass and holes poked in the lid for air?

Can’t you just smell/touch/taste the humid stillness of that eternal hour in the twilight, running through the feather soft grass of gloaming, chasing to catch but not crush, tiny gentle tips of flickering gold lightning beckoning just there, and there, and there . . . .

. . . .

It’s silly I suppose, as most days I’m not that old. Most days I’m not any age at all, I’m just me, being who I am, doing what I do. Most days, but not all. I’ve noticed in the last several months that I’ve never been satisfied with myself, never, except for moments as brief and rare as as a shooting star, felt ~ worthy, confident, fit, sexy, desirable, intelligent, attractive, or in any way, beautiful.

I’ve told myself it’s just a case of the blues I’ve got. I’ve been working so hard at trying to learn how to improve our financial situation via an online business ~ 6 or 8 hours a day after class during the semester, 12 or 14 hours a day on off days, weekends, and during the holiday break ~ in addition to keeping up with my “normal” responsibilities to students and family and friends, as well as continuing to try to juggle what money we have so that somehow $50 works out to be $100. And I haven’t been feeling well, my neck and shoulder out of place a bit, just enough to keep a low thrum of pain hanging around, just enough to snatch my breath for a moment if I stand or turn or move carelessly. I know it’s much harder to be positive and keep an upbeat attitude when you’re in pain a lot of the time.

So, it’s just a bit of the blues, post party depression I was thinking the other day, the let down after the round of holiday gatherings are finished ~ this year including a surprise party for Josh. I tell myself that. But it doesn’t feel that way.

When I look in a mirror and see the lines around and under my eyes, the imperfections on my skin, the veins on my hands, sun damage (“age spots” we used to call them), thinning hair, now more grey in the roots than the auburn brown it once was, one quarter the thickness it was when I was a girl, less than half the thickness I had even in my 30′s ~ thickness, now, that’s gone round my waist, of course, sedentary lifestyle, career, etc. and hedonistic tendencies toward high fat foods and sugar (they don’t call me “Sugah” for nothing) ~ when I see all that in the mirror, I think how it all seems to be going away.

I look at pictures of myself in my late ’30s and early ’40s ~ what few people were able to get on the sly ~ and I think how I wish I looked like that now, clear skin, wrinkles and dark circles and cholesterol bumps and “age spots” still some years in the future, a good 40 lbs lighter than I am now. Yet at the time I was just as dissatisfied, just as dismayed by my looks, my figure, my accomplishments ~ or lack thereof.

Then, it wasn’t my weight (okay, it was, a bit) or my skin or my hair (or lessening thereof), but it was always something. It was always easier to see the bad things in the mirror ~ the Jughead Jones nose, the too-high forehead, the too round face, the thin lips, the lop-sided smile. I never saw, then, the things that I look back at now, in those pictures, and wish I still had.

So what’s your point? you’re thinking, and this is one hell of a a poor excuse for a post in a blog that’s supposed to be about the power of belief to transform your life, right? Right.

But the thing is, belief can transform your life in ways you don’t want as well as in ways you do want. Better, in fact, more easily, because as Julia Roberts so aptly says in Pretty Woman: “The bad things are easier to believe.”

Why is that? Why is it so much easier to believe that little voice inside your head that’s always ready to point out those bad things about the way you look or think or act or do ~ anything? ~ those ephemeral and ultimately unreal until you give them reality by your belief imperfections? I’m learning the why’s from a book called Spontaneous Evolution. I’m looking forward to the part where I learn what to do about it, how to change that programing. I’m working on it.

There are many wonderful things in my life ~ I read Perry Marshall’s blog post about all the things he was thankful for the other day, and I could relate. I, too, have a lot to be grateful for and, I’m sure, tomorrow ~ January 1st of 2010 ~ I will remember what they are.

But tonight, just for now, I’m not feeling it. What I am feeling is old, and sad, and dispirited. Rebecca without Sunnybrook farm. Pollyanna has left the building. And I wonder how I got here ~ to a place where a movie that recalls a series I loved and so wonderfully sets beloved characters back at the beginning of their adventures evokes sorrow rather than joy, bitter regret rather than sweet nostalgia. I wonder why I’m here in this dark place and how I’ll find my way back.

To all of you, so many of you that I love so much ~ do yourself a favor, do me a favor: understand that you are beautiful now. When you look in the mirror, look for the perfections ~ your bright beautiful smile, your perfectly shaped eyebrows, your wonderfully curly hair, the sprinkle of freckles across your nose, the twinkle of mischief in your eyes ~ look for those beautiful things instead of the “imperfections” you usually see. Paint smiles and flowers on your face if you have to, draw the words “I love you” on your skin, with hearts and arrows all around them. Whatever you have to do to see, to know, to understand that you are beautiful now, just as you are.

Believe it ~ and I’ll try to do the same. Happy New Year, with all my heart,  to my beloved all of you.