DatingGod

What Life Wants

More and more these days, sh*t finds it's way into a fan, and my response, after an initial animal flash of fear, is: Life, I want what you want. And within days or hours or minutes, the sh*t turns into blossoms, and there I stand, petals of every shade and hue flying about my head, landing in my hair, on the tip of my tongue, and I stand there in delight, amazement, wonder. 

And I can't help but laugh and think: this is it? This is what I've been fighting against all these years?   

A few days after I was hired for a full time position, the big boss came up to me and said: we're moving you to the ((State Sanctioned Basic Human Survival)) program. I went to a four hour training a couple of hours away. But nothing changed. I came back and still did my brutal cubicleland job, mach ten with my hair on fire, hour after hour, day after day. 

A week or so after that he said: oh, and you're moving to ((Social Service Compound Pit of Hell where they have security guards and metal detectors and everything is pink as pink is supposedly soothing to the mind of people who are f*cked to the four winds and all five dimensions)). But still nothing changed.

Then, last Thursday, an assistant boss said: so how is ((State Sanctioned Basic Human Survival)) training going? And I said: what training? And they totally flipped out. Turns out my immediate boss kinda didn't want to let me go, so he was just keeping me where I was. But the sh*t found propellers and in the space of two days, I was pulled from my mach ten job, moved to a cubicle to the back of the maze until they move me to The Hell Compound and given the very firm directive: Train. 

In between Training (which consists of writing down long lists of forms that have to be filled out and where to fax them and how to log them) I keep up as best I can with the folks who are still in the hopper of the machine and are still desperately trying to get The Machine to cough up cash for them. I've been ordered not to go near my old job duties. But I know that at least part of the reason I got hired was because I'm not afraid of any of the management, not afraid to go head to head with them to fight The Machine, force it to turn the cog that will produce the cash for folks. And really, I'd rather take an action that provides some sustenance for someone in need than not do something because it might prove "unpleasant" for me. The bosses won't fire me for it. They'll give me 101 rays of grief, but they won't fire me. Probably. And if they do, it's a decent way to go out.

But in spite of Training, and hammering on The Machine a bit, my job is no longer mach ten, but a slow walk down a gravel path. In the space of a day, my job went from very very loud, to very very chilled. 

I move to The Compound in a week or so, into a pink cubicle about twice the size of the one I'm in. I'll have no supervision, other than my immediate boss who I'll communicate with via phone or email and a staff meeting every few weeks or so. I'll be going with one of the new part timers hired a few weeks ago, a feisty, smart, hilarious glamor girl fresh out of college, and we'll have folks we'll be checking in with that organize The Compound, but mostly, we're on our own, in a new program, figuring it out as we go along.

Who knows what tomorrow brings? My execution is still in effect, but now it comes with many more flowers and chill time and much less screaming and juggling of knives. 

I like this death of the ego thing. The whole "dying" thing is certainly a drag, but the postmortems are getting more and more fun . . . 

Nothing to Do

I'm pretty maniacal about backing up my computer info. I specifically bought my ibook with a superdrive so that I could burn dvds and make things easier. But when my hard drive crashed a couple of weeks ago, it crashed hard, and when I looked around, the last time I backed up my info was over a year ago. Seriously. 13 months ago. 

When the hard drive first started making that clicking sound that Saturday early eve, and then the screen went blue, and then the knocking sounds came, I knew what the deal was. I cut everything off, called a local Mac repair shop and took it in on Monday after work. Through a series of things to do with the repair folks and their personal issues, they didn't even get to replace the hard drive until the following Monday, and it wasn't until Tuesday that I picked it up to see the words scrawled across the static-free bag that encased my old drive: Bad Drive. As in not recoverable. As in they couldn't even get a whir out of it anymore.

They gave me info on a place in Cali that can recover most anything off a drive, for a hot $1000 or so (which hilariously is exactly what I have saved back for "emergency purchases/repairs/etc. which pitted me against the choice: your money for your past), but by that time, I was deep inside the Yes. Because when my puter screen went blue, and the knocking commenced, and I understood that all the data was gone, I immediately got: this is not a bad thing, you just don't know the particulars of this bit of awesomeness that Life has brought to you now in your living.

This is not new age pap. This is not affirmations or positive thinking or magical thinking or thinking at all. This is the truth of what has shifted in my world the past few months. I now trust Life way more than I trust my mind, and it has opened up a sense of wonder about even the seemingly f*cked up parts of life. 

May I share with you what is gone and gone forever? The last pictures of The Hoon. All of the pics of Baby Wallace when he was still a baby, and all the ones of the new kittens. All of my financial data of the past year. The entirety of my address book that contained my client list, the one that I used to do mailings for sessions and classes and which supplied me with >%25 of my income. All of my browser bookmarks, every single last one of them. All of the work I've done in the past year on my novel. All of the writing projects I've done, including an evaluation I did for an attorney in the midwest that aided a woman in her bid to not be hospitalized and medicated against her will for her "visions", that my ego would masturbate over once a week. All of the emails I've ever sent. All of my itunes music, including >1000 songs ripped off of Lime*wire. All of the flyers and handouts and class materials that were created or updated in the past year. 

And other than one single flash of fear when the computer consultant said the word "unresponsive" I have only been filled with excitement and joy. Excitement because I knew something amazing was coming. And joy because I was experiencing what was amazing. 

What was amazing? Oh good lord, so much. So very very much.

First came the silence. And the stillness. When I got home from cubicleland there was nothing to do. When I got up in the morning there was nothing to do. No email to check and return. No hulu.com to watch. No obsessive googling of every last single thing to pop into my mind. For many many evenings the content of my night was laying on my bed and watching the sun set and the sky flow from one color into another, while kittens snored and purred and licked. I discovered that in the absence of movement and sound, the strongest energy was the beat of my heart as it sent its tendrils of Yes throughout my system, how my body pulsed, Yes, Yes, Yes, with warmth and release. I cooked slowly. I ate slowly. I read a novel, three non-fiction, and was more than content not to read at all. 

And the data? All the pictures and info and email addresses and files and papers and drafts and music? A year's worth of past, an enormous chunk of Past is gone, was gorgeously, deliciously, so very compassionately removed from "me" in an instant, and I am so lighter because of it. I didn't even know that such a huge chunk of "me" lived in my computer, and now it's simply gone, gone, like a turkey in the corn. Life did this. Life vamoosed it. How could it be anything other than Yes? 

Isn't Life amazing?

It is so wild to be exploring this life without the data, without the iron anchor that was this computer and its data, but which is not that anymore. We think we need something, that without it we can't continue to live, love, make money, look good, be okay. But it's an illusion. 

And I don't know what else to say other than Life is so good, living is so precious and sweet and full of Yes. Never would I have had the huevos, the seeming stupidity to trash my hard drive on my own, to empty things out like that. And now that I sit here, my computer clean and fresh and new, I offer up an invitation to you:

Trust Life. Stop looking to teachers and books and celebrities and friends and teachers. Instead turn to the source, the font, the shit: You. Turn inward. Embrace the very thing you fear the most. Rub up all against it like a kitty to a human leg in the process of delivering some dang skippy delicious dinner. Because if you do this, if you turn inward to the genius of your process, the one that lives in you and ONLY in you, you will be set free. This isn't metaphor. This is the everlovin gospel according to Yes. 

All you have to do is say Yes to what is up in your grill. Know that Life has got your back. And your front, and your sides, and all up underneath. All you gotta say is Yes.

Yes . . . 

Loops

A dozen times yesterday, I'd hear a string of words, and then a minute later, the person I was with would speak them. It got to the point where I would mouth along with them. To myself of course. Don't want to frighten the natives. 

There didn't appear to be anything Magical or Mystical about it. I just heard a backwards echo, a kind of pre-echo or reverse echo, of generic things people said a wrinkle further up on the timeline. The first few times it just seemed oddly coincidental. Then it was kinda wild, in that Whoa-Dang kinda way. By the end of the day, it was just funny. What did it mean? Who knows? Who cares? 

Maybe it was just to get my attention. To remind me that even in the face of seeming banality, something Very Very Large is running the show. But really, mostly it was just funny. All these people, deep in their self, their moment, thinking that they were exhibiting free will, when in reality they were just spewing the same old lines.

Now if I could just point this laser insight into my hoovering up of cake. Gluten-free, sure. Taken with lots of digestive enzymes, yes. But heart-pounding, gut stuffing, baked goods none the less.

Vanilla cake with chocolate buttermilk icing: where my own rotten stinking ego takes it's last stand.

Smart, crafty ego. Keeping the gum-flapping mouth closed by stuffing cake into it.

Yum.

We Is Family

Wallace needed a brother. Jacinta isn't much fun for him and his pink punk ways. And me, I eventually grow weary of tossing toys for him to chase. Yep, he needed a brother. 

And so began the process. That took three months. And culminated yesterday with this:

I meant to only get one. Really. I even had a few dreams about him: black with white spots, goes by the name of Beauregard. But alas, Beauregard was not to be found lo these three months. But Thor and Emmaline? They have joined the party.

Yep, we're all diving right in to the love fiesta here at the Hacienda of Kcats. While napping just a few minutes ago, Thor rode my head like a horse. And his sister Emmaline? Emmaline loves to lick, especially my face, and may I share with you how much it tickles to have your nostrils washed out by a tiny little 11 week old kitten tongue? That little tongue was all up in my stuffs, with Emmaline just purring and purring like she was humming while brushing my long luxurious hair . . . 

And Wallace? He is passed out in the bed right now, plum tuckered out. But happy. Sleeping the sleep of the deeply, contentedly, exhaustedly happy.

Even Jacinta appears to be okay with it all. Hanging out mostly in her closet, her little hideaway, but she's in good spirits, and I can tell that a tongue bath from sweet Emmaline lies in her imminent future. 

If you don't have kittens in your world, I highly recommend them. Jed and kittens. What more does a gal need on a Sunday afternoon?

Jed McKenna's Notebook

Jed has a new book out. Not exactly new maybe, but new to hard copy. It's a collection of the bonus material from the ebook version of his trilogy. Of course, I have multiple copies of the print books, as well as copies of the ebooks, so of course I just ordered the hard copy of Notebook, though I won't order the ebook as that would be just silly, wouldn't it? 

If you're happy in your life, and prosperity is cradled in your hands, a soulmate sings from your bed, and God is your close, personal friend, or these are things you both want and feel are really, for you, just up the road a bit, there is no need to order this book. If however you are attempting to chew your own head off to escape the trap, if the humans around you all look like agents or aliens or screeching robots, and you've become a real pill at social gatherings, here's where to go:

Jed McKenna's Notebook

Sentence

The Big Boss pointed his finger at me. "You," he said, "my office," and turned, walking down the cubicle row to the back of the facility. 

I followed him, walking in his wake, both of us in silence. I'd applied for a full time position within the office back in May. This was most likely the verdict. Hired. Not hired. Or perhaps I was being fired. It was definitely one of the three.

"This could be my execution," I said out loud. He didn't laugh. Neither did I. I meant it. 

He pointed to a chair across from his desk. "Sit," he said. I sat. 

"Looks like you're going to be working for me for two more years," he said and smiled.

Yep. Definitely my execution.

I quickly searched my brain for the correct response. I'd practiced this for weeks now, just in case they gave me the job. I'd gotten that expansive Yes feeling after the interview, so knew they'd hire me, but the pesky mind had added it's two cents in several hundred times since. But now the job offer was floating in the air between the boss and me, and an adequate response was expected.

I clapped my hands together and said, "Yay, what a relief, thank you, that's good news."

We exchanged a few more meaningless words, there was nothing important to discuss. It was a state job and the salary was fixed - $31K - as were the benefits, vacation, health, etc. And so I went back to my cubicle and back to work. Just because we had the following day off didn't mean the work load had lessened. It was why they hired me: I work like a machine, perpetual motion, on and on and on, sick, tired, crabby, work, work, motion, motion. They probably think it's work ethic, but it's really surrender, about saying Yes to every moment, stepping up to the plate again and again and again, climbing the steps to the gallows over and over and over so that Life can continue it's destruction of me.

A global office email was sent out announcing the new hire. Folks stopped by my cubicle to congratulate me, the very people that I've avoided the eight months I've worked there. I found a standard response and performed the motion over and over: thank you, yes, it's a relief. In the insanity that is the current economy, one hundred and thirty-two people had applied for the three jobs available. It was a big deal in their world - who got hired, who didn't. But mostly they stopped by my cubicle to talk about themselves, and so they did, and my required further input was reduced to simply sitting there until they ran out of egoic steam and walked away. 

My immediate boss is in the cube next to me. He's the really intense guy in his late sixties that is just as likely to blast me as be kind. He brings me garlic and tomatoes from his garden, ignores my questions on how to solve the computer glitch problem for the man sitting in my cubicle who hasn't gotten any state cash for two months and who has four kids and a pregnant wife and is losing his trailer and car. 

"Hey, big guy," I call over the cubicle wall, "looks like you're stuck with me for another couple of years."

He comes to my my side of the beige fabric wall and hugs me, tickles my back in that gentle way that always surprises me with how full of love it is. He reminds me that he's retiring in 18 months, that I'm most likely being groomed to take over his job. The very thought is horrifying. I hug him back.

At 5:02 pm I'm in my car, driving home, crying, just a little. I knew this was coming but still it feels shocking. My physical and energetic bodies fill with the sort of anguish that feels really, really big. 

Another piece of me is dying. Another piece is being sliced off so that I can see that what I think is me isn't really me. I am not the job I do, not the money I make. The purpose of the job is to continue to dynamite the ego. There will be enough money to take care of what needs to be taken care of. I'm not the bachelor's or the master's degree I spent three non-stop excruciating years and 85K in debt to acquire, whose information and skill set and language are leaving me rapidly, day by day from lack of use. 

Over the past six or so months, I performed a lot of actions, in order to give Life a wide selection of choices. And Life responded with all sorts of immediate support and assistance. A chance remark with a client provided me with a public health contact, a man high up in the PH world in the Raleigh-Durham area, a chance to talk with him several times on the phone, go to his office to meet with him, have him introduce me via email to several more PH folks, for informational interviews, contacts. While I was visiting him, he mentions that there is a conference taking place, and would I like to stop by and hear the lecture going on? Yes, I say, and as we sit down in the lecture hall, I see it's one of my old profs from SUNY Albany, and I spend a half hour talking with him after his lecture. From all parties I hear the same thing: the world of public health jobs is frozen solid right now, state government budgets slashed, grant funding shriveled, huge crops of new graduates all clamoring for the same few jobs. 

For six months, I stayed in motion, sending out resumes, taking days off from cubicleland to drive three, four, five hours to interviews, each interview costing me ~$175 in lost wages and travel expenses. I had no real feelings either way about any of it, nothing that stuck longer than a half hour or so anyway. These were all the next steps, so I took them, whatever they cost is whatever they cost.

I got that Life would ultimately do as it would, but I also got that my job was to do as I felt. Some of it was simply to get the actions out of my system, to play all the notes, so that when the hammer came down the peanut gallery that lives in my mind could say: I tried everything. And I did. But in the end, I was turning down job interviews, four of them in the last two weeks, knowing what was coming, and completely surrendered to it, or at least mostly.

Staying here in Wilmington and accepting this job means that I expend no extra energy. Not in moving to a new a city, or starting a new job, getting to know new people, acclimating them to my rather unfriendly personality. I save the money it would take to move, money that I don't have. I can continue to do the holistic work that comes my way because of the rep I've established the past couple of years, and earn enough money to close the gap between my ridiculous bills and my paltry state wage. Because the important thing is that I have a white hot burning laser turned on my ego, my self. The perimeters have been identified. And although I slip every day, blow it in a hundred different ways, fail and fail and fail, sometimes I succeed, and another piece of dead, grey self falls into the dirt, and that Yes thing inside of me, whatever it is, gets a little bit easier to recognize as Who I Am.

That's the whole point. Surrender. Trusting Life. Going with what is occurring. 

As I write this, Baby Wallace sleeps in the barcalounger, the sun turning him into the tiny sweet fierce fire puma he is. Birds make wild music outside the open window. Jacinta is safe and snug in the laundry closet, her belly full from the breakfast I just served her "in bed". My head is clear from the massive amounts of digestive enzymes I've been taking. The three day holiday weekend stretches before me, no work scheduled beyond errands, and even they feel more like dance moves than Must Do. The decaf coffee in my mug is full of both sweetness and umami, from the stevia and the vanilla almond milk. Hoochie, the backyard dog, just pounced on a squirrel, killed it with a shake of her head, then walked away to do the next thing. 

And all is well, exactly as it should be.

Life is so very good. Right now. Right here. I could die anytime today, or tomorrow, and that's good too. 

Something happens when you begin to release the tiller on your own life. The situations don't really change. Prosperity and soulmates and permanent never ending flows of comfort and happiness don't appear and set down roots. But the need for prosperity and soulmates and happiness begins to leave you, because they aren't real, like letting go of the easter bunny or santa or god. And it's good. The horrors you spent your whole life avoiding surround you, but instead of ghouls they are simply old acquaintances. They're kinda irritating at times, but on the whole, fine, just part of the background, the background that is fading. 

In the next few weeks I'll get new glasses, go to the chiropractor, the gynecologist, an endocrinologist. I'll settle in to having a regular paycheck, map out a new scenario for bill paying. Waking up doesn't mean the action stops, the flow of motion ceases. It just means it becomes clearer what to do, what can be let go of, what needs to be attended to. As I began this latest deepening of tiller-releasing I set a broad intention: to free up as much energy as possible for awakening, how it happens is of no consequence, just free up energy for the burning, the letting go, the surrendering. And this job, because of it's health and time off benefits, because of the fact that I don't care about it in that attached way one does to A Career, how I in fact hate it, would fling it from me like a flea-infested coat if the opportunity presented it, is perfect.

I'm curious as to what Life has next for the chopping block. I search around for what I still care about, what I still believe in. Then I shrug. I'll know soon enough by the screaming and the Nooooooooo and the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth in my head. Or maybe not. Maybe the next phase is a little quieter. I doubt it. But who knows?

Life knows. And that's a beautiful thing . . .