Back to School

I have a raging headache, but I started a post tonight. I am going to lay down for a while. Back soon.

Here is the post I was working on when the headache got the better of me:

I always loved "Back to School" time - even still, out of school for many years, I go to the "Back to School" sales and marvel at the supplies and miss that beginning of the school year energy. Even when I worked for the school district, I always loved the beginning of the school year - it is scary but exhilerating at the same time. Meeting the new teachers, new friends, learning new subjects. New paper and pens and pencils (have I written about how much I LOVE office supplies?) are among my favorite things.

When I was in middle school and high school, I had a friend who lived a couple of blocks away and we used to spend the evening before school started together - usually sitting outside in the front yard, just talking and imaging and worrying. The days were still long at the end of August, so we would sit out there chatting until well after dark. Then, to bed. But I could never sleep. Even when I was working, I could never sleep the night before classes commenced - too nervous/excited.

So, to all teachers and kids out there, Happy Back to School week! Enjoy it while it lasts!

Remembering the Dreams of my 6 year old self

This video is why I wanted to be a teacher. When I was six years old, I thought *all* teachers were something like the teacher in these videos and I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do anything different in the world.

It made my heart hurt a little to know that if we just had more teachers who felt they could do this, children's lives (everyone's lives) would be so much better. Thank you to all the teachers who touched my life, to all the teachers who are still in the fray, even though it is getting harder and harder to stay.

"Children Full of Life" – posted on Aug. 29, 2009 by Patti Digh on Facebook
2009




part 2


part 3

part 4


part 5

Prince and Rumi - That Kind of Day

“Outside ideas of Rightness and Wrongness, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." ~ Rumi

I was reading a rather contentious email thread for a group I subscribe to and one of the posters had the Rumi quote in their signature.  I really liked it, so here we are. :)

So now, for a complete non sequitur:

A couple of weeks ago, I read something about a "Purple Rain" Sing-A-Long. As "Purple Rain" is one of the top 10 most perfect albums ever, and as it was popular when I was in high school and therefore burned into my psyche for all eternity, I was quite excited by the thought.  I immediately searched for a "Purple Rain" Sing-A-Long in Portland, because, although you may not know it, Portland is quite the Sing-A-Long town.  I have participated in the "West Side Story", "Grease", "Wizard of Oz" and "Once More With Feeling" (Buffy, Season 6 musical episode) Sing-A-Longs and had a GREAT time.  I love to sing and I particularly love to sing when no one else in the audience is all that great of a singer, either, so there is little judgement on either part. 

Alas, I could not find a "Purple Rain" Sing-A-Long and have yet to hear of one coming.  This year marks the 25th (!!!) Anniversary of the movie and there was a Sing-A-Long in NYC, but apparently, we are a little too granola or something and couldn't wrap our mind around an evening of singing "Let's Go Crazy" or "I Would Die 4 U".  It is disappointing to say the least.

When I was 17 and the movie first came out on video (I will share my "Purple Rain" inaugural viewing at a later date), we would go up to the local (meaning locally-owned) video store where I alternated between renting "West Side Story" and "Purple Rain". The owner could not understand a girl who watched the same movies over and over again.  Finally, when my mother asked to buy a copy of "West Side Story" for $80 (that was a lot of money for something like that), he had to Special Order it.  He thought she was insane.  He told her the only people who buy videos are video store owners. He did not yet know the future of video was in sales, not rental. After the zillionth time I walked up to the counter with "my movie", he said he would order another one if I wanted to buy the used copy - that way he could sell it to me for cheap.  Of course, it was BETA (the superior format). And, of course, I took him up on his offer.  It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

Anyway, I put "Purple Rain" in tonight to listen to as I was messing around online.  The music certainly stands the test of time.  And Prince still exudes a marvelous naughty aura.  The movie isn't the greatest, but it is a cult classic.  

Maybe I should organize my own "Purple Rain" Sing-A-Long.

Waste of a Day or Exactly What I Needed

I did nothing of use today...I worked some, even though it is my day off.  I tried working on www.signplay.com, but I want to change the template but I'm feeling fearful about it...what if I hate it or lose everything or??  I tried reading, I checked my Facebook, checked my email, watched some TV.

I really had stuff I needed to do and wanted to do, but I think I needed a day to dink around and do nothing useful.  That's one of the bad things about burnout - it burns up my days off with apathy and feeling like I can't be bothered to do something more productive.

Tomorrow, though, I'm turning over a new leaf.  I have things to do.  :)

Log Jam

Well, it was bound to happen...my daily work world and my theatrical interpreting world crashed into each other this week.  It is all coming out ok, but I think it is because I just realized I can only do what I can do.  

I'm looking at some time management stuff to help me manage better.  The irony is that the stuff I want to fit in ISN'T work for once.  I want to manage my time for work better so that I can WRECK and do the Artist's Way and get ready for the Joy Diet book group and READ and watch a movie without feeling like I should be doing something else.  Although it has been a week of frustration and franticness, I learned a lot and I feel good about my decision to find a way to make the work work better so that the LIFE can be better.

Thanks to all of you who support me in any of these endeavors to en-joy life and to just be a person instead of a widget.  I think sometimes I felt like if I wasn't a widget, what was I doing here?  Now I know that I can "be" a widget for a part of my life, but I AM NOT A WIDGET.  It is GOOD to have a life outside of work.  It is good to find more personal satisfaction in personal stuff than in work - that is MORE NORMAL than my old habits. 

I'm not sure what all of this means in terms of the big picture, but when I can look calmly at it, I know it is the right direction to follow.  

P.S. The show went pretty well, I think.  Had a few minor bumps, but all the songs I was struggling to translate came together for the show, which was nice.  Topol is an amazing person, by the way. I'm still amazed at his work after all these years.

The Beauty of Youth

I love seeing kids and parents at events with music - I love to see the little kids dancing their hearts out - swirling and waving without self-consciousness.

This little girl seems to go to a dance school, but there is just something so beautiful about her lack of inhibitions, her confidence and comfort in her body. Beautiful.

"Fiddler on the Roof" and a link

Full day today - work and craziness all day (rip in pants, health emergency in the family, phone call bad, show, late to work)...saw "Fiddler on the Roof" in Topol's "Farewell Tour".  I read that he is 73 years old and still performing in a touring company.

If I get to be 73 and can tour the country and perform in a musical for 3 hours a night, 8 shows a week, I will say that all is well with the world.  

And here is a clip of the singing sensation on XFactor in Britain - he's a teacher and a great singer.  Just a great performance by someone who looks like a nice guy.  Click Here.

Deferred Dreams Revisited

I have wrapped a blanket of creativity around me and I am loving the smell and the color and the warmth of it.  The blanket has led me to meet a bunch of amazing people in the cyberworld - some folks I have met, some who were already friends and some people I might never get to see in the flesh.  It is kind of amazing that such a simple thing - this blog- can lead to such an opening, blossoming of a life, a spirit.

I return again and again to the hot spot that came up for me during the first day of my "Live Your Wild and Precious Life Now!" telecourse - "I'm still alive."  I feel like so much of my spirit has been hibernating for years.  I don't regret it, I don't have any blame to lay anywhere.  It just is.  I put my creative life to sleep with some fairy dust and a hope that I could wake it up again someday.  I just didn't know how long it would take.

Roby and I were friends - alive and together - for 13 years.  This 13th year after his death has been the spring of my grief - green sprouts of Jean are popping up all over. The only hard part of this reawakening is that the scales are tipped wildly in the direction of this new-found life.  I want to write. I want to create. I want to connect.  My other life, my work in the world is made of a different material.  It is a little bit scratchier, a little bit thicker.  It is browner.  It doesn't fly in the wind the way I wish it would.   

The Safety of Objects - The Artist's Way

Week one of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron talks about items that bring us a sense of safety.  When I first read about that, I kind of thought, "What do you mean?"  I think in this life we have so many THINGS in our lives that we touch or see regularly that we don't really - I don't really think about it.

It only took me a couple of minutes to think of one object that I would say gave me a sense that all was right with the world and ironically, it is the one item I don't have readily available to me anymore.

My object is a tiny pewter Piglet pin (Piglet of Classic Winnie the Pooh stories) that I bought with Roby's mom and sister the day we picked up his ashes.  We had stopped at a little store for goodness only knows what and I saw these tiny little pins and bought one for each of us as a talisman.  Hard to explain now, but it made sense then.

I wore my pin every day for about 3 years - even one of the students I used to interpret with remembers it.  I touched it any time I was feeling stressed or anxious.  Just a tiny pin that represented Roby's spirit - it felt to me as if that pin had him in it.  When I touched it, I felt grounded.  

One day, years after I started wearing it, I got into my car after a job and when my hand went to my collar to touch it, as was my habit, it was gone!  I panicked.  Literally freaked.  I looked everywhere, I went back to the job and looked and asked others to keep an eye out for my pin.  I wept when I realized it was probably gone.  I mean, this thing is TINY and the back of the pin was a tie tack - they get loose eventually.  Finally, a couple of days later, I was getting into my car and found it tucked between my car seat and the emergency break.  I was ecstatic and decided to put the pin on a ribbon hanging from my rear view mirror.  Not the same as wearing it daily, but I didn't want to lose it because of the loose tie tack (um, replace the back...).

When the car was totalled in an accident, I had to pull all my stuff out of the car and I put it in a box that I have lost track of...but I still think about that pin.  And miss it.  Sometimes, my hand will stray to my collar to touch it.  It isn't there, but I think that is where I carry Roby's energy still.

So, there you have it.  My safety object. I know I have it here somewhere, and now I am motivated to try to find it.

Attitude Adjustment and Gratitude

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."~ Oprah Winfrey

In my tiredness and anxiety lately, I have been focusing on all the wrong things.  So today, I am focusing on the good.  I know that this is a better way to go.  It is harder to remember when you are tired.

I'm lucky in so many ways and I'm grateful for my good life full of good friends, my family, work that I enjoy, endeavors that I love.  I have a good job, I have my health and when you come down to it, that's all that is really important in life.

I am still and always working on en-joying life, on being grateful and creating those little moments of happiness.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

And Another Thing...

Read Carolynn's eleoquent and thought-provoking post here.

I often feel so insignificant and power-less.  But each of us can smile and maybe prevent a tragedy.  I'll have to remember that.

Wrecking Sisters - A Little Off-Topic

My experience with Jamie Ridler's "The Next Chapter: Wreck This Journal" has not ended...not only because we are continuing our Wreckage, thanks to Grammy for setting up Wrecking Sisters Reunited, but because of the incredible women I met online through the process.

Today, I was reading at Kavindra's A Clear Path to Happy and I started looking at some of the great sites on her blogroll and I was so inspired by some of the hope and beautiful people and initiatives available online, reminded of some of my own favorite sites, as well.  

I have had a hard week and I wanted to share some of the beauty that is out there, not just from Kavindra's list, but things I have found, love and want to implement in my world/life.

Hope Revolution 

Operation Beautiful

Welcome to the Joy Rebellion

Operation NICE

37Days

Jamie Ridler Studios

BlissChick

I know there are many many more...I will be adding some of these to my own blogroll here.  I just wanted to put something positive into the world today.  It seemed important.

Thursday Thought

"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong."  ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce

I'm trying. It takes determination, that's for sure.  The world is throwing a lot of obstacles my way right now, but I am moving forward, right or wrong.

Groundhog Day?? Anyone? Anyone?

I didn't ever finish the movie "Groundhog Day" because I just couldn't get through the 4th or 5th time the same thing happened in the movie.  It just didn't hold any interest for me.  I'm pretty sure that when I saw it, I was a freelance interpreter and I had no idea that many lives are kind of like a horrific Groundhog Day or how much, some days, it would be really nice to have Groundhog Day so that you could just do that one little thing over.

Today was that day.  To tell you the truth, I might start the day over by not getting out of bed.  Or maybe getting out of bed earlier.  Even though I only really lived it one time, this day has chewed me up and spit me back out. And I don't think I tasted very good.

And, I didn't do anything artful or artistic or artisty in any way whatsoever.  And now I'm going to bed.

Pink as a Transformative Device

"I am not a sidekick. I am the hero in my story and I am making my cape (it is pink)." ~ Jean (from my Live Your Wild and Precious Life Now! teleconference homework)

A few years ago, I experienced an intense period of grief and struggled to get a foothold on myself and my life.  It was difficult and I learned a lot about myself in the process.  I felt like my life was covered in a dark grey film - it covered everything, muted everything.  There were colors, emotions, joys, dreams, but they were all tinged with this grey film.

At one point, I had a health situation come up and I had to have surgery and was hospitalized for the first time in my life. During my recovery, I went to the beach with my family and some family friends.  I was not well and not up for running around the coast.  I mostly stayed at the beach house and slept and breathed in the coastal air.  One one of the last days I was there, I was bored and I decided to venture out on my own for an hour or so.  I ended up at the Seaside Factory Outlet stores in the Liz Claiborne store.  I was looking at purses.  My favorite color had been purple for years and purple was "in".  I found a couple of purses - one with purple and little white flowers on it.  As I was looking around, I spotted "THE ONE".   A PINK purse unlike any purse I had ever had and PINK!!!  I bought it, and the purple and white flowered one, too.

It took me a couple of weeks but then I started to carry the pink purse (I need to find that...).  When I carried it, people who know me well would say things like, "I never would have imagined you with a pink purse like that...but...it suits you."  I heard this over and over again.  After a few months, I realized that something was stirring in me.  

Pink became my color.  I would see pink EVERYWHERE.  Someone told me that pink had something to do with the heart chakra (when I looked it up, I think they were thinking of something else).  What I knew was that this attraction (obsession??) with PINK, the brighter, the better, had to do with the stripping away of the grey film.  PINK shows through the grey strong and clear before it is all gone.  

Now, there are still strips of grey and days when the film seems to cover everything, but it is less often and I see the PINK in my world, in myself.  I have a YELLOW car, another step in re-coloring my life after a long grey spell.

I know that this might sound weird to anyone who has not experienced something like this, but it is the truth.  I was always attracted to bright, shiny, neon colors - I wanted everything to be fluorescent colored when I was a kid.  I took a lot of heat for that as a kid and I buried a lot of those tendencies.  Now, I love PINK and YELLOW (capitalized because of the brightness I mean when I write it) and I am proud of that.  People in my world (work, home, relationships) know that I am "colorful" and they accept and embrace it in me.  It is part of my charm.  (See the pink Kitty Clock in a post from a couple of days ago).

So, stay tuned.  Who knows what color I will be next.  For now, I am tickled PINK.

Overcommitted in a Good Way

I'm overcommitted to my own personal growth and development.  I've been doing my telecourse, am interested in going through "The Artist's Way" with a blog group (any from the Wreck this Journal journey), finishing Wrecking and will be joining the "Joy Diet" group in September.

All of this is an attempt (it is working) to grow and en-joy my life more.  I am loving it, but I am in that stage where all I want to do is all the stuff that makes me feel good -writing, art, painting, wrecking, reading.  

Obviously, I maintain my work in the world, but it is a difficult choice most days.  For the most part, I enjoy what I do and the people I work with.  But something is missing for me on a deep, creative level.  Interpreting satisfied that level of need, creativity and connection.  Managing is not the same thing.  It is less intellectual and more emotional, it is less creative and more rote.  The more numbers and columns of numbers and rote tasks I perform, the more I long for something that taps into my thinking brain.

So, I am overcommitted to change.  Not that I need to be fixed, but that I am looking for a path that has more variety and musicality and color.  I just have to figure out the balance.  It seems like the more I discover myself, the more intense the work in the world gets.  Does it feel itself becoming second priority?  Does it know and therefore it is trying to defend itself against my exploration?

Am I just tired and rambling?  Perhaps.  Doesn't mean it doesn't have some merit.

Wild Woman Poster I found

I love this poster. I found it on SwirlyGirl's blog, but she directed me to BlissChick which directed me to DaisyBones, who created the poster from BlissChick's words.


If you go to BlissChick's blog here, you can download it for free. :) I'm probably going to post it on the sidebar, too, so you will be seeing this one for a while.

Blog Aesthetics

This is a light-weight post because I have had a heavy-weight week...

I want to change the look of my blog, but I feel like I am stuck in a rut.  I tried new colors and whatnot yesterday, but I just couldn't come up with anything that satisfied me.  I even decided I was going to do an HTML code tutorial.  I got far enough to do the title, some body stuff, color the background and make the font larger/smaller, bold/italic/regular, but then I realized that it would take me FOREVER to learn how to built a website.  

Then I looked for Blogger templates that I might like...I don't like the ones that are here that much, so I looked at other stuff and I just couldn't find anything that suited me.  

I think I have to break out of my color thing and find something.  White seems too stark after all this time, but maybe some other color that is not "typical Jean".  Maybe some fall colors...

Anyway, don't be surprised if you see some crazy blog changes.  If you hate something, or it is hard to read, please let me know.  If you love something, please let me know.

[Kitty clock is in my office at work. Just felt like this post needed a photo and this was the first one I found that made me smile.]

Inspiring but I Haven't Done it Yet

Patti Digh has done it again- she came up with a great idea and something that I WANT to do and have not started yet.

She has started to send a "Thank You" card a day and intends to do so for life.

I love this idea as I buy THANK YOU cards and stamps for THANK YOU cards and pens for THANK YOU cards and I don't write them. Sometimes I want to write them for silly little things or big things or just because.  Why don't I do it?  I can say because I'm busy, because I'm tired, because I procrastinate, because I didn't have the right pen or the right card. What is the real reason?

Sometimes, when I want to do it, I end up going to the scary place in my head where I imagine the other person's reaction and I scare myself off. Sometimes, I carry them around for days and days and then the impulse just goes away.  Sometimes, I don't know what I would say, even though I just really want to say THANK YOU, so I don't write it.

Not as any excuse, but I am planning to start after my show on Aug. 27 (I think that's the date).  I have the pens. I have the cards.  I have the will.  I have the website (go here first then follow the links) where I know I can find inspiration and support.  I may not manage to do it every day for the rest of my life, but I need to do this.  It is important.  I can feel it in my stomach.  

Second Sign of the Apocolypse

So, the first sign was the iPhone application for babies which I wrote about here.

The second Sign of the Apocolypse (now dubbed SOTA) is the atrocity that we call tv news.  It doesn't matter whether it is local or network.  I don't know why I still feel compelled to TRY to watch the news...I keep thinking I will get some information, and I never do.  I get so annoyed that I have to turn it off before the weather from STORM TEAM 2009 or HEATSTROKE 2009 or LEAVESWILL BLOW 2009.  Sometimes, the weather is watchable. Mostly, I don't even get there...

Case in point:  Tonight, in the Columbia River Gorge, searchers are looking for two hikers who called 911 because they were lost and had NO IDEA WHERE THEY ARE!!!  Shocking!! Lost people who DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE!!  Now, it is August, after all, so we would think that they would be fine overnight because it isn't like it is January.  But tonight, it is a little chilly, according to SOTA reporter who then asks the weather person about the conditions for the lost hikers who have NO IDEA WHERE THEY ARE!!! The weather person replied (and I am NOT kidding), "Well, they have hit the weather trifecta tonight.  A little bit of rain, a little bit of wind and a little bit chilly tonight."

OH NO!!  The lost hikers who have NO IDEA WHERE THEY ARE might get rained on in Oregon!!!  Whatever will they do?  And it might be windy, in the Gorge, where there are windsurfing competitions at least annually.  I'm stunned.  And it might be chilly tonight.  That is definitely the weather trifecta.  Yessiree, bob.  

I mean, good lord.  I don't really know how they say this crap with a straight face.  And I know it isn't probably as freaky here as it sounds when perfectly reasonable-looking human beings are saying things like "searchers are looking for some lost hikers who HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THEY ARE" in any kind of non Saturday Night Live way.  

Can't we say "Searchers are looking for two lost hikers in the Columbia River Gorge.  It is unclear what kind of supplies or equipment they have to protect them from the elements. Searchers hope to locate them as soon as possible."  It is simple. Let's convey our concern by not being ridiculous.

Second SOTA.  I'm just saying.

**P.S.  I hope the hikers are found soon.  My rant is about HOW things are reported.  I'm sure I will come up with another example soon.