Physical
• Slacked off and screwed around this week, too, and blamed it on the weather. I made a bit of progress with bike riding, and definitely improved my diet (lots of fruit/juice)

Creative
• I wish I had a pedometer for my fingers—a fingometer? I’ve been writing a lot this week—mostly non-consequential things for an online writing game I play, but I’ve been filled with ideas for both my books.

Fun things I did:
• Babysat for an awesome two year old
• Did some volunteer work for a local group on Saturday

Setbacks
Time management. I didn’t even do my Sunday morning weigh-on and Sunday evening post. But, each day is a new day and I won’t let this set me back.
________

Goals from last week:
• Walk 10 miles, and go to a yoga class
• Read for one hour each weeknight before bed On Chapter 4 of To Kill A Mockingbird.
• Research better eating patterns for my body type and metabolism
• Add more fruits and veggies to my diet
• Don’t flake out or let work get in the way

Goals for next week:
• Walk 10 miles, and do 1 hr. of yoga
• Get to Ch. 10 of To Kill a Mockingbird
• Finish Emily’s wedding stuff
• Keep track of fruit/veggie count per day
• Don’t flake out or let work get in the way

In summer 2009, I lost my primary source of income. My bosses needed someone full-time and they knew (and I knew,) that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my work with Deep. Realistically, I knew I could not support myself on Deep alone, however, I knew it was highly unlikely that I would find another part-time job that would allow me the flexibility to work with Deep as intensely as I do.

I made the decision to continue to work for Deep. Financially, I should not have been able to do it. My bills averaged around $300-400 more than what I actually made.

The strange thing was? I never overdrew and I never had a second to even stop to worry about any of it.

In July, I was given a ridiculous amount of money to move out of an apartment I had only lived in, rent free, for a month. That got me by into the fall.

Then, I thought about selling my car, which was worth about $5,000, and I still owed about $2,500 on. Instead of having to sell my car, a family member gave me half the money I owed on it. That got me by until December.

Over the last seven months, I ended up getting around $3,500 for no reason other than I got it. I started to realize that if I could make it until July, when my last car payment was due, and if I could just get a lower student loan payment, then I might just balance out.

Last week, I received two pieces of information in the mail:

1. My car title and a $0 balance on my car—four months early! My advance payments over the last few years caught me up and over, and I even got a check for $106 returned to me because I had overpaid.
2. My student loan repayment application was accepted, and I have gotten my payments lowered to $50-60/month.

I am now making $200 more a month than the bills I owe, which means I can start lowering my credit card balance from where I bought a new computer and all my gas over the last seven months.

I DID IT!

And yes, while the scientific, rational part of my mind in no way wants to contribute this to some incorporeal energy that permeates everything, I can’t help but say, you know what? I’m meant to work with Deep. I am doing good works and I’m supposed to be in this place, at this point in my life.

I am not where I am because I prayed for it. I am where I am because this is where I am supposed to be; because I am contributing good things to the world; because I didn’t want to give this up simply because I couldn’t afford to live this way; because I persevered; and because I believed in what I was doing and its significance.

I decided to do this full time. I decided to make this work. There was no trying or maybe. I kept putting good things out, and getting good things in return—and life aligned so that I could continue to do what I do. Is there any better way to explain it that that?

Okay, yeah.

So, I am at a point where the following can best explain my ideas on existence: I am a unique composition of atoms, and I am composed of the same primary atoms as everything else on Earth. I careen through the galaxy at 67,000 mph on a giant rock with a molten core. I do not follow one single dogma. I believe that I give and intake energy, and because everything else on Earth is made up of the same primary atoms as me, it too gives and receives energy. The energy I put into the world will be returned to me.

It’s part of the reason I do what I do—aside from the fact that I love it. I don’t work with Savannah/Chatham County youth because I make big bucks or get huge recognition. I work with the Savannah/Chatham County youth because they inspire me. I give them my best, most positive attitude and energy. I do this because I hope:
a) I will encourage, inspire, and teach them;
b) make them feel important; and
c) they will reflect that positivity and inspiration to other people.

(If you want a warm-fuzzy representation of this filled with über cute, Haley Joel Osment explains it way better than I do.)

Point is, if everyone puts positive energy into the world, it is bound to get back to everyone eventually. This is not dissimilar to former religious ideas I’ve had about “God Works in Mysterious Ways” and “The Power of Prayer”, and yet, to me it is entirely different now that I’m no longer religious.

When I was following the Christian dogma, I was asking a deity to do something for me. I didn’t necessarily even have to do anything about the situation other than pray about it. This isn’t uniform across the board, and varies on personal dogma, but I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “Well, all you can do is pray about it now.” This is the epitome of giving up hope. It’s akin to saying, “Well, you sure did your best, but clearly it wasn’t good enough. Now you’ve got to turn it over to someone else.”

While I’m all for admitting one’s own limitations and the power in asking for help in a situation, I am also a former art student, and I know that you are never done working on something. It is never perfect. To me, turning it over to God in prayer feels like sending a letter to Santa Claus—hoping for, but not exactly expecting something in response.

The way I think about things now, I focus on putting my best effort into everything I do. Each day I am the best that I can be. I put forth into the world all the good things I want for myself. I exude positive energy.

This incorporeal energy is every bit as important as physical energy to me. Energy is the strength or vitality required for sustaining activity. We take in energy all the time, in the form of food, rest, inspiration. Energy gets us charged. Sometimes, an hour and a half of teaching can give me more energy than eating or sleeping. Because I am inspired by the kids’ positive attitude, I want to continue working, producing positive energy of my own.

When faced with a problem, positive energy gives me the strength to push on. A kind word can renew my zeal for a task. I’m not turning to anyone else for help as a last resort, I am finding the strength to go on through the positive energy someone else has passed on to me—or, lack the strength because I have negative energy weighing down on me.

If I turn to my coworker and say, “Kim, you did a great job today,” she is going to take that energy into her the same way as if I had turned to her and said, “Kim, you really suck today.” She may not use it, but she has taken it into herself, either to bottle up and save, or reflect out later. (If you still need visual representation, you can get it from Scrubs, or Yoda.)

Now, when I have a problem, I don’t solve it in a letter to Santa Claus. Instead, I give and take to the best of my ability. My life now feels more like communicating in a critique group or at a meeting—I am constantly surrounded by incoming and outgoing energies, where multiply ideas and attitudes are shared and communicated. My ideas are directly received by another person, and their ideas are likewise conveyed to me. It’s give and take.

It’s basically the belief in qi (read more at Wikipedia and Religion Facts.)

Why do I bring all of this up? I’ll continue that in a second post and give your brain time to rest.

• Slacked off and screwed around this week. I had full work days each day this week, plus too many carbs and not enough walking. I didn’t do any of my daily walks—a few days this week, I didn’t get home until after dark.

Karma(?)
• I have some existential shit coming up for you this week. It goes past progress report and into it’s own post

Setbacks
• VEGGIES—or rather, lack thereof. Also, too much coffee, sitting, and carbs. Also, MAJOR SLACKING. Even this post is slacking. I’ll make up for it tomorrow. I have a major vision problem right now and can barely see the screen.
________

Goals from last week:
• Walk 12 miles, and go to a yoga class
• Learn one thing I didn’t know
• Write for one hour, at least once a day
• Work on next two chapters for YA novel and post a section
• Post twice to this blog
• Add more fruits and veggies to my diet
• Drink more water.

Goals for next week:
• Walk 10 miles, and go to a yoga class
• Read for one hour each weeknight before bed
• Research better eating patterns for my body type and metabolism
• Add more fruits and veggies to my diet
• Don’t flake out or let work get in the way (FEEL FREE TO YELL AT ME ABOUT THIS IF YOU SEE ME.)

Enough Words?
by Rumi

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don’t try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don’t wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it’s in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there’s no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don’t open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves towards him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in the silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.
Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?

The Glass
By Sharon Olds

I think of it with wonder now,
the glass of mucus that stood on the table
next to my father all weekend. The cancer
is growing fast in his throat now,
and as it grows it sends out pus like the
sun sending out flares, those pouring
tongues. So my father has to gargle, hack,
spit a mouth full of thick stuff
into the glass every ten minutes or so,
scraping the rim up his lower lip to
get the last bit off his skin, then he
sets the glass down on the table and it
sits there, like a glass of beer foam,
shiny and faintly golden, he gurlges and
coughs and reaches for it again and
gets the heavy sputum out,
full of bubbles and moving around like yeast–
he is like some god producing food from his own mouth.
He himself can eat nothing anymore,
just a swallow of milk sometimes,
cut with water, and even then it
can’t always get past the tumor,
and the next time the saliva comes up it’s
chalkish and ropey, he has to roll it in his
throat to form it and get it up and dis-
gorge the elliptical globule into the cup–
and the wonder to me is that it did not disgust me,
that glass of phlegm that stood there all day and
filled slowly with the compound globes and I’d
empty it and it would fill again and
shimmer there on the table until the
room seemed to turn around it
in an orderly way, a model of the solar system
turning around the gold sun,
my father the dark earth that used to
lie at the center of the universe
now turning with the rest of us
around the bright glass of spit
on the table, these last mouthfuls.

Keeping Things Whole
by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

This is a Photograph of Me
by Margaret Atwood

It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or how small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion.

but if you look long enough
eventually
you will see me.)

• Beginners Yoga at Savannah Downtown Yoga: SORE! But, on the plus side, I am pretty flexible and proud of myself for keeping up. I don’t know if yoga is something I want to do every day just yet, because oh man, OUCH. However, it is something I want to keep up. I’m going to aim for once a week until I don’t wake up the next day feeling stretched to the max. (Also, I really have to get my right should checked out. I could barely move it in comparison to my left shoulder.)

• Hiking at Congaree National Park: In three hours, I hiked over six miles in the “largest tract of old growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the United States.”[1] It was the best morning I’ve had in a long time.

Setbacks
My week was off given that it was St. Patrick’s Day this week, and my schedule was thrown off kilter. Savannah’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration is one of the largest in the nation, which means it’s a nightmare to do much of anything when you live in downtown Savannah… which I do.

Instead of sticking around Savannah for the weekend, I escaped to Columbia, SC, at the last minute and stayed with my friends, Christian and Aaron. It was wonderful to see them, but they are foodies and treated me to dinners that were tastier and richer than what I’m used to on my budget… plus two cupcakes! I ate more, and richer, than what I’m used to and it left me feeling a little out of whack. I made up for it by hiking on Saturday morning in Congaree, and this upcoming week will be one where I aim to stick tightly to my healthy eating—and drink more water, because I’m definitely dehydrated.
________

Goals from last week:
• Walk a total 12 miles, and go to a yoga class
• Go somewhere I am not expecting to go I ended up going to Columbia.
• Learn one thing I didn’t know
• Write for one hour, at least once a day
• Start reading a new book Gino gave me The Giver!
• Work on next two chapters for YA novel and post a section
• Post twice to this blog

Goals for next week:
• Walk 12 miles, and go to a yoga class
• Learn one thing I didn’t know
• Write for one hour, at least once a day
• Post some writing to this blog
• Post twice to this blog
• Add more fruits and veggies to my diet
• Drink more water

Thoughts: Discouraged, but not entirely. I know that adding the two mile walk every day (that I managed it) is helping my health, even if the pounds didn’t fly off in the first week. I weigh in on my Wii using Wii Fit, despite its overly perky advice. I’m going to pick Sunday at 9 am to be my new weigh-in time, to try to be more accurate.

• Watched “America The Beautiful”—a documentary by Daryl Roberts about self-image in the United States. Highly recommended for anyone and everyone. The best part was part where they showed a statistic showing some make-up ingredients used by women lead to smaller penis size in their male children. I laughed so hard. Definitely left me feeling beautiful and better about myself at the end.

Spiritual
• Watched “The Nature of Existence”—a documentary by Roger Nygard. It’s a good look at world religions and belief systems, but didn’t tell me things I didn’t know already. I tuned out in several parts. Overall? Interesting, but from the very beginning, it was easy to tell what the conclusion of the documentary would be. Didn’t change my feelings or opinions.

Creative
• Turned in the first four chapters of my YA novel to my critique group. Good to get feedback from them—and great to hear they liked the flow of things.

• Reviewed Floco Torres’s Floco’s Modern Life for TheBlueIndian.com. Read it here.

________

Goals for next week:
• Walk a total 12 miles, and go to a yoga class
• Go somewhere I am not expecting to go
• Learn one thing I didn’t know
• Write for one hour, at least once a day
• Start reading a new book
• Work on next two chapters for YA novel and post a section
• Post twice to this blog

Yellow Car Season finds my mornings full of mucus, my evenings full of mucus, and my sleep interrupted by hacking fits where my body has decided that 3:45 am is the best time to forcibly rid itself of said mucus.

Mid-day to early evening, I feel great—fantastic even. But, no matter how great I feel, I still sound like Marge Simpson, at best, and at night I turn into a lethargic blob of sneezing, coughing, mucus filled mess. It’s incredibly sexy.

This weekend also marked the beginning of the thoughts that would prompt this blog. Friday night was marred by the persistent emotional conflict that surrounds my family in Alabama. Saturday, I had a blind date, followed by long talks about my love life, which in combination can be overwhelming. Sunday, I attended our local PechaKucha (read: pe-chahk-cha) and heard a woman talk about how her most recent art reflected her 70 lbs lost in 52 weeks. The way she held herself accountable? She took a picture of everything she ate. I am not that dedicated, and I know it. However, there was something to be admired in her process.

By the end of the weekend, I had begun to reflect on my own self, on things I wanted, and the means with which I could go about meeting those wants, about changing, growing, evolving. I opened my journal and wrote down a list of goals. The next day, I walked two miles. The day after? I walked two more. It felt good.

So, this is a new adventure for me—an open blog where I’m going to try to keep record of my journey towards a higher level of existence (as my friend said, “That’s some heady shit.”) I want to be the absolute best I can be. I have a feeling this will encompass multiple avenues of trial and error, posts that are boring as hell, and hopefully some that enlighten on the way way. There will be tons of pontificating, but perhaps some nuggets of brilliance.

Why a blog? Well, I hope for some response. Reassurance? Of course. What human doesn’t crave response to the their questions and opinions? I’d love to know I’m not the only one lacking certainty, that I’m not the only one constantly searching, progressing. In part, it’s a sort of accountability. Setting of goals and knowing that someone might be reading.

I plan to post progress reports every Sunday evening on the week’s accomplishments or setbacks (aiming to have more of the former than latter.) Posted between will be artwork, thoughts, discoveries, adventures, reviews, rants.

Who knows? It will be an adventure. And I’m funny, sometimes, so you might even laugh.