New Launch ... New Venture ... New Dream

This is what I'm up to these days.

More news coming soon.

Aim

Oh, $%^*&#!!! Today is Tuesday, and at about 9:00 in the morning, I've just realized that yesterday was Monday, the day of the delayed beginning for the course in Personal Writing I was scheduled to teach. I've realized this fact in the same moment as realizing that I never went anywhere yesterday. If students had shown up (they didn't) they would have had no teacher. I didn't go to my own danged class!!

Brilliant job. Just brilliant. Way to impress the people who make the decisions down there at the Hegewald Center. (geeeez!)

But - the thing is - there were no students either. (I'm having an existential crisis with the two reactions. I screwed up. I wasn't ready. ... And ... No one needed me to be. No students. No one came.)

So I called the nice lady in charge, and she was ready for my call. She's even more disappointed than I am that no one showed up! (Knowing this from her is calming to my angsty moment.) She has ideas and proposals, and would like me to find a way to offer it again in the spring. Heartening. This is heartening to me.

It was not a bad target, but my aim was off.

I'd sure like to know, from anyone who reads this little blog, what would you attend? Pick one of the following, or invent something else, and help me figure this out. I've got good stuff, and I want to give it to people. So ... here are some options.

• Getting To Know You: a one-day seminar in self-discovery through writing

• Saturday Self-discovery Series ~ on the third Saturday of each month, gather with others to gain clarity, optimism, and a sense of purpose through guided writing and discussion

• Express Yourself! ~ Would you like to have clearer thoughts and the right words for saying what you really mean? The writing exercises in this course are adventures in self-discovery.

See, that's what the director thinks would work - to offer this information as self-discovery rather than as writing. The target we're trying to hit is the passing on of some simple, basic writing techniques, all of which are found in some easily accessible books and materials currently on the market, that can give anyone who uses them some wonderful benefits. The benefits are things like:

• more resilient immune system
• greater clarity of thought
• better problem solving
• clearer direction in life choices
• emotional release
• self-knowledge
• release from defensiveness
• release from resentment
• and a lot of other things

This information is gleaned by me (because I'm me and can't help gathering and experimenting with it), organized into a course, and offered so that a student could use it as it is, or branch out from what I've offered and find paths of his or her own. As you see, I've got my perennial problem - a huge, multi-faceted Big Idea, and a serious need for focus. I need better aim.

Any of you readers have any feedback at all? I can use anything you can give me.

Ducks in a Row

Somewhere between the nearly flowering bulbs on my kitchen windowsill and the dead and soggy "garden" outside ...

Somewhere between ducks in a row, and ducks with their butts in the air ...

Somewhere between flourishing and fallow times ...

That's where I am.

Again.

ugh.

At least I know that this is part of how it goes. Life is like this. It goes along for awhile, and then we start to chafe at the sameness, and we remember more interesting days, and the mud sticks around or ices over, and nothing blooms, and no one can see our heads because our butts are in the air -- and then chaos looms and finally hits -- and then we get to start over again. Not until then. Forcing the bulbs on the windowsill doesn't mean I can have spring in January. Those bulbs are just the promise of spring.

Now, if jobs applied for become jobs to go to, and if partners chosen become partners legally joined, and if trees standing become trees felled, sold, and financially helpful ... if classes prepared for become classes taught ... if the well laid plans and the puffy ephemeral dreams become reality ... then the next thing to do will be finding stability in chaos. But I'm not there yet. There's nothing to adjust to yet. Sameness is passing, chaos isn't here. Not yet.

I
hate
this!

I know how this goes. Martha Beck is right - there are four squares to the human change cycle, and Square One is chaotic and untethered and deeply disturbing to some people. Square Two is where you start to think of ideas again, Square Three is where you try them out, and when you finally find a way to operate with your new reality, you get to Square Four, which is maintenance.

Okay. Okay, I get it.

And I prefer being in Square Two, and I loathe Square One, and I know I'm about to slip down the ridge between Squares Four and One, and that's when all hell breaks loose, the piles on my desk get mingled because they all get knocked off at once, I get bumped and bruised and don't know what I'm doing and can't tell which end is up, and I usually overdraw my bank account because I lose track of the balance.

Aaaaaaagh!!!

Get on with it, Universe! I know it's right around the corner, so could we just move on?