Today’s Words:
seize
greaseball
yo
nutters
bulbous
homeowner’s association
high-falutin

“Yo!” screamed the scrawny crossing-guard. “Are you nutters? That ain’t a toilet!”

The old man looked up from his task, diligent as he was, squatting over the drainage grate at the edge of the street taking a huge and sonorous dump. He looked confused, as if the added input of the guard’s salutation had derailed his feeble ability to focus.

“You can’t do that here! What’s wrong with you?” continued the young man, oblivious to the old man’s obvious inability to comprehend the inadequacy of the receptacle he had chosen for his deposit.

The crossing-guard, whose name happened to be Alan, seized the half naked man’s arm as if to pull him off the street, but mid-pull, thought better of it. Alan had spied the soupy consistency and greenish shade of the old man’s business and decided it would be better to keep his distance.

As if Alan’s touch had awoken something, a smattering of clarity swept over the old man’s face and he seemed to be gathering his few remaining wits about him. He struggled with his surprisingly-clean pants and managed to reassemble himself more quickly than Alan expected.

Now he seemed to be younger than Alan originally thought. There was a strange lurching sensation in Alan’s stomach, and he felt woozy and disoriented.

“Excuse me young man–I’m looking for the Elvish Pinkerton Homeowners Association –might you know where it is?” the not-so-old man asked Alan brightly, with no trace of doddering or crazy.

The man’s offal seemed to have disappeared too. It was as if the incident had never happened, and Alan was thoroughly nonplussed.

He looked more closely at the ground and realized that the grate was only painted on. And the paint looked like it was actually licorice strips.

“I say, did you hear what I asked you?” queried the man again, while great wings unfurled from his shoulders.

Butterflies erupted in Alan’s stomach, and he quickly looked around him. The asphalt now resembled snake-skin slowly undulated under his feet.

“Fuck” he whispered under his breathe. “How did they find me?”

“Now young man, there is no need to swear. If you could just direct me to the Elvish Pinkerton –”

Alan shoved the man, who was now more of a griffin-creature with a bulbous human head attached to a lionish body with talons and wings.

***

OK, I’m bored with this!
Emma

Hey, I’m back. Yup, it’s going to become a habit. Pretty soon you’ll never know I left.

Today my thoughts are circling around this question: do I want to help people because it is fun and I enjoy it? Or because I grew up believing that if I made myself helpful people would keep me around?

The deal with me is that right at this moment, I am tickled pink by data migration. Specifically my own data migrating into a new billing system. I LOVE IT. I had no idea.

And I am completely disinterested in figuring out how to teach people about business and money and the Tao of anything.

And because I’m constantly scrutinizing myself, I have to know what it means.

Eh. Maybe it means nothing. I am also reading sci-fi/fantasy again. Which I haven’t done in ages. Maybe life just goes along and I don’t have to know why. Maybe it’s an ebb and flow and…blah, I am boring myself.

I am turning 30 in a few short weeks. And you are probably tired of hearing about it. I’m tired of thinking about it! It’s an impossible event that nonetheless seems to be occurring. I am filled with cognitive dissonance. 30? That happens to other people. People in their thirties!

Another unusual event that bears documenting is that I plunked down a chunk of cash to spend two nights on the coast for my birthday. Without any of the usual shoppers quandary and endless research trying to find the same thing but cheaper. I just wanted to do it. I liked the place. And I didn’t mind spending the money. It’s unusual. I like it. I’ve been thinking…what else could I spend money on? Could I travel now? I’ve never allowed myself the expense.

All good changes I believe. But odd-feeling inside.

Eh. Life. It really is never quite what you’d expect.

That’s probably for the best.

My desire to help will probably grow back. Maybe it just needed a break. For the summer. To not care and read silly books and go to the beach and…er…play with data. Love it.

This is what I like about myself: I try as much as possible to give myself what I want. I may spend a lot of time trying to figure out why I want it and if it’s a healthy thing to want and if there is anything else I might want more that I might not realize I want…but ultimately that is all so I can have what I want. Whatever that is. Whether it makes a whole lot of sense or not. I believe in desire. I believe it guides us toward wondrous-ness. I believe we contain in ourselves the desire for beauty and grand love and pureness. And through giving ourselves permission to seek that which we are drawn to and fall in love with it, we shall find those things. And we shall experience that soaring falling feeling of being at one with something magnificent. I love that feeling. It makes me happy.

Which really is the only thing I want to say when helping people: there is this feeling. You can have it. Your business and money and everything else can be part of that feeling. It can be wonderful. Go after it. Let yourself seek it out. Don’t stop until you find it. Don’t forget that it’s real and it’s great and it’s right there in the next breath. It’s worth looking for.

Court the sublime. Chase it. Surrender to it. Know it. Believe in it. It’s here, it matters, it’s real, it’s not that hard to find, and it’s brilliant.

That is what I want to say. In a few months. After my birthday. When I finish my book and polish of my data.

=)

Writing matters. I think.

I mean, I want to take on faith that it does, and just start doing it again.

I have gotten out of the habit of writing. I used to just go along and a great idea would come to me and I would get all excited and out it would come.

Lately every idea seems kinda not great. And what’s the point. And blah blah blah.

I don’t like being in the blah blah blah space. I liked being in the writing space. So I’m going to find it again.

I like this writing space because I don’t have to be “on”. I can write in the certain knowledge that pretty much just Emily will read it. That’s nice. Hi, Emily.

But still. For the sake of the writing, let’s pretend I have an Audience.

Here are some ideas I’ve had lately that, if I didn’t have a blah blah blah brain, I might want to write about:

The Tao of Fame

Actually, I want to learn about this. This is an interesting topic that I am fascinated by and don’t understand and want to grok.

It seems like a lot of my struggles lately around writing and creativity have centered on this: how much do I want to be known, by strangers?

I understand the desire to be known by those close to me. I’ve yearned to be known in that intimate, deep way. And I’ve experienced it, and I like it. It’s good.

But longing to be known by people who you will never know? Immediate ambivalence.

1. Is it right to want that? What am I giving them, isn’t it a one-way street and isn’t that selfish? Isn’t it ambitious, and greedy? Is it bad?
2. If I didn’t think it were bad, would I actually want it and go after it?
3. Isn’t thinking it’s bad the same as thinking  money is bad, and isn’t that what I tell people is silly all the time? (Well, not silly exactly, but unnecessary and perhaps even unnatural).

Money is good. It’s abundant, it’s fun, it’s useful, it’s part of life. It’s your friend.

So can I say that of fame? Fame is good. Fame is abundant. Fame is useful. Fame is a part of life. Fame is your friend.

Ee…eeek.

OK. One at a time.

Fame is good. In the way that money is good.

Money is good because money is energy and energy is love and love is good. Money is good because the Universe is good. The Universe is fundamentally a good place and money is a tool within that that is actually neutral but in that the Universe is good, it is good.

OK. So. Fame is good because fame is…well, it’s not exactly energy.

What is it, exactly?

Fame is when…people know you who you don’t know.

OMG. Maybe it’s not that I fear that it is greedy or selfish. Really, I don’t have a problem being greedy or selfish. I mean, I think those are natural parts of ourselves yadda yadda yadda.

Maybe it’s that if I don’t know them, I don’t feel safe with them knowing me.

I’ve come to recognize I have a certain vigilance about life. I don’t trust people. I like to see their hands. I want to have my back to the wall. I don’t like public transportation. Some might say that I don’t like people, but it’s really that I don’t like people that I don’t already know.

So the idea of thousands of strangers thinking they know me? Or even worse, actually knowing me?

Yeah. I think the greedy and selfish (read: alive and excited about it) part of me does want to be famous. I think that part of me wants to write and blog and share everything with the world.

It’s the other part of me that doesn’t. The part that is sure that people don’t like me when they meet me. The part that has to check in constantly with what other people are feeling and thinking because they might have decided they don’t like me in the last 5 seconds. You still like me, right? You aren’t going to leave me suddenly are you? Are you? Tell me!

That part of me doesn’t like the lack of control that fame represents. People could decide to like me or not like me and not even tell me! They could develop all sorts of opinions from reading what other people say about me and I wouldn’t even get to say hey wait, that’s not fair, I’m really likable I swear! Give me a chance!

I’d have to really get over what people think of me.

Wow.

Fame is abundant. In the way that money is abundant.

Money is abundant because there is an infinite supply of it and an infinite supply of both people and needs. There are always more people needing things that want to pay for people to provide it. Endless opportunities to give and receive money. They print more every day. There is literally billions of dollars floating around and you just need a tiny tiny slice of that total revenue stream to be happy.

OK. So. Fame is abundant because there is an infinite supply of people wanting to be told things and wanting to read things and wanting to hear other people’s ideas about things.

Sigh. My head-voice says: but they don’t really need more talking heads. They need to listen to themselves.

Ok. Let’s try again.

Fame is abundant because on this earth, we are always forgetting. Every single day we wake up and forget how wonderful we are and how gracious and kind we can be and how clever and brilliant our writing is. So every single day we need some reminders. We are always needing more blessings and good wise words and happy thoughts. There is always a need for this.

So. There are always more people needing reminders that want to be reminded. That yearn and seek for some nourishment.

And there are endless opportunities to talk and speak and also to listen to others wisdom. There are endless opportunities to know and be known. Everyone wants to connect and talk. People spend their whole lives talking! And reading and listening and trying to figure things out. New people are born every day who are seeking answers to the perplexitude that is life. There are literally billions of people wandering around on the planet and you just need a tiny sliver of them to listen to you and you’ll have a bit of fame. Do you need to be as famous as Madonna? Or could you be happy with just a bit of fame, enough to feel like you are reaching the kind of people you want to reach and really saying something that matters to them?

Maybe before you start you need to know that you are not starving and will not get carried away with it.

People fear making money because they feel so hungry they don’t trust themselves. Who will I become if I start trying to meet this need for myself? What if I am never satisfied? People hunger so for money. I don’t want to go there.

Am I hungry for the kind of validation that I think will come with fame? Am I afraid of who I might become? Like people who write books and are scanning the bestseller lists constantly, desperate to get on them, be on them, stay on them. It’s like a drug. No thanks.

Can I say no thanks to fame when it’s not my audience or not my scene? Can I keep my center? Will I be tested? Will I survive?

Hmm.

Fame is useful. In the way that money is useful.

Money is useful, obviously, because it’s very hard to trade 500 chickens for a night at a hotel. You can do all kinds of interesting things with money that you can’t do with barter. Like the stock market. Well, that is dubious. But still. Credit cards are convenient. And online shopping. Etc. I mean, really. This is a no-brainer.

Fame is useful because it’s very hard to talk to 5000 people individually. You can do all sorts of interesting things with fame, like recommend other cool things. Like Brad Pitt and that silly bracelet. Well. Yeah. But still. Obama is cool. He inspired a nation. For a few months. That’s still something.

All the people who wrote books that I’ve read. They’ve really helped me. I’m glad they wrote those books. I really am.

Fame is a part of life. In the way that money is a part of life.

Money is a part of life because you are paying for the floor your chair sits on. You didn’t design the system and you can’t change it. You can go live in the desert squatting in a hut, but really. It’s easier just to deal with money already.

Fame is a part of life because people are always forming opinions of you. You can’t stop them. There is nothing you can do about the opinions you’ll never know about or never see. There are many things out of your control and fame is up to other people. You can go live in the desert squatting in a hut, but really. Then you’ll just have your own judgments and opinions, and is that really better?

You can’t help anyone if you won’t allow them in your presence because you don’t want them to have an opinion of you.

Fame is your friend. In the way that money is your friend

Money is your friend because it will work for you beautifully and logically if you just learn how it works and work with it rather than resisting it. It will make your life easier, take care of you, let you go places and do things that are truly wonderful. It is one of the most useful and helpful tools humans have invented. It works certain ways is all. You just have to learn them, and then it will unfold its mysteries for you.

Fame is your friend because it will work for you beautifully and logically if you just learn how it works and work with it rather than resisting it?

Huh?

I feel like this is probably true but I realize now I have no idea how fame and promotion works. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Crap.

I’ve met people who money makes no sense to. They usually don’t have any.

Well. I do have a way of becoming mildly famous without even trying. I think it’s in all of us. I just hide from it. So if I can learn to stop doing that, it probably won’t be so awfully hard.

* * *

Disclaimer to the voice in my head: I get that it’s maybe a little silly to be trying to work out your fame issues if you aren’t really famous at all. But it’s kind of like, if you don’t have any money maybe you should look at your money issues. Get it?

I had a rockin’ meeting tonight with my Hakomi group. Much unfolded.

I’m going through this period of uncertainty. The confidence that I normally draw on readily is just missing. I look around the world and it suddenly seems much larger than before. I had a plan, I was ready for a world the size I thought it was. But suddenly its far larger and I don’t have a plan. My plans don’t work. I’m bewildered and afraid.

But hark, here is a thread of awakening to tug on. My plans in the world are based around fortifying and protecting myself from criticism. Be perfect, be seamless, and also, preach to the choir. But the new world is so large I can’t possibly prepare.

This is familiar. My family was critical. I was always on guard, preparing for the next insult, the next jest or jab. I had to be aware of the world at all times, and I was lucky that it was small. I had an iron grip on it.

Out in the world, I’ve created a bubble. It’s small enough that I have a handle on it, and I’ve filled it with non-jabby people.

But ultimately it is too small. I am bored. I am frustrated. I want to be known. I want to explore. I want to venture into new neighborhoods and meet new people. I want to impact the world.

And I want to feel up to it. I want to know how to handle criticism without wilting or biting. I want to bend and sway like bamboo or some shit. I want to be OK.

So I want more exposure. There it is. Following on the heels of last weeks post, which was all about being OK with my bubble and not ever leaving it. Hah! I laugh at my bubble! It is time to think about maybe looking out over the rim and maybe sorta kinda sticking my toe outside my bubble sometime soon but not right this second but soon. It is time for that!

Yes. Excellent.

Sometimes I get a glimpse of the future. Not a lot, but occasionally I’ll get a flash of knowing that turns out to happen.

Sometimes I try to see into the future and this internal force prevents it. Like a voice that say, “No. You’re not supposed to know that yet.”

When I was younger I had a strong sense that I would become famous. Save the world famous. And I struggled with it and was ambivalent with it.
And then finally I came to terms with wanting to do something or other that helps people and who cares about the rest.

And the funny thing is that feeling that I would be famous has subsided. I don’t really feel this inevitable doom of bigness that I used to feel.

So maybe it was a weird fear-delusion to begin with.

Or maybe as I’ve gotten older I’ve changed and my potential futures have shifted. I don’t think I want to be famous. I enjoy solitude and quiet and anonymity. I like making things that people use. I don’t need them to know me.

I used to half-fear and half-want to be famous. Now I am unsure if it matters to me at all.

Lately what seems important is on a smaller scale. Doing good work. Being kind. Understanding love. Creating balance. Enjoying being alive. I want to do these things.

What difference does it make who sees or knows if I do these things? They are my business.

I don’t want to be larger than life. I want to be exactly the size of life.

Some things are lost when you scale. Things that matter to me.

I don’t think my life scales. I don’t want to stretch it to see either. Right now it’s a good size.

But when I ask myself about it, I get the voice. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe I know the answer and I haven’t accepted it yet.

I guess it is still in a state of ambivalency. Just with lower amps. And more appreciation for being not-famous. It’s so nice, being not-famous. Being just me.

This is what I want: a summer all to myself, where I can make things and chat with people online and never have to go anywhere. It’s lovely. It’s perfect.

I want to run as far as the eye can see in a perfect meadow. I want to live at the edge of a lake and swim whenever I want, in perfect 70 degree water. I want to have my Twitter that I can turn off, and the rest of the time a giant workbench that I can make things out of. I want a world I can pause whenever I want. It’s beautiful.

I want to float on chairs made of cotton candy and marshmallows. I want to be lifted from my body and fly through the clouds, twirling slowly around and around. I want to have no deadlines ever, just a long summer of making things and working on projects.

This is how my chair + laptop make me feel. Like I can go on forever in a dreamy wonderland of creativity and on-demand connection.

Nothing is demanded of me here. I can play games and chat and think of new ideas. There is no pressure and no expectations. It can go on forever. There are no appointments to keep, no hair to get cut, no cars to get fixed, no brain to get shrunk. Life is entirely satisfactory. I am clever and happy, my work is interesting and fun, and nothing bad ever happens. I can answer just the emails I want, and never “process” anything.

My laptop has all the good parts of computers and internets, with none of the bad.

The angry people live in my desktop machine. The deadlines and calendar and task lists sit heavily on my desk. On my laptop they are all optional. Emails are a stream, not a bucket. I have no boat to be constantly emptying water from. I can dabble my toes in the river and then take a nap. Everything is optional and fun. And occasionally my kitty comes up to snuggle. It is a happy place.

I have updated the site to now just be for me and Emily. So there. Nyah.

Well, no hard feelings. It was originally for us and now it is again. Aw, just the two of us.

If you are, by some odd chance, one of the slim percentage of Earthlings who signed up during the long stretch of time that the site was open to registrations and gathering dust, please be happy to know that you have not been here in some time so we have moved on without you. If you did write something, we have saved it, if for some reason you want it back. Otherwise, your account was deleted. Thank you and goodnight.

P.S. A new design is coming soon. It will involve even more silliness.

Today was a Wednesday. I woke up and felt really tired. So I had a cup of coffee, worked a bit, and then I heard the mail arrive. The movie Lily recommended arrived, so I watched I Love Killing Flies.  About a restaurant owner in NYC, quite a curmudgeon… his philosophy on life, his 5 kids, his wife, the community they built over the 30 years of running a restaurant. The dude can cook ANYTHING.

Sadly, it was a short documentary.I took a nap afterwards,because I’ve been overworking.

Emma came over to wake me from my nap. When I really feel bad, having someone I love say to me, “Oh, poor baby”, it’s the most soothing thing.  She did that. And then I got up and we got ready to go. Today was to be the day of replacing her alternator. But her car wouldn’t start, so we had to change the plan. We ended up at the Petite Patisserie on Alberta. I ordered the special (Steak salad), and Emma had soup and a sandwich.

Warm, warm day today, even hot I’d say. Everyone who could get outside seemed to be outside. A fellow with a pit bull was sitting next to us when we got to the cafe. Lovely, sweet dog, very shy. Warm fellow.

We solved a coding problem that’s been bugging me a lot. My framework code works well for handling DB tables, but not as well when what you need is a very customized, ad hoc form. She said, “I’d like to just write HTML.” I laughed at first–mere HTML! How would you get all the perqs of the framework with mere HTML? And then I saw it, plain as day, simple as peaches.

As much as I wanted to just jump right in and apply this new idea to the signup pages for AcornHost, I didn’t. Instead, Emma and I laid in bed, rested, talked, and she introduced me to Hakomi. And what an introduction. I got to understand that it’s about just going into what’s going on. You don’t have to fix yourself, just be aware of yourself. It feels much better. We explored my attitude toward the code, a kind of desperation I have about getting it done, and worrying that Emma might lose confidence in me if I don’t work at a rapid-enough pace. She would say things like, “Now I’m going to say some things. Just go into yourself, and see what comes up when I say them.” One thing she asked me was what comes up when she says that I am loveable and valuable. And another was comes up when she says that I can have a balanced life.

I feel a bit of ease, and expansiveness now, regarding Project Gina.  I want to be kind to Emily, give her the same level of service she gives to her customers. (Okay, wait, maybe a few notches above. And I won’t call her a Nimrod.)

The winsome final touch was eating dinner just now with Moogoo. He was fascianted with a feather, prancing about, being, well, so absolutely winsome, that it inspired this post.

A side-thought I had was: I’ll never be fluent in Spanish. I can tell you Moogoo es un buen gato. But I have no idea how to describe his winsomeness, his wiles, his ways, his wicked coolness, his grace, the comedy of his movements. No idea how to say to nuzzle under-bunders.  I love English, I want to play with it more often. Code is good but paragraphs are finer. So fine. So fine. Such a fine day!

And it’s not over. Monopoly on the x-box, still to come.

Writers used to be private. They wrote books. They had their private dramas and parties and we caught little glimpses between the lines. They didn’t spell it all out for us. They didn’t post their shopping list on the internet. Well, maybe Thoreau. He would have loved blogging. “I spent $2.50 on nails for my shed today. Stealing wifi from my neighbor.”

Blah blah blah blah blah. Shut up. No more nonsense.

I don’t read other people’s blogs. Unless I know them. I don’t want to read inside other people’s lives. I do, however, want a place to spew.

Do not mistake this place for beauty or wit. It is a place for motley stews of words. It is not here because I want to share. It is here because I want to write.

I don’t care if you read it. Let’s just not pretend though. I’m not writing for my readers. I’m not inviting them into my life. I’m not connecting and being transparent. I’m writing for me. I don’t want you in my world. I want my world on the page.

***

This space is the place I feel freest to write. I’m planning to re-org it a bit. The other writers have moved on. Maybe some will come back. I want to pause my other blogs. I don’t want to share anymore. I just want a space to write, a hidden nook away from the crowd. With no expectations. How could I write for a teeming invisible theoretical mass anyway? I don’t like it. I want to create tools for small groups, and publish those. I don’t want to write for everyone. If I have a good idea I’ll put it on the Tao. The bloggy blog will go. I have an ambivalent relationship with my audience, if my audience is ‘anyone’ and my subject is ‘me’.

Here I can come and go and return and nobody asks where I’ve been. It’s private. It’s for spewing. It’s not for public consumption. It’s not my book. It’s my journal. I never want to mix the two again.

This will be a corner of the Universe that only breadcrumbs will lead to. No flash. You’ll just know if you know. It’s not for everyone.

***

Damn, I miss writing.

While I hoped this site would sprout wings and fly, it perhaps never had the nourishment it needed to develop healthy bones and ligaments. Or perhaps its bones were far too heavy for it to leave the ground. In any case, here it lies, a wimpering near-carcass.

The other two major players have taken their writing behind closed doors (password-protected that is), and no longer wish to cavort in the open field. And personally, I have too many other blogs I can’t keep up with.

Although, I will say, this blog is one in which I tend to wax more wordy…less heady, more fluid. I like that.

WELL I don’t know what I should do. Remove the “group” elements and make it back into a singleton blog? Admit defeat and close the doors?

See, I’ve lately realized my attentions are completely divided. I’ve started more and more projects (websites), and unlike books which you can put a final sentence in and close for good, when you make a website, there it stands in perpetuity, asking “What now?”. Websites are perpetual beings. All these open flames draw my oxygen and I begin to wilt.

See how much more interesting my writing is here? Sigh. I am always so damn messianic on cheekyboots. I must save the world thusly, and by first cutting open my head for all to see. Blah on that.

No one has requested to join my little merry lack-of band for some time (excepting a few spammers), so I could remove those functions. And remove the words of those who deign not share themselves with any but a careful few. I ask, what is the point of that? But then again, I have never been private with my thoughts.

No, my approach tends more toward oversharing and hoping somewhere, someone perks up and turns her grace upon me. I was never able to be mysteriously aloof. I live in perpetual fear of the right person not knowing I exist. The person who might actually understand me. The rest of humanity, what they know or don’t know of me, eh. Who cares? I write not for the masses, but for the few who may understand.

The awareness has crept upon me once again that I’m not a social butterfly. Not in real life (meatspace), and not in the virtual world either. I maintain my social network to be visible for a few, not for the many. This may be an altogether silly strategy however, for if I am meaning to attract other such souls who dislike the trivial and surface and yearn for the deep and intense, will they really be found on Facebook? And will they really recognize a kindred soul if I have 189 “friends”? Might they not assume I am some other beast entirely?

Sigh. Marketing, it always comes back to marketing.

I think the beauty of this blog is that I created it, not to document my brilliance (the original mission for cheekyboots), but just to have a space to blather. This affords me a liberty I find missing in all my other online writing endeavors.

There is no purpose here except to translate my inner experience into words. And that, my friend, is fun.

So, I will not shut these doors. I don’t know quite what I will make of this house, but I will not demolish it. I might repurpose it.

Or I might not. Perhaps the illusion that I’m writing in the midst of an online colony of other misshapen and misconstrued authors helps me emerge as a more true and eloquent version of myself. Certainly I feel cloaked in a certain anonymity.

So. This blog will not fall beneath the ax today. Perhaps anon. Or perhaps a clear vision of its purpose will arise in my mind and trot forward to be enacted forthwith.