intellectual properties

fantasy life 2012

it seems a local team did something and sports fever is taking over again. cool, i guess? < shrug> . i was thinking about this, how some people are really into being BIG FANS and things like fantasy sports or phantasy phish where you create (and try to manifest?) the best possible team/game/event EVAR.  i’m more into Fantasy Life, and this morning i feel so grateful that i have so many other people not only playing along with me, but into making it FANTASY REALITY, from #occupy to fashion to fitness to art to music to education to policy to travel to procreation.  dreaming ain’t good if you don’t try to make it real, and if we play it right it looks like RealLife 2012 is going to be an epic win. GO TEAM! you know who you are.

2011 was / 2012 is

it’s hard for me to even think back so far as last january, as 2011 was a long year full of movement.  as much as the foundation of my external life stays the same (same city same job same LTR), internally it feels like constant change. i do not stay idle for long; i cannot bide time.

i am currently too exhausted, sitting here in JFK waiting for my flight back to SFO, to put that more precisely into words. it’s the 2nd day of 2012 and i’ve been up at dawn for both. i’m sleepless, restless, eager to see the world turn.

january 2011 started out a little rough when i declared unemployment but kept my job (complicated). however, once accepting this i felt opened up to other opportunities. i began seeking.

jay and i celebrated our 13 year anniversary on feb 1. then we unexpectedly lost our cat Piggles on Feb 7 which sent us into a bit of a depression for a few weeks.  i did lov3sick 4 on valentine’s day, heartbroken.

march was full of a lot of rain and movies and introspection. i went to michigan to visit my family.

april brought spring, and in may we enjoyed some wonderful weddings and started warming up for summer. global politics got heavy. they weighed.

in june we spent a few days floating on a houseboat in the sacramento delta @Ephemerisle and that marked the official beginning of the Summer of Doing Everything I Want To. plus i was reading The Dice Man and was easily influenced to start daylighting my minority selves.

july got off to its usual start with the 6th annual Priceless, and then in late July i headed to NYC for a 10 day whirlwind of hot yes.

august – camping + phish in tahoe, and then burning man for the 7th time.  the last time?

september – #occupy hit the streets and i was at once excited and overwhelmed. my brain was swamped. confliction, evaluation, determining where you stand and the slightly uncomfortable realization that we are not all on the same page, even amongst ourselves. more reading on subjects that i know little about than i have done since college.

october – i turned 35 and mom came to visit. slightly disconcerting wrt feelings of arrested development. what’s next? #occupy continued, things at OccupyOakland got tense as hell, and i read more email in one month than i think i ever have.

november – 3 weeks of sobriety, blogging every day for NaBloPoMo (lots of great QOTDs and a guestpost on Offbeat Home), and then the holidays began.

december – SFO to NYC to Puerto Rico and back. i surfed and swam and danced and explored. we rang in NYE in rock star style and ended the year exhausted with possibilities.

.::.

i’m sure i’m forgetting things, but in short: i did not work very much. i rode my bike a lot of miles.  i did a lot of yoga. i got my chronic pain under control but in the process became a gym rat. i wandered a lot of streets and a lot of trails.  i loved a lot of people and felt loved.  i drank a lot of coffee and wine and champagne. i didn’t dance enough. i did not write enough but also learned that maybe i do not want to “be a writer” — i just write. i slept a lot sometimes and not nearly enough at others. i asked a lot of questions. i got some answers, but usually just more questions. i hoped and dreamed and ached and while this world is full of signs i wished for many more.

i desired austerity, focus and grace for 2011.  i got the austerity. i don’t think i achieved focus or grace. in fact, i think i lost them completely.

.::.

so, 2012. where are we? who are we? where are we going?

i honestly have no idea.

recession wishlist for 11/11/11

i heard today was a lucky day, 11/11/11. so in the spirit of making wishes on lucky days, let us itemize the list of crazy plans i have in mind in over the next 10 months (after November Austerity is over, of course!):

• visit family in Michigan sometime before it snows too much (=in the next 30 days?)
• New York City + Puerto Rico for Christmas +NYE 2011
• Phish @ Madison Square Garden New Year’s Run (not NYE but one of the other nights?) tried, did not get tickets
• Utah – January? SLC or Zion?
• weeklong yoga retreat in Mexico – February
• Montana/Glacier NP – April?
• Cruise from Seattle to Alaska, May 2012, with both of our families (not only a crazy plan – actually booked)
• Iceland, June/July 2012 to chase the midnight sun
• August 2012: fly in/out of burning man 2012 for a 72-hour stay
• Fall 2012: NYC School of Visual Arts: Critical Theory and the Arts (MA) . for this, i need to get my shit together. a lot.

**
apparently the way my mind works is that while we are suffering a major Recession and i don’t have a full-time job, i should spend a lot of time and money traveling and apply to an expensive private art school in the one of the most expensive cities in the world.

anyone want to suggest anything else awesome and totally impractical i should consider adding?

november austerity

since november 1st, i have implemented some personal austerity measures (that was one of my 2011 resolutions, you may recall), the first of them being no alcohol until thanksgiving, the second being sticking to an almost fully vegan diet (with a few exceptions so as to make life not entirely difficult), and the third being no extraneous shopping for the entire month.

so far, so good, and i do feel better. things were getting a little out of hand in those departments.

but i think the thing i really need to pull back on is media.  too much news, too much internet, too much commentary, not enough reading long-form media like books and a delay in responding to things that actually need thought in responding to.  all media mania, no focus, and focus was also one of my 2011 goals.  because things are more than a little unclear over here and only getting murkier, and i am only getting more distracted.

and so i think i now need to implement a 4th measure, which is going somewhat dark (dusky?) for an indeterminate period of time.  i will continue to blog here daily for NaBloPoMo, but i need to take a break from facebook/RSS/twitterland and focus on some things that require time and attention. so if i owe you an email of substance, you can expect that soon, but if you post something awesome somewhere else, i might not respond.

QOTD: transfiguration

“We are all agents of transfiguration,” Tutu told the congregation at Grace Cathedral during its Sunday morning service. “Go forth and transform your personal relationships, your community, your world, so it becomes hospitable to joy, to justice, to freedom, to peace.”

–Desmond Tutu @ Grace Cathedral, SF, 3/6/11

streak

my goal for this week is to be nice. to myself and to everyone else. last week was mean.

for 2011: austerity, focus, and grace

i am finding this “end of year” post difficult to write, and it’s coming out in pieces.  i am trying to wrap up 2010 in my mind and in writing and it’s not going well.

part one: recognition: grace

in my solstice blog post i talked about why this year hasn’t been fun for me. the thing that bothers me most about it is not that i feel like life has been cruel or unfair to me in particular – i am highly aware of my 1st world privilege and all the good things surrounding me – but that the overall affect on my mood and attitude has made ME not fun.  a couple of nice friends told me after that post that despite how i have been feeling on the inside, i’ve been a friendly, positive force for them, and i appreciated that, because i think most of all this year i have been afraid that i’ve maybe rubbed some people the wrong way with my grumpiness, even though it was rarely ever personal, and possibly even damaged some friendships/relationships.  my boss in particular – wow.  the combination of 1. work stress 2. body pain 3. not sleeping 4. task boredom have sometimes compounded me into a srsly ….bitchy person at work. some days even i can’t believe how grumpy i am at work. and that my boss puts up with it. i feel guilty about this. which goes back to my last post about my main resolution for 2011 is simply to try to be a more positive person, even if in just the little ways.  i want to have more grace.

part two: shedding skin, removing the unnecessary: austerity

like everyone else, i have (ongoing) goals of removing the unnecessary from my life, physically and mentally.  clean out the shelves, get rid of useless stuff, release attachment to objects, cleanse the environment and body.  the drastic Austerity Measures in europe this year piqued my interest in learning more about that idea, philosophically and economically, and while this 2010 Word of the Year has a bad reputation economically and politically, philosophically i am not opposed.

the crux (for me) here is whether austerity is, by definition, on the opposite end of the spectrum from hedonism. can you not be an Austere Naturalist (see: Hume), living life to the fullest, completely enamoured with creation, but without all the excess? isn’t that a better way to be, happier in simplicity? is this idea truly audacious in a modern consumer world?

more than anything though, i feel that simplifying my desires, my belongings, and my inputs and outputs will help me gain some focus. i need focus.  there is too much extraneous going on here.

part three: reincarnation: focus

recently some friends started an email thread wherein they reported all the things they’ve done/accomplished/significant events for them this year.  while i’m inspired by my amazing community, it also it made me sad, because i feel like i have notable nothing to say, and i didn’t participate in that thread.  going on vacation to south america and watching a lot of really good movies and being lucky enough to have worn some fabulous outfits this year don’t qualify as accomplishments to me.

in retrospect, the two biggest things that happened in my life this year have been 1) again, the ongoing body work/struggle to find pain resolution and 2) becoming a full time bike commuter.  at the beginning of the year i was certainly not expecting #1 to still be ongoing here at the end, and was unprepared for the mental toll it would take on my energy and commitment-to-do-things level.  as for #2, i knew that biking to work and back would be somewhat of a shift, but didn’t realize that it would feel like such an accomplishment. according to my exercise log i have biked over 1500 miles this year. every day that i get out of bed and get on my bike and make it to work is sort of a little miracle.

but if these are the two biggest parts of my year, i’m not sure how to feel about 2010.  in past years i’ve always found myself little side projects, moonlight jobs, or new hobbies that resulted in feeling like i accomplished something new and definitive.  i feel like i just let this year the last couple of years roll over me. maybe this is what i needed and a natural downcycle but it feels very unproductive and i feel that now i am overly-anxious to DO SOMETHING in 2011.

“Someone told me not long after I moved here that people with talent and no ambition move to San Francisco, people with ambition and no talent move to Los Angeles, and people with talent and ambition move to New York.” (–PH)

OH HOW THAT RESONATES.

but WHAT? the thing is i still do not have any definitive goals.  i can’t tell you what i want to do in 2011.  or who i want to be.  so in addition to more Personal Austerity and Grace, i need Focus.

so here’s to 2010: the year i went to South America, the year i bicycled nearly every day, the year the whole world felt volatile and entropic on both a personal and global scale.

may 2011 be full of austerity, focus, and grace.

not fun

one of my new years resolutions is going to be that i will try to be more positive, at least vocally and publicly if not successfully internally.  less ranting, less expression of exasperation/jadedness/hatertude, less wallowing, more focus on gratitude and affecting change for the better in my little world instead of worrying about the big one so much.

so while it’s still 2010 let me gripe/whine for a minute.  a longer post reflecting on 2010 and moving into 2011 is (maybe) pending, but these current bullet points from this morning sort of sum how this whole year has felt for me:

–waking up to a negative bank account balance is not fun

–not feeling confident to go places/buy things you want to for the holidays because of empty bank account is not fun

–having your first email of the day be from a disgruntled tenant with a soaked computer because the roof leaked all over his office because you can’t afford to fix it is not fun

–a full year of ongoing chronic neck/shoulder/back pain that appears nonresponsive to hundreds of dollars in treatment is not fun

–i’ll keep this brief right now but i’ve been going back and forth too much in my head about how much of this is self-inflicted misery (what more should/could i be doing to help these situations for myself), and that is also not fun.

i had some awesomeness this year (Priceless, Chile/Peru, Burning Man, fun weekend excursions and things with friends/family), and i am super grateful for those times and people and i don’t mean to belittle them, but overall, the other 45ish weeks of this year have felt like personal purgatory (see: notes from February, not to mention the mental impact of global socio-political-economic situations) and NOT FUN.

it feels pretty terrible to write that. not fun.

yeah, maybe i’m just an actual grownup now with grownup responsibilities and problems, but i refuse to believe in “acceptance” of things you can change (aka settling) and don’t think that wanting the majority of your life to be/feel FUN is too much to ask. and this is where most of my not fun comes from: i know i can change some of these things, that life is what you make it, but the fact is that i haven’t.  acknowledging this (and the possible reasons why) is NOT FUN.

i digress, but hopefully that will be the last big of negativity you read from me (at least for a little while…).

Life: Read This Every Day

source: http://www.elementsofstyleblog.com/2010/09/read-this-everyday.html

be kind; the universe owes you nothing

“When you recognize yourself feeling contempt for a human being, stop.

When you recognize yourself judging or ridiculing a human being, stop.

When you recognize yourself boiling human matters down to black and white, consider the gray areas.

Stay away from people who do the above things. Seriously. I avoid serially snarky people like the god-damn plague. Yes, there’s always room for a bit of viciousness and sarcasm in humor, and I can accept that. What I can not abide by an individual who cannot open their mouth without some sort of judgmental remark coming out of it. All the more when they shrink up/blow up when that sort of treatment is reversed upon them.

One more thing: the universe entitles you to nothing. You are not entitled to happiness, prosperity, wealth, anything at all. Any suffering you feel, or have felt does not mean you get any more of a break in life than anyone else. You are not owed a damn thing in this world. Do not ever act as if you are. Avoid people who do.

That being said: be kind. The only time you will catch a break is from someone who goes out of their way to be kind to you. Do so yourself, regardless of the above fact. This isn’t about fate or karma or any such mystical claptrap. It is about knowing you are, as much as you can, doing the right thing.”

–http://ask.metafilter.com/157204/Shiny-happy-people-speak-out#2253229, via google reader