Reflection: Under Polka Dot Skies (Again)

This blog opened with a picture of a snowy Seattle, under polka dot skies. One of my early Squidoo lenses, Step Into Seattle, began with that picture, and the line, "I don't live in a land of polka dot skies..."

As you can see from the upper left corner of my picture, polka dot skies have returned to Seattle -- meteorologically if not metaphorically. This picture was taken early Monday before the snowstorm really got going.

That evening, I chose to take a bus out to a tutoring appointment, despite the predictions. The buses have chains, so they do better than cars. It got bad, though. The bus lost its traction, and once the driver got it stopped, we all had to get out. I walked from 25th & 55th to 15th & 45th.

I will note that luckily we had broken down right across from a Circle K, which has a really nice coffee bar, so I was equipped with a 16 ounce cappucino on the journey. I cut through campus because it seemed safer than the viaduct, and sure enough I was soon walking in the wrong direction. But I encountered a group of people and one lived near me, so I walked with her on the trek through campus.

There wasn't really a point where I felt seriously frightened or even regretted not having canceled the tutoring appointment. I do have some wariness of walking at night, but the world wasn't even dark tonight, with the fine white mist blowing. Campus was otherworldly. I was almost home by the time my hands got seriously painful or numb.

Reflection: With Legs Crossed

I have been sitting here, working on a stack of freelance 'cert' articles, this time on the subject of yoga. I have been sitting with my legs crossed and my feet elevated in such a way that... well, the netbook does fit very nicely wedged between the balls of my feet. It's a healthy position for the netbook, too -- good air circulation so it doesn't get overheated.

I haven't found equivalent ways to celebrate any of the other health professions.

Things have been crazy time-wise. The articles are rather a blessing. One very different freelance gig was a disaster; it taught me after 35 or 40 hours -- that my eyes can't track across the rows of a spreadsheet. It's been a lot of 12 hours, but much of it has been at home. (Doing a little teaching, but couldn't be out in the schools too much and still get done what I need to.) Sometimes I go out to Online Coffee the first hour they're open, to get a free hour on their computer with the purchase of a coffee.

It's getting a little less wild, time-wise. SquidAngeling is over for the season. No more trying to read spreadsheets. Writing gets a little faster, too. There are a couple blog posts I begun, but didn't finish. They may appear under this one later.

This morning, I learned that if one wants to train to be a yoga teacher, they may have to, say, do a handstand in the middle of the room. I would have made a bad yoga teacher, I will note. Joint flexibility is high -- muscle flexibility and strength very low. I'm gaining the vocabulary needed to discuss many things.

Reflection: A Loss of Pliability

A soapbox post -- not the one I was planning, but a very 'me' one. I have hesitated sometimes to mention the cat -- aware of people here and there, just freezing at the mention -- but it has been a long time since he died. For a time, I would go to a support group at the humane society, and I was aware how some people hesitated to bring another animal into their life because they were afraid they would love it and it would die. I was aware also how people would sometimes interpret things I said that way -- like once when I was talking about how maybe it would be better to get a foster animal. Someone heard in those words that I was afraid of getting attached and having an animal die. No. The pair bonding impulse in me is so strong that... I have never in my life even one time that I can remember resisted any attachment because of a fear of being hurt. Quite the contrary. I can't imagine being hurt by the people around me because I can't imagine loving them. But that's not because I don't mold myself to others' shapes. It's because I do it too much.

When I was a little kid, I was like Play-Doh fresh from the can. By the time I was a teenager, the pliability was down. I wrote before about the classic storybook image of the little girl who can only love her doll, and not even another doll someone buys for her that looks just the same. Up to a point, that tendency is part of the beauty of being human. But too much of that is a barrier to normal living. It's normal for a person who's been married to someone for thirty years to say, "I will never love again," and be a perpetual widow. It's not normal for a young teen to already be moving in those directions -- finding it progressively more difficult to love, not out of fear, but out of doing it so completely (We're not even talking romantic liaisons here!) that anything else just gets a "But that's not my rose!" reaction.

So many issues people have are normal -- even good -- traits and drives that are just upregulated beyond the norm.

This picture was titled "Helping Hand". But what do I title it? "A Loss of Pliability"!

Reflection: A Time for Angeling

Ah, there's an essay I want to write in the next day or two, on something dear to my heart (back on the soapbox again). But first...

I've written at different points about the SquidAngels, who 'bless' and boost rank on very high quality lenses. And now, a few days short of one year on the platform, it's my season for 'angeling' -- the first one, at least. The terms have gotten shorter, but people now have the opportunity to cycle through for repeated tours of duty.

I've 'blessed' more than twenty these first two days, but one has been my particular project.

Here is where I am linking to the blessed lenses: Squidangeling Season.

In Between: If You're Human, I Apologize

I do need to get another phone. It's happened occasionally forever (colloquially) but it's been worse for a while. It used to be that sometimes, especially if the phone had been off the hook at some previous point, that I'd pick up a ringing phone... and it would keep ringing. Jiggling the cord -- pushing it in further -- would get it going, and I'd take the call. But now... Someone called several times in a short span of time. I don't think they were an automated subfinder because there were no jobs posted when I logged on to the online version. If you're human, I actually didn't mean to do that that time. It did make me anxious, those several attempts.

PS I have a different one lugged in now.

Reflection: A Star for Passing Brain Chemistry

Talking about purple star lenses again -- but I'm not bragging. It's the stories surrounding the stories that I want to talk about. Someone gave Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry a purple star. I wrote that story, as some will remember, four or five years back. I later made the choice to self-publish it on Squidoo. Putting it up on Squidoo... well, that gave the story some things it wouldn't have had otherwise, and I'm talking about something more here than giving it a music soundtrack. The comments on that lens... they're a substantial part of why I put it where I did. It went on Squidoo to collect acceptance, and Squidangel blessings. It did that. And a while later it got its purple star.

Those purple star awards... I'm not the only person on Squidoo who has gotten several in a short span of time since it became a pay-it-forward program. I also want to tell a story about... well, not about the first two, but about what I was doing when I got the email notifications. I was checking the one email I don't get scared to check, and I was looking for an email from almost the only friend who has that email address. (And why not? He is on so many shared networks. He couldn't die or do anything noteworthy without it hitting all the major networks. What's an email? But I digress.) Anyway, though there are more purple stars than LOTDs ('lens of the days') in Squidoo-land, it's still considered something of an honor, and boosts your rank and all that. So a lot of people would have reacted (do react) with some excitement -- to the first at least. My response was, "But I'm not looking for a purple star! I'm looking for for a note from..."

Still monotropic after all these years: Laser-light and not incandescent. It's about what I'm looking for, and what I care about, and not what the world chooses to give me. This (the end of this paragraph is an edit, some time later) can sound snobby of me, but no. In 'real life' people have sometimes thought I was not altogether there because I didn't respond to something in a normal ways... like maybe I didn't even hear or observe. I just don't tend to have normal emotional responses to things -- good or bad -- if it's not something that was on my radar. I'm not 'deflected'... though I can surely act if I get inspired.

There are a lot of words I didn't know when I first penned the "Brain Chemistry" piece. But, with the exception of folks' names, I've changed only a few. I may not stand by the labels worn in those days, but I stand by the rest.