Notice how unusual it is to say that someone is a “successful” artist. Usually they are a “starving” artist. You never have to say that someone is a successful doctor or successful engineer or a successful plumber. It is assumed that they are successful. But artist? It is assumed that an artist isn’t successful. It is assumed that they are scraping by, just barely making it.
Why don’t we put more value on art? I mean real art. Art that is one of a kind, not mass produced. Art that is so amazing that it doesn’t match your sofa and you don’t even care. Art that is so amazing that maybe you even buy a new sofa to match it instead of the other way around.
Real art is one of a kind, just like the artists. It takes time to make and it takes love. That is worth supporting.
When you buy original art, you aren’t just buying the materials. You are buying the artist’s time and dedication to her craft. In the same way an Olympic athlete has to train many hours to get good at what she does, an artist has to work many long hours to get good at her craft. Good artists, like good athletes just make it look easy. It isn’t.
Notice that very few people get art scholarships, and many people get athletic scholarships. What do we need more of, arts or sports? What lifts our spirits and helps us see beyond ourselves? What shows us how we are all connected? I’m not saying to get rid of sports. I’m saying that arts need to be equally supported.
So go buy some art today. Or better yet – go make some. Art is for everyone, and it makes us better people.
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Paper or Plastic?
If you want to be really mindful, go to the grocery store with cash.
I’ve started using cash for everything. I’ve created an allowance for myself. Every week I go to the bank to get cash. It is really weird.
I grew up this way of course. I’m old enough that credit cards weren’t a part of life during my formative years. When I first got a credit card it was just for emergencies. Then somehow it became a way of life. Somehow the credit card became the norm and cash became the thing I used for emergencies.
So many of us reach for plastic over paper these days.
I know a young guy who bought a wallet. It took him two weeks to realize that it didn’t have a place for cash. He didn’t even think to look for a place for cash when he was buying the wallet. He was constantly scoffing at me for carrying cash at all.
There are so many advantages to using a card. You can see online what you are spending your money on. Many companies give you money back or rebates for using their cards. If you pay your card off every month, you can actually make money doing this. I did, for many years.
But it is all a trick. I spend way more money when I use my credit cards. I don’t think about what I’m buying. I need it, so I get it. Or, I think I need it. Well, sometimes I just want it.
And then I have to make a place for it. Whether it is a new dress from Goodwill or a pint of ice cream, it has to go somewhere. With the ice cream the somewhere is my butt.
Shopping with cash at the grocery store means I have to really think about what I’m getting. Do I need it? I can’t justify buying snacks and other non-food items. I’ve not bought sodas in a while, but chips and cookies are still appealing. The more money I spend on those, the less money I have for actual food that I need. You know, food with vitamins and minerals. Actual nutrition is going to win in this debate. Having limited resources makes me mindful. Thus, it means I’m eating better.
Even with a bargain dress from Goodwill, I have to be mindful. I’ve got other dresses. I’m fine. It isn’t like I don’t have clothes that fit me and look acceptable. I justify buying the dress because it is a great price. But even then I’m not being mindful of my money. Ten dollars spent is still ten dollars spent, and it adds up. Too many trips to Goodwill means I’ve spent $100 before I even know it.
A bargain isn’t a bargain if you don’t need it.
I’ve always carried at least $40 in my wallet. I rarely used it, but when I needed it I was reminded of how useful that practice is. Sometimes the credit card machine isn’t working. Sometimes your card doesn’t work. Then how are you going to buy your gas or your meal? Cash always works, and cards don’t.
Some places don’t even take credit cards. We went on a trip to North Carolina and ate at a restaurant. It was a nice meal, but what happened at the end wasn’t very nice. We found out they only took cash or checks. There was no message about this on the door or on the menu. Fortunately I always kept a spare check in my wallet and used that. Otherwise we might have had to wash dishes to pay our bill. Or one of us would have to leave to find an ATM.
These days I’m turning this around. I’m carrying the credit card as the backup and carrying cash as the main thing. I’ve done this for a week and already I’ve noticed I’ve spent $200 less than normal, and I’m eating better. Instead of eating out as often, I’m making food at home.
It is interesting how this is dovetailing into my New Year’s resolution to cook more. I’ve wanted to get better at cooking for years, and the only way to get better at cooking is simply to cook. I’ve wanted to go to the store and get fresh vegetables and cook from scratch, and now I’m doing it. I’m feeling really empowered by learning how to feed myself well. But then I started deciding to use only cash, and that is going nicely with it. Both practices are keeping me mindful of how I spend my money, which ultimately represents my time and my energy.
I’m sometimes resentful of having to spend forty hours a week at work. I’m grateful for a job, but I’d like to have more time away from it to live my life. Thirty hours would be better but it isn’t an option. But how smart is it for me to waste that money on expensive, unhealthy food and trinkets and baubles? Using my money wisely will mean I have more money saved up for bigger things, like a trip overseas, or improvements to my house. In the meantime, I’m learning how to take better care of myself, and that is the best investment of all.
Cut up your cards.
There is plenty of paranoia these days about the government getting all of our information. Let’s go over some of it. Some of the precautions actually are worthwhile, but for other reasons.
If you are afraid of the NSA tracking your every move, then delete your Facebook and email address. Keep in touch the old fashioned way – by phone and by mail. Oh, and as for mail, get a P.O. Box, that way nobody can steal your mail. It is always safe and clean and dry.
Don’t use any “loyalty” cards either. All those keychain cards are worse than the NSA. You don’t have to worry about “them” getting into your information. Those deals and savings you get are the rewards for giving your information away. You are letting them track you. It may not be the government, but it certainly is a bunch of strangers knowing your business.
Remember Santa Claus – “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake”? With loyalty cards it is more that they know when you are buying cat food and they know how often you eat out and where. With Facebook and email and it is the same – strangers know more about you than your friends. They can see the big picture.
How about this too? Dump your smart phone with the GPS. They know where you are that way too. Every picture you take is geotagged. Every time you look up an address they know what you are doing and where you are going.
But this alone will call attention to you. Suddenly stopping doing all these things will create a sort of information void around you and that will look odd.
Then what about this – there are a lot of credit card scams these days. Target, Nordstrom’s and Michael’s just got hit by hackers. Thousands of credit cards essentially got stolen from their owners. All the information was quietly taken electronically.
The answer? Cut up your credit cards. Go back to using cash. Even checks can be tracked. Now, you can’t go in debt with not using credit cards. You can’t spend what you don’t have. So there is a legitimate reason for not using credit cards. It is a great way to stay on budget and be mindful of what you are buying. It also severely minimizes your exposure to identity theft.
So sure, you can live your life paranoid. Plenty of people do. But there are some really good reasons to stop using some of the modern conveniences we take for granted. Most of the reasons involve being mindful about what you spend and who you give your information to.
What is the point of having a security system on your house if you leave the front door wide open?
alone
I haven’t been alone in a long time. I’m relearning how to do it.
When I moved to my house I planned on learning how to be alone. Then I met Scott and he moved in rather quickly. My planned life of spinsterhood was changed. I’ve not really been alone since, not for any real length of time.
Shortly after we got married he left for the weekend. Literally the weekend after we got back from or honeymoon he left. He drove all the way back to Grandfather Mountain. I cried myself to sleep. It was really hard and it seemed unfair. I’d just gotten him, and then he was going away.
He goes there for working weekends twice a year. It has taken me ten years to adapt to this, to not dread it. Now I’m starting to look forward to it because it means I have more time to work on my painting and writing. I have more time to work on me, instead of working on “us”. I find when we are together, we don’t do our own things. There are a lot of things I am learning I need to do on my own, and I can’t do them with him here. Writing is one. That isn’t a very social action.
Before, when I lived alone in my apartment, I’d be stoned. So I was alone, but not present. I didn’t like being by myself. These days I’m relearning how to be alone but not lonely.
He has to spend time at his parent’s house these days because they are feeble. They really need to go into assisted living. That is a decision for him and his brother. But in the meantime he isn’t around as much as usual. Recently he had to spend the night. I have a suspicion that this will become more and more frequent.
In the past that would have freaked me out. What would I eat? How would I sleep without him there? I’ve gotten very used to him, and I’m kind of using him like a crutch. The more I do that, the less I remember I can walk on my own.
The ability doesn’t leave, or get weaker. We just forget. Not knowing you can do something is more powerful than having a physical disability. If you think you can’t, you won’t even try.
Conversely, if you think you can, you can move mountains.
So I tried. Instead of getting fast food (which isn’t really food) I cooked some vegetables. I had a nice supper and I felt like I had invited myself to a party and the guest was me.
I like that feeling. I’m actually looking forward to him not being here again so I can treat myself again to my own cooking, and have time to craft or read whatever I want.
How do you know when you are an adult?
How do you know when you are an adult?
Sometimes there are rituals and ceremonies. You’ve graduated college. You’ve gotten married. You get to see a change has happened. It is celebrated.
Or there are other milestones. You’ve gotten your first “real” job. You’ve moved out on your own. You no longer need a cosigner for credit applications.
In some African cultures, women are marked when they reach certain points in their lives. You can tell who is married and who has had a child for instance by looking at the scars on their bodies.
We don’t have such visible markings here. Our changes are internal. You have to let people know you aren’t a child anymore. The only external mark is a wedding ring, and not even that guarantees that you are an adult.
It is good to be childlike, but not childish. You want to be able to be independent. That is a sign of a mature person.
I knew I was an adult when my parents died. We had a next door neighbor who was at least 70 years old. I was instructed to call her Mrs. Miles when I was growing up. When my parents died, I started calling her by her first name, Margaret. I didn’t even think twice about it. She didn’t correct me either. To call someone by their first name is to say you are equals. Previous to my parent’s death, we weren’t equals. But now we were. I’d gone through a trial by fire and come through (mostly) intact.
The sad thing is that my brother never got the message that I was an adult. He kept treating me as lesser. I was his little sister and he was determined to “keep me in my place.” It didn’t matter to him that I was 25, and had taken care of our Mom the whole time she was sick, and had handled the entire estate on my own.
To him, I was lesser and would always be. In reality, he was treating me as lesser to make himself feel better. He was pushing me down to raise himself up. He couldn’t accept the reality that his “kid” sister had done all the hard work and he’d run away from any responsibility. I’d proven I was an adult, and he’d proven he was a coward.
I refused to let him treat me as a child, and I still refuse it. I refuse to allow him or anyone to treat me in a disrespectful manner. If it means that the relationship has to be severed because of that, so be it. Life is too short to spend with people who are not kind. Life is too short to let people treat you like dirt.
Part of being an adult is putting a value on yourself and not letting anyone bid any lower than what you are worth. To let someone treat you badly is to tell them that is OK.
Now, to treat anyone as lesser is also a sign of immaturity. Part of being an adult is to know your own worth and to establish it. But it also doesn’t mean that you get to treat anybody else as beneath you.
If you are going outside, put a hat on. You’ll be happier.
Hats are the secret to happiness.
Now, I don’t mean any hat. Ball caps don’t work. You need something with a brim all around, like a fedora.
I’m a big fan of fedoras.
If it is raining outside, your head is dry. If it is cold outside, your head is warm. A wet, cold head is a bad way to spend your day. Best to avoid it. Wear a hat.
If it is sunny, the light isn’t shining in your eyes. You can angle it so you aren’t squinting. It makes for safer driving. Not squinting and not getting a lot of sunlight on your face means you aren’t getting wrinkles. How awesome is that?
Plus, wearing a cool hat is a great conversation starter. You get to meet all sorts of interesting people when you wear a hat.
Good Morning
I’m reassessing how I do my mornings. I have an alarm clock set for 6:30, but I don’t seem to be able to get out of bed until 7ish. It is very frustrating. I’d like to think that I am in control. It reminds me of my struggles with any addiction. There are things I want to do that I know are good for me, yet I seem helpless to do them.
So I’m thinking about it. Why can’t I get up? What is the problem?
I don’t need to get up that early. I just want to. I want to have more time to write or paint or do yoga. I deeply resent having to spend 40 hours of my week at work. That is a lot of my waking time. It is a lot of my life. Thirty hours would be reasonable but that isn’t an option. Not only is that not something my workplace will even consider because of how the pension plan is set up, I’m not sure we could afford that kind of pay cut.
I find that it is hard to get up early for several reasons.
I usually stay up late to read. I don’t have much time to read otherwise. Back to the 40 hour work week. My main chunks of time, other than work, are spent asleep. I shoehorn in exercise, visits with friends, and everything else I want to do or need to do. I don’t have a lot of time to read. Or I don’t make a lot of time. I read at lunch, but right before bed seems to be the best. I’m not in a rush. Sometimes at night I really get into a book though and it is hard to stop. Then I don’t get enough sleep and I’m tired in the morning.
Another issue is my husband. He has to leave for work before I do but it is always a scene of frazzlement in our house when he is getting ready. The center of our house is the kitchen. It is where our computers are, and where he has all his work gear. It is the biggest room in our tiny house.
If I try to start my day while he is trying to leave the house it is the exact opposite of calm for me. It is not a good start for my day to be in that whirlwind. Ideally, he’d leave earlier, but running late is his normal. I can fight it or accept it and just get out of the way and not let this train run me over.
So I’m trying this. I’ve brought my Kindle into the bedroom. I can write for a bit, out of the madness that is the morning here. I can choose to start my day calmly.
It isn’t about the situation. It is about my reaction to the situation. That’s the key to everything. I can fight it or work with it or around it. My choice.
Addiction – on the death of yet another celebrity.
You just can’t understand addiction unless you’ve lived through it.
Yet another famous person has died of a drug overdose. It was an illegal drug but plenty have died of drug overdoses of legal drugs. This just highlights the tragedy that is drug abuse and addiction. Hundreds of people die all the time from drug addiction, legal and otherwise. They aren’t famous, but their deaths are just as tragic.
Even if you don’t die, addictions steal your life. You aren’t quite fully human when you are in the pit of addiction.
Just before you start in with the “But for the grace of God, there go I” line, think about it. Many people have addictions. They are just socially acceptable ones. You probably have an addiction and don’t even realize it. The best addictions just masquerade as habits. It is just something you do. You don’t know why you do it, you just do.
Gambling. drinking. Smoking cigarettes. Eating too much. Eating unhealthy food. Even being angry all the time can be an addiction.
Anything you do unthinkingly that is harmful to you is an addiction. It doesn’t matter if you think it is a problem yet or not. If you let an addiction have its way, it will slowly take over until the addiction is driving you. It will take over and use you like a puppet.
I remember what it was like to smoke pot. I smoked for ten years. When I started it was once a month. Then over time it was once a week. At the worst it was all day long.
I’d wake up and get stoned. When the buzz would wear off I’d smoke some more.
Meanwhile I was in college. I had a job. I was fully functional as an adult. All my bills got paid.
Nobody knew I was a pothead unless I let them know. The only people I let know were other people who smoked. We had a code between us. We kind of felt each other out, like Masons. There wasn’t a secret handshake, but there were still tells.
I remember one time I wanted to quit but I just wasn’t ready to go cold turkey. I told myself I could slow down. I didn’t want to smoke every day. I took my supply of pot and my pipe and I wrapped them up in plastic and sealed it with rubber bands. I then put it up on a shelf in my closet so I’d have to get a chair to get it. I figured this would make me think several times, way more than twice, about what I was about to do. I figured it would slow me down.
I remember time and time again going for that bundle, opening it up, and smoking, and the whole time wondering why I was doing it. It was as if I was possessed. I didn’t want to smoke, and here I was smoking. It was insane. Nobody was forcing me to do it, but I couldn’t stop.
I felt helpless.
And this is just pot. It wasn’t heroin, or oxycontin.
People say pot isn’t addictive. They say it is a gateway drug, that it leads you to other, harder drugs. I say otherwise. I know. There’s about ten years of my life that pot has, that I missed. This is why I’m opposed to the legalization of pot. Look how well we are doing (not) with alcohol. Look how many people’s lives are ruined by it.
A lot of people think they can’t become addicts. They can drink or smoke or snort or swallow whatever they want. They think “That can’t happen to me.” I say, why not? What makes you so special?
The only way to be special is to not do it at all. You can’t tame an addiction. You can’t do it half way. You can, at the beginning. Then it gets bigger and bigger and it will win, every time. There’s a honeymoon period at the beginning. It is all sweet and wonderful. It is your best friend, your lover. It fills in all the gaps. It makes the bumps in your life not so bumpy. It makes things warm and mellow. It makes life not hurt so much.
Then it gets harder, and it wants more. It takes more to make the warm feeling come. Then it costs more, and that has you bothered, so you do more to not worry about it. It spirals. It is a snake eating its own tail, but you are the one being eaten.
Every time you get near the edge of the abyss and you survive, you think you’re lucky, and you can do it again. There is always another sign telling you that you’ve gone too far, you should turn back. That car crash. The arrest. Your spouse left you. You got fired. There’s always something after the last road sign on the way to your demise. You think you can stop before you get to the end of the road. You’re enjoying the ride, you think. You can stop any time. But you don’t. You want to see how hard and how fast you can drive this thing. You don’t realize that the whole time you are the one who is being driven, and you’re being driven to the very edge of madness – and sometimes beyond.
Sometimes you stop. Sometimes you get off. But then there is still danger. The lure is always there.
The bad part is that even when you get clean and sober, the addiction is still there. You’re two years sober and the moment you forget how hard it was to get clean, you’ll try it again, and fall for it again even harder. There won’t be that honeymoon time like at the beginning, where you’ve got it under control. It remembers, and you’ll reset to how things were at the worst.
You can’t control it.
You aren’t special.
I could say “Just say no” but that’s naïve. The moment you tell some people to not do something, they are going to do it.
There is no simple answer to addiction. And there is no way of understanding it unless you’ve been there. If it was as simple as just quitting, nobody would be an addict. And there wouldn’t be any more overdoses.
Pray for peace for the addicts. Pray for strength to resist the pull. Pray for all those who haven’t heard that siren call to turn away from it when they do.
Aliens built my birdbath – not.
To say that aliens built the ancient structures on our planet is insulting to ancient people. Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu – these are all amazing structures. And they were all built and designed by people.
Here’s the catch. Why don’t we have collective memories of these things? Why wasn’t the knowledge of how these stones were transported over long distances without the benefit of modern machinery? This question is one of the “proofs” of why these structures can’t have been built by humans.
But then again, how much collective knowledge do we have? Just look at your own family history. How many of us can name or tell anything about our great-great grandparents? Or great-great-great grandparents? Yet they most certainly existed, and many more back. We know as far back as three generations at most, usually. We didn’t come out of nothing. We didn’t just happen to be. If we don’t even know our personal history, how can we hope to remember our collective history?
I’m not saying that aliens haven’t visited Earth. To me, that seems entirely reasonable. If God can put sentient life here, there’s no reason God wouldn’t have put the same elsewhere. There’s no reason that life couldn’t have discovered a way to travel to other planets. I have no problem with that idea.
But I say that to decide that aliens invented, created, or built the amazing structures from our past is to insult our ancestors. I say there is no proof that it has happened, and only cancels out further questions. When you say that aliens are responsible for these amazing structures, you stop wondering how they could have been made, and you stop learning. If we can figure out how the stones in Stonehenge or the moai on Easter Island were moved from the quarry to their resting sites without modern pneumatic machinery, we’d learn a lot about how to build in energy-efficient ways. This could help out developing countries that don’t have such technology but have a need for large structures for housing. We could learn to build in less expensive ways.
Look at the Romans. They figured out the secret of concrete and of indoor plumbing – hot and cold, long before anybody else did. When they retreated from Britain, they took their knowledge with them. They weren’t aliens. They were just really organized, and knew a good thing when they saw it. They were really good at taking technology from other cultures and adopting it as their own and improving upon it. Nobody says the Coliseum was built by aliens, and it rivals any ancient marvel.
So let’s stop thinking that aliens built anything. Let’s start thinking for a change.
Where are you from?
Why do people ask where are you from? What does it matter? Does where you are from define who you are?
I was talking to a lady who defines herself as a “military brat.” She has a really hard time with this question. She’s lived in many places. Does it mean where she was born? Or where she grew up? Or where her parents live now? These are all different places, and there are many other places that she has lived as well. None of them really are “home.”
I think people ask because they are trying to pigeonhole you. As if all people from a certain place are the same. How is this not some unnamed “-ist” thing? It isn’t racist, or sexist, but it certainly is along those lines. It is saying that you are in a group, and you aren’t an individual.
Then again, how long do you have to live in a place before you can say you are from there? I’ve lived in Nashville for nearly 15 years. I grew up in Chattanooga. So where am I from? I chose to live here. Shouldn’t that count?
People ask me where I’m from and I tell them this, and then they ask where I was born. It was also in Tennessee. They are still confused. I don’t talk or look or act (in their opinion) like someone from Tennessee. The problem is, there is no such thing as a person from Tennessee talking or looking or acting a particular way. We are all different. Sure, I’m Southern. But I’m not like all Southerners, and in fact none of my friends are stereotypically Southern.
And perhaps that’s the point. People are what they are.
Is it nature or nurture, or both? Or neither?
It is like asking someone where they work or what their religion is. It really doesn’t matter. You might as well ask them what their sun sign is. You’ll know more about the person if you just ask her about what is important to her.
What does she like to eat? What are her favorite movies/books/musicians? Does she have a hobby?
Instead of putting her in a box, why not find out what makes her who she is? Find out what makes her happy, and you’re on to a good start.
Perhaps the best answer to the question is this: It doesn’t matter where I’m from. It matters where I am. I’m here, now. Take me as I am.
betsybeadhead 
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