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Aug 31, 2015

Aries For Life

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I’ve had to use great control in the last couple of days to not come here and completely delete my whole site.  Or go start a new site with a completely anonymous name and not tell a single soul about it, just for the sheer pleasure of getting to write “publicly” whatever I wanted.  I still might do that.

But then I read a couple of my old blog posts and started to feel inspiration flitter back into me.  {Why thank you Jenn . . . you’re most welcome Jenn}

I looked back in my comments history to when other bloggers linked to my posts from their own sites and the things they said about my site and I thought . . . (well, one was a bastard and threw me under the bus to make themselves look good to a bunch in a discussion board, so eff them) but I thought, maybe . . . maybe I’m not done here.

I’ve worked so hard over the years to even be capable of writing on a blog without hyperventilating and fainting, and yes I’m frustrated that I am still too scared to really *really* express myself . . . but I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

And really (and this is truly in Jenn Fashion) before I go and do something dramatic like delete my whole site and all of the writing I’ve done here over the years, how about first I just go for it and go down in a flame of glory?  What do I have to lose at this point?  If I made a complete disaster of it, then <boom> delete the site.

Do you know that that is how I convinced myself to not try taking my life when I was a teenager?  I was absolutely at wits end.  It wasn’t typical spoiled teenager teen angst.  There was some truly, truly shitty things going on in my life at the time, which I can now say with confidence and the perspective of someone who has been off gallivanting in adulthood for a good many years.  I was in very dire circumstances and had been for awhile and I had absolutely nobody to turn to or who I could trust.  I had no out, and I couldn’t stand the feeling in my body anymore.

I started to let go of trying to make it in this life.  I let myself give up.  I let go of the feeling of guilt, of feeling like a disappointment, of being a burden.  And I started to settle into a feeling of deep peace as I contemplated the ways in which to *delete* my existence.  It felt like such a relief, that feeling of relaxation in my body, that I was momentarily able to feel through and around my pain.

I remember vividly the very moment it happened.  I was laying there in the dark in my bed and staring out my window, and I thought . . . “but wait . . . Jenn . . . you’re still a virgin.  You don’t want to die before you get to try sex, I mean c’mon!  You have to at least give that a try.  THEN, if everything still feels this shitty, then you can kill yourself.”

That became my new game in life.  Anytime I am in a situation that I have no control over and I start feeling like I want to die, I think of something that I haven’t tried yet that I would really like to give a go before I left this planet, and I make it my mission to do that thing before I check out.  Because why not?  What do I have to lose?  If I were going to end it anyways, what does it matter if I took a risk or chance in doing something that I’m so scared of?

This is one of my secrets to how I find my will to live over and over again.  I reach a point of being ready to let it all go . . . all of it . . . I’m willing to surrender absolutely everything in my life . . . but I pause long enough to feel out what I would miss most once I was on the other side or what I would be pissed about when I was back in soul form and no longer in a physical body and being able to run and laugh and play while on this Earth plane . . . and always . . . always something comes surging through and then with kiddy-like glee I go racing off to my next mission and challenge to take this life by the horns and ride it all the way through to the end.

 like-a-boss

 

 

 

 

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May 13, 2015

Great Changes Taking Place

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So this is a video that I actually uploaded on May 5 that I never posted here.  I had put a timer on for some food I was cooking and also so that I had a set time in which to speak.  This was following the video I did regarding the Nepal Earthquake and there was something I had brought up in that video that I had wanted to expand upon.

I go more into what I meant when I say that we’re thinking too small regarding the challenges we’re currently facing on Earth.  How all of the things escalating are related and interconnected and not just isolated events, from the rise in health issues, violence, war, gmo foods, animal deaths, natural events, etc.

I have so much information in me and I haven’t quite pulled it all together in a cohesive way, and is kind of what is happening on the fly in these videos.  Eventually I’ll have the information more buttoned up and not quite so scattered, but I figure I have to start somewhere. 🙂

The pressure is on everything, both the Earth and Humanity and we’re being pressed into crises mode.  I don’t speak about this in the video, but you start to see what people are really made of when put under a pressure cooker like this.  There are those who are screaming and pointing and blaming everything outside of themselves, and there are those who have gone quiet and gone inward trying to resolve the issues within themselves.

It is my feeling that those who chose to go inward to fix what is wrong in themselves first, are the ones who will begin to rise and become the new leaders of tomorrow, who will know how to truly deal with the challenges we are facing.  Ones who have integrity and strength of character to do what truly needs to happen from a centered and balanced place, instead of being thrown all over the place by ego and immaturity.

It’s no longer becoming acceptable to say that the reason we do things like we do is “because that’s how it’s always been done”.  In times of great upheaval and change, it requires that we question everything we thought we knew and understood about life, and it requires that we change too.  Change is easier when everyone can recognize it for what it is and start pulling together and cooperate as a family, instead of acting like selfish and spoiled little children.

Mother Nature does not give a fuck about how fair you think it is or not.  You don’t talk back to the Momma.

 

Filed Under: Earth Changes · Tagged: , , , ,
May 11, 2015

The UnMasking Continues

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Yesterday was a really interesting and long day for me.  I got revved up into my Aries fire and it felt like I was getting oxygen into my lungs finally after a long time, but also like getting water to drink after being dehydrated for so long.

While doing the video I felt really solid, strong, and good inside.  Then I watched the video and I was like, “What in the hell is all this?”  What I felt and what it looked like were two completely different things in my mind.

First of all, I was able to hear strain in my voice.  It’s *almost* like a whine.  It’s not my favorite sound.  Because I know what I was feeling on the inside, I understand how it’s still the remnants and traces of the tightening and restriction in my body from trying to stop this kind of expression from coming out of me.

The important part is that it’s starting to come out and find expression, kind of like relieving a pressure valve in me, but being pushed through a very resistant and stubbornly tight tube.  Kind of like when the toothpaste gets so crusted and dried up at the opening of the tube and you have to push the rest of the tube so hard to force it through, that when it breaks through, toothpaste is all over the wall, mirror, . . . no?  Just me?  Anyways 🙂

And like I look and sounded like I was genuinely shaken up inside, like I was working hard to keep myself together . . . and again that’s like the opposite of what I was feeling inside.  I was feeling great!  Like AH!  YEAH!

Also, while talking, I felt like I was staying much more grounded and clear than usual, but hell if I didn’t wander.  I stopped in mid-rant because I saw a white cat with big orange spots walking around the garden across the street and it was so out of place that I completely got distracted with what I was saying.  If that’s not a fine display of Gemini, I don’t know what is.

I would hear myself go into one point and then veer off into another point completely.  While I’m very, very happy to have gotten out the points that I did – I still had a hard time following all of what I was trying to say – and that’s with me knowing what I was trying to say.

I was watching it going, “wait . . . that didn’t make the impact or the point that I was getting at, that ended up sounding like such a non-issue.”  and “wait, you were about to make a good point and you just totally veered off into a non-related thing, wtf Jenn?”

I totally get the people on American Idol now who can’t sing worth shit, but are genuinely surprised when they are told so.  There’s how something goes in your head, and then there’s what actually comes out.  If you’ve never done candid videos of yourself and then watched them back with an open mind, I cannot recommend it enough.  Holy cow.

But just like when watching my other videos, there were also parts that I tend to hide or squelch in me that I really wish I wouldn’t because they are my favorite parts when I do show them.

Also, I talk too fast and run over thoughts too quickly.  I’m like, “this, that, and whatever”.  I’m like, uh, Jenn . . . why don’t you put a little more thought into those examples and list more specific things instead of saying, “x, y, z” for everything.  It’s like I’m trying to make it generic enough to fit whatever other people’s own personal situations are, but I make it so general that the point I’m trying to make gets lost in it.

It is SO Neptune-ie.  Vague, general.  When that’s not what I’m trying to do at all.  I’m trying too hard to make it fit too many situations and scenarios so that people can relate and I’m totally failing in that purpose.  Right?  Because instead of like, “oh I totally relate” it becomes more like, “well . . . I think I can relate . . I mean, I’m not totally sure if she’s referring to the same thing I’m thinking of, but it does remind me of that situation.”

I’m wanting too much to relate and to fit in, while at the same time fighting to not lose my own self and integrity.  I see how I’m still thinking too much about the crowd of fictitious people I think are watching my videos, which pulls me out of myself.

I can’t be centered in myself, being myself, if too much of my focus is hanging outside of my body and yelling back at me how to adjust what or how I say things so that this audience that is really just made up of ghosts from my past, don’t get offended or respond to me in a way that feels hurtful.

I’m trying to be too many things at once instead of just standing tall in myself.

I need to stop being afraid of using specific situations or examples from my life and trying to protect the identity of others in my life.

Here’s the thing.  I want to talk about what I’ve learned and what I’ve noticed in life, and it kind of involves other people in my life.  I’m aware that there’s how I saw and experienced a situation, and then there is how they saw and experienced a situation.  But when I try to tell how I saw and experienced the situation, it sometimes doesn’t paint the other person in a beautiful light.

There is a tendency in our society to focus on *booing* the supposed “bad guy” in a story, instead of paying attention to the point of the story.  When I’m in balance, I do not see others in my life as the “bad guy”, but when I try to tell my stories of what I’ve learned in life, all of the focus becomes on, “oh you poor dear” or “that’s horrible” or “they shouldn’t have done that to you.” which completely misses the point of the story, and it completely leaves me out of it.

It becomes about the other people in my life not being “good” and that is upsetting to me.  I don’t feel it’s fair.  That person has a life and a story to tell as well, and it’s most likely just as sad and upsetting, if not more so than my story.  I’m sure when someone else is telling a story about their life that involves me, I may look like the bad guy in that story.  Do you see how pointless all of it is?

I don’t want what other people did or didn’t do to be the focus of my stories.  They aren’t their stories.  They are mine and they are about how I overcame and triumphed over challenges and obstacles.  Don’t make it about the other person, you know?

And plus, like I love and care about these people, and I know they aren’t perfect – but it’s like I’m not allowed to share my life and my stories because other people’s judgments come in and fluff it all up for me.  I then find myself telling my stories where I’m some sort of victim, and that’s NOT even how I personally experienced the situation.

I again let how society has been conditioned to see situations, influence and overwrite me.

I have come to believe that I had a bad childhood, not because that’s how I experienced it, but because of the reactions and responses I have received from people over the years when I’m just talking about my life.  It paints my life in a darker light.  It then makes it more difficult for me to cope with it.

It ends up causing me more hurt than was necessary.  It forces me to see the world with less love in it.  I start to feel bad and guilty for loving my parents and my exes.  I get painted as being naïve and stupid for not knowing better.  I become this frail and damaged person.  “Poor thing, she doesn’t even know how damaged she is.”

Do you know why kids are so resilient?  Because they aren’t focused on the fact that they’re being wronged.  They see through the eyes of love.  If we didn’t make so many things SO HEINOUS and so disgusting and evil and go on and on and on about it and how we have to punish the evildoers doing this to our children and using children as a platform to punish other human beings . . . then children wouldn’t be so fucking traumatized about the things they go through.

They are naturally understanding and naturally forgiving.  They don’t want to be the source or used as the reason to prosecute and harm other humans, no matter what their crime is.

So in my stories about my life, you will notice an absence of me saying anything specifically about who did what to me, exactly for this reason.  To protect them from other’s unfair judgments and in making my story more about them than about me.  And the times that I did try to mention something specifically, I regretted it with every fiber of my body.  I hated that I did it and I hated the feelings it brought up afterwards.

Like I said . . . it influences me.  I start thinking less of my loved ones than I did before, and that makes me feel less about myself because that’s not how I think and that’s not how I am.  I don’t see the world like that.

Omg . . . I didn’t even realize that that is why I am so afraid to speak up or express myself.  (Having a toothpaste on wall moment.)

I love my dad.  He’s not perfect.  He’s a man from the Appalachian Mountains, who are regarded as the smallest minority group in the United States (even though they are white).  They are poor and they are humble.  It’s the general area where Dolly Parton is from, so if you’ve seen her story about her earlier life, you’ll have a good idea of the kind of life he comes from.  They work hard, they have little.

He has a temper.  Things got broken in the house growing up.  There was a lot of yelling.  There was a lot of things that went on that weren’t necessarily cool, and no a lot of it should not have happened to me.  But I love my dad.  I see the soul inside.  He’s a good man, who got hurt at a young age and got covered up in other people’s darkness.

I love my mom.  She’s not perfect.  She comes from a more proper family.  Good manners, proper grammar, no elbows on the table kind of family.  She didn’t necessarily know the struggles my dad knew when growing up, so it’s harder for her to understand where he was coming from.  His more raw and rugged ways were harder for her to handle because she didn’t have so much of a resilience to how hard life can truly be, when they had first met.

She was what a person would call naïve or not very street smart, she didn’t know how to handle the darker side of life . . . and so life kept coming  at her with darker and darker things the more she tried to run away from it, the more she tried to deny that she had those same tendencies within herself.  She held tightly to my light to keep the darkness away from her, choking the life out of me in the process.  Not intentionally.  Not knowingly.  Not maliciously.  But because she was so afraid, she couldn’t see through the darkness to the truth.

Told in stories from my perspective, they will appear on the surface to be the bad guys.  They are not the bad guys.  They are people, human beings . . . not monsters.

The “bad” people in our lives, are just human beings with painful stories of their own.  It doesn’t excuse their behavior, it doesn’t mean they don’t have to suffer the consequences . . . but it does not mean that they need to be demonized.  It does not mean that they don’t deserve to be seen through the eyes of love and with compassion.  They are already living in a hell of their own within their own skin, the last thing they need is anyone else’s judgment on them.

Discernment . . . discernment is another thing entirely.  It’s good to be aware of another person’s tendencies.  Be aware of whether their actions are hurtful to you or not, and if they are, to take the necessary steps to remove yourself from harm’s way.  Be aware of your own tendencies.  What is leading you to people who behave as they do?

I use discernment to decide whether it’s best that I cut someone out of my life or not.  It has NOTHING to do with whether I love or care about them.  If someone is blind to their subconscious actions, then they are going to continue hurting me without meaning to.  Therefore, in order to not let something keep going until I start to hate the person for hurting me over and over, I have to find the strength to push them out of my life.  They may think it’s because I don’t care or don’t love them, but that is not true.  I cry all of the time for the loss of the people I’ve had to push out of my life for these reasons.

They are so lost in fear and blind to themselves and what they do and how it impacts and affects others, that I am forced to make the painful decision to not have them in my life.  It hurts me.

But . . . in order to not turn into them as I grow older, I also have to learn to forgive this hurt and let it go too.  Which means, I can’t be seeing them as the bad guys.  When you’ve healed from your pain, the world looks vastly different.  It’s not filled with potential people who are going to hurt you, it’s filled with human beings who aren’t perfect but who are trying to find their way the best they can.  It’s filled with people desperate to find love and wanting to feel better, and are going about it in the many creative ways that humans can.  Some think they’ll get better with money, with sex, with a high position, with being a healer, being a parent . . . all the many ways we seek to find our way back to our innocence and to home.  Always trying to find our way back home.

I’m ever hopeful that I’ll find others who are willing to put in the hard work to push through the darkness that covers them so that they can bring themselves back into awareness about who they really are, so that I don’t have to continue pushing people out of my life . . . so that I don’t have to be alone.

*This* is what my story is really about.  I’m wanting to find fellow playmates . . . friends . . . who have found themselves and who don’t unintentionally hurt me and who I can be myself around because my way of being doesn’t offend them because they are seeing me from a place of love instead of from a place of fear.

eight-year-old-version-our-self

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May 10, 2015

Starting To Pierce Through My Fears And Expressing My Inner Fire

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I felt more of myself come through during this video than I’ve felt in a very long time.  My god did it feel good to get out.  There was a full hearted, present, and enthusiastic dance that ensued through my house for a little while afterwards (with music of course), moving that Aries energy through me.

Reaching this part of me felt like fresh oxygen getting into my body.  It was magnificent.  When I feel like this, when I feel like me, I don’t give a flying french fry what anyone thinks about it because it’s from my heart.  I know and feel it so deeply within me that it doesn’t matter if I was criticized and told I was wrong by every individual on the planet.  That’s when I know I’m being true to self.

This is SO much closer to the real me.  This is what I’ve been trying to get at and un-repress.  It’s just now surfacing and so there will be a few more bumpy trial and errors as I adjust, just like it took a little bit at the beginning of this video for me to really get there).  This was me starting to pierce through my Pluto & Saturn in my chart, through my fears/terrors – as well as my Chiron (deepest wound).

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Apr 29, 2015

Jenn Talks Her Ever Loving Head Off

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I’m waiting for my latest video to finish uploading/processing so I can link it here and then get to bed.  I’m determined to keep this momentum train running!  I finally had to break down and figure out how to do the actual recorder on my webcam on my laptop vs the one you can directly do from youtube, because I got tired of it disconnecting randomly which then made me nervous I was going to do a bunch of recording and then lose it all again.  So once I took care of that and wasn’t running into issues with the recording, I ended up talking for an hour!  O.O

It went by so fast!  Anyways, I go all over the map, but it’s also all connected.  I bring up some things in a book I read, and I only really bring up one line in it, but there’s still a ton more equally fascinating things in the book, so it is possible that it will be the topic of other videos in the future.  The main point for me at this moment, is just that I keep doing the videos and/or posts.  This is a sticky part of the ‘overcoming fear’ process for me.  This is where I either make incredible progress or I start sliding backwards, and fuck that.

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Apr 28, 2015

Not So Bad After All

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I’m starting to really gain traction in overcoming a lifelong fear and so I’m going to keep throwing myself into the fire.  I’m posting and putting myself out there more, even at work.  Although I’m barely getting a response, it’s like crickets out there.

That kind of hits at the core of my fear though, you know?  Like I finally start to come out of hiding and the reception is luke warm at best.  Luckily my focus is more on trying to do whatever I’m doing for my own personal enjoyment.

It felt really nice doing the video yesterday.  I was the most relaxed I can ever recall being in a situation like that.  I was much more comfortable in my skin.  Kind of like, hey . . . this isn’t so bad.

The biggest thing I’m learning out of the video blogs though, is from watching them myself later.  I know all of the things that were going through my head during that time, and it’s quite a different experience seeing what it looks like from the outside.

I find that my favorite parts, are the ones that normally I would’ve stopped the recording and started all over again to edit them out.  I’m seeing firsthand how I edit myself out of my life constantly.  Living it, I know exactly why I do it . . . but watching it from the other side, I’m like WHY in the HELL are you doing that?!  Let her come out more!

The parts where silly me slips out like when I crack myself up, can feel embarrassing to me on the inside, like “Woops, I wasn’t supposed to do that, I’m a grown up and grown ups don’t act like that.”

From this other perspective, I am understanding less why I worry so much about how people will receive me.  Watching as if I were meeting me for the first time, I find myself feeling, “I like this person.  I really like her.  If I were to meet someone like her in life, she would be my lifelong friend.”

The biggest shock of all is what I didn’t see.  I have all of these impressions and perspectives from what has been reflected back to me by others that I’ve been close to in life.  Those things absolutely do not match what I see.  From doing this exercise I’m only now becoming truly aware of how much what other people have projected onto me, isn’t me.

Prior to these vlogs (ah ah ah . . . sesame street count), I had never watched myself on video.  I never got to experience me for myself.

I’m not sure what I was expecting.  A villain?  Horns to appear when I began speaking?  My eyes to turn blood red?  I was expecting more of an attitude to be coming out of me.  I was expecting to look like I was just totally full of shit.  I was expecting to be annoyed or irritated by me.  I was expecting to watch me and be like, “I hate you, you disgust me.”  I was expecting to see hints of arrogance and like I was holier than thou.  Like I was trying to be something I’m not.  Like I’m trying to be better than I really am.

But after watching?  My perception about myself is changing vastly, because I’ll tell you something . . . if I were to meet someone like me in life, I wouldn’t even dream of treating her like I’ve been treated.  In fact, it’s appalling when I look back on my life.  My respect for about a dozen or so people in my life just totally went into the toilet, along with their ability to influence me.

I am very happy to have been able to meet and see me for myself so that I no longer have to take other people’s word for it.  I’m used to stories of people facing themselves in the mirror and not liking what they see.  I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a story of someone facing themselves in the mirror and being surprised by how much they like who they see.

This is all I needed, I just needed to know for myself that I am not as horrible of a person as I thought.  That’s something I can take to my heart and give myself a safe harbor to weather storms.  From there, it’s okay if you don’t like me.  It’s okay if I’m alone.  It’s okay if I’m invisible.

I faced and judged myself with the same measures in which I judge others, and I experienced something completely unexpected.  I really like who I am.  If I were a man, I would adore, protect, and cherish someone like me.  I would do anything to make her happy and to keep her smiling and laughing.  If I were another woman meeting me, I would want to be best friends for life and would give thanks to the heavens every day that I had her in my life and would go on crazy girl adventures, getting into trouble and enjoying the hell out of life.

If I’m able to feel that way about myself, then there’s just no excuse for me allowing otherwise into my life.

Fought For Me

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Apr 27, 2015

Continuing To Conquer My Creative Fears

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Does she mean conquering her fears of creativity or does she mean that her fears are creative?  The world may never know.  Alright, here’s another vlog (does that sound Dracula-ish?)

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Apr 4, 2015

How The Internet Going Out Changed My Life

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Do you ever have one of those days where you just *know* that fate had a hand in the events that played out?  It’s been awhile since I’ve felt that, but today was one of those days.

It was more than just the unlikely sequence of events that took place that left me feeling like that.  Preposterous things in general have a way of showing up in my life, so that’s not enough to make me raise an eyebrow.  No.  These events had a little something extra added to them.  Each one increasing the presence of that extra feeling that if I had to put words to it, might say something like, “Pay extra attention . . . magic is afoot . . . something bigger is unfolding.”

So my internet went out again this last week.  This is the 3rd time in a month.  And when it goes out, it goes out for  d a y s.  I have to completely shift how I live life.  It is absolutely amazing to me how much I rely on it now, when 20 years ago, I had never heard of it.  But anyways, being ever the optimist I’m like, “Okay, well shit.  What to do now . . . ”

This alone is a micro-series of events that took place.  It involves a whole weekend of meeting up with different friends and going to the movies and coffee shops, another weekend of inviting my son over for dinner and board games (yahtzee . . . lots of yahtzee), going to a used bookstore and finding 5 book gems that I couldn’t wait to get home and read.  It involved even more inner reflection than usual (I had nothing else to do while I stared into blank nothingness as I ate my dinner.)

So all of that led to my most recent post about all of my thinking about ‘art’.  After writing that post, the thought stream didn’t end there, it continued on the next day (usually writing about something will satisfy whatever is going on in my head and proceed to leave me alone . . . but not so here).  In that post, I had brought up my flute playing from when I was younger.  It started to haunt me.

I had completely forgotten about the musician in me.  I’ve been a mom and business analyst for so long, it completely escaped my mind that this wasn’t all I used to be.  In fact, I was so into my music in school, I fully intended to major in Music.  I was going to make it my life.  I remembered asking my mom what kind of things they have a person do to get a Ph.D in music, and she said they do things like give you an unfinished score from Mozart or one of the greats and ask you to finish it.  That scared the living shit out of me, but I was like . . . I’ll do it.  That’s how I knew that was my field.

As a little girl I had wanted to be many things and I could never make up my mind.  I wanted to be a archeologist and dig in dirt and find old things.  I wanted to be an astrophysicist and study the universe.  I wanted to be a teacher, but mostly because I wanted the summers off.  When I thought of trying to deal with 30+ kids at once, I decided that wasn’t the job for me.  I would look into what it took to be all of these things I wanted to be, and more often than not I’d see the requirements and make a scrunched up face and say . . . uh . . no.

But music . . . I was willing to go through hell and back for music.

It’s just that one day in high school I kind of hit a wall.  I had reached an incredible level of playing ability with my flute, but I just couldn’t get it to the next level.  Something in me was missing.  Something wasn’t gelling in me.  I would practice for endless hours.  My sophomore year in high school, I had a tutor who had played in the Seattle Symphony.  The first time she spoke on the phone with my mother (to arrange the lessons) and upon hearing that I wanted to go into music as a career, the tutor let my mom know that the music field is ruthless and you have to give everything you’ve got to make it in that industry and that she always encouraged her students to get a degree in some sort of science first as a backup.  She always recommended it.

Then I went to my first lesson with her.  To gauge my skill she pulled out a couple of music books and had me sight read a couple of pieces.  Saying nothing she went to her extensive music library and pulled out some more books.  This.  Now play this.  That was the entire lesson, me playing one thing after another.  Then she gave me my homework of what to study for my next lesson, and then I started to walk home.

By the time I returned home, the tutor had already called my mother.  She called simply to say, “If she wants to do music, then let her do it.  She’s got what it takes to make it.”

I honestly don’t know what I had done to impress her, but at my next lesson there was talk of traveling to Paris and competing there and . . . and . . .

That’s when I hit the wall.  I suddenly could go no further.  Something in me completely locked up and froze.  As I said before, something in me was missing.  I didn’t know what it was then . . . but I know what it is now.  It took me over 20 years of life experience and of completely walking away from music and everything I loved, in order to gain that missing something in me.  I know without a doubt that I would not have made it very much further without the experience and knowledge I’ve gained from the last couple of decades.  It would have been futile.  I would have been banging my head against a wall and I don’t think things would’ve ended well for me if I had forced it anyways.

So all of this was coming back to me.  Music.  My first love in life.  I’m not just a mom or an analyst.  I am a musician.  Even just saying it out loud brought me such peace . . . and tears.  It wasn’t just remembering I was a musician, it was allowing that feeling and reality back into my awareness.  It’s been in my peripheral for so long I had become blind to it.  I spoke about it, I’ve even tried over the years to try and play instruments again . . . but it just wasn’t time yet and so it floated in and out of my life over the years like the tide.  But this time something different is happening.

And then came today.  I woke up again with that feeling of waking from a dream and remembering, “I am a musician.” with an underline feeling of excitement.  It was like saying to myself, “I won the lottery.”  I had stopped at the music store yesterday to get a silver polishing cloth because I was going to clean my flute up all nice and pretty.  I was looking forward to beginning the process of reacquainting myself with my dear old friend.  This flute has been with me for 20+ years.  I first picked up a flute 26 years ago.  Just the act of cleaning it brought me back to all those years ago.

I was checking everything on it and I saw that the cork in the head joint was most likely going to need to be replaced.  The position it was in meant that there was nothing I could do to make my flute be in tune.  I cannot play an out of tune flute.  It’s against Jenn Law.  But no matter, the music store is just a stone’s throw from my apartment.  Which was good because the internet technician was supposed to come to fix the internet, and I had been given a time frame of 8am-6pm.  So I couldn’t go too far.

I got to the music store and turned in my flute to the repair shop.  However, I wanted to play an instrument so bad, I walked over to the display case where all of the really nice flutes for sell were.  I started trying them out and proceeded to fall in love with one in particular, and so I was like screw it, I’ll buy it.  You can never have enough silver flutes I always say.

But I needed to move some money from my savings account.  I asked for them to hold it while I went home to take care of the financial part of it . . . but then I remembered I had no internet and so I decided to (finally) download the bank app for my bank and sign up on my mobile so I could transfer funds there.

It was while I was in the middle of this that the extra feeling started to make itself known to me.  Something in the background of my senses was flagging me down.  I had somehow gone from internet not working to standing in a music store trying to transfer funds for a 2nd flute.  Also I was wondering if this was my version of having a mid-life crisis.  Instead of a Corvette or Porsche, I was going to own a variety of impossibly expensive flutes.

I entered the information in the app to identify myself and the app said, “Uh, sorry but the shit you typed in doesn’t match the shit we have in our system.”  I figured I mistyped something, and so I did it all again . . . my debit card number . . . my pin . . . last 4 of my SSN.  Nope.  So I did it again.  “Not only nope, but now we’ve locked your ass out of the system . . . call this number.”  So I called, and the woman was looking stuff up and then she asked for the last 4 numbers of my debit card.  I gave it and then she said, “Oh . . . that’s what is wrong.”  And then dead awkward silence.

So what happened, is that my account was a part of *something* (she didn’t say what) that could have compromised my account information and so they had sent me a new debit card with a new number.  The *something* happened on April 1st and they sent the card with explanation on April 2nd.  Sooo I can’t do anything online, only in person transactions.

And you know what?  I wasn’t even mad.  I was glad they were on top of their shit and protected me, and also . . . this was the moment that the feeling became clear to me that something was going on that was out of the ordinary . . . I was being led to something specific.  Life had a game plan unfolding and was in the process of herding me towards it.  So I explained it to the people and they were totally happy to hold the flute until my new debit card came and I was ready to continue on my day.

Except the whole “I am a musician” thing.  I was stoked for two days to get to play my flute today and now my one is in the shop and it was suddenly not made possible for me to get a 2nd one.  However . . . a couple of years ago I went through one of my momentary moods of attempting to get back into music and had gone to rent a violin . . . which I paid off completely a year ago shortly after my Raven Kitty girl died.  I’ve had it for 2 years . . . and I have never even pulled it out of the case.

I had wanted to sink my teeth into something I already knew how to do.  Get the taste of it back into my system and *then* attempt to learn a new instrument.  And yet everything had coalesced into a situation in which I was completely set to play a musical instrument . . . and yet my known instrument was suddenly yanked out from under me, leaving me only one choice.

I came home with the recommended books for starting out on violin.  By this point, the feeling of *destiny* was very much in the air and in my veins.  Violin was actually the first instrument I had ever played.  I played for a year in 4th grade but then moved to a place that only had bands and no orchestras . . . and so started my journey with the flute.  But violin . . . oh . . . where do I even begin.  Nothing . . . and I mean nothing speaks to me like a haunting gypsy melody played on the violin.  Or like the part in the song “Devil Goes Down To Georgia” (if you’ve never heard it a) have you been living under a rock your whole life? b) go to youtube and listen to it. now.)

I want to be playing *that* already, not being a new student on an instrument . . . but then again, the universe really has put itself out there to arrange this . . . so . . .

So I read the intro and everything to the Suzuki Method book.  It’s the very same book I used when learning the violin as a little girl.  The intro is surprisingly . . . well . . . meaningful.  Suzuki isn’t messing around.  He goes all meta like I do, “Education begins the day a child is born.  As an infant’s body grows day by day, its powerful life-force absorbs all the stimuli it receives externally, developing in the process of acquiring ability.  Without stimulus to the life-force, there will be no development in the child.  Under conditions of neglect, nothing and no one can grow.”

Holy shit Mr Suzuki-san.  Is this volume 1 of learning violin or the answers to the universe?  I love you crazy violin person.  Actually, this is very indicative of the Japanese culture and something I feel and know (remember) intrinsically in me.  I understand this level of crazy, so I was all in by this point, but still I was touched further when I read this sentence, “The violin is a medium for cultivating human character, ability, and heart.”

In fact, I had to take a moment’s pause to let some heart felt tears make their way out.  The accumulation of all of this was really getting to me.

I can imagine it would be like an amputee suddenly growing their limb back.  Losing the limb . . . going 20+ years coming to peace with it . . . and then it magically starting to grow back.  There’s a mix of disorientation, nostalgia, relief, . . . and . . . a larger understanding of life.

But still . . . I was having a hard time getting myself to pull the violin out of the case.  What is it?  What was stopping me?  I kept reading through the instruction books.  Proper stance, proper way to hold the bow.  How to tune, proper maintenance of the violin.  How to apply rosin . . . the name of the strings.  The instructions in French, German, & Spanish.

Something in me was wondering what the point was.  I’m not that 17 year old girl anymore.  There’s no plans to take the world by storm with my extraordinary musical talents.  There’s no audience waiting for me.  Come Monday morning I’m still going to be getting up to get ready to go to work . . . so what good does this do me?  What’s the point?  How could this make any difference in my life, I mean really?

Then I had a feeling flashback, going back to when I would spend 5 or more hours a day practicing my flute.  It brought solace to me.  In a world gone wrong, it made me feel okay again.  As I strengthened my flute skills, my body and emotions became strengthened and I could withstand the hardships in life much easier.  Being a musician is something that is for me.

So at last I reached a point where I pulled the violin out.  I dusted it off with a soft cloth.  I tightened and rosined the bow.  It was time to start tuning the strings.  I took a deep breath and drew the bow across one of the strings . . . and it rung out deep and strong.  I felt the power of the sound of the violin vibrate through my bow, my hand, and my heart.  In that moment, I understood why the universe had worked so hard to coerce and push me towards this.

There’s listening to a violin on recordings . . . in songs . . . from other people playing it.  I’ve enjoyed the violin immensely in this way.  It is an instrument that touches my soul in a way that nothing else comes close to.

But experiencing the violin as the one holding it and drawing the bow across the string myself was another thing entirely.  It is something I would willingly dedicate the rest of my life to learning.  It’s like it enables a doorway through which my soul is easily able to sing through.  This is something my heart has been searching and longing for . . . an outlet in which it can be fully expressed.  It’s like my heart was trapped in a prison and was banging on the walls, and then the stroke of the bow on a single string made the prison doors fly open and my heart could suddenly breathe the air of freedom.

Who needs an audience when the simple act of playing gives you something as valuable as that?

Today was the start of something new for me.  I went back to the music store and told them that there was no need to hold the 2nd flute for me, I had found what I was actually looking for.  They helped me pick out a few new things for my violin.  I requested to be put on a list to be contacted when they have a new violin teacher for lessons.

Something in me has settled down and is pleased that I’ve finally taken the first steps down this road.  In this I look forward to being a student.  I look forward to the whole journey, from learning how to properly hold the instrument to sassing it up with my devilish gypsy ways.

And yes, come Monday morning, I will get up to get ready for work just as I always do . . . but something new has started to blossom in my heart.  Something that I get to nurture and grow and care for, for the rest of my days.

Violin Awesomness

Filed Under: Misc Awesomeness · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
Mar 27, 2015

My Little Furry Care Provider

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I was having a really silly dream right before I woke up this morning.  I was sleeping in bed (suspiciously in the same position I was sleeping in for real) when a butler came into my room with my breakfast.  (I think I’ve watched too much Downton Abbey in my life).  My breakfast was a bowl of sugar pops cereal, which I can’t even remember the last time I ate cereal, let alone sugar pops.

I was trying to wake myself up enough so that he knew he could leave, but I wasn’t fooling anyone.  I started talking about some joke that included me teaching French.  I don’t actually know French so my joke was being done in English with a French accent.  Realizing that I wasn’t actually speaking French, the conversation shifted into how much funnier it would be if I taught a class in how to speak French accented English.

I thought I was being a riot.  I could not figure out how the butler was keeping a straight face and patiently waiting for me to actually sit up to eat breakfast, with all of my shenanigans.  So finally I sat up, he handed me my bowl of sugar pops, which I was wondering how he kept them from getting all soggy in the milk and whether the next person the butler was going to, was going to have soggy cereal because of me taking so long to get up.

At this point I started to wake up for real, because I had a little black Gir kitty walking into my room meowing at me.  I was just as reluctant to wake up as in my dream.  At first I thought his motivation was him wanting food.  I knew his wet food dish was empty because I had given him chicken from the day before instead of his usual canned food.  But this cat has never been motivated by food, so I wasn’t completely convinced that that was the situation.

I’ve been slowly recovering from both of my ears and deeper sinuses being blocked for quite some time.  I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but it must have been for awhile.  All I know is that it was reaching a point where I was barely able to get any oxygen into myself.  I began the long process of reversing all of it.  It took a long time to get to that point and so it’s taking a long time to recover from it too.

Each step that I take helps remove a deeper layer.  This has been a process of weeks and weeks.  It’s been like chiseling away concrete using a needle, but I have made some incredible progress.  It’s getting easier to breathe, which in turn is making it easier for me to sleep at night, which in turn makes it easier for me to get through a day before I start hitting anxiety, which in turn puts me in a more overall pleasant mood.

With where I’m at in the process, a good portion of my body that has been basically frozen in survival mode, is starting to relax.  More feeling is starting to come back into me, and with that I’m noticing just how exhausted my body has been from all of this.  So I feel relief, I relax, and then I’m like holy shit I am tired!  I had absolutely no idea, how over time, my body had started to fight more and more for the little bit of oxygen I was letting into myself.  It’s that stupid conditioning thing, where something happens slowly and subtly enough over time, that you don’t realize it’s happening.

So this morning I was almost in a drunk state of relief and exhaustion.  “Omg it feels so good to be able to relax {slobber} I don’t want to get up ever again.”

That’s the state I was in when Mr. Gir came sauntering into my room.  I was too crashed to even get mad at all his racket.  I was able to just stay there in my body, all comfy, not really giving a fluff.  It felt so nice to not become unhinged by what he was doing and my temper coming out.  I laid there comfortably watching what he was doing.

He was putting a paw onto my bed (I’m on the floor), walking himself into my outstretched hand.  Talking and going on and rolling on the floor and knocking everything over.  He was being adorable.  I could see an earnest want or need for me to get up.  This cat was on a mission.

So finally I was ready to get up and I started my morning routine, which Gir knows so well he leads the way.  Into the living room, open the blinds.  Plug in the internet.  Off to the bathroom.  Into the kitchen.  As I willingly cooperated with Gir’s monumental efforts to get his human moving, I noticed a whole change in his demeanor.  He got a little bit of a bounce in his step.  He started to purr so loudly.  He looked so happy.

In my half asleep (but very relaxed) stupor, it hit me what was playing out.  He has found a way to contribute to his family unit.  He has found something that he is good at, and that is useful and helpful.  It’s not just humans that like to feel needed and useful.  It’s not just humans that need a purpose in life.  As all of this went through me, I looked at him with new eyes and became as clear as day.  It was written all over his little kitty face and in his expression.  “Look mommy, look I helped!”

It’s something that I was incapable of noticing before my health started to return to me.

When I got him his breakfast (and mine) and went to sit down in the living room, he came and chilled in the living room as well, looking all extra pleased with himself.  His motivation had not, in fact, been about his food.  He was just doing his self assigned job.  In his own little kitty way, he has shown me more care than many humans are capable of showing anymore.

The little dude cares whether I get out of bed or not.  It may be for his own reasons (which are the best reasons for doing something), and it may not be a conscious thought . . . but it doesn’t matter to me.  I know care when I experience it, and he’s providing genuine love and care.

As for my dream, I can see how the more my health returns to me, so does my humor and joking.  I stop being so super serious about everything . . . I become more playful.  I, in fact, do wake up out of bed saying stupid things that I think are hilarious even if nobody else thinks they are.  And the sugar pops cereal was obviously a reference to being a kid.  My inner child returning.

And no wonder the butler wasn’t laughing at my hilarious french jokes . . . I mean, he’s a cat for crying out loud.  It had nothing to do with how funny my jokes were.  😀

Gir

Filed Under: Misc Awesomeness · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
Mar 24, 2015

Jenn’s First Video Blog!

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Hello!  So I took the plunge.  I don’t know how many times I have thought about doing some video posts instead of just typing because sometimes it’s more appropriate for my mood, but I’m not a video person.  I had to setup a youtube channel and all kinds of crazy technical shit.  So anyways.  It’s short.  It’s just to get my feet wet.  It was even more fun than I thought it would be.  Ha!  Now you guys will never be rid of me!  🙂

 

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