Someone corrected my last post and said it should state “I’d rather live by my wits than be led by a nitwit” – I had another retirement lunch today with someone leaving their company, she said, “It’s like they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Live and learn.
Carly Fiorina’s grand statement that stuck with me is that we have to learn to save the best and discard the rest. I feel that I have tried to do that in the five decades I have been alive. Here are some of the things I have accomplished:
1) My father had gypsy blood even if his actual identity was a Sephardic so for years that I spent trying to rebel against my dad – root myself as deeply as possible into each scenario, I’ve learned to tread a little lighter, and thrive without feeling the need to act like an oak and weight myself down with accumulated whatnots and the feeling that I can never leave (ghastly).
2) My mother was a free spirit but she came from salt of the earth stock I wanted to be salt of the earth but it was constantly at war with my free spirit, so I’ve tried to nurture both, which often causes some internal and external confusion, but it’s moving in the right direction.
3) I was raised a Jew, and the philosophy of Jesus was as foreign to me as breathing underwater, but in moving back into my spirit life at this point in my years, I’ve found that Jesus had a philosophy that is starting to pair well with my own, peace and love baby all the way. I don’t like the trappings of what the institutionalization of his creed has become, or did he even have a creed I wonder aloud, but on a deeply spiritual level Jews, Jesus, and Muslims and Zen Buddhist and Hindus are all at the core striving for the same erudition and enlightenment. It is only in their manifestation that they have become perverted and political.
4) Because I was raised without a Christmas tree and with the lights from the menorah what illuminated our dark house in winter, I’m opposed to the tree because it symbolizes all that I am not. But today I looked at a friend’s blog and saw her first tree and it moved me. It moved me because I once had a first tree when I was in my 20s and I was so damn excited about it but I was not excited about cleaning up the mess afterwards. Now that Tin is seeing Christmas, he is getting excited about trees, lights, santa, and such. Yesterday, I was at a friend’s house and her husband was sneaking the presents into the shed that would later be wrapped and put under the tree for the kids to open on Christmas morning. I flinch at the excess of this tradition and where it has come to, and yet, I think about Tin on Christmas morning without a tree and without the presents. What to do? I’m still debating this and although my druthers would be to get up and visit friends’ trees and then to go out into the community and help others who are less fortunate, I’m not sure I have found the right groove here. To Tree or not to Tree? That is the still the question.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
Steve Jobs
Amen Steve, you are spot on. I was listening to an interview with Marc Benioff (Charlie Rose) and he speaks about the zen idea of the beginner’s mind and how you need to employ that in business thinking. There is a tendency to cling to the old way, to hold onto what no longer serves you, and then you try to glom onto the old way, the new way, which can’t be entirely new because it is weighted by the old.
But getting fired – now that changes the whole equation. I personally feel that getting fired from my job was the best possible thing that could happen to me at this point in my life.
The other day when we had guests staying at our house, we were coming up the side of the house and walking to a neighbor’s and the guests spoke to Tin, “Hey little man,” the guy said to which Tin responded, “I used to live there.” Tin is learning how creative his parents can be when times grow challenging – cost of this lesson = priceless.
I’d rather live a life by my wits than follow the lemmings off the cliff.
I went to the doctor this morning as my upper respiratory sinus thing was waxing all over again and sure enough I have sinusitis and a Zpak and got a nice big steroid shot in my rump. Please go away sinusitis – I am walking on thin ice as it is.
This morning I picked up one cat in one hand and placed it out the back door. Picked up the other cat and placed it out the front door. And was willing to sell both dogs to the lowest bidder.
I took Tin to a playdate, but no that wasn’t good enough, he came home and decided to wet down his bed with the humidifier, break the shamash off the electric menorah in the window, and pull the video monitor out of the wall socket.
Harumph.
Yesterday, as the heater repair man was climbing up and down out of the attic trying to figure out why there is zone slippage, I told him we were renting out the house. He said, “At least you have that option.”
I said you’re so right, at least, and be grateful for what you do have.
So today, Tin who likes to recite his full name, his birthday, his address and then say and I’m in a marching band, had his own reason to be grateful, he got to wear the Panorama funeral hat that Ben Schenk wears for second lines.
And the guy who started the company I worked out for the past 16 years called me to say that he appreciated all I had done for the company, and he said I was a “creative, driving force” for the company for all those years. Thank you Craig Gordon, I appreciate you too!
So circle the things that are negative, put a dot on them, then shrink them with a good dose of virtual steroids.
What would you do if you had a day given to you? Well I worked on my new client’s project, did 1/3 of the thank you notes from the Re-Bridge Gala and hand delivered them while walking the dogs, and paid some bills, dealt with the heater repair guy, vacuumed, cleaned the windows, put away clothes. And you know what – I have one hour left before Tin comes home (a friend picked him up from school today and he went over to help her decorate her Christmas tree) – so I’m going to get off of this computer for a few and go see if I can relax. Or something that looks like relaxing.
December 12, 2011
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
Today you need to determine what is the most important thing in your life — or else you may make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. Think about what needs to happen in order to enable other things to happen, and make that your top priority today. That means if you have to rest or take care of yourself (instead of hitting the town), then so be it. What seems like fun today may cause you some trouble tomorrow, so keep that in mind when your phone starts ringing off the hook.
I realized yesterday after spending the entire day in search of Tin’s needs that a mother gets spent quite easy. It’s what made me decide to give away all of my animals in one fell swoop. I didn’t mind you, but I thought those thoughts and I think every animal in this house felt those vibrations and were crouching low to the ground when I came near.
I think it was around 7:30 pm when Tin was spitting his apple sauce out into a pile on the table that I snapped.
For it was then that I realize what I have realize before that as a woman you grow up with some false belief that there is someone out there to take care of you, but then you grow up and realize you are taking care of everyone else so where is that someone to take care of you? And it dawns on you just as you are crawling to bed, spent, you are that person. But damn, now you are done for the day.
So when I put in Winter’s Bone to watch a movie that was directed by a woman which won many awards, I just said, pfst, and when the Netflix DVD skipped and replayed the last scene I was watching I said, THAT’S IT, and put it back in its jacket to go back to the mothership.
I was fully prepared to send everything and everyone back to the mothership when I realized that the best thing I could do for humanity and myself was to go to bed. Which I did, and I slept the sleep of the dead or the done.
When I woke this morning to watch the sun rise over the bayou, and to see the newspaper sitting in the walkway and to smell my tea steeping in the pot, I realized from the comfort of my flannel pjs that life delivers days that drain you and days that frame you.
And I committed this day, Monday, to be a day that frames me.
I began the morning by deciding not to get out of bed and so then when I turned over and saw it was already 7:40, I knew I was doomed. Doomed to not have any time to read my paper, drink my tea in peace, or for that matter have a moment to gather myself before the energy level of a fast moving freight train steamrolled into me.
That would be a 2.5 year old toddler name Tin.
So after trying everything I could think of this morning, we headed to the park to run, climb, and rough house only Tin just wanted to swing and that wasn’t going to take care of the whirly twirly toddler energy that was causing all of this disruption.
Luckily we came home to find my neighbors’ kids playing football in the yard and so tackle, fetch, hut one, hut two and suddenly we had some of that energy getting dispelled. Some of it.
Tin and I walked over to a neighbor’s retirement party and aside from the pimento cheese finger sandwiches that remind me emphatically of New Orleans, the best thing was the playlist – all the I am leaving this fucking stupid job and you idiot boss songs that you can imagine. They were hilarious but of course the reprise was YOU CAN TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT and so I will use that as the theme of this post.
A better day awaits all of us even if this is an unsettling time and like my friend (me) responds that especially those of us in the later years are thinking WTF as things are happening at an unsettling pace and causing lots of plans to catapult and collapse.
But I will say here and I know this to be true – this is the dawning of a new age – let’s not call it Aquarius because honestly that has never been a sign that I understood all that well okay so let’s just call it the DAWNING OF THE BULL – yes a different bull than the one that ran ramshod over the 80’s 90’s and early 2000’s this BULL is about being close to the earth – so close you can smell the dirt, and about being here, present, and not about sitting around having meetings to prepare for the unknown future – this BULL is about being virile and strong and snorting and just letting it all hang out.
Take this job and shove it – I ain’t working here no more – I just found the bull that I am and it was all I was waiting for…
Well just fill in the blanks.
Tin and I and a friend went to go see the Music for All Ages brass band at Perserverance Hall in Louis Armstrong Park this morning and while I must admit it is always a treat to hear Sunpie Barnes sing or the many different brass bands play, this morning was like striking gold! The Africa Brass band was playing and Tin and his friend Lukas, and other kids got to sit in and listen to masters playing something more than music, it was like they were channeling from another world. Wow is all I have to say, a big whopping wow and thank you universe that I found myself there this morning to witness it. We walked over to hear more good music at the Jazz & Heritage Treme Fest with Shannon Powell whipping it up on stage and I had gumbo that I was unfortunately forced to eat with a fork – it was a gumbo cook off right, but forks? Needless to say, no matter, the price of admission at Perserverance was come ready to listen and be moved.
Disclaimer – you are watching the warm up – I could not get the 15 minute jam session of Fire on the Bayou segueing into the Big Chief Drinks Fire Water to upload that had Fritz (black and white shirt) picking up his trumpet, and Charles Joseph (red shirt, baseball cap) picking up his trombone, and Tim Green (white shirt) pick up his sax and Matt Perrine with his sousaphone (thought it was a tuba) and jam jam jam proving yet again that New Orleans roots are firmly in African rhythms. Beautiful music.
My true love gave to me the ability to shape shift into a different state of being.