I haven't looked at any committee lists of suggestions yet, but I've already started making a list of things I'm thinking of bringing to tomorrow's occupyeugene.com
Watch me if you like - you can even start a section below for your own list (or start your own separate pad).
on: October 14, 2011 tagged:
Keystone Cafe vs. Cornbread Cafe
In a rare display of eating out for me these days, I satisfied a months-long desire for biscuits & gravy, not once, but twice yesterday. Lunch was biscuits & gravy (and some blueberry pancake) at Keystone Cafe. Dinner was seitan (a la chicken-fried steak) and gravy, with biscuit, greens and fries at Cornbread Cafe.
Keystone Cafe wins the biscuits & gravy competition hands-down. This was their sausage gravy (I'll have to go back and try their mushroom some time, but I trust it will be about as good). Even on the biscuit itself Keystone would have won, but to be fair, the competition in this case is called the Cornbread Cafe (I'll have to go back and try the cornbread). As a whole, both meals were fantastic, and well worth the cost.
on: October 14, 2011 tagged:
on: October 12, 2011 tagged:
Haven't loved life this much in a looong time.
My biggest life challenge is that my very existence can seem threatened by someone being angry with me, or any sense that someone has negative feelings toward me, or even if they're just not giving me "enough" attention. The less connected I am, the less aware I am of having these thoughts, and the more likely I am to believe them. And the more I believe them, the more likely I am to desperately avoid or try to "fix" such situations.
Yesterday I had the enlightening realization — on a gut level, not just as an idea — that the strength of my fear, every time I experience it, comes directly from how much I love life. I've spent enough time in fear that this was earth-shifting, bumping my hope and trust to levels I haven't felt for years.
Update (a day later): Oh, right, all of my emotions and impulses are some manifestation of loving life!
Update (a month later, now): The initial surge of energy and trust has faded some, which is just a reminder that maintaining it takes continued awareness and attention from myself, and from those in my support network. I've been investing in that, and it's paying off.
on: October 6, 2011 tagged:
Jon Udell is always worth quoting, and in this article on augmentation and memory (starting with phones), he gives us:
As our relationship to devices and the cloud reorganizes our brains, those [mental] powers are changing. But we’re not just passively experiencing these changes. We are actively co-creating the powers of our individual brains and of the collective brain we’re becoming.
on: August 14, 2011 tagged:
Such a long silence from me is usually a bad sign, and indeed I let myself down into a particularly bad withdrawal/alienation dynamic, more intentionally than usual giving up on life. This lasted all of October and into November, until my parents got me to go visit them in Massachusetts, where the change of context — not least of all waking up in a brightly lit room every morning — eventually had me reaching out and responding to life again, willing to take at least some responsibility for myself. (Thanks mom & dad!) Now I'm back home, picking up some pieces and moving along.
Fortunately, I can never seem to shake curiosity — whenever I do seriously contemplate suicide, I can't bring myself to take a step that may mean I don't get to see as much as possible of what happens! Versus hope, faith, trust and awe, all of which I shake off more easily. :-P
I've done and learned many things to support myself and my learning and growth. They've been things that are primarily psychologically framed, and have helped a great deal, but have so far at least not been "enough". In my awareness that a, if not the, root of my challenges is losing basic trust, I have been interested to explore more spiritually framed things. To that end, I just attended a Quaker Friends Meeting (my second, the first was 30 years ago), and loved it! The hour-long silence in community leaves so much space for me to be where I am, while inviting deep attention to things that matter. I was surprised that I ended up being one of the very few people to say anything, but something insistent did pop out. I then took the opportunity to be with my fear ("How will a first-timer's speaking up be received?"), and had fully processed it and moved on when the next person spoke, ten+ minutes later. She had obviously been sitting with what I had said. This touched me, that I can make a difference for others.
I've also listened to a couple of sermons from the local Religious Science church, and may go sing kirtan tonight. Most intimately, I've been talking with my soul (!), perhaps more on that later...
(This is all a fairly Big Deal to me, having grown up atheist. My full spiritual background could be summed up as Jewish by birth, atheist by upbringing, Christian by culture, agnostic by reason, Hindu by marriage, Buddhist by practice.)
Update: biked to kirtan, but discovered they stopped doing it months ago! A housemate is interested, we may start something ourselves...
on: December 5, 2010 tagged:
One of the only things I did with the inquiry of instituting an evening routine was set an alarm to go off every night at 9pm. Then I just ignored it. Until it went off tonight — now what?
Made a todo list for tomorrow. That's good. A big part of my resistance to going to bed is often anxiety about all of the things I think I ought to do, and having a list helps me worry less. Spent longer than I intended making a playlist of quiet, gentle music. Funny that a lot of songs about dream or sleep are so loud (Aerosmith's Dream On, Supertramp's Dreamer), but I picked one to kick things off (The Police's Bring On The Night) before going into the quieter stuff. Copied to iPod, now will shut off computer, put on music, and do something quiet and offline in bed and maybe even sleep!
Also celebrating that my room has been top thing on my mind some. Cleaned a bit more today, feels good to walk into it being nicer than it has been. More spacious, peaceful.
on: September 21, 2010 tagged:
So...I have not been the uppermost thing on my mind lately. At all. :-P I have still been meditating and walking most mornings with Tom. When I haven't been otherwise looping in unhappy patterns, I've put some attention into the co-op where I live, regular house stuff, and exploring replacing our half-busted oil heat with a super-efficient ground source heat pump.
Would I like to be the top-most thing on my mind again? I'm a bit nervous, I don't want to fail at it again, okay that melts as soon as I notice it. More substantially, what exactly to focus on? Is the idea of establishing an evening routine too hard (I do have a lot of resistance to it), or just not the right thing right now? In any case, a weekly review of what's on my mind seems like a good idea, so whatever I settle on I'll check in with myself next Monday morning to see how it's going and decide about setting a new focus or not.
The inquiry of what to focus on stirs things up — you mean I'm responsible for my own life? :-) I didn't start the day in a mood that would have included any amusement at that, but an unexpected call from a loved one first thing in the morning helped turn that around. Very grateful.
Just looked around my room and it is an absolute pit (laughing at the immediate obviousness of it). So, that is now my inquiry — how would I like my room to be? The easy general answer is warm, but spare, a large clear space on the floor, with lots of cushions. No computer. A corresponding inquiry is, what would I like to do right now toward my vision? Let's start with some easy picking-things-up, taking the computer out, and laundry...
on: September 20, 2010 tagged:
It's my blog, and what matters to me most about it is that it invites me to write.
When I wrote about power, etc. a few days ago I noticed that I hadn't written for about a month. I may decide that it would be helpful to start a practice of daily writing, but for now what flows most is not having any rules for myself around it.
I've been writing mostly about myself, fairly intimately/vulnerably, and have so far resisted urges to write about other things (process and geeky stuff, and semi-random other things), but will probably start doing so again soon. Some people may prefer to only read about my personal explorations, or only about process stuff or geeky stuff, but these things are often deeply interrelated, so it's just much easier for me if I can publish it all in one place. I am tagging posts with what they're about, and you can generally click on those tags to see a list of entries (and other pages) on that subject. Not as pretty as the main blog page, but functional.
on: September 17, 2010 tagged:
The last few days sleep hasn't really been the first thing on my mind, and I stayed up through enough of last night that I missed morning meditation today for the first time. It's very clear to me how helpful meditation has been, so this is not a good thing. I have still generally had a fair amount of attention on myself in general, but it will probably help anchor the inquiry in my mind to declare/explore it a bit publicly here.
How to get enough sleep and rest? More specifically, how to go to bed, lay down and turn out the lights early enough to get a good night's sleep before morning meditation? I often have resistance to going to sleep, but that inquiry would only be theoretical right now, so, at 10:30pm tonight I will check if I would like to explore it right then (assuming there is any resistance tonight, but that seems pretty likely).
I know it's helpful to go to sleep at the same time each night, to wake up at the same time each morning, and to have a clear intention about when to get up. This has been an indirect benefit of the morning meditation with Tom, and I have woken up several times just minutes before my alarm went off, which is nice. Some evening routine around going to bed sounds good, so that's a very specific inquiry I can live into.
I'm also a firm believer, from experience, in the value of taking short rest breaks in between things. In addition, I want to notice whenever I am tired and stop what I'm doing to rest or nap. I actually was doing this more before the last few days. It will certainly be relevant today as I've been running on five-six hours of sleep for a few nights. If I do notice tiredness and don't stop to rest, that will be another opportunity to sit down with pen & paper or laptop and explore what's going on in my twisted mind :-).
on: August 17, 2010 tagged:
start going to sleep at 8:00 pm and you will likely have a wondrous experience. tips: don't look at computer screens past 7:00 pm. when ...
Don't know if it's the morning meditation or what, but I've noticed a number of times yesterday and today that I am holding my shoulders tensely (and then relaxed). And just now I was able to simply notice my breathing. A good sign, though I still feel rather anxious gearing up to do any of the many things I still want to catch up on from recent times letting things go. :-P
on: August 12, 2010 tagged:
Tom and I just agreed to meditate together every morning at 7:15am — w00t! This is great not only for the meditation itself, but also toward getting enough sleep I know that if I get up the same time every day that will establish a rhythm, and create a natural pressure to get to sleep early enough to get a full night's sleep.
This was while we were walking together to a new farmer's market near our co-op, where a friend (the one working on women's empowerment I wrote about earlier) and her marimba band were playing fantastic Zimbabwean music. I loved dancing even though I was almost the only one doing so, and was reminded that's another great bodily thing I can do more often.
on: August 8, 2010 tagged:
Waking up thinking about the game or other non-me things sometimes, but usually noticing quickly and shifting fairly easily to me/body. Struggling to get enough sleep. I took a lot of naps yesterday when I was sleepy, which was good, but I think for now at least I will narrow the topmost question further to how do I get enough sleep?
on: August 8, 2010 tagged:
One of the things I've been doing recently to avoid the rest of my life is playing a very involving online game. Some days it's been almost the only thing I've done from waking up to going to sleep. Waking up today, I came to an inquiry of what it would be like if I put the same intensity of time and attention I was putting into the game into myself.
Life is not offering me a straightforward way to try this out right now. My friend Karen Mercer was cremated today, in fact I interrupted writing this to go, and am very glad I did. I went because it matters to me to be part of her passing into whatever is next for her, and to be with her partner Tom Atlee, who is my housemate, colleague and a good friend. In a sense I did it for me. In a sense everything we do is for ourselves, but I've generally meant something narrower when writing here about making myself the top thing on my mind. How to be with myself first thing in the morning and last thing at night? How to be present in the moment more of the time, be more mindful about what I am doing and what I choose to do next? How to notice sooner when i'm struggling with some choice, do what will help me make it and move on? And what about all those body-related questions which have been on my mind since I chose to focus on that? Those are some of the inquiries I want to live into more.
But what's more alive right now is noticing that I can and did bring some of the attention to myself that I want into going out today. I bicycled to the cemetery and back, four miles each way which for me is a good workout. Also body-related, I took a shower, trimmed my beard, and put on a nice shirt. (If you don't know me it helps to know that I'm pretty relaxed about such things.) There were also unexpected work-ish connections there which may have a big impact on my life. We got to talking about a women's empowerment project one of us was organizing, and I offered to connect her with the communications director at the largest private foundation in Oregon. Another person is starting a non-profit supporting the natural burial movement and is looking for people to work with. I need an income and imagine that we would work together really well and have fun doing it, so I offered myself and we will explore that.
Women's empowerment was a life-long central issue for Karen, and we have all been dealing with the process of her death, so these connections seemed very appropriate to the occasion, and not tangential at all. Tom particularly appreciated this. (He'll probably write about it very shortly on his new blog, Death Matters.) Death has had some additional meaning for me recently, as I just turned 45 and the approach to and passing of that milestone has brought my attention to my own mortality — have I done enough, will I be able to do enough in the time left? As if I need to justify my existence. :-P
That brings up a lot more to say about death, but enough sitting and writing for now! Time to get up and live into my inquiries...
(laughter) ...and before I even posted this I was interrupted with house responsibilities, then dinner. Life keeps throwing things that I allow to take me away from what I'm saying I'd like to focus on. It's important to remember that it is always my choice, and to notice as I have here the ways that whatever I'm doing is also about me, even when it may not seem so at first.
on: August 6, 2010 tagged:
Too many questions. Starting with how to be in my body, not that I"ll ignore the other questions i wrote up earlier.
Stretched this morning a bit, will re-ask a housemate who does yoga about teaching me. Other possibilities include meditation (I do a body-scanning variety), walking, biking, and of course food. Personal grooming and clothes(!). Long hot baths. Ooh, massage! (Not affordable, but if I stay aware of it perhaps it will emerge.)
What else?
I have a vague sense of wanting a broader inquiry than just a list of things to do.
on: July 29, 2010 tagged:
So, I've had "me" as the top thing on my mind some, but it's kind of broad. What are the more specific topics or questions I would like to focus on? I don't have all of the questions I'd like yet, so that itself is one of the inquiries.
Another is how to stop doing (for more than, say, 24 hours) the life-avoidance thing in the all-consuming way I've often done. I generally prefer to focus on things to move toward rather than away from, but this feels right, though I'd also like some complementary questions that invite exploration in the positive direction.
How to have more trust? In support of that:
How to spend more time with people i love who love me?
How to be in my body more?
How to have a better sense of humor about myself?
Where to put my primary meaningful work attention?
How to make enough $ income?
That's actually more complete than I'd thought I could come up with so quickly, but I imagine there are still some good ones to come, and besides I can never pass up the opportunity to talk about recursion a bit — when you don't know what the question is, the question is, "What's the question?"
on: July 27, 2010 tagged:
I've been avoiding life on and off, well, much of my life. It's clearly my favorite strategy in response to the painful and difficult things we all face from time to time. What makes it really nasty is when I notice I'm doing it, feel guiilty about that ("I should be making the most out of life!"), and then try to avoid thinking about that by running away all the faster. That way madness lies!
Of course I can't escape myself. Every time I finally look up, there I am again, with all the same painful and difficult things to face, in fact often they're worse shape because they've been ignored for a while. Then I have the opportunity to take them on, or turn around and try running away again. If I don't run away, I often throw a lot of my energy at the outward tasks and projects I've let go: "I've been selfish and now it's time for me to attend to others."
Well, not this time.
Putting together a few things — some I've run across recently and some I've had bouncing around for a while — my first project is now officially me, for at least the next year. Here are the three things
1. Conversations with two close friends recently — Tom, who, in shifting his world-changing work to include advising others on how they should live their personal lives (he's generally been more exclusively focused on large-scale change), sees that to have integrity in advising others he must follow his own advice about attending to himself in healthier ways. With Jonas, I was just imagining out loud the other day what would happen if I focused primarily on myself. (Horrors! I identify myself in large part with my drive to help us all attend to the very big picture.)
2. An article (via Daring Fireball) about how you only have one top idea on your mind at a time, one thing that you'll be thinking about when you're not consciously thinking about anything. As a result that's the thing that you'll find yourself coming up with brilliant solutions for, so make sure it's what you want it to be. I woke up this morning thinking about the game I've been playing to avoid life, that was the final straw that got me up to decide and write all this.
3. "I may not be much, but I'm all I think about." —Dave Miller
(quote from a friend through the Nonviolent Communication network.)
The problem is not (as much spiritual advice goes) that things go bad when I'm selfish, and well when I focus on others. How can anyone avoid focusing on themself? The whole phenomenon of a self is a locus of awareness — I am aware of what I am aware of, everything I experience or do is experienced or done by me! It's a question of how I focus on me. When I do that in a healthy way, it's not only good for me, I just naturally also end up attending to others in much better ways. Of course the reverse is also true — when I focus on others in a healthy way, I naturally also end up attending to myself. So I'm not taking sides in a big philosophical sense in the focus-on-self vs. focus-on-others debate. I think that's a pointless question, obviously the answer is both. I'm just making a choice of where to start with my attention for now.
Concretely, a few small and large steps:
1. I wrote Dave's quote at the top of one side of the giant whiteboard in my room :-). Now that I think of it, I'd already cleared that side of it of various todos and reminders so that I could use it to focus on me, so clearly this decision has been emerging gradually.
2. I'm shifting back from lower-casing i to the more traditional capital I in my writing.
3. I'm reaching out today to some good friends who earlier agreed to be in a support group for me to get that started again.
(Hehe, phone just rang as I was finishing this — a work call with someone I've been trying to have a conversation with for a few days. And I told him i was busy with something important and would call him back when I'm done. Yay me! In fact I think I'll go take care of a couple of other brief but critical things for myself before calling back...)
on: July 24, 2010 tagged:
(See also Recent Changes on this wiki. For earlier posts, see ObBlog)
moon phases |
appreciating your thoroughness, accessibility, creativity, generosity, passion and love of living life, john abbe.
xo, shana deane COH2 2007.....Thu Jun 04 10:37:17 -0700 2009
Thanks JOHN! I enjoyed our call very much today. Getting familiar with Wagn. Found it pretty easy.
--JP Allen.....Sat May 15 15:25:27 -0700 2010
Seeing all this self-attention feels very tasty to me, John. L'Chaim!
--Angela (Not signed in).....Thu Aug 19 08:20:11 -0700 2010
Just read your Dec blogpost. Hope you're doing ok. Talk to JerryMichalski or GerryWeinberg about Quakers.
--BillSeitz (Not signed in).....Mon Jul 11 14:30:36 -0700 2011
Thx, been through a lot of darkness. Future is very up in the air, but just the last few days I've started having a more positive outlook about it all.
--John Abbe.....Mon Aug 22 13:50:18 -0700 2011
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