We're All Connected

Monday 23Feb15

One of our Managers was let go on Thursday January 30th. We were about to start our meeting, got moved out of the boardroom and into the lunch room because there was another meeting to take place. There seemed to be so much activity in the management office and the energy was a little chaotic but it didn't enter me. It wasn't my chaos.
Those of us who were going to meet in the lunchroom cracked a few jokes and were ready to begin as an executive stopped in the door and called the manager's name, "Can I talk to you for a second?"
"Sure,"she said, then looked at us, "I'll be right back."
And that was the last thing she said to us.

We saw the HR woman who is usually around when someone is being let go and a couple of the ladies made comments of, "oh-oh, if she's here that can't be good. Do you think the Manager is being fired?"
I said, "No, no. She doesn't always come for that. When I applied for a position at Head office she came to see me to tell me personally that I hadn't gotten the position. We discussed why the other person did get the position, she had more experience etc. She doesn't come for just bad news don't worry."
Minutes went by. The faces of the other ladies looked scared. They were that scared silent. The Security Coordinator and I cracked our jokes, trying to keep the mood light.
I said, "Ahh it's probably me getting fired."
He said, "Yes, and I'm going to be the one to escort you out of the building with 3 guards and a taser."
The ladies weren't having it. They kept to that scared silence.

Well, 45 minutes later, our big boss came in, closed the door, and said, "Well, I guess you folks have figured out what's going on. The manager has been let go."
I leaned back in my chair. My stomach turned.
He talked about stuff, my mind wasn't connecting. There were a few, "Whys?" and "I really liked working with her."

And I spoke up. "I just have to say something because my stomach is upset and well, I have to say what's on my mind. I feel so disheartened that after all her years of service that this is how it ends. We were just starting to get into a good groove..." And then surprising to me as well as to every one else I started to cry.

I was asked if I was making this whole experience about me and I said no, that I was upset that it feels like there is no loyalty to a persons years of service. This way of being let go was like a slap in the face. That I imagine that she is wondering what we are saying about her. That we can go through years of feeling abused by one manager and when we finally get a manager who listens that this is what happens. That we don't even get a chance to say a proper good-bye. It was like a death. How do I even contact her to say, "Are you okay?"

He talked to me again later and I said, "I don't warm up to many people. It makes a huge difference between working with someone you get along with and working with someone who you feel is always setting you up."

If there is anything good that came out of it, it's that us non-managers have been confiding in each other more. We've shared stories of the things we'd suffered through over the years. We've realized that we are not alone in some of the mistreatments that have transpired.

Last Thursday there was breaking news that a little 3 year old boy had gone missing from his Grandmother's apartment. It was so weird. As I walked to work in the morning it was so cold out that my knees hurt. When I got to work I was saying to a couple of co-workers that you'd think I could walk faster since it was so cold out but I actually walked slower because my legs were so cold. I had on leggings under my pants.

I think I got the breaking news email just after 8:30am about the little boy Elijah. He'd last been seen at 9:30pm when he was put down to bed. He was wearing a t-shirt and diapers and the apartment door was open.
Dear Lord, let this end in good news.

It didn't. People drove in from Mississauga, from London, Ontario. From all parts to help to look for little Elijah. He was found by a volunteer about 100 metres away from the apartment building without vital signs. I got that breaking news email and 30 minutes later the breaking news email that he had passed.
I felt defeated.

I worked that night at my part time job. As I was getting ready to leave for the evening we turned up the news to hear the full report. There had been a picture of little Elijah in the apartment building lobby before he left the building out into the -30 degree weather to his eventual death. My eyes welled up.
In the report, they said that the volunteers who found him were crying. That the police who took him to the ambulance were crying. They spoke to some of the volunteers on the scene and they broke down just saying, "We came to help. We were hoping for the best. This is just so heartbreaking."

I started to cry.

I said to my co-worker, "When I heard the news this morning that he'd passed away I kept trying to think of a reason for this. Maybe the angels were with him. Maybe they woke him and held his hand and said it's time for the job you were brought here to do - to open everyone's hearts." Because why would something so tragic have to happen?

Friday morning as I had my shower, I thought of little Elijah and pictured his sweet smiling face and I sobbed. I sobbed because so many of us would have offered our own lives in order for his little 3 year old life to continue. I sobbed because this life can be so damned painful and feel so senseless.

I want to believe there is a purpose for this painful story. So many strangers, including myself, are mourning his death. His death tells us that we are all connected. When life is incomprehensible we are all connected. We all cry, we all mourn. In this cold, cold winter that has been bearing down on us, they've been calling it 'winter fatigue' in the news, we can find the energy to help each other. We have to.

There are so many negative things that can be said about this city, any city, but then our hearts open and we show up. There has been an endless year of bad Police coverage in the news in both the United States and Canada and then a story like this brings us back to the real deal, that the Police are witnesses to regular pains that we can't comprehend. Incidences and crimes and senseless deaths that would break us.

There are so many ways to look at life and then the Universe shakes us and we have to find gratitude for our small lives because we don't know what kind of traumas can be around the corner. We have to find a way to live in honesty, with compassion, with love. We have to realize that the minute we feel our connection to each other the less likely we are to continue to do terrible things to each other. And when we're kinder to each other we'll be kinder to animals and mother earth.

Even on the Oscars last night. It was the people who stood up and spoke for something more who received the real applause. Because it is time. It is time we accept each other. It is time that we respect and care for one another.

There are so many levels of us living in fear and living in anger and feeling abused and victimized and vilified. There is so much pain. We have to feel it in ourselves to see it in others. xo

EY

Over Sensitive Artist

I love Sia Furler's work.

I love her voice and I love her writing. If you go back to my straight for the knife blog entry, she had already affected me with saying what I was feeling about a man. It was painful at first but now I can listen to that song and feel the learning that went with that whole experience.

Last night I was over sensitive about some of the comments my friends were making about her performance on the Grammy's. Several people wrote similar statuses of, "What is this mess?"
I don't know it really upset me.

So I wrote a little comeback on facebook:

"So many people are posting about Sia in a negative way. I love her. She is an amazing songwriter and was only going to write and get out of performing for many reasons. How hard the industry can be on people, women in particular. Her problems with addiction. People not accepting her and her faring better as a writer...
I think about stage fright, and insecurities and still being able to find a way to perform because she turns her back on the audience. Performing through our fears. She has an amazing voice.
And I see the dance as the crazy mental chatter in our heads. People who go crazy. People who suffer from depression and paranoia. The thoughts, the crazy thoughts.
You don't have to like her but take a moment and think about what she is doing. She is an artist.
My grammys rant for the year."

A couple of people responded rather kindly. I don't think I was looking for a response per se. And I said, "all I wanted was people to think about it before they dismiss it. She touches me in my deep place where all my fears live and I want people to see that. They can continue on disliking her, of course, but I want them to at least see the validity of her work."

I think what is happening is that I am seeing myself as an artist again.

Recently, at work, the conversation came up about being mortgage poor. One of the managers said she couldn't do something because she was mortgage poor. I said I couldn't do it because I was music poor. I spend all my money on music.
Someone asked me if I downloaded music for free. "Hell no. I pay for other peoples work. I understand how hard it is to do the work. I understand how hard it is to be an artist and survive off the money you make off it. Heck I'm a discouraged artist and working here because I haven't had what it takes to be a paid, thriving artist."

My boss went into a long monologue about buying a whole album for one good song and yadda yadda yadda. I tuned him out.

There's no excuse for that now. You can buy one song.

I talk so much about healing and themes each year. And I'm slowly seeing that it's my artist that I'm starting to look at healing.

It's funny, as I wrote my little Grammys rant on facebook last night I forgot that Sia's album title is 1000 forms of fear. And yet in my facebook response I said, "She touches me in my deep place where all my fears live."

Yes fear and missing out on so many more flavours.
I've been a multi-talented person from when I was very little.
I always danced. I was the little girl who automatically started dancing to music even before I could speak. My mother would get me to dance in front of the grown ups and they would all watch me with big smiles. Dancing then was just moving up and down but I improved once I got older. I wanted to be a solid gold dancer. Dance training was never an option or even an idea of an option.

In grade 2 or 3, I discovered my singing voice. I can remember that singing class (there was such thing when I was a kid)when we sang the same song as a group and everyone turned around in class to look at me because my voice was louder than everyone else. My singing teacher encouraged me but I wasn't at that school long enough for it to move on to any real training or options. I went to three different schools in grade three. By the third school I was a quieter, shy, child. No one knew I could sing.

My mom would get me to sing in front of the company when she had parties. Often she would get me to sing, Firefly, to the record by The Temptations. It was her favourite song. My mother always wanted to be a singer. Her praise and criticisms were unpredictable. They would range from the sing to my friends to stop showing off, you don't even know what you are doing.

I used to draw. If you ever read my old blog entries you would know that both my brother and I would draw. My brother was the Picasso to my Charles Schultz. I could only draw cartoons. My brother could draw wild animals, people, landscapes and cartoons. Where my brother's drawings were put up around the house by my mother for admiration, my cartoons were completely ignored. So I gave up drawing and picked up writing.

I've been writing since I was 10 years old. I have been offered mentorships by professional writers three times in my writing life. I ran away in fear because a couple of people whose opinions I valued told me they were not interested in helping me, they were only interested in stealing my work.

I've been a blocked and creative artist interchangeably for my entire adult life. I am not blaming anyone, please understand. I am simply saying that I needed others to help me to believe enough in myself and my talents.
Those are a brief look into my fears.

Growing up being in love with music I could never understand why it was so hard to have easy access to all the types of music. You know, radio was top 40. My mom did play jazz on a Saturday afternoon or classical on a Sunday. Classical was annoying until it wasn't and so was jazz for that matter. Right?

As an adult as I listen to the music from my childhood I hear so much more because I have so much more experience and music knowledge. When I listen to Blood, Sweat & Tears song, Spinning Wheel, I don't hear it as a classic rock song, I hear it as a jazz piece. And Queen's, Somebody to Love, I hear as a gospel song.

I guess the more we know, the more we appreciate and the more we see.

The main reason I love Sia's performances is because she turns her back on the audience. She's telling me and every over-sensitive artist, in every performance that there are ways to still put our work out there and carry our fears along with us. We can bring the mental chatter and our crazy along with us.

I'm asking people to open your minds to the artists out there, even if you don't like them. And see the bigger picture.

We all say we're tired of the lowest common denominator ass shaking and boob revealing performances but we can't expect to get through that and past that until we start to see what options there can be out there. I only started to love movement theatre because I was exposed to it. It was a beautifully, brilliant piece done at a fringe show that Theatre Rusticle did called the Stronger. I didn't understand it for the first half of the show until I did. And then it was a cannonball through my soul. It blew me wide open.

We need to make a proper space for our artists. They chronicle our experiences. They help us to articulate our humanity. We can't simply dismiss someone's work with what is this mess?
The two friends who did respond to my facebook rant said they just didn't like the song. Mind you, they weren't the ones who said, What is this mess? So they were never the people I was talking to. You don't like the song, you don't like the song. That I can understand. That's specific.

What is this mess? I don't get why she's singing facing the wall and she has this child and woman making these frenetic moves. Then we're open for a dialogue. Open for interpretation. Open to learn.

What is this mess? A brilliant woman who is finding a way to put her work out there through 1000 forms of fear.

EY

15 Songs you never knew were written by Sia

Criticism of Sia using 12 year old dancer Maddie

I have an Open Head and an Open Ajna

I started working with my open head (or crown). That's the top triangle. All the shapes/centers that are white are considered open or undefined. Because of that open, undefined, triangle I am prone to receiving mental pressure from others and often think that it is my pressure when it isn't. I get lost in all this mental dialogue, mental chatter that I think I have to figure out.
My biggest issue that I noticed I have is solving other peoples problems. I ask all these questions and I feel like I need to find the answers to these questions, not realizing that they're not my questions.
The hardest part is being able to allow those questions to flow through my thoughts and not become attached to them.

My head and those questions is not a place for me to work out what my next decisions are. And the moment I think it is the place is the moment I am overcome with mental anxiety. The moment I think that the questions are valid is the moment I am overcome with mental anxiety.

At work, it was the situation of not ever having been invited by my boss to share my ideas or opinions. I've understood that clearly since I've found out about Human Design. So I know I'm working in a situation where I haven't been invited. That tells me to be quiet. Don't volunteer information. Don't say what I think could be done to improve anything because I won't be heard. That was simple enough. The hard part was the question, How do I gain approval from a person who hasn't invited me?

Still not the clearest question because the question was more, how do I avoid having to listen to being told that I didn't do my work the right way, according to him? I've spent all this time second guessing how he wants me to do my job in order for him not to tell me that I didn't do it right. If I did this first then I'd find out that I should't have done this first. Can you see what happens with that kind of thinking? I'm rushing around trying to get everything done at once simply so I don't have to hear, "Why didn't you do this first? This is more important."

I'm running around in this circle of anxiety, trying to avoid another beat down of disapproval when I know full well that I know how to do my job. I go into stress mode because I'm going to receive another evaluation where I have to fight every negative bullet point of how I'm not very good at my job.

As I started studying what the undefined head center stood for I started to think, "wait a minute, if he's never invited me, he can never approve of me. If he can't approve of my work then no matter which way I do it, it will be wrong."
AHA, AHA, AHA!

Damned if I do, Damned if I don't. hmm
If I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't then what do I do?
Don't do and don't don't. Get it?

I've always known what to do at this job. I know that certain projects have to be done by certain dates because accounting needs to process invoices based on my work by certain cut-offs, for example. These cut-offs are company wide. They are not arbitrary dates that can be pushed back and pushed back.

I've been second guessing my own work that I know, I know how to do because of all these questions in my head that have nothing to do with me. I know how to do my work. It is always accurate.
He will always voice his disapproval because there is no approval. What the hell am I getting stressed out for? I can't win.

The only valid question I need to answer, which I have, is do I know how to do my job right?
So, since I do know how to do my job right the only thing I need to do is do my job.

And that's what I've been doing since January. I've been simply doing my job. When he asks me if I've done something yet and I haven't, I inform him no and list all of the activities that are on my to-do list and when I plan on doing the activity he's asked me about. And I keep going on about my business.

I do not need to find answers to all these myriad of other questions that are not my questions.

I can use my open head to help me to relax, remind me to stay quiet (not initiate) and change my negative thoughts. I can use my open head to think about what I want to write.
My open head is good to help me to review but it doesn't help me to do.
Do not make decisions - I don't need to decide to quit my job, nor when I should quit my job. My head center can't help me with that. It's my strategy and authority that helps me with that decision. My strategy is to wait for an invitation and my authority is to find out within my emotional wave how I feel about that invitation.

My little mantra I wrote for myself regarding my open head center is be quiet and focus on my own projects. Think about my own projects. Not my questions, not my pressure, not my energy, not my chaos. I have to differentiate between what is theirs and what is mine. None of it is mine. Because I am open, it is coming into me and it is amplified. It is not mine.
The lesson is to become unattached and simply watch. Be quiet and focus on my own projects. Seeking his approval on the way I do my work is not my project. Doing my work accurately and within the set deadlines is my project.

With the Open Ajna (mind) center directly below the Head/crown center it's the mental pressure (the head) to find the right answers (the ajna).
The mental pressure questions that we think we need the right answers can fall into things like I have to be debt free before I have a baby or before I fall in love. I need to move into a bigger place before I start dating. I don't have to have an answer for everything or anything for that matter.

The Ajna, whether defined or undefined brings mental anxiety and fear. It just so happens that the undefined ajna's fear and anxiety is amplified because we are taking in so much more. We think we have to do this or that (whatever we name ii like x in a mathematical equation) in order to relieve the anxiety.

The combination of the two centers were causing me mental anxiety because I felt like I had to make decisions. I felt I had to fix things. I felt I had to do something to change what's been going on within the environment and only then would I feel okay.

I wrote up a bunch of notes for my open Ajna to help me to hone in on how all this pressure was feeding this anxiety that needn't be here

I do not have to do this (Quit my job; move away)
I do not have to do that (Get my life in order before I quit my job; move before I date)
I do not have to say that. I do not have to speak if I'm not invited. I do not have to help if I'm not invited. I do not have to find a way to resolve my issues at work. I let my strategy and authority decide how and when I speak. I don't have to rehearse possible answers to possible questions. If I make a rash decision about what I think I should do and follow through on it, I will replay that decision for the rest of my life. "Did I do the right thing? What if I had done it differently?"

Ask myself, Does this matter? Is this of value?
I can never be certain of anything I am not like everyone else and there is nothing wrong with that.
I don't need to be uncomfortable when I don't have an answer.
I simply need to learn how to be fully present instead of working to develop an answer or comment. (I was so anxious, I was always rehearsing in my head.)

I don't need to finish anyone's sentence. I can listen without impatience. I cannot solve my personal problems by figuring them out with the mind.

Studying those two centers has relieved me of so much angst.

I had that little conversation with myself like you have. There are two things that can happen here. I can quit my job or I can be fired. If he wants to fire me, he has to have a reason. If he doesn't have a reason then he has to pay me off. There are labour laws. I could quit, but there are still many good qualities about my job and so far, I haven't been invited to something new. And this job has really only been about this relationship. Well if all that is the case then I simply go to what I've always done in every job I've ever worked at. I simply do the best job I can do. And that's what I've been doing.

I stopped getting upset when decisions are made that I think, don't make sense. I remind myself that I'm not invited so there's no need to volunteer my "make sense" ideas because they won't be heard anyways. Ironically enough, we've been getting along much better.


A side note about invitations, in case I haven't explained them properly. If I had been invited then I wouldn't have to repeatedly be invited. I could go up to his office any time and say, I have an idea about saving our department money... Or I could email him and say, I was thinking of another way we could do this that might be quicker... And he would be open to 'hearing' what I had to say/email. Because I haven't received an invitation nor been recognized in knowing what I'm doing, if I volunteer, I am a nuisance.

Any of the notes I've gotten have been from the book I've been studying by Lynda Bunnell called Living Your Design. A Manual for Celular Transformation.

Previous blog entry about My Questions

EY

Playlists - side bar

2014 Playlist was "Lift Me Up"


1. Turn it Into Something Good - Earth, Wind & Fire
2. I'm Going all the Way - The Sounds of Blackness
3. Get Up - Amel Larrieux
4. You Can Do It - The Brand New Heavies
5. You Gotta Be - Des'ree
6. I Believe I can Fly - R. Kelly
7. On Top of the World -Imagine Dragons
8. Am I Wrong? Nico & Vinz
9. We Give You Thanks - The Sounds of Blackness
10. Please Take My Hand - The Sounds of Blackness
11. Happy - Pharrell Williams
12. You Can Make it if you Try - Sounds of Blackness
13. Yes We Can - Sounds of Blackness
14. Do it for love - Dannielle DeAndrea
15. Superwoman - Alicia Keys
16. Never Stop - Brand New Heavies
17. Optimistic - Sounds of Blackness
18. Stand - Sounds of Blackness
19. His Eye is on the Sparrow - Lauryn Hill
20. Magic - Olivia Newton-John
21. Your wish is My Command - Sounds of Blackness


2015 Playlist is "FUNK"
1. Affection - Tamara & the Seen
2. Lost You - Zed's Dead
3. I love Myself - Kendrick Lamar
4-7. Uptown Funk - Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars
Uptown Funk plays 4 times in a row, if that can't get me going, I'm the walking dead!
8-11 Check up on it - Beyonce and Slim Thug
12. Holdin on - Flume
13. Still Got Me - Mark Ronson featuring Daniel Merriweather
14. If you want me to stay - Eric Benet
15. One more day - Glenn Lewis
16. Tell me Something Good - Rufus and Chaka Khan
17. Ain't off to the back - Ben L'oncle Soul
18. Ain't no other man - Christina Aguilera
19. Groove Thang - Zhane
20. Hey Mr. DJ - Zhane
21. We run this - Missy Elliott
22. Love will never do without you - Janet Jackson
23. When I think of you - Janet Jackson
24. There you Go - Pink
25. Raise your Glass - Pink
26. Funhouse - Pink
27. Love you Honey - Randy & the Gypsys
28. High wire - Ernie Isley
29. All about that Bass - Meghan Trainor

That's just a taste. There's 252 songs in the playlist. I've been listening to it daily and tweaking it, like putting Uptown Funk and Check up on it 4x's in a row. And it was originally only funk but it really is more dance than strictly funk.

Do you have a playlist for the year to set the tone?

EY

Being Here

The above quote and picture came from Jovian Archive

I'm feeling like I'm in 2015 energy and out of 2014 energy. Thank goodness. I was happy to see that year behind me. Mind you, It was a big learning year for me but you know what that often means right? The learning curve came with much pain. But like that GoDaddy.com commercial that makes me laugh 2014 can stick it! Stick it! Ha-ha!

I'm in my personal 3 year of Numerology and although I don't have many notes on my previous personal 3 years there are some great themes:

1988 - at 24 years old - I left my job as a nanny to 8 children.
I started a part time job at a bowling alley where I subsequently got bar-tending experience that experience subsequently got me a job as a waitress/bartender and then restaurant assistant manager and brought me downtown. And a co-worker at that job got me into working at a performing arts centre of which I've had a job within the performing arts either full-time or part-time ever since. You just don't know the gifts one little part-time job can give you. All the theatre and musicals and dance that I've watched because of my jobs and the people I've met including eventually my Australians!

I met one of the Warren Beatty's of Straight for Knife blog entry that year.

1997 - at 33 years old - I ditched the other Warren Beatty once and for all.
I spread my mom's ashes in Montreal

2006 - at 42 years old - It was a fun year.
I worked the final children's festival of one of the performing arts centres that I'd worked at for over 10 years. Every children's festival I'd worked I'd always get scheduled with the crappy guy. Everyone would be scheduled with their buddies and they'd ask me, "what did you do wrong that you have to suffer that punishment?" When I finally brought it up on the previous year, I was told that not every one could be scheduled with their friends. "You have to understand that we need people in specific places. It's not personal." But EVERY YEAR?!?
So for the final year I gave availability that made it impossible for me to be scheduled in the shitty position. It was my nice way of saying that the years of taking advantage of my accommodating nature were over.

And now we're in 2015 and I'm thinking of my personal 3 options. Thinking of what no longer serves me. Those were the themes of the previous 3 years. How might I begin something new, with a foot in the door, and what gifts might come with that beginning? Or better yet, what invitations might come with my preparation for them?

As I move into 2015 energies, I feel like I resolved the issues and blocks of the previous Warren Beatty with the help of George Clooney. He really did serve a fine purpose. I'm living comfortably with the knowledge that he is not for me. I've watched myself through a very important cycle, a full cycle with him. I don't feel any bitterness about it whatsoever and I understand emotionally that my cycle (It's actually called a wave in Human Design) is at the very least one full year. The brilliant thing is that we've gotten to a point where I can ask him questions and he answers them. It's like that episode of Sex & the City when Burger tells Miranda, "He's just not that into you." And she says,"Thank you! That information is so freeing."
Why doesn't he call when he says he's going to? He's just not that into you...

Old things I've learned about myself prior to starting this Human Design journey are being confirmed again and again with the HD experiment.

Things like:
- I need to know what a person wants from me so I can say either yes or no. In HD, it's the invitations of course there's the proper recognition of me that goes hand in hand.

- Something my mother told me when I was a young child, "You have to learn how to play solitaire. You have to know how to have fun all by yourself." In HD, it's what do I do while I wait for the invitations.

- I've always had a delayed reaction before I know how I feel. It can take me days to know How I really feel about a situation. In HD, My delayed reaction is my emotional wave.

- Be seen and not heard; Don't speak until spoken to. A childhood mantra I was raised on. And ironically enough in HD it's about me not initiating. I have to wait for the invitation. I have to be recognized first otherwise it's disastrous.

- Whenever I'm really happy in my life and I've got things going on is when men/people/friends approach me. In HD, the best quote that resonated with me is, "A Projector happily engaged and intrigued pulls the interest of others to them." I'm the person quietly reading on a flight somewhere and every body keeps asking, "What are you reading?" or saying, "Oh you look engrossed."

- I've always been an aloof person. I've never been one who makes friends quickly because I know that the energy of the wrong people wears me out. In HD, Tune into subtle energies to get the cooperation and attention to fulfill your purpose. Pause to assess situations and intentions of others.


So yes, Human Design is still on my roster. I think I'll make another blog entry to discuss my Head Center which has cleared up my mental anxieties because -- they weren't mine!

I usually have a specific theme for my year or a knowledge of what it will be but so far it feels wide open. When I listen to my intuition I hear words like Love, Self-Care, Faith. Faith has been coming up a lot. But more like faith in the process. I get a sensing, they tell me, 'it looks like chaos but have faith. When it's time, you'll understand.'
So I believe, I surrender, I find my faith.

There's a newness. It's like everything has been interwoven and all I have to do right now is simply Be Here.
Be here with the noise. Be here with the peace. Be here.
And as I'm here, I bring music with me. Where last year's playlist was called, Lift me Up, and it was filled with gospel music and songs of positivity this year's playlist is called , FUNK, and it's all about dancing.

I haven't talked about dreams in a long time. Hmm, Have I ever? LOL! Anyway, I've kept dream journals since I was in my early 20s. Dec 1996 is when my mom passed away, which was my personal 2 year and last year was my personal 2 year. In my dream on the early morning of the day of her death, last December, I dreamt about pandas. Playful, baby, pandas. I got off the public transit to help their caregivers coral them all to safety because they were running around playfully in the streets. One of the pandas jumped into my arms for a cuddle.

I love bears. I've always known that one of my animal spirits is the bear. It's been interchangeably a black or brown bear. It's been with me since childhood. When I'm/ it's scared it rushes at what scares us, then stands up on its hind legs and makes itself as big as possible. It lets you know don't fuck with us. We will do damage. It only comes out then. It came out most recently a couple summers ago when a man scared me in the grocery store. He backed away quickly. There is a polar bear too that joined up with us around 2006 but that bear is really quiet, still. The elephants joined me around 2010 (Thursday and Good Friday). There are quite a few elephants I still don't know how many. And Ganesha joined me by 2011, I think. The baby Ganesha in my dreams. A little playful guy, really adorable, who I could sense was telling me, "I go where ever you go." And a giant, adult Ganesha who leans in the doorway when I go for my massages and simply waits for me so I can really go deep into my relaxation.

And the cuddling, baby pandas that my mother sent me on the anniversary of her death. I originally thought it was simply to help me to cope with the day especially since I'd had nightmares every night leading up to the date. Because Pandas? Adorable! :-D But then as I researched pandas I realized that Panda is my animal spirit for my Human Design journey. So many of the things that my mother taught me, when I was a child, that upset me, are now turning out to be the perfect training for this Projector trip.

The Panda is about finding pleasure in what you are doing, not multi-tasking or over-working or being busy. Conserving energy; waiting and patience. And they can be as fierce as a tiger (the projector anger or bitterness.)


Dancing and Waiting Patiently and Being Here.

EY