authentic- [ aw théntik ]...

authentic- [ aw théntik ]

Definition- Not false or copied: genuine and original, as opposed to being a reproduction

I thought I’d post today about the single most liberating and life changing thing that can happen to a human being, to give yourself freedom and acceptance to be your authentic self. This solitary choice can give you independence from the daily internal sabotaging and conflict that goes on in your brain between who you were meant to be, and the little voices that you carry on with all day. Now let’s call your authentic self the conscious mind, the ‘who you are without question’, and the little voices the subconscious. It is a fact that the subconscious processes some 20,000,000 environmental stimuli per second, sorting, filing, stacking, interpreting, and reacting while the conscious mind can only attend to 40. It’s a scientific fact that your brain has its own agenda and is only doing what it is biologically designed to do, to process as much information as possible and present solutions that keep you comfortable, protect you from imminent danger, and work whatever angle necessary to be accepted. No hard feelings.

It is only because, like every other human being on the planet, I’ve been there 20,000,000 times per second that I can already hear your little voice saying, “What do you mean ‘authentic self’? Who else would I be?” Take a minute, take a deep breath, and stuff a sock in that little voice. We all make do, or make it up at some point or another and if we have anything or anyone to place blame upon, let’s lay the wrap on biology. It’s a safe place to put it, and now that the blame is out of the way (clapping hands together like slapping dust off), let’s get down to really real business.

Let’s lay it out there. The thought of being your authentic self is scary. What if people don’t like you? Not the you you put out in the world, but the real McCoy? What if others don’t think you are funny, or smart, or entertaining, or a good person, or have good taste, or what if they just don’t enjoy your company? What then? It’s much easier to put up a mirage and accept the fact that if anyone has any complaints or judgments that it’s not really about you. My question to you is what in the world makes you think you are the only one? The people that you are so afraid of, are equally afraid of you! Isn’t this front of ours is a huge waste of time? At what point do we give up living a LIFE where we are fully free to express who we are, for the possibility of looking good to someone else? We all judge each other anyways whether we are being authentic and genuine, or whether we are putting up the grand mirage. I am telling you from absolute experience that if you give up all that mumbo jumbo and put yourself out in the world, you will never be happier or more fulfilled.

For most that have truly discovered their authentic selves, there was an ‘AH-HA!’ moment where everything fell away and being the lead actor or actress was exposed as being an exhausting waste of time. You finally decide that wasting another precious moment putting work into something so empty is simply unacceptable. How about giving that “AH-HA!” moment a little prod? Start with some small, embarrassing secret. Confess to a group of people that you like Brittney Spears music, that you have a crush on Prince, that even though you have a business degree, your big dream is to own a hair salon, or that you think Sarah Palin would be a great president (OMG) but lay it out as a fact instead of a dirty little secret. Once you see that you haven’t died from embarrassment or that nobody has sent you to live on a deserted island all by yourself, your next reveal will be easier. Keep revealing, continue to speak your mind. Put yourself out there. Keep an empty head and just BE. Try not to think so much. It’s seriously overrated.

Giving an A...

Lately I’ve picked up a few “inspirational” books to see what differences and belief systems might exist that I haven’t tapped into yet. I take pieces of what I like from here and there and toss the rest aside. It becomes a path to a new game and I love who I’ve been able to create from listening to, reading about, and practicing new things.  For those of you that know me personally, I choose to be an upbeat, positive person! The glass isn’t half empty or full because a glass containing and constructed of fabulosity simply cannot be measured in those terms. I rarely have a bad day because I don’t believe in them. When I have a bad day it is because of the way that I put the events that occurred that day into context, and the way that I personally chose to experience those events.

The most recent book I’ve attempted to dig into is called “The Art of Possibility”. It has stars up the wazoo and people all over the globe are raving about how this book will change your life, etc. etc. Now I AM only ½ way through at this point so I’m keeping an open mind. Besides, everyone interprets things differently so even if I gave it a single star, that opinion would be just as valid as any one of the 5 star givers.

This particular post is about an observation about where I was listening from during a chapter entitled “Giving an A”. It’s also about how I reinterpreted the chapter to my liking and got something fab out of it even though my interpretation was not the author’s intended delivery. We can do that you know. Change shyte around until it suits us, and then make it real!

Everybody gets an A. Oh boy. Paragraphs through this chapter I considered closing the book and considering it a fail. Hippy nonsense and psychobabble! Bah-humbug! It is not my belief that everyone deserves an A. Children who get medals just for showing up are not being prepared for the harshness of the really real world. They are not being encouraged to be more. There are winners and losers and that’s just the way it is, try harder. Same goes for the work place. Higher motivated and higher achieving employees should get a bigger bonus than slackers. This is what I believe… uh, wait a minute. Hold up. This is a belief not an experience. Beliefs are made up, experiences are real. Ok. Put this idea into a different context and see where it takes you!

I decided instead not to give everyone an A for their achievements or their likeness to me, or to give an A so that they feel better about themselves and I feel better about me, but instead I gave an A for being a perfect human being. Exactly as they stand. Each one of us is uniquely different and we each turn up the noise and proceed to be whatever that little voice in our head encourages us to be. We load up all our fears and insecurities, our past, and our belief systems, and we create this person that doesn’t really exist. Underneath all of that made up mumbo jumbo, is a perfect human being. If you think that this is bunch of hippy nonsense and psychobabble (bah-humbug I GET IT!), just give it a try. Find someone to eyeball and give them an A for being a perfect human being. Try to remember that your act is just as ridiculous as their act, and the act is what we create to survive life. No act is correct nor the truth, it’s just what we think we need to survive in the world, to be accepted, and to be able to live with ourselves.

Its a great day to be a girlfriend (GF)!

I didn't really think about it when I did it. A pinkie swear seemed like something fun to do, and before I knew it, I was suffering alongside a girlfriend(gf) who had sworn off chocolate, cheese, booze, and caffeine for a whole week. Even though visions of chocolate covered cheese booze ran rampant through my head the entire week (I couldn't commit to the zero caffeine clause), I didn't regret the compulsive decision one bit. What made this pinkie swear really special is that it was not a share between 100 year bffs, it was a pinkie swear between co-workers, between two goofy women who share office space. This is one of those little things that girls do, that even we don't completely understand and these little things, are what make us all the more interesting and necessary to each other. I have yet to come home and have my husband tell me he's made a random pinkie swear with a fellow man so he's off cheese for a week. Men and women have lots and lots of great, amazing, magnificent things to share with each other but makeup, and hairdos, Hello Kitty, and pinkie swears are not among these things. Actually one of my biggest giggles is to tell him "lets talk about our feelings", as I would with any one of my gf's, and watch the shear terror spread over his handsome face. Its not that he doesn't have feelings, its just that his way of working them out is to go build something.  Man, its a great day to be a gf!

Now I made a decision when I really began blogging that if I was going to do this thing, I was going to have to be completely honest and let the chips fall where they may.  One of the cool things that I get out of this relationship is hearing from other women who tell me that just by sharing my experiences and hearing them from a woman's perspective, written in chick language, I've opened up a crack in the door for them and  have given them a space to see things from a new perspective. How awesome is that? It made me think about all of the rotten things, and all the awesome experiences I  still have to share, and I get to do it because I made a decision to blog free. These random little notes also made me ponder the way that we share as gf's, and it's a weird, complex, dramatic, loving, supportive, irrational, ridiculously long story-telling way to share. It's perfect!

So I'm throwing a shout out to my fellow Chick-a-dees! Girlie's remember that we speak the same twisted, coded, language. We love stories with details (don't you dare leave a thing out!), and we have experienced the same types of heartaches and joy in the same way. We cry during commercials, and notice when a fellow gf has a new outfit. We even know what colors look best on our gf's! This is something special that we share. Something that connects us even if we don't have similar interests, so listen up! If we are ever to become who we were meant to be in the world, we have to do what chick-a-dee's do best, continue to cheer lead for each other, support each other in our irrational rationale, listen with rapturous interest to even the smallest sentence, and give each other comfort with our own tales of 'Yeah girl, I've been there!" There is everything right about being a girl. Don't ever let anyone tell you that it's silly, or ridiculous, or that things that make us happy don't have any significance. These things are significant to us which make them necessary.  Now go out into the world and grab a gf to make a pinkie swear with. It's what we were born to DO.

*A shout out to Bee for the use of her pinkie in the photo above. Bee, I know you've been anxiously awaiting your premier and I must say, your pinkie photographs finer than any I've ever seen (wink!)

Spring Cleaning...

I'm really very fortunate. My Mom and I have been working on a healthy, honest, relationship for the past few years. While sometimes our conversations are heated, and sometimes we are ready to push each other face first in a mud puddle and shake, these conversations can also be very insightful and healing. Now we aren't even close to being complete, but we are working on it, one little story at a time.

It's important that you understand what this whole thing is about. My mom and I have always been very close, we've always been in love however, we've also been very careful at protecting each other and covering the ugly with a big ol' juicy red heart. By doing this, the ugly never went away but instead festered until it became silent anger coated with resentment. For two people who love each other and have only tried to protect each other, it's a hard place to be, fessing up that we got some shyte to work through, but here we are.

I'm sharing this because recently my mom told me I need to move forward and stop being so angry for all the muck we've been through, and try to focus on the good moments. This leads me to suspect she reads my blog (Hi Mom!). This is completely cool with me however this particular conversation with her had me explaining why I bring the past up at all. It is my thought that if I share some of my life experiences with you, YOU will be able to relate to me on some level. Connect with me in a way that preaching good, and happiness, and choice alone won't do. I stand by my soapbox preachings that your life is up to you, that an amazing life is waiting for you if you dump the meaning that you've put into your show and take a step forward. I share my past with you not because I'm living there, but because perhaps you've been in a similar space and I might be able to show you the truth by experiencing my stories from their mucky bottoms to the way out. I can't be sure, but I also think that once you get to a certain age, you start to examine all the things that you've been stuffing in neat little boxes up to this point. You pull out all the junk in the boxes and shelp through the contents, and even though the contents are covered with goo and spiders, it's important to do some spring cleaning once and for all.

One thing is certain, there is no going backwards and fixing what went wrong. You can't change your past, but you can become clear about how much your past influences your present. If you can roll up your sleeves and get to work cleaning out your closet, if you can put up your dukes and confront all the skeletons inside, if you can make a courageous choice to leave all the meaning behind that you've associated with all the piled up junk in there, you have a real shot at creating your future. What do I mean by creating your future? Aren't you already doing that? The surprise answer is probably no.

Think of your past in this way, when things have worked out in the past, when things were going really great, you did your best to recreate the experience and even plan in the future to recreate what worked. When things didn't pan out, or you ended up with an outcome that pretty much sucked, you tended to focus on doing your best to avoid the same experience. Either way, your past in already in your future. It's a weird kind of understandable. We are reluctant to put the past behind us because we know what the probable outcome will be, we've already been there, it is comfortable and we know how to handle what comes next even if it sucks. Now try to imagine this, your closet is empty, you've worked out your shyte, and now there is nothing in the future... it's yours to create. Ya dig?

The really cool thing about creating your future is, there are no limits. Everything that you decided you were before, doesn't exist anymore. You have no angel on one shoulder, no devil on the other. Everything you admire in others and wished could be yours, could be if you choose it. Creating comes from a place of nothingness and empty. Creating is what you began as a child and then somewhere along the way, something happened, good or bad, and instead of creating, you re-created or avoided events that had already happened. I know, I know, it can be quite a shock. You created everything? It's all made up? If you clear it... there's nothing? This reasoning is at the core of all my many soapbox preachings. Anything is possible if you begin with nothing and create what's next. The tough part is getting out the broom and the dustpan and getting to work on that closet.

Rapture...

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. —Mark 16:17-18

The idea of "Rapture" sprouted after I watched a documentary on Appalachian serpent handlers. I was immediately drawn to these people and their passion for God, their devotion to their religion, and their absolute disregard for the probability that harm that was likely to come to them because of their practices. I was drawn to their prideful ways, not in material things or physical appearances, but of their BE-ing, of their culture, of their history and roots.

Serpent handling is serious business. Serpent handlers believe that The Bible says to take up serpents and that those who practice handling are simply taking the gospel literally. It is their belief that if a handler is fatally bitten it is God's will. If God is ready to take them, their time has come. The people who practice handling have their own ways, their own music, their own way of speaking. Serpent handling has even been outlawed in most states because it can be fatal yet, the faithful continue to worship in the way they see fit. Rebel, rebel.

If you are interested in learning more about this culture and this practice, there is no shortage of information available. As for the painting itself, the first few paragraphs describe her beginning, the idea of where I started. You have the obvious visual explanation and with the help of some key notes above, you can pick through and pull out some meat in the body that describe a bit of my personal outlook and experiences. Lets chat now about the little bits and pieces that I didn't mention above that make the painting personal to me. Let's get in the guts and dig around a little shall we?

My biggest struggle with this piece was actually the color scheme. I need color. I use color and brightness as a beacon to lead you to me. As a young girl, raised in a large, tight-knit family who's focus was the adults and all of their many issues, many times most of the kids felt invisible. We were expected to blend in, to not call attention to the lack of attention, to learn to say convincingly that everything is good, everything is normal, I'm okay, you're okay, and behind the cardboard facade, everything was deteriorating, cracked, peeling, or already broken. I was very uncomfortable with this piece until I gave her a pinch of makeup, added the snakes, and colored her hair blond. In the beginning the color scheme was so bland, it felt as if the cardboard fascia fell forward and I had to sit there with the world looking in on the broken, dusty, insides. Screams volumes huh? The best part about that discovery though is to know with a certainty that I have the power in me to change everything. I have the strength to change it, and I know how to make something ugly and bland, beautiful.

A last note, the snakes I added are also important to the piece. I chose the most colorful, interesting, snakes found in my region... that weren't poisonous. Now in the really real world, serpent handlers are called 'serpent' not 'snake' handlers because they only introduce poisonous snakes into their rituals. I chose these California Kings because they are all the same species but have distinct markers so I could add more than one color or dimension to the piece. They emit beauty, contrast, and interest to the subject without any real danger. This is a very important insight to the way I live my life and who I am. I live out loud but have had my fill of dangerous and reckless choices. My choice is to appreciate every single thing in my life today for what it is, not what might impress someone else. I do things today that I would have never imaged for my life because at a certain angle, in a certain light, when you might feel like crawling out of your skin and doing something that you believe makes you feel alive, these things might seem like a bore. I've found excitement and great joy in things such as gardening, worm farming, hiking, camping, creating, and even cooking! I've opened my eyes to the things around me that deserve to be celebrated but are often overlooked. I've found peace and true happiness in my life through gratefulness. Reckless, and if I may be so bold, dumb-dumb-dummy choices are no longer necessary to make things interesting. If you happen to be someone in that musty old space, the space that needs more drama than peace, the grass is much greener on this side. Take a peeksie. I've mowed a nice little spot in the grass for you beside me.