How Does the Online Idea Party Work?
You have a dream or a wish, and an obstacle to getting there. (If you don’t think you know your wish, work through my kick-starter and read this post. To learn why you must put logic aside to find your dream, read the following.)
The online Idea Party is here to help you – and the other fellow party goers – with your wishes and obstacles.
Voices from Success Teams and Idea Parties:
Having a team to report to and hearing what everybody did each week is very exciting. It’s kept me moving all year. In the past I made some good starts on my own, but found, every time, when the energy ran out, I ran out. Now it doesn’t run out.
Jade G.
Children’s Playroom Therapist, New York Hospital
I would do a painting a year, a sketch a year. If it was only me I know I would never do it. Having to tell you makes all the difference. It’s crazy why I didn’t do this years ago, it’s so easy all of a sudden.
Caroline R. Personnel Executive, Macy’s Dept Store
Post Your Wish and Your Obstacle Here!
And help your team mates out when you can. Use the Reply link to help, the form below the comments to add your own Wish and Obstacle.
(Your first comment below has to be approved, so it may not display instantly depending on the time of the day. Once your email address is approved you can post instantly. If you want your own profile photo to show up beside your comments, instead of the cute little design, upload your photo on Gravatar.com and give them an hour or so to make it happen.)
Thanks to all of you for this support!
I feel very stuck and would love to share the loop playing over and over in my head! I am grateful for your advice.
I have been a stay-at-home mother to two boys for the last ten years. Before that, I worked with children and studied macrobiotic cooking and philosophy (for 20 years ! ! ! ! !). When I was little I wrote poems and that still feels like who/what I really am. Then I dropped all writing around the time I started to study macrobiotics and went on a spiritual journey! At the end of it, I just wanted to write again. Now, my boys are in school, I will need to earn some money, and the pain of not expressing myself “in the world” has been very acute for a while.
Recently, I had a wonderful break, as a result of the exercises in one of Barbara’s books. I am thrilled that I will be paid – and more to the point, feeling appreciated and like I can share! – by having a poem published in a lovely place. That is one of the great accomplishments of my life, and I feel so deeply grateful to Barbara.
I want to write songs. I love nothing more than songs. My dreams are to dance and sing and perform and maybe act and to read my poems and have them be widespread. They are humorous and modern in style. I am 45! I have never played an instrument! But I love to sing and dance more than almost anything.
Since I want to share my gifts, and need to make money, I keep thinking I ought to teach macrobiotic cooking lessons ( I have done that a bit in the past) or work with clients who want to strengthen their health through a plant-based diet. I know this is more chic now than it has been for most of my life and possibilities are there. But I cannot seem to get myself going! I just fizzle out. I did a few consultations; they went well. I just felt kind of crummy and depressed afterwards. I like giving cooking classes although they also tend to exhaust me. I gave them for a while, had a few students, then – poof. I stop.
So many people suffer and I would love to help them. At the same time, I do not light up at the thought of teaching and counseling. It may be a feeling of obligation and I hate moving from there. I know what I feel all lit up about, but there is the question of money, and my inexperience, etc. I hope the picture is clear. Do I start a career as a health coach/counselor and/or cooking teacher or do something else? The whole thing gives me a lump in my throat and the more I think the worse it gets.
Thank you SO MUCH for listening, and for any suggestions you may have. I feel desperately in need of some kind of framework. Wishing all the best to all of you, Elizabeth
Yes, it’s Lump Time! I also call it lumpy limbo! A nasty place to be! I’m going to go at this backwards. Don’t ask me why, it just feels like backwards is easier. If you don’t light up at the thought of counseling or teaching, then for God’s sake, don’t do it! I am assuming you mean formalized teaching, as in elementary through high school, or formalized counseling, which, at the minimum, requires a master’s degree in Clinical Social Work or Counseling Psychology. Those are the pathways in. Formalized teaching requires at least a bachelor’s degree plus a fifth year of Education courses, or a major in Education, and then, after the university, various steps to obtain licensure in your state. You have to be passionate about it, or the curricula will kill you off before you finish, and the daunting to seemingly impossible steps you must take to obtain licensure will, as well. And, you have to be passionate about it to be a good teacher or be able to handle clients in a good way. Otherwise, you’d be in for much frustration and even agony. Not to mention being worn out.
It is possible to make a good living doing coaching instead, which combines teaching and counseling, and the costs and the stakes are not nearly as high and demanding in order to get certified. If there is a Free University near you, you can put together a proposal for a class or workshop that you would like to teach, run it by them, and then, assuming that they like it, which is likely, you can teach it without any further ado, and no credentials, besides your interest (and therefore, expertise), are required.
What can you identify as the stopping points, or stumbling blocks to teaching macrobiotic cooking, or vegetarian cooking? Are there certain stumbling blocks, or are you just no longer interested in the idea? If there are certain stumbling blocks, maybe we can brainstorm how to solve those. I detect that you said “I ought to.” This does not bespeak of wanting to. “Ought to” always carries a heavy debt load of obligation, somehow.
“I love to sing and dance more than anything.” All right! So start. Is there an open mic space near you? Within a 50 mile radius of your house? Can you work up some standards to sing, and maybe just sing one of them at open mic night? Is there a performance space? Some towns and cities have dance performance spaces, and dance classes. Anything like this within a 50 mile radius of your house? Are there any coffeehouses, or other small performance spaces where poetry readings are held? Start! Wrap fingers around pencil and create some new poetry. Simultaneously, see what performance spaces there are for small performances, and book yourself there to read a few poems, once they are written. Any theater groups within a 50 mile radius of your house? I once lived in a place where there was a community theater. The day I moved there, they were auditioning for Oklahoma. I play violin and viola, so I showed up to the audition, and won the role of the fiddler in Oklahoma. Things could turn out good that fast for you.
Of course, you’ll have to have a “Good Enough Job” which will support you and yours while you pursue these creative endeavors, and which also subsidize the creative endeavors. You didn’t say you were a single parent, but if this is the case, all the more important to have a “Good Enough Job,” something that doesn’t rob you of all your time and energy, something that does not have toxic people on staff, and something that pays you well enough that you can do more than starve and barely get by. This is Barbara’s definition, as I understand it, of a Good Enough Job. And I hope there is a music store somewhere, so that you can either get or order some staff paper. And then, curl fingers around pen and start writing songs. Write down what comes into your head. If you don’t already know how to read music, you’re going to have to learn how, of course, via music lessons for a vocalist. Getting going on these things will probably begin to ease the pain of not expressing in the world. The challenge is to have a good enough job that doesn’t involve amounts of time so huge that you cannot create. I was a cook in three restaurants and cleaned resort cabins, worked in a bookstore, worked in a pet store, and cleaned resort rooms and rooms in a B&B while I also created. Pay was lousy, so I had to work three jobs. Then I became a cleaning contractor and my own boss. Pay improved 4-fold, but the work was grueling, and I came home worn out and ugly every night. You will, of course, need to find the right formula for you.
Dear Mary Ann, I appreciate your understanding and suggestions. Thanks for reading between the lines and for your encouragement. I took up something along the lines of your good coach suggestion; started to prepare, and planned to try it for a year. I woke up the next morning with a panicky feeling; tremendous overwhelm. I realized that I cannot take on the role of cooking teacher, health coach or counselor right now. Because I want to help people so much, and feel that I can, I was getting confused. Also because I was fortunate to receive a “good education,” and my parents are a doctors and lawyers, I have the conditioning to I feel I ought to do something like that in my own way. In fact, I need to keep part of me very empty and free (for my family and poems.) I have zero other ideas right now but I trust that some will come. I think it is a very big thing for me to organize anything, so perhaps it is just a matter of finding something where I am not the boss! It was very helpful to hear of your experience being your own boss.
Last night I sang on stage for the first time, and loved it ! ! ! ! ! ! I had a headache before and it left on stage! I am writing poems every day and I trust that the good enough job will present itself.
I am touched that you took on my concerns, when we do not even know each other.
Thank you from my heart.
Elizabeth
Well, that’s what we do here in the Idea Party and in HO (Hanging Out with Barbara.) It’s very supportive and international in scope, too. Fantastic about the singing, and the headache vanishing! That shows you something! I think it’s particularly important when we’re crafting ourselves, which is what we’re doing, to be particularly careful about taking on what others want us to do and be. Our lives are our own to craft and to develop, not our parents’ nor our friends’, nor our critics’. Especially not our critics’! Good luck with it all!
Hi Elizabeth,
What you write about macrobiotic cooking and teaching and counselling sounds very much to me like it’s what you think you ought to do rather than what you want to do. It might be that you just don’t like the formalised-having-to-earn-money side of it, or that you need to move on now to develop some of your other interests.
In contrast, your words light up when you talk about music, poetry and song-writng so I’m guessing what you really want is to revive that side of you. Are you perhaps feeling that it would be selfish to go down that road and that you need to give something back by teaching or counselling though you don’t really want to do that any more? If so, you shouldn’t feel guilty There are plenty of ways to help others without any need to do so formally, or to devote your entire time to doing it.
Poems and music can be very healing for listeners. People can be made happy or given personal insights through song. Giving people the pleasure of your creativity can be as helpful to them as counselling or teaching. Is it the physicality of cooking lessons which is tiring you? If so, you might consider setting up poetry and songwriting workshops (which might be less physical), perhaps for people with learning difficulties or the disabled. Charities in your area might be interested, and funding could be available. There are other organisations, too, such as the WI, that might welcome (and pay) you for an evening helping them to express themselves. I don’t know whether you would need to have any formal qualifications in your country. I think it could be done here without any.
Perhaps it’s just teaching itself you are finding a bit too much. People who write poetry often need quite a bit of solitude, I imagine, and being a teacher can be emotionally demanding. Counselling, even more so. I was interested that you felt ‘crummy and depressed’ after your 1-1 consultations even though they went well, and I wonder if examining why you felt like that could give you a clue to the basis of your inner conflict. It’s possible to teach and give help to people without having to interact face-to-face (which sometimes means you take on their problems). People learn through and are helped by books, magazines, blogs, podcasts, webcasts and the like every bit as much as face-to-face contact these days. Does the idea of setting up an online course inspire you at all? I assume there are poetry blogs out there too. Would developing something like that, perhaps along the lines of poetry for healing, interest you?
The need to get an income is always the most pressing thing for most of us and, as someone who at 64 realises she has thrown away a good bit of her life doing just that and ended up nowhere, I would advise you if you can to first address the problem of finding something that lights your fire. Do some of Barbara’s exercises, talk to your friends and family, and spend some time by yourself in your favourite places, having a think. Put aside any guilt you may feel about spending this time on yourself. I’m sure the ideas will come if you let them. Good luck.
All good wishes.
Jay
Dear
Dear Jay,
Your letter helped me greatly. Thank you. The day I received it, I had woken in the morning, yearning for an elder. Simply someone who was ahead of me in years, who could hear me, and guide me a bit. I do feel you were heaven sent. I hear what you say about your 64 years and how you advise me to find what lights me up. Please know that I don’t take your words lightly, but that they have gone right to my heart. I will do that. I will hold out for what lights me up. I will not try to talk myself into teaching and counseling merely because they are sensible.
Thank you for reminding me that poems and songs are gifts to give the world, too, and that we can grow by them. I had an important-to-me teacher tell me once that if I don’t try to help others, I cannot grow. But I think my interpretation has been too literal. Helping with health problems is surely not the only way. And besides, I am not sure she is entirely right. When we are most alive, do we not naturally give?
Thank you for your workshop ideas. I like the idea of trying something like that and hadn’t thought of it. I appreciate what you said about solitude. I DO need it, in droves, and as the mother of two young sons, it is rare enough anyway. It is true that teaching takes a lot. I had never realized it is emotionally demanding, but I feel you are right.
The last thing I want to say is that I hear you say you have wasted 64 years, but I experience your thoughts as nuanced and perceptive. I hope these gifts will continue to be used, as they were in your letter to me.
All my best,
Elizabeth
Dear Mary Ann, I appreciate your understanding and suggestions. Thanks for reading between the lines and for your encouragement. I took up something along the lines of your good coach suggestion; started to prepare, and planned to try it for a year. I woke up the next morning with a panicky feeling; tremendous overwhelm. I realized that I cannot take on the role of cooking teacher, health coach or counselor right now. Because I want to help people so much, and feel that I can, I was getting confused. Also because I was fortunate to receive a “good education,” and my parents are a doctors and lawyers, I have the conditioning to I feel I ought to do something like that in my own way. In fact, I need to keep part of me very empty and free (for my family and poems.) I have zero other ideas right now but I trust that some will come. I think it is a very big thing for me to organize anything, so perhaps it is just a matter of finding something where I am not the boss! It was very helpful to hear of your experience being your own boss.
Last night I sang on stage for the first time, and loved it ! ! ! ! ! ! I had a headache before and it left on stage! I am writing poems every day and I trust that the good enough job will present itself.
I am touched that you took on my concerns, when we do not even know each other.
Thank you from my heart.
Elizabeth
Dear Elizabeth,
We oldies are used to having our advice fall on deaf ears but if it has helped you then I am very glad. I am sure if you give yourself the space and circumstances you need, the answers will come. Someone with your many gifts will automatically be giving something of value to the world, whatever you choose to do. Best of luck.
All good wishes
Jay
Hello all. I’m 53 and it’s time for me to do what I want. Here is my dream. I want to sell spices at markets. Anyone ever been to the Market in Lancaster, PA? There is a guy there has a little spice stall. I LOVE that place. I’m afraid to do it because of the bills. Ok wait. I could do it just on weekends! Anyone have a small business that they just do on the weekends?
Dear LindainPgh,
My thought is that when you’re in business for yourself, you’re the boss. That means you can set your work space, at least to some degree, and you can set your hours. This is not a bad way to get your “feet wet” doing something new. And then if you find that you still love it after a period of time and it’s doing well and needs to expand, then you can possibly find ways to cut back what you’re doing right now and do it some more on a part-time basis during the week. And then if you’re really doing well on this basis, then you can expand into full time, if that’s what you want to do, or not. I know someone who changed careers and did it in just this manner.
I have been a freelance book manuscript editor, and had a business going like this at one point in my life. I lived in Seattle, and most of my customers were people from the University of Washington who got their master’s theses and PhD dissertations gone over and typed by me. There were a few book projects that came in during the 6 years that I had my business going.
Now, what I would like to do is to attract business from authors who want an editor to take a look at their book manuscripts, and to make editorial corrections and suggestions. I do not know how to proceed. Anyone got any ideas?
Hi Mary Ann,
Does it have to be books? I know that many translation companies look for editors who can review the translations, especially marketing translations. If you prefer books you could ask publishing companies.
Dear Britta,
It has been 40 years or so since I last seriously studied French, and my other foreign language is Latin. Would I have to be bilingual to work for a translation company?
I am seeking ways to make extra money by being a freelance editor who takes manuscripts and edits them and then returns them to the author with editorial suggestions for changes and copy editing corrections. I am good at this, and did it as a freelance business for 6 years. However, living where I do now, I do not know how to attract customers, and this is the issue. Since I am a psychotherapist who is trying to come up with extra ways to make money and also to make a cross-country move to Washington State, I am not interested at all in moving somewhere else, to some other state, to go to work for a publishing company, in, for instance, New York, or somewhere. This is off the path for me. I just want to learn how to attract authors with manuscripts who might want some editorial help.
Dear Mary Ann,
You don’t have to be bilingual but should have knowledge of French if you would like to review French-English translations. As far as I know, all the editors work remotely from home, no matter if they review translations or books. I am not sure how to attract authors but you could call or send emails to translation companies and publishing companies. Do you think your knowledge of French is profound enough in the field of psychology? Then another idea would be to offer editing for life science texts. Let me know if you need some company names.
Good luck!
Britta
Thanks, Britta. This helps, and I will investigate.
Mary Ann,
A *really* quick Google search yielded this:
http://writernetwork.com/about.html
If they are not what you are looking for, I do understand and I hope you won’t mind my offering them.
As far as finding things on Google – I usually start with a phrase (like this: authors “need editorial help”). Note the *double-quotes* around the words that should always be together – that saves a ton of time! Then I see if that yields good results, or suggests other searches. (Maybe “writers” is better than “authors”? How about “seeking” instead of “need”? etc.)
If you are willing to follow the trail of bread-crumbs, and keep asking yourself: “Hmmm. How else might I say this?”, there’s a good chance you will eventually find what you are looking for – even if it’s in an area where you are not a specialist.
All that being said, it’s the end of a work day and I’m pushing brain-deadness, so I thought it might be more valuable to explain how to find things than to try to come up with an exact match for you, without knowing all the search criteria myself.
Wishing you the best of luck in your searching –
Jennifer
Thanks, Jennifer. This really does help, and I’m going to give it a pursuit. I get brain dead too, when it comes to figuring things out sometimes.
Hi there!
I am Lisa Dean the “laughter & entertainment specialist”, and I wish to be world known celebrity, singer, songwriter, comedian, sell tools for entertainers, perform at big concerts, speak to large audiences, laugh every day, and feel good, being supported and loving what I do.
I’d like to post my photograph, but I can’t see the button to upload.
I’d like to make you laugh when you read this. Laughter is the best medicine.
When I was born, I didn’t cry, I just laughed! Ha ha!
Keep on laughing! Lisa Dean
That’s the dream, so what’s the obstacle?
I’m also very creative, so I can relate. I studied acting and attempted that dream in Hollyweird. Do you go to open mics? It’s a great way to practice your material. Most of the performers are just starting out so it’s not so intimidating. I’ve brought in comedic monologues and recited them at open mics because I wasn’t confident in my own material yet. You can get comedic monologues from plays, film scripts, or even a search on the Internet. 😉
Hi everybody…
it’s still Valentina, the lawyer/journalist who left tv because she was confused about her future and then went back (a few days ago) in television, despite the bad opinion a lot of people in the environment had about her choice to left.
I would like to share with you a thought that I had in these days and I would love to know if any of you had the same concern about being a “scanner”.
I understood that my biggest concern was an inner conflict: on one hand I would love to stay in the same environment and taste all the good things that being with the same people/job offer (like a little mental rest and so on), while on the other hand I was afraid that, if I stay to much in only one place, my adventurous side would suffer.
So the conflict was that both of these two sides of me were afraid and suspicious of each other, just as they cannot live together in one person, and I was terrified about forgetting one side of me and then realize it when it was too late…..
Did anyone use to feel the same? How did you solve the problem?
Hi Valentina,
I’m a newcomer and was on here tonight responding to someone who had responded to me when I saw your comment.
I didn’t know I was a scanner until I read Barbara’s book a year or so ago – just thought I was a failure because I’ done so many things and never ‘got to the top’ before moving on. I’m not sure I ever resolved the internal conflict but I think something inside tells you when it’s time to move on and even though you miss your colleagues the new experience draws the scanner in you towards it.
I think I made a compromise by sticking with what I was doing (often because in the difficult job market here I had to to get an income), perhaps moving jobs within that field, and making hobbies of other things I wanted to do until I felt competent enough to get employment doing them. It seems that being a scanner is always to be doing a balancing act and trying to square with yourself that you’re not like the average person who wants to spend their life doing the same job and getting promotions. This is often hard because society expects you to be like everyone else and defines success in those terms. However, I believe I have had a much more interesting working life than many of those who took the ‘normal’ route, and I have had so many wonderful working colleagues and treasure memories of our experiences together.
I did find that doing something as an employee eventually took the excitement out of it and I was thinking today, as it happens, that one of my problems with taking the plunge into something new now is that I’m afraid once it becomes a source of income with the rigid structures that so often entails it won’t be fun any more. I’m hoping freelancing could be the answer.
You’ve raised an interesting issue and I look forward to reading the experiences of other scanners. I hope you manage to resolve your own conflict. You sound as if you are having a very interesting life with law, journalism and tv and I wish you every success.
Best wishes
Jay
Hi,
your (Valentinas & Jays) words could come out of my mouth! I know exactly what you mean. It is the same for me. At the moment my courses here in England at Uni are getting harder and I like the challenge. But also it bothers me so much that I am asking myself, why would I want to study again after that? Or do something else, if I could have an easy life just doing what I already do. Why not choosing the easy way? Why do I always need to make myself feel uncomfortable by jumping into new “adventures”?
And at the same time, I can’t stand the idea just doing only one thing for the rest of my life…I know I like the challenge, but why? What’s the point?
I hate that inner conflict…
One thing for the rest of our lives is anathema to a Scanner. My “careers” and jobs have looked like this: Library clerk, professional symphony musician, classical disc jockey at a listening laboratory at a university, library clerk again, school librarian, freelance editor and manuscript preparer, grant writer, executive secretary (twice), real estate tycoon, retreat center founder, wilderness school founder (those two ventures failed), professional cook and baker, bookstore clerk, resort housekeeper, cleaning contractor, tutor of English, writing, philosophy, and history, and graduate student in the field of Clinical Social Work. Presently, an unemployed psychotherapist. I am thinking of becoming an Ecopsychologist, which will require a PhD, and I also want an MBA, so that I can start the Center for Indigenous Wisdom but do it in the proper manner, or get to my proper home, in Western Washington, and help the Bainbridge center as much as I possibly can.
Greetings,
I know what its like to be indecisive and for me the lesson came through a break up. To date or not to date really implicated a deeper question that I did not know existed only after the break up. What I came to realize was that the external situation was irrelevant. I began to ask myself why I was unhappy, and with the external distractions went away, I began to realize that the question became, “Why am I unhappy with myself” and realized that I needed to take care of other aspects in my life which I had neglected. I highly recommend Stephen Shapiro’s “Goal Free Living, the section that talks about “There are only decisions”. Shapiro ‘s take on indecision is that there are not good or bad decisions if you work under the framework of “Trusting that you are never lost”. He advises to see your life not as an either or situation but as a highway with many detours that you can take to enjoy the view of the countryside, and know that you can always come back to the highway if you wish.
How did I solve my scanner tendencies? I got organized! I took a bunch of post it notes and wrote down my interests/fantasies and dreams, each has its own note. I post them on the wall and organized them by theme. I then followed Barbara’s advice and asked myself, how much would I need to do to feel satisfied with this side of myself. For my interior designing side of me, I found I really just wanted to watch shows like DIY and follow Robes On Design on youtube and collect inspirational pics on pinterest. So all this sides of me I have posted on my wall and found that sometimes the recognition that I had an interest in a certain area was enough. So now, I subconsciously know how my mind works. Also, I picked the post its that most appeal to me and put them in a smaller 8*11 construction paper. Each week I review it and mix and match as I please and these are the projects I will focus on. From there, my system gets more intricate but the way to tackle your scanner interests is to ask yourself “What will I do first?” I I take the time to acknowledge my wanderings with arts and crafts and the time spent alone sort of feels like a prayer. It’s so exciting to be a scanner don’t you think?!
Dear Valentina,
These two sides live together in me all the time. I must be part bear. I love stability, and I love to go to my little house and hole up, particularly when I’m hurting or when I’m drop dead tired. But I love to be adventuresome too. Like going hiking and camping. Coming to within 100 feet of a cougar, and having his big yellow eyes stare straight into mine. Having run-ins with bears. And, for heavens sakes, rattlers! Hiking to mountain lakes, going up trails, going herb gathering, and that’s on This Side of the Veil between the Realms. I won’t mention what happens on the Shamanic side! I am a Metisse Grandmother who walks in Native and non-Native worlds. My spirituality can take on very adventuresome dimensions at times. I have played in symphony orchestras, three at once at one time. And yet I value a warm little house. And a good warm meal, and a chance to just be there and hole up. I have lived in the same place for 10 1/2 years. And I’m a renter. Stability? Up until now, you bet!
Ah, Valentina, I know exactly how you feel! I’m often jealous of people who have incredible adventure stories about what they’ve done. I wonder why I can’t let go of my “stuff” and get out there and live the dream.
Of course, most of my friends are always telling me how jealous they are of the places I get to go and the things I get to do.
So, first of all, the grass is always greener over there. No matter how interesting and exciting our lives are to other people who watch us, it’s really easy for us to get adjusted to our own “normal” and start taking things for granted. If we did something incredibly adventuresome, like start a crocodile wrestling traveling show, sure as rain in Vancouver, it would start to feel ordinary in no time.
My definition of “adventure” is “expecting a positive outcome in the face of the unknown.” Opportunities for adventure are everywhere, but whether we see them as such is another matter. They’re not always huge life-changing activities, but could be a chance to stretch a little.
I’ve also discovered that being open to talking to strangers and meeting people is the best way to open yourself up to adventure, locally and abroad. Getting to know people will bring you into their lives and open you up to experiences you didn’t know about before.
Every beginner documentary photographer always asks a professional how you get “in” with people to have them allow you to document their story, how you get started with a knock-out subject, and they all say the same thing: start in your own neighbourhood.
I think that’s how adventure works. You start where you are now.
You also stop thinking about it as binary: if I’m having an adventure, I can’t be at home or going to work 40 hours a week. Not true. You can have an adventure every day just by trying something you’ve never tried before.
So don’t let those two sides be at war with each other. They are not in conflict at all. They can both be satisfied at the same time. Believe me!
Hello, I’m a great fan of Barbara’s books and have been reading the comments on here for a long time, though don’t feel I have much to contribute yet. I just joined the party today and am feeling a bit like the one lurking at the back of the room in the lousy dress admiring the get-up-and-go of all the others.
I’m 64, female and live in England. I’ve spent all my employment life doing law and IT and teaching. I’ve always hankered after doing something creative but have no training and I suspect not a lot of talent. I’m a scanner and there are broadly two things I want to do (i) write articles for web or magazine publication and (ii) make and decorate unusual small containers for sale (a development from my jewellery-making hobby).
My practical obstacles are: (i) partial disablement through rheumatoid arthritis which ranges from bedridden, exhausted and deeply depressed on some days through to being cheerful, positive and able to get about and do stuff on others so I have to fit anything I do in on my better days and (ii) minimal pension and huge debt which means not only that I can’t afford much for materials but I have to get some income soon or I will lose my home, computer, transport and much else which in turn makes me feel desperate and unhappy.
My personal obstacles are: (i) lack of formal training or experience of selling stuff I have made/written (though I did publish one or two textbooks when I was teaching) and a feeling that I have nothing original to contribute, complete awe of what others with whom I would be competing are doing and the conviction that probably no one will want to buy my work (ii) being hopelessly disorganised, moving zombie-like from one thing to another and (iii) being isolated and living alone with friends and family a long way away so no one to give a benign critique of my work.
On the plus side, I think I’m a typical scanner with great enthusiasm, an inquisitive mind that generates loads of ideas and ability to learn. I also have lots of time, if I don’t have to go back into employment which will drain me of all my energy for anything else. In short, I love my life (apart from the arthritis obviously) and would love to make it pay.
Basically, though it all seems like such a huge mountain to tackle alone. I’ve read Wishcraft and have stalled at the barnraising chapter because I feel there is no one to help me raise the barn. I know this sounds like self-pity but it’s more anger and frustration that I’ve lost the drive and abilities that got me a reasonably successful career.
I can spend days braistorming and drawing flowcharts etc. but then I just wander off and forget about them. I suspect my feeling are not unusual in people who want to take the plunge into self employment after a liftime of relatively secure employment in a completely different field. What would really help, please, is if there’s anyone out there who’s already started a business doing something like this alone at a later stage in life and is willing to pass on their advice and encouragement.
Hi Jay,
I enjoyed reading what you wrote, and related to much of what you had to say. (I, too, am 64, and have arthritis.) But I’m also a freelance technical writer / teacher, which sounds like it might be up your alley, too.
I’d be happy to explain more if you’re interested, but right now time is tight, so first I wanted to send you this link: http://www.etsy.com/sell
It’s for selling your crafts on etsy.com.
I *love* Etsy, and buy as many handmade gifts from there as possible for birthdays and Christmas – not only because they are clever, unique and one-of-a-kind, but also because I like to support craftsmen and women.
If you were in the USA, we could meet for a cuppa tea and talk. But let’s chat here, anyway.
Warmest wishes for your success,
Jennifer
Hello, Jennifer.
I’m so excited to have a response. How lovely to hear from someone with similar interests. It would be great to have a cuppa together. Mine’s Assam, what’s yours?
Thank you for the Etsy link. As it happens, I am already an Etsy fan and can spend hours browsing there myself (kidding myself I’m doing product research while putting off actually producing anything, of course). There are so many lovely things and brilliant craftspeople, I find it daunting but I’ve tentatively earmarked it for a sales platform if I ever pluck up the courage to sell my stuff. I’m fascinated by containers of all kinds and my idea is to transfer my jewellery-making techniques to making small gift boxes for rings, earrings etc of permanent mixed media materials that can be kept as decorative ornaments in their own right. Do you think there would be a market for that kind of thing?
On the writing side, I looked at technical authoring earlier on. As I love teaching/explaining above all, it seemed to be right up my street. However, my impression was you couldn’t get into it unless you already had a track record in an employment role in that field. The one or two freelancers I spoke to got the bulk of their work from companies who had previously been their employers so I discarded it. It’s something I’d really like to do though, but the only experience I have is having written software manuals for students when teaching IT, and the usual handouts to accompany lectures to law degree students. How do you go about marketing your writing skills (the bit that terrifies me)? Do you have a website and advertise globally or do you work with local contacts? Have you been established a really long time or is this something you’ve taken up recently? I’d love to hear more about it if you’ve got time.
Thanks and best wishes
Jay
Dear Jay,
I love decorative boxes, and I have one that someone gifted me with. People love them! I’m sure!
Jay,
Quick note on this: “My impression was you couldn’t get into it unless you already had a track record in an employment role in that field. The one or two freelancers I spoke to got the bulk of their work from companies who had previously been their employers so I discarded it.”
I have two words and a link for you: KEY WORDS and http://www.LinkedIn.com
1.) Assume that head-hunters are lazy (most are) and want technology to do the work for them
2.) Knowing that, and that 85%+ of them do their “recruiting” by using key-word searches on LinkedIn — and that it’s free — and that there is a HUGE demand for technical trainers in the UK (I know, because they even ask me to come across the pond to work) – then it only remains for you to put together a very nice LinkedIn profile highlighting your technical writing / teaching experience.
Be sure to include all the techie abbreviations that you can (at least for the things you’d be interested in doing again). Post it asap.
Trust me, the work will come. You may have to travel to work on-site, but some of it may also be remote work, or a mix of the two.
This will help your finances and the joy of it is that you don’t have to work full-time. You can work on short-term (4-6 weeks) or long-term (up to a year) contracts, and still have time off to write and do crafts. And the pay is good.
Thanks very much, Jennifer, that’s very useful information. I’m going to give it a try.
Best wishes
Jay
I second Mary Ann’s response. Small, decorative boxes would be fantastic for gifting! If you get some up and post the link here, I promise to buy one! (If they’re gorgeous, even more!)
P.S. Is there a B&B in your area? Have you ever thought of teaching metal-working / jewelry making / small decorative box contruction? That would be fantastic! (Maybe a weekend workshop?)
Jennifer, you must be a diamond! I will certainly put up some photos and post links if that’s allowed but I have quite a bit of work to do before I get to the finished products stage. I’d better get cracking, hadn’t I?
Best wishes
Jay
Jay, have not heard back from you. Sent a very important email to the address you used to post here. Please write to webmaster [at] barbarasclub.com if you have not received it. Thanks!
Oh — put links to your photos in your comments and send me a note to activate the links whenever you want photos included.
Hello Jay,
In my business I help people to achieve their dreams and goals, much like Barbara Sher 🙂 just on a smaller 1 on 1 scale.
One thing that has always come up is that if the person is in pain it makes achieving their goals 10 times as hard. So I have spent considerable amount of time trying to find things that get rid of pain naturally and quickly.
I have tracked down 2 that work consistently.
I am not going to go into explaining them as it would be long and I don’t have a lot of time right now. So I will just give you the links.
[omitted – self-promoting]
[omitted – self-promoting]
I have seen the results from these things 1st hand and they blow my sock off! The [omitted – self-promoting] product is great as well for getting rid of that depression and brain fog as well so you can really get focused.
Next… I am actually just in the process of putting together an online magazine specifically for achieving Dreams. I will be seeking contributors for this. A lot of the process of putting together a magazine is gathering articles and curating them into a logical format and theme. The pay wouldn’t be great to start but would increase as subscriber levels built.
This would also give you the ground work of learning from someone else of how to produce your own online magazine and get monthly subscribers for it. I am big on the mentor and apprentice method of learning as I come from an art background where I have had many apprentices over the years. It will cost you nothing but time to get the experience you need to start generating income that you can live on and achieve your own dreams and goals.
If you are interested in working with me you can email me via the webmaster [at] barbarasclub [dot] com and I can give you details of what I am thinking and see if our minds mesh.
Thanks,
Richard
Thank you for your suggestion, Richard, and for taking time to respond. Please see my response below to Meri’s comments, which picked up on the same bit of my post, where I deal with the matter more fully.
It is kind of you both to offer this advice/assistance but I should perhaps make it clear that although my medical condition may place some limitations on my physical capabilities, I do not regard it as an obstacle to achieving what I want to do and was not putting it forward as such. Probably I should not even have mentioned it.
Well-meaning as it is to offer sympathetic advice and assistance for medical problems, I hope that people won’t waste their valuable time focusing on this aspect in my case. [Smiley face].
Very good wishes
Jay
Richard, having said that and then reread my original post, I do see I called it an obstacle so it sounds very contrary of me to say now that it isn’t one, for which I apologise. I think in the difficulty of formulating my first post for an unknown audience, I was using the term incorrectly when I said ‘practical obstacles’, correctly when I said ‘personal obstacles’, in that the former are merely clarifying my situation and I am not looking for help with them here, while the latter were things I was looking for support with in the ‘barnraising’ sense. I hope that makes it a bit clearer, and thanks again. [More smiley faces].
Best wishes
Jay
Dear Jay,
WHAT!!??? Quit lurking and come forward, Cinderella! You’ll be the most beautiful person at the ball! The containers sound marvelous, and the writing sounds good too. I’m a firm believer that if you really want to get to be known as a writer that hard copy is the way to go. I’m a former freelance book editor, and I’ve seen too many people get lost on the web. Bookstores won’t take self-published books that are published on the web, for instance. This may be part fact and partly my own personal bias. But I do believe that hard copy is the way to go. The way to find out if you have “real talent” is to dive in and try it out, as far as I know. Good God! You sound like me. Here in the U.S., we have Social Security for the elderly, and that’s people 62 and up. I turned 67 in September. I refer to it as Social Insecurity. Because by the time I’m done paying rent, utilities, phone, long distance charges, mandatory car insurance, and buying some simple groceries, I have about $250 to live on for the rest of the month, and I’m always going broke. This month, I just paid $700 in car repairs! Eating is going to be interesting, and grocery shopping has taken a nosedive this month.
YIKES! What can we do to help you from losing everything?? There hasta be a way! I have had huge debt at times in my life too, including in 1996, when I got a stroke and couldn’t work forever, it felt like. I was using my Visa card to Visa gas and groceries and rent, until one day when I put it in the slot, and no more money would come out of the machine! I still couldn’t work, and by the following year, the Visa debt had spiraled out of control. I kept getting these dreadful dunning letters, “Pay $6,530 now, and we will forgive the rest of your debt.” What could I do? Nothing!! I couldn’t possibly pay the outlandish amounts of money they wanted. All I could do was pay nothing. And that’s what I did. It took them about 15 years, but finally, they forgave the debt entirely. Medical bills are another matter. Around here, it’s possible to file for what we call “indigent status” to get medical bills mitigated when they’re impossible. I’m working on one of those right now. I have to produce a mountain of paperwork, but when I submit it, they excuse the debt. The mountain is being produced. Every hospital has a charitable fund, and it is for just that purpose. It is also a well kept secret that every hospital has a charitable fund, and a social worker on staff to help people with just such problems. They never want anyone to know.
Right now, I have huge student loan debt, to the tune of $50,000. Some interest is running on it, and I don’t know what that amounts to, and I don’t even want to know. I hafta get work too! But, although my back hurts and there are days when I can hardly hobble, I do not face the challenges of rheumatoid arthritis that you do. I have osteo arthritis in my spine, from spinal injuries suffered in an accident in 2005. To be awake is to be in pain.
It occurs to me that the career of a writer would be good for you. I was a cleaning contractor prior to my injury, and I worked for a woman who was a professional author. Her genre was murder mysteries, something which I’m not fond of, but she was a good writer. Boy, was she good! She found an agent who pitched one of her manuscripts to Bantam, and as an unknown author, she got a three-book contract from Bantam that her agent negotiated for $46,000. Not bad! She had me working for her because she was too ill to clean her own house. On her good days, she sat in her recliner in the front room and wrote. She wrote all her books in longhand, in spiral notebooks, and then typed them up later. I was absolutely forbidden to talk to her when she was writing. She sounds very stern, but I absolutely loved working for her.
What I have to say about all this is about what Winston Churchill said in World War II: “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!” And, “Never, ever, ever, ever give up!” Damn the debts, full steam ahead! Get in your chair and do what you can on your good days. I don’t know if my illustrious friend’s books are on Amazon or not, but she was Cristina Sumners. She died in August, and I am still grieving her. She was an amazing woman. Daughter of a Texas real estate agent, she was in love with everything English. She went to Oxford where she obtained a Doctorate in Divinity, and became one of a handful of women Episcopalian priests. She married an Englishman, a brilliant mathematician, and came back to this country. I don’t even like murder mysteries, but I read hers and totally enjoyed them. She’s a brilliant writer. “Crooked Heart” is one of them, and “Thieves Break In” is another. She was a remarkable woman, who kept soldiering along and didn’t let anything stop her.
Me again! I don’t think you lack formal training at all, if you published some textbooks. I’ve been a book editor, and writing is writing! Something or other, like so many of us, has instilled a sense of not being able to believe in yourself–your talents and strengths. But you wowed me when you said you published some textbooks! And you have all the sorry doubts that I have about being a writer!
I sat in a Success Team in Seattle for 3 1/2 years, and one woman in there was just like that. She wanted to be a writer, but thought she hadn’t anything to say, and who would ever want to read it, etc. We told her, “Bring in a piece of your writing by next week. And it had better be BAD!!” She did produce something, we cheered her on, and she went on to became a successful financial planner, because that’s where her heart was.
So, Shakespeare said, “Get thee to a nunnery!” I say, “Get thee to a support group!” Immediately, if not sooner.
And I have something to say about competition. In my undergraduate years, I went to a major university. There were sometimes as many as 800 students in one class. The professor was a tiny dot on the stage of an auditorium! One day, a student came up to me as I was walking across campus and wanted to know how in heck I was coping with the competition in that class. I just stared at him in disbelief. I said, “Competition?? If I worried about the competition, I would go Nutz! I just study, take the exams, and try to do the best I can in that class. Competition be damned! I just try to do the best I can. And that’s all I CAN DO!” And I walked away. I am a Metisse Grandmother, part Native American and part non-Native, brought up with Native values. One of our important values is, “Excel, don’t compete.”
Ya Gotta End the Isolation! Pure and simple! You’ve got support here. Can you scrounge up the money, or could someone pay for you, to join HO? Barbara’s Hanging Out club? It provides enormous support, but you need personal, local buddies too. Any Success Teams in your area? They are great! Can you get together with a Success Buddy?
As to the disorganization–I used to be this way, and I have ADHD, which compounds that problem. I realized that the first step to success in life was getting some kind of an organizational handle on my life. So I took a course in household organization, and it helped immensely, because it gave me a way of controlling life in terms of endless chores, so I could even have time to live and breathe beyond that. It helped immensely. That’s how I cleared the deck enough to be able to sit down at the desk in my house and become a freelance editor.
Of course, there’s no one to help you raise the barn. Not yet. And it’s not self-pity, and the anger is fully understandable. But, find a way to get into HO and into a local support group, and watch life improve. You’ll have people who can give your work an informal critique. I will offer you this–I will be willing to give your work an informal critique, free of charge. My e-mail is rubydragonfly2@yahoo.com. But I think you definitely need to work on local support, even if you have to create it. I strongly feel, from experience, that it takes at least 3 pairs of eyes to go over a ms before it can be published, so you will need more than my support. I have been in business for myself for over 30 years, in various businesses, and I know that your greatest challenge is to get in your recliner, get your spiral notebook handy, curl your fingers (when they will curl!) around a pencil and write. Or however you can do it best. AND IT HAD BETTER BE BAD!!
Facing cougars, bears and rattlers, Mary Ann, I’m in awe, sitting here in my very rural English village where the most exciting wildlife seen in 10 years is a growing colony of rabbits who are a threat to the farmer’s beets! I don’t know what I must have been thinking to bury myself here where having had a career makes you automatically weird (if you’re a woman) and being the parish spinster means you’re the closest thing they have to a witch. I’m joking (a bit) of course but this is certainly a Little Englander enclave where most of the mainly elderly inhabitants still live in the 1950s, have hardly been anywhere or done anything and never thought of deviating from their parents’ view of the world. I’m terrified I’ll end up just like them – nice but completely narrow-minded. The Internet is my salvation. You reckon you’re part bear – I reckon I’m part-mouse and part-tiger. When I stopped work and couldn’t get another job, the mouse took over (a coup it had been planning for some time, I suspect). I need to find a way to get that tiger roaring again (do tigers roar?). If you can go hiking in wild territory with your arthritis then I can surely stop using mine as an excuse to lurk in my safe little hideout.
To business. Your posts are very heartening with so much valuable help and wisdom in them. I have to separate it out to respond properly. I hope you won’t mind a long response.
You have an impressively robust attitude to debt. I think I will adopt ‘Damn the debt, full steam ahead!’ as my mantra and post it up somewhere where I can see it regularly. The world revolves around credit and as lawyer I know you shouldn’t let it get in the way. Why is it that one’s ingrained emotional attitudes to money go so much against common sense and obstruct action? I have all the practical tools to deal with the situation; just held back by the wrong attitude. Fortunately we don’t have medical bills to worry about here thanks to our wonderful NHS (though it’s under threat so a worry for the future. How do you cope over there?) but as you demonstrate, getting the knowledge to tackle the situation and then facing it head-on is most of the battle. I’ll try to remember but it’s the battles and confrontations which hadn’t used to worry me that I now find drag me down so much. (Barbara’s ‘Hard Times’ helps quite a bit though).
Thank you for making me aware of Cristina Sumner whose work I hadn’t come across before, which is surprising because I love murder mysteries. I have just Googled her and the sort of novels she writes sound just like the kind I enjoy. I am going to get hold of some of her books. The information about her circumstances was interesting. She sounds like a wonderful person and a great role model for any woman. I can understand that you must miss her support very much.
I have had a go at writing murder mysteries but the problem for me is that while I know where to start and where I want to finish, the plot gets out of hand and wanders off along the way. I’ve read a ton of books about plotting which seem to boil down to: ‘the plot will develop naturally from the characters’, but I find it’s the characters taking over that makes it go all over the place. I need structure here as in everything else.
It’s really good of you to offer me a critique and I’m truly grateful. I was going to follow the directions of my ‘mouse’ and politely refuse because it seems like an imposition, but on reflection I suspect that both you and Barbara would chastise me for passing up such an opportunity. So if you don’t mind I will dust off a few hundred words this week and send it to your email and if you don’t regret the offer you can tell me if it’s really BAD and (as my school English teacher once advised me) I should take up knitting instead.
I would like to join a writer’s group which I think would be helpful. I used to belong to one in the ‘90s and it encouraged me to enter a national short story competition, which I did quite well in. Work (the sort you get paid regularly for) got in the way though and I didn’t pursue it further. I’ll see if I can push myself this winter. I doubt that many people in my vicinity have ever heard of Barbara’s work and there’s no chance of joining a Success Team, but I do take your point that I need to end my isolation and find people with similar interests. I will look at my sorry finances and see if I can find a way of Hanging Out but I know I can’t do it at the moment. I think fiction writing has to go in the ‘hobby’ pigeonhole now though as it’s not going to bring me income in the short term. Writing textbooks was a doddle in comparison as I only had to think about how I would put my knowledge across to students in the classroom.
As to my organisation obstacle, when Jennifer (above) kindly responded to my comment I was so heartened that I got out my Scanner Planners and Daybook which were literally covered in dust. I’d thought the ring binder thing would work for me because I’d always used them for teaching but I put things in the binders and then just forgot about them. Also having several binders or sections and going between them made me even more confused and disorganised about where to go. I’ve realised that what was putting me off was (a) it reminded me too much of work and the imposed structures I hated and (b) I hadn’t managed to adapt it well to my less structured creative activities. I remember in I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What It Was, Barbara and one of her creative clients came up with a chessboard kind of thing, a way of visually charting progress of several projects simultaneously, and I think something like that might help me if I could devise it. I’m sort of thinking of a colour-coded projects timetable up on the wall showing projects on a daily basis with progress, with the colour coding linking to daily or weekly to-do lists, also colour coded, somewhere I can see them too. If any organised person reading this has done something like this I’d love to know.
In your last post, you talk about going mad if you think about competition and I’m sure you’re right. Perhaps that is something any creative person has to get over and just go out and do what they have to. My working world has been so much competition that I’d forgotten that. 800 students in one class! When I did my degree there were fewer than 40 of us. Class sizes have increased now of course but most of my teaching was done to groups of less than 20.
I could certainly use a course in household organisation and frequently look at organisation sites on the Internet (despairingly I’m afraid with the thought that life must surely be too short to colour-code your shoe collection, even if you have one which I don’t, unless that’s what you really love to do) but I suspect I would take copious notes then file them away and do nothing. I never notice the chaos in my home until someone visits (a rare event) then I go mad trying to clear everything up, get overwhelmed, feel hopeless and helpless, get exhausted then depressed and suffer from complete inertia until I can get back inside myself sufficiently not to notice the chaos any more. I suspect I’m not alone in a global context but the ‘good housewives’ of my acquaintance think I’m a slattern. (No allowances made for disability – being a successful woman equals having a clean, tidy home!)
I read your post in answer to Valentina, about your dream to start the Center for Indigenous Wisdom which sounds very intriguing and I was interested in what that might entail. I assume you put it up as your dream somewhere earlier on but I can’t find any way on here to look back at other people’s posts without having to go through every single post. It would be good if that were possible.
Anyway, I’ve nearly written a book in reply, sorry. In short, I am so grateful to you for having taken the time and trouble to respond at length and so interestingly. You have stiffened my sinews and given me some of the courage I will need to rediscover my inner tiger. Bless you for that.
All good wishes and all the best with your own dreams.
Jay
P.S.
Jay,
I *love* reading about your life in England! ANd I believe many others would, too.
Have you ever considered writing a blog (even an anonymous one) about day-to-day life there?
You might be surprised about how many people would find it fascinating.
There is a woman who writes about living on a ranch in the mid-west in the USA. She calls herself the Pioneer Woman. She writes about her daily life, what she cooks, and takes photos of the ranch happenings. She has over a million followers, and ended up writing cookbooks and being on TV. Her cooking isn’t gourmet. It’s more about the romance of the lifestyle.
People like to escape, and the idea of living in a tiny village in the UK is romantic to all of us who don’t have to do it! LOL
Please add this to your list of things to consider.
Lovely thought, Jennifer, and I might consider starting a blog one of these days, but not along those lines as I’m no Martha Stewart type. I confess to a certain hankering towards being a Jessica Fletcher (‘Murder She Wrote’) in her Cabot Cove existence, dashing off yet another bestseller while baking a perfect batch of cakes and dispensing homespun wisdom to a clutch of admiring neighbours (perfectly groomed and designer-clothed, of course), but that would require a level of organisation and dedication vastly beyond me and must remain well and truly in the realm of fantasy.
English villages are sadly not what they used to be either, and mine is rather more comatose than romantic. A peaceful haven to return to at the weekend when I was working all week in town, but really dull for daily existence. If seething passions are being enacted behind the net curtains, Agatha Christie or Elizabeth George style, there is no outward sign of it. People walk their dogs before lunch and, if they meet, talk about health (theirs and the dogs’) the shocking cost of veterinary fees and how long you have to wait for a hospital appointment, sleep after lunch and occasionally drop into the village shop where the hot topics are the weather and gardening. Oh and we do get a fish and chip van one evening a week for a couple of hours. They have even started to put tables and chairs outside it. High point of the week but it wouldn’t fill a blog post, I’m afraid.
Thanks for the suggestion anyway and for your continued interest.
Best wishes
Jay
Dear Jay,
It’s good to write books, sometimes. I’ll have to reply Saturday. That’s the only time I really have to do the replies to the Idea Party and to HO. But this looks juicy, and I will.
Hi Jay,
A blog could be a place to experiment with writing fiction too… You could ask for comments from people about what you’d written so far. Many people write short blog posts. Long posts often don’t get read anyway. People have short attention spans these days…
Dear Jay,
What, no bears, cougars, or rattlesnakes in England? Well, I’ve been a Westerner and a Mountaineer all my life, so, sooner or later, I’m bound to run into these critters. Yes, tigers roar. My osteo-arthritis is in my back and is not as debilitating as rhumetoid arthritis is. I am able to walk. It is getting better, the more I walk. I only used to be able to go a quarter mile before the pain became ungovernable, and I had to get off my feet for the rest of the day. I kept trying to keep on extending my range. Last year, I could go 2 1/2 miles, and this summer, I completed a 6 mile hike! I have to keep at it, even when I hurt and don’t want to, or when I’m tired and don’t want to.
Yes, definitely, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead when it comes to debt! I am $50,000 in debt from going to graduate school. And we can’t file bankruptcy on student loans! But where would I be if I had never attempted graduate school? Rotting away, that’s where! We sometimes need to embrace this sort of thing to get to the next level. And anyway, if we aren’t working and advancing ourselves, how in the heck will we ever be able to pay our debts? It can’t be done by having a dishwashing job or a part-time cooking job in a restaurant, I can tell you!
About medical bills: We don’t cope, and it’s insane. Insaner yet is how this country was shut down and we almost went into default (speaking of debts!) because one small right-wing faction wanted to repeal Obamacare, and wanted their own political agenda more than they wanted anything else. And so the whole federal government came to a grinding, screeching, halt. How outlandish! We don’t cope, and it’s insane! I am having to mitigate a medical bill that I can’t presently pay. It takes submitting my 2012 income tax (nineteen pages of gobbledegook), a copy of my lease, a copy of all the receipts to my utility bills, etc., ad nauseum. I rely primarily on Native American healing, including herbs, to help with what ails me, and occasionally, I go to the doctor. I stay away from hospitals. I have old people’s Medicare, and Medicaid, but younger people don’t even have this. They have to have health insurance or get fined, the way things are going now. And then there’s this faction that opposes it and shuts down the government. It’s insane!
I miss Cristina Sumners very much, period. She even put me into one of her books, in a sort of a cameo appearance. I am helping to sort a murder mystery.
I hope you won’t consider taking up knitting instead! Your writing here tells me that you are a writer. It’s obvious. I look forward to seeing some of your work. I wouldn’t offer if it were an imposition. It’s juicy to be doing what I like doing. Much better than jerking weeds out of my yard or mopping floors.
There’s a way to go on line, in Barbara’s copious website, and look up to see what, if any, Success Teams exist in your area. She also has lively instructions on how to start an Idea Party locally, and there is HO, (Hanging Out with Barbara Sher) which I’m in, and it provides phenomenal support, particularly if one is depressed and isolated. She says, “Isolation is a dream killer,” and I fully believe that she’s right. You sound like a brilliant writer, and you’re not being recognized for it. My God, if a textbook was a “doodle,” then I have to be right!
I’m so glad Jennifer gave you information about how to get going as a tech writer, so that there might be a chance of improving your finances.
About using organizing materials: One trap I have fallen into is that I end up more time playing with the organizing materials than I do just doing the tasks! The organizing materials are tantalizing, because when I work with them, I think I am really getting somewhere, but then later, I discover that the tasks that I was trying to organize are still undone. In one of her books, Barbara claimed to be an “ace procrastinator.” I grinned and bounced up and down and giggled when I read that, because, as far as I know, I am the world’s greatest ace procrastinator. I can certainly relate to dust-covered organizational materials. I’ve got ’em too! There’s something (some gremlin within) that resists this. Maybe it’s my ADHD. Probably. Good chance.
I do have a color-coded thing up on my wall where I have mapped out various projects over a 6 year time frame, and the poor thing desperately needs to be torn down and revised. It began in 2008. I did go to grad school as planned, but a lot of projects are withering and dying for lack of money, just as a plant withers and dies from lack of water. However, I refuse to give up. Besides damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!, the other thing that Churchill said was, “Never, ever, ever, ever give up!”
I don’t use daybooks much. In fact, right now, not at all. That may change at some point. I just have every appointment scheduled on a wall calendar. And I try to not schedule more than one in a day.
Like most Americans, I am a polyglot of nationalities and even cultures. And, believe it or not, this has a bearing on organization. Some of my people are Native Americans. Some of them are Scottish, Irish, German, and Bavarian.
The Bavarian ones came to this country and became Amish. Grandpa was Amish. The Amish women have a little song that they are taught about household organization. And they are impeccable at it! I don’t remember the tune, but the words go like this: “Monday wash, Tuesday iron, Wednesday mend, Thursday market, Friday clean, Saturday bake, and Sunday church.” I have adapted it to my own needs, so my version goes the same for the first three days, and then Thursday paperwork and errands, Friday clean, Saturday car care and yard care, and Sunday, day off!
Because I am a gramma without kids, I don’t have washing and lots of ironing and mending to do. The “clothes hassle,” which is what I call it, gets done once a month when I have the money to get to Taos to a public laundromat.(I live 55 miles SW of it in the Rocky Mountains of Northern New Mexico.) So that means my Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are usually free for other things. There is more paperwork and phone calls than I can shake a stick at, because I am conducting an active job hunt, and it generates volumes of stuff. I clean when I feel like it. Saturday, sometimes the car gets cared for and sometimes not, same with the yard. Afternoons, I am always down here at the library pounding away on the computer when the library is open, because I have no internet access at home. And Sunday is a time to meditate, pray, and go for walks in the woods with my friends Bear, Rattler, Cougar, Bobcat, Skunk, Raccoon, Lizard, Eagle, Hawk, Osprey, and Javelina (wild pig). Also Deer and Elk. Most of the time, I just run into their scat and don’t meet anybody.
Many years ago, now, I took a class in household organization, because I knew that if I was ever to become successful, the house and yard chores that were gobbling up my whole life had to be subdued and managed, somehow. So I signed up for a class. The instructor gave us the Elizabeth Taylor Emergency Cleanup. She said she had permission from the actress to use this, and so I hope she had. I trust her. The Elizabeth Taylor Emergency Cleanup goes as follows, and is being suddenly implemented because one of Liz’s mothers-in-law, the one who makes white glove inspections, has just phoned and says she’s coming over! Oh, Horrors! Something must be done! NOW!
Step 1: Shut drawers and doors. Amazing how the appearance of a room is improved by taking this step.
Step 2: Remove debris. Definition of debris: Things that are out of place, including garbage that has missed the can. Definition of remove: (This goes for objects; garbage goes in the appropriate receptacle) You grab an empty laundry basket or a large cardboard box. You go around the perimeter of each room, starting and ending at the door. You designate one room as the Debris Room. No one, under pain of death, is allowed to go in there. You throw everything out of place into the basket or box, and then go run and heave it into the Debris Room. To be sorted later, when there’s time. But not now, because Mother-in-Law is coming!
3. Pile dishes in the sink as if you intended to wash them.
4. Make beds.
5. Remove gross dirt. Definition of gross dirt: If it grosses you out, remove it. If it doesn’t, don’t!
6. Post a guard by the door. Then get out the electric broom and go around each room, getting the big pieces. (Things like cigarette butts, for instance.)
7. Sweep any uncarpeted floors that weren’t touched by the electric broom.
That’s the Elizabeth Taylor Emergency Cleanup. You’ll never get to it all, because Mother-in-Law will be ringing your doorbell before you even get to Step 4 or 5, more than likely. But that’s the Cleanup.
As far as I am concerned, the first four steps are what I call the “Dailies.” These are shutting doors and drawers, removing debris, piling dishes in the sink as if I intended to wash them, and making my bed. It doesn’t matter if the bed looks like there’s a body in it, or some other lump, so long as it is made, at least. When I remove debris, I put garbage and recyclables where they go and pick up stuff and put it away. As I have ADHD, it helps to have a place for everything, and everything in its place. This doesn’t always work, not by a long shot, but it is a way of restoring sanity, when needed.
The other thing I learned from my organizing class was when doing ironing or mending, to do “Yards per hour.” This means that the simplest things get ironed first, and the fanciest, last. This rapidly cuts down on the volume. When I go to the laundromat, I take hangers along for my clothes, and then when they come out of the dryer, they are hung up immediately and then laid flat for transport home, so I don’t waste a lot of time ironing. I can eliminate most of it this way. Car care consists of checking tires, coolant, and oil, and washing the windshield inside and out every so often. So, in this way, I have been able to control my house chores so they don’t control me. Otherwise, I would be enslaved to them.
The trouble is, most people try to do too many things too often. Like the woman who does laundry 7 times a week! Why, for heavens sake? Like the Amish say, once is plenty! Or you’re overworking yourself. Same thing for all their weekly chores. I like their system. It’s not fastidious overwork! It’s freeing!
As to projects, I dip into my Native American heritage for that, and for organizing my time in general. To us, life is circular, not linear. And the Great Circle is divided into four quadrants, the Physical, the Mental, the Emotional, and the Spiritual. Physical means the following: home, health, geographic location and whether that’s right for you or not, and who you bump elbows with on an everyday basis. The grocer, the postman, the mechanic, etc.
Mental means Right Livelihood. Livelihood, based on doing what we love, like we’re learning to do from Barbara Sher. This is both time developing it and doing it.
Emotional means your relationship to yourself and your relationship to others, including those whom you love. Friends and family.
Spiritual means your relationship to the Creator, however you decide to define that, and your relationship to all of Creation in the natural world.
There are 16 waking hours or so in the day. If that Wheel were to be divided evenly, there would be 4 hours for each thing. So my mornings, around 8-12, are for the Physical. Getting bathed and dressed. Doing those dishes. Making bed, removing debris. Today was Saturday, so I weeded some of my yard. Tomorrow is Sunday, so I will refuse to weed my yard. Noon, and I’m having lunch, and then off to the library to pound on the computer until it closes at 5. Then I take my walk, and 6-7 is supper, and from 7-11 is either an Emotional evening, when I write to or call friends, or work on deepening my understanding of psychotherapy, for I am a therapist. Or it is a Spiritual night, when I perform ceremony, in accordance with my Native traditions, or work on a Star Quilt. Or it is a musical night, because I am a violinist, a violist, a percussionist, and a vocalist. I usually fiddle. Or play classical violin concertos or pieces. And I like to watch British drama on TV! (Hee hee!) And nature programs.
That’s what I know about organizing. The rest, I’m learning from Barbara Sher. And I’m still an ace procrastinator, and I still have 52 or more projects scattered all over, and each project has 52 moving parts, and I have about 650 books or so in my private library, in case I ever get bored. Some of them are for reference. I always have 12 or 13 books all going at once, for some reason. Probably ADHD. But at least, I have a way to be able to dig out from time to time and restore order and sanity, temporarily, before everything reverts to chaos again!
I hope that any of this has helped.
My clothes closet is color coded. Black at the left end, followed by white, then grey and silver, then turquoise, blue, green, pink, red, purple, brown. Orange and yellow make me look sick, so I don’t have many of them. Every moon cycle (sort of like a month) I change my clothes and jewelry around. Right now, it’s brown, because this is autumn. Next month, I’ll wear stuff with some orange highlights. I don’t have enough shoes to worry about. Summer sandals go in a suitcase when it isn’t summer, and winter boots and boot moccasins are piled in a heap in the corner of the closet. I dig through it if I want a certain pair. Bedslippers are handy. That’s what counts! A friend saw my color-coded closet once and just roared with laughter. But hey! I know where everything is, and I can get at things readily. So be it.
I am “Born Organized.” I suppose that my ADHD has caused me to develop and invent all sorts of coping mechanisms. I used to be an executive secretary once, and I can organize files, bookshelves, and just about anything else. It’s one of my skills, and I think I’m good enough at it that it’s marketable. However, I prefer to concentrate on other things. If I lived in an urban population area, there would be a market for it. But here in rural New Mexico, there isn’t.
I think I’ve given you a method of coping. The Elizabeth Taylor Emergency Cleanup is both hilarious and a lifesaver! Imagine living right across the driveway from your landlord! That’s my fate! I try to keep him out of my house as much as possible!
I don’t think I put my dream about the Center for Indigenous Wisdom up anywhere. It has been shown to me as a multi-million dollar facility, and would be a place where the Dali Lama of Tibet would be welcome to come and speak. It would be a place for the Wise Ones of all indigenous cultures, not just Native American, to share. People who work there would also be presenters. I know where the land is–in Canada. The purpose of the place is to preserve, present, and promote the wisdom of indigenous cultures, worldwide. My role, besides being founder and CEO, is to be a therapist, but not necessarily in the context of a 50 minute hour in an office. I am to become one who helps people to heal by putting them out upon the Earth to get in touch with the healing power of the Earth. Nature as healing metaphor.
Don’t be sorry for long posts. We write ’em around here. The important thing is that people’s issues get addressed, at least that ‘s what I think.
Hi Mary Ann,
Good to hear from you again. Love the Elizabeth Taylor Emergency Cleanup, which made me laugh out loud. I will take time to read your comment properly and respond fully in a short while but am seriously trying to get some of my box ideas out of my head and onto the table today, and have to strike while inspiration is hot. Just didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you meantime.
All the best
Jay
Hi Mary Ann,
It’s been a very busy week: I’ve put in some sterling work on my box prototypes, dusted off my novel and done a bit of thinking about the plot, looked online to see what kind of freelance writing work is available, done the monthly shop and even cleared the guttering on my house ready for the rain. Haven’t felt so motivated for ages, but now I’m worn out and as it’s a cold wet day, am having what I call an R&D day.
Walking is great, isn’t it? I’ve always tried to stay mobile by walking every day, especially with a dog, and credit my still being able to do so (contrary to medical diagnosis) to having kept active. I can’t get very far now, but we have some lovely, if not spectacular, countryside – very flat so you can see for miles – and it’s terrific to experience that openness now I’m stuck indoors so much of the time, so the morning walk is quality time for both me and the dog.
I’d also agree with you about the value of education. When further and higher education was free here to students no one questioned whether it was a good thing. Now it has to be paid for it’s a topical debate. I personally feel that the disappearance of free FHE, soon to be followed if we’re not careful by loss of free healthcare provision, are the saddest and most damaging things to have happened to this country in the last 50 years. We have been watching the news about the US shutdown with interest here. It is shocking. They tell us it couldn’t happen here, but I’m not now sure there’s anything bad that couldn’t happen. It’s depressing. The world is changing out of all recognition and I really fear for the younger generation.
I absolutely agree that creating organisational materials can be a displacement activity. I used to have THE BEST revision timetables when I was a student. No problem spending hours colour-coding them! Perhaps it is just another distraction but I do have a tendency to wake up in the morning and spend an hour wondering: ‘What shall I do today?”, trying to avoid the 100 things I really should be doing, trying to find an excuse to do one of the things I really would like to do, and ending up going shopping or doing the washing instead, so I could probably do with some organisational materials just to get the daily debate out of my head and get started earlier.
If you are ‘Born Organized’, I am ‘Born Disorganized’, a state that was not helped by having a mother who was immensely artistic and creative but whose middle name was ‘Chaos’. (She must have been a Scanner too, and it’s a pity she didn’t know that because it might have helped make her feel better about not having a perfectly organised home). Her mother-in-law just loved doing housework and was the kind who would deliberately look for dust and comment acidly on it. We used to do ‘The Bung’ when Gran came round, which meant bunging all the craft materials, projects in progress etc in cupboards and hoping they wouldn’t fall open while she was there. Your Elizabeth Taylor Emergency Cleanup reminded me of that and made me laugh. It is fun and I shall certainly adopt that tip on a regular basis. I won’t go as far as a colour-coded wardrobe, not least because I only have a few things I wear habitually and they are mainly black. I also like the idea of having a particular day of the week for doing each thing which would work very well with my tendency to flit from one thing to another and has already worked for me when I was teaching different subjects.
Funny thing is I can be perfectly organised outside of home. My office was always neat and tidy, and I could organise other people’s things too. I think it’s something to do with being an introvert. I can come out and see things as they are and get them sorted when I have to, but when I go back into myself at the end of the working day or whenever I stop relating to my surroundings. Dorothy Rowe says that for an introvert reality is what is going on inside your head and what goes on outside is a bit like a movie and isn’t quite real, and I can relate to that. Apparently it’s the other way round if you’re an extrovert. Having a landlord and having to let him/her into my home is what I absolutely dread most about having to go into rented property and what is spurring me on to keep trying to pay the mortgage.
Anyway your tips have helped to focus my mind on the ‘outside’ a bit and I shall Take Steps. I’ve found Barbara’s avocation stations idea to be helpful, by the way, and have all the materials and tools for my different processes stored in plastic sectioned holders with handles so that I can bring the appropriate one to my work table at the right stage without having to wander around looking for stuff. That has helped a lot. Perhaps it could be adapted to other areas. Looking around, I can see it is largely books, papers and clothes that defeat me, not to mention kitchen utensils which all seem to get used whenever I cook and not put away again. Oh and the recycling – where does one store that in a tiny place like mine?
Your idea of a Centre for Indigenous Wisdom is wonderful and you must do it. Are you actively working towards it at the moment, or is all the detritus of living getting in the way? Is there some special reason why it has to be in Canada? Is that where your Native American heritage derives from?
I’m going to send you an email about writing and editing this afternoon so as not to burden the thread with any more on it.
Very best wishes
Jay
Jay said
“I have had a go at writing murder mysteries but the problem for me is that while I know where to start and where I want to finish, the plot gets out of hand and wanders off along the way. I’ve read a ton of books about plotting which seem to boil down to: ‘the plot will develop naturally from the characters’, but I find it’s the characters taking over that makes it go all over the place. I need structure here as in everything else.”
That’s interesting Jay. A while ago Barbara explained to me that a novel can either be plot-driven or character-driven. It seems that it can’t be both. Murder mysteries are usually plot-driven. So maybe you’re trying to write in the wrong genre for your natural style. And anyway, it doesn’t matter if it goes all over the place in the first draft. You just need to keep the writing coming whatever way it will. So let those characters take over and go wherever they want.
Then you give it structure in later drafts.
That’s a really good point, Skannie, and you know I hadn’t ever thought of it. It’s true, I am very much character-driven in my writing, (and dialogue-driven too, so perhaps I should be writing plays though I don’t want to). Funny how someone else can easily see what isn’t obvious to yourself. Thank you. I’ll give it some thought and try to keep writing even if it doesn’t go anywhere.
Hi. My first time here and I wanted to respond to others b4 posting my own hopeless case scenario. (Yes, I’m hopeless yet here I am…) I don’t have much wisdom to share, but I do read a lot about natural medicine and home remedies, so it’s something I know a bit about. I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to respond to your rheumatoid arthritis obstacle.
Have you researched natural remedies for it? It may sound simplistic but there are quite a few out there and they DO work. You just need to find the one/ones that work for you as well as what amounts you’ll need to take. You’ll probably nd to experiment & figure it out on your own as most dr’s don’t know abt natural remedies (or won’t tell you.)
I’ve read of people who were unable to walk being able to walk again, for ex., by taking nutritional supplements, eating anti-inflammatory foods while avoiding inflammatory foods & exercising regularly. (I find I nd to exercise every single day.)
I don’t have what u have & am not your age, but I do have chronic pain & arthritis due to an injury and here’s what I do: I practice yoga, at least 20 min per day. Yoga is extremely effective for many aches and pains & there are very basic, easy yoga poses for beginners. When I have more time, I’ll do over an hour. I also try to get in at least 30 min of cardio (walking, biking, swimming, etc.) most days. You can just go for a brief 10 min. walk and do very simple yoga moves in the beginning, of course, then gradually work your way up. You don’t want to get an injury and add to your troubles, so move at your own pace. Lots of free youtube videos on beginning yoga or even yoga for seniors or yoga for arthritis can get you started. Just do a search on youtube.
I’ll have at least 1 tsp of turmeric (an anti-inflammatory spice) per day and mix it with a bit of black pepper (makes it more effective) and sometimes ginger (this makes a cajun spice really) and put it on my chicken or fish (works on eggs too.) I eat a lot of salmon (it’s naturally anti-inflam and has omega 3’s.) I avoid red meat and only eat the grass fed beef when I do.
I’ve also made a drink using coconut or almond milk w/a bit of ginger, turmeric, cinnamon then stevia for sweetening. (Stevia’s a natural sweetener that’s not inflammatory like sugar is but it usually only works in drinks.) I heat it up and it makes a nice spicy, anti-inflammatory drink. Tart or black cherry juice also helps some people, but the taste puts some ppl off. I take Glucosamine/chondroitin/msm and I also put some olive oil and a little bit of coconut oil on my salad everyday. Both are healthy oils.
I order a lot online to save money. Buying in bulk can be cheaper in the long run too.
I also take Omega-3 w/DHA and EPA levels but am still experimenting w/how much I’ll need. Sometimes I take Boswellia (an herb that Gary Null recommends for pain.) I also take a multivitamin, a B-complex, and try to cut down on sugar (not so easy for me.)
Anyhow, there are lots of web sites or books you could access w/more info but I hope you look into it. I don’t want to seem like I’m selling anything here ’cause I’m not, so I’m afraid to post any links. A woman posted a youtube video about her rheumatoid arthritis and she started juicing–just putting fruits and veges in a blender and drinking her salad. She also added ginger and black seed oil (a bit expensive as it’s imported from Africa.) She stopped eating processed foods, started eating mostly whole foods, raw fruits and veges and found it made a big difference.
The reason why many ppl avoid natural medicine is that it takes A LOT OF WORK. I mean, you’ll need to find out w/foods are worsening or helping your condition, w/supplements, w/spices/herbs, etc., on your own (unless you can afford to hire a natural practitioner.) Perhaps you need 2 tsps of turmeric while most ppl need only 1, for example. Perhaps turmeric doesn’t help you but cherry juice does. Perhaps a yoga pose hurts but there’s another pose that completely takes your pain away–after you’ve been consistently practicing it for two weeks, that is. It takes time, research, trial & error, but it’s so worth it. In the long run it’s much cheaper and less time-consuming then doctor’s visits, surgeries, medications, etc., that you’ll need otherwise, so I hope you’ll consider seeking out natural remedies.
Many Smiles,
Meri
Dear Meri,
Thank you for responding to my post and I hope you will soon feel able to post about your own dream and obstacles.
As regards the arthritis, it is a widely variable condition, which varies not only from person to person but within the same person over time. As you yourself say, something that works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. Something may seem to help for a time, but then appear to stop working so the relief may be due to natural remission of the condition. As there is no rhyme or reason to the condition so far as we know, clearly it is open to all kinds of potential remedies, and there is sadly a lot of quackery attached to it as well as clutching at any straw when it becomes unbearably painful.
I have had the condition for most of my life and of necessity have become something of an expert. I first began doing yoga when I was in my 20s, and that can help as can other pain management activities. I pay careful attention to my diet. As to natural remedies, there are few I haven’t come across including the ones you mention. All I can say is they haven’t worked for me, though I don’t doubt they do work for some. Many people have their own special remedy and it is natural when you discover something that helps you that you want to pass on the good news to others but, as I say, we are all different so it will never come with any guarantee.
I manage my condition to the extent that that is possible. Its very nature in doing so much internal damage means of course that it cannot be cured, though relief may be obtained. With rheumatoid arthritis, especially, people are very often ignorant of what it actually does to a body and imagine it is merely aches and pains. I mentioned it in passing in my post not because I was looking for further help with it but merely to explain why there are limitations on my physical capabilities.
It was kind of you to care and I thank you for your advice.
Now, to that dream of yours …?
Best wishes
Jay
Hi Jay,
It’s great that you’re taking care of your health. I didn’t mean to be presumptuous abt that. Chronic pain and fatigue hold me back a little, so I thought the same might be true of you.
I’m just suggesting that you not give up on the possibility that something might be out there that might reduce your discomfort at least. Yes, it may not cure you but might help you to feel a bit better.
I’ve only just recently realized, for example, that I’m anemic. I also think I have a B12 & possibly protein deficiency. (I’m from the US and there’s so much money&politics behind health care here that I was never able to get a diagnosis from doctors, so I diagnosed myself. It’s not the best way, of course, but dr’s wouldn’t take the time as that cost money, so it’s what I’ve had to do from my own research.) I’ve started taking iron tablets and have noticed my fatigue decreasing. This is after years of suffering& starting to think I wdn’t be able to work anymore, but sometimes it’s a matter of finding the right thing.
Anyhow, I’ll stop. You know what’s best for you. 🙂
Eventually, I’ll post my own dreams/obstacles but my situation’s pretty impossible right now, so I want to wait until I’m in a better place emotionally. I feel that I should give to other people by responding to them first as I have a tendency to wallow in my own misery too much. So it’s best I postpone my own story till I’ve been able to help someone else first.
Dear Meri,
I don’t believe that Any Situation is hopeless. I have found that it is a bit like cross-country skiing. When you learn cross-country, you don’t start by bombing down a ski slope. You start on the flat, and you learn to slide one ski ahead and then the other. I have found the same to be true when helping others, and I am a psychotherapist. I have found that when I help others, it makes me stronger and cheers me up, so that I can help myself to heal myself. And when I reach out for help, as with my dreams, as we do here, then that helps to heal me. We all need healing, with the possible exception of our wonderful leader, Barbara. I know of a woman who lives near near here, in Northern New Mexico.
She’s an author, and her name is Chellis Glindelling. She has written a book entitled, “Hello, My Name Is Chellis, and I am in Recovery from Western Civilization!”
I don’t necessarily think this is a forum for dealing with deep psychological hurts, but it is a very good place to unsnarl the hopeless and find out it’s not so horrible and hopeless after all. And so, very definitely, is Barbara’s HO. (Hanging Out with Barbara.)
BTW, I made an error above. It’s curry spice not cajun…
Hi Meri,
I didn’t think you presumptuous, just caring and helpful – and there is certainly nothing wrong in that. Fortunately for me, I have access to good free medical care and all the health advice I need at the moment, so that isn’t the kind of support I’m lacking, but I do realise that isn’t the case for everyone.
I’m sorry to read that you suffer chronic pain and fatigue and hope you are finding things to help you. I would certainly agree with Mary Ann that no situation is hopeless. Often when one is in a really bad place emotionally, contact with others can reveal a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s taking that step of reaching out that is so difficult, I find.
I hesitated to post about my situation on here for a long time, but now I have and others have responded I feel much happier and less isolated and as a result more positive about the future. I hope you will too – but we each have to move at our own pace.
Very best wishes
Jay
Thanks Jay and Mary Ann.
I get pretty enthusiastic about health and nutrition, and sometimes people get mad at me for telling them about natural treatments I’ve read about. But I think that’s an American thing. I live in a very conservative city right now where people are especially averse to natural medicine (and “new” ideas in general.) I often think I was born in the wrong country. In the US, most people don’t believe in natural medicine as I do and would rather just take a pill or have surgery than learn about nutrition or exercise. (Meanwhile our food is laden with so many toxins, preservatives pesticides, colorings, high fructose corn syrup, etc., that it’s killing people!)
And I forget that not everyone posting here is from the US. Here in the US most of us don’t have access to decent health care or even info on natural medicine & that’s why I’ve become so enthusiastic about it. It has helped me so much. But in Europe I’m sure natural treatments for illness are more readily available.
Yes, I’m working on my chronic back pain and fatigue problem by exercising regularly and experimenting with supplements and different foods and herbs, as I mentioned earlier. I’ve given up on doctors as all they want to do is prescribe me addictive pain killers.
And yes, I agree that helping others can help one’s self which is why I’m postponing my own story. As I said, I have a tendency to wallow in my own misery–times are tough, times have always been tough, blah, blah, blah. So I’d rather jump out of my own situation and look at other people’s problems for a while and see if there’s any knowledge I can share with them. 🙂
Wow Meri,
I really loved reading your post. I totally agree that Yoga is the way forward and should be a part of every human’s life. I practise Yoga at least 4 times a week for an hour. Your post was so informative and helpful.:)
Thanks
Thank you so much, Lathu! I was so worried that I was coming across as preachy. I really didn’t mean to but, like you, I just love yoga. It’s great isn’t it? And when you’re enthusiastic about something it’s hard to keep quiet about it.
Also I actually had a really rough childhood and yoga w/meditation is one of the things that really saved me psychologically, and now it’s helping me physically with my chronic pain and fatigue. It just helps with so many things.
I’d even go so far as to say that if everyone in the world practiced yoga 4 times per week for an hour we’d have less crime, fewer wars, a better world, etc. 😉
Maybe. For me, as I’ve said, with my busted up back and legs, I’m lucky to be walking. Getting down on the floor is a form of torture, and getting up is worse. I walk for exercise, but for me, yoga is out! The important thing to realize in healing modalities is that there is no One Right Way.
Mary Ann, so sorry that you’re in so much pain. Walking is great. Glad you are able to at least do that. I hope it helps you. It’s great exercise.
You’re right, there is no “one way.” Keep in mind, though, that yoga is not all the intensive workouts most people think about–downward dog, etc. There are very simple yoga postures that just involve tilting one’s head to the left or right or just lifting a foot off the floor while holding onto a chair, for example. Yep, those are yoga postures. Yoga isn’t meant to be a competitive sport. It’s actually a spiritual practice, so the emphasis isn’t on contorting yourself into difficult positions or trying to do what someone else is doing but on sensing what your body needs and releasing bodily tension in those areas so you can relax and meditate. There’s a strong spiritual component to yoga. But you’re right, some of us have more of a proclivity toward yoga than others. To each his/her own 😉
Dear Meri,
For some people, like me, with my busted up back and legs, yoga is a form of torture. I walk, more and more, but it has taken since 2005 to be able to go more than 2 1/2 miles. I helped a woman to heal from rheumatoid arthritis once. She was only 26 years old, and her hands were knotted into shapes like gargoyles. Her body hurt so bad that she couldn’t sit for more than an hour, and sitting cross-legged on the floor was impossible. She had tried every medical and alternative treatment known to man, including Chinese herbs, and liquid gold. Nothing had worked. So, sometimes natural remedies work, but in this poor woman’s case, nothing had!
Hi Mary Ann,
I’m sorry you’re in so much pain. It’s great that you’re doing all that walking. That’s quite an accomplishment for someone in all that pain. Some people can’t walk a mile and don’t have the health problems you have. I consider walking to be a form of natural medicine too, so from my point of view, you’re practicing natural medicine by walking regularly. 😉
A lot of people have misconceptions about what yoga is. Yoga is a spiritual form of exercise, not a competitive one. If you can lift a foot off the ground while paying attention to your breathing and to how your body feels, noticing where you feel tension and focusing on keeping your body relaxed and steady, then you’re practicing yoga, my friend.
It’s not all downward dog!
Much of yoga is a state of mind, a way of looking at and interacting with the world. It has to do with healing your mind, body and spirit, so it’s not all physical. Many yoga exercises will be the exact same exercises a physical therapist or chiropractor will give you to heal an injury.
But I’m not going to try to sell yoga to you or anyone. It’s helped me a lot, so I’m just throwing that out there, but you’re right–it’s not going to appeal to everyone. When something saves your life it’s hard to not talk/write about it. But discard my ideas, please, if they don’t apply to you.
It sounds like walking is really working for you and that’s great!
Yes, sometimes traditional, modern medicine might be needed, particularly if someone needs help right away or is very sick. And if modern medicine heals someone’s ailment then he/she doesn’t need to turn to alternative/natural medicine. Some of us still have aches and pains that medical doctors can’t/won’t treat effectively. I’d rather get to the root cause of a problem than just take a pill to dull the pain, so I look for alternatives.
People can still practice the natural, alternative treatments while receiving traditional, modern medicine. One doesn’t necessarily exclude the other. The list of natural treatments available for illnesses is never-ending, so it’s not possible to have tried them all. I just shared the treatments I know about that I’ve researched for my own ailments hoping that someone else might find it interesting and benefit from it. But of course, as you say, everyone needs to walk along his/her own path. Quite literally in this case!
There’s also the fact that people have different needs and priorities. For ex., I have a friend who drinks a ton of soda pop. I tell her it’s bad for her and she tells me it’s good for her, that her body needs it. Okay, so maybe she’s damaging some areas of her body by taking in all that soda pop but she might be healing another part of herself. Maybe it feeds her spirit in some way to drink her favorite soda pop. So who am I to judge?
So people have different ideas on what they consider to be healing too.
It must be her spirit, since it has no helpful qualities for the body at all.
Can i get an idea on how to travel to europe n work..actually i hold a diploma in accounting and unemployed…i wish i could get somebody who will help me get there and pay back even with interest…counting on your advice n coopereation
Barbara Sher, in her Idea Book, (available on Amazon) has a section on travel and working abroad.
Hello Addo,
You don’t say where you are coming from or where exactly it is you want to get to but as I live in the UK and have some experience of working abroad, I thought I would offer up some thoughts.
First, if you haven’t done so already, it might be a good idea to sit down and clarify where you want to go and what you want to do. You might like to think about whether you are looking to travel around or stay in one place and for roughly how long, what you want to do and how much it would cost you to live over here as well as requirements for work permits, visas etc.Europe comprises many countries with diverse cultures, languagues, working environments and legal requirements so you could get bogged down if you don’t formulate some targets. In some European countries, inability to speak the language fluently may be a bar to finding work and it may be difficult to find accommodation. If you want to stay in a country for a while and get employment, do your research thoroughly and talk to people who’ve already done it. What starts as an adventure can be very lonely and hostile if you’re standed in a foreign country with no accommodation and very little money.
I only really know about the UK and, without wanting to be negative, will start by sounding a cautious note. The government here is unfortunately pursuing a deliberate policy of discouraging people coming from overseas to work here and if some laws which are about to go through Parliament are adopted people from overseas may find it more difficult to get work or accommodation. Additionally, with around 2m unemployed even graduates of UK universities are finding it hard to get work.
Having said that, you do have valuable accountancy skills (and maybe others?) and the fact that you have an accountancy diploma says certain things about you as well as being good at sums, such that you are hardworking and organised for example. London is a financial centre and there are many financial and legal institutions as well as companies with large finance deparments, so if a long-term employment contract in tha field is what you want, it is not impossible. British embassies abroad have information departments which should be able offer a wealth of information about working in Britain so your local British embassy or Consulate might be a good place to start. They will tell you about requirements for visas and work permits and may suggest some avenues of approach to employers.
Jobs with accountancy firms here are usually widely advertised through UK job agencies and can be found easily on the Internet. There are some specialist agencies but from the top of my head I would think Reeds and also The Guardian online jobs pages would be good places to look. If your diploma is one of the recognised chartered accounts diplomas, you should be in with a chance, especially if you have experience and a good track record to go with it. Most of the big financial and legal firms have branches overseas too so if there are any where you are it would be worth approaching their HR departments to see if they have any roles in which you might be able to travel to Europe. If you want to stay in the financial field you might also want to look at things like drafting bills within big legal firms or working for financial departments of international companies with perhaps opportunities for secondment to offices in Europe.
If you are not looking at anything so long-term or settled, you might look at accompanying someone or a group of people to Europe as an interpreter, organiser, administrator or whatever. If you have languages, you could look for work with an international organisation, e.g. the UN or with a global charity such as UNICEF. Even as a volunteer you should get bed and board. Additional skills – teaching, administrative, IT, languages, will all open up additional roads. While in IT I worked with a lot of young people from Asian countries who used their skills to come over on a visa and get contract work through UK employmnet agencies. They were wll paid too.
I would be very cautious about seeking unskilled work over here though. Most unskilled work is now on minimum wage which is barely enough to subsist on, and zero-hours contracts which means you are not guaranteed any work at all but have to be available to the organisation you are contracted. It would therefore probably be unwise unless you have oher sources of income. The once-popular idea of working your way around Europe is not, I think, so easy these days since the global markets crashed. There are also horror stories of illegal overseas operators who bring people over here, promised visas and work but then find they are trafficked for prostitution or gang-labour purposes. This is relatively unusual, but of course you should very carefully check out the legitimacy of any organisation who you deal with, and don’t be afraid to approach your British Embassy or consulate who should be willing and able to help you do so.
I hope this has given you some things to think about and a bit of encouragement.
Let us know how you get on.
Best wishes
Jay
Thanks Isabelle,
I want to get into the training field, I love self-development courses as it has helped me a lot as a single parent. I am just not sure how to start. I love traveling and thats the industry I am in. I would like to build on these. I am also quite computer savvy. I need to hang on to this job for a steady income and start working on something else so that I can earn more, build something else so that I can retire rich. Just don’t know where to start. 🙁
What about starting your own online travel agency? As you already have knowledge in the travel business and being a computer savvy will help building your own website. You could offer journeys where people can do self-developement courses, or finding themselves during the journey.. you know what I mean? Maybe you could also offer journeys like these to your area. Therefore you could establish a program, where people do some sightseeing and have also self development training held by you in the evenings or so… (You might do that on the weekends, so you can keep your current job until you might earn enough money with our online travel agency) –> weekend trips to your area might be perfect 🙂
This is a brilliant idea, Isabelle! I agree – travel mixed with self-development would also be very relevant to the context of a foreigner in a foreign country. I can tell you that I would love to take a trip like this!
Mari Hi,
Thanks for your comment. I am going to start working on this.Hope you all will be around as my support system.:)
Regards
Lathu
Sure, I’ll be part of your support system – please keep us updated!
Sorry, Lathu, I’m still trying to find my way around the posting structure and I replied to your first post too late. Glad you have found what you want to do and if I can support you on here I’ll be very happy to do so.
Good luck.
Jay
And how! Much of wilderness adventure therapy is this. Retreat centers abound which have self-development courses going constantly; many of them are in amazingly beautiful areas that would be just simply fun to travel to, as well.
Isabelle
Thanks so much. This forum has been quite motivating for me. Your idea is brilliant. Its exactly what I would like to do. I am going to start working on this. Web design .. I have to look at. I am not sure how to build one. I guess it may not be that difficult to learn. Hope you all are there to support me.
Sure! I’ll be part of your support system, too!!! Can’t wait to hear news and see your homepage going to be developed 🙂 as soon as you’ve got an URL, please post it for all of us 🙂 it’s nice seeing your dream/idea that means a lot to you growing, like a little child 😉
It’s inspiring to see that someone on this site is finding their way. I hope it works out for you. You could always find a college student who wouldn’t charge too much if you needed help with the web design part, though I don’t think it’ll be too difficult for you w/your computer knowledge.
Are there support groups for entrepreneurs in your area? Sometimes attending those can help with networking.
I’d like to be a part of your support group also! It sounds like a great idea.
Wow, Isabel! Terrific idea! The idea of retreat centers also comes to mind. I have done seminars and lectures at such places from time to time, when that wasn’t my main means of making a living. The travel stuff and the self-development stuff definitely can be interwoven. I love this!
Do you have a “free university” near you, where you don’t have to have any special degrees in order to teach, just your expertise? This would be an excellent place to begin, if there is one. If there is, then you begin by contacting them with your idea, and write up a proposal, and probably a synopsis, of the course you want to teach. They will even help you with how to do that, most likely. Then they will consider your proposal, and if they like it, you’re in and teaching! I’ve done this, without any master’s or PhD degrees.
I am living in Germany, am a single of two teenagers and lost my job end of August. I was in sales of a translation company and am going to have an interview in another translation company, again for business development. However, I feel that this is not what I want to do again though I earned good money. I would like to start something on my own but am not sure what it should be. I have several ideas but am not sure how to start it and I am not sure what I really want to do, what it really is that I love to do. Also, as Lathu already said, risk is stopping me, I need to earn money immediately.
Hi Britta,
In Germany there is a “short version” of Barbara book ‘wishcraft’. This is called “wie ich herausfinde, was ich wirklich will” it has just 96 pages, so it’s a good easy way to start! It helped me. especially the exercise “write your perfect day”. This might help you to find out what you REALLY want to do 🙂
Also I would recommend to do the interview – just to be save. You can always resign later (and normally you have 3 month probation time, where you can just leave from one day to the other)
I hope that helps a little bit. would be nice hearing how you go on 🙂
Hi Isabelle,
Many thanks for recommending the short version of “Wishcraft”. I have ordered it immediately after reading your post :). I will definitely do the interview but am confident that I will find my own way. I have already bundled my ideas. One was being a trainer for sales and complaint management, the other one was accompanying Spanish people who are coming to Germany for work and giving them German classes and cultural insight. Now I think I will open up a school or academy where I offer different kinds of classes, from sales training to intercultural training and leadership and management consulting. I can look for freelance trainers and consultants out there and don’t have to invest a lot of money because I can book the location at hotels when needed. If any of you have any more ideas, it will be much appreciated :).
Thank you!
Dear Britta,
I think Barbara is right. In order to be safe in developing our dreams, we need to be able to “subsidize” them with a “good enough job” which is a job that does not take up all our time and energy, which does not have toxic employees within it, and which has a good enough salary that we can live, and not merely barely get by. It is very risky beginning a business. I have done it several times–I have been self-employed 4 times over the past 30 years, and I have experienced making a very modest part time income, and going from boom to bust in less than a year. So, one way is to just dive off the cliff and do it. But I don’t think this is wisest when you are the single parent of two teenagers.
There is a man whom I know who wanted to be a hot air balloon pilot. He loved that more than anything. He was selling insurance, and he HATED it! So he began his ballooning business by offering rides on weekends. His business began to grow. It grew so much that within a few months, he was able to cut back to working half time at the insurance office and did the ballooning the rest of the time. Then, a few months later, he was able to quit the office altogether. Would a formula like that work for you, in terms of how to work what you want to do into your life?
Dear Mary Ann,
Many thanks for your reply. You are absolutely right! However, I am in the very lucky situation that the German government supports people who want to open up their own business and I will receive some money for 6 months. If I don’t earn enough money with my business after 6 months I will definitely have to look for a “good enough” job.
I want to start something on my own or find a better day job that pays me more. I am a single parent with 2 beautiful girls and been with the same job for the last 25 years. I want something more challenging and would like to earn more. Not sure how to get out of my comfort zone. The thought of not finding enough time for the kids and taking a risk is stopping me. I need some advise on how to get out of my comfort zone.
Hi Lathuon,
25 years in the same job, you must be an expert in it! That is a great basic, I think. I found it really helpful doing the exercise “write down your ideal day”. Maybe you will find out what exactly you want to change and which other job or own business would be fulfilling for you. If you have found out in which direction you want to go, you can get active by doing research on that new job/business. Find out what do you have to expect, where can you do it etc. Maybe that will also activate you to go further… It’s just an idea 🙂
And it’s a good one!
Dear Lathu,
What do you want to start on your own? To dream into this, if it isn’t altogether clear, appears to be the first step. And what sort of a “good enough job” would it be? This needs to be dreamed into, as well, if it isn’t already abundantly clear. The strange things with dreams is that they have energy. The way forward can be found; I think that if these steps haven’t already been taken that they are the beginning steps.
Hi Lathu,
My advice would be to decide what you want to do first and forget the obstacles for the time being, especially any emotional ones. If you know where you are going then you can deal with the obstacles later, so for the moment just daydream. What would you be doing if you had limitless self-confidence and could find a way of doing it that would give you more time for the chidren? Is there something you’ve always wanted to do but never dared admit it? If not, there are ideas everywhere. Tons of inspiration in the forum posts on Barbara’s site. Also you could try listing all the skills and talents you have or would like to acquire and do a search on them to see what other people are doing with them. If anything makes your heart beat faster, follow it up – especially if it scares you because that is often a sign it’s really what you want to do.
If it’s any encouragement, I changed after more than 20 years in one field (law) to a completely different field (IT programming), self-taught and with absolutely no training or previous experience. Terrifyingly risky and loads of obstacles but once I’d made up my mind and had the determination, things just seemed to work out. It was the best thing I ever did from a personal development viewpoint. The worst thing I did was letting money worries and lack of self-confidence lead me away from it back to something I didn’t really want.
The first step is to let your imagination run riot through the possibilities like a child in a sweetshop. Reality can kick in later when you come down to the nitty-gritty.
Do let us know on here what you come up with.
Best wishes
Jau
Thanks Jay
I have been waiting to learn programming too on the weekends. The issue sometimes is that I have so many interests. Training, Self development, Travel, Computers and programming, writing, Instructional design. I have to get down to one goal at a time, then it should be easy. Did you go for some formal training in programming ?
Lathu,
Not to sound like a broken drum, but you can combine most of your interests into a career that’s perfect for a scanner. As an independent technical trainer, I travel, write and teach about computer software. You don’t have to be a programmer, either – just have an interest in IT and like to help people. Every job is different, you are always learning, and someone else pays for your travel.
Dear Lathu,
Since when do you have to do one goal at a time? I think some of these things could be combined nicely. Self-development and travel. Writing added in, or combined with instructional design. Possibly another income stream from computers and programming. These are obvious areas of talent for you. And I can see how at least some of them can be combined.