To me it is obvious that nothing in this world operates on its own. It's true for everything... Legs are good for running, but trying to do it with just one leg--not so easy.

It is slightly unnerving that there are so many separate moving parts in every given...well...thing. For example, this week I discovered, that in order to have good self-esteem, I'd need to be comfortable in my skin in All Areas of my life. It's not enough just to be confident in one, or even most. If I put myself down in one area of my life, it trickles down to everything else that I do. It's good to be aware of one's weaknesses, but it's another thing all together, to be needlessly insecure. But that shit can be worked on, thankfully.

I've suffered from a lot of abuse from a lot of people in my life, but I'm breaking the cycle now. Through coming to terms with my own abuse, I've become very sensitive to evidence of it around me. Whether it's racism, or cultural, religious or dogmatic oppression...I see evidence of it every time I get on the subway here in New York. When you open your eyes to something, it's almost impossible not to see it.

One area where I'm particularly sensitive to abuse is the environment. If we weren't so abused in our own lives, I don't think we'd be so quick to do it to the environment either. Abuse creates anger, disconnect and mindlessness, among other sucky things. The worst part about abuse, is that it doesn't stop once the abuser is no longer around. It becomes our reality--it continues on in our heads and we pass it forward. How are we going to be kind to the environment, if we can't even be kind to ourselves?

The reason why being kind to nature is important, is that we can't live without it. The weather is already starting to turn against us, with unprecedented storms, floods, fires and droughts due to global warming... According to an article written by Al Gore for Rolling Stone-magazine, there is a "constant dumping of 90 million tons of heat-trapping emissions into the Earth's thin shell of atmosphere every 24 hours." That's abuse if anything is!

I'm not trying to paint a picture of doom and gloom here. I have a lot of hope, although I know that this issue is urgent for all of us. These days, I regularly ask myself the question: What can I do as an individual to be kinder to our planet, and to help heal it? This blog is one thing that I'm doing. I am, needless to say, trying to connect with you. I don't write this only for myself, even though I do find it very therapeutic.
This quote comes to mind:

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Through my own experience in this world, what I see, is that being kinder to ourselves, will inevitably lead to us to being kinder to everything that surrounds us: the nature, other people, animals... Becoming aware, if or when we are abusing ourselves is key.
We are all connected. One leg can't run without the other.

"If you want to work on your art, work on your life" - Anton Chekhov

These days, I regularly surprise myself with what I am capable of, both on a personal, and on an artistic level. Where was all this *fill in the blank* hiding before?? Answer: underneath a load of crap that I've sifted through.

There are so many more layers of understanding and capacity in a human being than most of us realize. We unconsciously understand our truth in every situation, so lying to ourselves will eventually fuck us up. You can fool some of yourself some of the time, but you can't fool all of yourself all of the time. Your body and spirit always know what's really going on, even if your mind doesn't. Makes sense to become more conscious of the unconscious then, doesn't it?

I've put some devotion into working on my life this past year.. As a result, I am a better singer, a better songwriter and a better musician than ever before. I am, most certainly also, a better performer. My life and my art are utterly intertwined, completely connected. Getting to know who I am, finding out my strengths and weaknesses, allows me to walk a straighter line towards my goals. No longer distracted by what's presented as 'trendy! cool! must-have! must-be!' at any given time, I'm better able to pick out the things that interest and inspire me. Most of the hype simply isn't relevant to me.

There's no need to measure up to anything, our own personal truth is all. Our interests are as varied as our personalities, and that's a beautiful thing. Why try to fit into some ideal format of who we "should" be? Who the fuck is defining who we should be, anyway? And what does it say about me that I've been listening to peppy, Mexican disco-music from my favorite video game, Little Big Planet, all week? I don't much care. It's where I'm at.

This week, I resolve to think less (and to live more).
That just about sums it up for me today...






"The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind." -Jacob Bronowski

"All this buttoning and unbuttoning..." read an anonymous 18th-century suicide note. I can relate. Life can get pretty tiresome at times, with all this raveling and unraveling... Apparently the word ravel even means the same thing as unravel, in addition to meaning the opposite of it. So there you go. I'm talking about those times, when you really feel like you're getting somewhere, and then consequently finding yourself back, seemingly, at square one.

One of my favorite movies is The Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray. I think it perfectly portrays the essence of what we're dealing with, when it comes to life, provided we're not in the middle of a natural disaster, for example. Every day is essentially the same, if we decide to live it that way. Every day, we have a million choices on what to do with our lives, and yet often we choose to do what we've always done, because it feels safer.

I have a disorder that is known as PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I have lived with it for most of my life. A lot of the fear that I'm pushing through has become inbuilt, and I can hardly remember living without it. That's why this process called life has been extra-challenging for me. But I am choosing to do like Bill Murray (once he gets over his frustration)... Like him, I have decided to build healthy routines on top of healthy routines and I trust that one of these days, I'll wake up next to Andie McDowell. (You know...that being the symbolic equivalent of it.)
Apparently the truth is, we get better. We really do. We just need to decide to do so, one day at a time.

I am not one to want to leave conflicts unresolved, though I often have in the past.
I've been too scared to bring up things that have hurt me, for fear of being hurt again... So after a while, I've just let things slide. Unfortunately, unresolved conflicts stay with you--locked in all kinds of boxes in the unconscious. Then, when another conflict arises, the anger is doubled, tripled, quadrupled--because it gets
aggravated by all those other, earlier hurts... Those seemingly secure, locked boxes open all at once, causing one to want to retaliate, often not proportionally....

Confrontation is (still) scary to me. So far, I have not come across many people, who are able to talk through a conflict without re-injuring me. The goal is, that one day in the future, I'll be able to dodge bullets flying at me, like Neo in the Matrix. Or better yet, stop them entirely..! This week, I find that sitting with my emotions, for however long it takes for me to make sense of them, is healthier than acting on my anger straight away. I am still far from being able to dodge a bullet and I know it. I'm also trying not to shoot anyone myself.

Figuring out how I feel about the hurt, considering the best way to bring it up and to talk about it, may take days, weeks possibly. It is not wimpy--it actually feels quite powerful. As long as I'm not able to call some people out on their shit in the moment, I'll sleep on it, sit on it, and do it later, as well as I possibly can. At its best, resolving conflicts can be incredibly beautiful and purifying. I have been lucky enough to experience this, more than a few times now...

“The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.”
-Carl Gustav Jung

For half of my life, I've had this misconception that I'm lazy. I've beat myself up about it royally every chance I've gotten. Seems rather sad now that I realize that I'm anything but lazy. I have merely been fearful. See, getting to know oneself is imperative!

What I discovered this week, is that one of the reasons for my perceived laziness, is extremely high goals. Goals, that require a lot of work to attain. I have actually felt quite paralyzed by what I'm working towards, as I've felt like I'm so far from where I want to be.... I have often had this thought: "well, what's the point?" I've been intimidated and scared to do the work, because I've felt like nothing is enough.

I found this amazing book on Sunday, called "One Small Step Can Change Your Life" by Robert Maurer. Until now, I've incorporated changes into my life through huge innovations... I've been attempting to change my life completely in one day. I've struggled through these phases, through an immense built-in resistance. Sometimes it's worked, but often it has not. Changing myself like this has required an enormous amount of courage and resilience on my part... Now, I realize that the process doesn't have to be that arduous.

Robert Maurer's book instructs me, that if I incorporate tiny changes into my life every day, I'm able to tiptoe around the fight-or-flight response in my brain, which follows every departure from my usual safe routines. This is true for all of us, and is a life-altering realization for me. I don't have to be scared about doing the work I want to do anymore, because I can start doing it in Very small increments. I have certainly been headed this way in my soul-searchings, but reading this book really speeded up my understanding. I whole-heartedly recommend it.
Hehe.... I feel like I just gave some frickin' book report... Well whatever. I like to share.

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

I'd like to harken back to the toolbox of emotional tools, that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago... As one hacks away at the stuff in life, one gets so tired sometimes, that all one can handle is a pair of tweezers. Even lifting up the hammer is a chore. But this is a valid phase, and the tweezers are a valid tool, I say. Seems to me, that if you keep hacking at the big things at all times, you will miss the splinter. Take the splinter out, even the bigger things get easier.

I've been disregarding the splinters of my life a lot, because I thought they were insignificant. I learned to live with many "small" annoyances, because I was taught it was sissy of me to get so worked up about "a little splinter." So I walked around with many. But here's the thing about splinters: they hurt, and thus they take up a lot space in the mind. Plus, they can get infected. Better to take care of problems while they are still small, is what I now think. It is justified and healthy. The little things is what the big picture consists of.

The way I see it, is that if anything hinders my journey at this point, or slows me down in my quest, it has got to go. However much work it may take me to get rid of them (and provided these are things that I can actually control).

As I address the issue of the splinters, I feel like for the first time I may have a fair fight ahead of me. Seriously. It almost feels like I'm starting over...
*gathers tools and gets back to work*