My Axiom of the Day

I would rather stumble and even fall under the weight of my own dreams than excell in the pursuit of someone elses.

Me.

Dancing with the Devil in the Pale Halogen Lights

At what point in the job search process does the art of selling yourself becomes the tantalizing tango of selling your soul?

What you say/What you think
Yes, I can do that/Why would I want to

Yes, I can work weekends./But I won't

Yes, I can fax, copy, collate, staple and Fed-Ex that/Do you want Fries with that?

No, I don't mind multi-tasking/Idiot

Yes, I can get you more coffee/F***ing Idiot

Please, I don't have enough to do./Someone shoot me, please. Just shoot me.

You'd think by this stage in my life with as many bouts with unemployment as I've endured I would have the whole interviewing for a job that I want, can do, and am willing to do down pat. Maybe I'm jaded, I think I shouldn't *have* to go through all this because I'm just that good. No, really I am. But how do you sell yourself without selling your soul.

It comes down to I have to work, I need to keep a roof over my head until I get published well enough to support myself as a writer. But if you tell people without a sense of humor (and believe me we that have are acutely aware of how the majority of the world doesn't have) they seem to think that your loyalty to your passion will somehow diminish your effort to their proletarian goals for the company. They think they have a life outside of their job, but when they boast about the hours they've put in instead of the sunset they missed the night before, or how many presentations they were able to crank out instead of the blossoms in their garden then they really have no concept of the whole passion thing and they will never understand or accept anything less from their overworked and underpaid minions. I don't want to sellmy soul for an hourly wage, yet I have to keep pace with the world in order to support my passions. My biggest fear is that I will eventually slip on this razors edge and eventually be consumed again by the hemoglobin dependant task masters in the corporate hells we sell ourselves to.

(Sorry, no visual to express myself today. I googled "Faustian contract" and "selling my soul to the devil" and all I got were images of Eva Mendez, Nicole Richie and Mickey Mouse. I have NO idea what that means other than it looks like Mickey has won market share in hell.)

On Death

Christ taught that we should be a light unto the world, the Dalai Lama has finished the thought as to why....

When you die you go alone, and the only light to accompany you derives from the spiritual practice or positive acts you have done. -The Dalai Lama

My Own Mythology

This weekend on NPR (PRI) on This American Life there was the history of a father with a directionless rudder allowing him to become whatever the tides of society dictated for that decade. It got me thinking about my mom and my life. I realized on some level the narrator and I shared a lot of the same experiences, only hers were more violent and damaging in ways than mine. Where her father lived in Movies like Ice Storm my mom lived in ones like Gone With The Wind and Donna Reed.

As easy as it is to always cram Mom into molds and say things like above, the truth of the matter is I live in my own Mythology. I guess we all to do some extent. I believe that I am a writer of worth yet with nothing published to make this myth reality. I believe that I am cultured and refined because I love opera when in reality I still cling to the morass of images displayed on the proletariat driven television. The list goes on and on I just don't want to bring all my faults into the light.

I have always wanted to be more than I am and in the past the simple desire has been enough to sustain me. Now that I'm reaching for the more authentic in life I find myself discontent on the mere morsels that mythology has to offer. I'm starved for the sustenance of the here and the now. Maybe that's what college was supposed to teach me but I was too disconnected with my desperate attempt to hold onto the mythology that I never allowed myself to grow. Now that I'm reaching forward, looking forward, living forward I find it difficult to feel my footing under me, to trust in the unseen hand of fate and faith.

I'm trapped in the netherworld between myth and authenticity. I guess my only recourse is to keep my eyes towards the light as I try to leave the world of shadows and hope to find myself, for the first time, on solid ground living the life I've always dreamed.

Look at this when your grumpy.

How can you look at this and not go AAaaaawwwww.

More Quotes

As promised over a year ago, here are more of my favorite quotes....

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If you think Genealogy is supposed to be fun you've either never had fun or never done Genealogy.

Carol Haws

Family History Class

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To come together is a beginning, to stay together is progress and to work together is success.

Henry Ford quoted by

KC Wu, Cisco Systems

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Enlightenment - That magnificent escape from anguish and ignorance - never happens by accident. It results from the brave and sometimes lonely battle of one person against his/her own weakness.

Bhikkhm Nyanasobhano

Landscapes of Wonder

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Worldliness is next to Ungodliness.

Cameron Shaw

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The soft bigotry of high expectations

Doonesbury

9/21/07

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More of an original word pairing than a quote...saving it for the moment of greatest impact....

Sphincter fatigue.

Rules To Live By

Be thankful for what you have

Pray for what you need

and

Work as if you've recieved the answer

Nothing says it better than a cupcake!

I've been feeling like a cupcake lately. Too small to do anything impressive, confined by one-time-use ruffled paper and thoroughly baked . Cupcake reality: no matter how pretty the cupcake, it's still just a cupcake.

That Wacky President of Ours

It's good to see that the POTUS is making use of the "Word of the Day" desk calendar Laura gave him for Christmas. Listening to his press conference this morning I heard him use several polysyllabic words without breaking a sweat.

What was fascinating to me were the phrase-pauses he took so the people with the approved Dick-isms can whisper them into his ear. I'm sure any deviation from the scrip will result in a reduction of cookies for snack and an hour more of afternoon nap time.

3 August 2006 & Counting - Fin

Not counting any more. In fact, I'm back in the dating game, so to speak. I hate the dating game. You have to gear up for the "big sale" only the sale can last upwards of eight tiring months of waiting for the big fish to bite. In this case, they bit me in the ass. I know the picture doesn't make much sense to the rant, but it's one of mine and I thought I'd share.

It's not that the whole rejection letter was bad, it was actually quite positive and complimentary, but to say it was a positive rejection letter is a really bad oxymoron. They said their reviewers gave it an "excellent" rating, and that I really got into the minds of what it was like to be a missionary. Their only criticism was my ending which didn't end the way they had hoped. I don't know what they were expecting, they are missionaries after all, it's not like they can have a kegger or something. I talked to my editor about it and she said I shouldn't change it unless it was something I was going to change in the first place, which I wasn't. It ended where it wanted to end, how can I change that? Everyone had learned the lesson they were supposed to learn and had applied it while they were there...so my question is, where do you take story from there.

I'm now in the process of trying to pick another publisher to send it to. I have the deadline for it to be in the mail of May 1, 2007. I'm going to give them about six months to consider it before I send it out to the next one and then just make it a habit of sending it out every six months. I don't want to have to wait for eight months to find out that they aren't going to take it. I could have had it on the desk of another publishing house for two moths had I initiated this policy before. I guess you live and learn. I think I've narrowed it down to a publisher that published a fictional story about the MTC, at least I think it's fictional. Maybe they'll be interested in adding to their missionary library....we'll see. Time will tell.

No Pressure

It is not sufficient for religious people to be involved with prayer. Rather, they are morally obliged to contribute all they can to solving the world’s problems.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama