Mike is back. Yay!
It’s been a busy day. We had Laser Eagles. Mike was not the tracker – I worked with Jennifer Marr who is a fabulous tracker! Mostly I was collecting together the paintings that I intend to exhibit at the ROM so that Kimberly can drop them off at the CAVE office. This is where Paul and I are collecting them, where Andrew will photograph them, and where we will make our plans for shaping the exhibit so that its message is as powerful as possible.
Oh yes, Kimberly is back too. Yay! The impact of her absence hasn’t been as obvious to me because she did an excellent job of replacing herself while Mike and she were away. But just the same, lots of things went on hold, like some fundraising, so it’s wonderful to feel the energy picking up again.
I spent a large part of today getting a cat from Hamilton to the northernmost reaches of Toronto. In all, eight people were involved in moving one cat. Mike and I got to do the actual driving and delivery of a yowling and frightened feline. On the one hand, it’s truly bizarre, and as Mike was reflecting as we drove, nothing of this really has anything to do with the cat itself. He simply wasn’t wanted where he was and I knew someone who did want him and Mary and Gloria did not want to see him killed and there you go, grown adults spending a day and a good bit of money moving an animal across three municipalities!
It was good to see Gloria and Mary again as well. I spent a lot of today handing out happy faces and stars. I have discovered in the past few weeks that it is a wonderful thing to surround myself with stars and happy faces. I have been using them to keep track of the twelve projects I am creating so as to keep on track and to keep motivated. The “unintended” result is that it has become ever so clear to me that I made a decision when I was very young, probably four, that I did not want EVER to cry again when people hurt me. It certainly was a simple enough and obvious enough decision for a four year old to make in the kind of situation that I found myself in as a child. Never could I have imagined that by having such a determined focus to be stoic and invulnerable that I would powerfully shape myself into a person who struggles to be compassionate both with myself and others and who is unwilling to be emotional and touched.
Of course, that has shifted a lot over the years but this Third Cycle has powerfully revealed to me that I carry the tightness and the burden of the decision to be encased in a shell. My own shell has way more shaped my body and my heart than did the plastic shells that the doctors encased me in when I was a teenager with a growingly twisted body.
At the same time, while happy faces and stars came into my life to support my desire to shift the world towards giftedness, the same happy faces and stars have cracked the shell and helped me discover a child who deeply longs for affirmation and who responds to affirmation with joy and laughter.
So today I decided to give it away, bought some packages of stars and happy little Easter chicks (actually, one of them is kind of grumpy!) and gave them to nearly everybody I ran into today. Is this something I would do every day for the rest of my life? Probably not, but then again, who would have ever thought I would be exhibiting at the ROM?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
April 13, 2011
It’s been ten days, maybe eleven, since I had a dose of Morphine. I’m beginning to think that today may be the day.
Factors: pain in my lower back, headache, a low pressure high humidity air mass here at the lakeshore, lots of time up in the chair yesterday, anxiety! Anxiety – the key factor to having the experience go from a minor discomfort that disappears into the day’s activities to becoming THE theme of the day.
Why did we create such a world that is so hard to grow up into? Yesterday I found out that the Workers Compensation “tax” on my staff’s payroll is going to take most of the extra allocation that I received earlier this month leaving me – for the third time in 18 months – nearly out of money to pay my personal assistants. No amount of friends’ generousity and creative money finding prepares me for these moments – when someone/thing beyond my awareness/understanding/management exercises their “legitimate” right to take “my” money. I am left with “hopeless”! Anxiety!
Of course the Morphine does not find the extra $5000. It just takes the pain out of “hopeless”. Hence the risk of addiction.
Yesterday I was toying with the idea of restarting my PhD at OISE, mostly because there are some fat research scholarships available. I realize that I still don’t really want a PhD – it’s way more like I want to be a Senior Researcher of my own Institute on Excellence in Research and Development in Inclusion. It’s what I am anyway, and it would give me the appropriate “trappings” – context – for me to look like what I am and to attract the team and the money.
Today the dream seems more than usually unattainable. It seems utterly defeated before it’s born – like: “Who do I think I am, anyway!” The raid on my payroll is just another example – another message from the universe – “Know your place. Go back to bed and die.”
I need/want a different place to go back to. I don’t mean I want to move. I mean I want Square One to be real enough that I and we are not constantly shoring up daily life.
Jen has taught me to breathe through the anxiety – to allow the muscles to relax and stretch out. I have also come to believe that miracles are always happening and that I can rely on something being available that right now I have no awareness of. The real question worth asking is: “How am I going to make myself available for a miracle?”
Factors: pain in my lower back, headache, a low pressure high humidity air mass here at the lakeshore, lots of time up in the chair yesterday, anxiety! Anxiety – the key factor to having the experience go from a minor discomfort that disappears into the day’s activities to becoming THE theme of the day.
Why did we create such a world that is so hard to grow up into? Yesterday I found out that the Workers Compensation “tax” on my staff’s payroll is going to take most of the extra allocation that I received earlier this month leaving me – for the third time in 18 months – nearly out of money to pay my personal assistants. No amount of friends’ generousity and creative money finding prepares me for these moments – when someone/thing beyond my awareness/understanding/management exercises their “legitimate” right to take “my” money. I am left with “hopeless”! Anxiety!
Of course the Morphine does not find the extra $5000. It just takes the pain out of “hopeless”. Hence the risk of addiction.
Yesterday I was toying with the idea of restarting my PhD at OISE, mostly because there are some fat research scholarships available. I realize that I still don’t really want a PhD – it’s way more like I want to be a Senior Researcher of my own Institute on Excellence in Research and Development in Inclusion. It’s what I am anyway, and it would give me the appropriate “trappings” – context – for me to look like what I am and to attract the team and the money.
Today the dream seems more than usually unattainable. It seems utterly defeated before it’s born – like: “Who do I think I am, anyway!” The raid on my payroll is just another example – another message from the universe – “Know your place. Go back to bed and die.”
I need/want a different place to go back to. I don’t mean I want to move. I mean I want Square One to be real enough that I and we are not constantly shoring up daily life.
Jen has taught me to breathe through the anxiety – to allow the muscles to relax and stretch out. I have also come to believe that miracles are always happening and that I can rely on something being available that right now I have no awareness of. The real question worth asking is: “How am I going to make myself available for a miracle?”
Sunday, April 10, 2011
April 10, 2011
It’s early on Sunday – about 10:30am. It’s been a very different week so it’s fitting to write at a very different time.
The new guy, Brian, did very well on his first solo shift. This is a saving grace in the midst of the stresses of covering Mike’s vacation and of Helen’ and Eva’s sudden illnesses, and the “back-ups” – people who typically cover an odd shift here and there – all seemingly being elsewhere this weekend!
I think that I wrote recently that I am keeping a chart up each week of the twelve projects – thirteen this week! – that I am juggling. I give myself happy faces each day on each project for efforts I have made and stars for team efforts, with or without me. Mike’s absence leaves a big gap in a third of the chart, which lets me know that I am only in contact with a big part of my life through him right now. It looks like an area where I can build communication with others!
The chart also reveals that I already have achieved my goal with ODSP and I can take it off my project list. I got another new case worker about two weeks ago, and I decided to go to see her in person, to explain my plan to transition off of “the pension” by October. It turned out much better than that. She can, and did!, mark my case as eligible for receiving the drug and dental coverage, and wheelchair repairs and replacements even when I make too much money for the income part. This will also be true after I am 65. This makes a significant difference to my current plans for making money.
Early in the week I noticed that there were very few cubes – prefabricated modular cells made in Texas – remaining in the train yard. The immediate view from my bedroom window was returning to its themes of marshalling yard and industrial wasteland. I assumed that the local prison – now up to four stories with two big towers and one huge one – was near completion. Yet, two nights ago, another train came in and I awoke to several stacks and flatbeds of the largest, grey cubes.
Once again I am fascinated by how much goes on at night in the gigantic playground, and how I just don’t see all of it. This activity is typically accompanied by bright, sometimes flashing lights, and last October I was several times kept awake by an enormous arc lamp. The actual work is accomplished by very few people and humungous machines. How can it be so hidden? Yet they must have discovered ways to be more discreet so that now we all pretty much sleep through it.
Just how big is it going to be, this prison?
I painted today. More gray and blue, but today with some Gesso. It’s my first time with Gesso, necessitated by the use of somebody else’s recycled canvases. It made the acrylic paint work more like oil – thick, slow to dry, easy to scrape off. Expensive. Yet somehow I felt like I was t taking charge of my craft, not just painting. If I truly am a serious artist then I must understand the economics of it – not understanding as in learning but as standing for it to work and grow, to have its own integrity. More than one trained tracker, reliable supplies of sufficient quality, a style, themes, a context, appreciation for its own sake. It is not therapy.
The new guy, Brian, did very well on his first solo shift. This is a saving grace in the midst of the stresses of covering Mike’s vacation and of Helen’ and Eva’s sudden illnesses, and the “back-ups” – people who typically cover an odd shift here and there – all seemingly being elsewhere this weekend!
I think that I wrote recently that I am keeping a chart up each week of the twelve projects – thirteen this week! – that I am juggling. I give myself happy faces each day on each project for efforts I have made and stars for team efforts, with or without me. Mike’s absence leaves a big gap in a third of the chart, which lets me know that I am only in contact with a big part of my life through him right now. It looks like an area where I can build communication with others!
The chart also reveals that I already have achieved my goal with ODSP and I can take it off my project list. I got another new case worker about two weeks ago, and I decided to go to see her in person, to explain my plan to transition off of “the pension” by October. It turned out much better than that. She can, and did!, mark my case as eligible for receiving the drug and dental coverage, and wheelchair repairs and replacements even when I make too much money for the income part. This will also be true after I am 65. This makes a significant difference to my current plans for making money.
Early in the week I noticed that there were very few cubes – prefabricated modular cells made in Texas – remaining in the train yard. The immediate view from my bedroom window was returning to its themes of marshalling yard and industrial wasteland. I assumed that the local prison – now up to four stories with two big towers and one huge one – was near completion. Yet, two nights ago, another train came in and I awoke to several stacks and flatbeds of the largest, grey cubes.
Once again I am fascinated by how much goes on at night in the gigantic playground, and how I just don’t see all of it. This activity is typically accompanied by bright, sometimes flashing lights, and last October I was several times kept awake by an enormous arc lamp. The actual work is accomplished by very few people and humungous machines. How can it be so hidden? Yet they must have discovered ways to be more discreet so that now we all pretty much sleep through it.
Just how big is it going to be, this prison?
I painted today. More gray and blue, but today with some Gesso. It’s my first time with Gesso, necessitated by the use of somebody else’s recycled canvases. It made the acrylic paint work more like oil – thick, slow to dry, easy to scrape off. Expensive. Yet somehow I felt like I was t taking charge of my craft, not just painting. If I truly am a serious artist then I must understand the economics of it – not understanding as in learning but as standing for it to work and grow, to have its own integrity. More than one trained tracker, reliable supplies of sufficient quality, a style, themes, a context, appreciation for its own sake. It is not therapy.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
April 6, 2011
Yes, the date was had!
It has been a tumultuous day – the wheelchair broke, the water was off so the building’s boilers could be fixed, an assistant went home with a blistering ear ache leaving me in bed waiting for the only one who come in - Nick, three promised cheques have yet to arrive, and yes, the date was had!
Let’s call him Fred. He is a welder and worked until 6am and so couldn’t get himself here by 11:00am. We talked back and forth a few times on the cells – I think I might have woken him up the first time. He got to the Yalla café about noon.
In the meantime Yalla was about 35 minutes late opening up. Helen and I stood about for awhile, then went for a short walk. Michel, one of the owners, broke his hip falling on ice on Feb. 19, and he still isn’t allowed to put weight on his leg. He and his wife/cook Helen had errands to run before they opened and so were late.
As I entered the café my new chair would not come out of the partial tilt I had it in to travel at higher speeds. It’s been quirky all along, and I suspect the controls have been messed up from the beginning! Anyway I was not in a good position for eating.
But it’s not bad. It turns out that Fred is a Shiite Muslim who escaped from Iraq after all his family were killed except himself and one brother by Sadam’s people. He was brought by the UN to Hamilton. His English is week, but Michel welcomed him in Arabic, translated when necessary, teased me and said many flattering things. Eventually we were both comfortable enough, and Helen, my assistant (who was the soul of discretion throughout it all) propped me up with a cushion and we four ate together, sharing food from each other’s plates. Fred paid and walked part of the way back with us.
We will likely have another date, and not need Michel.
I spent the rest of the day in bed so the tech could take my chair in for a major part replacement.
Throughout the day I noticed that the number of prison modular cubes waiting in the train yard has gone down dramatically this week. There are perhaps only a dozen left. Today I actually saw an oversized flatbed take one out of the yard, loop around to Horner Ave., and drive it to the back of the now almost finished prison assemblage.
It was fitting that I was landed back in bed to see this little drama. Until now most of the activity has happened in the dead of night, or occasionally in daylight, but not when I was present to witness it.
Mike and Kimberly are off to Whistler for eleven days, for pre-wedding planning, sampling and inspection of facilities. It leaves a BIG hole in my schedule and my life.
Today I realized that “sick” is now definitely done! I have entered fully into my commitment to live Third Cycle fully and powerfully, to unmistakenly turn Inclusion over to a future in good hands and to live my life as the miracle it is as I fulfill this chosen task. Fred, Michel, Helen, Mike, Kimberly, Nick and many, many more hold me respectfully, carefully and insistently in the precious chosen and created family that makes my amazing life both possible and worthwhile – (and I haven’t had Morphine in six days!)
It has been a tumultuous day – the wheelchair broke, the water was off so the building’s boilers could be fixed, an assistant went home with a blistering ear ache leaving me in bed waiting for the only one who come in - Nick, three promised cheques have yet to arrive, and yes, the date was had!
Let’s call him Fred. He is a welder and worked until 6am and so couldn’t get himself here by 11:00am. We talked back and forth a few times on the cells – I think I might have woken him up the first time. He got to the Yalla café about noon.
In the meantime Yalla was about 35 minutes late opening up. Helen and I stood about for awhile, then went for a short walk. Michel, one of the owners, broke his hip falling on ice on Feb. 19, and he still isn’t allowed to put weight on his leg. He and his wife/cook Helen had errands to run before they opened and so were late.
As I entered the café my new chair would not come out of the partial tilt I had it in to travel at higher speeds. It’s been quirky all along, and I suspect the controls have been messed up from the beginning! Anyway I was not in a good position for eating.
But it’s not bad. It turns out that Fred is a Shiite Muslim who escaped from Iraq after all his family were killed except himself and one brother by Sadam’s people. He was brought by the UN to Hamilton. His English is week, but Michel welcomed him in Arabic, translated when necessary, teased me and said many flattering things. Eventually we were both comfortable enough, and Helen, my assistant (who was the soul of discretion throughout it all) propped me up with a cushion and we four ate together, sharing food from each other’s plates. Fred paid and walked part of the way back with us.
We will likely have another date, and not need Michel.
I spent the rest of the day in bed so the tech could take my chair in for a major part replacement.
Throughout the day I noticed that the number of prison modular cubes waiting in the train yard has gone down dramatically this week. There are perhaps only a dozen left. Today I actually saw an oversized flatbed take one out of the yard, loop around to Horner Ave., and drive it to the back of the now almost finished prison assemblage.
It was fitting that I was landed back in bed to see this little drama. Until now most of the activity has happened in the dead of night, or occasionally in daylight, but not when I was present to witness it.
Mike and Kimberly are off to Whistler for eleven days, for pre-wedding planning, sampling and inspection of facilities. It leaves a BIG hole in my schedule and my life.
Today I realized that “sick” is now definitely done! I have entered fully into my commitment to live Third Cycle fully and powerfully, to unmistakenly turn Inclusion over to a future in good hands and to live my life as the miracle it is as I fulfill this chosen task. Fred, Michel, Helen, Mike, Kimberly, Nick and many, many more hold me respectfully, carefully and insistently in the precious chosen and created family that makes my amazing life both possible and worthwhile – (and I haven’t had Morphine in six days!)
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
April 5, 2011
Okay, I started with Facebook, with an ad for seniors who want to date. It led to a website where I would have to pay money so I quit filling in my information there.
Then Helen remembered a site that she thought might be solely for non-heterosexual people. It’s called Plenty of Fish. We looked it up and it turned out to be both free and quite comprehensive. Not only is it for all types and all ages, but it gives lots of advice on how to create your profile, what to do on the first date, what not to talk about, etc.
I signed up and had four responses in less than 24 hours. Exciting!
Today is Mike’s last day until April 19th. We packed a lot in today since our lives overlap so much with both Landmark and Inclusion. However busy we needed to be, today’s activities included checking out the responses that came through this morning!
Before you know it I was “chatting” with a man who lives in Hamilton and is originally from Iraq. I am not a very fast typist when it comes to chatting and so I happily encouraged Mike to do the messaging. Once again, within minutes, I was pushing his boundaries, and in some senses he was pushing mine. On the one hand I was asking his advice on how I should respond. On the other he jumped in at least once to answer the guy’s comments before I had said anything. This led to a very productive conversation about what is weird and what is too much and the value to me of having opportunities to mix friendship, experience and support. Among other things I realized this morning that such boundary melding sometimes actually gives me more safety, not less, and it certainly gives me valuable insight into the worlds of younger people, walking people, and just simply people who get to see parts of the world that I will never see.
Anyways, I now have a coffee date for tomorrow morning. We are going to go to the Yalla Café. Not only do I feel welcome and comfortable there, but Helen and Michel, the café owners and operators, love me and will give me a very good perspective on how this new guy is as a potential relationship. If anything, Michel may be somewhat paternalistic and that at least will be funny.
It’s all very different from any time I’ve tried dating before. It’s funny but this thing about expressing myself with fewer inhibitions has really shifted my world and its possibilities.
I will, of course, write a story about how it goes. Now it is time to sleep.
Then Helen remembered a site that she thought might be solely for non-heterosexual people. It’s called Plenty of Fish. We looked it up and it turned out to be both free and quite comprehensive. Not only is it for all types and all ages, but it gives lots of advice on how to create your profile, what to do on the first date, what not to talk about, etc.
I signed up and had four responses in less than 24 hours. Exciting!
Today is Mike’s last day until April 19th. We packed a lot in today since our lives overlap so much with both Landmark and Inclusion. However busy we needed to be, today’s activities included checking out the responses that came through this morning!
Before you know it I was “chatting” with a man who lives in Hamilton and is originally from Iraq. I am not a very fast typist when it comes to chatting and so I happily encouraged Mike to do the messaging. Once again, within minutes, I was pushing his boundaries, and in some senses he was pushing mine. On the one hand I was asking his advice on how I should respond. On the other he jumped in at least once to answer the guy’s comments before I had said anything. This led to a very productive conversation about what is weird and what is too much and the value to me of having opportunities to mix friendship, experience and support. Among other things I realized this morning that such boundary melding sometimes actually gives me more safety, not less, and it certainly gives me valuable insight into the worlds of younger people, walking people, and just simply people who get to see parts of the world that I will never see.
Anyways, I now have a coffee date for tomorrow morning. We are going to go to the Yalla Café. Not only do I feel welcome and comfortable there, but Helen and Michel, the café owners and operators, love me and will give me a very good perspective on how this new guy is as a potential relationship. If anything, Michel may be somewhat paternalistic and that at least will be funny.
It’s all very different from any time I’ve tried dating before. It’s funny but this thing about expressing myself with fewer inhibitions has really shifted my world and its possibilities.
I will, of course, write a story about how it goes. Now it is time to sleep.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
April 3, 2011
A friend once told me that in the world of astrologers when Mercury is in retrograde (which means that it appears to the naked eye to be travelling backwards) all kinds of difficulties in the area of communication show up. I’ll bet if I were to check – which I’m not going to – Mercury has been in retrograde for a while now! Tonight my computer just stopped dead twice. Earlier this week I have been hassling with two of the City Team members, and other stuff has been breaking down or messing up, like the car door switch not working.
Just the same, aside from the pain being pretty bad all week, the most recent weeks of my life have been very powerful. For example, tonight on the way home from Newmarket, and while getting caught in a snowstorm, and while my hips and feet were tired and starting to hurt, Mike and I still had a very creative conversation around renaming our peace/Inclusion organization and around structuring it, resourcing it, etc.
My capacity to express myself is clearly shifting. I can see a kind of progression from black and white to shades of gray to colours breaking out. I find myself with the ability to experience compassion and to experience all sorts of things without needing to severely judge. I find myself laughing, and even genuinely being funny sometimes.
I am in the midst of a Landmark seminar called Sex and Intimacy. I came to it very reluctantly and mostly because I’ve been complaining for years that I don’t have a sexual partner and certainly not a lover. It is extremely ironic that I, who is absent of willing partners to support me to have a sexual expression, have been avidly sought out this last year by people who want to know more about sexuality and the experience of being physically limited in mobility. I am sure this has lots to do with the play – the Book of Judith. But even here, expression is breaking out. When I was interviewed for the Trillium funding research project on personal assistance and supporting sexual expression, I was asked very powerful questions about the nature of personal assistance and what it is like to be assisted. I felt genuinely free and grounded in answering these questions and left one of the interviewers moved to tears. I was clearly in the zone of my personal gifts.
It is emerging in the Sex and Intimacy seminar that one of my major blocks has been what we call in Landmark a winning formula. It works for me to be a strategist who builds my efforts on eliminating the likelihood of failure. In other words I always have at least one back up plan and often two in case something is not working out in my life. This way of thinking is very helpful for dealing with issues like staff people not showing up because they got ill overnight or breakdowns in my wheelchair, my car or my own body. However, it is from such a world view what clearly shows up for me is failure. In other words, when you first buy a Chevrolet, all you see is Chevrolets, or when you first find out you’re pregnant, suddenly you are surrounded by strollers. I have been causing myself to experience failure in the area of my sexual expression.
So I have decided to play a game with myself. I am going to start dating again. In fact, I promised to have one date this week. Anybody know of anybody I could go on a coffee date with??? Helen came up with a brilliant idea that if the date goes well, no problem, but if the guy turns out to be boring or annoying then I can write a story about it in my blog. Either way, it gets to be expression and I get out of the failure loop.
It also solves a problem of what to keep writing about in this blog. I do not believe I can get back to the once a day schedule, but I believe I can get this out twice a week.
Anyways, that’s it for now. I am going to bed.
Just the same, aside from the pain being pretty bad all week, the most recent weeks of my life have been very powerful. For example, tonight on the way home from Newmarket, and while getting caught in a snowstorm, and while my hips and feet were tired and starting to hurt, Mike and I still had a very creative conversation around renaming our peace/Inclusion organization and around structuring it, resourcing it, etc.
My capacity to express myself is clearly shifting. I can see a kind of progression from black and white to shades of gray to colours breaking out. I find myself with the ability to experience compassion and to experience all sorts of things without needing to severely judge. I find myself laughing, and even genuinely being funny sometimes.
I am in the midst of a Landmark seminar called Sex and Intimacy. I came to it very reluctantly and mostly because I’ve been complaining for years that I don’t have a sexual partner and certainly not a lover. It is extremely ironic that I, who is absent of willing partners to support me to have a sexual expression, have been avidly sought out this last year by people who want to know more about sexuality and the experience of being physically limited in mobility. I am sure this has lots to do with the play – the Book of Judith. But even here, expression is breaking out. When I was interviewed for the Trillium funding research project on personal assistance and supporting sexual expression, I was asked very powerful questions about the nature of personal assistance and what it is like to be assisted. I felt genuinely free and grounded in answering these questions and left one of the interviewers moved to tears. I was clearly in the zone of my personal gifts.
It is emerging in the Sex and Intimacy seminar that one of my major blocks has been what we call in Landmark a winning formula. It works for me to be a strategist who builds my efforts on eliminating the likelihood of failure. In other words I always have at least one back up plan and often two in case something is not working out in my life. This way of thinking is very helpful for dealing with issues like staff people not showing up because they got ill overnight or breakdowns in my wheelchair, my car or my own body. However, it is from such a world view what clearly shows up for me is failure. In other words, when you first buy a Chevrolet, all you see is Chevrolets, or when you first find out you’re pregnant, suddenly you are surrounded by strollers. I have been causing myself to experience failure in the area of my sexual expression.
So I have decided to play a game with myself. I am going to start dating again. In fact, I promised to have one date this week. Anybody know of anybody I could go on a coffee date with??? Helen came up with a brilliant idea that if the date goes well, no problem, but if the guy turns out to be boring or annoying then I can write a story about it in my blog. Either way, it gets to be expression and I get out of the failure loop.
It also solves a problem of what to keep writing about in this blog. I do not believe I can get back to the once a day schedule, but I believe I can get this out twice a week.
Anyways, that’s it for now. I am going to bed.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
March 20, 2011
Happy solstice and extra large full moon! I’ve heard that the moon is as close in physical distance right now as it ever gets. On top of that last week’s earthquake shifted the earth axis, narrowed the Pacific Ocean by 13 feet and slightly compressed the Earth’s shape so that we are now spinning ever so slightly faster.
This week also marked the memorial services of two people who have effected my view of Inclusion – Wolf Wolfensberger and Marilyn Ferrell.
I felt shaken in my core this week. It’s not that anything particularly good or bad happened, but just the same, it felt like some kind of reorganization.
Outwardly the signs of this are that my circle met today and I ensured that we did not talk about my health or my needs, but about how I am groping to reorganize my life so that I can integrate and balance all of the commitments that are trying to happen to put Inclusion and Peace deeply into the conversation of the world. To use a biblical phrase, this week has been about girding myself to conduct the big fight, the big push.
Mike and I counted my commitments, not such an easy task because they do overlap quite a bit with each other. In the end we decided on twelve:
1. The ROM Exhibit
2. Laser Eagles
3. The Book of Judith
4. Zombie Video Game Research & Development
5. Making WPIT a genuine presence
6. BMX Model Research
7. Health & Well Being
8. Wisdom City Team
9. My Staffing
10. Weaning myself off ODSP
11. Having Individualized Funding Extended
12. The Book and Getting it Published
All these things together will bring about the capacity of my colleagues and I to deeply embed a new conversation about Inclusion. Anything less will have me and our efforts unstable in some way. So in a very real way it’s all or nothing at this time.
Of course, this is the way it looks right now. Expect in the near future it will consolidate into a simplified version of this picture. The genuinely core issues will emerge and it will be clear how to empower all of it through a few key efforts.
It is also clear that I and we really need project management and a project co-ordinator. These things are necessary to engage as many people as possible and keep as many efforts going as possible all at the same time.
What has shifted is my level of certainty. This is what must be and can be.
This week also marked the memorial services of two people who have effected my view of Inclusion – Wolf Wolfensberger and Marilyn Ferrell.
I felt shaken in my core this week. It’s not that anything particularly good or bad happened, but just the same, it felt like some kind of reorganization.
Outwardly the signs of this are that my circle met today and I ensured that we did not talk about my health or my needs, but about how I am groping to reorganize my life so that I can integrate and balance all of the commitments that are trying to happen to put Inclusion and Peace deeply into the conversation of the world. To use a biblical phrase, this week has been about girding myself to conduct the big fight, the big push.
Mike and I counted my commitments, not such an easy task because they do overlap quite a bit with each other. In the end we decided on twelve:
1. The ROM Exhibit
2. Laser Eagles
3. The Book of Judith
4. Zombie Video Game Research & Development
5. Making WPIT a genuine presence
6. BMX Model Research
7. Health & Well Being
8. Wisdom City Team
9. My Staffing
10. Weaning myself off ODSP
11. Having Individualized Funding Extended
12. The Book and Getting it Published
All these things together will bring about the capacity of my colleagues and I to deeply embed a new conversation about Inclusion. Anything less will have me and our efforts unstable in some way. So in a very real way it’s all or nothing at this time.
Of course, this is the way it looks right now. Expect in the near future it will consolidate into a simplified version of this picture. The genuinely core issues will emerge and it will be clear how to empower all of it through a few key efforts.
It is also clear that I and we really need project management and a project co-ordinator. These things are necessary to engage as many people as possible and keep as many efforts going as possible all at the same time.
What has shifted is my level of certainty. This is what must be and can be.
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