It’s probably going to be a short one tonight. Just about three quarters of an hour ago Helen texted that she’s sick and doesn’t want to work tomorrow. Nick and I spend the next 40 minutes sorting it out. Not bad really! But it means that it’s bedtime and this blog loses its fascination!!!
Just the same, it is important to CELEBRATE! We found the money. I am going to Savannah, although perhaps not for the full two weeks. We’ll see.
It was simple enough really. Today I sold the trailer to Rob and Michelle Comtois. Instead of coming to me it is going to Mike so that he can set up the travel arrangements and pay himself. With the amount of money that we have raised we can pay another personal assistant. The lodging is free until February 26, so we should be OK. If I am able to earn some more money somewhere, all the better. It will mean that we can stay for a few days into March and pay for an ocean view hotel on Tybee Island for a few days.
My intention is to finish the “Dirty Window” painting. Doing it in Toronto, one hour a week at a time, which is usually all the time I get at Laser Eagles these days, will not have it finished in time to make it a centre piece of the ROM exhibit. (It looks like it’s going to be scheduled for August.) In Savannah, I am hoping to finish it within the two week period and then begin to build other materials around it, like a story, some posters, and perhaps other paintings related in theme.
My though is that by making the prison assembly a central theme in my exhibit, I can create a dance between Inclusion from the “disability” perspective and Inclusion from other diversities and their gifts.
Mike and I had some intense conversations this last weekend. It is good! I am stretching to explain – with compassion I hope – not only what it takes to create Inclusion but also what it takes to be a creator of a concept which can shift the world. Of course, what do I know about shifting the world? However, I have some very solid experience about what doesn’t shift the world. In fact, this is something of a dilemma for me. I have a natural gift of what is not working, and this is very useful sorting out and leaving behind strategies that are less effective. However, it is not very engaging for partners in the work and also it doesn’t actually create a new direction.
On the other hand, I think I have been very creative around building new directions. I am just saying that I have to struggle with myself not to communicate too much negativity.
I am in a very different space than I was a month ago. Even then I was in a very different space from where I was at a month before that. It feels like acceleration – exponential growth. For heaven’s sake, Mike and I were using Fractal theory to describe a model of inclusion should look like. I haven’t even thought about fractals for 10 years and I have utterly forgotten the names of the terms that are relevant. Yet somehow it is as if all the powerful things that I have ever learned are congealing into one large attempt to put Inclusion on the map. So be it.
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
January 29, 2011
Gloria had a fabulous idea today. She suggests that I take all the entries I have made about the cranes, cubes and the prison which is rising before me and make them into one article and publish it – somewhere like The Globe and Mail.
I will do this, but not tonight.
The doing of this is related in a number of ways. First on my mind is to develop the capacity to be calm, courageous and to celebrate life in the midst of all that is life destroying, horrible and disgusting. My automatic response is to ignore or run away. Truly I want to do neither. I want to be able to continue to look out my window, to be a watcher as my Mother was, and to celebrate the fabulous variety of insignificant events that continue to emerge moment by moment just outside my bedroom window. I want to continue to love living in this odd neighbourhood, so close to the lake, so “underdeveloped”, so human. I want to paint the emergence of life around me. I do not want to stop seeing and I do not want to have to go away. These are ways of the past that I have been able to rise above. This is my personal legacy – to be able to be where I am and be who I am whether or not I am afraid.
From another perspective it is too simplistic and fundamentally not true to say that this prison building is wrong. It is very much not what I would choose, but this is not the same thing as being wrong. There are many dynamics that bring about the global economy that result in Texan prisoners building cubes for Ontario prisoners to assemble and live in. I would prefer that people make different choices, and organize themselves differently in the awesome, largely unconscious, effort to work together around the planet. Just the same, although the results of this effort seem so contrary to life and its affirmation, still it is life and living people that are bringing it about. I do not understand and perhaps understanding is not an adequate response or approach. However, in my not understanding I can still appreciate the awesomeness of what is beyond me and my capacity to understand.
I have spent most of my life in a conscious choice to make a difference that I call Inclusion. I feel that this choice, this calling, is in some kind of coordination with the eternal impulse that brings life to the world – often called God. The rising presence of a massive prison in my backyard – rising night by night as I sleep or don’t sleep in my bed – can it be accidental? And even if it is accidental is it not something to which I can respond? What is before me at this time is to discover the response that I can make that forwards the conversation called Inclusion because that is who I am.
If I write my life with a large brush then it seems that Camphill fell through and my finances fell apart so that I might end up in this bedroom looking out this window at the very time when this prison is being assembled. Of course, I could say the same thing about other elements of my life – for example, that Gabor turned against me so that Mike would come to fill the empty position, or that I would have to turn to ODSP so that I would be in a clear position to choose powerfully how I accept or do not accept the next plan from ACF, or that I would contract a life threatening infection and have five doctors deal with it ineffectively so that I might end up lying and looking out this window for nine weeks. I am sure that many would say that I am far too full of myself to write such a major role into my life script.
On another topic, tomorrow is the day that I set to choose if I am leaving for Savannah, or not, on February 12. It seems that we are about $4000 short of what it would take to pay Mike and another assistant separately from the CILT based fund for my personal assistance. The value of doing it this way, besides keeping the peace among myself, CILT and the Ministry of Health, is that I would recoup a large part of the overspending of this account that has happened in the last seven months.
Unfortunately, no such amount of money is forthcoming for all the usual reasons. It is certainly not for lack of looking for it, although I’m sure there are sources that I have not discovered or touched. For the last six weeks I have kept a chart with happy faces and stars to reinforce my efforts to find money. The chart has helped. I am now more than likely going to earn enough money each month this year to be able to pay back some of the ongoing debt I am in, and to travel to some important engagements like the Conference for Global Transformation in May. Just the same, the money for Savannah is not there today. Of course, it may show up tomorrow. It would be awesome!
What would I do in Savannah? Paint “Dirty Window” and have it ready for the ROM exhibit. (This is the painting of the rising prison.) Catch up on what’s been happening with people who are struggling to be economically included in the most racist place I have ever been. Re-immerse myself in an explicitly Christian environment that somehow moves me deeply. Hang out with pelicans during the month before all the tourists invade. Speak to people about what I have learned and questioned in the two years since I last spent time with them. Enjoy the car ride down and back – a time that always allows me to pull my thoughts together. Eat fabulous southern grits and BBQ and other foods rarely encountered in the cooler north. There is so much more that I can hardly imagine that three or even five weeks wouldn’t pass by in a flash.
But it seems, at least tonight, that I am not meant to go. Seemings can be wrong. I sure hope this one is!
I will do this, but not tonight.
The doing of this is related in a number of ways. First on my mind is to develop the capacity to be calm, courageous and to celebrate life in the midst of all that is life destroying, horrible and disgusting. My automatic response is to ignore or run away. Truly I want to do neither. I want to be able to continue to look out my window, to be a watcher as my Mother was, and to celebrate the fabulous variety of insignificant events that continue to emerge moment by moment just outside my bedroom window. I want to continue to love living in this odd neighbourhood, so close to the lake, so “underdeveloped”, so human. I want to paint the emergence of life around me. I do not want to stop seeing and I do not want to have to go away. These are ways of the past that I have been able to rise above. This is my personal legacy – to be able to be where I am and be who I am whether or not I am afraid.
From another perspective it is too simplistic and fundamentally not true to say that this prison building is wrong. It is very much not what I would choose, but this is not the same thing as being wrong. There are many dynamics that bring about the global economy that result in Texan prisoners building cubes for Ontario prisoners to assemble and live in. I would prefer that people make different choices, and organize themselves differently in the awesome, largely unconscious, effort to work together around the planet. Just the same, although the results of this effort seem so contrary to life and its affirmation, still it is life and living people that are bringing it about. I do not understand and perhaps understanding is not an adequate response or approach. However, in my not understanding I can still appreciate the awesomeness of what is beyond me and my capacity to understand.
I have spent most of my life in a conscious choice to make a difference that I call Inclusion. I feel that this choice, this calling, is in some kind of coordination with the eternal impulse that brings life to the world – often called God. The rising presence of a massive prison in my backyard – rising night by night as I sleep or don’t sleep in my bed – can it be accidental? And even if it is accidental is it not something to which I can respond? What is before me at this time is to discover the response that I can make that forwards the conversation called Inclusion because that is who I am.
If I write my life with a large brush then it seems that Camphill fell through and my finances fell apart so that I might end up in this bedroom looking out this window at the very time when this prison is being assembled. Of course, I could say the same thing about other elements of my life – for example, that Gabor turned against me so that Mike would come to fill the empty position, or that I would have to turn to ODSP so that I would be in a clear position to choose powerfully how I accept or do not accept the next plan from ACF, or that I would contract a life threatening infection and have five doctors deal with it ineffectively so that I might end up lying and looking out this window for nine weeks. I am sure that many would say that I am far too full of myself to write such a major role into my life script.
On another topic, tomorrow is the day that I set to choose if I am leaving for Savannah, or not, on February 12. It seems that we are about $4000 short of what it would take to pay Mike and another assistant separately from the CILT based fund for my personal assistance. The value of doing it this way, besides keeping the peace among myself, CILT and the Ministry of Health, is that I would recoup a large part of the overspending of this account that has happened in the last seven months.
Unfortunately, no such amount of money is forthcoming for all the usual reasons. It is certainly not for lack of looking for it, although I’m sure there are sources that I have not discovered or touched. For the last six weeks I have kept a chart with happy faces and stars to reinforce my efforts to find money. The chart has helped. I am now more than likely going to earn enough money each month this year to be able to pay back some of the ongoing debt I am in, and to travel to some important engagements like the Conference for Global Transformation in May. Just the same, the money for Savannah is not there today. Of course, it may show up tomorrow. It would be awesome!
What would I do in Savannah? Paint “Dirty Window” and have it ready for the ROM exhibit. (This is the painting of the rising prison.) Catch up on what’s been happening with people who are struggling to be economically included in the most racist place I have ever been. Re-immerse myself in an explicitly Christian environment that somehow moves me deeply. Hang out with pelicans during the month before all the tourists invade. Speak to people about what I have learned and questioned in the two years since I last spent time with them. Enjoy the car ride down and back – a time that always allows me to pull my thoughts together. Eat fabulous southern grits and BBQ and other foods rarely encountered in the cooler north. There is so much more that I can hardly imagine that three or even five weeks wouldn’t pass by in a flash.
But it seems, at least tonight, that I am not meant to go. Seemings can be wrong. I sure hope this one is!
Friday, January 28, 2011
January 28, 2011
Well, I plugged away today, mostly while lying in bed, at finding the $5000 I still need to go to Savannah in two weeks. Some in my circle would say that this is my very problem – it is in my mind to look, not to have it come to me, and subtly I am pushing it away.
I listened to Trey Anthony’s Ted Toronto talk tonight. Her name has come up in my world a lot lately – we are both in the Second Story agenda. In the Degree of Freedom world we are separated by only two relationships – Helen to Jen to Trey. She has done a Ted talk. Do they pay people to do those talks I wondered?!?
I battle sometimes with my own reluctance to “push” myself. However, I have no reluctance to push Inclusion and apparently I am my own best example. So be it!
So I looked it up, found the Speaker’s Nomination form and applied. I got the e-mail back that says they received it. We’ll see.
The prison cube crane has been active – slowly – night and day for a few days now. The article in the Toronto Star seems to have sped things up. I wonder out loud with Helen how to stop the prison. I wonder to myself if I can return to just peacefully watching out my window, with no concern for the “value” of what I see – nonattachment. This “perfect” apartment has lost some of it’s sublimeness since I discovered the real nature of the gigantic blocks. I don’t want to have that rising feeling that I will have to move on to search again for my perfect home.
Of course the perfection or lack thereof are all inside of my own evaluation. The prison was always there – there have always been guns and drugs and crazed tenants in this building. The world is what it is! And so this is once again a great opportunity to create a gift out of this potential obstacle that has suddenly appeared before me.
I am so far behind on my e-mail it isn’t funny. Boredom and fundraising are the reasons. I want an adventure – a fun one – to legitimately be able to set up an automatic e-mail message that says: “I am out of town and will not be responding to my e-mail until… “
There has been nothing from the ROM or from ACF. Perhaps they will disappear – perhaps not. It wouldn’t be the first time that something or somebody occupied the depth of focus and energy that they have for roughly ten weeks only to vanish from centre stage. I feel like I am steeling myself for disappointment in several areas of my life.
Enthusiasm gone! Not the first time for that either. Fatigue. The doldrums. Apparently, according to a short video I saw today, it is a relatively new phenomenon to call such a state “depression” and to treat it medically. Others might call a shaman and do a ceremony for the whole “family” – me, Mike, Kimberley, Helen, Peter, Bill and Bill, Adlon, etc. Sounds like a mid-winter party to me!
I am making a promise to myself and my readers that I:
- will have something worth writing about by Monday – today is Friday;
- will catch up on e-mail by Monday.
I listened to Trey Anthony’s Ted Toronto talk tonight. Her name has come up in my world a lot lately – we are both in the Second Story agenda. In the Degree of Freedom world we are separated by only two relationships – Helen to Jen to Trey. She has done a Ted talk. Do they pay people to do those talks I wondered?!?
I battle sometimes with my own reluctance to “push” myself. However, I have no reluctance to push Inclusion and apparently I am my own best example. So be it!
So I looked it up, found the Speaker’s Nomination form and applied. I got the e-mail back that says they received it. We’ll see.
The prison cube crane has been active – slowly – night and day for a few days now. The article in the Toronto Star seems to have sped things up. I wonder out loud with Helen how to stop the prison. I wonder to myself if I can return to just peacefully watching out my window, with no concern for the “value” of what I see – nonattachment. This “perfect” apartment has lost some of it’s sublimeness since I discovered the real nature of the gigantic blocks. I don’t want to have that rising feeling that I will have to move on to search again for my perfect home.
Of course the perfection or lack thereof are all inside of my own evaluation. The prison was always there – there have always been guns and drugs and crazed tenants in this building. The world is what it is! And so this is once again a great opportunity to create a gift out of this potential obstacle that has suddenly appeared before me.
I am so far behind on my e-mail it isn’t funny. Boredom and fundraising are the reasons. I want an adventure – a fun one – to legitimately be able to set up an automatic e-mail message that says: “I am out of town and will not be responding to my e-mail until… “
There has been nothing from the ROM or from ACF. Perhaps they will disappear – perhaps not. It wouldn’t be the first time that something or somebody occupied the depth of focus and energy that they have for roughly ten weeks only to vanish from centre stage. I feel like I am steeling myself for disappointment in several areas of my life.
Enthusiasm gone! Not the first time for that either. Fatigue. The doldrums. Apparently, according to a short video I saw today, it is a relatively new phenomenon to call such a state “depression” and to treat it medically. Others might call a shaman and do a ceremony for the whole “family” – me, Mike, Kimberley, Helen, Peter, Bill and Bill, Adlon, etc. Sounds like a mid-winter party to me!
I am making a promise to myself and my readers that I:
- will have something worth writing about by Monday – today is Friday;
- will catch up on e-mail by Monday.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
January 27, 2011
Now and then life throws something that can make one (me!) laugh.
If you are a regular reader you know I have been in a tizzy about how to respond to ACF when the ED offers me something. I don’t know what she might offer but, since I have had 2 meetings with her, one with Mike, she has asked for a proposal (and received it!), and then Mike and I were at both consultations on Tuesday whereat she said she would get back to me, I think it safe to think there WILL be an offer of some sort.
The “problem” has been that I have not been thrilled with what she wants me to do. It certainly looks light straightforward advocacy – she calls it campaigning. I see advocacy as part of the trap that keeps people in the M world, with no other identity except as a disabled service users. I have been at work to put Peace through Inclusion into real time and space in the world, as opposed to a nice idea. It will be no small feat if I/we pull it off because not many are willing to believe that World Peace is possible. I now feel that it is to go way off track to be doing advocacy.
Conversations with Shirl Edwards, Martha Leary and this morning on the “money call” led by Gary Menezes and with 4 others have expanded my point of view.
With Shirl it was mostly about realizing that M is everywhere, all the time anyway so working from ANY position still has power. With Martha I realized that there are many leaders among people who do not speak, and that to give them a chance to advocate is something some of them highly desire.
This morning I asked Gary to say something about negotiation and this sparked a rich discussion indeed. Hence the space to laugh.
The first step he explained is to be clear what the alternative is to the outcome you (me) are negotiating. In my case my alternative is clearly something I value a lot. For example, I have:
- freedom to not work
- freedom to engage a large network in resourcing me and my vision
- freedom to work on developing new concepts and strategies for Inclusion
- freedom to relate to whomever I please who wants to relate to me
- time and energy to support the development of promising others, like Mike and Kimberley
- evidence that I can be trusted that will be accepted by marginalized people
- large repair, replacement and medication costs covered
I also have an ongoing struggle to sustain enough income without disrupting the ODSP benefit.
Then Gary explained that if the offer is not as attractive as your real alternative you are negotiating to enhance a partnership, and you can ask for enhancements of the deal. It is important to get clear what your (my) value is to your potential partner so you can be clear what it is you have to offer. Look for what they see or could see as your (my) assets, which may actually be hidden to you (me!)
This last part is also particularly true when the potential offer is clearly better than your (my) current situation. This situation is like getting a job, and assets can be like you are relieving your potential employer of the trouble of doing it him/herself, you are improving the ambiance of the workspace, you can work at home and don’t need an office, etc. In my case the ED really enjoys that I am creative, straight and will argue with her!
This morning’s tutorial lifted my anxiety big time, and gave me considerable power when I was meeting this afternoon with a man who is arguing with his support staff. To cut a long story short I increased my income today with a small contract, doing work I love to do, and had NO trouble saying I expect to get paid!
A new day has dawned indeed!
On another note, Helen and I located the prison under construction, drove by and took a picture. Here it isǃ
If you are a regular reader you know I have been in a tizzy about how to respond to ACF when the ED offers me something. I don’t know what she might offer but, since I have had 2 meetings with her, one with Mike, she has asked for a proposal (and received it!), and then Mike and I were at both consultations on Tuesday whereat she said she would get back to me, I think it safe to think there WILL be an offer of some sort.
The “problem” has been that I have not been thrilled with what she wants me to do. It certainly looks light straightforward advocacy – she calls it campaigning. I see advocacy as part of the trap that keeps people in the M world, with no other identity except as a disabled service users. I have been at work to put Peace through Inclusion into real time and space in the world, as opposed to a nice idea. It will be no small feat if I/we pull it off because not many are willing to believe that World Peace is possible. I now feel that it is to go way off track to be doing advocacy.
Conversations with Shirl Edwards, Martha Leary and this morning on the “money call” led by Gary Menezes and with 4 others have expanded my point of view.
With Shirl it was mostly about realizing that M is everywhere, all the time anyway so working from ANY position still has power. With Martha I realized that there are many leaders among people who do not speak, and that to give them a chance to advocate is something some of them highly desire.
This morning I asked Gary to say something about negotiation and this sparked a rich discussion indeed. Hence the space to laugh.
The first step he explained is to be clear what the alternative is to the outcome you (me) are negotiating. In my case my alternative is clearly something I value a lot. For example, I have:
- freedom to not work
- freedom to engage a large network in resourcing me and my vision
- freedom to work on developing new concepts and strategies for Inclusion
- freedom to relate to whomever I please who wants to relate to me
- time and energy to support the development of promising others, like Mike and Kimberley
- evidence that I can be trusted that will be accepted by marginalized people
- large repair, replacement and medication costs covered
I also have an ongoing struggle to sustain enough income without disrupting the ODSP benefit.
Then Gary explained that if the offer is not as attractive as your real alternative you are negotiating to enhance a partnership, and you can ask for enhancements of the deal. It is important to get clear what your (my) value is to your potential partner so you can be clear what it is you have to offer. Look for what they see or could see as your (my) assets, which may actually be hidden to you (me!)
This last part is also particularly true when the potential offer is clearly better than your (my) current situation. This situation is like getting a job, and assets can be like you are relieving your potential employer of the trouble of doing it him/herself, you are improving the ambiance of the workspace, you can work at home and don’t need an office, etc. In my case the ED really enjoys that I am creative, straight and will argue with her!
This morning’s tutorial lifted my anxiety big time, and gave me considerable power when I was meeting this afternoon with a man who is arguing with his support staff. To cut a long story short I increased my income today with a small contract, doing work I love to do, and had NO trouble saying I expect to get paid!
A new day has dawned indeed!
On another note, Helen and I located the prison under construction, drove by and took a picture. Here it isǃ
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
January 25, 2011
I apologize to readers. Last night I forgot to blog! Just plain forgot until I was already in bed.
In some ways, since I blogged about the prison cells collected outside my window, I have lived a rather drunk, rather surreal life. Not literally drunk – I have had no alcohol and very little Morphine. Rather I have thrown my hat thoroughly into Cycle 3 and now it is simply unfolding. With this come demands – on my time, listening, focus, energy, stamina, words. There are demands from my assistants, ACF, ODSP, the Marsha Forest Centre, the Wisdom City Team, from my circle, my body, Father, WPIT, e-mail, Laser Eagles, the ROM?, the Book of Judith. I am not complaining – just spinning!
It all stems from taking myself seriously – perhaps way too seriously. I continue to imagine that I can transform the world by transforming how diversity is valued and included. Mike and I saw “The King’s Speech” again tonight, and though I waiver between whether I am more like George or Lionel I know (as in KNOW) I have an essential part in a drama much bigger than myself. Everything speaks to me as a potential means of finding a pathway to peace through Inclusion so I can turn down very little these days. That, and the ongoing search for $$’s, keeps prodding me on.
This morning Mike and I met with ACF and their poverty reduction champions and this afternoon with old and new members of the ACF Board and the Inclusion Circle. In all we met for over six hours. Mike was still raring to go after it all, but I was exhausted. For me the morning was mainly about listening, and listening to mainly whining, grieving and nostalgia for days when organizing seemed clearer. Listening took place on top of my own weary concern with feeling like once again I am being drawn into strategies that don’t work,
In the afternoon I felt the need to speak up about how it seems that ACF has not implemented the Inclusion Task Force recommendations. That and other people’s stuff led to a much livelier energy. However, at the end of the day (literally), it still remains in the hands of others to decide when, who and for what end this process will continue.
Going into the movie I lined up behind a young woman who is familiar to me from the Wisdom Course. Coming out we ran into a woman and her friend/supporter, both of whom were active twenty-five years ago in some committee or other that I was part of, probably the Ontario Advocacy Coalition. I felt that a certain element of safety and familiarity was added back into my day. In particular the woman who has a long term cognitive difference after a brain haemorrhage that she had in 1970 brought back the joyful sense that life is to be celebrated. She is just the sort of person I want to bring to lunch with ACF – Mary Lou, Miriam, Chloe, Greg and Felicia – the people who show me over and over again that it is way more effective in the end to stop trying to fix everything, and to enjoy the food, the company and the movie.
Speaking of lunch, I had the best roast beef sandwich I think I have ever had in my life. I could chew and swallow every bite, and I ate the WHOLE thing.
In some ways, since I blogged about the prison cells collected outside my window, I have lived a rather drunk, rather surreal life. Not literally drunk – I have had no alcohol and very little Morphine. Rather I have thrown my hat thoroughly into Cycle 3 and now it is simply unfolding. With this come demands – on my time, listening, focus, energy, stamina, words. There are demands from my assistants, ACF, ODSP, the Marsha Forest Centre, the Wisdom City Team, from my circle, my body, Father, WPIT, e-mail, Laser Eagles, the ROM?, the Book of Judith. I am not complaining – just spinning!
It all stems from taking myself seriously – perhaps way too seriously. I continue to imagine that I can transform the world by transforming how diversity is valued and included. Mike and I saw “The King’s Speech” again tonight, and though I waiver between whether I am more like George or Lionel I know (as in KNOW) I have an essential part in a drama much bigger than myself. Everything speaks to me as a potential means of finding a pathway to peace through Inclusion so I can turn down very little these days. That, and the ongoing search for $$’s, keeps prodding me on.
This morning Mike and I met with ACF and their poverty reduction champions and this afternoon with old and new members of the ACF Board and the Inclusion Circle. In all we met for over six hours. Mike was still raring to go after it all, but I was exhausted. For me the morning was mainly about listening, and listening to mainly whining, grieving and nostalgia for days when organizing seemed clearer. Listening took place on top of my own weary concern with feeling like once again I am being drawn into strategies that don’t work,
In the afternoon I felt the need to speak up about how it seems that ACF has not implemented the Inclusion Task Force recommendations. That and other people’s stuff led to a much livelier energy. However, at the end of the day (literally), it still remains in the hands of others to decide when, who and for what end this process will continue.
Going into the movie I lined up behind a young woman who is familiar to me from the Wisdom Course. Coming out we ran into a woman and her friend/supporter, both of whom were active twenty-five years ago in some committee or other that I was part of, probably the Ontario Advocacy Coalition. I felt that a certain element of safety and familiarity was added back into my day. In particular the woman who has a long term cognitive difference after a brain haemorrhage that she had in 1970 brought back the joyful sense that life is to be celebrated. She is just the sort of person I want to bring to lunch with ACF – Mary Lou, Miriam, Chloe, Greg and Felicia – the people who show me over and over again that it is way more effective in the end to stop trying to fix everything, and to enjoy the food, the company and the movie.
Speaking of lunch, I had the best roast beef sandwich I think I have ever had in my life. I could chew and swallow every bite, and I ate the WHOLE thing.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
January 22, 2011
I am about to prepare the proposal that I will put before the ED of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation (ACF). I recognize that I have a highly emotional response to her request of me. Clearly I am reactivated (or stuck) at more than one level! So, I thought that I would use this blog – this expression vehicle – as a way of writing her a personal letter. Then I could write her the straightforward proposal. I can also suggest that, if she is interested, she read the blog, although that seems pretty risky at the moment. Of course it couldn’t seem so risky if I didn’t feel that much depends on how my working relationship with her turns out, and what each of us is able to accomplish by working together.
I am sure that this is just the sort of thing that Gloria wants me to face and transform in the context of. She is always saying I can’t give anything away, as in permitting others to run with the ball after I have set a direction. I don’t think this is true but I do recognize that I am not the best judge! So these are the words I would say to the new ED who is curious about me, maybe even hopeful about me, and who holds the key to what my next project will look like, perhaps.
Dearest O,
(It always seems that such letters start with “Dear” or “Dearest”)
I have been struggling with how to frame a project to put before you by Monday morning. Saturday evening is about to arrive and I only have the barest outline in my head. I am frustrated, angry and hopeful. I am trained enough to know that I’m not really responding to you, but to a series of former relationships and opportunities both lost and fulfilled which have shaped my life, my understanding of Inclusion and my current “mission” in life. It seems to me that you are interested and that you hold a key to potential progress. However, both my sense of what is a key and what progress is leave me with a feeling that you have undue power over me at this moment. I am reacting to my own “helpless identity” in the face of your “power”.
In the eyes of the world, you are black and I am crippled. We spoke euphemistically about these realities last Wednesday. I explained to you that my relationship to this point with Atkinson has been as a “window washer” – in other words, my circumstances have lead me to a certain kind of work in the world and consequently people imagine both that this is the kind of work I want to do and also that it is the only thing I’m good for. Accordingly, when people want to include me, support me and/or honour me, they offer me another window to wash. This is exactly what I FEEL like you are doing now.
I have been so tempted to ask you if you would like to make some pancakes.
Specifically, I stopped wanting to be an advocate in approximately 1991. I took it up again in order to support the Individualized Funding Coalition of Ontario. In 2004 we were offered an opportunity to “consult” with the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Community and Social Services in Ontario. I participated fully! I did so because, even though I figured there was very little chance that the work would lead to real policy change, I felt that there needed to be as good as possible a document that recorded for history the benefits of individually supported community participation for people who are labelled with developmental disability.
It is nearly impossible, as you know I am sure, for people to build full participation with minimal resources, including some that are illegally established. Secondly, this power is further diminished by the intense bureaucratic overlay that comes with these resources. Add to this the intensely inadequate capacity to do good research when all that is available to do the work are volunteers, no control group, no standard definition of anything, and tight deadlines to come up with data and analysis. In spite of this, the IFCO managed to produce two reports that each had “eyeball” significance. In other words, you could see by just looking at the data that there are huge differences in how people who have individualized supports participate in their communities versus people who have agency support.
Shortly after we produced this data, the Finance Ministry of the Province of Ontario shut that Deputy Minister down, had him reassigned, and put in place an ineffective puppet. All evidence that the government might move towards individualized support for people who are labelled with developmental disability disappeared overnight.
The hidden consequence of all this, at least hidden to the Ministry, the bureaucrats and well meaning people such as yourself is that the people themselves who are labelled lose at every step of this process. First of all, they lose relationship with their parents and caregivers as these people exhaust themselves with extra work, and the process of being drawn into defining their loved one as a needy disabled person. Secondly, they lose the opportunities that disappear while their caregivers are busy doing other things rather than going out to the library, the park, a volunteer job somewhere, church, etc. etc. Finally, as the bureaucrats dash the hopes of the advocates and burn them out, they lose the energy and commitment of their parents and caregivers – the main source of support in their lives. How many people end up in a worse situation and in group homes just because their parents became advocates and then burnt out? I have no idea what the number is but I am sure that it is not small.
I was not, I believe, turned into a cynic by this defeat, not just because I was expecting defeat but because I knew that people could not be satisfied unless they had tried, and try we did. My intention was to support the effort as best as I could, not imagine that we were somehow going to buck the bureaucracy and actually make a change. At the same time I very much intended to never pick up the banner of advocacy again!
Lo and behold one should never say never! Here comes a very energetic, intelligent and passionate ED who is more than willing to make pancakes. Who am I to say that she is not correct? History has funny turns and I am not the one to say that this is not the time in history when a new voice and new energy might actually shift the social perception of people who have been labelled developmentally disabled.
You remind me so much of an energetic and passionate woman that I met in 1978 who turned my life, and many people’s lives, around. I hated her for a good six months before I fell in love with her and proceeded to do anything she asked of me because somehow around her things really worked out. For example, although we are far from having genuine Inclusive education in Ontario, the bureaucrats have never been able to kill it either, and that has a lot to do with Marsha Forest, who so inspired and so kicked butt that her influence continues 11 years after her death from breast cancer. I can only hope to have such power as Marsha had.
So, you say, it is time to gather the advocates and to have them start talking to each other and to have them begin to create a common identity and a common approach. Do you know that that is exactly what Marsha inspired in our city in 1980 to support our powerful engagement with the system during 1981, the International Year of the Disabled Person? The impact of that conference reverberates to this day in small but fundamental ways.
I can hear Marsha’s voice saying quit your bitching and get writing. This is an opportunity not to be missed.
Alright then – Let’s get on with it! Where’s that pancake recipe?
I am sure that this is just the sort of thing that Gloria wants me to face and transform in the context of. She is always saying I can’t give anything away, as in permitting others to run with the ball after I have set a direction. I don’t think this is true but I do recognize that I am not the best judge! So these are the words I would say to the new ED who is curious about me, maybe even hopeful about me, and who holds the key to what my next project will look like, perhaps.
Dearest O,
(It always seems that such letters start with “Dear” or “Dearest”)
I have been struggling with how to frame a project to put before you by Monday morning. Saturday evening is about to arrive and I only have the barest outline in my head. I am frustrated, angry and hopeful. I am trained enough to know that I’m not really responding to you, but to a series of former relationships and opportunities both lost and fulfilled which have shaped my life, my understanding of Inclusion and my current “mission” in life. It seems to me that you are interested and that you hold a key to potential progress. However, both my sense of what is a key and what progress is leave me with a feeling that you have undue power over me at this moment. I am reacting to my own “helpless identity” in the face of your “power”.
In the eyes of the world, you are black and I am crippled. We spoke euphemistically about these realities last Wednesday. I explained to you that my relationship to this point with Atkinson has been as a “window washer” – in other words, my circumstances have lead me to a certain kind of work in the world and consequently people imagine both that this is the kind of work I want to do and also that it is the only thing I’m good for. Accordingly, when people want to include me, support me and/or honour me, they offer me another window to wash. This is exactly what I FEEL like you are doing now.
I have been so tempted to ask you if you would like to make some pancakes.
Specifically, I stopped wanting to be an advocate in approximately 1991. I took it up again in order to support the Individualized Funding Coalition of Ontario. In 2004 we were offered an opportunity to “consult” with the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Community and Social Services in Ontario. I participated fully! I did so because, even though I figured there was very little chance that the work would lead to real policy change, I felt that there needed to be as good as possible a document that recorded for history the benefits of individually supported community participation for people who are labelled with developmental disability.
It is nearly impossible, as you know I am sure, for people to build full participation with minimal resources, including some that are illegally established. Secondly, this power is further diminished by the intense bureaucratic overlay that comes with these resources. Add to this the intensely inadequate capacity to do good research when all that is available to do the work are volunteers, no control group, no standard definition of anything, and tight deadlines to come up with data and analysis. In spite of this, the IFCO managed to produce two reports that each had “eyeball” significance. In other words, you could see by just looking at the data that there are huge differences in how people who have individualized supports participate in their communities versus people who have agency support.
Shortly after we produced this data, the Finance Ministry of the Province of Ontario shut that Deputy Minister down, had him reassigned, and put in place an ineffective puppet. All evidence that the government might move towards individualized support for people who are labelled with developmental disability disappeared overnight.
The hidden consequence of all this, at least hidden to the Ministry, the bureaucrats and well meaning people such as yourself is that the people themselves who are labelled lose at every step of this process. First of all, they lose relationship with their parents and caregivers as these people exhaust themselves with extra work, and the process of being drawn into defining their loved one as a needy disabled person. Secondly, they lose the opportunities that disappear while their caregivers are busy doing other things rather than going out to the library, the park, a volunteer job somewhere, church, etc. etc. Finally, as the bureaucrats dash the hopes of the advocates and burn them out, they lose the energy and commitment of their parents and caregivers – the main source of support in their lives. How many people end up in a worse situation and in group homes just because their parents became advocates and then burnt out? I have no idea what the number is but I am sure that it is not small.
I was not, I believe, turned into a cynic by this defeat, not just because I was expecting defeat but because I knew that people could not be satisfied unless they had tried, and try we did. My intention was to support the effort as best as I could, not imagine that we were somehow going to buck the bureaucracy and actually make a change. At the same time I very much intended to never pick up the banner of advocacy again!
Lo and behold one should never say never! Here comes a very energetic, intelligent and passionate ED who is more than willing to make pancakes. Who am I to say that she is not correct? History has funny turns and I am not the one to say that this is not the time in history when a new voice and new energy might actually shift the social perception of people who have been labelled developmentally disabled.
You remind me so much of an energetic and passionate woman that I met in 1978 who turned my life, and many people’s lives, around. I hated her for a good six months before I fell in love with her and proceeded to do anything she asked of me because somehow around her things really worked out. For example, although we are far from having genuine Inclusive education in Ontario, the bureaucrats have never been able to kill it either, and that has a lot to do with Marsha Forest, who so inspired and so kicked butt that her influence continues 11 years after her death from breast cancer. I can only hope to have such power as Marsha had.
So, you say, it is time to gather the advocates and to have them start talking to each other and to have them begin to create a common identity and a common approach. Do you know that that is exactly what Marsha inspired in our city in 1980 to support our powerful engagement with the system during 1981, the International Year of the Disabled Person? The impact of that conference reverberates to this day in small but fundamental ways.
I can hear Marsha’s voice saying quit your bitching and get writing. This is an opportunity not to be missed.
Alright then – Let’s get on with it! Where’s that pancake recipe?
Monday, January 17, 2011
January 17, 2011
At about 4:50pm EST I was sitting with Helen and Dad in a branch of the TD bank watching the black computer screen of the burly, sometimes surly, financial officer as she set up a joint line of credit on the GIC that Dad has willed to me on his passing. The intention was to pay off the loan on the trailer that Gabor, Jason and I lived in on the WPI Tour up until Sept. 22, 2009.
Suddenly a clear white sentence appeared in bold letters near the bottom of her screen. TRANSFER APPROVED LOAN PAID OFF.
I nearly cried, fainted and stopped breathing for two seconds. The enormous unshiftable burden – the physical sign of my failure to manage my life during those seven months, the unending anxiety of a responsibility I can’t meet yet must meet every month – in a split second dispassionately disappeared.
I had no idea of the extent of the weight on my spirit until it was gone. And when it was gone, it was just gone. A pile of papers to sign, two managers to say “Yes”, an electronic ritual to complete precisely – and the white letters simply appeared at the bottom of the computer screen.
Forgiveness has been dispensed.
This does not mean I have no financial concerns. It means I have a path to getting from “red” to “black” to being once again free to powerfully impact my and other’s circumstances with my own money, not just other’s on my behalf.
I owe so much to my parents I cannot fathom the depth. My Mother’s relentless saving reaches from beyond her grave through my Father through his love of me and of manipulating his GIC’s to release me from the shackles and the shame I incurred for throwing my hat over the wall in 2008. I am blessed.
My sense of mission is once again reinforced. Why am I so blessed, so lucky if not for being yet again showered with opportunities to keep on bringing Inclusion. Forward – go forward!
Today I met a young research student, and in a nutshell, a feasible research project is emerging around measuring the impact of the WPIT inclusive video games on the peacefulness of the children and youth who play it. A new “Yes”, a different “Yes”, a powerful “Yes”! Forward – go forward!
Jen was here this morning. Together we explored the nature of standing. For me it was more like having a conversation with my body about the experience of standing – the being of upstanding – of leadership and courage. I am stretching and parts of my body are turning and curving differently. The body of Judith is discovering how to support her stand.
I, Judith, am leading the world, through a planet wide team of young people, into an international culture of abundance, inclusion and peace. It is my destiny and I choose to fulfill this dream.
Suddenly a clear white sentence appeared in bold letters near the bottom of her screen. TRANSFER APPROVED LOAN PAID OFF.
I nearly cried, fainted and stopped breathing for two seconds. The enormous unshiftable burden – the physical sign of my failure to manage my life during those seven months, the unending anxiety of a responsibility I can’t meet yet must meet every month – in a split second dispassionately disappeared.
I had no idea of the extent of the weight on my spirit until it was gone. And when it was gone, it was just gone. A pile of papers to sign, two managers to say “Yes”, an electronic ritual to complete precisely – and the white letters simply appeared at the bottom of the computer screen.
Forgiveness has been dispensed.
This does not mean I have no financial concerns. It means I have a path to getting from “red” to “black” to being once again free to powerfully impact my and other’s circumstances with my own money, not just other’s on my behalf.
I owe so much to my parents I cannot fathom the depth. My Mother’s relentless saving reaches from beyond her grave through my Father through his love of me and of manipulating his GIC’s to release me from the shackles and the shame I incurred for throwing my hat over the wall in 2008. I am blessed.
My sense of mission is once again reinforced. Why am I so blessed, so lucky if not for being yet again showered with opportunities to keep on bringing Inclusion. Forward – go forward!
Today I met a young research student, and in a nutshell, a feasible research project is emerging around measuring the impact of the WPIT inclusive video games on the peacefulness of the children and youth who play it. A new “Yes”, a different “Yes”, a powerful “Yes”! Forward – go forward!
Jen was here this morning. Together we explored the nature of standing. For me it was more like having a conversation with my body about the experience of standing – the being of upstanding – of leadership and courage. I am stretching and parts of my body are turning and curving differently. The body of Judith is discovering how to support her stand.
I, Judith, am leading the world, through a planet wide team of young people, into an international culture of abundance, inclusion and peace. It is my destiny and I choose to fulfill this dream.
Friday, January 14, 2011
January 14, 2011
I have a sense that no one is reading this anymore.
When I first started people were hanging onto every entry. I suppose the drama of whether or not I would recover was compelling. Then, of course, I signed off, not imagining that I might want to get going again so soon – three days later. How does one tell the departed to return?
Also when I started these writings it was not my intention to write for readers. I was writing to explore pure expression. It didn’t stay – clearly can’t stay – purely expression without some attention to the response of others. The response occurs in my own voice even when no other person is writing or speaking to me about these posts. Then again, if I truly intended no response why use a blog as a vehicle?
Gradually I have come to want to write about some things and not others. A desire for privacy? Feeling complete? Fatigue? Less urgency as my health returns and the pain diminishes? All are factors in my growing self edits.
We have passed the Epiphany and are now in Ordinary Time, according to the church calendar. Mundane concerns dominate my calendar, my day. Groceries, money, laundry, debts, housekeeping, scheduling, business plans, amusements, the neighbours. A shorter horizon indeed.
At the same time miracles are still happening. I caught myself NOT thinking that I might be dying today. This, for me, is a genuine break with the past – a breakthrough in Landmark language.
The past several days have been jammed packed with real and imagined commitments and appointments. This has led to insufficient eating and fluid intake, and yesterday the inevitable constipation set in even though I took care to drink more. Consequently, I awoke in pain three times last night, and I was also cold, requiring an extra blanket.
I have been learning from and through Jen how to shift the pain experience and so I was able to go back to sleep all three times and even slept to 7:45am – an hour and a half longer than usual. But more than that, today I realized that I wasn’t thinking all last night and this morning that I was getting sick AGAIN, that possibly I was dying. I was just thinking that my management strategies had broken down – too much bread and not enough water – and that I had better get on track or use stronger measures.
And then the flax oil, juice and vegetables of late yesterday and this morning kicked in, and all systems are go again.
Apparently I am off and running for a full Cycle 3. 120 birthdays.
Yesterday David Fu gave me amazingly different ideas on how to design an organization and on how to get across the ideas that World Peace is actually available through Inclusion. I am hoping that Mike and I can write it up in the next few days. Of course we are about to get into another crunch writing phase to get my autobiography out by May. I am truly hoping that on Monday I can get a Line of Credit on Dad’s GIC. In this way I can work at preparing a real fundraising effort.
When I first started people were hanging onto every entry. I suppose the drama of whether or not I would recover was compelling. Then, of course, I signed off, not imagining that I might want to get going again so soon – three days later. How does one tell the departed to return?
Also when I started these writings it was not my intention to write for readers. I was writing to explore pure expression. It didn’t stay – clearly can’t stay – purely expression without some attention to the response of others. The response occurs in my own voice even when no other person is writing or speaking to me about these posts. Then again, if I truly intended no response why use a blog as a vehicle?
Gradually I have come to want to write about some things and not others. A desire for privacy? Feeling complete? Fatigue? Less urgency as my health returns and the pain diminishes? All are factors in my growing self edits.
We have passed the Epiphany and are now in Ordinary Time, according to the church calendar. Mundane concerns dominate my calendar, my day. Groceries, money, laundry, debts, housekeeping, scheduling, business plans, amusements, the neighbours. A shorter horizon indeed.
At the same time miracles are still happening. I caught myself NOT thinking that I might be dying today. This, for me, is a genuine break with the past – a breakthrough in Landmark language.
The past several days have been jammed packed with real and imagined commitments and appointments. This has led to insufficient eating and fluid intake, and yesterday the inevitable constipation set in even though I took care to drink more. Consequently, I awoke in pain three times last night, and I was also cold, requiring an extra blanket.
I have been learning from and through Jen how to shift the pain experience and so I was able to go back to sleep all three times and even slept to 7:45am – an hour and a half longer than usual. But more than that, today I realized that I wasn’t thinking all last night and this morning that I was getting sick AGAIN, that possibly I was dying. I was just thinking that my management strategies had broken down – too much bread and not enough water – and that I had better get on track or use stronger measures.
And then the flax oil, juice and vegetables of late yesterday and this morning kicked in, and all systems are go again.
Apparently I am off and running for a full Cycle 3. 120 birthdays.
Yesterday David Fu gave me amazingly different ideas on how to design an organization and on how to get across the ideas that World Peace is actually available through Inclusion. I am hoping that Mike and I can write it up in the next few days. Of course we are about to get into another crunch writing phase to get my autobiography out by May. I am truly hoping that on Monday I can get a Line of Credit on Dad’s GIC. In this way I can work at preparing a real fundraising effort.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
January 11, 2011
Well there are days when the ball just won’t go between the posts! I was running late pretty well all day. Mike and I went to a consignment store this morning and there were some really great things but nothing in quite the right size. I got an email back from someone who had been asking good questions about WPIT but he declined to donate. I called some more people to be guests at the Wisdom Completion Evening this Thursday but just got message machines. Blah blah blah.
Perhaps the truly concerning “failure” was my need to use Morphine two days in a row. Jen did say there would be major shifts, and there have been. I do recognize it as one of those plateaus before a great step forward. Just the same, I am tired and sore, and kind of wishing I hadn’t booked myself such a busy week! But so it goes and I’m just venting, not really worried or complaining.
It is interesting how the quality of the questions and comments about WPIT as an organization and our projects are taking on a very more rich and serious (in a good sense) quality. I was Skyping with a colleague this evening and she completely bought into our need for a $6 million dollar foundation so that we can do our projects without constantly having our hands in somebody else’s pocket. She also was thinking about who, at the university level, might take on the kind of social/economic research that inclusion deserves. In a sense she is a “nobody” in the world of big money and research but life doesn’t work that way. Talking to her tonight makes it easier for me to talk to the Executive Director of ACF tomorrow, and on the other hand I have no idea who she knows or who knows who she knows. The message is travelling out and getting stronger as it goes.
In Wisdom we talk about fail, fail, failing your way to success. It very much feels like that is where I am at this time. It kind of makes it easier in a way because if lots of failure is the way to success then bring it on, bring it on, bring it on!
Of course, I hope that the failures are getting smarter as we go!
I feel like it’s been a very long time since I worked hard. I did not work hard at my jobs in the early and mid 90’s. The international travel was fun. The paid office stuff was excruciatingly boring and useless but not at all hard. The intense schedule and consistent phoning, writing, speaking that I’m doing now is considerably more difficult in the sense of leaving no room for fooling around, but it’s making a lot of sense and building a network and proving that I can be worthy of a team working with me. It is a very different life than Cycle 2.
Oh yes, I painted today. Well I didn’t actually paint. Mike and I spent about an hour preparing to paint. I am about to attempt reproducing a photograph of a scene outside my window – one of the scenes of the industrial and railway view outside my bedroom. It is a picture that I took during the last week that I spent most of my time in bed. It is very inclusive of all the elements that intrigue me about this view – the cranes, the trains and the sandbox quality of the scene.
At one point this morning I thought that I might not be able to paint today and keep up with all the other things I said I would do. I realized, though, that painting is once again going to disappear as a regular activity unless I stick to it in my schedule. Actually it’s amazing how much disappears when I (or anyone else!) doesn’t stick to the schedule. We talk about freedom of choice etc. But I chose all these things that are in my life and I chose them freely so having them disappear because I don’t keep my schedule is just some sort of insanity. I am free. I just have to remember that!
It’s been a long day. Tomorrow may be a big day if the meeting with Atkinson goes as well as it could! Time to pack it in!
Perhaps the truly concerning “failure” was my need to use Morphine two days in a row. Jen did say there would be major shifts, and there have been. I do recognize it as one of those plateaus before a great step forward. Just the same, I am tired and sore, and kind of wishing I hadn’t booked myself such a busy week! But so it goes and I’m just venting, not really worried or complaining.
It is interesting how the quality of the questions and comments about WPIT as an organization and our projects are taking on a very more rich and serious (in a good sense) quality. I was Skyping with a colleague this evening and she completely bought into our need for a $6 million dollar foundation so that we can do our projects without constantly having our hands in somebody else’s pocket. She also was thinking about who, at the university level, might take on the kind of social/economic research that inclusion deserves. In a sense she is a “nobody” in the world of big money and research but life doesn’t work that way. Talking to her tonight makes it easier for me to talk to the Executive Director of ACF tomorrow, and on the other hand I have no idea who she knows or who knows who she knows. The message is travelling out and getting stronger as it goes.
In Wisdom we talk about fail, fail, failing your way to success. It very much feels like that is where I am at this time. It kind of makes it easier in a way because if lots of failure is the way to success then bring it on, bring it on, bring it on!
Of course, I hope that the failures are getting smarter as we go!
I feel like it’s been a very long time since I worked hard. I did not work hard at my jobs in the early and mid 90’s. The international travel was fun. The paid office stuff was excruciatingly boring and useless but not at all hard. The intense schedule and consistent phoning, writing, speaking that I’m doing now is considerably more difficult in the sense of leaving no room for fooling around, but it’s making a lot of sense and building a network and proving that I can be worthy of a team working with me. It is a very different life than Cycle 2.
Oh yes, I painted today. Well I didn’t actually paint. Mike and I spent about an hour preparing to paint. I am about to attempt reproducing a photograph of a scene outside my window – one of the scenes of the industrial and railway view outside my bedroom. It is a picture that I took during the last week that I spent most of my time in bed. It is very inclusive of all the elements that intrigue me about this view – the cranes, the trains and the sandbox quality of the scene.
At one point this morning I thought that I might not be able to paint today and keep up with all the other things I said I would do. I realized, though, that painting is once again going to disappear as a regular activity unless I stick to it in my schedule. Actually it’s amazing how much disappears when I (or anyone else!) doesn’t stick to the schedule. We talk about freedom of choice etc. But I chose all these things that are in my life and I chose them freely so having them disappear because I don’t keep my schedule is just some sort of insanity. I am free. I just have to remember that!
It’s been a long day. Tomorrow may be a big day if the meeting with Atkinson goes as well as it could! Time to pack it in!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
January 9, 2011
As I was going to bed last night, Mike assisting, after staying up a little late to blog, I thought that the day had been so fulfilling, so replete with authentic experience, that I could happily die with no regrets. Well, I didn’t die. I awoke to a day of more video taping in my winter coat under camera lights, more Farmville, more apple pie, and beautiful sunshine. The vision out of my lake facing window was just like so many of those Christmas card scenes with brilliant sun shining on neat and even tiny houses with perfectly snow covered roof tops!
I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.
At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.
Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!
A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?
So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.
Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.
Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.
Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.
I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!
I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.
At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.
Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!
A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?
So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.
Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.
Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.
Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.
I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!
Thursday, January 6, 2011
January 6, 2011
I need to draft some stuff for the Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation so I thought I’d start here.
The task is to equip her with enough compelling analysis and evidence in two hours so that she can activate her Board to take action on their Inclusion agenda.
What can the Board actually do to empower Inclusion? Their focus is on policy change. Where would policy change actually make Inclusion more likely to occur?
What would Inclusion look like? According to the BMX model:
- B – easier, more expected, even facilitated access for “targeted” individuals and groups to claim a space with little or no interaction required
- M – person centred and individualized services, citizen and economic development focus replaces welfare, charitable and health approaches
- X – broad recognition that everyone has differences that can foster interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity AND that the very characteristics that get turned into symptoms and excuses for labelling are potential for interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity
What happened to developing a common literacy about Inclusion.
To make the leap one must understand “Giftedness” – that is that gifts are anything you have, are or do that creates an opportunity for interaction and that interaction is fundamental to relationship and so social and economic opportunity. All differences are gifts.
Anyone who believes that either they themselves or anyone else is not what they should be already is in a trap.
Tell some stories.
Explain my organization bases and my history. Explain that recreating the same sort of organizations as already exist will automatically exclude most people who are labelled.
Excluded people LOOK like they are not contributing. This is a structural limitation.
Hospitality is a powerful stimulation for Basic Inclusion. What happened to revolutionary lunches?
Economics and Inclusion? We already said uneven labour market practices were founded in social exclusion. There is an inseparable link. This is a POLICY issue.
How ACF spends its money, and currently, if ACF spends its money, is a mark of its true values. In terms of X Inclusion, withholding its resources totally indicates no willingness to enter into genuine dialogue with those whose citizenship remains unexpressed.
The task is to equip her with enough compelling analysis and evidence in two hours so that she can activate her Board to take action on their Inclusion agenda.
What can the Board actually do to empower Inclusion? Their focus is on policy change. Where would policy change actually make Inclusion more likely to occur?
What would Inclusion look like? According to the BMX model:
- B – easier, more expected, even facilitated access for “targeted” individuals and groups to claim a space with little or no interaction required
- M – person centred and individualized services, citizen and economic development focus replaces welfare, charitable and health approaches
- X – broad recognition that everyone has differences that can foster interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity AND that the very characteristics that get turned into symptoms and excuses for labelling are potential for interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity
What happened to developing a common literacy about Inclusion.
To make the leap one must understand “Giftedness” – that is that gifts are anything you have, are or do that creates an opportunity for interaction and that interaction is fundamental to relationship and so social and economic opportunity. All differences are gifts.
Anyone who believes that either they themselves or anyone else is not what they should be already is in a trap.
Tell some stories.
Explain my organization bases and my history. Explain that recreating the same sort of organizations as already exist will automatically exclude most people who are labelled.
Excluded people LOOK like they are not contributing. This is a structural limitation.
Hospitality is a powerful stimulation for Basic Inclusion. What happened to revolutionary lunches?
Economics and Inclusion? We already said uneven labour market practices were founded in social exclusion. There is an inseparable link. This is a POLICY issue.
How ACF spends its money, and currently, if ACF spends its money, is a mark of its true values. In terms of X Inclusion, withholding its resources totally indicates no willingness to enter into genuine dialogue with those whose citizenship remains unexpressed.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
January 5, 2011
Yes, almost unbelievably, the repair man arrived at my Etobicoke apartment, from Pickering, before 9:00am and the chair was working by 9:15am. A loose wire somewhere! Thank God.
The new Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation is a mother of two young children, and our meeting started a few minutes late due to her handling children’s needs. It made me feel a whole lot more comfortable!
Olivia is both a respectful listener and a great listener. She comes from a UK culture where disability advocacy is the rage – considered to be the ultimate activity for a person who has been labelled disabled. At first she gave me the impression of being dumbfounded to hear that I think advocacy can be a trap. By the time that our meeting was over she invited me back for a focused conversation about how she might guide the Atkinson board in the direction of Inclusion. We scheduled a time!
Right now seems to be a gestation period – a plateau. The difference is that this plateau is at a distinctly different – higher? – level than I have ever been before.
On the one hand people are listening and doing like never before. Mike is ACTUALLY preparing the book’s first draft with me; people ARE reading this blog; Kimberly is REALLY preparing to do tracker training; Paul is INCLUDING my support needs in his plans for developing Laser Eagles and CAVE.
On the other hand just as I am myself starting to give WPIT more of my attention Atkinson and CAVE are taking notice and offers to pay me to work out of town are starting to materialize. Could it be that I suddenly will have to choose – travel to make money and be heard versus sustainability at home while I/we give these new beginnings a chance to grow to new maturity.
Is it true that both – out of town expert and local, reliable leader – are possible? How can this truly be possible?
It’s late. Another short piece – I apologize. I think you get the gist. In order to not drop back and hide, to stand for “All of it” as Landmartians say, I need to be open to strategies opening up that right now I cannot imagine.
Good night!
The new Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation is a mother of two young children, and our meeting started a few minutes late due to her handling children’s needs. It made me feel a whole lot more comfortable!
Olivia is both a respectful listener and a great listener. She comes from a UK culture where disability advocacy is the rage – considered to be the ultimate activity for a person who has been labelled disabled. At first she gave me the impression of being dumbfounded to hear that I think advocacy can be a trap. By the time that our meeting was over she invited me back for a focused conversation about how she might guide the Atkinson board in the direction of Inclusion. We scheduled a time!
Right now seems to be a gestation period – a plateau. The difference is that this plateau is at a distinctly different – higher? – level than I have ever been before.
On the one hand people are listening and doing like never before. Mike is ACTUALLY preparing the book’s first draft with me; people ARE reading this blog; Kimberly is REALLY preparing to do tracker training; Paul is INCLUDING my support needs in his plans for developing Laser Eagles and CAVE.
On the other hand just as I am myself starting to give WPIT more of my attention Atkinson and CAVE are taking notice and offers to pay me to work out of town are starting to materialize. Could it be that I suddenly will have to choose – travel to make money and be heard versus sustainability at home while I/we give these new beginnings a chance to grow to new maturity.
Is it true that both – out of town expert and local, reliable leader – are possible? How can this truly be possible?
It’s late. Another short piece – I apologize. I think you get the gist. In order to not drop back and hide, to stand for “All of it” as Landmartians say, I need to be open to strategies opening up that right now I cannot imagine.
Good night!
Monday, January 3, 2011
January 3, 2011
There is a little tug-o’-war going on in me these days. The “I don’t wanna’s” are pretty strong – I don’t wanna:
- fundraise
- have a support circle
- cut down on gluten and drink more fluids – not caffeinated ones at that
- invite people to the Completion Evening of Wisdom
- catch up on e-mail
- set up paying gigs for February and March
- get my eyes checked
- etc.
I DO wanna too, and generally I am doing a little better than 50% which is the level I was at for years.
Why the ambivalence? Well, besides not wanting to “stick out” I realized as I was waking up this morning that I have been reluctant to be honest and open about my life-long sense, strong and clear since I was twelve, that I have a personal relationship with God and that God has given me a mission – to create Inclusion, especially so that people who don’t speak can be seen and supported as contributors to society.
But this is a fact for me – one that has shaped all my life. Still I cannot imagine saying in public, or in front of my circle, certainly not frequently and bravely: “Got wants this and I want to do it!”
This reluctance to sound like a religious weirdo constantly gives strength to the “I don’t wanna’s”. It’s better to not stick out, but rather to look like I’m motivated by good thinking and research, to seem like I just want the same things as most people.
But probably I am not fooling anybody anyway. Clearly I DON’T want the same things as most people!
Being at the Terracotta Warriors exhibit last Friday reinforced deeply for me the realization that most people do not know that there is an alternative path to peace besides war. The visible evidence was impactful - that fighting for a stable society and community with abundance and opportunity for all is a way of every culture that goes back multiple millennia. It was also powerfully clear that this way is wasteful, bloody and ineffective.
The other clear message was that history takes no account of the needs, desires or contributions of ordinary people. They live and die hearing that their sole contribution to peace on earth is to support war, up to losing the lives of loved ones and themselves.
I have another way. It takes many ordinary people to build and sustain Inclusion. The good news is that when they do so they also build abundant economy and community, and eliminate the fear and inadequacy that lead to war.
Can I gather enough courage, faith, people and resources to get the message across so that all ordinary people know they have a choice and they know how to implement that choice?
- fundraise
- have a support circle
- cut down on gluten and drink more fluids – not caffeinated ones at that
- invite people to the Completion Evening of Wisdom
- catch up on e-mail
- set up paying gigs for February and March
- get my eyes checked
- etc.
I DO wanna too, and generally I am doing a little better than 50% which is the level I was at for years.
Why the ambivalence? Well, besides not wanting to “stick out” I realized as I was waking up this morning that I have been reluctant to be honest and open about my life-long sense, strong and clear since I was twelve, that I have a personal relationship with God and that God has given me a mission – to create Inclusion, especially so that people who don’t speak can be seen and supported as contributors to society.
But this is a fact for me – one that has shaped all my life. Still I cannot imagine saying in public, or in front of my circle, certainly not frequently and bravely: “Got wants this and I want to do it!”
This reluctance to sound like a religious weirdo constantly gives strength to the “I don’t wanna’s”. It’s better to not stick out, but rather to look like I’m motivated by good thinking and research, to seem like I just want the same things as most people.
But probably I am not fooling anybody anyway. Clearly I DON’T want the same things as most people!
Being at the Terracotta Warriors exhibit last Friday reinforced deeply for me the realization that most people do not know that there is an alternative path to peace besides war. The visible evidence was impactful - that fighting for a stable society and community with abundance and opportunity for all is a way of every culture that goes back multiple millennia. It was also powerfully clear that this way is wasteful, bloody and ineffective.
The other clear message was that history takes no account of the needs, desires or contributions of ordinary people. They live and die hearing that their sole contribution to peace on earth is to support war, up to losing the lives of loved ones and themselves.
I have another way. It takes many ordinary people to build and sustain Inclusion. The good news is that when they do so they also build abundant economy and community, and eliminate the fear and inadequacy that lead to war.
Can I gather enough courage, faith, people and resources to get the message across so that all ordinary people know they have a choice and they know how to implement that choice?
Saturday, January 1, 2011
January 1, 2011
It has been a day of rest, play and building tools of accomplishment for 2011.
The rest is needed. I have had wheezing and an odd swelling in my left arm and hand. Considering how many people have been down with the flu recently, and how big the conversation has been lately about my death, it seemed important to consciously do stuff to tell myself that I am taking good and successful care of myself. So I have been in bed all day, peeing whenever I had the slightest inkling. The wheezing is gone and the swelling down.
The play consists of three Farmville harvests and all that entails, about five games of electronic Price is Right with Kevin my 11 year old neighbour, teasing Mike (not too much – he’s really tired from last night), some FreeCell and contemplation of greater sexual expression!
Building tools is a large piece that won’t be done all in one day. It involves opening 2011 folders, setting up a year-long calendar with everything in it – in five colours! – that I already know I am committed to and organizing my promises and related resources. I set up two tables – one for this week and one for next.
Yesterday I completed the year with the typical review of what I intend my year to look like. This work, of course, is required to be able to set up the tools. For all that 2010 was a year of dramatic events, little has changed in how I intend to live my life. This is my “To Do” banner: "I am the possibility of interesting. I am committed to World Peace through Inclusion. My word creates the world my community lives. I create with beauty, truth and goodness."
These words are essentially the same as those for 2010. I am certainly committed to World Peace through Inclusion, to my coop, my personal stability and to having a superlative staff of personal assistants. These are as clear, or even more clear than ever.
What is new is my commitment to my own expression. Hence this blog and a nearly completed first draft of my autobiography. It is also in focus that WPIT needs a real organization – I am willing to believe that the concept that peace is available through Inclusion will not disappear entirely as I let go of the reins.
And so, as I wrote two days ago, now is the time to push for money. So many of the 2011 tools now in use or in creation are intended to keep me asking for financial resources – for WPIT and for my personal assistants.
My financial coach had me realize that I did not fully realize the cost to me and to the world that I don’t have the $6 million to stabilize WPIT. I am used to imagining and working toward finding enough money month by month to keep my home, health, car and staff. My immediate work is to get crystal clear on the earth changing difference that world peace would make and how uniquely available that peace is through Inclusion.
The more clear that state is the more powerful I will be at finding the people and resources that WPIT needs.
Happy New Year!
The rest is needed. I have had wheezing and an odd swelling in my left arm and hand. Considering how many people have been down with the flu recently, and how big the conversation has been lately about my death, it seemed important to consciously do stuff to tell myself that I am taking good and successful care of myself. So I have been in bed all day, peeing whenever I had the slightest inkling. The wheezing is gone and the swelling down.
The play consists of three Farmville harvests and all that entails, about five games of electronic Price is Right with Kevin my 11 year old neighbour, teasing Mike (not too much – he’s really tired from last night), some FreeCell and contemplation of greater sexual expression!
Building tools is a large piece that won’t be done all in one day. It involves opening 2011 folders, setting up a year-long calendar with everything in it – in five colours! – that I already know I am committed to and organizing my promises and related resources. I set up two tables – one for this week and one for next.
Yesterday I completed the year with the typical review of what I intend my year to look like. This work, of course, is required to be able to set up the tools. For all that 2010 was a year of dramatic events, little has changed in how I intend to live my life. This is my “To Do” banner: "I am the possibility of interesting. I am committed to World Peace through Inclusion. My word creates the world my community lives. I create with beauty, truth and goodness."
These words are essentially the same as those for 2010. I am certainly committed to World Peace through Inclusion, to my coop, my personal stability and to having a superlative staff of personal assistants. These are as clear, or even more clear than ever.
What is new is my commitment to my own expression. Hence this blog and a nearly completed first draft of my autobiography. It is also in focus that WPIT needs a real organization – I am willing to believe that the concept that peace is available through Inclusion will not disappear entirely as I let go of the reins.
And so, as I wrote two days ago, now is the time to push for money. So many of the 2011 tools now in use or in creation are intended to keep me asking for financial resources – for WPIT and for my personal assistants.
My financial coach had me realize that I did not fully realize the cost to me and to the world that I don’t have the $6 million to stabilize WPIT. I am used to imagining and working toward finding enough money month by month to keep my home, health, car and staff. My immediate work is to get crystal clear on the earth changing difference that world peace would make and how uniquely available that peace is through Inclusion.
The more clear that state is the more powerful I will be at finding the people and resources that WPIT needs.
Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
December 30, 2010
Yesterday I wrote for the book and you will, of course, get to read that within the next few months – by May is our intention.
For the last week I have been fundraising with determination. WPIT provides me with lots of opportunities and lots of reasons to get more people involved and find lots of dollars. Right now it’s my most grounded way out of personal poverty.
So tonight I will just share my notes I use in constructing fundraising e-mails. The document they refer to is posted on www.peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com.
To a Canadian potential donor:
We spoke on the phone this morning. You said you would see if some of your friends (10?) would let me contact them about donating to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation.
I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects.
The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game when they include diversity in the group of people who are playing AND reward diversity in the Zombie characters.
The money we raise is used for project development. the coding costs $80,000, and video development costs $7,000.
Money also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
One possible way to donate is to send a cheque to the Family Life Foundation. WPIT gets 85% of your money and you get a charitable receipt. Send the cheque to:
Family Life Foundation
c/o Lindsay King, Director
6 Kings Inn Trail
Thornhill, ON, L3T 1T7
Include in the memo: World Peace through Inclusive Transformation
The other way is to go to www.ppsn.on.ca and click on "Donate". Follow the prompts I get 50% of your donation and YOU get 75% of your donation back as a tax credit when you file your income tax. More information is on their website.
Thank you for your consideration and generousity.
Warmly; Judith
To a potential US donor:
It is awkward to ask for donations, but I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects. The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game by including something that is different about the characters and about other players.
The money we raise is used for project development. It also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
There are two things you can do to make a difference with WPIT, and my ongoing underfunding with my personal assistance.
First, make a list of people you think would be open to listening to a request for money to support my ongoing participation, and ask them if I can contact them. If they say "Yes", give me their contact information. I am attaching a brief about WPIT and its projects.
Secondly, send a check directed to the World Peace through Inclusion Tour to:
First Presbyterian Church of Savannah
c/o Barbara Bishop
520 Washington Avenue
Savannah, GA 31405-2323
Thank you!
(Let me know how much so I can budget, please.)
Warmly and Season’s Greetings; Judith
For the last week I have been fundraising with determination. WPIT provides me with lots of opportunities and lots of reasons to get more people involved and find lots of dollars. Right now it’s my most grounded way out of personal poverty.
So tonight I will just share my notes I use in constructing fundraising e-mails. The document they refer to is posted on www.peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com.
To a Canadian potential donor:
We spoke on the phone this morning. You said you would see if some of your friends (10?) would let me contact them about donating to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation.
I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects.
The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game when they include diversity in the group of people who are playing AND reward diversity in the Zombie characters.
The money we raise is used for project development. the coding costs $80,000, and video development costs $7,000.
Money also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
One possible way to donate is to send a cheque to the Family Life Foundation. WPIT gets 85% of your money and you get a charitable receipt. Send the cheque to:
Family Life Foundation
c/o Lindsay King, Director
6 Kings Inn Trail
Thornhill, ON, L3T 1T7
Include in the memo: World Peace through Inclusive Transformation
The other way is to go to www.ppsn.on.ca and click on "Donate". Follow the prompts I get 50% of your donation and YOU get 75% of your donation back as a tax credit when you file your income tax. More information is on their website.
Thank you for your consideration and generousity.
Warmly; Judith
To a potential US donor:
It is awkward to ask for donations, but I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects. The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game by including something that is different about the characters and about other players.
The money we raise is used for project development. It also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
There are two things you can do to make a difference with WPIT, and my ongoing underfunding with my personal assistance.
First, make a list of people you think would be open to listening to a request for money to support my ongoing participation, and ask them if I can contact them. If they say "Yes", give me their contact information. I am attaching a brief about WPIT and its projects.
Secondly, send a check directed to the World Peace through Inclusion Tour to:
First Presbyterian Church of Savannah
c/o Barbara Bishop
520 Washington Avenue
Savannah, GA 31405-2323
Thank you!
(Let me know how much so I can budget, please.)
Warmly and Season’s Greetings; Judith
Sunday, December 26, 2010
December 26, 2010
There are moments when the need for greater integrity asserts itself. I have noticed that culturally it’s something we often think about at year’s end. The need has been calling to me, and those near to me, urgently for some time, but especially since Wednesday or so.
In Landmark Education lingo integrity is about workability, not morality. We speak about “unworkability” coming from missing integrity – some element of a physical structure, a network of communication or a plan that – by not having been put in place, or in being forgotten or ignored – weakens the project or relationship and makes room for ineffectiveness and drama.
For powerful people integrity is nearly always “out” because, paradoxically, success creates change in the world which brings a need for new projects, which need different integrity, and so some element is always going to be not yet in place. Powerful people must be continuously looking for what’s missing. “Missings” will be in the area of context, complete work, honest and open communication, and meeting other’s and your own expectations.
Yesterday I wrote about the missing integrity that was coming up for me around the celebration of Christmas. It came up similarly today in that the friends I was with have had to leave where they were living for the second year in a row at Christmas time. We met to “celebrate” in a back kitchen of a church. They are safe, warm and fed, but without the sort of stability that permits moving forward in meeting goals. The disorientation and anxiety were palpable.
In other areas, money is needed to build up WPIT projects and its organization, and to stabilize my staffing and home. The integrity of living on ODSP is very different from the structures, commitments and communication – not to mention day-to-day action – that will bring in our ideal $6 million to give WPIT and me a solid foundation. While between these “ways of life” I need to live poor and think and act rich – another sort of integrity to create as I move toward having money.
Mike and I were talking about the integrity of being lazy. I find that if I never plan for time off or don’t stick to my plan, subtly the sense that I am a martyr to the cause of Inclusion creeps in and I become tired, scattered and ineffective. However, not just any sort of laziness truly satisfies – leaving me with the willingness to keep my commitments. Mike and I were talking about what sorts of time off and undone activities truly satisfy that “time-off” urge.
Then there are the books. Tonight we began the rough sorting of my writings into two types – autobiography and theory. It’s the beginning of creating the integrity of the two books – integrities that we want to put into place rapidly, and while lots of other things are going on at the same time. What will become available is that at least one book can be sold with the ROM exhibit this summer creating the context for people’s interest in it. This can generate income that I need for me, staffing and WPIT.
It’s not quite like making a New Year’s resolution. And it is also like it. It’s all about reinvention. This blog is part of the expression of this reinvention. The “third cycle” model is also integral to remodelling of Judith Snow and her interesting life.
I learned last week that keeping my resolutions – recreating integrity – demands that I treat my unwillingness like a seven year old who is learning new behaviours and skills. Beating myself up makes no sense and doesn’t work all that well in any case. So I made myself a behaviour modification chart and I will put a happy face sticker on every part of the chart where I keep my promise to myself to fundraise.
Tomorrow I begin again.
In Landmark Education lingo integrity is about workability, not morality. We speak about “unworkability” coming from missing integrity – some element of a physical structure, a network of communication or a plan that – by not having been put in place, or in being forgotten or ignored – weakens the project or relationship and makes room for ineffectiveness and drama.
For powerful people integrity is nearly always “out” because, paradoxically, success creates change in the world which brings a need for new projects, which need different integrity, and so some element is always going to be not yet in place. Powerful people must be continuously looking for what’s missing. “Missings” will be in the area of context, complete work, honest and open communication, and meeting other’s and your own expectations.
Yesterday I wrote about the missing integrity that was coming up for me around the celebration of Christmas. It came up similarly today in that the friends I was with have had to leave where they were living for the second year in a row at Christmas time. We met to “celebrate” in a back kitchen of a church. They are safe, warm and fed, but without the sort of stability that permits moving forward in meeting goals. The disorientation and anxiety were palpable.
In other areas, money is needed to build up WPIT projects and its organization, and to stabilize my staffing and home. The integrity of living on ODSP is very different from the structures, commitments and communication – not to mention day-to-day action – that will bring in our ideal $6 million to give WPIT and me a solid foundation. While between these “ways of life” I need to live poor and think and act rich – another sort of integrity to create as I move toward having money.
Mike and I were talking about the integrity of being lazy. I find that if I never plan for time off or don’t stick to my plan, subtly the sense that I am a martyr to the cause of Inclusion creeps in and I become tired, scattered and ineffective. However, not just any sort of laziness truly satisfies – leaving me with the willingness to keep my commitments. Mike and I were talking about what sorts of time off and undone activities truly satisfy that “time-off” urge.
Then there are the books. Tonight we began the rough sorting of my writings into two types – autobiography and theory. It’s the beginning of creating the integrity of the two books – integrities that we want to put into place rapidly, and while lots of other things are going on at the same time. What will become available is that at least one book can be sold with the ROM exhibit this summer creating the context for people’s interest in it. This can generate income that I need for me, staffing and WPIT.
It’s not quite like making a New Year’s resolution. And it is also like it. It’s all about reinvention. This blog is part of the expression of this reinvention. The “third cycle” model is also integral to remodelling of Judith Snow and her interesting life.
I learned last week that keeping my resolutions – recreating integrity – demands that I treat my unwillingness like a seven year old who is learning new behaviours and skills. Beating myself up makes no sense and doesn’t work all that well in any case. So I made myself a behaviour modification chart and I will put a happy face sticker on every part of the chart where I keep my promise to myself to fundraise.
Tomorrow I begin again.
Monday, December 20, 2010
December 20, 2010
Jen the masseuse, Kevin the frazzling child, trading a ride to Christmas shop with Helen for a car wash – inside and out, fundraising, cancelled meetings all day, tracking down a minced pie for tomorrow’s Laser Eagles potluck, discussing the next phases of WPIT with Mike, answered and unanswered e-mail, wrapping presents – these occupied my day.
Jen says there is no choice except to rest. At the same time we are on a very different plane today with my body, discussing together the intricacies of clearing and opening space for my right side while moving more of what I do with my right side into my left side – practical to spiritual. It’s a much different place than managing pain, though there is still some pain to manage. Oh, by the way, I don’t really get what all that means in a day-to-day way. Stay tuned!
When I get to this moment in the year I generally feel a certain sense of victory. This year, this night, at 3:17am Eastern Time there will be a full eclipse of the moon and we will also pass the Solstice. Thursday will yield more sunlight than today. Daylight will steadily lengthen until June 21, 2011.
There are moments in life when you know for certain that it doesn’t get worse than this. Those moments are perversely joyful, at least to me, giving a sense of power and vitality. Now that I am solidly into my Third Cycle this eclipsed Solstice offers just such a sense of joy and strength. I have already come through some of the most difficult moments of my life, and yet so much potential and realized opportunity is with me at this time.
I love my home, my health has returned, I have pathways to money, I have great staff and awesome friends, the ROM is working with me, the Book of Judith will tour this year coming and next, Mike Skubic is putting real legs under WPIT and – mysteriously – I even feel more attractive to men. I want to be a leader, I am a leader and I have the strongest chance ever to make a worldwide difference.
Some euphoria is Morphine, no doubt. Yesterday I took none but today I took two doses. Just the same could Morphine give me a high if there was nothing in my soul to be uplifted? I doubt it.
Besides money, if there is something to be at work to accomplish it would be to paint more frequently and steadily, which means having reliable and frequent access to a tracker that is trained to my ways. Mike has great potential but we have so much else going on that tracking for me easily gets sidelined. There is no reason I couldn’t have more than one tracker.
I never expected that art and writing would play such a large part of my life and be such a strong path to building Inclusion. Yet when I look back over the past seven years, and also twenty-eight years, painting, theatre and writing have been the most expressive and reliable vehicles for me to be Judith.
Funny how long it takes to see the obvious.
Anyway it is time to focus on painting, writing, friends, good food and rest. There are other important aspects to my life, of course, but these are my foundation.
The Third Cycle will continue.
Jen says there is no choice except to rest. At the same time we are on a very different plane today with my body, discussing together the intricacies of clearing and opening space for my right side while moving more of what I do with my right side into my left side – practical to spiritual. It’s a much different place than managing pain, though there is still some pain to manage. Oh, by the way, I don’t really get what all that means in a day-to-day way. Stay tuned!
When I get to this moment in the year I generally feel a certain sense of victory. This year, this night, at 3:17am Eastern Time there will be a full eclipse of the moon and we will also pass the Solstice. Thursday will yield more sunlight than today. Daylight will steadily lengthen until June 21, 2011.
There are moments in life when you know for certain that it doesn’t get worse than this. Those moments are perversely joyful, at least to me, giving a sense of power and vitality. Now that I am solidly into my Third Cycle this eclipsed Solstice offers just such a sense of joy and strength. I have already come through some of the most difficult moments of my life, and yet so much potential and realized opportunity is with me at this time.
I love my home, my health has returned, I have pathways to money, I have great staff and awesome friends, the ROM is working with me, the Book of Judith will tour this year coming and next, Mike Skubic is putting real legs under WPIT and – mysteriously – I even feel more attractive to men. I want to be a leader, I am a leader and I have the strongest chance ever to make a worldwide difference.
Some euphoria is Morphine, no doubt. Yesterday I took none but today I took two doses. Just the same could Morphine give me a high if there was nothing in my soul to be uplifted? I doubt it.
Besides money, if there is something to be at work to accomplish it would be to paint more frequently and steadily, which means having reliable and frequent access to a tracker that is trained to my ways. Mike has great potential but we have so much else going on that tracking for me easily gets sidelined. There is no reason I couldn’t have more than one tracker.
I never expected that art and writing would play such a large part of my life and be such a strong path to building Inclusion. Yet when I look back over the past seven years, and also twenty-eight years, painting, theatre and writing have been the most expressive and reliable vehicles for me to be Judith.
Funny how long it takes to see the obvious.
Anyway it is time to focus on painting, writing, friends, good food and rest. There are other important aspects to my life, of course, but these are my foundation.
The Third Cycle will continue.
Friday, December 17, 2010
December 17, 2010
I made $375 today. Tomorrow I will make $500.
I hope I have made enough to offset the cost of fixing the flat tire I discovered as I set out tonight to shop for Christmas!
As I lay awake this morning before Helen came to get me up I watched in the early dawn light while the crane by the “boxes” inside the railway yard fence drew up its cable. I watched for a few more minutes but it did not move again. The boxes had been rearranged a little overnight and there are new gaps between them. Beyond these alterations, and that the crane is facing the opposite way from yesterday, there is no change in the goings on of the marshalling yard.
I wondered – again – what is going on that must mainly happen at night.
Soon after I got up I counted the construction cranes visible to me from my bedroom window. There are six. Each one is distinct from the others in size, shape and colour.
Nearly always they stand motionless. One in particular has a motion of bobbing like a long-necked bird dropping its beak into a stream for fish. It has stood “beak down” for a few days now, looking very weird indeed. Together, when they stand still all day, they remind me of the dinosaur exhibit at the ROM.
Since I was in a counting mood I counted the different types of rail car visible in the yard. Again six. The large double decker orange/white/yellow passenger car belongs to a train called “Rocky Mountaineer”. (I drove closer mid-morning to read the indistinct words.) The remainder of its cars are black and white. This giant train has been here, motionless, for about a week.
Eighty percent of the cars on or moving through the yard are “Go Train” vehicles. These double decker conveyances are big, but not nearly as tall as the three or four cars of “Rocky”. The seven “Go Train” engine cars that are lined up in a flying wedge formation have not moved for about a week either!
The single story passenger cars of the “Via Rail” seem miniscule in comparison. However, they don’t hang around!
The rest of the train cars are flat beds – part of a freight train. Occasionally one will see the other sorts of freight car, but not today.
It is something of a mystery to me that so much valuable stuff – gigantic construction cranes, passenger cars, each with the capacity of a movie theatre, huge prefab buildings, sleek and fast engines – can sit idle for such long time periods. Certainly we are given to believe that the economy is run as efficiently as possible and that there’s an elaborate plan behind it all. But from the vantage point of my bedroom window I have a very different impression.
Have I stumbled across a train set that has been abandoned while some bored child of a giant takes an afternoon’s nap? Why does this huge child play only at night, or is it his father who secretly moves the blocks, cars and cranes around while his son sleeps?
I can only exercise my imagination – likely I will never know what is behind this great idleness. However, I am very pleased that I am a spectator to it all.
I hope I have made enough to offset the cost of fixing the flat tire I discovered as I set out tonight to shop for Christmas!
As I lay awake this morning before Helen came to get me up I watched in the early dawn light while the crane by the “boxes” inside the railway yard fence drew up its cable. I watched for a few more minutes but it did not move again. The boxes had been rearranged a little overnight and there are new gaps between them. Beyond these alterations, and that the crane is facing the opposite way from yesterday, there is no change in the goings on of the marshalling yard.
I wondered – again – what is going on that must mainly happen at night.
Soon after I got up I counted the construction cranes visible to me from my bedroom window. There are six. Each one is distinct from the others in size, shape and colour.
Nearly always they stand motionless. One in particular has a motion of bobbing like a long-necked bird dropping its beak into a stream for fish. It has stood “beak down” for a few days now, looking very weird indeed. Together, when they stand still all day, they remind me of the dinosaur exhibit at the ROM.
Since I was in a counting mood I counted the different types of rail car visible in the yard. Again six. The large double decker orange/white/yellow passenger car belongs to a train called “Rocky Mountaineer”. (I drove closer mid-morning to read the indistinct words.) The remainder of its cars are black and white. This giant train has been here, motionless, for about a week.
Eighty percent of the cars on or moving through the yard are “Go Train” vehicles. These double decker conveyances are big, but not nearly as tall as the three or four cars of “Rocky”. The seven “Go Train” engine cars that are lined up in a flying wedge formation have not moved for about a week either!
The single story passenger cars of the “Via Rail” seem miniscule in comparison. However, they don’t hang around!
The rest of the train cars are flat beds – part of a freight train. Occasionally one will see the other sorts of freight car, but not today.
It is something of a mystery to me that so much valuable stuff – gigantic construction cranes, passenger cars, each with the capacity of a movie theatre, huge prefab buildings, sleek and fast engines – can sit idle for such long time periods. Certainly we are given to believe that the economy is run as efficiently as possible and that there’s an elaborate plan behind it all. But from the vantage point of my bedroom window I have a very different impression.
Have I stumbled across a train set that has been abandoned while some bored child of a giant takes an afternoon’s nap? Why does this huge child play only at night, or is it his father who secretly moves the blocks, cars and cranes around while his son sleeps?
I can only exercise my imagination – likely I will never know what is behind this great idleness. However, I am very pleased that I am a spectator to it all.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
December 16, 2010
Sunday, Wednesday and tonight I spent considerable time with a child. It makes me appreciate SO much that I don’t have one.
He likes me, though, and I like him. Regardless I’m not set up for it in my living space or psychologically. It gives me new understanding why other people who use personal assistance have worked hard to create a particular type of support to help them raise children. Without that it’s a real challenge to get the kid to keep his sticky fingers off the keyboard while his incompatible “educational” game is threatening to melt down my operating system.
It seems like I have spent a lot of time and energy lately trying to reassert control – “my boundaries” as they say now. I noticed recently that I have greatly increased my patrolling – frequent trips through the apartment to ensure that things have been put away where they belong, room has been left on the floor to permit free passage of my wheelchair, Peter’s stuff is in Peter’s spaces, table tops are cleared of things whose purpose is incompatible with the function of the table – even regularly counting what’s left of the eggs, toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, etc. In such ways I have become my Mother.
Part of this is because with Peter here, four other personal assistants coming weekly, a great deal of WPIT and Laser Eagles planning going on in the space and now intentionally offering hospitality to neighbours – including an eleven year old boy – everyone’s needs for safety, storage, secure work space, etc. must be met. Those needs may exist for an hour or for months. Once again, I have gotten fairly good at understanding and accommodating the requirements of my assistants. Adding a housemate and a half-a-dozen neighbours created a different dynamic that invites stress and chaos.
Another factor behind my increased control freakiness belongs squarely to the “Third Cycle”. Since it’s clear that I will live and I have a passion to get back in the game of inclusion, I must vastly increase my resources. I have about a $15,000/year shortfall in paying my personal assistants. I have large living costs. Lots of things cost double because of been accompanied – bus fare, meals, hotel rooms, rent. Most importantly the research and project development needs for WPIT will be/are significant.
I used to be very good at making money, especially when Marsha was around to remind me to keep at it and to promote me. Then I got slack. As the end of Cycle 2 crept up on me I grew content to live the life of a very poor person,
But Cycle 3 is now very much underway and I must leave the ODSP world soon – perhaps February. My intentions are set on a functioning Judith Snow/World Peace through Inclusion Foundation with assets not less than $6 million by the end of 2011!
I am learning again how to make money. I am getting coaching. I am seeing how I got stuck in lots of side tracks, from not wanting to lose my connection with vulnerable people to enjoying hanging out with the stories of how hard it is and in enjoying too much the dreaming of what we could do next.
What works is to take the action that reliably brings in the money. I set a goal of making $500 a day, five days a week. Yesterday I made $550. Today I made $100. Tomorrow I will make $500.
He likes me, though, and I like him. Regardless I’m not set up for it in my living space or psychologically. It gives me new understanding why other people who use personal assistance have worked hard to create a particular type of support to help them raise children. Without that it’s a real challenge to get the kid to keep his sticky fingers off the keyboard while his incompatible “educational” game is threatening to melt down my operating system.
It seems like I have spent a lot of time and energy lately trying to reassert control – “my boundaries” as they say now. I noticed recently that I have greatly increased my patrolling – frequent trips through the apartment to ensure that things have been put away where they belong, room has been left on the floor to permit free passage of my wheelchair, Peter’s stuff is in Peter’s spaces, table tops are cleared of things whose purpose is incompatible with the function of the table – even regularly counting what’s left of the eggs, toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, etc. In such ways I have become my Mother.
Part of this is because with Peter here, four other personal assistants coming weekly, a great deal of WPIT and Laser Eagles planning going on in the space and now intentionally offering hospitality to neighbours – including an eleven year old boy – everyone’s needs for safety, storage, secure work space, etc. must be met. Those needs may exist for an hour or for months. Once again, I have gotten fairly good at understanding and accommodating the requirements of my assistants. Adding a housemate and a half-a-dozen neighbours created a different dynamic that invites stress and chaos.
Another factor behind my increased control freakiness belongs squarely to the “Third Cycle”. Since it’s clear that I will live and I have a passion to get back in the game of inclusion, I must vastly increase my resources. I have about a $15,000/year shortfall in paying my personal assistants. I have large living costs. Lots of things cost double because of been accompanied – bus fare, meals, hotel rooms, rent. Most importantly the research and project development needs for WPIT will be/are significant.
I used to be very good at making money, especially when Marsha was around to remind me to keep at it and to promote me. Then I got slack. As the end of Cycle 2 crept up on me I grew content to live the life of a very poor person,
But Cycle 3 is now very much underway and I must leave the ODSP world soon – perhaps February. My intentions are set on a functioning Judith Snow/World Peace through Inclusion Foundation with assets not less than $6 million by the end of 2011!
I am learning again how to make money. I am getting coaching. I am seeing how I got stuck in lots of side tracks, from not wanting to lose my connection with vulnerable people to enjoying hanging out with the stories of how hard it is and in enjoying too much the dreaming of what we could do next.
What works is to take the action that reliably brings in the money. I set a goal of making $500 a day, five days a week. Yesterday I made $550. Today I made $100. Tomorrow I will make $500.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
December 15, 2010
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this.
Childish, isn’t it?!?
It’s been one of those days. The good part was that I went to the pain clinic again and got to try a TENS machine. I was quite doubtful, but the 20 minutes I did spend on it were quite comfortable. I can see that it can be made easily portable. Perhaps it is a useful way to make travelling in airplanes doable again.
Other than that, Helen was sick, and because we only have cell phones around here, nobody knew until 15 minutes into her shift. It was a big disruption to Mike and then Peter jumped in. It’s been a long time since Peter did a day shift. Basically I was pretty tired by the time his 6 hours were up. He was going to go out but he was tired too and fell asleep. Then Mike got stuck in a traffic jam and I was alone, in pain again, for 2 hours.
I didn’t do the stuff I should have done. It reminds me of January when all I could do was sit and play Freecell because my brain was too bloody tired to imagine doing anything else. Probably I should just go to bed!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but I keep trying to make things work – to fix the broken systems. For years we’ve used a manual that we wrote ourselves, and that I update regularly, performance reviews at least once a year, sometimes more often, mentors for the staff, circle meetings, circle teleconferences, etc. In the end, things get fucked up just about as much as when I don’t bother. It probably would be a lot more helpful to me personally if I just accepted that things get fucked up. I haven’t been left stranded since about 1975, I haven’t died, I still have a home and don’t have to declare bankruptcy yet, lots of people admire my work and are inspired by me – and so far so good – I can still pay my staff. I can imagine that I could be satisfied. But I’m not! I’m grumpy!
I think it’s the money thing. I have written about it before a couple of times. Money used to come quite easily to me even though I took no particular pains to hang on to it. Now, it’s always a one month to the next thing. Largely I am very successful. 15 months in this apartment and the rent has been paid on time each and every month. Just the same, I get anxious when I can’t see beyond two weeks from now. I feel like I’ve lost my luck or my nerve or something. I get brought down by that funny feeling that somehow I’m not carrying my weight. I am, but I don’t feel like it.
It’s ridiculous and I know it and I’m almost ashamed to admit it. However, the weight is there in my head, in my words, in my language, in my thinking and in other people’s way of thinking and it has somehow crept into me.
It is my intention to not pay any more attention to it, and in fact to create something much more empowering. It is my intention to be at peace, and not brought down by this invented sense of scarcity.
At the same time, there is work to be done to find and/or raise the money that I need, and I’m not doing the work. That is what must change. That is what I am committed to.
Change is kind of a sneaky beast. I was looking out my bedroom window at about 11:15 this morning, waiting for Caleb to pick up his glasses that he left here two weeks ago. The crane that is between New Toronto St. and the GO Train tracks began to move west at a stately but ponderous rate – probably about 5 km/hour. It became apparent that it is also on one of the train tracks. Very slowly I was able to see that people were harnessing one of those very large grey cubes that look like a modular section of a prefab building. The “stevedores” raised the cube – maybe 3 feet – and then nothing happened for a good half hour. Was it lunch break? I had to leave and when I returned at about 3:30 the cube was gone, the crane was still sitting there, and there is no way that I can tell what happened. I will just have to keep on watching.
Will I master money in such a slow and invisible way? Will I wake up one morning and realize that I’m fully funded for my personal assistants forever, that I have an equally beautiful condo that has a similar view in the same neighbourhood that is fully paid for, that I am able to be generous with friend and stranger alike? So be it!
Childish, isn’t it?!?
It’s been one of those days. The good part was that I went to the pain clinic again and got to try a TENS machine. I was quite doubtful, but the 20 minutes I did spend on it were quite comfortable. I can see that it can be made easily portable. Perhaps it is a useful way to make travelling in airplanes doable again.
Other than that, Helen was sick, and because we only have cell phones around here, nobody knew until 15 minutes into her shift. It was a big disruption to Mike and then Peter jumped in. It’s been a long time since Peter did a day shift. Basically I was pretty tired by the time his 6 hours were up. He was going to go out but he was tired too and fell asleep. Then Mike got stuck in a traffic jam and I was alone, in pain again, for 2 hours.
I didn’t do the stuff I should have done. It reminds me of January when all I could do was sit and play Freecell because my brain was too bloody tired to imagine doing anything else. Probably I should just go to bed!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but I keep trying to make things work – to fix the broken systems. For years we’ve used a manual that we wrote ourselves, and that I update regularly, performance reviews at least once a year, sometimes more often, mentors for the staff, circle meetings, circle teleconferences, etc. In the end, things get fucked up just about as much as when I don’t bother. It probably would be a lot more helpful to me personally if I just accepted that things get fucked up. I haven’t been left stranded since about 1975, I haven’t died, I still have a home and don’t have to declare bankruptcy yet, lots of people admire my work and are inspired by me – and so far so good – I can still pay my staff. I can imagine that I could be satisfied. But I’m not! I’m grumpy!
I think it’s the money thing. I have written about it before a couple of times. Money used to come quite easily to me even though I took no particular pains to hang on to it. Now, it’s always a one month to the next thing. Largely I am very successful. 15 months in this apartment and the rent has been paid on time each and every month. Just the same, I get anxious when I can’t see beyond two weeks from now. I feel like I’ve lost my luck or my nerve or something. I get brought down by that funny feeling that somehow I’m not carrying my weight. I am, but I don’t feel like it.
It’s ridiculous and I know it and I’m almost ashamed to admit it. However, the weight is there in my head, in my words, in my language, in my thinking and in other people’s way of thinking and it has somehow crept into me.
It is my intention to not pay any more attention to it, and in fact to create something much more empowering. It is my intention to be at peace, and not brought down by this invented sense of scarcity.
At the same time, there is work to be done to find and/or raise the money that I need, and I’m not doing the work. That is what must change. That is what I am committed to.
Change is kind of a sneaky beast. I was looking out my bedroom window at about 11:15 this morning, waiting for Caleb to pick up his glasses that he left here two weeks ago. The crane that is between New Toronto St. and the GO Train tracks began to move west at a stately but ponderous rate – probably about 5 km/hour. It became apparent that it is also on one of the train tracks. Very slowly I was able to see that people were harnessing one of those very large grey cubes that look like a modular section of a prefab building. The “stevedores” raised the cube – maybe 3 feet – and then nothing happened for a good half hour. Was it lunch break? I had to leave and when I returned at about 3:30 the cube was gone, the crane was still sitting there, and there is no way that I can tell what happened. I will just have to keep on watching.
Will I master money in such a slow and invisible way? Will I wake up one morning and realize that I’m fully funded for my personal assistants forever, that I have an equally beautiful condo that has a similar view in the same neighbourhood that is fully paid for, that I am able to be generous with friend and stranger alike? So be it!
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