Motivation vs. Exhaustion
I had a funny experience the other day; I was doing a tarot reading for someone else, when two cards came up that just made me laugh because they are so indicative of my life right now. I have long suspected the tarot does this – you often get requests for readings that give you messages you yourself need.
The cards in question are from Mark McElroy’s Bright Ideas deck, which doesn’t look exactly like a tarot deck. He developed it in part for corporate brainstorming, and so the images are quite a bit more modern than a traditional deck. In any case, here are the two cards I drew:
Situation:
Ace of Cups equivalent – the seed of your heart’s desire
Crossing Card (Obstacles or Challenges):
Ten of Wands equivalent – duties and responsibilities weighing heavily; time to let go of burdens and move on
Get the drift? :D
Here I am all fired up about a new project – an online mediation business that I hope to start within the next month (more on that later as the website gets developed) and the feeling that the mediation/facilitation career I’ve been working toward for so long is finally coming through. I’m very, very motivated to start something new.
On the other hand, I am literally chained to my desk with work related to the end of the fiscal biennium for the state – everyone wants their projects done before the end of the month, and it’s almost more work than I can physically do. That’s normal for the end of the biennium, but it’s rough, all the same. Especially when I am trying to sneak in work on my website at the same time!
Well, one more week of this and I hope to be done with the State projects. Then I have federal projects that will keep me working at almost the same pace through the end of the year – a little more free time, but not much.
This is not the first time I’ve been trying to start one career while still working at another. It is exhausting. But I hope to be diminishing those piles of paper and finishing up some things I’ve been working on almost 10 years. It will feel good to have left something productive behind for others to use, and to move onto something new – hopefully next year.
Grandpa’s Day
I spent the weekend with my family, on behalf of the only father I have known most of my life, my grandpa. My grandparents, especially my Grandpa George, were the bedrock of our family. All of us felt safe just knowing they were there. I remember when, in their 80s, Grandma became really ill for the first time. I had that sinking feeling that I only later identified as feeling that suddenly, we were really the adults. It felt like there was no longer an older generation to count on if disaster struck. I’ve been completely proven wrong about that, by the way. My mom has shown great strength and togetherness in dealing with their situation (not to mention helping me through and after my divorce). I think I didn’t give her enough credit; kids seldom do.
Grandpa has had a terrible time adjusting to this new reality of life. He doesn’t want to be the one taken care of, or have any of his bills paid by anyone else (even with his own money), or driven anywhere (though he admits it’s nice when it happens). As much as we’d like to give back, we really haven’t had a chance until now. Mom and her brother George found them a really nice place to live and have gone through untold amounts of work to get this to happen. My grandparents have been living in their home for over 60 years. You can only imagine how much stuff there was to sort through and downsize to a 2-bedroom apartment.
It was very traumatic for them, and incredible amounts of work for Mom and her husband Terry, who’s been a trouper, hauling stuff to the dump by the truckloads and figuring out how to give things away. The Universe gave us two great real estate agents and a wonderful family who want to move in, who are all so excited about the space and the big yard that they’ve won over our grandparents and made them feel better about moving out.
So, this was the weekend of the big move – only to have my Grandmother come down with one of her periodic asthma attacks and be rushed to the hospital. The movers were moving anyway, stuff needed to be unpacked and made ready for them when they got back, the dog taken care of, the old house cleaned, etc. So off I went to do my small part of unpacking the apartment while my Mom and her brother George dealt with the old house and moving my grandparents when they were ready.
I can’t help thinking what a strange Father’s Day this must be for my Grandpa. On the one hand, his whole family is around him. On the other hand, things are in chaos, he no longer has his own house to come home to, and Grandma is still recovering. And we’re all busy trying to give them all the new instructions for the place they’re living, at a time when it’s hard for them to remember anything.
On the good side, the place is really nice – on that everyone agrees. Their way-too-large-for-the-rules but incredibly nice and well-behaved dog is busy ingratiating himself in the hearts of every staffer in the place, which will help them when the inevitable emergencies happen. And there was a Father’s Day barbecue that we all got to go to, and discovered that the food is really good, and the people who live in this center are very lively and friendly. Many of them came right up and introduced themselves, and lots of people knew they were moving in. There was a good energy there, which I hope they can feel.
We’re all glad they’re so close – 5 minutes from my Mom and an hour from me – far better than the 2-hr drives each way we were dealing with before. And they have so much more support there than just us. I hope they feel a sense of relief mingled with the anxiety and disorder of change. From this point on, the best thing we can do is spend time with them there – something I’m determined to fit into my schedule. It’s the least I can do, and I’ve not been very good about it since I moved to Puyallup. Time to be a better grand-daughter to the grandparents that have been there all their lives for me.
DC This Week – the good, the bad, and the ugly
Well, let’s just see what’s going on in our nation’s capitol – shall we start with the good news, or the bad news? Maybe the good news, since there’s so little of it.
The Good – The Supreme Court upheld the right of companies that conduct Superfund cleanups voluntarily to recover part of their costs from other responsible entities. This preserves one of the basic incentives for companies to do voluntary cleanups without waiting to be ordered, since otherwise no-one would want to incur costs to clean up other people’s messes. This is especially important since Congress eliminated the tax that funded the Superfund program some while back, and this is now how most cleanups get done.
Who would oppose this? The Bush administration – of course. The case in question was one where the federal government shared a portion of the liability, but relied on its contractor to step up and do the cleanup, then denied their claim for compensation on the grounds that no-one should get to recover costs unless they were actually forced by the government to conduct a cleanup. 38 states filed briefs opposing the federal government on this one. Even Clarence Thomas, who wrote the opinion, could see what a ridiculous stance this is. The government has an estimated liability of 300 billion in Superfund cleanup costs, which could have something to do with it – ya think? Still, one would hope they wouldn’t stiff their own contractors.
Also in the Good category, though not in Washington DC – I can’t help mentioning Google and Intel, who yesterday announced that they are joining in an initiative to make computers more energy-efficient (they currently waste 50% of their energy). Succeeding at this goal is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of eliminating 11 million cars, or closing 20 coal-fired power plants. Awesome idea.
The Bad – Well gee, where should I start. I almost hate to go back to the Bush Administration, because it’s just too easy. Mr. Bush is threatening to veto Congressional legislation designed to lower vehicle emissions, make appliances more energy-efficient, create incentives for inventions that will lower energy use, and various other useful programs, such as ways to make school buses less polluting. Why? Because there is oil-company price-gouging legislation included.
On another topic – The Administration is busy developing a strategy to improve the US’s public image around the world, by focusing on countering terrorist arguments and ideology, and by touting “American” values of human rights, dignity, freedom, and humanitarian aid. If we spent more time actually LIVING UP to these ideals – we wouldn’t need this “strategy.”
The Ugly – Here I really must have Congress and the State Department share this award, sad as I am to see this Democratic Congress contributing to such activities. Our Congress is sending funds to the tune of $30 million to fund opposition groups in Iran – at the same time Condi et al. are over there pointing fingers at Iran for funding the insurgency in Iraq. How on earth do we get away with this stuff? THIS is the problem with our “image.”
And now we’re talking about arming ex-Al Qaeda troops in Iraq because they claim to be disgruntled and will fight on our side instead of theirs. They’re probably laughing all the way back to their arms depot. Haven’t we learned ANYTHING from history?
SIGH.
How do you decide?
When to jump? When to make some major life decision whose outcome can’t be predicted, and afterwards your whole life will be different? We only get a few chances to make these changes, when all the events in our lives line up in such a way that we’re free to choose, or allow ourselves to be. Changing careers, making a choice to be married or single or married again, moving to another country. All possible, all with unanticipated endings. Sure, we can plan – make it easier or harder on ourselves by getting some idea what we’re in for. But in the end, it’s a leap of faith.
The questions are unanswerable. If I move to Central America, how much will I really need to live on? Can I make that much online? How will it feel when all the friends I know are here and I am there? Can I really learn the language quickly and make new friends? Will some of my friends and family actually visit, or not? Will I like the climate, be fascinated by the birds, love the slower pace of life, find enough to do? Will I really be in better shape and enjoy the walks into town to buy food, or will I hate the inconvenience? Will I die of loneliness, wish I had never left – or love it? How can I possibly know these things ahead of time?
I feel stuck in a cycle of expensive mortgage requiring endless work in a high-paying job. There’s no way to live decently as a single person in the US without spending too much money. But if I leave, I can’t make as much. Will I come out ahead, or will it just even out? Just looking at it from here, it looks like it would work. But if it doesn’t – then what? Start all over back in the US? Am I feeling stuck here for no reason? Lots of people write that it’s easier than it looks – of course, those are the ones for whom it worked out.
So many of my friends are going through similar dilemmas in other areas of their lives. Not the same issues at all – but the same problem of choosing without knowing, when the consequences are so great. What seems most likely is that it will be nothing at all like we expect – maybe much better, maybe worse. Paralyzed with indecision. But at least we’re trying to make a decision – then there are all the people who simply dismiss dreams or plans like this as impossible, not applying to them in any way.
And what about those who are just content? Will I ever be content, or am I one of these people that’s impossible to please? Am I justified in hating all that the US stands for in the world and not wanting my tax dollars to support that, or is that just a convenient justification for making changes, any changes, in my life? Am I missing some big issue that if I could resolve, I wouldn’t need to make all these other changes?
I don’t know. Questions without answers.
Paper, paper everywhere…
The other day I was sitting in a trial, testifying about the effects of wood waste in the marine environment. It was rather surreal. Aside from the multitudes of lawyers, I was absolutely surrounded in a sea of paper. This trial generated more paper than I normally expect to see outside a library. The judge had a swath of binders that ran from end to end on his bench. There was another copy of all the binders on the floor, by the witness stand. The floor was so full of documents that the court reporters could barely make their way from the break room to their places in front of the bench.
Never mind the copies the lawyers had with them, the backup copies in the “war room” back at the hotel and in the local law offices, the other copies in the law offices in other states, and all the copies that all the experts had. I know because my living room is full of papers, piled by topic and date. Each time I get involved in a trial, some room in my house is taken over by paper. I can’t pick it up until the trial’s over, lest some crucial document becomes hard to find in the moment it is needed. And when all this is over, all that paper – will be shredded.
During my testimony, I kept getting handed giant binders of materials to look through that I had no place to set down, balancing them teeteringly on the polished wood before me and searching for a key line or phrase that was somehow of importance. This courtroom actually has some neat gizmos, electronic touch screens that you can draw on with your finger and highlight phrases or create arrows to point at something. And during the preparation for this trial I did see electronic progress, as I received many documents on CD or by ftp for the first time. Yet even still, the binders went forth and multiplied.
And this was a trial, in the end, about trees.
The irony was not lost on anyone in the courtroom. There were little jokes about how we were keeping one side in business. Some of us have been working on this particular project for almost 20 years, and now we are reaching the final throes, the last gasps of contention as those who have already done the cleanup of old historic pollution litigate to see who should pay for it. The paper in this room and involved in this one trial is just a tiny subset, really, of the paper that’s been generated just trying to study and clean up the pollution offshore of this one industrial city, not to mention the other trials spawned by this cleanup involving hundreds of properties, industries, insurance companies, port districts, and municipal entities.
I know in my heart the bay is actually clean now. Was it worth it? All that expense and all that paper, all those years of work by almost everyone in the environmental community – consultants, agency staff, activists, cleanup contractors, facility managers, lawyers… 20 years to undo a century of contamination. 20 years of paper.
Are we in the electronic age yet? It couldn’t come too soon for me :)
Meanderings on a Blue Moon
Disclaimer: There’s a reason this entry is included in the Random Walk category… :)
Tonight I was driving home from Seattle, having just visited one of my oldest friends who has been living in London and was in town visiting. We had stayed up half the night, and it was past midnight when I hit the freeways heading home. It’s just a couple days past the full moon and it was nothing like the Blue Moon it was supposed to be. Instead, it was orange, hazy, and bisected with blackish horizontal clouds. The overall effect was misshapen and distorted, pieces separated from the whole and offset strangely.
It is quite unsettling when celestial bodies don’t look like themselves. I could just imagine villagers centuries ago huddling around the village square, muttering about dark portents and omens. I found myself continually checking the moon on the drive home to see if it had changed. It did change, but not necessarily to anything more reassuring.
In a strange segue from the past into the future, it occurred to me to wish that I could snap a photo of it for this blog, so you could all see what I was writing about. I had the random thought that maybe someday that will be possible – with a blink of an eyelid we’ll be able to take a quick photo, later to be downloaded into a computer. My mind seems to work that way already, it’s just a matter of technology catching up. I’m the one that always comes back from vacations without any photos, because I’ve stored all the images in my mind and they’re perfectly good that way.
And then there’s the fact that this Blue Moon isn’t even a Blue Moon for everyone, which makes it just a little bit stranger. One friend in a group of close e-mail friends had the idea of doing a goal-setting event, since folklore says that a Blue Moon is a good time to set your intentions in action. Since a Blue Moon only occurs once every 2+ years (it’s the second full moon in a month), she asked us to state our goals and intentions, and she would remind us again on the next Blue Moon.
The problem is, this one is occurring on the last day of the month. On the west coast of North America, it was around 6pm – on the east coast, 9pm. For our friends in Europe, it wouldn’t be until the morning – which would be June, not May. For them, the Blue Moon would be the second moon in June, offset from the rest of us by a month. All well and good and natural from an astronomical point of view, except we like to do things together.
Ah well, it’s not like we haven’t bent the space-time continuum before ;) We’ll be together, even if we’re not.
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