Thankful for Home: The Very Last Post

This is a place in England and not where I live,  but look! A blue door. 

And hanging in the door it says "home sweet home". Gotta love that.

I realized the other day that there was something bothering me about the way I ended this blog. 

I needed to give one last update to the homeless situation. It is only fair. You read along and gave me good wishes when I was in that situation. You should know a little more about what has happened.

I am no longer homeless.

I now rent a room in someone's home. 

It also seems only right that the last post should be a gratitude list. So here are my thankfuls for having found a place to call home.

I am thankful for:

• a roof where I listen to the rain falling (and sometimes storming) and the sound it makes is so different from rain on a car roof. It is one of my favourite sounds, no matter where I am. But I do think I prefer the room roof sound of rainfall over the car roof sound.
• a bed. With my pillows and clean sheets and my blankets. It is large enough (full sized, perhaps? I don't know, I'm not good at bed measurements. Hmm. That doesn't sound quite right, does it?) anyway, it is large enough that I can sleep with my legs and arms stretched to their longest. And cozy. So cozy.
• a small alarm clock. I can open my eyes and look over and see the time without turning a car on. What will they think of next!
• a sitting area. I have a couch with a coffee table. A place to have a friend over. I can serve tea and cookies. 
• a largish small refrigerator. I have a refrigerator. In my room. Seventeen-year-old me would have been green with envy. So this means I can also offer juice or sparkling or still water or crackers and cheese.Or a cool glass of wine. (Fine. If you want beer, I'll throw a microbrew or two in there. I hate that stuff, but I realize I'm odd.) 
• full use of a lovely kitchen.
• a TV with a VCR. It's old school. And perfect. Because VHS tapes are super cheap (and that's my budget right now, super cheap) and I get to sit in my room (or lie in my bed) and watch Shakespeare In Love - I'm still on the hunt for Harold and Maude and my very favourite movie of all time, Still Breathing, in VHS form. Also the TV is seriously cool. It turns itself off when it realizes the tape is done playing and no one is paying attention. And that's without setting the sleep timer. Which it also has. And I have a remote.
• a tiny closet for hanging clothes, a super large closet with shelves for storage.
• my own thermostat. I can finally be warm all night and not get woken up by the cold at odd hours. And warmth without turning on the car!
• an overhead fan. Because summer is a-coming, peeps.Slowly, dragging her feet. But she's coming!
• bookshelves. My books are unpacked. And I can walk over to the shelf, peruse it, and read or research.
• the outdoors. This is a pretty place. And it's nice to be able to hang out outside when the weather is beautiful. 
• a desk and a desk chair. Because there is writing to do, my friends. There is writing to do. (Although it's doubtful I'll actually do much of it at the desk.)
• the ability to have a large bulletin board. I went and got one. I actually tried to get a bulletin board they had on super amazing sale that was mondo-giganticus, but it was so big it wouldn't fit in the car. So I got the next size down figuring if I need bigger, I'll get another. At some point. In the future. 

I'm in a safe place, renting from nice people and I have a room of my own. 

It's not fancy, but I can't tell you how perfect it is. 

I'm home, you guys! Thank you for helping me get here. 

I wish for you that you always have a home: safe and happy and warm - or cool, depending on where you live, a place where you can live and love and be true to yourself. 

Hugs all around.

If you wish to write to me, I will be keeping 35jupiterdrive (at) gmail (dot) com up and going for awhile yet. 

Photo: Pauline Eccles [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A Love Note

And because I want to end this blog on a note of love:



New Zealand passed marriage equality today. The woman in the striped jacket with the longish wavy hair is the one who introduced the bill. 

Her name is Louisa Wall, she's an out lesbian who thanked her partner, and said:  "In our society, the meaning of marriage is universal - it's a declaration of love and commitment to a special person. Nothing could make me more proud to be a New Zealander than passing this bill." 

The song being sung is a Maori love song. 

Update: I'm Okay

Hey folks.

Just letting you know that I'm okay. While I am in Massachusetts, I was not at the Marathon today and am not anywhere near the bombing today. 

My heart goes out to those who are impacted by this. 

The End ... And the Beginning

So here we are at the end, for me, of an era. The 35 Jupiter Drive era.

It's time to let the little house on the big planet go.

I have very mixed feeling about it. But I think it's time. 

I want to thank you for being here with me through the thick and the thin. You made a difference in my life. 

Thank you. 

With love and hugs and wishes for all the best for all of you,

Em

List: A Toolkit For Tough Times

A world in which there are monsters, and ghosts, and things that want to steal your heart is a world in which there are angels, and dreams and a world in which there is hope. 
Neil Gaiman

When things are bad, difficult, trying, heart-breaking, anxiety-provoking, depressing and so on, it's easy to slide in to a bad place and simply want to lie down, face-planted firmly in the dirt. 

There are some other options. Here's some that work for me. 

1. Answer this: is (fill in the blank) going to kill me right this minute? 99.9% of the time the answer to that is no. If it's yes, then you need to get a move on and stop all this philosophy and get away from whatever it is. If the answer is no, then there are always some options.
2. Look around and see what's good in the world. Even if things are really bad, you can always tip your head up and see the sky. The sky, in general, is good. Often there are even birds there, who are also good. There's usually a longer list, though. Neil Gaiman quotes. Small storage units. Paint. Pie. Music. 
3. What's good in your life? Right now, like me, you may have a few problems. What's your good stuff? Here's a part of my what's good: writing, blogging, you guys,  my amazing brother, poetry, dogs, cats, mini-art projects, my recent tarot readings. Well, you get the idea. 
4. Breathe. Sometimes it helps to just stop and breathe in and out. To tell yourself that for the next 5 minutes your job is to breathe. That's it. It can get you out of panic. 
5. Turn it on it's head and see how it motivates you. In the midst of something bad we're  usually pretty clear that it's what we don't want. This can be a good time to figure out what we do want.
6. Find your anchors I written about this before, but I'm going to mention it here too. When hard things happen, it can feel like we've been pushed right out of our lives. It can be good to find a few things that anchor and ground us in them. For me those include having a schedule and meditating and a few others. Someone I know needs to go see a movie in a theater every week for life to feel like it's his life. You have anchors too, and in the midst of a difficult time can be the perfect time to find and reincorporate them. 
7. List ten good things about yourself. I know, this one sounds really like ego run amuck. But a lot of times doing this can lead to an aha about what to do or what options you may have or maybe a way to get out of whatever situation you're in. (Being in a bad situation can make some of us, I'm not admitting anything, beat ourselves up. This is a good counter to that.) Also, if one is going through emotional abuse or bullying (speaking as someone who recently experienced this) it can be a nice reminder that the meanies are, excuse the expression, full of shit. Because they are. 
8. Brainstorm ridiculous as well as not so ridiculous solutions. You have to move past the obvious and into the absurd. (And maybe a solution will present and maybe it won't, but there's something about putting your brain on notice that you're looking for solutions that makes your brain say, "oh, I'm looking for solutions!")
9. Think of  thankfuls. There's a lot, actually. Just clean water alone, easily accessible, can knock my socks off at times. So many people don't have it. I just turn on a tap. Even if I'm sleeping in my car. I stop and go to a truck stop or a diner and there's a water faucet and a toilet that flushes and is connected to an incredible sewer system that I don't even have to think about.  
10. The practice of tonglen. I've talked about this before. But it can get one out of being self-focused and in to being more focused for the world and what's going on everywhere.  (More on the practice on tonglen here: The Practice of Tonglen.)
11. Believing you're bigger than the bad stuff. I think good triumphs, in the end. I just believe that. I also believe in guides/angels/gods/goddesses and so on and I think they have a stake in our triumphs. Simply a belief of mine that helps. Maybe you have a belief that helps you. No matter what it is, belief helps. 
12. Embrace being epic. Most troubles fit the hero's journey scenario pretty well. There's always a time when the hero of our story (that's you) is in a dark and desperate place. So realize you are epic and your life is epic and embrace your inner hero. 
13. We get to decide what we do with the experience. I tend to decide that things are learning experiences. The bad stuff is also stuff that teaches and stretches and makes us more compassionate with a better grounding in this human thing. Sometimes it may be painful and hard. In the end, it all has a gift in its hands, even the most terrible of experiences. 
14. Self-nurture. I have a weakness for soy chai lattes. Normally I don't get them, though, because lots of calories and expensive! Normally I get green tea on ice. Exception: When life is super hard I drink quite a few soy chai lattes. And, once in awhile, a salted caramel hot cocoa. Because they are nurturant. They make me feel rich and lucky and enveloped in delicious. I also keep tissues with lotion on hand. Because if I'm going to sob into something, it's not going to be a roll of tp, instead it's going to be soft! So it's good to know what you find really nurturant and then give that to yourself.
15. Being here now. Sometimes, with whatever is happening, I may borrow trouble from the future or relive the painful from the past. But the truth is here, now, I'm fine. (Breathing, fed, clean, safe.) So when I'm getting really worked up about something that might (or might not) happen I try to reground myself in now.  And right now I'm writing a blog post. So that's good. 
16. Stay curious. It may not have been great for the cat, but it's good for us. This will all work out in the end. How will it? We don't know, it's a mystery. (With a heavy duty nod there to Shakespeare In Love, which I'm paraphrasing shamelessly.) Since it's a mystery, I'd like to know what happens. Will I: Live my dream? Meet my match? Make my name? Use lots and lots of rather tired phrases? Well, that last one is a definite yes. The rest ... we will find out, won't we? We will!
17. Knowing that everything changes. Change is a constant. No matter what is going on, life goes on too, and things change. This too shall pass. And then goodbye rain, hello sunshine. (Unless one lives in a desert. Then reverse that.) 
18. Remembering that what goes down must come up. No one stays down forever.  Trouble is finite. It simply is. We learn to live with even the most devastating of experiences. Look at Nelson Mandela. In 1962 he was put in jail for the rest of his life. In 1990 (that is a very long time) he got out of jail. In 1994 he was elected President of his country. I think we have to admit that in, oh, choose any year he was in jail, things must have seemed pretty hopeless. 
19. Keep perspective. No matter what's going on, it is only what it is. 
20. Focus on why you're alive. I think a big part of why we incarnate is that we all have a gift to give the world and we came in to give it. Every single one of us. When bad things are going on it's a good time to figure out what that gift is. If we already know our gift, it's a good time to be doing it. Because I'm pretty sure giving our gift to the world will help. If we've lost someone to death, then we're honouring their lives by truly living our own. If someone has abused and dishonoured us in some way, we can honour who we truly are by being who we truly are. If one of a zillion other bad things is going on then giving our gift will, at the least, make us happier. And help us focus on what is really important. It's also incredibly empowering.
21. Keep breathing. As long as you're alive, you have chances and choices. So breathing is a good thing to remember to keep on doing. 
22. Get help and support. If things are too bad to handle alone, there are people and places one can go for help. I get an incredible amount of support through blogging. For someone else, this might not be the right type of support or enough. If that's the case, there are meetup and support groups, hotlines and hospitals. There are also survival centers and food banks. There are lots of different resources out there once you really start looking for them. It is a very rare person (I think they may be a myth, actually) who goes through life without needing the help of other people at one point or another or several. It's a good thing to get it if it's needed. So it's important to use it. Because the hotline people aren't psychics. (That's a different type of hotline.) So you have to call them. 

If you're in a tough time at the moment, I hope there's something helpful in here. If you're going through hard, hang on and know I wish you very well indeed. You will get through the trying and move on to the triumph. 

And when that is done you will have tales to tell, of encounters with monsters and ghosts and things that wanted to steal your heart but also tales of being a citizen in the world of hope. And in that tale is the story that, in the end, being a citizen of hope is more powerful than any ghost or monster could ever be. 


Photo: By Twice25 & Rinina25 (nostra immagine) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons