Help a stranger, help a friend.

Alzheimer’s has touched my family, and now my friends’. I have over 120 some followers, if you all donated a dollar, even that could help. This is a family that in one way or another has influenced my life for over 25 years.

Please see the attached gofundme. https://www.gofundme.com/63k9y-save-my-parent039s-home

“My father is 78 years old and has Alzheimer’s.  The disease is advancing.  My mother and I are his primary caregivers and are doing our best to keep him home with family as it progresses.  Mom is on a fixed income.  I work full time and am also a full time college student, set to graduate this Spring, 2019.  I’ve left school many times over the years in order to help family, I am really pushing to finish now.  We have a hard time making the mortgage payment.  We’re literally at risk of losing the house, at which point I have no idea what we would do.

My dream here is to raise enough money to pay off the house for them and help cover the costs of his very expensive medications and other living needs. I would never dream of asking for money like this, but then I thought “we live in a world where a multi-millionaire can raise millions just so she can be a billionaire.  People set up, and succeed, in GoFundMe campaigns for boob jobs, dream cars, festival tickets, vacations etc.

So I figured I would take a shot in the dark here and see if there is anything I can do to help save my father’s home.  He is a Vietnam-Era veteran who worked his entire life.  He graduated Harvard Law.  Watching him fade away in front of us is so hard.  Thinking of having to put him in a residential home and losing his house is just too much.  I want him to be around family, who love him, until the end.  So I’m making this campaign, and putting it out there and will see what happens.

Blessings to all.”

When a part becomes apart…

I have previously written about loneliness, here. It is interesting to me how loneliness changes and presents itself; and in what situations. I have often lamented in real life and all forms of my “virtual” life that communication is becoming less personal, like AI. No longer are skills like reading people, situations, exchanging energy, gazes that inspired poets, as valued…or learned. There is an entire generation growing up, (socially disadvantaged in my opinion) without making eye contact, without interacting, without the time or distance to be mindful about what they say or how they react to things. We cause ourselves anxiety over not getting likes, not getting responses back, etc. In our effort to feel a part of something, we make ourselves apart. We can be in the same room as someone and not even look at them. Cursory, rote greetings have become a standard. We sit at restaurants with our loved ones and don’t make eye contact… with our lovers, our parents, our kids.

We get some sort of a chemical addiction to the instant gratification… Our Pavlovian response encourages us continue the high… the goddamn blue bubbles of solace. But we may have someone LITERALLY right next to us. And yet, we seek communication from the ether…We have a cognitive dissonance about the links between loneliness and being alone. Because those of us, with the privilege to have technology, have created a culture of slumber parties consisting of a group of adolescents snapchatting each other from the same room, no one looking at the stars unless they can get a pic of them, instagram, pinterest, etc. We are past the point of sexual revolution gratuitous hook ups, online dating, facebooking, pornography, vines, vaguebooking, comparing ourselves to real and imagined foes, stalking, bullying, trolling, sexting, mentally checking out, gaming, hunting, shooting, racing, battling, flying, etc….

ALL WITHOUT BEING WITHIN THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE OF ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. 

It truly makes me very sad. For us all. Now granted, I know #noteveryperson whatever. BUT we are going that way and very fucking fast. I am guilty. You are too. You are reading a goddamn blog that was either in your email, on your twitter, on your facebook, googleplusokcupidpinterestKiKtindergrindrzoosk, whatever the fuck. You didn’t come looking for a blog by Jani B.

I am lonely a lot. And upon a lot of alone and lonely time countered with a lot of around people and still lonely time, I have realized it is not the being alone part that bothers me, it really is the loneliness. When you have an entire manic world in your head to talk to someone about and no one asks. When you spend all day giving and giving to people who are not in a position to give back, and you are spent, lonely. When you have an amazing day and want to share it with ANYONE but all that is available is social media..or yourself… When you are in an office full of people, all day, all week, and unless it is a client or someone needing something, no one talks to you. When you shut off your Facebook and the only people that contact you now are family members wanting to know if you blocked them specifically. I am lonely at times around friends because I am either so up in my own head that I am not really interacting with them or they are so engaged with someone else my introvertedness makes me wilt and seem disinterested.

I have always prided myself on my communication and intuitive skills. Technology however, has made me crazy, made me anxious. I am happy that I grew up in an era where real life communication skills were more important than properly formatted for office politic emails. Back in the good ol’ days when you didn’t abbreviate much and spelling counted, in love letters, gossip notes, poetry, cards, and invitations. When you used words, those oh so important words, combined with physical existence, body language, and observed emotion, not texted emoji.

I think that is why so many elderly couples die so close together or remarry so quickly. The loneliness. So many losses…having someone breathing next to you at night, someone that no matter what is going on out there, you know you have someone to share with here. The loss of that must wreck havoc on the soul, the heart, the immune system. I know what I experience after not having that for a much shorter time than the elderly couple I imagine. I cannot even fathom what it would be like after 30, 40, 50 years.

I fear for the current and future generations. Those with the skinniest thumbs and curviest necks will evolve via natural selection in an unnatural way. Homo Curva. That’s the next evolutionary leap.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. —Albert Schweitzer

 

Mercury Retrograde BE DAMNED I feel amazing.

I have had quite the empowering and cathartic last couple of weeks chock full of epiphanies and cosmic 2x4s.

One, I shall not write into narrative for you voyeuristic vampires whom I love. It involves self growth and reflecting on past relationships.

But when it dawned on me, it went something like this:

Then, I read this on my FaceCrack wall:

Wild Woman Sisterhood

A Wild Woman doesn’t want to be your Girly friend

Can you love me in the deep? In the dark? In the thick of it?

Can you love me when I drink from the wrong bottle and slip through the crack in the floorboard?

Can you love me when I’m bigger than you, when my presence blazes like the sun does, when it hurts to look directly at me?

Can you love me then too?

Can you love me under the starry sky, shaved and smooth, my skin like liquid moonlight?

Can you love me when I am howling and furry, standing on my haunches, my lower lip stained with the blood of my last kill?

When I call down the lightning, when the sidewalks are singed by the soles of my feet, can you still love me then?

What happens when I freeze the land, and cause the dirt to harden over all the pomegranate seeds we’ve planted?

Will you trust that Spring will return?

Will you still believe me when I tell you I will become a raging river, and spill myself upon your dreams and call them to the surface of your life?

Can you trust me, even though you cannot tame me?

Can you love me, even though I am all that you fear and admire?

Will you fear my shifting shape?

Does it frighten you, when my eyes flash like your camera does?

Do you fear they will capture your soul?

Are you afraid to step into me?

The meat-eating plants and flowers armed with poisonous darts are not in my jungle to stop you from coming. Not you.

So do not worry. They belong to me, and I have invited you here.

Stay to the path revealed in the moonlight and arrive safely to the hut of Baba Yaga: the wild old wise one… she will not lead you astray if you are pure of heart.

You cannot be with the wild one if you fear the rumbling of the ground, the roar of a cascading river, the startling clap of thunder in the sky.

If you want to be safe, go back to your tiny room — the night sky is not for you.

If you want to be torn apart, come in. Be broken open and devoured. Be set ablaze in my fire.

I will not leave you as you have come: well dressed, in finely-threaded sweaters that keep out the cold.

I will leave you naked and biting. Leave you clawing at the sheets. Leave you surrounded by owls and hawks and flowers that only bloom when no one is watching.

So, come to me, and be healed in the unbearable lightness and darkness of all that you are.

There is nothing in you that can scare me. Nothing in you I will not use to make you great.

A wild woman is not a girlfriend. She is a relationship with nature. She is the source of all your primal desires, and she is the wild whipping wind that uproots the poisonous corn stalks on your neatly tilled farm.

She will plant pear trees in the wake of your disaster.

She will see to it that you shall rise again.

She is the lover who restores you to your own wild nature.

(c) Alison Nappi 2015

The I saw this and wanted to go run. Dafuq, right?

This is all on top of a windfall at work, in my bank account, with my kids, with my love, with my friends, EVERYTHING. On top of the world and it is strange.

Winter Solstice ponderings

Today is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. It has always held mixed meanings for me. My first wedding was held near the Autumnal Equinox and my last wedding was on the Winter Solstice. I came full circle through the seasons and while that final wedding boded no better than the first, it was and will be, my last.

This year, I want to focus on the actually perceivable aspects of it; the eternal pendulum of dark versus light finally swings toward the light again. The darkness has been building up to this point, and now the light finally wins for while. I am going to make sure that I hold that thought within myself… KEEP YOUR LIGHT.

The darkest days are over for this cycle.

From here out, I will stay mindful of this with the intent that it will guide my choices and my attitude in the coming months. Just as Winter signifies an end, it also indicates the impending Spring. A time of rebirth. A time of renewal. A time of creation.

And that is the miracle.

The American Public Education Factory: what is it producing?….Volume 1

I have been really trying to get some sort of an outline in my head about this topic for a while; I have decided to just start blogging it as it comes because every time I think I have it concretely fleshed out in my head, some new thought comes in about the social injustices associated with public school systems. From epistemology to NCLB, to “common core” to booster clubs, regurgitation vs. creative thought AKA actually thinking, ingenuity to different types of intelligence, to the perpetuation of rape culture and #Iammorethanadistraction, ugh the list can go on.

I am going to start with socioeconomic inequality in schools. Studies have shown that the more engaged in school a child is, the better they do. It isn’t rocket surgery. If a child is involved in sports, music, drama, whatever their choice of extracurricular activities are, the busier they are (no time for other naughtiness), the more invested they are in better grades, the more involved their parents might be in their world, “the more” everything. Things like teamwork, hard work, friendship, conflict negotiation, community, working for success AFTER failure, etc. are learned without the child knowing that they are learning it. But when these things are made to be so expensive that only the middle class and up can participate, well then, now we have yet another layer of oppression adding to the intersectionality of what it is to be a middle or high school student.

To over-share with a little self disclosure, I make what I assume to be a pretty “comfortable” wage, although it is definitely not the magical salary I was led to believe a masters degree would grant me. I make a little more than 50% of the “average median income” in America this year. I believe this probably makes me considered “middle class” but just barely. We still qualify for free lunch, thank sweet ancient baby alien space monkey Jebus, but it is not easy. I am still living paycheck to paycheck. I have come to terms most days with living one paycheck away from homelessness, mostly because as a housing case manager, I know what resources are available in the area.

I digress.

Anyhow, my point was that my child is involved in the school sponsored dance team, the fine arts credit required orchestra, and the foreign language credit required Spanish. We receive a discounted “activity fee” for the “sport” but the uniforms ($135 to start, with additional costumes throughout the year), “required contribution to the booster club” of $100 (which my child/myself get to harass friends, co-workers, family, and social media with in order to raise by selling coupon books or car wash tickets, not to mention the $1,200 dollar “Spring Break trip to Disney World” that all the “rich kids” get to go to, but sadly, probably not my child. This causes lateral oppression within the team of the haves vs the have nots; because the kids KNOW who will be able to go and who will not from the beginning. It is not fair. And yes, I know, “Life isn’t fair, Princess.” One+ more kiddo(s) financed OUT.

But come on! What is the booster club for anyway? Isn’t it there to support the kids who WANT to participate and work their asses off to participate? The answer sadly is, “No.” It is there to make up the difference between public support/donations from the school’s budget for sports. That is a shame. But go ahead, buy some more computers. Make the teachers learn a different way to teach because they aren’t churning out productive enough regurgitaters at the rate the country wants. That is a much better use of funds……And tell me again why kids here are obese and live online?

Ah, speaking of obesity….the school lunch. It is not what it could be. I recently read about France’s model and how lovely it is. What a pipe dream for good ol’ Merikah. Instead we have corporate sponsors, such as Subway and energy drinks in the schools. Which always look better than god knows what is really in the instant processed mashed potatoes and goo.

Spanish class requires fees. For what? I have no freaking clue. Is there a lab associated with Spanish? One+ more kiddo(s) financed OUT.

Orchestra requires not only a $100 fee per year to “pay for music” but also a rental of an instrument if you cannot afford to buy one. The schools do not even loan instruments anymore. How many kids love music but cannot participate in band or orchestra because of the cost?  I was told that because the school was making photo copies of music for the students they were fined $4000. Isn’t there some sort of fair use for schools to use copyrighted music?

“Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”

Yeah, I thought so.

So tell me again why I have to pay for music for my child to continue playing in the school orchestra? And why must they also have “orchestral uniforms” which include for the gender binary, long black dresses for the females, penguin suits for the males. Could we not just wear black pants and shirts or skirts? We must buy these clothes for a high school class? Good grief. One+ more kiddo(s) financed OUT.

Did I mention all these fees are due either at registration or during the first MONTH of school (save the spring break trip, luckily “they understand what a hardship it might be for some families so they give them until late winter to confirm these amounts.” Cause between you and me, as a single FT working parent that gets minimal child support, registration, extras, school supplies, school fees, school clothes, and anything else needed at the end of summer/beginning of Fall, is freaking HARD to figure out.

These examples and many others show it is unaffordable for many if not most kids to participate in the activities that studies show teach resilience and community. It is unreasonably expensive for ALL kids to get the protective effects of participation in these activities. So they must find other outlets and no one seems to like those outcomes, and yet…..

I contacted the school to find out what options are available as a low income parent. You know, because despite being on whatever magical list they keep us free lunch families on, they do not send home any information on these sorts of options. There are some “scholarships” available the first week of October, I was told. But it doesn’t cover everything. It’s a first come, first serve sort of deal where a committee decides who gets it. Based on what? I don’t know. But you better believe it is not a blind decision. Someone is making judgments either internally or perhaps even out loud. I imagine fucked up words like “deserve” and “worth” and “investment” are tossed around in that conversation.

So back to the original point and not my own personal struggle…The socioeconomic injustices of a public school system…. You want a college scholarship? You want to take classes you might *GASP* be interested in? You want to do sports? Music? Drama? Prepare to pay my friend cause this is college. Public High School.

If your parents can’t afford it, screw you.

If your parents feel shame asking for help, screw you.

If your parents don’t speak English as a first language and aren’t sure how to advocate for you/your family, screw you.

If your parents are too busy because they work 8,327,498,374 hours a week and don’t have the time to contact the school, screw you.

If your parents have nothing but time because they are unemployed, depressed, worried, stressed, whatever, screw you.

Welcome to Public High School.

To be continued.

Help me do good work.

Please visit my gofundme.

 

Help JANI!

Call to action!

Two of my favorite people and longest friends recently found out that their dream house that they’ve has been living in with their two wee kiddos has been infiltrated to the point of almost not being correctable by MOLD……. They are doing what they can (luckily it is summer so they can sleep in tents while they try to get it taken care of) but they need help.

I can not financially assist, but I thought I might be able to send a shout out to my followers (there are over 100 of you!) and if you all threw in a buck or two, that would be amazing.

 

Do a good thing.

Spend a buck.

Love and light!

AND SHARE!

CLICK HERE TO HELP OUT MY SOUL SISTER!!!

Fire walk with me…

I haven’t blogged in a while. It’s been a combination of not having time and not having really anything nice or uplifting to say about anything. Yesterday was probably the lowest day energy and attitude-wise I have had in a couple years. I don’t think that it was necessarily anything in particular, just a lame culmination of the last few months and the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. So as things just seemed to domino in my world, professionally and of course personally because I am not one of those cool people that can leave my job at the office…. I just kind of gave up yesterday.

 

But as I always do, I woke up this morning and decided to try again cause really that’s all you can do.

I went to work, decided no matter what I was going to have a good GD day.

And I did.

I helped a family get housed that has been in shelter since January and it was a win. I really left work yesterday sure that it would not happen for them and rehearsing that conversation of sadness.

When I went to the shelter today to meet them and have them sign some final paperwork, I was showered in the grace of the experience. Everyone there is like a family. The family I work with has been there longer than anyone else in the shelter and literally had a couple days left on their 3rd extension. Everyone was happy and congratulating them, high fives, hugs, tears, etc. Their kids? One of them was so happy he was about to burst. He couldn’t even imagine having a room of his own again. The mom who has not let herself have any hope the last few months was over the moon. I honestly had never seen her smile a real smile. She had not even allowed herself the anticipation of this house.

It was the best experience I can remember having in a long time.

And it reminded me of this song:

So I ask you….

What is YOUR fire?

Is it waiting for fuel?

Are you the fuel for someone else’s?

Whatever lights that passion in you, however briefly….

FIND IT.

FEED IT.

The fuel is out there.

Let the spin stop.

Ignore the distractions and feel the burn.

 

When I am wrong, I admit it.

Sometime last year my friend Daniel posted a video of a girl sitting in a car with a crazy system. She appeared to be, well, really enjoying it. I called bullshit. Maybe if it was a Harley I said, but not “just” bass.

Well, this previous summer I had to buy a hamster car…totally stock 2013 Kia Soul, but it has a freaking badass stock system. This song came on my Pandora station and suffice it to say, I was driving down I-84 and had to pull off for a second or 4 minutes.

Straight up.

No joke.

I doubt most computers can pick up the low frequencies in this song, but if you have a way to find it and play it through a good system, it’s pretty effing sweet.

Ladies, you are all welcome.

Men, you should buy this album for me. er, your lady, if you like ladies.

Poverty. Totally a choice.

Bootstraps. Pull yourself up by them!

Unless you are barefoot and pregnant….and that was YOUR decision. Fu*king breeders!

Just kidding. I get tired of feeling like I have to explain my clients or enlighten people on oppression and poverty and every other ism that exists in my world (your world too, just FYI). I digress.

When I started out down the social work path, I was very vigilant and ready to educate the masses; I was excited to understand the criminal justice population I had previously been working with in another light. I wanted to fix the world, change society.

Now I just want to help individuals. I am sure that is why nothing changes and if it does it is a very slow painful process….because all our passion gets sucked out and replaced by not apathy but sheer exhaustion. Or we feel liuke we did something by liking something on Facebook or blogging about it or signing a dumb ass petition on change dot org….

You can’t fix ______________ so you just try to negate the damage.

It’s sad, but it is what it is.

I read this today and thought it was a nice look into the lives of the people some of you are blaming and bitching about.

http://killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decisions-or-poverty-thoughts-1450123558

And just for fun, here is my favorite explanation of white privilege for you white boys who don’t believe in it.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

I hope Daniel reads this.

Dear Universe:

Jani

123 Main St.

Somewhere, WA 12345

September 18, 2013

RE: Hoops

Dear Universe:

It has come to my attention that while I have jumped through all of your stupid damn hoops from birth through today, apparently I am still missing something… I understand adversity develops character; yet it also breeds contempt. I’ve done all the things I am “supposed” to do (married baby daddy, divorced baby daddy when he done me wrong, went to school, went back to school, got a stupid masters degree, I don’t beat my children, I’m kind and generous, stay conscientious of being positive and helping others, and so on and so on) and I still find I am constantly freaking struggling. Could you maybe back the f**k off for a second?

Now don’t get me wrong, while I am incredibly grateful for the things I have going RIGHT in my world, ie: my love, my kids, my health, my friends, my first world problems, etc.; I do not find it incredibly selfish of me to simply want enough money to make it less hard. I do not like worrying about whether I can pay for my child’s instrument rental or their school supplies or whether I will be able to wash my clothes without having to go to a laundry mat in the event that my W/D break because my landlord is raising my rent yet not continuing to provide maintenance on the appliances. I do not want to worry about if I am going to get child support to pay my car payment so I can go to said laundry mat or my invisible job or my child’s cross country meets.

Can’t I just have a break? One whole annual quarter where EVERYTHING goes RIGHT? Some breathing room would be nice.

Or maybe just a heads up or a clue to what it is I am supposed to be learning that I apparently keep missing?

K thanks.

Respectfully,

Grateful, yet over it.

I’m just a believer….

That things will get better.

Silver linings and all that.

Agrodolce.

This is for you too, Jane.

 

So maybe I am a capitalist swine.

But if I couple my need to chase paper with serving people and advocating for the oppressed…. Does it balance out?

Can you be a good social worker and want to make a lot of money or does that make you unapproachable and even more privileged? Yes. And yet, no….

“Money is the reason…We exist….Everybody knows it, it’s a fact! *Kiss, kiss*”

This is an interesting article that delves into the topic…watch the ted talk too.

I struggle with wanting a job that will fulfill my intrinsic needs and my financial ones… but find that if it pays my bills plus, I usually feel less than awesome about what I am doing.

I’ve struggled with balancing having a partner who can financially share in the support of my world but still fulfill the physical/emotional intimacy needs as well…

As to both, I have always found that if I have one the other is lacking regardless of which I have… Yet, I have recently come to the conclusion one can have both but it can’t be expected… only appreciated.

It’s an interesting reconciliation of thought.

Onward.

xoxo

oh the shame, the SHAME!

As this is the first year that I am independently purchasing my kid’s school supplies, clothes, and general new school year BS without the aid of my student loans, suffice it to say things are rather lean…. So I told them to go through the first week with minimal supplies and figure out what they actually need rather than me just spending asinine amounts of money on things the Manchild will lose and the Girlchild will not use and I will just purchase the needed stuff later…

The Girlchild apparently made an editorial comment about this at a friend’s house so the friend’s mom bought her some supplies. DOH!

Way to make me feel like shite. YAY!

So I texted the girl’s mom to tell her thank you and explain my thought process rather than letting her think I was just a poor muthatrucka…I don’t think she believed me.

Then, as I am now an indentured servant with $23478398475845 in student loan debt to Sallie Mae (and considering the fact that my beautiful paid off car was accidentally killed because I forgot about the &*^*^%^* timing belt which caused me to need to buy a new car and have a car payment)…. I have NO effing expendable cash…. So I am down to using credit cards to buy groceries. Yay.

I go to Winco to buy groceries, spend an hour shopping, unloading, ringing up, and DOH!

Winco doesn’t take credit cards.

The shame, the shame.

F**k me.

Someday I will have a really awesome job with a really awesome salary. Until then, I am a poor muthatrucka. White person poor, but poor all the same. Relativity boys and girls, relativity.

Kicking my own ass

I find myself struggling at times to keep my head out of my head; I try very hard to stay present and in the moment so that I enjoy things without over-thinking them, diminishing them, or writing them off as hormonally/chemically influenced experiences. When you think and feel something but aren’t sure if you should say them or not because of the weight they can carry, for instance…But there are also times when I give people advice about such things; from how thoughts are things and intention and energy and love and self image, etc…

I talk a good game but these things I advise others on are very hard for me to stay conscientious of myself from time to time. For example: Even at my heaviest, I thought I was hot. I carried that attitude and put off that energy and like a magical little glamour…others saw me that way too. And now, at my lightest in a few years, I find myself more critical of myself. I still think I am the kitty’s titties, but the older I get (and not terribly unrelated…the younger the collective THEY get) the more I compare myself to the THEM I think I am competing with. I know I am not, but it is still something I find myself doing.

How do you stop that?

I’m not a typically insecure person. In fact, often the opposite. I generally find myself feeling like a judgmental schmuck because I probably do think I am smarter and hotter than most. HA.

But social media (usually Facebook) really makes me feel less than.

It’s like a commercial bombardment of peers and celebrities and things I wish I was all the time… and you know what others think about them thanks to the fucking little ticker on the side. Ugh.

I just want to shut it off again.

But then I would go nuts wondering what was going on and what was being said etc.

Not to mention the lameness of my “friends” who don’t contact you unless you are on Facebook. Boo.

I miss the 90’s. Fuck this shit.