Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing. I don’t mean the small, what am I doing, like when I’m on my way to the kitchen and forget what it is I am going there for. I mean the big, what am I doing, like, what the hell am I doing with my life?
As many of you know, Bernice and I renovated a dance studio in Nelson recently, only to be evicted by our landlord even before we had our opening. We poured into this studio, not only our money, but our hearts, and filled it with hopes and dreams. To have these dashed away even before they had a chance to begin was devastating, for both of us.
Another studio is always possible, but it means finding a place, negotiating, investing, renovating, decorating. And that’s just to get the doors open. To do all this while we’re still in the process of litigation with our ex-landlord to recover our investment from the first studio is challenging. So a new studio is not on the top of the list of things to do right now. Which leaves me asking the question, what am I doing?
As a self-employed, conscious r.evolutionary and freelance pirate of the psychic seas I don’t usually get my bread from the usual baskets. Although my university education is in business, my real work, and the development that I am most proud of, is my work with personal and community development, facilitating empowerment through creative expression, empathy training, and compassionate communication, as well as the righteous celebration of life.
You don’t find ads for work like that in the classifieds. And even when one does pull all the pieces together, they generally are connected to smaller tributaries of the main economic flow. So, I have a vision. A vision to create, with a small group of facilitators and performers, a community that models and facilitates the shifts necessary to reach our next step in human evolution, whatever that may be, perhaps from people motivated by fear to people motivated by love. A community that supports each other in the blossoming of awareness and the discovery of personal truth. This is my work.
But today, I’m having a little trouble doing my work. Although last night B and I made up, and made out, the ice is thin these days and I hardly even know how we cracked through it today into icy water. We’ve spent the day together, barely talking. Lately, we’ve been making up a lot, but not really making through. We’ve avoided a lot of communicating, both of us flying the flag of, I won’t be heard anyway even if I say something. So it builds and builds. And it pops through in the most unsuspecting places.
One thing I know, is that no matter what anybody else does or says, I know my pain is always my own. And I know it comes from not loving myself fully and accepting myself wholly.
So I’ve got my work cut out for me. The shift happens slowly. We went to the ashram, and then to the hot springs. Bernice massaged my sore back in the hot water and for the first time all day more than our hands touched. We love each other. We both know that. But it is incredible how strong the resistance is to love when it’s not there on the inside. So I’m working on feeling what’s on the inside. And loving it no matter what. And trusting in myself. And celebrating all the work that has been done, that is being done, and that there still is to do.
Tonight my work is loving and listening. We’re on our way to hear our friend Ty West play at Sleep is for Sissies. I’m going to love myself, love Bernice, and love life so I can drop the funk and have fun. Not forget the funk, or ignore the funk, or suppress the funk. Feel the funk, love the funk, hold the funk, so I can drop the funk. Because if there is any work that the world needs, that’s it. Drop the funk; and have fun.
(Ty West - Dropping da funk!)
“What do you do to get yourself out of a funk?“ is the question in 12 day journal #291
