Utah rocks

As I mentioned before, my boy and I went to Utah for Christmas. But I never really mentioned why or what for: We went there because Southern Utah is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I had driven through there with my ex-boyfriend in 2002 on my way back to California after having lived in Virginia for two years. At that time we didn’t have enough time to check it all out. So when my boy and I wondered what to do for Christmas this year, Utah was one of the places I suggested we could go to.

What is it about Utah? Back in 1993 I heard the song Utah Saints by Utah Saints on MTV. I really liked the song, so I thought “Wow, Utah must be a really cool place.” But during many years of living in California I had been assured by many people that no, Utah is not a very cool place, that it is in fact quite a creepy place. But after driving through there in 2002, I decided for myself that Utah is an absolutely awesome place. It’s the rocks. There are these red and orange rocks everywhere that are unbelievably tall and massive and that have the most unusual shapes. You can’t find rocks like that anywhere else on this planet. I had liked them so much in 2002, just seeing them in the distance while driving through the area, that I now decided to spend a whole week among those rocks.

We stayed in Springdale near Zion National Park for three nights, then in Tropic near Bryce National Park for three nights, and then we spent a night in Salt Lake City.

The first day we spent at Zion. The second day we drove to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We had been planning on checking out Lake Powell that day, but then we found out that the Grand Canyon was just as close. Since the boy had never been there, we decided to go for it. We had heard that the road to the Northern Rim of the Grand Canyon had actually been closed just a few days ago, but we decided to go for it anyway. And luckily we took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up on a back road that led us there, bypassing the road block. So we had the entire Northern Rim of the Grand Canyon all to ourselves, on Christmas Day! It was incredible.

On the third day we drove to Escalante and Capitol Reef. That night we checked into our second Bed and Breakfast in Tropic, UT. On the fourth day we checked out Bryce National Park. On the fifth day we left at 6am to drive all the way to Arches National Park, a five hour drive. We spent three hours at Arches and then drove back, arriving home around 8pm. It was well worth it.

On the sixth day we did another scenic drive through Bryce, then got on a plane to Salt Lake City around 3pm. That evening we walked around the city, then had some awesome beer at a brewery and then an awesome dinner at PF Chang’s, the first “exotic” food we had had in a few days.

On the seventh day we flew back to San Francisco on a horrible flight that wouldn’t turn off the seatbelt sign for a second because a “weather system was moving in.” There were turbulences the whole time, and I had ironically picked THIS flight to NOT take my sedatives to show myself and my boyfriend how brave I was. But half way through the flight I couldn’t take the turbulences anymore, I started bawling, people starting handing us barf bags, and I inhaled two of my sedative pills as quickly as I could. So much for being brave.

And now I’m back, and here are my pictures.

And here are Antti’s.

Gratitude

I am grateful for

- the free facial I received today
- getting soaked in the rain today
- the parking spot I got right in front of my house
- my ex-boyfriend who is a better friend to me now than when we were together
- not getting a ticket or towed when I parked in a yellow zone
- not losing my cell phone today even though it seemed like I had at one point
- going to Utah with the boy tomorrow
- that the Roomba was too big to take to Utah which is why I got that Christmas present early
- the super cute shoes and super green hoodie I found at Crossroads yesterday
- the car mechanic on Valencia who has all these flyers taped to the windows of his shop for passers-by to see and who, when asked “What do I have to do to get a flyer in your window?”, said “Just find some room” and gave me some tape and let me put my flyers in his window
- the days getting longer again
- Go Gratitude
- making lists even though my readers might be thinking “come on, not another list, Vera!”

This is my December

Some more things I have been doing:

• I went skiing last weekend.

  
  Skiing at Lake Tahoe’s Heavenly
  Originally uploaded by SFAntti.
  

• Yesterday I went to Santa Cruz to do practice counseling sessions with a friend.
• I’m reading an AWESOME book called Creating Money: Keys to Abundance. It’s about the energetic and spiritual laws of money (as opposed to the man-made laws–such as finance, planning, marketing, etc.), and it’s proposing that money can be attracted using the energetic laws alone. I have only read a couple of chapters so far but I’m totally hooked and inspired!
• Went to two yoga classes this week, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY, of course.
• Been going to small organic grocery stores instead of the big supermarkets. The reason I didn’t do this before is that parking can be tricky at those neighborhood stores whereas places like Safeway have a huge parking lot with guaranteed parking. But since I can now go shopping IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY, parking is much easier, plus I have much more TIME to LOOK for parking anyway.

Have you quit your job lately? I highly recommend it.

What I’m doing

These are some of the things I have been doing with my newly created freedom:

• make use of the BART station that is two blocks from my house and actually take BART somewhere
• visit a friend at her store just as she is arriving to open it ca. 10:20am
• have at least five brilliant ideas a day, like hosting a House and New Year Warming Party in January. Other ideas have included the concept for a children’s book and who I want to illustrate it, offering my boyfriend’s sister that I can now help her watch my favorite twins, like, ALL THE TIME, and finally buying the shoes I have been dreaming of for months even if they are slightly above my preferred price range for shoes that really look more like slippers than shoes. It’s amazing how much room there is for brilliant ideas when you’re not chained to a desk and computer.
• shop at Target for some new outfits for the above mentioned twins and take a luxurious ETERNITY to pick them out
• forget to eat all day long and lose weight without trying
• meditate AND do yoga every morning (thanks, Ariel!)
• pick a card a day from my new Trust Your Vibes card deck (thanks, Zandria!)
• fix the shoe rack hanging over my closet door so that I can now actually close the door
• put renewed effort into the residential parking permit petition project I started two months ago, after moving here
• discover a cute store near my house that is full of style and love
• redesign my other website ever so slightly
• go to the movie theater in the middle of the day to pick up movie tickets for a show later in the evening, just because I can
• go to the Union Square during Christmas time and have it be not quite as unbearably packed because it’s the middle of the week day!
• take a nap in the middle of the day
• masturbate in the middle of the day
• make an appointment for a facial a friend owes me for the middle of the day
• agree to meet another friend in the middle of the day
• arrange another meeting for the middle of the day sometime next week
• can’t stop marveling about this middle of the day thing. It’s so great to be running around in the middle of the day because the middle of the day is a great time to be running around!

Perfection

I think I am going to remember this time, this moment, for the rest of my life. I am so psyched right now. I don’t have to go to work on Monday, or the next day, or the next week, or the next month! I am free to do whatever I want, whenever I want. And I just stood up for myself and against an increasingly corporate culture.

Sure, the glory of having walked out is going to wear off. And the money I have saved up is going to run out too. But right now, in this moment, I am feeling the purest bliss, the bliss of newly gained freedom and of knowing that I have money to support myself for at least the next three months or so. And between now and then, ANYTHING can happen! Absolutely anything.

Liberation

Today was my last day at MacromediaAdobe. It has been a very hard week. Monday was our first day as a combined company. Over the course of the week, all employees received letters — either offer letters to continue working at the combined company, or lay-off letters. I was hoping to be laid off because that way I would get money, at least two and a half months of my full salary, possibly more. A few months ago I had asked my boss to lay me off at the time of the merger but he couldn’t make me any promises because he knew that there probably weren’t going to be any cuts on our team.

On Wednesday I received an offer letter. I didn’t feel too surprised. But what I did feel on Wednesday was angry. Not because I didn’t get laid off but because there were people (not on my team, but elsewhere) that got laid off but really wanted to keep their jobs. I was also angry because the mood for the past eight months had been awful — so much anxiety, uncertainty, and discomfort — and for me it was all culminating on this day. I was really angry and felt so powerless about this whole corporate transaction. And that’s when I realized that there was exactly one thing that *I* could do and that I did have control over: I had an offer letter in my hand, and I had a choice of signing it or not signing it.

On Thursday morning I told my boss that I wasn’t going to sign the letter. I felt like a million bucks afterwards. I have never had that much energy in my body. I feel like this was the most courageous thing I have ever done, and I was really proud of myself. I said NO to something I didn’t feel right about even though it means that I am now without a salary, without health insurance, without stock options, even without ANY severance pay.

That afternoon I sent a letter to the people on my team:

Hi everybody,

I decided yesterday that I wasn’t going to accept the offer from Adobe. Most likely this means that tomorrow will be my last day working with you guys.

I know that this comes a bit sudden, and I apologize if I have let anybody down. I do think though that you have an awesome and strong QA team with [D] and [A] having joined recently, and [S] is doing an absolutely phenomenal job.

I have been working on a new career for several months and knew that I would eventually be leaving the company. But I didn’t know until I had the offer letter in my hand yesterday, that the time was now. All of a sudden it was clear to me what I had to do. I know that sounds a little bit weird, but when it came down to signing or not signing that letter, I decided that not signing was the way to go for me.

I have felt for a while now that I need a long break from the cubicle life. I am finally taking that break and may not return to the corporate world full-time, but that remains to be seen. I may be interested in contracting for Adobe in the future.

This morning I told [C] and [P] about my decision. They are trying to find out from HR if I can stick around for a couple of weeks without signing the letter, but most likely tomorrow will be my last day. When I know what my last day is, I am going to send out a final good-bye email to all my friends at Macromedia, and I will include all of you of course.

Thanks for having me on your team. I will miss all of you a lot. And I will definitely miss the [some geeky thing].

Vera.

Then on Friday, I sent my good-bye email to everybody I know at the company:

Dear Macromedians,

I have decided to decline my offer from Adobe. Today is my last day working here.

There was a time when, to me, working for Macromedia and playing with ActionScript was the coolest thing since sliced bread. But I am a different person now. And Macromedia is not Macromedia anymore.

There are many factors that play into my decision to leave. One of them is that I have been slowly starting my own business as an intuitive counselor. I offer insight and guidance for people’s day-to-day challenges, decisions, and feelings. This is something I know is desperately needed in our society, which is why I have decided to offer this. My interest in software is waning, and my interest in people and happiness is exponentially growing. So I am trying to help people find (and keep) happiness. I do one-on-one life counseling and personal coaching sessions and psychic readings, and I also teach workshops on manifestation and intuition. If you’re interested in what I’m up to, I have some business cards in my cube as well as flyers for two workshops I have coming up in January.

Thank you, Macromedia, for an interesting and colorful two years and almost nine months. Thanks for all the appetizers and drinks. Thanks for stock options and ESPP. Thanks for affording me my dream car after eight years of dreaming. Thanks for letting me wear whatever I want. Thanks for [geeky thing]. Thanks for [another geeky thing]. Thanks for [two more geeky things]. Thanks for the MX 2004 ship party and the shirt pocket incident. Thanks for Toshi, Juraj, Israel, and Stephanie, who were always willing to listen to what I had to say, no matter how crazy or personal. Thanks for giving me my boyfriend, the sweetest guy I know. Thanks for [a wonderfully funny woman that works there]. Thanks for the Flash Forward passes. Thanks for making me famous in the Flash community. Thanks for publishing two of my articles on the DevNet (and thanks, [C]!). Thanks for the FastPass. Thanks for keeping my feet on the ground when I started exploring the supernatural this year. Thanks for all the suggestions for my ant problem – I think I got it under control now. Thanks for [my first boss] who gave me my first chance here.

Thanks for so many things, but now it’s time for separate adventures.

Love and happiness and joy to you all,

Vera.
verafleischer @ usa . net

I got a lot of responses to both of my emails. A lot of them used words like “wow”, “ballsy”, “guts”, “impressed”, and “jealous.” I have felt absolutely amazing these past two days. I feel that not only did I do what’s right for myself, but I also made a statement. I hope I don’t sound arrogant, but I really think that I did.

I know that people quit their jobs all the time, even without first securing another one. Maybe it’s not that big of a deal. But for me this is a HUGE deal. I finally felt ready to jump off a cliff I have slowly and fearfully been approaching. This is the scariest thing I have EVER done in my life. And I did it.

I FUCKING QUIT MY JOB!

Counseling is SO effective

Last night Trish from my counseling training came over for a practice session. We took turns counseling each other.

Trish has similar aspirations to mine, i.e. to start an intuitive counseling business. Her intuition is right on and super helpful. Thanks, Trish, for:

- showing me that I don’t have money/abundance issues.
- introducing me to Renate, the German, overactive accountant part of my psyche that has been running my life.
- suggesting that PMS DOES NOT LIE and that it’s an incredibly truthful psychic tool.
- confirming that I’m ready to take flight.

A*M*A*Z*I*N*G insights.

‘macr’ is not a valid ticker symbol, says Yahoo! Finance

It’s a historical moment in geek land. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. Well, cry, definitely cry. But then again – isn’t this what I asked for indirectly? Yes, this is definitely what I asked for, indirectly. The strings have been loosened.

My current coffee status

After mulling it over for a while, I had decided to stop drinking coffee in 2002.

I was clean for over a year and a half and felt very good about my clean state. But then in March of 2004, a boy dicked me over — literally — and I suddenly started feeling bad, really bad. And two months later I was still feeling bad. So I started experimenting with coffee again. And I found that it gives me the most delightful rush of energy, and that it makes me see everything in a more positive light.

But of course I remembered my resolve from 2002 to stop drinking coffee. And of course I understood that I was using coffee like a drug, like an escape the way other people use television, or chocolate, or, well, crack.

So when I started feeling better in January of 2005, I decided that I didn’t need coffee anymore because I wasn’t depressed anymore, and so I quit again.

But the desire for coffee, for that energy rush, that lack of boredom, kept creeping up on me. So I started drinking it again. And then I quit again. And then I started again. And then I quit and..

It kept going like that for this ENTIRE YEAR. All year I had a love-hate relationship with coffee. I would quit for a few days, only to start drinking it again with abandon. It got to a certain point where I just stopped fighting it and let myself have it. So then I ended up having a double-shot store-bought mocha EVERY WORK DAY. First I had it in the afternoon because that’s when I experienced the biggest slump in the work day. But then I started having it in the morning because why wait? And soon I found that if I had it in the morning, I experienced an even worse slump in the afternoon, so I felt the desire for more coffee in the afternoon..

I realize that this sounds like a story of drug addiction. And it is. Just because coffee is legal doesn’t mean it can’t act AS A DRUG.

Finally, thanks to my psychic awareness class, I started to really observe what is happening in my relationship to coffee. We each picked an addictive behavior pattern in our lives that we vowed to observe very closely. We didn’t intend to change anything about it, just observe. I picked coffee of course. And I found that there is a constant inner battle going on inside my head.

I can’t stand to be at work without coffee.

But you have done that before, remember?

But it feels so good.

But you wanted to quit. Your habit is destructive. Don’t you want these voices to stop?

But it’s not doing any harm. It’s not like it’s heroin.

It’s not doing any harm? Don’t you find this constant inner dialog annoying?

Yes. So I just need to get THAT voice to shut up, the anti-coffee voice.

Yeah, well, good luck. I don’t think you’ll stop listening to me.

And it was true. I was never going to stop listening to the anti-coffee voice. One day I did get the intuition that I could just keep drinking coffee, as long as I made sure that there were absolutely NO NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS, including no guilt and no inner conflict. And it worked for about half a day. Then the battling voices started again, and I had to admit to myself that this approach wasn’t working.

Then I went on vacation to Germany and then I was sick for almost two weeks. I didn’t drink coffee at all during that time. When I came back to work, I had the advantage of no longer being physically addicted. But of course the pro-coffee and anti-coffee voices started right up again.

I was on the bus and about to get off at the stop closest to work, and there is a Starbucks on the corner. I said to the universe “It’s up to you. If the light is red, I will go straight to work. If the light is green, I will go to Starbucks. Let’s see if you want me to have coffee or not.” But then I realized that the universe didn’t care if I had coffee or not, that the mere fact that I was letting the universe decide showed that I hadn’t LEARNED anything, and that this was a great opportunity for the universe to TEST me, and that *I* was the one who really deep inside didn’t want to be drinking coffee, so I decided to NOT go to Starbucks and go straight to work.

And when I got off the bus, the light was red. That’s when I realized that the universe DID care, but that I had to do my part too. And that morning I had done my part by saying NO to coffee.

And miraculously, the pro-coffee and anti-coffee voices didn’t return at all for several days. There was no “Maybe I’ll have coffee today” and no “You shouldn’t be drinking coffee.”

But then yesterday I was having a bad day. So I said to myself “I’m going to have coffee today because I’m having a bad day.” And as soon as I did that, the voices and battle inside my head started up again. And I knew that if I said NO this time, the voices would have even less power the next time. Luckily I received some help, and just as I was about to go get coffee, I was whisked away to a party at work, and the coffee voices shut up again.

I hope that they are going to stay quiet for a LONG time.

Editor’s Note: I realize that I sound a little crazy when I talk about “the voices.” But I am not crazy. YOU have voices too, you may just not call them that. You all have inner conflicts that play themselves out inside your heads. You may not call them voices, but it’s the same thing I’m describing here.

The end is near

It looks like I’ll only be an employee of M ac ro me dia for one more day.