Coffee shop land

I have been living in coffee shop land, and I really like it there. The past two weeks I have spent one to five hours every day (including on the weekends) on a freelance Flash project. Most of that work has happened on my laptop at a coffee shop. It doesn’t really feel like work; it feels like I’m just hanging out. During downtime, when I’m uploading files or waiting for further instructions, I take breaks to surf the web or knit or write in my journals or people watch or walk somewhere to get a snack. I really like this existence. I roll out of bed whenever I want, I stuff my laptop, my journals and my latest knitting project into a bag, put on my boots and walk down to Ritual (usually that one, but not always). I stay there, see people I know, meet people I don’t know and go home when I feel like it. Sometimes the people I am working with call me on the cell phone, but most of the communication happens via Google Talk. I feel free and powerful. And almost every day I have made a new friend. Like the guy who taught me how to purl-knit. Or the guy I ended up grabbing Indian food with. Or the guy I had already met at Burning Man with whom I ended up going to an art show. Or the girl with whom I might get together and knit next week. Like I said, I really like it in coffee shop land.

A potential realization

Many years ago I asked my then-boyfriend what his favorite profession for his girlfriend would be. When I referred to his girlfriend, I wasn’t talking about me; I was talking about his hypothetical girlfriend that has the profession of his choice. He said that he didn’t know or that he didn’t have a preference. I told him that my favorite profession for my boyfriend would be web designer.

It turns out that the desire to have a web designer boyfriend was really my own desire to be a web designer myself because just a few months later I completely immersed myself in Flash.

If I ask myself this question today, the answer that comes up is that I would want my boyfriend to be a film maker. So now I have to wonder if I have a secret desire to be a film maker.

Who would I be if I didn’t know anything about myself?

I just received my friend Robin’s newsletter in which she asks us to ponder the following questions:

Who would I be if I did not know so much about who I am? What would I do if I didn’t already have an idea of what I’m willing or interested in doing? What would I try if I had no preferences to bend to or self-image to keep up? What kind of relationships would I have if I had no concept of how relationships, partners, or friends should be? What might I get to experience if I didn’t know what was real?

As I read these questions I started tingling all over with possibility. Some of the things I think I know about myself are:

I am reserved.
I don’t like my hair very much.
I need at least 8 hours of sleep.
I get my heart broken a lot.
I don’t like to wear my platform boots just to go to the grocery store.

Now, what if I didn’t know these things and got to start over? I think these are some powerful questions, and I will certainly keep them in mind for the next few days or weeks or months or lifetimes. Thank you, Robin!

For those of you who don’t know, Robin’s classes made me realize my psychic abilities two years ago. I highly recommend them. Check out her website.

The Perfect Kiss

I know,
you know,
we believe in a land of love

Song of the Week: New Order – The Perfect Kiss

I animated the hearts

My friend Starrie helped me with this year’s redesign for Psychic Valentines. She took a photo of me blowing a kiss and turned it into a cartoonish illustration of me blowing hearts at a crystal ball with a rainbow in it. I love it! Then I took those hearts that the cartoon me is blowing and animated them. Take a look and tell me what you think.

And now they’re listening

Whoever “they” are. The universe, my spirit guides, god. I don’t know who exactly but they’re listening, all of them. Because suddenly things are rolling smoothly in my life. Pieces are falling into place. I think of something and next thing I know I have it. Except for the sex part. I’m still working on that. That one is tricky. Because I am picky. And so are other people.

Or maybe it’s not that something is listening, but that I am emitting positive energy again, which I wasn’t for about a month. I was emitting toxic energy because I was feeling bad. But now, thanks to a technique called SOS* that I learned in a meditation class my friend Tracy and I are taking, I am feeling good again and emitting positive energy.**

So what has that gotten me? Let’s see, lots of little things:

• I wanted to order a shit load of Moo MiniCards to promote Psychic Valentines. But they have this weird ordering structure where you can only order them in boxes of 100, and for each box you have to pay $4.95 for shipping. So if you order a lot of boxes, the shipping charges become totally unreasonable. I wanted to order a lot of boxes but I didn’t want to pay these outrageous shipping charges. So I wrote to them about it. And within a day, a very friendly man from Moo had written me back with two coupon codes for a free box each! That takes care of the outrageous shipping charges, and I am back in business.
• My friend Linda came over on Monday evening for an exchange of a massage for a psychic reading. While she was digging into my back, I noticed that my mouth was hurting and getting really tense. That made me think that I wanted to receive some craniosacral therapy because that could probably help with whatever tension was in my mouth. A couple of hours later I received an email from an aquaintance who was offering free 30-minute craniosacral therapy sessions, and I received one last weekend!
• Then, the reading I did for Linda was amazing and it totally validated my psychic abilities. I really am psychic! That stuff works!***
• Craig from Craigslist was in my taxi on Monday, and my friend Fabian who lives in Munich is going to meet Craig next week because Craig is going to Munich.
• When I first started working with Flash in 2000, I saw this animated software demonstration that was done in Flash which showed how Flash worked. Ever since then I have been wanting to make animated software demonstrations and tutorials in Flash. And recently I had a guy in my cab who works with these guys who specialize in creating these kinds of software demonstrations. He passed on my contact information, and I started working with them last week! AND I was blogspotted by someone in their office building!
• The new gig requires me to work remotely. I have been spending tons of hours in coffee shops with my laptop. Sitting in coffee shops with my laptop (or my knitting or my journal) is one of my favorite things to do, and I now get to do it all the time.
• My mom and my friend Angie had both unscuccessfully tried to teach me purl-knitting. But the other day a guy sitting next to me in a coffee shop taught me how to purl-knit, and now I can purl-knit!
• I found a plane ticket to go to Germany for a week at the end of February, and it was only $500. In the almost-eleven years that I have lived here, I think this is the first time that I have paid that little to go visit my former home.

Life is good when you think good thoughts and produce good feelings.

* SOS:
Stop yourself when you notice a negative thought entering your mind.
Observe where that thought came from and why it is there.
Steer yourself away from it and to a more positive thought.

** Yeah, I like to investigate WHY something is or is not happening in my life. Always. I don’t believe in coincidences or in “good luck” or “bad luck.”

*** I had lost trust in my psychic sense recently because I felt that it been deceiving and misleading me. But now I know that it’s just regarding my own love life that my psychic sense is not that reliable, at least until I get more discerning.

Secrecy is whack

I was walking on 24th Street the other day. I was wearing yellow sun glasses, green gloves, a candy-striped scarf and a poofy green prom dress. A woman was walking in front of me, carrying a little girl. The girl was looking at me, and she kept looking. Not taking her eyes off me, she turned towards her mom’s face and said “Turn around..” She wanted her mom to look at me.

The mom turned around and then immediately whisked the girl away to look at a display in a window. I knew she did that because in our society it is not okay to point at someone and to talk about what a stranger is wearing so they can hear it. The little girl had wanted to do just that, and that was not okay.

And so we grow up to whisper and to talk about people behind their backs and to keep many things a secret. We get those uncomfortable stares on the subway when you know someone is talking about your outfit. Even when they actually like it, it’s still uncomfortable because of the secrecy, because they don’t want you to notice it but you still know that they’re doing it. All this starts with parents telling their children not to point. “Don’t point because it makes people uncomfortable.” And it ends with “Don’t talk about how much money you make because it makes people uncomfortable.” For me personally, it’s not these impulses that make me uncomfortable. It’s the secrecy and the suppression of those impulses that make me uncomfortable. All this secrecy and suppression is causing a lot of negativity and discomfort in the world.

At Burning Man, it would have been different. At Burning Man, the woman would have looked at me. She would have listened to her child, and she would have turned around and looked at me. She might even have said something like “Yeah, she is wearing a poofy green dress! Look at that!” She would have been open, and she would have taught her child that it’s okay to be open.

I’m in line for a ticket right now.

Putting the cute in psychic

I redesigned my business card. This is what my old business card looked like.

I repeat: This is my old business card. I designed it in the summer of 2005, I think. I mean, I know.

A few months ago I started running low on cards, so I tried to reorder them from Kinko’s. But somehow the resolution of the graphics wasn’t good enough even though it had been fine the first time I ordered them. I tweaked with it in Photoshop, but I couldn’t fix it, so I gave up.

Today I finally found the energy and inspiration to redesign my business cards. So this is what my new business card looks like.

Thoughts?

The Price of Love

Song of the Day: World by New Order

Somehow the voice of the New Order singer always makes me feel like everything in the world is really okay and always will be.

All Is Full of Irony

Within one week I got an email from my former boss at MacrAdobe, asking if I wanted my old job back and an email from somebody in Germany who is organizing a Flash conference, asking if I wanted to speak at the conference. These emails are such good news–for the old me. For the new me, they are pure irony. I can’t say that I am not flattered because I totally am, but the question is: What does this all mean? I got the message, last summer, that while I am getting my new life in order, I should take advantage of my Flash skills to supplement my income. I started doing that again last week and am freelancing for Carat Fusion, the company I talked about recently. So there, I am still listening. But I don’t know what I am missing because the pushes from the Flash world keep coming. Clearly I am not meant to take my old job back or speak at any Flash conferences. Maybe these emails are meant to boost my confidence. Maybe they are reminders that I was pretty successful at the Flash thing, and that means that I will be successful at other things I try as well. But still, I’m at a bit of a loss.