Morning yoga

When this video made the rounds on one of the mailing lists I am on, I got inspired to do short yoga sessions at home. The girl in the video does pretty intense yoga for 3 minutes and 29 seconds to a really pretty song.

The first time I did it myself, I did it to the song from the video. I did whatever yoga poses I felt like until the song was over. I felt really good afterwards, physically and emotionally. And ever since then, every morning before my shower I have put on whichever song I most feel like listening to and done yoga until the song is over. Sometimes I do it again at night, and sometimes I use a 15 or 20 minute song, but usually it’s just a 5 minute song.

It’s been about a month and a half, and my body and soul are thanking me every day.

Some recent developments

I am applying for the Integral Counseling Psychology Weekend master’s program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). The school is practically in my neighborhood. If all goes well, I will graduate in the fall of 2013 with a master’s in psychology, and after that I will eventually become a licensed therapist (MFT).

A friend of mine commented today that I keep “getting sucked back into the easiest way to make the most money.” He is right, with Flash programming being the easiest way to make the most money for me. I quit my full-time job five years ago because I wanted to work with people instead of the computer. I still spend way too much time on the computer, and I don’t like it.

With this master’s degree I hope to finally make a fundamental change to the way I spend most of my time. My aim is to really commit and take responsibility for my path as a healer.

With the start of school approaching next fall, I am finally feeling some pleasant pressure to finish writing my first book before then. I have been thinking and talking about this book for over four years. I started working on it multiple times but always got discouraged. Finally I am absolutely convinced now that I have to write this and have written six chapters in the last two weeks. Even if it won’t get published, I have to write it for myself and for my future. But I have a feeling it’ll get published. It’s called Rejection.

I’m going to Germany for Christmas, and while I’m there I have a date with my very first unrequited crush (who is now married with child) to talk about what happened back then. Why didn’t he want my kisses? And last week I had a long chat with someone from college who stopped calling after sleeping with me once. Working on this book is making me feel more alive than I have in a while.

Born author

When I was 12 and finally starting to feel like myself again after two years of clinical depression, I worked on this little book project. It was called something like Anna and Nancy. It was about a little girl named Anna (or something like that; I don’t actually remember her name) who interviewed the U.S. first lady at the time, Nancy Reagan. It was written as a dialog between the two females. Don’t ask me how I came up with this stuff but I enjoyed it immensely.

I cut pages out of paper, wrote on them and glued them together. I illustrated some of the pages with photos of this little blond angel girl I found in the pages of a Christmas crafts magazine. The magazine had this girl throughout it, which worked out great for me. Later I wanted to create a similar book but I didn’t have any pictures to illustrate it with. So I went to a store and asked “Do you have any magazines that have photos of the same little girl all over it?” The lady didn’t know how to help me. I think I ended up using a big clothing catalog which sometimes used the same child models. But it wasn’t the same because the kids looked too postmodern and not as stylized and whimsical as the angel girl. I could have really used the Internet back then.

I created a little book jacket for my book with the title, and my favorite part was writing the About the author section on the back of the book. “Vera Fleischer is 12 years old and lives in a small town in Germany with her parents and siblings. This is her first book.” I had fun making this jacket as realistic as possible.

When I was 16 I started writing a book in the word processing program of our first family computer. It was a novel but it was loosely based on my own life. It was about a girl my age but she lived in an apartment in a fictitious German big city by herself, and she had a lot more friends than me. But she was also just as neurotic and just as into shopping for clothes as I was. She was a combination of who I was and who I wanted to be.

I don’t know how many pages I wrote–probably close to 100. I stopped when I left for the U.S. as an exchange student and didn’t pick it back up when I returned because who I was and who I wanted to be had changed so much.

I am using these memories of my early authorship attempts as fuel to finally complete my first book. I have been talking about it for years. I think it’s time.

I can be a good model sometimes

Originally uploaded by Verabug

I just had my second shoot with Selene Gibbous of Gibbous Fashions. I am much happier with the results than those of the first one we did earlier this year. Selene did my hair and dramatic make-up and put me in two different outfits. The shoot was part just for fun and glamour, and part to have some photos of items for sale in her online shop. She also fitted me for two new dresses we are going to shoot with in the future.

I am very pleased with what we created together.

Swirly dreams

When I was younger I had a friend named Kathi. Her full name was Wera-Katharina (Wera being pronounced the same way as my name, Vera). She went by Kathi because she didn’t like the name Wera. She also said “There is no beautiful way to write Wera or Vera.” I believed her. But I did feel grateful that my name was spelled with a V instead of a W because I thought that the V looked prettier. Plus, I had seen this French teen romance movie called La Boum, in which a boy is in love with a girl named Vic and writes the letter V over and over again in his notebook. That’s when I started fantasizing that one day a boy would do the same for me, with the V representing my name.

Two years ago I saw the movie Elizabeth, in which Cate Blanchett signs a document with her name and very intricate swirly patterns beneath it. I was deeply impressed. Around the same time I got my first swirly tattoo, and I started noticing all the swirly metal gates, doors and windows in San Francisco. Even the gate and stair railing at my building have metal swirls, but I had never noticed them before. Suddenly I was in love with swirls and felt a desire to contribute to the swirly beauty in the world.

I decided that perhaps I could take a calligraphy class. I looked online and found a place that teaches locally, but the class I wanted wasn’t going to be until a few months later. By the time the class started, I was broke and had no budget for any classes. I was lucky if I could pay for rent and food. When another few months later I had money again, I decided to buy a bunch of markers and some really smooth black pens and start drawing swirls instead. This phase didn’t last long. I have never been all that interested in drawing and always been much more passionate about writing. I started decorating birthday cards and letters with swirls but when it came to writing the “To …” part, I wanted to know: How do I make the letters pretty? How do I make the T swirly in a way that looks like I know what I’m doing?

I don’t know what finally came over me – divine feminine energy perhaps – but on Saturday I actually went to an art store and got myself some black ink, a calligraphy pen and a cursive font book.

And for the rest of the weekend I spent hours and hours practicing swirly letters. I felt really fired up and inspired. The Chopin script quickly became one of my favorites because it is especially swirly. I mean, look at that A! Look at that N! They are little works of art.

The page in the book on Boulevard Script is another one I really appreciate because in addition to giving you the alphabet, it also shows you how to make lower case letters a little prettier if they appear at the end of a word. I adore the ornamental swoops at the end of the lower case k, z, etc. And I really like the upper case S. I have been practicing that one a lot by writing the name “Sue” over and over again. I can’t wait to write my rent check later today because I get to address the envelope to Skyway Realty.

I went through the entire book, found a font I liked and then practiced my favorite letters from that font. I hope to come up with my very own cursive font which takes inspiration from a variety of the fonts from the book. In the Vivaldi Script I found my favorite V. Another great thing about this book is that it includes a bunch of other ornamental swirls, for instance the heart on the Vivaldi Script page. I have spent hours practicing drawing that heart. I am almost there.

I fell in love with the swoop included on the page for Snell Roundhand. I want to marry it or at least use it a lot in my own handwriting. So far I have to fill it in manually but hope to eventually get a different pen that can draw thin and broad strokes. In fact, I have already emailed Sabrina Ward Harrison and asked her what kind of pen and ink she uses. She really inspires me in that she has created her very own signature cursive font, which is gorgeous, and which obviously uses one of those fountain pens that can draw think and broad strokes. I hope she gets back to me soon.

One page in the book even shows you how to prettify commas and periods by adding a swoop or swirl after them. I like this. Maybe I’ll use it next time I write my return address when paying a parking ticket: “San Francisco *comma* *swoop* CA 94110″.

So I finally practiced writing my name over and over, especially with the V from the Vivaldi Script. I think it looks beautiful, and 20 years later I feel like I can finally say that Kathi was wrong. There are beautiful ways to write the name Vera. Look at it. Doesn’t this make you want to fall in love with someone named Vera?

How I almost lost a finger for fashion

The modified hoodie I almost sacrificed a finger for

Originally uploaded by Verabug

It had been a long time since I had done anything creative. I think working from home has helped make me feel more inspired and creative. The other day I decided to make a black version of a green hoodie I had modified about two years ago because, let’s face it, I wear black way more than I wear green these days.

I went to the thrift store and bought a Bebe hoodie for $6. Then I got out my scissors and some grommets. When I was poking the holes for the grommets, the scissors slipped and rammed into my left index finger. I said “Ooooooh” and Jeremy, who was luckily around, said “Ooooooh” and rushed me and my bleeding finger to the bathroom. There was a deep gash that went around by 90 degrees, so that two sides of a square of skin were loose. We weren’t sure if the bleeding was going to stop without stitches but it did. Jeremy rinsed the wound with water and hydrogen peroxide and wrapped some gauze tightly around it. The bleeding stopped.

The next day Kean took the bandage apart and rinsed the wound again. It started bleeding again. It also looked really bad, as if the flap of skin was still trying to come off. Kean put some neosporin on it and rebandaged it. I was scared of ending up with a deformed finger.

Kean, Jeremy and I have been taking turns redressing my wound, and today it’s actually looking really good. It looks like the flap of skin is starting to reattach itself to my finger. I am so proud of my body’s cells!

Well, I think my new modified hoodie looks great. Was it worth losing a finger for? Probably not. But almost losing a finger? Sure.

The fifth year of Psychic Valentines

It’s Psychic Valentines season again! The orders have started rolling in, and I have started answering questions. I love this little service of mine. Sometimes I wish it was going on all year, and not just for a short time in the spring. I’ll have to find a way to make it more applicable to the rest of the year.

Thinking about Psychic Valentines

After Psychic Holiday Wishes were such a nice success this season, I am hoping that Psychic Valentines will follow suit. If anybody has any idea on how to make known and promote Psychic Valentines, please do let me know.

Psychic Holiday Wishes – who woulda thunk?

I first got the idea for Psychic Valentines in early 2006, and that was the first year that I offered them. I have since offered them in 2007 and 2008, and they never became the big hit I wanted them to. Yet. To be honest, I felt that they were a brilliant idea, and I still do. I still feel that they have a high potential for becoming quite successful one of these years. It would be great if that year is 2009.

Since 2006 I have also been offering Psychic Birthday Wishes, (Anytime Generic) Psychic Wishes, and Psychic Holiday Wishes. None of them ever took off either – until this year. Psychic Holiday Wishes have become quite popular this year. This is almost exclusively thanks to a woman from my past life regression class who bought them for almost 20 of her friends, several of which then turned around and bought some for their friends. I am immensely thankful for this because not only is this helping me financially in my time of underemployment, but it is also super fun to be busy writing emails back to the people who have asked their questions for psychic advice.

I really hope that this is only the beginning of the continuing success of my little Psychic Wishes. Please, please Universe. I would love to be busy answering email questions all year long.

The simple satisfaction of being creative

Yesterday I didn’t do much but I did:

- plant flower seeds in the flower boxes on my balcony. They have been pretty much empty for the two and a half years that I have lived here. But I recently received encouragement and inspiration from both my mom and my sister to start planting something in there, so now I finally did. If everything works out, I am making some flowers!

- dye three of my favorite white bras black. They turned out beautifully. There is a certain white bra model that I have seven of because I liked the fit that much. I have had them for years. I don’t even know if they make it anymore, and it never came in black. But yesterday I made my own favorite black bra!

- start knitting again. I hadn’t knitted in over a year. I’m convinced it’s because I had emotionally associated knitting with a difficult break-up, in the aftermath of which I had knitted a lot. But now I’m back into it, and I’m making [something] for [somebody]!

When I went to bed last night, I felt more satisfied and content than I had in a long time.