Negative Self-talk and the State of the Universe

Me of course, single therefore the camera in one hand technique standing in the soon to be abandoned man cave of my youngest "child". SF here he comes.

One wall of my every inch is covered 17 year downtown bungalow home studio.

AAAAAH!!! So many FABULOUS memories of time well spent. Seriously.

Command central with Grandpa lording over it all. THANK YOU Sancho. xoxoxo.

Yeah. Ha ha ha ha. I really do sleep right in this room!!! With dogs!!!

Dearest readers, And no, I am not unbalanced or delusional, I really mean that address--"dearest".  When I look up my teeny, tiny blog in the immensity of the online my opinion is soooo meaningful blogging world I choke up a bit when I see how many have signed on and read my writing!!! Seriously, and I do so love seriously!!! Don't you? So, to begin with, THANK YOU. Ahhhh, we are alive in one of the great climates and times of fear, paranoia, melancholy, and just because I love the sound of this word, ennui. It is a saturated time of visual images and wordy documents and pithy tweets and instant connection. And because we live in one of the highly "developed" countries, we can worry about frown and smile lines, phone, food, and car choices,  and instant gratification in all areas.  Sometimes this works out to fabulous advantage, like booting up "Despicable Me" and cuddling up on the teddy bear rug with your not so wee granddaughter and enjoying a divine respite in the midst of a midsummer (almost) night. Nothing, absolutely nothing is better than spending time with people you love.  We already know this!!! But other times this constant and continual comparison and evaluation of all things about ourselves and our lives can be nothing short of punishing. In past writing I explained to you why I quit FB. The elitest drip feed of vacations to all places exotic and expensive, the millions of shots of attractive people with perfect teeth, the brazillions of descriptions of fascinating lives and successful careers became a perfect medium for self-abuse.  Many people have documented this already. And therein lies one of the key points to my rant. BTW, don't you just love the use of words like therein? LOL, almost makes my 25 year old student loan debt seem worthwhile. When I was a kid, don't you dare yawn!!! I promise this will be succinct!!! When I was a kid, I had a horrible plastic torture device called a cage where teeny white mice were supposed to live and have tea parties and raise babies and live in happy mouse harmony.  They bred and bred wildly as all mice do I guess, they just adored each other so, and one day--as I prepared to lower in their well-engineered food pellets GASP!!!! One of the mice WAS EATING ANOTHER!!!!! Holy mother of gawd--I ran sobbing-and just in case you are wondering? NO ONE sobbed better than me-scrawny, homely, prone to emotional outbursts pretty mush---ha, ha, ha--see how I wrote mush for much?  it stands-- a perfect mistake!!! all the time, bookish (just the fact that I love that word proves that I am bookish!!!), and a TERRIFIC sobber . . . to my mother who had less than nothing to say and then to my father who squinted at me over his paper and said: "Mice do that when they are too crowded." and DANG--I believe sometimes that we are those mice in the plastic box.  All racing about, trying to keep busy, surviving to exist, standing on our respective cyber soapboxes and yelling to no one, welcoming death from a polite distance, avoiding life, worrying, judging, and speaking to our inner selves in a negative way.  I am going to dedicate this to some of the women I know right now . . . WE ARE REALLY REALLY GOOD at negative self-speak. Volumes have been written to document this, you know that is true. Borders had entire shelves devoted to this topic. Every single Oprah mag has a dozen articles addressing this so why oh why good gawd Lise do you have to chime in with your two bits? Well, I will tell you--as I said yesterday--my two bits are BURNING A HOLE IN MY EVERLASTING POCKET!!! This next part helped me as much as my great "sad" experiment.  I found a quote in a thrift store book which changed my life. Sounds like a wonderful bumper sticker, doesn't it? Here it is: "See everything as if for the first and last time." I love this quote because it reminds me of that awful good Anne Rice Vamp film, you know the one, where Lestat says (I know, it is awful good like I said and painful kind of but we love it): "Now, see with your vampire eyes!" and EVERY SINGLE TIME I start to slap myself across the face with a negative thought ABOUT MYSELF, I focus my eyes in and JUST LOOK AROUND.  And I practice, truly practice seeing all things around me for the FIRST and LAST time.  TRY IT. 100% guarantee as to changed for the better life outlook. Another terminally unique experiment is to imagine the ABUSE you heap on yourself at a moment's notice was happening to 1) someone you love OR 2) your child self.  You would NOT stand for it!!! Not for one second!!! I know all of you well enough to say this without a doubt--you would come screeching to the rescue, you would cross any rickety bridge, slash your way through anything and everything all Lost style to rescue that person--ahhhhh my head is going to explode if you do not agree!!!! See? See what a cruel thing it is to think of ourselves as anything less than who we truly are? And until you have sat with yourself, truly sat with yourself--in that destitute gutter, close and dark closet, plastic box cage, quiet hour, and or vast volumes of journals-how will you know EXACETLY as Alice would say, WHO you are defending? You must become unafraid to see yourself in the bright light of day and love that light, love that day, love that brightness and realize that you are it!!! Yeah!! We are it! Wow. What an opinionated preacher I have become, haven't I? All right-substitute "I" for all of the "yous" in the above paragraph and it becomes clear that we are in MY head.  But seriously beloved readers, how much time do you have to waste? Have you let the media fool you into thinking that despising your looks, thoughts, feelings, accomplishments, relationships, incomes, talents, ideas, intelligence, position in all aspects of life is worth your involvement even for a nano second? All AMAZING time wasters!! All AMAZING life wasters!!! So be done with all of this NEGATIVE SELF-SPEAK. My beloved daughter muse sends me the MOST adorable and inspiring shots of art studios all around the world and from bygone eras as well as present day. We ooh and ahh over them because they are wonderful, but try this experiment with me--snap YOURSELF in an UNSTRAIGHTENED UP moment  in YOUR oh so perfect and precious life. Come on. Do it. Don't be afraid. Now post it somewhere. Send it to someone. Pretend that you are seeing this captured moment for the FIRST and LAST time. It IS cool, isn't it? YOU are cool, aren't you? BTW, do NOT think I posted this picture of myself because I think only good and great things about myself. Oh no, no, no, no!!! You know I struggle mightily with women of a certain age hanging onto past lunacy issues times ad nauseum!! But I am following my own dare I say brilliant advice!!! The time is NOW!!! Because face it my darlings . . . we are those mice in that box and we must stop EATING EACH OTHER!!!! LOL!!! You knew I could turn this into a vegan post!!! Love always and THANK YOU for reading and PLEASE send me your experiments in this moment of life . . . ah, MOMENT!!