Tag Archives: abstract 🧠

Healing through stillness 🤓

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photograph by J.L. Munn

For the first time in the better part of a decade I have been able to actually use my time off from the pay check to advance my personal goals. One of the most interesting to me is that I have been finally been able to sustain 20 minute sessions of standing meditation with my husband. He does way more, but I don’t feel too bad since he’s been doing it for decades and I am just trying to start.

I’ve now successfully completed 4 days straight and am encouraged by the experience so far. I know the real test will come when my pay check starts back up and I have to compete for energy, but there are signs that I might be able to find a rhythm that allows me to continue more days than not.

I guess we’ll find out soon.

Sunday Rorschaching 🤓

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I’ve never taken an official Rorschach test. I don’t really know anything about them other than the pop culture references that have been ever present throughout my life. I can’t even tell you if the Rorschach test is something that psychiatry finds particularly useful.

I do know that, in spite of the fact that I own no Rorschach test kits, I love letting my imagination free on the random “Rorschachs” that I encounter. I find it is a very easy way to check on your current well-being.

I haven’t scared myself yet. 😇

* If you want to know more about Rorschach tests, the Encyclopedia Britinnica offers a brief summary here.

Broken radio 🥺

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Today was supposed to have been a day without work. It was supposed to be a day of relaxation and recuperation after a very intense moment. Today was not that kind of day.

In the end it wasn’t a horrible day. It was just another day. For some reason that feels somehow worse, but I can’t put my finger on exactly what it could be. 

I think as I age my rebelliousness turns its attention to apathy and waste.

Maybe I can use today’s apathy to fuel a great weekend?

Better a string of letters? 🥺

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Photograph by J.L. Munnd

There is no mystery to me why “the West” is losing its competitive edge. Between universities that see students as asses in seats with a pay checks for faces and HR departments that never see the human in the resource, how could we not. One day someone will have to explain to me why it is better to have a string of letters after your name than to have ability and talent. 

Our systems are supposed to use the tools available to us, including education and HR, to help us achieve a better life. Our systems are failing miserably and I am sorrow for the generations that will be permanently crippled by the shift.

A little bit privileged 🥺

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After careful consideration, I have decided that I definitively do not like going to the grocery store anymore. I am aware of how spoiled that sounds. I should be thankful for the ease with which I can find nutrients for my body. I should be thankful for the variety that is overwhelmingly available to me. There are many in my own society and throughout the world that do not have this simple luxury. Their lives are full of hunger. Their stomaches are often empty or filled with food that only fills the belly without nurturing the body.

And I am very thankful for that aspect of my privilege, but I refuse to pretend the system is perfect when it is not. 

Want an idea of what I mean, pick the food documentary of your choice. If you don’t have one, you can start with “Hungry for Change”.

Under-exposed 🥺

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It may be true that you can never go home again, but it is also true that you cannot change from whence you came. Our exposure to “culture” and “cultures” is completely dictated by the physical space we inhabit and the people that share that space with us. As best as I can tell, the advent of the digital landscape has not really changed that. There was a brief period in the early days when I had hope it would, but as more and more joined the digital revolution, it simply became the A/R arm of the forced collective experience that the ever present “middle” dictates. We are geotagged and/or relegated to the appropriate groups without much consideration for any desire to expand beyond the popular.

We live in precarious times. We live in times that require us to look beyond our immediate bubble and grow beyond our problems.

Disparity 🥺

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Photograph by J.L. Munn

When I was a child is such a cliché way to start a paragraph.  I might as well say it was a dark and stormy night, or maybe Once upon a time.  Yet here I sit, writing it and giving wholly into the cliché.  “Why?” you might ask?  Well, because my topic today is unfortunately also so cliché.  So, hold onto your pre-conceptions, it might get bumpy from here on out.

As previously stated, when I was a child, there was point at which I understood that there were some people who had a great deal more than others.  I couldn’t understand, at the time, how that could be or what it meant in the world of adults, but it would eventually lead, much later in life of course, to the realization that those “with” could and would use this disparity to scare those “without” into accepting, even participating, in the violent theft from those “others” also without who were so clearly the cause of their own “withoutedness”.

I can’t wrap my head around why we accept this fear, so completely unfounded.  Nor can I understand how violent we are so quickly willing to go without any real thought to the human being(s) on the receiving end of that anonymous violence because of this irrational fear.  If the truth be told, I hope I never understand it.  From what I’ve seen, understanding it seems to come with wanting to wield the power, for the greater good of course.

…always for the greater good.