A Happy Discovery

After having both of my lower wisdom teeth extracted last week, (one of Wednesday and the other one of Thursday), I've been doing quite well. No major problems, virtually no pain (except for the expected pull here and there from the work done) and everything just swell.  Three days of vacations - which I've taken to have the procedures done and an extra day to link it to the weekend, so I can get a decent amount of rest - have gone flying by so quickly. Still, the looming of Monday and another work day doesn't bother me at all: these are the blissfull days of someone knowing that work is reaching an end (and hopefully a new job will arrive in time ^_^). However, what's pissing me off currently is the baby food. Yes, the baby food.

After having your teeth removed, like with most surgeries that touch any part of the digestive system (and the mouth is part of it, in case you didn't know), you are commanded to eat only soft foods, and soft foods are mainly soups and baby food. Normally I love baby food, and indulge from time to time with a jar or two of peach or prune "2nd Food". From time to time it's fun and delicious, but three days on the row... or more like four now, eating only baby food it's becoming too much. It's ennerving! I've spend days eating less than 1000 calories a day (I know for I keep the count of the calories now with the fitbit), when before that I kept going over the daily recommended amount (2000) and by far (once I've got 6000 ^_^). So, this is when I start dreaming about food and the day I'll be free again to stuff my face with whatever I want.

Yesterday, however, as I met with my dear friend Shimmy Gin, I realized that there was something else I could eat while the wounds in my mouth healed: mashed potatoes. *Insert Celestial Music* As we sat chatting at a coffee place nearby, I nursed dearly a plate with delicious, creamy, warm mashed potatoes enjoying every bit of it. Oh dear, how did we got to that point?

Sometimes you can't help it. I couldn't eat anything else if I wanted, because I undergo a procedure and thus I need to give it time to heal, otherwise I could suffer quite unpleasant consequences. I'm losing weight like crazy now, and though I'm not hungry - I was always one fo those who eat little - I'm constantly yearning for something else. I want nachos with garlic seasoned sour cream, bread with sour cream (I love sour cream), buffalo wings, pizza, chicken risotto, sushi, salad, sesame sticks (with garlic and pepper seasoned sour cream), PB&J sandwich... Shimmy told me that after he had all his wisdom teeth removed - and it was a procedure and healing of 44 days! - he got so starved out, that the first day he could eat like a normal (un)civilized person again, he hogged on an insane amount of Chinese food and he felt soooo good about it!

Hopefully my healing period will be shorter - or so my doc has told me - and it will be over just in time for the trip, so I'll probably hog on plane food (it's Air France, so hogging is understood) and then... in Paris. Can't wait for the Escargot!

I'll probably will gain back all the weight I lost with the forced diet, but who cares? Yes, I set myself a goal and it would be nice to work to get it... but food after such starvation is a welcomed blessing, no matter what comes behind. :-)

Do You Know What You're Doing?

That kind of questions come to mind when you are looking at someone who doesn't seem like they do. It's kinda hard because you are thinking "Man, you don't know shit about this, now do you", but often they present themselves or they are presented as "The One Who Knows Best". It would be cool to think that these are the least of people, but sadly that's not the case. In general I've observed that for each person who does know there are at least 1000 who PRETEND to know, and usually the ones who know don't even say so!

Are there ways to spot this people? Well, hardly before hand, but it's easy once they started sharing their "wisdom" and you realize it's going nowhere, or the more it speaks, the less it seems like it makes sense. Some of them also like to pretend to be introduced to a higher level of knowledge - to a secret society, so to say - and so when they see your initial attempts all they do is look at other "initiates" and mock, like "oh, they think that's the way to do it, hahahahaha". Someone who knows may not have the patience to explain you in detail, over and over so you get to share the knowledge (that's me, I'm 0 patience, 0 tolerance and 0 bullshit), but they won't laught at you for not knowing, because they've been there too, and they know that that's where you start.

Someone who knows either helps you understand or tells you where you can find the help you need to understand. Someone who knows - really knows - can actually use simple words and explain clearly to make you understand what you don't know. Someone who knows addresses your question directly, and explains exactly what you need to know, and if it must explain something prior to that, someone who knows, can make that explanation short and to the point making it clear where comes from what you are asking for.

Someone who doesn't know uses big words to pretend to be important. Won't explain and say that you wouldn't understand either. It will speak but make no sense. It would never address your question directly, it will always seek alternative routes to reach only the part they do understand, or the part they have learned to fake.

So, the next time, don't be afraid of call on someone's bullshit, and don't waste your time with the pointless explanations of those who don't know.

Blessed Imbolc!

Blessed Imbolc Everyone! ^_^ Pagan or not Pagan, please let's all join in the celebration of the end of the cold, wintery days! (Though admitedly, I LOVE Winter more than any other season in the planet.) I've been researching a little bit - as usual - about the celebration and have been keeping for myself those things that I can use, which apply to the general frame of my believes and personal philosophy.

Imbolc, more than other celebrations of the Pagan Calendar, remind me of one of my favorite topics: Organization. So how can we live it? ^_^ Here's what I take of it.

This sabbath is basically about the first signs of life, the waking up of nature. The patron (or matron?) of this celebration is Brigid, also known for Christians as Saint Brigid, the Light Bringer. The first flowers push through the snow and bloom, the first green sprouts shyly come out and the days go a bit warmer. In some countries also celebrate the Groundhog Day, which is when the groundhog comes out of it's burrow. If it doesn't go back to it, the Spring has arrived! If not, winter still keeps some more days to reign.

In general, today, as you celebrate the awakening of nature, you also walk out of the time of meditation you've been in since Samhain (Halloween), and are ready to work! But just not yet! In this celebration you live the moment when you prepare to work, when the plans you have been drawing up since Yule (like Christmas), and all those wonderful plans you've been making since New Year. This is the moment when you put down your pencil and stand up to gather all the supplies you need, and roll your sleeves to prepare the fields to sow what you wish to reap this year. And what better way to plough your field than tackling a fun, and healthy Spring Cleaning!! Doesn't that idea gets you giddy? ---- Ok, maybe it's just, Dragonfly, Trish and I...

Pick the scrub, and tackle your closet and drawers. Take a step back and make decisions: What will help you achieve your goals for this year? Is that skinny dress that has been making you feel bad really help your get back in shape, or would that rather be achieved with your tracksuit, that makes you feel great and want to run a couple of laps around the block? Do you need your old backpack and college stuff, or are you ready to take the next step and fully assume your life as a professional? Time to get a promotion or a better job? Then dust out your power suit and cast away from your closet all those clothes that say "yeah, I'm here, but I'd rather be somwhere else". It's time also to get all your tools in order, decide what you need more at hand, and what would take more space than being functional? Naturally, you should have your plans drawn up for this point - these are your blueprints to get what you want done! - and if you don't, what have you been doing since New Year? Recovering from hangover? Dust your plans up, review your New Year Resolutions, your dreams about what you want to achieve, all that planning you should have been doing, and make sure you have all you need to make all that happen! This is the moment to drop all excess baggage, warm up, flex your muscles and prepare: your fabulous work is just ahead!

There is something quite beautiful and fabulous about separating the planning from the preparing. You don't go planning what you'll sow and buy the implements at once. By separating both things you can plan quietly, on a larger scale, break it into smaller bits to be accomplished in different periods... and undo it and do it again if it doesn't work! Now you have your plans, you know what you want, you have your instuctions, so you stock up for all that you decided to do.

So, arm up, smile, get deep into cleaning, selecting, organizing and prepare everything to get your goals! Blessed Imbolc, All!!

Tick-Tock Tick-Tock

Days are going by at the same pace it has since the first tick-tock of the world. Second by second, minute by minute, all days measure the same. 24 hours, each of them made of 60 minutes, each of which is composed by 60 seconds, and a second is a blip. Yet now time seems to fly. It was New Year not so long ago, and my boyfriend and I were taking a plane back to Costa Rica, from the beautiful, paradisal Dominican Republic, where the party is eternal, and the priorities in life have shifted from the material to the emotional. Now it's already February, and tomorrow will be the birthday of Tuesday Writer, and Imbolc - all in one and quite befitting.  Snow melts, allergies rise like the tide - and I'm riding one of those motherfuckers as we speak - and life changes.

Today started different from yesterday. I didn't have to wake up insanely early, for I didn't have to go to work: I took out vacations for my dentist appointment, and since I have to appointments - today and tomorrow - and both of them are big - cordal extractions - I also took Friday for "surgery recovery". Don't get me wrong, my dentist is an angel sent to Earth to do teeth, but once you are out of his office and the anaestetics wear off, it's like you were hit by a truck on the jaw. Besides, who goes back to work on Friday after half a week out?

I've got plenty rest - all recorded now by my trusty and wonderful Fitbit ^_^ - and now here I am, sitting home,  a bit bitchy because I can't do much exercise and push up my badges on fitbit.com, and eating baby food. I don't bitch about the baby food, I love baby food! Tooth extraction is just a good excuse to indulge on industrial amounts of baby food. Of course, not any baby food, only prune and peach. Who the hell would eat meat and veggies? Or mango and banana? :-P

Unlike many people, I actually like extractions, though I'd only agree to the extractions of my judgment teeth, all others only if the replacement is right there - I'm quite vain -. Unlike caries or cleanings, extractions don't involve any buzzing, and I hate that irking, vibration that feels like scratching a blackboard. So, basically I went to the doc hopping and smiling and came out the same, and can't wait for tomorrow to get my next out-of-this-world experience!

But what for the rest of the day? In here, with the days going tick-tock, tick.tock, knowing and I'm left only 3 more days of work, it downs to me that it is really time to take account of my belongings and start to pack. Oh dear, fit my like in a suitcase... or two... or four (and hand luggage). Get down to finish some letters, work on a scrapbook project I'd like to finish for tomorrow and then wonder and pray... whether I'll be able to go to yoga on Sunday. I certainly would love to see how my fitbit likes that. 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, the days go by and a new season starts where the old one ends.

Measure What You Eat

Well, after struggling quite some with my fitbit, I believe I've finally got the hang of it. Not without the help of Farrah, an unseen kind lady from the Customer Service who has been tremendously kind at helping me via e-mail to set my lovely little bit to function. As result I'm quite happy - I could say excited - and already doing something I've never done before: I'm counting calories. Man, do you have an idea how tough it is to count calories? I love to log and keep tracks on everything, but calories? And it's not bad when the Fitbit site knows them, or the package has them, it's a nightmare when there's no way you can find them!

So far I've been blowing my dashboard meter pushing the allegedly 1955 calorie daily intake, downing even up to 5000 calories a day. Do I exercise that much? Hell no! But I'm not one to say no to yummy pizza or stuff like that, mind you. However today... today was something.

I had to run this office errand, and I was going to do it on foot. I did it on foot. I had to go from Building A to Bulding B, and usually do that crossing the Metropolitan Park in between. However, as my allergy has been a real bitch recently - runny, stuffy nose and so on - I decided not to chance it with the trees, and went arroun the park, which made me take four times longer to get to my destination. In the way I've got hungry and since there was a Subway around, I decided to stop for an omelette sub and another sub for lunch. The sub for lunch was easy, as I decided to go with one of the healthier choices, but the omelette and cheese sub, with avocado was something else. Normally I wouldn't think about it, just pay it and eat it, but this time I was thinking: "how am I going to log this?". No, Fitbit didn't have the information, nor did Subway, who aside from the healthy choices, fails to disclose the caloric value of all other options. This brought me nearly to the point of NOT INDULGING IN AN OMELETTE AND CHEESE SUB just because I had no idea, how to log it. Yes, please notice, it wasn't a matter of maybe eating something that could make me gain weight, it was a matter of not being able to write it down.

In case you wonder, I ate it and logged then an "educated guess", based on similar products I found after googling "calories in an omelette and cheese sub".

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving my fitbit, and I love my account - to which I'm logged more than to my facebook account - but sometimes I do stop to wonder, whether this is sane. Is it ok to measure everything you take to your mouth? Shouldn't you just eat and run without thinking about the statistics, and just enjoying what you do?

The Art of Minding Your Own Business

Today I read a very interesting story in the column of Miss Manners, on the Washington Post. The reader writing was a concerned mother-in-law who was bitching about how far her son and his girlfriend lived from her, how ugly was the decoration of the house, how the daughter-in-law was so disrespectful as to not change her shoes for she had told her that she's too tall to wear high heels, and on top of everything, they haven't prepared for her visit, but pretended to let her choose what she wanted to do. If that weren't enough, she started a fight with her son and the daughter-in-law, and this last one even had the nerve to break down crying "obviously to make her son feel bad". Worry not, Miss Manners put the hag on her place.

Now, I must admit that whenever I read a letter like that I wonder seriously if it's a real letter, or the columnist is taking it out on someone who acts like that. If it's a real letter - which I still seriously doubt - said person should really take a minute before sending it to read it and check on the problem by themselves. If it's not - as I suspect - the columnist should really consider to ban the mother-in-law from the house. However, be it a real letter or not, be it a true story or not, this time around what caught me was a problem that's not only shared by annoying mothers-in-law, but also by many other people around the planet in many other of their relationships: they keep sticking their nose in other people's business.

There are the coworkers who can't find themselves other occupation but to go around gossiping about others, grabbing whatever little bit of information to distort it into a press stopping headline. There's the friend who can't stop talking about their other friends who keep doing this or that, and continually tell them what should they be doing. There's the relative who thinks they know better than the others what the others should do with their lives, and there's also the self appointed guru who may or may not appear on TV telling everybody what should they do, read and buy. And though often these behaviors are masked as "concern" they seldom are, as often they try to make decisions about something that doesn't concern them and for which they haven't been even consulted.

Why does it bother you how someone else decorates their house? Why does it bother you if someone decides to ditch college? Why does it bother you if someone quits a well paying job to follow an independent, artistic lifestyle? Are you living in that house? Does it affect you directly that college-ditching? Do you depend on that income and are really unable to supply for your needs another way?

Recently I was really upset about the HHRR lady spilling the beans about my permit to people who don't need to be involved, along with information nobody REALLY needed to know. It wasn't her business and there was no forseeable benefit she could pull from releasing that information. If anything it was only inconvenient for me and my boss, but it wasn't a fatal wound or anything of the sort. I concluded her life was terribly drab and colorless and she evidently needed some excitement and the only excitement was someone like me preparing for a grand and exciting adventure not everybody gets to live. I still sustain that theory.

Then, after reading this story about the horrible mother-in-law, I started wondering, not why people do that, but whether we do it too even when we don't mean to. When concern ends and being nosy begins? Some time ago I was pondering about the matter, as I was being pulled too deep into the marital problems of a friend of mine. Soon it started to consume me, as she dished detail after detail about her husband's lack of interest, his laziness, his unwillingness to hold his end of the relationship, and even about his multiple affairs. Eventually I was so soaked in her problems that it was all I could think or talk about. It was then that realization hit me - by the way I was looked at by other acquintances - that I was being seen as a nosy person. This is where self examination came into place.

I sat down with myself and pondered why was I so deeply in my friend's problem. Was it my marriage? No. Was it REALLY affecting me directly? No. Could I effectively do something to sole the situation? No. Then what the fuck am I doing? How come I can rely on God to do His part of the heavy lifting in my life, but I can't trust a grown person to manage her own life?

Sometimes we get swirled into other people's problems and we believe it's our duty to get involved and "try to help", but before you become a nosy person minding other people's business instead of your own, consider the following filter questions:

1. Is it a situation that involves you directly?

2. Does it really affect you directly? (Makes you worry doesn't apply. Loving that person doesn't apply.)

3. Can you effectively do something to solve the situation?

If the reply to any of this is "no", then it's not your business, and you should walk away. If you don't you are being nosy, and then, sadly, you are up to trouble as more than once you'll be yelled for it, and you'll be wasting your time and effort concentrating on something that won't yield you any results.

Night Out With My Girls

Have you gone to see a movie twice, so that you can go watch it with your friends? Or maybe even more times so that you can get "the hang" of it? Well, I'm one of those people who can go and watch the same movie a gozillian times and the buy the DVD so I can keep watching it until the end of times. Evidently I am one of those and in this occasion the movie I went to see twice was Sherlock Holmes 2: The Game of Shadows. In here I won't go into the details of the movie for you can read that in any film critic site, and I'm not one to go repeating what others say. That's boring - and takes the fun out of both blog writing and blog reading. Wouldn't you agree?

The first time I went, it was with my boyfriend. I'm quite a fan of movies, and go as often as I can - as long as the movies shown are to my liking! - while he's not. In the past lot of years he has gone only when I've taken him to the movies, and that's not that many times. (Well, once settled in Hungary, that's going to radically change!) This was a couple of weeks ago, and we went to the VIP theatre. The experience of the VIP was so marvelous he decided Hungary NEEDED dearly the VIP experience. He would run and open VIP movie halls, if he could!

To evaluate this movie you should honestly compare it with the first one, but the first one left me so cold, I can't recall enough of it to pass judgment. This one, however, was charged heavy with slash. I though it was going to be an action movie, so what the heck, he would probably like it, but I never expected my eyes to bulge out and my hands to curl into a fist wishing to have my slasher friends close to hold their hands and scream in delight. Thus, the decision was made and we decided to go out the three of us to evaluate the slashiness of the movie. We met at our favorite commercial center - a large and posh commercial center at the South of the capital, in one of the most exclusive areas of the Metropolis. Once there we realized that they wheren't presenting the movie any more. That was like a slap on the face! However there was a nearby mini commercial center built around an IMAX movie theatre, where they were still showing the movie. We had to wait some two hours still, sort of, but we were cool, as we were going to drive there.

Before leaving we went to have something to much on while I presented them with the marvel of mangas on the Kindle and they passed me some digital mangas as well. It was like in the old times, when the three of us met with other friends to gap about yaoi mangas and yaoi animes, and yaoi anything for hours, sharing CDs and mini CDs full of whatever we have managed to hunt down in our cruises through the gutters of the Internet. 

From there we went to the movies only to discover that the 18:45 show was sold out. The horror. We wanted desperately to see that movie, so what to do? After a bit of debate we decided to get tickets for the next showing, at 21:30. I called home to let my boyfriend know that, no, I wasn't dead, I just didn't get tickets at any of the showings I expected, so I was going to stay with the girls for the 21:30 - the last one. With the tickets in hand we went to the Sports Bar in the complex, where the girls relished in ordering mouthwatering delicious cocktails with enough alcohol in them to fly a Boing 777 from Bali to Corsica, while I - minding the driving - had to make due with a virgin Piña Colada. The downside of driving.

There we spent a nice time between more gaping about mangas and yaoi and recently seen movies, and work stories and travel stories (Kate has recently come back from a trip she did to Peru, I believe, from which she showed us the most funny videos where her deadpan serious comments made a banal image of people walking unto an account about the last days of civilization befire the rise of the zombies), and then some disturbing images about kickboxing matches that looked just like... mating. There, while many watched intently the match, we tried to figure out how could two men locked in a tight embrace, pushing to be on top, grabbing each other's asses actually pass for a sport. Because if that's a sport, I might believe I have been practicing on the bed quite often...

The time for the movie arrived, and we took our seats in the regular movie hall (the VIP was showing something else), and we giggle like schoolgirls about a thing or two, then showing annoyment as the image was cut and a portion of the upper end of the film was seen on the lower end of it. Quite unnerving. However the problem got fixes in the first 5 minutes of the movie and soon we were able to enjoy the film, grabbing hands and turning to each other mouthing "Oh My God!" and "Did you see that!!?". However the best scene, the grand scene was the dance scene. There we sat, the three of us, linked by the hands and holding our breaths in excitement, only to mutter at the end of the movie: "I didn't get it... how can they explain it to the non-slasher public?"

The mystery may remain forever unsolved, but the three of us walked out of the movie hall, minutes before midnight, with a large grin and plans to run down the Internet looking for slash fic.

Fit

Some time ago I bought for myself a fitbit ultra, which is this thingie that counts your steps, and how many calories have you burned and stuff like that. Since my friend Dragonfly-cr started running and wearing one of these to measure her performance, I was pondering getting myself one of those, basically to start running too. I wasn't planning on running here, though, as if I do I would mainly be running away from robbers and kidnappers (my neighbourhood has proved that safe...), but I do was planning on starting to run in Hungary, preferable at the Margit Island, which has a lovely running path made of something that's soft and feels cool. This things are called "pedometers" or something like that. Checking them on the Internet wasn't all that easy, mind you, as there were features I didn't get, and none of the mentioned things were clear about whether you need something else to go with them. Also, with prices running from $20 to $200 there was no way I could pick safely something that was really good and what I needed.

Luckily when boyfriend and I were flying back from Dominican Republic, I read on the plane's magazine - Destinos - (we went on Taca) about the fitbit. A page in two languages dedicated to explaining shortly this device made me decide that this is the one I'll get, and so I did (specially because I could get it in plum, not necesarity in blueberry, as you know that blue and I don't get along very well). The fitbit came with an internet page where you can track your progress and keep your statistics. Calories consumed, calories burned, activity, mood, and so on. A real delight for someone so into keeping track and tabs like me (who have been keeping tabs on my weight, not like it changes and not like I would do a thing to change it!), however... my Hyne if this is a hard thing to get by! The fitbit is all nice and cute, but it doesn't seem to be accurate. I climb 15 flight everyday to get to the office, and it says I climb 22. I end up climbing from 29 to 44 and the counter says 75 to 88. I walk distance of five meters and it claims I've taken 500 steps. What am I? A geisha??

The page also gives you an account on the calories you have eaten, for which you log every single food you eat. It's nice and cool, and rolls out a list from where you pick what did you have, and that's okay, and all, but it gets me thinking, that getting fit isn't as easy as one would think. With a thingie like this, it's not only a matter of will, it's a matter of patience. Does this really motivate? And in general, if you have a sendentary life like mine, how further do you get with a program that keeps you in front of your computer logging in your weight and every single snack bar you chew?

My goal isn't to lose weight - what for? I'm fine the way I am - but to keep myself healthy, move and keep my body well. That's why I go to yoga classes too, so is a dashboard to work with keeping me from effectively be more active or is really helping me, thoughI don't know that yet?

Falling In and Out

Friday. A peculiar Friday if one takes in consideration that this is the last one... in this place. Time to slowly start the Spring Cleaning and discard all that has no longer space in the new chapter of my life. Time for doing lists: what do I need, what goes in the luggage of my life, what must be viewed as obsolete. Time for packing, for making arrangements, for acquiring a thing or two, here or there. It's in moments like this when you get the chance - there rare opportunity  - to evaluate what you've been carrying around. What are those things, those habits that you take with yourself that may have been slowing you down? Which things have been burried under tons and tons of other stuff, that should have been at hand's reach for ages?

There are many things that we do not question, that we do not notice or ponder about normally, when our life is settled on the rails of rutine, but when that rutine is to be changed, and you must fit your life in a suitcase, or your whole office in a box, you get them in your hand and think: what's the purpose of this? And what is the purpose? Are you carrying the signs that truly represent you, or are you carrying your traumas and limitations? Are we a bird that values its feathers and take them to the travel, or a bird that's slowed down by carrying also the cage?

I find myself strangely detached and reluctant to decisions. Decisions about what goes and what stays. I sit at my cubie, checking mail, following up on projects and in the odd moments, revisiting old matters, old books, old writings. I'm detaching slowly from my surroundings, watching places and people around me from a cold distance often thinking: "this is not going to live for much longer". A handfull of ties lie in my hand and I'm pushing them slowly between the scissor blades of my decision. Acquintances and friends are about to fade off my life without their knowing so. I'm falling, in and out, speed is definitive, moves are definitive... I'm falling, and oh sweetest thing, how am I falling! So many years worth of memories, experiences, and souvenirs, all to be evaluated and decided upon, and some of them are just so precious... so precious.

Change isn't an easy thing - who said it was? - and when in change you feel like falling... perhaps the best thing to do is to take pencil and paper and write. Trish, there's a chance I'll continue what I sent you.

The leeves, at the same time, are giving away, not without the laborious help of those who shouldn't be involved in the matter. Gossip, oh ever present, omnipotent Gossip! The grapevine is vibrating with so much charged buzzing. Information - right or not, concerning or not, entitled or not - must be shared, so that the fire touches it and explodes in millions of exciting colors. Gossip, oh Gossip... those grapevines of bitter harvest I won't miss.

Take Note!

Recently Dr. Frank Buck posted in his blog Get Organized about a topic that has quite some pull with me: taking notes. From the most efficient, to the most modern, he considers in his posts not only how you take notes (paper & pen or digitally), but also what do you do with those notes. You know me, I love all topics related to organizing, and anything that has to do with pen and paper! (... and writing) Having been recently introduced to the wonders of smartpens - and I'm in love with my boyfriend's Pluse and can't wait to try out my sleek, fabulous ECHO - I replied to the first part of the topic (it's broken in two parts), telling him about my experiences with the smartpen and how it has improved my note taking.

As someone with a terribly bad memory and the tendency to wander off mentally whenever there's a less-than-exciting lag in the session, prone to projecting mental movies in the worse of times, note taking is actually one of the things that can keep me on the topic, on the matter and focused. From university on - when my note taking skills were honed to their peak - I devoted myself to the use of as much shorthand markings and speed up my writing as much as possible without rendeing my writing unreadable. Not an easy task, as I learned at the University, where more than once the solution was to chase the notes taken by my classmates to complete my chicken scratchings. And if you had to ever do that, you know it's a bitch, as not to students take the same notes, so matching them is quite a task, when you are trying to replace that couple of lines you jotted out that flatlined on you.

Once I started to work, the note taking didn't go away, as now it was about writing down the task you had to complete, or the directions to do something, the highlights of the seminars you are sent to, the laws you had to check out, the procedures that had to be followed, and not once, the notes of the meetings you attended.  It was basically in these last ones where I saw the benefits of taking notes digitally. Typing as fast as I could to catch every word, taking the meeting notes on a laptop allowed us to be able to send them for review as the meeting was ended. Taking these notes on paper would have meant to take extra time from your day to type down you notes into the preselected format and then send it for all to check. Basically both systems have pros and cons.

Taking notes digitally, allows you to ensure they will be always readable, and often you don't need to check the spelling, because Windows does that for you. Repeating names and concepts can also be dealt quickly, and  - what's most important - sending and filing is faster. No ripping pages or recopying them to a notebook or a file so you keep all the notes on the same topic in the same place, but there you are, already filing it where it needs to be. Also, it's much easier to find what you are looking for by opening the right file and searching in it, instead of paging through a notebook back and forth looking for a particular quotation.

Taking notes on paper on the other hand, gives you plenty of freedom regarding how and what you jott down. Going from words to a graph is no hassle, just draw the graph. It also allows you to use freely the space by drafting quick relation mindmaps of figures, if you are prone to them. Linking words, drawing arrows and balloons, or squares and brackets... whatever your method is. It's also much silent than typing, and for those exposing or talking at the meeting, you look much more involved with a notepad and a pen than typing on a computer - after all you could be chatting or looking up porn pictures while everybody else is trying to fix the department's yearly budget. Another great advantage of paper and pen is the fact that though it can run out of pages, or out of ink, it doesn't run out of battery. There were a laptop can go on for 2 hours to 6 hours (on average 2 hours), a notepad and a pen can go for months. And even if you run out of pen or paper, there's always a fast way to get around it, as usually when you take notes you are not the only one and there's always someone who can lend you a couple of sheets of paper and a pencil or a pen, which isn't the case with the laptop's charger.

Personally, I prefer pen and paper, and my smartpen is the best solution to my needs, as I can go back to accomodate myself on a small surface and jot down my notes and even my comments, while the pen also records what's being said, linking it to the scratches I make. However, when there's a meeting and I'm asked to take the minutae, it's always the laptop I resource to.

In this question, I believe we must also consider a very important component, which is the intent, the recipient of the note. Why are you taking notes and what are you expected to do with them, in what period of time? Are you taking notes for a news piece and need to post it as soon as possible, send it to the editor in the shortest time possible? Then maybe you should consider taking your notes digitally. You are preparing a piece based on something you are witnessing, and being able to draw graphs and make balloon-stick connections is important? Go with paper and pen. Are you in a History class and need to catch as much as possible? Go digital and if you can, connect your recorder as well... or go with the smart pen. Math or economics class with lots of functions, formulas and graphs? Paper and pen, absolutely, but consider pair it with the recorder or your smartpen. Inspiration can hit you anytime of day and you need to be prepared to scribble down that great post idea, or that verse for your upcoming wonderful ode to something, or finally have the piece you needed to close that chapter perfectly? Paper and pen, no doubt. Tablets can work... if you don't have to dwell with them too long to get a usable sheet you can write on before the fleeting spirit of the muse leave you for a writer much more prepared to take their dictating.

However, it's up to you. What do you feel comfortable with? What works for you? 100 gurus can give their opinion and 100 techno-whores could present you with the newest developments in the area, what matters is what works for you.

Concerns with Intelligence

Someone wrote on their Facebook wall something about how "generational governments" didn't get that "major intelligence" is in the "new citizen" and not in the "intelligence departments". I bet it had some sort of deep and smart meaning, but the output wasn't certainly the most fortunate, after all, lets define "intelligence" and "major intelligence" and then "new citizen" and what the fuck do you cover under "generational governments"? We could assume the person meant to describe the nearly monarchy-like governments where the power goes from the current ruler to a heir of them, usually blood related. It's  perhaps not the most democratic practice - specially if the people don't get a say in this - but let's let that slide, for this post. When it comes to the concept of new citizen and intelligence, there's no room for assuming. 

A department of intelligence in the Government isn't a department that's in charge of intelligent people and looking for ways to make the population smarter. I believe that's actually called "Education Ministry". An "Intelligence Department" is more like a part of the Defense Ministry, and they work collecting data on other countries or on companies, or groups or people the Government believes could prose a threat to the country, or the system. It's like the CIA, you know "Central Intelligence Agency", you probably have heard of it from movies, where they have all those spies and stuff like that? Yes, that's an "intelligence department". The "major intelligence" definition escapes me, so I will assume that the person posting this meant a level of intelligence that surpases that needed to do sapping. As for the "new citizen"... either the person means the new generation, or it's leaning more towards Ubermenschen ideas so popular among the Nazis. Let's go with the gentler, and more politically correct interpretation. Let's say it's about the new generation.

So basically this person said that the Governments where the authority is passed down within a family group without possibility of transparent, popular, general elections, haven't understood that the "major" capacity to gather data on the countries and subjects that threaten the coutry resides in the younger generation and not in the departments of intelligence, like the CIA. Huh? Okay, the other possible interpretation is that this governments don't realize that the intelectual development of the nation is in the younger generation, not in... the CIA?

Well, this person is around my age, and works in Education. If this kind of clear minded thinking is what's being passed on to the new generation - which has been nurtured on instant gratification and Teletubbies - what's the actual, real hope the world has regarding any development of the popular intelect? Or is it that any development counts, so if the future majors or Nobel Prizes are on Kardashians instead of DNA decodings, that's ok?

The matter of the levels of intellectuality among the population has been a concern for ages, as from generation to generation the quality levels drop just as fast as technology raises. There's more bullshit to fill heads with, less regard towards hard work and actual knowledge, and more appreciation for gossip and the skills to cheat the system, find shortcuts and pulling out a job or a task without actually doing anything.

It's not a matter of what kind of Government we have, be it a monarchy, a full fledged, perfect democracy or a plutocracy, it's a matter of what - as society - are we doing. Yes, indeed a Government concerned with the life quality of its citizens can do more than one concerned by the private interests of it's representatives, but it also matters what the society demands, and what it does. It's irresponsible from adults to keep pushing the task to the younger generations, saying that "the future is in their hands". So what? Are you telling them to educate themselves? With what moral stand, when you don't take care of the present, you dodge your responsabilities, and the books and internet content available, has been written mostly by lazy people like you. So what are you expecting this youth to do? Expect them to do what you were too lazy to do yourself?

If you want to see a change in the way things are going, you gara get off your fat, lazy ass and do something. What? Well, how about starting with yourself, educating yourself, acquiring all the skills and knowledge you'd like society to acquire. Want the people to visit more the museums than the bars? Well, pick up your sorry ass and go visit a museun instead of warming a stool at a bar. Want them to read more? Then you pick a book instead of the remote control and read a book. Want them to be better educated? Then educate better yourself.

The change in society starts in you. If you want change, you have to be part of it, otherwise your bitching is as useless as you are. So, basically this whole developping of the people's intellect, this sought after "major intelligence", sparks up and starts from the individual. Starts in the present and doesn't need of a future generation to get ignited, but if a future generation is needed, we were a future generation, where's our contribution to the intellectual development of our kind?

Wherever we are - because I assume that not all of us live under a family-business-Government, though many of us certainly live in a Plutocracy - has the Government stopped us time and again from smarting up, or has it been our choices, the examples that surrounded us and the peer pressure what has lead us to be the way we are now? Was the Government and - lets say - a crappy educational system what kept us from reaching a higher level of intelligence, or was our inclination to slack on everything? So, why to place the blame on a type of Government, that has really nothing to do with our personal choices, that has no say regarding how much , how little or how hard do we study?

The opinion of this person falls through the cracks as a poor construction born from a weak logic and a sorry excuse of expression, but one truth does remain: the slumping on the levels of intellectuality is done also by the lack of personal, individual effort to nurture it and make it grow.

Beautiful María Of My Soul

Another Era, Another Times

Browsing through the net, I've been checking pictures of other times - the forties this time around. Enchanted by the black-and-white pictures, where the shades of gray replace color gracefully to throw back at us an image that lives and still remains out of reach, at safe distance from our daily rutine, gliding over the waves of time ethereal and dreamy.

Have you ever dreamed to have been born in another era? Or just another decade, another century... Well, probably you know you are not alone in your wish, but would we really, really want that? And really... why?

In a state of wonderment and arrested emotions, I feel like living in a movie of the 40's. Knee lenght clothes of heavy fabrics, clunky shoes and funny little hats, lighting cigarettes under the lamp posts and smeaking the mouth with furious red colors. Sitting at cafés nursing a black coffee and reading the papers, reading a hard bound book and rolling a handkerchief between the fingers while wondering about this and that. A life with none of the current matters, where pens were still fountain pens, penpalling wasn't a dying art, but the way you communicated, phones weren't granted at every home, and electronical equipment was expected to last at least 50 years. But if I had a time machine, would I go there? In the middle of World War II? With women still having to fight for opportunities and overthrow all sorts of ideas and judgments that kept placing them several steps behind men?

It's not a secret either that one of the eras that really catch my fantasy is the Middle Ages. The clothes, the stories, the root of so many fairy tales, the lush forests and woods, clear air, living closer to the Earth and nature... and would we go there to live? Wish badly to be there and live there? With the witchhunting (because I would surely be prosecuted as such just by general principle), the scum, the violence, the lack of rights, the health care... the toilets!... no running water, no TV, no books (unless I would successfully pass for a man and become a monk of a rank high enough to be let around books), no fanfics, and lots of public executions... Thanks, but no thanks.

Though we may feel identified with another era, and yearn for some of its best features, in the end we've all been born where we should be and where we can contribute to the larger cause. Yes, I'm one of those that - from as long as I remember - I'd LOVE to get the chance to wear long dresses and skirts, layered and following some sort of Medieval style - I'm not one to squeeze my lungs into a corset! Or go more primal and run around with just a sheet wrapped around, or naked - fuck clothes! (That way I could sleep longer and still get to the office in time :-P)  - but if sent back, would I have the strenght to face the Holy Inquisition and make a difference for the freethinking women? Or just women? If sent to the 40's, could I stand up as bravely for the rights of my sisters and I? Could I stand up for the rights of the people of other races or fight shoulder to shoulder for the rights of gays and lesbians? Could I fight for the right not to be discriminated on religious basis? (I'm mainstream, ok? But just because I'm not gay or because I'm Christian, it doesn't mean I don't realized that stepping on the rights who are not like me is also stepping on my human rights as well. Any discrimination: in favor or against, IS discrimination, and we are all being discriminated.)

Fantasizing and wishing is fine. Hell, how many haven't gone further even and wished to be in the world of a movie or a book, or a comic book, or a game (Final Fantasy!)? Dreaming and escaping reality for a moment to live in a make believe world is okay, we are humans, and that's also why we made art. That's why reading novels is so cool. That's why fanfics are so popular and loved. BUT there's a difference between wanting to be there and not being here. If you are here, there's a reason for it. Find it and fulfill your destiny.

Gossip

Office gossip is the kind of weed that does more harm than good - even though often is the only way to get information about the character of certain people (proper filters applied!) - and like the weed, it springs everywhere and you can't eliminate it. Also, you can't kill it basically because in every freaking office there's at least one - but usually more - people of the kind that won't do their jobs and their lives is so plain, so blah, so drab, so colorless, that they NEED the lives of other people to actually add some excitement to their tasteless existence. Gossip usually tends to be malicious and seeks usually to create a conflict where there's no natural conflict. Usually.

Then there's the gossip about what's not their business. The gossip about who is going out with whom, who went where in vacations, who bought what where, who likes what, who worships what and so on. I myself haven't been inmune to the general curiosity, either because of the size of my shoppings, and my prancing around everyday in Benetton clothes or something of the sort, and then also because I traveled every year to Hungary, or the malicious gossips spread because I often went out to lunch with friends, sometimes girls, sometime boys (because women who are single and haven't made friends in the office, are not allowed to meet with unknown women or girls because they are automatically LESBIANS, nor with unknown men or guys becuase they are automatically WHORES). It never bothered me much because I knew the truth -  healthy finances, less acquired responsabilities, broader circle of friends than what they have - but this time around it's different. This time around the office and the plain-existence hags have fallen upon a piece of information I really wanted to remain private, and which relates to my future plans, and made it of general knowledge. Why? Do they profit from it? Is there something in it for them? No, it's just because they have nothing better to do. Oh no, but Bunny must come around and spice up their lives with the bits and pieces of her awesome life.

Do they get off pretending they are me? Does it make them wet imagining how my life is? Do they touch themselves thinking about being a day in my shoes? They must, as they evidently need so desperately to share the latest news of my life. Yes, I know my life is heading to something so much more wonderful, because I'll live where they only dream of going for a week or two if they can twist arms enough to get a seminar or a scholarship. I'll be living there. That's going to be my daily reality. Is that the matter? Am I the fairy princess in the fairy tale they can never catch because they never did the effor to make something nice and decent about it? Yes, I work, yes, I don't feed on gossip, yes I'm quite selfsufficent, and yes, my life is RICH. I've a wonderful life, I've amazing friends, I have penpals (something most of them haven't heard of), I've a delightfully marvelous boyfriend, I've two citizenships, I speak more languages than they do, I've a wonderful, colorful, shiny future before me, an open mind, a heart filled with hope, a soul blessed by God, a path splashed with flowers, the key to millions of doors... and I actually do my work, and love doing it.

Sorry their life is plain, I wasn't in charge of planning it, but that doesn't give you the right to feed on the headlines of my days.

In the Blogging

I can't help but stare in sheer wonder at the bloggers who strive for recognition. From the constant effort to be read, to the writing always in the same style - maybe even in the same line - hunting for the best tactics and secrets to guarantee a high traffic... The question time and again comes and time and again is left unresolved. Could it be a sort of a cybernetic outlet to the need to get attention - as I've had the chance to meet a few blogger personalities, and some of them do strike me as what's called "attention whores"? Or could it be... a way to make a living? Then again, I also have known some of that.

Maybe the question with the blog is "do you want to be read or not?" Maybe, if you want to be read, you should do something to be read, and if you don't want to be read... well, why do you blog, right? However there is something about blogging that caters to those who want to write but don't necessarily want to be read - or widely read: a place to shout in anonymity. The blog can become a sort of personal, secret place - much safer often than the journal book you could be carrying in your backpack or your bag - where you can vent about anything on the world. (Like I do not so rarely ^_^)

There's this fairy tale about a girl who has seven brothers and they are turned to ravens and she has to save them by making during seven years seven shirts - one for each and must not speak a word during the seven years. Through this time she's married off to a prince and gives birth to children - all of which are snatched and killed by someone jealous of her. Unable to speak, she can't say a word to defend herself or express her sorrow, so one day when the pain is too big to bear, she goes out to the woods, digs a deep hole and cries into it.

Well, blogging often feels like that. A blog, if not much read, becomes the black hole in the ground where you can shout out everything that upsets you and pains you. It doesn't matter that unknown people who will never meet you read what you have to say - hell, in some issues a word of comfort, a good advise from the depths of the darkness can come so good! - but when you start realizing that people around you read it and know you... how free do you still feel to express what's going on?

As a blogger, yes, you can seek to be public, to be read by many to bring to their attention social issues and several truths denied from them - blogging becomes thus a tool at the hands of the people to gear up and spread the news corporations and governments don't want them to know. But as a blogger, you can also be ptivate, faceless, indentity-less crying into the dark hole what you are bound to say face to face. Has anyone blogger considered creating a new, secret blog, unfound, non-circulated, where they can spill their secrets safely? Ease the heart, but keep the issues well locked down?

Changing Your Mind or Not

Someone once praised Marcel Proust - I believe it was him - saying he was a consistent man who had never changed his mind in his whole life. As a good thing, it was said that all his writings were consistent and had never, ever written a single word in his life - from the early age to his elder days, that contradicted any other. Instead of instilling in me wonderment and admiration - as the writer intended - it made me think about how sad and sterile has to be his life. This idea that this condition of always being the same, never changing positions was good has been defended before... though maybe it's not so cool to mention here that it was regarding how much cooler Son Goku was when compared to Vegeta, since Vegeta changed his character while Son Goku never did. Yeah, lame, nerdish even, but even then there was this thing: changing your mind, your character is a sign of weakness.

It's kind of interesting how this is seen this way in an era full of gurus that advocate for change. "Change is good", "you should change ever so often" and stuff like that.

Recently, reading a post by Fire Lyte, he mentioned an article he wrote some years ago, titled "The Pagan Secret", and mentioned how someone asked him whether he would remove it from where he posted it, now that his position and opinion has changed. (No, he won't.) I found it quite sad - to put it somehow - that he had to or felt the need to defend this right to change his mind, or even have contradicting opinions. I read his defense and thought about it, but can't fully accept it as my position on the matter is different: "yes, I wrote that, I believe that, I changed my mind about some parts - but I won't deny what I used to believe - and now I believe and stand for this as well".

Explaining the duality - more than defending it! - is quite a difficult task, because singularity is easier to process. In a show Chris Rock said "you are not just liberal or just conservative. You are liberal about some things and you are conservative about other things", so yes, duality is normal and can be accepted. Also, often the very people defending the fact that change is good, also advocate for the opposite: people who change are weak.

As in everything, extreme positions are not only not good, but they are not fitting. No matter what you do, no matter what you think of, or what do you defend, extremes are bad. In the particular case of opinions and taking positions, as humans, we don't choose a side and stay there, but what often goes on is a process of learning. You get in touch with something, or enter a group, and you start your learning process. From the begining you will form yourself an opinion about things, and that opinion could either be strengthened, adjusted, modified or proved wrong, discarded and replaced by a new one. Is this bad? Hell, no! You are not supposed to know everything in advance! if so, what would be the fun of life? So, from this side, change is neither a good or a bad thing, but a natural thing - just as breathing is neither good nor bad, or eating is neither a good or a bad thing (the good and the bad comes from the direction we want those actions to take).

However, in order to grow, you certainly need to deepen your contact with a certain opinion, a certain position, and explore it. For this you have to stay there and follow the very path you have chosen.  Externally, socially, the consistent behavior or character of a person is desired for that gives it a vote of trust. A consistent person becomes dependable. Internally, for yourself, a set opinion gives you a philosophical platform from which you can explore the rest of the world, the rest of the areas of knowledge you are interested in, and against which you can compare, measure and relate. Changing, thus, isn't bad, but staying enough to form a platform, a life path, is esirable either.

From Marcel Proust, the general opinion I've got is that there is a person that has never opened himself to the world, never let it in, never allowed the external world to permeat his internal world, and thus his internal world - cut also from it's natural growth - died inside him like a stillborn and rotted inside him. I read of Marcel Proust and can't help but think: "what a sad waste of a perfectly good life". I think of Vegeta and what comes to mind is that there's a man who dared to learn, dared to adapt and was strong enough to allow his mind to break free and explore new turfs and adopt them.

Through our life we are given the oportunity to broaden our experiences, to accumulate knowledge and incorporate all that organically into our lives. We can access knowledge and live it - knowledge isn't just a sterile, burdening thing, but a building block to extend our lives. Realizing that our first impressions were mistaken, wrong or incomplete isn't a shameful or bad thing, but instead a very good thing: it allows us to later on understand those who find that same path correct. So, discard it and deny it when it no longer suit us? No, that would be like denying your path, your choices, your roots. Those opinions, now different from your current ones, lead you to these, and if you are proud of you current opinion, why should you be ashamed of the path that lead you to them?

My reply would have been simple: "why would I deny or hide any part of my thinking? We all have to come from somewhere, otherwise we are sterile, stagnating and dead".

To finish , I'll live with the words of Kierkegaard: "It doesn't matter what you believe in, as long as you are sincere". It's ok to change your mind, as long as you are sincere about it.

The Root of Power over People

Through the reading of the book "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels, I came across the topic of clerical power. While cutting into the possible roots of discomfort between the orthodox Christians and the Gnostics, there's the matter of religion as a way to gain power. Basically, a system of believes such as a religion, gives a group of people, or a person, the right to rule over all the others. Through religion someone can say that God speaks to him directly and has appointed him as ruler over all others. This becomes more clear in different quotes and depictions where a parallel between heaven and earth is drawn, where basically as angels are ruled by God, bishops are ruled by angels and the people is ruled by bishops (or something of the sort. I'm not going into details here).

Through history we have also often said how kings claimed to be appointed by God to rule over their people. Also, religion makes sure you can't question God, God's authority or God's power. This secured air tight the system, ensuring that THEN the authority on Earth couldn't be questioned, for that would equal to question God Himself. In a way this gave also footing to claims of the "true religion", for only a true religion worshipped a true god, and only a true god could appoint a true ruler.

One would sigh releaved and think that's good that those times are over... at least for a part of our civilization, but as I mulled over this matter, I realized that's not true. Our senators, presidents, prime ministers and ministers don't claim to be put in power by God, (God-God), but they claim their power on the name of yet another god that's just as ubiquitous, and often more mythical that real, quite unsubstantial and also free from questioning: The People. But who is this People, and when does it appear? How does this People manifest itself and how does it appoint a ruler of all? 

This People - who are supposed to be all of us - becomes visible at elections, right after the candidates have made many an offering to it so they would be appointed. In many countries where rulers also get anointed by The People, the arm of this empowering god is forged, but that doesn't stop them from claiming the same root for their power, and take over for themselves much more powers, many of them often aimed at looting at the actual people you and I make part of.

As the kings and often the bishops, anointed by God to exercise their power, current leaders claim a power from a root they then disrespect, ignore and often act against. So then, why do we let them do it? They say they have been appointed by the people and they represent us, but time and again they bow to the current court, the current nobles - the companies - and loot from us - source of their power - to give to their buddies and those that have bought their loyalty.

Cuts to taxes for the wealthy in detriment of the social programs that aid the people, or cuts on taxes for the wealthy compensated with a raise on taxes for the people. Permisive labor laws, or the execution of it, protection to the sources of income of companies in detriment of the income and access to services and products by the people. SOPA and PIPA are a question again of favoring the New Nobility against the People, and where is this Rulership appointed by The People aiming at? Who's the Rulership favoring - despite of what it says? The New Nobility.

Certainly as a Root of Power, this god called The People is more like a circus pet, pulled out every four years to do a show.

Unexpected

The unexpected and unpleasant rumors cristalized. Bummer. Things won't be happening the way I wanted them to, so that means to buckle up and still try and make things work one way or the other. Adjust, settle and "fuck, I guess life isn't all about doing what I want" and "why the fuck do I have to take risks when I'm allergic to them? Can't the rest of the planet fall in line with what I want?". Yeah, the usual. Then again, I was given yesterday a potential solution for my situation, in case of need.

Guess then it's time to put my believes and my faith to the test and see how much I trust God, right? Well, then I'm passing the ball and hoping there are no interceptions! God, please run me a Touchdown! ^_^ I won't lie, the risk, the insecurity is killing my nerves, and I'd rather run across the planes and punch lights out until I get what seems to me as a completely irrational request straightened into what I find more suitable for my needs. Oh well, it could have been plain denied and then I would have to take more drastic measures (no! Not about the punching, you moron!), so maybe it's time to count the blessings and... let God run me the Touchdown. I mean, at least there I can do more than here to shorten the yards. :-) Time to prepare, gear up and get going.

Interestingly enough, I've been wondering around today about that message and the spark it brought. I nearly post about it, except that I caught myself in time, feeling "I've done this already". I have. Wouldn't write that down on a memory that poor, but rather on an event that remarkable. It is. As silly, unbecoming as it may sound, it is indeed a quite remarkable point in my life and a light in my memory.  Sign or no sign, it is for sure a reminder, and I'm finding it sweet to revel in reminiscence...

Sweet and Bitter together... life is sometimes a mix that doesn't make a tasteful sense.

Faith

Whatever is your religion, it's useless if you don't believe. Whatever you claim to be your system of believes, if you don't believe in them really, it's useless. Like Kierkegaard said (in a way) "it doesn't matter what you believe in, as long as you are sincere". In my current and personal interpretation, it doesn't matter what you claim to believe in, or the way you express that believe, as long as you put your heart, your honest believe into it, it will be okay.

I can't get enough of the people who attack other people's system of believes or the way they choose to practice it. Time and again have we read or heard self appointed "owners of truth" admonish others that "Islam is a religion of violence" and "Judaism is a religion of corruption", "Christianism is a religion of oppression", "Buddhism/Hinduism is just another word for Satanist", and "Paganism is the religion of the coocoo birds". Rumors spread as truth in and out religious circles, they nag at something they have no business poking at. (I once heard some Christian say that Islam was a religion of evil, so much that they couldn't worship God, only Allah. The moron - who claimed to have been in Arab countries and know deeply their religion, kinda forgot how Allah (Al-Lah) means "The God" in Arabic...) They have a problem if you wake up before dawn, wash yourself, and go to pray kneeling on a rug, and then four more times a day. They have a problem is you choose to call your prayers "spells", or if you dedicate a day a week to rest because in your religion, God said so, or if you make the sign of the cross before praying, if you light votive candles or keep a rosary... It doesn't matter why you do it, why you follow that religion or that tradition, the problem is why you don't follow theirs, which is "the true religion".

And even you you follow "the true religion" they have issues if you don't do it the way you do. Why? Because there's only one way, or so they claim. Truth is, no matter how much you seek to emulate them, there will always be something wrong, and that's expected, for this types of mentalities can't settle with anything if there's not a conflict, an enemy they can group against.

The truth is that these are simply sects. No matter the religion, these are sects that have nothing to do with believes or religion or the Divine or any of those things. These are groups to segregate people. Believes, however are something different, and come from within.

Don't be afraid of experimenting, mixing and matching, taking what's good for you and discarding the bad. Your believe - your personal believe - is your unique connection with The Divine, be this whatever name you choose to give Them. God, Gods, Goddess, Universe, Energy, Chi, Prana, Mother Nature, Gaia, Earth, Nature... you name it. You feel it in your heart and you can connect directly to it through any mean that comes natural to you. Try it out, and you'll see that when you find the way that's yours - whatever it is - things will align. No, it doesn't mean that you'll get all your wishes granted, it means that you will be not only more in control with your own destiny, but you will also understand better the things that happen in your life, trust more and be far more happy.

Often that feeling that "this isn't it" comes for the doubts. Don't be ashamed of them, don't stash them under the bed, but come close to them: what is it that provokes them? Can you find an explanation for them? Do you need an explanation for them? Or are your doubts arising because you feel insecure, or you already go into it thinking "this is bullshit and it ain't going to work anyways"? Self doubt is another matter, and it's something that can fuck up any system of believes. There's no path you can choose where you can find all the answers to anything, though in many paths you can find the answers you need.  If you already doubt it, stash it. If you can't put your believes on anything because everything looks like bullshit, you may want to go atheist, though that doesn't give you the answers either. No church or group is gooing to cure what you should work yourself, and THAT's something many of these sects prey on: personal insecurity and disbelief. No, it ain't going to work, what they offer, but they get the Soul Miles for "converting you".

Through my personal projects, I have found myself in many difficult situations - some of them are still unsolved - and through which I've learned to separate them in two groups: those I can do something about, and those that are out of my control. For the first ones, I do my part and work them to get them. For the second I trust my believes, my connection to The Divine - which by being Christian, I can God - and act accordingly: I pray. It doesn't diminish my believes or my connection to God if one day I decide to pray "the Pagan way" and hold a little ceremony for a Sabbath, or simply take the prayer and add elements of Paganism to settle it in, or pray through my yoga class. Each of these are the way in which I feel that day, in that situation, in a better position to connect, to take my prayer through.

God is everywhere, in everything and in every way. The way through which we choose to approach him is personal, is human, it's for us, not for Him. So is there a true way? Sure there is, but that's not the same way for everybody. The true way is the one that works for you, the one with which you feel well. And you don't have to buy the whole package! Mix and Match! God is in your heart, in the details, not on the Full Pack and Accesories many are so set in selling us.

So the next time someone make those comments, or wiggle a finger before you, remember: As long as you are comfortable, and you honestly, trully, really believe in it, they can fuck it.