You can, for a day or three, step away from a conscious choice and remove yourself from the noise. But when can you safely step back?

I’ve been absent from this space for a couple of weeks. I’m not sure if it was a conscious choice, but it was one I made. First I was under the weather and I missed a few days that grew into weeks. I had other concerns and, somehow, I did not feel like writing, not here, not in my journal, no poetry; nothing.

My pencil was silent.

I write. It is what I do, I write every damn day. But I haven’t been, and each day there was a little less guilt. Deadlines came and went, and then were forgotten, as were the days of the week.

It was early this morning when I realized it was Wednesday, and here I am writing, again.

During this break I read more than I have been, I thought more than I usually do, and I rested more like I needed it. It was a valuable time for education, for letting my mind go to other places, and for focusing on things I need to pay more attention to.

But I need to write, I know that, so I am stepping back fully aware, but with a lesser intent.

I cannot be consumed with deadlines. I need to write, again, like I did, when I could and how I am. It is the process that I somehow became distracted from.

It’s personal when you realize that you are not all that you have, but you are all that holds you back.

By Laurel Christie

Every morning for the past two months, I wake and gauge the weather from the open slots in the blinds from the first light of day. I lay there, blanketed, on my right side, my good side, silently becoming again, with the whispers of how do I feel already smokily winding their way through my body.
  It was impossible to rise, check the phone, and without a thought, mechanically start the machine that showers, that washes down a slight breakfast, that chooses a uniform for the day, that drives to a familiar destination to generate income, only to later drive back to a place not my own, unaware of the miles passing beneath the tires because the mind plays a continual loop of a fantasy life, lived somewhere else in a pendulum sway of past and future.
  I lie here and think, those days are over. I am alone and unemployed.
  It took a move, at 53 years old, to break what I hadn’t even realized. . . a lifelong pattern of habitual feelings, behaviors, and actions that kept me cocooned in a belief system that I suppose was just good enough, familiar, and frankly quite boring.
  And even more truthful, I readied myself daily, armored and disguised in playing small in a suburban part of New England where my parents grew up, and their parents before them, and so on.
  Was I afraid of life?
  I never thought about it.
  I did things, of course; raised a family, married and divorced. Twice. I indulged in my creative endeavors by singing in bands, continuing on doggedly with my art in spurts of actively painting, then having years of dry spells where inexplicably I couldn’t touch paint to paper.
  I would write in a special journal occasionally, usually arduous tales of woe, under the pen, rifling words of disappointment on where I thought I should be. Where was I going? Why was I stuck?
  Weekends would come, and I reveled in those years of consoling myself in the company of long-term friends, where we would smoke and drink wine together, forgetting that life had a way of dredging the bottom of our lakes, looking for those drowning, lost souls that were important to someone.
  Then it all became too much.
  There was no more hiding behind alcohol or relationships. I was addicted to MORE in whatever form it chose to take, and my life was spared in recovery.
  That was thirteen years ago, and through the hills and valleys of this journey, the question is not so much am I afraid, but is my present life based on old assumptions and paradigms from the conditioning of family, peers and environment, thus creating what was once the familiar, the comfortable, and the known, is now completely stepping outside into the unrecognizable, into the virtual unknown.
  What was I expecting in a move to a new state, where I was jobless, and knew no one?
  My partner moved for a job, and I followed. Beyond that, I never considered how this upheaval would change me in so many ways, but also hold a mirror to the core of my fears, doubts and insecurities.
  I suddenly felt old beyond my years, friendless and wandering the city streets, searching for ways to acquaint myself with not only this foreign place, but the surprising notion of who I was without my safety nets?
  I felt I needed to thrust my whole being back into the rote of a job, any job, while studying for a test as part of the state licensing requirements to continue my therapy practice. In two months’ time, I quit two menial jobs, got into a car accident, visited numerous churches in search of solace and spent many days feeling lost and miserable. I created a separateness with my concerned partner, a witness to my daily crying jags, and laments over how I was not contributing, not viable, that I hated living in the city.
  I longed for connection, and searched for it in recovery groups, spiritual groups, social media. . . anything to distract me from the obvious disconnection with myself. I was failing.
  A wise person once said to me, “Any time we search for anything, it is because we are unhappy.”
  Like any addiction, I realized that I was again searching for meaning outside of myself for knowledge, comfort, answers.
  I needed to slow down. My mind had been racing, for years, over the pressure to be larger than life, to have the ideal relationship, and to be a recognized and monetarily successful artist before time ran out.
  But in all the time of searching, my inner well was as dry as dust, and darkened by my futile attempts to get somewhere.
  Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “Wherever you go, there you are.” No truer words have been spoken. Ever since I had read that phrase, I repeated it to others, and to myself but never quite underst0nding the brevity of its meaning.
  Here I am, in a brand new situation. Did I want to carry around this warped package, wrapped with anxiety and fear in an old sack slung over my back?
  I had to change my thinking, and when I truly availed myself to my new world, the answers came through signs, symbols and intuitive feelings.
  I saw birds that represented freedom, the fragrant smell of balsam fir reminded me of the beauty of nature everywhere. The small sketches I created didn’t have to be masterpieces, they kept me in an artful creative mindset. The exploration of the city exposed beautiful architecture and food from all cultures.
  The opportunity to truly rest, with the support of my partner, was finally accepted.
  Slow down. Calm. Ritual. Kindness.
  You don’t have to believe everything you think.
  Let it go. Let it go. Let it go.
  The practice is daily. Every moment can be considered a success. Sometimes it is eating well. Sometimes it is reaching out and making that phone call to a friend. Sometimes it is five minutes of doing nothing. Sometimes it is a walk, playing with the dogs, making some marks on a paper, getting one task done.
  Sometimes it is just a good hair day.
  My expectations are gone because the future has not, and will never, arrive. There is great relief in that. It lets me off the hook. I am as good as I shall be.
  Here. Today.

© 2019 Laurel Christie

Laurel Christie is a healer, an artist and writer who simply lives in the woods of New Hampshire with my partner and two dogs. Her fascination with the way human beings relate to one another, inspires her art, poetry and vlog musings.

Our heads are now so full of passwords and PIN numbers, it has become a daily test to retain what is ours in this broad and bold digital universe.

A mix of digits and symbols, alphanumeric in some form or another, passwords have become the bane of our existence A code of some sort — one for each device, every application or platform —is required to do just about anything.

Everything is online. With nimble fingers we set out to sign in, login, logon, and unlock (or try) our meagre lives. Bank accounts, personal documents, emails, websites and social media sites all need an electronic signature to be used and viewed.

Password requested or password rejected; our memory is tested each time. With a need to protect personal data, security has become so precise it will quickly lock you out if it’s not correct. Often it is not.

Memory fails even the brightest minds. Did you ever notice how you are forced to reset a password at the most inconvenient time? How on earth will you remember the one you select, when there are dozens of others clogging up our memory banks? All you know is that the device will not accept what you have used before.

I have a mental gallery of passwords required in both my personal and professional lives, and they are constantly changing.

At work, there is a series of security steps before I even have a chance to enjoy my morning coffee. At irregular intervals throughout the weeks and months (especially when you least expect it) you are called upon to change your sign-in signature.

I have tried to set up a system for instant recall, but I fail again and again, in spite of it all.

With variations of one word or phrase, I’ve tried to replace numbers with letters. A zero can easily become an ‘O’, or vice-versa (you think) but often it is not quite so. A lower case L looks much like a one, but to remember which is which leaves me dazed and confused.

Then, when I think I’ve got it, I come up against personal verification questions to confirm my somewhat fickle identity. It’s then you realize the questions were set up seven or nine years ago, when my favourite movie was different than the one it is now.

Even the simplest answers are never obvious. How could I forget my best friend in high school. . . or my mother’s maiden name?

It seems I do, time and again.

By Heather E. Cameron

We are lost in shells of a former self 
Locked in prisons of longing 
Tucked away on the back of a shelf
Lessons learned from the wrong things 
We are stuck in a time of regression
In a boat we know will sink
Trapped in our minds of depression
With our own thoughts we no longer can think 
We are wandering these beat-up streets 
Throwing our hearts and souls away
While the oceans are no longer clean sheets 
And the skies are nothing but gray 
We are sitting in the in-between 
Waiting for the magic 
Not willing to save the scenes 
Where this play has become quite tragic 
We are headed to a place where weapons of old no longer protect us 
A place of despair and fear 
But I’m going to hitch a ride on this struggle bus  
Before we all just disappear 

@ 2019 hec_poetry 

Heather E Cameron is a poet from the small town of Wauconda IL. where you can find her drinking coffee and dreaming of big cities and wide landscapes.Follow her work on Instagram @hec_poetry 

I unfollowed @realDonaldTrump on Twitter last week.

I really hadn’t been using Twitter much lately, having grown tired of the incessant notifications the social media platform keeps pushing out, most of them promulgating that the U.S. President has something more to say.

Before the official presidential campaign had even started, I began following Trump’s Twitter account as his abject lunacy provided the sort of ironic, and moronic, humour that continues to this day. Through the process, and since he was elected, Trump’s Tweets have become even more narcissistic and disturbingly mean-spirited.

Many of the insulting, off-the-cuff comments were hurting real people. I realized it’s not that funny.

It especially hit me a few days into the new year when I man I know from a writer’s group, a contact through Facebook and a frequent contributor to the The Tattooed Buddha, opened up on social media. As one of about 800,000 U.S. government employee, he presented the reality of where he was with the shutdown, then, only 13 days old.

He did not know when he would work, or when he would be paid, but he did know that in 13 days he would be in trouble. Like most of us who count on our paycheques to feed our families, feed the mortgage or pay the rent, he was concerned over how he would live, no matter how modestly.

In the FB post, he identified that he wasn’t looking for people to feel sorry for him, he was simply putting a human face on a very public problem. He was one of the “real people” affected by what was happening in the states.

Now, more than a month later, governmental employees are still not back at work, and Trump’s funding demands for an over-priced, unnecessary wall continue, as has the audacity to continuously remind us of both his ignorance, and the unfairness of the situation.

Each Tweet from his dainty little fingers becomes more ridiculous and more dangerous to a nation that is polarized and suffering. This is the leader of a democratically-free nation holding back the personal economic prosperity of his constituents.

What the hell?

The United States is not my country. Donald Trump is not my president, and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, even vote for him. I have followed world politics for as long as I can remember, and spent many years reporting on that of my own country. I have never seen anything like this.

It. Is. Discraceful.

Period.

Still, life goes on.

I will ignore the bullshit and bafflegab coming out of Washington (though I can’t ignore its impact globally) and be inspired by the true strength and character of a man I hardly know.

The writer, father of a couple of teenagers, did not wait for his call back to work, and did what any self-respecting human would do. He went out and found a “shutdown” job.

Educated, and probably over qualified, he is now selling fancy sandwiches at a local restaurant.

His service is not only to the hungry lunchtime customers, but mainly to his family. He did what a loving husband and father would do; he took a job to put food on the table, to take care of his own, and survive another day.

All decked out in the company uniform, he posted on Instagram not that long ago. It’s not his regular job, but it is a job. After seeing the photo, I was proud (and that may not count for anything) to see an honest, hardworking American doing what he needed to do. I know he is not the only one.

Who knows how long the shutdown will continue, and who knows what adjustments this man and his family will have to make because of the assumed divide between his regular salary and the paycheque he will receive, but he is working.

He is working, despite the efforts of his country’s leader to hold him back.

‘You can’t keep a good man down’. This old adage has never been more clear to me.

So, I won’t miss Trump’s irreverent reminders of the kind of man he is (even though the Twitter algorithms somehow sneak a few through), and you can’t get away from reports on traditional or social media (yes, we do talk about him here in Canada), but I have managed to reduce my Trump intake by erasing him from my Twitter feed.

I may even begin tweeting again from @sayit4word. Maybe I can push a little positivity into a world that truly needs it.