Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Give It Away Now/ Charity

WARNING: I'm a little bit buzzed right now, read at your own peril.

I got rejected from Hunter College this morning. In retaliation, I had a rum punch for breakfast, whined via text message, forgot why I was upset, ran errands, and signed up for a writing workshop. I think I may take rejection exceptionally well. Or it could be my short attention span at full mast.

Additionally, today I learned that the Georgia State Supreme Court called limits on malpractice awards "unconstitutional." Well goody. Ten days past my statute of limitations. I have not decided whether I will pursue the change of other excruciatingly unfair laws for the good of all georgia-kind or just take my wounds and my injuries and limp off into the future.

I have started an investment portfolio for the first time in years. I've been investing in my health for the past 6 - 7 years, health care is expensive. I had a fairly amusing conversation with a guy who didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground on the topic of the new health care bill. Obviously, my crippled ass is in favor of it and I'm damn glad it passed. I still recall the shock of learning Americans not employed by the government or in the military didn't necessarily have health coverage. This is an aside, but my co-intern at the Detroit Free Press Christy told me her mother died at home, of breast cancer, because health insurance wouldn't cover the condition. Her family converted from being Republican to Democrat after that.

Anywho, since I'm investing in my health with tens-of-thousands per year because I've just gotten tired of spending that kind of money, I've decided to put some of that money toward playing with the stock market. 24 hours in, I've taken a $24.00 drubbing. Oh well. I'll do some more reading and then evaluating my "starter stocks." I've never invested in individual stocks, I've always tended toward Mutual Funds instead. But I like stocks, thus far, and they are fun and easy to buy in small amounts. All good.

Well, I'm going to enjoy my buzz.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Be My Backdoor Man

After weeks of reading the entire Sookie Stackhouse series and brooding like a hen, I'm out of the funk. This morning I woke up and read a random passage of Simple Abundance. I hated it. It was about asking for what we want. I felt, if at all possible, even broodier. I hurrumphed around the bathroom and gallumphed down the stairs and harrumphed into the office and worked. I considered canceling my afternoon appointments. I enjoyed my surly.

Then my buddy Colorful Child IM'd me and we chatted about feeling stumped in our respective developments as sentient beings, women and artists. We chatted and had breakfast and inserted a few "brb" and eventually came up with a really fine idea for promoting ourselves through the efforts of one another. There is nothing more nerve wracking than promoting oneself. Tim Ferriss makes it look easy, but it just isn't. I can run someone else's multi-million dollar venture and go to the mats over 1 cent, but I have problems remembering to attend to my own affairs much of the time. I've tried personal assistants. They make me batty, all that telling someone else to do when i can just do it, or think about doing it, myself. Then managing the end product, oy vey!

So, we will barter promotional efforts to one another. I'll do her, she'll do me, at least in the earliest stage and see how it goes. We've nothing to lose, we're both too squirrely to do it for ourselves.

I had tea and rum for lunch with a bit of McDonald's and enjoyed the fine guitar-picking stylings of Fatback Deluxe and decided it's just a Blues kind of period. I have been frought and distressed and generally put out, which is Blues living if ever there was any. There has also been plenty of "doing plenty of things I don't want to and hearing the whip crack on my back" going on. Today was unseasonably warm as well, so Mississippi Delta, I'm with you in spirit.

I found an old email exchange with one of my personal idols, The Sweet Potato Queen, Jill Connor Browne. Don't you just hate when someone says something and you think "that's not true" but then discover, much to your horror and mortification, that they were right on the money? Money. They were right about money. They were right about another person. They were right about another person and money. It's like feeling a pebble drop from the back of your throat into the pit of your stomach with no digestion, that's what it's like to read words of wisdom and realize just how transparent you were to someone else when you thought you were occluding everyone.

Today after the chat and before the rum, I thought about myself. I thought about the hallmarks of my personality. I'm ruthless. I'm occasionally feckless. I'm stubborn and I'm single-minded. I'm smart and tough and fragile and quite worldly, but that comes at the expense of knowing a lot of American cultural hallmarks. So, taking all of that, I am going to create myself out of spiderwebs and spanish moss.