Around The House #2 - Smooth Suffering

This one's not really an alternative home remedy, as expected in the hippie sense... but it is a remedy of sorts, and a little alternative. Okay, maybe a lot alternative. But I love it.

The Russian mystic Gurdjieff said that addiction to suffering was the one he had the hardest time getting his students to give up*, and I can relate. I mean, we've got to struggle a little in life to make it worthwhile, right?

Well, I'm tired of fighting out there. I think I'll control how I receive my pain from now on, thanks. Conveniently, I've found a great way to get all the torture I could ever need in one place. I've also decided it's okay to relinquish my old quasi-feminist body-hair-for-the-principle-of-it stance, and give into my aesthetic enjoyment of hairlessness. (Hmm.. sorry, ex-boyfriends!) So,

Ladies, and deliciously metrosexual men, say hello to your new worst best friend:

The Epilady Discrette

Why sabotage success in your life because you have some subconscious programming that says you have dues to pay? Just take all that shit out on yourself with one easy handheld device, and be done with it. Nothing like ripping hairs out of their folicles, root and all, to put you in your place. Plus, you may just find yourself a little sexier, when you're done.

$35 on Amazon. Enjoy!

*Conscious Loving by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, pp.90

Going From Broke #3 - Gone Overboard

I'm frikkin tired. I feel like I've been running a marathon.... and really, in my terms, I haven't been doing all that much. What I have been doing a lot of is examining my financial picture, and digging into core values and assumptions around oh, little questions like, um... only my worth as a human being.

One of my books seems to shame readers into realizing they shouldn't live on credit, spending above their means. Of course, logically I agree with this assertion by all means. However, it's only been a few months ago that I, realizing I'm trying to build a new business, and bound to see a lull in income, accepted that maybe it's okay to live a stint as young and broke, and let myself accumulate a little credit debt. Well, with my allowance from old Uncle Unemployment Insurance running out, I got scared last week, and thought maybe I should just learn how to live within my means, whatever they are at any given moment. So, I budgeted the rest of the month, and have been trying to nurse $48 to cover life in LA for 2 weeks.

Now, tired, hungry, and lonely, I say "f*c& this."

Living within my means right now would require moving back in with my parents, which would prevent me from two other financial keys in this process: 1) building a client base on the Westside, and 2) stepping into adulthood and acknowledging my real value as a human being. Neither of those things can I do from my messy childhood bedroom in Simi Valley.

So, with caution, and awareness, but a healthy-dose of much-needed self love, I say "Welcome back, citicard! I missed you!"

Going From Broke #1

The first installment of the chronicles of entering financial adulthood, and stuff.

I realized something today. My Spiritual Psychology education will make me question this statement later, but I'll just say it anyway: Making a living is hard.

I interject with a moment of Heidi history (feel free to skip ahead, if you're feeling impatient) : I know I haven't reached the stage where I don't struggle with it yet, but I figured that was because up until the last couple months, I've still been sorting out what I want to be "when I grow up". Well, after a year of philiso-psychological unpacking of that question, I finally (like in my last post) just let it go. I gave myself permission to not know, and not be "successful" (whatever that is), and to be a broke kid for a while, if that's the life experience I seem to have been supposed to be having. I also removed the burden of my entire fulfillment from the shoulders of my career, where I'd placed it years ago. In doing so, I freed myself up to be open to what I really want to do know. Which is Integrative Personal Training, or Mind-Body Coaching, in case I haven't already told you. (No, there won't be a shameless self-promotional plug in every post, I promise).

Follow all that? It's the Cliff-notes version of about a year of self-work, so I don't expect it to make sense. It's tangential to the matter at hand anyway. The matter at hand is that life is expensive, and paying for it... (again, my inner life-coach is trying to get me to rephrase as I write, but) paying for it blows.

I've been toying with the idea of working in food-service lately. Never done it, I'm just barely charming enough to be able to handle myself well in a tip-driven job, I bet, and working in a cool hippie-fueling vegan joint could be rad. I notice myself delaying applying though, for fear that working the kitchen at YMCA camp won't be sufficient experience to get the job.

Fuck, I think.. I'm a grad student, with a degree from a top-tier university, who gets paid to jump off buildings and crash through furniture, and helps people change their lives on a daily basis (well, okay, on good days), and I'm afraid of not being good enough to get some crappy waitressing job that I'm sure to use as a good source of complaining down the road? Well, yeah. I don't have much experience.

A buddy of mine is looking at taking a job hanging Christmas lights this holiday season, to fill the gaps between stunt jobs. He has extensive foodservice work history, so I asked him... "you'd make so much more money, why don't you get back into that for a while?" So get this... he tells me it's too competitive. He'd have to spend months pounding the pavement to get a waiting job. Which strikes me as not too different from stunts. Or building my training client base. Or landing yoga classes. Or selling paintings. Or booking singing gigs. Or any of the things I've considered doing with my life. Shit, parents pay thousands of dollars for SAT tutoring for their kids, cause this crazy competitiveness makes the average teenager "not good enough".

I used to think that was frustrating and stupid... why does everything seem to be so much harder to succeed at now than I imagine it for previous generations? Why does the majority of my age group have to go back to live with their parents during at least one point in their supposed "adult" lives? There's some actual statistic I could cite, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

Now, I've changed my mind. I like that everything's so fucking hard... it means you had better damn well love what you do. I think it was tempting for earlier generations to get stuck in jobs they didn't really like, because landing and keeping those jobs was easier than having to put the immense energy required to carve out their own paths. Now, it seems to me that going one's own way hasn't really gotten much harder, but there are fewer and fewer easy default paths. At least with Southern California costs of living, just hoping for "whatever" in terms of work won't pay rent. Anything is going to take ridiculous amounts of energy. So, its like the forces-that-be have sweetened the "be true to ourselves" pot, by removing some of the allure of living by default. We're left to make the choice.

So I'm taking one of my favorite sage's teachings, and above all, having fun. I might go work my ass off to get a waitress job, and stay there as long as its fun. I will most definitely slave away creating my marketing machine for my business, because working with my clients just feels damn good inside. I'll put the energy out... cause damn it, it's becoming clear I'm going to have to. But I'm only going to give it to what makes my life joyful.

Think it'll work?

(next time on Going From Broke... does it really have to be hard?)