Lisa Shea's Blog, page 334

Marines

Quiz time! It’s his birthday! Bad boy growing up, joined the #Marines, who is he and what movie is this from?

Meditate

It’s nearing my 10pm meditation. I’m nearly ready to publish my 5th novella, so that is quite soothing! All for a good cause . #meditate

Palette Contest

Making progress each day with a fun contest – to turn this palette into something intriguing. Right now I’m in the testing stage. The finished artwork is due in a week.

Pepper plants in Containers

Pepper plants are doing great in the window, steadily making more peppers for us – fun idea for those who like it hot -

Day 17 / Forgiveness and “Others”

Day 17 / Forgiveness and “Others”

Sometimes this book seems to be repetitively specific, while sometimes it goes a bit wildly in the other direction. “Others”? Others can apparently mean strangers, acquaintances, friends, co-workers, you name it. I think this is a bit too broad to work on all at once. So I’m going to segment this out.

Today I’ll work on strangers. Probably has something to do with this CraigsList guy who is upset with me.

It’s intriguing to me that I can feel hurt by strangers. With all the actual concerns in the world, and the real care I have for how I impact family and close friends, surely I can’t reasonably be concerned about how every stranger out there interacts with me. Maybe their mother just passed away. Maybe their tooth is broken and they’re in pain. Maybe they grew up abused and unloved and now this is how they see the world.

I certainly can’t change strangers. They are on their own path and hopefully they will eventually find a place of greater peace and joy.

Also, if someone is a volcano, it doesn’t make sense for me to take responsibility for that. I can’t take responsibility for being unable to cap it. If they haven’t been able to do it themselves during the years of their life, and their family and friends have been unable to help, then it is foolhardy for me to expect to do better.

I think I sometimes want to save every hurt puppy – but we just can’t. We all only have 24 hours, and X energy. I absolutely want to be kind to strangers. I want to present a serene point of contact for them. My energy should be positive.

That said, if a stranger is in a position where they are hostile and unhappy, I also need to let them continue on their path. It could be that the very thing they need right now is time alone, to uncoil.

Spontaneous Tomatoes

Last autumn our marigold planter on our front steps spontaneously grew a tomato plant. A bird must have dropped a seed in there. When winter came, we brought the planter inside, figuring the tomato plant should get its chance to make it. It’s still going strong and now has tomatoes!

Saffron Crocus

Just waking up, gorgeous, fluffy snow falling. Did brief yoga and admired the #saffron crocus growing by the window.  It’s growing well!

Song Lyrics and Copyright

OK I’m completely baffled and need some help. I have permission to use song lyrics in my novel. I’m looking through novel after novel (novels that use song lyrics) to figure out how to properly list the artists’ copyright on my book’s copyright page. But I can’t find any book which does this! And I’ve looked through thirty now that do have lyrics. Does anybody know the proper format?

Meditate

Heading into 10pm meditation time – lots to ponder tonight. The nature of how we communicate with each other. #meditate

Day 16 / Forgiveness and Children

Day 16 / Forgiveness and Children

I’ve been pondering this one for several days. My first reaction is that I wouldn’t need to forgive my son – I’m the one who needs forgiveness. I think of all the things I didn’t do right in his life. I remember them keenly. Even little things like, one night when he dropped his bottle, I reached under the bed, grabbed it, and gave it back to him. Then he instantly threw up because I’d given him last night’s bottle which had somehow fallen down there. Not that he was really hurt by taking a mouthful of the sour milk, but it stands out in my mind as me failing. And of course there are other situations that all stack up.

But the point of this exercise is to dig deeper and examine issues from all sides. I already am working on the “Forgive Lisa” aspect of things in various other days’ exercises. So I gave this one more thought. Were there really things I might need to forgive my son for, that could be impacting our relationship?

I realized, after some pondering, that it’s bothered me that he isn’t trying to get a job / move his life forward. I know the job market is tough. But to not even try, or to not move forward with schooling, doesn’t make sense to me. He could be writing novels. He could be doing all sorts of productive things.

Instead, what he does, along with helping my ex with random tasks, is to run a twitter feed where he shouts at people and swears. When I recently had an IM discussion with him about the nature of violence and pornography in video games, he began shouting at me. This all bothers me immensely. He’s 25. He’s an adult male. I make excuses and ignore it and figure “boys will be boys” – but at a core level this is not what I want to see in an adult. Male or female. One should not have to shout at another to force a point on them. Nor should one have to swear.

So I think this exercise has helped a lot, in bringing these feelings to the surface. Now I have to figure out what to do next. Clearly he’s 25 and is an adult. And I did speak up the next day and indicate that his shouting was inappropriate. But maybe it is time for me to “unfollow” his feeds, if this is the way he interacts with others, so it doesn’t upset me. I can love of him and also not approve of the way he interacts with his Twitter people.