SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

BLACK DOG, EARLY MORNING

Here is a writing exercise wherein you write down an assumption that bothers you, and then reflexively retaliate with what would constitute the opposite of that assumption:

✞ I will be unable to keep up with the standard of living in San Francisco, accrue debt and interest, lose my house, and become the Unabomber.
☽ I will thrive using my skills, talent, and proximity to community. Subsequently I will share the winnings with the community by revealing the methodology of creation, and in the inspiration emanating from what I create.

✞ I don’t have enough time, nor energy. Thus I will run out of both and be imprisioned.
☽ I will slow down and be free. An action performed gracefully emanates from one who has taken all the time necessary to rid oneself of distractions and false emergency. Someone who appears fast, has taken an exceedingly disciplined approach to slowing everything around them down.

✞ My past mistakes have doomed me.
☽ My past mistakes are lessons that if properly observed, help to solve the riddles that would be unsolvable if we hadn’t made the mistakes in the first places.

✞ I will be unable to take care of Ramona while operating in a society that deems it finaancially impossible to do so from a time is money perspective.
☽ Ramona, a descendant of wolves, exists to illuminate the false assumptions of human society, and in so doing, shows how to properly parcel time and energy to live a healty, wise, and realized life under the true principles of nature.

✞ I don’t have time, nor energy for love and companionship in human form.
☽ Smart work creates the circumstances wherein these stars align. Smart work is fulfilling work, and conducted at a rate, and time scale wherein the basic needs of life are taken care of with no sense of desparation.

✞ My past art and music are embarrassments I can never outrun.
☽ The purpose for making art and music is in the playing, learning and presentation. It is a process oriented field, like the baseball field you left too soon, and switched to music to redeem that regret. Failure is part of the game and part of why you like playing. Being in the batter’s box is fun because you are using God given kinethestic intelligence and ingenuity to defeat failure. It isn’t fun without the possibility of failure or the experience of it.

✞ I’ve wasted time and money making three websites for my art, music and garden businesses respectively, when there is only enough time in life to do one thing well, and probably not even that.
☽ Intelligence, and all ideas are radio signals. They serve as tools and instruments these websites do. They cost relatively little, and they’ve gotten better with each bit of work you’ve done on them. They will pay for themselves and help you to organize and prevent that which is beautiful and well rendered, and simultaneously show what to discard in order to make room for more innovative work.

✞ I’m too backed into a corner psychologically and financially, from a stress and anxiety perspective, to quit smoking.
☽ Breaking this habit happens relatively quickly. You won’t miss it once it’s gone. On the contrary, you will feel better and notice it, and enjoy it. It will open up new areas, and return your focus to where it naturally belongs when you are operating as the expression of the wilderness you enjoy being most.

✞ My back fence, and house actually, will deteriorate and fall down faster and more expensively than I am able to afford to fix.
☽ You have developed the skills to fix it yourself. That is a powerful investment that you haven’t yet seen fully realized. Imagine: You can build a fence with only the cost of materials, whereas most people have to pay thousands of dollars in labor costs, and even then, lack the perspective to properly select and verify the quality of the labor. You can do this! This is the ground of independence, on which freedom is bound to take root and flower. This garden will grow for you.