I know this is a month past Solstice, but I want you to see what Janet, with whom I have resumed Sunday 8 AM LAF meditations and I —

— were up to with our highly creative and collaborative friends in Jackson Hole way back when. Two of those friends, Todd and Paula, have now joined our LAF meditations, 8 AM, in their own time zones.

As an addictive personality, the best I can do is to cultivate healthy addictions, as substitute for unhealthy ones. I learned that long ago. And in such manner I gave up both cigarettes and weed, my two major substance abuse addictions.

How I Stopped Smoking

Another addiction is more difficult to work with: my lifelong addiction to “the news.” Even as a five-year-old, I would run to get the paper as soon as it dropped on the front steps, and quickly scan the headlines. Would the world end that day or not? That was my prevailing preoccupation, as a war-wounded child of The Bomb, born during World War II, and abandoned emotionally by my mother when my father was in the Phillipines. Not that she meant to abandon me. Her fear of him not coming home took her under, into depression. And of course, as her child, I both picked up on her fear and tried to make her happy so that she would mother me.

I wonder if I’m still doing that. Wonder if, in these daily blog posts, I’m picking up on the cultural fear and trying to make us happy so I will be loved.

My chronic, lifelong addiction to “the news” is something that I want to be able to work with, not by ignoring it, or withdrawing from society altogether, but by moving into a less enslaved, more reasonable relationship with it. Because I know that this addiction has also helped my own intellectual/philosophical nature to flower. In my attempts to gain perspective and on and to share “what I perceive is happening,” I grow, and feel fulfilled as a result.

This morning, while cleaning the kitchen, I thought about taking some time off.  And immediately felt guilty! Can you imagine! I’m “supposed to” keep posting because I have a few hundred subscribers who would “miss me.” Really?

My larger self looks at this guilt and thinks, wow, here you are again, lapsing into childhood, when you felt guilty constantly, watched over by a strict, stern, judgmental “God.” Oh wait a minute, that was my Dad! That was his nature, which BTW, I grew to appreciate over time, especially when I discovered that I’m the same way, and not just because he is. Because my own nature also tends to be very disciplined, and during the two years of this plandemic, especially disciplined, so that I wouldn’t freak out and do something crazy in public just to jolt the terrorized sleeping ones from their mass formation hypnosis!

So every day, this pattern, for two years now, with no days off. (Though I do adjust to join our Green Acres two-hour work parties twice weekly.) No travels like I used to do, regularly, both short trips and long. Nothing but this, this:

Wake up, eat while on ipad devouring news, do initial tai chi, walk dog 3-4 miles, do blogpost, eat lunch, nap, work on “recapitulation project” — to archive just about my entire written corpus since 1973 — and I’m not including blogposts. I’m talking essays, and book-length manuscripts, some published, some not, but about 85% have stood the test of time, to my surprise. At this point I’m putting the entire collection, much of it retyped, into google docs, before transferring to an online archive. I’m about five years into this late life project, and estimate two more altogether.

At around 4 pm, I stop, do yoga, chikung, taichi, plus errands and deal with whatever’s come up here in the running of Green Acres Permaculture Village, then dinner, more ipad news, bed by 8:30 p.m. — with ipad, in case I wake up in the middle of the night, which I always do.

Every day. No days off! I think in these past two years, I’ve gone without doing a daily blog post maybe seven times?

So, as of one week from now I’m going to at least take Sundays off each week and perhaps more.

And starting tomorrow, I may spend more time on my other websites that I’ve pretty much ignored.

So this next week might be iffy, hearing from me here.

Here’s a sample from the coming recap collection.

_OPENSPACE_ IS A VERB