A Post of 1000 Tales

Hey, gang! Welcome to my life – where anything is possible and nothing is as it seems. I’m Freedom and I’ll be your host, coming at you from within the depths of Geistopia.

Welcome To My Life is a project, an experiment in Life and ART. A living storyboard, if you will. Its premise is that life is experiential, and that you can, and do, experience the life you choose. It is based on The Wheel of Life and The ARTs for The New Millennium as life building tools.

Welcome to my Life is an I T.V. Studios/Geist…House Players Production, in association with the Center for Creative Inspirationalism. JustUs Productions, the parent company, would like to give a ‘Shout-Out’ to the following for their ongoing, and sometimes unknowing, inspiration and support:

Princess Cuddlebug

Princess Sunshine

Craze & Co.

The Shaman

The Pillar

The Entire Putt-Putt-Putter Clan

Professor Siggy Chong

The VanMan and General Ralph Glossop (may they R.I.P.)

‘Blue 326’

The Original KLT

The Looch

The Baker

Bert-on

Andy Pandy

The Mudder

The Prodigy

The Wix-ians

Piz-Niffer

Dancing Queen

Downtown Encyclopedia Brown

Mama Rabbit

And, of course, a very generous sponsor who (not-so-much) wishes to remain anonymous.

It is…Sunday, February 11, 2018. Time...Deferred.

Theme of the Week – Back to the Beginning

Lesson of the Week – Slllloooow Doooowwwnn

Observation of the Week – Every Moment is Divine

This was a particularly rough week. It wasn’t bad. It had its challenges. I’m not angry. I’m not depressed, nor fearful. [I am a little sore, but that’s a whole other matter altogether.] It was active – on many planes – and somewhat intense at times. There was just so much hitting me all at once along the way. So much, in fact, that the beginning of the week seems like it was a month ago. It is but a blur, a vague memory. [Very vague.] There were shifts in the job arena – some coming, some going, some revisited. There were revelations and epiphanies. Somewhere in the Universe a floodgate opened up and all of this stuff just came rushing at me – visions and inspirations and moments. I’m fairly certain that I have spent the past 36 hours in a spiritual vortex [And, if my calculations are correct, I have another 60 to go.]

This project is one of those things on which the light did shine. I started taking a closer look at it this past week. I thought about what I’d like to see happening down the line, the overall and long-term vision. I sorted through the past, all of the faces this project has worn and the various formats it has taken along the way, and tried to find the foundations to rebuild upon. Then I stepped back and looked at the Resources I currently have before me to see what I could fit together and utilize.

As I have pointed out previously – This is a reboot. Somewhere out there, tangled in the inter-web, are, not one but, two previous versions of this blog. I like what Wix has to offer overall. I may have given up the ability to do fun fonts, but the ‘take’ from it all could beneficial. [Not to mention that I am still floundering my through this so I do not really know how all of it works yet.]

One of the Goals of the reboot was to condense things a bit – the same amount of information, but in less space. This has proven to be very challenging. There are many things from the past few weeks that I still have not touched on, and must before we proceed forward.

(That being said – This will probably be a long post.)

One of the things I have gained in my switch to Wix was a wonderful little thing called ‘Categories’ – labels, sections, divisions. Interestingly enough, this is the core of how WTML actually functions. First and foremost, it is a blog. It tells a story -the story of my life. Currently, that story is about ‘The Reboot.’[Category #1.]

And, let us not forget that, it is an experiment. I am working towards something. There are theories and philosophies at play. I’m throwing it all out there and observing, gauging, the results. These posts are my notes. So, I think a good second category would be something along the lines of…’Experiment.’ Or, perhaps, since the ‘experiment’ is under the watchful eye of our beloved Dr. Hans Franz von Lichtenshteiner we should give it a more suiting title like – ‘The Prognosis.’ Much of what I have already written in this post would then fall under that category. The rest would fit nicely under a category that, in the past, was fondly known as ‘Director’s Notes.’

‘Director’s Notes’ was a segment that developed over the original 10 week…’Pilot.’ It was a chance for me to sit down and touch base on some of the more ARTistic choices being made. WTML started as a video project (a television concept)…to a blog…to an audio blog…to a blog…to a vlog…and, now, back to a blog. So, “Director’s Notes’ would have been the ‘Behind-the-Scenes’ interview explaining all of the hows and wherefores. Today, and hopefully in the future, it would also be a good category for analysis, and explanations, of the actual videos. But, more on that later.

So to wrap this up – Look for new categories to appear on the Blog page of my blog site. *sticks out tongue teasingly.*

Moving right along…*sings* “footloose and fancy free”…*in his best Kermit voice* “I’m ready for the big time. Is it ready for me?”

The Prodigy Piques Perusal

I don’t know how it happened exactly. But, it did…and it kind of took off with some momentum. The Prodigy came to visit one night, and, as we pow-wowed in The Cave, chillin’ and chattin’ we somehow came upon the topic of WTML.

More precisely – the voices in my head.

It was my second week into The Reboot, and I had played around for a moment with doing a video segment. [It never did come to fruition.] So, at some point I somehow referenced that particular filming and, essentially, the conversations I have with myself.

Needless to say, he was a little confused. The Prodigy came along about two years after the momentum of WTML came to a screeching halt. So I had to explain that when the camera goes on the characters they come out. And, before I know it I am having entire dialogues between three different people. WTML is more than just a blog. It’s a whole world. There is a studio and a set. WTML was meant to not only be inspirational, but entertaining as well. So, a host of characters developed along the way. When I write like this you, the reader, miss out on them. But, they are still there, whispering in my head.

Nonetheless, that conversation led to watching some of the WTML videos on YouTube. He enjoyed them, so much in fact that he went home and watched some more. He seems to have loved them. Later, he asked me why I don’t do them anymore. Apparently he thinks they have potential for greatness. There are reasons I don’t do it anymore. First, editing those videos together was easily a 40 hour job each week. So, back at that time I would do whatever work I had before me and then do WTML. That is pretty much all I did. That was my week, week after week. I worked when work was available and then home to ‘the studio.’ I enjoyed it, but at times it became very overwhelming. I enjoyed it. I loved it. But it was a lot of time and energy and focus, especially considering I didn’t have a huge following, if any at all. I also developed some ill feelings towards it. WTML has always been a sore spot with my family. I’m not sure why. They have just always hated the project and in many of the fights that would happen it would come up. I would be called crazy, and stupid, and pathetic. Of course, they had never really watched of them. They just hated that I did it.

A newer reason for not doing it is my dental situation. I was watching ‘Moments of Freedom’ and it was hard for me to see. At that time I only had the one broken tooth. It is much worse now. Of course, the dental situation is one of those areas of frustration in my life. Twice I have been close to getting it resolved. Twice it has been snagged away from me. Another of those things you just have to throw your arms in the air and ask, “Why.” The dental issues make it very difficult for me on a daily basis, so to put it all out there on video is a little uncomfortable.

The project had also hit a sort of stalemate – stagnation. It was growing and developing but there were humps I just could not get over at the time. That might be different now. WTML was never really supposed to be just about me. I wanted my friends involved. It’s hard to get people to let you film them. To this day, one of my favorite posts is ‘The 8th Day of Freedom’ which was me hanging out with some friends. There’s just so much life and fun to it. I had also hoped to have ‘guests’, artists and entertainers, helping them to promote themselves. And, of course, there was always supposed to be a bit of ‘sketch comedy.’ But, without other people that became virtually impossible.

Finally, as I watched the old videos I realized something. I don’t have that kind of ‘oomph’ anymore. I lost some of that Spirit along the way. I see it possible that some of that has changed. Maybe there is an opportunity to do reach that point. Maybe, just maybe, it is time for a video reboot as well.

“Hi, I’m an idiot”

For years, this has been the joke. Me? I’m a moron. I can be absent-minded and forgetful. I am great at losing things. And, if you need shit to go wrong I am most definitely your guy. Even the Princesses know this. This was slapped in my face pretty hard this week to the point that I am thinking maybe it’s not so much of a joke and perhaps I should just open all new interactions with that line. Use it as a disclaimer of sorts.

We were in tech for the latest show at the theatre I mentioned in the last several posts. Everything that could have gone wrong on my side of the stage did. Things not working right. Things coming apart. Honestly, I felt like a jackass by the end of the week. It was embarrassing, to say the least. However, putting a positive spin on things, as I so often do – we found everything that could go wrong long before the curtain rose. All the little things that one would not think about, or be looking for, that could happen did happen. So, they all got fixed before there was a performance. So, I guess, sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to be an idiot.

This theatre experience has been a lot of fun for me so far. I think it is a very talented cast and a wonderfully talented production staff. There truly is no business like show business. The other day I arrived at the theatre and one of the actors was being an orangutan. I’m still not sure why. He had just decided on a whim that it had something to do with his character development. [Not really, but it does sound good.] So, he’s all hopping around and making noises and I look at him and say, “God, I wish I had a banana.”

Instantly, everyone was like, “OMG no! You’ll just get him fired up all over again.” So, I smirked that devilish smirk I have, turned to him and played an orangutan myself. It lasted only a few moments, but it was fun. This was a work day for me. I was at my job. Where, other than theatre, can that be an accepted part of a legitimate workday?

Wherefore Art Thou

Why? Why? Why?

Such an interesting question. Why did this happen? Why didn’t that? Why?

Everything happens for a reason. Believe it or not. Every moment is charted and plotted. Every moment has purpose. Sometimes that is hard to see. The Prodigy asked me if I ever wondered why everything happens for a reason. I started to answer no, but that wouldn’t have been totally truthful. I have in the past wondered. But as time moved on, I grew older, and things kept happening, I changed that. I stopped asking why. I stopped asking because I realized that we may never know why. So many things happen to us in our lives that have absolutely nothing to do with us directly. We are but a means to an end – offering the right words of encouragement, being at the right place at the right time to offer assistance, leaving memories ingrained on the minds and souls of others. The vastness of it all becomes incomprehensible after awhile. One of my own personal examples is always my living situation. It is far from ideal by any measure and has wrought much criticism from those around me. No matter what I have done over the years it is something I have not been able to change. It’s almost as if I am being forced to remain here despite how I or anyone else feels about it. This can be stressful. But then, one day the Shaman says to me, “Did you ever think that maybe it has nothing to do with you, but your daughters?”

I thought about that for a long time, as I do with most of the things the Shaman says. He was right. If I lived anywhere else, had any other life, my daughters’ lives would have been very different. Geistopia offers them a lot of blessings that another life never could have. So, maybe that is it. Then again, maybe it is something else. I think about all the times, and ways, that Geistopia has allowed me to be there to help or lift someone up. I think about the flexibility it has allowed me. I think about all the times I never expected to be somewhere to help or lift someone up. It just happened.

That’s the thing about it all. It just happens and we may never why. Not only is it possible that what is happening right now has nothing to with you personally, but it may not have anything to do with anyone with whom you are engaged. What you say or do to some random stranger on the street could impact them to the degree that they then go and say or do something for someone else that moves that person forward. And, on and on that pattern goes until the moment has reached the person for whom it was meant. What you may see as an insignificant moment today could very possibly, three years from now, be the foundation for a life-changing experience for a person you have never met.

I wanted to discuss the pattern, The Cycle, a little more this week, but I think that is better saved for a ‘The Prognosis’ post. It is very important to it all. It is very distinct, and for twenty years, it has always been there. [To some degree or another.]

I think, for now, we are mostly caught up. As always, there are things on my mind and stories I could tell, but it has to come to a close sooner or later. This is the fourth post and 4 is the number of foundations. I think we have a foundation on which to build once more. The stage had been set. The lights have dimmed and the curtain is ready to rise.

Before I sign off officially, I want to just touch base once more on where things currently stand. Every week seems to bring just little shifts. So, I think it is important to keep up with that.

So, I have the whole theatre gig. In a week, money starts coming in from that. By the end of the week, I start my new job and by the end of next week will start getting the money from that. Now this all sounds good and positive, but there is a catch. Between the two jobs, right now, I will make enough to pay my bills once more and get caught up on the things I am behind, including paying some debt that has accrued. In a little more than a month the theatre job comes to an end and so does its income. This will leave me with Just Enough to pay my bills each month.

In both scenarios one thing is certain. I need to make more. If I want to have any kind of a life I need to make more. I need to almost instantly recoup every dollar I spend outside of paying bills. This means, if I want to go to the store and by a can of coffee I need to make that three dollars back almost immediately or somewhere something will be short. The bigger problem with this is that any business investment will also need to be recouped immediately. This is a problem because currently I have a show that I am getting ready to produce/direct and it will take some serious investment. I am working towards doing some craft shows/festivals this year. I need materials and supplies. All of this will have to be earned back as soon as it is spent. Essentially, I need to make more than I can conceive as possible, especially since I do not know where to look for it. But then, this brings us back to Faith. And, remember, in the overall Journey of Life the Lesson of the Journey is Faith.

Finally, a few side notes. First, please feel free to leave comments, questions, and concerns. I don’t know you are there if you don’t say, “Hi.” But, also, you’re experience of WTML is just as important as mine. So, let me know what you think. Secondly, if you would like to connect, or find out more about me, you can find WTML on Facebook @TheNewWTML or myself at @rev.mgeist.

So, without hesitation…

For now and for always, from here in Geistopia this is your beloved Rev wishing you Peace, Love, Light and Freakishness, baby!