Life Could be a Dream [Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom!)

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. 

DOC: Velcum To My Life ees a prochect, un experiment in Life unt ART. A living storyboard, if you will. Its premise ees zat life ees experiential, unt zat you can, unt do, experience ze life you choose. It ees based on Ze Veel of Life unt Ze ARTs for Ze New Millennium as life building tools. Ja, it’s true! 

WALT: Welcome to my Life is a 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 oft-times unknowing, inspiration and support:

Princess Cuddlebug

Princess Sunshine

Company

The Shaman

The Pillar

F’n Bob

The Entire Putt-Putt-Putter Clan

The Warden

FaeriePrincess

Professor Siggy Chong

Sparky Wentz-eclaus

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

The Messengers of The Galactic Federation

 Looch

BJ & The Bull

Ace

Bert-On

The Baker of the Cornbread

Andy Pandy

The Mudder

Wilson

Zason

St. Diane & You (5)

Brother John & Sister Jen

The Bee Man

Spooky Queen

Boom-Boom Snuffbox

The Nameless One

Tim-Bo

The Mayor & The Turkey Man

The Rox

PDT

Sir Richard Slouch

The Wix-ians

The Socialite

The Village of Idiots

Piz-Niffer

Dancing Queen

Downtown Encyclopedia Brown

Chicken Witch

Dick Pointer

Soup, the Son

The Legendary Pink Elephants

Baby-Mama Rabbit

Wisconsin Belle

The Babes

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

It is…Monday, August 19, Two-Thousand and Twenty-More. Time...Holding

Theme – Everything Happens for a Reason - Precise & Perfectly Placed

Lesson – Trust in the Lord G-d with All Your Might

 Observation – I'm not Sympathetic

The Post

 *Pause*

*Get up. Try to set the "mood". Double check necessities. Coffee? Check. Tobacco? Check.*

*Deep sigh*

If I'm going to do this, then I need to do it right. I haven't done it right in a very long time.

WALT: That's what she...

Stop! Stop it.

I need to focus. I cannot rush. I must tell my stories without getting too wordy.

WALT: Good luck with that.

Knock it off.

I get on here and I hurry through my week. I am scattered and frenzied. Anymore, it feels like all my weeks are pretty much the same. That's not because they are. They aren't. But I just never seem able to do them justice in my telling of them.

I wrote once, quite some time ago, that for most of my life I would 'Make-Believe.' As I would hang around Olde Geistopia, the chill moments when life was really being lived, I would 'Make_Believe' that I was in my future life. As I cleaned the house or tended to the property, I would 'Make-Believe' it was my home and property that I was caring for. [Again, my future life.]

When I would sit to write, I would 'Make-Believe' that that was what my life was. I was writing because I was meant to write. In those moments, writing would be the purpose of my being.

Tonight I want to 'Make-Believe' again. I want to dream a little dream of me.

If we were to discuss finances tonight it would be the same old conversation. I am struggling and juggling, managing and manipulating - Every day, every week. There's always a new challenge waiting around the corner.

At the beginning of last week, I received my most recent of those challenges. It is fairly serious and certainly something to which I must tend with some urgency. I am doing that the best I can. [For now, that is all I will say on the matter.]

The thing is, it hasn't stressed me out nor caused me panic. [But for perhaps a fleeting moment.] Nothing really has. For like a week or two now. In fact, I feel as though I am becoming more and more relaxed and at ease with each passing day.

Logically and practically this makes no sense.

WALT: Then it should make perfect sense for you.

Precisely.

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, nor what triggered it, but I seem to have had a true switch in mindset. I've been more casual about my life. It is What it Is. I have spent the last 18+ months stressing over everything. I would jump from one stress and worry to the next. I would push myself harder and harder each week trying to find balance and make the money and just manage my life.

I survived, but I don't know that I got anywhere.

Lately, I am more about letting it all unfold before me. I've been taking each day as it comes. And I mean that very literally. I'm not talking about like, "Okay, it's Tuesday," and then I do Tuesday. No. I'm talking about me taking every single moment of Tuesday as it comes, and then every moment of Wednesday, followed by Thursday and so on. Every single day is like a lifetime to me.

What I have found, so far, is that it doesn't seem to be any worse for me than when I was pushing and stressing. One might even say things are just slightly better. [I'll have to get back to you on that though.] I still have struggles, but I am also still surviving. And, due to the course of The Grounding, I have made slight improvements and advancements and set some things in motion that have helped since.

For instance, our food supply. I have been a minimalist since the day I moved in. I've kept food in the house but it was still very limited. I took advantage of the circumstances of The Grounding and bulked up on pantry supplies. I made sure that we had all the basics in ample supply as well as the things needed to round out the week. I did the same the following week. It was rough, but now my grocery list is shorter each week. We have all the essentials. It is now just a matter of keeping up with them and rounding things out.

I've somehow managed to do something extra each week. By extra I don;t necessarily mean anything fun or even Extra-vagant. I mean like buying a pack of light bulbs for the house. All the things that I keep putting on hold for fear of lack. My mission has been to do one extra thing a week. For instance, one week it was a pack of light bulbs ($8) one and one week it was an air filter and a bolt for the push mower. ($15.) Last week it was minigolf and ice cream for my Re-Birthday. Now, that money I haven't exactly spent yet. Cuddlebug covered it up front. [It was too early in the week for me to have made the extra money.] I wasn't able to make that money last week but I am paying her back in other ways. I bought her cat letter today while I was at the club store and I might make up the rest with covering some insurance for her.

I have also been determined to conquer tasks, even if just one a week. I am doing better each week with it. Much like finances, I don';t always get a lot done in a week but I do something.

I would have to say The Grounding was the start of this evolution. Something in that experience numbed me to life. This is not a negative thing. I mean, I was fighting the good fight that week. I was right on pace financially. It felt good. And then...BAM!

I think that is when I realized that we can push and push and push but around any corner there can be something that makes all that pushing not matter. I stressed and stressed and stressed and even when I was winning I lost. ["Lost." Cause ultimately, in the long term, it was a win. It was what I needed.] So I just decided to no longer stress. Pushing myself hasn't solved the problems. So I am taking a more casual approach.

I also made it through that whole debacle. My world crashed for a moment, but then, just as was done for Moses, the waters were parted and managed safe passage and I survived. I have some making up to do, but Right This Moment, I am making it up.

I have added DoorDash to my mix of work. I had to build my ratings to a certain point in order to make the best use of it but I have done that. This addition is part of what has spawned my new causal attitude. I can't say that I am making more money. I'm certainly not making any less. But it has made it easier to make the money I do make.

There have been several times when I was getting nothing from the other two but there was dashing to be done. The coverage ranges for my region are slightly different in dash and so it hass increased the liklihood of picking up some extra at the furthest reaches of my area - places where I really couldn't before. This also increases my likelihood of accepting deliveries that I wouldn't have before. I have found that it also increases [slightly] my chance of getting offers from home.

I have been experimenting with it all. I have been letting the apps determine my day. I have been all over The Valley. I have been to areas I would have never been in before. And I have made some good money in those areas. I use The Homestead as a base ore frequently. I will come and go from here, when possible. It allows me to leave the apps on and try to do things.

In fact, one of the things I have been trying is treating Mondays as days off. I say treat because they are actually days I work but only in small shifts. Or I will work a whole day from home - just going out when I get offeres and staying out until they stop coming. Sometimes this is one delivery. Sometimes it turns into hours. Financially, I have seen little impact. I wasn't making my daily Goal on Mondays as it was. I have found the last two weeks that I made the same amount working like that from home as I did the previous two weeks when I actually tried to make a work day of it.

Today turned out to be more of a day off than the making money. It wasn't planned that way. I mean, I was very casual when I woke up. [Late. Or later than usual.] I had certain things I needed to take care of today [dealing with my latest challenge] and those were my first and foremost priority. As, I woke into my day and was piddling with coffee and such, I started a fuller list of the things I wnted to accomplish with this day. Some of them were things I could do as I was out and about working. Others were smaller, simpler projects around the house. [Like making the tunasalad I've been trying to make for a week.]

I went out to work, but it was short lived.

The last two days have been a reminder to me of why I like what I do. I can change my day on a dime. In my life, I find that to be very useful. For as long as I can remember now, at any given moment something can happen or someone can call and I am needed somewhere. This is difficult to accomodate when you sell your time to an employer.

There have been all sorts of examples along the way. For example, tomorrow morning is the first day of school for Sunshine. She is taking the bus this year so I am going down to see her off just as I have done [almost] every other year. I had forgotten about it and Cuddlebug reminded me yesterday.

Or, there was the day over the summer, when Cuddlebug facetimed me because the hose faucet had come apart and it was just shooting water out. I was able to stop my day and come home and tend to that immediately.

AMEN

These last two days it has been Cuddlebug as well.

Yesterday, I was home on break and she had left for the store. Fortunately I was Just Enough awake to hear my phone vibrate against the table when she facetimed me. I could tell as soon as I saw her that something was seriously wrong. I honestly thought she was going to tell me the car was like on fire.

She hydroplaned off the road. She was five minutes down the road but on a highway. She was fine. The car was fine. However, with her ailments, the whole experience had her heart rate way up and she wanted me to come down and help her get her shit together. And, I'm glad I could.

She had gone off from the left lane so she was on that side of the road. That was actually the safgest and best place for her to go off, but it made it very difficult to get her back on the road. She was off the road around a bend just after an overpass. So the traffic coming at us couldn't see us until they were on top of us. I ended up calling the state police and an officer helped us get her safely back on the road.

She and I went to the next exit, stopped at a convenience store, and chilled for a moment. When she was ready she headed home and I was off to work.

Before we pulled out yesterday, we noticed some rubber hanging from the front of her car. Nothing that was important. I pulled it off. This morning, before she left for work, she sent me a pic, there was rubber hanging from the other side of her car too.

It just soi happened that my deliveries had me in the area where she works. So, I told her to just tell me where she parked at work and I would head over and pull it off for her before she was driving to her mom's tonight. Along the way, I stopped and faxed a document. [In regards to my latest challenge.] So, I not only was positioned right to help her, I was also able to check something off my to-do list.

In the end it didn't matter, because she had parked close to and over the curb so I couldn't get to the damn thing anyway. Actually that's when I said I would do it before she went to her mom's. I told her I would meet her at the house when she was done work. I figured that I would tend to her and then go tend to the Baker's cats and start work. It would be late, but Monday dinners can start kind of late anyway.

Somewhere along the line, I had decided to just not go back out. I had business to attend to here. I had to research some timres because both cars need them for inspection. I had an application that I wanted to get submitted.

Well it's a good thing.

To shorten the story...Her back tire blew out. She was 4 minutes from the house. I had to go and get her donut on and follow her home.

Thank G-d I can control my schedule.

Especially now, because until we can get that tire fixed, I have to get her to and from work every day. This week will test my casual approach. today could hurt me financially. We will see. I have a lot to take care of in the next two weeks. All I can do is show up and see how it plays out.

It was while changing the tire that I found a cross. On it were painted, "Trust in the Lord G-d with all your might."

That is all I can do right now.

I had so much more I wanted to write. I feel like I want to write about The rabbit HOle. It has been on my mind lately. And since this was about (or supposed to be) dreaming of my life, it seemed appropriate.

However it is getting later. I have lost the groove for this. So it is time to move on to whatever is next.

I added DoorDash to my mix of work apps. Then I raised my ratings enough to be able to turn it on and dash whenever I want.

If you’re not already there, go to the Welcome to my Life Facebook page – WTML. Or the YouTube channel – WelcomeToMyLife08. You can also find me on Facebook under Rev. Matt.

Wherever you are and whenever you are – Like, Comment, and Share – we’re on a Journey and it takes you to get there.

So, without hesitation, for now and for always, from here in Geistopia, this is your beloved Rev…

WALT: And Walt…

DOC:  Unt Doc…

JOHNNY: Aaaaand Johnny…

And those guys, saying, “Stay Tuned-In, Fellow Travelers,” and wishing you Peace, Love, Light…

WALT: And Freakishness, Baby.

The Totems & Archetypes

from Ted Andrews’ Animal Speak

Hawk

Mouse

Cat

Chipmunk

Dragonfly