Fabulous Friday!!!!!

Headline: Spacey Hippie Grandma braves technological challenge-wins!
What a relief, after over a week with no laptop, communicating from my phone and my aging laptop which has no keyboard, I finally took the daring adventure into "Safe Mode". Such a funny name because to me it always felt like a very UN-safe mode...I expected the journey to be something like venturing into a dark cave with only a birthday candle for light.
The temporary loss of my beloved laptop gave me an opportunity to evaluate certain areas of my life. I spend a significant amount of time online, some of it productive, some creative and some just silly. I realized that at times I neglect other areas of my life, areas that expand my creativity and are essential to living a somewhat balanced life. I spent more time drawing, crafting, walking and played some board games.
Another issue that came up was my commitment to a non-mainstream lifestyle. I live on very little money and at this point in my life and our nation's history I rather prefer to keep it that way. I don't have savings or credit cards and much of my "commerce" is via the barter system or making/producing many of my own goods. That means when something breaks I can't just hop in my car (don't have one) and zip over to the Mega Media Mart, drop off my computer and come back later with my shiny credit card to pay the stranger that fixed it. So while I was asking around and waiting for a repair person who would be willing to barter, I reflected on concepts like community and time. The car/credit card/ Mega Mart method would have saved a great deal of time...and personal involvement. My method required me to network, talking to real actual people who then went and talked to real actual people. While this was going on, I took the time to read instructions to actually learn some things about my computer and took chances by trial and error.
It has occurred to me that most people are spoiled by convenience, having a car that tells you where to go rather than having to use your own problem solving skills and enjoy the adventure of getting lost and discovering new territory. If something "breaks", people throw it away. I had a friend who was about to throw away her vacuum cleaner; I looked at it and discovered a broken belt and a beater that was tangled with hair. In 20 minutes I repaired and cleaned the vac and saved her the 160 dollars it would have cost her to replace it, and saved a small piece of landfill.
There are many small actions we can take that combined and applied consistently can make our lives more sustainable, reduce our dependence of corporation that care nothing for our health and safety and help encourage others to follow our lead. The one certain thing is, we can't continue living with the instant gratifying, disposable, self absorbed patterns that have impacted our planet, our economy and our freedom.
What steps can you take, or have taken to humanize your community? I'd love to hear your stories!



© 2011 Nanakoosa’s Place, authored by Jennifer Hazard

Justice continued

Since I published my last post only a couple of days ago, I have spent hours reading through various reactions to the event in Arizona and reactions to the reactions to the event. You may be asking yourself "what does this have to do with being a survivor?" These news events, political analyses, contradictory opinions and attempts to assign or deny responsibility, are events that affect us all as citizens. The voices and opinions we hear are those of Politicians, media pundits, political journalists and, occasionally from a survivor or a relative of one of the victims. It is in complex scenarios such as this that the truth and honest assessment gets lost in rhetoric and convenient hackneyed sound bites. And that is why those of us with real life experience, who have experienced losses, who have felt the pain of discrimination deserve to have our say in these very public issues. If we continue to leave the editorializing to the same old sources, we get the same old story, usually very black and white, narrowly focused and worst of all, divisive.
Last week on my website, I posted a bit about social responsibility, as an example of one of the facets of the Whole Person. That post was before the tragedy in Arizona, but I gave an example of a cause that has struck a chord with me recently and while I do not expect for anyone to jump on MY bandwagon, or anyone else’s for that matter, I do think it is important for those of us who have been excluded from the mainstream, who have known the despair of powerlessness and whose opinions and ideas have been dismissed to take an opportunity to reexamine our values. Many of us have been told by others for most of our lives what to believe; or worse we've been sheltered from the news and events of the outside world and denied the opportunity to form our own conclusions. I think that gaining access to information and taking the time to examine our own reactions is an essential part of rediscovering and reconstructing the women we want to be as we create our future. Not everyone will agree in their final conclusions, and that's a good thing. Not everyone will find themselves passionately dedicated to a cause or a social agenda and that's ok too. I am suggesting, however, that we take some time to learn about world events, especially those that may be foreign to us, as one of the many exercises in empowering ourselves and establishing our rightful place in society as Women of Wisdom, Strength and Resiliency.
Knowledge, as they say IS power.
If you haven't visited my future/developing business website www.whitewaveconsulting.org.I have begun a series addressing "the Whole Person" and the importance of recognizing our roles within different areas of our lives, social, spiritual, health and body, family, career and financial and community. It is still a work in progress but I always welcome support and feedback as I construct my dream piece by piece. It's not a one woman job and my ultimate goal is to create a Community of survivors because we all have something that is unique to us that will create our own link the Chain of Wisdom that strengthens the Community.




© 2010 Nanakoosa’s Place, authored by Jennifer Hazard