the gift

Every year, on my birthday, I check to make sure it’s still there.

Every year, it is, and my heart is both torn and comforted.
It was the first thing I ever knew, and over the years has become a part of me. I think that without it, I would be lost.

Every year, for my birthday, I take it, wrap it up in pretty paper, and give it back to her, but I could do that a thousand times and it would still be here inside of me. It makes me who I am… but I do wonder what it would be like if it were gone.

Inside is the very first thing I was ever given, and something I carry with me even today. Even more today.

I didn’t have any words to voice what I felt, couldn’t make sense of it as the heartbeat and smell and warmth that let me feel that I would be safe was ripped away and I was torn out of the arms that for fifteen minutes kept the cold of the world away forever.

I would take it out, put it in a small box, wrap it up in pretty paper and hand it to her. Inside is something bigger than she is or can ever be, but something that over years and years made me stronger than I ever could have otherwise been. It takes a lot to hold the pieces together for so long.

She would open it up every year on my birthday.
Inside would be the baby’s pain.

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Deciding to Live

It’s time for everything to change. Again.
I’ve become complacent, undisciplined – and I need to come back.

I’ve read countless books on motivation, habits, procrastination, visualizing, raising energy, and anything that I thought would help. Some were crap, many got me inspired – for a couple days. I could never follow through like I used to. Something inside of me had broken, and I didn’t have the constant challenge to survive to inspire me.

That is, as strange as it sounds, what I think I miss the most. The fear. The adversity. It’s what inspired me to act on the first day I walked down to Fisherman’s Wharf alone, in full statue dress & makeup. It’s what inspired me to create an online magazine when I didn’t even know the first things about creating a website.
But it wasn’t just the adversity that inspired me. It was the love. The love I had for what I was doing, and the love of walking through the fear and feeling like I did something that mattered on the other side.

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out what it was that made me jump into things that I had no idea how to do, and when I realized the answer a few days ago, it was so simple it was absurd.

The one difference, the only thing that will ever create a lasting change in my life, and let me take my jewelry business from more or less a hobby to what I want it to become, the only thing that is different from those things and this is:
I made a decision to do them.
That’s it.

I could read thousands of books, watch hundreds of Ted talks, listen to podcasts until my ears bleed, but that is little more than mental masturbation – letting me feel like I’m doing something of value when nothing could be further from the truth. It’s just very clever procrastination.

Because I am afraid, and for some reason, I’m now letting that get in the way of doing what needs to be done. But that’s another something to look at and figure out another time.

I know that as much as I love making jewelry, there will be many times when I don’t. When I can’t find the right words for the “About” page, when I can’t think of what to write for a post on my site blog, and when I’m just not comfortable doing what needs to get done in order for this to grow. Without a solid, unwavering decision to do what it takes, I’ll never get to where I want. Never be who I want to be. Who I AM.

So it’s time for everything to change. Now.
It won’t be easy, not at first. I know that, and I’m expecting it – but eventually, as long as I show up and do the work, it will get easier. I just need to show up, and do the things that I need to, regardless of how uncomfortable I am with it or how afraid. I’ve been here before, and I know that, as long as I do what I need to, day after day, it WILL get easier.

And another thing I know: When I show up, so does the Universe – and doors that I’ve never even imagined will start opening to me.
They always have.

If you read this, please feel free to comment with what you think – and especially, call me out if you ever see me flagging.

Because there aren’t any excuses anymore. I’ll deal with the physical pain when it comes, and I’ll work through the fatigue. The time of floating is past, and it’s time to fly again.

I’ve made my decision.

 

the legacy of a smile

I find it difficult to view it as anything special, something different in me. Like a fondness for animals, my love of the ocean or a desire for solitude,  the need to create is just a part of me, & always has been.

But there are times, on occasion, when I think about it, and maybe come close to realizing how blessed I am. Simply creating something that did not exist in the world before, something that makes someone smile, feel better about themselves, feel more beautiful – words that I write that might make someone feel less alone, understand something better, inspire them – in the tiniest way, what I’ve made or written, perhaps even just for a moment – if it makes the world a better place, even just for one person, then all of the struggle, the pain, the frustration – it’s all worth it.

That’s when it all makes sense.

I wonder sometimes what would have happened – what my world would be like – if, on that one day about 15 years ago, I hadn’t had the courage to try to live the life that I wanted to live and just did what I knew would be the easiest thing – go out and find another job, continued being dissatisfied, but safe.

I have little doubt that the disease would have won, if that were the case – and that I would be dead… and that perhaps at the most, 3 or 4 people might have even noticed that I passed.

And I would have already been entirely forgotten.

behind the smile

Where do you say what you can’t?

They tell you to be buoyant. They tell you to be enthusiastic, strong, confident in the words you write, the words you share and hope the world will see. When people visit or hear about my Kickstartercampaign, they don’t want to read my woes or worries.

For now, I put on a plastic smile like a McDonald’s server and don’t show the terror. For now I don’t say what I am truly feeling.
People don’t want their bubble popped. They want to feel confident in my project, to be lifted higher in the buoyancy of my words, as forced & manufactured as they may be at times.

I want to make them happy. I do care. I try to give them what they look for, and I hope by writing the words I will also be lifted.

I can’t write “If this campaign isn’t successful I’ll probably die before the book is finished”. As true as it is, threatening people to support my campaign probably wouldn’t go over too well, y’know?
Still, boiling in this head is the knowledge of what will happen if this campaign doesn’t succeed. The things that only I have known.

Until now.

THIS is where I can scream. Most the people I know on Facebook don’t take the time to read anything over a few sentences, regardless of what they say. Here I find a sanctuary, either real or imagined. On WordPress.
This is where we ALL can be real, be vulnerable. This is the shower we sing in.

My book is all I have anymore. All there is left in me to give. Due to the way this disease works and what it’s done to me I can’t really perform, can’t work. I don’t know the days I’ll be too exhausted or in too much pain to do more than pass the day in bed. Though those days are less, they still happen – and the rest are filled with such a growing hatred for the life I’ve been living since I was released from the hospice that I know with certainty that it’s something I can’t go on with.

The book is/was/will/would have given me a reason, a new breath, a purpose. To go back to living each day worried about getting herbs, to go back to each week with the only thing I can focus on is begging more friends for money to afford them is no life at all.

Every waking moment I’ve had the thought of how my life would change to keep me going, to soon be able to live a life that matters, to have a purpose for each breath.
To enjoy life. This is what the success of the campaign would offer me.

I have envisioned myself a thousand times or more waking up for the first time in years with the excitement of living, of having something I needed to do besides beg for more money. I would sit in random café’s writing, sipping coffee for the flavor and remembering with clarity the amazing life I have lived, smiling to myself as I lifted my head & turned to look out the window and knowing that I’m doing something good. That I once again had value.

I would sit at my Mother’s dining room table, facing the back yard wo I can watch Ruby play, run in and out of the door with the dog my mother and I would find for her in a rescue. She says she wants one and I could get it for her, help her take care of it. Help take care of my Mother. She would come home and ask me about my book, and I would share the stories I had written that day. She would get to know me and I her. We have 48 years to catch up on.

I would hold my head up, a smile glinting off the green in my eyes and hinting on my lips. People would know again. I would know myself again. This is why I am. This is me. I would be full and in love with life. It’s been so long, so long – but I woke, rang the bell above my grave and purpose came to dig me out. I sucked the fresh air into my lungs and this empty heart was filled.

They would read my stories, my life laid bare, naked for them to see and they would see themselves. They would find the parts, the lines that made them stop & look up with a sudden spark of understanding that it only took a decision, that the past didn’t matter and all the smallness they felt would be washed away in the ink of my words staining their face with a determined grin. They would mark the pages, underline sentences, read it again and maybe buy a copy for a friend or two. They would write to me and I wouldn’t feel so alone anymore.

This campaign needs to succeed. I need to write my life, give it away.

The heart inside of me is weary, vacant. I say I love people hoping that in the spoken words I will remember how. The smile on my face is an advance taken from when I can feel it again, when my heart fills with the knowledge that my life has changed from the barren desert it has become. Beg for money, get herbs. I’ve been kept alive by the possibility of the book, the knowledge that when the campaign succeeded it would be written. Take it away and I have nothing I need to live for and I need a reason.

I try to write with an empty heart and find all I can hear are the sucking noises like those a straw makes in a cup that’s been drained by a ravenous thirst.

Also haunting me is a thought.
In September 2010 I walked happy & full of energy into the hospice/respite that I was supposed to spend only three months in. Up until that moment I worked every day on my magazine, setting up interviews, making the site better, writing reviews and each morning stepping out of my motor-home with a smile. Even though my legs were bleeding, swollen, leaking the poisoned fluid my liver couldn’t process and in extreme pain, I still walked with purpose and pride to the café knowing there was something I was needed for.

I wasn’t able to work on CultureFlux in the hospice. I had been doing fine (relatively speaking) before I walked in, living in poor conditions with no money, food, and only enough water to wash my face in the morning – but I had a reason to go on. I loved being able to help other performers through the magazine and I loved giving them a voice.

Within a week my body began to shut down. My skin began falling off, hair coming out in clumps, and I was barely able to walk. One week.

What will happen if the campaign doesn’t succeed? When I don’t have the dream of writing & publishing the book to keep me alive anymore?

The herbs have kept me healthy, but it’s purpose that keeps me alive. From the edge of death in the hospice to the 4.5 years following, I had two things to live for: Finding my Birth Mother and giving this book to the world, hoping my life will inspire theirs.

I have found my Birth Mother.
For anyone who reads this, thank you for letting me vent, and don’t get me wrong – it’s not always like this inside my head. There are still many times when I realize it’s only the 6^th day with 5x that more to go, and anything can happen. Hell, Oprah could see it and announce it to the world! It could go viral on Youtube! Anything! The most important thing I need to remember is to NEVER GIVE UP, even as much as I want to and as hard as it can be to dredge up the energy to go on. WE DO NOT GIVE UP.

http://bit.ly/NGGKickASS

I’m going to keep on fighting like hell for the success of this campaign, to make this dream a reality and again have my heart filled with purpose and passion.

It IS possible, and I’ve come from behind to achieve my goal more times than I can count. I mean hell – isn’t that what we do with EVERY dream we realize? We are WARRIORS, and this is what we do!

For anyone interested what all the above is about, here’s a link to my Kickstarter campaign! I wouldn’t mind at ALL if you supported it by making a pledge and/or shared it as far & wide as you can – you would be my new favorite person!
Just – don’t include the above, okay? (winky face)

And when you go there, please take a second to check out the update – I was *amazed* with what people said and want the world to see it too!

To all out there in WordPress land – thank you for being here for me. And thank you for not charging for my therapy.
Any comments of support or suggestions on how

 

 

 

Too Far to Fail Now

Twelve years ago I jumped off a cliff & gave up everything to follow my dreams. I lost my apartment, my car, slept on couches & went hungry – but refused to go back. (As long as my dog was fed!)
Then, my wings unfolded.

I did things. I had incredible adventures. I helped people overcome their self-doubt & perform in front of hundreds of people. Volunteered for Katrina refugees, was one of the first street performers in New Orleans after The Storm. Created an award-winning magazine, produced events, did more things. Met amazing people.
Fell in love.

Then my body decided to die. My unrealized dreams & I disagreed with it, & The Battle was on… and now I’m writing a book about ALL of it.

This book is going to rock your world. Hopefully, it’s going to rock THE world.

It won’t likely be like anything you’ve read before. It’s an authentic, raw, funny, honest, moving and inspiring story of my past twelve years, and how I turned a mundane, unremarkable existence into a beautiful, useful & helpful life. A life that I am finally proud of…

This book is about remembering how to dance with life. About not letting life happen to you anymore, but making it happen foryou. It’s for the dreamers, the believers, those that thrive on the hope of fulfilling the potential we’ve all been blessed with.
And it’s about love.

I just need to get it out to the world.

I’ve come too far to fail.

My Kickstarter launches in 13 DAYS. July 6th, Wednesday.
I’ve crunched numbers, & I fear that I don’t have contact with enough people to succeed in reaching my goal.

I’m going to need your help – not only to change my life, but most importantly inspire others to live theirs.

LET’S CHANGE THE WORLD!

Sign up on my new site – save time & get updates you would otherwise miss! (No flooding – promise.)

www.kseaflux.com

LOVE YOU.

back in.

 

It’s hard for me to accept. Impossible to foresee what the outcome will be.

Either all I have worked for comes to fruition and my life changes entirely, or… it doesn’t.

Like the 1st letter I sent to the person who, after searching for 25 years, I knew was my birth mother, and the wait after that. Like fighting so hard and so long to make a dream come true that the final act of jumping into the unknown is the only direction to go anymore, I need to take a deep breath, and believe.

It’s time to let go.

Let go of nearly all of the control I had, and just do my best to aim away from the rocks and trees as I soar past them, faster than I’ve become familiar with over the years of lying immobile in a hospital bed and then my own, planning for this time as life passed me by.

It’s time to join life again. To jump back in the game.

It’s getting closer. It’s what I have worked so hard for. It’s what I have studied far too much for – and I’m terrified. I need to remember how to love being afraid, because I *sure* as hell have forgotten – and I recall not that long ago when being afraid, when doing something I had NO idea how to do was like a drug for me – a euphoria. Where the hell did that person go?
I need to do some digging around inside of me & find him again. Maybe he’s just sleeping – feeling unloved and under used.

This will light a fire under his ass.

Very soon, it comes to the point where I have to release this to the world, and see if they approve. See if they are interested enough in me enough to support my project, and hope that they are.

Will they see me? Do they want to know me?

Will they love me?

Sure, I’m frightened – but I also believe that it’s time to light a fire under MY ass, and which-ever way this goes – in some way, it will be successful.

out of my head

I sit up in my bed, comforter pulled up to just above my stomach, drinking the tea that I just made. Ruby sleeps beside me, snoring gently off & on. It’s just after 6:00am & there is a rare serene quiet to the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco – no sirens, yelling, horns honking… even the crow’s abrasive caw-shout isn’t heard.

I adore the solitude of this part of the day, & try to be a part of it if the night before has been kind enough to allow me to. Of course, sometimes it isn’t, especially these days with all the physical crap I have to deal with, sometimes enough to wake me up, sometimes enough to prevent me from sleeping when I intend to in the first place – but today, this morning, is mine.

I’ve been thinking a lot about perfectionism. It’s something that I’m cursed with, and has for a large part of my life really screwed with things I wanted to do, going so far as to prevent them from happening altogether.
Without question it’s why this whole book project has taken so long to come to fruition, with me (aka “this asshole”) ripping things apart, re-doing & incessantly re-writing the copy for the site & never being satisfied – and it can’t go on like this. Not if I want to continue, and SURE as hell not if I ever want to finish my book.

I look further into the need for everything to be perfect & find that it could be based – most liely IS based – in fear. If I keep on changing things, I never have to show it to the public and am still able to say that “I’m working on it”.

I need to work on that. I need to change that.
If I don’t, then my life & all I want to do will be entombed in frustration, ripping away the joy I remember when I *did* finish things whether they were perfect or not in my eyes – performances, my magazine – hell, even my Living Statue garb when I began. I still can’t believe I started doing it without the frock coat & in my Dr. Martens – tattooed arms bare, black boots, poorly done makeup – but I DID it. I got out there. I was appreciated, tipped well, and hells- it worked.

I need to remember that lesson.

Things will never be as perfect as I want them to be, so I need to stop needing them to be. I need to remember that it is only a foolish fear that I created inside my mind to help avoid the time when it will need to be shown to the world.

Some people will like it, others won’t – whatever it is. Whatever it is, even the smallest dream that I make happen is worth FAR more than the largest dream that I never attempt.

That last part is from a quote I read somewhere, and it fits perfectly into this… but there’s also one of *my* quotes that may work well in this case: “Never let logic stand in the way of your dreams.”

My life began when I started making my dreams come true. The first time it happened & many times after that, they were small dreams (if there actually *is* such a thing) – they took little effort or fear – but the feeling that washed over me when I made them into a reality was – and will ALWAYS be – incomparable in the sensation of strength & accomplishment it gave me, and each one reinforced me with the confidence to reach for more…

 

…but then I got sick. Somehow, although it was the greatest & most difficult thing I have *ever* done, coming out of that – saving my life when no one else could, and literally dancing out of the front door of the Hospice (which admittedly was more of a stylish shuffle aided by my cane) – for some reason I don’t see that as an accomplishment.

Sitting here thinking about why… perhaps part of the reason is because although I did what many people believed unlikely or even impossible, I focus on more of how the sickness ripped my life apart – the exquisite life I had built, full of excitement, love, adventure & value – and in many ways continues to cage it as only a ghost of what it was.

I whine about how much it took away from me, instead of how much it gave and allows me to give to others… I had never thought of that until now; not even the idea that it didn’t feel like something good I did – and as a result was likely at least partially responsible for breaking the habit I had built of fearlessly realizing my goals & dreams.

unconscious for nearly two weeks. Hooked up to All of the fancy machines, and the one that goes “BEEP!”

Great. Something else I need to work on – but at least now it has a name, and the beginning of an understanding. That is pretty damn cool. I know where I should be looking now – instead of before when it was like trying to fix the brakes on a motorcycle by adjusting the throttle.

It’s now just flipping a few switches in my head from self-pity to gratitude that I’m still alive. Shouldn’t be that difficult, right?

It’s LONG past time to start making dreams come true again.
And simply through writing it out of my head, I just may have found the reason why it’s been so godsdamned difficult for me.

ON   WITH   THE   SHOW!

Connection / being seen

I was 13 when I first put pen to paper, and realized not only the fun – but the magick, and most importantly, in my joyless teenage years, the therapy it offered. The therapy I desperately needed.

You see – I was the most insecure, terrified and nearly silent kid – but when, one night, a pen found its way into my hand… my entire world changed. I had finally found something that would listen, and unlike talking to people, I felt that, at last, I wasn’t being judged. The paper would just sit there and accept all I had to say – and the more I wrote, the more it listened. It was the only friend I could talk to about all the confusion, angst, and above all, the loneliness & solitude I felt growing up.

The writing began almost entirely by accident. I had just discovered coffee, and one evening stayed up all night in the tiny kitchen in my parent’s home, writing & drawing in some sketchbooks I had laying around for some reason. Eventually I got together a few dollars, and after school one day went to Warwick’s – the main stationery/office supply/book store in La Jolla, and bought my very first actual journal. You probably know exactly what that journal looked like – the classic black, pebbled hardcover, 5.5”x8.5” blank book. Though everything before it has been lost or thrown away by my adopted parents, I still have that very first journal – though now have 10 others just like it, full of my heart, mind, and guts. My friends.

When internet journaling came around, it took me a while to warm up to it, but eventually I did. All of the sudden, people could actually read what I was writing… and when comments began occasionally coming in, and people were saying nice things about my writing, or connecting with it, or, sometimes, even thanking me for saying what they felt – all of the sudden I wasn’t alone anymore. With each post, with each comment that someone left, a little more fur was rubbed off – like the skin horse in The Velveteen Rabbit. People could SEE me, and sometimes in me, they saw themselves – and perhaps for the first time, I felt real. Maybe they did as well.

After a lifetime of feeling inadequate and like my life didn’t matter, I had found a way I could give something back to the world. A way I could connect with people, regardless of where they were, and not feel so alone. A way I could help… and maybe, just maybe – change someone’s life for the better.

As time went on however, people’s attention spans kept getting shorter & shorter. Less people read my words, less people commented, and the loneliness began creeping back. I started writing less, but – I just couldn’t find the words, or the passion I once had to write them. That was a HUGE mistake, as I had forgotten the reason I began writing, which is solely for me. Because I need to. Because the “paper” is still the best way to keep learning about my Self…

But there is one thing I would really like to do – something I’ve been thinking about for a few days. I write all this drivel, and except for perhaps a few, I don’t know most of you who reads it. I don’t know about you, I don’t know who you are, I don’t know about your country, what you like to eat, what your favorite song is – or pretty much anything about you – and I would really, really like to.

So I ask this of you. Tell me a little (or a lot) about yourself! Anything you want. Anything you don’t mind sharing, and as much or little of it as you want to. Just, at least, to start a conversation. There are no rules. Ask questions, send pictures, say anything you feel and know that I will not only appreciate it – I will absolutely LOVE it! Hell, even share this with friends of yours – let’s get people talking & connecting!
Of course, you are welcome to play along or remain silent – that’s entirely your choice – but I do hope you say something – and I promise – I will reply.

Much love, and thank you for reading.

P.S. – if you see this post on Facebook or Twitter, please let me know – but comment here!
AND, if you read this *here* and want to connect with me on facebook or twitter, I’m kSea flux on Facebook, and @kSea_flux on Twitter. Hope to see you there!