Another World is Probable

I have a truly wild story. About 13 years ago I lived in an in-law unit and the landlady wanted to show the apartment to potential tenants. I didn’t want to be home and at the same time wanted to safeguard my valuables. The most valuable piece of jewelry I owned was a diamond pendant necklace from my Grandma Libele. She died when I was 13 and the necklace was the only physical thing of hers I owned so it was valuable for multiple reasons. More in this week's post.

I feel incredibly off. In large part, it’s because I’ve been sick with a cold for the last nine days. Add in lack of sleep due to said cold, disruption at my apartment because of construction, Trump returning to the White House, the collective heartbreak around the LA wildfires, continued destruction of Gaza, and all the other tragedies in the world, and I want to pull a Rip Van Winkle. If I could go to sleep and wake up once everything is better, that would be great. More in this week's post.

The past few weeks I’ve toggled between wanting to do things my way and wanting to do things other people’s way, with my inherent goodness at stake. My therapist encouraged me to change my definition of good to encompass living in harmony with nature and all created beings. She specifically told me to look up “walking the beauty way path,” a Navajo/Diné concept. More in this week's post.

I have a confession: I make mistakes. I know, that doesn’t seem like much of a confession because everybody makes mistakes, but with the amount of shame and fear that comes up from admitting it, you’d think I stole money from little old ladies and kicked their dogs. More in this week's post.

On the heels of my post from last week about making new milestones, the phrase that keeps coming to me is, “Let go of the way you think things are supposed to be and embrace what is.” That’s a big one for me because I have a lot of “supposed tos.” More in this week's post.

If you’re listening to this on December 1, today is my 40th birthday. I’ve had numerous feelings about this birthday. I’ve cried many tears about it because I’m not at all where I thought I’d be at this age. I don’t have anything society told me I “should” have at 40 as a cis-het woman: I’m single, childless, and don’t own a home. More in this week's post.

A friend sent me a podcast he created solely using AI and it freaked me out. By feeding a discourse into a language learning model, it spit out a realistic conversation between two “people.” From there I spiraled into “AI will replace me” territory because I’m not a plumber – I’m a writer. And then my higher power wrote me a letter. More in this week's post.

This has never happened to me before but last week a chestnut-backed chickadee pair flew to my living room window. One of them chirped at the sill as if it was talking to me directly. I exclaimed in delight at this tiny bird watching me as I watched it. The encounter reminded me of the power of joy.