Horoscopes

I have been an avid believer in Astrology since age ten. I think my mom was the one who introduced me to this strange form of science. I want to say I think it's bullshit so you don't think I'm crazy in the coconut but I kind of believe in horoscopes, kind of a lot. I have a book called Astrology for Love and pretty much all the relationships I've had with different signs are spot-on in that book's descriptions.

My horoscope for today said I should do away with the negative and replace it was a positive perspective. This meant a lot for me because lately I've been feeling pretty doomed and down, like I'm already trapped in something I don't want with no way out but that's almost the opposite of the truth! I'm held down by nothing right now, so there's no reason to feel down about my situation, I can do anything ... yeah I know it sounds cheesy to give myself these pep-talks but once in a while you need one don't ya?

Starting today I'm looking on the brightside, the glass is half-full, half-full of my favorite beverage. mmm maybe it's half-full of champagne, that would be nice, or lemonade, also a good drink to have half a glass of. Well, I'm going to work on getting my shit together and actually doing the stuff I think about doing because if I don't maybe my horoscope tomorrow will say something like "f you. love, your dreams" ... I don't know. I just don't want to get to a point in my life and say what if or I really could have done something there.

I need to go, do, be and stop simply THINKING about these things.


Here is a list of things I'd like to do/accomplish in some sort of time:

1. Publish a book of mine
2. Own a farm and grow fruit and vegetables and have a road side stand
3. Work in or own a bookstore
4. Share food and laughter with friends and family
5. Travel everywhere the wind takes me, be more free
6. Take care of children who aren't mine
7. Hold lots of hands
8. Work more than one job
9. Live in a city
10. Be part of something much larger than myself

I think a lot of the things I want are more about the feeling than the doing. I'm interested in accomplishments, helping others and caring for myself, the earth and people. I want success but not at the expense of my morals or other people's well-being.

Sometimes I spend too much time thinking. Ugh. It gets stressful, which is totally ironic and weird that thinking is stressful but it is.

Listening to Michael Jackson makes me feel better though - "Can't Stop Loving You" is on my iTunes now. What lyrical genius. Hahaha :)

Honesty

I have decided to make a vow to be honest with myself about myself and what I want. This is it, I'm 22, I don't get 22 again and I feel like if I was honest about who I am college would have gone differently. It went wonderfully, don't get me wrong, I love the things I did and the people I met and fell in love with my friends and places and experiences we had together. But I feel like if I had been fearless and honest I would have done more, gone more places, seen more. So from now on fearlessness and honesty are my primary virtues. I have these visions of how I want my life to go and have known these since I was a child but fear keeps me from doing them. Apprehensions about being on my own and my allergies hold me back and they shouldn't. I know how my life could be and I know how I want it to be and I want both, but right now I want what my visions for my life are and then later I'll do the other stuff.

These are realizations I've come to thanks to facebook and the photos of people I know popping up on my newsfeed all on their own respective adventures and here I am doing nothing but working and sitting in my parents' house. I need to just take the plunge and go on my adventure. No planning, no plans no problems. Well, some planning probably but not so much that it becomes less adventure.

First on the list is traveling. All across the US - I want to go to California in my car and back down through the south, an epic road trip full of detours and roadside attractions, bad motels and delicious food and kind strangers and beautiful landscapes. Then I'll go across the pond, I want to go everywhere, Scandinavia, Russia, Greece, Austria, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, India, Japan, France, New Zealand, Cambodia. Everywhere, I want it one huge backpacking trip. Then I'll write about all my adventures. The thing holding me back from this all is money. I hate that. I despise that money is ruling my dreams right now, it's completely frustrating because with the need for money comes time, unless I win the lottery which I don't even play, then I'm stuck in one place for two years at best making money in a job I don't really want and refusing to move up in that job because I don't want to stay or be forced to stay. I want so much and I want it now but it's impossible to have now. I want to travel for a year or a year and a half, come back and go to grad school, move somewhere west, have a farm and a bookstore and a little cafe maybe with Sarah or someone else.

I want so much, and I want it now, I'm too impatient for time and money.

If you have a solution, please let me know because I feel like the longer I wait the less momentum I will have.

Technological Intuition

It's no big secret that a lot of the older generation (ahem, parents) lack a little of what the millenials are calling technological intuition. I don't even know how or why it exists - could it be that computers were such a large part of my formative years that they are embedded in my brain? Or is it that I grew up alongside the computer so we are on the same level? ... Regardless, I find it pretty easy to pick up a new program or computer and just figure it out - something that seems near impossible for Mom to do. Whenever we discuss the computer the notepad and pen come out. There she goes scribbling down "USB, cord for camera, on-switch" to know how to move photos from her camera to iPhoto. Maybe it's just me but something like that is second-nature.


For her birthday this year we got Mom a new macbook, it's beautiful, I am in lust with it and try to play with it any chance I get, which usually means teaching Mom something about it. So yesterday we first tackled how to create a playlist on iTunes and burn it to a CD. After multiple tries I began to feel incredibly subpar for not getting it right on the first try, I mean how many freaking times have I burned a mix CD for that guy in class!? It's the new mix tape which was the new love note passed in class ... which I guess was the new "stand at your window and throw stones" thing. Finally I realized Mom had her iPod plugged in and the playlist I created was in her iPod not iTunes ... duh. So then I had to explain how one cannot burn a CD from an iPod or transfer music from an iPod to anywhere but can put music from iTunes onto any iPod or CD ... complicated shit.

So we tackled that and moved on to putting music onto her own computer instead of always using the family computer. Ahhhh that big monster machine full of random school files and lacrosse team photos.

This is my life, seriously. I teach my parents how to use electronics. Go to yoga and the grocery store with my mom (which, let's face it, are kind of my new hobbies) and listen to music. Right now Big Jet Plane but Angus and Julia Stone is my favorite, it's so beautiful - check it out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFTvbcNhEgc

And their songs where Julia sings more than Angus are so ethereal and strange, some of my favorite qualities in female singers.

So other than that, yesterday my mom and I went to the mall, debated over the differences between wireless mice (mouses?) and finally purchased one, perhaps today's excitement will be educating my mother on the terms "nano chip" and "cordless mouse"

My life has become utterly thrilling in all aspects. This little sanctuary of four walls and a door that can close has become the place I am twenty-two in because otherwise I watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey with Dad and grocery shop with Mom.

Who knew graduating from college would be this promising?

Eventually I'll go on an adventure beyond Wegman's and the Bravo Channel, beyond yoga at the JCC and the apple store. Eventually ... I'll take a ride on a big jet plane and follow my dream to be more. But for now I'll stick to living rent-free.

The Great Bike Phenomenon

It all started one hot June. It was around the 4th, nay, it was the 4th. My mother, the illustrious Judy Masters, desired one thing for her birthday (the 4th of June) and that was to feel the wind on her face like she did as a five-year-old atop her very first Schwinn (she got it for Christmas that year, it was green and pink and had tassles on the handlebars). Since that time she has matured into a love of purple and wicker baskets. Being the genius children she brought us up to be, my sisters and I, along with the help of Dear-Old-Dad and his credit card, found the perfect beach cruiser in lavender for her. We got all the accessories except the tassles, some things are better left in the past. She was thrilled when we presented it to her and has ridden it almost daily since - with the exception of the brutal winter months of Buffalo.

Now the infatuation has moved past the honeymoon stage with her bicycle and they have found themselves in the depths of a normal, healthy relationship.

One year later around Father's Day, Dear-Old-Dad started snooping his nose around our local Bert's Bikes and cycling websites. He sniffed out a brand new obsession and brought it to startling heights that can only promise more opportunities for comical relief. We purchased him the opportunity to pick out his own bike from the store, and buy he did. What began as a seed of curiosity and a need to be part of the great bicycling his wife had partaken in, Dad discovered his perfect pal. The bike came home, shined and silver. Not only did the bike come home though. Along with it came a helmet, top of the line, of course "gotta have the best" he said, a neon spandex t-shirt that matched the neon green lining in his padded shorts (which no one saw, but that's not the point is it?) elbow pads for his aging bones, a tire pump, two waterbottles with holders that attach on the body of his bicycle, a computer program to track his progress, and a subscription to cycling magazine.


This man really knows how to take obsession the next level, it's sickening. What began as a soft glowing romance between mother and bicycling hobby was quickly turned into a gross obsession with all things cycling for my father.

This is the life I lead, hate or love it, there are vast opportunities for comedy if one takes the proper perspective. Who knew having a degree could be this useful?

the secret client

I started out the summer with a job - a good job with a good company. Good. not great, mind you. It's a job though and in this economy I have to be grateful. I didn't expect to be doing what I was - graphic design - in truth I don't know as much as I could, maybe I don't give myself enough credit but I'm sure there are people who know more than me and are my age. I know about books, I know about publishing, writing, editing, grammar, that's my jam, not keystrokes and Pantone colors. Pantone quickly became my jam though as I learned more and sometimes I even find myself loving it. The thing I miss most at this classic printing company is the excitement of risk and creativity. I so badly miss coming up with my wildest ideas and making them happen, whereas instead I follow the status quo and the designs that have been done before. That's all fine, it's a job.

Out of this job though, I have discovered books and authors. People who are friends with the boss and need help - need my help - finding publishers, learning about publishing etc. That's the shit I know ... so here I am free-falling into the world of publishing which I had no idea I"d breach so early on in my post-grad career and I'm faced with some really interesting clients. I can't say who, but it's pretty major, even if it is a potentially a little dangerous.

"Laura, I've been thinking, I'm not so sure about how much I want you getting involved with this {name of group}" said my dad ... MY dad, the guy who has been pushing me to do anything and everything, to follow the dreams I have always had and to throw ideas out and see what sticks, is telling me maybe he thinks it's a bad idea - but that's just because of the notoriety of the client.

Here's the thing, I'm a lowly designer, bottom rung on the totem pole, don't know as much as I could and am learning. This could be beneficial even if it was just a learning experience and on top of it I am thrust into a new arena with big names and people who want my, 22-year-old Laura's, help. WTF!?

If it all pans out this could be a huge leap. If it doesn't, nothing lost. I'm still 22, still working generating ideas and having a hard time figuring out which to do first. Here I am though, living in my parents house, watching Top Chef at night with my Mom and going to the grocery store with my Dad. My exciting life back in the nest just got more exciting.

Who knew life could get better than a brand new queen-sized bed!?

God is the belief. Religion is the practice

I've had this theology of my own brewing for about a year, maybe more now and I think I may be on to something, at least for myself.

To me, religion is the one thing that separates people in terms of beliefs - the spirit/god/energy is the same, it's just the metaphor we place along with it to better understand this divinity. I mean, the similarities between religions is astounding to begin with but that's a whole 'nother story having more to do with the similarities in people and (ahem) a lack of creativity perhaps, than actual GOD G-D spirit energy divine. Got it? cool.

So here we go -

In my belief system, Air is God. The way I see it, energies flow through air and if our spirits and souls are energy and transcendent of bodies then they are part of the air and we all mingle in it. Air is omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent. Air can get into everything, even our bodies, air does not discriminate - it flows through every living thing and over those things that cannot breathe it - ie. the rest of our earth. Air has existed since before humans, at the dawn of the earth, before there was land and sea the air existed and inspired chaotic reactions to cause life... "In the beginning there was nothing..." see where I'm going here? Genesis people. Air is our life source, it sustains us, it will exist after us, it exists beyond us, for all we know it exists in other dimensions, realms, etc. We do not see it but we trust and believe it is there for if it is not then we do not exist any longer. We have faith in air, which, I know, can sound a little hokey but do you not have faith that when you wake up in the morning there will be air for you to breathe in?

And just a small tidbit to leave you with - as we muddle religion with our human hypocrisies, trite pettiness and wars - so we muddle the air with our pollution, greed, and sloth. And here it is biting us back - hurt the earth, hurt the air, hurt those you love, hurt yourself - karma. It is all full circle. I think we all in our own religions have pieces of the puzzle and if we just decided to put down the damn walls built so high between ourselves then we might get closer to a truth that is easier to understand than a man in the clouds in birkenstocks and a white robe.


Meh, food for thought. Take a bite.

Voyeurism

Human beings are naturally voyeuristic. And not just that, but we're explicitly inviting voyeurism into our own lives every day. If examples such as Facebook, LinkedIn and other networking sites are not enough - where every second a new person self-glosses their status or changes their profile picture - look at the books we read and shows we watch. Human beings, or perhaps just Americans, though I have a feeling this virus spans our entire race, love showing off and promoting a shiny self on the internet. We are narcissistic and want everyone to know how great we are. That's all well and good, I do the same thing, we blog, who the hell cares what I'm saying but I do it anyway because I believe what I'm saying is important enough to be read. That's good and bad, but that's a discussion for another time.

The voyeurism in humans is really most apparent in the reality shows we watch on T.V. This new obsession with The Biggest Loser, American Idol, The Real World, began in the 90s. I think we love these shows because humans don't want to feel lonely. We each have our problems, our internal struggles. This is the same theory that is behind PostSecret, a blog where people send in a postcard with their secret written on it and a handful are chosen to be posted each week. Time and again people comment saying they feel less alone knowing someone else has their secret. No one wants to feel isolated even if they are. It's the human condition to want company, therefore we are voyeurists. We watch the people on The Biggest Loser fail, triumph, eat their feelings, and we sit and feel better about our troubles because it is somehow validated in the fact that we are not the only person feeling that hardship. Human beings feel alone most of the time, I think, it requires a high-frequency mindfulness to reach the level of competency that in fact the last thing we are is alone. We're all together here spinning on this great blue planet. We all feel the ebbs and flows of the world's energy shifts and we contribute to those shifts.

Maybe instead of looking into someone elses life through the TV screen to feel connected we can reach out and talk to someone on a bus, or in a store. We can offer help or smile to a stranger on the sidewalk. Wouldn't that make everyone feel less lonely than reaffirming our loneliness as is done with the self-isolation of consuming television? Just a thought.