Gaia Community: tinkonthebrink's Blog

going postal

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:44:32 -0000

I have a letter project going on. I was originally going to make letters to leave lying about to see if people would drop them in the mail, and then ran up against a minor obstacle: all of my art supplies, every single thing, are locked in our storage space and for two weeks we haven't been able to locate the key. I've searched every likely place, no key. And there's only the one key, so all those times I said to myself "I really should make a copy" are coming back to haunt me. So...to all those here who are on the letter list, this week I'm instead leaving postcards lying about, because really, I think postcards are even better. How could anyone resist reading them? But will they drop them in the mail? We'll see, I'm seeding them around town today with Little Bit.

So now Krissy got a nice art box for all our supplies and it's my job to break into the storage space this weekend (I'm good with padlocks, or rather, bad with padlocks I guess) and replace the keyless lock with a new combination one, so unless I lose my mind I'll always be able to get in. And I can have my stuff here. Now all I need is a cat-proof portfolio for paper and I'm set.

Letters sent through the mail or tucked into a pocket or slipped between the pages of a book are in a different world from email. In some ways, email is more demanding. All you can rely on for charm is the power of words. But physical, tangible missives - to touch someone's handwriting, to tuck a leaf or a feather in the envelope, to find the oddest postcard or send a photo as a postcard or draw a picture in the margins of the note, to choose the right kind of paper, to decide how to fold it, to embellish and play with it, that's an entirely different thing. I don't do it often enough anymore, but today I'm going to make a little move in that direction.

A friend of mine belonged to a circle of artist friends who did a postcard mailing to each other once a month. Everyone produced postcards to mail to the dozen or so other people in the group and Jon would bring all the cards he got and show them to me. They were amazing and clever and I was very jealous, but they weren't taking on any new members. (The last ones Jon sent out before he moved and I didn't get to see them anymore were made by taking molded paper like those egg cartons and flattening it in a gigantic press - he did metal work, so he had cool tools - and printing them with artwork.) That just isn't the same over email, now is it?

What does Autumn mean to you?

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:30:00 -0000

I love fall, I think it's my favorite season. Part of that is some ingrained memory of starting school, new beginnings from childhood, and part is the relief of cool nights and sleeping under fluffy comforters. I love the colors and smells and textures of fall. In art and objects, I also tend toward those colors and textures, the beginnings of decay, more wabi sabi than colorful and new. It's a season that suits me.

I'm always aware too that this is the time of turning inward. The plants take their energy back into the ground, they drop their seed pods and then their leaves and they get quiet for the coming winter. Time for regrouping. Between now and mid-December when the solstice comes, it's time for turning things down and putting them away and enjoying the last harvests of fall veggies and warm days and open windows moving toward that still period where everything pauses and freezes and waits.

So I'm regrouping. I'm much more of a fall cleaning person than a spring cleaning person, maybe because I see the prospect of living indoors more coming on. I've been cleaning and puttering and sometimes fretting about how much I'd like to get done.

This is a strange season this year. This morning I sat in line for 30 minutes to put gas in my car. I was lucky, Krissy was in line yesterday for an hour and a half and a coworker for 4 hours. There is no gas here and I have to drive for work. I turned the car off, listened to NPR and read Wicked, rolling forward a car length at a time and going back to my book. There hasn't been gas here for about a week. If I'm not working I don't drive unless absolutely necessary, and never have, but the strangeness still affects me and everyone I know.

The 700 billion bailout is mindboggling, the whole issue with the fallout of deregulating debt insurers and the clear fact that the house of cards is tumbling and we can't prop the pieces up quickly enough or at all and we have nothing to use to prop them up anymore, the fact that that bailout equals about 2.3 billion dollars per US citizen, all of that is very strange. It all seems complicated and it's tempting to just look at something else because I can't fix it - can I? But that's exactly how we got here.

So in this season of taking things in, I hope everyone will consider that we all do have the ultimate power to fire the fed and start over with the power where it belongs. If you live here in this messed up country, I'm begging you, just take it in, consider it, make every effort to take the power you do have back, and please vote. Try not to look away for too long.

Just sometimes, because with all of this, the trees are still beautiful and the day is still glorious and the people we love are so cozy and snuggly under those fluffy blankets, and if there's no gas maybe more of us will walk and bike and really see the world around us these days.

They're good, strange days.

the joy of being nonbaseline

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:46:31 -0000

I've always thought that if you trip over a crack in the sidewalk, the most sensible thing to do is break into some kind of gymnastic tap dance routine that makes it all seem like part of a larger plan. So as an adolescent with masses of wildly curly red hair down to my waist, 6 feet tall and bony-thin in that unflattering Olive Oyl way, I made a conscious decision to make being non-baseline a personal preference instead of an affliction. It stuck. Now I think of it as public service: someone has to notice the odd things and appreciate the unusual and I've taken that on as my personal quest. I have a kind of reverse-snobbishness where anything that everyone agrees is desirable automatically drops off my radar. I intensely dislike those mall stores where everyone buys things to look just like eveyone else. I like odd things, things that don't match, things that someone has discarded, clothes that are ratty at the edges, plates that the pottery coop gives away to the thrift shop because they didn't work out at all, the wall where the paint fell off and the old wallpaper is left looking out at me from fifty years ago. I like things that are the only one like them. And I like unusual experiences, books that only a handful of people actually read, places to visit where no one goes on vacation, foods that make people unsettled. I once lived with a man with well-managed debt (which seemed on the surface just like affluence), and he would look at people with less than slick lives and say "yes, it's a lifestyle choice" as a kind of mean-spirited joke, but you know, it is a lifestyle choice for me. I choose to look for the overlooked things and to appreciate what's been shaped by life and to have a life that isn't shiny and slick. I like being nonbaseline. I think it suits me.

Have you ever found a letter meant for someone else?

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:12:57 -0000

I do this weird thing. It's an almost superstitious ritual. I leave love notes or sometimes nice fortune cookie fortunes in the pockets of clothes at thrift stores. I don't know exactly why it's only thrift stores, except maybe because things there have a history and the notes could have come from anywhere really, except they didn't, they came from me. I believe in my heart of hearts that for someone it becomes their lucky day because of a tiny random bit of paper I tucked into a pocket. I like thinking that I have the power to do that, to make a regular day into someone's lucky day out of nothing but paper and ink. I like smuggling the little notes in unseen, stealing something into a store. It's good that I'm easily entertained I think.

Do you think more about the past or the future?

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:16:04 -0000

No, not really.

What does your horizon look like?

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:17:32 -0000

This is the view from my backdoor. I like an obscure, complicated horizon. I felt a little unsettled by living on the Pacific ocean for so many years, and when I drove through Oklahoma and Texas I woke my driving mate up to make them look at the incredible flatness, like an ocean of land, with the road stretching out in a straight line for as far as you could see and nothing but flatness everywhere. I have dreams of driving on a road like that but over water, a road with no railings and no space between road and water, the road going on as far as I can see. It's a road you can't turn around on. And this was like that road only with earth in place of water and when I moved out there, to California, I knew I couldn't just turn around. I finally got back here, to the mountains, a few years ago, back to complicated horizons and winding roads and things that are hard to find. In some way people and places are defined by their geography, by their climate and the flora and fauna. I'm not the same person here that I was in California, living on the coast, with an easy climate and an ocean and everything laid out bare in front of you. When I first moved there I thought everything looked like a cheap trailer park, everything brown and bare and the architecture so plain and low and laid open. I had to be in the desert before I got it, before I saw how beautiful the spare earthiness was. But I never felt at home there, even though I still miss it. I feel at home with a complicated horizon, with plants that will grow over your car over a long weekend, with undergrowth in the forests and trails that are hard to find and roads that never go in a straight line and funky old buildings and hidden walkways and mysteries and shadows. I like it here.

Happy Birthday Krissy!

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:22:40 -0000

Today is Krissy's birthday and we're having a birthday weekend that lasts until Tuesday morning. I am so very glad this person was born! Happy happy joy joy...

the way rain creates space in time

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:21:17 -0000

All at once, everything has slowed down. It's been one of those months, and then last Wednesday Little Bit went back to school and I'm going to part time and now there's more breathing space. Then yesterday, finally, it rained. We've had this drought going on, dry and hot and the things that should be green are brown and sad and then yesterday the rain started, and it kept raining, and it's raining still. In the middle of the night last night I woke up and heard a transformer go out, a big pop and then a bigger boom and then silence, total silence for as far as I could hear. It took five hours for them to fix it and all that time everything was silent except the sound of an occassional middle of the night car on the wet roads. I couldn't sleep, the quiet was too overwhelming, and the rain. Already this morning everything looks greener and saturated with wet color.
The prediction is for even more rain, rain all week, and for space in my life and time and breath and muddy pawprints in my kitchen where the dogs tramp through. And I can feel autumn coming from far away and getting closer by the day, my favorite time of year except for all the others.

When was the last time you behaved out of character?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:26:46 -0000

I think all the parts of me are me. I surprise myself pretty often, but it's all me. If it's possible to behave "out of character", then who we think we are is just a construct we've made up. I'll take the messy, surprising bits too.

the spaces between things

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:10:59 -0000

Thomas Moore says in The Reechantment of Everyday LIfe, that maybe when we're depressed, that's a good time to build a shrine, an altar to Saturn, to all things slow and sad and gloomy. I like that idea, and the idea of not running screaming from the low points. I think the desperation to escape from all sadness is an enormous source of deeper sadness, increased frustration, chronic dissatisfaction. Maybe that's an easier point of view for me than most because I do tend to default to happy, or maybe that point of view is part of the reason that I default to happy. Chicken and egg kind of thing, and I can't know the answer, since I've been me for as far back as I can remember, but I'm sure those two things are connected.

I have one other quirk that I think keeps me on a little bit of an even keel, which is this sort of distance that's also just part of me, always a little bit being an observer. There's even a part of me that's sitting back and observing me. That distance becomes bigger and almost meditative under stress, so interesting an experience that for years I sought out the highest stress work I could find. I worked in a cardiac transplant CCU, in ER's, in high risk labor and delivery, in the busiest restaurants, on scenic construction for theatre where we were always understaffed and behind schedule and I had to call on skills I didn't even know I had, almost any job where I walked in and it looked like at least half the people were about to lose it. A lot of the time I would have several of these kinds of jobs at once.

When I read the four noble truths of Buddhism, I had one of those instant recognition experiences. I never chose to be disciplined enough to follow the fourth one, that is, to follow Buddhist teachings specifically, but those first three - oh, exactly!
Yes, life is suffering, just by nature. Everyone you love will die, you will die, this planet will eventually die too. We're all temps and if we aren't just kidding ourselves then we have to have that profound loss in our consciousness every moment. I've noticed that a lot of people want to misunderstand this one. It doesn't mean that life, this experience, isn't wonderful and precious, but just that that's exactly what makes it so bittersweet.

Which leads to the second one, the "arising of suffering" coming from attachment - to people, pets, things, life, to all the things that will ultimately be lost. Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search For Meaning, says about the people freed from the concentration camps "A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely."
- because there is always another level of desire.

And then the third, that there is an ending to suffering through detachment, which if you are a Buddhist comes through meditating and following the teachings. If you're me, I don't know where it comes from, probably some defense mechanism in place from infancy if not before, one of those broken places that healed stronger.

I don't seek out the adrenaline-rush situations anymore, but I'm still liking the idea of Thomas Moore's shrines.

urban legends, jobs and careers

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:29:51 -0000

I've never really thought in terms of a career. That sounds very big and important. I think in terms of life and work, jobs, getting paid, doing something I like, doing something that needs to be done. Some work doesn't come with a paycheck, some work doesn't come with enough of a paycheck, some work I can't believe someone pays me for when I would do it for free -- that's the best. When I was in college I was the only art major taking all the premed courses, but I quickly decided with help from friends who were in med school and doing internships and residencies that I would never ever fit into that system. And now so many of the people I know who did that brave, dedicated thing have somehow lost their souls, resigned themselves to convention and insurance companies and being compliant little doctor-drones, because being any other way is an uphill climb all the way. That makes me very sad and I wish our health care system was more inspiring than it is. But I still prolly wouldn't want to play doctor.
I love working with Little Bit (my client with autism who I get paid to work with 5 days a week) but it's made me a little lazy about seeking out other jobs. I used to layer my jobs, a little of this and a little of that, because I was always afraid the bottom might drop out of one of them. Now I just have this one paid thing I do. But it still isn't a "career", it's a job. I learn a lot on jobs. And I learn something every single day with this person, but at the same time, I could push myself harder. I've thought about how much I like to cook and how I could get up early and go work in a diner cooking breakfast on a grill because I love that, love the rhythm and interaction and the need to be fast and organized like playing a game and getting paid for it, but then there's the unpaid part of my work life, the small zoo we have here, the plants that get watered every day in this drought, the tending and minding and caring for, and I just settle into that and do some more pushups because, 100 pushups, that's a job, I swear. Why won't someone pay me to do 100 pushups? It's way more work than spending time with Little Bit...
In my ideal imaginary universe I would get paid to do art projects and to write words into thin air. I hear some people do get paid for that kind of thing. But that might just be an urban legend.

20 questions, tagged

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:13:57 -0000

This is a very convoluted tag. Bridget tagged me in a comment somewhere, but the questions she answered are different from the ones that Tara answered, which are the ones I happened to copy and paste so here they are. Everyone else please go tag yourselves if you're inclined, kind of masturbatory tagging here...

I AM...a very curious person, in both senses of the statement: I'm always curious about things and I'm very odd.

I THINK...about patterns and how things fit together quite a lot. I think this is why I love puzzle games so much. There's a new Portal game coming sometime soon-ish, and I'm soooo excited!

I KNOW...a weird amount of trivia. Krissy and I love to watch Cash Cab and I know tons of the answers to these really obscure questions, which takes up the brain space that I would otherwise use to remember where I've left my car keys or my phone.

I HAVE...very vivid and memorable dreams at night. I wake up and type out a dream almost every night. Lately I've had a lot of dreams in which I'm asleep and dreaming, which is very confusing.

I WISH...all the time and have these superstitious things associated with wishing - tapping on something, wearing lucky clothing and jewelry, all kinds of craziness. Even I think it's crazy, but I still do it.

I HATE...waste, lack of care, inconsideration. I hate seeing resources or life being squandered, not even for enjoyment but just tossed aside.

I FEAR..humans when they become twisted and angry and destructive. I'm not afraid of other animals, although I'm sensible of their natural aggression and capabilities, but human animals can become mean spirited and frightened and hurtful in epic measure.

I MISS...so many people I've loved and still love who have kind of disappeared off my radar. I moved a lot for a big part of my life and I'm not very good about keeping up with people once I don't see them all the time, but I still love and miss them.

I HEAR..a soundtrack in my head almost all the time. Sometimes I actually play music that seems like the soundtrack for this moment or for what I want this moment to become. I used to go to sleep listening to the soundtrack to the first Harry Potter movie because I thought it would bring more magic into my dreams just by association. I don't know if it worked, my dreams are pretty crazy wild anyway.

I CRAVE...uni. Sea urchin sushi, mmmmm, there's nothing better. I also crave this salty Himalayan goji berry chocolate bar that Farland turned me onto after Dawn turned her onto it. It's amazing stuff.

I SEARCH FOR...everything, constantly. In the physical world, this is partly because I have the world's worst sense of direction. I have an inverted bump of direction and sometimes figure out where to go by thinking about what seems like the right direction to me and then going the opposite way. This usually works.

I WONDER..always and about everything. Curiosity and wonder are probably my signature strengths but also are the qualities that make me more than a little odd.

I REGRET...every time I ever said or did something unkind. I'm good with words and good with thinking on my feet and I can be very cutting and witty and a little evil. I always feel bad later, even if the other person "deserves it", but I'm the person who says the thing that other people later say "I wish I'd thought to say that". (Be careful what you wish for.)

I LOVE...being here in a body, having my wonderful family and friends, hearing music, dancing, playing, singing loud in my car or when I'm at home alone, drumming, painting, photography, yoga, sex, food, funny clothes, shoes that are cute AND comfortable (addicted to earth shoes!), playing games, reading, working with Little Bit...I love information too, I used to joke that I wanted to know everything, weigh nothing and live forever. It was only a sort-of kind of joke.

I BELIEVE IN ..everything and nothing. If belief is on the table, then everything is equal, faeries, elves, elementals, the easter bunny, god, goddess, lucky underwear...all equally improbable, unprovable, unknowable. I'm much better at observation than belief.

I SING...really loudly in the car by myself. I can sing more or less on pitch but I don't have a great voice, I have the voice of someone who doesn't really sing. I can sing harmonies though.

I LOSE...things all the time. I'm not organized unless it's required for a job. I like a kind of organic mess of things that naturally find their places but I do sometmes get frustrated when I can't find a particular thing I want.

I ALWAYS...have another question. I can't imagine ever running out of them.

I AM SCARED...of other people sometimes, not much of anything else except sensible fears like not leaping off of cliffs unless I know the water's deep, not petting venomous snakes, that kind of thing.

I AM HAPPY...yes. I love love love being here, in this body, in this life, having these experiences, yes. Yes yes yes.

some links I'm obsessing over

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:35:55 -0000

This is a nice little overview/analysis of Across the Universe, which is one of my all time favorite movies. There's a lot of cool little tidbits of information that I didn't know, but if you haven't seen the film yet, there are spoilers, so be forewarned. (And see the film right away, because you've missed a great movie.)

Alright, and I've been obsessing over this listing of cognitive biases and thinking that the entire list is a fairly complete description of how humans interact in the world. I love that there's a bias called "the lake wobegone effect".

And I think this is a really great idea, and something I'd never heard of - "slugging". Of course, I currently live in a city too small for HOV lanes. I mean, we barely have real roads, and they apparently lost interest before they got to useful signage here. When I lived in socal a cab driver in LA told me that you can't drive in the HOV lane unless you're going at least 100mph (and he was at the time, with me in the cab). Anyway, this seems like a very clever, useful plan.

the baby ma'am plan

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:56:27 -0000

So most days Krissy and I each draw a card and the high card is assigned to "baby ma'am" for the day and the low card to "baby minion". This does not apply during working hours, but when we're not at work Baby Ma'am can ask for anything at all and Baby Minion fulfills those requests and tries to do extra nice stuff too. We used to do this a couple of years ago, then it kind of faded off, and now we've reinstituted the baby ma'am plan. I highly recommend it, it's quite a lot of fun.

Well, today was day 2 of the hundred pushups - it's 3 days a week and I started on Friday, doing Monday-Wednesday-Friday. So today (how pathetic is this?) I did a total of 17 pushups, traditional style but with my hands up about 10 inches off the floor to make it easier - or more accurately, to make it possible. I only do 60 second rests between reps because other research I've done says that's the optimum for building muscle, not 90secs or longer as the site suggests.

I'm Baby Ma'am today. I wonder if I could get Krissy to do my pushups for me...

30 day trials

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:41:39 -0000

I love 30 day trials - it's a nice chunk of time to decide how I feel about something and I can do anything for 30 days. A while back I decided to answer all the QaR's for 30 days, even the ones that don't inspire me, just as a form of practice. It was interesting that sometimes the ones I initially found uninspiring gave me the best perspectives and new ideas...hmmm, maybe sometime I'll do 30 days of just the ones I don't care for?
Usually I don't read any responses if I'm going to post one myself, but once in a while I accidentally read someone's because it shows up in my notifications. And sometimes someone else's response gets me going and then I have to post something when maybe I wouldn't have otherwise.
The questions are a nice nudge out of my habitual directions and into different territory, kind of like mental orienteering: here you are, now find your way out. Here's a compass, a water bottle and a bucketfull of words. Good luck.
Right now I'm doing the hundred pushups thing that Emma turned me onto, although it'll take longer than 30 days. And I'm just finishing up a 30 day elimination diet and did a challenge midway through which made it very apparent that wheat and I are not best friends. That was really really useful information, you have no idea. I've been playing around with this workout routine which I think fits nicely with the hundred pushups, and I think I might turn it into a 30 day trial with an every day commitment. My plan is to become a superhero. Possibly not in 30 days, but eventually. One thing I love about this book and routine is that it mostly only uses your body, no equipment or props. So you always have everything you need with you.

change

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:42:24 -0000

When I started here I'd never participated in any kind of social network before and wasn't at all sure I wanted people to know who I was. And I'd never blogged before. I only used an icon that wasn't a pic of me, and didn't post any photos for a long time. I wasn't being sneaky so much as just shy. I picked the name "rapunzel" not for the fairy tale but for the character in Televisionary Oracle, Rapunzel Blavatsky. I didn't use the name I use everywhere because I didn't want everyone I know to know it was me. Tinkonthebrink is a name my son came up with a long time ago and I love it. So since Jon inspired me to make a change (which never occurred to me until he did it), I'm changing my nick to what I use everywhere else. I did the Google link thing a long time ago and stopped being skittish about writing out loud, but it's been quite a process for me. Anyway, maybe I'll change my name every day now that I know I can do it...

How do you respond to negative people?

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:54:43 -0000

It seems maybe there are different kinds of negatives. There are the people who can't say anything nice, who complain or criticize all the time almost out of habit, or because cynicism makes them feel like they come across as being smarter and cooler than everyone else. Those people I just ignore even though they probably need the most love -- it's kind of a reflex that grew out of living with a mother who was very unhappy and very critical. I just preferred not to put myself in her path when I could avoid it. When it's unavoidable, I'm just the same person I am all the time, I don't do anything in particular in response. Sometimes I make jokes.

Then there are people who are labeled as having "negative behaviors". Those are the people I work with a lot of the time. Today I'm going to a planning meeting for a little girl with autism who has outbursts where she hits, kicks and throws things at people, runs around wildly making crazy noises and periodically throws herself down on the floor -- but she doesn't do any of that with me now. When I first met her three years ago she did some of those things once in a while, but now none of that happens when I'm with her. She still does those behaviors with other staff and last year in school. I've been puzzling over what I do with her that's different from what other people do in order to bring some suggestions to this meeting, and I still don't quite know, and the meeting is this afternoon.
I think one thing is that because she has some verbal issues (she has a great vocabulary but she communicates by echoing a lot), people tend to talk down to her and assume she isn't understanding them. I've always known how smart she is and never did that. The other thing is that I notice I constantly narrate what we're doing, where we're going next, and I give her complicated instructions (hand me the peppers and the bananas, take the basket, put it back where it belongs and then come back over here). It's kind of like curling, I direct her by sweeping a space in front of her which keeps her from going off. A lot of people are afraid of her unpredictability so they hold her hand and only take one step at a time. She likes to see the flow of things, so their carefulness is actually bringing on the thing they're afraid of.
And that fear is the other thing. Last year her teacher told me they were afraid to talk to me about how her day went in front of her because they were afraid of her reaction as she had hit, kicked and thrown things at all of them repeatedly. I would rather not talk behind her back and I couldn't work with her if I was afraid of her. I think that makes a big difference for her, but I don't think that's something you can write into a plan.

I guess anything I do with her could also apply to those other kinds of negative behaviors with other people, the ones I avoid. It would be completely possible to create a space in front of them where they could shift, to think about who they really are under the behaviors and address that part of them, to not shut down and avoid them out of the fear that they'll contaminate me somehow. I guess I don't have the energy for it. I find chronically angry, whiney, critical behavior exhausting to be around.

Hmmm, I just realized that for some reason I've refused to say "negative people" as it was phrased in the question, only "negative behaviors". Something about labeling a whole person as a negative doesn't sit right for me. Even though I've known some people who seem to be big balls of negativity. I think that's me holding out hope for them a little bit?

mayberry on acid, that's my address

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:38:00 -0000

ok, this was just on the local news. Some dude got out of jail and immediately tried to break into a cabin. By going down the chimney. He got stuck. It happens that last year this cabin was used as "santa's headquarters". But wait, it just gets better. When they pulled him out, his clothes came off.

god I love living here.

VIA signature strengths survey

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:07:19 -0000

Alright, people have been posting about this test so I took it too and here's how it turned out:

VIA Signature Strengths

Here are your scores on the VIA Signature Strengths Survey. For how to interpret and use your scores, see the book Authentic Happiness. The ranking of the strengths reflects your overall ratings of yourself on the 24 strengths in the survey, how much of each strength you possess. Your top five, especially those marked as Signature Strengths, are the ones to pay attention to and find ways to use more often.

English Test Results #1 - July 29 2008
Your Top Strength

Appreciation of beauty and excellence
You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.
Your Second Strength

Curiosity and interest in the world
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.
Your Third Strength

Gratitude
You are aware of the good things that happen to you, and you never take them for granted. Your friends and family members know that you are a grateful person because you always take the time to express your thanks.
Your Fourth Strength

Kindness and generosity
You are kind and generous to others, and you are never too busy to do a favor. You enjoy doing good deeds for others, even if you do not know them well.
Your Fifth Strength

Zest, enthusiasm, and energy
Regardless of what you do, you approach it with excitement and energy. You never do anything halfway or halfheartedly. For you, life is an adventure.

Well, okay then...

Anyway, everyone consider yourselves tagged if you're so inclined.

this is what my mind does when I'm not looking

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:55:45 -0000

The other night I dreamed that I was sleeping. No, really. In my dream sleep, I was in my bed, Krissy was sleeping next to me, it was all just as it is. And in the dream I woke up. Then things got strange. I woke up and had a hard time seeing because the room was so dark and I noticed something moving over the window and realized that there was something - was it a bird or maybe a mouse, so dark it's hard to tell - nesting in the curtains. For some reason I found this upsetting in the dream world (in real life, anyone who knows me will tell you that I would not find this upsetting. I would probably build some kind of shrine around the nest and then take pictures of it. I definitely wouldn't feel unsettled by this kind of discovery - of course there should be animals nesting in the curtains, why not? But in my sleep I was upset by this.) Then I woke up. The room was really dark and it was hard to see. Krissy was sleeping next to me. It was all exactly as I had just experienced it. There was a long process of figuring out that, first of all, I had been asleep and there was nothing nesting in the curtains (it helped that there is no window on that wall in waking world) and then that I was actually awake and in the usual world (I'm still never positive about that part). Now what kind of person plays tricks on themselves by dreaming that they're dreaming? I think maybe I need more recreational activities.