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It is in many other things too
But wow, I’m going to Istanbul!
🙂
24 Thursday Dec 2015
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inTags
It is in many other things too
But wow, I’m going to Istanbul!
🙂
10 Thursday Dec 2015
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I had a pretty distinct vision of success- slim, romantically involved with a great guy, Â do-gooder job and/or very high income, pleasing my parents, fitting into the place where I’m at and a hometown heroine, Â surrounded by close friends, no longer socially awkward, perfect in every way
At varying stages of my life, I have pursued these goals directly and indirectly. It’s fair to say that my life has mostly been geared towards self improvement and success, perfectionism and pleasing. And yeah, a lot of my suffering, while not a waste and a part of my path, does not need to continue into the future.
Not one second more.
Success is on the inside, and purpose is an unfolding, a process- not a goal, not a fixed point, no where on the outside.
Yes, there are ups and downs and I dont think my job is the ultimate meaning of my life, and I don’t see a direct saintly mission to it, but I do KNOW, deep inside, that right now, this is where I am meant to be.
I also know that I am meant to write, and to share my writing.
I feel a strong desire to be in a relationship, bu while I may have moaned over unrequited love and wondered why the guys don’t like me, the truth is that I probably have not met the right person yet. I haven’t failed to find love; love will find me, at the right moment and with the right person. The truth is, all of the guys I have met, including my ex boyfriend, didn’t ever really impress me, and I want to be impressed. Not just on a superficial checklist level, although I want the guy to have some kind of job, a reasonable level of intelligence and intellectualism, and be really cute and good in bed and ADORE me. Yes, I want to be WORSHIPPED but not overly pandered to. I want a guy who can set limits and won’t let me walk all over him, but will go TO THE MOON AND BACK for me. Without me asking for it. Â The most important things about this person are that he must be kind, open, and spiritually awake. I am looking for a hero, and the truth is that I won’t stand for anything less. I won’t accept less than I deserve.
Yes, a bold statement coming from an overweight, disorganized, indebted, uncool person like me. But fuck it, I AM AWESOME. I am a success, right now. Mr Right hasn’t failed to show up because I don’t go jogging every morning, although this is something I would like to get into doing- FOR ME. Mr Right hasn’t showed up at least in part because I WAS TOO BUSY BECOMING AWESOME. AND MY AWESOMENESS CAME FIRST, before meeting a guy. And I only want a partner that will make me MORE AWESOME. That’s right, MORE FUCKING AWESOME.
And no, that’s not too much to ask.
I want to get what I give, and maybe a little more.
I want a guy who can plan a date, who follows through, who won’t make fun of me and doesn’t think I am weird.
The person I did date, in the past, was cruel, a bit delusional, and did I mention, full of shit. It seems mean to speak ill of the dead (not actual dead but dead and gone in my life) and there are times, like when I think of how he used to wrap my Christmas presents for me using minimal amounts of paper and tape and optimal wrapping techniques using his advanced spatial intelligence, that I almost kind of miss him and think he wans’t so bad.
He wasn’t so bad, but he wasn’t good enough.
He said so to me himself, at the end.
He knew I deserved better.
ANd there are many good things I learned from him- to rebel, to question my elders, to not take shit from people, to be selfish, to follow my joy and not give a shit about what other people think. To stop feeling guilty about having sex, and being different from what my parents wanted. How to be a friend.
So no, I don’t hate you V. But damn, you were a brat sometimes.
And I am done DONE dealing with brats. I don’t need an infant man, I want a man whose child would be worth my while to bring into the world. A man who deserves a permanent space in my life and is worth irrevocably tying myself down with.
No wonder I haven’t found the person yet, ain’t nothing wrong with me. I am looking for someone really SPECIAL, and it will happen.
I desire for it to happen, to meet this person that will add to my personal development instead of subtracting it, who will be down for the ride for all of life’s adventures instead of giving me the impossible choice of having a home or following my call and wanderlust where it takes me. I need a man who has wings of his own to intertwine my roots with.
But no, there is nothing wrong with me besides being a flawed human. It is not me, it is these men. I will find an awesome one, and he will find me and recognize the awesomeness in me, run after me, have the sense to lock me down and put a ring on it, and never let me go, or let me get dissatisfied.
I know there is someone that awesome in the world, right now. I know I don’t have to lose 50 lbs, or wait for some child man to grow up, or learn the rules of bitchiness and manipulation to get and keep a man.
No, I think it’s just a matter of time.
But with or without him, my life is COMPLETE. I am awesome.
And so, so grateful. FOr finally learning this lesson, and feeling it, and for all the adventures along the way. I am thankful fo the tears that washed my soul clean, I am happy for the scarpes on my wrists where the chains wonce bound me and which pushed me to go beyond the bounds of my comfort zone to finally claim.
I AM FREEE.
And no man is going to cange that basic freedom, so dearly earned.
And same for hat extra weight. My mind/body/willpower/discipline has completely gone on strike, because deep down, I WANT TO BE LOVED NO MATTER MY WEIGHT. I WANT TO BE ACCEPTED AS I AM. And I have finally learnd, the hard way, multiple times-
HAPPINESS MAKES SUCCESS; SUCCESS MAKES HAPPINESS.
And without happiness success is a bitter draught indeed.
Finally, I love myself. And I am so proud of what I’ve done, and I hope to be easily bproud when I don’t have as much to report. But yeah, I am maginficinet in my own way, and I can do it.
So namaste and feel the power. May the force be with you.
Live fully, don’t give a shit, and prosper whatever that means to you.
chapeau to me, I’ve got a long way to go and have come along way, but more importantly, my ever stronger self love and acceptation is the most precious gift that travels with me.
Namaste, Hallulujah, Amen
MJ
06 Sunday Dec 2015
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inYes, I would like to have my own tiny human, someday, though
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Kahlil Gibran
It is physical, mental, spiritual.
It doesn’t make sense.
And no, I’m probably not ready for all the blood and mess and sacrifice of a baby, but no, that doesn’t mean I don’t want one.
I discussed with a friend a few months ago regarding single women getting impregnated without a man in their lives. I thought, and still think, it’s selfish to bring a new child into the world without giving it a dad. I think women are not enough.
And yet, not long ago, I dreamt I was pregnant and didn’t know the father/there was no father, and I was still overjoyed.
And kind of relieved not to have to co-parent with someone, relieved not to have to make a relationship work for the sake of the baby.
This is not to say I don’t long for love. I don’t think my dream was exactly about a real physical baby, I think it was about birthing a new spirituality.
I long long long for love.
for a long time.
Sometimes it feels so far away and hopeless. I hope life surprises me, and soon.
But yeah, people belittle it, I feel, this yearning for a baby.
I don’t know why. Yes it’s hard, and once you have one you can’t walk away.
You can’t leave your job to travel the world without a steady source of income, and child care.
Though maybe you can, to a certain extent.
I think the myths about what is needed to have a child are used to keep us in line and working without asking too many questions. People will do many things out of fear, and anything to keep their children safe.
Speaking of which, I should call my parents.
I don’t want a baby now but, man, my life would be richer with more children in it.
I need one.
Namaste,
MJ
06 Sunday Dec 2015
Posted Uncategorized
inBecause God is at home with me.
Because I am doing my real work of writing.
Because God is there at mass too but I feel far away from Him/Her there.
Because I finally realized the Catholic Church is a corrupt hierarchy like every other, whose head does not believe in small l liberalism, no matter how much he is the person of the year, and the system of beliefs, is, in itself, a corrupt system, I do believe.
I’m not saying I no longer identify as Catholic, but that I really didn’t want to go to Church.
Because I need to get to the church in my own heart.
I have a tiny Nativity scene in my apartment, and I’m having trouble figuring where it fits into God these days.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the beauty and opulence of the Church, but I do think there is something wrong with its self assuredness.
The sure way to know you haven’t found God is that you’ve stopped seeking him.
So I am seeking him, and I have already found Him, and Her, in many forms and faces, but like Joseph Campbell says, the symbols must remain transparent to the eternal.
The symbols are just another veil. Even Jesus, even God made flesh, even the baby in the manger is just a cloak for that much bigger I who am.
ANd I love God’s creation. I don’t think my traveling, just because, is anything less than a pilgrimage. There are many ways of loving God and worshipping Him.
Today I feel like worshipping God is looking deeply into my own heart, and answering His Call to a fuller life. A genuine, purposeful life without illusion, that is not all about me but about being me, playing my own small role in the Nativity Play and not being upset that I was not someone else when they did the casting.
When the time comes, God will not ask “why were you not Muhamed?” “why wer you not Paul?” but rather, “why were you not you?” paraphrasing from Paulo Coelho
ANd I feel a bit penitent that I tried to take the easy answers out of life. I tried to believe my religion was the only true religion, and that meaning could b made from doing something that wasn’t my calling. I tried to deny there was more than the material world and the hierarchy of the Church.
I denied the mystery.
And now I feel, Emmanuel, God-is-with-us, is everywhere. He is in the fight I had with my boss that made me realize that I need to come to the Table of Plenty and eat living bread and drink living water. He is in the stars which I have only fully witnessed in the Moroccan desert, that make me feel so blessed to be a part of creation. He is the people that are sometimes difficult to like but impossible not to love, who are just shuffling along and trying to be good too.
He is the basic goodness of all things, despite all the war and plunder and rapine and injustice and privilege, he is my realization that I am flawed but perfect and infinite that led me to get a pink lotus tatooed on my body in remembrance of a moment realizing the beauty of life in a buddhist garden.
He is far more than the dove that I tattooed on the other ankle in remembrace of Christianity, which echoes back to the Arc and Aphrodite and Istarte.
He is in sexually transmitted infections, one night stands, hangovers, and having the cops called because there’s too much noise- not a demon that incites us, but the force of life, and the journey towards wholeness, towards goodness, that is all pervasive despite the apparence of something vile and corrupt.
He is my sexuality and my chastity, the great current of energy that leads us towards birth and deathand the thrill of our heartbeat and breath.
He is there when I question whether it all makes any sense, he is there when I think it doesn’t , he is there whne I know life is not fair, and humans are so flawed but so beautiful.
I think he is most present though when I stop my complaining and jabbering and witness, listen to the sounds around me, be present, and feel my tears flow or the pleasant pain of a bely laugh.
Today I can’t go to Church, because it’s not big enough to contain him, or even come close to representing him, and for the moment, I don’t want to go see what even the highest nature of men have wrought of him.
Today, I just want to be here, and know that God can’t escape me.
Be still and know that I am God.
Namaste,
MJ
06 Sunday Dec 2015
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It seems painfully obvious now that I’ve admitted it, but I do feel like that most useless and vain of occupations-writing- is indeed mine, and everything I have been doing is just source material for the tales I will tell. Not fictional tales. No, things that really happened to me.
Like Eat, Pray, Love and Wild. Stories that changed their authors and the world.
But most importantly, spoke truth from real, authentic, genuine voices.
I have a voice. THe more htan 10,000 words I’ve spent on this blog have helped a lot. I really miss the feature on WOrdpress that would show you a random post from your site, and it showed always how much I”ve grown yet remained the same. SOmetimes I”m astounded at the wisdom of my former self, sometimes a bit embarassed.
I think the biggest thing is realizing I owe some of the best of me to the selves I realy dislike who went through really tough transformations to make me a more beautiful person. I don’t really miss them, but I appreciate perfectionist, obsessive, nearly anorexic overachiever Megan, without her I never would have become such a hippie, and I also am growing to love depressive, impulse eating, anything-goes, no holds barred, fuck the man but become one anyway, struggling with complexity, wandering, thoughtful, philosophical nad out of place gradute school Megan. You can find her from September 2012 to September 2013. I also like my dream has come true yet I haven’t found life’s meaning Megan, who starts shortly after I arrive din France in March 2013 and stretching up pretty much to March 2015, finally really transitioning into something else around October 2015, after my big backpacking trip where I realized I was and wasn’t a backpacker, and was happy to go back to work in Paris.
And yet, this too was a phase, and the truth that I know now and have always known, and can’t ignore, is that I must write.
I must see the world and tell it through my own eyes.
What job I do for money, my interest in photography, workout crazes, intetnions for a better diet, these are all distractions.  Really, they are the false self, the many false and shiny selves, glittering but not gold, never quite materialized because my voice is too strong and my soul is to big to ever really settle into any of those fake identities.
I get lost in the trap of who I want to be, caught in the looking glass, and I lose completely who I am.
ANd the voice that comes from me, from my real self and not my fake self.
My voice comes from something real deep inside of me, like the Om at the beginning of the world, it creates and reflects me.
I am uncomfortable in my chains. I cannot bury these emotions.
I was not meant to.
As the fortune teller said, I have many books in me, and I need to find true succes through being, and not doing.
As my mentor told me long ago, there are many things you can do; but what do you want to do?
As the mayor of the town in the Walking Dead explained with her dying breath,”what do you want to do? Why do you want to do it for you?”
And when you find that answer, you cannot shrink from it.
You cannot pretend it didn’t happen.
You can’t pursue it with just half your heart because you never really wanted it anyway.
Rather than living in your dream come true, you are forced to live in the ever present now: this is what I want to do. I am doing what I want to do.
I am being me.
ANd me can be soo scary. Me is so afraid she will never be loved. Me is afraid of being weak and vulnerable and flimsy and easily shattered. Me is all too real, a true, pumping heart that is not like the idealized version.
But so alive, and so real.
Me is being you cannot shield yourself from. Me is something you cannot deny when it’s difficult. Me is a clear flowing stream after the viscous milkshake of living the world’s daydream; me is casting off the chains and turning to the light, and never again to be tricked by the shadows.
Me is so beautiful it’s almost impossible to bear.
Me is something worth living for, the meaning of life, the heart’s call, the whisper within, the voice of God that dwells with us.
We need to do His work.
Namaste,
MJ
05 Saturday Dec 2015
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inSo I’m an American living in France (Paris to be exact) and despite the fact that I’ve learned that I know nothing (a lesson that helps repeating itself) I have quite a lot to say, and I don’t think the world stands to gain any by me not saying it.
So here goes, time to get out Jason Mraz’s analytical knife and be the salt of the earth whilst enjoying Hemingway’s moveable feast. A table, les amis!
05 Saturday Dec 2015
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So this week at work, I had a fight with my boss. Never a good idea, especially when one is on trial period. Â Feeling like I needed to have a Plan B and soon, and more than anything, needed to evaluate my life and if this was a sign I was going in the wrong direction, I racked my brain for other things I could do, how I could survive and thrive if this didn’t work out, whether or not this was what I actually wanted.
I came to the conclusion that the adversity I was facing- and in some ways, created myself but we’ll get to that- would likely be found anywhere. In general I feel good about my work, and just the day before I felt energized despite putting in an abnormally long 11 hour day. People issues will be everywhere, and there is no escaping them. ANd while nothing is perfect, on the whole where I am is good, and there is something to be said for seeing things through. Even when they don’t come easy nor are they exactly perfect in everywhere.
Because no, my job does not bring a sense of meaning or joyful happiness directly to my life. And I had been beginning to think maybe it could, that work could solve many of my problems and get my mind off other things, and that by finding success and purposeful, goal-oriented activity to get there would give me whatever I lack- be it an aura of unavailabilty to attract men, money to pay someone else to do my dishes and avoid having to cook, and of course,self worth and validation through hard work and material “success.” Â I’m glad my bubble was burst.
As my friend who I vented to and asked for advice explained to me, happiness is within, and leaving my job for the unknown wouldn’t magically bring me to a better place.
I know in my heart I am not necessarily cut out for the world I”m living in now, but I think it’s a good step.
This job has showed me that my main attribute and passion is communication, which is not a huge surprise. It has also showed me how much I don’t really value it, and think it is a second rate super power to have and just a stupid girly job that will never give me any real power and is for stupid people.
Definitely a very potent form of self hatred and misogyny.
And the truth is that I need a real project in my life besides my work, trying to find a man, and travel. Â I need to write about my travels.
Life is doing everything it can to prompt me to write, and I am just afraid to speak, and realize ten years later or just a few months what an idiot I was.
I am afraid to speak and be discovered by my job and not respected by my colleagues or asked to leave.
I am afraid to speak my truth and realize I am not the person I thought I should be, and that by doing so, I will have to acknowledge some of the stone idols I pretended to worship were false.
I am afraid to be an indiviual, because I already feel like a minority of one. It’s lonely, and I’m beginning to realize I can’t do life on my own.
ANd I also realize that I must answer the call, I must BE a fucking writer, and not let stupid Cheryl Strayed’s pretentious self-consciousness as a writer or my English major friend’s self proclamed status as poets and playwrights get in my way. It gets under my skin because I don’t dare to come out of my “achiever” closet, and because I am afraid of being judged as not good enough.
Much safer to write for an anonymous blog that I don’t even proofread than to actually spend some time on stuff, develop my own unique style, and getcalled out on it as not enough.
And in terms of my drama with my boss, I realized I am afraid to be vulnerable enoughto learn from her. Afraid to admit I can’t do it on my own. Afraid that whatever I am doing in France wouldn’t be good enough for AMerica and that’s why I am here, because I am an All-American reject that can’t fit into her birth society or host country.
Iam afraid all those stereotypes of the French are right, I am afraid that following my joy is wrong.
Mostly, I am afraid of being me.
ANd no wonder Ifeel inauthentic, no wonder I am struggling at my paying the bills job, no wonder no matter how much money I earn it doens’t feel like enough thugh before when I earned a pittance I didn’t feel like I was suffering- although the money issue really isn’t so bad. NO wonder all I do is compare myself to my other people and in doing so lose my soul.
I know who I am and what I want.
Fear is no excuse for a life not fully lived.
Waiting for things to ripen is smart, but being afraid to pick the fruit off the tree is damn dumb.
Refusing to acknowledge my fruitfullness is dangerous, and makes me feel barren.
Waste is one of the few true sins.
May God continue to lead me out of temptation, and may I have the courage to accept my salvation.
World without end, Amen.
Namaste friends
I have another blog to register.
03 Thursday Dec 2015
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Life is wonderful.
Really divine and cosmic and sacred and sublime.
Always trying to save you from yourself, always fulfilling your deepest yearning.
Never letting you settle or rest in anything that’s not to your highest good.
And so a few days ago, I was brought to my senses-
This is not the moment to buy a house, this is the moment to travel the world.
My work is not my worth, my job must never be my identity;
Yet it is sustenance for which I am grateful.
And with that abundance, I will create.
It is time for a creative explosion.
It is time to raise my voice and listen to myself for once.
It is time not to be arrogant or judgement or critical of myself or others, but to recognize the greatness that I aalready am,
And do the one thing the universe needs from me-
to be myself.
Even if it means all the idols will be shattered on the floor,
and my opinions will be scattered on the four winds,
And I give up the bittersweet illusion of control,
And accept with grace whatever comes my way.
I have it all when I have myself.
ALl that ever was, and all that ever will be.
Namaste,
MJ