Things I Did This Weekend

Calling In The One

Ah, like, went to bed last night/this morning at 5 a.m.  Holy crow, batman, I don’t remember the last time I stayed up until 5 am on the weekend.  It has surely been a long time.

I had a crazy, cool, out of fucking hand day yesterday, that just kept morphing into the next cool thing.  Did it all happen?

Yup.

The morning was my usual Saturday morning m.o.  Get up do my morning practice, make a little breakfast (hot oatmeal with an organic banana, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, ginger, nutmeg, sea salt, and unsweetened vanilla almond milk.  Oh my god who is this masked woman and what the fuck is she eating?) and a pot of organic Italian Roast french press coffee.  Then I did me some writing.

I did my morning pages, three, and I did the exercises out of Calling in the One.

PS.  If you are sick of hearing about this book, tough, this blog is going to be screaming with it, so get over it now or go read something else.  Like my book.

Ahem.

So, yesterday’s reading was around the ‘boogeymen’, you know those things that we allow ourselves to tremble before, despair of, and be in fear (F.alse E.vidence A.ppearing R.eal) of.  Like the this one: what the hell am I doing even thinking about applying to school for something I may really enjoy doing as a career, don’t you know that there’s not enough money and you are a fool and you are going to wind up getting evicted out of your apartment and you will be pushing a shopping cart in front of the Aveda institute with too much rouge on your withered cheeks.

Yeah, that’s where my head goes.  Uh, thanks for that.  That was really pleasant.

The exercise for this reading was to write yourself a letter specifically addressed from this fear.  Let the fear have its say.  Now, I thought, here is the stupid exercise that is not going to work.  I have contempt.  I know this fear, blah, blah, blah.

Hmmm, seems like some one is balking doesn’t it?

I write the letter addressed to myself from the fear of financial insecurity (ie the ain’t-never-gonna-be-enough fear) and boy howdy, did I get pissed.  By the time I was done with it, I had said “fuck you” out loud really loudly.  Poor cats, they thought I was hollering at them.

Here’s the “letter” from my fear-

Dear Carmen-

You’re never going to make it, you’re going to be poor forever, you’re going to get evicted, you going to wander the streets homeless and abandoned with a shopping card.  You will be unloved and always abandoned, you don’t deserve love, you’re unlovable and you don’t deserve financial success either, because you’re a piece of shit.

Baha- Your Fears Committee

I really did say “fuck you” quite loudly, then adding, “who the hell are you and what are you doing in my head?”

Flipping the page to the book, which is designed just so that you don’t see that next part of the exercise until you are about to do it.  The directions following said, I read to now write back to the fear and address it the way you would a young child.

Bingo.  I have the memory.

I was five, four, probably.  It was the middle of the night, somewhere in some city in the Bay Area or San Jose area.  Mom was flinging stuff into her boyfriend Chucks car and my sister is sleeping next to me in the back of the Volkswagen Beetle.  I am terrified, but keeping it pretty stifled.  We are moving again.  We are fleeing before they evict us.  I am woken out of a hard sleep to be shoved in the car with a bunch of boxes and garbage sacks of clothes.  My mom is sneaking around the car trying to be as quiet as possible so the neighbors don’t wake up.  The porch light is off and I watch from just below the door jamb on the Bug, I am crying and sniffling.  I had liked it here.  There was a tangerine tree in the back that I liked to eat from and I liked the kids in the neighborhood.  I don’t want to go.

Hence, with some new perspective, I write back my fear–

Dear Fear of Financial Insecurity

Thanks for the insight, but I am really being taken care of quite well, I’m not a little girl running away in the middle of the night skipping out of the rent like my mother and her abusive boyfriend.  I am loved and I am allowed to succeed.  And I am never alone.  I have an amazing God that loves and provides for me (yeah, I said GOD, get over it bitches).  Further I get to be happy and successful, they are my dues after all the hard work I have done.  I know that you are scared for me, that you are just trying to protect me so that I won’t get hurt.  But it’s time I flew without you, I promise God won’t let me crash.  You can let me go now.

Thanks for your concern, in loving kindness–Carmen

Then I left the house.  Saying as I left, if I lose this apartment because I am going to go to “beauty school” so be it.  I accept the consequences.

Now remember, the consequences don’t have to be bad!  What if, as John Ater suggested, the consequences are that I get a better place?  Am I ready to accept that?

YES!

I got a message from Beth on the phone about meeting up, so we hooked up in the Mission and then had us a great girls lunch at SunFlower.  Man, I love me some tofu salad.  It is just screamin’.  And nothing accompanies it better than a good bouquet of girlfriend.

Then I head downtown on BART to the institute.

It is perfect.

Can I just say it again, perfect.  Yeah, I got nerves, yeah, I had me some doubts, again, what am I doing?

Yet, every time I turned around something else was declaring hey, Carmen, this is it.  First, it smelled delicious.  I am such a fan of all things that smell nice.  I always have Pacifica candles burning in the house, maybe it’s vertiver,or blood orange, or my favorite Mexican cocoa.  I drench myself in coconut body lotion and make it a habit to always have my signature perfume, Egoiste, by Chanel, on my body.  I am a scent person.  And the school smelled good, so good.

So much better than poopy diapers, let me tell you.

The woman who I interviewed with, Jocelyn, and I got along smashingly.  Ridiculously. I thought, why we could be best friends her in about three days.  And how Paris came up (thought I’d forgotten Paris had you, think again!), how, not sure, but she’s going there soon for a vacation and the next thing you know I am asking, is there an Aveda in Paris?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Why, yes, Carmen, there is.

Fabulous.

Then we are talking about the CIDESCO program and how it would mean not only California licensing to practice esthiology, but also throughout the United States and 30 other countries.  France being one of them.  Paris being where the Aveda institute is located.

Why, how handy is that?  I had been keeping it in my heart, but now, I share.  I don’t want to be a nanny in Paris either.  I want to do skin care work and I want to do make up art and I want to work the fashion shows.  I want to go to London on the tube.  I want to go to Milan.  I want to be booked to work the shows in Paris.

Hey fear of financial insecurity do you hear me knocking down your door?

I pay the deposit.  We go over the financials.  I breathe and say I don’t have to know where the money is coming from.  It’s just coming.  The tuition will get paid.  I will get to do this.  I also run into an old friend whom I had not seen in years, turns out she’s their new director.  Well, fuck me, how cool is this?

And I will be starting November 8th.  The very week after K. starts pre-school.

Handy, no?  Could the timing possibly be better?

I leave Aveda on wings.  I drift home up the hill.  Have I mentioned the school is located down the hill from my house.  I can walk there in fifteen minutes.

I meet with Jackie.  She picks me up and we head over to Oakland to see Thievery Corporation at the Fox theater.

More fantasticness.

We catch up in the car and bang, Kismet.

Guess who else has been doing Calling in the One?

Guess who has called in the one?

She did the web seminar.  And met the one.  I got to meet him too.  Spontaneity took hold of me while we were having dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant on Telegraph and I said, sure, I’ll go to this work party function in some crazy fancy high-rise condo in San Jose after the show to meet your guy.

And I did.  And it was awesome.  It was so affirming to see how it was working for her.  We shared a lot, we talked a lot, we compared our experiences.  She bolstered me up and assured me that I was on the right track.

It was though the Universe, was saying “hey, kid, I swear it’s happening, just hang in there, here’s a little proof to show you”.

As Joan likes to say, “Amazeballs”.

Amaze balls indeed.

I came home this morning too wired from the night and the party and meeting Jackie’s beau and drinking a lot of coffee, to go right to bed.  I got online, filled out the FAFSA, financial aid paper work for student loans, and made a promise.  Today I would get my nightstand for the other side of the bed, as I was directed to do weeks ago.  No more balking.

And guess what?

I did.

Guess who is calling in the ONE now?

Yeah, that’s right I am.  Here he comes, walking right straight for me.  I think he’s going to like the nightstand.  I got him a kick ass lamp to read by as well.  He likes to read.

Before you know it, there’s going to be an extra toothbrush in the bathroom as well.

Now excuse me while I go kick some more fears out into the hallway, I ain’t got room for them no more.

Tags: Aveda, Calling In The One, coffee, fabulous, fear, love, organic, Paris, postaday