Universe, I Need A Raise

Please know, dear blogosphere, that I've had a really strong cup of coffee.

I told my husband this morning that last night I gave up. I was up with our son for about an hour in the middle of the night helping him settle down after a nightmare. Drew (The Husband) thought when I said "I gave up" that I had somehow lost my parenting marbles at 3 in the morning and plunged Will (The Son)'s head into a hot fudge sundae and then built a ball pit in our bathroom.

"It's OK that you gave up. It was late and whatever you needed to do to get him to sleep, I support you."

"Oh, no," I said, "That was fine. I meant I gave up on all my hopes and dreams last night."

Short pause as he pours coffee, then "Ah. Way to go, Job."

And I did by the way actually lie in bed last night (after having helped my son rank the twenty-five different angles at which his feet could possibly be tucked under his blanket) and say, out loud, "Universe, I give up. I give up. I give up."

I'm not sad or depressed or despondent. I think life is pretty awesome. The people in my life are exceptional. Drew and I are happy. My son floats around on a tiny little motor-powered cloud and emits sunshine and I have to keep my mouth shut about how fabulous he is 90 percent of the time I'm thinking it so I don't sound nuts and so the women (or men, whatever works) in his life in the future have half a chance.

However, there's a lot of half-fixed stuff in my life that I thought I was going to complete through sheer willpower, or chutzpah, or by singing a song from Mary Poppins (and I do the most awesome Julie Andrews accent, which is all the better when it comes out of a Jewish-Puerto Rican person like myself). My apartment is half-nice, but then you open the door to our bedroom and the zombies fall out. Our kitchen cabinets are about to FALL OFF THE WALL (it's kooky) and we don't have the money to fix them. We're halfway out of an enormous debt. My current job is cool, but I'm still really broke, and it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I don't blog enough and I haven't finshed a big project for my dad's business that I promised him I would do. I got all the plants in on our deck but the deck itself looks like the opening credits of "Sanford and Son". My husband is sick right now, and just lost a big client, and I feel like we're blankly staring into the future, blinking occassionally, not really knowing how to pull it off.

I'm out of optimism. I need it all to come together already. I've spent ten years saying it will, and some of it plain hasn't and just might not. I need a clean, completed house, I need a rollicking career. I need, it seems like, a hundred thousand dollars to politely climb up my yoga pants leg and into my pocket. And Universe, you know me, I'll pay this jazz back tenfold, but really, I give up.

Help, please. You know where to find me. Still love you, Universe.

Jen

Guest Post: Faith With No Fear, Please

A guest post from the lovely and talented JP! With an addendum, no less! Because I should have posted this like a month ago and lost the original email! Yay!:

"I have been thinking hard about what I would ask for from the universe. I have been surprised because the answer does not automatically come.

"In giving it so much thought I have made an alarming discovery. I am smart. I have a wonderful husband, a delightful dog, remarkably talented and supportive friends, I am close to finishing my master's degree (something I have wanted for a long time), The people in my inner circle are, for the most part, happy, healthy and free, and yet, I am often at a loss for faith.

"I realized that I don't know what to ask the universe for because I don't feel like I deserve to ask for anything. Isn't that just the worst thing you have ever heard? I am so lucky in my life and yet I am so scared of the future. I want so much and yet I worry that I haven't earned the right to ask for any of it. Somewhere along the way I learned that life is supposed to be difficult and challenging and that blood, sweat and tears is the only way to get results. I have spent a lot of my adult life not trying because if you never try you can't really fail.

"So here it is.

"I want to ask the Universe for faith in my own future.

"I don't want to be scared of what comes next because I don't want to find myself too scared to pursue my dreams fully. I want children. I want to make a living doing what I love. I don't want to make compromises that give me excuses for settling for less. I don't want to look back in ten years and have regrets about what I did with my time. And most importantly, I don't want to waste any more time worrying that I might not achieve all of the things I just listed.

"So there you go, my friend with the ear of the universe...... faith with no fear please."

And the addendum:

While reading your return to the blogoverse, I dug up my "ask the universe" piece to re-send you. I have attached it below..... BUT interestingly.... in the world of sort-of-success-stories, I think it would be prudent to also include that the following things have happened to me since I came to California three weeks ago (now the proud holder of a masters degree)..... I received a letter from the chair of the Brooklyn College Theatre Department telling me that I have been recommended by the department to be an Adjunct Lecturer in Theatre for the fall semester... AND it looks like I will be teaching two or three workshop classes in period acting styles for a summer theatre program for teens run out of Queensborough Community College when I get back to NYC in July. Way to go Universe!

---
Exclamation point mine. I love you, JP.

Peace,

Jen

Don't Mess With Mr. Strut

While I am back -- and better than ever -- and have lots to write about after my impromptu vacation from this blog and thinking about anything of any worth, well, I'm not going to today. And that's because I'm too delighted by this AP story that came out this morning and the fact that one of the Universe's main priorities is Mick Jagger. I also like that the Hell's Angels are open to signs from the heavens, or at least from the ocean.

From the AP:

BBC: Hell's Angels Sought to Kill Jagger
('LONDON (AP) -- Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger escaped an assassination plot hatched in 1969 by the Hells Angels, a new British Broadcasting Corp. documentary has claimed. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 3, 2008
Filed at 7:36 a.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger escaped an assassination plot hatched in 1969 by the Hells Angels, a new British Broadcasting Corp. documentary has claimed.
A program to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday says the rock star was the target of the plot following a purported dispute with the motorcycle gang over concert security.

Jagger had vowed not to use Hells Angel members as bouncers following the death in December 1969 of an 18-year-old fan at a notorious free performance at Altamont Speedway in Northern California.

In return, gang members hatched a plan to kill Jagger at his holiday home in Long Island, New York, the BBC claimed.

''The Hells Angels were so angered by Jagger's treatment of them that they decided to kill him,'' Tom Mangold, the presenter of the program, was quoted as telling Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He said the plan was disclosed during an interview with Mark Young, a former FBI officer, for the BBC's ''The FBI at 100'' documentary.

Mangold said the men tried to reach Jagger by sea. ''The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard,'' he was quoted as saying. They all survived but made no other attempt on his life, Mangold said.

It was not clear whether Jagger was ever informed of the alleged plot against him.
LD Communications, Jagger's publicists in Britain, did not immediately return calls requesting comment.

The Hells Angels have always denied any connection with the Altamont Speedway killing.

Salutations to the Guru. Over and Out.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation and guru to the Beatles, among others, died yesterday on February 5th. While I'm sure someone else has figured this out, I have not yet noticed any mentions in the news that he died the day after Across The Universe Day, when NASA beamed the famed Beatles song into space via satellite antenna in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the song's release. The song's chorus includes the mantra "Jai guru deva om" which, according to my beloved and overused Wikipedia "is a sentence fragment whose words could have many meanings, but roughly translate to "salutations to the guru", then the mystic syllable om". While Maharishi was a controversial figure for many reasons, he did believe that TM, a form of meditation using mantras, could help heal the world and bring peace.

So. . . salutations to the guru and the mystical 'om' were beamed quite literally across the universe, to unknown effect, and then he died.

Salutations to the guru. Om.