Finding the Right Mentor to Fulfill Transformation

This blog has never been quite right. I've always been aware of it and the first to confess it. From the get-go, my intentions, although beautiful and good, were vague. Instead of focusing on one central "nobody youer than you" theme, I tried to give equal billing to the whole committee of interests that take up my attention. And then there were all the technical issues, magnified by my sense of helplessness around them. Some "blogger" blogs had automatic comment-response notification and others (mine included) didn't, for reasons beyond my understanding or ability to fix. For a while, I manually emailed comment responses to every commenter, but that wasn't sustainable. Even after commenting mostly migrated to Facebook or Google+, it remained a frustration.
I listened to all the advice about the superiority of self-hosted wordpress blogs, I got one, and so acquired all the technological challenges times two--the comment situation, if anything, was worse, and again I couldn't understand why mine sucked and others worked fine--and now there was the additional headache of a two-horse team and no clue how to pass the baton from one to the other. So, for the past year and a half, I've duplicated my blog posts between the two platforms while hoping to find someone to help me migrate and consolidate. Hoping, but probably not looking hard enough. In Homer, the person I wanted to teach me was unavailable, and although I'd blatantly failed to figure any of it out on my own and needed help, my imagination and resources didn't stretch beyond that one individual to look for someone else. 
As in the ether, so on earth: no doubt this dissaray and unclarity around my online presence well reflected a lack of real-life directedness also. I apologize to all my readers for eighteen months of unfulfilled promises that I would be making changes "soon."

When I moved to Tucson, I started attending the Tucson Bloggers Meetup group. I immediately noticed the bike in the corner beside the group host, and my interest was piqued--clearly a sustainability-oriented person. I was further drawn to his use of Google docs for his presentation: the fact that he modeled its use, and then at a suitable moment explained clearly and succinctly why Google docs is so useful and important as a tool for creating and sharing content. This presenter was also giving much of what I considered the best advice about blogging, including many things (like choosing a niche, like having a name that isn't an obscure mouthful (like "ulteriorharmony")) that I knew were necessary but had failed to implement, and/but he also had multiple examples of how he had created these things himself and helped others to do so, and he clearly had an insider's knowledge and understanding of how the web works. It also emerged that he has a musical background, as do I, and that not only is he a plant-based enthusiast, he actually heads up that Meetup group as well! Finally, there was a petition circulating the group asking for labeling of GMO foods, something (you won't be surprised to hear) that I consider a no-brainer. He wasn't the petition's circulator, which proved that he also attracted to a general bloggers' group the type of person with that type of conscience and sensibility.
If you were me, wouldn't you be thinking you'd found just the person you wanted to learn from?
Me too.
But--how busy do you suppose such a person might be?
Yep, pretty busy!
But--I was ready to invest, seriously, in getting things right. Earlier this year I invested disastrously in a business coaching program with a bunch of people I never saw, starting me from scratch at things I didn't necessarily care to do. If I learned anything from the loss of finance and time, it was to invest in something I knew I wanted, with the right person. I tracked down PABlo and articulated this to him, and he agreed not only to build my "real thing" website for me but also to teach me some of the principles and practices so that eventually I'll be able to manage my own blog and website properly, perhaps even help others to do so. He's teaching me how to situate the blog in the context of a website. How to categorize and tag correctly. How to set up a post.
He also taught me that duplicating my blog for the past eighteen months is a cardinal sin in the eyes of Google search: original content is the main desideratum (what a novel concept!) and I was automatically rendering my content unoriginal, aka shooting myself in the foot. So, this blog with its tricky name is effectively invisible, and you are reading a rare and translucent object.
This time, dear reader, I can make a promise of change-a-coming with confidence. The new, more sensible domain name is registered. I'm learning a new blogging platform and have several drafts queued. I have a highly proficient mentor and teacher, whose work and philosophy I admire, from whom I'm learning how to set up a blog effectively for excellence, and how not to cut some corners as I was inadvertently doing--how to give the reader the best possible experience.
I have so much to share with you, but I'm saving some for the new blog. I'm so eager to get that blog live, and therefore much of my attention's going in that direction, so please bear with me, and watch this space!

Six Spiritual Lessons from Learning about Business

Winter has returned here. A windstorm that blew off roofs and blew in snow, and now the temperatures are in the teens, where they "should" be at this time of year, not the 40s.

My current crash course in business building is cross-pollinating beautifully with my focus on personal development. I've realized that my lifelong head-in-the-sand approach to finances, getting by solely due to extreme frugality coupled with some innate blind trust, is not just because I thought money was unimportant. There has been a certain amount of judgment of money as "unspiritual" as well as some scarcity mentality about not wanting to use up resources (who, me?) or not believing there's enough to go around. 
Time to let those go.

Wow, so part of my spiritual training right now is recognition that money, too, is spiritual. And the business training is spiritual training, too. I could go on and on, but here are six quick ones for Sunday night.

1. Abundance! You have to approach your business in the sincere awareness and consciousness of abundance. Acknowledge that there is plenty, there is enough for everyone, there is enough and plenty for you to have abundance. Yes! In spiritual development too, cultivating a sense of abundance is a consciousness-raiser.
2. To work well in business, it's essential to be in the present, aware. If you make a mistake, learn the lesson it encapsulates, and move on: now is the only time you can make a difference. In spiritual life too.
3. To build a good business, it's wise to have a daily practice that supports--and maintains--daily habits that focus your attention in the places needed. This is also important for self talk and change of personal habits.
4. When figuring out the focus of your business, it's wise to brainstorm before researching marketability--come up with ideas. And in the personal development sphere, spinning ideas is a great way to connect with a broader, one-mind reality. James Altucher talks about building an "idea muscle" as a way to access one's subconscious and become more creative and generally more productive.
5. Be your best for the greatest good. If you make your business as good as it can be, it will produce the most it can and satisfy its consumers to the greatest degree. If I am my best, I can do the most for the universe.
6. A business is part of an ecosystem, with consumers and suppliers and complex interactions on many levels. Acquire a sense of being part of a greater whole simultaneous with autonomy and personal accountability. And the same goes for my individual self. In both areas, there is a grace to the sense of being part of something greater than oneself, to being a channel, being of service.

Gratitude for spirit! I want to stay in that space. Perhaps my body can just run on pure spirit.

_____________________________________________
On a different note, RIP Maxine Kumin, Pulitzer prizewinning poet, essayist, novelist, children's book writer--and back-to-the-lander. 
In her honor, here's a sonnet of hers that proves she had a wryly humorous appraisal of death:

Purgatory
And suppose the darlings get to Mantua, 
suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin 
with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a 
displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin. 
His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum. 
Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eye. 
Another Montague is in the womb 
although the first babe's bottom's not yet dry. 
She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse 
who dares to send a smock through Balthasar, 
and once a month, his father posts a purse. 
News from Verona? Always news of war. 
Such sour years it takes to right this wrong! 
The fifth act runs unconscionably long. 

_____________________________________________
much love.

"...and your life is in your hands."

When I get a line of poetry going through my head, it's usually for a good reason.
Lately:    voi ch'entrate, and your life is in your hands. -- the final line of Robert Lowell's "The Exile's Return." 
"Voi ch'entrate" is elliptical for Dante's lasciate ogne speranze voi ch'entrate, better known as "abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

And the truth is, I'm staring down a precipice.

But aren't we all, always? I take my life in my hands with every breath. That part was clear. But I didn't understand why I was getting the "abandon hope" part of the quote. Maybe it was just along for the ride.

Thank goodness I've been listening to all the self-empowerment and personal development audios. I listened to Roz Savage, the English lady who left behind her corporate life to follow passion, and has rowed solo across oceans. One of her lessons from aboard boat was don't indulge in hope. My ears pricked up. In the middle of the ocean, in a storm, with a broken oar and a waterlogged radio. hope may lead to paralysis, apathy, and a feeling of disempowerment as you try to replace your initiative and responsibility with wishing and longing.
So, actually, Robert Lowell (and little miz Ela), abandoning hope and acknowledging that your life is in your hands are two arms of the same embrace--embracing personal accountability.

My life is in my hands as I stare down a precipice and as I check my hope at the door. 
I'm learning so much right now, rediscovering my urge and delight in creative writing and translating, and throwing myself down the rabbit hole of a whole new endeavor, learning and being coached to run a business. In my ripe old age, I'm finally learning about finances! I'm finally bringing myself into participation (one of the reasons I first started this blog, participation) in one of the most potent and ubiquitous means of circulation.
And it's uncanny how well what I'm learning about business fits in with many of the spiritual/personal development changes I've been working on. I'm looking forward to sharing more detail on that.
But there is also a demand for unflinching honesty. If you're going to lay out resources you don't have, you'd better be very clear about where you're borrowing it from, and on what terms. Things have to match up. 

I have a mismatch. I'm excited, optimistic, engaged. I feel really good. And/but--I feel really good despite... When I say or think x is really good despite... is usually when something's about to go awry. But really, I feel okay. And yet, it was wisdom to decide not to go to the writers' conference at the end of this month because I'm not at the top of my notch. But I'm feeling okay! But objective markers of measurement would insist I'm not okay. And there's such a mismatch, I can hardly believe it even standing on two different scales, even getting feedback from people I trust.

Now would be an extremely inconvenient time to have to go away to treatment. But I'm back at the point of being told it's go away by choice or else I'll lose the choice.
I'm finding this pretty difficult to digest. It makes going off and studying up on LLC paperwork seem relatively easy.
And my life is in my hands.