What is creativity?

I have a degree in English. Why? Honestly? Because after transferring to my 4th University in my attempt to have something to show for the student loans that were piling up, I was only a few courses shy of an English degree, so I ran with it. Plus, I enjoy reading and writing. I had no idea what I'd do with my degree, I just knew that if I was going to have to start paying back my student loans I might as well have something to show for it.

So, what does an employer think/believe when they see that I have a degree in English?

I'm beginning to believe that some feel that I must be extremely creative and have an amazing ability to think outside the box.

Honestly, for me at least, it means that I love to read and I enjoy writing. And by writing I mean writing about what I'm interested in. Writing in a style that I am most comfortable with, mainly what you see here.

It does not mean I have the ability to creatively come up with a new and streamlined way of sending information back to our clients.

I am a copycat. I take someone else's idea and tweak it a bit. I find it difficult to pull new creative ideas truly of my own out of my head.

I also over analyze and take in a number of factors of how I understand the current system to work and why it is that way. In this case, we've been sending similar work to our client for 3 years. It has be slowly tweaked and changed as requests have been made by our client. Could it be streamlined? You bet. Does our client want that? I kinda doubt it. What I would propose to streamline our client would have to take in good faith that info we didn't give them wasn't needed to be given but was seen by us. (If that makes sense.) As it stands, that trust is minimal in this given case. Thus my over analyzing and knowing possibly too much.

The trick? To force myself to throw something out there that is completely wild and disregard most of what I know. It also requires me to ignore the likelihood that my final idea will be rejected, if not by my superiors than most certainly by our client.

I know at this point that I cannot tell my superior why this is a bad idea, as it seems I'm good at explaining why I shouldn't have/need to do "x". So to avoid that I will attempt to come up with some radical new idea.

What sucks? The first sample I gave, with the help of a fellow co-worker, I thought was at least a good step in the right direction. It wasn't so drastic of a change that both parties would hate it, but it was more streamlined and I think flowed better, making it easier to pick out the info wanted. It was completely shot down. I was told to not consult with fellow processors. I was told to "use your creativity".

(I can only assume that she believes I have creativity based on my degree? This assumption also comes from when the project initially started I was informed it would allow me to put to use my writing skills. Let's be clear, a list of bullet points and fill in the blanks does not constitute writing skills, in fact it would seem to be to be the opposite.)

My creativity does not carry over into the workforce very well. I am a horrible office monkey. I do not play well with others in the corporate world, nor do I dress the part. It is that one should dress for the job they want, not the one they have. I believe most would assume that to mean, at least in the corporate world, to dress business professional if you find yourself a processor and the dress code is jeans and a nice shirt and dress shoes. I dress in jeans, questionable nice shirts and I wear hiking shoes. I don't wear makeup. I wear brightly colored hand warmers, and do very little with my hair. I dress for the job I want, which isn't in the corporate office world. I do my job well. But I'd do it even better in the comfort of my home in PJs at 4am.

So what is creativity? It is more than an English Degree. It is not always what someone else wants you to be. My creativity lives inside my head. I would give you colors and abstract ideas. I would give you incomplete sentences and assume that you're smart enough to know what I'm talking about. I would cut our reports in half, because the client has the guidelines on their end, they see what we see.

Do you like me? Check Yes or No.

Anger and emotion. What am I doing with myself?

I am an emotional person.
I cry.
I cry at everything.
I cry about things that bring me joy.
I cry about things that happen to other people.
I cry.
I am a loud person. I have horrible control about my volume level. It is truly bad when I'm emotional.
I struggle on a daily basis with the desire to not get out of bed.
I struggle on a daily basis with the desire of not wanting to be productive, but then knowing I'll hate myself should I choose to be unproductive.
I am me.
I will not chalk my actions/emotions/reactions up to being a woman.
I'm not going to play that card. It's a stupid card to play and a horrible excuse.

In my struggle with my emotions and with my tears I find that I'm either on or off.
I am slowly finding a slight middle. And when I say slowly, I mean slowly.
Very. Very. Slowly.

Sadly, these emotions flair up with little to no warning and those that I care most about are greatly affected by them.

I am at a loss as to what to do with myself in this matter.

I appreciate how empathic I am; however, those feelings will often so overwhelm me that no one knows how to handle me in those situations.

I don't want to stop feeling.

I don't know how to be a moderate with my emotions.

I don't want to be stone cold.

When I attempt to not cry I become angry and ugly and mean.

I have contemplated a career change, if one could call what I have a career, but nothing appeals to me. I want to be at home caring for my family the best way I know how, which is by providing a warm and loving home. At this stage of the "game" I'm doing horribly. I work 40 hours a week and have no motivation once I'm home at the end of the day to accomplish anything. If it weren't for my partner I would most likely have skipped many a dinner.

My life is full. I have a roof over my head. I have a loving partner. I have pets that love me. I have money in the bank, not much, but we get by. I have a running vehicle that gets me to work everyday. I have a loving partner that makes sure I'm fed.

But I feel lonely. I feel incomplete. I feel uncertain for my future. I feel as though I should be doing something else than what I'm doing. And everything I can think of doesn't come with a paycheck.

I feel selfish when I say I wasn't meant to be a cubicle dwelling employee. I feel really selfish when what I really want is to be a homemaker. I find most joy in that. I feel complete and accomplished by it. Thus far, my attempts to work from home have been thwarted. I show my love for my family by having the laundry done and the house clean and the shopping taken care of. I would like to be the one that make the meals, so that I can make my partner a true breakfast before he leaves for work in the morning and have a nice hot dinner waiting for him when he gets home.

My motivation really hits me early in the morning and early in the afternoon. With this mundane job I'm on my way to work early in the morning and I'm stuck in my little box in the early afternoon. By the time I get home my motivation is gone. There never seems to be enough time to do anything and yet everything must get done. In the end fuses are short and tempers are high. Everyone is tired and no one wants to do anything. Thank the gods for auto bill pay.

Game Change. It's called Juicing

This past summer I fell in love with juicing. It started with a juicer left by an old roommate when we moved back into 1712 and a dear friend who had watched Fat Sick and Nearly Dead. I'll admit, I still haven't watched it, and I think it's because I fear what I'll find.

I join the Reboot and found some recipes that I thought I'd like and would work well for me. I bought fruit and veggies out the wazoo. The juicer I own isn't the best, but it isn't the worst either. I do struggle with getting it to not jam on me, which is most likely why I stopped juicing. Juicing, in and of itself is a bit of a workout, at least for me and my bad back and weak arms.

I juiced before camping and froze my mason jars full of this amazing concoction I'd thrown together. (I eventually threw the recipes out, once you've done the research to know what will go well together and what will turn on you in a matter of hours, you won't need an actual recipe.) Those frozen drinks were a godsend in the wild. They slowly thawed into these slushies, causing great pleasure in my mouth and body. Plus one helped save a friend from dehydration and lack of substance.

I know all of the wonderful benefits, or at least I get it, so why did I stop? I'm lazy. Pure and simple.

Everyone I know, or at least a large portion of them, have jumped onto this health kick band wagon. They are exercising daily, cutting back on the "wrong" foods, delving into P90X and other intense exercise programs. The peer pressure to jump onto this band wagon with all of my amazing friends is HUGE. However, I'm a lazy ass and I'm tired of doing things simply because everyone else is doing it and thus I feel the pressure that I should do it too. (And you thought peer pressure ended in high school/college!)

Aside from my laziness and a touch of stubbornness, I also abhor exercise. Exercising purely for the sake of exercising and burning fat and building muscle does not appeal to me. I want my time spent doing such things to be productive and on a slightly grander scale than making myself healthier. (Sounds odd, I know.) It's like when I clean my house. I get an amazing work out AND I have a wonderfully clean house I can bask in when I'm done. Almost instant gratification.

So here's the deal (and I figure if I post this here I'll have to hold myself accountable, crunching the numbers is easy, follow through is another story altogether), I don't exercise, but I don't eat so great either. I snack all the time, and snack food that isn't good for me. I don't drink enough water and I certainly don't get enough of the vitamins and minerals that I need in my daily diet. All of this is my fault. I have watched myself, in my adult life go from a size 8 to a size 14! (I wore a size 6 in high school and early college and that was baggy on me.)

I keep telling myself that if I stay at this size forever I'll be ok. I said that when I was a size 12. What I'm seeing is that slowly but surly I'm packing on the weight. I'm turning into the one thing I told myself when I was young and skinny that I'd be, which is the size my mom was before she died. I'm not there yet, but if I don't do something soon I'll be there and I'm not certain I'll have it in me to do anything about it at that point.

In a little over 60 days Beltania begins. I am part of staff and will be there early and staying late and busting my rump throughout. It is an honor to do what I do while I'm there, but if I'm to manage myself better and enjoy the event even more I've got to do something about my fat ass. I intend to sleep on the ground for a 7 nights! I plan to help build a sweat lodge and then tend the rather large fire for 6 sweats during the event, as many as 2 a day, which comes to 4+ hours per sweat stoking a fire and passing white hot stones from the pit into the lodge. In order to do this without dying in the end and becoming completely useless, I need to reduce this fat floating around my middle.

In order to reduce this fat I've gotta reduce my intake, increase my energy and get off my ass and do more.

The plan?

JUICING!

Will it work? I don't know, I've got 60 days to find out. It's more about a life change than a quick fix.

I'm looking at have a juice for breakfast and lunch Monday - Friday.

So...
Make a ton of juice on Saturday/Sunday. Separate into 10 jars. Freeze said jars. Grab 2 jars each morning as I head to work. Eat a decent meal for dinner.

If I play my cards right I won't want to eat a huge dinner. I'm already cutting back on seconds and doing my best to avoid the sweets.

If all goes well and I stick to my plan I should start to lose some weight, and if nothing else I should see my energy levels rise, helping my self confidence and thus causing me to want to be more active, thus allowing me to work off some weight.

So there you have it. I'm a lazy ass, so I'm trying to find things that I will do that will help me feel better about myself physically and emotionally.

The next step is to clear out my closet of things I won't wear or look funny on me because of my weight. I've held on to some things thinking that when I'm smaller I'll be able to wear them again. But truly, one should only hold on to things for so long before that thought is just silly.

I'm purging, on all sorts of levels.

This is how one runs a corporation?

I am continually amazed at the absurdity of corporate life. 3 years ago I ventured into the corporate world as an investigative processor. (Trust me, it's not as exciting as it sounds, but it does sound cool.)

In the time I have been here I have seen a company go from good to rough to down right sad. We have been sold once since I've been here and it was the 3rd or 4th sale in the history of the company.

Our upper management is in chaos and one manager has since resigned after almost 20 years with the company. She didn't like where the company was heading and how they were getting there. (At least that I was told from others that had spoken to her directly.)

My team currently has no supervisor and we are currently reporting to a manager that doesn't respond to email very often and is difficult to get a hold of.

There are rumors everywhere about all sorts of things. In the midst of this there has been little to no communication and what we have found out was due to processors actively asking what was going on instead of management being proactive and keeping us updated with the changes that are going on around us.

How on earth does any corporation intend to function like this long term?

When I first started here I was excited and did what I could to make sure that "the powers that be" knew that I was a strong and dedicated employee. Sure, the honeymoon period has ended. But what this company has taught me is to keep my head down, not draw attention to myself and just let the chips fall where they may. Any attempt to bring to light issues that could easily be fixed are ignored. No good deed goes unpunished here.

I do not like the worker I have become. I still do my job well. I still complete my assignments in a timely manner. But I no longer feel excitement for the company I work for. I no longer feel proud of the work I do. My pay is minimal. My benefits are decent. I am grateful for the vacation time I get (despite the frustration I'm currently going through trying to get time off approved for May, simply because my manager is afraid of what the future might hold and is scared that I won't be here should she need me. She hasn't said this, but all the evidence points towards this. But seriously, I've given 6 months notice for my request, 12/26/2012 to be exact.). I do not like the uncertainty that dwells within me because I see and hear things but don't know what, if any of it, pertains to me and my team. I once aspired to be a supervisor. I have since learned how they are treated. Once you go salary you get screwed. This company, and I'm assuming most, expect salaried employees to be available at all times, to work insane hours, and be at the company's beck and call 24/7. It would take a pretty hefty paycheck for me to buy into all that.

When will corporations start realizing that their employees, the ones that keep the company running in it's core, if it weren't for the grunt work we do, there would be no corporation, are people, humans, with lives and families and responsibilities outside of the work place?

When will corporations realize that we are adults and not children? It amazes me how much micro-managing goes on around here. The internet is so "locked-down" that at times it's difficult to do my job. Most sites are blocked.

On one hand I understand why social media sites are blocked. On the other I don't. Call me a bastard, but it's a few bad apples that make it rough for everyone else. The solution? Fire the bad apples. I am a multi-tasking wiz. I love it. I switch between reading, writing email, checking on my social sites and still can manage to get all my work done in a timely manner and in top quality. This ability keeps me sane. When things started to be blocked at work, I went "nuts". I became depressed. My contact to the outside world was cut off completely and these 8-10 hour work days turned into hell, a slow moving traffic jam.

I have advocated for over a year now to allow us to work from home. What my team does can easily be done anywhere. There is no solid reason to require us to sit in a box for 8-10 hours a day. Working from home would make me a happy employee. Working from home would allow me to better manage my home and work those bizarre hours when the desire hits me to get a few files done. Like when I wake up at 3am wide awake. I could get a good chunk of work done before anyone else wakes up. Ahh, but the argument then becomes how will the company know that I'm doing my job. Well, obviously they'd know by the work I presented to them. If I failed to meet my deadlines, if I failed to complete my files in a timely manner and with high quality, then fire me. There are consequences. I get that. But don't assume that I won't get my work done because of some bad apple that came along once upon a time. There are still those of us out there with work ethics and we should be treated as such. In this corporate world we are treated as though we are guilty.

The Summer of 1998

After graduating high school I moved to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for the summer of 1998. That time of my life was filled with confusion and uncertainty about what I was doing with my life and what I thought I wanted.

Coeur d'Alene is beautiful. I walked everywhere while living there. There was this nifty second-hand store / coffee shop called Boondoggles that I used to hang out at. They would hold open mic nights and from time to time a band would come in to play for the evening.

I remember walking through a park bordering the lake and sitting on a picnic table with my then boyfriend and smoking a Camel Wide. I was 18. I was no longer under the thumb of my mother. I was an adult. I was confused as fuck.

I was in a relationship that was based on strange ideals and believed I was in love with a man I had originally met when I was 15.

I oft times wonder how my life story would have changed had I ventured down the road of possibilities which living in Coeur d'Alene offered. I didn't know then what was going on around me. I was in a relationship with a man that was polyamorous, but I didn't know that word existed much less what it meant. I also had the opportunity to smoke weed and passed it by, not knowing what I was passing up on.

I spent my days buying cross-stitching supplies, walking all over town, and reading at Boondoggles. I spent my evenings smoking on the front step of Boondoggles listening to music I'd never heard before pouring out the door. I spent my nights chatting online to long lost friends and pretending to be sexy.

I postponed my college to experience this. I left home on not so great terms to venture out into a world I didn't know much about.

I was confused as to how life worked. I was uneducated as to how I was supposed to go about creating a life of my own.

...A life of my own...

I am now 32. I am just now beginning to understand what it means to create a life of my own.

A thought on religion

NOTE: I originally posted this on my old blog on 2/27/2013. 

As I do not want to poke the troll and stir a good internet "debate" on the comments page, as I've said what I felt needed to be said and will leave it at that for them, I would like to address my further thoughts here.

It all started yesterday when I read this article: http://www.religionnews.com/2013/02/25/fox-apologizes-for-comments-on-wiccans-at-university-of-missouri/ and then read the few comments that were posted. 

There was one comment that I found highly offensive and rather ignorant, "If they don’t worship Jesus Christ, they are Pagan and non-essential to living and the eternal."

To which I replied as follows:

Seriously? It’s wonderful that you believe that Jesus Christ is a god, or at least the son of a god. I’m assuming this based on your comment. However, “non-essential to living and the eternal”? Are you claiming that anyone who doesn’t worship Jesus Christ is non-essential? Please define “the eternal”.

I do not worship Jesus Christ. I once did. I no longer do. I am an earth loving, nature worshiping pagan. I am essential to the community I serve and work in. I am essential to the lives of my loved ones. I am essential to the children I help raise. I am essential to the protection of the environment to the best of my ability. I am essential in caring for all of gods creatures.

Remind yourself of this fact when you find yourself in a medical emergency, that nurse caring for you? That ambulance driver? That 9-1-1 operator? That citizen who placed the call? Any and all of them could be a pagan. Are they still non-essential in your eyes? I helped save a child from bleeding to death. I do not think his parents viewed me as non-essential. In fact, my spiritual practices weren’t even discussed, as it did not matter. What matter was my character and my quick reaction to the situation. What matter was that I cared for the safety of that child.

I was blown away that one could possible believe that those who do not believe in their god (or son of god, depending on how one views Jesus Christ in a religious sense) are non-essential.

Today I was greeted with this wonderful response from the original poster (all of which can be seen if you follow the link above):

What matters is the hereafter. The Earth is cursed from sin and is no longer a great place to live. Jesus Christ offers a chance to see the new Heaven and the new Earth that He meant for us to experience before evil ruined it. What I meant by non-essential was the fact that what is done now against God, and whomever lives against God, will burn in Hell. You can be as good as you want but your belief in the Son of God is the only Essential thing that you need. Heaven is open to believers, all others who don’t believe are therefore, non-essential to Eternity. Hell is there home. And if you don’t teach your children about Jesus and give them a chance to believe, they will go to Hell as well. Sorry to say but true. After the age of recognition, they are responsible for their own beliefs. No one can accept Jesus for them but themselves. 

What I did not reply there with, but what I will say here in response is this:

The hereafter for me is different for others. What matters in the present is that I live an honest and good life and leave this earth a better place for those who come after me. 

I do not believe in sin. Sin has such a broad definition for religious individuals that to say one has committed a sin, or is sinful, is not very specific at all. For some simply the thought of sexual acts with another is a sin. For others it's a an alcoholic drink. It can be defined as a passionate kiss with one you are not married to the severest of crimes. Sin is a tool of organized religion. I think here sin should be replaced with a lack of morals. 

If this world is no longer a great place to live it is so because we have allowed it to become such and we should do the best we can with the tools we have to correct that. I use the word "we" very loosely here. As this is something that has happened slowly overtime. 

And now, back to Jesus Christ, who, I'll admit, was a great man, assuming he actually existed as one man, there are many lines of thought as to how the person of Jesus Christ that we know today came into being (and I do not mean necessarily by immaculate conception). This poster is quoted as saying "Jesus Christ offers a chance to see the new Heaven and the new Earth that He meant for us to experience before evil ruined it." That is a loaded statement that I'm certain I could write books on. If evil ruined this supposedly wonderful world, why did Jesus Christ allow it to happen if his intention was for us to see heaven and earth has he wanted us to? 

She is quoted as saying "You can be as good as you want but your belief in the Son of God is the only Essential thing you need. Heaven is open to believers, all others who don't believe are therefore, non-essential to Eternity. Hell is there home." (We'll ignore the miss-spelled words and poor punctuation.) 

And now we move on into the realm of a place called "Hell". See, I don't believe in "Hell". Even growing up as a Christian I did not believe in "Hell". This idea that if I live a good honest life and I treat my fellow man equally and I show kindness and good deeds, is still not enough to spend eternity with "the Eternal Father" simply because I did not believe in his supposed son that came to earth to teach us how to live a a good honest life, is absurd to me. The fact that this supposed heavenly parent would condemn me to a place defined as being filled with fire and brimstone, not because I was a bad person but because I did not declare Jesus Christ as my savior, sounds like a parent that is not psychologically balanced. 

Oh, and our poster goes even further to condemn my children who will also go to hell because I did not teach them about Jesus Christ. So, to be clear, all of those people who have never heard of Jesus Christ, at least according to this poster, will go to hell for that simple fact. And her reaction to that belief? "Sorry to say but true." I would love to know how she knows this to be true, and by some other means than the Bible, of which there are multiple versions and millions of interpretations. 

I believe everyone is free to worship and believe as it feels right to them. It is not my place to judge anyone for their spiritual beliefs and practices (assuming they are not harming themselves or others, be it physically or mentally). It is honorable that she believe that Jesus Christ will save her from this evil world she must live in until she dies. Yes, I think it is ass backwards that many of her ilk (I'm assuming here) believe that as long as they put their trust/faith in Jesus Christ and pray everything will be ok. 

We are not helpless witless beings, blindly walking this earth. We should not behave as though we are. Regardless of what religious beliefs we have, it is not our place to condemn others simply because their beliefs are different from our own. Growing up as a Christian I was raised to respect the fact that others believed differently than us. Although I was raised to believe that the church I belonged to was the one true church on earth, we were also taught to not flaunt it. 

Only those who have reached their expiration date on this earth knows what comes after. It may be nothing. It may be everything. And then again, it may just be a similar repeat to what is now. We will not know until we too hit our expiration date. 

I will give you this. She may have told me that I will go to hell when I die, as far as her beliefs are concerned, but she did not call me evil. She did not call me a worshiper of the devil (mind you, I don't believe in the devil either). In her eyes, it seems to me, that it does not matter what I do on this earth, I am condemned to hell simply because I do not believe in her god, Jesus Christ. She is free to believe that. I am also free to believe that she is ignorant in her thinking and it saddens me to think that there are people out there that believe that small innocent children can go to a place full of fire and brimstone simply for not knowing this person Jesus Christ. Would you condemn Buddha to such a place? Gandhi? The Dalai Lama (any of them)? 

From a Christian standpoint, what about the Catholic Priests that molest children? They believe in Jesus Christ. What about those who stand outside funerals, memorial services, abortion clinics and preach hate? They claim to believe in Jesus Christ. 

I can at least say that I believe Latter-Day Saints got something right in that they believe everyone, with the exception of the truly wicked and evil, will live in an afterlife that is better than what we have on this earth today. If the Christians are right about the afterlife, I hope it's the LDS that got it truly right. Because what parent doesn't want their children to have a life just as good if not better than their own? What kind of parent would want to condemn their child to such torment for all eternity despite the fact that they lived a good life full of good deeds and honest works? It is possible to live a Christ like life without believing in Jesus Christ. His teachings were simple. 

The Christian religion was flipped on its head when greedy men got involved and realized that organized religion is a great way to control the masses. It is a fantastic tool to instill fear in children and the lower class. For centuries the bible was read to the congregations, only clergy had access to the bible. Think about that. Thousands upon thousands of people were blindly following a religion based on what a man standing at the head of congregation told them. 

There are people that /need/ organized religion in order to fully function in this life. I can respect that. I am not one of them. 

Bottom line. Worship how/who you want. Do not tell me that I am condemned to hell. Keep that thought to yourself. Tell me you are concerned for my soul. But you will never convince me if your tactic is to attempt to instill fear into my heart.

Deep in Thought

It is March once again. For the past 3 years this month has been one of extreme mixed feelings.

4 years ago tomorrow (March 5th) Jordan and I became a couple. In those 4 years we have seen and done much. The honeymoon period is over. We are settling in to the long haul. Realizing what's truly important to us and reminding ourselves that we must continue to work at our relationship. We have found our comfort with each other and now to make certain we don't become so comfortable that we start to take advantage of the other. It will always be a work in progress. But we are happy. We are in love. We are continually building a future together. I am blessed.

3 years ago today (March 4th) my youngest niece was born. Hazel is an amazing child. There is no doubt that she is a Crawford.

Sadly these two joyous events are over shadowed by the death of my mom, 3 years ago on the 10th of March.

3 years ago Jordan and I had just returned from celebrating our one year anniversary together in Estes Park. Mom had sent money so we could do the Haunted Tour at The Stanley. She declared it an early birthday present. We also enjoyed an amazing meal at Mama Roses', thanks again to a gift certificate that mom got me for Christmas. It had been a splendid time and gifts had been bought and hope was on the horizon for bringing joy back into my mom's life.

3 years ago my little sister brought her 4th child into this world.

6 days after that amazing miracle entered our lives, our beloved mother left it. She wasn't quite 55 years old.

Here I sit, enjoying the longest relationship I've ever been in. I am in the process of becoming a home owner. I have been in the same job for 3 years now, again, another first for me. Social media has made it possible to stay in close connection with my immediate family. And yet, deep within me I feel a great loss. A great longing.