Nothing For Granted

Last updated on: September 6, 2014 at 6:17 am by CJ Blackwood

Nothing For Granted 2014-09-06T06:17:16-05:00 CJ Blackwood

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I have no urge to have an office job that takes me away from home almost every day.

People are afraid to lose work, and are fighting to raise minimum wage. This is because minimum wage is not enough to support a household of two comfortably, let alone one.
Because of disability among other things, I make just above minimum wage, and I’m scared of losing that. It’s not enough to give me health insurance but it is enough to keep a roof over my head, pay bills, and do things like that. Our government is fairly broke though.
Most of my anxiety is based on social interaction with strangers, making a job involving customer service pretty difficult. I got a degree in journalism but cannot drive. And then there are the bouts of depression, and the unbalanced periods of no sleep, and then lots of it. Chronic headaches are another problem.
With Maeve’s help, I’ve found some acceptance. While I need to have in the back of my mind a plan for the day when the ground caves in under the United States treasury, leading me to keep a linkedin as well as a list of places I publish for, I accept that the best work environment is one with little distraction by other people; one where I can rest when I need to, or work nights if I so desire; one where threadbare tank tops and worn-out skirts are perfectly professional, and my hair doesn’t even have to be washed.
Maeve, a warrior goddess history has painted with a fairly salacious brush, has spent the summer working to convince me that I need to listen to myself, accept myself, give myself more credit. Her style is to show me through circumstance. Society has its own ideas of what a woman expresses when she expresses confidence. It does not have to mean confidence in appearance and sensuality, it can simply mean you know you are worth loving on an emotional level. I hadn’t realized that I believed I wasn’t, until this summer’s roller coaster relationship. The memories mostly bring a sensation of discomfort, and the feeling that I wasted a summer, but the lesson had to be learned. Confidence isn’t necessarily the knowledge that you can crush and outlaw an enemy, (though that IS fun), more that you can impact the world.
It is to that end I accept that my physical and emotional problems deem it necessary that I work from home. I get enough money to live on for the most part. I have a comfortable apartment, a close group of good friends who keep the good times rolling, a wonderful daughter and familiar in the form of my cat, Lucia, and the opportunity to let change come from my hand. This is where I am supposed to be, both for my own comfort and because from the desk facing my living room window, I can reach out to the online globe and make a difference, even to just a few.
I may not be physically capable of much. I can sit here however, write for the Crimson Crescent, Staff of Asclepius, The Good Witch’s Cookbook, and Cross Quarterly, and know that on an emotional level, someone finds something worthy of considering, even worthy of value. I can sit on the floor and make bead jewelry, playing Stephen King or James Patterson in the background, and know that the piece will find its way into the hands of someone who’s life will improve because she has it.
The trouble with me and most religions is that to be devout you need to follow rules. I have always obeyed my own core values first, and if a rule doesn’t make sense even after clarification, I don’t bother. I’ve also just never liked being a follower, and never really been able to take what I’m told as truth without proof. So Maeve’s style is to put the evidence in front of me, and let me work out what she needs me to know. The war she seeks to help me fight is on two fronts, but I’m also watering two trees with one glass. By encouraging me to let my creativity change the world, she works through me to try to shift the balance toward a stable, neutral middle ground where there is a balance of positive and negative. Right now there is too much on the side of negativity, of emptiness. Fighting an enemy is dark, but true evil is emptiness, it’s apathy, bad answered with wrong-doing and people just going numb and not giving cat’s tail about the world around them. It occurs to me that media, Internet and TV, has taken a lot of human interaction and emotion out of our lives, and allowed that numbness to flourish. So working from home, speaking to the world from my keyboard in a progressive manner helps to negate just a little of that. At the same time, putting me in a place where I can make changes has helped me to see that I have potential, that I am worthy of self-improvement and of the friends I finally seemed to have earned. Through her I recognize the Mother’s hand in everything. My creative talents have been building to this point. If I didn’t have the challenges to physical and mental health, I wouldn’t be sitting here. If my mother hadn’t turned hard and bitter from years of twelve-hour work days combined with managing a large family, I would not have seen that hers was not a life I wanted. I don’t want to be a cog in a corporate machine, to poison and brainwash myself into a bitter, angry woman who tries to keep her daughter on a short leash, clay in her hands to turn into a better, more talented version of herself. I won’t allow the emotional cancer that invaded my teen years to pollute the rest of my life. I am right where the Mother, all her goddesses, all of womankind needs me. I can see that I am meant to survive, because each time I feel worthless, useless, and like I am going nowhere, some pretty interesting things start to happen, like the newest of my three closest friends revealing her duel passions for road trips and craft beer. These two facts have led to some great evenings together as well as plans for a couple of trips, the shorter of which we are taking tomorrow.
I may not be physically or emotional very healthy. I may have financial problems. What I have though, is a home, friends, and open channels by which to express myself. I have plans for the future that don’t include anyone toxic. No matter how deep into depression I fall at times, I know there is a lighted place to rest somewhere up ahead, a blazing hearth surrounded by people I am close to. I will not take these things for granted. I can honestly say that I am glad for the position I am in, working from home. I am doing what I want, even if I live on government benefits, even if I have to keep an ear to the ground for the rumbling of that cave-in I mentioned. I have the knowledge, strength, creativity, and determination to craft change, and I can do it from a place of emotional security. We are all taken care of in the end. Take nothing for granted. Listen and consider the messages woven into the circumstantial fabric of our lives.

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