To the California Sun

I'm getting a little sick of hearing myself whine so I can't imagine you're all up for yet another woe-is-me post either. So let's just get the dribs and drabs out of the way once and for all: I spent the entirety of last night hitting refresh on my own blog. On my email. Reading and rereading your comments and feeling sorry for myself and then reading your comments again. I was a bit like a puppy who had piddled on the rug, been chastised and then forgiven with pets and treats and high-pitched rounds of "good boy!" In my tail between my legs state of mind I could not get enough of it. Your kind words got me through night #1 of unemployment. Night #1 of freedom. THANK YOU.

The thing is all my life I have taken credence in Janice Joplin's words that "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." I thought it was a negative lyric for freedom, that it meant that the ties that bind are positive. Family and friends and a mortgage and a job--in their own way they each shackle. But the alternative? That's having nothing. That's freedom. That's also Janice Joplin, dead at the age of 27.

I hate to admit it but I am a cubicle girl. Comfortable with routine. With pats on the head when I have been good, with getting my nose rubbed in my own piss when I haven't. With this new unemployment thing I am going to have to get used to marking my own territory and that? That scares the shit out of me. But I am beginning to see that maybe that's a good thing, being scared, taking risks, growing. Coming out from behind the safety of the cubicle to question, to search and to live.

"Do not ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."--Harold Whitman
Because nothin 'aint worth nothin but its free.

Photos of strong women courtesy of a very scary website called UpCheer.com