30 Days of Jung — Day 3: #Vision, #Dreams

Day 3 of “30 Days of Jung,” my series, wherein (soon, I will start repeating myself, like now) I take a famous quote of Carl G. Jung‘s and try to make sense or refute or invert or disembowel it or where I turn into a heaping pile of mush because of it in 1,000 words or less.

If you don’t know who Jung is, he formulated the theories of introverted and extroverted personalities, the stages of individuation, the basis of the “Meyers-Briggs” personality (INFJ / ESFJ, etc.) tests. He’s the “father” of modern-day psychoanalysis. In short, he’s a badass. But he’s dead, so he can’t be with us today.

Today’s quote (is very different from yesterday’s which I hated loved) is:

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
― C.G. Jung

Let the 1,000 words begin:

I have three boys. They are spaced about 33 months apart, save for the “bookends” as I call them, who are 5.5 years apart.

Our middle son, Thing 2, is 12. He is understandably feeling an urge, as he has all his life, to differentiate himself from his two brothers. Jung would calm me down and consider T2′s “behaviors” completely normal. I get it.

The “issue” with T2′s explorations to find and follow his very young but important vision of himself and his successes is that it seems to be coming mainly from outside. He wants Likes from YouTube, a Facebook account, Instagram hearts… All these false validations. Sure it’s nice to have “friends” on social media, but when I was his age, back in 1884, I had my stick and hoop to play with and my bible studies and real people like Scratchy McFarland down at the water hole t’wrassle. Real shit.

I know this “social preening” is perfectly natural for his age, but I have seen full-fledged supposed mature adult grown-ups (Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan, _____ _____  person I know) behave similarly: turning to self-desctructive behavior, drugs, and risk taking — while looking outside themselves for approval, validation, and success — for relief from the constant pressure of looking outside themselves (comparing) for validation. What’s the phrase, “compare and despair”?

Jung is very concise in what he talks about. This quote is very clear: “dreams” and “awakes.”

When we look outside ourselves, to others, for our success and our triumphs, we are simply observing others, watching others succeed, watching others apply their vision and their determination and their ambition to do all they can to reach their full potential. We are dreaming, “If only I could be like him… If I could have that six-pack or her thighs or his film career or her doctorate…” those ambitions have nothing to do with us and they never will because they have already happened to other people. Our successes are still waiting for us. Capiche?

When we look inside, really inside, we face lots of stuff: fear (huge stuff), ambivalence, doubt. We have to go in, bring a shovel (I can feel my stomach churn a little at this proposition right now) and get through that stuff in order to be OK with our own true abilities to be That Person We Are Waiting For. We can be audacious! We need to be audacious! There are 7 billion of us out there, the deeper we go to face the yuck the better.

I made this circle image for this post. I hope it conveys what I think I see going on with myself when I look inward and outward.

The more we look to others for our path, the more we will be led astray. I’m not explicitly saying it’s wrong, it’s just not our path. It’s their path. Do you want to be the next Robert Downey Jr., or do you want to the next YOUR NAME HERE? You want to be the next YOUR NAME HERE. I have no confusion that RDJ said, “I want to be the next Harrison Ford, Cary Grant, Montgomery Clift.” He wanted to be the best RDJ he could (and I’m so so SO glad he did, he’s a genius). But we almost lost him, didn’t we? He almost died of a drug overdose because of the pressure of looking outside himself for his success. He was dreaming, he was asleep. Ironically, it took a near-fatal drug overdose to wake him up. Let’s not do that to ourselves.

Visions. We all have them, right? I want to be a happy and great writer. If I compare myself with Cormac McCarthy or Dorothy Parker or Erma Bombeck, who am I tormenting? Me. And who wants another one of those people anyway? They have cut their own cloths. Is it foolish of me to aspire to their greatness? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s smart and good to have role models, but that’s all they can be to us. They can be our muses, our sparring partners, but we must do the work.

We watched “Rocky” over the weekend. Other than it being a terribly slow movie in dire need of a remake, the basic lesson was that Rocky had to dig deep, beat the crap out of cow carcasses, wake at 4:00am, run in the dark, eat five raw eggs every morning and train like a fother mucker to simply go 15 rounds with Apollo Creed just to have a rematch. I digress. He had to look inside, work hard, trust people and get his head on straight. Once he did it, he was amazing. We all have this potential. A better boxing story, and a true one at that, is “Cinderella Man.”

So what to do? How do I make sure my son is looking inward, eating raw eggs at 4am? How do we remember to keep our eye on the prize? To keep our focus on our vision when we are awake (looking inside) and not be lulled into dreaming (looking outside)? And how, as a mother, am I supposed to instill in him a sense of service to and awareness of others if he is being told to look into his own heart? How do we not get tripped up by our own drama: the ego? I guess we just need to only compare ourselves to ourselves and really stay inward with that vision. But then, how do I make sure that I’m not / T2′s not looking so much inside that we forget the world and become too self-involved??

OAMAIGAAAD! WHAT WOULD JUNG SAY ABOUT THAT?!

I suspect that this looking inward to our own hearts to clearly find our own visions requires not only an awareness of others and the potential traps but also a HUGE awareness of ourselves: our pitfalls, our flaws, our strengths. Yes, our strengths. Once we find those strengths we can better know our weaknesses, and knowing our weaknesses can then become a strength as well. (I know. That was a bit much. I’m sitting down. But it’s true….)

So we must become better acquainted with ourselves, our hearts, and our weaknesses to better understand our gifts: our strengths to stay awake so we can keep looking into our hearts.

Damn. Activate “heaping pile of mush” sensation.

Thank you.

30 Days of Jung — Day 2: #Perception, #Self-Awareness

Welcome back. Today is Day 2 of my series, “30 Days of Jung” wherein I take a famous quote of Carl G. Jung‘s and try to make sense or refute or disavow or disembowel it or where I turn into a heaping pile of mush because of it in 1,000 words or less.

Today’s quote is to me, his most famous and MOST vexing of all:

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.― C.G. Jung

Doesn’t that quote just steam your shorts? It’s so smug.

I hate that quote.

I also love it.

That quote has taught me SO much about myself and why I hate it.

It has shown me that when I am irritated by say (hypothetically of course), that my son ate all the Cap’n Crunch and didn’t save me any that I’m mad because he was so selfish. I mean, how could he eat all the cereal?!

Not so fast.

He didn’t sit with a big salad-bowl, pour the entire box and use a massive spoon and all the milk to eat it.

This was not staged.

But maybe he did. He just happened to have been the final person to eat the last available all-natural, organic, delicious and healthy morsel.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is how I react to his action. If I see him as selfish, I paint him with a broad brush. I have disconnected from him. I begin to feel excluded, angry, and invisible, selfish. He’s the jerk and I get to be the victim. So I am just as selfish for being so mad at him. Suddenly (as in most moments of emotional reactivity), this isn’t about the Cap’n Crunch (as impossible to believe as that may be, especially around here). It’s about something much deeper, what my family friend used to term, “you’re not mad at what you’re mad at.” Your reaction is a projection of how you feel about yourself: invisible, excluded…selfish.

What about people who exhibit arrogance or elitism or another form of threatening behavior: flamboyance, eccentricity, self-promotion, exhibitionism, shyness, reclusiveness, great athletic, artistic prowess or intellectual skills? If we are bothered by it, what are we manifesting in ourselves? Be honest with yourself: that’s where the pay dirt is.

As devastating as it would be for me to lose all those Crunch Berries, it was a benign example of an effrontery. What about much deeper and more harmful offenses? When is it OK for a survivor of an offense (a legitimately upsetting act) to be irritated? I still think the opportunity for a better understanding of self still applies, but on a more sensitive level. We see evidence in the news on a hourly basis that some people have just checked out; they simply don’t possess the bandwidth to care about anyone else. And they’re out there in the millions. I guess, for us to navigate all this in a healthy way for ourselves is to do what we can to alleviate our suffering and that’s likely achievable by looking at our reactions and if we’ve allowed ourselves to identify with those reactions then we’ve allowed those reactions to become part of us.

Ahhhhhh…

Don’t go calling me weird and saying I’m overly sensitive. What about Newtown? Virginia Tech? What about when you’ve been hurt or offended? We all have felt hurt.

Maybe you just haven’t admitted it to yourself and the suggestion of your vulnerability proves Jung right. If you deny your hurt, you’re harboring it and letting it become part of you; you can’t process and move on from the denial of a reaction to something. Are you willing to be led to an understanding of yourself? Are you willing to stay mindful about your reactions and feelings toward others in order to gain a better understanding of yourself? It takes a lot of brain power and humility. (That’s why I can’t do it all the time. I’d never get anything done around here. Not that I ever get anything done around here…)

The whole “everything that irritates us about others” thing is all about our release of control and releasing our judgmentalism (which sometimes is really a judgment against ourselves).

Another point: what about the identification with (not of) everything that irritates (a feeling, a sensation, not rational or intellectual at all) us about someone else? The feelings.

Eeew… she said feelings.

To me, this goes back to the “It takes one to know one” rebuke of Lisa Loopner’s (Gilda Radner) when Todd DiLamuca (Bill Murray) would tease Lisa or call her a nerd and she’d say, “It takes one to know one, Taaaaaadddd…” and she would be totally right.

(http://s1026.photobucket.com/user/CamronJo/media/GrabbedFrame3.jpg.html)

We can’t know (identify with) the selfishness, nerdiness, coldness, arrogance in others unless we possess it ourselves.

Blech. Enough with the psychobabble. I have a headache.

Let’s turn Jung upside down. Let’s replace “irritates” with “enamors.” If he’s suggesting that examining “everything that irritates” can lead to an understanding of ourselves, the same thing can be said of the inverse. The best way to paint something, my mother always said, was to try it upside down. She also said that from a visual standpoint, the way people see us physically is as a reflection of a reflection (like a 3-way mirror). I thought our eyes see things reversed and upside-down but it’s our brain that turns them “right-side” up and in “proper” order. Are we all really upside-down and inverse?

Pass the coffee… or the pillow and blanket.

What about the blasé amongst us? Those who have no opinion? The indifferent who are neither irritated by or enamored with everything about others? Can it be that they are totally enlightened? Mmmmmokay. I would likely propose they just have decided to not bother with it. Am I jealous of them? Hell yes.

Per this inversion, I propose that what we can admire in others can also lead us to a better ability to admire ourselves, and to appreciate ourselves because as Lisa said, “it takes one to know one, Taaaaaadd.”

If you can be kinder to yourself, you can be kinder to others and eventually, just maybe, what “irritates us about others” might not be so much. We will have gotten that much closer to equanimity.

Thank you.

This one was tough.

30 Days of Jung — Day 1: #Relationships, Alchemy

Ok. Time to get this doggie going.

I am starting a new series today to get me back to writing something every day. It’s been crazy around here lately and writing is therapeutic for me, so here we go. The series is “30 Days of Jung” wherein I will

HAY! WAKE UP!

Wherein I will grab a popular quote of Carl Jung, the father of modern-day psychoanalysis. Here’s a blurb from wikipedia (so it must be true):

Carl Gustav Jung (/ˈjʊŋ/ yuung; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf ˈjʊŋ]; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychotherapist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of the extraverted and the introverted personality, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, literature, and related fields.

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation – the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy.^[2] Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.^[3]

I love Jung. I also love to hate him and that dovetails beautifully with his whole thing about integrating the opposites… Mr. Fancy Pants.

So, here is today’s quote and my attempt at whatevering it in less than 1000 words.

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― C.G. Jung

This is not just coincidental, ironic, woo-woo funny and ha-ha funny…. I literally am going down a list of popular quotes as they are presented on a certain page.  Back to the irony: I just posted this on my FB page because today … well, here:

19 years ago today, OJ Simpson hid from the LA police in the back of his own white Ford Bronco driven by his football friend, AC Cowlings, for the alleged slaughter of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her tennis pro, Ronald Goldman. Sadly I had to look up the names of the victims, but the infamous names were no problem to retrieve from the databanks.

Why am I saying all this? Because it was also 19 years ago that my own wedding rehearsal dinner was hijacked, by the fascination of watching “The Juice,” my hometown NFL team’s wide-receiver hero cower like a little boy threatening suicide because he was afraid he was gonna get blamed.

People who were at my rehearsal dinner don’t really remember the dinner or the fantastic speeches made. I do, because my brother compared me and my beloved to mercury and granite, respectively, but I doubt anyone else does. Perhaps they don’t remember my mother singing that night either. Did she? I don’t know.

Because EVERYONE was “going to the bathroom” or “getting something from the car” every five minutes to check on the OJ chase. Eventually someone ‘fessed up… and said the truth about their whereabouts, casually stopping to stare at the television for more than 10 minutes at a a spell who was it? Who was it who told the truth?

No matter. It will be forever known that my wedding happened the day after OJ Simpson hid in the back of his own car driven by another man. It’s OK. He’s in jail now. We know where he is. It’s good… I’m not bitter. Really.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Here’s the woo-woo part: “mercury and granite” and Jung’s reference to “two chemical substances.” My brother commented that we, my husband and I, are those two elements merging. The last time I checked, mercury (elemental table: Hg) doesn’t merge with anything and it’s a poisonous element, but it is extremely useful in depicting conditions, i.e., temperature. Granite doesn’t really “merge” with anything either, but it’s solid, grounding and soothing when polished.

http://iowaworkcomplaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/mercury2.jpg

Mercury is also the Greek god of messages too, so I dig that; and it’s the closest planet to the sun. Mercury rotates four times around the sun for every one time for Earth. I’m beginning to rather like being considered “Mercury.”

Here we, Mr. Granite and Ms. Mercury are 19 years later (23 really because we met in 1990) and I have passed that point in my chronology where my granite has been in my life longer than he has been out of it. And I am truly blessed for it. But we will stop here about my marriage. This post is more about relationships and the reaction that happens when two people meet.

You know — immediately — whether you’re gonna hit it off or not with everyone you meet, you just do. We all do. What we don’t do is listen to our intuitions, our gut reactions that say, “This person is good for me” or “This person is bad for me.” We ignore the mercury, both the element that tells us the temperature and likely the messenger who is trying to communicate with us.

All meetings do this. So if we fight the reaction we get when we first meet someone because we don’t want to be overly nice or overly aloof. We change for them, we allow them to change us and the chemistry between us creates different element altogether. In practical terms, yes, it does create a different element altogether. When people create life, the third element, a child is the reaction of the chemistries, but even then, no third element is ever repeated. Even identical twins are not truly identical: they have different fingerprints, different retinas, different freckles. There’s no such thing as “identical.”

But I digress: every meeting will create a reaction, that mercury response. For me, it’s what I’ve done with that internal reaction, that intuitive gesture, if you will, that makes the difference between an experience of high-level pleasure, amity and friendship or super-deep exhausting depletion of energy because I want to be liked or I want to be a good person and not turn myself away from a nutjob that my intuition is SCREAMING at me to avoid.

There has NEVER been a time when my gut has said, “PSYCHO, ten-foot-pole this one,” and it’s been wrong. I can tell you of all the people I’ve ever met and have gotten to know, that if I’d just listened to my gut, I’d be a whole lot less complicated, but a ton less experienced.

These experiences, these chemical reactions are important. We can be alchemists. We can be friendly with deep-enders, we can watch them swim and dive, but we don’t have to join them. That’s the fix for me: giving myself permission to take note of that chemical reaction. I am not mercury any more than my husband is granite, but we are good team. I do winnow my way in to things, I can be an atmosphere changer, I used to make people run and likely hide when I spilled. But I’m contained now. I will tell you how things are going around me; I don’t need to mix myself up in them to know it’s hot outside.

I used to think of myself regarding the “Mercury” reference of my brother’s as a slam against me, that I was mercurial, toxic, dangerous. That’s my interpretation, but I know he loves me and that’s not at all what he meant. That’s how I felt about myself then. That was my chemistry in our relationship. He’s a very smart person. I suspect even now though, that if he were to read this post, he’d agree with my seasoned synthesis of his speech. It’s good to be mercury; you just have to know how to handle it.

Thank you.

It’s the End of the Year and I Know It

Hey…

I read somewhere thanks to a friend that the best way to “blog” is to write as though you (I) are (am) writing to just one person. I have to say I agree. According to my blog stats, I have been writing for just one person. Literally, four (4) people have looked at my posts in the last 48 hours. Four people. I’d like to thank Murphy and my sons for stopping by on separate occasions and reading my posts; the most popular three of which are the one about the Amish, the times I peed on a pregnancy test stick and my rant about parents thinking it’s funny to make jokes to or in spite of their kids about their drinking. I’ve got only two spam comments for the past week. JUST TWO?!?

I am nigh invisible to the internets!

Writings from me have been so sparse (because it has been the end of the year at school) and it has been absolutely crazy for me. Last week, I wrote to tell you why I hadn’t been writing in the previous two weeks.

End of the year.

Omaigaaad.

End-of-year parties, end-of-year gifts, end-of-year celebrations, end-of-year meetings, end-of-year transitions, end-of-year ends x 3 and then add in the end-of-year stuff for the rowing club I’m taking over and the fact that I’d like to use the toilet every few hours without much delay and I’m sorta … baked.

The last time I posted was more than a week ago; I actually had no idea this time of year would be quite so insane this year, but the difference lays in our busy personal schedule: we’ve had 200% more house guests, there is a huge amount of things happening up at the school, and there was ton of rain here for a few days:

This is my yard with the flash flooding.

This is my yard after the flash flooding:

Ewww. I know, this is nothing compared to Katrina or major disasters, but this happened so fast… in 20 minutes my yard was totally flooded.

Monday I helped out at Thing 2′s exclusive Field Day.

The whole Field Day event was moved indoors because of the threat of more rain, but because I was running the water games I got to stay away from it all and was out in the open air. I’m sure it has nothing to do with my dazzling personality. I was pretty psyched because who wants to be in a gymnasium with a bunch of sweaty 11-13 y.o.s? “NOT I” said the cat.

This game was HILARIOUS. See that girl on the right holding the red cup? There was a ping-pong ball in that cup. The kid on the left, with the watch on, he had to spray water from his spot (along with a classmate to his left, she’s obscured) into the cup to get the water to a certain level to make the ball float. It took a while. The kids got to choose who was a sprayer and who was a cup-holder. The game was genius. I can’t wait for it to stop raining here so I can “play” this game with my kids. ‘Cept I’m going to use our garden hose and have them hold a thimble.

The next day was Tuesday, and I needed a nap. So I took one. Then I went to a meeting that got all effed up because people didn’t show I will stop talking about right now.

Wednesday, I did this:

Oh! Yes, I also went on Wednesday to help clear the racecourse for the Stormageddon that was heading our way. People pay big bucks to have their legs wrapped in sea kelp. Me? I got it done free and I smelled like a fishwife just for showing up.

Within 30 minutes of my return home from that, I had to shower and show up on time to watch Thing 2 in “Suessical” where he was Cat in the Hat #2:

Don’t make fun of the costume. He officially pissed me off about the costume. One week previous, here’s me, “Hey, T2, do you need a costume for Suessical? You haven’t asked me about it, I haven’t seen anything come home…” Here’s T2: “No, they’ve got something for me.” Three days later, I ask again, he demurs. Then, FOUR $#@_)*@_ HOURS before the event, I get a phone call from the school. It’s him. He needs me to bring up black pants and a black hoodie or “whatever” for the play for the preschoolers. WHAT THE WHAT?! No. I stood my ground. “No, you told me twice you needed nothing. I am going to the racecourse today to help clean up. You can use what you said they had for you…” He sulked, but I think he looks great. Meow.

All the while, for the past week, the hot tub is doing this:

what the foam? this. it’s not supposed to be this foamy. or this green. or this scummy. double ewww.

So the hot tub has become a major distraction; and not always in the best of ways.

First, the hot tub guys are … idiots. The “Cheat Sheet” from the dealer says to use X amount of chemical per X number of gallons per each use and the humans say to use 1/3 that amount of chemical per person regardless of the gallons (total tub volume / capacity) of water being moved through the filters. So it clouded up. Like… in no time. And no one knew why. Also, the sheet explicitly says to use Bippity Boo Solution (ok, not actually “Bippity Boo” but that doesn’t matter because the brand they cite on the cheat sheet isn’t the brand they gave us when they delivered the tub). So… I may as well be pouring milk and Cap’n Crunch in the tub and I know I’d be a hell of a lot happier.

Perhaps this will explain it:

the strip gets read left to right based on this: MPS, Alk and pH as shown on the vial. everything was low. for maybe several days despite our adding the verbally prescribed amount of Cap’n Crunch chemicals.

And so then I decided to call the actual administrative office and the gal who answered didn’t want to talk to me, she wanted me to talk to the guys who sold it to me and I said “No, they are jackholes.” (“Jackholes” is a new fun word for me. I know: 1995 called and it wants it back, but I like it so I’m personally reviving its use.)

So the administrative gal and I went over the massive confusion that the brand they sold was not discussed on the sheet they provided… (being in corporate communications and brand management, that’s what we call a NO-NO) and she instructed me to pull the filters, spray them with degreaser and whatnot, shock the tub, wait three hours, clean the filters again and then, THEN do a full rosary and 17 psalms, sacrifice a disgusting left sneaker that’s soaked in sea kelp while wearing a Cat-in-the-Hat hat and eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and then beg for it to work. Keep in mind, we’d only had the tub for 20 days and used it maybe 15 of those days. Here are the filters:

Gee. Do you think they’re dirty? If you look at the one on the far right, its top 1/4 is the original color… triple ewwww. do you think we were using the right amount of Cap’n Crunch chemicals?

So I did what she told me to do, which took almost six hours and three days later it was gorgeous again (and so was the weather) and not creepy green (plus I stopped putting Cap’n Crunch in it) .

But that wasn’t enough.

My week wasn’t over. I was under pressure because I was having a party to welcome all the incoming and returning rowing coaches and club officers because the season ended with some pinched feelings. So to prepare, I did it: I cut the tags off my cushions:

I’m a rebel.

And I worked all day Friday and set up for the party and have everything be nice and clean and inviting… And by the time I was done preparing my deck looked like this:

this was how everything looked for the party Friday night. it was a great event: everyone showed up and had a good time. (notice the clear hot tub? same water, just balanced chemicals.)

Then on Saturday, I brought this to T2′s Father’s Day All-Star soccer tournament because I thought I’d have time to read:

But I didn’t have time to read. The games were nail biters. They won one, then lost the other.

But their standing was good enough for us to rally at 9:00 today to play the third game, which they lost. Here they are early doing drills.

The coach in white is my husband. He is nice.

This game… this game was SO good. It was fantastic. But we won’t play for that head coach anymore; he got so frustrated during the second half he said to my son and some other players, “I want to win this game, so I’m keeping you out and putting the better players in.”

Uhhhh… WHO SAYS THAT TO 12-YEAR-OLDS who were INVITED to play in the tournament?! I know who, but I won’t say. But that was the last time I’m ever letting ANY of my kids play for him. He has shown me who he is many times before, but I have sit back and let my kids play for him; no more. The man has no character. OOOOOOooooh, I’ll tell you this: He told a party full of his players and their parents and sibs at an end-of-season event that even though his son made a travel soccer team that he was going to stay with the team he was with for the following season because he made a commitment for the entire year; it didn’t matter. And his son would play for the same team too. Three months later, guess who’s gone? And guess who took half the players with him? This dbag coach. My husband knew better, he asked me if I was OK with T2 playing for him and I said, “this is your gig; you expose the boys to these things as you see fit, as long as he wants him, it’s up to you…” and then he said what he did to T2 and his fellow players this morning. Shameful.

Then we had Father’s Day. It was fun. I made lasagne. And I want to end the post with two things: 1) my Facebook status about my own dad:

It may have not have been the easiest lesson to teach me or for me to learn, but my father taught me the importance of sobriety; the meaning of candor; the necessity of a sense of humor; the value of ambition and drive; and the worth of a moment of repose. You can never unring a bell, but you can always “sleep on it and see how you feel about it in the morning.” Thanks, Dad.

and 2) my plans for the next 30 days:

I’m launching a new blog series tomorrow to get me back on track — “30 Days of Jung” where I will take 30 of my most favorite Carl Jung quotes and wax intellectual or mindful or sarcastic or Cap’n Crunch or hot tub or comedic about them… who knows, but I love Jung and I also love to hate him.

I need a challenge like this to keep me on my toes. I need it to keep me writing. Things have been so crazy, I’ve just stopped writing and that’s not good at all. I also plan to get back into the fiction too, so if you’ve been following that, I will post this week for sure.

Now I can exhale!

Thank you.

ps — behold: the carbMonkey:

yes, i take pictures of food. mostly breakfast. this was what Thing 1 ate for breakfast before a final last week.