I would not know your name or Martha Beck without some woo!
I was at the bottom of the well- spiritually, financially, directionally.
2015- I saw Jen Sincero’s book You Are A Badass. I couldn’t afford to buy it ,so I sat reading it in Barnes and Noble.
She was offering coaching back then. It cost $498. I decided to put the principles to practice. I woke up the next day to a check in the mail for $501. A company claimed they owed me and only could reach me now.
I’ve lived at the same address for a decade.
I almost didn’t take her course. I needed the money! But I bought a coffee at the Barnes and Noble cafe and purchased it.
From there, I met people. Someone in that group saw a drawing I did. Which lead to a whole movement and standing on stage at the Women’s Rights Museum with a microphone.
It lead to selling my artwork. My ideas. My writing.
It lead to a podcast where I interviews Pam Grout (author of E Squared) from a similar series of woo events.
I also once meditated hard enough and long enough to have a voice tell me to “buy the ticket”. I bought said ticket and won just enough to take one of Marty’s writing courses that at the time I couldn’t afford. The wordlessness and oneness are for reals
I, on a recent holiday, was able to predict with 99% accuracy which elevator would show up using your beloved’s technologies of magic. Surely you can get your brilliance published. I believe in you Ro! Must be the wrong timing or the wrong publisher 🤷♀️ Wishing you all the things soon ✨
I worked as a social worker in an emergency room. Another social worker told me to go into a room with a man who was out of control. She gave me a metal thing and told me to protect myself if necessary, not do a psycho-social assessment or find him a bed in the hospital, but to call the police. When I entered the man's room, he called me an F@*&$ B@$#%. I laughed and told him I could definitely find that. Not what our culture would have had me do. It took him off guard and I gained his trust and interest. I then brought out the dry and ridiculous allopathic psycho-social form that isn't going to heal anybody, and started asking him the required questions, but interweaving into them The Work of Byron Katie and other modalities I have learned outside of the allopathic profession. When he started to tell me his historical background for example (an allopathic question) I said, "And who would you be without that story? I mean, who are you, really, sitting here with me right here, right now." He was so shocked - he stood still, teared up, and said no one had ever asked him that. Now we had two vulnerable people being real with each other - just pure presence between two individuals. About 40 minutes later the other social worker saw me going to the grape juice machine and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was getting the man some grape juice because he was thirsty, that I had done the psycho-social assessment and I had found him a bed. I was not better than the other social worker, I just added some magic and woo while maintaining a balancing act with the required societal allopathy to what would have surely otherwise been a fight (with the metal protector) and voilà two humans actually connected and a man was given some help.
Rowan, I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the rejection is part of being a writer?!? I’m not sure I like it...I haven’t submitted anything past my own stamp of approval.
I find most of my woo within nature and the cycles of weather, seasons. My mood lifts and I breathe easier when I am outside. Lately, it seems that tiny bugs have been visiting me. Or maybe I am just noticing them more. I will say this, they are meant to teach me something I just don’t know what but so far I have had 3 lovely longer than normal moments conversing with a lady bug, the tiniest black spider and a hover fly. My daughters and I also helped a daddy long leg, with a broken leg, off the playground to a safe place under the bushes just the other day.
Also nature magic of any kind is perfect for 2 years olds and their creative moms😉🌻🐛 so this might be an excuse to go play with dirt and lay on a blanket staring at the clouds pass.
I hope the weather where you are is perfect for some magic 🪄 . Tomorrow. Tonight, sleep. Dream. Tomorrow is a totally new day. 🤞🏻
We owned a two family home. Our renters told us that a brother was coming over and going to cause trouble for them. When he arrived in a taxi, he didn't have money to pay the taxi driver so he pounded on the renters door. They acted like they weren't home so he sat on our porch to wait. My spouse, Colleen, wanted to pay the taxi driver for him and asked what did I think? I went inward and heard, don't pay the taxi driver, so I said no, don't pay him. The taxi driver told the brother, I will take you home. He saw that it was a bad situation. I was grateful for his insight and compassion. And if we would have paid him, we would have ended up dealing with the brother.
First, I just want to offer that what you’re doing is HARD and super impressive. The publishing world is so political and also figuring out what people will like/not like - it’s all a lot. It’s a hard place for art and artists, because art doesn’t live and breathe like that. Having to fit it into our capitalistic society, it’s a very square-peg-round-hole situation. And you’re doing amazing.
If it’s any condolence, my entire life has been made by 'woo'. I don’t think I can really explain how I got to where I am without just ‘following the woo’ because that’s 100% how I did it. Being willing to stick to the things I knew were right for me in the face of a million no’s was my one saving grace.
So if you KNOW in the core of your cores that traditional publishing is IT for you - hold that. Return to that vision every day, and feel the feeling of it being so. In my experience, it was making a habit out of connecting with the FEELING of my dreams on a daily basis that provided the foundation for being able to find the steps that were going to take me where I wanted to go.
Getting to a place where I have a remote career living in Asia from having no formal education, no tech skills and no travel experience (also no money) was literally a process of feeling and following the next thing that felt the most like that end goal feeling at a time.
Learning to blog, then becoming obsessed with a raw foods website that turned into my first online job, that taught me all the skills for running an online business, that taught me how to write programs, that taught me how to work with people one on one, taking a trip that led to a series of moves that all accumulated to enough income and stable work to get us back to Asia, traveling and finding the right country to get a visa, being able to actually get the visa - it was ALL walking in the dark, and following the feeling. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew what FELT like a 'TING' and each one of those ‘I don’t know why but this is the way’ steps, were the steps.
For me, it was about making my entire life about that FEELING state. I learned that what I really wanted was that feeling, and that my mind was coming up with the image of the end goal as being the thing I THOUGHT would give me that feeling - and in some cases that was true, and in some cases there was something much better. As I reoriented myself to the FEELING, and then allowed myself to fill my life with everything that felt like that, and allowed myself to say no to anything that didn't feel like that - the path revealed itself. And honestly the WHOLE time the only reason I had for WHY I was doing what I was doing was ‘it feels like the thing!’ But it totally worked.
What I learned along the way was that at least for me the biggest thing was making it about the bigger picture. Holding on too tight to the end goal looking how I wanted it to often led me into over thinking and analyzing and that never actually helped. When I realized the thing was all about how I wanted my LIFE to feel and who I wanted to BE - that's when I think it all turned around for me. Letting the vision just be the anchor for the feeling, then following that feeling. Again using my logic for working out HOW to make the feeling things make sense, and then finding out as I went which parts of the vision were actually what I wanted, which parts were just a holding vision for something better and it kept me open to getting to the vision in totally unconventional ways.
It was actually about WHO I was becoming and building the whole life. And again following feeling and holding the vision lightly made it possible to follow the path that often times I had no idea existed and was totally different than what I thought the path would be.
Woo seems to be interested in the big picture, the becoming, the life building, in my experience. The ‘thing’ seems to be what pulls us along like a carrot on the stick ;)
Unsolicited advice - Hold the vision, hold the feeling and let go of how you think you're gunna get there. Zoom out to the purpose, the life, the feeling state you desire to occupy. Let the ting take you in it's totally unexpected directions.
Let it be about filling your life with everything that FEELS like the end place. See where all those steps lead you. See if you can say no to anything that doesn’t feel like that, even if it seems illogical to do so.
I'm feeling my way, too. Part of a big improv. With a fluid, and insanely talented, troupe. Never knowing what will advance the action. Until it lands.
We have a family tradition of going to Santa Cruz every summer right before school. My little guy missed 4 years due to my lymphoma. So last two years despite my girl in the bubble status we go. Masked and only eating outside. Yet here I am quarantined for 20 days w Covid. It is longer because I am immunocompromised. So on day 3 feeling well enough to pick up my phone I see your call for ennui and rejection. I feel you hard my friend. 5 years of my face pressed to the window of the candy store of life and still big no for me.
I have a number of magic stories but one that comes to mind was a Jedi mind trick. I have been able to do 3 or 4 times in my life. I strangely know when it is going to work. It feels like I am connected to something more.
So I was going to a concert for a British band that had only tour on the East coast before and was finally coming to San Francisco. It was a huge deal and probably once in a lifetime opportunity to see them local. We had been waiting for months and the tickets sold out in a day.
Night of the concert my group of friends are queued in a line going around the block. One of our friends said he forgot his ticket, my guess he didn’t buy it or hocked it. He was a wild drunken poet. He is freaking out and our friends are freaking out.
I just know we are all getting in, I just know. He doesn’t believe me, I really have no receipt to back that up. We snake closer and closer to the entrance. We start seeing people w/o tickets being turned away, full capacity at a sold out show. Everyone else is getting nervous but I am completely calm despite promising something that I have no means to provide.
Our turn comes up. I go first and I look the ticket checker in the eye and say, “Here is my ticket and he is with me. She looks through me and says yes and we walk in. Everyone is equally delighted and freaked out.
I would not know your name or Martha Beck without some woo!
I was at the bottom of the well- spiritually, financially, directionally.
2015- I saw Jen Sincero’s book You Are A Badass. I couldn’t afford to buy it ,so I sat reading it in Barnes and Noble.
She was offering coaching back then. It cost $498. I decided to put the principles to practice. I woke up the next day to a check in the mail for $501. A company claimed they owed me and only could reach me now.
I’ve lived at the same address for a decade.
I almost didn’t take her course. I needed the money! But I bought a coffee at the Barnes and Noble cafe and purchased it.
From there, I met people. Someone in that group saw a drawing I did. Which lead to a whole movement and standing on stage at the Women’s Rights Museum with a microphone.
It lead to selling my artwork. My ideas. My writing.
It lead to a podcast where I interviews Pam Grout (author of E Squared) from a similar series of woo events.
Now I can buy books. I’ve even made a book!
It all lead back to me. Now here with all of you.
XO,
V
I also once meditated hard enough and long enough to have a voice tell me to “buy the ticket”. I bought said ticket and won just enough to take one of Marty’s writing courses that at the time I couldn’t afford. The wordlessness and oneness are for reals
I, on a recent holiday, was able to predict with 99% accuracy which elevator would show up using your beloved’s technologies of magic. Surely you can get your brilliance published. I believe in you Ro! Must be the wrong timing or the wrong publisher 🤷♀️ Wishing you all the things soon ✨
I worked as a social worker in an emergency room. Another social worker told me to go into a room with a man who was out of control. She gave me a metal thing and told me to protect myself if necessary, not do a psycho-social assessment or find him a bed in the hospital, but to call the police. When I entered the man's room, he called me an F@*&$ B@$#%. I laughed and told him I could definitely find that. Not what our culture would have had me do. It took him off guard and I gained his trust and interest. I then brought out the dry and ridiculous allopathic psycho-social form that isn't going to heal anybody, and started asking him the required questions, but interweaving into them The Work of Byron Katie and other modalities I have learned outside of the allopathic profession. When he started to tell me his historical background for example (an allopathic question) I said, "And who would you be without that story? I mean, who are you, really, sitting here with me right here, right now." He was so shocked - he stood still, teared up, and said no one had ever asked him that. Now we had two vulnerable people being real with each other - just pure presence between two individuals. About 40 minutes later the other social worker saw me going to the grape juice machine and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was getting the man some grape juice because he was thirsty, that I had done the psycho-social assessment and I had found him a bed. I was not better than the other social worker, I just added some magic and woo while maintaining a balancing act with the required societal allopathy to what would have surely otherwise been a fight (with the metal protector) and voilà two humans actually connected and a man was given some help.
Rowan, I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the rejection is part of being a writer?!? I’m not sure I like it...I haven’t submitted anything past my own stamp of approval.
I find most of my woo within nature and the cycles of weather, seasons. My mood lifts and I breathe easier when I am outside. Lately, it seems that tiny bugs have been visiting me. Or maybe I am just noticing them more. I will say this, they are meant to teach me something I just don’t know what but so far I have had 3 lovely longer than normal moments conversing with a lady bug, the tiniest black spider and a hover fly. My daughters and I also helped a daddy long leg, with a broken leg, off the playground to a safe place under the bushes just the other day.
Also nature magic of any kind is perfect for 2 years olds and their creative moms😉🌻🐛 so this might be an excuse to go play with dirt and lay on a blanket staring at the clouds pass.
I hope the weather where you are is perfect for some magic 🪄 . Tomorrow. Tonight, sleep. Dream. Tomorrow is a totally new day. 🤞🏻
We owned a two family home. Our renters told us that a brother was coming over and going to cause trouble for them. When he arrived in a taxi, he didn't have money to pay the taxi driver so he pounded on the renters door. They acted like they weren't home so he sat on our porch to wait. My spouse, Colleen, wanted to pay the taxi driver for him and asked what did I think? I went inward and heard, don't pay the taxi driver, so I said no, don't pay him. The taxi driver told the brother, I will take you home. He saw that it was a bad situation. I was grateful for his insight and compassion. And if we would have paid him, we would have ended up dealing with the brother.
First, I just want to offer that what you’re doing is HARD and super impressive. The publishing world is so political and also figuring out what people will like/not like - it’s all a lot. It’s a hard place for art and artists, because art doesn’t live and breathe like that. Having to fit it into our capitalistic society, it’s a very square-peg-round-hole situation. And you’re doing amazing.
If it’s any condolence, my entire life has been made by 'woo'. I don’t think I can really explain how I got to where I am without just ‘following the woo’ because that’s 100% how I did it. Being willing to stick to the things I knew were right for me in the face of a million no’s was my one saving grace.
So if you KNOW in the core of your cores that traditional publishing is IT for you - hold that. Return to that vision every day, and feel the feeling of it being so. In my experience, it was making a habit out of connecting with the FEELING of my dreams on a daily basis that provided the foundation for being able to find the steps that were going to take me where I wanted to go.
Getting to a place where I have a remote career living in Asia from having no formal education, no tech skills and no travel experience (also no money) was literally a process of feeling and following the next thing that felt the most like that end goal feeling at a time.
Learning to blog, then becoming obsessed with a raw foods website that turned into my first online job, that taught me all the skills for running an online business, that taught me how to write programs, that taught me how to work with people one on one, taking a trip that led to a series of moves that all accumulated to enough income and stable work to get us back to Asia, traveling and finding the right country to get a visa, being able to actually get the visa - it was ALL walking in the dark, and following the feeling. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew what FELT like a 'TING' and each one of those ‘I don’t know why but this is the way’ steps, were the steps.
For me, it was about making my entire life about that FEELING state. I learned that what I really wanted was that feeling, and that my mind was coming up with the image of the end goal as being the thing I THOUGHT would give me that feeling - and in some cases that was true, and in some cases there was something much better. As I reoriented myself to the FEELING, and then allowed myself to fill my life with everything that felt like that, and allowed myself to say no to anything that didn't feel like that - the path revealed itself. And honestly the WHOLE time the only reason I had for WHY I was doing what I was doing was ‘it feels like the thing!’ But it totally worked.
What I learned along the way was that at least for me the biggest thing was making it about the bigger picture. Holding on too tight to the end goal looking how I wanted it to often led me into over thinking and analyzing and that never actually helped. When I realized the thing was all about how I wanted my LIFE to feel and who I wanted to BE - that's when I think it all turned around for me. Letting the vision just be the anchor for the feeling, then following that feeling. Again using my logic for working out HOW to make the feeling things make sense, and then finding out as I went which parts of the vision were actually what I wanted, which parts were just a holding vision for something better and it kept me open to getting to the vision in totally unconventional ways.
It was actually about WHO I was becoming and building the whole life. And again following feeling and holding the vision lightly made it possible to follow the path that often times I had no idea existed and was totally different than what I thought the path would be.
Woo seems to be interested in the big picture, the becoming, the life building, in my experience. The ‘thing’ seems to be what pulls us along like a carrot on the stick ;)
Unsolicited advice - Hold the vision, hold the feeling and let go of how you think you're gunna get there. Zoom out to the purpose, the life, the feeling state you desire to occupy. Let the ting take you in it's totally unexpected directions.
Let it be about filling your life with everything that FEELS like the end place. See where all those steps lead you. See if you can say no to anything that doesn’t feel like that, even if it seems illogical to do so.
You got this.
<3
So many wonderful concepts to pin on a wall here.
I'm feeling my way, too. Part of a big improv. With a fluid, and insanely talented, troupe. Never knowing what will advance the action. Until it lands.
With you - Roe, Aliyah, all.
This is poetry <3
We have a family tradition of going to Santa Cruz every summer right before school. My little guy missed 4 years due to my lymphoma. So last two years despite my girl in the bubble status we go. Masked and only eating outside. Yet here I am quarantined for 20 days w Covid. It is longer because I am immunocompromised. So on day 3 feeling well enough to pick up my phone I see your call for ennui and rejection. I feel you hard my friend. 5 years of my face pressed to the window of the candy store of life and still big no for me.
I have a number of magic stories but one that comes to mind was a Jedi mind trick. I have been able to do 3 or 4 times in my life. I strangely know when it is going to work. It feels like I am connected to something more.
So I was going to a concert for a British band that had only tour on the East coast before and was finally coming to San Francisco. It was a huge deal and probably once in a lifetime opportunity to see them local. We had been waiting for months and the tickets sold out in a day.
Night of the concert my group of friends are queued in a line going around the block. One of our friends said he forgot his ticket, my guess he didn’t buy it or hocked it. He was a wild drunken poet. He is freaking out and our friends are freaking out.
I just know we are all getting in, I just know. He doesn’t believe me, I really have no receipt to back that up. We snake closer and closer to the entrance. We start seeing people w/o tickets being turned away, full capacity at a sold out show. Everyone else is getting nervous but I am completely calm despite promising something that I have no means to provide.
Our turn comes up. I go first and I look the ticket checker in the eye and say, “Here is my ticket and he is with me. She looks through me and says yes and we walk in. Everyone is equally delighted and freaked out.
I wish it worked on 🦠