I'm going through a lot of old books, trying to find one that might help me with my get-out-of-high-tech-find-something-else-to-do plan. If you read this, I'm assuming you know me and will reassure me that people do not think ill of me for owning the following titles among many of the same ilk: Learned Optimism, Zen and the Art of Making a Living, What Color Is Your Parachute, The Artist's Way at Work. Really.
This doesn't include the small books, those tiny books like Women Who Do Too Much that I guess you're supposed to carry around in your bag and read when you're having a bad day instead of threatening to stab your cab driver. I have an entire drawer of these, either bought during some apparent time of wanting to turn over a new leaf or given to me by well-meaning friends and back in the day, fellow 12 steppers, that thought I was an angry bitch. I read them sometimes.
Digging through the pile, I found Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. You just threw up in your mouth. It was given to me by Abby, this seriously cool woman with a great job and charming husband and nice clothes. She had a lot of cats, but there was nothing about her screaming RUN or Howling Wolf t-shirt! She said it was helpful, and I believed her.
My first reaction, upon reading the first few entries, was that it was quite possibly the gayest shit I have ever read. Tea! Flower sachets! Dream journals! OMFG, SLEEPLESS IN SEATLE! I imagined the Delicious Dish ladies sitting around discussing the book and how their "authentic selves" had baked gingerbread cookies and had cocoa on a snowy winter's day. Barf. Plus, the suggestions were so mundane and almost insulting to women -- everything involved cooking or cleaning (discover the real you by reorganizing the spice rack!), setting the angry feminist radar on high alert. There's even a website that greets you with some breathy music chanting, I shit you not, "the gift of love." Not for me.
Or so I thought.
I picked up the book the other night, and after getting through all the new age hippie crap, I found myself almost liking the central premise: that you have everything you need to be happy, you just need to find it. I believe she says, "discover it," but...ew. Maybe it's the baby. Maybe it's the meds. Or maybe I've tried to think of everything that will help me figure out how to change careers, and I've hit such a wall that a glittery dream notebook and a pink pen seem like plausible ways to do this.
So, I'll be reading one of these meditations (even the word makes me cringe) each morning and attempting to follow through, blogging about my..choke...journey to peace and plenty when I can. Humorous, probably. Enlightening, maybe.
You now have my permission to laugh out loud.
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