Facebook … Bah Humbug

Yesterday, a friend sent me an e-mail telling me to check out her Facebook page.  She’d added a bunch of pictures to it.

I don’t do Facebook.  So I asked her how to do that.  She sent me an invitation to be her friend on Facebook.

Turns out I have an account.  I’d totally forgotten that I signed up about 2 ½ years ago when I was doing everything I could think of to promote websites.  I never finished setting it up.  Never wrote a profile or added pictures.  Truth was my heart wasn’t in it.

I don’t like Facebook.

There, I said it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI comes knocking on my door.  I think it might be anti-American to dislike Facebook.  Even more radical to refuse to look at anyone’s Twitters.

I just don’t like people that much.

Well, okay, that’s not true.  I mean, I like people, but I don’t want to know what everyone else is doing.  It messes with my head.

Too many people are doing negative things.  Or they’re doing positive things I think I should be doing and I’m not so I feel guilty that I’m not.  Or they’re doing things I just plain don’t care about one way or the other.

Facebook is too exposed for me.

Yeah, me.  A book author who has been on national TV to promote her book.

Or maybe it’s not that.  Maybe it’s the group-think involved with it.  The sheep aspect of it.  Everyone’s doing it.  I prefer to do things that not everyone is doing.

So I went to Facebook and accepted my friend’s request.  I discovered one of my dear friends had made a friend request months ago.  I accepted it then sent her an e-mail that said I hadn’t been ignoring her—I’d just not been following up with Facebook.

All authors should be on Facebook, the experts say.   That thought makes my stomach clench up.  I don’t like it.

A few days ago, this was Abraham’s daily quote:

“We would never do anything that didn’t make our heart sing! … And so you say, ‘But that choice doesn’t seem to be there. There’s this choice that doesn’t make my heart sing, or sort of staying where I am. So what should I do?’ And we say, we’d hang around and wait for something that makes our heart sing—and then we’d jump in with all four feet.”

I have SO much evidence that doing what other people say is a good idea doesn’t often work out.  I want to do what makes my heart sing.

I’m working on a book proposal right now for a book about my 17-year relationship with Muggins, my dog that died in October last year.  THAT makes my heart sing.

Facebook doesn’t make me sing.  So my page is going to stay the mess it is.  Thirty unanswered friend requests.  No pictures.  No information about me.

I don’t want to join that crowd.

And since I’m choosing to make feeling good my top priority, I don’t have to.

Getting My Mind To Mind

The mind is like an untrained dog, one left to languish in a backyard, maybe on a tether or in a kennel, not given instruction, not guided to happy purpose.  Most of us are extraordinarily lazy about what we think.

I’m sure that’s why so many people, including me, are still waiting for all the things we thought the law of attraction would bring to us.  Most don’t realize that the law of attraction is bringing a match to our thoughts all the time; the reason what we’re getting isn’t what we want is because the majority of our thoughts aren’t a vibrational match to what we want.

Lazy thoughts are “what is” thoughts, observation of something that’s going on, something that happened to you or someone else or something going on in the world.  We think we need to talk about current events (sometimes to such lengths that if the topic were a dead horse, we’d have pulverized it into mere wisps of tissue by the time we’re done).

The truth is that unless something is what we want, unless it truly makes us glad or brings us hope or makes us feel appreciation, it is not something we need to be talking about.  This includes disasters like those in Haiti—which doesn’t mean we ignore them.  You can put your attention on something that needs to be done, like bringing aid to people who need it, but the attention needs to be on the solution, not the problem.  Lamenting what has happened doesn’t help anyone.  We have to learn to start where we are and find thoughts that bring relief.

What you focus on perpetuates.

I KNOW this.

But do I control my thoughts accordingly?

Nope.

I let my thoughts meander like that untrained dog, digging holes (coming up with terrifying scenarios about what might happen in the future), chewing on shoes and furniture (running problems through my head over and over), barking at every little noise (paying attention to anything around me, whether I like it or not).

This morning, in spite of that intention to feel good and feel happy, I woke up aware of my financial situation.  I threw a choker chain over my mind and yanked it away from that unhappy line of thinking.  I put it in a nice heel next to thoughts of things I like (my bed, a memory foam/latex foam combo, is very comfortable and much of the hip and back pain I had before I got it is gone; the storm we had last night blew through quickly and left behind no damage; Ducky greets me with delightful enthusiasm each morning as if I’m the most fascinating person in the world).

But as the morning went on, I realized my thoughts must have been someplace I didn’t like because I felt flat and blah.  Not sad or depressed.  Not consciously angry or discouraged.  Just a little lethargic.

This definitely wasn’t the “I feel happy—it’s a perfect day” the way I wanted to feel.

Tim and I were walking in the forest with Ducky (another thing to feel good about), and I told him I wanted to lift my energy.

He said, “What do you want?  Tell me about things you want.”  (Another thing to appreciate—I have a very supportive husband!)

So I started telling him about the house I want us to buy—I talked about the rooms and the view and the property it sat on.  I talked about its location and what I wanted to do to the house.

Once I started talking, I felt SO much better.  I could feel my energy rising; a little surge of enthusiasm started percolating.

Since then, I’ve been able to build on that by using this “what do you want?” focus as a leash that pulls my mind back in line when it starts circling the yard of fear and sadness.

Ducky, at less than 6 months old, is better trained than my meandering mind.  It’s time to change that.

I’ve got 29 days left to teach my mind enough feel-good tricks to change my life.

I think I’m off to a good start.

The Joy of Play

One of the ways I remember how to feel good is to watch my dog.  Here’s what pure joy looks like:

And this:

Passing The Puppy Baton

When she was here, she brought out the fun in me.

When she left me, she sucked away some of my breath.  Part of me has been suffocating for almost three months.

Muggins was my mentor, my guide.  She was what every woman needs—a wise bitch who knows how to go out on a limb to embrace life.

I could always find a reason to feel good when I looked at Muggins.

The morning after she died, I was up at 5 a.m.  I couldn’t sleep.  For months, we’d been sleeping with a nightlight in the room so she could see the ramp that led up to the bed (her eyesight had been poor for some time).  I’d hated that nightlight because it disturbed my sleep—I thought it kept me from going into a deep sleep.

We unplugged the nightlight the night she died.  The darkness screamed, “She’s gone,” and the knowledge smothered me.  I wanted the nightlight back.

I gave up and got up.  I turned on all the lights.

For weeks, I’d been starting my day by dancing, freestyle dancing to a selection of tunes on my ipod.  That morning, trying to push the dark away, I danced.

In our kitchen, above the pantry, we have a wooden plaque that reads, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass.  It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

I looked up at the plaque, and tears bathed my cheeks.  “I’m dancing, Muggins,” I said to my beloved dog.  “I’m dancing.”

That’s what Muggins would have wanted.

When you’ve had a dog for 17 years (I brought her home when she was 8-weeks old), when she’s gone, a void opens and swallows you up.  When we left the vet, I said to Tim, “What do we do now?”

He didn’t know.

I decided to send an e-mail to the breeder from whom I got Muggins.  I told her about Muggins’ long life and asked if she’d have a litter of Springer pups any time soon.  She e-mailed back that she wouldn’t have a litter until Spring, but, she said, there was a puppy available now.  The breeder lived about three hours from me, and she was one Muggins’ breeder recommended highly.  She said she’d already called the other breeder to highly recommend me.

I looked at Tim.  He looked at me.

It seemed like it was sort of falling in place.  I sent an e-mail to the new breeder.  She sent me a picture of the puppy.  The next day, we drove to the breeder’s home and saw the puppy.  Big surprise.  We brought her home.

Ducky is a black and white Springer Spaniel, like Muggins.  But she’s not Muggins.  SO not Muggins.  She’s very different, in appearance and personality.

That’s good.

And she knows about the joy of life (all dogs do).  That’s good too.

So Ducky has taken the baton that Muggins passed off to her (I am convinced Muggins, who is now part of that nonphysical stream of energy we all come from) led me to Ducky.  Ducky is still a puppy.  But she’s clearly a wise bitch who knows how to embrace life.