my jobby job

Once again I've found myself at my "job": in a cafe, drinking a soy chai latte, surrounded by Berkeley students and apparently blending in as one (a few people have openly assumed I am a student and I didn't necessarily correct them... hopefully I'll get some sort of discount as some point. One of them also said I was probably 22 or 23. I'll take that :) I knew I should've gotten that fake student ID card in Bangkok, it would have come in handy so many times already! especially for airline tickets...)

anyway, this seems to be my daily task: walk 5 miles roundtrip, spend time blogging / craigslisting / emailing / researching, stare out window at passerbys and wonder where they are going and what their life is like, and pray that my life will fall into place as well as I would LOVE it to. I'm doing the work, I'm following the guidance, I'm working very hard and not freaking out when things don't work out the way I would like them to, and I'm calling friends when I absolutely cannot take the silence anymore. Even if you all don't answer, at least I hear your voice and can make some sort of indirect contact. Thank God for cell phones and the internet. I seriously have really really begun to fully appreciate the technological age in which we currently live. It is SO easy to get places, to meet people, to keep in touch, to learn about life outside of your little bubble, and to just experience the variety of life that used to be completely untouchable.

I watched "Sense and Sensibility" the other night, and realized how crazy I would be if I wasn't able to fully express myself, or do something to be in some control of my own life, and to not even be able to walk a man to the gate outside of my house alone for fear of societal reproach. I mean, c'mon! I guess that is why Indigos are here now and not then ;) that would've been some show!

So now we have cell phones, cars, planes, computers, computers in our phones, and an amazing capability of communication and connection that we have NEVER known before. This is huge, people! This type of life has NEVER been lived before. Aside from the inevitable magnetic fields and radiation and waste that accompanies such objects, they are truly a gift and I fully embrace them all and love the chance that i've been given in this life. I have a freakin iPhone, MacBook, iPod, and sweet digital Camera, and a nice car that isn't too nice so as to not attract unwanted attention... all this without a job. I mean, c'mon. I am so lucky. It doesn't go to my head nor give me "white man's guilt" anymore, I just fully appreciate what I have been blessed with in this life.

I had this thought the other day: how can people be racist, especially if they believe in God, b/c God is the one who created our situation, not me. So according to that philosophy: God made me white, born into my well-to-do and generous family, and it wasn't something I decided upon so as to make other people "less than" and suffer. They shouldn't be mad at anyone, if anything they should be mad at God.

Oh, well. I know it's something they have to learn and it's not for me to question their process. Just something that has come up recently. I just know it's in my face b/c I now live in "the ghetto" for this month, according to some kid I overheard as I was walking today. He was walking with some friends and said, "yeah, over there, past that street, that's the ghetto." I just laughed and thought back to my days of living in lower Haight in SF, when crackheads roamed the street and gunshots were not so surprising... It has affected me more this time. Maybe b/c I know more than I did then, and I was way more careless then. I also lived there with three of my good friends. This time it's just me and it's not that I'm not scared at all, if anything the people have been super nice and way more friendly than Del Mar people have ever been, it's just different. It adds to the huge adjustment I am not making by being up here.

It shows how much I trust people and the universe, for I absolutely know in my heart, without question, that I am perfectly safe at all times. And so is my stuff. I just know. What is more difficult for me, is seeing the degradation of the neighborhood; trash everywhere and people driving around without stopping at stop signs, nonchalantly walking across a busy major street when their light is red... and not being able to talk to anyone without them hitting on me and making it absolutely imperative to not talk to them again. They just take it to a level that is so not necessary.

I know I'm a young woman, pretty attractive, very friendly, and obviously not scared to live in the ghetto... but I do not need to always get asked if I'm single, what I'm doing later, and other obviously slimy comments. It's just so not necessary. I guess now I just need to see why this is happening to me and what I'm supposed to learn from it. I know that I'm not letting it get to me like it would in the past. I used to get so scared by it and not have any boundaries, and get upset when people didn't respect the boundaries I thought they should just expect that I have, if that makes any sense. I expected other people to create my boundaries for me, and then respect them. Ha! Fat chance.

So now I am fully aware of my big ol' fat boundaries and I'm so not letting anyone beyond those. As soon as they get into the schmoozy energy, I am out of there. I give them a chance, and then that's it. I then become married to a big ol' wrestler with anger and jealousy issues, who just got out of jail for attacking someone who asked me what time it was... oh, and he breeds pitbulls for fun. The mean kind...

I did not know this post was going in this direction, but that is what I've been dealing with recently. So there you go.