Review: 10 Steps to Finding Your Happy Place

(The BOOK)

 (The cover has an inviting painting of a happy place.)

Review – “I Am Jennie”

This is an irritatingly difficult challenge.  Since I began blogging, I’ve asserted that you can’t write about yourself with complete accuracy, no matter how hard you try.  When we tell our own life stories, we portray ourselves as we imagine we are and have been, and it’s inevitably subject to all our biases, the self-protective and the self-destructive ones.  No one is merciless and/or fearless enough to do it.  That’s why I’ve always said I’m writing here about a character based on me.

Unforgivable

Barbara Johnson’s mother died unexpectedly.  That’s always sad.  Her family planned a simple funeral for last Saturday in the setting of her lifelong faith, the Roman Catholic Church.  The priest, Father Marcel Guarnizo, learned that Barbara is a lesbian when he was introduced to her partner of 19 years shortly before the funeral mass.

What if There Isn’t?

TIME Magazine wimped out.  On the cover was the provocative question “What if There’s no Hell?”  The article inside hardly dealt with the question.

Why I Know

There’s an underbelly to show business that’s every bit as ugly as all those stories you might have thought were urban legends.

Caged

The warehouse of unopened boxes in Citizen Kane (1941).

I’ve been thinking about a kind of imprisonment many of us struggle against – the cage of material possessions.

Subduing the Demon

We are animals.  When animals get stressed there’s an adaptation response called “fight or flight”.  It’s more like fight, flee or freeze, but the point is it’s biological.  It’s a built-in.  You can learn how to use it properly, but you can not keep it from happening.  When you get stressed, adrenaline will pump into your system, and adrenaline can turn you into a monster.

My Father’s Imprisonment

Our achievements and our problems don’t begin with us.  There’s a continuum from our parents through us to our children and beyond.  Even in cases where you don’t know them, there’s a genetic legacy which has more influence than many want to admit.  If your parents are smart, tall or short, fat or thin, have any kind of chronic condition related to health, have emotional or psychological “eccentricities”, or thinning hair, the chances are greater that you will share these characteristics.

My Dilemma

This is my second marriage.  It’s funny how even though I’m very happy in this second marriage, I still feel inwardly like I failed at something to even have to admit it.  I was young.  Was it a mistake?  I wish I knew.  The first marriage failed despite our best intentions, because of slow-acting poisons we took voluntarily.

Most Evil Job Ever

Some of my readers urged me to write about another odd job I held once, but at the time I deferred because it was an unusual experience of real evil, the kind that swims in the dark river of sludge beneath all capitalism.