Archive for the ‘The Good Life’ Category
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
If you are "always on" (i.e. completely transparent) you will exist always in a state of Grace or complete vulnerability. In this way, no one can harm you. Thanks for the inspiration [1]. The cartoon reads: "There are no rules that say you have to follow the rules."
[1] http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004439.html
Posted in Cartoons, Features, The Good Life | 4 Comments »
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
[1]
-Billy, age 4 [2].
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/love-is.jpg
[2] http://www.beinghealthynaturally.com/spiritualityandlife/whatislove.htm
Posted in The Good Life | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
As you may have already guessed, I've revamped and streamlined my blog. I realized that I avoided blogging because the previous template was just too much. Over the last many weeks I've come to several realizations.
1. Sometimes simple is best. Complexity brings with it more choice. More choice can be taxing.
2. Each commitment brings with it additional responsibilities. No is the fastest way to maintain simplicity.
3. Fear is not a useful, long-term motivator. Scaring myself doesn't really get me where I need to be, and I end up exhausting myself, too.
4. I like traveling by Amtrak. Everything is much slower on Amtrak than either flying or driving.
5. We're here on earth to be kind to one another and help each other get where need to be.
6. Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" works in the city as well as the rural midwest.
7. I want to work my story, not find a story that fits my work.
8. I'm developing a passion for surrealist literature.
9. In the end, I will die and become one of the billions of nameless, faceless people who have gone before me. Despite the greater proliferation of information, I believe I will become, in death, more obscure than many who have come before me.
Posted in The Good Life | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Hey All!
I will be visiting Chicago March 27 and March 28 and would love to meet other FtMs/trans masculine folks, as well as friends, partners, and anyone else while I'm there. The big feminist bookstore in Chicago is not an option for doing a reading gig so I'd love the opportunity to read from Self-Organizing Men as well as talk about our current and upcoming books.
If you want to meet and/or know of places (people's homes/coffee shops/etc.) where I can do a reading I surely do appreciate it. Leave your contact info in the comments.
Big love to all, Jay
P.S. I did contact Nick Winter at GenderWorks.....
Posted in Self-Organizing Men, The Good Life | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 1st, 2008
[1]
These days I'm working on wanting what I have and gratitude for what I do have. This effort has resulted in five new, yet interrelated epiphanies, about money, clutter, and time. These are the three big issues for those of us solidly in the middle-class, which is to say, our materials are need on a regular basis such that we might not be living paycheck to paycheck, have healthcare, and very importantly, have money to pay someone else to fix our broken things.
Ephiphany No 1. By truly wanting less - not the notion of "I should want less because Zen is In!" - I have more money now. That I am 43 and have only now figured this out indicates the depths of my suffering mind. But as we like to say here in the u.s., better late than never. Somehow, this working on gratitude, I've managed to hold on to the pennies, nickles and dimes I used to fritter away on so much crap.
Epiphany No. 2. With less crap, the less I have to pay to keep the crap I do have clean. Here is a bonus epiphany. Not only to get more money (see Epiphany No. 1) but I also get more time. There is less to clean, less to organize, less to worry about.
Epiphany No. 3. The more I am grateful for what I have, the more relaxed I am. Less striving after the crap of life. Ms. H. candidly pointed out to me awhile back that it is "the act of buying something that is sexy. We've bought art that we still haven't hung but we were very excited when we bought it." Very true. The getting of a thing is often much more fun than the having of it. (This can also be true of dating!)
Epiphany No. 4. Gratitude somehow generates more time. I'm not really sure how it works. It's kind of like four-year-old magic or something. A more adult like explanation can be found, I think, in the realm of paradox. But I do have much more time now to tend to the details like cleaning, organizing, answering non-urgent, non-important emails. The whole experience seems very Hogwarts to me.
Epiphany No. 5. And along these magical lines, these acts of gratitude for my stuff have helped me like people more. Now, I am a curmudgeon from the get-go. If Ms. H. precedes me in death, I will surely be the old man with 63 cats whose house gets egged by kids on the block. I recall reading a Zen teacher from Japan based in the U.S. tell his students that caring for our things teaches us about the fundamental goodness of, and in, life. I didn't really believe him. But now I sort of understand what he means. But don't just believe him or me without trying it yourself. See what happens.
What are you all grateful for?
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/too-less.jpg
Posted in Cartoons, The Good Life | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
[1]
How many of us are overwhelmed by email?
I was. To reduce this feeling and and practice slowing down and reducing my stress, my goal is to contain my email [2]. Since last week I've checked personal email only twice a day and not at all on this past Saturday and Sunday. Considering I am a recovering crackberry addict, I'm pleased with my results. Now the hard part. What do I do with all my emails? Each time I'm at my inbox, I achieve inbox zero. That means there's nothing in the inbox when I click "log off." Here's how: 1. A process for dealing with emails ~ Do something with every email. You have four choices.
Respond.
Delete.
Delegate.
Delay.
Start at the top of your inbox and handle each email. If I can respond to the email in under two minutes, I do it right then. If not, I move it to a "delay" process that is essentially a daily tickler file. I realize this system will not work for all of you. It is purely my own, and I do not recommend it. Create whatever system works for you. Maybe David Allen's system works or your Grandma's does. Create it. Use it. Stick to it. If I can't respond to the email in two minutes, I delay it until I have time to answer it. Sometimes that means I must make answering that email one of my two Most Important Tasks (MITs) of the day. Like yesterday I spent about 20 minutes responding to our lawyer's questions about our new contract. 2. The five sentence response ~ How many emails do you receive that you feel will require thought, deliberation and at least an hour to respond to? I've been there. Email is one form of communication. You are not obligated to respond with a short story to anyone's email. Frankly, if you do believe that is required, your response merits a phone call. How old school! You say. How 70s! Believe me, people are relieved to actually talk to another human being. Instead, practice the five sentence email response [3]. That's it. Respond to every email in five sentences or less. Don't waste your time or anybody else's either. If I can't say what I need to say in five sentences, I need to be making that phone call. 3. Don't incur what you don't have to ~ I've stopped all those email reminders. From Google, Facebook, online banks, all of them. Turned them off. I've also started unsubscribing from newsletters. Makes deleting emails short and sweet. In this game of life, it's all about attention. Without attention, we have little time. I can say that containing my email has been one of the most productive and edifying choices I've ever made in my life. It may prove to be so for you, too. Good luck. May the force be with you.
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/afraid-to-give-up-busy.JPG
[2] http://jaysennett.com/2008/01/02/3-tools-for-slowing-down/
[3] http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/07/fight-email-overload-with-sentences
Posted in Cartoons, The Good Life | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
So I lied. Kind of. While I stated that loving myself is my top resolution for 2008 [1], I confess to having one more: to slow down.
I've become all-too aware of how much I have let busyness rule my life. This realization provided me with motivation to do less in 2008 [2]. One way to begin the process of doing less is to slow down.
I've found three tools that I will be (and already have started) using in order to slow down, really, really slow.
1. Contain the Email ~ I'm only checking personal email once a day. I can't conceive of anything arriving in my inbox that requires me an immediate answer. I resolutely did not check my personal email before lunch. As I listened to the iPod and walked around campus taking in the beautiful, winter snowscape, a little voice kept urging me to check my email when I get back! Check my email when I get back. Why? To distract myself. One of the reasons I'm slowing down is to see how distracted I really am.
2. Stop Multitasking ~ Do you read blogs while you eat lunch? Answer email while you're on the phone? Chow down on popcorn, M&Ms and other junk food while watching television? I do. And I'm vowing not to this year. Today I ate my lunch, slowly, one bit at a time. It took me about 25 minutes to do it. Usually I wolf down my food in under 10 minutes. By slowing down, I think I'm going to learn that I eat more than I really need to and most of what I read I don't remember. I'm not really reading it in the first place, just filling up the time waiting for that All Important Big Thing to happen. Meanwhile, life zooms on by.
3. Focus on Breathing ~ As I walked, I focused on feeling both my inhalation and expiration. Sounds easy. But try sitting in a favorite chair and focus only on this: breathe in, breathe out. If, like me, you are a thinking and feeling human being, in less than one expiration, the monkey mind sets in, screaming "go," "move," "do something now!!!" Just keep breathing.
One of the most important reasons for me to slow down is that I want to address a persistent feeling of unhappiness I've had throughout 2007. I can most accurately characterize it as a lack of gratitude. A lack of gratitude arises because I'm not paying attention. I'm not paying attention because I'm moving too quickly, multi-tasking, etc. Thus, slowing down may be a ticket to more joy.
What other tools do you use to slow down?
[1] http://jaysennett.com/2008/01/01/new-years-resolution-2008/
[2] http://jaysennett.com/2007/12/31/5-powerful-reasons-to-do-less-in-2008/
Posted in Features, The Good Life | 3 Comments »
Monday, December 31st, 2007
I've spent 2007 attempting to responsibly act regarding my money and my stuff. The first 11 months of the year I tried various organizational tools to help me Get Things Done [1] ala David Allen [2]. Vitalist [3] and Remember the Milk [4] were helpful.
But I had fallen prey to an-all-too common GTD behavior: I was spending more time updating my lists than actually doing the things on my list.
So I pared back by moving everything to a lo-fi list using a moleskin and Behance's stunning, wonderful swag [5]. I highly recommend their tools if you are a pencil and paper kind of trannie, queer or genderqueer. The fact that I don't have to fire up the laptop every time I want to check my grocery list is worth the cost alone. Plus, Behance really convinced me that using beautiful tools enahce's my creative output. Don't know if that is true for you, but it certainly is for me.
Behance's tools make me happy to write down my to-do items, happy to review them and happy to check them off. And what's more, I actually save the lists as a reminder of things I've done. A quick review of the lists whenever I'm not motivated can help me get motivated.
But even with these inspired and inspiring tools, what has really helped me get organized is doing less. The art of doing less has been an kind of awareness-shift for me, and I'm going to work very hard on doing less in 2008.
Here's why:
1. Spiritual Growth ~ Don't know about you, but I'm the perfect workaholic tranny activist. This past weekend I vowed that I would neither turn on my laptop nor work on work. Instead, I finished up a funky-looking frame for postcards from our Ireland trip. Now, this frame has been on my to-do list since about September of 2006. With always working, though, it kept getting pushed back to someday. But by not working on working, I was free to finish this project. As an experiment, I just watched my mind and feelings as I puttered around the basement finishing up the frame. What I observed knocked me off center.
I work because I hate unstructured time. In fact, I fear unstructured time. By doing less I've gotten in touch with a core fear. Namely, that I am nothing and will amount nothing in my life. Knowing this fear is within me, I can work to more fully integrateit into my psyche and be okay here and now.
2. Personal Care ~ You know, the dishes, laundry, cooking, cleaning just really aren't that important because, you know, I'm working on the Revolution! The dishes piled up and so did the laundry and I possessed a nagging sense that these tasks were somehow the work of Ms. H. since she wanted a clean house. Such a lie! Such bull pucky! I've always wanted a clean house but somehow I had positioned cleaning as diametrically opposed to work. So I've spent this past week between jesus' birthday and new year's eve cleaning as I go, wiping down the kitchen counters every night before I go to bed and doing the laundry regularly. By doing less, I can take better care of the messes I make. This helps me feel less flustered, angry, more integrated.
3. Political Revolution ~ I can hear all of you saying what does political change have to do with doing less. A lot. By more meaningfully integrating personal care as part of my responsible work in this lifetime, I'm creating less messes. I'm also taking one hundred percent responsibility for cleaning them up. This helps reduce a behavior I call "shitting in bed, kicking it on the floor and expecting somebody else to clean it up." In our North American society, how many of us unconsciously act like it is somebody else's job to fix the crap in our life?
By doing less, I create less crap, can clean up the crap I create and more fully and responsibly enter into my next crap-making endeavor.
4. Time for Lovers, Family, Friends ~ This one seems like a no brainer. But for a workaholic like me, doing less means doing the difficult work of maintaining my connections with Ms. H., my family and dear friends. In the end, they are the ones thatcare for me as I age, spend time with me when I am sick or troubled, support me through the ups and downs. An empty email inbox can't do that.
Now, I'm totally down with an empty inbox, but if I'm frittering away time checking email fifty or more times a day instead of calling my family every once in awhile, I've lost sight of the profound fact that Ms. H. and my family love me. By doing less I'm willing to face all the difficulties and ickiness that is sometimes part of relationships. Most importantly, though, by doing less I have to face the fact that they do love me, which for me, is one of the top three most difficult facts for me to accept in life. It's probably no. 1, actually.
5. Time for Hobbies ~ Do activists have hobbies? I surely don't. Everything gets subsumed under the Cause and the Revolution. Hobbies are Frivolous. So by doing less, I'm actually learning to engage in activities for the simple pleasure they bring me. Shocking. And I'm learning to deal with how very awkward I feel about engaging in activities that are not good for the Cause, my Health or the Work, they are just good for me, because they make me happy.
Bonus: Bigger Bang for Your Buck ~ One of the main problems with staying busy, busy, busy, is that I've frittered away time on low-hanging fruit. Not focusing on the big ticket items like this blog, Homofactus Press, working on my novels and short stories, my various speaking-gig presentations and my cartoons, just about guarantees a kind of successful mediocrity. By doing less, I am working more productively on those tasks that are most important. I am also learning to view email and such as the work to be completed around the big tasks, not instead of.
Happy New Year!
[1] http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-getting-things-done
[2] http://www.davidco.com/
[3] http://vitalist.com/
[4] http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
[5] http://www.behance.com/Outfitter#cat2
Posted in Cartoons, Features, The Good Life | 4 Comments »
Thursday, December 27th, 2007
Nina at Queercents [1] recently asked me Ten Money Questions [2].
Besides being a shameless plug to read yet more about me, I encourage all seven of my dearly devoted readers to check out Queercents.
A whole lotta queers have money issues, problems, etc. Nina and her pals do a fantastic job looking at money from all kinds of angles, from getting out of debt to the spirituality of money.
Rock on!
[1] http://www.queercents.com/
[2] http://www.queercents.com/2007/04/06/ten-money-questions-for-jay-sennett/
Posted in Features, The Good Life | 3 Comments »
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
My Sunday reading, a kind of spiritual reminder that we have much work still to do, to end poverty, to enhance coordination between granting agencies, to provide more grants for overhead and salaries, to provide continued practical assistance to thousands of our people still suffering a year plus later.
From Oxfam America [1]: Forgotten Communities, Unmet Promises [2]:
One year ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, elected officials at all levels pledged bold new action and committed to righting inequities as devastated communities rebuilt—better, safer, with more access to opportunity than before. However, despite their pledges that the most vulnerable citizens would get the help they needed to reclaim their lives and livelihoods, lawmakers have lacked the political will to turn their rhetoric into action.
[1] http://jaysennett.com/cgi-bin/mt/www.oxfamamerica.org
[2] http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/briefing_papers/briefing_paper.2006-08-21.1978258942
Posted in Etc., The Good Life | Comments Off
Friday, March 24th, 2006
Sexiness, righteous anger, sound bites (blog bites?) sell in the blogosphere. I seem to spend too much of my life energy trying to find Something Really Important to Blog About. Those posts get hits. Those types of posts are also the ones I tend to read. But posts about the ordinariness of life, emotions like rage and anger and hatred and disappointment, they don't sell.
Yet these posts that bring me back to myself: the beating of my heat; the fullness in my bladder; my right thumb; the ancient rememberance that my social justice work is about healing, healing myself first and foremost. And from this strong place of myself, I remember again the Work: extending my hands, keeping them open, ready for another person or even an animal to grasp them.
All the work I do is simply to help me keep my hands open.
Posted in Features, The Good Life | 7 Comments »
Thursday, August 25th, 2005
I've learned much since I sang [1] the praises of Publish and Be Damned [2] awhile back.
To truly be considered a publisher by the industry, one needs to own the ISBN number, which can be purchased by R.R. Bowker. Thusly, while Scott Turow may own the copyright to his works, his publisher (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux / Time Warner Books) owns the rights to said books. The publisher determines when and how the book will be distributed, whether new editions will be published, and how much Turow receives in royalties.
In all but a few cases (Nora Roberts, J. K. Rowling), writers are tenants on the publishing plantations of the world. Writers, like muscians, are intellectual sharecroppers.
The writers write the words the publishers then distribute. In return, the publisher may offer money up front and percentage of profits after expenses. Up-front money ranges from a few thousand dollars to a million. Publishers expect a book or books in return for this money. They may also offer royalties, a percentage of the book's sales after expenses.
Royalties range (as of what I know today) from 1% to 10%. And the 10% offering comes from small, liberal independent presses, not the big publishers.
[1] http://jaysennett.typepad.com/jay_sennetts_blog/2005/07/selfpublishing_.html#more
[2] http://jaysennett.comwww.pabd.com
Posted in Features, The Good Life | Comments Off
Thursday, April 28th, 2005
This morning I opened up my short story to print it out, only to find I had saved over it with some crap document! The last three days of work gone. Forever!
I called a writing friend. We agree writers lose journals, save over them, destroy them when hard drives crash. I've never saved over a document (at least one that is important to me) in my life. Now, when I am ready to go to the next level, I write over the damn the thing!
How delicious and frustrating and wonderful.
Of course I must retrieve the story. No other option exists but to continue.
The story, and all my stories, are still inside me. The whole experience feels very Zen to me. Like pain is inevitable but suffering is optional or something like that....but I am a wee bit annoyed and grateful, too.
Off to excavate the story from my mind....
[Update: 05/04/05 I've finished the story. Like a few of said, it is much better than the version I lost.]
Posted in The Good Life | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, April 27th, 2005
My pal, Andy, from Spicy Cauldron [1], shared some wisdom with me about blogging and writing and story telling.
Blogging, for me, is experience, discipline, freedom, practice,
reinforcement and reassurance - when I see what I've written, now an
impressively large body of work I hope, I feel that maybe one day I will
write that novel, I will get that poetry collection published. Ultimately,
though, writing is it's own incentive. I sometimes wonder if writing is
simply the most commonly exhibited form of autistic behaviour when it's a
novelist or poet over someone who just writes occasionally. For me, it's a
blood thing. I am a slave to the letters. The thing I say to anyone who asks
me, though, how I write, is this: everyone has experiences and stories,
emotions and opinions, inside them. If you want to write, you write. You
don't waste time worrying about what's going to happen once it's over. Just enjoy the ride. (Emphasis mine)
Writing while solitary in its execution, is in so many wonderful ways, communal. Thanks Andy for sharing your experiences with me. Please, everyone, check out Andy's blog. Very spirited, intelligent, wry, compassionate.
[1] http://www.spicycauldron.blogspot.com/
Posted in Political Art, The Good Life | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, April 26th, 2005
Today, I'm finishing up a short story. Once finished, I will submit it far and wide. My goal is to receive at 50 rejections, 10 of them with decent editorial feedback.
I can say that waiting for a story to be perfect resides in the realm of a mathematical null set. A null set has no value and cannot ever have value. My perfect story will never, ever exist. Finishing a decent story is now my new goal.
I'm also preparing a call for submissions for an anthology I will edit. More on that when I post the call.
How are all my creative pals doing with your latest endeavors?
Posted in The Good Life | 7 Comments »
