Photo / Will H McMahan
You can make excuses not to vote -- I’ve heard them all. Said a few myself.
 
You’re too busy. You’re not sure if you’re eligible. You don’t know how to register. Your vote won’t make a difference.
Why bother, all politicians are alike. It’s too hard to fight all the injustice. 
 
In my many years on this planet, I’ve learned most excuses are bullshit.
 

• Too busy? Many states have mail-in ballots. Fill the ballot out over a soda and pizza.
• No mail in ballot? Create an event in your social media feed and invite your friends and neighbors. Carpool to the polls on Election Day – make it a tailgate-voter party.  
• Attending college away from home? Ask for an absentee ballot from your local election facility. Now.
• Not sure if you’re eligible? Here are the only requirements to vote in a US election:
  • Be a U.S. citizen 
  • Be 18 years old (to vote this year, you must be 18 years old by Nov 6) 
  • Live at your present address at least 30 days before an election 
  • Not be in jail or on parole for a felony conviction 
  • Not claim the right to vote elsewhere
• Don’t know how to register? Go here: https://vote.gov/  
• Think your vote won’t make a difference? An election in Virginia in 2017 was a tie. The winner was decided by a coin toss. Believe me, every vote is important.
• Think all politicians are alike? Then run for office yourself. Go here: https://www.runforoffice.org/
• Concerned about voter suppression or problems in your area? Go here: https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights
• Too hard to fight all the injustice? Yeah, alone it is. What you need is support. To be inspired, check out these young activists:

The Parkland teens – they’ve launched a nation-wide campaign to register young people to vote. Follow them on twitter or go to:  https://marchforourlives.com/ 
The Junior Newtown Action Alliance – an advocacy group led by students in Newtown. Follow them on twitter: @Junior_NAA
22×20 -- a national initiative recognizing that by 2020, 22 million teenagers will have turned 18. They want to be informed and ready. Go to: https://www.22x20.org/
 
You’re still disheartened. I get it. I can be, too.
To combat my apathy, I remind myself that fighting for change takes guts, courage, and time.
I remind myself that voting is a privilege earned for me by a centuries long list of activists who endured incarceration, starvation, police beatings, dog-attacks, being shot, and watching their classmates be shot.
They endured all this so we could tick a small box on a ballot and have our voices heard.
 
On behalf of the next generation, I make this plea: honor the Americans who fought, and continue to fight, for our right to vote.
 
If you’re still not convinced why you should register now and then vote on November 6th, I give you the words of Edmund Burke – “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Here's my guilty secret - I’m a disaster movie mega-buff. It's a slight obsession. I watch them with pleasure while I'm shredding papers, organizing files or performing other tasks that require entertainment distraction. If you wanna watch movies about tornadoes, volcanos, floods, alien invasion, I’m your gal. I’ll bring the popcorn. No shark-tornados or monster-alligators, please. After growing up in Florida, I’ve seen enough of those gnarly-toothed animals to last a lifetime.

As a disaster movie mega buff, I take pride in my all-encompassing knowledge of how to prepare for a disaster. 
Recently, however, I was served a big slice of humble pie when my apartment building caught on fire. 
​
The alarm went off at 4 AM. It was loud. Ear-banging loud. I slipped on my shoes, grabbed my phone and my emergency to-go disaster bag that I keep by the front door (good little disaster prep artist that I am) and raced down the five flights of stairs to the front sidewalk - quick shout out to my fireman friend who advised me to never live higher than the ladder on a fire truck can reach (100 vertical feet).

As I stood shivering in the cold, I realized that although I had my cell phone, passport, some cash, and my ‘can’t lose or I’m screwed’ documents, I was standing on the street in my pajamas. Without my glasses. In house slippers.
If the whole building went up, not only would I squint my way through the day, in my pajamas, but I’d lost my password book (yeah, I’m old school and I write them down), my wallet, and the I-pad I’m writing this on. Oh, and I had forgotten to charge my phone the night before and my battery was down to 20%. Well, crap.
​
So, this is my public service announcement from a chagrined disaster movie mega-buff: 
Prepare a thorough to-go backpack. 
Now.
You can find cheap backpacks or large purses at Goodwill that will do nicely. At a minimum, put in it the following:
1.      Cash – at least $20 so you can buy yourself some coffee while you wait to see what happens. Put in more if you can afford it. Some disaster prep books suggest you have enough for a night at a hotel, or a plain/train/bus ticket to family and friends.
2.      All your ‘I’m screwed if I lose’ documents in a water proof bag – zip lock freezer bags work great.
3.      A change of clothes and street shoes – sweats and a t-shirt are fine, but you might want to add a jacket in case the alarm goes off in the winter.
4.      If you have children, include any necessary items for them – some snacks, a toy, change of clothes, diapers, etc.
5.      If you have a pet, include some treats, a toy, and a can of food.
6.      An extra charger for your phone.
7.      Extra pair of glasses if you have them.
8.      Xerox copies of your credit cards, front and back, your driver’s license, your passport, and your prescriptions. 
9.      A portable first-aid kit – you can buy one the size of a wallet.

Feel free to add items that are important to you. The bag may be heavy, but believe me, it will be worth it.

Random things to also take care of:
1.      Upload passwords to a secure online site like Keepers Security.
2.      Stay up-to-date on uploading all important files to the Cloud in case you forget to grab your I-pad or Chromebook.
3.      Establish a meeting place for your family members if your home or apartment becomes inaccessible (e.g. the coffee shop around the corner).
4.      Set up a contact person that everyone can call for information or to check on status – preferably someone who doesn’t live in your town, so they aren’t impacted by the disaster.
5.      If you don’t have homeowner’s or renter’s insurance, get it! Policies can be as low as $18 a month – that’s one designer pizza.
6.      Take pictures of your possessions in case you need to file an insurance claim.
 Please understand this emergency bag is for a building fire or other minor disasters. For earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, etc., you need this and more to be prepared. In the case of these bigger types of emergencies, you will need to be ready to survive a minimum of three days on your own. To do that, I HIGHLY recommend Bob Mayer’s e-book: Prepare Now Survive Later. He breaks everything down into manageable steps and levels of preparedness.

That concludes this service announcement.
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I’m signing off to go shred some old files...and maybe watch Twister for the fifteenth time.

Life, the world, well, everything, is pretty wild right now. Weirdness abounds. The hair pulling kind. The ‘I’ll have that second martini please – wait, I don’t drink anymore – damn, okay, the ‘I’ll have a giant piece of chocolate’, kind.
We’ve done a rewind to the era when we didn’t understand that asbestos kills you, carbon emissions are bad for the atmosphere (whether we created them or not), radium was considered a beauty aid, and it’s okay to dump coal slush in a river.
There is a rumor that we have passed through a portal to a new paradigm. In this paradigm, humanity is evolving to a kinder, gentler way of being. Yay. What we are seeing now is the last gasp of the old, self-immolating ways.
There is also another rumor that a squirrel snuck into the Hadron Collider and the little bugger knocked us into a parallel universe that isn’t as great.
Either way, right now is tough. You can build your own rocket and take your chances on Mars, become an ostrich and stick your head in the sand, or find a deserted island to live on – no wait, that won’t work because sea levels actually are rising. Okay, you can hide on a mountain top somewhere.
In lieu of all these possibilities, may I suggest the following 5 actions to keep your sanity . . . or at least what’s left of it.
Turn off your digital life for ten minutes a day. I know, I know, you want the umbilical cord connected at all times in order to stay informed, connected, amped, whatever. Ten minutes is only ten minutes. In that ten minutes, pause, pay attention to your breath. Breathing is an amazing experience. On the in-breath you are taking in life. Tiny oxygen particles combined with nitrogen particles with a bunch of other stuff (ignore the toxins) in this awesome combination that allows life to exist on our planet. It’s truly awesome, right? Now, on the out breath, you can exhale all the insane, mean, weird things you managed to wade through to get to this exact moment in your day. . . and your breath is proof of that. Well done.
Find some flowers. Real ones. Smell them, for a long time. Smell them until the bliss rolls through your body and gratitude fills you for these incredible blossoms so loved by the bees . . . and you. Then smell them again.
Watch a sunset. I’d suggest watching a sunrise, but that isn’t going to happen where I live. The shining yellow orb hits the skies at 430 AM. I’m not that motivated. So, watching a sunset is doable. Savor the colors. If you are unfortunate enough to live in the areas covered with smoke from the fires, if it’s any consolation to the crappy air, Mother Earth is known to provide kick-ass good sunsets through the smoke haze.
Tell someone in your life how important they are to you. How knowing them is an honor – because it is. It doesn’t have to be a close friend or family member, though it can be. There are 7.6 billion humans on this planet, and out of all those humans, you two have met each other. You’ve shared time together. Maybe even supported each other through a rough spot. Tell them it’s an honor and a privilege to share being human with them.
Finally, once a day, cultivate a sense of goodwill. Not just be kind. I mean cultivate Good-Will. It’s one of the most basic spiritual qualities of the human being. Try and approach life with an attitude of cooperation toward another human. Deeply listen to what they are saying. Reserve judgment. Offer support.
You can cultivate goodwill more than once a day, of course. You can spend your whole day, heck, your whole life, cultivating goodwill inside yourself. It will be stupendous if we all do. But doing it is hard, so once a day is a good place to start. This will set up a ripple, both inside you and in your community. This ripple will grow and touch others and others and well, you get the drift.
We can create a 100th monkey effect of goodwill. Imagine what this paradigm will be like if everyone’s first thought every day is ‘how can I cultivate Good-Will’. One breath, then another. Watch that sunset. Smell that flower. Help a stranger.
This wild ride will slow down. I promise.
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I play peek-a-boo on Facetime with my grand-niece. The little cherub is 18 months old, which can be an exciting, joyful age of discovery. Peek-a-boo is one of her favorite games.
My grand-niece knows me as the ‘grandma-aunt’ who appears on the magic box my sister calls ‘My-Phone’. Our ritual is simple. My sister keys in my number, my grand-niece presses the green button and I appear on the screen. We say our hellos. She shows me her latest creation – a Lego tower of five blocks. Then we play ‘peek-a-boo’. For those who have never played, the rules are simple. You cover your eyes and ask, “Where is the baby?” Then you uncover your eyes and exclaim, “There she is!” My grand-niece will play this game for a good three minutes – which is a very long time when you have the attention span of 18 months.
From my grand-niece’s perspective, even though she has ‘disappeared’ for a nano-second, she reappears when I uncover my eyes. She is still there. She is still recognized. She is still beloved.
I believe the magic in the game lies in the fact that my grand-niece trusts me to be able to find her, no matter what. She is continuously reassured that I recognize her – which is a basic need of all humans. We all want to be ‘seen’ by those who love us.
Today there are over a thousand small children being forced into a challenging game of peek-a-boo with no hope or trust that their parents will be able to find them. My question is this: if you've ever played this game with a child and experienced their delight, if you've heard their gurgles of laughter - how could you possibly deny any child the right to be ‘found’ by their parents? ​

I’m annoyed. I’m staring at my monitor preparing to write my next blog on a totally different subject and all I can think is -- I am annoyed.

Over the last few days, while doing research for the blog I’d planned, I’ve run across several interviews, articles, and a new release in print books advocating we all put down our digital devices. Now. The tone of each author is vehement – as if any one of our digital devices is an explosion waiting to happen.

It’s the vehemence of their tone that is troubling to me. Equally troubling is the repeated assertion that face-to-face human connection always trumps any and all digital interactions. Such blanket statements don’t take into account we have crossed a threshold into a new, digital world which we don’t completely comprehend. Yet. Nor do such statements allow room for the unseen and the unknown of this new digital word.

Operating digitally is a very recent phenomenon for humanity. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the personal computer was introduced in 1984. In 1991, the World Wide Web debuted as a publicly available service on the Internet. We’ve barely hit the thirty year mark from these thresholds into a new form of communication. We are in a whole new playing field.

The authors and interviewees have valid concerns and make salient points about our obsession with all things digital. Maybe the issue isn’t our immersion into in this new world. Maybe it’s our lack of understanding of what the digital world actually represents.

Let’s say we subscribe to the old saying, “necessity is the mother of invention”. What was the necessity for humanity to create such a pervasive digital world? Why is the global community so readily adapting to it? Is it because it serves our 21st century communication purposes? Yes. Is it because an e-book saves trees? Yes. Is it the mountain that you climb just because it is there? Yes. Are there risks and dangers to the creation of digital devices? Yes. There are numerous hidden costs – mining the needed minerals through forced labor, destruction of the environment, benzene poisoning of the workers who put together the devices. The list is a long one. Yet, even with the perks and the dangers, I think there is something more, something deeper to our embracing all things digital.

There are two terms used for people who adopt new technology – Early Adopters and Late Adopters. Early Adopters are those who embrace the latest technology before it hits the mainstream. A Late Adopter is someone who is slow to take on any new technology but eventually succumbs when the price goes down or it has become the symbol of what is considered cool.

What if we based our definition not on when a person embraces a new digital technology, but rather on how many years of their life has been influenced by hand-held digital technology? One-third, two-thirds, all of their life? For the sake of this blog, I’d like to propose re-defining these terms to mean that anyone born after 2007 is an early adopter. Anyone born prior to 2007, even if they purchase their devices ahead of the curve and are the first to tweet, scan, or pin, is a late adopter. No matter how quickly they acquire the next new technology, they will ALWAYS be a late adopter – because of their age.

Why make this distinction?  Even before they can put together entire paragraphs of language, a child born after 2007 understands that the cell phone represents an unseen world of communication. Yes, the telephone has been around since the 1870s and yes, I played “telephone” with a rotary phone as a child. There is something different about the use of the cell – it connects us to an unseen Other when we communicate (not unlike a telephone) but it also connects us to the unseen World Wide Web. Understand that the Web is not the Internet. It is a service (like email, instant messaging) that operates over the Internet. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. Think about that. A playing card size device (or a wrist-watch like Samsung’s Galaxy) connects a child to a global system of inter-connected computers through a service which is a global medium for distributing information. Neither the Web nor the Internet can be touched, tasted, felt, or seen. Late adopters can only comprehend the results of them when we download our email, do a Google search, or e-chat a friend in Asia. As a late adopter, we understand this in theory. As an early adopter, again those born since 2007, this is how the world works. It is their norm to e-chat someone in Asia.

This brings me to the questions I’m pondering.

We know that the neurons in our brain are constantly being upgraded. New connections are being made, old ones deleted. What if the only world you have ever known includes a device that connects you to an unseen world, would your brain be wired differently from the get-go?

What if these new humans have a different understanding of what it means to be human? What it means to interact? To communicate? What if their brains truly are wired differently now because of their use of digital devices before they command language? Could we be looking at a threshold in human development not unlike the crossover humanity made approximately 4000 years ago when we relinquished being a totally oral society and embraced the use of a written language? What if humanity, and the human brain, is going through another such quantum shift? What if these true early adopters, who have always understood a digital device has the capability to connect them to an unseen world, are the forerunners of an expanded human brain? What if these expanded brains can consciously explore the quantum field of humanity’s global mind?

The assumption is being made that face-to-face human interaction always trumps the digital world. I propose that we are stumbling our way to a greater comprehension of the unseen quantum field. Just like in the transition from cave drawings to an alphabet, could these early adopters be the scribes and priests who hold the sacred knowledge of this new era? ​

​. . .fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run . . .Rudyard Kipling

The measurement of time is a constant in our lives. We struggle to control it or to spend it wisely. We keep ourselves busy tracking it down to the digital micro-second. Time informs how we view the world and how we record the events of our lives. We judge our activities on how much time something takes. If a You Tube video lasts longer than 3 minutes, we hesitate before hitting that triangle. Is this video worth my next 3 minutes? But if the video counter hovers around the magic 1 minute mark, we hit play. After all, it’s only 1 minute.

What’s interesting to me about all of this – besides the question of when did 3 minutes become a long time? -- is that measuring time is a human-made construct. The Earth has been orbiting the sun 4 + billion years. For the majority of that “time”, humanity hasn’t been around to clock Earth’s passage around the sun. Using a human-oriented time analogy, if the life-span so far of the earth were compressed into 24 human hours, we would show up on the planet in the last 4 seconds before midnight. We’ve been here way less than that magic 1 minute. Bottom line, the Earth has been doing just fine orbiting the Sun without the use of our clocks – either digital, analog, sundial, or hour glass.

TIME IS POWER

So why do we measure time? Power. Once the agricultural revolution took hold and human cultures shifted from hunting and gathering to planting and harvesting, it became increasingly important to understand the rhythms of the Earth’s voyage around the sun. Measuring time helps answer the question: When is the best time to plant your crop in order to yield a good harvest? Is it when the time of sunlight is equal to the time of darkness? Or is it when the time of sunlight is almost double the time of darkness? How many full moons will appear and disappear before the cold and darkness changes to light and warmth?

Whoever masters the optimum planting time, masters feeding their tribe. Whichever tribe is better fed, is the tribe which controls the most resources. Whichever tribe controls the most resources is the one with the most power.

TIME IS ARBITRARY

The idea of using a calendar is human-created and society-centric. The Mayans calculate time according to the cycles of the moon and their new year occurs in the month called July in Western civilization. We get our idea of a seven day week from the Babylonians, who connected the sequence of sunrise and sunset to their major seven gods who were connected to seven heavenly bodies. In the Hindu calendar, the day starts with the sunrise. According to the Jewish religion and the ancient Druids, the day started at sunset. It wasn’t until 1532, when Copernicus released his work on heliocentrism, that the idea of the Earth orbiting the Sun rather than the other way around became a mainstream thought. The calendars became more sophisticated. In 1751, an effort to match up the two major calendars being used in Western Civilization, England declared that year to be only 282 days long, running from March 25th to December 31st. The year 1752 started on January 1st instead of the previous New Year’s Day of March 25th. To complete the process, another adjustment had to be made later in 1752. The month of September was shortened by eleven days. The people of England went to bed on Wednesday September 2nd and woke up on Thursday September 14th.

TIME IS NOT CONSTANT

As we increase our ability to measure time down to the millisecond by the use of Cesium atoms, we’ve realized our planet doesn’t stick to the same 24 hour clock like we assumed. Our planet is a vibrant, ever changing entity. The Earth can gain and lose time – albeit only microseconds – whenever there is a major earthquake. Between the Indonesia mega-thrust earthquake in 2004, the Chilean earthquake of 2010, and the Japanese earthquake of 2011, the earth has lost 6 micro-seconds from its day. Clocking that 1 minute video isn’t quite as accurate as we think.

TIME IS SUBJECTIVE

Time slows when you are doing something which interests you. Time is short when you are late for a meeting. Time is crucial when the game clock says 5 seconds and your team is behind one basket. It’s all about perception.

This blog isn’t a judgment of how we live our lives in the 21st century. I’m simply noticing that our relationship to time changes, well, over time. How Copernicus related to time in the 1500s, or how we related to it before the advent of the atomic clock, no longer serves us. With the recent advances in quantum physics, I expect our relationship to time will evolve even more in the next 20 years.

The take- away from all of this is that most important thing is to be in the moment. Our awareness of the moment is the only thing we can control. In that one moment, we build the rest of our lives.

So, the next time you worry that you are out of time or that you don’t have enough time, relax. Be in the moment. We made all the rest up anyway.

​Go inward instead.

We’re in week two of 2014. How are your resolutions holding up? Are you like the last warrior left standing in Assassin’s Creed — battered, bruised, but still defiant … and a little queasy because 50 weeks still remain in 2014? Will you keep your resolutions?

The hard truth is, unless you are the special 8% of the population who has an iron will and a support team that just won’t quit, you will ditch your resolutions by the end of the first quarter. There will be guilt. You will berate yourself with the promise of next year. Or the next. Or never.

You are not a slacker

The recent data on how few people actually manage to keep their resolutions - despite supportive articles, apps, and what-not — fascinated me. We can’t all be that undisciplined. What is missing in 92% of us? I thought about the word resolution and what it connotes, so I did a little sleuthing. Big surprise.

The word resolution comes from the Latin word resolvere. Definition: unfasten, loosen, release. So, hidden in the word resolution is the idea of letting go … of your resolutions. Weird, huh? All this time I thought resolution meant to stand firm. It means the opposite.

Maybe, just maybe, the problem with keeping our resolutions is not that we are slackers. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is what our subconscious mind does with the hidden meaning.

Now what? If we struggle to keep our resolutions because our subconscious mind tells us to let them go, how do we change? How do we get our subconscious mind to support us?

Six-pack abs and other nonsense

Here’s a radical idea. Ditch the resolutions. Flat out get rid of all of them. Often they are knee-jerk efforts to become the person we think we should be. Friends, family, co-workers, the media – all tell us who we should be, according to their perceptions and rules. We make resolutions to become that person, whether it resonates to our core or not. We get caught up in the promise of the goal – “lose three dress sizes and boys will like me,” or “build six-pack abs and I will get a girl”. This is not about criticizing being a healthy weight or having a toned body. This is about discovering who you are as a person and then operating from that place to create the body you want.

Lasting change happens when we discover who we really are

One of the beauties of being human is that in every moment, we can rediscover and recreate ourselves. We can change and we can make the change stick. We just need to know who we want to be, not who others have told us to be. Going into therapy is one way to discover yourself - I’m a big fan of the Existential-Humanistic perspective in therapy, but since this is a blog, not a couch, and I’m a storyteller not a therapist, I’m going to pass along a tip I learned.

Ask. Answer. Repeat.

Have a friend or family member you trust ask the following question, “Who are you?” Answer them with the first thing that comes to mind. No analyzing, no “is this the correct answer?” Just spill out the words. Then have the friend ask the same question again, “Who are you?” Answer again and again, without pausing. Ask. Answer. Repeat. For two minutes. I guarantee, you will discover some pretty amazing things about who you really are, about the qualities you want to embody by the end of 2014, and what will fire your soul in the months between. The best part of this question and answer session is, if you explore who YOU are and the qualities of the person YOU want to become (always, always with compassion towards yourself!), you also access your best way to achieve it. You are your own best authority. Yep, another radical idea.

I’d like to share a lovely reminder by Steve Jobs. It’s one of my favorites. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” So, go inward. Discover who you are, not who you are supposed to be. Go live the life you came to live.
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Over the next few blogs, I will be exploring more ways to help you navigate through 2014 in a powerful way. Stay tuned.