The Journey

I Talk To Automated Voices

It just occurred to me that something I do may be fairly unique in the world at large.  It might not be, either, so if you want to weigh in on this, feel free—I’d be interested to hear what you have to say.

I talk to automated voices—you know, you’re standing at the ATM and it says, “Thank you” for whatever it says that for.  I look directly at the camera lens and say, “You’re welcome.”  When I’m checking out in the self-serve line, the machine always thanks me for shopping at Fred Meyer.  I always tell it, “You’re welcome.”  Oh, and when I call some company and they tell me how important I am to them and beg me to wait for the next available operator, I thank them, just as if it was someone telling me she was going to do something nice for me.

The other day when I did that I suddenly wondered why it is that I do it.  I didn’t come up with an answer to that question but I did realize something else.  I feel better when I do that.  When I walk away from that machine I feel almost as good as when I walk away from a person I’ve just had a positive exchange with.  I found that to be very interesting.  After all, isn’t it the person I’m talking to who causes me to feel better?  Isn’t their positive response to my words that causes me to feel more suffused with joy than before the conversation began?

Apparently not.  From my experience with automated voices, both standing in front of machines or listening to them on the phone, the experience of feeling better appears to be a direct result of my attitude rather than that of the person to whom I’m talking.  How wild is that? 

This all goes back to the concept that we create our own reality—that life is what we believe it to be.  This appears to be something I can point to and see as just one more bit of evidence that it is true.

Where else can I put this into action?  I already talk to my cat (by the way, she really does talk back some of the time).  Actually, there are lots of inanimate objects I can interact with.  Come to think of it, I always encourage my computer and printer to have good days and thank them for doing their jobs so efficiently.  When I see a particularly lovely flower I’ll say something like, “aren’t you beautiful.”

I confess: I also talk to myself.  This gets even more interesting.  I’m going to have to start paying attention to what I say to myself because if I can actually make myself feel better simply by talking nicely to myself, how cool would that be?  In the past I’ve been quite critical of myself and I have wanted to be a bit kinder.  Perhaps this is just the kick in the ass I needed for that to happen.

If you’re not already doing this, give it a try—see what happens.  After all, if it actually causes us to feel better, how awful could it be?

Where I Am and What I'm Doing

I’m still journeying like crazy—changing my direction on a regular basis.  I think that may be the best part about journeys, discovering the different side roads that pop up along the way.  I think I’m beginning to be more comfortable with that and, instead of stopping writing here just because my journey is shifting and I don’t want you to know how “flaky” I am in my changes, I may attempt to share a bit more about those shifts.

There may be too much that has gone on since my last post to catch you up but that’s fine.  You can have more highlights (just as you did last time I wrote) and I’ll do a bit better in the future—well, perhaps, perhaps not.  You will at least have links to my other two active blogs and you can pop in there periodically to see what else is going on in my life if you are so inclined.

I had decided that since photography had become a passion that I should leap into finding a way to make it pay for itself.  I started a blog, had all these plans for the book I would write, the paid subscription site I would have, teleseminars, newsletter, the works.  Good grief!  As a result, the blog was just a “teaser” to get people interested enough to want to get the newsletter where they could actually see photos, take the teleseminars where I could promote the paid stuff, and then make lots of money.  DUH!  Not the best plan but not a huge problem.  I pretty much stopped writing the blog (I had a bunch of stuff already written that I could plug in for future postings so it won’t look like I stopped writing) and I’m changing the focus of the site to make it more about what I’m photographing right now and a couple of the photos I took regarding what I’m talking about and leave it at that.  If for some strange reason I should develop a following, I’ll think about some of the money-making ideas then, not now.

I also went on a women’s retreat and took a writing seminar while I was there and go all excited about “writing my story” again.  For years and years (at least 30) people have been telling me I should write my story.  I’d start and then not be able to figure out what to do with it and think I had to sit down and write the whole thing all at once.  OK, that obviously wasn’t working because I didn’t have anything written for a very long time.  Now I’m writing approximately a page a day (though some days the blogging counts as writing but I try to do something more in line with writing my story.

Finally, one day I was searching for something on Google and came across a blog called the simple dollar and while I was reading it I realized that this guy was brilliant with financial stuff but not so great with household money saving stuff—well, great with some of it but not much.  Suddenly I had a shift in my thinking about my frugality blog.  First of all I had been talking simply about cutting grocery bills in half.  It occurred to me one day that the whole thing, the blog and the book I actually wrote about that subject, were all about scarcity and not abundance and I’m all about abundance these days.  I stopped writing completely and shelved the book (which needs a major overhaul anyway because I foolishly put prices in there and they’ve all nearly doubled in the two years since I wrote it).  Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that what I do and what I believe in terms of frugality AND what I could share with others is simplicity of living, sustainability, and ecological living.  Much of this has to do with living a more frugal life—living the simple life to cut back on our carbon footprint and all that.  So, that blog is active again.  The only thing I’m not thrilled with is that I called the blog “Cut Your Grocery Bills in Half” so the URL reflects that name but I’ve changed the name of it to “Abundantly Frugal.”  If I change the URL, I lose links and photos.  I haven’t decided how I want to deal with that.  I’ll figure it out later.  For now, it is what it is.

There I am in a nutshell.  Feel free to check out the other two blogs: Abundantly Frugal and Did I Take That Photo?

Enjoy and look for me to be here just a little more often—maybe.