2005-09-16 - 10:47 p.m.

Who the fuck knew I�d be so blazing happy crunching numbers on a Friday night. I think I�m going to start to cry. today i could barely breath thinking about how I�m carrying an estimated 30,000 in manufacturing debt...

Guess what my receivables are for sept/oct, receiving latest by 0ct 15 almost all COD, **including the 3,ooo deduction from the returned/botched order----

$39,453.50

I think I�m going to start to cry!
So I�ve got a whole nine to live and operate production. Which I clearly can�t do, but I sorta think it�s starting to make some ittle-bits of sense to me, like possibly this might just work out after all. all i've felt lately is the pounding sense of debt and production needs/orders without ounces of funds to keep going. every line of credit is totally stretched at this point. "bankrupcy is always an option" swirling in my head. and i'm looking at brand new orders next week to produce and trying to understand how i'll magically fund it. but i will. i'm excited about the challenge. the hustle. let me at it.

I just added my sales to date since dec or January: $98,513.5 almost 100 thou! At the profit percentage i estimate minus my silly overhead I think I�m nearly clearing the salary of a substitute teacher, oh joy! Maybe next year I can make as much as a waitress, my real childhood dream job. :*)

here's a slice of my day....
i drove down to pick up leather at my wholesaler who promised buckles everyday for the last two weeks, which he really didn't control the lateness of, but that didn't stop me from telling him off on a few of the calls.

while he was getting the order together, i saw on his wall some condolence cards for the loss of a family member. then i put it together that these guys are brothers that run the company. it got me thinking about how essential it is to be gentle to others, to be human, to be kind. i never know when someone is going through something catapulting. capsizing.

there are times when i've desperately needed kindness from my world. imagine treating everyone as if their father died that week, imagine having compassion for each person to that level. i had a nice talk with him about his family business.

then i went downtown to my silver and gold guys. downtown is something so blasting of the senses. the heartbeat of the diamond, gold, jewelry district, froth with russians, persians, armenians, latins, roaming homeless people with mad style and a lot to say. hip hop guys, a guy with corn row braids pulled back into a pony tail, the sweetest dipples i've ever seen strutting across the street carrying a baby blue "it's a boy" gift bag. short, stout latin men hand in hand with their woman. big smiles.

i went in for a coffee to give my guys more time to polish a piece and the woman behind the counter was making a cup of cereal. i love cereal. it was for the owner who jovially told my behind sparkling carmel eyes with long black lashes how if he has his cereal too early he gets gas. he goes on to explain his food strategy to me. the perfect time to eat the cereal for his "system."

fannntastic man. just what i need to know about a perfect stranger. i loved it. he said he's going to start serving cereal on monday. i'm in.

then i climb eight flights of stairs in an old building with beautiful details from the past. everything in downtown has these pieces from the past, from a past that cared about the handcut curves of a hardwood staircase arm rail, the marble sculptural framing of the brass elevator, all slowly falling apart, the dust of time wearing it down. the fast walking. i climb the stairs, passing the worst smelling bathroom in dt, to the eighth. i'm heaving breaths of "i'm so out of shape, no?"
turning the corner, aa the smell of sweet, soft rubber, the kind used for jewelry molds. it really smells sweet.

ring the bell by the thick iron door, my guy opens with a huge smile. the armenian family. they are about to have lunch, they are always wanting me to sit and have coffee thick as mudd or candy treats. just like when i was little and i would walk our main street from store to store and talk for hours with the adults and try and score some candy. mr. beech in our neighborhood was the best. he had a room full of hand carved little sculptures. bowls of mm's. there was talk of a horse. i think those people injected a sense of calm in my frayed, lonesome nerves. of meaning. sensitivity.

the unbearable lightness of being.

they always weigh my gold and silver and mumble (shy to speak english) words i grab on to understand. smiles, knocking on wood that my next tradeshow will be a good one. hand shaking, out the door with a little clutch on my heart. thinking about the team. how much i want to sustain for all of us. how much i want to support these families and their businesses. everyone i work with make everything with their own hands. families. lives. beliefs. children. traditions.

then i drive to my one of my leather manufacturers homes to drop off supplies. i realize how nice it is to be lost in the car so much these last few days. how nice the rhythm and hum of smooth movement is. like a baby rocking lightly in a cradle.

you only hear about all of the stress, half the time, all i feel is the sharp pangs of the stress. but do you have any idea how much i love this? how much this is the entirety of me?

how much i've dreampt of nothing more my entire life? how i started businesses at the age of seven. how i loved figuring out numbers, budgets, ways to produce, market, expand, doing it all on my own, creation, testing myself.

i just want it to work so badly.

i haven't stopped for a minute to really think about any of it. afraid that if i lifted my focus from the speeding ground beneath me, that something would happen. not sure what that mysterious, no i do know, i'm afraid that if i admit it, it'll be taken away. like i'm just not supposed to have good things. so i barrel ahead and get very caught up in the stress and the problems of it. dig my feet into how horrible it is. plz. it's all very good.

it's friday night. it's 11pm. i'm totally sober. terribly happy.

before i left downtown, across the street from where i parked was these signs from the 1950's for a hardware store and a fish tackle store. sure enough, hiding behind grime and bars and clutter there was a door to the store. i thought of getting my dad some fishing tackle. one of my nice memories of him is fishing together once or twice when i was little. the first fish i caught was a ground sucker, not a fish you could eat. i remember the disappointment, and holy shit, i remember specifically thinking, what did i "do" wrong? was it something "i" did to catch the wrong fish?

i do believe i've spent nearly my whole life wondering what i've "done" wrong when life throws me a sucker fish.

i was about to drive off when i thought, no, stop, you are thinking of doing something generous, but generousity doesn't get communicated when you only think it. so i ran into the store and picked out two really cool fluttering blue green colored feather tackle pieces. i'm going to decorate them and send them to my dad.

i'm asking for real forgiveness. real compassion. the kind where i can look across at a man and understand, holy shit, i think he just lost his father, and everything else falls away. all i can do is just be human to another human. i'm wanting to feel this for my brother. i have so much hurt and blame and anger towards him. i've totally shut him out. i haven't told him, i've just distanced myself. i'm so hurt and so lost in justification of my hurt and anger. "what he did." how i can't let go until he admits it. appologizes. forgiveness on contingency.

when i did the sweat lodge, one round i was pouring. pouring with it. with the hurt. with the anger. with the desperation to understand it on a gutteral level. i can't just walk past it, i have to chew on it and own it. it has to come from the deepest, most honest place of compassion and forgiveness. i can't fake it. i won't. life's too short for the color pink.

i live by reds. and blues.

and sometimes that hurts. becuz i would die tomorrow knowing i'm in the red. the ferocious wall of anger, of knowing that he and i never made up. never connected. and this stubborness within me would rather clutch onto this, this thing, than begin to know how to really forgive. or just to understand. to understand the death of his father. to understand the origin of his hurt, his reasons. it's in understanding.

i keep so busy. i keep so very padded by the pace of my life. i want integration. i want to feel my skin. my emotions. face spiritual challenges. decide to love myself even as i'm not ready to be anywhere but lodged in the protective womb of my hurt. boxing gloves out. do not come near god damn it. you hurt me. and you will never. ever. get in again.

that is safe for me.

that has always been the only thing i've known how to do.

and have done stunningly well. it feels so powerful. leaving. pushing.

i just still don't understand it. really. at all. i know i've talked a lot about it. here. becuz i was running neck break and i had to spew, unwind.

but in truth, i'm still really struggling to realize what this tender scar means. beyond feeling like it'll never look normal again.

submerging into the worst of my fears.

here it is. i think that it has more power eating within me, then by giving it power in talking about it. which is the reason i've never said specifically what the fear is. because i've been afraid that i'll somehow make it real.

but.

but.

but.

i saw on postsecret.com a post card about someone's secret fear that their whole life they've been terrified, sensed, that they would get breast cancer.

i hate . hate to say this, but let's dispell it, that's it. that's exactly as i've secretly thought for years. i've thought, while i was friends with my girl who i surfed with. who recently passed from c.

i thought the whole time that by the time i'd be diagnosed, she'd be gone and how i'd ache to talk to her. how i'd never be able to. then as she's dying, i. well, as it was bluntly put by my doctor while i had another 22gage needle in my arm this week, i was getting diagnosed by throid cancer. was getting questioned. we were questioning it. and it's still. well. they voted no. she went back and looked again at the pathology reports.

i just couldn't even hear that statement, diagnosised with thyroid cancer. i've "talked" only to talk. but really digesting that. and it's my biggest fear that my body is against me. that the anger i've lived with would cause a revolt. a blackness within.

i've always thought of myself as strong. unquestionably. i have the constitution of a brut. i rarely get sick. i can handle a tuna melt after sitting in my hundred degree car for hours without a thought.

well. that right there, is one of the biggest secrets in the pit of me. i don't think i've told a soul. i'm just so scared that becuz there was this, that somewhere else within me, there might be more. and it is questionable to know what was even there and the extent of it. there were a lot of questions and not a lot of answers.

i just don't want to be so caught up, such a cog in the mad wheel, that life passes me and i barely noticed. i want saturation. feeling. touch. i want to fall in love again. i want to love every slice of my life. i want to fall in love wiht the madness of my life. i want to let myself love my job, my way of contributing. i want to love all of the challenges.

i'll leave you with this. the other night i realized, admited to myself that i want to fall in lvoe again. i want to lay next to someone again.

i had been sneaking into my closet to tap the ass of the donkey. translation: there is a hole in the backend of the donkey pinata that i'm attempting to save for a night with friends, but am secretly shaking bits of candies out of. finally i stop the shenanigans of goign back and forth into the closet and i pull the entire orange, blue, purple, yellow, green donkey bedside and suddenly there is a mess of tootsie roll wrappers at my side. i start to nearly choke on the sheer sugar arresting my throat. as i am almost choking, i think, well jezuz, if i die right now, choking on a grape flavored lolly pop, i will die alone. people aren't supposed to lie alone. someone should be by my side.

i'm just a very specific puzzle piece to fit.

i can't wait to share all of the edges and grooves. i really can't wait.
:*)