It’s been a busy few months. I’ve developed the website for and established JingTone Reiki and Natural Healing and accepted my first clients. I’ve established and claimed my Yelp business page (and if you’ve ever had Reiki from me, or I’ve talked to your animals, I’d appreciate an honest review…) My yard signs and business cards have arrived. I’ve harvested my garden’s first tomatoes, kohlrabi, Swiss chard, and lettuce. There’s an apple and a pear tree in our mini orchard that, in their SECOND year since planting, are each bearing one fruit a piece. I’ve helped hubs migrate off of the broadcast platforms where drama and technical difficulties were the norm. We’ve built our schedule to suit ourselves and our dogs.
It feels at once like a glorious golden age, and like there’s more pressure than ever before. Not having a standard paycheck direct deposited into our bank accounts… is nerve wracking. Oddly comforting, in an ironic way, is the fact that most Americans actually retire earlier than planned.
So my creative muscles have seized, but my curiosity remains unbounded.
I discovered there’s a local beekeeping group that offers trainings to interested parties. That the reason buttons open on different sides on men’s and women’s clothes may have something to do with drawing swords. That there was a sleeping pandemic 100 years ago. That there was a small group of (uncredited, natch) female designers who remade the Tiffany brand. And there’s a millennia-old practice of female tattooing in the Balkans.
Then there’s the whole AI question. For myself, I align more with Erin Brockovich, who questions why we need to give up our groundwater – let alone allow ourselves to be gouged by power rate hikes. The level of natural resource consumption far outstrips the value we get from the tools. And then there’s the way it is … “ingratiating” itself into our perception, using serif fonts. And it appears to be gunning for some kinds of non-fiction writing, as well. Corollary to AI itself, smartphone use has now been implicated in … reduced fertility.
So while I appreciate some of the conveniences of technology, and maybe also because I spent so many decades working with/managing software engineers, I have yet to see a convincing argument that technology offers stable, long-term, sustainable, definitive answers.
This week I’ve re-opened my WIP, since I had a few surprise sales of my Planet Seekers books last month. Now that some of the initial heavy lifting of opening a new business has settled down, I’m hopeful that I can regain some momentum on the final book. I had this idea… 🙂