Sorting the pieces

6:29:24 AM CST

AOL Journals: You've Got Ads

According to AOL in the Washington Post article linked above, they have received several dozen complaints.  I guess the hundred plus comments at Scalzi's, Joe's, the complaint petition, and the email complaint forum are subject to different math rules than I was taught.

 

By the way,  I hate NASCAR, which was the advertisement I saw at the top of my journal today.

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10:21:55 PM CST
Just a note to let you know that comments at A Crazy Quilt Life have been set up to allow people who do not have Blogspot accounts.

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6:40:57 AM CST      Goodbye for now, my friends.  I'm changing addresses since the neighborhood got trashed.  You can find me at A Crazy Quilt Life until the ad banners are removed, maybe permanently. I do hope you'll come visit. 

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1:48:10 PM CST
  If you are as dissatisfied as I am with the banner advertising placed on paid members' journals, I encourage you to sign this Online Petition - Stop AOL from displaying banner ads on Paying Members Journals.  A standard line in customer service training is that for every customer who complains there are ten equally dissastisfied customers who don't say anything but just leave, taking their money with them.  Complaints give a company the opportunity to change what is making their customers unhappy.
Let AOL know they have dissatisfied and in deed insulted their paying customer base and see how they respond. Then we can know if they really do have a commitment to customer satisfaction.
Oh, on a side note. The only way I can save an entry into this journal is through Instant Messaging. I find this a terrible inconvenience, and this could be reason enough to make me leave if it's not corrected.

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11:35:05 PM CST
     Though the vast majority of people I know online use AOL, I don't know anyone who likes it.  There is always some customer service issue that's ticking people off.  I've never had any problems that the technical or billing people couldn't handle, and I've always been treated with respect, but a lot of that has been due to my own persistence.  I've spent so much of my career with a telephone attached to my head, that I have no hesitation to keep asking for the next person up the ladder.
Two things have kept me with AOL, message boards and journals.  Not long ago, AOL changed the format of message boards, making them harder to read and harder to navigate. Many of the "regulars", women who'd earned my affection and respect, bailed completely on the board and some left AOL completely.  AOL blew through and destroyed a community with the effectiveness of a tornado, all the while telling us how much better it would be.
Today, I've watched another community begin to crumble. At the top of the journals used to be Your thoughts. Your blog.  Now, at least in mine, it's a bank I don't use.  They are not bringing my words to the ether.  They do not sponsor me, and I do not support the advertising that has been placed on the journals.  It's rude.  It's intrusive.  All bloggers know that they're writing in a public forum, but the draw is that it feels like a personal space. 
One of the features that AOL has promoted about their journals is the permission management feature.  They've wanted to let us know how easy it is here to let in who you want and keep out who you want.  My permission was neither sought nor given to let this bank in my blog.
AOL is a media company.  Traditionally, the media make more money from advertising than they do from subscriptions.  With newspapers and magazines, the cost of a subscription doesn't even begin to cover the cost of the product. This makes advertising the driving force behind profitability.  However, advertising rates are driven by subscriptions.  Advertisers want to reach the maximum number of people for their money, and the more subscribers a mediaoutlet has, the more they can charge.
An exodus of journallers, and it looks like AOL subscribers, has begun.  In their reach to include more advertising, AOL is forcing away the draw for the advertisers.  I've seen more banner ads in journals for AOL and its LoveMatch service than I have any other ads.  This leads me to believe that they're still selling this particular product and are filling space with their own in-house advertising. 
If the advertisers know that the people they're trying to reach and convince to use their products are dissatisfied, it promotes their own dissatisfaction.  I think AOL needs to be reminded of this, and I don't think the companies whose ads top our journals want all the people who read journals daily to get mad every time they see their business name.

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6:03:48 PM CST
     I've tried several times today to add an entry to my journal, but along with all the changes, journals wouldn't recognize that I was logged in.  Today is the second anniversary of Sorting the pieces.  I had no idea when I started blogging that I'd still be doing it this long.  I wanted to give it a shot to reground myself in the habit of writing daily and thought that journalling in a public forum would help -- like telling your friends you're going on a diet or quitting smoking.
    
It's been interesting to see the changes my blog and I have been through.  Writing here has definitely been a tool in making some of the other changes happen.  I've really enjoyed keeping this thing going.  I love the ethereal friendships I've made and have been surprised at both the reality and depth of my feelings for people whom I've never met face to face.  There are so many writers who have left this corner of the blogging world, and I miss them. 
As much as I hate the advertising imposed on our blogs, I hope this journalling community continues to thrive.  There are so many blog providers available, and I hope that AOL hasn't wrecked the nature and spirit that has made J-land such a special place on the net.
Will I stay or will I go?  Right now, I don't know.  Two years worth of entries are a lot to just up and leave. (Somebody please remind me to save this to a CD regardless of what I decide.)
Anyway, to everyone who has read Sorting the pieces, thank you.  I hope you've enjoyed it.  To everyone who has been so supportive, I am sincerely appreciative.  Many times, the support and praise I've received here has been a primary mainstay when life got challenging.  My friends, you have touched me, challenged me, made me laugh, made me cry, inspired me, motivated me, helped me feel less alone in this world and enriched my life.  Those are a lot of good things to happen in two years.

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9:47:16 AM CST

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, And a time to die:
A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill, And a time to heal;
A time to break down, And a time to build up;
A time to weep, And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, And a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain, And a time to lose:
A time to keep, And a time to throw away:
A time to tear, And a time to sew:
A time to silence, And a time to speak;
A time to love, And a time to hate;
A time of war, And a time of peace.
            Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, New King James Version

     I am in the middle of a lot of change, and it's exciting and scary.  I start a new job on Wednesday, my first time as a full fledged employee rather than my own boss after years of going it on my own.  I'm going to be working in a local office of a large corporation with very clearly delineated policies and procedures, and after years of developing my own work methods, this will be an adaptation, though an easy one.  When it comes to work, coloring within the lines has always been easy for me.  It's a new field in which I'll have a lot to learn.  I'm ready for a new challenge. 
     My work has been divided into two distinct and unrelated areas.  While this has involved keeping a nimble mind and switching gears sometimes rapidly between the two, both have grown stale.  No matter how much new stuff I've had to learn, so much has seemed to be modifications of the same old stuff, changing jargon to keep up with the times and trends, rather than deepening my understanding or forging onto the next level.  This is a definite down side of self-employment.  When you guide yourself, you can often go to the same familiar territory.  What's worked before can work again.  That happens on any job, but when you're solo, the spark you get from seeing how other people do things just doesn't happen as frequently.
     I've also been looking for a new church.  This has been something I've needed to do for awhile but have been very hesitant  to undertake.  There are questions of loyalty, motivation and need, and I've finally accepted that my family's and my needs are not being met, and it's time to move on.  This isn't a criticism of my current church.  It works beautifully for other people, but there's been something deep within me that's calling for something the rest of the congregation doesn't seem to need. All of our needs are different, and I respect that.  That mine are not meshing with others doesn't mean that mine or theirs is greater, truer or more compelling than the other.  I just know that I think I've found something closer to what I'm looking for. I've been surprised at the form it's taken, and that surprise is part of the pleasure.
    These are good changes, and I'm excited about them.  It's pleasant to be forming some of the changes in my life.  The last round of big changes were thrust upon me, and I felt I had no choice but to adapt and go along. I feel like I'm somewhat in control of my own life again, shaping it to what I want it to be, rather than making the best of the hand I was dealt.  The challenge with this is knowing my purpose.  If I feel like I'm shaping my life, I'd better be darn sure what I want.  I know the choices I'm making are to provide greater security for myself and my family, to find more opportunities to grow as a person and use some of this potential I've felt was wasting.  I'm sure I'll find more purposes as I go.
     Ironically, my mind just jumped to Michaelangelo carving a block of marble and telling someone he was letting the angel in the marble emerge.  That's a bit like what I'm feeling.  I don't really know what will emerge, but I have a firmer grip on what my tools are to let that happen.  I know the angel is there even if I don't see her face yet.  I know that with my writing I can find some aspect of it.  I know that with my business life, the necessary work, diligence and discipline that will require that another aspect will emerge. I know that personal changes for me will cause changes in my family life, and I feel ready to handle those changes as well.  Giving myself the freedom to let the future emerge by using the tools I want, rather than determining what the future should hold and then looking for the tools to create that, regardless of if they fit me or not is new for me. Using the right tools in some ways feels purposeful in it own right.  It lets a Plan B become acceptable, rather than a sign of Failure.
    The scary parts are actually things I know all too well -- my self doubt, the natural fear of the unknown, trusting my family to handle their changes, rather than me handling them for them.  This is definitely a time of challenges and growth, and that's the wonderful thing about change.  It's how growth happens.

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7:28:27 PM CST

The lovely Christina of my journey with Multiple Sclerosis asked me to do this, and I was happy to oblige.

1. What sign are you?   Cancer, on the Gemini cusp.

2. What is your favorite color?  Deep, bright blue

3. How many waffles could you eat in one sitting?   One Belgian waffle, two out of the box in the freezer waffles.

4. Can you touch your tongue to your nose?  No, I never wanted to taste my nose anyway.

5. If you had to choose between cats and dogs, which would it be?  Impossible choice for me to make, and even if I tried, I'd develop too many enemies who live with me. Animals outnumber people in my home, and I'll do what I can to keep the peace.

6. What is something you have learned recently?  That hope always endures.

7. What is your favorite quote? I can do all things through God who strengthens me.

8. What is your favorite entry in your own journal?  After almost two years, I don't have a favorite anymore.

9. What color is your bedroom? Currently white.  I have the hardest time deciding on paint colors.

10. Where is your favorite place to visit?  I am torn between the beach and the mountains.  Each feed my soul in different ways.

11. What is one thing you want to accomplish this year? Surviving.

12. Why do you write in a journal?  My thoughts make a lot more sense when I herd them into written words.

13. What is your favorite joke? Usually the one I heard last, and that one's too dirty to share here.

14. Do you like the city or the country?  Both.  It depends on my mood.

15. What style is your house decorated?   Granny's attic classic meets cheap chic.

16. Who is your favorite artist?   This is another I can't decide, but Van Gogh, Monet, O'Keefe, Cassatt and Kahlo are all contenders.

17. Can you pat your tummy and rub your head at the same time?  Yes, but I hope I'll never have the need to.

18. Are you a night owl?  I have a built in alarm clock that goes off at 5:30 a.m., but somehow I never get to bed until around 1 a.m. So, besides sleep deprived, what does that make me?

19. What is something you love in your house? (If you have a picture you get extra credit!)   It's an antique clock, and I am the sixth generation in my family whose home it has graced.  I've heard it described as a grandmother clock.  It's not quite three feet tall and designed to sit on a mantle.  The hands and gong move on weights that have to be wound once a week.  My father broke the minute hand in his days of confusion with senile dementia, and I haven't found anyone skilled enough to trust with the repair.  Right now, it sits still and silent, but one day, it will count the passing of days again.

20. Do you believe in God?  Oh yes.

21. What hobby could you never give up?  Reading

22. What color makes you think of Hope?  Blue, the color of the sky after a storm.

23. What color makes you think of Love? Red.

24. What is your favorite flower?  Red gerber daisies and yellow daffodils.

25. If you had one wish for the world, what would it be?   Heart and soul transforming love.  That causes so many other positive changes.

26. Whats the best surprise you have ever received?  A surprise birthday party a year in which I thought I'd been forgotten.

27. What can you cook like no-one else?  Kick ass chocolate chip cookies.

28. What do you think about most?  Oh my goodness. I can barely sort out the contents of my head, much less quantify them.

29. Who is your favorite poet?  That word drunk insomniac dreamer, Will Shakespeare.

 30. And last but not least, if you could wrap yourself up in one word...what would  that word be?  Love.

 

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8:53:20 AM CST      Indian summer hit us a couple of days ago with temperatures back in the seventies, and yesterday got up to 86 degrees.  With the humidity just in the 60% range, it felt clean and bright, and I went without the air conditioning that owns me in the summer.  Leaves blew in the back windows that I had wide open, and sweeping them out of my dining room was well worth the freshness that came in with them.
     My dryer died a few days ago, and the repairman won't be coming until Friday.  My laundry wouldn't wait that long.  I had actually forgotten that I have a clothes line tucked away behind our carport.  I've felt thrown back to my childhood when all of our clothing dried in fresh air, and I was surprised at the memories that came back.
   I grinned slightly when I showed my daughter how to use one pin to hold up the corners of two garments, remembering when I got the same little domestic lesson.  I folded each article as soon as I took it down. This rhythm just seemed natural, and I realized that it was just what my mother and our maid did when they handled the clothing of my childhood.  It was so unlike me now. When my clothes come out of the dryer, I dump them in the hamper and fold or hang them later...sometimes much later.  I even remembered to hang the "unmentionables" on the back line closest to the building where they were least likely to be seen.  I'd forgotten how stiff air dried clothing becomes, even with fabric softener.  Nothing will make me enjoy the ironing this aspect of line drying demands though.  Best of all, though was the smell -- cotton, detergent, bleach and sunshine, and just a hint of the vanilla and lavendar fabric softener I loved.  No bottled fragrance will ever come close to that smell, and I savored it all day long.  If I could have rolled in it I would have.
     Today's laundry includes sheets and towels.  I'm almost excited.  When I was a kid, I would play under the drying sheets on the clothing line, pretending they were my castle, my fortress and sometimes my maze.  In the early sixties, before dryers were as common as coffee pots and I was still young enough to enjoy this game, all sheets were white.  I can still see the light filtered through the tight weave and feel the dampness evaporating from their smooth, warm, waving surfaces as I brushed against them.
     My neighbors already think I'm a bit nuts (hopefully in a nice sort of way), and I wonder what they'd think if played under my sheets again.

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5:05:49 AM CST

     I received a couple of comments from two of my favorite bloggers that make me want to revisit this subject. 

Raaaarrrrr!  Ah Cynthia, extend some of that bounteous grace to yourself!  That shadow self is here to stay.  Make up a spare room.  Like Vicky, I don't relate to the correlation between shadow and sin.  I used to, but I could never live up to the expectation.  Nearly destroyed me trying.  
Comment from theresarrt7 - 11/9/05 2:46 AM

Beautifully expressed, Cynthia.  But I do have a question.  You say "owning my shadow is realizing my sin ."  We all have a shadow self.  Does this mean that we all sin and will always sin?  My understanding of the shadow concept is that it co-exists with our persona and thus is never lost, right? So that sin is a "necessary" and ever-present factor in all of us?

Just want to understand.

Love, Vicky
Comment from vxv123 - 11/9/05 12:14 AM

  When I finally get something from more than one perspective, I sometimes find it difficult to express myself with the clarity I desire, and I knew after writing my last entry, particularly with my desire for conciseness, that I hadn't quite gotten everything I wanted to say across.  I also want to state that both my understanding of the shadow and of Christian theology is in development.  While I hope to gain a thorough understanding of Jungian ideas, I know that I will never have a complete understanding of my own religion.  It will be a lifelong process, and I recognize that delving deeper into secular psychology can be as well.
     So, here is my very rudimentary understanding of the shadow in the most simple terms.  The shadow is the self that we hide from ourselves.  It can be the things about ourselves that make us uncomfortable or our downright ugly aspects.  In the simplest, most dualistic terms, it's easy to see ourselves as light and dark.  Now dark is not necessarily bad, and not everything in my shadow self is necessarily sinful.  I'm definitely hesitant toexplore anger, and that includes anger for good purposes as well as destructive ones.  There are things about myself that I might not want to trot out in public, but I have no problem seeing them as part of me, and so certain private aspects of myself aren't necessarily my shadow self, because I don't have any problem looking at them.  A good example of this is sexual desire.  It's a wonderful part of who I am, but I'm not going to discuss the details of my sex life.
     There are aspects of my shadow that definitely fall into the category of sin though, and one of the ongoing struggles of a Christian is overcoming sin.  As a human, I never will completely.  It is a permanent part of me, and in a secondary definition of the word necessary, sin is impossible to evade or avoid.  In that sense, sin is a necessary aspect of being human, and it's only hubris that makes a person think that they can  personally completely conquer sin.  
     There is a Bible verse that I can't reference off the top of my head that says, "None is good but God."  I had to struggle with this for a long time, but what I finally got from it that God/dess is outside the paradigm of human judgment.  What is good from the Divine point of view is unattainable by human standards.  That doesn't mean that we, as humans, are bad by the standards we know and use. I can be a very good person, but I will never reach the goodness of God/dess.  This isn't a bad thing. It's just natural. To tie this back into the concept of the shadow and sin:  if I put myself on some mental seesaw, with my shadow on one side and my acceptable self on the other, God is the fulcrum on which my world balances, the defining point from which I draw my understanding of what is and isn't acceptable, but God is not the seesaw.
      Another verse I've had to struggle with is the one that says as Christians, we are free from the bondage of sin.  That's not something we can do on our own.  As a Christian, I'm basically holding onto the shirt tail of Jesus who did break that bondage.  He did it being fully human and divine, and I accept with gratitude that he did.  I accept the grace that came with the merging of humanity and Divinity, but it's not something I can ever do on my own.  However, loving Christ means more than accepting Divine grace, it means emulating Him as a role model.  I would love a sinless life (the standard set by Christ), and when I recognize sin in my life I work to get rid of it.
     That takes me back to my shadow. Because sin is something I don't want, I shove it deep into my shadow.  Life seems much easier in the grips of self-delusion, but that has a nasty way of blowing up with disastrous results.  So, I peer into the shadow.  I get a little more courageous and look directly at it, and then it gets to me that I'm looking at myself.  I accept that what I see there is me.  If what I see there is sinful, in accepting my shadow, I'm acknowledging my sin.
     And that brings me back to my Christian beliefs, when I see sin in my life, I regret it and repent of it.  Repentance is more than feeling sorry about sin, it's working to remove it from your life.  I can't tackle all my sin at once. Nor can I stand to see all that my shadow holds at one time.  That would be the ultimate overwhelm.
But say that I see and accept that I am a greedy person.  As a Christian, I choose to work on it.  I do so through prayer, developing my generosity, purposely developing a more materially simple life and so on.  As I succeed in each step, I'm also creating the opportunity for stuff to move around in my shadow. If I get the generosity thing, I can become wrongfully proud of myself.  I may have conquered one sin, but I've let another go unchecked.  I have grown and loving myself means giving myself credit for that growth.  It doesn't mean the shadow is any less though, just that its contents have changed with me. 
     I think something we've all seen is the person who has worked very hard to gain spiritual knowledge and wisdom, but when their shadow emerges, so does their self-righteousness.  It doesn't mean that the knowledge they've gained means nothing, but that their shadow grew and changed with them.  As they changed, their sins did as well.
     I became a Christian as a child.  Many things within myself and within the church as an institution worked to move me away from it.  During that time, I never quit working on the spiritual side of myself.  I found beautiful truths in paradigms both religious and secular, but in no other belief system than Christianity did I find the truth that resonated in the depths of my mind, spirit and in the very marrow of my bones.  I came home to Christ as an adult, but it meant looking at everything I had been taught with new eyes. 
     There are some within Christianity who cannot accept my understanding as Christian.  I can accept this.  I've found that each person has their own straight and narrow path, and the boundaries God/dess has shown me someone else might not need.  They may have already passed through this section of the road.  They may not have come across it yet.
    Some, outside of the Christian paradigm, have found many of the truths that I have but without the framework of Christian definitions.  I see this as a wonderful example of Divine grace.  God/dess knows how best to reach each person, and though many of my friends outside of my religion may find this offensive, I see the Divine working everywhere in everyone.  The Creator is greater than the definitions that any religion uses to understand the Divine.
     I don't know if I've clarified or muddied the waters here in further explaining how my beliefs inter-relate, but take from it what you will and know that it was written with love.

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