“The basal ganglia is thought to contain a sort of gating system. When the gate is closed, the tinnitus is held back — and on mute. When it’s opened, the noise floods through. Cheung and his team believe if they can go in and manipulate that part of the brain, they just might be able to muffle the noise — and provide some real relief.“ I’m going to script a self hypnosis session to close the gate on my basal ganglia!   “This internal sound is commonly used in meditation focusing techniques. Rather than fight or fear it, listen to it. Those that feel they suffer from it and fear it should know that meditation techniques deliberately focus on it. Doing so creates a consciousness of depth, dimension and variety and the sound seemingly becomes louder. In fact, these variations may be auditory illusion. Regardless, the idea is immerse oneself consciously in it to develop concentration skills. Awareness of the sound is also used as a form of warning. One may suddenly be stimulated to hear it due to an internal or physical stress. If it’s an internal stress, and perhaps sometimes too if it’s a physical stress, It’s advised to slow down at that moment, stop and listen to it.”  Continue reading →

Your heartache is someone else’s hope.  If you make it through, somebody else is going to make it through.  Tell your story.  — Kim McManus.  This is why I don’t delete old Facebook or blog posts that tell my journey of how I made it through challenging times. Sure, it tells how unconscious I may have gone in the process but it also shows what it took to find my way back.

MTV’s Real World: Skeletons. Tonight the cast will have 2 skeletons from the past added as roommates. It’s always interesting to see how friends handle people from their past that they’ve never resolved issues with. Your current relationships are only as conscious as your past ones. Everything will resurface years later to be resolved, so do it in the moment and get on with your happy life with nothing hanging over your head. Now there’s a show called Battle of the Exes, a gang of reality castmembers being paired for sports challenges with castmembers they’ve previously hooked up with in former shows. Looks like 2015 will be the year to have secrets revealed so everyone can stop playing games and be real with everyone else. WHO YOU ARE RIGHT NOW IS ENOUGH, no pretense needed, no phony back stories — they will always be revealed, even 10-20-30 years later. Make it easy on yourself.

My cats both weigh 11 pounds.  Benny is all muscle.  YinYang, alas, is not.  They can both benefit by setting meal boundaries. They won’t eat healthy Hill’s Science Diet dry food, so I give them their beloved Meow Mix.  I’ve overfed YinYang for 14 years and Benny for a year. Now they are balking that rations are cut. Benny used to get a 5.5 oz can of Little Friskies himself and Yinnie would get a 3 oz can of Sheba. The last week, both are boycotting the dry food altogether.  I tried a new cat feeding schedule of 1/2 cup each dry food morning and evening, plus 1/3 can Yinny, 2/3 can Benny in the afternoon. Both cats kept hounding me for more. So I put 1/2 cup of the Hill’s Science Diet dry food in each bowl, figuring that if they are really hungry, they will eat it. Sometimes they do. I can’t cave. The kitties need to shape up for 2015.  And BTW what planet am I on that I thought a cat needed a can in the morning and a can at night and dry food filling the bowl at all times?   The Fancy Feast website says “Feed an average size adult cat 1 can (3 oz) per 2 ½ pounds of body weight daily” which is 4-5 cans a day.  Holy hippo.

I may be watching too many cooking shows. I just spent an hour on the mise en place for breakfast: crispy potatoes, roasted mushrooms, sliced onions, scallions, tomatoes, rosemary and parsley, lemon zest for the gremolade…  Am I watching too many cooking shows?  Or am I just beginning to organize my kitchen as though I cook there twice a day?

I seriously hope no one important calls with an automated message because I hang up as soon as I hear it’s a recording. Thank you callers but I don’t need to consolidate debt and I don’t need a collection agent since my clients all pay on time.

Excellent info here — “Don’t be in a rush! Although modern selfpublishing tools let you revise and tweak a naive edition, you cannot edit your reputation. Take your time. Do it properly. You’ve got a lot to learn – about writing to a publishable standard and about publishing itself. The world will wait – but it won’t forget if you mess it up.”  From –> Publish traditionally, solo self-publish or something else? Advice for the 2015 writer:  Last year I wrote a post about whether I’d advise an author to publish or self publish. A year on, the landscape for authors is remarkably different – or perhaps not remarkable if you’ve been waiting for a bubble to burst.  Indie authors have seen sales plummet because of the sheer numbers of books available, and subscription schemes such as Kindle Unlimited have created a breed of readers who won’t shop outside a limited free list.  Might this mean it’s better to be traditionally published?  Not from what I’ve seen. My friends with trad deals aren’t having a good time either. Leaving aside royalties and advances (which seem to offer little financial reward for all the hard work writing), their books aren’t getting a decent chance for a long-term future. A friend whose first novel won a major award in 2012 has just watched his fourth novel launch with no more fanfare than a tiny paragraph in a Sunday paper. His only other support was a training day on a social media course. And don’t even ask about rights grabs – where authors might wait years to reclaim a book to publish it themselves.  Tough times, my friends. So savvy writers will be looking for smarter ways to publish.  Continue reading →

What will you do less of in 2015?
What will you do more of?
I’ll do less complaining and I’ll do more goofing off.

Thich Nhat Hanh on death: “When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water. It would think, “Some day I will have to die. This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing.” These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish. A wave can be recognized by signs—beginning or ending, high or low, beautiful or ugly. In the world of the wave, the world of relative truth, the wave feels happy as she swells, and she feels sad as she falls. She may think, “I am high!” or “I am low!” and develop superiority or inferiority complexes, but in the world of the water there are no signs, and when the wave touches her true nature—which is water—all of her complexes will cease, and she will transcend birth and death.”
Continue reading →

Were you stretched in 2014? Were you pushed beyond your comfort zone? Thank the Universe for that blessing You’re stronger now that you’ve snapped back. Exercising that muscle made you more powerful than you were. What are you going to do with this power in 2015? What’s next?