Category Archives: Jan’s Blog

Welcome!

Currently, I put most of my energy into the weekly channeled messages, the daily Soulbytes, and the completion of The Recapitulation Diaries. An occasional blog does still get written when the creative urge strikes. Archived here are the blogs I wrote for many years about inner life and outer life, inner nature and outer nature. Perhaps my writings on life, as I see it and experience it, may offer you some small insight or different perspective as you take your own journey.

With gratitude for all that life teaches me, I share my experiences.

Jan Ketchel

A Day in a Life: Nature, Spirit & The Power Of Thought

Fog is depressing. That's a thought that has power. - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Fog is depressing. That’s a thought that has power.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It’s raining and foggy today. I could be depressed, but my spirit is not depressed and so the weather outside is not having the effect on me that it might once have had, when I was clinically depressed. Back then the weather would have made me feel even more lifeless and given me a good excuse to stay in, vegetate, and feel sorry for myself. Today I take it in stride, knowing that the outside weather will nurture me in some necessary way, perhaps not clearly revealed until later in the day. I am certain that my spirit and my own nature will find the appropriate alignment that will lead to this nurturance.

Why is it raining? Nature says it’s time for rain. The conditions outside—cloud cover, temperature, humidity, etc.—produce fog, everything working together to produce this grey and rainy morning. We might look outside and wish for some sun perhaps. What we get, however, is nature saying, “no, I need the rain and everything is set up for rain to happen so this is what you are getting today.” This is the spirit of nature, nature and spirit as one, creating appropriate conditions for the planet.

Sometimes nature produces extreme weather conditions, fires, volcanic eruptions, melting ice caps, flooding rivers. Sometimes nature produces aberrant behaviors in human beings, rapists, murderers, terrorists. I can only surmise that nature knows what it is doing, that all of these extreme and seemingly destructive elements and events are actually necessary correctives. I trust nature. I know I cannot control it, but I can study the lessons it seeks to teach me.

We have similar goings on inside ourselves all the time, our nature and spirit work as one too, producing exactly the conditions that we need at this time in our lives. Sometimes the conditions within our bodies are extreme too, such as catastrophic illness, accident, or unexpected deeply emotional situations that send us spinning. Perhaps we also have a terrorist inside us, seeking to rout out some aspect of ourselves that we have not acknowledged or cared to deal with.

How we react to what is going on, both outside and inside ourselves, will tell us a lot about how in alignment we are with our own nature and spirit. Do we ignore the real reasons behind our challenges? Do we pull up our usual defenses, shift right into our ingrained habits and behaviors, the things we normally latch onto when we don’t want to face what is actually happening in our lives? On the other hand, we can turn inward and ask our own spirit and our own nature to come forth and communicate, to tell us the truth, to show us what is really going on.

We can take a scientific approach as well as a psychological approach to any situation we find ourselves in. In fact, viewing a situation from all sides is pragmatic, so that we have all the information we need to make a good, healthy decision for ourselves. Facts might be presented that explain what we are dealing with, alternative approaches to healing suggested, imperatives presented, but then it is up to us to go deeper into what is happening to us, if at all possible to invite our own nature and our own spirit to weigh in. Often, if we are to not only alleviate but fully resolve our inner conditions, we have to go beyond the facts and venture into feelings and emotions, and confront the deeper issues and circumstances of our inner psychological and spiritual makeup that produce our outer symptoms.

If we sit and go inward we might discover something we didn't see before, like the nurturing sage growing right beside us! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
If we sit and go inward we might discover something we didn’t see before, like the nurturing sage growing right beside us!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

For instance, if I’m depressed, my nature and spirit are telling me there is a reason, that it’s time perhaps to go deeper into old feelings about myself that need to be attended to. I take the view that my physical body is my personal planet, and in knowing that my spirit resides in my body I understand that they are one unit. This body unit is my personal “Nature.” Just like the nature of the planet outside of me they are always in agreement, constantly working together to alert me to my deeper issues, offering me the guidance I need to heal my mind and body so that I may take my place in a new and brighter world.

It’s sometimes easier to look outside of us and see how other people are in conflict with their own nature and spirit, but much harder to see it in ourselves. It’s much easier to look to the earth and see how we humans have been, for centuries, slowly destroying the planet we live on, but much harder to realize that what is outside is only a reflection of what is going on inside and that we personally are as responsible as anyone. It’s so easy to blame others, to rant about what they have done to us. It’s so easy to point out how others are so greedy and feel so entitled to take and to destroy. We are above it all, we say, but the world around us is telling us that we are all responsible for the state the world and the planet are in now, just as we are responsible for our own bodies and spirits.

As the rain pattered outside this morning, Chuck and I sat and spoke about our dreams and what we had been reading. The conversation came around to how to begin a process of healing that is practical, offering the most basic of principles: Change our thoughts; change our personal world. Yes, thoughts do have power, a lot of power. Negative thoughts powerfully effect us negatively. Positive thoughts have powerfully positive effect upon us.

Our thoughts set up our natural environment. They bring us rain and fog, or they bring us sunshine. If we say that we are sick, then we will be sick and we must take full responsibility for feeling sick. If we say that we feel great, we must take full responsibility for feeling great too. No one else, outside of us, has the responsibility or the ability to fix us or heal us. Just as we are all on our own journeys—responsible for all the decisions we make in our lives, offered the opportunity to take what happens to us to new levels of growth and understanding—so are we responsible for our own thoughts. And beyond that we are equally responsible for our own healing.

If we have negative thoughts running through our head we should pay attention to them. They are there for a good reason. They are our spirit alerting us to them, asking us to question if they are really true, hounding us to let them go. We will not be left alone until we do. We will suffer depression and inadequacies until we feed our nature and our spirit some healthier alternatives. This is how our nature and our spirit are in alignment.

How we decide to nurture our minds, bodies and spirits is up to us! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
How we decide to nurture our minds, bodies and spirits is up to us!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Are we polluting ourselves the same way we pollute the earth? Are we taking too much, giving too much, overdoing, thinking negatively? How are we using our power? Where are we out of balance in our own lives and what can we do to correct the imbalances?

It’s not really that hard to take the first steps in a healthy direction. But it takes a commitment to really taking up the challenges that are imposed upon us as we face what we need for healing. To bring our own personal planet into alignment we must let our own nature, our spirit and our body, drive us to the necessary balance.

The world outside of us is the perfect environment for our inner process to grow and evolve; as within, so without. In gaining inner balance, outer balance will also be achieved and our lives will advance. A rainy day will not be depressing, but the perfectly necessary environment that it truly is.

Enjoying the fog,
Jan

A Day in a Life: Where Is Our Soul?

What are we seeking that is not right where we already are?
What are we seeking that is not right where we already are?

The eminent American psychologist and Jungian analyst, James Hillman, once remarked that all countries have ancient roots and ancestral teachings that define the soul of all the people who inhabit that country. Though we Americans may search the world for our gurus, going to ancient lands in the East to find, connect, and reacquaint ourselves with our soul, he suggests, that our true soul lies right here, in the ancient practices and teachings of the Native American Indians. This land that is America holds within it everything we are searching for. Our soul is here, waiting for us to discover it.

As a child growing up, whenever I’d ask my mother what our ancestry was, she’d bluntly state: We’re American. I knew that I was part Swiss because I knew the story of my paternal grandmother, how she came to America from Switzerland as a child of seven with her mother, in search of her father who had deserted the family. He’d gone off to America to make his way, promising to send for the rest of them, which he never did. My great-grandmother set off to find him, taking my grandmother, her youngest child, with her. Though my grandmother tended to embellish her life story as time went on, the story of her early entry through Ellis Island and her uncle’s boarding house on East 22nd street in Manhattan, where she grew up and that her mother took over running, never changed.

It was not until I was much older that I learned that I also had English, Irish, and Welsh blood in me. Some of my ancestors had come to America even before the Mayflower arrived; their blood, sweat and tears are part of this land. My immediate family, however, had no rich cultural traditions, no ethnic attachments.

In the 1970s I lived in Sweden, having moved there when I fell in love and married my first husband. Upon that land I became Swedish, learned to speak like a native, embraced the culture and traditions, learned to eat herring, salmon, potatoes, sour cream and dill, learned what good bread and cheese was, learned to drink aquavit, and supped on tea and open-faced sandwiches every evening.

I so completely embraced the culture that I felt more Swedish than I had ever felt American. When the Swedes would ask me what traditions we had back home, I’d feel lost, homeless, disconnected. I could think of nothing, no special foods or traditions, for none had ever been part of my life.

A memory from Sweden.
A memory from Sweden.

While I was also living there I met a guy who ran a record shop in Stockholm; he’d landed there as a Vietnam war deserter. He had the largest collection of Swedish traditional music in the city. He always bemoaned the fact that all the young people came in asking for American records when they had a rich musical heritage of their own; fantastic stuff that he blared out into the street, songs of love and loss, of sailing adventures and longing for home, for the cool air, the rocky shores and calm waters of the archipelagoes of Sweden. The musical riches are all at their feet, he’d say. I took this to heart and fell in love with many a Swedish troubadour, poets of song that sang to my own soul’s longing for a true home port.

Eventually, I left Sweden and the rich culture I had embedded myself in so thoroughly. I returned home, back to America, back to searching for my own home, my own sense of belonging. The funny thing is that my favorite books, books on Native American Traditions, had accompanied me to Sweden, the myths of the Indians, long before the white man ever set foot on the land that belonged to everyone and to no one. I read them while living there, searching for what I knew not, but I had always been drawn to their myths and teachings.

In one of those books, Rolling Thunder, the author Doug Boyd, back from his own sojourns to India, writes of sitting with Rolling Thunder, a medicine man and spiritual leader. It’s the early 1970s. “A lot of things are on this land that don’t belong here,” says Rolling Thunder. “They’re foreign objects like viruses or germs. … A lot of the things that are going to happen in the future will really be the earth’s attempt to throw off some of these sicknesses. This is really going to be like fever or like vomiting, what you might call physiological adjustment.”

“It’s very important for people to realize this. The earth is a living organism, the body of a higher individual who has a will and wants to be well, who is at times less healthy or more healthy, physically and mentally. People should treat their own bodies with respect. It’s the same thing with the earth. Too many people don’t know that when they harm the earth they harm themselves, nor do they realize that when they harm themselves they harm the earth. Some of these people interested in ecology want to protect the earth, and yet they will cram anything into their mouths just for tripping or for freaking out—even using some of our sacred agents. Some of these things I call helpers, and they are very good if they are taken very, very seriously, but they have to be used in the right way; otherwise they’ll be useless and harmful, and most people don’t know about these things. All these things have to be understood.”

“It’s not very easy for you people to understand these things because understanding is not knowing the kind of facts that your books and teachers talk about. I can tell you that understanding begins with love and respect. It begins with respect for the Great Spirit, and the Great Spirit is the life that is in all things—all the creatures and the plants and even the rocks and the minerals. All things—and I mean all things—have their own will and their own way and their own purpose; this is what is to be respected.”

“Such respect is not a feeling or an attitude only. It’s a way of life. Such respect means that we never stop realizing and never neglect to carry out our obligations to ourselves and our environment.”

As I reread those words of Rolling Thunder, so many years after my own sojourns to other lands, I realize that to access the wealth of knowledge of the ancients of our own country, of the Native American Indians, we must take full responsibility for living here. We must learn the first lesson of any novice, to love and respect the teacher, the earth we live upon. We must be mindful of and questioning of every action we take. Am I being respectful and loving toward this land I live upon, toward the earth, toward the Great Spirit—which is all life in all living things—and toward myself?

Am I a good, loving and respectful steward of this land? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Am I a good, loving and respectful steward of this land?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Whether we are of Native American ancestry or not, we live here now. Just as I became a Swede when I lived there, embracing it with love and respect, so is it our responsibility to treat all living things in our own country with love and respect, as we too wish to be treated. As we seek our path of heart, we must remember this.

Our soul is here. In everything we do, we must give back to the soul of the land we live upon. If we are to heal, we must also heal the land.

Respectfully, from our shared home port,
Jan

Excerpts from Rolling Thunder by Doug Boyd, pp. 51-2

A Day in a Life: How To Create A New Reality

Did our thoughts create this reality? - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Did our thoughts create this reality?
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

“You get what you concentrate upon,” channeled Jane Roberts on August 28, 1980. This is one of my favorite quotes from the energetic being, Seth, whom Jane Roberts channeled, stressing how our beliefs and attitudes create our world, both our personal world and the world we all share.

In the simplest of terms, Seth is saying, if we focus on something it will happen. If we are negative thinkers, negative things happen. If we concentrate on happy, positive things, we will get happy, positive things in our lives. What we choose to concentrate on can be to our detriment or to our advantage. This may sound simplistic and idealistic, but if we examine how thoughts create our reality we can learn how to change our thoughts to change our reality as well.

If you have a pimple on your chin and stare at it, it soon looms large. It turns red and ugly. It’s all you see when you look in the mirror and you are sure it’s all everyone else sees too. You apologize for it, try to hide it, or even refuse to go out in public. The pimple festers and grows the more you stare and poke and pinch at it. So is it with thoughts. The negative ones fester, causing us to weep that our lives are terrible, that we are unhappy, miserable, lonely, and that life is unfair. The positive ones grow as well. As we open to and accept new positive things into our lives, our lives expand; new experiences unfold as the world meets us on our positive terms.

The reality is, both negative and positive aspects of our lives are things we create for ourselves. They are our intentions, brought to us by our beliefs and attitudes—unconscious as well as conscious—that we decide upon and set for ourselves. For instance, does illness really exist or is there a part of us that has created it for some reason that we are perhaps unaware of?

There are definitely real reasons for illness. Aside from obvious diseases or injuries there might, however, be other reasons for the illnesses that plague us, for chronic pain and depression, for mental and emotional imbalances. Not everything can be fully healed by physical methods alone, but a more holistic approach offering psychological and spiritual attention as well might do the trick. The entire biological organism that we are must be taken into account, both that which is seen and that which is unseen. Some aspects of our reality are created unconsciously and thus need consciousness to bring them to healing.

We are a whole lot more than meets the eye... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We are a whole lot more than meets the eye…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we take into consideration that we are actually a whole lot more than we can touch and see; that we are energy as well as substance, ethereal as much as flesh and blood, we might begin to understand how powerful our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes really are. They are without form, so what else are they but energy? If we energetically create our own realities then we can energetically change them as well.

Perhaps our beliefs tell us that we are miserable and that we will always be miserable. Is that really true? Or is it only true because we think that way, because we have accepted that attitude? Did any of us really come into life intending bad things to happen, or to lead a miserable life? Were not our infant selves innocent of all that happened to us?

In fact, the lives we live have largely been created by what we’ve learned, believed, been told and continue to tell ourselves, or by what has been done to us. If we remain in that creation then indeed our lives will not change.

In truth, we are largely unaware of how we constantly retrench ourselves in our own predicament. It’s easy to blame others, and yes, others do cause great harm, but blame also keeps us stuck in negativity and there is little resolution to be found there. We become powerless victims of our circumstances, helpless and depressed, as we spin deeper into our darkness. In a sense we become our own worst enemies, our own abusers.

We all get to the point where we have to make a decision about how we want our own lives to unfold, and face that if we want positive experiences it’s up to us to give them to ourselves. No one else can provide what our spirit needs. It’s at that point that we might be ready to try something new. The simplest thing might be to change the ingrained, negative mantras we constantly repeat to ourselves, aborting the usual thoughts, inserting new positive refrains.

I had learned, at an early age, the devastating consequences of not acting on my own behalf, and by default the value of seizing an opportunity. I’d learned that one thing would lead to another, that things would happen, doors would open. Sometimes those doors were not the right ones, but as I grew up and made my way into the world I learned that behind some doors there were good people. I learned to accept that good things could happen and that good experiences were out there waiting for me to find them. Positive things happened when I took a chance on myself; things changed. My own lessons in creating a new reality for myself meant stepping out into life in a new way, navigating away from the old negative world, venturing into a new world of my own choosing.

There's always a door waiting for us to walk through... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There’s always a door waiting for us to walk through…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we are to create a new world in which we can all live in harmony we must get into harmony within ourselves. We must all face what might be behind the doors that appear in our own lives, all of them necessary, and all of them leading us on our healing journeys.

Our role is to take responsibility for our own lives, to heal ourselves as much as we ask others to heal us. We can do this by recreating our own world, fashioning it with positive intent, even as we face what pains us the most, even as we open yet another door that might not yet be the good one. We must do it anyway, concentrating always on the one that we know lies ahead, the one good door that will be the one that will finally lead us out of our old world of worry, fear and negativity into a more positive light.

If we can each do that for ourselves, then there is hope for all of us. Because, you know what? We are all energetic, magical beings—every one of us.

What is happening in your own current reality? What is it that you concentrate upon? How can you change it? As Seth also said: “Your experience will follow your concentration and belief and expectation. The mind is a great discriminator. It can use its reasoning to bring about almost any possible experience within your framework.” Now that is something to concentrate upon!

Creating anew for me and you,
Jan

Excerpts from The Magical Approach by Jane Roberts, pp. 71-2.

A Day in a Life: What Is Right Action?

The holidays are soon upon us. For some people they are longed for; time to get together with loved ones, catch up, and bask in the familiar. For others they can be dreaded, the very thought of having to once again show up at a family gathering nauseating to contemplate. No matter what our circumstances are we have to consider our responsibilities, to our self and others, especially at this time of year when we know that expectations will be in the air, that sensitive issues may come up. Will we acquiesce as we always have, or have we moved on? Do we attend family events out of duty or guilt, or are they meaningful and important to us? Are we selfish if we make other plans?

This time of year challenges us to give pause and consider where we now stand in our lives, both on the matter of family and in the deeper matters of the heart. We might decide to do things differently, because it is right for us to do so, to take action on behalf of our changing self, simply put: to decide that family above all just isn’t what is most important in these times of change. The decision itself will be challenging for us. Once made, we will have to deal with the consequences of our decision. Can we do so with the attitude of the changing self in charge, with our spirit on board, guiding us, with our psyche alert and ready to investigate our feelings and emotions on a deeper level?

Perhaps we decide that, of course, we will attend the family affair as we always have. As we sit at the family dinner table we might notice the usual tensions arise, both within ourselves and with others. Perhaps this tension is just a slight disturbance beneath the current of joviality, perhaps more noticeable. Perhaps, just as expected, the sisters criticize each other, the brothers get drunk, the parents argue, the kids get cranky and grandma and grandpa can’t handle any of it. Do we let this get to us? Do we sit there and judge everyone else? Do we take it personally, get offended or blame others? Do we try to make it better, compensate for everyone else? These are the projections that leave us feeling tense, resentful and unappreciated, that point out where our own deeper issues lie.

If we pause, sit back and take a deep breath, we might be able to allow our observer self to take in the scene. Perhaps we might consider addressing our observations and assumptions by looking within ourselves rather than at the actions of others. Perhaps we see how hilarious the whole situation really is or perhaps it’s really just sad, or a little of both. If we have deeper issues that we have been facing regarding our families all of this might trigger something that we hadn’t expected; it might set off an inability to withstand the impact of something within our own psyche.

Perhaps we already realize we don’t want to do this anymore, that we are in fact done with repeating the same family dynamics that have been acted out our whole lives. Perhaps we’re ready to stop playing the role we’ve been expected to play and having to be in the middle of everyone else’s role playing as well. Perhaps we’re ready to face the deeper issues that plague us and that our family of origin presents us with at every holiday gathering. All of these are things to take into consideration as we prepare for this holiday season.

If we make the decision to not attend a family gathering we will have to deal with the challenges of that decision. Who will we offend? Can we let them be offended? Can we dare to disappoint, knowing that it is right for us to refuse to subject ourselves to the tensions of unresolved family situations; that in fact it might be the healthy thing to do? It might just be time to nurture ourselves in a new way now, to carve sacred space and time in a venue of our own choosing.

Perhaps it’s time for us to realize that though we made the decision to change, others have not and may never. We have to be okay with that too, letting others take their own journeys, hopeful that some day they may take a new path. We cannot, however, convince anyone of anything; we can’t change another person, heal them, or make them into something they are not ready to be. It all has to come from within. The motivation and the intent has to be instigated by something cataclysmic within each individual. We know this ourselves, either because we have experienced it or because we’ve heard it said enough times and instinctively know it to be true. On the other hand, we can be an example of what it means to change, and that is what we may be challenged with this holiday season: to honor who we truly are, a changing, healing being on a new journey.

In the end, what will we gain or lose if we decide to do things differently this holiday season? In my own experiences, I’ve felt great relief in choosing healthy alternatives, to do my own thing rather than succumb to the dictates of family and society, rather than powerlessly acquiescing to tradition. But I have also had to face the disappointments I knew I was causing others. I have had to face that I was asking others to do something they may not have been ready for, my children for example.

I have bowed out of so many family events, not because I don’t love my family or like to be around them—quite the contrary, as they are an amazing group of thoughtful, talented people—but because the reasons to get together with anyone have to be genuine and meaningful to me and not simply because it’s traditional, that time of year again, or out of a sense of duty. Duty does play a role in our lives, but that is a different matter; duty must transcend being dutiful by default to dutifully embracing the compassionate, loving beings that we all are. And there are plenty of other times when I have attended to family members and family matters, fully embracing and embraced in this attitude.

In the end, there are times to be humble and gracious and giving, and there are times when it is appropriate to decide how we want to spend our energy. We have to decide what is the right action to take for where we are in our lives and compassionately allow ourselves to make the decision that is truly right for us; a decision made from the heart, absent of guilt, blame, resentment, and anger. As you can see, it can be a complicated process, but if we stick with our deepest heartfelt feelings and pay attention to the truth of our lives, we will act in a loving manner.

Sometimes our time of journeying with people is done; there is no next step to take. It’s a mature person who can honestly and lovingly say, “It’s been nice knowing you, but I think we’re done here. Good luck with the rest of your life.” No apologies, simply time to move on.

I let my deepest feelings prompt my actions. At times it has been quite a task to pay attention to the quiet-speaking heart, easily drowned out by the louder commercial call to celebrate, to receive and give, to eat and drink, to be happy. In the end it’s really about being in the moment, allowing the changing self to be fully present and lovingly active in the decision making.

On the path of right action, difficult and challenging as it is, and wishing you well,
Jan

A Day in a Life: The Power of Thought

One day I mused about how nice it might be to take a vacation from my computer, for even a few days, to take a break from it and all that it affords me, the world at my fingertips, the ability to work on my photography and my writing with ease, to manage our website and put out our blogs. Even with everything it is capable of and all that it funds, I felt how attached I had become to it and momentarily wished it were otherwise. What else would I be doing if I didn’t have my computer? I wondered. What did I do before it became such a big part of my life?

The very next day, as I worked at my computer, the phone rang. I was able to say, “Hello,” and little else as a power outage hit and in an instant both the phone and my computer went dead. And so my wish was granted; my computer and I are on vacation!

It has not really been a fun vacation, not yet anyway. In the beginning my main focus was on diagnosis. Was it just the hard drive? Luckily, I keep a backup drive going continually and I also back up some very important things to the “cloud.” I’ve learned the hard way how necessary backing up is.

Soon I was reading Apple forums and support groups, gathering information, running Disk Utility, partitioning, renaming and restoring, and other things I never thought I’d be able to figure out. My techie guy is unavailable and so I have had to go it alone. I soon arrived at an impasse, so off to the Apple Store for expert help.

I returned from the “Genius” hopeful, my hard drive cleared for data retrieval, and set about restoring my files to my computer hard drive once again, but it soon became clear that something was seriously wrong. It froze. I tried a few other things. It froze. I tried shutting down and rebooting by pressing one key or another, and finally doing a “Soft Boot.” Things would look hopeful and then my computer would freeze again. Alas, more expert help was necessary.

Off to the local Apple experts where my taciturn little MacMini refused to boot up, refused to give anything and then suddenly sprang to life. I saw that my efforts to restore it had indeed been fruitful, but then it froze once again and refused to partake in any further probing. And so I have left it in good hands, its insides to be taken apart and evaluated. Will the diagnosis be fatal?

In the meantime I work on an “old” iPad, the first one that came out, no camera, no ability to upload audio. I find it cumbersome and it doesn’t handle wifi too well either for some reason, cutting out on me often. And so I am in the midst of my vacation from my computer, the vacation that I had so briefly mused about yet did not expect would really happen. But the universe hears everything.

It’s actually been nice to reexperience pre-digital living, to be shut off from so much. I don’t have an iPhone, though I do like having the luxury of my computer, access to everything that it affords, but I also dream of one day disconnecting fully, escaping to a different kind of existence. With the dire state of the evironment, it’s not a bad idea to muse about life post-digital. We’ve come so far, but are we prepared for real life should all of this be taken from us? What’s really important?

Right now, my treasured external backup hard drive that sits on my desk is most important. I guard it with my life. Should anything happen to that, I am done for. I don’t even dare to muse about that!

Be careful what you wish for, the Universe is listening!
Jan