In 1998, I had been back in San Francisco for two years after a thwarted move home to New Orleans in 1995. My panic attacks reached enormous proportions because I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be in New Orleans, near my family, having children with my husband, and living and breathing the architecture, culture, music, food, flora and fauna of New Orleans not being lulled to sleep by the sterile, overpriced, transient and tenuous San Francisco that existed during this time.<\/p>\n
I was working at editing financial letters, had started investigative reporting for the predecessor of my company now, and had taken a night job transcribing at a law firm called Brown and Wood to earn extra money to pay the exorbitant cost of living in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n
I was also reading the Tao te Ching interestingly enough. And at 1:30 AM in the morning on September 3, 1998, while working at Brown & Wood’s offices on the late shift with one large dyke with cow-like eyes and one effeminate yet cerebral man, I wrote on a post-it note:<\/p>\n
Dejected and despairing over how to proceed – need the money? this bad? – get out? stay on?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I stuck this yellow post-it under the 9th entry of the Tao when I got in bed later that night – so for our meditation today here is #9:<\/p>\n
Fill your bowl to the brim
\nand it will spill.
\nKeep sharpening your knife
\nand it will blunt.
\nChase after money and security
\nand your heart will never unclench.
\nCare about people’s approval
\nand you will be their prisoner.<\/p>\nDo your work, then step back.
\nThe only path to serenity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1998, I had been back in San Francisco for two years after a thwarted move home to New Orleans in 1995. My panic attacks reached enormous proportions because I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be in New Orleans, near my family, having children with my husband, and living and breathing the architecture, culture, music, food, flora and fauna of New Orleans not being lulled to sleep by the sterile, overpriced, transient… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-19Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4462"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4464,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4462\/revisions\/4464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}