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I was headed on an epic trip. I was, really. I have driven cross-country more times than I can count, and it is an activity I have much enjoyed in my life, although I know that is mysterious to many - it is an activity many do not enjoy at all. There is a way in which long-distance driving was a kind of emblem of my freedom to move about in the world - it was part of how I defined myself. I at times fantasized about being a long-haul trucker (but never all that seriously.)

I have, for the last year and a half, struggled with a chronic illness (chronic pancreatitis) that is not life-threatening, but has been very life-altering for me. I've had to reduce the hours I work, greatly change my diet and activites. I've become an avid fan of community acupuncture, because it gives me treatment I need that I can afford. I've learned a lot about antioxidants. Western medicine has nothing to offer me for this condition - it's not one that it can treat at all. I have been doing quite well with the modified life, and I assumed that planning a six-week cross country trip to visit friends and family, and go to Wiscon, would be within my abilities. I was wrong.

Two days into the trip, while driving through Death Valley, I got pretty sick, and had to turn back. Besides being sad and disappointed at mssing the trip I'd been carefully planning for weeks and weeks, I've had to go through a lot relating to how I think of myself - my own self concept. What's true is that I've struggled with this particular conundrum for a lot longer than this. I also have a "hidden" disability - a very arthritic hip, that limits my ability to do a lot of things - and that's been true for years, but somehow, losing this ability - the ability to drive wherever I want whenever I want to, has made me stare this in the face.

Of course, many people deal with this all the time - I've had it relatively easy in life. I can walk around, dress myself easily, do modest exercise, and make my way around the world in such a way as most people have no idea of what I struggle with. But as I get older, I'm learning that I can no longer equate mobility with freedom.

What is freedom, after all? Many of us think of freedom as the ability to do what we want when we want it - but that's a false sort of idea - because by that measure, none of us is truly free. Real freedom is an inner state - a state of being fully at peace with what is. We are free from aversion, or craving, or hatred - we are free from what binds us to suffering. We are free to live out, and manifest our best nature. That is the freedom I long for.

Losing mobility is a fact of life, whether it happens to us sooner or later. But freedom is always available to us. 

• Personal

I'm leaving on Wed. for what I am calling my Epic Cross Country Trip. (Maybe it should be Epic Cross Country Trip, 2012, since it's far, far from the first one I've done. I've now lost count.) Here's my basic itinerary, for the curious:

• Miracle Hot Springs
• Death Valley National Park
• Grand Canyon National Park
• Sedona, AZ
• Roswell, NM
• New York, NY (family)
• Western Mass (friends)
• Northern Vermont (friends)
• Madison, WI (Wiscon)
• Home

The first leg of thetrip I'm taking with Ruth. I've never been to Death Valley, and I've haven't been to the Grand Canyon since I saw it at age 14, during a cross country camp trip in 1975.  The rest I'm doing on my own. I'm excited, and a little scared. I'll be mostly camping, with my new cool tent, and staying with friends and family. If you follow this link while I'm traveling, you can see where I am (well, more acurately, where my phone is) in the country at any time. If you are a facebook friend,  follow me on twitter, or friend me on instagram, you'll get to see photos and hear about where I've been and where I'm going. I'll also probably do a fair bit of blogging as well. I'll be working about as much as I usually work, so it's not really a vacation, but it is a chance to get out of my present context, see loved ones I haven't seen in years, and have my own sort of meditation retreat on the road. As you can see, there are also big gaps. I'm expecting to take I40 to I81 to get from Roswell, NM to NY. And I'm probably going from northern VT to Madison via my favorite foreign country (that would be Canada.) I also hope to finally check off North Dakota from my list of states in the Continental US that I have not been to. And, as a newly converted fan of community acupuncture, I'm visiting 3 clinics: One in Flagstaff, one in Northampton, MA, and one in Madison, WI. Nice to know I can keep healthy while on the road!

• America
• Personal
• Pioneer Valley

This image is making its way around facebook, and on first look, I can see why most people feel like it makes sense. But I have been doing a lot of personal work around fear lately, and I have a different perspective.

I think that fear is a good thing. At its core, fear is a set of physiological, psychological, and emotional responses to external threats. It evolved to basically save our lives in the face of lions, tigers and bears (oh, my!) It is, in a sense, a protective adaptation. If we didn't feel fear, and respond to it, we would be in danger of not being careful enough.

I've been thinking of fear as my friend and protector, lately. I've been having virtual beers with my fear. Listening to it, and hearing what it has to tell me. I have deep gratefulness for the ways in which fear has protected me from harm over the years.

The origin of the sentiment in the picture though, is what happens when we actually don't listen to the fear, but follow it blindly, without question, observation or curiosity as to why it is present. Of course, if you are driving down the street, and some person runs a red light in front of you, following your fear blindly will likely save your life. But if you're standing in the kitchen with a loved one, for instance, following your fear blindly will likely lead to suffering.

We need to observe the fear, notice its presence, notice how it feels to us, notice what instincts it brings up in us. We need to acknowledge the fear, and work to listen to what it is trying to tell us. But we don't always need to follow it blindly, or let it take over. That's when we get imprisoned by it.

• Personal
• Spirituality

As you might recall, I chose to bite off a fairly big chunk of things for my lenten fast. And I'm bringing that fast to a close this week (sort of slowly easing into things rather than all at once on Easter.)

I learned a ton during this time, and I think much of it will take time to filter through me. I was unsurprised by some things, and surprised by others. I was a bit surprised by how much I missed hearing about people's lives on Facebook, but I was also surprised by how much it had become simply habit and entertainment. I wasn't surprised by how much extra free time I suddenly had, but I was surprised by how often I searched for entertainment, and looked for more visual stimulation.

I think that, above all, was the thing that struck me the most. I'm not someone who lacks for things to do. In fact, one of my long-standing habits is to take on more things, make more projects and have more ideas than I can possibly see through. I do see a lot through, of course, but still, there is always something I have on my list to write, or do, or create. I have no lack of things to keep myself busy and interested.

But it took a good long time for me to get out of the habits of being entertained, and back into the habits of doing things, or even just reading and listening to music, which are entertaining enough, really.

I realized the extent to which my brain was trained to seek out stimulation, and how it wasn't so happy when it didn't get enough. I think it will take me a good long time to re-train it, because I certainly don't want to continue to feel like I need the amount of stimulation that I had been taking in.

And I know that from now on, I'll be delving much more into why I want to watch something, or play something, or spend time on social networks. Is it just because I feel the need to be entertained and stimulated, or is there real, concrete meaning to it?

This is not to say that I'm not wanting to, or expecting to have fun watching things, or being entertained. It's just that I want to be clear about what the energy is I have as I'm watching. Is it just boredom and lack of impetus to do anything else? Is it that need for visual stimulation? Is it avoidance of how I'm feeling about something? Am I simply in a space to have fun?

It's that investigation, and being open and non-judgmental about what I find that is my task for ordinary time.

• Personal
• Religion
• Spirituality

I saw an impressive movie a while back, called "The Economics of Happiness." It's worth seeing - it's a great film, with really important things to say about what kinds of things we need to change in our economic system so that people can be happy, and find meaning in their lives. So I was really glad to hear that they were doing a conference, with all sorts of cool people. I was excited! That is, until I found out that the conference costs $300 (with, of course, discounts if you request them.)

And that's when I got dismayed, and thought to myself, "ah, this is just going to be the same old circle jerk."

Yeah, really. It's going to be the same, largely white, privileged audience, talking to each other, about this cool stuff, almost inevitably resulting in ideas that leave other people out, because other people are left out by design.

Now, of course, $300 isn't a HUGE amount of money - it's not like going to TED or something. But it still requires a certain amount of privilege to cough up that kind of dough, and having to ask for a discount is, frankly, an automatic turn-off for a lot of people without means. ($300 is, for your reference, more than a week's take-home for someone on minimum wage.)

And you might say, "But running a conference costs money. You have to rent the space, bring in the speakers, pay the caterers..." And you'd be right. Except what is this conference about? A radical restructuring of our economic system so that all people can benefit. If you're not willing to examine the privilege inherent in getting a bunch of people who can pony up that kind of money in order to attend a conference like that, how is it you think you'll change anything, really? If you're not willing to try something radically different so that anyone can attend no matter what their financial resources, then what's the point?

Over the past few years, I have had an interesting relationship to Lent. As a Unitarian Considering Christ (or, as my spiritual co-conspirator Joellynn Monahan says "Universalist Chillin' with Christ",) Lent has never been about penitence. Growing up Protestant, and even in my brief flirtation with fundamentalism in my early adulthood, I never paid attention to it - I thought it was a Catholic thing. When I went to seminary, I was surprised at how many people actually took it seriously, so I began to think about what it might mean to me.

Jesus is my savior in the sense that I believe that what he came here to teach us can save me, and us from the results of our worst natures. But I don't believe the "Jesus died for your sins, believe in him so you can go to heaven instead of hell" thing. So the need for repentance and atonement (which I know are important spiritual practices) for me have always been disconnected from the idea of Lent, that time before Easter. For me, repentance is a practice that has to happen all year long. But I have come to realize that it is actually a useful thing (skillful means, in Buddhist terms) to have a time of year where you consciously decide to dig deeper, and connect with yourself, and God/Spirit/Wisdom/{your name for the Divine here}. I love that Atonement can also look like At-one-ment - and a time for that is a good thing.

So then I have to think: "What is it that causes me to lose my way?" Those would be the things I do that I need to focus on. Some years, I take away things. One year I fasted some days during Lent. Other years I stopped doing this thing, or that thing. One year, I stopped playing video games. A couple of years ago, instead of taking things away, I added something - I endeavored (and did pretty well) to add three parts of the Daily Office (in my case, morning, midday, and evening - I used Thomas Merton's Book of Hours).

This year, it has become increasingly clear to me that the barrage of incoming electronic information, and the ways I engage and respond to it is causing me to lose my way.

So, for Lent, from February 22, through April 8th, I won't be:

• Reading or posting on Facebook
• Reading or posting on any other social network (Twitter, Google+, Diaspora, etc.)
• Reading RSS feeds or Google News
• Blogging or reading Blogs
• Watching TV or movies on my laptop/computer/tablet/phone/etc. (no Rachel Maddow, sniff, sniff)
• Playing video games

This is kinda radical. And I am so looking forward to it - to finding out what happens, and to carve out that space. I will be reading email, and answering my cell phone and texts, so you can still be in contact, if you wish (besides, I still need to make a living.) And I'll still be cooking, so maybe, if you're in the Bay Area, instead of "liking" a Facebook post, you'll come by for soup. :-)

As you may, or may not know, I had a Kickstarter campaign to try and raise money to do a really nice professional cover, professional editing, and marketing for the fourth book in "The Casitian Universe Series." It failed, rather miserably.

I've had a love/hate relationship with book marketing ever since I started to think about bringing my novels into the world (well, honestly, it was 99% hate now that I really think about it.) I got swept up in this idea that I should spend effort and time with marketing to sell my books - something that doesn't at all come naturally to me. And, if I couldn't do it, I should hire someone else to do it (hence the need for the Kickstarter campaign, since I don't have that kind of spare cash laying about.) I read a ton of blogs and blog articles about 30 minute marketing, eBook marketing, 10 steps to a million copies, blah, blah, etc. etc. I hated to think about it, and I only managed to do a little.

In light of the failure of the Kickstarter project, I took a good hard look at the whole thing - my relationship to writing, marketing, getting my books read, etc. And in that look I realized that I'd been going about this the wrong way... for me. I was entering into a paradigm that wasn't the right paradigm that made any sense for me.

I've been a small business owner and/or an independent consultant for most of the last 14 years, and have always done only the barest of necessities around marketing myself (website, blog and business cards,) and I've done well enough. I've done well enough primarily because I spent a lot of time (and I still spend some time) paying it forward. I blogged about technology, giving folks comprehensive information and advice for free. I always gave away hours of consulting time, did free (or very low cost) websites, I always had really reasonable rates. I volunteered my time at conferences to give talks. I wrote articles for free. And it has been enough.

For some reason, I thought that it made sense for me to do something differently, more mainstream, with my books, but I know now that I was wrong about this. I knew enough about myself and my own philosophy about things to license all of my books with Creative Commons licenses, a form of paying it forward by allowing people to reuse and remix the work freely. But I didn't go far enough.

So, what's next, you might ask? Well, I have the answer, right here in this here blog entry.

First, I'm going to focus on my craft. I would like to work with an editor, primarily to make my craft better, and make it so that I can edit my work well in the future. I'm not exactly sure how that's going to happen, since editors cost money, but it is something I want to do. I will spend most of February and some of March editing my fourth novel, and publish it sometime afterward, with a very modest professional cover. I have two more complete novels that I will be editing and putting into production later in the spring and summer. I have a seventh novel that is currently in process that I hope to publish by the fall sometime.

Secondly, I have decided to give my books away. I'm changing the pricing for eBooks on Smashwords (which will propogate to other retailers) to free. On Amazon, I'm putting the first three books at $0.99 (can't make them free on Amazon) and I won't publish any more on Amazon directly. I'll be giving away all electronic formats on my website. For paperback, I'll be pricing them on Amazon at their minimum, and I also won't be publishing anymore on Amazon. In addition, if people want to request paper copies, I'll give those away as well. There will be a nice shiny donation button if people want to donate, but the books will always be free (and, of course, still licensed with a Creative Commons license.)

Thirdly, I'm going to blog about writing, science fiction, and book publishing in the 21st century. (But, you might say, you already blog about that stuff! Exactly.)

Fourth, I'm going to stop reading the marketing blogs, and focus on what I know I'm good at: writing, and paying it forward.

A lot of people ask me about the themes present in my writing. Of course there are themes relating to gender, race, and sexuality - I'm not sure it would be possible for me to write fiction without those themes.

But if I were to identify the core theme in my writing - the one theme that is consistent throughout the 6 novels I've finished, and just about every novel that I have planned (more than a few,) it would be the theme of what happens when people of sometimes subtly, and sometimes greatly different cultures (and I mean that in the broadest terms - cultures of human beings as well as cultures of aliens) are brought together by necessity.

Here are some examples:

In the first three books of The Casitian Universe series, the primary culture clash is between the Casitians - human beings gone from Earth for five thousand years, having evolved a completely different society, and Earth humans. But there are also other culture clashes - a big culture clash within humans on Earth, as well as cultures of the Galactic Community. These are big - involving many people, and public.

In the fourth novel of the series, the biggest culture clash is small and individual, and not at all public. It is between a Casitian and US society in the mid-19th century. There is, described in that novel, the big, public culture clash at the time - between southern slave society culture, and northern culture that abhored slavery.

In the novel I just finished, it's all very different, since none of the societies that I describe are familiar - but it is a clash between two cultures, both conservative and tradition-focused, but they manifest that in completely different ways.

I enjoy writing about this - it's a big question for me in life in general. How do we learn how to encounter other cultures in such a way as to be able to accept those cultures for what they are, and not in any way decrease the value of our own culture, or denigrate what others do. It's an interesting challenge, for sure.