26 February 2022 Responsible Creation

It was hard getting up this morning

Hello to you. How’s your day going? I’m getting a late start to the day. I just didn’t want to get out of bed!

Check out 26 February 2022 Saturday chat https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1408892493 my

Todays Twitch stream was good. We talked about a lot of stuff today! Addiction, the choice to have pets, psalm 26, different cultures living together, world peace, technology and responsible creation. One of my viewers asked if I feel like technology has brought people together and my answer was yes but it’s also a bit of an illusion. With technology I’m able to communicate with people all over the world – something without technology I wouldn’t be able to do. Without technology my life would be very lonely….but I have to remind myself that technology isn’t a replacement for one to one contact. Technology can’t replace what happens between people having face to face contact.

I wish there were more visionaries in the world of creation. So much of our worlds operations is based on short sightedness. How much money will this make me? Not how will this be a benefit to mankind. Follow from creation and through the entire life cycle of what is being created – where is what I want to create going to end up? Taking responsibility for our creations. When I really started thinking about my crafts and hobbies I ended up stopping a lot of what I was doing! I liked to paint but realized the environmental impact of my enjoying it – the paint in the water for example. One area of late that I am concerned about with this is robotics. I would like to see more vigilance….more regulation but it’s already kind of too late! Anyways, talked about a lot today.

“Focus on how we are the same not how we are different.” – me

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of the Ukraine and Russia – any part of our shared world that is in conflict of any kind. We must learn to focus as a world on what we have in common not how we are different – what separates us. It’s like taking out your mental gratitude list. Once you think of one thing a whole bunch of others come to your mind! I just hope everything is going to be alright with all of this.

I highly recommend this video – we are all responsible for the “stuff” that gets manifested in this world: https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM

ob·so·les·cence/ˌäbsəˈlesəns/Learn to pronouncenoun

  • the process of becoming obsolete or outdated and no longer used.”computers are infamous for their rapid obsolescence”

The Ocean Clean up Project: https://youtu.be/8HQEd_IX6A8. I’m very proud there are young people like Boyan Slat in the world.

29 January 2022 Saturday

Check out 29 January 2022 Saturday morning chat https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1280050945

Hello. How are you today? I hope good. I’m feeling pretty good. I got some sleep and that makes the world of difference!

First drawing in my new sketchbook today

The Twitch stream this morning was good. I got a chance to talk about some things I hadn’t talked about before. For example some of what was going on with media and my brain when I had all those manic episodes. How it’s really important to be mindful of what you feed your mind, body and spirit. When I was having manic episodes my brain didn’t differentiate between fantasy and reality. The two worlds merged and I was in the middle. I feel “content creators” in this world have a responsibility for what they put into this world. Over time, if we look, there has been a lot of trash packaged for consumption that may be should have just been left to being a thought, a dream…. a nightmare. There are people like me that have had psychotic breaks and start talking to things like television sets!

Another thing I talked about along the line of content creation is motive. As a content creator what is my motive for my creation? Is it to make a lot of money? Garner attention and fame? Influence people? Why am I doing it? For me personally it’s for several reasons. Making the videos and writing this blog is very therapeutic. It helps me not be lonely for a little while. It’s also my hope when I’m doing these things that somebody will get something out of it. That something will resonate with them and they will be able to use it to help themselves of somebody else. My motives are pure. I’m not looking for money or fame from doing what I do. Honestly I don’t think that is Gods plan for me. In the past when money has come into play with crafts and stuff I’m doing it has tainted it….the purity is lost. Bottom line is as a person putting “stuff” into the atmosphere people live in it’s important to check your motives at the door!

28 December 2021 Tuesday

Hello to you. How are you? Hopefully staying warm! It’s a balmy 22 degrees here as I write to you. Winter is definitely here. I’m so grateful Link and I have a warm shelter. Even as we near 2022 there are people without affordable housing.

So I rousted myself with some Heilung and my little drum this morning. My little drum circle idea rose and fell this year. It’s ok. I don’t regret buying the drum. It gets lots of use.

https://youtu.be/64CACoHNBEI – Heilung Norupo

Thinking of hearth and home this chilly Tuesday!

“Primal beat of my drum and ancient calling, steam rises from my coffee…snow is falling. A warm hearth and home within my heart can be found. An echo of the beginning sound.”

As I sit here this morning I wonder where we are heading in this world. Where am I heading. Things are doing things…..I keep trying to stand still in time but it doesn’t work that way. How do I graciously embrace the inevitable? Lately I’ve been feeling like my mind is in an in between place. When I feel this way I don’t get to just live my life and move forward with it. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the flow….that stream of existence where time doesn’t matter. Your doing what God put you here to do and that’s all you want to do! All you want to do is be in that “sweet spot” with God.

Sometimes when I’m writing I get the place I desire to be. It’s warm and safe. The words just flow and I don’t want it to end but it always does. I had these sort of feelings when I would sit outside in Texas and draw with chalk. I would sit outside for hours and just draw. I felt such a direct connection with God. What was nice is my drawings lasted until the rains came. Then I would have a fresh canvas. I used to draw spaceships that sailed off with the rains. Where I live now I don’t have a slab in the backyard to draw on. I just have a driveway in the front yard and I’m a little self conscious about doing my drawings there.

I believe God isn’t done with me yet. There is a reason I still exist. I have to remind myself that the reason(s) aren’t always big ones. One of my favorite Saints is Therese of Lisieux: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_of_Lisieux and the reason is because of how she believed in serving God in little ways. Every time I smell roses I think of her. We each have a part in Gods play. Some are major parts and some are very small but they are all important. Sometimes we are destined to live the little way and have to find peace with that.

I hope something here resonated!

26 December 2021 Feelings

Check out 26 December 2021 Sunday chat https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1244211250

Hello it’s me again. It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m feeling lonesome so I thought I would write to you again….hope you don’t mind.

Something happened with me and my Twitch channel and I feel really bad about it. I had a rant and it wasn’t subtle and I ended up hurting the feelings of someone I love and care about very much. I felt so bad that I had to delete the video. It was not the place to express what I expressed in such a brutal manner. If you knew the person I’m referring to, you would agree. They are the last person on earth that you would want to hurt! We have cleared the air but I still feel horrible about it! Ugh!! I feel like such a shit!

The subject matter at the core of this debacle is how I feel about “stuff.” Living in this tiny home means there is little space for extra things. Anything added to the limited surface space I have can look like clutter if there is too much of it. I prefer to receive gifts that are going to be used up and gone like soaps, lotions and food things. I didn’t buy gifts for anyone this year. Instead I bought bags of food for the local food pantry in my families honor.

I am not sure if the livestream lifestyle is my friend. Part of me wonders if it’s best left to content creators like musicians, magicians and artists. The reason I started using Twitch was to try and reach out and make a connection. There have been a couple sessions where I have had communication with people like I’m looking for but it’s rare. If you aren’t playing instruments, singing, playing video games or doing some sort of something people just don’t tune in. Something tells me not to give up just yet though. I have 12 followers and that’s pretty good for a channel like mine!

I have a couple more shirts I can paint just not sure if I want to do that today. It goes so fast! Some people when they are drawing and or painting they take their time. It doesn’t go that way with me. As soon as I decide to do it, whatever comes forth is the finished product. It’s like I have this notebook I have been drawing in and it’s almost full. Then I will have to get another one and have to find a place for the one I finished. The “stuff” monster rears it’s ugly head again – even in my art! May be that’s why people use food as their area of craft. Make a beautiful cake and it gets eaten – the byproduct goes into the toilets. You don’t have to feel guilty about it ending up in a landfill.

Every something that is tangible ends up somewhere. Thankfully this blog is just digital text but it still takes up space in a server and a server is a tangible thing. I have a friend who’s job it is to manage large servers…..even digital things…words…..taking up space in our tangible world! The other thing is it doesn’t really belong to me once I publish it. I should be saving my posts on an external hard drive but I don’t after what happened to the last one.

May be all of this explains why I’m still keeping and using towels that are nearly 30 years old. I use things until they fall apart. My first husband taught me about buying high quality stuff so you don’t have to replace it so often. Unfortunately we live in a world of products designed with planned obsolescence in mind. Some of the towels I received as gifts in years past are not holding up nearly as well as the older ones.

It’s hard for me to live in a material world at times. There are tubs of stuff that I have that I don’t know if I’ll ever get the courage to go through. I had hoped the gals I hired to organize my stuff would help me cull but they didn’t. They just put it in tubs and stacked it neatly – now it’s harder to get into. I need a disinterested party that specializes in what I have going on to come in and help me cull. I mean what do you do with boxes that once held your beloved pets ashes?! What do I do with Knick knacks that I have no cabinets to display them in?! If I set stuff out it has to be dusted. I don’t want to dust! Years and years of journals and drawing books….nobody is going to want my shit when I’m gone and that’s the harsh truth of this modern world. Everything has become so cheap that things that really should matter have little to no value.

The story of stuff goes back a long ways. I can remember when my first husband and I lived in an apartment in Fliessem Germany. All our stuff fit until Helga the landlady asked us to move out so her son and his new wife could live there. We ended up moving to a place up the street but it was smaller than the place we were living. I got overwhelmed. There is a picture of me sitting where we had to stack everything and I had been crying. There just wasn’t enough room. The house in Alvarado was the first time there was enough room for everything but I still had a problem with stuff. I liked Christmas gift exchanges with my parents the best. You told them what you wanted and that’s exactly what you got. It was always good quality stuff that we were going to use.

The story of stuff really opened my eyes to what our material world is doing to us and this planet: https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM – after seeing it and seeing what The Ocean Cleanup project is encountering out in our oceans I really started to think about how I live. Like I said earlier everything we make and use has a life of its own. You can’t get something for nothing and it’s important to be responsible consumers.

20 December 2021 Family Party

Hello to you in your where and when. How are you? I am waking up slowly! Had to blast some Heilung this morning! I’m so grateful for the speaker from my friend. It syncs up with my phone so I can pull up my You tube play list and hear my tunes!

Well yesterday was really nice. We had the family Christmas party over at my Aunt and Uncles house. There were about 20 of us!! It’s a family tradition to get together. My Uncle, who lives in California, catered the meats and some Mac-n-cheese. I got to taste the jalapeño jelly we made earlier in the year and boy does it taste good with cream cheese on ritz crackers! We had a new baby in the mix ! Baby Cove. She is my cousin Heidi’s granddaughter. Very good baby who didn’t seem to mind being passed around and loved on. There were a lot of pictures taken. It was nice to have lots of grandchildren and great grandchildren together. I left before the gift exchange….it was starting to get dark and I have to worry about turning into a pumpkin!

My Auntie and me. It’s been one year now since I moved to Idaho!

The plan for Christmas Eve is Aunt and Uncle are going to pick me up and we are going to church together. We have gone to church before but never on Christmas Eve. It’s a very symbolic thing for us to do as my Mom died on Christmas Eve back in 1968. Auntie and I have never gone to a holiday service together so it will be special! A celebration of life!

I’m still trying to figure out, after all these years, what the holidays mean to me. I don’t know where my place is if that makes sense. I had a little family and we were starting to establish our own traditions and now it’s just Link and I. He had to stay home yesterday because there were too many people. I have trouble with gifts – giving and receiving them. That’s why I have been buying the bags of food at the grocery store for the food bank. I’m surrounded again by people who like to do the gift bit and I don’t quite fit in. I get overwhelmed by “stuff.” Since I live in a tiny house, anything extra can seem like clutter and it drives me nuts! Hopefully over time my family will begin to understand me.

I’m live on Twitch – Watch me at https://twitch.tv/jwygant

14 December 2021 Sum of the Parts

Hello to you! How are you ? It’s a snowy, wet and gray morning. Had to listen to some Heilung this morning to get things started. I like to harmonize and play my drum with groups like them. No words, just sounds. Now I’m sitting here calm with my coffee. My friend texted me about coming to visit today ! I’m looking forward to seeing her!

Last nights Twitch stream was interesting . We talked a little bit about tattoos and I didn’t know this but there is a passage in the Bible that says you shouldn’t do it ! I hope God isn’t too mad at me for my Ichthys (Jesus Fish) and fading chameleon!

Leviticus 19:28New International Version

28 “‘Do not cut(A) your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.

My other viewer chose Revelation 21: 4 which I myself had highlighted as a favorite:

Revelation 21:4New International Version

4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.(A)There will be no more death’[a](B) or mourning or crying or pain,(C) for the old order of things has passed away.”(D)

As things are coming together in my life lately – The music I listen to, my blog, my spirituality, communicating through Twitch I am seeing myself as many parts and pieces. What I do in my life is I try to see the good in all things. I think that is why I am so confusing to people I know. Most people pick one particular path and don’t see any other and I’m not like that. This is the problem with religions for me. Once you choose a path your discouraged from seeing anything else. I feel like this makes for narrow mindedness. The way I visualize things is we each have a key to this existence… to Gods house. That’s why I feel so close to God outside. All are welcome.

When I read the Bible I am in so much trouble! I have broken some of the Ten Commandments and have tattoos! Thankfully the God of my understanding loves me no matter what. He was there with me when I broke those commandments. He was there with me at the tattoo parlor. My God is with me however high or low. My God has kept up with the times we are in and isn’t into kicking people when they are already down.

I am the sum of many parts. God has made a planet sized home for us and each of us has our own set of keys. Everyone has a different messenger in which to hear their God. The beauty of our existence is that we are all so different! We are biologically incapable of perceiving this life in the same way. Wouldn’t life be so boring if we looked and thought exactly the same ?

I’m live on Twitch – Watch me at https://twitch.tv/jwygant

12 December 2021 Full Life

Hello to you. It’s Sunday as I write to you. Listening to Astravert on Twitch doing another one of his awesome improv jams. His music is great to write to. I highly recommend checking him out.

So last night I had my longest stream ever – just over 2 hours! I got to talk to an EMT who has lived so much life for his 25 years of life. He served in the French military for 6 years as a medic and apparently experienced some pretty rough stuff. He lives with his 5 year old German Shepard. He ultimately would like to be a Family Practice doctor with a pilots license – he’s working on getting his pilots license! This young man just amazed me with how much life he’s lived and all that he wants to accomplish. These are some of the people I’m meeting by reaching out on Twitch. That stream got the most views I’ve ever gotten – 28 so far! We talked about movies and also about spirituality. I love talking about matters of the spirit with open minded people. What an honor to talk to one our worlds real super hero’s. EMTs are on the front line in our world. He works in Washington DC so you know he’s probably seen more than his share of trauma. He says it can really wear on him. He talked about getting a call for a suicide and they were too late! It was especially hard as he had lost a brother to suicide. Like I said , I was truly honored to have a visit with such a person!

So many stories to tell! That’s what I’m seeing manifest for my channel . I want to hear other peoples stories and share mine too. Each one of us is a living novel – each day a fresh page.

My prayers go out to all those who recently went through the horrific tornadoes. I kind of stay away from the news but did see that. One of the worst hit was Kentucky.

I’m live on Twitch – Watch me at https://twitch.tv/jwygant

21 November 2021 Infantile

Hello . Ugh!! I wasn’t going to write again today. I have been having a rough day on my own. The best way to describe what I’m experiencing is imagine an infant wrapped up in a blanket in a crib screaming. You try feeding the infant and that quiets the child for a few minutes. You put the baby back in the crib. They start screaming again. You give them some milk….same thing more screaming. You try singing, reading, rocking, dangling their favorite toy in front of their face….. nothing but more screaming. Finally you pick up the child and hold them and speak softly in soothing tones….at last there is peace.

There is a part of me way deep inside that is the infant I described. Even after 53 years I still can’t completely soothe “Baby Jackie!” It is so tiresome trying to parent an infant trapped inside my own body! I just can’t seem to please her and if I do it isn’t for long. “We” are chronically lonely.

When my Mom took her own life, it feels like she took a part of me with her. I was too young to know her but there must be a part of me that did. A part of me that just can’t seem to find lasting comfort with life in this world without her. I try! I really try but it’s on days like today that remind me I have to keep at it! When you are a mother to your own soul your work is never done.

Sigh…..I hope something here resonates. I’d love to hear from you and your story.

15 November 2021 Glow

Hello to you how are you? It’s Monday again. My Monday is gray and overcast. In a little while I have to drive to my therapist appointment. It will be good for me to get out and talk to another human being.

We had a small victory here. If you will recall from a few posts ago I had bought a Djembe drum. Well turns out it had wood eating insects in it!! Well one of my new Meetup friends suggested I put it in a bag and freeze it. If worked! I could send it back but I am kind of attached to it now. When I look at the little instrument it reminds me that I too have flaws and imperfections but am still useful to God.

The times I feel the most useful is when I’m feeling the “glow.” It’s that warm feeling in the center of my chest when I’m right where and when I’m supposed to be. When I feel that feeling it emanates through my whole body. Most times it comes when I’m expressing true emotions…..stuff of the spirit. When I’m talking with others about real things….about God. When I’m in that space I’m not worried about the world I’m living in….what I’ve left undone.

Sometimes this world feels like the story of Mary and Martha:

Luke 10:38-42New International Version

At the Home of Martha and Mary

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha(A) opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary,(B) who sat at the Lord’s feet(C)listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care(D) that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried(E) and upset about many things,42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[a](F) Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Busy busy busy……our world is so busy that we miss what is important. We miss what is right in front of us. We miss an opportunity to glow. In the end what is it that remains of us ? Is it what we did or how and who we loved?

What makes you glow?

14 November 2021 Safe

Hi. How are you? It’s 806 pm as I write you. Today has been a good day. For those of you that have been following along with me you know driving has been a thing for me. Today I drove the farthest I’ve driven here in Idaho and made it there and back safe….praise God and my guardian Angel! I had a really enjoyable visit with my family – it was a happy birthday!

Tonight I watched a live broadcast of Elevation Church’s Steven Furtick and his message really resonated. Steven had a unique style of preaching – so much energy! Don’t weep for what’s left you, whatever it is. Something better is coming!! Build on what remains. I have endured a lot of losses but a lot of good remains. A lot of good has come. God knows my heart and has not abandoned me to sorrow. Today I was crying for the loss of my husband to divorce and God filled the void with my loving family. I can’t go back….only forwards…..better!

I can remember being in my back yard in Texas crying because my world had gotten so small. I kept playing the song by Mind In A Box called Escape over and over. God had to move so many pieces to answer my pleas. I lost so much but as my new life unfolds I realize there was no other way. God delivered me and my husband. My husband was too young to be trapped as my caretaker and he just couldn’t help me. So many pieces have to move for just one moment….just one prayer.