life practice
consciousness
choice

My life has become a practice of making conscious choices, and learning how to respond from the largest of my Self. At least, that’s what I’ve chosen to make it. And I also think of it as a way to create peace within and without. Sometimes it goes better than other times, but I’m aware of what I’m doing, and even if I'm not acting from the highest of myself, I love myself through it.

Navigating between outer insanity and inner complexity can leave one’s emotional body on a constantly frayed edge. It’s not always a good-feeling place to inhabit. In one moment there’s the heartbreak of reading news headlines (that’s all I can bear these days) on my iPhone, yet in the next I can know the joy of observing a glorious moon dotted by winking planets in the night sky, or anticipating the divine taste of the crustless quiche whose aroma is wafting from my oven.

I’ve chosen, at least for now, to live a mostly inner focused life, and things that once seemed so important, no long seem so. Instead, I’ve noticed how I feel more connected to Spirit, how synchronicities and angel numbers appear more often, how my intuition seems more expansive. And I’m finding I want to talk less, especially about my issues, and when I do talk, to slow down and be more conscious of what I say. The meaning of words goes deeper than sound and syllable. While my inner life feels a lot more real, on a practical level, stuff happens and I have to deal with it. Although how I deal with it is up to me. And lately, I’ve been observing myself in a number of interesting situations.

Things are changing so fast in every arena on this evolving planet. Outwardly, it’s the accelerated time of no more secrets and endless lies, and the proverbial ca-ca is flying all over the place. And things that have been around for many years seem to grow weirder and weirder. For example, Facebook has gone crazy. I’m not on much, but I’ve noticed that I can hardly find my friends anymore. And there are now endless invasive ads based on anything I’ve ever researched in my browser or even wondered about, I swear. I think it reads my mind. Or my texts. And there are now also these long, meandering posts, too often claiming to be someone’s “true” story, or opinion, or confession, most of which are suspect to me. And how about all the celebrated couples who had adopted twin orphans decades ago and are now reunited with them. Or all the famous folks in hospital, or diagnosed with serious illnesses. Who posts these things? And why? All of this said, I have actually learned how to wish a friend a happy birthday, post about something new on the blog, or add a heart to a friend’s art, without letting the weirdness affect me.

Another thing that has gotten weirder are the spam writing-related emails I get. They used to just be from those who claim to be impressed by my books and want to help me market them. But now I receive emails from authors themselves! I’ve received detailed emails from Ocean Vuong, Fredrik Backman, and a few others I don’t recall saying how they want to communicate with authors whose work they admire. I must say that the email from Ocean Vuong, the first like that I received, sounded very real, well written, and with accurate reference to the themes in my books. He talked about things we both share as writers, like our love of magic realism, etc. What happens when someone replies?

Open Lotus, Chihuly Exhibit at Biltmore Estate, Asheville NC 

As far as other venues in the 3-D world, I have learned to do really well with Amazon agents. I wish I could say I don’t have to use Amazon, but the fact is that I do. And since I do, I feel great gratitude and appreciation for all those who so often help me resolve issues. I choose to trust that somewhere down the road the Jeff Bezoses of this world will disappear. I hope I’ll live to see such transformation. Meanwhile, I almost always have fun with the agents I speak with.

One agent helped me return some face cream, from Taiwan or somewhere, that I did not order. She was very cheery and started chatting with me about face cream and her skin and how it was still breaking out, as if I was the same age as her. When I asked, she said she was twenty-two, which made me laugh out loud. “I’m seventy-nine” I said, and she laughed out loud. She solved my problem, offering personal anecdotes as she worked. And when all was done, she told me to have a nice evening, to which I replied, “Have and nice…life!” She chuckled. “Oh that’s so nice," she said. "Thank you.” It's lovely to uplift people with the unexpected.

Another time on Amazon, I was talking to a young (I could tell) male agent, I think from Pakistan or India, who called me sweetheart. This was a first. If I were a younger woman, I suppose I would have reacted differently. But he sounded so polite and sincere that it amused me. I said “I should be calling you sweetheart. I’m old enough to be your grandmother. I’m seventy-nine.” He laughed and told me I didn’t sound that old, and we continued to have a delightful, light-hearted interaction.

Morning Egret, Naples FL

That said, it is wise to wait a while before switching to a brand new platform. There are always bugs that create issues, and it’s often best to allow time for them to be addressed and updated. But I wanted to see what was going on and decided to migrate my own two websites to Divi 5. I also wanted to redesign this blog and I didn’t see the sense of doing it in the older Divi 4.

Okay, so once Divi 5 was released, all the Divi tech groups I belong to on Facebook went wild. You mostly hear about the issues on these venues, since people are both reporting them as requested, and asking for feedback or help. The posts were scary in that they were talking about things I was not at all familiar with — loops, flex, clamps. Clamps is apparently a new fluid function to size modules in addition to px, ems, rems, vh. Oy.

Anyway, I built staging sites for both of my websites — Serendipity Digital Design, and Rachelle Rogers. I’m happy to report that SDD, a smaller site, migrated beautifully both from Divi 4 to Divi 5, and from staging back to live without any issues. I was more nervous doing the migrations for this writing site, since it has a lot more content, including the last three years of blog posts along with a few I saved from 2013 and 2016. Plus the book and poetry pages, and a YouTube promo video I had made a decade ago for my memoir Rare Atmosphere: An Extraordinary Inter-dimensional Affair of the Heart. I was hoping that wouldn't create any issues.

Once on the staging site, I uploaded Divi 5, opened the special migrator, and pressed the buttons. I realized I was holding my breath. But then…success! Everything migrated perfectly. I began to design a new main blog page and a new post page and that’s when the reality of the learning curve kicked in. Every action from Divi 4 was there, but in totally different places and with a plethora of new, and to me still incomprehensible, advanced features.

Without going into any more boring detail, I will say that I spent days researching and watching videos, trying and messing things up. I’m a good researcher. And a generally patient person. And, even though it was hardly a smooth ride, I eventually was able to build a new blog and post pages, although there are still some bugs to be sorted out. And the migration from staging to live, the part causing the most apprehension, actually went well, with few things to clean up.

But there are other things I’m learning from this experience, like how good it feels to be stretching my brain around something new…and even complicated. And how, once I started getting the hang of things, I so much enjoyed designing and creating the new pages. I felt engaged, productive, and happy to know that at seventy-nine, I’m doing okay.