What & Why & Who Am I?

a New Year's Eve retrospective and prospective for 2024

I recorded this on NY Eve, and I want you to know that I dressed up just for you! First I served a 4-course dinner practically in my pajamas. But as the older generation, I’m invisible anyway, so it doesn’t matter. (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have a funny skit on this in Grace & Frankie. Look at #2 The Cigarette Run.) And staying in the kitchen to cook kept me out of trouble. I didn’t get into an argument until dessert! And for that I have you to thank.

After packing off the kids to their burlesque show and fixing myself another blue martini, I could get dressed up, slap on some makeup and talk to people who want to hear what I have to say! That’s a revolution in my life.

I don’t believe in making resolutions. They get in the way of revolutions. Instead, I list accomplishments even on a monthly basis. I’ve crossed out ‘To Do List’ in my planner and instead written ‘Accomplishments.’ So here’s what’s happened in 2023:

• I went from 1100 subscribers to 2700 on all platforms.

• This is my 200th video, including the two taken down by YT.

• These resulted in 5000 hours of people listening to my ideas.

• Started putting all videos up on Rumble also.

YT analytics tells me that 65% of my audience is male and 50% of my viewers are over 65. And that’s great because it takes time to get as smart as we are!

A new joy in my life has been the smart, sassy, supportive women who read and comment. This makes me so happy! And there are those in the next generation—you know who you are—who I get to mentor. And I love this. I love you!

I was venting about a personal situation to Tonika of Visceral Adventures, who wrote:

I feel terrible for the younger generation who have to navigate such confusing waters and still retain their social capital. In the end, we get to an age where it doesn’t matter so much because the ones who know don’t care and those that care don’t know.

One of the advantages of knowing the shit that’s going down is that it keeps me from sweating the small stuff—no signing petitions, marches, rallies, political campaigns. The world as we know it is ending, so who cares?

In his Year of Do MEMEs (which I think should be Do Re Memes) Ratio Broadbornius has an Apocaloptimist, a label I proudly claim:

Year Of Do MEMEs

Heather of Bliss & Blisters posted a Happy New Year Meme-A-Thon:

Happy New Year Meme-A-Thon

And Tonika of Visceral Adventures has an end of 2023 Memelanche. Take your time and ride the wave at your leisure, don’t let it bury you. Memes are all fun, no obligation:

End of 2023 Year in Review Memelanche

Steve Martin of Count Chocula reminds us the shitfuckery will not end with 2023. Western Japan has just had a 7.6 earthquake with tsunami waves bringing down buildings. Is there a relationship between the Year of the Dragon and the Dragon Court? Let’s get Frances and Nefahotep on that.

In looking at the video, I flipped to another tsunami on Dec 28th in Ventura, California, then watched footage of waves in Santa Cruz go over the head of a kid on the street, who emerged laughing. Hopefully the parents emerged less stupid.

This happened mere days ago and scant blocks away, yet was narrated by an eerie AI voice that put full stops between Santa and Cruz. Is this how the world will end, broadcast by robots? Are there so many shocks being administered, we can’t even keep track of the last week?

Ringing in the Year of the Dragon with a Roar

But the one I related to most was Pasheen Stonebrooke of Diva Drops in Wicked New Year that included these gems:

Wicked New Year

But in fact, I will probably do more stupid shit in this year. Specifically, get into arguments with people who like me. This often doesn’t feel good but why argue with people who don’t? They’re not going to listen anyway. As my youngest daughter says, you can only change what you love. And I think that goes with who you love, and who you could be changed by too.

So my resolution is to have better arguments. In the spirit of casual promises to myself that I’m under no legal obligation to fulfill, here are some other ways I’d like to step up my stack game in 2024:

• In a moment of insanity, I thought I’d put out four (count ‘em, four) episodes a week on topics where I have partial drafts of books I’d like to finish. Then I came to my senses and said, “Why do I want to take a good thing and turn it into a job? Fastest way to ruin a passion.”

• I am, however, still vaguely intending to pre-record a YT for midnight, PST, every other day and send out the Substack the next morning. I’ve found that Substack won’t embed a scheduled YT, even if it sends after the YT posts. So the universe wants me to learn delay of gratification.

• The formula I’d like to keep in bi-weekly rotation is socio-spiritual solutions and subversive Bible studies ;-)

  • The socio I’ve thought of as Third Paradigm Thursdays that look at false dichotomies and proposes a completely different plane to consider.

  • Spirituality Sundays will continue my book draft, A House for the Soul in the Land Beyond Faith and develop a systematic way of discussing what religion should be and the Big Questions.

  • Solutions Tuesday would apply the system changes proposed in How to Dismantle an Empire. The second book in the series I call A 2020 Vision would be How to Build a Commonwealth. Unlike Corbett’s Solutions Watch that looks at what you can do as an individual within the current system, this would envision how your community would use the caret system to solve its problems. Mark Alexander is working on an app that would facilitate the caret system, and show how it would be applied. Exciting developments in 2024!

  • Subversive Sabbath Bible study would develop my book draft of A People’s History of the Bible, Old Testament and New. This would systematically apply the premise that Josephus wrote the gospels and edited the Torah to twist the truth and serve the Davidic dynasty and Roman Empire as a coded military strategy. At the same time, it would unravel the ‘seamless cloth’ to follow the threads to the ‘truth that could set us free.’

I reserve the right to change my mind as soon as a new idea pops into it. But I won’t change my mind on my gratitude for all of you. At 66 years old, I have finally found my people and get to have real conversations that go somewhere. And go somewhere fast! It’s amazing how much progress can be made when people are allowed to talk freely. Let’s use this in 2024!

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To see how far I’ve come, this is What & Why & Who Am I? in Year Two and the very first What & Why so you can see how bad my sound and lighting was. But my heart was in the same place:

On the solstice anniversary of Third Paradigm, I do a one-year retrospective. Following Russell Brand's advice to "dance with the devil but don't go home with him," I put my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, on Amazon. I started a YT channel and published 77 episodes (with only one deleted by YT). On Substack's writing platform, I combined videos with text and found smart, perceptive commenters on each. I describe the common thread in each of the nine playlists: The Great Reset; GeoPolitics & Ukraine; Propaganda & Censorship; Politics IS Division; Sex, Money & Power; Socio-Spirituality; Restoring Local Sovereignty; Where Are the Women?; and What Is Reality? I look at 2022 as the year of truth-telling and crisis/opportunity when we need to be ready with a plan. Thank you to all of my subscribers and viewers who made this the year I found my people!

Introduces the Third Paradigm and "Yes And...Russell Brand"-- responding to his Under the Skin interviews on metaphysics, global politics, food ethics, parenting, cults and conspiracies, and many more. Uses the spiritual lens of A Course in Miracles to turn reality inside out, and the economic lens of my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, to turn capitalism upside down.