#DoYou10Q? Rosh Hashona through Yom Kippur, September 29 – October 10
(#Jewish New Year High Holidays), Read, Respond, Review, Forecast

It’s not too late, and you don’t have to be Jewish or celebrate #Jewish High Holy Days (Rosh Hashona, Jewish New Year’s, and Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement”) to want to spend some time considering your life and your goals/accomplishments each year. I was raised Jewish, but I am a practicing #Buddhist.

It’s free! http://doyou10Q.com and #DoYou10Q are the connection points.

Check out any local Partners with 10Q: http://doyou10q.com/partners: Reach out to Josh Kanter, Reboot’s outreach and partnership manager, at josh @ rebooters DOT net or (go to the site for his phone number (in the USA)].<

You can respond to all 10 Questions from September 29 through October 10, online, and have them put into the “vault” for yourself for next year’s reflections.

10Q: “Reflect. React. Renew. Life’s Biggest Questions. Answered By You.”

The title and all the info, below, come from the 10Q site. Visit! Sign up! Do it!
http://doyou10q.com/

“Answer one question per day [or more than one per day, if you have some to catch up on] in your own secret online 10Q space. Make your answers serious. Silly. Salacious. However you like. It’s your 10Q. When you’re finished, hit the magic button and your answers get sent to the secure online 10Q vault for safekeeping.

“One year later, the ‘vault’ will open and your answers will land back in your email inbox for private reflection.

“Want to keep them secret? Perfect. Want to share them, either anonymously or with attribution, with the wider 10Q community? You can do that, too.

“Next year, the whole process begins again. And the year after that, and the year after that.

“Do you 10Q? You should. If you have, already, enter the “giveaway” by sharing one or more experiences and using the hashtag, as directed:

Click here to get your 10Q on.

10Q begins September 29, 2019, and goes for 10+ days
http://doyou10q.com/

Here are my responses to some of the 11 questions (same questions each year), from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014:

2018

-1) Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

My Answer:

2017-2018 was the first full year of my life, since I was 12, that I haven’t worked for money in any type of job. This was not on purpose (I applied for dozens), and if it weren’t for the generosity of my mother (who has let me live with her since I suffered a TBI in 2014) and my son (who has given me money several times in the last year) as well as my having taken early Social Security and being eligible for some (a vert low but useful amount of money for) Food Stamps (SNAP), I don’t know what I would have done. I am grateful for all of that.

But, for over 19 months, now, I’ve had no health insurance except for dental. I will soon need new glasses that I cannot afford. I pay (with my son’s help) for acupuncture and Chinese herbs for my physical ailments. Otherwise, I see a Western medical doctor for only one visit each year so that I can qualify for my prescription medications. For that visit, I applied for and got the fees waived due to my low income. Grateful for that option as well. Fortunately, my three prescriptions are not the extremely costly variety, because I also have to pay for those myself.

I keep trying to get work, but due to many factors, such as: employers’ ageism and/or their preference for hiring someone who will “stay a while”; my extensive experience (which intimidates many potential employers who have a lot less than I do); the dearth of appropriate jobs for my skill set and education where I live; my physical limitations; and, my mission-based choosiness, I have not succeeded in being hired even when it’s “down to the finalists,” which has occurred several times.

Meanwhile, I’ve earned a grand total of less than $50 this year for book sales and editing/proofreading gigs.

I’ve been wondering when/if I’ll ever earn money as a wage worker again (I am now 64)?

We’ll see. I pray for all those who are in even worse situations, who have no family to fall back on, no Social Security, no SNAP(Food Stamps), no hope.

May all beings have shelter, food, comfort, meaningful work, and physical safety.

The failures, travesties, horrors, lies, greed and malfeasance as well as outright criminality of the current Republican party and particularly the Trump administration are staggeringly disheartening, frightening and disgusting. Having lived through Nixon/Watergate and all of Vietnam, Bill Clinton, both Bushes and Reagan, I thought I’d seen the worst of USA politics. I was so wrong!

I’ve never been so ashamed to be a citizen of this country nor a member of the human species as I have this year.

This year (and many more to come) are consequentially tragic for so many; merely awful, for me and so many others.

For me personally:
1) My son and his wife will purchase a home and move into it which has space for me to live, when I’m ready, which will “solidify” my “next phase” living plans;
NOT YET
2) I will find meaningful and lucrative work and/or keep writing and start earning more money from that;
NOPE
3) I will complete a mini-retreat at least once/year, somehow, starting in November, 2018;
Did manage a 9-day retreat this past May – June!  Yay! Am also doing more regular 1/2-day and multiple-hour meditation sessions on “weekdays,” since I’m not working, still. 
4) My relationship with my spiritual teacher will continue to be on a positive footing;
YES!
5) I will make at least one new and significant friend and possibly start an intimate relationship in the next 12 months;
Rekindled a long-distance friendship this summer with a dharma friend that is very fun, challenging, beneficial to us both and wonderful to have. No intimate relationships, though.
6) My health will continue to improve and/or stabilize at a good level.
Yes, but still very overweight.

For our country/the world:
1) Dems will get a majority in all parts of the government so that Trump and his family members (except for Tiffany and Barron), Pence, McConnell, Ryan, and many others will join their already-sentenced criminal comrades to be indicted, plead guilty, be sentenced, impeached, removed, and we will have the movement toward having a special election in 2020 for a new administration;
IT IS HAPPENING! Voted many GOP Reps out at all levels, and many resignations gave Dems the House and many new seats in the Senate (but voter suppression/voting machine fraud/Republican shenanigans, including gerrymandering, moving and removing polling places, giving wrong dates for polling, collection and not counting absentee ballots, etc., gave the criminals the Senate majority).
#Impeachment proceedings began yesterday (9/24/19)! YAY!
Indict, imprison, remove them ALL! 
2) All the horrible policies, decisions and edicts enacted by the previous administration will be removed, rolled back, ended, fixed;
PLEASE! 
3) All the children will be found and returned to their families who are currently illegally detained and/or sold/”adopted” away from their families;
PLEASE! 
4) Melania Trump will divorce Donald Sr.;
NOT YET.
5) Elizabeth Warren, Sally Yates, Kamala Harris and many other great female leaders will rise to the top of government offices;
Two are running for President for 2020! 
6) The newest Supreme Court Justices will include great judges who will replace Kennedy, Scalia’s illegal replacement appointee, and Thomas (who will be impeached as well) so that RBG can retire with dignity;
IMPEACH Kavanaugh and Thomas, remove Gorsuch, and we’ll be golden! 
7) New election and electoral college (ABOLISHED) rules and laws will be put into place so we never have another situation like the one we have had in/since 2016 (ending voter suppression, gerrymandering, closing polls, arbitrary ID laws, etc., that disproportionately disfavor minorities);
Stacey Abrams is ON IT! 
8) The USA will come “on board” for climate change, arms reduction, ending ALL armed conflicts and becoming a beacon of peace, again.
Thanks to Greta Thunberg, things are moving in the right direction in some areas! 

One can hope….

2017

-1) Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

My Answer:

This has been a very strange year, professionally.

—I went back to work as a teacher for the first time in many decades just before the new year started, but was mistreated, disrespected, slandered, libeled and driven out of the job within 6 months. Even though I felt somewhat satisfied as a teacher (reaching students no one else had been able to reach, helping several complete their G.E.D.s, and moving others along who had been stalled,) and a teacher trainer (my co-teacher had never had education to be a teacher; she had been a vet, so she had said that she learned a lot from me), the attendance dwindled so much that we often only had 1 or 2 students for weeks at after Jan. 2., It was a complete waste of my time and skills to be there. I was relieved to be “laid off” in mid-February, 2017.

—Despite much effort, many applications and several interviews, I still haven’t [as of September, 2018] found a good place to put my skills, experience, knowledge and expertise to use. Why is that?

—I also haven’t finished my fourth Volume in my sci-fi series even though it has been more than 3/4 finished for over [two years]. My urge to write has flown.

—I stopped doing my online conversational talk show about one year ago as well, due to technical problems (not mine; YouTube’s) that took more than a month to resolve. By the time I could return to it, I didn’t want to do that any longer, either.

I feel guilty, as if I’m wasting my life. I have so much to offer and nowhere to offer it.

What to do with myself, professionally, is the burning question of my 64th year on this planet. Hope I can figure that out.

2016

–Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

My Answer:

I had an up-close-and-personal experience with the American judicial and jury system and I was very disappointed and discouraged from it all. From the attorneys to the judges, the jurors to the laws: all crap, and not in favor of actual justice for the plaintiff, ever, as far as I could tell.
I was severely injured (and still recovering) in a trip-and-fall in a restaurant that was clearly liable and negligent, causing there to be obstacles in the path of a patron which a patron could not easily see. The jury actually agreed on that. However, due to archaic laws, lobbying by the insurance greedies and other mistakes in jurisprudence (which disallowed anyone from actually informing the jury how the “awards” they intended to go to me would be apportioned or the fact the restaurant owner would not pay a dime due to his having insurance), I got nothing, my lawyer was out $30K, and I owe many thousands of dollars to family and friends. I am grateful to all who have helped and continue to help me, but resentful and angry at the unfair outcome of my two+ years of misery.
I am an educated, white, older woman with intelligent and supportive friends and family. I can only shudder to imagine how this “justice” system grinds up those without support or resources and other people who are already on the short end of every stick.
USA justice isn’t.

–Describe an event in the world that has impacted you this year. How? Why?

My Answer:

The Marriage Equality Act’s being confirmed as the law of the USA by the Supreme Court was a giant step in the right direction for equal rights for all individuals regardless of sexual orientation. As a bisexual woman who eschewed marriage for many reasons, inequality being among them, I am glad to see people who want to get married being able to do.

2015

—Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

My Answer:

I was able to reconnect with my meditation practice in March & May and again in early Sept. through instruction and connection with my spiritual teacher, Lama Drimed, after many false starts, attempts, painful absences and confusions as well as hurt feelings on my part.

So happy about all that!

—Describe an event in the world that has impacted you this year. How? Why?

My Answer:

The upholding of Marriage Equality laws and the enforcing of them across the USA and in other countries feels like a giant victory.

Looser laws, releasing noncriminals from prison when their only “crime” is possession of marijuana, and eventual legalization of marijuana/cannabis use across the USA and other countries also seem imminent, due to the vast success (economic and social) of those places in which it is already legal and those changes have already occurred; another set of great victories.

I appreciate the egalitarians’ winning. I appreciate common sense’s prevailing. I appreciate nondiscrimination’s being enforced. Feels right and good.

—Have you had any particularly spiritual experiences this past year? How has this experience affected you? “Spiritual” can be broadly defined to include secular spiritual experiences: artistic, cultural, and so forth.

My Answer:

Due to a TBI [Traumatic Brain Injury] in April, 2014, I went from not being able to meditate for almost one year (after meditating consistently for over 42 years) to restoring my practice, slowly, bit by bit. Very grateful to my spiritual teacher, sangha and good fortune that this has been possible.

Returning to my practice is like coming home.

—How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year? Is there a piece of advice or counsel you received in the past year that could guide you?

My Answer:

My meditation teacher reminded me that meditation practice in our tradition comes from our heart center, not our brain area. The Tibetans use a term that means “heart-mind” when talking about the mind.

My wish to improve myself and my practice is to keep it centered in my heart. “Meditation: it’s not what you think.”

2014

—Describe an event in the world that has impacted you this year. How? Why?

My Answer:

Many science discoveries: proof of the multiverse, ability to teleport particles, invention of pre-tractor beam technology, getting paralyzed rats and others to walk, moving limbs and other things with just the mind: so much!

Very exciting, and all goes into research I use for The Spanners Series books!

—What is a fear that you have and how has it limited you? How do you plan on letting it go or overcoming it in the coming year?

My Answer:

Fear getting more unhealthy instead of more healthy over the next several years. Fear not getting my full meditation practice/brain function restored. Fear being unconnected to community/friends, no lover, no one close to me where I live.
Plan to keep exercising, eating better, reaching out to Buddhist and other groups (writers, Jews, work) to make friends.
Plan to stay in touch with my teacher.

—What are your predictions for 2015?

My Answer:

Movement toward reducing and ending full-impact football, hockey, etc. (headers in soccer, e.g.), in youth and college sports.

More states’ legalizing marijuana.

More states’ ratifying gay marriage.

Proof of alien life on other planets.

How do you want to 10Q? It’s up to you!