Ampersand Gazette #47
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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Mattering is “a core, universal human need,” a necessary component for well-being, Dr. Flett said. But it’s tricky to define, he added, because people sometimes confuse it with belonging, self-esteem and social connection.…
To matter, people must feel valued—heard, appreciated and cared for—and they must feel like they add value in ways that make them feel capable, important and trusted, said Isaac Prilleltensky, a professor at the University of Miami and a co-author of “How People Matter.” It’s a two-part definition: feeling valued and adding value.
From an article by Gail Cornwall in The New York Times
“Want to Want to Believe in Yourself? ‘Mattering’ Is Key.”
September 27, 2023
Matter is of course a word sourced in the Latin mater, meaning mother. To matter is a core, universal human need. Do you think of yourself as if you matter? This goes along with another need, one which I have heard voiced over more than four decades of counseling. This one goes: I just want to make a difference.
Personally, I think we all want to make a difference, especially related to the people, places, and causes we care about in this world. A lot of not-so-swell seems to be happening the world over at this moment. I could make a list, but you already know what’s on it.
Do you matter in any of those world-wide situations? I believe you do, whether you feel like you do or not. That feeling like you matter is actually what makes the difference in mattering at all.
Unfortunately, most of have this sense that unless we’re discovering the cure for HIV/AIDS, or some such other grandiose solution, whatever we have to do with it doesn’t matter. But is that true? I don’t think so, and no, I don’t even know where the laboratory is or what the science could be that might be close to a cure.
I do, however, know people who are living with HIV/AIDS. Fortunately, in the United States, the treatments for the syndrome have turned it into a chronic disease for those who can afford them, rather than an immediately fatal one. I pray for, offer absent healing, and often listen to those who have HIV/AIDS. That matters.
I actually think that’s where most of us do our mattering—not globally, locally. We can’t all be Greta Thunberg. But we can all care for our planet, do what we can to mitigate climate change, and, of course, we can always pray. Each of those behaviors is a form of mattering.
In the face of the resignation, apathy, and digital hypnotism of our everyday world, do you feel as though you matter? And there is the key: feeling it.
Feeling valued—which most of us have hooked up as coming from outside ourselves.
Adding value—which most of us are at last learning must come from within ourselves.
If your value is dependent upon what you receive from the outside world as validating both it and you, then of course there is never enough. You are never enough. What you do is never enough. Scarcity, anyone? (Which I prefer to think of as a place: Scare City.)
If your value, on both adding and feeling fronts, comes from within, then whatever you happen upon as kudos from the outside is just extra. That core value, though, is part of what we’re all doing here—learning to establish it, nourish it, feel it, and give to the world from it.
Value, the value you place upon yourself, your time, your energy, your focus, your care, is an inside job, Beloved. If you feel valued, excellent. If you don’t, start valuing yourself, even if it’s just you in the bathroom mirror.
Every single time you value yourself, you acknowledge that you are here for a reason, and that, whether you can see it right now this minute or not, the world—the whole world—needs the value that you bring simply by being alive.
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We are no longer achieving an acceptable level of whimsy. In even the smallest corners of daily life, we are asked to abandon delicious inefficiencies—the archaic flights of fancy, the capricious nonsense—in favor of a totalizing commitment to the false idols of logic, regularity and efficacy.
It is time, in a disorganized and utterly decentralized way, to fight back. Away with the metric system; not only should we keep up with inches and miles—who needs the cold logic of 10s that can be found in metric?—but we should also return units like the barleycorn, the furlong, the drachm and the fluid scruple (composed, naturally, of 20 minims) to common usage. De-decimalize not just the U.S. dollar but every currency. And let’s stop blasting holes in mountainsides—just let the damn road have a few switchbacks.
Our society is hooked on efficiency. People work to optimize their lives, multitasking every possible activity, looking to force every possible minute out of the day to be productive, turning hobbies into “side hustles”—and from this they suffer. That much, many seem to know.…
There is a whimsy in those lifestyle choices and hobbies, a whimsy in doing things the roundabout way. It is simple enough to argue that the most direct path is the best one, but humanity doesn’t really work like that. As a species, we learn by doing—and often enough, we find joy in it. Taking the time to master a skill, to understand a process or to have a conversation—even if it isn’t quite as fast—is consistently more rewarding than having something simply done for you. Efficiency-focused single-mindedness might make things faster, but it is a thief of life’s joys.
… —there is a beauty and (dare I say it) usefulness to inefficiency. Inefficiency is generative; inefficiency is where we source our ideas, our inspirations, our conceptions of a world of endless paths and journeys rather than one of monotonous drudgery occupied only in repetitive labor. A life whimsically lived, a society whimsically (dis)ordered, is one that promotes freedom of thought, even as it knows many of the freely found thoughts won’t be all that useful.
from an Opinion Essay by Parker Richards
“Down With Efficiency! (When We Get Around To It.)”
October 5, 2023
My birthday was this past week, and I had a really lovely day doing the thing I love best: writing. I received a pile of research books for more writing. Calls, texts, emojis, emails, good wishes on various social media, and an ecard of singing balloons.
Parker Richards’ essay really hit the spot for me. I’m tired of efficiency. Oh, not all the time. Well, I mean … I like efficiency … for some things. But perpetual efficiency just doesn’t work for me anymore.
My birthday always makes me miss my mama a little more than normal. She was the world’s best gift-giver, I swear. She could meet someone just once, and know how to buy them the perfect gift.
Her favorite word for me was magic—she would say, “Susan? Susan is magic.” Her second favorite was whimsical. I think whimsy always holds an element of surprise in it. And I wholeheartedly agree with Parker Richards, we need more of it.
The ecard had singing balloons. We all know that balloons can’t sing, of course, but that was the magic and the whimsy. I’ve said before in these pages that I am guided to every single thing I need for whatever I’m writing at the time. It’s so, so true.
The thing is … I don’t go hunting for it. Nor do I Google it. Look it up in Roget’s. Or GoodReads. I don’t ask on Facebook.
For whimsy to begin to make an appearance in a life, you must learn to let it come to you.
The thing that surprises me every time is that I would never have searched for that thing, whatever has shown up. I, like the rest of us, am limited by my own filters. I can only think up what I can think up.
But … if I’ll leave a gap, a space, a … potential, for something magical, something whimsical, to find me, all sorts of things appear out of the treasure trove of universal abundance.
One of the other major principles of whimsy is that it loves to feel our reactions of delight to its appearance. That means presence, this moment, paying attention.
It has been said that we now live in an attention economy—the greatest asset each of us has is our attention. Perhaps, but I would add that, on that magical day when whimsy comes to call, bringing you just what you need, bearing a huge whip-cream dollop of delight, those are the days that I don’t even know the word efficiency. And oh, they bring me joy.
The next time things are too push, push, push for you—stop paying attention, float, breathe, doodle, make up a tiddly pom song like Winnie the Pooh, dance in the kitchen for no reason, play air guitar, write limericks, sit and do nothing, and see what comes your way. I hope you’ll be surprised.
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Don’t forget this bottomline prayer. It works every time …
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And in publishing news …
Jasmine Increscent is live on three platforms: Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble! I am so pleased.
I’ve extended the sale on both Jezebel Rising and Jasmine Increscent until the 18th on all platforms.
In the back matter of both books, there is a page offering to send you an email to forward to a friend who you think will love these books. Please! Take advantage.
May I ask, if you read either of The Subversive Lovelies books and enjoy them, that you post an Amazon review please? Reviews are the major determining factor for that pesky little algorithm. Thanks!
School’s in full sway now, and people are settling into this semester’s routines whatever they may be. Are you making time to read for your own pleasure? Even if it’s ‘only’ a chapter a night?
That’s one of the things I’m really careful about in my writing. Most of my chapters are within a +/- five hundred words the same length. That’s so you can read one before bed and know you won’t get caught in a long, long chapter.
And for those who missed it …
Here’s the blurb (to whet your appetite)—
A wedding. Increasing. And it’s time to start her vicety … it’s a three-ring circus—oh, my.
Jasmine Bailey is the second eldest of the Bailey siblings, yes, those Baileys. Known for being much more in the present than the future, years earlier she’d begun a one-woman mission to serve mothers who’d been abandoned by their spouses in the worst slum ever to darken New York City: Five Points. Universally recognized by her honorific, Lady Jasmine, throughout Gilded Age society, the wealthy take their checkbooks in hand whenever they see her strawberry blonde braid and her lissome figure coming.
Now it’s time for Jasmine’s vicety—the second of four the sibs had planned upon the death of their beloved father four years earlier. Since then, Jezebel’s pair of viceties—The Obstreperous Trumpet, a saloon, and The Salacious Sundae, an ice cream parlor—were going great guns. Jasmine had originally intended to create a high-end gambling hell. Except ... her wedding is scheduled in less than a month, and she’s increasing. There’s, uh, a lot on her plate.
Jasmine’s research takes her from the lowest of the low policy shops in Mulberry Bend to an outré visit to the most elite gambling institution in town. Still, she’s struggling with what is in her heart about starting this vicety. A chance sentence, if you believe in that sort of thing, overheard whilst at breakfast one morning changes everything.
Will her struggle with gambling resolve to her satisfaction, or will Jasmine have to scrap every idea she ever had about it to start over again? Sure, no doubt she could, but does she want to, and how will that affect her siblings and their nefariously well-meant agenda in Chelsea Towers?
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And OMG!!! I finished Gemma Eclipsing on Friday, the 13th—perfect.
By that I mean the narrative. I was able to type Finis.
And now comes a whole ton of work—writing all the front matter—the dedication, the epigraph, figuring out the free gift, and writing all the back matter—the Author Note, bio, Historical Notes, the Gratitudes, and then there’s re-reading the whole 228,315 words (so far), editing, checking grammar and spelling, making sure of continuity, and only then do I send it to my editor.
Tony, my editor (and if you need a good one, find him here), and full disclosure, my much beloved husband, bless the man, will go through the manuscript, fixing small errors—spelling and sentence structure, but also asking questions, pointing out continuity issues I missed, noting possible historical errors, and more.
His self-dubbed name for what he does is Book Husband. And that’s exactly what he does. He, somehow, has figured out how to live in the world that each of his authors has created, and participates avidly in that world. His gift is remarkable, so if this fall is a time to get going on that book you’ve always dreamed of writing, find him here with my heartfelt blessing.
And while the book is with him, I have a whole ’nother to-do list, but I’ll save that for when it’s time.
P. S. Oh! And I wrote the first scene of the next book on the 14th: Jacqueline Retrograde & Jaq Direct. Right on schedule.
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As you will know by now, a next, new speculative fiction series is starting to gather momentum, and I am hanging on tight. Research is still top of the list. The title for the series is:
I have been given the titles of all four books in the series. The first one is:
The book takes on the healthcare system in the U.S., and its evil twin, the insurance industry.
I am still researching, but I am also ready to say that I’ve discovered something remarkable about the avatar for this book, who some of you might recognize. Her name is Lilith. It turns out Adam was a divorcé.
What I’ve discovered in my depth astrological studies is that there are actually five Liliths! Five!! And that each one represents the pattern of how Lilith plays out in your life, only in a slightly different way.
Right now, I’m seeking a few volunteers to have me create a Lilith Legacy Chart fsor them. If you know that’s you, please email me, and send me standard birthdate and year, time, and place (town, states, country) you were born.
The storyline of the books is coming to me slowly. It’s a process I treasure.
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Speaking of whimsy and magic, here is a map of a green earth. Try to meditate with it sometime, and see what happens. I am, of course, more convinced than ever that And is the solution to everything, and so, Be Ampersand, Beloved, until next time.