More Cold Tea Infusions

A post I wrote a little while ago was about cold tea infusions that were refreshing and delicious summer beverages.

Here are a few more. Try black tea with lavender. Mostly black with a little lavender for accent, similar to the combination of bergamot and black tea to make Earl Grey.

Another nice combo is black tea with peppermint.

Black tea with rosemary makes a tea with a wonderful light accent.

You can also combine green tea with lemon balm or lavender or just make a green tea infusion all by itself.

Lady Grey is a combination of green tea with bergamot, and to that you can add a dash of lavender.

Jasmine tea is also wonderful as a cold infusion.

For something green and caffeine free, try alfalfa and lemon balm. Or just lemon balm by itself.

Or for a real surprise, dill, nettle and alfalfa. The flavor is very mellow and you are still ingesting some wonderful nutrients while you sip this refreshing tea.

At this time of year, basil is growing prolifically. Let some fresh basil leaves float in a pitcher of water overnight and serve it with a twist of lemon, orange or grapefruit peel, the same way bartenders do with alcoholic beverages, like a martini with a twist, or a vodka on the rocks with a twist. Same principle with a non alcoholic summer cooler.

There are all kinds of delicious opportunities to experiment with while fresh herbs are in bloom.

Blackjack and Intuition

Recently I went up to Blackhawk to gamble. I like to play blackjack. Although it seems like most people play slot machines these days, I enjoy the games where you have a person dealing and other players in the mix.

In the old days, players used to mentally count all the cards that had turned up on the table, which meant that people with quick memory and retention could predict what cards were likely to turn up. So the casinos responded by putting several decks in a shoe so that it would be about impossible to count. Since they rotate dealers every half hour, you could play that long without going through a whole shoe. So it is still possible for intuition to have a rule alongside the logical rules of blackjack. It is a game where intuition and logic will battle. There were times when I just felt like I should take a card, and other times where the traditional rules served well.

Being aware of energies in a casino is an interesting experience because even though I know about following instincts, it is still possible to be pulled off course.

In the first hour or two, I was way ahead of my original stake. I was in the groove and rolling. I made small bets at first and then when I felt the groove, I kept increasing my bets.

Then the flow turned and I wasn't getting any cards. If I stayed on 20, the dealer would pull 21. When that energy shifted, I should have cashed in my chips and took a break from the table, but I was feeling that I could keep on building my winnings. But instead they dwindled, until I lost it all.

I noticed changes in energy with dealers too. Even though they are all trained and they all act professionally, there is definitely a difference. With some dealers, I was clicking like crazy while others seemed to only deal me losing hands.

I could sense when the energies were shifting, but still, I thought I could override my intuition and win anyway.

The other players and dealers were fascinating to watch and some were fun to play with. Next time, I will follow my instincts closer. Every experience is instructive, if we are alert and aware.

Have you had similar experiences?

Rain. Coffee. Dancing

It was lovely to have three of my favorite things this weekend. I always love the rain and I wish we had more of it. A good cup of coffee is a much appreciated simple treasure in the morning. And dancing? Dancing is a great antidote to stress, conflict, boredom, and whatever else is temporarily interfering with your happiness. As soon as you start to dance, that stuff all melts away and fades into the background and you come home with a smile on your face.

Rain. Coffee. Dancing. All three of these things are wonderful. To have them all on the same day is like rolling in wave after wave of joy.

Reading the Beer Leaves

Whether or not you are a beer drinker, there are some interesting lessons from looking at what is happening in that business.

Back in our grandparents time there were lots of little breweries, beer gardens, local and regional brands. Then little by little, a few big breweries became the dominant players, buying up some of the smaller brands and adding them to their product line while other small brewers went out of business and a few others managed to survive as marginal players. The three biggest companies sold most of the beer in the whole country.

The dominant beers became pretty bland as they used the power of advertising to make light beers the most popular items.

But then during the last 20 - 30 years, small companies sprouted up all over the country, drawing on classic recipes for making beer, sometimes adding new twists like fruit flavorings, but often simply reverting to a greater emphasis on traditional ingredients like hops and in some cases using locally grown hops and other ingredients to make their brews.

The new brewers must be doing well in terms of creating profitable companies and new jobs because some of the more successful ones are expanding capacity, opening additional plants, expanding distribution.

The taste of the products from the microbreweries has created a loyal and growing fan base. Beer tasting festivals have become very popular events. Brew pubs where a person can taste the various offerings made right on the premises have become popular restaurant destinations. I know for myself that if I go to a party and all they have is light beer, I'll opt for water instead. I really enjoy the classic flavors, with a penchant for pale ales myself.

We may see a time where the situation devolves to the point where a growing portion of the beer consumed comes from the small breweries rather than the few giants. So the industry may come full circle again.

This observation may offer hope and inspiration to many entrepreneurs. Just as a growing market share wants produce from organic farms, and growing numbers of beer drinkers savor the flavors from the microbreweries, think of other businesses where this same model may work.

Some business that you might like to be in may be dominated by a few big players, but there is always room for people who doing things very well and only serve a small part of the market. With time and effort that small part of the market can grow. And in time, industries can shift away from a few giants to a number of smaller players.

Think about ways that can work for you.

Keeping the Vibration High

It is important to focus on all the things that are going well for us and keep the vibration at that level in order to attract more good developments and people at that level.

It is easy to slip into conversations about what is not going well, and sometimes we can learn something that will help us improve this way, but we do not want to stay in that vibration so that we do not attract influences that are not what we really want.

Keep focusing on what is wanted, desired, intensely. Feel the joy of that choice. Feel it coming to you. Keep the vibrations at the highest level of joy and accomplishment, and they will be summoned to you.

When we see a problem, we need to find a solution as efficiently and effectively as possible and study the problem enough to learn what we need to learn in order to fix it and then resume the higher level of vibration we were on. The danger for some people is that they dwell on a problem for too long and that lowers the vibration of thought they have on their business or other endeavors.

So the challenge creates a disruption just long enough to become a learning experience, not enough to draw down the level of energy that is empowering the vision.

Keeping the energy level and our vibrations high is what propels us toward our goal, and so as we roll with the variations and steer around the obstacles is all about how we steer our way along our chosen course. It's about seeing how promptly we can bring the vibrations back in tune.

Look at your patterns and notice the vibrational variances. Notice when you are on track and how that feels. Notice how the path of least resistance is usually the best choice.

Asking Questions

Often the person asking a question reveals more than the question being asked. For example, the person who asks how you can do some offbeat sounding task for a living is often the equivalent of someone slapping themselves in the forehead and going "Why didn't I think of that? or Why didn't I ever realize that I had many more choices than I thought I had?" I use the phrase off beat sounding in this article but we all decide what that means.

Of course, what is offbeat to one person is the main point to someone else. After all, who decides that helping a corporation sell their new flavor of potato chips, corn chips or lite beer is more important than being an energy healer, a psychic, a massage therapist or a dog walker? We all know that the person who helps market ranch flavored chips will make tons more money, but is what they are doing really much more important? Of course, in the bigger picture, our society holds the belief that marketing ranch flavored chips is mainstream and that reiki healing is offbeat, but that's all a matter of perspective.

It is probably impossible to get accurate info on all these different things, but the more the corporate world keeps merging and acquiring and moving jobs to countries with cheaper labor, then more and more people will find that their only good choice left will be to create their own small business. And some of them may find themselves doing something offbeat. If being offbeat or odd or unusual is all in the eye of the beholder, then the only remaining question is whether you can make enough money to live on. If the answer to that question is yes, then being a psychic or a wedding singer or someone who travels around doing Renaissance Faires or being a pet sitter and walking other people's dogs is simply an array of different choices. There are some people who open a restaurant so that they can make money off their cooking, and some people who cook for their clients in the clients homes. There are people who do singing telegrams and people who do body painting. There are people who are caregivers for the old and the ill. There are people who make costumes and those who make and sell their own music, books and art off their own websites.

Even though some of you may be smiling as you contemplate doing any of these things for your income, the joy is genuine. If you have even been in the situation where some corporation told you that they suddenly no longer needed you and sending out your resumes got as many results as tossing paper airplanes into a black hole, one of these offbeat choices may be your future.

Yes, the short and simple answer to this question is that we make up all the answers.

Once we have that perspective, we have more joy in life.

You're Doing What???

Choosing to make a living doing something unusual or different often elicits that kind of response from others, often parents, sometimes friends. You're doing what??? Can you make a living doing that?

Psychic work, energy healing and related things are unusual to a lot of people. But then again, it was not that long ago that making a living as a massage therapist or yoga teacher was an uncommon choice.

How about pet sitters or people who walk other people's dogs for a living? Or those people who come in and reorganize the stuff in your house for you? Or people who do singing telegrams?

There are lots of people now who do their work on computer, at home and then send the work off to their client via email.

But there are still people in our parents generation who still think of work as something you go to a factory,warehouse, office or store to do, and you have a paycheck and benefits and you have to ask someone's permission to take time off.

In the course of doing something they love for a living, people often hear parents and others ask the question "When are you going to get a real job?"

Of course my response always was that as long as I could pay my bills and afford to have some fun that I did have a real job, although it might not look like it if you were looking for me to clock in at someone else's place of business or to having to wear a suit and tie or a uniform every time I leave home.

That's the way most jobs used to look. But that was before the upheavals and earthshaking changes in the economy. That was before anyone was familiar with terms like off-shoring, downsizing, right sizing or free trade agreements. When those people, who really do have our best interests at heart ask when we are going to get a real job, they are referring to those disappearing situations where if you showed up for work every day and did your job according to the company guidelines you could expect a regular paycheck, health insurance, vacation pay, sick pay and a pension plan. But that was then. Less and less companies offer these types of situations, and so it is increasingly on us to create our own better situations.

What has happened is that situations have changed but people's mindsets and perceptions are still catching up to the new realities.

In some ways these new realities are simply going back to the pre-industrial age, when all businesses were small businesses and all farms were family owned.

For a growing percentage of people, our best prospects are to own our own small businesses, maintaining a low overhead and a flexible schedule. When you own your own business, you learn all the lessons about risk taking, but you also learn the joys of becoming financially independent. It is a joy to be able to decide when you want time off, and just arrange for it, without having to ask permission. In a big company, you might have great ideas for how to do something better, but those ideas will often fall on deaf ears unless you can convince an entire committee or hierarchy to listen to you and try it. On the other hand, when you are self employed, you can try your new ideas whenever you are ready.

There are whole categories out there that people outside of it might mistake for a mere hobby. But if you think about it, there is an entire segment of the population, although small compared to the whole, which makes its living doing Renaissance Festivals, or metaphysical fairs, comic book, fantasy and sci-fi conventions. There are merchants who make a fine living selling beads, art supplies and other items for customers to buy and do it themselves at home. There are people who support themselves doing energy healing, psychic readings, various forms of bodywork and various forms of consulting. Since the 1990s, there has been a whole subset of people who do web design, software design and similar stuff on their computers in their residence. Each of these segments of the population are small by themselves, but altogether, they form a part of the active economy, responding to the law of supply and demand.

Obviously some people have been forced into learning about self employment thanks to the machinations of their former employers, and some people simply choose to act on their dreams and joyously endeavor to make a living in ways that others cannot imagine.

It is funny, not in the ha-ha way but in the ironic way to listen to conversations of this type, but this is what it looks like when you are on the cutting edge of changes.