Feng Shui Your Ride!

Gee, Feng Shui for a car?  I just can’t see it, even though I do try to keep an open mind.  For instance, my BFF Bernice (she always says that while she appreciates being my best friend, she frankly worries what the other “F” stands for) rotated her dining room table because her interior designer said it was better feng shui for the room.  And, Lord knows, Bernice is making a lot more money than I am, and has classier dinner parties to boot, so who am I to argue?  Still……

I know someone else who got paid good money for installing a Bagua (Pa Kua) Mirror in a mutual friend’s home as a way of manipulating the negative outside energies.   Talk about negative outside energy – she would have been better off with a divorce lawyer if you ask me, but I suppose buying a mirror in a octagonal red wooden frame was cheaper.  And she can always use the mirror in her next marriage.

In my own home, I use the Yin-Yang theory in which the interacting forces of Yin (feminine) and Yang (masculine) keep us deeply interconnected.  As an example, the Yin closet is the big closet in our master bedroom.  And, not wanting to mix these universal forces, the Yang closet (for my husband’s clothes) is in the small guest bedroom down the hall.  OK, in all honesty, his clothes occupy half of that closet because I need the other half for my hats.   And in the bathroom, the Yang is exceptionally good about always putting the toilet seat down after use because he fears the Yin ch’i when certain people sit down in the middle of the night and get nothing but porcelain.   Trust me, nothing good can come from that.

Anyway, I thought I was pretty hip about this stuff until my blog-friend Diane alerted me to an article from the Ford Motor Company entitled, “Ford Offers Feng Shui Concepts to Create a Calm, Organized Vehicle All Year Long.”  Well, as you can imagine, this article answered so many questions about what’s wrong with my life (and Brad’s too).   Just look at the accompanying diagram and you’ll see the problems right away. 

First of all, according to their diagram, my poor husband (who is a creative director) has all of his creativity stuck in the rear passenger wheel well.  Bummer!  That would explain his client who keeps going round and round the copy choices he has given her without ever making a decision so they can move forward.  Hello!

Also, 75% of the wealth and relationship energy reside outside the body of the car. That doesn’t bode well for the folks riding inside.  It might go a long way toward explaining our bank account, however.

On the other hand, the knowledge ch’i appears to be right smack dab in the middle of the driver’s seat, which my husband will happily embrace since he thinks that he is ALWAYS right even when passes a perfectly good parking spot or doesn’t move into the right hand lane until it is too late and then curses the other drivers who won’t let him in. I’m just sayin….

The Ford folks want us to put a medal or an icon or a picture in the glove box to reduce stress. Right now, all I have in the glove box is my vehicle registration, insurance card, the owners manual and a stale candy bar.  Since I’m Jewish, a medal or an icon probably won’t do it.  Maybe I’ll toss a “Happy Face” sticker in there so that at least I’ll remember to“have a nice day.”

I wanted to do further research, but when I Googled “feng shui your car,” I got 2,230,000 hits, a smattering of which showed that in order to have proper “feng shuiness” (yes, it’s the word that is actually used), I need to:

• Choose the lucky color according to my individual feng shui chart (I guess my husband is SOL)
• Choose the day of purchase that is positive according to my feng shui calendar (gee, we chose the day based on when we could afford to buy it)
• Ring with hand bells inside the car to purify the energy (giving new definition to the term “Baby, ring my bell”)
• Scatter sea salt on the car floor carpets to absorb negative energy (careful – that stuff will hurt like hell when it gets into any scratches you got on the beach)
• Order license plates with only lucky numbers (our Prius says 62MPG)
• And above all, do not hang crystals or anything on the rear view mirror, since it draws away the attention of the dragon from your protection. 

I don’t know about you, but I hate it when the attention of the dragon is drawn away from my protection.   I wonder how the dragon feels about air bags?

Are we having fun yet?

Open For Business 25/8

I don’t know about you but I just love it when a client calls at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday to “run some ideas past you.” After all, freelancers don’t need no stinking “sleeping in” on a romantic, rainy Sunday. Sleeping in only results in spontaneous sex. Better to lie beside your spouse and listen to a conversation about distribution quotas while you quietly seethe. That will bring the population growth down.

I also love it when clients call in the evening, during a movie. Do you answer? Yeah, so did the guy in front of me in the multiplex last night. First he tried whispering. Then he got “stink eye” from his neighbors. When someone beaned him with a wadded up napkin, he left the theater talking all the way. You could hear the conversation. It was about a deadline that had been moved up. (Why are deadlines always moved up? Why are they never moved back to give you some breathing room? Why is that?)

I suppose he could have ignored the call but my experience tells me that if you don’t answer, they will just text you. Over and over again.

Why are we allowing ourselves to become on-call slaves? Because we live in the age of instant gratification. Early morning; late at night; weekends; holidays. BTW, what are holidays? I haven’t seen a holiday since 1972. And I live in Hawai‘i, the state that has more official holidays than any other state in the union. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, New Year’s Day, Prince Kuhio Day, King Kamehameha Day, Independence Day, Statehood Day (which is celebrated by native Hawaiians by displaying the flag of the nation of Hawai‘i upside down – the international distress signal) and all the rest. Oops, did I accidentally say “rest?” Ha, ha! That was a joke. The only people who get to rest on most holidays are state workers. For everyone else, it’s just a day in which the busses don’t run as often (for our convenience).

And it’s not just clients who are guilty of this behavior. Suppliers also call whenever the muse is upon them. Because we’ve all become accustomed to being available not just 24/7 but beyond 24/7. I once wrote about the appalling statistics of American workers in comparison to those of other developed nations. We suffer twice the rate of clinical depression as our European counterparts. And we’re literally killing ourselves – in 1980, we ranked 11th in the world in life expectancy; we now rank 42nd.

I have a plan. (You knew I would.) This is a shocker, so you may want to be seated for this – freelancers and entrepreneurs could declare their business hours and then stick to them. Out there in the real world of non-freelance (aka “paid”) work, businesses actually post their hours right on the door. They do. Then when the end of the day comes around, they lock the door and they leave.

I realize that this is a far fetched concept. But think about it:

• · When you call your bank after hours, does the President of the bank interrupt his dinner to answer your call?
• · Would you expect your hairdresser to meet you at Starbucks on Sunday morning to review some pictures of hairstyles that might look cute on you?
• · Do you wake your butcher up at 11:30 at night to tell him about your upcoming dinner party and get his “feedback” on entrée choices?

Let’s try, shall we? Let’s tell our clients right up front, in writing, the hours that we are available for meetings and phone conversations and then (gasp!) turn off the phone. Unless you are a trauma surgeon, let’s pretend that no one will actually die if we don’t take this call. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Some unexpected sex? I don’t know about you but I could live with that.

Are we having fun yet?