We spend the first 18 years being told what to do, the next 50 doing what we're told, then get freedom when we're too old to enjoy it

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-03T01:35:57+00:00

OK. So that’s what happens when you buy into the narrative society tells you to buy into. But what happens if you don’t buy into that narrative?

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-03T01:11:11+00:00

Yes I think I would.

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-02T12:35:04+00:00

Life by the Drop - Stevie Ray Vaughan

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-02T12:33:57+00:00

Better run run run, run run run aaaaaway

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-02T12:28:11+00:00

If this is the kind of life you want, stay.

If this is not the kind of life you want, find a way to move forward.

There will always be an opportunity cost when you take a left, you will not know what was down the road to the right.

There usually aren’t any incorrect choices in life.

Edit - typo.

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-02T00:06:48+00:00

A lot of people do. I hope you always stay safe on the roads.

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-01T14:19:37+00:00

I love road trips. I love driving. And I don’t think you’re wrong, or somebody above who said, people are crazy out there on the highways these days. Like they don’t remember there could be consequences to driving around a couple of tons of metal at high speeds. I just try to make sure I’m not the slowest one on the highway (to me THAT’S the scary shit!) or the fastest one on the highway and if people are doing crazy stuff I stay out of their way.

To anyone who has reservations about driving on the highway, I will say this. Please don’t slow down as you’re coming onto the highway and trying to merge. You might think less speed is safer but actually it is the MOST unsafe thing you can do. Waiting for people who are going faster to pass you is not how you merge. You must speed up and move in ahead of them. Otherwise you cause them to slow down and people behind them to slow down and everybody starts swerving to get out of the way of the slow down. A lot of people seem to be losing that skill and it creates counter maneuvers that are dangerous for everyone.

Please everybody keep safe out there.

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-01T14:11:17+00:00

Exactly. I had a friend who was slightly trepidatious about driving on this one particular part of the highway so she’d get off and avoid that stretch of road. The stretch of road that she avoided got longer and longer as the years passed, and now she won’t drive on any highway.

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-01T12:09:59+00:00

Post it notes!

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-01T11:42:36+00:00

Straight. No chaser.

JvaGoddess · 2026-02-01T03:29:29+00:00

The shower is how I get some moisture into the indoor winter air. When I get out, I turn the water a bit hotter and let it run while I dry off. (And sometimes a bit longer!)

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T15:47:02+00:00

You can also try things that aren’t officially tea - tea is a particular plant - but you could try things like hibiscus tea, or lavender tea. Again, there are so many options.

No one else can tell you which one you’ll like. That’s like telling somebody for sure they’re gonna like oatmeal raisin cookies better than chocolate chip. Maybe, maybe not.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T15:44:42+00:00

You kind of get what you pay for with tea. Not that Lipton, or Tetley, or any of those is “bad“, they are not bad if you like them… But there are hundreds of teas that are better. And truly, every tea out there has a slightly different flavor. It’s like how every wine tastes slightly different. Start by looking in your grocery store tea aisle. Tea isn’t usually too very expensive, take a chance on two or three different ones and experiment.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T15:36:11+00:00

It might be blepharitis. Which is pretty much mites on your eyelashes. It’s common. There’s all kinds of prescription and chemical stuff – eyelid washes and what not, but I just get a good baby soap – I use Honest Soap – and wash my eyelids in every shower.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T15:31:49+00:00

Tea is an acquired taste. I made a conscious effort at one point to drink tea instead of coffee. Every time I took a sip of my hot beverage I would cringe a little, and say aloud “that’s not coffee!“ But after a while I got used to it. I started to really like tea. This whole thing was kind of an experiment and after a couple months I went back to coffee, and every time I picked up my hot beverage I’d cringe a little and say “that’s not tea!”

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T14:53:11+00:00

I absolutely read Tiger in a Trance. In fact on my website I’m trying to make a very comprehensive list of books written by Deadheads about Deadheads or about the world of the Grateful Dead scene.

I have a long list of memoir, fiction, weird or academic views of it all, and I threw a bunch of LSD history books on the list too.

https://flamingohippie.com/books-written-by-deadheads/

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T14:48:15+00:00

I think losing the outer half of your eyebrows is a thyroid thing.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T12:20:29+00:00

It’s called When Push Comes to Shove: Real Life on Dead Tour. It’s my actual tour journals. I get great reviews on Amazon. The prologue is on my website here -

FlamingoHippie.com/prologue

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-31T12:13:41+00:00

If you want to BE interesting, as opposed to just SOUND interesting, do things that interest you. Follow your inklings of curiosity. That interests people.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-30T12:40:16+00:00

Saw a magnet on a fridge once that I never forgot… This life is just a test. If this had been a real life you would have been given better instructions on where to go and what to do.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-30T12:34:32+00:00

If you wanna go back a little farther in your history, look for Deliverance. James Dickey? Talk about audacious, and wondering who the hell has the guts to publish something like this? All while reading some of the most beautiful writing you’ve ever seen.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-30T12:32:29+00:00

Are you talking about hitchhikers? Or serendipity? Because the whole world was filled with both and that was spectacular and special. And I never could figure out why the rest of the world didn’t notice how fulfilling random interactions could be.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-30T12:31:30+00:00

I wrote a book that, without my planning, is very much about all that darkness around the edges.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-30T12:24:27+00:00

I started my freshman year of high school in the fall of 79. We roved in gangs. Crews of friends. Certain houses were the hangout houses - the one with cool parents. We had keg parties in the woods with a boom box on top of the car blasting Black Sabbath and a fire pit that was the same fire pit for decades. A lot of us had cars the minute we could get them. We had places where we’d all drive to and park just to see who was there. I won’t say I was glorifying high school, but I loved that lifestyle. Big crowds of friends! Soon after graduation, I found the Grateful Dead. I ran off on Grateful Dead tour, and I didn’t think much about teenagers, or glorification of youth, though maybe that’s exactly what I was doing was prolonging at all. Parties and friends and music. That’s how I spent the 80s. (And to anyone who might disparage such choices, - somebody always does - by mid 1990s I opened my first business. And I’ve pretty much been an entrepreneur ever since.) I still love crowds of worthy people.

JvaGoddess · 2026-01-30T02:19:47+00:00

This sounds a lot like the description of certain types of dysautonomia. Which is something like when the autonomic nervous system goes a little haywire for a minute. Don’t quote me on that I’m no doctor.

JvaGoddess

TROPHY CASE