Soap Dough and Discipline

Soap dough creations are one way to show the high dream. 

What is a high dream? It's the very pinnacle of skill and technique manifest. Even if you don't want to create multiple soaps with details, one soap with detailed adornments can point out your capabilities and drive interest toward the bulk of your soaps.

I didn't start out making soaps. I began at 16 years old working for a fast food chain. I had emancipated myself by the time I was 17 and had to support myself to finish high school. I worked there for 3.5 years for $3.15 an hour, starved for choice. I was dodging authorities. My mater paternal unit had threatened to put me in juvenile detention. Threats were coming from every direction, school threatened the same thing when a devious student told the heads I was a runaway. I wasn't. I had been beaten and told to leave. You beat a dog enough and that dog will not return.

Fast food was a means to an end. I quickly realized that I could not make ends meet and therefore took more jobs. I would take food home, because I couldn't feed myself and pay rent. I had to be creative. At one point I was employed by three fast food chains at one time, which helped to keep me busy but didn't fix my extreme poverty. 

Eventually I took a job at J.C. Penney's selling shoes and sporting goods where I learned the 3-R's: return, repair or replace. This showed me belief in one's products. I dressed better but I still couldn't make it all work. I didn't go to continued education after high school because I had a little brother to raise. I became his guardian because our parents failed. 

I took a job at a factory with 12 hours mandatory over-time for $5 an hour. Better pay, longer hours, spirit-killing work. This meant if I didn't work 12 hour days I would be fired.

I hated every one of these jobs and saw my future as pointless, but I had hope. Some days it was bright and some days this hope was hardly an ember. I hoped it would get better, some how. On the way to work before the sun came up I would write stories in my mind. I would dream of a day when I could create something, anything. I dreamed I had something inside that was better than my circumstances.

I failed at most of these efforts. I told myself I didn't try hard enough. I wasn't good enough. I was not a good parent to my little brother or myself. I was tired all the time. I could hardly bare my life, as if it were burned skin, always painful. 

I learned to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I learned persistence. After years and years of trying to figure out what an emotional boss wanted, of trying to navigate the arbitrary work landscape, the constancy of entitled customers, the lessons that surfaced colored my mind-scape and  instilled a determination that opened a doorway in my personhood.

 

 “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” - Marcus Aurelius

 

I ended up at two colleges and two universities. Read Ayn Rand, and one veil was lifted. I saw a sea of taupe trench coats making their way to cubicles siphoning off creativity to be leveraged by someone who didn't possess ingenuity but knew how to leech it. I saw the matrix. I saw the value of the light inside myself. I saw how those void of creativity berate those who who posses it. I saw how they sensed that ability, they could smell it, they knew on a deep level. I saw it in their eyes, the hunger, the envy, the desire to consume what they did not have. 

I knew that was my job - to protect that ability to create; that unharness-able ability attracted those who can't create, cannot hope, like moths to fire. It took years for me to come to understand the full value... I still had so many other things to do.

At 46 years old I went to aesthetic training. I had already run my own construction company for eight years, successfully, but had to humble myself. This skin-care school taught young woman how to show up for a job, what the word "hygiene" meant, how to stop swearing, which was harder than making them grow taller. Not only was I bored, but I preformed all my tasks like a trained monkey so I could get a job making $11 an hour being polite for tips. Nothing changed from working in fast food 30 years earlier. I was disheartened. 

During all these jobs I worked for employers that had no business being responsible for others. They were petulant, self-entitled, mean-spirited bosses that had been promoted to the highest level of incompetence. They had no idea that others were learning the worst forms of leadership. 

I watched. I listened. I learned. 

Now, I take manifesting new ideas very seriously, but with joy. Supporting others to find that unique spark, striving to fan that ember into a flame of creativity. My job is more than just making unusual soaps. My job, as I see it now, is to offer inspiration, to show what is possible with soap dough, practical or impractical. To show what is possible with the smallest amount of hope. My job is to protect my job, protect that light from those who want to feed off my efforts because they sense my creativity.

I strive to show new ways to elevate someone from the normal day-in, day-out efforts; elevate a utilitarian tool - soap - to a creation infused with magic. The magic of hope, possibilities, to showcase a moment of creative inspiration. My tool, the object I use to remind you that there is an enchantment to this world (if you want to see it) is soap. All these creations are reminders you never know what is around the corner. These soaps are a reminder that someone does pay attention, someone is watching and can see beyond the veil.

If you hope it'll get better, it might. If you hope, add persistence and the discipline to apply effort, it will get better. Soap Dough is a way to a high dream, the very best beyond the veil.