What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Three months later we meet again / the ongoing experiments / vernal equinox 2023
Some words before the other words!
What is this called? A pre-something.
Pre-
A lot going on these days in the world. A lot going on that makes it difficult to focus, to keep on keeping on. I want to glow extra love (boundless & bountiful love) for all trans friends, I want a better and kinder world, an inclusive and welcoming world, but most of all a safe world for you, may justice and sanctuary prevail, I also know that glowing love is not enough, it is just a beginning point for everything that needs to change.
A heart-breath for dreaming and scheming (in a good way) towards these wishes of sanctuary, a safer world where you are loved and treasured and thriving. May it be so or something even better. ❤️
Three Months Later (hello again)
An unexpected seasonal crumpling
The time change this month hit me like a ton of bricks, I am imagining the last straw on the proverbial camel’s back but each straw is somehow also a ton of bricks.
All my beautiful well-cultivated habits crumpled immediately.
And I can’t even say why I didn’t expect it. It’s in the calendar! It happens every year! This felt different though.
As if I was under siege, as if time itself had launched a wily and multi-pronged all-fronts attack on both my nervous system and the system of my daily routine, exposing how these two systems are entwined. When things are working, they support each other. When the light is wrong and the time is off, they both short-circuit, along with my brain.
Is this a lot of metaphor-mixing? Sure, possibly, yes, however, in my defense, I was already not doing well and then the time change has not helped, so this disjointed report of my current state comes from within the unraveling, and if that is reflected in a cacophony of disharmonious metaphor, I am okay with that.
When the light is wrong
I hadn’t realized until the time change just how many things were working for me, and had been, all winter long:
Early to bed, closing my eyes for X Delicious Hours, the steadying comfort of morning bobcat time (gentle yoga, slow stretching, big cat yawns), making my pot of ginger chiltepin hot chocolate, padding around my tiny kitchen in my warmest socks and fuzzy slippers. A routine.
A routine is a lovely thing, or it can be
You do one thing and then do the next thing, and it is, if not automatic, then at least a familiar and reassuring sequence.
But it’s been two weeks and I am only just now beginning to find my bearings again.
For the first week I couldn’t fall asleep at night, couldn’t wake up in the morning, couldn’t remember what I am supposed to do next, or what I need to try when nothing makes sense.
So I just stayed in bed for hours, unable to remember the sequence of getting out of bed and starting my day, I stopped stretching and forgot to make a hot southwestern desert beverage or light my candle or hum my morning hum.
And even once I remembered the sequence, it had zero appeal. I couldn’t remember why I used to do those things, for what purpose, or how to begin, but also couldn’t think of a new way to coax myself into the day, into being brave enough to just try.
It isn’t just me though
Anne Helen Peterson asked on March 16, on Twitter:
Is there an explanation for why Daylight Savings hit everyone I know like a semi this year (I’m talking more than usual, more than I can ever remember)
Her question elicited an enormous number of responses. Predictably, there were some annoying ones from men in suits who magically remain at ease and unbothered no matter what the happens in life and intensely need to brag about it given the slightest opportunity, but the majority agreed emphatically with her premise.
Even people who said they normally don’t notice it reported getting absolutely flattened by it this year.
I thought the best (or most useful) response came from Kathleen McLaughlin, @kemc, who said, “We are all just cracking under the weight of three years of way too much every-fucking-thing. I think. Any little shift is now big.”
Yes. Any little shift is now big. So there’s that.
Three Months Later…
Three months ago (and change), I wrote about my practice of interacting with the year in quarters, equinox to solstice, solstice to equinox, and how deeply I adore the television drama trope of Three Months Later, Dot Dot Dot, typed on a card, to indicate to us, the audience, that a substantial period of time has passed, and things are different now.
And just like the time change hit different this spring, this winter quarter (or these winter quarters, if you, like me, prefer to imagine time in space, time like a living space…) felt very different to me compared with previous years.
*I say WINTER from here in the northern hemisphere, and at the same time I don’t want to exclude friends and readers in the southern hemisphere who are summering their way through the end of summer, so please translate as needed based on your location, and know that I am thinking about you as well, drinking iced beverages and napping a lot, I hope!
Whether your equinox is vernal or autumnal, we head into the next Three Months Later either way…
Time is confusing
Time is confusing and I have questions!
For example…
How did the Three Months Later of this winter go by so fast???
But/and also: How was The Endless Winter so very long and seemingly unending, my friends in the midwest are still getting snow in late March, and even here in sunny southern New Mexico we had hail and some flurries last weekend, the mornings still cold and bitter.
And apparently three months ago is when Elon Musk did his fake poll of “I will step down if the people want me to”, but that feels like at least two years ago, so make it make sense, I find myself so confused by the passage of time and also confused by my confusion.
A confusion of sadness
On equinox I sat down to write my wishes, and began by rereading the wishes I wrote for winter solstice.
This is usually a grounding and helpful way for me to begin the vulnerable thing that is the process of wishing wishes and daring to let them come into the world in the form of words. It is revealing.
Except I was absolutely devastated to confirm that all my wishes are exactly the same as they were three months ago, which very easily morphed into a very familiar self-criticism narrative or monster story about how Nothing Has Changed, There’s No Hope and What’s The Point because It Will Never Get Better.
What’s true? What’s also true?
And so I am trying to play the game of what’s true and what’s also true, to see to shift my focal point.
What can I notice, what can I bring my attention to that is different, to counter my impression that nothing has changed.
What is useful in encountering the same wishes, three months later? If they haven’t changed, have I changed?
And: if noticing the pattern changes the pattern, what changes when I notice (in a neutral way, without judgment) the re-wishing of past wishes? How do they change when I rename them or re-invoke them?
What is different now? How is this equinox different from last solstice?
What is different, other than things related to light and temperature and length of days?
My hair is three months longer.
I cry a lot less. To be clear, I still cry a lot, I just mean that am no longer crying multiple times a day, and as of this past two weeks, I am no longer crying every day, so that’s a shift, a huge one, and it counts.
Related: I think in general I am a lot more angry and a lot less sad, so that’s something?
I don’t know if it’s a good something, but it does indicate that things are moving, and I believe movement is good, and also we are countering the narrative that nothing has changed, because here’s something pretty big that has changed!
The First Rule of Cooking Club is Think About Cooking Something
I now make a big batch of soup each week, which is a delight, and I got really into Cooking Club, which is imaginary, but it does its job, aka it helps me focus on batching food and keeping myself fed.
These are both important because I have very little appetite most days, and often no energy, and some days even standing is too much work for very long, so I need to make eating both easy and appealing, less of a chore.
Three months ago this was one of my biggest challenges, and there’s considerably more ease there now, though this is also one of the helpful habits that got rattled by the time change.
What else?
I started celebrating days by naming them and doing one thing to commemorate each day. Marking? Celebrating feels like a very strong word here, it might be doing too much work. We mark the days.
Maybe nothing was particularly celebratory but what I mean is associating something good with the day, like Taco Tuesday! Who doesn’t like tacos.
But specifically for disabled life, rural trailer house on the edge the forest life, a life that runs on slow time.
Happy Blursday
Sunday Spa Day is not actually a spa day but I make sure to do one symbolic thing like shave legs or give myself a kitchen facial with hot towels, or a small diy pedicure.
Monday Strike Day is for being on strike and not doing things that stress me out. This is how I avoid what some people call the Sunday Scaries, the existential dread that accompanies knowing you have a long list of things waiting for you on a Monday. Screw that. Monday Strike Day! WE STRIKE!
Zhugsday is for making zhug.
When the time change happened, these all fell apart, but I kept naming days: Woeful Wednesday, Things Are Off Thursday, Fuck It Friday, Sleep In Saturday, Surly Somnambulist Sunday. We keep a sense of humor around here even when things are falling apart.
What can I find to be proud of, looking back on these past three months
Let’s see…
I kitchen-jogged every day,
did more yoga,
learned to bake without baking when my beloved tiny toaster oven broke,
made myself a birthday cake,
survived a poisoning,
lit a candle every day,
and I am thinking about different things now than I was then, and that’s also something.
Though also who cares? And I mean that in a good way, not in a critical way…
Not: Who cares (derogatory)
But: Who cares (liberating)
Though also who cares
What I mean by this is that even if nothing changed at all that I can name or point to, and even if my wishes and desires are the same as they were three months ago, and even if my perceptions of zero progress are correct which I don’t think they are…
None of that matters because that’s not the important thing. The important thing is actually that I made it through the long, hard, cold winter against all odds, and honestly the odds were kind of grim.
So sure, there’s no linear “progress” on anything I can point to, but I made it through. The rituals held me and healing is happening.
The rituals held
The rituals held and healing is happening.
The rituals held in the sense that they did not break (at least until the time changed), like a protective barrier, a levee, and they held me in the sense that they were my comforting ground, they made my days make sense, they carried me from winter solstice all the way through to spring.
Those things matter. They matter a lot, actually.
Against the odds
Here’s what I was up against this winter, in addition to the usual winter things of cold and dark.
My hot water heater is broken, as you know, and no one will give me a clear answer on the kind needed to replace it, so I have to heat water in the kettle to wash hands and wash dishes and wash myself with a washcloth. I get to shower a couple times a month if the mountain roads aren’t covered in snow and ice, which they mostly were.
The drafty single pane kitchen window which wasn’t doing a great job keeping the cold out to begin with has taken to flying open at a gust of wind. It was an especially stormy winter, colder than last year, more snow, more wild winds, more intensely gloomy than I remember.
There’s no central heat and I can only run one space heater without blowing a fuse, which means that each day I need to decide if I’m going to be in the front room or the bedroom, and just stay there.
My toaster oven broke, and I had to stop making many of the warm cozy baked goods that got me through autumn.
One-two
Long covid and a traumatic brain injury continue to be a one-two punch. I can’t do very much because of the misery of neck and back pain, or the excruciating tinnitus, or the devastating depression or because I am basically Drew Barrymore in Fifty First Dates and can’t consistently remember what I’m doing, sometimes even while I’m doing it, sometimes even with a written reminder.
And the loneliness gets to me. It does. Somehow in the winter it is harder.
In the three months between solstice and equinox, I had seven conversations. There were days when I listened to podcasts just to remember the sound of someone laughing.
All the many forms of grief and despair, all the many forms of shattered hopes.
So hey, you know what, if I made it through the bitter cold of winter, the intense solitude and the pounding of wild winds on the roof, if nothing too important broke and I arrived here, into spring, then who cares if anything else happened?
Still here
Braver than the marines. Tired, scarred, still here.
I am the hero of my third pandemic winter which, despite all these obstacles was also, in some ways, less depressing than the last two. Still here still here still here.
Still here, baby.
Grieving my lost hope
I found a bottle of grief tincture in my cabinet, I’d hidden it away after discovering that I did not enjoy learning just how much grief I have, but something has shifted or maybe it hasn’t but I was feeling brave and took a dropper-full.
Then I got on the floor for fifteen minutes of very slow, very gentle, cautious movement, and what came up very strongly is that I AM GRIEVING MY LOST HOPE.
Grieving my lost hope.
What restores hope?
Or is that even the right question…
What can I love right now?
The startling clarity about my grief and my lost hope was startling and clear in a way I did not find helpful in the moment.
But from the perspective of a few days later, I can see that the answer is more along the lines of shifting my focus to Things I Can Love Right Now.
What helps? What is hopeful?
Tending to the tending
Like I said, I am crying less, maybe that’s because the sun is back and the bunnies are back, and, in very exciting news, I was finally able to get to a shower after three long weeks.
But there’s also something about how even though grieving lost hopes was one of the challenges I faced this winter, I think I might be getting better at the grieving process, the acknowledgment & legitimacy, the layering on of safety, the slow and patient work of self-tending.
It’s not like I’m good at it. It’s just that I can automatically turn towards the tending now, instead of blaming myself for needing to be tended to in times of grief.
Making do part deux
I was going to say that back in the fall, I wrote about making do. But I looked it up and it was actually in the fall of 2021, so a year earlier than in my memory. It figures, time remains elusive and confusing. The essay was called Use What You Have.
Anyway, I was challenged to master a new level of Use What You Have recently when the tiniest toaster oven that was already making do in place of a regular oven, or even a regular sized toaster oven for that matter, gave up the ghost halfway through winter.
I learned how to make raw cakes and cookies. I started baking (or actually not-baking) skillet bread which is actually cooked — yes, in a skillet, hence the name, instead of baked.
And I missed my mini toaster oven dearly, but in some ways focusing on missing a toaster oven was easier and less painful than missing the person who loved me deeply until the day they exited my life without warning (I wrote without WARMING, which is also true).
Missing an appliance is just so much simpler than missing the mysterious disappearers from my past, or missing pre-pandemic life, or pre-pandemic me for that matter.
Nostalgic
Ah, my pre-pandemic pre-concussion self. I am not sure if I miss that person or not, but mainly I try not to think about it because it’s painful to remember.
Pre-pandemic, pre-concussion, pre-long-covid me who had energy, focus and joie de vivre. A playful approach. And hope. Those were the days.
But we are here, now, and it is spring, and we lived to tell the tale, quite miraculously in fact.
Just some light poisoning
Long-time readers may know that I have a birthday curse, and so on the day of my birthday I am very careful to do nothing at all, particularly nothing celebratory, because the best possible way my birthday can go is uneventful.
REMAIN INDOORS! DO NOTHING! This is my birthday approach, having run many experiments and learning the hard way that the only way through is to keep a low profile.
So in honor of my forty sixth birthday, I gave myself the gift of the most uneventful, normal day imaginable. I did my kitchen jogging and my slow cat-like yoga. Made sure I ate. Stayed offline. Moved slowly and carefully. Did zero cooking. Nothing celebratory. Nothing out of the ordinary. Don’t tempt fate.
And it worked. For the first time in memory, nothing bad happened. To be fair, nothing good happened either, but the bar is low, and zero disasters is honestly quite impressive.
Unfortunately, this is also how I got cocky. I didn’t wait long enough for do-overs.
Do-overs
As you know, I am devoted to the concept of Do-Overs Forever, and so, in a way, I celebrate my birthday (in a top secret sort of way) throughout the year, because I know the day itself will be rough. And usually, I don’t do this too soon after my actual birthday.
But because there had been ZERO injuries, mishaps or other disasters on the day itself, I mistakenly thought it might be safe to attempt some low-key celebrating the day after, and make a birthday cake, sans baking.
It was a raw chocolate lavender cake, with the culinary lavender that I bought at the lavender farm last summer when I intended to make this exact cake for Concussion-Anniversary Day but never did, and it was gorgeous.
Celebrate good times COME ON (very quietly and in secret)
And I can’t tell you how this cake tasted, since I only had the tiniest taste of the frosting when my throat began tightening dramatically and my throat glands felt like painful golf balls, and that, my friends, is one way to learn if you are extremely allergic to raw lavender.
I’ve used it in stews and for a lavender rosemary simple syrup for example, and that’s never caused an adverse reaction, but apparently this quantity of lavender in uncooked form is not awesome for me, which is information that I would rather have than not have.
But of course it’s hard not to interpret this as yet another sign that CELEBRATING is not something my body or the world will agree to, apparently, the nature of the mysterious birthday curse.
I am far from town so did acupressure on myself until it felt like I could take full breaths again, and had a very miserable, painful sore throat for a few days, and It Is What It Motherfucking Is.
Anyway, that’s the story of how I poisoned myself on my birthday but really the day after, and someday when I am feeling brave, maybe it will be time make another raw cake with only known safe ingredients.
Three months later / next time around
What worked this year in winter?
- cheery things
- yellow things
- noticing: often these are the same: lemons, bananas, tall candles, a beeswax tea light when i’m having a bad day, I learned that like bright yellow dish cloths, so really: cheery, yellow things
- laughter (other people’s, listening to podcasts to have laughter in my house)
- having a schedule for Cooking Club
- making a note for the next day about what I am excited about / why to get out of bed, for example there is pudding for pre-breakfast
- making do, and being creative with Use What You Have, innovation as a superpower
What is good? What can I appreciate right now…
Eight robins in the field outside my window.
The bunnies are back, in full frolic, doing their little cool flips and playing statue next to my car.
A solid roof over my head reminds me of sturdiness that was not available for me in past difficult times, a reminder that Now Is Not Then.
Every single version of the song I Can See Clearly Now, but especially the Holly Cole version right now. I can see clearly now, the rain is gone / I can see all obstacles in my way. I keep reminding myself that this is what hope sounds like, it’s gonna be a bright bright bright sunshiney day…
A literal perspective shift
I moved the bench in my kitchen from one side of the table to the other, and now I have a different view.
A literal reminder of Now Is Not Then, and now is also not three months ago, and even if my wishes are the same or appear to be the same, I can look at them with a different perspective.
What else can I move around, physically or otherwise, in service of exactly this?
What do I want to keep in mind for next year?
Some of my equinox rituals really worked for me!
I took Star Car to get an oil change & checkup, and there was a cute girl working there who flirted with me outrageously, which is definitely the best thing to happen so far in 2023, bless a good sunny spring day flirtation. Also spa day for Star Car!
And I made the bed with fresh clean sheets and lit my favorite candle and made spicy chocolate pudding.
The thing I wanted most (either a hike or a visit to hot springs) did not happen because of weather and circumstances, but it was a beautiful wish, and I can appreciate that and re-wish it for next time.
May I stay flexible and determined, in equal amounts.
Equinox wishes
I think for now I want to return to my solstice question of what wants to be eliminated versus what wants to be illuminated, and how can I take small steps in service of both?
Feeling some good Spring Gleaming energy whooshing in now that the fog of the time change is lifting, a pull towards rearranging and reconfiguring.
I wish for steadiness, focus, and the warm, sweet, loving clarity of Holly Cole singing. I can see clearly now means I think I can make it now.
It’s gonna be a bright (bright bright bright) sunshiney day. This is what hope sounds like, even when I forget.
Let’s keep going. ❤️
ANNOUNCEMENT! The Brautigan Wing returns!
In October of 2013 (nearly ten years ago somehow), I put out a 77 page ebook called The Brautigan Wing.
My description of it at the time: It is about a museum of small and big realizations.
But as a commenter on a recent post pointed out, it was also a collection of intriguing scribbled notes to myself.
In this book, I imagined building a museum exhibit about my mind, based on these found post-it notes, with commentary about what the poet may or may not have intended. Now it is a glimpse into the museum of my mind from ten or more years ago. Maybe there are some good clues for you, or maybe you will be inspired to turn your pile of notes into your own museum exhibit.
Anyway, if you feel moved to give any sum of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, I’ll email you a link to the ebook as a bonus thank you! I don’t check email every day, so give me a couple days but it will happen!
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm your own. What are some equinox wishes or themes you’re drawn to play with! What patterns are asking to be rewritten and what would help? As always, we remember that People Vary.
And of course you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
Here’s to locating the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
Wishing March wishes (a perambulation of clues)
A small celebration / cake time
A small celebration: we made it to March of miracles, miracle of miracles, I thought about this (“I march for miracles!”) while jog-walking figure-eights on my kitchen rug as the sun rose Wednesday morning, illuminating through the clouds, hello, new month, we made it to another threshold.
I was thinking about how nothing is linear and yet process is cumulative, and how this ritual of kitchen-jogging held me in the dark of winter, supported me and kept me going.
Noticing a spark of insight, something about how this practice of moving while not going anywhere, aka “apartment hiking”, to borrow a marvelous turn of phrase from Ian Dukes, is both similar and different to a wish I had earlier in the week about getting to know the trails in my area.
Something about maps as a verb.
What happens when I map my terrain, when I ground myself in a sense of place? Is it a time for landing here?
A new familiarity
Time to build a new familiarity, reorient myself in place.
I am also doing this in my mind thanks to traumatic brain injury, relearning who I am or might be.
March (the month) as an experience, but also as a location in the year that is both familiar and new; march (the verb) as an experience but also as a transformative process, striding and eliding, moving through.
Steady steps, feel the ground, a new understanding of where I am in time and space. Location location location, I am locating myself in the calendar and in my home, in my environment.
Like the sign says
Like the sign says, YOU ARE HERE.
Is it helpful information? I don’t know, maybe, maybe not.
A breath for being here now, a breath for being where I am.*
Lionesque / lioness
March marching in like a lion with wild winds and swings of barometric pressure, and why not, storm it up, I can nap through it, I like being lion-like, I aim to be a big cat.
Roar and thunder, nap and stretch, I can wait patiently, that’s what lions do, lions play the long game.
Stay dangerous, stay ready. Stay ready and wait.
And of course, a parade for bravely and heroically making it through both the longest-longest month (January) and the longest month in disguise (February), now we’re getting somewhere, less than two weeks until the time change brings more light here, and just three weeks to vernal equinox, a move into new quarterly quarters.
Good job. Go team.
Go team
We’ve basically/mostly made it through the worst of the winter storms, here in the northern hemisphere, at least where I am in southwestern New Mexico, in the southwestern United States, and I am waving to all southern hemisphere friends, I hope you had-and-have plenty of popsicles and an abundance of cooling, soothing comforts to get you through the heat waves of summer.
A lion’s breath of powerful release for all of us, doing our best in intense circumstances, sometimes also in intense weather. Brain-weather and external weather and all of it. It’s so much.
I am thankful for the comfort and long distance companionship of friends and readers of the blog, we are all trying to get better at doing more of what works, and less of what doesn’t, without judgment, the process is the process, and it helps to know that I am not alone in the ongoing work of self-fluency and self-treasuring.
Sometimes when I finish dishes, I will say TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK, even though it is just me. Sometimes the Go Team is a very, very small, extremely local team of me. I appreciate the virtual company too.
A Monday Meeting on a Wednesday / a March meeting in a storm
I wanted to write some March wishes, but also I skipped my Monday Meeting this week because I had to urgently commune with a hot spring (neck pain emergency), so let’s do both and combine them.
Also I wrote these wishes during a snow storm: in like a lion!
What are some themes that I already know are coming up?
Themes:
- obsessing in a good way
- reorienting (in space and time)
- the earth, the earth
- R&R & R&R and more than you think
- bridging dissonance / build dissonance bridges (bridge like in a song? write the bridge!)
- towards, again (this is also orienting)
- miracle mind
- time-adjacent celebration day (aka my birthday is this week, thanks to Jason for the delightful phrase) & of course related wishes about Solved By Cake and Cake For Days…
Let’s start with a couple of these and see where they lead, everything else can go into the pot!
Talk to me: who is at this meeting
The Monday Meetings are a gathering space / journaling practice where I hear from incoming selves or aspects of myself, that’s the joke, a meeting in the sense that I am meeting them, sometimes I invite fictional characters or a persona version of someone I admire, someone on my council or in my imaginary support group.
Whoever shows up is who shows up.
Who do we have here to welcome in March?
I pick up my pen and wait for stragglers, and we do roll call. Who all is here today?
Talk to me about the wish of place & getting to know the area
Alright, friends, talk to me please. Tell me what you know…
But first maybe I should explain more about the wish?
Me: Okay, so here’s something I’d like to run by all of you. I had this strong wish come up when I was in Las Cruces hiding from the big snowstorm, something about how I want to really know the area where I live, to explore and have a relationship with different trails, to be at home here.
This is partly a wish about companionship because I would like company for some of these adventures, and partly a wish about healing, and partly a wish about bridging dissonance.
[background: I have long covid, a chronic and seemingly incurable situation, I am unable to predict which days I will have energy or if my body will agree to either standing or moving, or for how long, so how do I tend to the boundaries required to care for myself and protect myself in a world where people pretend this is not happening or insist that I am on the verge of getting better, when I know I am not….]
And also in its simplest form, this is a wish about belonging.
I fell in love with this area, moved here to be close to this particular spot, and then due to [reasons no one could have anticipated], the place I moved to became uninhabitable, and now nearly three years later, I am MAKING IT WORK because there are no other options, but it does mean that I am always cold, there is no heat or hot water, and pretty much everything is broken. So, conflicted emotions about being here.
The Cowboy says…
You can talk to the land from your kitchen, sitting on your heated blanket, looking out at the trees and the cliffs. You do not have to climb to the top to commune with the spirit of place, you are still connected and interconnected. I don’t stop being a cowboy when I am resting in my bunk.
Things take time, and the transition from moving here to actually living here full-time took more time (and more of everything) than you anticipated, and that’s not a sign that it wasn’t the right move, it just didn’t come to pass in the way you imagined.
That’s a truth worth remembering: Not everything goes smoothly, it doesn’t say anything about you.
Stay in miracle-mind. Do what you can at the pace that is available to you. Keep wishing on stars, or on whatever you want. A wish is a wish, and wishing is a good habit.
The Assassin says…
Ah yes, the whole waking up in a bathtub full of ice thing, recovery is hell, but you’re a fighter and fighters go through a lot of recovery periods, recovery is part of fighting, you can’t rush what you can’t rush, it’s all part of the training. Fighting the recovery though…that’s just counter-productive.
To hone your lion skills requires a lot of stretching and yawning. It isn’t all pouncing and claws and being devastating. It’s sleeping eighteen hour days and not caring.
Anyway, you set the pace. If people want to come with you for slow steady walks that end when you say so, they will. And if they don’t then borrow someone’s dog. You can also scope the area by driving, that’s another way to get to know the lay of the land.
The Baker says…
Every day a new experiment, and sometimes the experiment is months and months of refining something you already know and love. Just like you like to read recipes, you could find books about the area, read up on trails, revisit favorite spots.
Your oven broke and so you decided to make a raw cake instead, apply that wisdom and ingenuity here.
Easy come, easy go, keep wishing your wishes, stay innovative and playful, clean up your workspace and start again tomorrow. It’s all learning and improving.
The Lion says….
Injuries heal. You adapt. Fierceness just is, either way. You don’t lose in prowess just because you got scratched up. You haven’t stopped being a force to be reckoned with, you are just learning new ways.
It’s called lion’s breath for a reason. Big loud full-body exhales. Growl your way back to yourself. Luxuriate in taking the time.
Evangeline…
Evangeline: You won’t listen to me because you don’t like me
me: come on, I literally invited you to the meeting, or whatever, maybe I didn’t, but even if you invited yourself, we all know you’re here because your insight is needed here
Evangeline: You think I’m manipulative and untrustworthy
me: okay sure, and maybe sometimes it’s good or useful to be manipulative in certain situations, if I perceive you as manipulative then you are the shadow I avoid, you are someone who goes after what they want and makes things happen, so show me what I need to learn, help me understand what is the treasure in what I fear or don’t understand..
Evangeline: To set yourself up well on a hike, you want things in place, a map, water, comfortable shoes, tell someone where you’re going…
me: okay, I get the analogy, now what
Evangeline: I need you to be more ruthless, and also more clear on what’s important to you, stop compromising on what matters, and start setting things up so they are in place for what you want
me: okay, working on it
Evangeline: And you’re not having enough fun
me: how do I have more fun
Evangeline: Your power lies in the things you are already good at: ritual and repetition, just do what you already do but make it fashion (make it witchy), and yes, go for a hike…
Hiking Day self says…
I am not sure about this name but what I mean is the version of me who loves hiking, nature, being outdoors, a marching self?
Hiking Day self: Honestly I don’t care whether you take up hiking or not, I think the research part will be a good rabbit-hole for you, and maybe this whole exercise is a proxy mission, who can say.
Start with finding a short hike you love, and go from there. Maybe that’s the only thing that needs to happen. Maybe it only needs to happen once. Maybe I’m just pointing you in a direction. But you love to obsess over things so obsess over this. This can be your spring obsession.
Get outdoors, we’ll go from there. The clues will reveal themselves. Just start.
Sorcery Self says…
A spell is a period of time as well as a magical incantation. Do something for a spell, and do it with intention, and then rest.
You already know how to magic-up space, magic is a verb you excel at, so what’s stopping you?
Light a candle. Take a breath. Feel what is needed. One step at a time, fractal results. This sort of energy acupuncture in a space is a thing you know how to do.
It’s a boring cliche to say that you fear your own powers but also it’s not wrong. Find out what you can do by giving more time to ritual.
The self who excels at rest and recovery says…
Let’s name what is working. You are doing great at Early To Bed. You’re doing great at Closing Eyes for X Delicious Hours. You’re doing great at being kind and patient with yourself when [night terrors, etc].
You’re doing great at morning and evening stretches. There are more things in the category of What’s Already Working than you think, give yourself more credit here.
You are correct that you vastly underestimate how much you can do, the extent to which doing (anything) wears you out, and vastly underestimate recovery time and overestimate your ability to snap back.
This has always been true, and you are also adapting to new limitations. And you’re doing it in the cold, in a pandemic, all alone and in the wilderness under very trying conditions, so good for you.
Let’s just keep building in more recovery time. Whether that’s during the day (good job, you did some cooking or washed dishes, now let’s get on the floor) or taking way more time for some good healing nothing after driving yourself to an appointment.
This is the worst kind of “trust the process”, I know, it’s so hard to trust and it’s scary and can sometimes be kind of miserable, but also you gotta do it. Rest is medicinal and a form of resetting.
The self who excels at the pursuit of pleasure
I have been referring to this self as Comically Young Area Mermaid, which is a joke, I said something to a friend of mine who is a younger boomer about how creaky I am feeling, and somehow turning forty six this week, and she said, OH THAT IS JUST COMICALLY YOUNG.
And then when I was sitting in hot water letting my neck release, I thought about mermaid time and what it would be like to just be Area Mermaid, in a news story. Area Mermaid finds cure for neck pain. Comically Young Area Mermaid enjoys the healing powers of water. Okay, now you’re caught up. What does this self have to say?
To excel at the pursuit of pleasure is about not saving pleasure for later.
Pleasure is not the reward, it is the everything. Pursuit of pleasure is not just about the pleasure, the pursuit can also be a source of pleasure itself. Stop thinking about endgame and start bringing attentiveness to the joys that can be savored in this moment.
Small pleasures are available that you don’t know about yet. Savoring what is here now is also a form of pursuing pleasure.
Mainly: stop putting off joy until you think you’ve earned it. Devote yourself to the pursuing.
I believe in miracles, you sexy thing
This is the first time this self has shown up to a meeting, and I know nothing about them other than this line from a song, let’s see what they have to say…
The self of I believe in miracles, you sexy thing (IBIMYST) says: Stay in miracle mind. Breathe into left and right hemisphere. Breathe into wherever. Make space. That’s miracle-mind. It doesn’t require anything of you.
This is a practice of remembering that perfect, simple, elegant solutions are possible and available, beyond what you are able to currently picture.
This is not a practice of seriousness. This is a ritual of lightheartedness. Let some silliness bubble up.
Dance it out. Laugh out loud for no reason. Cultivate an appreciation of the ridiculous. Have dessert for breakfast.
R&R and R&R and more than you think
Rest & Recovery
Ritual & Repetition
Recalibration & Reorienting
Resonance & Reverberation
Release & Receive
Recharge & Reset
And of course Remember To Remember…
Remember to remember
I always need so much more rest and recovery than I think I do. However much I think is enough is usually a small fraction of what I need just to get back to baseline.
All the R&Rs and more than you think!
Some March wishes (march-in-March wishes!) to start with…
Here are my wishes for March and beyond…these are wishes, goals, secret ops, superpowers and clues about what I want….
More naming: naming priorities, naming obsessions, naming iguanas, naming what works…
More reorienting towards pleasure, towards pleasure itself and towards the act of seeking and prioritizing pleasure.
What is the opposite of The Big Fog / The Great Molasses / The Impossible Slog of Slog? Is it the power of A Good Obsession? Is it the superpower of AND I CRAVE IT? Is it the pursuit of pleasure? Let’s find out!
Miracle mind, find out what it’s like to spend more time there. And: Everything is funny / what if everything is funny?
Go on hikes. That’s the clue that keeps coming up for me. What does it mean? I will have to report back.
I still don’t know if this is a metaphor or not but it’s the best clue I have
It keeps coming up so there it is. Go on hikes. I don’t fully know what it means but I know it is a clue, and a clue related to fresh air, new views, perambulation, and craving something, and maybe that’s the medicine.
What can I crave? What can I just OBSESS OVER in March?
Rest, Recovery, Reset, Recalibrate, Ritual, Raw Cake, what else starts with an R or doesn’t but is worthy of a good obsession?
Retraining, Relishing, Resonance, Reconnaissance, Regenerating, Red Flowers, what else?
Wait, talk to me about perambulation
A clue just showed up out of nowhere, I love it when that happens, absolutely my favorite part of journaling, let the words come and then zoom in on the unexpected ones.
Perambulate, verb: to travel over or through especially on foot : traverse : to make an official inspection of (a boundary) on foot.
So it isn’t just a stroll. It is an inspection of boundaries. (!!!!!!)
An inspection of boundaries, you say? On foot, to be extra grounded. Now we’re getting somewhere. Of course this is what is needed. It’s perfect and hilarious. The reason I want to go for a hike is that my boundaries need some close-up inspecting, who would have thought, other than all of us.
An inspection of boundaries might well lead to a RECALIBRATION of boundaries, something that starts with R, and feels very needed these days.
Alright, let’s go traverse a space on foot and make an official inspection of what’s there, where it begins and ends, what exists at the edges?
And: what will motivate me to perambulate? What will support me in perambulating? Oh, I know this already. A good obsession is what works for me. My neurodivergent brain thrives on an obsession, let’s dive into a rabbit hole, let’s special-interest the hell out of this.
If I can’t get motivated, can i get obsessed?!
Or: If i can’t get excited, can i get obsessed?!
Obsessed with the ground, feet on the ground, the scent of the earth, a meandering walk with lots of rests before, during and after, drawing power from the earth, striding forward, a march of March…
Whether it’s Apartment Hiking or mapping out new places in my mind, or going for an actual walk, or inviting a friend to go to the cliff dwellings with me once they open for spring, I am taking Take A Hike as my next directive, with the understanding that I can stop and rest as often as I need to, and that the hiking might need to be metaphorical, that’s okay too.
We are taking steady steps, the next indicated step and then another one, good job, go team. Companionship is a blessing. Thank you for marching (March-ing?) with me, as we find our way into what helps, what works, what might be a more pleasurable way to keep tending to ourselves in these changing and challenging times.
Entering as I wish to be in it, with a lion’s breath (rawr! big unapologetic full-body exhale!), with compassion and curiosity, wishing the wishes, embracing a good obsession, inviting in miracle-mind and a playful spirit.
Let’s keep going. ❤️
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm your own. What are some March wishes or fun potential obsessions or themes you’re drawn to play with! What patterns are asking to be rewritten and what would help? If you have any Incoming Selves you want to channel like I did here with mine, love that too. As always, we remember that People Vary.
And of course you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
I wish for all of us the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the trailer and getting through this rough patch.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
My life without memory
My life without memory
I have always left myself cryptic notes, even before the concussion.
A devoted and forgetful scribbler of reminders, I exist in ADHD time: the thing that is right in front of me is either entirely invisible to me or, alternately, the only item/task/question/pursuit that exists in the universe, no in-between.
At the same time, I am regularly interrupted by memory, sudden and abrupt, almost unbearably intense.
A loss or heartbreak from years ago hurts the same as the day it happened, I remember and gasp in pain.
It recedes or it doesn’t, on its own timing.
On its own timing, like everything else
I too am on my own timing, I just don’t really have a sense of how it works.
And yet, I maintain a mysteriously high level trust in these reminder notes that almost never do their job.
In the moment, as I am laboriously deciding how to phrase the reminder, I remain fully convinced that the next day I will know exactly what “a time for gleaming, a time for things that gleam” means, and be able to act on that instruction.
Cryptic is such a good word
In a way, these notes confuse me less now because I devote less time to puzzling out what the poet intended.
I am mostly uninterested in what yesterday-me or last-week-me might have meant, if I don’t understand the instructions then they aren’t for me.
Now I just casually toss these post-it notes into the recycling. If I’m meant to remember that clue, it will show up again. Solved by not having to solve it.
Solved!
Somehow, in the moment of writing these notes, I am wholly convinced that writing it down is the most brilliant, simple, elegant solution to help tomorrow-me remember what is important, what needs to happen, how it needs to happen.
Write it down! That’s the answer!
And occasionally it is.
But the regularity with which I will think to myself, “Great, solved that problem by writing a note for later!” only to find myself utterly baffled by the very same note the next day…
I recognize my handwriting, and maybe a vague shadow of a memory of the mood I felt while writing it (urgency? excitement? cautiously optimistic?) but what did the poet intend? Who can say. Certainly not the poet.
Certainly not someone coping (barely) with memory loss, brain fog and a traumatic brain injury.
Lost & found in translation
It occurred to me just now while rereading that “what did the poet intend” is actually more of a phrase I would use in Hebrew, I’m not sure how well it translates to English.
It’s a reference to the way teachers phrase essay question in literature class. And it makes sense in colloquial Hebrew as any form of “I have no idea what this person is talking about, your guess is as good as mine!”
But it also serves the purpose of directing us to focus on a deeper meaning, because there has to be one somewhere. What do we think the deeper meaning is?
Oof. Suddenly I am not sure if any of that works as well in English, or not, and I can’t think of who to ask.
You will have to tell me in the comments if that phrasing came across as funny (intentional), funny (unintentional) or oddly poetic. Maybe you are also not sure what the poet might have intended here. 😜
WWDBD
Since the concussion reshaped my brain, and even more so since Long Covid changed the shape of my life, I have devoted quite a bit of poet-intending time to thinking about Drew Barrymore’s character in the Adam Sandler comedy Fifty First Dates.
Disclaimer: it has been so many years since I’ve seen this, no idea how it’s held up, my memory is broken, though in general I think Adam Sandler movies tend to be wildly offensive in about a hundred different ways, so apologies if I am referencing a film that did harm, it probably did, I only remember a few scenes.
The part that interests me is the not-remembering, what we do and don’t remember.
Drew Barrymore’s character was in an accident that left her with a brain injury in the form of anterograde amnesia, she remembers her entire life up to the day of the accident and believes it is still that day, each day. Her family doesn’t want her to relive the trauma of the accident, and so they to contrive to make each day the same for her, erasing the passage of time. No more unfolding of time.
Unfolding feels wrong, but maybe time rolls out like a rug.
Good Morning, Confused Lost Self: YOU ARE HERE
And in the end, Lucy (just looked up her name) is married to Adam Sandler’s Henry character, and each morning she wakes up to find a video tape that says GOOD MORNING, LUCY.
She watches the video, which explains her injury and the accident, and catches her up on her current life, in which time does unfold, so that she can go through her day with updated information.
No confusing, alarming surprises about where she is. Or who she is.
Doesn’t that sound lovely.
What Would Drew Barrymore Do (she would watch the video!)
You will be unsurprised to know that I find this both enormously relatable, and that I have a deep yearning for this kind of video I could watch for myself: hey, good morning, this is what you are about, this is how your brain works now, these are the things that are important to you, here is how you get things done.
I crave it. Truly. I want this so badly.
How sweet, how reassuring and convenient to just have all that information pre-packaged, ready to go. To not have to spend so much of my day, so many of my days, just re-remembering and rediscovering the exact same things, astonished anew each time.
Sometimes it seems like that’s all I do, remember.
And on the other hand, maybe that’s not a bad thing even though it feels very time-consuming. As Esther Gokhale says, about movement and posture but really about so many things, forgetting is part of remembering, and each time the memory gains in strength. Or in theory it does.
Composition
I sit down to write.
I write words. Often I like them. Not always, but either way, so many points for the act of intentionally sitting, for the practice, for the rituals of composition and reflection.
And then, if I don’t finish the piece of writing, or don’t return to it the very next day with the help of many reminder notes, I forget about it entirely.
This is how I have ended up with dozens and dozens of documents of half-finished essays in various locations, both on my computer and in notebooks.
Just make an ending?
Sometimes I think I want to hold a Rally or put myself through a writing retreat where I just take action on these limbo-pieces of writing: finish them or delete them or publish as they are, fragments.
Flip a coin. Just finish. Just end it. Just erase it. Choose your adventure, or pick your poison.
But then I write myself a note about that, to remind myself to do that, and then I forget what the note meant.
What did the poet intend?
Existing outside of time is not for the faint of heart
The other day, I found some draft essays on the website, unfinished, some just sentence fragments, some hundreds of words, and one, from last March, which I do not remember writing at all, had the most tantalizing title:
Existing outside of time is not for the faint of heart.
What a terrific title. I love it. What does it mean? I mean, what did I mean?
I too am wondering what the poet intended.
Or if I will ever write that piece, or rewrite it, or write a new essay with the same title.
Will I remember how to remember?
Erased at midnight
I was listening to the Blast Zone podcast, the episode about the movie Dark City, which I never saw and am pretty sure I never heard of, and a plot point is that everyone’s minds get wiped at midnight each night.
Which is also extremely relatable.
There are no touch points, this is also something I wrote on a note, and believe to be true, even if I no longer remembered what the poet intended.
I think what I meant is that for me, being disabled in a pandemic, and living in isolation, there are not many external situations or interactions that can remind me of how things are, do I mean touchstones?
So I live by ritual and repetition because those are the stones I can find. If 6pm is when I get into bed and 8pm is when I close eyes, and 6am is when I open eyes, and 6:30am is when I need to be jogging on the red rug, those are points.
Enough points form a constellation or a shape, and I follow that shape, and it doesn’t matter that my mind got wiped again at midnight, if it did, if that’s what the poet intended or if the poet intended for me to remember. I follow the fragments, follow the focus, any stone making up a path, any touch point in a storm.
Chop wood, carry water, remember to remember to remember
This winter has been so brutal, so much harder than last year. Last week the temperature went go down to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (-13 in Celsius? very cold), and I have lost track of how many times the pipes have frozen and burst this year.
Each day in the evening, at sunset, I turn off the well pump, and empty the water from the faucets, so that there is no water in the pipes to expand.
Around noon, I turn the pump back on and open the faucets, sometimes there is water and sometimes there isn’t, sometimes it takes a few hours and sometimes the shed floods.
Even if I don’t have water inside, sometimes there is still water outside, so when it’s time to wash dishes, I go outside to the spigot and fill a jug of water, then heat the water in the kettle, and fill another jug. And so on.
Slow time on the farm. Remember to remember to remember.
And so on
I have never liked the phrase “chop wood carry water” but I get it, ritual and repetition, small tasks, one step at a time, be the bravest hero and get up again, do it again.
With attentiveness? Is that the point? For me it is more about valiant effort.
Valiant Effort is the superpower of keep on keeping on. Good morning, Lucy. Watch the video, Lucy. Fill a water jug. Do it again. Good job.
Braver than the marines.
Forgetting what hurts, forgetting what helps
Sometimes I forget the way I am affected by weather, the grey-white sky, the hailstorms, the 70mph winds hurtling through the canyon, the barometric pressure headaches, until I am crying on the floor in the middle of a mental health crisis.
I write myself notes about this, and the notes don’t make sense.
Don’t believe the weather, I tell myself. What did the poet intend?
Comparison: still the devil
Last year the second half of February was when the worst of winter was over out here, when I felt a reprieve had been granted. I could still see my breath inside in the mornings but not all day. More light more hope.
And so this year, without really realizing it, I have just been coaxing myself to get here. Just make it through the first third of February, and you win. Winter will be until it it isn’t.
I don’t think I understood to what extent I was hanging by a thread to get to last week, until then last week when the reprieve didn’t come. I looked at the weather app and saw NINE DEGREES and lost my fucking mind, or whatever was left of it, and cried and cried and could not stop crying.
But why compare this year to last year. This year is this year. Now is not then.
In the realm of badasses and badassery, badass adjacent, but what does it mean?
My friends tell me I am a badass.
I most emphatically do not perceive that I am a badass. Apparently my internal (monster-written?) definition of badass includes “not crying for hours at a setback”. My monsters think I am the biggest baby, the biggest fuckup, always lost and confused.
However, apparently I am wrong. Apparently living alone at the edge of the edge, wounded and confused, outside of time and outside of culture, living by ritual and repetition is in the realm of badass, even when I forget. And I am always forgetting.
WWABD
What would a badass do? Watch the video, Lucy.
Good morning, good morning, good morning. This is your life now.
Or: this is your life right now, in this moment.
Now is not then. Things move and shift and change.
It’s another beautiful day at Slow Time Farm. It won’t be this cold forever. You’re doing great.
Get dressed. Be brave. Jog for 23 minutes on the red rug. Fill the water jugs when you can. Good job, babe.
{enter as you wish to be in it}
These are the things I do before I sit down to write:
wash & dry dishes
clean my librarian glasses
vacuum the rug
remove any iguanas (stressful things) or distractions from line of sight
turn on the heating pad
light candle or loose incense
fill a glass of water
Breathe in, breathe out. We will write our way through.
Where is the freedom
Where is the freedom within the Drew Barrymore as Lucy situation, and how does it work? What is useful in this situation of apparently my mind gets erased each night at midnight? Talk to me about the liberation within traumatic brain injury and long covid and not being able to focus?
There is an element of each day you start fresh.
There is an element of preserving some baseline information about what you’re working with (ritual & repetition, scribbled notes, carry water).
I am learning about my life without memory. I am learning about my life, without memory.
Learning about my life without memory, without memory
I am learning about being a writer who has to write without the gift of memory, just these confusing post-it notes, quarter-to-half essays, and sometimes just an intriguing title:
Seasons Gleamings.
A Surprise Guest.
Follow The Focus.
Will I write these ? What did the poet intend?
You remembered about your forgetting. That’s a start.
What are the baseline known elements?
Resting into what works. Path of least resistance. The way I know ritual and repetition are what hold me.
I do the same things each day, not many, but religiously, by a schedule.
And I make the same food (refinement as a practice).
And I show up to [Writing Hour], and skip stones until I find a direction.
Carry water. Small tweaks to what is already working. Praise praise praise. Braver than the marines. Good job, Lucy. You watched the video. So fucking brave.
So brave
I love you, I believe in you, one step at a time. Fractal interconnected steps.
The winds will calm. You will remember something you care about. Let it surprise you. Let’s make tea. Let’s fill those water jugs. You are what the poet intended.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm your own. What would go in your Good Morning, Lucy video? What patterns are we rewriting and what would help? We remember that People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
May we find the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
The Holiest Feast Day of Do-Overs
Do-Overs Forever
It is known that I do not hold by New Year’s Eve, and begin my new year on February 2, the under-appreciated holiday known as Groundhog Day, or as I think of it, the Holiest Feast Day of Do-Overs Forever, Amen.
January for me is more like a very relaxed trial run that absolutely doesn’t count, it’s not even the dress rehearsal, but something before that. The pre-, the Erev (Eve of), the thing that comes before.
Just casually, steadily, intentionally marking out the steps, a whisper-hum of wishes, pointing myself towards.
A run-through of what things could or might look like once we get into our groove, but: low stakes. Very low stakes.
January the longest month of just getting through
January of course it has its own issues, being the Never-ending Month That Does Not End.
Here in New Mexico it was also very, very cold in a way I can only describe as unforgiving. And January also contains some extremely painful memory-days for me that are nearly always harder to get through than I anticipate.
So I don’t push in January, as a matter of principle, and also because pushing is no longer an option for me.
I don’t push in January
January is for getting through it, percolating on my new year wishes, running some reconnaissance on my various new year experiments, and seeing what helpful intel I can gather.
Reconnecting with myself, maybe poking my head out and trying to reconnect with people I care about.
But mainly just a lot of ritual and repetition. WE DO GROUNDING THINGS, and we do them over and over again, and we just keep doing them.
Show up. Light a candle. Keep it moving. Follow the focus. One beautifully fractal step at a time.
Good job. Back to bed is also a step. Forgetting is part of remembering. Rest is part of recovery. Compassion compassion compassion. Add more compassion.
Ritual & repetition
Waking up each day and doing the things that help…
Naming this: Hey, I am doing things that help. I am doing some of the things that help. Even (and especially!) when I don’t want to. Acknowledgment & Legitimacy for the hard things being hard, they really are.
Awarding myself ten trillion sparklepoints for sticking with it, the courageous ongoing work of We Got This, Just Keep On Keeping On.
Noticing how the light is coming in a little earlier here in the northern hemisphere, and hanging out a little longer before sunset…
True New Year
I don’t insist on big new shifts in January, all I do is introduce small, cumulative tweaks to the things that were already working. And I continue to give myself so much credit for being brave and adaptable.
And no pressure! It doesn’t count! January is just a test-drive. We aren’t making assumptions or commitments, just trying some things while tending to the basics.
That way when True New Year arrives on the second day of February, I wouldn’t say that I’m ready, because what’s that, but I’m definitely not shell-shocked the way I was at the end of December, with all the pressures of NEW YEAR NEW EVERYTHING in the air.
And by the time I’ve had the longest month ever to sit with (or near) some of my goal-wishes for the new year, they seem less intimidating by then. Maybe I’ve already taken some symbolic steps towards them, or slid into their DMs (so to speak), maybe we are closer to meeting than we were before…
Treasure (sometimes unexpected or unanticipated, also a verb)
I love and treasure the qualities of Newness and Recalibration, these joyful, hope-filled aspects of beginnings, the tantalizing freshness of it all. I just have a strong allergic reaction to the sort of collective pressure that builds up approaching the new year.
Luckily, none of that stuff is attached to Groundhog Day, a perfectly mundane holiday, which makes it an excellent candidate for a Feast Day. And, the next day, the third of February, is National Carrot Cake Day, which sounds very cheerful, so I’m into it!
Happy National Carrot Cake Day to all who celebrate, and if you don’t then what better time to introduce more cake into the world.
It couldn’t hurt.
Solved By Cake. Unexpected medicine. The healing powers of sweetness, which is also how I think of the practice of Can I Add More Compassion? What would ten percent more sweetness towards myself feel like?
Trees
Then on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shvat, which this year is Sunday, February 5th, we come to the eve of the birthday of the trees, who get their own new year, it goes through Monday the 6th.
The holiday of Tu B’shvat is celebrated through deliciousness and simplicity, eating tree goodness (almonds, figs, dates, fruits of spring) and feeling good about trees.
I always feel good about trees so that’s an easy one but it’s fun to have a day just for that.
Living close to national forest land, I am writing this looking out at juniper and piñon and cottonwood friends. Blessings of protection, tree friends. Thank you for oxygen, for love and comfort, for companionship and salves and magic.
A month of new beginnings
So really if you think about it, we get a whole bonus month of new year, new beginnings, slow-time style, and I love that for us.
Repeats. Cake. The steady companionship of the trees.
Do-overs forever. With an emphasis on what is delicious.
Reflecting time (two meanings)
As you know, I like to reflect on what was hard and what was good.
I don’t want to skip naming the hard things, because sometimes that can become a way of neglecting myself through trying to gloss over pain, forgetting to meet myself with the compassion I would have for a friend in my situation.
I want to practice acknowledgment and legitimacy, the hard things were hard! Absolute heroism for making it through despite that.
And I like to name the good, not out of a desire to force myself to find silver linings or demand gratitude from myself, but because the good is here too, and it is helpful to bring my attention to what is hopeful and possible. New buds, a shifting of the light, here and present for the miracles.
Naming what was hard for me in January
In general I’ve been getting better with the solitude, but I did go thirty entire days from the last week of December to almost the end of January without a conversation with a human who is not me,* and while it was not as devastating as I feared it might be, it’s just very intense.
*Unless you count the polite {“Did you find everything okay?” “Yes, thank you”] weekly exchange at the grocery store as a conversation, but sometimes I find that interaction even more isolating.
There is the isolation of living alone by the trees with no one to talk to, and the other isolation of making the journey to town for provisions, realizing I am surrounded by people who are living interpersonally and in a world where Covid is “over” (for them), and I am not living interpersonally, and do not exist in a world where Covid can be ignored, and I am unable to join them there, and it makes the loneliness more disorienting.
Mmmmmm what else
The cold spell was brutal and my pipes froze so many times that I started filling jugs of water each day, then shutting off electricity to the well before sundown, and waiting until mid-day to try for running water again.
Showers were few and far between because the roads were too icy to drive anywhere where I can shower.
The one-two punch of Long Covid with traumatic brain injury remains devastating and unpredictable. There are days when my brain doesn’t work, days when my body doesn’t work, and days when both of them absolutely refuse to come online.
There are also miracle days when I can do things, sometimes even with relative ease, but because I can’t know or even guess when these days will show up, I cannot plan for anything.
Naming what was good
I am less lonely than I used to be, not because of any real change of circumstances but somehow finding it easier to have a good time with myself again. More cooking, more dancing, more laughter, more being okay with slowing things down / being slowed down.
A good deal of practicing what my dance teacher in Portland used to refer to as “do less to get more”.
Mainly: I made a list of what works and then did what works, and stuck with it like it was a life raft, which it maybe was. Ritual and repetition. Staying attuned to hopefulness when I can, and to ritual and repetition when I can’t. Show up, do the thing at the time, or a version of it that is doable, rest, repeat.
And this week I was able to spend time with a friend (twice!) and got to see a doctor who is a delight, and wow it was so good.
Sunshine almost every day. Lots of people check in on me from afar. I am not alone, even when I perceive that I am. Red chile cauliflower potato soup! Made a large batch each week as part of ritual & repetition, nourishing and delicious.
What worked in January!
Found a rhythm of rinse and repeat with my rituals, not literally because I mostly didn’t have running water, haha, but more like, I got into a steady groove of yes, this is the steady groove, and I crave it.
Craving it is really what I’m going for. Any sparks of desire in a storm, right?
Ran some experiments, all very small and low-stakes.
Started closing my eyes very early in the pursuit of Ten Delicious Hours of Eyes Closed, and it turns out this trick works for me, which is annoying, but there it is.
Started treating 7am yoga hour like I am teaching a class I am very excited about (even if it is just for me). Some days I even do feel a little excited about it, and other days it is a slog, here’s to more of the good ones, but I show up either way.
Added fifteen minutes of gentle stretching before bed.
Instead of thinking about getting into bed before 6pm as a failure, as if I have given up on [everything I used to do], I’m thinking about it as an intentional hibernation and healing practice. Again, if a friend were doing it, I would cheer them on and find the good. Can I do that for myself? Sometimes!
23:23 minutes for getting things done, then if I have to sit down and recover, I do, but this is a good amount of time for me to give to washing dishes or closing tabs, or whatever needs to get done.
What do-overs do I want for the New Year
I want to keep showing up for what is working, for Yoga Hour and Cooking Club (imaginary, currently the only member is me, but anyone is welcome to join me from afar for daily food prep), and closing my eyes in pursuit of Ten Delicious Hours of maybe sleep and maybe eyes-closed, resting and hibernating.
I want to keep adding elements of And I Crave It to these rituals, so that they become more pleasurable and enticing. To yearn to be doing the things I’m doing anyway.
And on the days that these practices are a slog, I want to remember that showing up is worth it, but also I want to be flexible and adaptable, letting myself move on from something that is stuck, come back to it later or reconfigure the plan.
And on the days when I have no energy or a case of bad brain weather, I want to shower myself in love and sweetness, and applaud myself for resting.
Instead of making a list at the end of the day of all the things I didn’t get to that I think I should have, I want to appreciate myself. It is no small feat to navigate this world. We’re just practicing.
What are the qualities of Secret New Year
What are the qualities of Secret New Year / True New Year / Most Holy Feast of Do-Overs forever?
Process. Spaciousness and Expansiveness, aka There’s time.
Experimentation. Compassion.
Sweetness and Comfort. Trust and Hopefulness.
Sanctuary and Structure. Creativity and Play.
Something about layering on these experiences of nourishment and sustenance.
We try things. We notice what’s working and what might help. We tweak the experiment. All intel is useful.
What is my plan for the Feast of Do-Overs
Not much, I never know how much energy I will have, but am going to keep doing the things that work and keep on keeping on.
There will be red chile cauliflower potato soup that I made during Cooking Club time this week.
I might gleam something with extra care, maybe wiping down the cabinets is tomorrow’s gleaming op, if I have the energy for that.
Might do some stone-skipping or a version of a Monday Meeting to get clarity on my wishes for the year.
Nearly every day, if I’m paying attention, an insight or idea-spark will volunteer itself about a small shift I could make to one of my experiments, and I would love to get better at noticing how these add up over time.
Cumulative magic
This goes back to taking the time to pause, remember, appreciate the winding path. While progress might feel slow, it is cumulative.
Resting is not only good practice, it’s when I can turn around and see just how far I’ve come.
Sure, maybe some days it’s too foggy to see. Okay, that happens too, we add compassion, make soup, a breath and another breath for the shifting light and all hope-sparks to come.
Can I undo the habitual mind-trap of linear progress?
And if not, can I notice that I’m in it, and remind myself that it is a mirage. Do-overs forever. Carrot cake and trees and showing up again.
Do-overs are a practice of kindness
Do-overs can be playful. Do-overs can be fractal.
The rewriting and reconfiguring of habits, patterns and existing structures can emerge from anything. Sometimes they come out of a state frustration or a useful if not-fun breakdown. And sometimes they come from appreciation of an already-good something that you want to be even more good.
I have said this probably ten thousand times but: it is brave to try things, and it is also brave to be like, ”Oh yeah absolutely no thanks to that thing I tried!”, and then try something else.
We learn through experimenting and experience. Ritual and repetition, small shifts, add compassion, notice what we notice, regroup, start again.
Happy Feast Day of Do-Overs Forever to you, I hope you are able to feel some hope-sparks and, if you like, begin your year again.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting! All experiments are useful experiments! All Do-Overs are good! You can brainstorm experiments & practices, for rewriting a pattern, whatever you’re working through, People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship is healing.
Wishing you a sweet new year that is an improvement in all ways over the last one, and if you are boycotting the passage of time then pretend I did not mention that! May we all find the supportive rituals, playful experiments and loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
New Year Experiments
New Year Experiments
We’re talking experiments for the new year (my own experiments, and the idea of experiments in general), we’re covering the gentle art of pattern-rewriting, and there might also be sound effects. Whee!
Preface! Context! And the usual parenthetical asides.
It’s that time of year when it seems like everyone online is either talking about their rhymes-with-revolutions, or about how they make a point to not do any.
Are these both reasonable options? Yes! Are there other options? Absolutely. Let’s find out!
And of course, as with everything we want to keep in mind (or hold in the heart, keep in heart? How is that not a phrase?) that People Vary. People Vary.
People Vary
One way we might vary is that some people find the new year invigorating, while some people want to sleep through it. My friend E says he resents even being reminded of the passage of time, fair enough!
Some people love making big changes all at once, and other people like to ease into new patterns and habits in their own timing, either in small increments or just waiting until they feel ready.
One of these approaches is not better than the other, it’s just a matter of figuring out where we land.
And, the People Vary principle also applies to words and how we feel when we encounter them.
We all have our own personal histories with words, layered associations built up over time.
Some words draw us in, some repel us. This can also change with time, and let’s remember that we have some power here too, in the sense that we can always rewrite words and/or our associations with them if we want to. We can play.
But first, we start with just noticing how we feel about these sometimes tricky words, and what they bring up for us. And of course the word I am thinking about specifically right now is resolution, in the sense of New Year’s resolutions.
Start where you are
If resolutions work for you — as a word or concept or a practice (or all of the above!), I love this for you and am excited for your new year resolutions! May all your resolutions come beautifully to fruition, or something even better. Wow, what beautiful wishes…
And if you’d rather opt-out entirely of interacting with anything related to goals, wishes, or anything in between, I support this too. There is so much external pressure to force big change, and that it happens at the exact time of year that is least conducive towards doing anything other than hibernating is honestly kind of cruel, and at best, a really big ask.
This dissonance can be painful, and we’ve talked about this before.
Opting out of the whole thing is not only its own beautiful, creative and subversive practice, it can be a generous gift to yourself. So if that’s what you’re drawn to, I applaud the opting out! Take the detour. Love a detour.
We begin when we begin. When we’re ready.
We begin when we begin
There is so much value and healing goodness in making changes in ways (and at times) that actually support us, and sometimes that means Nap First, receive intel later.
Rest into it or run towards it, whichever you like. Or something else entirely.
(The point!)
All that to say, I am not writing this to convince you of anything, I don’t need you to like resolutions or to be a middle finger to resolutions.
In fact, I genuinely support both of these, as well as any form of Not X, Not Y, But A Third Secret Way, whatever works for you.
I wrote this just to share how I do things. And I don’t need you to do things the way I do them either. All I want is to remind us with love and affection that we have options. We can go our own way. Cue Fleetwood Mac…
* Though I am hearing The Cranberries 1999 Live In Paris version which always makes me cry but in a good way.
A starting point
Maybe my new year practice will spark some ideas for you, maybe you’ll want to review your relationship with resolutions and intentions or [a stand-in for these].
Maybe what you want is a new word, approach or practice, or maybe you’ll realize the way you already approach this transition works really well for you, awesome.
And if none of this is what you want, maybe that clear beautiful no can be a clue that lets you craft something new and different that you like better. Love that too.
New Year Experiments!
The reason I go with experiments over resolutions is they feel more spacious and playful to me.
An experiment involves gathering information (reconnaissance!) and putting together a hypothesis, and being willing to change the hypothesis, or even the entire focus and scope of the experiment, depending on what we learn and how things develop.
Experiments are about being genuinely curious, suspending judgment and releasing expectations. Being present in the moment: willing to be surprised.
There might be some hope-sparks in a certain direction, but the experiment isn’t “good” if it “works” and “bad” if it doesn’t. That’s a misunderstanding of the process. All experiments are useful experiments.
And each experiment yields vital information that leads us to the next experiment.
There are too many unknowns for me to resolve anything one way or the other
I don’t resolve to do anything in particular, to be more x, or have more y, or even to commit to a habit in a certain way for a certain amount of time.
Mainly because I have no idea what’s going to happen, who I am going to be, or what slightly-future-me is going to need. It’s all unknown.
For me, resolutions involve deciding and committing, and I can’t do that because I have no idea what my energy level will be like, or what I’ll be feeling passionate about until I get there.
Example
Last year, in the very first week of January 2022, I got Covid. I was fully vaccinated and boosted so it could have been so much worse, and still, it kicked my ass, turned my life upside down and I am still not close to anything that feels like recovery, whatever that means.
Anyway, I was in pain and non-stop distress for pretty much the first two months of the year, and after that my brain didn’t work.
So it would have been pretty ridiculous — and enormously frustrating — had I resolved to do or produce or get things done, had I wanted to achieve [X number of Y], work out every day, be more this way or that way. None of those were available to me.
Luckily, I hadn’t made any resolutions. I had only renewed some ongoing experiments. Were the parameters of these experiments changed by being incapacitated? Sure, a little, but not much. I was able to shift my experiments and adjust.
A little bit about how I approach experiments!
Compassion is step zero!
But it’s also all the in-between steps.
Rewriting habits and patterns is courageous work. It involves challenging familiarity. We already have our comfy neural pathways, we already whoosh down them automatically, like a toddler on a slide. Wheeee!
If we are going to interrupt our patterns in order to reconfigure them or rewrite them into something better, we want to do it lovingly. Otherwise we’re just reinforcing a bigger pattern of trying to force things or generally being shitty towards ourselves, and what’s the point of that.
What’s the point of reinforcing self-criticism
So part of this practice of Lovingly Interrupting Patterns is noticing when we’ve whooshed down the slide of the old self-criticism pattern, and glowing some compassion and understanding for that too. Oh yeah, no worries, we went whooshing down the familiar path for a minute, so reasonable, so understandable, it’s okay.
Of course we did things the familiar way, that’s why it’s the familiar way. Of course we wanted to force things, of course we were being shitty to ourselves.
That’s the training we’re undoing! Good job, babe.
Good job, babe
Noticing the pattern changes the pattern.
Good job on the noticing.
Good job, stepping over onto the new path.
Good job, being conscious and intentional about being conscious and intentional. Is it always going to work? Hahahaha, not at all. Welcome to being human. Good job, babe, killing it at that too.
When we get into the loop of self-judgment…
And when we forget to be compassionate? Or when it feels impossibly hard…
You guessed it. We can apply compassion there too.
Like this:
Oh wow, I’m having a hard time being compassionate with myself about this old habit-pattern of the mind, and about how long it’s taking to get out of this rut, okay, noted, can we let that be neutral information for now, and remember that it’s okay to have a hard time activating the new response.
Especially when we live in a culture that pretends the best form of motivation is feeling bad about ourselves.
We’ve run the numbers
External culture loves a shame-guilt spiral, even though we have confirmed through years of experimentation that it pretty much never gets us to where we think we want to be! Run that one by the internal scientists.
We’ve run the numbers on this. Can confirm. Feeling terrible about ourselves is at best hit or miss as a form of motivation. It might occasionally work, for a brief period of time, but it backfires more often than not, is not sustainable in any way, and anyway, who wants to live like that, not me.
Nice try, Puritans, you got this one wrong. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Would you like some examples of ongoing experiments I’m working on?
Okay I reviewed my list and there were too many so picking two examples to start with, I can go into these in more detail later if you like (let me know in the comments!) and am also happy to share more about other ongoing experiments in future updates if that’s of interest….
The experiment of A Spacious Morning
This is an experiment about intentional containers of time, and starting my day with the rituals, routines and practices that are most supportive of mental well-being.
Sometimes focusing on morning spaciousness means I’m busier in the evening, but that’s okay for me because early evening is actually when I have more focus.
Things I have learned from the experiment of A Spacious Morning:
+ boundaries support spaciousness (too spacious and my day gets lost to depression and anxiety, or adhd spacing out and autism stimming)
+ 3:33 on a timer will get me to do something I find appealing but challenging
+ 19:33 on a timer will help me do something that will feel good once I start but I’m resisting starting
+ music helps
Tweaking this for 2023:
What happens if we rename the components?
Would it feel good to check these off on a card?
Syncing morning bobcat stretching with sunrise (exception for when night terrors)
The experiment of Naming Wins
It’s easy for me to get into monster-stories about how I have Achieved Nothing, especially since covid stole what was left of my concussion-injured brain, and I spend a lot of my days just trying to remember what I was about to do.
At the end of each day, my self-criticism monsters give me a long depressing list of all the things I didn’t get to, and I have learned that I can apply a neutral mindset to this list, and turn it into reminders for tomorrow-me.
But the main thing I like to do is counter their list with my own list of wins. Sometimes these wins are very small, but they all count, they all add up, and naming them is helpful for me.
Even more helpful is sharing them with a friend who is able to be much more impressed than I am with my list. I have learned that if I name the wins every day, I get better at noticing them throughout the day.
Tweaking this for 2023:
I’m not sure yet, will update when I know. I think it has to do with celebrating more fully. Maybe an emoji for each win on the list. Maybe lighting a candle while compiling the list. It can be hard for me to think I need a high five on any of this, but STUDIES HAVE SHOWN (aka the last few months) that it helps when a friend cheers me on, and I am always happy to cheer them on as well.
Main takeaways
I don’t ever want to turn an experiment into a should, something I use to beat myself up for not doing, or doing wrong, or even for forgetting about.
That’s the entire reason I moved away from resolutions to begin with.
It’s way too easy to let a wished-for practice or habit morph into a stressful obligation. It’s way too easy to feel crappy when we mess up or forget or get too busy or get sick, or [life stuff gets in the way, as it does].
Again, this is mainly the fault of external culture, which wants us to feel bad about ourselves at all times, to always be pushing, striving, trying (and failing) to be “better”, this is how the system maintains status quo and how it maintains itself.
And, as wiser people than me have pointed out, this constant push-push-push hustle-and-grind culture of striving towards an imagined happier, better, unattainable something (but never actually feeling content) is just how capitalism and other forms of hierarchy sustain themselves. So let’s keep interrupting those patterns too.
There is something that is not workaholism and not devoid-of-ambition, but A Third Secret Thing, and I don’t know what it is yet or what it looks like.
Figuring that out is another ongoing experiment, but I do know that it’s a worthwhile question to follow.
What is the opposite of turning a habit into a cudgel
So often we start a new “good” habit, something we have wished for and dreamed of and now we’re doing it, and then the monsters use it as a cudgel for the rest of our life.
I have seen the best minds of my generation eaten alive by this very thing.
The actual work of pattern-rewriting, from noticing the pattern to making space for letting things be how they are, to interrupting the pattern, to switching out an element in the pattern, to applying compassion over and over again, has to be about the opposite of a cudgel.
The new habit isn’t coming in to be the new thing we feel guilty about or frustrated over. Not playing that game is the real new habit.
Easier said than done? Sure. We still get a trillion points, at least, for experimenting with experimenting.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting! All experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm experiments & practices, for rewriting any patterns or whatever you might going through, People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship is healing.
Wishing you a new year that is an improvement in all ways over the last one, and if you are boycotting the passage of time then pretend I did not mention that! May we all find the supportive rituals, playful experiments and loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, it’s still slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, and it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, currently focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️