In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of ritual and self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
It can’t be Friday because in my head it’s still Wednesday.
But here we are.
Apparently.
Happy Friday! Let’s do this.
The hard stuff
Still too many things to do.
Overwhelming!
Plus there is always so much sadness and grief about the things that don’t get done. Even though, when you think about it, there will always be things in that category.
I mourned some of the not-doing this week.
Exhaustion.
So tired. So very tired.
I don’t even know what to say about that.
The building next door to the Playground is not done doing renovations.
Apparently they will never be done. They’ve been renovating since we moved in (fifteen months ago!).
And, according to the latest from my neighbors in the building, they’ve been doing this for at least NINE YEARS.
We’re going to have to sing the buttmonster song to make it better.
Ignored my bedtime.
I wanted so so badly to see Sharon Van Etten. I’ve pretty much stopped going to shows since the Nick Cave thing, because my needs to preserve my hearing, breathe steadily and be able to sit down are stronger than my desire to be present with the music while it’s happening.
Plus I really need to get enough sleep.
And if that makes me boring and old, I can deal with that.
So this show was going to be at 10pm, which is about half an hour past my bedtime.
But I had to go! And it was a tiny, special show. In a bar. Where I could sit. And not be overrun by throngs of people. Which is basically music heaven for a highly sensitive person.
Except, of course, that it didn’t actually start until 11:30. Which is when I used to start my shift back when I was a bartender. But right now it’s too late for me by a lot. Didn’t get to bed until after one, and that was not good.
Music still has so much sad.
Because I still miss my friend who is dead. He was at the concert too, sitting on the window ledge and smoking.
It never bothers me when he smokes. Maybe dead people cigarettes smell differently. I told him how many years it has been since I stopped, and he was really happy for me.
The news. I am ignoring it.
Seriously, it’s too much.
I wish the Shiva Nata training was at least a week longer!
I have so much more to cover!
And everyone is so amazing and I just want to get to hang out with them and do crazy shivanauttery all day.
Why does it have to end? Not fair! Not fair!
But it ends this afternoon. And then Rally starts Monday. What?! How?
That’s going to be amazing though, so ONWARD to the good!
The good stuff
Hit by massive inspiration.
I had a good three days of being in the zone, thanks to all the crazed Shiva Nata I’d done the week before.
Rewrote the Rally (Rally!) page, knocked about seventeen big things off the List of Roses and Iguanas, and wrote all the things that had been kicking around in my head wanting to be written.
Including the thing I had been completely blocked on. I just sat down and wrote it. Not even at Rally. Incredible.
A first.
I started this site six years ago (six years and two weeks!) but I’ve never done a guest post.
That’s because I’ve never wanted to.
But I did it for TJ as part of his Wagging the Blog experiment.
Partly because I really like the form. 30 Things I Love Right Now.
And partly because I really like TJ.
Also I met him at Rally. Rally! You should come to a Rally. It will be good. It’s where I meet people.
Anyway, I will send you think link when it’s up.
Lovely serendipity.
Went out to see a film on the weekend but there was a crazy impossibly long line, so gave up on that.
Went outside just as my friend Dana and her husband were driving by. They stopped. We went to Captured by Porches for beer and happiness. It was just right.
Help and support.
I’m getting so much wonderful help and support from people in my Kitchen Table program. I get to run all this stuff I’m working on by them, and they are so unbelievably helpful.
Feeling really appreciative.
Sharon Van Etten!
Even with no sleep, I wouldn’t have missed that show for the world.
It was unbelievably great.
Bliss.
I was there.
Thank you.
Exhale.
I’ll link to a video at the bottom so you can imagine it. Just like that but a hundred million times better!
The Shiva Nata training.
Ohmygod, this training.
I am having so much fun teaching it.
The hot buttered epiphanies are top notch: extra buttery!
The people who came are smart, funny, creative, goofy, and wonderful companions for doing something like this.
It’s a thrilling experience, really and truly.
And the usual thing where everyone there thinks they can’t do it and they can’t teach it, and then they all realize how deliciously wrong they are about all of that.
Also, I’m teaching it completely differently than either of the last two, which is a fun experiment. Results! There are many.
And all the Shiva Nata, of course.
We’ve done it silently and with music.
With words and numbers together. If you get a chance, ask one of our brand new teachers about the ten creative robots, the twenty one comforting ice creams and the twenty eight magical moments of spontaneity.
With sound effects:
Whoosh, Kapow, Meep and Ping for the horizontals. Eeeee, Shhhhh, Splat and Zap for the verticals. These also combine in cool ways like Meeping (4:3) or Splatsch (7:6).
Kapow and Whoosh gives you this cool kapowsh kapowsh sound.
We did it in a variety of other impossible ways too. We got hot and sweaty. We got still and silent. We did things we didn’t think we could do.
We made mistakes gleefully, messed up disastrously, made order out of chaos and took the world apart and put it back together. We rested and we ate potato chips. We fondled butt-monsters.
And I get to do three whole more hours of this stuff today. Yay!
Oh, and all the epiphanies, of course.
The number of insights, realizations, understandings and bits of Oh Yes It’s Like That have been huge.
Between the training and all the stuff I did to prepare for the training, my mind has been blown six ways from Sunday.
Wow. That’s all I can say for now. Wow! And still processing the rest.
Rally starts on Monday!
I love Rally so much I can hardly stand it. Rally!
And … playing live at the meme beach house it’s the Fake Band of the Week!
My brother and I have this thing where we come up with ridiculous band names and then say in this really pretentious, knowing tone, “Oh, well, you know, it’s just one guy.”
This week’s band courtesy of my wonderful uncle Svevo:
Mysterious Toe Accordion
They’re playing in town all week. Except that it’s really just one guy.
Also thanks to Darcy for introducing me to this marvelous song.
From the archives.
An old post of mine I accidentally encountered this week that I don’t remember writing or that seemed weirdly useful…
That’s from November, 2008. Weird.
Announcement time!
Imagine that I’m wearing that crazy hat. 🙂
- Reminder: Rally prices have to go up in 2012. Sooner than it sounds. And Rallies are already filling up quickly. So take a look at the SCHEDULE for this new year and make a Gwish about when/how.
- The whisper-brunch is happening for Crossing the Line: the 8 Day Voyage! (password: haulaway). I highly recommend signing up before I have a chance to write the copy for this. The bonuses are better.
- Lisa Firke has a gorgeous new site and, even better, a wonderful list called Rabbit, Rabbit. Get on that! I am a Lisa-fan.
I think that’s everything? If not, I’ll add stuff to the Very Personal Ads over the weekend.
That’s it for me …
And of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments if you feel like it.
Yes? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.
p.s. It’s okay if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — you can join in whenever (or not) and it’s no big deal.
Follow
Thanks for pointing to my new site and my silly Rabbits, Havi. The silly goodness gets even better in a few weeks because there are going to be Rabbit Rabbit Postcards. That you send to people on Rabbit Rabbit days (ie the first day of any month). Making them 12x more useful than single-occasion cards. Because that just how silly I’m willing to get. : )
Just noticed that the twitter widget had my old handle, hitthosekeys, instead of my new one, simply @lisafirke. I’ll get the hang of this Unbranding thing one of these days.
Chicken!
It’s been a strange week…
Hard:
-Food poisoning. Again.
-Little Bird is learning about friendship, things, and how friendship is more important than things. Also about how to deal with a kid who calls you mean names. This all makes me hurt for her. Because I think of my long list of kids-who-called-me-mean-names and I don’t want her to have that list too.
-I have the owie neck-shoulder-connector thing again. I think because the blowhard, I mean, blower, at work was blasting on my neck all day yesterday, despite all attempts to shut it off.
-Hard conversations. Harder than usual. Feels like the crux of the issue is becoming clearer, but it’s more painful than before. Oddly, the heightened pain makes me cry less about it. Also makes me more capable of saying the things that protect me in its midst. I guess that technically goes on the “good” list.
-Somewhat related to that, knowing I am being misunderstood. Having to accept that I may never be understood. That there comes a point when a person has created their own version of who you are and can no longer see past that version to understand who you really are. Which makes you feel invisible, in a way. And unheard.
-Overworked. Having to write things I don’t believe.
-The tree that I parked under and enjoyed from my office window was unceremoniously hacked to bits yesterday. There was no reason for it. They killed all the parking lot trees in one fell swoop. This made me weep. And served as (yet another) metaphor for things in my life. Which made me weep more.
Good:
-There has been much inspiration. Not always happy inspiration, but it’s nice to hear the muse’s voice, nonetheless.
-Lots of time spent walking outside. Noticing the patterns that are beyond my body. Migratory patterns. The slow changing of colors and seasons. Beautiful.
-Camaraderie, even if it is the virtual kind.
-Appreciating my own growth…recognizing something here. Maturity? And an acceptance of some of the deeper aspects of myself that I used to judge. Loving the flaw for being the flaw.
Alas…I’m cryptic as always.
Hugs for everyone’s Hard. Cheers for the Good!
HARD:
Balance goes to the hard side this week, I think.
-So much pain about my family. Many tears. Not sure how long it will take to get out of the woods. Seems like forever. And then what’s on the other side of the woods? …Nothingness?
-Boyfriend out of town. Though I don’t approve of this feeling because I believe in being self-sufficient, felt lonely in the house and slept badly/not enough and didn’t tidy anything because uuuuuuugh.
-Before leaving town, boyfriend lost my Kindle. He’s replacing it, but: grrrr!
-Looking down the barrel of a huge, complicated moisture-and-mold problem that is (I am prematurely sure) going to ruin our found-our-dream-apartment-at-last situation. Feeling like I have to micromanage everything even though it is not my responsibility and would in fact be presumptuous; therefore totally overwhelmed by details but without power to act on any of it. And obsessing nervously about talking to our so-nice landlords, who I am sure don’t want this problem put on their plate. And also freaking myself out about “does this make me just like crazy X, caring about this problem?!”
-Pain about possibly soon having to move again (for the 23rd time in 12 years.)
-Totally behind on schoolwork.
-Falling off the wagon about money.
-Body unhappiness. Viewing of pictures in which I look worse than I even imagined. Despair and overwhelm about how I will ever break my bad-eating-habit cycle.
-Want to hang out with people this weekend and do fun stuff but have SO much undone schoolwork to catch up on. Ugh.
GOOD:
-Put in an application for Long-Shot Dream Job that I feel like was pretty damn good–and I didn’t procrastinate it into a too-late guiltfest! This might be a first.
-Doing better with spending…mostly.
-The Kindle loss made me realize just how much I like it! Even though it has no page numbers and I’m massively afraid of a world in which there are no paper books, for some things (textbooks, for example! and traveling for long chunks of time!) it is amazing.
-Experienced amazing collective blisstimes on Monday. Yay!
-The art in the gallery next to where I wait for the bus every morning has a new, amazing thing in the window.
Ugh. Thankfully, there’s nowhere to go but up. Right?
Lighting tiny candles for everyone else’s goods and hards.
Sadness and grief about things that don’t get done — that’s how I’m feeling about the end of this summer. I got a lot done, actually, but there was so much more that I *wanted* to do.
This week’s hard:
– Headaches, all week long. This up-and-down, can’t-decide-what-it-is weather is making me miserable.
– Trying to eat more veggies and not succeeding very well. Sometimes I feel my palate has not advanced past age 5.
– Stuck trying to figure out what to pack for a conference I’m going to at the end of the month. Haven’t gone to anything like it in ten years or so, and my closet is low on anything that might be called “business wear,” and what is there doesn’t fit well or is a little out of fashion. (Guess it’s time to clean out the closet, too. Ugh.)
This week’s good:
– I was able to do a very good deed for someone this week, and it makes me happy.
– Back on the gym schedule, and it feels good (if a little achy).
– FINALLY sold something I’ve been trying to sell for almost two years. Happy to move it along to a new home, and happy to have the reminder of a not-so-great time in my life gone (even if it was hiding in a drawer).
Happy Friday, Chickeneers!
The Hard:
Ignoring the media and dealing with the events of history privately. Sending love and prayers to all who have suffered.
I have procrastinated finishing my taxes. Tried to stay up all night to get them done, and instead, I crumped. I am not 25 anymore…sigh!
Diverted energy into posting on my blog. I am a tax prep avoidant. Self-defeating for sure.
I have to get the stuff in to my CPA today.
Coffee in hand, rummaging through the papers I did not organize, because I’d kept everything in files in my laptop that died.
I would not make it working in an office.
The Good:
I love September and Autumn.
Love, love, love the Sharon Van Etten Video. Am always thrilled to find great, new (to me) music–Yay! And, thank you.
It is the very middle of the night here but apparently my body will not sleep until I have downloaded. So, cluck.
(Fair warning: this may be my Cursing Like A Sailor edition because I can haz pain and cursing helps me move that energy out of my nervous system and muscles and hippy shit like that.)
Hard stuff
– thoughts and epiphanies and realisations and uncovering old pain. My pain. Family pain. Other people’s pain. Poor everybody!! Oh lordy…. (Thanks Shiva Nata, thanks a shitload!)
I know this is all for the good. It still hurts. I guess it means I am ready and strong enough to experience it so then it can dissolve like mist in the morning. So strong etc I no longer need to protect myself by not-feeling it.
So I’m feeling it. And it is Ow. (I think Ow must be like Om except the letters are upside down. Or maybe I am.)
– reading about Non-violent Communication which is kind of equal parts hilarious (yes I am judgey about bad pomes!) and tragic (oh crap…. society) and oh-my-god-we-can-save-the-world-yet (no no no don’t give me hope and a WAY now I’m actually going to have to SAVE THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD!!!!!!!!)
Practicing trying to hear what are the feelings and needs underneath the words and feeling like I am emotionally illiterate. Which is not even an emotion but a judgement. I’m sure that new ways of hearing is related to the painfest.
– timing. It is hilarious. By which I mean it is entirely NOT hilarious at all, it is TRAGIC.
I am going through item 1 and 2 in the first week of September 2011. For fucks sake. OW.
Also: please, please, can’t we all just learn to get along?? Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children???!!!??
Sensitive, romantic, idealist, bonobo hippy-chick has hard time this week.
– family pain. Lots of it. Even if it was just finding out about ancient family pain. Also extrapolating from there into an appreciation of how GENERATIONAL pain and trauma and poverty and despair can create a seemingly-endless loop of pain. OW.
– having a discussion on !!!theology!!! and feeling hurt by being judged and !!!!forgiven!!!! (FUCK OFF!!) for not conceptualising “god” the same way this person (whose opinion I care about) does.
Bloody hell, if God is so fucking infinite then I’m pretty damn sure he can cope with every bloody which way people choose to conceptualise ‘him’, and ACTUALLY if god is so fucking INFINITE then not only must he be able to cope with different ways of conceptualising him but in fact must ACTUALLY EXIST in every possible way of conceptualising ‘him’. Including NOT EXISTING AT ALL which even I can’t wrap my head around but infinity theory indicates that it must be so. (I think).
So if you wanna get all fucking theological on my ass and talk about ‘infinite’ then don’t go and get all fucking JUDGEY about what works for me and actually just proves and point and reinforces that my conceptualisation is less flawed after all so there nyah nyah nyah I’ve fucking thought about this shit so watch the fuck out, muthafuckers, you actually wanna take me on here?? REALLY????.
*grumble grumble fucking ooooh “he forgives you” for fucks sake…. grumble fucking give ME the shits grumble*
– thoughts and patterns around money and self-sabotage as a portal to big insights and huge epiphanies around maybe my oldest pain and maladaptive coping technique. I’m talking the one I came up with when I was eighteen months old. Maybe two… MAYBE.
This “truth” about the universe and my place in it that I settled on when I was a BABY because I could not conceive how someone could love me AND also hurt me UNLESS it was actually all my fault somehow. That I was somehow faulty and deserved the pain even though I didn’t understand why.
This belief is not me. It is a pattern. That I can deconstruct and play with. Ow.
***JEEEEEEPERS HAVI!!! You go around creating a fucking SAFE PLACE where OKAY-NESS and acceptance and amnesty is built into the FABRIC of it all and people are going to go around and start feeling SAFE AND MAYBE EVEN LIKE MAYBE THEY ARE OKAY!!!!!!!!! Do you have ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING WITH THAT SHIT??????? Oh my god!!!!! I might have to reconstruct my fundamental beliefs about the entire fucking universe and my place in it that includes the notion that MAYBE I AM OKAY!!!!***
(That was a compliment, and an expression of gratitude, by the way. To clarify. Sorry for shouting… it’s just that it’s heavy stuff man… sorry. I just wanted to say thanks, again, and thought it would be funny to say it that way. Um, yes. Okay.)
Good stuff
+ see all of the above. Gunk clearing. Stuckness dissolving. Movement of stuckified energy. It’s all for the good.
love love love love love love love to every single person in the entire history of the world ever even if you were completely fucked and did completely fucking awful things I send you love and grieve for your pain and the fact you could only find such awful maladaptive coping techniques to deal with it and also endless love to every single person that has been at the receiving end of fucked up maladaptive coping techniques and more love all around and I’m sorry.
“Hard” and “good” feel so intertwined this week. But I’ll see about disentangling them a little.
Hard:
-My partner broke her foot quite badly. Needs surgery next week! Eep! Hard for her, and hard for me. (Issues on my part include: feeling a lack of control over the situation, resenting needing to pick up 100% of the chores instead of my 50%-on-a-good-day, wanting to magically make it all better but being patently unable to, self-referential “should” loops about feeling these things when I’m not the one who’s injured… etc.)
-Oh the code demons at work. Problems that aren’t my fault, but only show up on the platform I’m responsible for, and that don’t even occur consistently. Heisenbug chasing is the worst. I need to somehow figure out how to be a detective about it.
-Surprise influx of exercise equipment in the house meant that I needed to clear out half the basement piles and somehow store the objects more efficiently, with only a week’s time to do it. Unanticipated scrambling + dealing with piles = hard!
Good:
-I’ve sort of come up with a to-do list system that I like, and am so far using it to good effect. In light of the things I don’t have control over in my life right now, being able to control how I spend my time feels good, and I can channel that productively as well as derive solace from it.
-I built The Basement Shelves! (I added two shelves onto the existing system of upright beams.) I’ve been “meaning to get around to it” for ages, and the basement situation kind of meant I had to do it this week. It was a blast to come home and use power tools every night. Building things is awesome. And now some of the stuff can be accessed instead of piled!
-I’m sososo glad it’s becoming fall. My brain just doesn’t work well when it’s too warm outside, I think. And my internal calendar still remembers September being the start of a new “year” from when I was in school. I feel like I’m ready to start a period of growth and doing-useful-things and it’s exciting and hopeful! Yay!
Have a good weekend, everybody 🙂
This week seems to have simultaneously flown by AND gone on forever…Weird.
The hard:
Mass outbreak of Slothcat Crankypants this week.
Spending most of today in a room with a bunch of people who were definitely NOT my right people. Also getting super bored by the long explanation over and over again of fairly elementary concepts. (Like, if you’re running a business, you need to make enough money to cover costs + living. Who knew?)
Gale-like weather putting the kibosh on plans to go gallivanting around the countryside taking photos.
Right now I can’t find my iPod charger. No wanna have to rifle through a gazillion things looking for it or have to endure listening to other people’s inane conversations/screaming children on the train tomorrow. (Did I mention the crankypants?)
Oh, and apparently flea bites itch like…
Also not amused by the weird and inexplicable allergy that keeps waking me up in the small hours of the morning.
Not doing yoga. Mainly because I felt I shouldn’t be ‘wasting’ time doing yoga when I wasn’t doing anything productive. Even though not doing yoga = VIP pass to Slothcat Crankypants. I may need to talk to myself about this.
The good
Had a wonderful birthday. Lunch at favourite place! Photo taking in favourite graveyard! Cocktails!
My mum also really loved the presents and card I got her for her birthday.
Ballet. For the first time in six weeks. It felt so good.
Also tried out new yoga dvd, after realising that not doing yoga was pretty much the worst way to deal with the Slothcat. It was awesome and much smart thinkiness was had afterwards.
Took a couple of photos this week that I really love.
And have had some outrageous perception shifting epiphanies.
And have managed to write something for an about page that doesn’t make me sound like a demented robot.
Upside of today. Realised I knew way more about business + marketing + am way better with numbers than I credited myself with.
Hmm….a strange week. time for sleeps.
Cheers, Chickeneers!
The Hard:
– zero free-time last weekend due to house guests
– extra tired due to staying up past my bedtime all weekend and all week
– the Giant Paperwork Submission (of Doom!) needing to be completed by the end of the day Friday
The Good:
– a (relatively) tension-free weekend visit with my parents
– evidence that my students are learning in my courses
– the Katie Of The Past had already done most of the Giant Paperwork Submission (of Doom) so the Katie Of Now only had to do an hour of work instead of the 8 she was expecting (seriously!?!? how did I forget that I had already done it????)
Happy chicken!
The hard….
– Double funeral for DIL’s dad and grandma who died on the same day. My heart is just so heavy for her and her family. Plus feeling all useless when people are crushed like that.
– Working up a tiny panic b/c no new work came in this week. Which is fairly ridiculous, because I’m still booked until the end of October.
– Payment snafu from one client AND annoying changes in snail mail delivery meant that there were no deposits this week, until after the Friday 3pm cutoff.
The good…
– Despite it being a holiday week, I accomplished the major work goals I had for this week.
– My mom may be getting some respite care to assist her in caring for my 103 year old grandpa. So perhaps she won’t lose her health trying to keep him out of a nursing home.
– Have placed all our orders for our family room upgrade. Which will be awesome when completed. (Starts Wednesday!)
Have an awesome weekend, chickeners!
It’s my birthday!
So the Hard:
– Heaviest processing I’ve ever done this week. Days on end of crying for hours. And then crying some more. And getting it together just a little bit to cry *even* *more*.
– And all of that because things are going so well, and they could have been going so well all along if only I had got to meet the person that I actually am earlier than about this time last year.
– So much sadness and INTENSE physical pain about the years and years of my life that I wasn’t me. Also terror about not having to follow other people’s rules anymore. ANYthing could happen. Anything.
– So monsters all around, basically. This not even counting the holy-shit-I’m-older-and-still-don’t-have-kids-or-know-how-to-make-money. Which you’d think would be better now that I’m with someone who really wants to have kids with me in the next year or so, money be damned. But somehow it’s worse because “the next year or so” is not “now”.
– And no, I don’t really want kids now, but I’m also really freaking tired of being told to want other things instead, or first, or on a roundabout way to. This related to the years of my life lost to being someone I’m not.
– Oh, and the crazy “I don’t have a target audience” business stuff. And general falling apart of everything I thought I knew about *that*. Also related to all of the above.
The Good:
– I’m not crazy and I’m not depressed and I’m just processing. And I live with someone who absolutely believes this, which is kind of making me believe it.
– Two days now without falling completely apart. I even managed to start a task and follow it through to the end. So I may be done processing for a bit.
– Emergency Calming Techniques stepping in and saving my butt just when I needed them the most.
– Camping on the beach for three days! Oh so very much fun. I got to be a mermaid and my gentleman friend got to be a pirate and we both got to pet feed seals and it was awesome all around.
– I’m starting pole dancing classes on Monday! My birthday gift to myself. And I haven’t been this excited about something in ages.
– I have a beautiful life. And it’s only getting better. And I do know that. Even when I’m processing in a way that might look depressed and crazy to anyone else.
Friday already! Time to chicken!
Hard:
– I had to make a phone call that felt risky even though it wasn’t supposed to be, and there were follow-up steps and anxiety about them. The good thing is that it is done!
– Garage work finally started (yay!) and they found mold along the entire south wall. That was not part of the original work plan and means more cost and more time to finish.
– Pain and sleeplessness and not getting things done.
Good:
– I hung out with a friend this afternoon and we had a wonderful time.
– I saw a favorite child for a short time this afternoon and made plans to spend time with her tomorrow.
– I took someone out for coffee who is in a bad situation and has serious health problems and really needs a friend.
– Wednesday was an incredibly good day filled with good people and events and activities.
– I called in an iguana exterminator who will start on the 19th. I thought I had one before but she bailed on me. Since the surface pile of iguanas and general messiness hides the real mess of iguanas and doom, his help is going to be so great because I can deal with the surface pile, knowing that I’m not digging my way down to more work and more doom and more iguanas.
– I’m doing this self-helpey growth-oriented thing that seems to be going pretty well.
– Like Riv, I feel like I’m “ready to start a period of growth and doing-useful-things and it’s exciting and hopeful!”
And next week we’re going to Rally! So how could I not feel excited and hopeful? Yay, Rally!
Hugs for the hard, cheers for the good!
Barre chords! I love barre chords!
(So yes: thanks for Sharon Van Etten.)
Um. I wish I had a nickel for every time Havi’s made me grin in the last, oh, six months. And I only know her from the internet and from Twitter and from: RALLY!
Which is pretty amazing.
I’m humbled that she (uh, you (i.e. Havi)? yes also: it could also be YOU [i.e. not Havi], right?! you just have to be my friend on Facebook or Twitter, which is easy enough…) agreed to take part in my little experiment.
Because turns out: it’s not even MY experiment. Never really was, though I just figured that out. It’s bigger and more humbling than that.
Also I’m loving that I’ve read Havi’s 30 Things (!) and I know that they’re awesome. Humbling. Inspiring. Funny. Smart. Etc. I knew they would be. But there was that weird moment when you’re (which is to say: I’m) reading them and you know you’re the only one who’s read them and it’s this pretty intense, um, experience. I don’t know.
But what’s cool is YOU’RE going to have this experience too when you read her 30 Things on Monday. Which, serendipitously, is the day a new Rally! starts and I like that kind of serendipity better than the kind of serendipity where a cool, life-affirming blog post seeks to counterbalance the very heavy weight of lots of people conspiring to be mournful.
And also I’ll be writing about why (I think) Havi gets it. About teaching. About learning. About making things. Everything.
So. Yes. Stay tuned. And also: Rally! changes lives and I’m not even shitting you about that.
Not one bit.
The Hard:
Knowing myself and what I want and don’t want and letting go of the things I don’t want. Well, letting go of the things I want, but not under the terms they are being offered to me. Hard hard hard. But probably better in the long run than taking something for not enough money for the time they want. Still, hard.
The good:
Psychic party. Good things.
Dance party.
Good friends.
Being home.
Thank you, chick chicks …
The Hard:
Rain rain rain rain rain. More water in the basement.
The inordinate rain and flooding in the East while fires are out of control in Texas.
The Good:
In Seattle area Friday night already with relatives. Wonderful to see them.
Driving to Portland Sunday.
Rally (Rally!) starts on Monday. Yay!
I’ve just read ALL of the comments.
That took me pretty much all day (while doing various things on/not on the internet)
My week was so mixed. Maybe writing it down will help.
*** THE HARD ****
* overwhelm and tiredness
– crying all the time, feeling a lot of (work) pressure
* anxiety
– anxiety about finding new people to take over the volunteer organization I started – wanting to balance careful with transparency but feeling overwhelmed.
– worries about my work project – sorting through a lot of anxieties there. can i finish? is it good enough?
*** THE GOOD ***
* social events
– dinner at my friends’ place.
– looking at things objectively, we had another wonderful event and things are going well for the volunteer organization
– being hooooome
* organization
– i love my new living location
– we reorganized the office
– i got some essential admin done
* recovery
– a lot of sleep
– some rethinking of the boundaries and expectations
*** SUMMING IT UP ***
It was a tough week. But some new insights are emerging. Let’s hope and pray I find a way to stand up for them.
The hard:
-Academic year begin and deadlines! Deadlines! DEADLINES!! Procrastinators and scrambling so that the students aren’t held accountable for someone else’s negligence. It was a crazy busy week.
-Student Job and Research Fair that I had to attend and was scheduled to occur on two days right before a really big deadline. This made for more craziness.
-My work computer upgrade took twice as long as it was supposed to, so I missed more work time this week than was intended.
-The final really elaborate hair treatment that my daughter and I had to do were completed on Thursday night which made for a long Thursday night after work and Friday morning before daycare/work started. Schleepy Julie fo’ sho!
-Insomnia despite exhaustion. It’s quite frustrating, really.
The Good:
-While the timing of the Student Job and Research Fair was inconvenient, I did make a bunch of good contacts for possible future student researchers at my Institute. 36 out of 50 people signed up. Saleswoman me is still quite good. 🙂 Plus, I got to escape my cubical for a few hours for a couple of days. It was really nice to be outside in the middle of the day, too.
-My favorite brother in law moved to town. Now we can see him whenever we want.
-My kindergartner is fitting in at school which makes all my fitting in monsters calm down a bit.
-No snow yet!! (It’s coming soon, though)
-Despite the busy, I still had time for shivanata.
-I’m feeling more present and grounded lately. Less disconnected from the day to day life. Trying to figure out how to keep this feeling going…I like this. 🙂
The Hard:
– residual procrastination and stucknesses encountered at work.
– Being REALLY REALLY cold in Ithaca. Wanting to move to Portland.
– Disappointing my friends by not owning up to the last-minute spontaneous-promise to visit them in Boston. And being cold in Ithaca instead. Although this place is charming enough.
The Good:
– Realizing I could drop TWO classes (two!!!) and still graduate after this semester! More time for making monies, projectizing, yoga and navel-gazing.
– Kind of having a difficult conversation about my woo-woo with the spouse-person and it not being a disaster (and learning that I have a tendency to talk kind of violently at him. and then it being okay, because I learned how not to.)
– Putting up a blog! And writing things on it that I really enjoy writing about!
– Dreaming.
– Yoga Nidra. And its kooky, wonderful, soporific, slightly scary power.
– Having started “The Big Leap.” Likin’ it a lot so far!
Invoking amnesty here..
The hard stuff
-No sleep.
-Lots of stress about everything – uni, blog, rent, bills, etc.
-Got a phone call about a late bill – apparently they sent the final notice a MONTH ago. How the flaming hell did this not find me? Paid now but credit rating is now fooked. Thanks, Southern Water.
-Pain. Had such bad pain on Tuesday I went to bed with maximum pain killers and cried.
-They’ve cancelled the course I was most excited to start, leaving my first term with only boring-sounding courses. Not happy. Misrepresentative!
-Being home for 5 weeks brings up all my vulnerable-victim stuff. Heavy going.
-My beloved had laryngitis which meant he spent the weekend coughing and being unable to talk half-the-time. Don’t like seeing him ill.
The good stuff
Moooving on.
*Almost 48 hours with my beloved.
*We went to a Celtic hillfort with a temple to Minerva. Which was pretty cool.
*After a weekend without my herbal teas, I’m drinking Nettle tea and it’s epic.
*Job-seeking – I spent 3 days doing application forms, asking on the forum I’m part of and searching for options – and I got a job offer. Huzzah! Still working out the papers but.. yeah.
*Got a new idea for novel.. will see where it takes me 🙂
Havi,
If you like Sharon, you will also I think like Snowblink. Daniela Gesundheit. Not shitting you. It’s Gesundheit. Listen to them. They are amazing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKnsFlMPMIo