It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
REMINDER…
It ends Sunday night! Operation SUSTENANCE. Password: fredastaire
What worked?
Congruencing
The thing that nearly always happens after Rally…
No matter what my mysterious Rally project turns out to be, it invariably reveals all sorts of areas of my life that are not congruent with how I want to be living.
And then during the weeks after Rally, stuff has to move around. It actually starts moving itself around. Insistently!
Organizing and reordering happens. There are reconfigurations. Of small things like sock drawers, and larger things like my relationship with time, or with people.
Sometimes a fit of congruencing — making the necessary shifts, changes and adjustments — is invigorating, and sometimes I fight it.
This week I was able to just recognize it for what it is: ah, yes, I’m congruencing. Like scratching an itch. I let it feel good. Yes, everything is moving and being moved. Yes, this is hugely important.
Next time I might…
Look at the almanac.
The Alamanac is for notes about how I tend to react to different parts of the year.
It tells me how I like to celebrate the various Holy Days Of Havi Bell, which days I need to hide, when I am most likely to fall apart.
This week I was down about everything. Everything.
Until it hit me: this is my annual week before birthday slump. I can experience it as an Existential Fit Of Hating Everything, or I can experience it as Useful Intel Thanks To Heightened Awareness About What I Want And What Isn’t Working.
Turns out I have lots of notes about this, as well as about how to take care of myself while I’m in it. Almanac! And maybe a pop-up reminder on my phone?
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- This week was straight-up miserable, both for me and pretty much everyone I know. Blame mercury in retrograde, blame whatever you want. A breath for waiting this out.
- OHMYGOD. My neighbors decided Wednesday was a good day for two chainsaws and a wood chipper. The noise was unbearable. I am wildly HSP and can’t handle loud noises. I couldn’t leave the house because of my sprained ankle, and my housemate was out running errands in the car, so there was no escaping. I basically just curled up in a ball under a pile of blankets and cried all day, and then when it was over I cried some more because it was still loud and jangly inside of me. A breath for the pain of this.
- Working impossible hours trying to get everything ready for the Floop launch. Dry Dock is always rough — and busy, and this year I cut it in half to give everyone an extra two weeks on the Floop. The software upgrade is a nightmare, but only one of many. Too much to do, too many decisions to make, everything breaking. Richard was up until 2am tearing his hair out. The usual. A breath for patience.
- The ballroom and the Fluent Self and the Floop and Rally and writing. It is too many jobs for one person. A breath for solutions.
- Got some financial news that is on the one hand terrible, and on the other hand, the least terrible financial news of the past [period of everything sucks, aka the last two years]. We high-fived. We high-fived about terrible news. Because it was better than it has been. So depressing. A breath for sustenance.
- Thanks to the virus from hell and then my sprained ankle, I have been completely sedentary for TWENTY FOUR of the past thirty days. Movement is my sanity. And I have missed all the dance workshops I have been looking forward to all winter. If I can’t dance soon, I might explode. A breath for every aspect of this.
- There is more of me now, in the sense that I am visibly larger than I was thirty days ago (see above), and I cannot fit into any of my clothes, and I have a wedding to go to tomorrow night, and each of these things is disproportionately frustrating for me right now. A breath for this too.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- A long talk with TJ about a mission dear to my heart. A breath for confluence and for sparks of ideas.
- Against all odds (and despite everything going ridiculously wrong), the Floop is ready. The new design is beautiful, the new boards delight me, everything feels right, and I am proud of what we built. A breath for about to embark!!!
- The spy who loves me kept me company during the hard, reminded me to go have a yoga and Love The Ground, brought sweetness to the scary. A breath for comfort, for being adored, and for Loving The Ground.
- I am enormously happy about the 25,000 words I wrote for Operation Say Everything Twice. Those of you in last year’s Year of Emptying & Replenishing, and in this year’s incoming Year of Emerging & Receiving, will get to read it soon! A breath for the beautiful thing that is process.
- The shellbacks (the graduates from my 2012 Crossing the Line retreat). So much love and appreciation. A breath for companions in deep internal voyaging.
- I’m doing the best I can. A breath for trusting, deeply, that nothing is wrong, even as I walk through some hard places.
- Last night I walked TEN WHOLE BLOCKS, which is SEVEN MORE BLOCKS than I could the day before. I am healing. I am getting there. A breath for this.
- Two sweet letters from my mother, postcards from Agent Prairie Blue and my favorite uncle and my father. My red flannel hot water bottle from Germany is, still, the most magical thing. I have the most amazing friends. Also: Patsy Cline! A breath for everything that is good, everything worth appreciating, so much.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was to let go of the three ops-in-progress and back-burner them, and then start over with Operation Say Everything Twice. Not only did I start over, I am almost done! WHAM! BOOM!
Next week? Probably a ton of Editing (whoops I mean, Decorating) Everything Twice, and also to skip more stones regarding Operation Houston It Is The Vicar.
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
The powers of Nesting and of Releasing Through Words.
Superpowers I want.
The powers of Remembering That Shit Is Not About Me, of Saying Thank You Twice, and easy letting go.
Salve. The Salve of Readying Under The Surface.
This is the salve for Winter, also known as the salve of rest, the salve I need to remember when I have a sprained ankle, or when it is cold and dark out, as it is here.
Instead of trying to describe it, I will give you this poem by N.P. Van Wyk Louw. Thank you, The Living Chicken (Agent!) for pointing me here, and thank you, Eleanor for reminding me how much I need to remember this.
The earth now lies through nights drenched
in the still dark benediction of the rain
and dusky houses and branches stand out bleak
each day in mist, in white, and in the rustling wet.
All, all is rich and restful, with heavy
and secret and rich growth finding its way
through warm soil to every leaf and shoot
and binding everything – near, far – mysteriously
with moisture, fruitfulness, and great desire
– till one clear afternoon suddenly we see
the glistening grass, the tenderly rising grain
and know that life is served by rest.
How could I ever have thought of summer
as richer than this season’s mystery?– N.P. Van Wyk Louw (South Africa, 1906-1970)
If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band plays zydeco hip hop fusion. The band comes via Kathleen, it is called It Will Think Up A Z, and actually it is just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
You guys! THIS WEEKEND is your last chance to get cool stuff from our sail/sale, because it ends this Sunday.
We only have a few calendars left….and the Floop (my private online community of agents, entering its 6th new year) begins this weekend. So we are closing out Operation Sustenance, this is the last chance to get stuff this year.
To get cool stuff and/or read about the cool stuff: https://fluentself.com//sustenance
PASSWORD: fredastaire
You can join any of the ops through Sunday night when we shut it down.
If this is the time, much rejoicing! And if not, I trust that we will play together some other time, and I am invoking the superpower of All Timing Is Right Timing.
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re on silent retreat. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. Almost three hundred weeks of this and there still isn’t a right way.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.
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Cheers, Chickeneers!
The Good: The Sustenance Broth (misread bath in the fine print) sustaining the effects of the prior week’s Salve of Indulgence.
All the Re- words and concepts.
Just Doing scrapbook projects.
The Uncle allowing us to have a good chunk of our money back.
Reading the lead character in the detective novel tell herself before starting a task “enter as I mean to go on”.
The hard, challenging and mysterious – Heaving spiked iron shoes at The Dude when he’s in a hard place already.
Something about being a failure because I’ve never been able to do Olympic-level gymnastics like some of those 12-year olds, and a lot of other stuff. But way in the background.
Monsters breathing over my shoulder when I order the Monster Manual and Coloring Book, because they didn’t want to be replaced by foreign Monsters. I arranged to have them read along with me – on a live feed sent to their individual personal devices or big screens in the Monster Closet. They concluded that those Monsters were pretty boring and that I could even color some if I want, but clashing colors, and magenta spots were highly recommended.
What worked: Visiting the Russian River on my birthday. She’s getting help to stay in a much safer and cleaner place. She also seems better-fed and happier.
VPAing even in invisible ink.
What I might try in the future? Keeping the statistics on when the shoe-throwing happens. Maybe it’s related to PS (PMS in women who don’t M anymore). Keeping the statistics on Monsters liking technology and fruity umbrella drinks and not making myself anxious by Fretwork before work meetings. Listening and responding to the reality seems to work much better.
Play with time and space boundaries with The Planner, Niggles and the Say Yes! Monkeys.
I think I’ll dab on a little more Salve of Indulgence while the Salve of Mysterious Invisible Growth does it’s stuff.
Warm wishes, literally, to those chickeneers who need warmth.
Hello Friday!
The Hard:
– Too much snow + broken furnace = house barely above freezing
– All I wanted to do this week was eat carbs and sleep.
– The sinking ship situation
– Projecting happened in fits and starts (see above re: carbs, cold and sleeping)
– The world at large is full of pain and I am grieving that it can’t all be fixed, like, now
The Good:
– Fun projectivizing and gwishing with the gentleman
– Project is so much closer to done than before
– Reading the perfect things at the perfect time
– Embarking!
– More progress on the Valiant Intergalactic Mission Op.
– Our solution to the cold house was to build a giant blanket fort in the living room, bring in the space heaters and watch 90s comedies all weekend.
Kissing February on the nose and sending it on its way. March, come on in!
Worked: Doing one thing at a time.
Next time: Deeper breaths, deeper draughts of water, deeper permission to conduct.
Hard: Money, monsters, the usual suspects. (Hey! I just noticed that “oh ye gods, *this* crap **again**” is ***also*** a monster. Yay noticing! Yay, small and significant shifts in the pattern!)
Good: Lots of movement towards new work opportunities. Lots of courage! Daffodils on my front lawn. Singing duets. Sweet anticipation.
Superpowers: Stre-e-e-e-etching. It feels good, and it does me good. Next week, I would like the superpower of glowing emerging.
Lighting my candle, and sending love…
OMG. OMG! Why have I not been here for so long? Every thing in your post so resonated, so spot on. Thank you for the healing. Yes, it’s also been a terrible week. But also a wonderful week. The best of times and the worst of times- this week and 110 previous weeks. My super power – which I didn’t know I had – was playing my favorite music in my mind. I was so down after giving my all and being knocked down again. I laid down to sleep, curled on my side and when I wanted to cry, I heard Cheb i Sabbah spinning Kese Kese. It lifted the pain. I closed my eyes with a smile.
An awesome superpower that I want to remember the existence of more often! Thank you for sharing the name of the song — I’m listening to it right now and enjoying it a lot 🙂
A good chicken.
What worked?
Daring. Daring to reach out, dealing with the tidal wave and not drowning and then floating on the calm and looking up at the blue sky, with someone, and remembering.
Daring. Daring to ski. Dealing with the fear and then my legs and body remembered what to do and I was flying and swishing and every cell was so happy.
Maybe I will keep daring. Maybe I will just lay my heart out on the floor over and over and see what comes next. Because it kind of feels like something is coming next.
Daring! Cheering madly! <3 <3 <3
The salve for winter. For readying under cover. Slowly. Gracefully. Peacefully. In the quiet moments if rain before the dawn. This. This!
A breath for the sweetness of rest and excitement for the day if leap!
I partake and send so many thanks!
Greetings Chickens,
Hard
– Finding out it’s not my bus was surprisingly hard this week.
But wait, don’t I get terrible motion sickness on most busses?
Yes, that’s true. Thank you, pushy smart-arse me. I think.
Good
– Had to attend a one day workshop on procurement this week. I expected it to be so boring that I’d have to stab my hand with the complimentary pen to stay awake. Turns out the chap running it (who looked a bit like Ned Flanders) was so enthusiastic about corporate governance that it was kind of fascinating in a crime novel sort of way. An object lesson in how it’s not the subject matter but the quality of the delivery that counts.
– Realising that I’d unknowingly improved my balance and rhythm by practicing things that I hadn’t though of as related to balance or rhythm.
I have so much sympathy for not getting sanity through movement and prebirthday hell and noise. All the hugs or tea or good thought as you want for that.
I am both sick and on vacation, hoping to get a few days of heat and light without the sick.
Ahhh, Friday. (Well, erhm, Saturday morning.) Hello, Chickeneers!
The Hard:
-There is a baby staying in my house for the next two nights. It’s mother is also staying here but it like wakes up early and cries and stuff. In my house.
-Limbo City! I feel like Schroedinger’s Cat. I am both moving to Boston and not moving to Boston. It is like being at a focal point from which two parallel timelines emerge, and not being sure which one is going to be the “real” one.
-The absolutely ridiculous situation with Operation Post Office. Realizing a thing which might help support me is not a thing I want. All the stuff about how I value my own time.
-Stomach stuff. 3 times this week. Interfering with social plans too.
-Dry dock.
-Original birthday plans may not work out at this point because I am probably moving to Boston. I want to have birthday plans. Because my last few birthdays have been really icky. Acknowledging the hard around this and committing to doing some processing.
-This show, you guys. Why do we write plays with people yelling at each other for two hours? It leaves me exhausted every night.
The Good:
-Dance class on Monday. Kicking butt and taking names in waltz class, and learning some seriously cool new moves in hustle. Remembering to breathe.
-Signing up for FLOOP! Oh my goodness, FLOOP!
-Discovering (or noticing) my new relationship with play. I think I reached a new level this week of just being able to invite the fun in more easily. Always a process.
-My mom said a thing about me/my life and I didn’t go into stuff and freak out. I was just like, oh, yeah. That’s so interesting that she’s saying that to me. And then she told me something about herself.
-Remembering that the ROI on worry is low. I have been agonizing about the house/job thing and then saw the salve of “however it turns out, it’s going to be okay,” and it was okay. I would still like to know, but I do not need to worry about not knowing.
-A really nice conversation with the people whose house I might stay in.
-Fun times in the light booth. Realizing how much I enjoy/appreciate an old friend.
-Reconfiguring Facebook with a group called KAOS, which is about 45% Fluent Self 45% Spring and 10% random people I really trust, thereby making Facebook infinitely more fun. I get to feel how I want to feel in my spaces! Yay!
-Noticing how much processing I am doing even while dry dock is happening, and appreciating how much I continue to feel supported in this. Particularly grateful for the Floop Groop.
<3 <3 <3
Also, I discovered the Complaints Choir link on the Fountain page last night… oh my goodness. So hilarious. I feel asleep laughing delightedly.
Hard:
* Sisyphean aspects of studying
* Sisyphean aspects of ironing
* malfunctioning software
Good:
* Unanticipated ease
* Naps. Mmmmmmmm, naps.
* The beginners’ flow classes at my studio
Warm wishes to all y’all.
*skips a shilling across the surface of the fountain*
The lovely and delicious:
The Wild Bunch were indeed the Cheerfully Calm bunch on the day I most needed them to be (and leant more to the Cheerfully Calm all week, except Thursday). A co-worker’s misunderstanding gave me lots of unexpected quiet time to get ahead on various Ranch Operations. Also I kept cracking myself up with my ranch hand metaphor all week!
I forgot that I bought the Procrastion-Dissolve-O-Matic last year, and I rediscovered it and started playing with it.
The power of games and gardens, both real and metaphorical.
Finally reaped the rewards of Operation Pay Me My Money Down when the check arrived–just in time, too!
Book Club with friends I don’t see often enough and a Tender Bar–“The second rule of Book Club is what happens at Book Club stays at Book Club.”
The Hard:
The monsters being loud about what a terrible, unreliable family member and friend I am.
Thursday. I had to Crack the Whip quite a bit; apart from the fact that I hate doing it, the whole process is exhausted and leaves me like a rubbed-raw, irritated nerve.
Seeing so clearly how 2 people are hurting each other through miscommunication & being in their stuff rather than intention, and not being able to help.
Hard: Not being able to be there for someone I love.
Feeling so different, and realizing that to be my true self and speak up will always get me into trouble in the institutional setting that is my workplace.
Not being fully present for my little ones because of my own reaction to the aforementioned.
Resolution: Show unwavering support from afar.
Think about how to do what I love and stop being such a chicken (there’s that word) about financial and job security.
Spend tomorrow doing whatever they want it to be. (Breathe)
Cluck.
The suck:
-brother in the hospital. surrounded by death, and the machine that goes PING
-all the fucking alarms and bells etc. not a proxy.
-my sister handing me the awful task, and having to do it
-my dd interrupting the talk about the awful task, and my sister going off like the meanest of the mean. it was fucking ugly, and i still cant fix it
-my dad telling me to blow off the awful task, and i did, and then he told my sister i had started it, so instead of 5 days, I now have one and a half
-many nightmares
-going to facebook, finding an old friend, clicking hsi page and BAM looking at a pic of the man who assaulted me.
-missing my kids
-not getting 10% of what i wanted done
-the Occultist. he led me into deep water and threw me off my center. now he ignores me and flirts with other girls on FB.
the sparkle:
-so many beatiful birds!
-including a huge flock of turkey vultures on the lawn sunning their wings
-miami is so nice right now
-spending time with my dad
-my brotehr is MUCH better
-going home on monday
-new moon shenanigans with beloved lady peeps
-so much good food
-sobriety. lmost 2 weeks of it and i feel good. really good. and i feel good about it. maybe i’m not as deeply addicted as i think, maybe i can make this change.
-the husband being a total mensch.
-beautiful dreams
-my hair looks great
Oh and my writing popping up in more plces. yea me!
Cluck cluck
Hard stuffs:
– old thought patterns, quack quack quacking along behind me
– believing the thought patterns before remembering they were actually ducks, not monsters
– I am out of practice
– money stuffs, the usual
– oh, life is like *this* now. Say wha?? (breeeeeathe, Claire, just breeeeeathe)
– Little Lad ear goop stuff, he’s run down, I’m feeling guilty and overwhelmed
Good stuffs:
– omg I won’t even bore you with the romantic schmoo-ness levels in my life right now. They are so high it is ridiculous. I look at my facebook page and kind of want to punch myself in my own face for being so outrageously high-schmoo. But also not because, you know, happiness. It’s nice!
– okay, I’ll bore you a little…. Sweetest-hearted, shining soul, deep feeling, spunk rat, lover = in my life and loving it. Omg, yay.
– yesterday
– Wonderbaby turned TWO today. Holy wha???? CUTE AS!!
– I chucked out those fugly old jeans AT LAST. Now I have hawwwt jeans instead. Congruence!
– I am sort of neglecting my friends but because we are self-fluent I feel safe and shameless because they will know shit is not about them and all timing is right timing. SHAMELESS RELATIONSHIPS!! The best!
– Havi, and all things FS. Life changing. Heart changing. Heart REVEALING. Thank you thank you thank you heart. <3
Cluck cluck. Chicken, out!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Chickening on Sunday, because I was working up until 6pm last night. Technically I was working this morning, too, but that didn’t happen.
The hard:
– It is never enough. We are all hurting.
– The haunted laundry basket now seems to have a poltergeist. Disappointment for a failed exorcism.
– Ennui, which is probably due to tiredness and mild hangover.
– Working through to Thursday.
The good:
– The sun on the sea.
– Learning to say no. Boundaries.
– That was the first and the hardest, and it is done, and I made a reasonably good job of it.
– Laughter.
March sneaking in without my noticing. March on! March on! And spring is here, too. The waters are receding. The green shoots are coming. Looking forward to Lent.
Sigh, the hard and the good. Good: seeing so many people from before that I love. Hard: seeing so many people from before that I don’t need to see. Good: sunshine and the ocean. Hard: struggling with sunshine and the ocean. Hard: so many hours in planes. Good: safe and ok hours in planes. Hard: getting older. Good: getting older. Hard: feeling lost. Good: trusting that lost is ok. No, that’s hard too. But good.
Wishing a wonderful week to all the chickeneers!
Oh, VERY excited for the coming YEARbook! VERY excited Havi that you’re up and about. Very aligned with congruencing (Everything Must Go!, in my world), and loving that you’re doing some too.
xoxox