Victorious Month

February is Victorious Month, in the world of me at least. It even comes with a V Day which is clearly for Victory (I refuse to hear any other explanations at the moment), and so I have been intently focused on the superpowers of Small Victories Are Also Victories. Aka everything counts.

My main theme at the moment is Joyful Agility, mainly related to the many mysteries of how to find ease while constantly moving in a pandemic when I hate moving.

What if I don’t hate moving at all? What if movement is grace?

I have been practicing this in my morning sun salutations by deciding that whatever number I’m on is lucky. LUCKY SEVENTEEN!

And the main thing I learned this week related to Joyful Agility, Stay Formidable, and Victorious Victories is that I really need to know my Non-Negotiables ahead of time.

So there ya go. Fake band of the week is Joyful Agility & The Non-Negotiables. Is this band just one person? Probably. Lucky Seventeen can be their first album.

Weekend Check-in (Chicken!), we made it.

Reviewing the week aka Chicken/Check-in is not only a reassuring ritual and fun to say, it is another form of remembering, turning inward, paying attention, attentiveness to self.

We can name what was difficult and name what worked, I find naming therapeutic. What am I experiencing and how am I experiencing it? All intel is useful.

Mainly we’re here to take a breath for having made it here. High fives all around and hand-to-heart appreciation.

If I neglect to name something big in the world this week, could be ADHD, but more likely it’s my break from news after spiraling hard in December.

Breathing for what was hard, challenging, uncomfortable, not fun…

THING ZERO and THING ONE are still the pandemic and the dissonance, the different worlds we seem to be navigating, the lack of an agreed upon reality or even a shared context, whether regarding the coronavirus or political reality or anything at all. My perception is that I can’t trust anyone, and I can’t even trust trust. My kingdom for consensus reality!

I was not able to solve The Mystery of What Happens Monday, what happened Monday was basically a disaster, and so I have moved four different times this week. Basically all I did this week was carry my things back and forth from my car, and fill time reluctantly.

Related: I dislike the phrase killing time, but is filling any better? Four times this week I found myself with a six hour window between checkout and checkin, with nowhere to go.

If we weren’t in a pandemic, I could have gotten some work or writing done in a cafe, or gone to visit a friend, but those aren’t possible, and so the time just needed to be filled but I couldn’t fill it with any of the things I perceive that I need or want to be doing.

One place I stayed was gross, one extremely haunted, one was fine but not available. The place I finally landed is bad news but sadly I am out of both options and energy, so now ten days to fill (yes) in a place that is really not acceptable. Another expensive, frustrating mystery, and thanks I hate it.

Missed out on yoga and my other morning practices three times because of the moving around, and my morning routines are really the main thing that keeps me functioning, so that’s not awesome, but we made it work.

Everything else is just a combination of boundary issues, Groundhog Day related challenges (aka this terrible situation is eerily familiar and nothing I try to get out of it seems to work), and living above a carpentry shop, which was another fun surprise that someone really could have mentioned instead of describing their place as “quiet and peaceful”. I hex them with deep abiding self-awareness, and rats.

I also encountered people who think the pandemic is a big hilarious joke, but I had to be polite to them, because I just lost an enormous amount of money trying to solve the What Happens Monday Mysteries, and this is my last place to stay, and one of them laughed in my face and then grabbed my hand to shake it before I could stop him. DO-OVERS FOREVER. And more hexing.

Oh, and because I had time to fill and no way to fill it and too many troubled thoughts, I began for the first time in weeks to really miss mindlessly aimlessly scrolling for clues on social media, so a heartfelt thank you to my friends who reassured me that it was all desperately boring and terribly depressing and that I was missing out on exactly nothing, and even if that was a lie to make me feel better, I appreciate it immensely, but also it kind of sounds possible and true, so who knows.

Breathing for what was good, reassuring, joyful, sweet

• Sleeping well, despite all the current tumult, sleeping well and maybe even close to enough. And without remembering dreams, a rare and blissful reprieve.
• I’m an agile bobcat, I land on my feet, I can move through challenging times with steady grace, I’ve done it before and I plan to continue. I practiced SELF-RESCUE and got myself out of the terrible situation instead of trying to make it work like I did in November, which was a Known Disaster.
• My friends kept me company by text this week and sent reassuring loving reminders about how I am a creative genius who knows how to solve mysteries, and that helped a lot.
• Wandering the city all week led to some new fun discoveries.
• Groundhog Day is my personal holiday of Do-Overs Forever, and I celebrated right, with yoga twice and breakfast twice and going back to bed.
• My favorite breakfast place in Tucson named a certain beloved sandwich — aka my one true love breakfast, The Havi Special (when ordered the way I like it), and honestly I didn’t even know that was a life dream, but now that it has been fulfilled, I feel proud and happy to have achieved this wish that apparently I have always wanted and didn’t even know.
• Star Car hit 100,000 miles just as I was crossing my favorite street to head towards Saguaro National Forest, it felt auspicious, well-augured. I rewarded her with a spa day aka oil change and car wash, and we both felt happy about making it this far, so to speak. I also feel better about having forgotten to celebrate her fourth birthday, because I love celebrating birthdays
• Speaking of auspicious omens and of celebrating birthdays as often as possible, twice this week a hummingbird whooshed right past my face, which felt like being kissed by the air, if that makes any sense which it might not. But it felt magical and good, and I wanted it to be a good sign. Then I thought about reconnecting with my handyman in New Mexico after some months not connecting, to talk over the neglected projects (my piece of land is not livable or winter-ready), and just as I was trying to feel into what to say, he texted me! He told me it was his birthday and I said I would eat celebratory cake for him, and he told me he tries to eat cake as often as possible because it’s always someone’s birthday and he likes to celebrate birthdays. I said that this is a marvelous joyful life plan and I support it, and then, out of nowhere, he said that it’s joyful like when a hummingbird flies right past your face. So that was extraordinary because I hadn’t told anyone about the hummingbirds, and he told me that this is a very good omen, and a sign to keep up hope.
• I attempted to try cake in the form of a cupcake, sans gluten, sans dairy, from the new patisserie, but I just don’t really get excited about cupcakes so in the spirit of Do-Overs Forever, I set off in search of The Havi Special which is not technically dessert but is made with honey butter so it feels vaguely dessert-adjacent in the sense that it is beautiful, special, celebratory and sweeter than you’d expect. Anyway, my adventure to visit my one true love (my sometimes eponymous sandwich) also involved seeing someone I like almost as much as I like having a Havi Special, and we went for a walk in the sun, and it was delicious and enticing, as celebratory rituals should be.
• NEW WORLD RECORD FOR ME. Finished out January with a grand and glorious total of eight thousand and one sun salutations. They basically have to let me in to assassin school now, right? December record was seven thousand, so enormously impressed with myself right now, here’s to Joyful Agility.
• Morning rituals are working, keeping phone in AIRplane mode (AIR = Access Internal Resonance) is working, giving five minutes a day to something I am excited about is working, and none of this is surprising but I am continually surprised. It feels so good to have some enthusiasm again, I wasn’t sure if it would return to me, but here it is, new and better. A breath of gratitude and wonder in my full thank-you heart.
• Speaking of my grateful thank-you heart, two different people sent me surprise Appreciation Money this week via Barrington’s Discretionary, and I have to say that it eased my heart around the expense and time involved in moving, and also reminded me that I keep forgetting to share the link. It is always welcome and if I can land in a place, I can share more writing here, that’s my preferred way to fill time; writing and hopeful thoughts.

Play with me in the comments! You know the drill…

I love company! You can always use a made-up name in the comments whether in service of safety or playfulness.

We are all going through what we are going through. So we make this a sanctuary by not care-taking or problem—solving for other people, we can leave each other warmth or hearts of love or pebbles of witnessing. I still have not figured out how to get emoji to work in the comments, sorry!!

How are we holding up? Anything hard and/or good in your week that you want to name here? Sometimes naming helps. I have found for me that taking breaths while I name things helps a lot.

And if that’s not your thing, you can say hi or name something you’d like more of for the coming week.

Love ya,
Havi

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