Announcement & ebook reminder

If you’ve already given to Barrington’s Discretionary last year or this year, you should have received my ebook (by email) on how I approach and plan my year, how I think about time and am in relationship with time.

You’ll get a copy as a thank you when you give any sum to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, hope you enjoy!

More housekeeping: You can subscribe to posts by email again!

If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.

This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and yikes to that imaginary number, once a week is the dream.

Stillness as self preservation

Various flavors

The American Southwest is going through a heat spell. A heat dome, they call it.

Love to be in a climate emergency, and all there is on offer is more phrases for the various flavors of disaster. A dome of heat. Fun times.

I am extremely fortunate to be high up at elevation, blessed by cool evening breezes.

The little metal box I call home gets pretty hot during the day, and I don’t have air conditioning, but I have a system.

I have a system

Siesta Life is based in getting up at an eerily early hour.

There’s movement practice for sanity, that happens in the dark. Then knocking out a couple hours of cooking, kitchen chores, clean up, answering emails if I have energy, and then calling it a day by 10:30am…

My bedroom is cool and dark and tiny, I keep the curtain closed and the little evaporative chiller filled with water, I climb onto the bed, and wait it out.

Last week, temperatures got up to 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 Celsius), and some people might be thinking that’s not too bad compared to a lot of other places, and they’re not wrong, but also if that’s what they’re thinking then they might have air conditioning and probably don’t live in a metal box.

Nothing new under the hot sun

Obviously I am not the first to come up with this system of early morning doing, long afternoon nap, followed by a spell of not-doing, and just waiting it out. Siesta life already exists in the many hot places of the world.

It’s also how I was living nearly during my farm work in the desert days.

But the hours here are different and my living space is considerably smaller, so I put in some serious hours in bed, in part because there is nowhere else to be…

Well-meaning

Well meaning beloved friends keep texting asking if I’m staying cool, and it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the question, and I know they are concerned and trying to be kind…

And also, there’s not much I can do with that. Like, yes, I am laser-focused on staying cool, and I stay cool by doing absolutely nothing from 10:30am- 8:30pm, that’s the trick!!!! That’s my life!!!

Just living next to the chiller in my underwear, doing eight hour shifts of nothing.

Sometimes I’m a little ornery on the topic of staying cool, my only summertime pastime, but also: I don’t really think I mind it.

I don’t think I mind it

I don’t even think I would choose to have air conditioning given the option.

Though sure, I would absolutely choose towards some other home improvements that could help with keeping the sun off the metal siding, a better curtain situation, and so on.

These are things I sometimes think about during my long, long afternoons, from the sailboat-style bunk of my tiny bed in my tiny bedroom, in the dark, with the chiller pointed at my face.

Hibernating. Practicing some good Do Less To Get More. Or just doing less for self-preservation. As is required in this moment.

I don’t even know what I wish people would ask me instead.

Something about honoring self-preservation

Maybe it’s just that of course I’m staying cool, I literally have to in order to survive, my self preservation instincts are working, yes, good job, instincts.

Stillness is a form of self-preservation. Stillness as self-preservation.

Is it boring? That’s the wrong question. Is it the path? It is right now.

That’s the reality: this is not the season for doing.

Or, it’s the season for getting up at 3am and doing, and being worn out by mid-morning when the sun is high. I’m okay with that.

Something about hope

I live by the seasons more than many, or at least more than many I know, that’s not a bad thing.

Winter has its spells, its joys and obsessive behaviors: I kitchen-jog to stay warm, throw raucous dance parties to stay warm, make big pots of tea.

And summer here has its rituals as well. As wells.

If I can find joy-sparks, I can sustain hope. And if I am living with the seasons, then there is something hopeful (for me) in that.

I am staying close to my yeses, existing in slow time.

Something about devotion

Staying in bed all day might not seem like a devotional practice, but what if it is.

Drinking cold watermelon juice: a devotional practice. A three hour nap: devotional practice.

Fighting with myself: a devotional practice.

The great escape

This summer is somehow the fifth summer since moving out here, but two of those years were partial summers, because of other circumstances…

So it’s really only twice that I did the entire summer from June heat waves through monsoon season and made it through.

This summer I am taking off for points north and east, making my way to Michigan for a [mixed-feelings] project.

It is a little funny to plan a grand expedition from bed, but that’s how it’s happening.

Pain

My arm is hurting again, this happens when I am stressed and when I am angry.

I am asking the usual questions: what am I upset about, what do I need, what would help?

And from this additional place of forced rest, what can emerge?

Lost in perfect timing

My friend Cate met me very early in the morning by the auto body shop, and took me on a hike in the area so that I didn’t have to wait there while my car got fixed up for the trip.

We walked pretty trails, met some friendly dogs, got lost twice, and ended up taking a meandering way back through town. Just when we made it back to her car, the call came that my car was ready for pickup.

It worked out really well that we got lost.

Where is the treasure

I have been thinking a lot about Aesthetics of Activity — referenced by Thi Nguyen when considering cooking.

What makes an activity enjoyable or pleasurable or doable, or at least reduces friction? Where is my focus during that activity? What supports flow?

If my current summertime activity is living in bed, mostly, then what contributes or supports that? Where is the treasure in any of this?

Embarking

My voyage to Michigan is about undoing and releasing, shifting the energy, emptying a space, doing whatever is needed, exquisite self-tending, and a lot of quiet hours.

What is needed to enter into that state of mind, other than what I am already doing through Rest & Ritual & Readying?

A question is brewing, but what is it

Let’s skip a stone, or toss a question to my various incoming selves or current aspects of self…

Who is here? And what is the question?

Let’s confer with the selves.

And I want to ask about all of the above, about self-treasuring and siesta life, about this trip to Michigan, about living with the seasons, about devotion and rest and pain and healing and what is needed in and for all of this…

Can I love myself into doing less? What does that look like?

The Self of Cowboy Up says…

As always, you can absolutely focus on what is working, that’s your starting point.

Your chore time is limited, sometimes by illness and disability, sometimes by weather, sometimes by circumstances. We work around that, we bring focus when focus is what’s needed, and we rest when rest is needed.

Releasing judgment about chore time is a big part of chore time. We’ll get it done.

Analog Chrysalis self says…

There isn’t much to do but wait it out. Read one page of a cookbook and rest.

Are you inspired by all the symbolic liberation happening for the collective?

Your friend K submitted work for a course they started seven years ago. Your friend C finished the quilt she started making from her late husband’s shirts after he died nearly twenty years ago.

You are on your way to empty a house of things. Everyone is working on this together. The answer is not going to be on screens. The answer is going to be through touching objects with your own two hands right now.

You aren’t on your own. The collective is liberating things with you. Feel the support.

Scofield Self says

Work forwards and work backwards. You don’t need as much of a plan as you think.

What you do need, and you’ve trained for this, is a sanity plan.

Make a document that lists the things that help, the people who are there to lovingly listen and support, what you’re going to do when you get stuck in the muck of it all.

Cherry Season Self:

Oh, we absolutely trained for this.

Bring your Lush Plush & Slutty Summer self, your Devoted To Transformative Pleasures self, your Maximum Comfort Self, your Recalibrating Towards Joy Self.

What else is delicious other than cherries?

What are the summer delights, go seek them out or let them come to you, but stay attuned to pleasure.

Start with the simplest pleasures and give yourself over to them.

The Assassin says

We trained for this, we trained for this, we trained for this.

You can travel light. There’s always a country station. You can talk to all of us on the way. You are not alone in this. You can call Cate in the middle of the night if you need to, but you won’t need to. You’ve got this.

We trained hard all winter for a reason. It might be too hot for jogging now, but there are endless methods of training.

You have rested up for this. You have napped the long naps, you have put in the hours of Glorious Nothing. You have quick reflexes and good instincts. All is well.

What are the lessons in Stillness As Self-Preservation

Patience.
Devotion.
Loving Clarity.
Compassion.
Strategy.
Pleasure
Sweet Slowness.
Hope.

What are the pleasures in Stillness As Self-Preservation

Still figuring this out. Staying still. Figuring this out.

If you have spent many hours watching a bobcat (this is what I did back in Arizona), you know that in bobcat mode, there are times to wait patiently and gather powers, and there are times to pounce.

And of course, lots of naps.

I am gathering powers and napping, and the best thing I can do is remove judgment and add pleasure, expand my capacity for healing pleasure.

What’s next?

Hoping I can be on the road soon-ish.

There are still some things that haven’t fallen into place yet, and I’m waiting, but it’s coming. I can love myself into doing less. Or maybe I can’t, but it matters that I thought about it.

Temps are headed back up, but that’s okay too. I trained for this. Stillness as self-preservation, stillness as devotion…

A breath for our hearts, these times, existing in this time

These are heartbreaking, terrifying, agonizing, infuriating times, they just are, and it’s hard to hold onto hope for the world or for myself.

And, also things move and shift, this is known too, and I can support that through ritual and through my own stillness. Lighting a candle for peaceful swift solutions.

Things are moving and shifting whether I have faith or not. Solstice is coming.

Solstice is coming

Solstice is coming. The longest day and the longest night, and a new quarter begins for a new adventure.

Time to start seeding wishes, time to trust the stillness and the slowness, there is some good magic brewing even if it looks like nothing is happening.

The nothing is the work. The stillness and the waiting and the hoping is the work.

Or at least it’s one piece of the work, and the next piece will emerge. Trusting in that is also the work. Lighting a candle for this too.

Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company

You are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped or anything on your mind, make some wishes! I am lighting a candle for all of it.

Or anything you’d like to toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.

Whatever comes to mind (come to heart?), let’s support each other’s hope-sparks and wishes…

Thank you to everyone who reads, porch breaths, the winding path, the many clues that land when they land, receptivity, keeping on keeping on.

New ebook alert!!!

Aka fun bonus material on how I relate to time and map out my quarters for the year.

Anyone who gives to Barrington’s Discretionary this week (see below) will get this by email as a pdf!

A request

If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Between Long Covid and traumatic brain injury recovery, things are 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.

And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this 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 and you so much. ❤️