Hello, week: we are here.
{a breath for being here when we get here}
Thank you, week!
This is the 397th week in a row we are chickening here together….
What worked this week?
Imagining that I have a tiny nearly-invisible earpiece in my ear with which I can hear the rest of my team, because I’m a character on the television show Leverage, in my mind, except that my team is my Incoming Wild Selves.
Every time I felt shaky, I could hear one of them say, “You’ve got this, babe. You’re doing great, cool as a cucumber, all is going according to the plan!”
This was such a useful reminder that I can’t see the whole plan, only the part I’m currently interacting with, and maybe everything is not Completely Falling Apart (Again!) the way my monsters think it is. And even if it were, being able to respond from calm steady trust is already rewriting the pattern and changing the game.
Next time I might…
Build in way more recovery time.
Naming the days.
This week was the week of maps and passages, and here were the days:
This is fun. We’ve got this. Day of Leap. Revolution. A well bell. A new outlook. Knocking it out of the park.
Upcoming biopic if it were based on this week…
Be Willing To Happily Abandon The Plan
8 breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- So I entered three dance competitions last weekend, and here’s a thing about that, which I already knew in advance: dance competitions are not actually a great environment for a highly sensitive person who is also an extreme introvert. I knew being around that much noise and excited, ungrounded, chaotic energy would be extremely intense and overwhelming for me, but somehow didn’t really take into consideration how long the after-effects of depletion might last. Couldn’t get out of bed before noon all week (am usually a morning person, this is very unusual), and being around people, even a quick trip to the grocery store, was just the worst. A breath for this.
- Every single Plan B I had — and I’m moving out of my house but don’t yet know where I’m going, so I have an elaborate list of nearly two dozen Plans B — fell through this week, one after the other, in a cascading domino effect that was enthralling and horrifying in its total destruction. A breath for big trust and for sitting with the not-knowing and the not-even-a-maybe, because that’s what we’ve got.
- Lots of pain stirred up from then. A breath for healing.
- I miss someone who is far away, and everything about this is complicated. A breath for ease.
- While I have been trying to maintain safe headspace for myself by not reading anything related to the American presidential race, my god the political climate in this country is so ugly and distressing. Remember the late 80s? Remember Dan Quayle? Remember the things he would say? Remember how horrified people were at the thought of someone like that being second in command? And now it’s pretty hard to imagine that the thing we most feared was power in the hands of someone who was just not very bright. Right now, that seems pretty benign in contrast to the vitriol and xenophobia on display as Trump and Cruz bash it out. A breath for breathing, for safety first, for something better.
- I am living out of a suitcase and can’t find anything I need, and this is not how I envisioned adulthood. I mean, I am delighted to not be a wife or a mother, and to be living a life of grand adventure, but I would also like to have a kitchen and a view, or even just know where I want to live. A breath for wanting.
- Impending Birthday Crisis could easily be the fake band of the week. A breath for ease.
- Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. May peacefulness prevail. Trust-more love-more release-more receive-more. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week.
8 breaths for the good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- I handled competing much better than I thought I would. I also handled not winning much better than I thought I would. A hundred billion sparklepoints to me for both of these, and for being brave and trying something new. A breath of admiration.
- Dance breakthrough. Huge reverberating moment of “oh, wax on and wax off is how you block punches!” All the drills I’ve been working on so hard landed at once, and suddenly I get it, it all makes sense! A breath of joy.
- I asked for a new outlook and I got one. A breath of thankfulness.
- Big sweetness from far away. A breath for feeling this.
- All is well. It just is. I am in advanced levels of the video game of learning this, and sailing through the tests. A breath for new skills.
- Taking care of myself to the best of my ability, and this counts. A breath for practice.
- I don’t yet know why or how it could be good that all my options disappeared this week, but I know that future me thinks this is really good news, so I’m going with that. A breath of gratitude for being able to trust this hard.
- Thankfulness. Treasure in the form of flowers everywhere. Everything is okay and so much is good. Nothing is wrong, even when I want to believe it is. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. Thank you for this grand adventure. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
Sparklepoints, superpowers, salve, fake band of the week!
Current ops and forward movement!
Big progress this week on the Studio Op, and The Fountaining. Officially retiring the Wild Wild Nest op but unofficially letting it percolate quietly on a back burner and trusting that it is the right secret op but just not the right time. Operations Jubilation and Wild Montage are ongoing. And The Wild Convening is underway. Thank you, fractal flowers.
I am bestowing vast quantities of sparklepoints upon myself like a fairground stripper, and you are welcome to do the same for you.
Superpowers I had this week…
Last week I asked for the powers of Oh This Is Great News, and to have this power about everything, and it was hard work at first but I got there, and this is a very useful power.
Powers I want.
I still want new dance friends to go dancing with: All The Right People To Play With Show Up, or the superpower of Just Right Companionship.
And mainly I want the superpowers of Perfect Simple Solutions Reveal Themselves To Me and With The Greatest of Ease.
The Salve of Luscious Adventuring.
I formulated this salve to help me find new perspective on suitcase-life, to get into the mindset of the playful adventurer who loves lusciousness, instead of going into hopelessness and poor-me. This salve is made of:
Fantastic Unexpected Luckiness. Possibility. Presence. Pleasure. Play. Desire. Glamour. Honey.
This is a good salve for any situation that needs a new outlook.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is:
Hold The Twos
Their latest album is Paddle Paddle Paddle, and it turns out this band is just one guy.
TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS!
We are doing some reconfiguring and Congruencing, and the shop will disappear soon, so if there was something you wanted to buy, go ahead and do that before it’s gone. More explanations about [reasons] to come, but it’s all good stuff, and if something is speaking to you, this is a good time.
And this is the last chance to acquire a pack of stone skipping cards — PASSWORD: sweetdoors — because I’m moving out and won’t have anywhere to store them or the shipping materials, so get them this week, they’re amazing! And while you’re at it, sign up for the not-exactly-a-course where we embark on establishing a loving playful practice of self-inquiry, to access previously-hidden gems of internal wisdom and whatever else we might need. Dates coming soon!
How was your week?
Come play in the comments. Share something from your week, take a breath, or just say hi! No rules, my format doesn’t have to be yours, we’ve been doing this every week for years now and there still isn’t a right way.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We lovingly refrain from giving advice.
And of course it’s always okay to comment under a made-up name, whether for play and delight, or in the interest of Safety First.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — jump in whenever you like. Blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers too!
Follow
Samedi shalom!
What worked? Day of indulgence. The right combination of using discounts, trying new things, and placating the Resentment Monster.
Next time? As often: say less, listen/observe more.
Biopic: Peat Paves the Path
Hard, vexing, etc.:
* Workload still a firehose, with no un-problematic possible solution in view.
* Heaviest I’ve been in a while. Both OK and not OK about it.
* The awkwardness of fading/faded friendships and the mourning of them.
* Forgetting to put the radishes back in the fridge. You Are So Wasteful Monster jamboree.
* I knew renovating any building would not be simple or inexpensive, and it is not.
Good, delightful, etc.
* I have lemons. I have grapes. Pickling ahoy!
* Unsolicited compliment about my work being terrific.
* Sour cream. Yum.
* Unexpected catching up with a third friend while on a lunch date with second friend.
* 30-minute swim. Sharing the lane with a big, slow, friendly guy.
* Spanish puns with a friend.
* Thursday night date with my sweetie.
* Honorable mention in a poetry contest.
Warm wishes and appreciation to all y’all.
Occasional Chicken checking in! Roger that.
Some hard things:
* I still feel confusingly okay and also wretched. I am so often exhausted and still sleep is hard to find. My mind is so busy and excited and still I am finding it hard to move with purpose. My heart is still living at Hope Springs, I love so many things about my life and still I find myself in the Fog and the Bog so often.
* my daughter turned four. I did my best and still feel pretty lousy about what I managed to do for her.
* Shame is not helpful, and I’m keeping myself away from actually *believing* the horrible stories it is telling me by, like, a millimetre, but it is still being all slimy and stinky and in my face as it tells me these horrible stories. *Thoughts happen, thoughts happen, thoughts happen, it doesn’t make them true*.
* Narcissists always manage to render themselves the victim (after all, there is such sweet reliability in nobody possibly being able to feel as sorry for them as they do for themselves). Holding up just the basics of truth to their constant inversion of reality is just incredibly tedious.
* And then the sweetness that alternates with faulty logic and truth-inversion is still seductive af. And I have to remind myself of the honey on the venus fly-trap and decline to be charmed. But the parts of me that *want* to be charmed are so very very saddened by our cynicism. *sigh* Will there come ever a day when I just feel neutral??
* Diagnosis and the resultant road-map. There are very good things about this. And the quest seems incredibly daunting and hopeless right now. A breath for a situation of which joseph campbell would be proud and oh great lucky me I get to be a bloody hero, fanfuckingtastic.
* Uh, yeah, I’m afraid of America. And my Doom And Disaster Crew are busy *forewarning* me about all the terrible things that could very well happen to everyone when Trump and Putin decide to have a pissing contest about who REALLY has the biggest dick I mean nukes. FFS.
A breath of acknowledgement and legitimacy for all these things.
Some good things:
* Hope Springs, consciousness and separation from the hologram, all the things that support me – I can see them. And this is all temporary.
* Kids really don’t mind the things that you mind. Their logic is different. She seems satisfied enough with the life I’m giving her.
* Holding up truth to truth-inversion is just par-for-the-fucking-course tedium nowadays, and I’m doing it like a cynical, battle-hardened, politically exigent, warrior goddess. Fuck off with your tired routine, you cannot beat me any longer, I graduated from that level of the video game mofo, thanks for the experience points.
* It isn’t even that hard to decline to be charmed by the honey sweet side of the routine, and the young selves who long to be charmed are just bathed in legitimacy and love from a *much* more worthy source – me.
* Okay. We have a diagnosis and a road map. I get to be a bloody hero, oh hello new levels of the video game!!
* Sanity may yet prevail. Please may it be so.
That’ll do. Cluck cluck.
xoxo
Sparklepoints for the dance things!!
The Hard:
Connections that are strange. Like this boy that I don’t know why we like each other. But somehow we do and he likes to come and sit next to me and talk to me. And then he came over for a little while but I don’t know what we are or what he is. But I like having this boy with long femurs sitting next to me.
People that are broken. I cannot fix them. And I do not want to fix them.
Other strange connections – emails from the ex about life. It seems like those should stop. See above re: broken things.
Wondering if I have been alone too long and if I’m putting up walls and calling them boundaries because that is easier (but not really.)
Body pain – neck, arm, split fingers from guitar strings.
The Good:
Being kissed. That is the best. A tall boy leaning down to (unexpectedly) kiss (tall) me while it snowed.
Boundaries. And feeling secure with them for the first time in my life. And not thinking “if I tell him to go this time he will never come back.”
Wonderful clients.
Having hard things, because they are about things that are good and important.
Clucking in with love and hearts and pebbles for all present.
Nothing to say right now because my heart and brain are too full. But I’m here and present. Learning to feel again.
Thank you for being you, and thank you for being here!
Hard: co-parenting, when we don’t always agree on the best course. Torturing myself, so exquisitely, with might-have-beens.
Good: discovering a fabulous new-to-me new favorite store, a twenty minute drive from home. Feeling my spirits lift. Being back in rehearsals. Singing. Writing. Glorious moments of forgetting to give a damn what anyone else thinks of me — *can you imagine*? Oh, and waking up to realize that wrecking the truck was only a bad dream, ah, the relief. May *that* be a fractal flower for all kinds of awakenings from all kinds of nightmares.
I’m ready to savor that salve now… <3
Chickin in!
@Havi – Congratulations on competing, and for sleeping just as much as you need afterwards!
@Claire – Hugs and appreciation! (Am very familiar with shame)
This week’s hard:
– a very sad event involving a neighbor
– reminders from Drumpf supporters, and others, of all the nastiness people can indulge in when they are beset by rage and unrecognized fear
– reminders from Drumpf and his competitors that civility is always a choice, and incivility is a contagious habit
– continuing to be confounded by the ways I can sabotage my own positive motivations
This week’s good:
– journaling about the sad event
– getting to try for the first time a food from my family history
– leaving 2 separate purchases at store counters, and finding them when I went back (one was kept for me for two days!)
– Spring is really coming!
And now for breakfast and a shower.
I love the salve! Thank you for formulating it.
Thank you, too, for naming these super powers: All the Right People to Play With Show Up and Just Right Companionship. I want some playmates and where I have been looking has not brought me in contact with them. If they will just Show Up — how cool would that be?!
With Just Right Companionship and the Salve of Luscious Adventuring, I can launch out into new experiences and revisit old ones with delight and openness, presence and pleasure:
– the Re-formed Creek that used to be the Seven Pools in the Swamp-East
– the Tree That I Did Not Climb
– the Warriors
– the Swamp
– Re-visiting the Past with Mom
– the Reunion of the Bees
– the Old Books Archive
– other, as-yet unplanned adventures and explorations
So –I am looking forward to having these powers and seeing them in action.
This past week was basically about cleaning up after the floor replacement was finished, starting to pull things together, and also taking time to admire the bookshelves my brother is building, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in the dining room. I will be surrounded on three sides by books and will only leave it to go to the bedroom where I am also surrounded on three sides by books (or, you know, for things like food).
<3 <3 <3
The hard:
– very, very tired. Recovery takes so much longer than I think it ought to.
– brain splode arghle
The good:
– lovely lovely track cycling
– gorgeous spring sunshine
– finding the treasure
– potential kitten
Cluck cluck cluck
I love the idea of a Salve of Luscious Adventuring!
I am imagining a custom preparation of this salve for myself, with Glamour replaced by Seeing Beauty Everywhere, and Honey replaced by Deliciousness Is Easy to Find, stored in an amazing jar that is made from Adventurine stone, with flowers carved on it!
???
Oops, forgot that the heart symbol displays as a question mark. Let’s try that again:
<3 <3 <3 !
So late, evoking amnesty and clucking.
What worked last week: very little, including myself. Lots of errands, some kinda scary. the thing that worked best was pushing thru as much as I could, and rest when I hit the wall. Remembering my lunation vow and my all my goals
The mantra that’s been coming up lately is: the work will show you how to do it. and so far, it is proving true.
the sucks:
-not many, but more than enough. mostly the tyranny of the to-do list
-my inability to stay focused to move things off said list
-feels about not moving Operation Gold Star further than I have and a whole ton of [silent retreat] about that
-my deep need for rest, quiet, well tending, and my deep desire to get [projects] to happen. Where’s the ‘yes, and’ here? (NOTE: do Thorn’s middle pillar)
-never enough time
-worry and care
-the state of my credit cards and [silent retreat]. very worrisome
but it was offset by so much joy and sparkle!
-major sparkle points for adulting wins!
-major and timely wins on Operation Princess Tower
-sunday I cleaned out huge chunks of my youngest daughter’s room. serious progress made, lots of energy reclaimed from stagnation and iguanas. all doenw tihout yelling or ntears. HUGE victory
-so much sweetness
-so many blessings I’m challenged to receive it all
-clarity and fractaling with Blue Lapis, movement and fractaling on Gold Star. Lots of motivaton towards Operation mariposa.
-so many seeds I’ve planted have sprouted or are taking root. so many ways I have tried to get things to land, or shift, or something, it’s finally happening
Filk song alert! To the tune of A Wand’ring Minstrel I, from The Mikado.
A wand’ring chicken I, a thing of beak and feathers.
Checking in whenever
Whenever I’m wand’ring by…