Hello December / December Wishes

‘Tis The Season, as they say, but not like that

It is the season of the wishing cauldron, and there is much to be dropped lovingly into the cauldron.

Each wish-spark is an ingredient or a form of flavoring.

I don’t know and can’t know (and maybe even don’t want to know) how the various element are going to combine or what is going to be revealed. All that will come in right timing.

My job is only to tend to myself and tend to the cauldron.

My work as pertains to the wishing cauldron

My work is to stay patient and stay curious, to notice the wishes as they bubble up within me, and release judgment.

My work is to cultivate and maintain a mindset of welcoming wishes so that I can meet them, learn about them, and learn something about myself in the process.

Each wish is a tiny sweet thing, a tender offering, and I want to make space for it to just breathe and grow and thrive and feel safe.

Is it scary and vulnerable to allow myself to wish? Absolutely. Or at least it can be. And also it’s good practice. Let’s name some wishes and maybe we can track some of the connection points between them.

A wish about daily walking

One of the things I missed most this summer while I was in Oregon escaping the wildfires was my daily pasture walk for a dose of outdoor time.

Also known as my Silly Little Walk for my Silly Little Mental Health.

Also known as getting Double Bonus Outdoor Points, which I learned last year is surprisingly motivating for me. I love getting double points, even if they are imaginary.

Mostly I didn’t walk this summer because the humidity was gross, the city wasn’t fun to walk in, my shoes were dying, I was always busy. It just wasn’t the right thing for the moment. My ritual had lost its appeal.

A Glorious Return to walking, and a Glorious Return to craving the walk

When I came home from being gone, my pasture was entirely overgrown and impossible to walk in, and then of course the habit didn’t have a home anymore, not in my pasture and not in my body-mind.

This week I hired someone to help with yard work and they cleared a circle for me in the pasture again.

Can this month be about a Glorious Return to walking and outdoor time? I hope so! It might take some time to get back into it and then the ritual will hold itself.

Or if this is not the right ritual for unwinding my tangled thoughts, may another solution show up in right timing.

Into the cauldron it goes, what a beautiful wish, I welcome this wish and all perfect simple solutions related to this, or even tangentially related to this.

A wish about unstuck (symbolic and otherwise)

Last Friday, the sliding door between my kitchen and bedroom got completely stuck while it was shut, and I was trapped in my bedroom.

Of course everything I could possibly need (wallet, car keys, shoes) was in the kitchen which I couldn’t get to from inside the house, and which was locked from the outside.

Fortunately, thanks to my paranoia about exactly this situation, I wisely keep a spare key hidden in the bathroom.

And this is how I ended up jumping off the back porch (in four inch heels, like a sexy assassin in a movie), and miraculously did not twist an ankle.

From there I could unlock the front door to get back in the house, and get to everything I needed.

Interestingly

Interestingly there were also a lot of other, simultaneous Perceptions Of Stuck situations going on at the same time for me.

For example, a close friend got upset with me over a misunderstanding and withdrew for five days.

For example, I had at least half a dozen of the silliest miscommunications imaginable with someone working on a project.

For example, I still have made no progress on keeping my house warm for winter, and in fact, now it is colder than ever because I am afraid to close the bathroom door in case it sticks on me too.

What does unstuck look like and where else does this apply?

So for a week now, any time I need to get either into the kitchen or the bedroom/bathroom, I have to go outside and then come back in, and that’s my life. So fun! The best! Especially in the rain!

Allegedly a new handyperson is coming next week, and the builder of my house also offered to assist by phone, so I have hope for getting this solved eventually, however my patience for living like this is running out.

It made me think though more broadly about what is stuck generally, and also my own [Perceptions of Stuck], my favorite band, just one guy.

So there is a question here, or a stone to skip, regarding how I want to meet and interact with the various stuck situations.

Where can I add ease?

Once my door works again, where else can there be more ease and less friction?

What is even easier and what is even easier than that? Can I rededicate myself to more ease and keep adding ease?

What is the opposite of stuck? It is smoothness? Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Can I trust this.

Or maybe it’s more about being okay with wobbles and interference. I am open to exploring this too. Into the cauldron!

A wish about training hard

When I was in Portland I was training hard in yoga again, and doing lots of dance, and it was super fun and invigorating. A coming home to myself.

Right now I am putting in more or less the same amount of time into physical practice, but my focus has been more on restful stretchy releasing work, which is also great. It’s just that I miss and crave that feeling of being the exact right combination of Sore & Strong

Not sure if the answer is On Demand classes or youtube classes (same), or doing my own practice in a more focused way, or just adding in some challenge time. Impossibles du jour?

It is a wish about the treasures along the winding path

Something like that. My training wishes are not so much about achieving, and more about summoning or accessing the joy in going hard as well the joy in rest/integration.

So maybe this is a wish about finding some good interplay between going hard when that is called for and integrating the fruits of the training.

It is also a wish about fun goals that are less about achieving, or even less about the goal itself which is more of a symbol, and more focus on all the playful experiments along the way.

And by “along the way”, I mean as I bushwhack my way in the general direction of the stated goal.

A wish about glamour that is also a wish about tending

I will tend to ignore or postpone or delay certain self-care rituals until suddenly it’s like, oh wow how did this become a dire emergency!

And also I will wear the same sweatshirt and fleece-lined leggings and wool hat until I have a “reason” to look nice, but what if feeling good is its own reason.

What if channeling the dangerous sex bomb assassin version of me (or my cowboy self or my Jolene self) is its own reason.

Can I commit to an experiment around this? Can I be the reason for the season? Can my own joy be the reason for the season…?

A wish about tabula rasa

Even though my default state is a hundred open tabs and a bunch of projects and clues, I don’t enjoy feeling overwhelmed.

Can I try closing things down, or just keeping notes about my idea sparks and revisiting the notes instead of the open tabs?

Sure, I might lose a wish or a clue. Can I trust that we will find each other again?

A wish about bright colors

Whether this wish is related to specific items like flowers or clothing or dishes or candles, I don’t know yet for sure or I don’t know yet exactly. All I can say is that I am craving WINTER CHEER.

And specifically I am longing for a form of winter cheer that is vielfarbig, a favorite Yiddish-ism that I am spelling the German way, many-colored!

Craving cheery and craving color.

Vibrancy! Vitality! Brightness! I want all of this in abundance, and I want to have my comforting soup in a cheery yellow bowl, and I want breakfast cake on a red plate.

Mainly I want color to enliven me and revitalize me on the grey skies days.

A wish about clarity, discernment, glowing boundaries

What does this mean? Being really clear about my time, my space, my availability, my capacity, my tolerance for boring bullshit.

Being clear and expressing that clarity with as much loving-kindness as I can muster. But if a fight is needed, then I will show up to fight. I’m clear on that too.

A wish about the guest house, Rumi-style

I thought a lot about Rumi’s Guesthouse this week.

Mainly because I was in the middle of the silliest fight with a close friend over an even sillier misunderstanding, and they weren’t showing up to have a conversation about it, and I really just wanted to talk it out and resolve it.

So my daily guests this week were anger and frustration, and I tried making an extra cup of tea for them, lighting a candle and saying, YOU ARE WELCOME.

There is a lot to learn from an unruly guest, and it was good practice for me to make lots of space for what was going on for me in the moment, given the circumstances.

A wish about the guest house, real

I want visitors but I do not know where they might stay.

Into the cauldron with this wish.

Or maybe the guest house is simply a warmer place for me to go when it is cold.

A wish about flow and being in flow

Moving with and not against, going with what is, but also slipping through cracks in a good way.

How can I be like water in ways that are useful and also be a well-boundaried container for my own wishes?

A wish about spaciousness (?) or retreat (?) from broader culture

Living inside of Christian hegemony remains a major bummer, and I do not enjoy the experience of being constantly reminded that I am an outsider in this culture, and that I am not included in any of the celebrating.

Every year I make some kind of wish around this, like can I live like Miss Carla and order things online and not go into the world? Would headphones and a playlist provide a good buffer from holiday music on the radio and in stores?

How can I remove myself more thoroughly from this world and have more delicious, sweet coziness in my own? Probably this involves staying offline, which might be good for me as well.

Welcoming my wishes

I can welcome my wishes by lighting a candle for them.

I can welcome my wishes by clearing space and clearing the decks.

And by saying, “Oh wow, what beautiful wishes.”

And by journaling and exploring and experimenting.

I can welcome my wishes by taking a hand-on-heart sigh, or by placing a stone for them in my garden.

What’s true? What’s possible

I can welcome my wishes by doing sun salutations or by taking a walk in the pasture again.

I can welcome my wishes by focusing on what’s already working, and also asking what I can do differently…

And I can ask: What’s true and what’s also true?

What’s working right now?

Dancing. Friends. Hiking club. Reaching out and connecting. Morning yoga. Making tea.

What else do I want to try?

More airplane mode, longer walks, any walks, reading recipes before bed instead of being on my phone.

Welcoming solstice

In honor of solstice approaching this month, I am also placing my ritual solstice questions into the wishing cauldron:

What wants to be eliminated?

What wants to be illuminated?

Where do we go from here?

Something I like about the wishing process is that the naming of wishes itself is so brave and revealing and sometimes even surprising.

There isn’t really often any more to be done. I made space. I named what wanted naming. And now I tend to the seeds by tending to myself, and noticing what I notice.

I can also ask friends to be walking buddies from afar, or maybe they want to do something else, one of their wishes, more knitting time, more poetry time, whatever they want, while I take my little walk.

And I can keep journaling, exploring, playing, poking around. I can learn what I learn, and revisit these with love.

Maybe I will put a clue about each of them on a list and put the list on my wall. That’s an idea too.

Hello, December

Dear December, help me remember to move slowly and intentionally, because slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Help me maintain a sense of humor as I open the guest house (Rumi-style) to each new emotion and sensation.

Help me appreciate what is good right now.

Help me arrive at my own Loving-Clarity and receive decisions in a way that makes them actionable.

I want to be friends

December, be a friend and a companion, and I will try to do the same. As always, it’s an honor to play the game, even when I get tangled up in all my stuff about everything that isn’t working in my life.

Hello, December, with your sparkly lights and many candles. Let’s find a good path to walk together.

I like friends. Let’s start there.

May it be so, or something even better

Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.

I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.

Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.