Noticing
During zoom yoga with my friend Cate, she suggested that we try noticing what we’re not noticing.
This reverberated in me like the perfect stone skipping across the waters of my consciousness. How do you notice what you’re not noticing?
It is a striking question. Or a request. To notice where my attention isn’t asks me to pause. Intention & Curiosity.
There are of course the usual suspects that I can notice I am probably not noticing, releasing tension in my jaw, there’s that tightness in the ribs I forgot about, oh and the vastness of the anger in my heart, haha how did I forget to notice that, has it just become part of the scenery.
Also the many things I don’t notice because they’re working just fine, a whole subset of forgotten goodness.
Anyway, a weekend check-in (CHICKEN!) is not only a reassuring ritual for me, it is another form of remembering to notice what I may not have noticed. We made it. High fives all around and admiration and some breaths.
Breathing for what was hard, challenging, uncomfortable, not fun…
Obviously THING ZERO before all else, the absolute levels of fear in the collective as we all held our breaths for Inauguration wondering if we would get a peaceful reassuring day or if all hell would break loose again.
Thing One remains the combination of the pandemic and the dissonance between people who are committed to getting through it and people who still don’t seem to take it seriously. This is true for the pandemic and for many other things. A breath for how much I want consensus reality and can’t get it.
Thing Two, a variation on Thing One that I’m not able to articulate yet, something about about how the ongoing work of dismantling the very oppressive systems that I also benefit from, propagate and uphold is made unnecessarily challenging by that reality gap. Obviously this is not a new theme, and it’s an experience that is more challenging for more marginalized people, so this is not a poor me complaint, just a noticing and a noticing about the not-noticings, acknowledging the ongoing challenges of no agreed-upon reality.
(This is something I thought about a lot during the Kavanaugh hearings when most men in my life seemed to exist in a world in which thinking about the hearing was intellectually interesting as opposed to physically agonizingly painful, I am thinking about this now in a variety of contexts, anti-racism work, disability rights, protecting our trans friends, advocating for people without homes, undoing internalized fatphobia, all the big work of amends and internal rewriting. A pebble for the thing I mean.)
Thing Three is the exhaustion and the unraveling. I keep having mini-weeping sessions when I realize just how much tension the last five years of terror have put into my body, but I know a bigger release and possibly a massive delayed reaction meltdown is waiting for its big Broadway moment. Trying to function in a world in which that man had access to nuclear weapons was honestly a full-time trauma that we couldn’t even really fully express for fear of just losing all ground. Can I notice all that I didn’t let myself notice? Not sure I’m ready for that much noticing. Do I even remember what it’s like to not be on edge?
Thing Four: Still missing someone so much, and hating that I don’t have the ability to hold myself in higher regard on that front, but also noticing what is of the moment; intent on loving myself more because I am a human being who loves hard and hurts hard, this is part of being someone who feels so deeply and with such intensity.
Thing Five is this absolutely ridiculous culture we live in that wants January to be productive and about goals, when it’s winter (here in the northern hemisphere) and we all just went through the most stressful hell-month after the hardest year. I have received texts from almost every person I know this week and they have all been on the topic of “I simply cannot get anything done”, and I just want to confirm that the entire notion of getting things done not only needs to be kicked to the curb generally, but specifically as we emerge from this absolutely cataclysmic crucible of the last five years, we gotta just sleep it off and stare into space for a while.
And Thing Six is still not understanding how time works, after nearly forty four years of doing this being alive thing. I am in the middle of trying to undo a story about how I did not set up my day well / didn’t prepare well / didn’t understand time, because that is not true and that’s not how my wise selves experience me or time or my relationship with time.
All I know is that I can believe I am planning well and allocating time and attention beautifully, but even at my most focused and attentive, maybe one of the six things I think can fit in a day can get some love. A breath for this confusion and this process, and tending to my ADHD brain trauma brain with tenderness.
Breaths of Acknowledgment & Legitimacy for the hard things being hard, recognition that they really are a lot.
Breathing for what was good, reassuring, joyful, sweet
- Thank you, peaceful Inauguration day miracle. I watched absolutely none of it and instead committed to holding the force field for peacefulness. I took the word AUGUR from Inauguration, and spent the day as the Muse of Peacefulness. Drew cards, did a reading, gentle bobcat yoga all day, 365 sun salutations, five meditations, steady breaths all day for the collective. I’m not saying that’s what did it, but I’m not saying it wasn’t. Haha who knows if it helped at all but what matters is that I followed what felt strongly indicated for the day, and if it helped steady some of my friends, then that’s a sweet bonus.
- A breath for remembering hope, some joy, vital first steps, grownups in the house, we can work with this to move towards what matters. Brand New Day superpowers. A breath for what is possible.
- In an absolute miracle, got some focus, and everything that needed to get done somehow fit in without rushing.
- The Inauguration brought the rains to Tucson after the driest winter, I woke up to it and breathed relief.
- Heroically dealt with some things that are not my favorite, and it went okay, a trillion points to me.
- My wish of Delicious Food, Beautifully Plated is still happening every day. I cannot emphasize enough what a huge deal this is. Not only because it’s been my wish to treat myself as well as I treat others, but given the reality that two months ago I was too depressed to feed myself at all, and couldn’t manage much more than grabbing a snack from the mini fridge in the absolute hellish tiny house where I was staying in the middle of Tucson.
- Incoming me aka That Bitch, the me who knows about how to hold myself in High Regard, the one who doesn’t ever use the phrase “high maintenance” because that’s just Appropriate Standards, the one who remembers how to be the cat, the one who laughs when I say (as I so often do when I am mad), “I was born on an avalanche, I came out with abs and I’m here to fucking destroy you and your family!”. I love this self and the gifts they bring in images, dreams, bits of poetry, reminders, we talk all the time and are so in love with each other, blissful.
- Two weeks ago I said, “I want an impossible want (a substantive apology from someone who hurt me, for starters), the only way to get my wish is to bathe myself in love until I can let it go.” And today after a long difficult conversation, I did receive the heartfelt apology I wanted and didn’t imagine I would ever hear, and it meant a lot to me. A breath of gratitude for the unanticipated, someone else taking the time to notice what they weren’t noticing, their intake of breath when they noticed what they hadn’t noticed, that was a gift too.
- Today is the anniversary day of something in my life that is very painful, and I was dreading it, but then a conversation with a friend reminded me of the playful way she shifted a painful memory day for herself by declaring it a Feast Day. So I did the same and maybe I will share more about that later, for now I will just say that I didn’t expect this to work for me, but I ended up having a really beautiful and meaningful day, a breath for all the powers of rewriting, which is at the very heart of Self Fluency.
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
Greetings, check-inners!
I hope you are safe and well.
The hard:
– Learned that someone I know had to move into a rented apartment because the last earthquake really damaged their home, and it came on top of losing their business (to the pandemic), and I didn’t even know what to say.
– Sysadmin on the client side made my account so restricted that I couldn’t do the thing they’re paying me to do, and I wasted a ton of time trying to handle this issue.
– Frustrated by poor documentation, more time wasted trying to figure out basic things.
– Again did not do the thing I said to myself I was going to do, even though I also say to myself that it’s important. What else is new, right, but I’m still feeling bad about it.
– Stink bugs crawling into EVERYTHING. Omg how are they still alive?
Noticing the good:
– I’ve met up with a few friends for the first time since November. In better times we would have celebrated the New Year together, but now we’re drinking beer in a parking lot next to a closed pub.
– Received a replacement for the thing that got damaged in the mail.
– Lynda Barry’s books are blowing my mind. She has quite a few so depends on one’s interest which one is “better”, but Making Comics is really doing it for me.
– Gesso all the things! New possibilities opening up.
– Connecting with new interesting people despite being in hermit mode for the whole past year.
– Relief that the Orange ManBaby is finally out, hopefully this will bring positive change to all US friends.
I’m blanking out on what to wish for so I may snatch someone else’s idea later.
Ah I love Lynda Barry so much!!! <3
Cluck cluck!
The hard:
– a sort of fidgety but simultaneously slumpy reluctance to pay attention to anything. I find myself doing several things at once so as not to have to notice things, no matter how enjoyable they might be.
– tired tired tired. There is the sleep that my body wants me to have, and there is the morning walk that my mind really appreciates, and there is working the hours that I’m contracted to work, and I don’t currently see how I can manage more than two of those three.
– wet and cold.
The good:
– Friday was my day off and was beautifully sunny and I went for a walk and was just happy
– we have formed a support bubble with two of our friends who have a baby (this is legal, in the interest of the sanity of new parents) and so yesterday we went over to theirs to eat haggis and sing to the baby and just behave like normal for a bit. It was lovely.
– friend gave me some lovely bits of quilting fabric. One is a map of Paris and another has snowy mountains.
– this morning I sewed some things together. It’s been a while.
– I like watching the snow.
– at least two separate pieces of good news from the family.
– playing with fountain pens, playing with the possibility of buying a new one.
– The Harcourt Spellbook.
What’s working: shutting down at the end of working hours and having a lie-down. Small drawings.
Love to all the chickeneers!
Very relatable the slumpy fidgety reluctance, I feel it. <3
“Noticing what I’m not noticing”. . .well, that’s a good practice for just about everyday and everything, and seems to encompass the hard, the good, and everything inbetween. I’m especially resonating to the idea that I have cultivated great skill in noticing what’s NOT working, but forgetting about the “whole subset of forgotten goodness”. I am now aspiring to make that remembered goodness.
But transforming a painful memory day into a Feast Day (with Delicious Food, Beautifully Plated, of course) is beyond brilliant. Many hearts of gratitude for this!
I am happy to finally find it within myself to join the flock of chickeneers, even if I’m not so articulate at naming yet.
Remembered Goodness! What a powerful practice. <3
Hello!
A hard thing: continuing to feel too much overwhelm. At least I am playing with the patterns, so there’s a vein of good running through the hard.
A good thing: that poem by Amanda Gorman, and her performance of her poem — glorious and inspiring.
A thing that worked: sovereignty in cooking. I choose *what* I want to cook and *how* I want to cook, giving myself so much space and peace. I can carry this into other areas, can’t I?
In the coming week, I want to try wearing an invisible crown of *qualities* — sovereignty, yes, plus anything else I desire! Superpower of Standing Tall and Remembering: activate!
Carrying something that works into other areas! The best superpower. Love it. And yes to Standing Tall & Remembering!
I just came over here on the off chance and discovered not one, not two, but three new posts! So that is a good thing 🙂 Thank you Havi!
Exhaustion, so much exhaustion, yes indeed.
Checking in (CHICKEN!) a week afterwards, but “A wizard arrives exactly when [she] means to”, and I’m ready to Friday now.
A breathe for what was hard:
Period of awful mixed up with a workload that meant I had to work through the worst parts of it.
Great tiredness and skin hunger after my quarantine after my roommate got Covid (I got lucky, and am negative after quarantine and testing). But I missed all my people in my tiny pod for three weeks, and I miss hugs so hard.
Grading for the class I am teaching feels endless and overwhelming, and I am trying to give myself some grace about this, but there are shame monsters lurking.
I did too much knitting and embroidery, and my left wrist is VERY cranky with me, and that made everything harder to not have my current favorite creative escape.
A breathe for what was good:
Making my room even more a little sanctuary made quarantine feel surprisingly indulgent and nice. A few small changes (re-doing the lighting, fancy candles, a new back pillow, re-organizing a few areas, making my bed to look really nice every day).
Asking for what I wanted got me a fair amount of it! I got virtual company and hangouts and support.
Followed Ring Theory “support in, dump out” pretty well, and was able to be honest about the hard parts with some people. Monsters were fairly calm about the whole thing (YAY!)
Took a day off after being exhausted: preemptive self care for the win! I feel much better after a day off.
Wish for next week: Making peace with hunger for connection and balancing connection with boundaries.