A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Announcement on Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques, and it helps.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤

Operation Re-heart, Reheartened, A Reheartening

A question of focus

The horrors remain ongoing, and everything is very depressing, and also scary, which is a real bummer of a combination, as you’ve probably also noticed, and here we are. Not the best of circumstances.

I am not going to talk about any of that today, or at least not directly…

And this is because I am practicing [Persisting While Playing] on a very small-scale project right now…

What I want to do is zoom way, way in, and allow this project be the frame-and-window of my focus and my view.

We are drawing in

We are drawing in. Pulling inward.

Not collapsing, not pretending the bigger picture doesn’t exist, just temporarily and intentionally pulling focus to a spot, with purpose.

And also with curiosity and receptivity for what might be in that spot, or what might come from focusing in.

Yes, we are drawing in, with intention and a clarity of purpose.

It’s all a question of Focus. Or: an intentional narrowing-in of focus. This is the practice, and practice is what helps.

A stand-in, aka another form of play

Maybe this project can be a stand-in or a proxy for all the other work of [keeping on keeping on].

And I am going to trust in the fractal magic of play, so that whatever insights or bits of Loving Clarity arise from bringing my focus to this small project can do their work in other areas of my life…

They can do their work by dissolving fear and anxiety, or they can do their work by helping me see how everything is connected and all the patterns are the same pattern or variations on the same pattern.

Narrowing my focus to a symbolic focal point in the form of a small, doable project is a way to stop freaking out about all the Unsolvables, the mysterious mysteries, the things beyond my control.

Let’s take this one breath / one step / one question at a time, and trust that everything else will solve itself or it won’t. Either way we are focusing on what is known and doable right now.

Only one problem

Only one problem: I don’t want to do this project! INOWANNA!

It’s turned into a major iguana (what I call a thing I am avoiding), but we do we know about iguanas? They exist to be liberated. So let’s do some liberating.

And liberating begins with an exploration.

Where to start

Lolol did I say only one problem? Pretty sure there are more problems knotted up in this one. That’s usually how it goes though, right? Especially whenever we are very understandably avoiding something.

Even if we don’t entirely know why we’re avoiding it.

Let’s start somewhere. Let’s name the Known Knowns, and pull on any thread and see where it leads us.

And, as always, we want to practice Safety First.

And lots of Entry. Enter as you wish to be in it.

Naming the qualities

How do I wish to be in it? That is, how do I want to show up for this project that is starting to feel stuck and complicated?

Let’s name and invoke and channel some qualities, and drop them lovingly into the cauldron of It Solves Itself.

I am showing up with:

Courage. Curiosity. Presence. Grace.
A sense of humor. A sense of wonder. A sense of groundedness. A sense of place.

And the superpowers of I can do this, I trained for this, and hell yes I love a challenge.

Naming the knowns

I have written three different essays to share here, and then published none of them. In part because each one felt too agonizingly personal, each in its own way.

And in part because my website has been a little bit broken.

I was able to outsource the work of finding out what broke it (blessings upon kind people who are both smarter and more patient than I am), but I am the one who needs to do the actual fixing.

Website fixes! Somehow this feels unbelievably tedious and also stressful at the same time and wildly unappealing.

I know that if I just start, it will take as long as it takes but I will get into a groove, and it can happen in pieces. But I just don’t want to.

Reset Restart!

Okay so first before anything else, I want to practice Acknowledgment & Legitimacy. Like this:

It is perfectly reasonable and understandable that I don’t feel up to futzing around in the backend of this website I have had since all the way back in TWO THOUSAND AND FIVE that needs so much work and attention.

I am allowed to feel frustrated, anxious and resentful about the time, the tediousness, the way I do not feel at home in this kind of work. So reasonable! So understandable!

Even though I don’t necessarily know all the reasons that I have been feeling so stuck and anxious about tackling this, that’s okay. For sure they are good reasons.

Then we play. What does play look like?

Rally-style. Rally!

For example, playful approaches might look like…

Renaming the project!
Finding or channeling an incoming self or version of me who is has a better approach.
Checking in with the Internal Scientists.
Naming some possible tricks, workarounds, or tiny steps.
Maybe getting a friend to play on a parallel project at the same time or to check in with for some loving accountability.
Reassurance protocols~

The main thing is, let’s just start somewhere, see what happens, and take some notes about what we notice.

Renaming the project

A very funny anagram for Website Fixes is…

We bees fix it!

WE BEES FIX IT! What if there was a colony of bees all working together to solve this, for the good of the whole?

While I was writing this, my wifi went out, but I made a note to myself to do a little rabbit-hole investigating into the ways that bees might work together for some good problem-solving.

Bzz bzz! Fix-it crew is here~

What else suggests itself for a name, or a clue

Funnily enough, the thing that broke the website was hearts.

And here I am, broken-hearted and sad and disoriented and reeling from heartache, of course hearts is what broke.

That makes the most sense, that it’s hearts that break and also hearts that break things.

And it also very funny, both in a that’s such a good story way and also haha, it’s happening again, the theme that won’t stop being a theme is back.

Heart space

So really this mission is about returning the hearts, or resetting them, it is a Reheartening.

Do I feel heartened? Re-heartened? Not yet, but laughing is a start.

Operation Reheartening it is. With a honey-loving fix-it crew.

Let’s restore the heart, back to the heart of the matter, with my own heart at the center. Staying attuned to what is needed in heart space.

Who is the self who can do this?

The version of me or the incoming Self who can do this is the one who is hearted and lion-hearted.

Well-hearted. Well-provisioned. Well-fortified.

Courageous and steady. Havi The Lionhearted.

Let’s do this. Come on in, lionhearted self of love and boundaries. Let’s get passionate about bravely restoring this heart.

Checking in with the Internal Scientists.

The Internal Scientists is something I made up, and the idea is that what if we were collecting all our noticings somewhere, for science?

And the Internal Scientists are the keepers of this library of noticing. They are studious. They have clipboards. They know the numbers.

For example, I asked them for their insights on this project, and here’s what they said…

Point of fact!

Point of fact: A very substantial body of research indicates that you often don’t have a good grasp of how long a project might take. This is not a criticism of you; this is neutral noticing.

This means you either think it will take forever! weeks! so much time!, and then you don’t want to start, because it just feels hopeless, like trying to carve out a mountainside…

Or, alternately. you convince yourself that it can be done super fast, and that if you could only just get your ADHD brain to hyperfocus, then it would be done.

And actually that’s kind of a mean thought because it sets you up for disappointment when the project takes longer than anticipated.

Maybe this time we could try not having any guess about the scope, and just enter with curiosity. Put in twenty minutes and see where that gets you, and let that information be neutral.

Starting small

The Scientists are right. Let’s start small and stay neutral.

Next up: naming some possible tricks, workarounds, or tiny steps.

I journaled for a bit with my Lionhearted self and also with the scientists, and what I got was that I might find it easier to start from the other end. That is to say, go back in time in the archives until I find where the problem starts, and start fixing from there.

That way, I will have a sense of the scope of the project instead of it being a huge mystery.

Parallel play

I have told three friends that I am going into the forest (imaginary, but also a time management app) for half an hour to get my bearings in Operation Reheartening.

My mission is simple: pretend I am on the show Leverage and I’m breaking into the mainframe, but I only have twenty minutes before I will be kicked out of the system.

Then use the blog archives to try to locate a starting point.

Then count how many fixes need to be made. Then turn the fixes into a game.

Scope, scope scope, and small steps, one and then another one

I bravely and heroically got myself into the archives, where discovered, after much tedious poking around, that the posts that need to be fixed go all the way back to April 2021.

Exactly five years. Which is disheartening. And that made me laugh.

The process of removing HEARTS is disheartening, but dis-heartening is the project, and so learning about scope is disheartening, and learning about disheartening is part of the scope.

These symbolic hearts aren’t going to de-activate themselves! But also something about re-activating my own sweet heart, with tenderness, presence and care, in times of heartbreak and just generally.

Re-activating and re-accessing. Making a little altar in my heart and to my heart, and tending to that space.

Reassurance protocols

What do I want to tell myself or remember?

Can I give this to myself? Can I get a friend to help me remember?

You’re doing amazing, sweetie. You are braver than the marines. This is good and important work, to restore your heart through this Reheartening, and also it will bring your website into greater congruence, which is good for you and for the world. The world needs Congruence, even in symbolic amounts.

Can I approve of myself for trying something instead of criticizing myself for how long it took me to start?

And if not, can I just practice and try it on for size? What would that feel like? Let’s experiment.

One more clue for the road

Thanks to Amye for the clue of Practice is Everything.

Thanks to Laura Bluetree for the clue of “effort here, results over there”, aka fractal magic all over again.

Thanks to Kathryn for the clue of just do the opposite of the people who are breaking your heart, and source more joy, and a little Evil Kermit energy too.

Thanks to Darcy for the clue of solved by anagrams.

A breath of thank-you in my thank-you heart

I am always thankful for these clues and reminders. The work is the work, but the work can be playful, and play is transformative, and trying things counts.

Okay I will see you on the other side when the website is fixed. Hope it was helpful to observe the process and maybe it will have some fractal magic for your own projects and wishes too. I very much hope so.

I will take notes. And you can take notes! May all these clues and superpowers and bits of effort and care come together and glow some goodness into the world, god knows we all need it.

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.