Hello, week: we are here.
Thank you, week. Thank you, space to reflect.
{a breath for being here when we get here}
This is week 423 of this ritual, and so we chicken.
What’s been working?
Adding the superpower of “AND IT’S FUN!” to all the other superpowers I invent. For example…..
I am able to set clear expectations and it’s fun! I am effortlessly relaxed and it’s fun! Everything can be solved by the rule Just Add Water, and it’s fun!
I might try…
Going for more clue walks.
Naming the days.
Celebrating behind! Rainbow glow. These are my (job) requirements. Polaris/dipper. Clear and at ease. I am a STAR. Even more clear.
8 breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Sixteen trillion monster-number of things to be done before I leave town in a few days for however many months. Breathing.
- Have reached that uncomfortably familiar state of pre-trip packing-paralyis where not only are there monster-number of things to do, but I am not doing any of them, just staring into space or diving into any available form of escape. Breathing compassion for me. It’s just a pattern, it has [Reasons], it is legitimate and understandable, and it will change and shift as I notice that I’m in it and make room for it to exist. It is changing right now because noticing the pattern changes the pattern.
- Haha, last week I wrote something about “examining my relationship with uncertainty”, and what I meant was something like [me + Uncertainty, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g]. But now I see how this could also be read as [I am examining my relationship, and I am examining it while feeling uncertain], which, okay, there is something there. Being in a Relationship in any sort of formal way is not my yes. I am a wild adventurer and I value my independence. But/also the faraway cowboy and I love each other deeply, and our beautiful unique NARBAR connection has its own culture. (NARBAR = Not A Relationship Better Than A Relationship.) Anyway, this week I had a moment about this, and was visited by waves and waves of pain from Then. Breathing for presence: Now Is Not Then. Now is new. Now is better.
- Speaking of my-relationship-with-uncertainty, monsters are convinced this trip is going to be canceled, which makes it even harder to get motivated to get things ready to take off, since they keep reminding me not to get my hopes up and “how stupid will you feel when you find out you fell for this ruse again, you’ve been falling for this since you were five years old, grow up already”. AGAIN is such a favorite monster-word, and therefore a good clue which makes it easy to recognize when monsters are monstering. Thank you, monsters, for trying to make sure that I am safe and loved. I also want to be safe and loved, so we share the same mission. How about we remember that we are safe, and we are loved (always, unconditionally, by all the selves, incoming me and past me and all versions of me, a whole community of Havi Bells who all wish me joy and protection, I am always okay). This is not my childhood. And this is not Berlin. This trip will either happen or it won’t, life will happen as it does, but I don’t need to spend my life thinking that adventure is about to be canceled or indefinitely postponed. Breathing for trust in life.
- Ohmygod my neighbor who falls asleep while listening to loud action movies, between his snoring and the bombs and shouting overhead, I am losing my mind. Breathing.
- Many mysteries related to the theme of Crown On. Firing someone. Reconfiguring agreements. Letting things go. Telling people what is not okay for me. Breathing for the ability to be steady in my grace, certain in my power.
- Big stress related to a number of things turning out to be considerably more expensive and time-consuming than anticipated, from website relaunch to dentist to pretty much everything, actually. Monsters are monstering and need a safe house. Breathing for ease, steadiness and surprise simple solutions.
- 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.
- The weather cooled and I’m fine now. Amazing. It never ceases to astound me how easy it is to fix a state of Havi-despair, given the right external conditions, and yet I consistently forget the intensity of the impact that weather, environment and [circumstances] have on me. Really, all I need is for it not to be a thousand degrees. Give me a cool breeze, maybe a light misting of rain, any reason to put on a thin sweater, and ta da! SOLVED. I am content again, at ease in the world. So apparently just need to move somewhere where there are no weather extremes to launch me into hopelessness? Hey, maybe that’s a plus to having no idea where I want to live or what I want to do. We can figure this out. Breathing joy.
- Mood shifted (see above), and I have energy again. The same things that were hard before are still hard — the migraines, the sleep deprivation, all of it, but I have energy now and a good mood, and they don’t get to me. Breathing pleasure.
- A vast sky of sweetness, sharing, passion and big wild love with the faraway cowboy. What an incredible thing to be able to let myself be this intensely vulnerable, honest and connected with someone. Breathing appreciation for the miracle of this.
- Had a secret Rally (Rally!) with some rally friends, and got SO MUCH DONE, like, months worth of things that have not been done just completed themselves elegantly. Breathing witchy magic and glow.
- I had a proxy mission of learning to be a star, and now I am a star, and all the clues about stars are landing. Stars and constellations and firmament and shining and all of it. Breathing star power and star magic
- Dance! Destroying it on the dance floor with new skills and superpowers, thanks to absolutely obscene amounts of practicing things that seem to be unrelated to dance but are actually very related to dance. It’s a very Karate Kid thing happening here. My dance teacher is a sneaky genius and so am I. Breathing fun because ohmygod this is fun.
- I was brave and did so many brave things, and all of them turned out fine and not scary. Handled the Department of Magical Voyages (the DMV) like a boss. Went to my eye exam and was very clear about what I want and do not want. Went line dancing at a country bar in Tualatin. Set clear expectations and boundaries in every part of my life. I am amazing. Breathing for brave me being brave.
- Thankfulness. Treasure in the form of proxies, stones, unexpected superpowers, unexpectedly running into favorite people, wild epiphanies, non-metaphorical grilled cheese sandwiches. 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.
Superpowers I had this week…
Last week I asked for the power of not tolerating discomfort (physical, emotional, mental, energy), and insisting on adjustments, as well as the superpower of finding this Ridiculously Easy and Beautifully Simple.
I did not expect this to work, but actually it did, because this week I righted all the things that weren’t working or didn’t feel good.
Powers I want.
I have to tell you something so funny. For the past week or so, I have been writing about Clarity and Clear Seeing and Everything Gets Clear and I Am Clear About What I Want and Just Add Water.
Then I flipped the fluent self 2016 calendar to September, and guess what this month’s superpower is? The superpower of I Am So Very Clear.
The Salve of I Am So Very Clear.
This salve lets you see what you want without losing your ground. This salve lets you see your beautiful glow without wanting to collapse inward and hide from the world. And this salve lets you safely share what you want to be seen, because it is “clear” in the sense of invisible and hidden, and clear like a clean window that lets light through, and clear like a mirror that reflects back, and clear like water in that it clears things.
This is a great salve for boundaries because it is protective and reflective (and fractal!) and because it helps you get clear on what you need, and express it clearly to others.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band:
Let’s Go Steal That Bridge
Their latest album is This New Feeling About Pink, and this band is just one guy.
Announcement time….
Quieting the monsters is one of the most useful self-fluency skills there is. You can buy the monster manual which is available here, and it is enormously useful if you would like to practice being Way Less Impressed with the horrible things that internal critical voices say. And it comes with a coloring book.
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
Ohmygoodness, neighbours who snore AND fall asleep during loud action movies *boggle* May remote controls for both be somehow bestowed!
Worked
~ Just. Doing. Less.
~ thanking my Body for how it serves me, and asking what she needs, over and over, until she is satiated
~ realising Just. How. Much. Grief. I’m. Carrying–it continues to allow me to Soften towards myself
The week’s Hard
~ another virus laid me low for a week
~ letting go of that which I love but does not serve me well
~ the agony of not being able to do all that I seek physically and the subsequent stress
The Luscious
~ sunshine!
~ re-reading pieces of the Monster Manual
~ Alignment wishes coming true
~ certain Right People in my sphere
~ fine-tuning my learning around my sensory needs
~ I love love love Kindness! Both ingoing and outgoing! So much joy *beams*
The Superpower of Alignment has been really useful–more of that please.
All hail, dear Chickeners!
Cluck cluck chicken!
The hard:
– complete and utter zonkulation
– have I hit a wall? I don’t think so, I think it’s just time to move on to the next phase, but monsters think it’s a wall.
– it took me all weekend to get to the state where I could deal with the weekend.
– not wanting to look inside, not sure why, maybe just because I’m tired.
The good:
– the more often I go through a pattern, the less time it takes. This time the ‘but I don’t want to gooooooo’ phase lasted about half an hour. Hurrah for known bugs, or, rather, for the fact that knowing they’re bugs makes them much easier to work around.
– in fact, everything hard is taking less time than it used to. Hurrah for resilience!
– parties, yay! And hurrah for thinking yay about parties!
Love to all the chickeneers.
Zonkulation: so that’s what it’s called! Definitely hit zonkulation — or, rather, it hit me — by the start of hols. xo
Hard: caring intensely and feeling deeply and also not having enough influence or authority, other people being careless and not being held accountable.
Good: sunshine, my doctor, Dreaming, the porch, my brother. MrB is still alive and getting better and might some day be able to come home.
Your superpower of last week is one I want now. Also the superpower of Dreaming Things (objects, situations, resources) Into Being. And the superpower of remembering to establish my forcefield and letting Belinda the Basilisk sit on top of it* and glare away anything that might try to penetrate the field.
* Where does a basilisk sit? Yep, you know this one.
Cluck-bye.
Mmmm Dreaming Into Being, may it be so. <3
>>Hard: caring intensely and feeling deeply and also not having enough influence or authority, other people being careless and not being held accountable.<<
Oh very yes. I am familiar with this hard.
Hurrah for sunshine and basilisks!
Happy New Year! I begin the new compass with Invention and will move through Keep, Mindfulness, Beauty, Hospitality in March and April, followed by Boundaries, Focus and I will end Frolicking!
I have been Living the Smile for 1 year since September 1! What should a party look like? When? Where? With whom? Should I get a pin or award? (And a 3 year, 5 year, 10 year, 15 year award, etc.?)
The Hard: On 8/24, why did the Vietnamese rooster cross the road against the red light and scrape the nose of my new (to me) car? (His name is T.J. Insight.) Unshed tears. Breaths. Just shaken up. Talking to lovely insurance people. Car still goes. I had just bought him a tonneau cover and floor mats. I had had my church’s associate pastor bless him the day before. I guess it worked? I had him for 1 month and 2 days. He’s in the car hospital getting rhinoplasty. Having a car equals freedom.
My monsters are heat activated!
The Sometimes I Crack Myself Up: Releasing and Clues sparked “Release the Flab 5” I porked up a cartoon of the Fab 4 and inserted Flabby Lee. We are being held in the notorious Temple. We have to do crazy activities to escape and eat better to win the Warden’s approval and maybe an early release.
The Good: Ridiculously Easy and Beautifully Simple. I just call people up and WHAM Boom! Done! (Because I’m not the First person to Have Asked.) And the Bookstore That is Closing won’t until after we can get there. We can go see cetaceans cheaply for our wedding anniversary which is also National Encouragement Day.
I can get Conan: Case Closed online, even though the Japanese TV station has gone down to 2 ½ hours of broadcasting.
Past Me already got another swimsuit, earplugs and zoris, but I needed Sherlock Holmes to find where I’d put them.
Chicken of the Soul, out.
A whole year of Living The Smile! Wow. And what a glorious compass!
Saturday chicken!
Havi i soooo feel you about #5 hard, i lives this reality and we hates it, we does.
Oh this week, what worked: Choosing the best outcome, sit the fuck down, just keep going.
next week: next week requires the New Moon/September leveling up in terms of daily practice and stretch goals.
the sucks:
-the worst current pattern is sitting on the couch in the evening,. too much of that lately
-ineffectiev at work
-retox! ugh. a breath for abandoned best practices
-snapped my knee while practicing
but so much good:
-the mood, the level of emotional and psychic foundation, is good
-more time devoted to Fun and Play and Praxis
-i got a really beautiful gift this week. a breath for freinds, tribe, feeling the love, happy endings and being there at the end of things so you can see the completed arc and get to keep the narrative
– i am about to tak delivery of a 5 peice belly dance costume, hand made, worth a thousand bucks, that i got for a quarter of that
-dance! butlesque! an audition! it is happening!
-feeling pretty fluent
-lovign the new lessons and next steps so far
Quick chicken!
Hard: I received some disturbing health-related news, not hugely scary, but yeah, disturbing.
Also finding myself surrounded by monsters murmuring “but what if X happens ohmygod ohmygod that would mean doooooooom and OH NO IF YOU WORRY ABOUT IT THEN YOU WILL MAKE IT COME TRUE!” Ahem, gang, this is not helping.
Good: I am off on a weekend adventure! We’ll be at Folly Beach tomorrow, where I have been wanting to be for quite some time. Ahhhhhhh. <3
I am also delighted with this salve. I am *so ready* for a fresh wave of clarity. Thank you!
Feeling lighter because of the weekend and no rehearsal.
Reminding myself to breathe during this upcoming tech week which will be stressful for the whole family and, paradoxically, especially stressful for the one member of the family who gets to stay at home.
Thankful for cooler temperatures making it perfect porch weather.
Closing my eyes and remembering that autumn will soon be here.
And exhaling.
The Hard:
Feeling like I am wasting this weekend because I decided to stay put for once but now that I’m here I wish I was not. But this is very good intel for when I feel like I need to stay in town or get back early or I will Miss Out, because I won’t.
The Good:
My friend not texting me last night until almost 9 which meant I was already in PJs and couldn’t go out.
Lots of yoga these days.
I maybe found a place to camp which would greatly expand my ability to be Not Here.
Leaving my phone at home more.
Cooler weather.
Remember where the lighthouse is and adjusting my sails.
Love to everyone’s chickens. Thank you week, and cheers to the week ahead.
What worked:
Continuing to pay attention to how much water I drink. Drinking enough water makes such a difference. Activating my cloaking device at work. My work area is essentially on the company highway – gotta walk by me to get pretty much anywhere. Some days that’s valuable. This week it wasn’t. So I made a force field, gave it cloaking powers and it surprised the heck out of me that I was kind of invisible. Good sleep this week. Setting up a Rally (Rally!) on a project at home.
Superpowers of DeepKindness, TimeIsOnMySide continue to work for me. This week I’ll need Strength and NewPatterning.
-The week before a long weekend always feels extra long
-Organizing and doing so that I can actually have a free day on Monday
-Seeding new patterns
+The summer heat has passed
+Downpour of rain and clouds so dense and dark it felt like midnight at noon
+Dog#2 is feeling so much better – yay!
+Seeding new patterns
+Monday is a free day!
Hullo-ullo-ullo!
What worked? Shipping the harvest. Making phone calls.
Next time I might try: bringing along the part to be replaced so that I can match it.
What’s been hard, draining, mind/heart knotting…
1. People I care about in misery.
2. Things I’d looked forward to not coming to pass.
3. You might think it’d be easy to throw out letters from people I haven’t heard from in nearly thirty years and who likely don’t even remember me. But those letters still make me laugh or contain other tidbits I hesitate to discard. But the need to make room is real, and even scanning (and filing, and hunting again for) things exponentially hoovers up time I am hard put to spare.
4. Dog incontinence.
5. Am I backing the wrong ‘uns? Yikes…
6. Maddening lack of information/confirmation about multiple things.
7. Phone not receiving photos + possibly battery failing.
8. Missing workshop b/c of work.
Some things I am feeling glad and grateful about:
1. Baking a superb loaf of bread.
2. The steroid seems to be helping the dog, and she still has plenty of galloping-around-like-a-puppy moments.
3. First SUP yoga class had the perfect-for-me mix of instructor and classmates. The astonishing beauty of both the day and of a classmate doing headstands.
4. I am good — or at least game — for what I get to, and Now Is Not Then, so I have a more solid, sovereign (YES!) handle on what I can accept, what I must decline or defer, and what Isn’t My Job Right Now, even if something or someone will fall through the cracks. Oxygen mask first.
5. Finally using the gorgeous glass file I bought probably nearly two years ago, and finding it much more pleasant than I anticipated. A thank-you to Past Me for present treasure.
6. Past Me also stocked plenty of paper and the bag of Community Coffee and other provisions for both profit and pleasure. And hung up the dress that is right for today.
7. Carpentry manager noted where an additional outlet was needed before things had gone beyond the point of (comparatively) easily installing one. And overhearing the electricians find (and presumably address) some other things that weren’t OK when they created the outlet.
8. More dancing and paddling and wham-booming ahead. Oh very yes.
With warm wishes to all y’all.
Will try the “AND IT’S FUN!”-superpower! 😀
Long time no chicken, on my part. Lots time not having reliable internet, so I’ve been reading what people have been writing. And SO MUCH <3 !!! – everyone! <3
Okay, For last the two weeks before this one I worked A LOT on an [idea]. I mean really a lot, working on it in my dreams even. Last Friday, one week ago, it dawned on me that the [idea] was a proxy. An incredibly good proxy and convincing proxy. I am still laughing about this, and processing. Because it was so genius, I had no idea my brain could do this! Invent proxies all by itself, in order to do things I want-to-do-but-no. Wow. Still giggelng, actually.
I am still a bit worried about how togetting the thing I-want-to-do-but-no to function as the [idea], at least in the short run. But I know it's been done before. Even though (of course!) I am the exception to the rule that things simply work, I know that this knowlege does not at all reflect reality. At least sometimes…
So, what I mean to say is: thank you everyone! For being here. For being [insert prefered synonym for "amazing"].