Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
Is it Friday? I couldn’t tell.
Also, I don’t want to talk about it.
But here we are. Friday Friday Friday Chicken Chicken Chicken.
Hopa! That was me tossing a shot glass over my head.
The hard stuff
Busy busy busy busy. More busy.
Between closing out stuff for the year, the Great Ducking Out, teaching in Sacramento next week …
There’s just a lot going on.
I want a nap! I want to be tucked into bed! And to have someone bring me tea, please.
It was colder in Portland than in Alaska this week.
Come on, weather.
And then the heating stopped working at the Playground.
The day the Rally (Rally!) was supposed to start.
Chaos and confusion, much waiting around, and then some poor guy had to spend three hours on the icy roof taking care of it.
American Thanksgiving.
I know I escaped 99% of it because of the Great Ducking Out, but bleargh.
There was so much ambient cultural crappiness in the air this week. So much grumbly cranky resistance and unhappiness. It’s hard work just being around that, even when you aren’t actually in it.
Mack the Wife is not going to get better.
My poor laptop is on its very last legs. It is time to do something about this but I keep not doing it. Total denial.
Speaking of denial, I’m not ready for December.
No idea where this year went, but man, I need to magic up some time to take it all in.
The good stuff
The Great Ducking Out.
It really was that great.
Well named, me.
At the Playground!
Shivanauttery and epiphanies and projectizing and blankets and silly hats and superpowers and pie!
Yay.
All the lovely people I got to spend time with at the Playground this week.
What a joy!
Absolutely delightful people. Full of smart, interesting ideas. I’ve pretty much just been giggling the entire week.
Doing things my way.
Instead of falling into the pattern of my usual Thanksgiving plan of run awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Taking the time to consciously set things up to be sweet. That was useful and important.
Also: I got to enjoy a hilarious, fabulous picnic on the Playground floor, with twelve fun people and extremely good things to eat.
Schmurphling.
It’s a thing we do at the Playground. It involves being really terrible at tossing stuffed animals and making whooshing sounds. It makes me happy.
The Rally isn’t over yet!
Usually we end on Thursday evening, but we started late so this time we’re going all the way through this afternoon.
More projectizing for meeeeeeeeeee! Plus some of the Rallions promised/threatened to bring growlers of beer to help us projectize. Best. Ever.
I discovered a new superpower.
That I have.
Which actually turns out to be not new at all, but I didn’t know I had it, so it’s extra neat.
Nice.
And … playing live at the meme beach house it’s the Fake Band of the Week!
My brother and I have this thing where we come up with ridiculous band names and then say in this really pretentious, knowing tone, “Oh, well, you know, it’s just one guy.”
This week’s band is the unfortunately named…
Catastrophe Catastrophe Disaster
They stick with what they know, I guess. Except it’s really just one guy.
And some of the lovely presents that arrived this week.
All sorts of neat things from the Rallions. And special Rally pie from Casey.
And a monster pillow from Karen (thank you!).
Probably other things as well, but I haven’t been to the post office because it’s minus seventeen million degrees outside and also I’m at the Rally.
That’s it for me …
And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.
Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day and a restful weekend-ing.
And a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.
### FIN ###
Follow
Long holiday weekends where there seems to be multiple fridays are great!
The hard
– another week of scrambling to be ready to teach class since I spent the weekend being a student.
– exhaustion and insomnia
– funky ankle pain making walking not fun
the good
+ heading to the spa for my first vacation since may 2009!!!!
+ spending a day relaxing with friends
+ gluten free pizza with my hubby
enjoy the long weekend!!
Oh! Atlas schmurphles! Well, he doesn’t whoosh when he tosses, but he gets all excited and spins in circles and it’s the best thing ever.
So happy you had a wonderful Ducking Out. 🙂
The hard:
A week of sick puppy, who seems to be getting progressively worse instead of better.
Lack of sleep due to wee hour of the morning walks with sick puppy.
Vet bills, and then I hate that I am hesitating about x-rays because of the cost.
When done by people who are not my therapist, I do not love being psycho-analyzed and given advice about how to deal with said analyses. ‘Nuff said.
Snow and cold.
The good:
A wonderful reunion on the coast with friends.
Lots of warm blankets.
A lovely Thanksgiving with stuffing and apple cider and Shiva Nata and the movie Up.
My holiday card set. (Yay, on-top-of-things-me.)
The end of snow and a glimpse of the sun.
Making dinner for a friend.
The full moon.
cold and busy = boo. although i’ll admit i’m super excited to be part of your busy. yay sacramento!
the hard:
the cold that felt like a flu. 12 days of active feeling like crap. boo on that.
feeling like i’d never be well again and that getting sick is my fault.
being sick during my entire break.
the holidays.
the good:
starting to feel better. medicine – western and chinese. resting. vacation. no plans. bed. tea. books. hugs.
reassuring comments from friends about others who also seem to get sicker than most despite a healthy lifestyle.
having a whole week off from work to recover.
the holidays recreated to suite grown up me, not victim me.
a new camera.
giveaways on my blog.
the twitters.
Seriously, this has all been one week? Right then:
The hard:
– not getting the job I really wanted
– the patterns and stories of waaah and woe and stuck that that kicked off
– the godawful music my neighbour is playing crazily loudly right now – ugh
– viral yicketyness
– not being particularly delighted with some of the feedback I got from my course
– not getting done most of the things I needed to get done this week
– uni servers being down Sunday – did not help with that
The good:
– the support I had from people around me about the job
– getting really good feedback from the interviewer
– being able to see the woe and yet now be consumed by it
– another awesome yoga class
– buying some great Christmas presents
– a great review at work
– getting a fabulous Alice in Wonderland necklace and t-shirt
– buying vogue 1950s dress patterns
Hi, hi 🙂
Jumping right in, and with no regard to whether this is *actually* from this week, or just in general:
The haaarrrrrd:
*falls over giggling at the ridiculousness of the next particular*
-Family Gathering…. everyone was in rare form. I watched the performance art.
-romantic relationship. Second guessing, then second guessing the second guessing because my track record on quadruple thinking is pretty hard to analyze. Confuzzlmification. Hang it up and just enjoy today.
-Dreams, goals, search for the intrinsic sparkling motivation. Feeling like I haven’t been allowed to have preferences and tastes for so long, that I have a hard time knowing myself. (I didn’t really think the movie ‘Runaway Bride” was all that great, but realizing that I am not the only person to feel this way was nice, and for similar reasons.)
The Gooooood-
+Thankfulness of my remarkably awesome amazing friends.
I decided that I am going to have an un-thanksgiving this summer with my chosen Family.
+Romantic relationship, yay, niceness, and a man who kind of understands my crazy, and is much more mellow about the whole thing. Very nice. 🙂
+working on the dreams and kicking around ideas. Which I am going to try to allow to be fun.
+ running works for me! I never thought I would like it. Couch to 5k – I ran a 5k a couple weeks ago!
gotta go!
The hard
– The small Bolivian home for 5 days straight on account of school holiday closure. My mind can almost not even think about how many days off will occur at Christmas. (Shudder)
– The Stuck and the Overwhelm. They really need to go on holidays. No, really.
– Small bed
The good
– The gravy! Made my first Thanksgiving dinner (no turkeys were harmed in the process) and decided I probably needed gravy 15 minutes before the meal. 10 minutes after googling I had a stupendously easy and delicious gravy. Still dreaming of it. Gravy’s a breakfast food, right?
– Getting to spoil the husband on his birthday
– Finding out about Kindle for the iPhone! (Thanks 77 things that don’t suck!)
– An effortless plan materializing to get me to live Shivanata. There really is no close facsimile thereof.
The hard:
Calling in sick for the week.(Protestant work ethic at work alert!) Setting up and going to job interviews. Getting up early. Not sleeping well some of the time. Having to make decisions.
The good:
Calling in sick for the week (I know! It’s difficult…)
Being able to make decisions.
Going back to bed after kid has left for school.
Snow!! (I know. Noone else likes it. But after being shut up in a quarantine ward for weeks, it’s brilliant! (Not what you may think. I work there.)
Hello Friday, hello fellow chickeneers. OMG, this weeks was so packed and intense and flew by.
The hard in a week that has an overall good feeling:
– Soooo much stuff at work plus extra freelance stuff.
– Allergy to I wish I knew what that makes me wake up with swollen and itchy eyelids every once in a while made me wake up with swollen and itchy eyelids this morning.
– December next week? December next week. People talking about Christmas presents and plans for New Years Eve.
– The Weihnachtsmarkt has started. I can’t stand Christmas markets.
The good:
– Still love the job.
– We laugh so much at work despite all the stress.
– Twice out for lunch with someone to discuss a possible future job.
– Yoga every morning and hence leaving the house with a happy lower back.
– Just arrived back home for three days.
– I am having a glass of red wine and can go straight to bed afterwards.
Have a beautiful weekend, everyone!
Weird week.
Hard:
My friend woke up on Tuesday with no feeling in the right half of his face. Current diagnosis is Bell’s Palsy. Hard to not be able to make it all better.
Marty got the “thanks but no thanks” letter from the Auditor’s office.
Good:
Aisha’s new friend from England had his first American Thanksgiving with us. He is sweet and charming, and we all had a fun time.
Pie. More pie. No ritual sacrifice required (Buffy reference).
Post-surgery side effects are winding down.
Sewing.
Buffy on Netflix. 🙂
The hard
Meditation and my brain finally at logger heads so that nothing much is helping me sleep. Sometimes sleeping, sometimes not.
People in ze cubicle commenting on my failure to speak coherently. Anxiety increasing and a wish to be somewhere else.
Fury to do with small things that are out of my control around qualities that I value.
Problems with my love. Both of us reactive and out of control. Failing to articulate what I need without blame. Hurting him hurting me.
Not feeling supported.
Dipping into despair that comes from where I know not yet. Not knowing if we should stay together or not.
Sadness.
A session yesterday with Hiro fraught with technology interrupting everything.
More dipping unexpectedly into a source of vulnerability inside that is huge, horrible. Unexpected not much wanted.
Hearing someone else name a fear that I wasn’t ready to hear about in that form. Ow ow ow. Dipping, sinking, yuck.
Feeling hugely vulnerable being seen by others when I am at my most vulnerable. Not wanting to be seen and wishing I didn’t feel I had to be.
Unexpectedly off centre and losing my boundaries when an old friend rang so that my energy was totally depleted before a really important meeting.
The good
Still working on workbook ideas. Liking the sense that this is something I can do.
Seeing that the products that don’t speak to me yet and are most angst ridden lack some flavour of me, some sense of fun and trusting that I can play my way through.
Having fun with my colleague at work. Seeing her soften and goofing around with me. Making me feel less out of place there at times with this connection.
My blog reminds me that I love me. That I have something to offer. That I have changed, grown and am beautiful and enough.
More and more time given to meditating in my own way and feeling warm, safe, spacious inside even if I am not ‘there’ yet.
Having someone that irks me stay out of my way when I needed it most.
more good
Having so many resources around me and inside of me to help me pick myself up! Yayyyy!
@ Lisa: YES, gravy’s a breakfast food! 🙂
[Native US Southerner here. Biscuits and gravy, mmm!]
The Hard:
I miss that man. Or maybe I miss the man who is coming later. Or maybe there is not a man on his way at all. I miss having a man. I’m afraid I’m not suited for one. And will be alone forever. I’m afraid I’ve gotten too good at being alone.
The Good:
My body wants to run sometimes. And I run and now my legs keep reminding me all day that we run. Except today when we don’t run. We just chill. Maybe we walk later.
Making mushroom walnut pate for tomorrow. Yum.
When I sleep with a hat on and don’t shower the next day my hair looks awesome.
This too shall pass.
-brings you tea.. and a book or two you’d like-
And I totally want to Schmurphle. Most definitely.
The Hard
– doubts. guilt. illness.
– stress. week 8 of 10. ohmygoodnessdeadlines!!!!
– a singing workshop that made me ashamed of my voice.. for the first time. ever.
– food issues. not enough. too much. weight loss i can’t afford to lose. Belugh.
The Good
– a gig.
– friends.
– celebrating 1400 days with my gentleman friend. we, as a couple, are old [so he said].
– writing. planned Part i and iii. written 9.5k. it’ll be 85-100k by the end.
long week was long. all deadlines will be over by wednesday though so… almost there.
I had such a nice, quiet day yesterday that I may repeat it for Christmas — Muppet movies, cooking, writing, and doing nothing of any real note, with no obligation to anyone. Lovely.
The Hard
– I think I broke something in my shoulder, by sleeping wrong or moving wrong or being the wrong person, and it hurts and showering sucked a lot. Wah.
– Sick and tired of being sick and tired, and would like my body to knock it the fuck off and start working again ASAP.
– Lightbulbs keep expensively going out on me. Clearly, I need cheaper options.
– Ugh, money. Ugh ugh ugh.
– Work is behind and yet I feel like I need to be finding more to overcome the ugh. Bleh.
– Feeling like I’ve lost my grip on my “better” year in the last month, and wanting to get it back before I try for next year’s theme(s).
The Good
+ Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Casserole
+ Peace and quiet and warmth
+ Snuggly cats
+ A nice place to live in a great neighborhood with good food and good friends
+ Dream by the Fire Snickerdoodles
+ Winning at NaNoWriMo almost a week early
+ Liking the novel I’m writing enough to keep writing it anyway
+ Holiday cards and Coloring books are selling well this year, and it’s helping with the aforementioned ugh
+ My whiteboard to-do lists and things-which-I-want-to-ponder lists are working well and adding to my happiness, overall
+ Finding that I smile a lot when I’m neither feverish nor hurting
+ Bonus zombies
books and teas for Havi the Pirate Queen!
@seagirl: I’m sorry. Being afraid of being alone sucks. AND being good at being alone is not .necessarily. the same as having to be alone Forever. But being scared is still hard. .hugs or tea or whatever will help.
For me, the hard: today, practically nothing at all. This week, getting The Cold. Having a logistical thing fall through. A big logistical thing. Also? having a door unexpectedly close. Still needing the corresponding window to open a little wider. Needing to process the grief of the door closing, too, even though it was mostly eleventy-million degrees below zero and blowing ice sideways outside it. My head thinks it was sunny and 73 out there, now that the door is closed. You know how it is.
Feeling uncertain if The Thing is the Right Thing. Going to do it anyway, I think.
The good: oooooh, soclose to launching The Thing. Sitting down Right Now to work on it.
The best Thanksgiving in a Very Long Time. I was almost not wound up about anything at all. I was tempted by The Great Ducking Out, but I didn’t really need to duck out this year, so it was good for me to learn that.
nice comments (hope the HTML works!) about my interview and going to a couple of lovely gatherings where I met nice people and sleeping a little better and having people take me up on my new freebie offers. Knowing I help people, yay. Sweet safe go-nowhere flirts with friends and colleagues. And getting to do some important stuff for work. Starting to feel momentum. And things.
Havi!
I missed it: What’s the new super power?
Is it the superpower Nice?–like superpowered politeness or something? Or was finding the new superpower nice?
Or, um, none of my biz. You’da said if you wanted to.
Not believing it’s Friday… partially because where I’m at, it’s already Saturday (how did that happen?!)
But this week was much more good than hard, so that’s happiness making 🙂
The Hard:
* Ankle blister – ick and ow, and worry over whether it might be getting infected, and feeling like I can’t really go walking because it kept oozing and that was gross and it might get infected… and then it popped and that was so damn painful!
* My thoughts, spinning in circles and worrying over the same stuff every single day… wishing I could just move on already!
The Good:
* Finding stuff to clean and care for said Ankle Blister… it feels much better now! 😀 And I can go walking again!
* Actually moving on from the ever-spinning worry circle thoughts… and journaling some new ways of avoiding the spinning worry in the future
* Love notes to myself! to remind myself when I forget the things that I want to remember 😉
* Thanksgiving! In Thailand! Got to celebrate with my friend who moved here last year, with actual turkey and gravy and stuffing… and a group of her Thai friends who’d never seen turkey before. It was so much fun to explain Thanksgiving to them, and see their faces when they saw their first turkey 😀
* So much time to myself, and remembering how much I like my own company… this running away was a grand success, and just the thing I needed… now to write enough Love Notes to myself so that I can remember when I get back home, and hopefully won’t have to run away again anytime soon 😉
Yay! for Chickening! I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend, and that there is always more good than hard <3
Duck duck duck duck … chicken?
Chicken!
The Hard
~ Tired, all week. So tired I’ve been typing it with a capital T, Tired.
~ Money woes. And whoas. Of the not-okay variety.
~ Lots of work-crazy. Nothing bad in regards to my wonderful coworkers, just a lot of busybusybusycrazy.
~ Missing my mom. And she misses me.
The Good
~ My partner and I had dinner with his mom and her boyfriend, and it was Nice. Her house smelled like home, and my partner made a turkey for the first time, and it was a lot more family-awesome than I had expected.
~ Writing. SO MUCH WRITING. Oh man. I’m doing my 50,000-words-in-24-hours challenge this weekend. And if I keep up my pace, it will only take me about 17 hours to write 50k. AWESOME.
~ Deathcat came out of her closet and into the living room with me. She was very hissy at everything animal-shaped, but she’s been responding really well to my voice, and that makes me happy. (She’s mostly feral and hates all living things, hence the nickname, but I hold out hope that I can help her be happy as long as she’s our houseguest.)
~ Avatar: The Last Airbender. 😀
~ This space, this culture, these people, this blog. The feeling that all of these things generate in my belly. Happy things grow here.
The hard:
– Having a really difficult conversation, which I’ve been anticipating for a fortnight. But I managed to maintain my boundaries against a fair amount of pressure and what felt like borderline emotional blackmail (though I am trying to remember that that’s my irritation speaking, and I do understand that this was very hard for the other person too). What happens now? Don’t know; it’s out of my hands for the time being.
– Working on cutting out refined sugar again. Hard but I know it’s a good idea.
The good:
– That conversation has happened now, and it did need to.
– I felt OK about the way I handled it and really good about the boundary-maintenance.
– Chatting in the pub with a good friend I haven’t seen in far too long.
– A really productive writing evening with another good friend, which looks like it’s going to become a regular thing. Yay!
– A small but full-of-support gift from my mum, which meant a lot to me.
– Dinner and the Harry Potter film with my sister.
– A couple of breakthroughs about why I’m struggling with some stuff.
– Taking an unplanned half-day off on Friday to recover from the hard. Both good in itself, and good in terms of me looking after myself.
The week feels like it’s been kind of overshadowed by the hard, but it’s actually been really good. Maybe that’s part of why I feel OK about the hard?
Yay for successful ducking out and setting up sweet things!
Friday Chicken!
This week, I have closed a massive, heavy door which has very, very rusty hinges: I have defended my PhD thesis, it all went well, and I’ve got the diploma! Yay! Now there is room for picking up my actual life where I left it a few years ago and I’m planning on using December to re-instate rituals, re-connecting and taking care of me.
Have a glorious week, wonderful Chickeneers!
(Alrighty, I’m out of exclamation! points! for now.)
Hellooooooooo, Chickeneers!
This week’s hard:
– A bit of struggle getting a handle on the big new project. Finally hit a stride and feel comfortable with it, but it took more time than I expected to get there.
– No time yet to try out the new kiln.
This week’s good:
– Very nice, low-key Thanksgiving.
– Good conversations and good connections.
– Another shop has picked up my work, in an area of town where I don’t have any other shops.
Have a great week!
Yes, a fantastically weird week. Hard. Weird. Gone already? Not sure how that happened.
The hard:
– I don’t want to talk about it. Could Tuesday and Wednesday be stricken from the record, please?
The good:
+ Ducking out on Thursday. Lots of shiva and writing and thinking and processing.
+ So grateful to be living in Portland (despite the damn cold, cold, cold) that I could run to the Playground just when I needed it most. Truly grateful for friends.
+ Talking to Dave on Friday.
The hard:
-Training the girl who will replace me at my old job – even though she’s sweet, I find it incredibly stressful to have someone watching me all the time.
-Knowing that I don’t get to see my little brother at work every day any more.
-Really wanting to get out there and do something with my body (yoga, swimming, roller skating) and not actually doing it.
The good:
+Four-day weekend!
+With boyfriend’s family, who I adore, including my sweet four-week-old niece
+I start my exciting new downtown job next week.
+And everything else I wrote here.
Well!! Taking a deep breath for my first comment here. Havi, I have been obsessively reading all of your archives for a couple of weeks now, and I officially adore you. I have made a blanket fort. I have talked to the Songwriting Lizard. I was very tentatively approaching my next Thing and being inspired by your biggification ideas. And THEN I went to Barbara Sher’s Big Cheap Weekend workshop and she told me exactly the same thing! Show off in front of the right people! So I am on Twitter and about to start a blog (with help from your Blogging Therapy series). What a week!
Thank you so much for your wonderful insights, spirit, and duck. I’m in Eugene, and as soon as I can afford it I will be hightailing it up to the Playground.
Late chicken for me, because I had no access to the Internet on Friday.
Hard:
–Physical illness.
–Emotional onslaughts.
–Some squabbling with a loved one.
–Dealing with some tricksy and troublesome work patterns, and having a hard time being patient with myself.
Good:
–Visiting with far-flung friends and extended family.
–A romantic getaway with my sweetie to a cozy log cabin, where he cooked for me on the wood-burning stove.
–Emergency Calming Techniques! I’ve got ’em, and am looking forward to exploring them.
–Writing, singing, reading aloud, playing piano duets.
–Being loved. And loving — that’s good too.