In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of ritual and self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
This week had about a hundred weeks inside of it.
Hi, Friday.
I’m a little dazed, but glad we’re here.
The hard stuff
I have never worked so hard.
Seriously.
Sunday, Monday and Toozday of this week were unbelievably intense.
I have never had so many gigantic things going on at the same time.
Getting ready for the Great Embarking of the Floating Playground on the Day of Leap (Wednesday). Which is the culmination of more than six months of non-stop work.
Getting ready to open the band new Destuckification Playground and the Treatment Room and The Napping Room and the new Shiva Nata studio. Ditto.
Doing that physically in the space, and energetically and emotionally. And creating the systems for it.
And trying to do it all in a way that’s harmonious and congruent with the bigger culture of my company.
Wishing for patience.
While all this is going on, there are a variety of people waiting on answers related to all these systems things we’re figuring out.
And everyone wants an answer at the same time.
Also for containers.
I would like peaceful stations for arriving at my own answers, and for other people to have peaceful stations to arrive at their own answers. And some sort of no-poking zone would be good too.
Wanting appreciation and recognition.
The thing with doing seventy billion important things behind the scenes is that when you’re doing your best work, it’s completely invisible. Seamless.
As it should be.
But I am noticing how much I want the world to say: GOOD JOB, THAT WAS CRAZY HARD AND YOU ARE AMAZING FOR PULLING IT OFF.
That’s my stuff. Luckily, I have the Director to talk to about it.
Having an epiphany and not wanting to act on it.
Thanks to some particularly bad-ass Shiva Nata this week, I had about ten thousand amazing epiphanies.
One in particular really deeply showed me what needs to happen next.
And I don’t feel ready to do anything about that just yet. More to investigate on that front. Especially about what I think “ready” entails.
Envelopes of doom.
Lots of unknown entities this week that presented themselves as Possibly Scary.
I had to open metaphorical envelopes that I didn’t want to open. And call AT&T because of an ominous-sounding message from them.
Most of my week was processing and getting ready for that.
I chose to do a thing I didn’t want to do.
And now I know more about that.
Some concepts that I teach take longer to sink into the culture than others.
This is hard for me to remember.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.
And now I know more about that too.
The good stuff
Using my superpowers.
That’s all I want to say about that. Silent retreat!
The Floop! It is here!
I have been working on the Floating Playground since August-September.
It is the culmination of so many different things.
It is a way to make Rally (Rally!) happen all the time, online. Fun, playful exploration. What I have been wishing for. With everyone excitedly exploring all the rooms and finding out what patterns they want to play with.
It is the result of everything I have learned the hard way over the past several years.
And it is the thing I wish for the most: to play in community, with creative and loving people, while still getting to have spaciousness, and to go into powerful seclusion for internal process.
Everything came together right on time, as it needed to.
Getting to open on the Day of Leap was an incredible experience.
The Day of Leap.
Four years ago on the day of leap, I took a gigantic personal leap.
And this week I got to enjoy a different kind of transition.
Now is not then.
And thank goodness for that.
When you set the container right, everything is good.
There was a lot of setting up that happened this week.
The alignment exercise is magic.
I did alignment with AT&T and the person I’d be speaking to, and it was INCREDIBLE.
The person I spoke to was absolutely delightful. I have never had that much fun talking to someone at a call center. We laughed and played and enjoyed each other’s company. Everything that I wanted to get done happened smoothly and easily.
This exercise *always* astounds me, but this time it really was spectacular.
I don’t ever have to do the thing that I don’t want to do again.
That’s a wonderful thing to know.
Gigantic shivanautical epiphanies.
It just keeps getting better.
The fun part of the Chickening happens here.
Tabstravaganza! Or: what’s Havi been up to with all those open Firefox tabs?
Take a look at Bent Tuba from @verdissage.
Claire wrote a post about making changes on the day of leap.
From the archives.
Some old, weirdly pertinent posts that I don’t remember having written, encountered while looking for something else:
The one about Beacons, and also: The Cover Story.
Playing live at the meme beach house — it’s the Fake Band of the Week!
Background? Ez and I make up bands. Stu (retired Bolshevik-fearing voice-to-text software) once translated “people will hate me and be jealous” to “they’ll hang out at my Meme Beach House“. It’s just one guy.
This week’s band:
Permanent Grace Period.
Though, of course, it’s really just one guy.
Hallo Hallo! I am saying Hallo Hallo. Announcement time.
Picture me wearing that crazy hat…
I’m about to redo our shop page and take some things down. Will update when I have details.
In the meantime, you’re on the list, right?
That’s it for me …
Join my Friday ritual in the comments if you feel like it. Or call silent retreat!
We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. And we don’t give advice (unless people specifically ask for it).
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
Shabbat shalom.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever (or not) and it’s no big deal.
Follow
Yaaay for the Floop! (I just love saying Floop.) And happy birthday to Havi and her business! Yay!
The hard: Missing my partner while she was away. Sadness and loneliness there. Soooo much tired and also two nights of no sleep. Uneasy feelings. Not feeling satisfied with food.
The good: CRAYONS! I bought them, and it was even more delightful than I had imagined. A long phone chat with a close friend. Getting excited (!) about getting hitched. Writing happening. Photography happening. Settling into deep conversation with a coaching client, and it feeling good. Excited for my partner because she’s in California, doing good work and swimming in a pool.
Wishing evvverybody a happy first weekend of March!
Chicken March! (it’s like the Imperial March, but with weird little squacks inserted) (also, why Imperial March? this was a good week, not a DOOM-y one. ANYWAY….)
Good week!
*Amazing yoga lessons. Teaching is getting much, much better. Quickly. This is good.
*Getting on a call about Shiva Nata and _talking_. A little. Even if I felt like a bit of an ass (because that’s how I expected to feel, I expect. I’ll treat it as just a perception) Yay, talking.
*Someone wants me to start teaching them Shiva Nata! Real-style!
*I also talked to new people about Fan The Ember. relatively painlessly. i think the awkward was limited to my head.
*Dancing. (!?!) Amazing, how-did-I-not-know-this-exists dancing-temple.
*I planned the week. Super-concretely. And it worked! I did most of the stuff I planned. And I didn’t over-plan, quite.
*I said goodbye to February, concretely. And February went better then I thought. And hello to March. And March is going pretty well.
Hardsssss….
*Jealously. Whoa. This was a jealous week. And although I’m really proud that I’ve _noticed_ and identified new qualities and textures I’d like to have a result of this jealousy… It’s a bit tough anyway.
*Waving good-bye to the floop. It’ll be amazing for everyone on it, and I was right not to board… And I don’t want it to steal all my Havi-related friends away from the webs where I can see them and say hi. This is, of course, my stuff and I’m working on it but I just wanted to sigh a little sigh here.
*Stressed people in my life, being all stressed. and not owning it.
*Waiting. Bleh.
*The pattern that is not fading.
Happy Fridays, everyone! Sunshine and moonlight to all.
Chicken! (And love the image: March of the Chickens!)
The Hard:
Pain. Sitting with it.
Freaking out about possibility of moving in June. Again. Fourth time in three years. And all the tied-into-peripheral-freakouts.
Draggggggggy. Couldn’t seem to find gear, much less get into it.
The Good:
FLOOP.
Turning “pain” into “floogle.” Funny words make hard things softer.
Remembering now isn’t then. For that matter, now isn’t June.
Remembering that I don’t need to be “in gear” all the time, and “Park” is a perfectly nice place to be.
Reading! For FUN! 😀
Thanks, chickeneers!
ohmigosh, YES to this week having about a hundred weeks inside of it.
The good: Finishing my first ebook and getting it on my site, really real and really out there.
The bad: Finishing my first ebook and getting it on my site, really real and really out there.
(Really, the whole experience of finalizing the ebook and then having it on the site brought up SO many different emotions and weird-stuff-happenings inside of me.)
More good: An amazing phone call mid-week, support and encouragement from many wonderful people, and a good report from the doctor visit.
More not-so-good: The doctor appointment in the first place (don’t like doing those), the severe scary weather today, my cat almost getting severely hurt or worse (but she ended up safe, which is a very very good thing).
Happy Friday and Happy March!
The hard: the majority of what has occurred in the real world to me & my family this week. It has been an evil, heavy week from hell. Especially the leap day – supposed to be an added bonus but actually just a cruel insertion of added painful stuff.
The good: helpful people who tried to support. Clarity to see paths through and forward. Hot baths. Herbal tea (seriously. Life saver.) Breathing. Putting one foot in front of the other. Fresh air. Feeding the ducks and geese (respite moment).
Havi: GOOD JOB, THAT WAS CRAZY HARD AND YOU ARE AMAZING FOR PULLING IT OFF.
This week’s hard:
– Negotiating differing needs/expectations around celebrating a milestone.
– Feeling guilty for Not Doing Enough even though I was specifically asked to Not Do Anything. Interesting.
– Silent retreating on related stuff.
This week’s good:
– Awesome get-together with a new friend. Love it when you instantly click with someone — and it doesn’t happen very often.
– Dipping my toes gingerly into the Floop.
– Progress on lots of little things. It didn’t feel like much throughout the week, but when I look back on my lists today, wow, I did do a lot.
– Cake. And ice cream.
Happy Friday, Chickeneers!
Hard and Good:
* vacation shook out a freakload of stuff. Including a mess of notes and cards from my trip to Israel two years ago (in a suitcase compartment I’d managed to overlook through all the time since). Which included drafts of poems dating back to 1991, that I’d hoped to flesh out during that trip. Which pretty much triggered instant hoedown for Look How Much Time You’ve Wasted monsters — but there was also the perfect card for a friend, and things for future projects.
Also hard:
* grief
* ballooning and bulging of stuffs
* schedule conflicts and crowdedness
* resistance to priorities
* hearing NVC mocked on a popular show. triggers re being judged unhip and humor-impaired.
Also good:
* meals and walks with my loves
* warm weather. (It’s 80 F today!)
* trees in bloom
* finished recording Clinton’s Back to Work for the Talking Library. 6 episodes = 10 hours in the studio
* feeling far more sovereign than this time last year. Correspondingly feeling that this March will be so much better than March 2011, no matter what comes rushing or slithering at me.
* clean sheets
Wishing all y’all a beautiful week ahead.
Odd, odd, mostly good, but still odd week. Sparkles to all Chickeneers! (do chickens get to wear darth vader hats??)
The hard:
Realizing that I really do need to let go of an old part of my life. I’ve outgrown it, and it can’t support me anymore. Which is a little sad, and a little scary. And I need to do it in such a way that I don’t lose the people from that part of my life.
Headaches. I don’t get them as much as I used to, but two days this week I was knocked out. Bleh.
Boundary pushing. Having someone contact me in a panic about something that wasn’t really a problem, in a way that I’ve asked them not to contact me, and then go off about their feelings being hurt. grr.
The good:
Lots of critters moving in the right directions, and vouchers are coming in for a whole colony – with extra time to use them!
Insane amounts of processing time, getting stuffed in around the corners. Exercising more, without feeling all forced about it. Made sure to check in with my body more (still a long way to go there, but progress.)
Listening to myself. I have two! two! projects that have leapt to mind, nearly fully formed. Normally I’d charge in and start implementing. But I’m pausing. The do-it-no monsters are chomping at the bit, but I’ve been directed to the Magic Pudding, and they’re distracted. I’m going to give myself some time to full explore these projects. And, I have a tickle, a whisper of a message from slightly future me, to just keep to the path for this month.
So I guess something’s coming – and I’m looking forward to the surprise!
Chickens in Darth Vader hats! It’s just one guy…and a lot of chickens.
The Hard:
Bleh. Bleh.
My body is being the most crazy mysterious (profoundly annoying) enigma right now.
And Silent Retreat.
The Good:
Somehow, things are getting done. Like, lots of things.
With more enthusiasm? Lots of things are getting done!
I made money doing what I love!
The Floop and the Floopsketeers.
Sleeping 11-14 hours a day was never more possible.
Really grateful for my gentleman friend and all the good things he brings to my life.
Cluck, cluck!
HARD:
Pain from then, and remembering now is different not helping
PROXY: A few months ago, I went to one of my favorite yoga classes and was surprised to learn that they had a new dress code for class. Eventually, it turned out that for reasons partly related to the new dress code, I could no longer go to that class, which was disappointing and frustrating.
So this week, I went to my other favorite yoga class –the only favorite yoga class I have left! — and it turned out that they also have a surprising new dress code. And even though this dress code is really completely fine and will not keep me from going to this class, it still felt sad and scary. And also, when I remembered that now is not then, my monsters said “yes, now you only have one favorite yoga class left!” So that was also sad and scary.
Stayed up too late Monday = spending all week looking for ketchup!
Weekends
Surprise-busy last weekend. Non-surprise-busy this weekend. Having nothing that feels like downtime on the horizon = hard.
Stuck on last steps In more than one place, I am stuck one step from the end. Oh, dangling, tantalizingly-almost-finished things! Why are there so many of you?
GOOD:
FLOOP! I love the Floop! It is silly and beautiful and supportive and even though it is still taking shape, I am very excited to be riding on it!
Surprise snow time!
Flexed my work schedule a little to avoid driving in the worst of our surprise-bonus snowstorm, and therefore spent a lovely afternoon at home making risotto and generally puttering.
House progress?
I hope I hope!
Cooking spree!
I love cooking! And sometimes it seems like too much work for logistical reasons or monster reasons or both. But this week, I have been excited to cook, and I have done a bunch of it, and everyone else also loves it! Awesome.
I see you! I discovered one sneaky monster hiding behind a number of tricky patterns. It is a very good clew and I think it will be very useful!
Asking works!
I did an OOD about trustworthy systems and I think it is working.
Leaving stones for all my fellow chickeneers!
The hard:
The horrendous freak allergy attack on Wednesday morning, with two days of swollen eyes + ouchey sinuses.
Also the not recording of videos I wanted to make because of this.
Feeling zombiefied on Monday.
It appears I need to do a little refresher course on the whole boundaries thing.
A couple of moments of wondering if I’ve gone completely insane. Monster hi-jack.
The good:
I’ve started writing and putting together the photobook about China I’d said I’d do for the last two and half years. And obviously now is exactly the right time because I’m having gazillions of ephiphanies.
Feeling closer to an important someone.
Making scary but right feeling money choices, and from a place where it feels good. Again, this week there seem to be a lot of shifting in my relationships with money and time. A lot less panic and angst. A lot more actually being able to look at what I have or am experiencing.
Went for a lovely walk and saw the most gorgeous herd of horned black, grey and white sheep.
The Floop! It’s beautiful and clearly so much thought and work has been put into every detail. Thank you so much! Also good job. Multiple gold stars for everyone who made it happen. 🙂
The quality of surrender and I have a somewhat…fraught relationship. Mainly on my side of course. This week I have been unpicking some of the stuck. It has been hugely useful.
Ah. Goodbye week. Thank you for everything you’ve shown me.
Much love to everyone and good luck with all of your hard. Especially Helen. I hope things look better. I understand if they don’t though. We got some horrible evil news in our family a few weeks ago and now we can only be there for that individual.
The Hard
– I’m going to have to silent retreat on the above bad news that is still ongoing and will be ongoing for some time.
– A lot of blah and avoidance of work.
– I’m impatient.
The Good
– On Leap Day, I got to do Shiva Nata, take a candle lit bubble bath, and meditate. Hurray for self care.
– Walk at the river with my husband tonight.
– Money issues resolved themselves with husband and I both getting paid. Always a wonderful feeling when your bank account is suddenly full again.
– Saw our friends last night for write group – there was wine, and reading stories, and talking. It was much fun.
– The sun is out. Also, I was prepared for the rain and thus did not get wet, even when taking the bus/walking in the rain.
– I now can count to 100 in French, introduce myself, know the days of the week, the seasons, and the months. Je m’apelle Melissa 🙂 Woo hoo technology.
– Word Count grew this week. I wrote every day I think… yes every day 🙂 Excepting the weekend when we were in Reno to indulge the person involved with the silent retreat and I left my computer because there would be no time for writing.
Huzzah for FLOOP!! Yes, it should be seamless, and yes, you should feel the thunderous applause in your chest from all of us who are loving FLOOP! No more hoping, hoping for another post, because it’s all right there all the time and IT’S US.
I think what I’ve appreciated about you from the beginning, Havi, was your insistence that you didn’t want to be a guru or have a cult-ish following. Love, love that. Now it’s so very clear that the culture can be held by all of is. You’ve just given us a space to explore that.
Thank you, and here’s warm wishes for rest and renewal! Mmwah!
Love to everyone on their hard, and applause for the good–
Holy moley another week just went by in a cluck.
Hugs for the hard and yips for the good to all.
The hard:
Learning more about living in the unknown. What more can I say?
Dealing with disruption of many potential buyers coming. Great that there’s interest. Cleaning, leaving, returning, leaving again, sometimes 4x in one day. Not so much.
The good:
I leaped on Leap Day. Launched my website.
Got a new client. Yay.
Met with a prospective workshop partner and it went really well.
Son’s band, Emil & Friends, playing at SXSW.
Oh Havi, you totally deserve immense props and pats on the back for the mamzing Bad Ass Thing you have created! Too awesome!
it’s been weeks since i’ve done this, so here goes”
the hard:
-pcon was awesome but it was not a free ride. It was hard, and challenging, and showed every bit of my Achilles heels. plus headhaces on all 3 mornings. suck
-being hard at work
-sobriety is not happening
-this was a long busy week of too mnay things outide the hosue after dark for my comfort
-plus another one tonight and look its snowing
-becoming very protective of my time and spoons, having dear friend disrespect that need in a very annoying way
-badmouthing a lot lately
-gtting scolded by an elder in mytradiiton for shooting off my mouth innaproporately in her public space. ooooowwwwwwwwwwwww.
-i havent flailed, really flailed, in so long. weeks now. why? why the hell?
-my oldest child begining puberty with a newly emerging sense of existential angst.
the good:
-Pcon! so much beautiful good, fun juicy juiciness! ashe and blessings everywhere!
-the Girlfriend
-the writing
-getting a lot of lovingcare from elders in my tradition. Ashe! so grateful
-being told i’m in need of “extreme self-care” i’m doing beat to get that, including sea salt baths and saying NO more often
-discovering my superpowers, one of which is Being Given Yummy Food By Strangers At Random
-I got a chance to do a very good deed anonymously, and help a mom and young child in trouble.
love to all! Shabat Shalom!
@Rhiannon “It’s just one guy…and a lot of chickens.”
That made me literally laugh out loud! Hahaha! 🙂
My chicken is Chicken Little this week!
The Hard
The Flu.
The Good
The Floop!
Silent retreating on the actual chicken — because ohmygod there is no other way — but I am here for the overall spirit of chicken-ness. The essence of the chicken, if you will. Filling up on qualities of completion, exit, harvest, anticipation, patience, growth, congruence and entry. And love to all.
Especially love to the Floop! YAY FLOOP.
Havi, I am grooving on the CRAZYHUGENORMOUS AND ALSO INVISIBLE STUFF because I was absolutely, delightfully, peacefully amazed at the Floop this week, and I know that’s just one corner of amazingness, and being greeted into it with such ease and delight was truly, truly amazing. It healed some pains about Then that I didn’t even remember existed, until they stopped hurting suddenly. Wow. Awesome.
Chickening ahoy!
The hard
This week had one emergency room visit, one frightening new allergy, several complex and rollercoastery medications, and a colossal network of related stucknesses and fears and pains to work through.
It’s like the Sunday Doom never went away on Monday, and then was still hovering on Wednesday, and it was really, really hard.
And itchy as all hell. Itchey and pukey.
Not enough time to do my rituals in the way I wished. Perceptions of tightness, of squeeze, in many different and uncomfortable ways.
Perceptions of loneliness.
Perceptions of darkness. Worry and lack of hope for friend J and old pains about S. Connected worries for my own marriage and ways of being and [silent retreat the rest].
All the pain around asking for help, and receiving it, which was a vast and deep pool of stuff I felt unprepared to swim through.
However…
The good
Just like Simone said so brilliantly over here (http://freckledbrilliance.com/2012/02/17/when-use-eft-shame-shows-up/) I did that thing where I said to myself, in the darkest of dark moments: Even though _________, I am learning to interact with my pain.
And the sense of blooming delight at the idea of interacting with my project, and my relationship to my project, and the pain that I might be experiencing. These things were ultimate, unshakeable good in this week. A good rock to stand on. A rock on which to make a stand.
Also good: knowing about my life-threatening allergy, and now being able to avoid it. And not having to use my new epi-pen.
Also good: asking for help and receiving it. Yes. Being in a position to receive help. Preparing the way for help. Doing it with ease. Speaking up for my needs. Creating safety.
That superhero feeling, even if it’s a temporary drug interaction, is pretty damn awesome.
Amidst all that this week held, I also wrote forty pages of a grant narrative and another dozen or so for other projects. I’ll just say that again because I need to remember how awesome it is: FORTY FREAKING PAGES! Yes. All by myself. Figuring out a massive puzzle. I am proud and pleased and feel very accomplished.
All around, this has been a week of massive personal and professional accomplishments and that’s been pretty heady and awesome.
Also, the Floop. Magic ship of my delight! Delight, at will, when I visit it and it visits me and we commune. So much glee and excitement about this!
And to close out, hello March. Oh month-moon of Open and openings, in the sense of space and the sense of doorways, throughways. March, I can tell you are great big open and amazing, and your door is crowded with massive beautiful projects that are each their own huge universe, but which I know I can gently glide to the side like a balloon at will. March is the month of the balloon hanger. March is the month of opening it up, stepping past the balloons, being in the space on the other side. The passage of it.
Okay. I’ll stop here. Happy Friday, everyone! I wish for everyone the exact kind of weekend that they need, and for me too. xo
So thrilled it is Friday today, with no commitments this weekend. Hurrah!
Just want to say, to all who want acknowledgement of everything you’ve done this week, regardless of who you are and what you’ve done?
YOU ARE ALL FUCKING AWESOME.
(Because the movie of your life would totes make it so. and therefore, so it is. ROCK ON, progress.)
My week!!!
Ouch Hard:
– SPAAACE. THE FINAL FRONTIER. (aaaaaagh I need to fix my spaace aaaagh)
– Bathroom ceiling leak still not fixed.
– Oven still not fixed.
– Lots of things at work due on Monday. None are done. Only a very few are even close.
– Boss is back but caving on things I didn’t expect.
– Boss brought back illness with him.
– Thus, getting a massive sore throat.
– Violet still has not gotten her vacation.
– Skin has gone 3 different kinds of berserk.
– Some problems in representational sexuality. Ouch. (But thank you Kylie and Ev’Yan for bringing it up; thank you, more please.)
– Yet more incongruencies. I get it; yes I get it. Nothing I can do yet. No more, please.
Whee Good Woofs Woofs:
* OMG THE FLOOP so excellent and so mind bending already had to take several breaks to process. FLOOP!
* The crazy-stressful meetings had a really positive result that I will be silent retreating on. But it is good that I am associated with said positive result.
* Accountant email this morning concerning my results.
* DANCE INTERLUDE! (Yay Lovelyman for cooking this up!)
* Easy electric company resolution.
* While annoying, cell phone bill resolution worked out.
* Saturday Spacemagic, although too brief, still worked out.
* Dyed my hair. TWICE. (First time I was much too bloooo.)
* Keys in the mail! I now have the key I fell in love with at the Playground. That was, for some reason, VERY important to me after I left.
* The buttmonster I bought has made friends with the buttmonster I made out of the Overwhelm Bawl.
* Lovely not-quite-relationships with people who don’t quite know me, but want me in their lives anyway.
Loads of support and love and tenderness towards everyone and their goods and hards. Mwahs to all who want them, and respect and joy to all else.
Good heavens, you launched the Floop and immediately got a vision of what’s next?! Two things:
1. You are badass Havi, and the Floop is amazing and
2. I am noticing how clear it is, not in a “we can see the wires” kind of way, just in a “Yep, that’s right, sure enough” way that, MAN! A lot of work went into this and a lot of love and caring about the details and I am marveling at the whole thing and just super glad to have it.
I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I mean: FLOATING PLAYGROUND OMG!
Thank you for that. Ha! I am actually laughing out loud. YAY!
Ok, my week: I’ll make it short:
The Good Speaking of badasses, I am a badass cook, me. Not that long ago I was capable of fixing Frito pie, enchiladas, and homefries. But mostly, when dinnertime rolled around, I would open up a can of chile. (Unless company. Then, two cans of chile.) Nowadays, OMG. I am a badass cook. People are snitching my awesome Brussels sprouts while I type.
I love that.
The Hard Nothing that ain’t over now, baby!
Pretty soon Going to Boulder! YAY!
I love you all.
@MAX!
I really, really want to do a boot-painting thing for you. As in, a bunch of us grab a set of boots that are the right size
and then we all paint them. And send them to you.
The Good:
Dentist visit today. Very very good.
Running. Hurts and sucks, but it’s very good.
Soup in the freezer. Fish chowder with bacon and heavy cream is the perfect emergency dinner.
Bread in the freezer. Visited the good bread place and stocked up. I like to have things in the freezer.
The little snoring noises the cat makes while she sleeps in her little hidey-hole near the couch.
The Hard:
Running. It’s hard. It hurts.
Dentist. I got choked up a little, but then he fixed something that was bothering me, and can fix a couple of other things, and make my teeth white again. Wait, that goes in the good part.
Stomach issues. They are preventing me from going out tonight, but maybe that is a good thing.
Havi, the Floop is the best thing ever. Barrels of purple sparklepoints!
Hard this week:
-getting sick with some kind of cold and missing out on chocolate pudding cake because of it. And not being able to hold my housemate’s adorable baby. Bah!
-toothache leading to wrangling with a Long-Neglected Bill Of Unknown Proportions with the dentist’s office via the phone
Good:
-making good progress at work (even if it’s hard to remember that rewriting code to be better is just as important as writing it in the first place and totally counts as progress)
-flooooop!
-delicious and weird yoga nidra visualizations
-The phone call (a) happened rather than being avoided forever, and (b) went fairly smoothly and I won’t be thrown in debtor’s prison like the monsters said I would
-made a shawl pin
-coming up on being close-to-done with knitting my warm purple shawl!!!
Have a lovely weekend, everyone 🙂
@Beth Freeman — hand-on-heart sigh! Also, Finger Nata! Wow! I can’t wait to give it a try. Thank you so much for that!
Hard: Shoes.
Good: Love.
Weekend: Engage!
Chickeners, I have a question: if I were to swear in my Chicken, would it make anyone uncomfortable/maybe damage the culture of amnesty/inclusiveness etc.? No swearing in the one below, but I was just wondering…
The Hard:
– Still looking for a place to live. So much pain and disappointment around not finding a place that is adequate. I want a place that is good enough for Bunny. I want there to be room in my life for her, even if she is not there. It makes me sad how hard this is to do on a student budget/in a student-housing environment and makes me think of single parents and students with children who must feel this difficulty more keenly than I do.
– Assignment insanity that is still not over.
– Anxiety and fear around balancing life-requirement stuff (i.e. housing, job, taxes etc.) and school commitments, and the added stress of initiating The Bunny Arrangement.
– Sacrificing sleep to make up for lost study time.
– Possibly the most disturbing nightmare I’ve had so far, concerning Bunny and my inability to keep her safe. Some of my own stuff came up too.
– Best friend has disappeared again and I’m wondering how to give her space without it seeming as though I am giving up on her, or do not want her around.
– I sometimes can’t tell the difference between being present and grounded or being numb and seemingly calm because of that.
The Good:
– Wonderful talk with Guardian: I was worried about having this talk but it turned out to be warm and supportive. I cannot even begin to say how lucky and thankful I am to have his support and faith and trust.
– Lots of support from therapist too, regarding Bunny Arrangement and stuff.
– My other guardians have been offering helpful pointers regarding job-hunts.
– All my midterms and assignments for this week went smoothly, despite being incredibly exhausting.
– I’m learning how to say no to social commitments I’m not entirely comfortable with.
– I did yoga today so as to interrupt a pattern of morning melancholia. It worked.
– I have been cooking for myself again and eating healthy.
– I have been feeling more or less grounded despite the hard.
– Went thrift-store shopping with a friend and bought a badass silk shirt that requires cuff-links. I feel all lady-gentleman-like. Also bought some other beautiful shirts for the summer and slightly overcame my body-shame.
– Won the essay prize, which was pleasant and unexpected.
– I’ve decided what courses I’ll be taking this summer, and what seminars I’m taking next year – pretty excited about it all 🙂
Love to all Chickeners and Lurkers!
The hard:
having a Scary Mommy moment
feeling a particular type of loneliness and feeling afraid that it will never change
The good:
daily meditation and mindfulness
having many Good Mommy moments
big dose of hope combined with faith in self-efficacy
feeling understood, like there is a tribe out there for me
jumping from lurking to posting 🙂
Hello Friday!
Good heavens, how did you get here? Wasn’t it Tuesday just yesterday?
The good: ohhh. ummm….good food. and cooking dinner on Wednesday. And amazing clients. And a long conversation with a good friend. And figuring some stuff out.
The hard: ugh. So much hard. Silent retreat! And wanting to do more introspection than the schedule has allowed. Tomorrow: reorganizing and thinking ARE the schedule.
I’m so glad it’s Friday and I can chicken!
The good and the hard are so mixed together. Some of the good is happening because of the hard.
My son’s wife left him and he’s back living with us. Do I even have to say why that’s hard? I didn’t think so!
It would be so easy to start taking over some of the things he has to do because they are easy for me, but I have to stand back and let him do it. So I’m spending less time at home. The good in that is that I am spending it at my favorite hangouts.
It is also good that I’m NOT undermining his already fragile sense of self-confidence.
Another good thing is that MrB is helping our son by reminding him of things and driving him places. That gets MrB out of the house and gives him something to do besides watch tv and do stuff on the computer. And father and son are spending more time together, which is another good thing.
Even though he is there, R (our son) is not taking over any of the upstairs space which is now MINE.
Some unadulterated good things:
+ watching my mom with my husband: she is so fond of him and enjoys his company so much.
+ watching my nephew with my mom: he is so caring with her.
+ mild temps and open windows.
+ ice cream sodas.
Other things, good and bad:
+ the Floop!
– trouble with my email account.
– trouble with my home internet connection (what a good thing I’m spending more time away from home)
+ a writing project is going well.
+ a workshop that I’m supposed to lead is scheduled and nearly all the preliminary work is done.
– at a meeting about it, Someone who apparently thought he was helping was actually creating obstacles and problems.
– old pain being triggered.
– physical stuff.
+ plans with the Butler for early next week, to get into the studio/work spaces upstairs and re-do them.
+ my family, in particular because they are helping with our son’s situation.
I hope everyone has a pleasant weekend, with lots of what you need or want.
Hards
– complete freaking out meltdowns x 2
– percipient labour (ridiculously insanely fast)
– the world needs more NVC and sovereignty practice
Goods
– my daughter is here and beautiful (let’s call her Bolivia on the internet because that’s funny!)
– reconnection
– my mum
– everything. Even the ‘interesting’ bits which I’m sure I’ll be more able to appreciate some other time
xoxo
@Risa: you are AMAZING!
Heh!
Cheers Chickeneers!
The Hard:
– every extra moment of non-working time devoted to packing / moving / unpacking
– a person who interprets my writing “I’m not sure on this variable yet so I’ll need to think about it.” in an email as a directive to pull the data … and then email me with a thousand questions about which data I am requesting.
– my brain just feels fried
The Good:
– awesome haircut with highlights
– peaceful serenity of my new condo
– being appointed to the Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association’s Ambassador Core (they only appoint 10 people per continent)
@ClaireP YAY for Bolivia being here! *bounce*
We’ve been Chickened! Wheee!
For me, it’s been a week of Then Is So Very Not Now. And I’m grateful for that.
@Katie: Wow! Congratulations!
@ClaireP: Mazel tov! Welcome, Bolivia, and warm wishes to all who are hers. 🙂
@VickiB: sending thoughts of strength to you and your family. And yay for ice cream sodas. 🙂
@ClaireP: Hooray for you and your new daughter!
@Beth Freeman: Thank you for posting the Finger Shiva Nata video, love it! (Much better on an airplane.)
@Cathy: What a great idea, a different word for pain. Thank you!
@Rhiannon: “Floopsketeers” – Yay!
@Havi: Enthusing for the Floop and the Director. Joy!
Oh, chicken, my dear.
The hard:
-Trying to get more tax stuff put together when the avoidance monsters are saying “We thought we fooled you over Christmas into postponing this indefinitely. Here it is the end of February and the beginning of March, you tricked us by starting again. This is bad and scary!”
-Difficulties scheduling and starting other things while reading a wonderful several-book series of historical fiction. Avoidance monsters joined by the “Think of all you are learning” monsters.
-No family visits for last two weeks.
The good:
+FLOOP! Floopery! the Floopness of it all! And finding gems and epiphanies therein.
+Declutter sessions scheduled and accomplished with my organizer.
+Tax meetings scheduled with my bookkeeper. Finding stuff I needed to take to them. Working with him through some of the details. Discovering how even more wonderful it can be to have someone helping you who isn’t in the midst of brain fog, and who will talk you through your own.
Chicken!
Messages
HAVI GOOD JOB, THAT WAS CRAZY HARD AND YOU ARE AMAZING FOR PULLING IT OFF.
As a matter of fact, I have been wanting a Board of Gratitude to express how happy I am about the FLOOP. I can absolutely see the traces of what must have happened to bring it about: the amount of thinking, processing, giving, protection spells. I was super amazed the Day of the Leap went seamlessly and I stepped into a perfectly functional new world just like that!
@Beth Freeman – *hand on heart sigh*. Also the Chickens &VPA’s are still here and nowhere else!
@ Katie – congratulations 🙂
The Hard
I almost want to silent retreat on the hard, it was so hard.
– Having to finish a paper + plus reminiscent yelling and massive hidden monsters thoughts.
– Being in places and meeting people that reminded me of Things, Times and People That Got Lost. Triggering of insecurities.
– Seeing some of the hard my sister is and was facing and how tough she is on herself. Meeting her sister-in-law who was being absolutely snobby and feeling like a protective mama bear.
The Good
+ FLOOP – exploring and processing and feeling how I feel about having a space to share. Permission. Gratitude. Processing. Cheering! Sharing. And my monster got to make a friend, and my alter ego too and it’s like a cup of hot chocolate after a walk in the snow.
+ Visiting my sister. She is one of the most amazing people I know. Not just because she is my sister, but because she is amazing. She makes people happy. She is giving. She is warm.
+ My future daughter may be called Cleopatra! My sister & me have an ongoing list of the names all our future kids as well of those of our other siblings and for some reason this cracked me up to no end.
+ Being in the mountains. Interacting with a mountain, which is so much like a wall in that it will show you your stuff!! Stuff came up but we had a lunch about it with the whole Monster Collective and Strong Selves and it was a beautiful, beautiful day.
+ A day of cleaning. It took me all day. But there was permission in having a day for it. And then the cleaned space felt like Spring and Spaciousness and Safety.
+ Being part of a Karaoke student night. I didn’t feel old, I just felt young + experienced. There was so much joy in just singing for the fun of it!
Oh Havi — GOOD JOB! WAY TO GO! THERE IS SO MUCH AMAZINGNESS THAT YOU DO AND IT’S AMAZING THAT YOU DO IT AND PULL IT OFF AND WRITE ABOUT IT AND DO IT AND DO IT AND DO IT….
As for my week — sigh… holy fucking hard. Can i say fuck here?
I’m experiencing sadness – deep deep sadness. This might be the first time that I’ve really let it in… or out… or both…
the hard:
– This sadness.
– An external stuckness that affects me dearly but isn’t within my realm of responsibility.
– Not being treated with kindness.
– Longing for tenderness.
– Getting a really difficult email at the pinnacle of my “can’t stop crying day”
– Having to be a really big, effective communicating person with all of this.
– Being a bit off-center because of travel.
– Feeling like a part of me had to go into protective mode.
– Feeling my heart contract in fear.
– Having to be big, again, oh, did I already say that?
– being dehydrated from so much crying.
– showing up someplace that i said i’d go when i wanted most to go home..
The amazingly good:
– found out that we got the apartment that we wanted… yayy! i’ll save a bunch of money!
– people on twitter who love what i’m doing and announce it publicly! yesss!!!! it feels so good!
– the heart of money class. i love it. it’s stretching and changing and bringing me closer to so much.
– my dear sweet niece and her look of pure joy.
– my mother’s exuberance and optimism.
– Berlin!!!! i love Berlin!
– great food in Berlin!
– pulling together a whole bunch of paperwork that i needed to do at the last minute…
– the feeling of putting myself out there.
– new breakthroughs around money that have things feeling more saturated… rich… potent….
– being able to write this right now.
@Melissa – thank you. & Sorry to hear you are in that place.
Chickening from the Future again!
I feel like this week was mostly awesome. There was some hard stuff, but I dealt with it well.
The Floating Playground made everything amazing.
Hard Stuff:
+For about 12 hours, I thought something horrible had happened to my best friend. That was really the hardest thing this week.
+Disappointment that the new shoes I ordered don’t fit, and all the accompanying Oh Woe Is Me pity partying plus Well Maybe They’ll Fit Another Day if I Just Leave Them Here By This Chair denial. These are shoes that I actually need to be able to walk, so I’m getting kind of desperate/frantic/ARRGHH. Maybe I need to write a VPA.
+Still trying to cope with my Sight Balls
+Misplacing my water bottle
+Still way off orbit on Project Infinity
Good Stuff:
+FLOATING PLAYGROUND!!!!
+Making progress on crochet projects
+Got a bunch of Tarot clients in the middle of the week, WHOO!!!
+SINGING SINGING SINGING oh i love singing
+TWO REHEARSALS THIS WEEK INSTEAD OF JUST ONE
+which also meant baking twice this week instead of just once!!
+celebrating National Peanut Butter Lovers Day with peanut butter ginger cookies
+Eating an avocado in the bathtub!
+Curried spinach pumpkin wontons!
+Finding out that a friend has taken my advice to let her curious 4-year-old experiment in the kitchen so the kid will learn to cook on her own!
+Planting good dream seeds!
+Discovering some amazing new music!
+Shiva Nata!
Havig: GOOD JOB, THAT WAS CRAZY HARD AND YOU ARE AMAZING FOR PULLING IT OFF.
🙂
Wish I were in Portland so I could experience all this first-hand with you. Besos!