What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Friday Chicken #168.5: accidental wormhole (not a band!)
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.
I was in the archives this week (for the love of god do not click on that — they are endless!) looking for something or other that I already can’t remember.
And I discovered — much to my shock and horror — that somehow we skipped Friday Chicken #163.
We didn’t miss a Friday, of course. That’s never happened.
But a number is gone. It’s screwing up the count. Hence the point five. Might not be the best solution but it’s the first thing I came up with.
Anyway, shall we? Let’s chicken.
The hard stuff
Over-teaching.
Note to slightly future me. Or really, to the me who gets to leave presents for her:
Please do not plan to teach three teleclasses the week before leading an eight day retreat.
The first class was fantastic. Same with the third one. The one on Toozday I didn’t do a great job on. Sorry. Overloaded.
Apparently people got really good stuff from it anyway? So yay. The content was killer. But bleargh. I was not as there for it as I would have liked.
So much busy.
What with seventeen million things to do, and all the different forms of preparation.
Zombie thriller is totally hard and not fair not fair!
Somehow I’d thought that since I dance every day, this would be pretty easy for me.
I’ve got it down now, pretty much. But it took so many more hours of practice time than I’d imagined.
Bah.
Administrative nightmares all over the place.
Systems are mostly-working.
So the holes are just that much more noticeable.
Too many things.
Maybe not seventeen million but still overwhelming.
Had to go to a box store. Twice.
Imagine a dog coming out of cold and unpleasant water and shaking it all off.
I want a long weekend!
But it’s not going to happen this weekend.
The good stuff
Getting stuff done!
The hanging-out-with-my-iguanas session, which I thought would be horrible but was actually fascinating and useful.
I learned all sorts of things about the stuff I don’t want to do and why.
Learning the Thriller dance, finally.
So. Much. Fun.
Also, I like that this weird hole in my dance vocabulary has now been filled.
Shivanauticon.
Oh, yes.
We’re having a convention. Well, an Unconventional.
Details coming soon. EXCITEMENT!
Internet high five! Which I got from @sockdreams….
Fun stuff coming up! Who wants to do fun stuff with me?
Like going to the costume sale at the Oregon Ballet Theater warehouse this weekend?
Or going to the Rosebuds bout Saturday night?
Or doing Zombie Thriller next weekend???
Come on! Tell me.
Just happy.
I don’t know.
Smiling to myself. Crunching fall leaves. Eating squash.
Things are good.
Dance dance dance!
This week I was living and breathing in dancing mode.
My body is sore and happy.
Barbara F-ing Sher, ladies and gentleman!
So it’s no secret that I adore Barbara Sher.
Some of you might remember when I flew out to spend a week in North Carolina to do a retreat with her.
She’s one of the smartest, wisest, funniest, most fabulous people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I sleep with a copy of Wishcraft by my bed. If she ever finds herself without a place to stay, I”m going to move her into my house and make her omelets.
We did a Kitchen Table call with her yesterday and it was so good!
Also do you know what she said about me?
She said: “I think you have a special handle on fun and joy. I like it when you sulk and grumble too, but you have never lost that magical thing that children have.”
Which is so perfect because I forget this like, three hundred times a day.
Crossing the Line!
It begins on MONDAY. It’s here. Password: haulaway
We are crossing. The line. And this is the voyage I care about most.
And it is going to be the most amazing thing ever.
I have planned all sorts of things and I am giggling over them.
Also, soon I get to buy the pie!
And we will have stars on the ceiling, and everything will be better.
The fun part of the Chickening happens here.
Tabstravaganza! Or: what’s Havi been up to with all those open Firefox tabs?
- My friend Madeleine’s marvelous no-stress manifesto, which is basically an anti-manifesto manifesto. Love.
- This made me so happy I can hardly even stand it.
- Also the candification of our food. By which I mean “food”. YES.
- This piece by David Erik Nelson (another Ann Arborite) called In it for the money.
- Thank you, Hayley for making me read this piece from Maya Angelou.
From the archives.
Some old, weirdly pertinent posts that I don’t remember having written, encountered while looking for something else:
- Destuckifying a hurt. (July, 2009)
- Visibility, Invisibility, Power, Pirates. (May, 2009)
- This one called Who me?, which might even be the first post I wrote about dancer-me. And then promptly forgot about.
Man. That second one I need to use on everything.
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 angry but hilarious band:
It Takes A Village, Asshole.
Their first album was, as everyone knows, Closer To Rants. It was pretty awesome.
Though of course, it’s really just one guy.
Hallo Hallo! I am saying Hallo Hallo. Announcement time.
Picture me wearing that crazy hat…
- The January Rally (Rally!) is nearly full. February is more than half full. So take a look and make something happen.
- Do you have an iPhone? If not, go to your local pub and chat up someone who does. Tell them they need to get the Shiva Nata app. Then borrow their phone for five minutes a day.
- Shivanauticon, people. If you’ve never done Shiva Nata yet, don’t worry. It will happen. But we are going to have the most unconventional convention that ever was.
I think that’s everything? If not, I’ll add stuff to the Very Personal Ads over the weekend.
That’s it for me …
And of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments if you feel like it.
Yes? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.
p.s. It’s okay if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever (or not) and it’s no big deal.
The hotel inside my head is delighted to offer a wide variety of in-house entertainment options.
I have been having lots of long talks with Cairene about exhaustion. And the consequences of exhaustion.
Like how all the stupidest and most regrettable things I have ever done (see: sneaking into self-forgiveness) all end up being related to how ridiculously little sleep I was running on at the time.
And how most of the people I know, most of the time, are in a state of nearly permanent depletion. Including me, of course.
In fact, most people I know are so used to running on empty that it isn’t even that noticeable.
You only recognize it when you’ve gone beyond depletion. Past whatever reserves were left. When it’s the full-on falling-apart everything-must-crash time.
So yeah. I’ve been doing a lot of interacting with the various pieces and elements. As you know.
And today I need to tell you about the hotel.
When I reach a state of worn-out, I can’t really make decisions.
I definitely can’t make the kind of decisions that support slightly-future-me.
That’s why I’m always practicing. Trying to be — and become — the person who can take care of her.
We have long conversations where I ask her questions about what she knows and what she needs.
I do stone-skippings. I plant presents for her, and make notes about what she likes.
I consult the Book of Me. And the Dammit List.
Basically I’m trying to avoid situations where she’ll be worn out. And if she is worn out, I want her to not have to make hard decisions.
It’s not letting future me get into the wrong kind of shenanigans.
Cairene said something super crazy smart about how the tired mind is pretty much always going to decide wrong. Or it will choose the things that don’t help.
So the idea behind all this conscious entry and preparing for the voyage that I am always talking about is basically this:
Set stuff up so that there aren’t any of the kind of choices that are going to be stupid and terrible.
Don’t offer up any of those things that take you away from yourself as possible options.
Set it up.
So then we were talking about how at fancypants hotels they slip that sheet under the door telling you about all the things happening the next day.
You get to pore over all the stuff there is to do. And even if you don’t do any of it, your choices are still guided into the same general pathways. Do I want to do something restful? Something fun? Something entertaining?
And so Hotel Playgroundia was born.
Hotel Playgroundia is part-imaginary and part-not.
It’s the idea of the place that I go to chill. It exists to take care of me. And to remind me to take care of me, if that makes sense.
It’s also what I’m calling the new extra-cozy loft-bed-blanket-fort deal in my Pirate Queen quarters at the Playground. Which also doubles (metaphorically) as my Dressing Room.
In the hotel room there’s a guidebook.
It’s that kind of binder that hotels have (a bit like the PLUM, the Playground User Manual).
It’s all about how things need to work when nothing is working.
There’s a page about food options.
About movement classes and old Turkish lady yoga.
Where and when you can get a massage. What you need for the pool.
Room service options. The mini-bar. Entertainment choices.
Emergency services (what to do when you freak out and fall apart).
That’s what I did today.
I played with magic markers and construction paper.
And stickers.
I made eight very colorful pages.
While having fits of giggles resulting from my attempts to invoke cliched hotel copywriting:
“At Hotel Playgroundia, we are honored to provide a variety of nourishing snacking selections…”
“Our plentiful and varied entertainment options include an exciting assortment of books that are already on your iPhone…”
But it’s all there so that I don’t have to decide.
Or if I get to the point of Beyond Tired, the only decisions I can make are between X thing-that-is-supportive and Y, that thing-that-is-also-supportive.
I won’t be able to choose the things that hurt me because they won’t be available options at the hotel.
And if it doesn’t work, I’ll play with it some more.
That I’ll get tired and over-tired is a given. Being alive involves playing at the edges and discovering what my boundaries and limitations are, sometimes the hard way.
But my gwish is that the coping mechanisms I’m putting in place will bring my attention back to being cared for.
That way, instead of constantly trying to make my way back from beyond exhausted, I can eventually find out what it’s like to live in a state of 90% preventative and 10% recovery. And not the other way around.
Play with me!
Self-practice and the giant communal and commenting blanket fort.
There was kind of a lot packed in here today.
Probably because I just taught the Art of Embarking on Monday, and then on Toozday I did a class for my Kitchen Table program on flow, depletion and recovery. So I’m kind of swimming in this stuff right now.
Here’s are some things we could possibly mess around with today:
- Identifying the signs of oh whoops, in depletion again. Obviously, the People Vary rule holds true here. But what are yours? How do you know when you’re there?
- What types of things would your hotel guidebook include?
- What would you-from-a-few-weeks-from-now love to have in [his/her/your-favorite-pronoun’s] hotel?
Usual comment zen applies. We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We take responsibility for what’s ours, we let other people have what’s theirs. We don’t give advice. We’re supportive and welcoming. Everyone belongs. We play.
Confidential to [redacted] — past-me would like to add that she does not at all regret you-related-decisions of a decade ago, extreme lack of sleep be damned. Though she apologizes for obviously-stupid other you-related-decisions that happened the next year. For the record.
Planting hidden surprises for later.
Yesterday I talked about the practice of leaving presents for future-me.
And Larisa told this awesome story in the comments about how her brother used to throw fistfuls of Jolly Ranchers into the backseat of the car to discover later.
Exactly. Like that!
There are so many marvelous surprises that we can hide for later.
What kind of presents and surprises?
Presents and surprises for future-me can be small or large.
They can be really obvious. Or things that might not even be noticed.
Maybe she’ll trip over them and then say ohhhhhhhhhhh, got it.
1. Words and qualities.
Sometimes I go a few months ahead in the calendar and I write a word on a day. Any day.
Like REJUVENATION.
Or AUTONOMY.
Or TRUST.
It’s planting a day that is full of the essence of that. And then when she sees it, slightly-future-me will have a flash of remembering.
She’ll know what it means. Or she’ll find out.
We have a colorful wall of words and qualities at the Playground in the Refueling Station.
I like to sit in the rainbow hammock and breathe in the words. Me-who-is-arriving-in-a-few-weeks is even better at taking time for that.
In fact, she’ll probably know why the word I chose for her is important — and she’ll know it in ways that I am not yet able to understand.
She’ll also know why that day was the right one, and then we’ll giggle over it together.
2. Experiences.
Booking her a massage for before and after Rally (Rally!).
Scheduling secret artist dates for her at her favorite cafes.
Buying a giant box of crayons just for her.
Sending a postcard to my uncle to tell him she’s going to visit him and hide out in the woods with his dogs.
3. Reminders.
Mailing her postcards with coded messages.
Putting things where she’ll see them.
Flowers.
Planting presents for the next two weeks.
Things are going to be busy and amazing for me-who-is-arriving.
She is teaching Crossing the Line, which is an eight day retreat. That’s a lot of work, and also a lot of batshit crazy life-changingly great epiphanies that she’ll be having, what will all the shivanauttery.
She’s going to need spaciousness and time. Love and support.
What can I do to make things easier on her?
- Use secret agent code words to set up a rendezvous with Liz.
- Flowers and love notes in her dressing room.
- Everything she doesn’t need to deal with can go into a box and be put in the office she won’t be using.
- Give her a small tactile reminder of who she is. Maybe a necklace from her friend’s Etsy shop?
- A list of reminders.
- A round with the First Mate to review.
Play with me!
Self-practice and the giant communal and commenting blanket fort.
We’re leaving presents for future-us. Yay!
What could we maybe-possibly-theoretically-if-we-wanted-to plant now for later?
Usual comment zen applies. We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We take responsibility for what’s ours, we let other people have what’s theirs.
We make this a safe space to play by not giving each other advice (unless people ask) and by paying attention to what we need.
Also: we can declare Silent Retreat whenever we feel like it, dammit.
Kisses.
Presents for future me.
Ah, the continuation to yesterday‘s public recognition of the pain that comes with realizing just how little I have paid attention to the needs of me-from-next-week.
Until next week shows up and then: oh right, I am her.
Yesterday was all about acknowledging grief and loss. Letting it exist, because that’s always the starting point for changing anything.
Today: transitioning into the next part (discovering what I know about the current patterns and how they could change).
What is working?
Well, I’ve gotten remarkably good — through years of practice — at caring for past me and making things easier for her.
It’s become gradually less challenging to remember to do sweet things for me-from-then.
And over time I’ve been able to really notice and feel how doing this helps me-now feel safer and more supported.
So there’s a blueprint of experience.
What else is working?
If I look back at six years ago when I started this business (or really, even just a year ago), there’s clear evidence of progress.
Thank you, Internal Committee of Scientists for your extensive studies on the subject.
I used to never think about taking care of slightly future me. Now I do all sorts of things for her.
Like my Anthology of the Pirate Queen — the binder that has everything I need for teaching, all in one place.
Or the fact that my Dressing Room at the Playground is no longer a storage room but an actual room for me to rest and recuperate.
All the things I do to prepare for voyages.
The various metaphors, systems, processes and rituals that I have developed for her.
Ha. I don’t suck at this after all. I still don’t know as much as I’d like about how to lovingly attend to me-from-next-week, but the “You Are A Disastrous Failure At This” monster narrative has been disproven.
What do I want to happen?
I think I’m finally at the point where I’m ready to learn more about taking care of me-who-is-arriving.
Not just in fits and starts but as a regular way of being in the world.
I want to be the person who leaves secret gifts in unexpected places.
Sneakily seeding kindness for later.
In fact, I asked for help with this in Sunday’s Very Personal Ads:
I want me-of-three-weeks-from-now to look back at now and say, “Wow. Thank you.”
Not to just practice self-forgiveness for all the ways I have not been able to take care of myself and her.
But to feel really and truly appreciative for the things I did do.
It’s like being a secret admirer! Or a secret santa (something I only know about from television). I can be sneaky and silly and have fun!
What does this new relationship with me-who-is-on-the-way give me?
Delight. Courage. Conviction. Sweetness. Power. Radiance. Support. Sovereignty. Presence. Play. Curiosity. Experimentation. Receptivity. Flow.
What would the Best Secret Admirer Ever do?
Actually I think I need to change that metaphor because it’s kind of creeping me out. Where’s the mouse? We need him.
Negative connotations to “secret admirer”? Yes.
[+unasked-for attention] [+vulnerability] [+not knowing]
Negative connotations to “secret santa”? Yes.
[+outsider] [+what if I’m doing it wrong] [+discomfort]
Okay! Good to know. That wasn’t the right question then. What’s the right question? Oh. Of course.
What do I know about the thing I do want? What does it contain?
I want it to include:
[+safety] [+permission] [+play] [+silliness] [+excitement] [+tingly anticipation] [+groundedness] [+taking notes about what works] [+curiosity] [+love] [+support]
Like a loving fairy. Or a non-creepy house elf. Ooh. A bunch of Helper Mice. A something something of Heinzelmännchen.
Except that what with time passing and living abroad and all that, they’ve become way more chill.
What did we decide the collective noun was for Heinzelmännchen? A Party? I’m going to go with Huddle!
A Huddle of Heinzelmännchen. Someone write that book, please.
Anyway, there’s a collective. Whose job is to care for me-who-is-coming! And I get to submit ideas and proposals because they need my help.
That way I get to participate but I don’t have to do all the work. I’m an adviser. Sneaky-sneaky!
And maybe sometimes I also get to go on fun present-planting missions.
And Presence-Planting Missions.
Is there a secret mission-behind-the-mission here?
Yes. Yes there is.
My real hope (which I’m whispering because the monster collective has issues with this) is that doing loving things for me-who-is-coming will help me be okay with taking care of me-now.
And by distancing myself from the process (being an adviser, doing sweet things for someone else), I can get closer to the experience of being cared for.
It’s like a safely mediated way of getting to feel what it’s like to be deeply taken care of — something I crave that also terrifies me.
What happens next?
Tomorrow I’m going to make a list of presents and presence.
Things I can do for her that I wouldn’t necessarily do for me.
And we’ll find out if there’s an easier way to get better at this. Because who knows, sometimes there is.
Also I might make this my mysterious project the next time I’m at Rally (Rally!).
Play with me!
Self-practice and the giant communal and commenting blanket fort.
Did that sound like a band name? Ahahahahahaaaaa. It’s just one guy!
Okay. If you want to play with me and think about this theme or ways to care for you-who-is-arriving, that is fabulous. Practicing silently counts too.
I am planning to use the comments today to leave tiny little notes to helper mice. About me-from-the-future.
Like this! Pssst! Havi loves toast. Make sure she gets toast.
Or: Havi can never find her slippers. Can you make a special slipper home for her?
Join in if you like with notes for you.
As always: we all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff.
We make this a safe space to play by not giving each other advice (unless people ask) and by paying attention to what we need.
Kisses.
Postscripting:
The November Rally is completely sold out. January is really close to full. See the Rally page for dates and details.
Because I want to eat pie with you. Except that I can’t eat pie. But I can sit with you, and we can giggle and plot craziness while you eat pie. It will happen. And it will be so much fun.
Sweetness for coming-in me.
Today’s post is a woem I wrote a week or so ago.
A woem is a poem of woe! And grumbles.
This is something we invented at McGrumblebug’s Whine Bar (a forum board disguised as a pub) in my Kitchen Table program.
See: My weekend got eaten by bears!
And, as it happens, today’s post also falls in the category of Accidental Poem.
See: The swooping of Fairy Godmothers. The one on invoking protection. The superpowers.
Anyway, let us woe!
A woem about wanting and regret.
I was able to experience being future-me today
for a moment
in that I learned the [thing I’d wanted] won’t arrive for five weeks
but if I’d only come in an hour before…
ah, then I could have had it tomorrow
but now I can’t
because I’m here but I didn’t set things up for being here
I’ve had nine days to take care of this
except I was scared
and I don’t even know/remember what exactly I was scared of
[this is familiar why is it familiar oh right
all pain is legitimate
and there is no such thing as “irrational fear”
it’s just that we don’t remember why the fear makes sense
but it does — it just does
it always does]
and even though I know this in the deep places
there is so much pain when I see how I’ve accidentally sabotaged future me
through wallowing in old hurt-pain-fear-avoidance-ball-droppery
and then I become her and it hurts
(but of course this isn’t true, it’s another pain-narrative…. what else is true?)
once I’m future-me…
then I look back with compassion because future me is always so damn sweet about the past
but oh (pain, again) I wish wish wish wish wish wish
I could be nicer to coming-in me
and set things up for her so that she could have sweetness from now
instead of always just giving back sweetness to then
so many things this past week that I didn’t do or say because it felt overwhelming or too big or out of proportion, and then this giant pile of half-done that I left for myself
tomorrow I am giving the day to compiling and depiling
the gifts to myself are in the stones
one day I will perceive the choices as they’re arriving
I will ring all the bells
right now I just want to plant tiny presents for tomorrow-me and next-week me so that she knows I prepared for her with love…
if I don’t or can’t, she’ll love me just as much anyway
or she’ll try
or she’ll practice the hardest practice, just for me
I am filled with the desire to do something marvelous for her
something marvelous
not out of guilt or shame or regret
just love
Next time.
Next time (tomorrow?) I will talk about how I am seeding things for me-who-is-arriving.
I will practice preparing for the voyage.
I will practice finding the useful.
In the meantime, I am here.
Play with me. And how the communal comment blanket fort works.
You can leave woems of your own. Or think about this stuff with me.
(Note! The brilliant thing about woems is they don’t have to be written especially well. Because the point is interacting with woe. Tiny or large, they all count. A woem about toe-stubbing is just as valid as a woem about deep grief and loss.)
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a process.
We take responsibility for what’s ours, we let everyone else have what’s theirs. We make this a safe space to practice through not giving advice and not telling each other what to do or how to feel.
That’s all! Love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and anyone reading.
p.s. The class on the Art of Embarking (consciously and intentionally setting up experiences so that they’re supportive and fabulous) is today! Sign up for the recording, ebooklet and Chattery transcript.