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.
My life without memory
My life without memory
I have always left myself cryptic notes, even before the concussion.
A devoted and forgetful scribbler of reminders, I exist in ADHD time: the thing that is right in front of me is either entirely invisible to me or, alternately, the only item/task/question/pursuit that exists in the universe, no in-between.
At the same time, I am regularly interrupted by memory, sudden and abrupt, almost unbearably intense.
A loss or heartbreak from years ago hurts the same as the day it happened, I remember and gasp in pain.
It recedes or it doesn’t, on its own timing.
On its own timing, like everything else
I too am on my own timing, I just don’t really have a sense of how it works.
And yet, I maintain a mysteriously high level trust in these reminder notes that almost never do their job.
In the moment, as I am laboriously deciding how to phrase the reminder, I remain fully convinced that the next day I will know exactly what “a time for gleaming, a time for things that gleam” means, and be able to act on that instruction.
Cryptic is such a good word
In a way, these notes confuse me less now because I devote less time to puzzling out what the poet intended.
I am mostly uninterested in what yesterday-me or last-week-me might have meant, if I don’t understand the instructions then they aren’t for me.
Now I just casually toss these post-it notes into the recycling. If I’m meant to remember that clue, it will show up again. Solved by not having to solve it.
Solved!
Somehow, in the moment of writing these notes, I am wholly convinced that writing it down is the most brilliant, simple, elegant solution to help tomorrow-me remember what is important, what needs to happen, how it needs to happen.
Write it down! That’s the answer!
And occasionally it is.
But the regularity with which I will think to myself, “Great, solved that problem by writing a note for later!” only to find myself utterly baffled by the very same note the next day…
I recognize my handwriting, and maybe a vague shadow of a memory of the mood I felt while writing it (urgency? excitement? cautiously optimistic?) but what did the poet intend? Who can say. Certainly not the poet.
Certainly not someone coping (barely) with memory loss, brain fog and a traumatic brain injury.
Lost & found in translation
It occurred to me just now while rereading that “what did the poet intend” is actually more of a phrase I would use in Hebrew, I’m not sure how well it translates to English.
It’s a reference to the way teachers phrase essay question in literature class. And it makes sense in colloquial Hebrew as any form of “I have no idea what this person is talking about, your guess is as good as mine!”
But it also serves the purpose of directing us to focus on a deeper meaning, because there has to be one somewhere. What do we think the deeper meaning is?
Oof. Suddenly I am not sure if any of that works as well in English, or not, and I can’t think of who to ask.
You will have to tell me in the comments if that phrasing came across as funny (intentional), funny (unintentional) or oddly poetic. Maybe you are also not sure what the poet might have intended here. 😜
WWDBD
Since the concussion reshaped my brain, and even more so since Long Covid changed the shape of my life, I have devoted quite a bit of poet-intending time to thinking about Drew Barrymore’s character in the Adam Sandler comedy Fifty First Dates.
Disclaimer: it has been so many years since I’ve seen this, no idea how it’s held up, my memory is broken, though in general I think Adam Sandler movies tend to be wildly offensive in about a hundred different ways, so apologies if I am referencing a film that did harm, it probably did, I only remember a few scenes.
The part that interests me is the not-remembering, what we do and don’t remember.
Drew Barrymore’s character was in an accident that left her with a brain injury in the form of anterograde amnesia, she remembers her entire life up to the day of the accident and believes it is still that day, each day. Her family doesn’t want her to relive the trauma of the accident, and so they to contrive to make each day the same for her, erasing the passage of time. No more unfolding of time.
Unfolding feels wrong, but maybe time rolls out like a rug.
Good Morning, Confused Lost Self: YOU ARE HERE
And in the end, Lucy (just looked up her name) is married to Adam Sandler’s Henry character, and each morning she wakes up to find a video tape that says GOOD MORNING, LUCY.
She watches the video, which explains her injury and the accident, and catches her up on her current life, in which time does unfold, so that she can go through her day with updated information.
No confusing, alarming surprises about where she is. Or who she is.
Doesn’t that sound lovely.
What Would Drew Barrymore Do (she would watch the video!)
You will be unsurprised to know that I find this both enormously relatable, and that I have a deep yearning for this kind of video I could watch for myself: hey, good morning, this is what you are about, this is how your brain works now, these are the things that are important to you, here is how you get things done.
I crave it. Truly. I want this so badly.
How sweet, how reassuring and convenient to just have all that information pre-packaged, ready to go. To not have to spend so much of my day, so many of my days, just re-remembering and rediscovering the exact same things, astonished anew each time.
Sometimes it seems like that’s all I do, remember.
And on the other hand, maybe that’s not a bad thing even though it feels very time-consuming. As Esther Gokhale says, about movement and posture but really about so many things, forgetting is part of remembering, and each time the memory gains in strength. Or in theory it does.
Composition
I sit down to write.
I write words. Often I like them. Not always, but either way, so many points for the act of intentionally sitting, for the practice, for the rituals of composition and reflection.
And then, if I don’t finish the piece of writing, or don’t return to it the very next day with the help of many reminder notes, I forget about it entirely.
This is how I have ended up with dozens and dozens of documents of half-finished essays in various locations, both on my computer and in notebooks.
Just make an ending?
Sometimes I think I want to hold a Rally or put myself through a writing retreat where I just take action on these limbo-pieces of writing: finish them or delete them or publish as they are, fragments.
Flip a coin. Just finish. Just end it. Just erase it. Choose your adventure, or pick your poison.
But then I write myself a note about that, to remind myself to do that, and then I forget what the note meant.
What did the poet intend?
Existing outside of time is not for the faint of heart
The other day, I found some draft essays on the website, unfinished, some just sentence fragments, some hundreds of words, and one, from last March, which I do not remember writing at all, had the most tantalizing title:
Existing outside of time is not for the faint of heart.
What a terrific title. I love it. What does it mean? I mean, what did I mean?
I too am wondering what the poet intended.
Or if I will ever write that piece, or rewrite it, or write a new essay with the same title.
Will I remember how to remember?
Erased at midnight
I was listening to the Blast Zone podcast, the episode about the movie Dark City, which I never saw and am pretty sure I never heard of, and a plot point is that everyone’s minds get wiped at midnight each night.
Which is also extremely relatable.
There are no touch points, this is also something I wrote on a note, and believe to be true, even if I no longer remembered what the poet intended.
I think what I meant is that for me, being disabled in a pandemic, and living in isolation, there are not many external situations or interactions that can remind me of how things are, do I mean touchstones?
So I live by ritual and repetition because those are the stones I can find. If 6pm is when I get into bed and 8pm is when I close eyes, and 6am is when I open eyes, and 6:30am is when I need to be jogging on the red rug, those are points.
Enough points form a constellation or a shape, and I follow that shape, and it doesn’t matter that my mind got wiped again at midnight, if it did, if that’s what the poet intended or if the poet intended for me to remember. I follow the fragments, follow the focus, any stone making up a path, any touch point in a storm.
Chop wood, carry water, remember to remember to remember
This winter has been so brutal, so much harder than last year. Last week the temperature went go down to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (-13 in Celsius? very cold), and I have lost track of how many times the pipes have frozen and burst this year.
Each day in the evening, at sunset, I turn off the well pump, and empty the water from the faucets, so that there is no water in the pipes to expand.
Around noon, I turn the pump back on and open the faucets, sometimes there is water and sometimes there isn’t, sometimes it takes a few hours and sometimes the shed floods.
Even if I don’t have water inside, sometimes there is still water outside, so when it’s time to wash dishes, I go outside to the spigot and fill a jug of water, then heat the water in the kettle, and fill another jug. And so on.
Slow time on the farm. Remember to remember to remember.
And so on
I have never liked the phrase “chop wood carry water” but I get it, ritual and repetition, small tasks, one step at a time, be the bravest hero and get up again, do it again.
With attentiveness? Is that the point? For me it is more about valiant effort.
Valiant Effort is the superpower of keep on keeping on. Good morning, Lucy. Watch the video, Lucy. Fill a water jug. Do it again. Good job.
Braver than the marines.
Forgetting what hurts, forgetting what helps
Sometimes I forget the way I am affected by weather, the grey-white sky, the hailstorms, the 70mph winds hurtling through the canyon, the barometric pressure headaches, until I am crying on the floor in the middle of a mental health crisis.
I write myself notes about this, and the notes don’t make sense.
Don’t believe the weather, I tell myself. What did the poet intend?
Comparison: still the devil
Last year the second half of February was when the worst of winter was over out here, when I felt a reprieve had been granted. I could still see my breath inside in the mornings but not all day. More light more hope.
And so this year, without really realizing it, I have just been coaxing myself to get here. Just make it through the first third of February, and you win. Winter will be until it it isn’t.
I don’t think I understood to what extent I was hanging by a thread to get to last week, until then last week when the reprieve didn’t come. I looked at the weather app and saw NINE DEGREES and lost my fucking mind, or whatever was left of it, and cried and cried and could not stop crying.
But why compare this year to last year. This year is this year. Now is not then.
In the realm of badasses and badassery, badass adjacent, but what does it mean?
My friends tell me I am a badass.
I most emphatically do not perceive that I am a badass. Apparently my internal (monster-written?) definition of badass includes “not crying for hours at a setback”. My monsters think I am the biggest baby, the biggest fuckup, always lost and confused.
However, apparently I am wrong. Apparently living alone at the edge of the edge, wounded and confused, outside of time and outside of culture, living by ritual and repetition is in the realm of badass, even when I forget. And I am always forgetting.
WWABD
What would a badass do? Watch the video, Lucy.
Good morning, good morning, good morning. This is your life now.
Or: this is your life right now, in this moment.
Now is not then. Things move and shift and change.
It’s another beautiful day at Slow Time Farm. It won’t be this cold forever. You’re doing great.
Get dressed. Be brave. Jog for 23 minutes on the red rug. Fill the water jugs when you can. Good job, babe.
{enter as you wish to be in it}
These are the things I do before I sit down to write:
wash & dry dishes
clean my librarian glasses
vacuum the rug
remove any iguanas (stressful things) or distractions from line of sight
turn on the heating pad
light candle or loose incense
fill a glass of water
Breathe in, breathe out. We will write our way through.
Where is the freedom
Where is the freedom within the Drew Barrymore as Lucy situation, and how does it work? What is useful in this situation of apparently my mind gets erased each night at midnight? Talk to me about the liberation within traumatic brain injury and long covid and not being able to focus?
There is an element of each day you start fresh.
There is an element of preserving some baseline information about what you’re working with (ritual & repetition, scribbled notes, carry water).
I am learning about my life without memory. I am learning about my life, without memory.
Learning about my life without memory, without memory
I am learning about being a writer who has to write without the gift of memory, just these confusing post-it notes, quarter-to-half essays, and sometimes just an intriguing title:
Seasons Gleamings.
A Surprise Guest.
Follow The Focus.
Will I write these ? What did the poet intend?
You remembered about your forgetting. That’s a start.
What are the baseline known elements?
Resting into what works. Path of least resistance. The way I know ritual and repetition are what hold me.
I do the same things each day, not many, but religiously, by a schedule.
And I make the same food (refinement as a practice).
And I show up to [Writing Hour], and skip stones until I find a direction.
Carry water. Small tweaks to what is already working. Praise praise praise. Braver than the marines. Good job, Lucy. You watched the video. So fucking brave.
So brave
I love you, I believe in you, one step at a time. Fractal interconnected steps.
The winds will calm. You will remember something you care about. Let it surprise you. Let’s make tea. Let’s fill those water jugs. You are what the poet intended.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm your own. What would go in your Good Morning, Lucy video? What patterns are we rewriting and what would help? We remember that People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
May we find the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
The Holiest Feast Day of Do-Overs
Do-Overs Forever
It is known that I do not hold by New Year’s Eve, and begin my new year on February 2, the under-appreciated holiday known as Groundhog Day, or as I think of it, the Holiest Feast Day of Do-Overs Forever, Amen.
January for me is more like a very relaxed trial run that absolutely doesn’t count, it’s not even the dress rehearsal, but something before that. The pre-, the Erev (Eve of), the thing that comes before.
Just casually, steadily, intentionally marking out the steps, a whisper-hum of wishes, pointing myself towards.
A run-through of what things could or might look like once we get into our groove, but: low stakes. Very low stakes.
January the longest month of just getting through
January of course it has its own issues, being the Never-ending Month That Does Not End.
Here in New Mexico it was also very, very cold in a way I can only describe as unforgiving. And January also contains some extremely painful memory-days for me that are nearly always harder to get through than I anticipate.
So I don’t push in January, as a matter of principle, and also because pushing is no longer an option for me.
I don’t push in January
January is for getting through it, percolating on my new year wishes, running some reconnaissance on my various new year experiments, and seeing what helpful intel I can gather.
Reconnecting with myself, maybe poking my head out and trying to reconnect with people I care about.
But mainly just a lot of ritual and repetition. WE DO GROUNDING THINGS, and we do them over and over again, and we just keep doing them.
Show up. Light a candle. Keep it moving. Follow the focus. One beautifully fractal step at a time.
Good job. Back to bed is also a step. Forgetting is part of remembering. Rest is part of recovery. Compassion compassion compassion. Add more compassion.
Ritual & repetition
Waking up each day and doing the things that help…
Naming this: Hey, I am doing things that help. I am doing some of the things that help. Even (and especially!) when I don’t want to. Acknowledgment & Legitimacy for the hard things being hard, they really are.
Awarding myself ten trillion sparklepoints for sticking with it, the courageous ongoing work of We Got This, Just Keep On Keeping On.
Noticing how the light is coming in a little earlier here in the northern hemisphere, and hanging out a little longer before sunset…
True New Year
I don’t insist on big new shifts in January, all I do is introduce small, cumulative tweaks to the things that were already working. And I continue to give myself so much credit for being brave and adaptable.
And no pressure! It doesn’t count! January is just a test-drive. We aren’t making assumptions or commitments, just trying some things while tending to the basics.
That way when True New Year arrives on the second day of February, I wouldn’t say that I’m ready, because what’s that, but I’m definitely not shell-shocked the way I was at the end of December, with all the pressures of NEW YEAR NEW EVERYTHING in the air.
And by the time I’ve had the longest month ever to sit with (or near) some of my goal-wishes for the new year, they seem less intimidating by then. Maybe I’ve already taken some symbolic steps towards them, or slid into their DMs (so to speak), maybe we are closer to meeting than we were before…
Treasure (sometimes unexpected or unanticipated, also a verb)
I love and treasure the qualities of Newness and Recalibration, these joyful, hope-filled aspects of beginnings, the tantalizing freshness of it all. I just have a strong allergic reaction to the sort of collective pressure that builds up approaching the new year.
Luckily, none of that stuff is attached to Groundhog Day, a perfectly mundane holiday, which makes it an excellent candidate for a Feast Day. And, the next day, the third of February, is National Carrot Cake Day, which sounds very cheerful, so I’m into it!
Happy National Carrot Cake Day to all who celebrate, and if you don’t then what better time to introduce more cake into the world.
It couldn’t hurt.
Solved By Cake. Unexpected medicine. The healing powers of sweetness, which is also how I think of the practice of Can I Add More Compassion? What would ten percent more sweetness towards myself feel like?
Trees
Then on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shvat, which this year is Sunday, February 5th, we come to the eve of the birthday of the trees, who get their own new year, it goes through Monday the 6th.
The holiday of Tu B’shvat is celebrated through deliciousness and simplicity, eating tree goodness (almonds, figs, dates, fruits of spring) and feeling good about trees.
I always feel good about trees so that’s an easy one but it’s fun to have a day just for that.
Living close to national forest land, I am writing this looking out at juniper and piñon and cottonwood friends. Blessings of protection, tree friends. Thank you for oxygen, for love and comfort, for companionship and salves and magic.
A month of new beginnings
So really if you think about it, we get a whole bonus month of new year, new beginnings, slow-time style, and I love that for us.
Repeats. Cake. The steady companionship of the trees.
Do-overs forever. With an emphasis on what is delicious.
Reflecting time (two meanings)
As you know, I like to reflect on what was hard and what was good.
I don’t want to skip naming the hard things, because sometimes that can become a way of neglecting myself through trying to gloss over pain, forgetting to meet myself with the compassion I would have for a friend in my situation.
I want to practice acknowledgment and legitimacy, the hard things were hard! Absolute heroism for making it through despite that.
And I like to name the good, not out of a desire to force myself to find silver linings or demand gratitude from myself, but because the good is here too, and it is helpful to bring my attention to what is hopeful and possible. New buds, a shifting of the light, here and present for the miracles.
Naming what was hard for me in January
In general I’ve been getting better with the solitude, but I did go thirty entire days from the last week of December to almost the end of January without a conversation with a human who is not me,* and while it was not as devastating as I feared it might be, it’s just very intense.
*Unless you count the polite {“Did you find everything okay?” “Yes, thank you”] weekly exchange at the grocery store as a conversation, but sometimes I find that interaction even more isolating.
There is the isolation of living alone by the trees with no one to talk to, and the other isolation of making the journey to town for provisions, realizing I am surrounded by people who are living interpersonally and in a world where Covid is “over” (for them), and I am not living interpersonally, and do not exist in a world where Covid can be ignored, and I am unable to join them there, and it makes the loneliness more disorienting.
Mmmmmm what else
The cold spell was brutal and my pipes froze so many times that I started filling jugs of water each day, then shutting off electricity to the well before sundown, and waiting until mid-day to try for running water again.
Showers were few and far between because the roads were too icy to drive anywhere where I can shower.
The one-two punch of Long Covid with traumatic brain injury remains devastating and unpredictable. There are days when my brain doesn’t work, days when my body doesn’t work, and days when both of them absolutely refuse to come online.
There are also miracle days when I can do things, sometimes even with relative ease, but because I can’t know or even guess when these days will show up, I cannot plan for anything.
Naming what was good
I am less lonely than I used to be, not because of any real change of circumstances but somehow finding it easier to have a good time with myself again. More cooking, more dancing, more laughter, more being okay with slowing things down / being slowed down.
A good deal of practicing what my dance teacher in Portland used to refer to as “do less to get more”.
Mainly: I made a list of what works and then did what works, and stuck with it like it was a life raft, which it maybe was. Ritual and repetition. Staying attuned to hopefulness when I can, and to ritual and repetition when I can’t. Show up, do the thing at the time, or a version of it that is doable, rest, repeat.
And this week I was able to spend time with a friend (twice!) and got to see a doctor who is a delight, and wow it was so good.
Sunshine almost every day. Lots of people check in on me from afar. I am not alone, even when I perceive that I am. Red chile cauliflower potato soup! Made a large batch each week as part of ritual & repetition, nourishing and delicious.
What worked in January!
Found a rhythm of rinse and repeat with my rituals, not literally because I mostly didn’t have running water, haha, but more like, I got into a steady groove of yes, this is the steady groove, and I crave it.
Craving it is really what I’m going for. Any sparks of desire in a storm, right?
Ran some experiments, all very small and low-stakes.
Started closing my eyes very early in the pursuit of Ten Delicious Hours of Eyes Closed, and it turns out this trick works for me, which is annoying, but there it is.
Started treating 7am yoga hour like I am teaching a class I am very excited about (even if it is just for me). Some days I even do feel a little excited about it, and other days it is a slog, here’s to more of the good ones, but I show up either way.
Added fifteen minutes of gentle stretching before bed.
Instead of thinking about getting into bed before 6pm as a failure, as if I have given up on [everything I used to do], I’m thinking about it as an intentional hibernation and healing practice. Again, if a friend were doing it, I would cheer them on and find the good. Can I do that for myself? Sometimes!
23:23 minutes for getting things done, then if I have to sit down and recover, I do, but this is a good amount of time for me to give to washing dishes or closing tabs, or whatever needs to get done.
What do-overs do I want for the New Year
I want to keep showing up for what is working, for Yoga Hour and Cooking Club (imaginary, currently the only member is me, but anyone is welcome to join me from afar for daily food prep), and closing my eyes in pursuit of Ten Delicious Hours of maybe sleep and maybe eyes-closed, resting and hibernating.
I want to keep adding elements of And I Crave It to these rituals, so that they become more pleasurable and enticing. To yearn to be doing the things I’m doing anyway.
And on the days that these practices are a slog, I want to remember that showing up is worth it, but also I want to be flexible and adaptable, letting myself move on from something that is stuck, come back to it later or reconfigure the plan.
And on the days when I have no energy or a case of bad brain weather, I want to shower myself in love and sweetness, and applaud myself for resting.
Instead of making a list at the end of the day of all the things I didn’t get to that I think I should have, I want to appreciate myself. It is no small feat to navigate this world. We’re just practicing.
What are the qualities of Secret New Year
What are the qualities of Secret New Year / True New Year / Most Holy Feast of Do-Overs forever?
Process. Spaciousness and Expansiveness, aka There’s time.
Experimentation. Compassion.
Sweetness and Comfort. Trust and Hopefulness.
Sanctuary and Structure. Creativity and Play.
Something about layering on these experiences of nourishment and sustenance.
We try things. We notice what’s working and what might help. We tweak the experiment. All intel is useful.
What is my plan for the Feast of Do-Overs
Not much, I never know how much energy I will have, but am going to keep doing the things that work and keep on keeping on.
There will be red chile cauliflower potato soup that I made during Cooking Club time this week.
I might gleam something with extra care, maybe wiping down the cabinets is tomorrow’s gleaming op, if I have the energy for that.
Might do some stone-skipping or a version of a Monday Meeting to get clarity on my wishes for the year.
Nearly every day, if I’m paying attention, an insight or idea-spark will volunteer itself about a small shift I could make to one of my experiments, and I would love to get better at noticing how these add up over time.
Cumulative magic
This goes back to taking the time to pause, remember, appreciate the winding path. While progress might feel slow, it is cumulative.
Resting is not only good practice, it’s when I can turn around and see just how far I’ve come.
Sure, maybe some days it’s too foggy to see. Okay, that happens too, we add compassion, make soup, a breath and another breath for the shifting light and all hope-sparks to come.
Can I undo the habitual mind-trap of linear progress?
And if not, can I notice that I’m in it, and remind myself that it is a mirage. Do-overs forever. Carrot cake and trees and showing up again.
Do-overs are a practice of kindness
Do-overs can be playful. Do-overs can be fractal.
The rewriting and reconfiguring of habits, patterns and existing structures can emerge from anything. Sometimes they come out of a state frustration or a useful if not-fun breakdown. And sometimes they come from appreciation of an already-good something that you want to be even more good.
I have said this probably ten thousand times but: it is brave to try things, and it is also brave to be like, ”Oh yeah absolutely no thanks to that thing I tried!”, and then try something else.
We learn through experimenting and experience. Ritual and repetition, small shifts, add compassion, notice what we notice, regroup, start again.
Happy Feast Day of Do-Overs Forever to you, I hope you are able to feel some hope-sparks and, if you like, begin your year again.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting! All experiments are useful experiments! All Do-Overs are good! You can brainstorm experiments & practices, for rewriting a pattern, whatever you’re working through, People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship is healing.
Wishing you a sweet new year that is an improvement in all ways over the last one, and if you are boycotting the passage of time then pretend I did not mention that! May we all find the supportive rituals, playful experiments and loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
New Year Experiments
New Year Experiments
We’re talking experiments for the new year (my own experiments, and the idea of experiments in general), we’re covering the gentle art of pattern-rewriting, and there might also be sound effects. Whee!
Preface! Context! And the usual parenthetical asides.
It’s that time of year when it seems like everyone online is either talking about their rhymes-with-revolutions, or about how they make a point to not do any.
Are these both reasonable options? Yes! Are there other options? Absolutely. Let’s find out!
And of course, as with everything we want to keep in mind (or hold in the heart, keep in heart? How is that not a phrase?) that People Vary. People Vary.
People Vary
One way we might vary is that some people find the new year invigorating, while some people want to sleep through it. My friend E says he resents even being reminded of the passage of time, fair enough!
Some people love making big changes all at once, and other people like to ease into new patterns and habits in their own timing, either in small increments or just waiting until they feel ready.
One of these approaches is not better than the other, it’s just a matter of figuring out where we land.
And, the People Vary principle also applies to words and how we feel when we encounter them.
We all have our own personal histories with words, layered associations built up over time.
Some words draw us in, some repel us. This can also change with time, and let’s remember that we have some power here too, in the sense that we can always rewrite words and/or our associations with them if we want to. We can play.
But first, we start with just noticing how we feel about these sometimes tricky words, and what they bring up for us. And of course the word I am thinking about specifically right now is resolution, in the sense of New Year’s resolutions.
Start where you are
If resolutions work for you — as a word or concept or a practice (or all of the above!), I love this for you and am excited for your new year resolutions! May all your resolutions come beautifully to fruition, or something even better. Wow, what beautiful wishes…
And if you’d rather opt-out entirely of interacting with anything related to goals, wishes, or anything in between, I support this too. There is so much external pressure to force big change, and that it happens at the exact time of year that is least conducive towards doing anything other than hibernating is honestly kind of cruel, and at best, a really big ask.
This dissonance can be painful, and we’ve talked about this before.
Opting out of the whole thing is not only its own beautiful, creative and subversive practice, it can be a generous gift to yourself. So if that’s what you’re drawn to, I applaud the opting out! Take the detour. Love a detour.
We begin when we begin. When we’re ready.
We begin when we begin
There is so much value and healing goodness in making changes in ways (and at times) that actually support us, and sometimes that means Nap First, receive intel later.
Rest into it or run towards it, whichever you like. Or something else entirely.
(The point!)
All that to say, I am not writing this to convince you of anything, I don’t need you to like resolutions or to be a middle finger to resolutions.
In fact, I genuinely support both of these, as well as any form of Not X, Not Y, But A Third Secret Way, whatever works for you.
I wrote this just to share how I do things. And I don’t need you to do things the way I do them either. All I want is to remind us with love and affection that we have options. We can go our own way. Cue Fleetwood Mac…
* Though I am hearing The Cranberries 1999 Live In Paris version which always makes me cry but in a good way.
A starting point
Maybe my new year practice will spark some ideas for you, maybe you’ll want to review your relationship with resolutions and intentions or [a stand-in for these].
Maybe what you want is a new word, approach or practice, or maybe you’ll realize the way you already approach this transition works really well for you, awesome.
And if none of this is what you want, maybe that clear beautiful no can be a clue that lets you craft something new and different that you like better. Love that too.
New Year Experiments!
The reason I go with experiments over resolutions is they feel more spacious and playful to me.
An experiment involves gathering information (reconnaissance!) and putting together a hypothesis, and being willing to change the hypothesis, or even the entire focus and scope of the experiment, depending on what we learn and how things develop.
Experiments are about being genuinely curious, suspending judgment and releasing expectations. Being present in the moment: willing to be surprised.
There might be some hope-sparks in a certain direction, but the experiment isn’t “good” if it “works” and “bad” if it doesn’t. That’s a misunderstanding of the process. All experiments are useful experiments.
And each experiment yields vital information that leads us to the next experiment.
There are too many unknowns for me to resolve anything one way or the other
I don’t resolve to do anything in particular, to be more x, or have more y, or even to commit to a habit in a certain way for a certain amount of time.
Mainly because I have no idea what’s going to happen, who I am going to be, or what slightly-future-me is going to need. It’s all unknown.
For me, resolutions involve deciding and committing, and I can’t do that because I have no idea what my energy level will be like, or what I’ll be feeling passionate about until I get there.
Example
Last year, in the very first week of January 2022, I got Covid. I was fully vaccinated and boosted so it could have been so much worse, and still, it kicked my ass, turned my life upside down and I am still not close to anything that feels like recovery, whatever that means.
Anyway, I was in pain and non-stop distress for pretty much the first two months of the year, and after that my brain didn’t work.
So it would have been pretty ridiculous — and enormously frustrating — had I resolved to do or produce or get things done, had I wanted to achieve [X number of Y], work out every day, be more this way or that way. None of those were available to me.
Luckily, I hadn’t made any resolutions. I had only renewed some ongoing experiments. Were the parameters of these experiments changed by being incapacitated? Sure, a little, but not much. I was able to shift my experiments and adjust.
A little bit about how I approach experiments!
Compassion is step zero!
But it’s also all the in-between steps.
Rewriting habits and patterns is courageous work. It involves challenging familiarity. We already have our comfy neural pathways, we already whoosh down them automatically, like a toddler on a slide. Wheeee!
If we are going to interrupt our patterns in order to reconfigure them or rewrite them into something better, we want to do it lovingly. Otherwise we’re just reinforcing a bigger pattern of trying to force things or generally being shitty towards ourselves, and what’s the point of that.
What’s the point of reinforcing self-criticism
So part of this practice of Lovingly Interrupting Patterns is noticing when we’ve whooshed down the slide of the old self-criticism pattern, and glowing some compassion and understanding for that too. Oh yeah, no worries, we went whooshing down the familiar path for a minute, so reasonable, so understandable, it’s okay.
Of course we did things the familiar way, that’s why it’s the familiar way. Of course we wanted to force things, of course we were being shitty to ourselves.
That’s the training we’re undoing! Good job, babe.
Good job, babe
Noticing the pattern changes the pattern.
Good job on the noticing.
Good job, stepping over onto the new path.
Good job, being conscious and intentional about being conscious and intentional. Is it always going to work? Hahahaha, not at all. Welcome to being human. Good job, babe, killing it at that too.
When we get into the loop of self-judgment…
And when we forget to be compassionate? Or when it feels impossibly hard…
You guessed it. We can apply compassion there too.
Like this:
Oh wow, I’m having a hard time being compassionate with myself about this old habit-pattern of the mind, and about how long it’s taking to get out of this rut, okay, noted, can we let that be neutral information for now, and remember that it’s okay to have a hard time activating the new response.
Especially when we live in a culture that pretends the best form of motivation is feeling bad about ourselves.
We’ve run the numbers
External culture loves a shame-guilt spiral, even though we have confirmed through years of experimentation that it pretty much never gets us to where we think we want to be! Run that one by the internal scientists.
We’ve run the numbers on this. Can confirm. Feeling terrible about ourselves is at best hit or miss as a form of motivation. It might occasionally work, for a brief period of time, but it backfires more often than not, is not sustainable in any way, and anyway, who wants to live like that, not me.
Nice try, Puritans, you got this one wrong. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Would you like some examples of ongoing experiments I’m working on?
Okay I reviewed my list and there were too many so picking two examples to start with, I can go into these in more detail later if you like (let me know in the comments!) and am also happy to share more about other ongoing experiments in future updates if that’s of interest….
The experiment of A Spacious Morning
This is an experiment about intentional containers of time, and starting my day with the rituals, routines and practices that are most supportive of mental well-being.
Sometimes focusing on morning spaciousness means I’m busier in the evening, but that’s okay for me because early evening is actually when I have more focus.
Things I have learned from the experiment of A Spacious Morning:
+ boundaries support spaciousness (too spacious and my day gets lost to depression and anxiety, or adhd spacing out and autism stimming)
+ 3:33 on a timer will get me to do something I find appealing but challenging
+ 19:33 on a timer will help me do something that will feel good once I start but I’m resisting starting
+ music helps
Tweaking this for 2023:
What happens if we rename the components?
Would it feel good to check these off on a card?
Syncing morning bobcat stretching with sunrise (exception for when night terrors)
The experiment of Naming Wins
It’s easy for me to get into monster-stories about how I have Achieved Nothing, especially since covid stole what was left of my concussion-injured brain, and I spend a lot of my days just trying to remember what I was about to do.
At the end of each day, my self-criticism monsters give me a long depressing list of all the things I didn’t get to, and I have learned that I can apply a neutral mindset to this list, and turn it into reminders for tomorrow-me.
But the main thing I like to do is counter their list with my own list of wins. Sometimes these wins are very small, but they all count, they all add up, and naming them is helpful for me.
Even more helpful is sharing them with a friend who is able to be much more impressed than I am with my list. I have learned that if I name the wins every day, I get better at noticing them throughout the day.
Tweaking this for 2023:
I’m not sure yet, will update when I know. I think it has to do with celebrating more fully. Maybe an emoji for each win on the list. Maybe lighting a candle while compiling the list. It can be hard for me to think I need a high five on any of this, but STUDIES HAVE SHOWN (aka the last few months) that it helps when a friend cheers me on, and I am always happy to cheer them on as well.
Main takeaways
I don’t ever want to turn an experiment into a should, something I use to beat myself up for not doing, or doing wrong, or even for forgetting about.
That’s the entire reason I moved away from resolutions to begin with.
It’s way too easy to let a wished-for practice or habit morph into a stressful obligation. It’s way too easy to feel crappy when we mess up or forget or get too busy or get sick, or [life stuff gets in the way, as it does].
Again, this is mainly the fault of external culture, which wants us to feel bad about ourselves at all times, to always be pushing, striving, trying (and failing) to be “better”, this is how the system maintains status quo and how it maintains itself.
And, as wiser people than me have pointed out, this constant push-push-push hustle-and-grind culture of striving towards an imagined happier, better, unattainable something (but never actually feeling content) is just how capitalism and other forms of hierarchy sustain themselves. So let’s keep interrupting those patterns too.
There is something that is not workaholism and not devoid-of-ambition, but A Third Secret Thing, and I don’t know what it is yet or what it looks like.
Figuring that out is another ongoing experiment, but I do know that it’s a worthwhile question to follow.
What is the opposite of turning a habit into a cudgel
So often we start a new “good” habit, something we have wished for and dreamed of and now we’re doing it, and then the monsters use it as a cudgel for the rest of our life.
I have seen the best minds of my generation eaten alive by this very thing.
The actual work of pattern-rewriting, from noticing the pattern to making space for letting things be how they are, to interrupting the pattern, to switching out an element in the pattern, to applying compassion over and over again, has to be about the opposite of a cudgel.
The new habit isn’t coming in to be the new thing we feel guilty about or frustrated over. Not playing that game is the real new habit.
Easier said than done? Sure. We still get a trillion points, at least, for experimenting with experimenting.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting! All experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm experiments & practices, for rewriting any patterns or whatever you might going through, People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship is healing.
Wishing you a new year that is an improvement in all ways over the last one, and if you are boycotting the passage of time then pretend I did not mention that! May we all find the supportive rituals, playful experiments and loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, it’s still slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, and it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, currently focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
Three Months Later
Quarters, Quarters & the Superpower of X
Three Months Later…
A trope I adore in a television series is the card that tells you how much time has passed. I am especially fond of Three Months Later…
Three months later…
Dot dot dot…
A beautiful container of time
Three months is such a rewarding amount of time to be given, or to have passed through, or to imagine passing through. A quarter of the year has gone by. A season came and went.
Our beloved protagonist has been through some things. They are different, possibly in some ways unrecognizable, whether to us or to themselves. Very strong New Hairstyle Energy here, love this.
I am very drawn to the superpowers hiding inside of Three Months Later. Transitions and transformations. Off-screen. Unrecognizable in a good way. Things shifted, as they had to, for reasons, and we are about to learn what is now and how it is new.
That moment of about to learn how is where the appeal is to me the most: what transpired in the missing time and space, what shifted for this person we care about?
Yes, tell me more (show me more) about what happened during the ellipses, the later inside the three months later, dot dot dot…
Dot dot dot…
When I am going through some things, and wow have I been going through some things, I hold fast to the superpowers of Three Months Later and Dot Dot Dot…
Like, okay, time is baffling, things are rough or painful, the grief is overwhelming, this is all true, IIWIMI (It Is What It Motherfucking Is), and what’s also true is that three months is a good container of time for experiments, rituals and discoveries.
In three months, some things will be the same, and some will have shifted, and I will have more perspective, maybe even more compassion that I can glow, inward and outward, into my own relationship with the painful things, and outward into the world.
Glowing perspective and compassion: towards and away, forwards and backwards, through time and space, letting them find their way, rippling through the river, onward: to past and future quarters, for recent and incoming selves.
To past and future quarters, for recent and incoming selves. A toast, and a rippling through.
This is the magic.
This is the magic. This is some of what can happen during the dot dot dot…
Whether I spend those three months hiding in bed, crying at the edge of the void, clawing my way out of the pit of despair-anxiety-depression, baking gluten-free broccoli-jalapeño bread each week until I find my exact right version, visiting my favorite tree, and/or some combination of the above…
Dot. Dot. Dot.
I go through what I go through, I learn what I learn, we made it to the next quarter, a thousand points, and at some point it is possible to discern some treasure in what was, or what was learned, or just having been through it.
Or not. Treasure-finding not required. But it has been known to happen.
The treasure in the reframing
This is also related to what is sometimes called Reframing.
In other words, sometimes our perception is that there is zero treasure in a given situation, and while we absolutely don’t have to force ourselves to find treasure, sometimes someone else has a perspective that shifts our story for us, in a good way.
Soup, bread, repeat
I told my chef friend Michael about how I was feeling disappointed and sad that I just baked the same two things over and over again from autumnal equinox to winter solstice, and also made the same soup on repeat. Green chile cauliflower potato soup.
Extremely delicious. Zero complaints. This is my favorite soup, and I did not get bored of it.
But also something about sorrow and regret, a perception (or a monster story? aka a self-criticism narrative?) about how I had been neglecting my true-yes wishes about Wildly Experimenting, A Joyful Obsession, Expanding My Abilities.
He said, “You know, there’s something to be said for not moving on to the next thing too soon. It’s good to refine things, nail them down, internalize them, etc, so they become truly yours and an expression of yourself. You’re doing great. Keep grinding!”
It’s good to refine things, actually
And suddenly my perspective on the last three months shifted. I was just refining some things. And I actually love REFINEMENT as a practice, as a power.
In fact, that’s something I already know about, from yoga and dance and sun salutations, it just hadn’t occurred to me that it might also apply to soup.
And so my monster-story about how I am not innovating because I am unfathomably, impossibly stuck, just depressed-boring-stuck (and my cooking habits are undeniable proof of this!) dissolved immediately.
I am refining. Repetition is refining, and refinement is about getting to know yourself intimately. It is brave to pause, wait, refine, not rush on to the next thing. I’m doing okay, actually. It’s safe to take this time.
Three months later…! Dot dot dot…!
There it is. I refined things, without even knowing that’s what I was doing, and then I received a vital new perspective, I was able to that refining things was a valuable practice, and not a sign that I’d moved into the pits of the despair.
What else am I wrong about?
I thought I had mostly spent equinox to solstice in the pits of despair, but maybe that’s not the truth of that quarter, maybe those weren’t my quarters at all. What else am I wrong about!
This might be my favorite useful question, asked with love, in service of loving clarity. What am I wrong about here?
What really happened in my Three Months Later…?
Quarters (quarters!)
A delightful (to me) discovery I made probably ten years ago continues to be as enchanting as ever (in my brain).
The year divides into quarters, and quarters is also a word for living space. A segment of time, aka a quarter of the year, and also a designated space to call home.
There are my quarters. Captain’s quarters.
Here is a temporary home that is also a quarter of the year. Three months in which to experience [whatever happens inside of that time], and emerge.
You could say that quarters are a kind of chrysalis. You enter them and then [MYSTERY] and then it’s three months later….
My quarters — and here I mean both the period of time, and the living space I occupy, are what hold me as I experience whatever it is, from making soup and baking bread to rededicating myself to the practice of refinement.
What do I want from my quarters?
What do I want from my quarters?
And/or:
How do I want to feel in my quarters?
Shall we retreat to our quarters? Oh, but they have been redecorated! New and familiar. We’ve been here before and we have never been here before. It’s okay. We Trained For This. Remember?
Maybe.
Return to familiar quarters / rededicate our quarters
Each time I think about this (quarters & quarters), I turn into the living embodiment of the heart-eyes emoji. Is it my pattern-obsessed autistic brain, or my burning love for the playfulness of language, the poetry and symmetry of overlapping words, or all of the above, who knows…
I just love thinking about time as space!!!
And I love the imagery of oh it is winter again, and so we return to familiar quarters (we trained for this!) and we are able to steal a new glimpse! Here’s some more information about who we are, what we need to thrive in this time-space, and how we have changed since the last time we were here.
Or maybe it is time to rededicate our quarters, to re-imagine how we want to exist inside this container of time, this real and imagined living space.
Here we are again, but it’s different this time. Now is not then.
And here we are again: Very Interior Design.
Happy solstice (or maybe happy isn’t the right word)
You of course are welcome to design your quarters any way you like, or maybe quarters isn’t how you interact with your year at all. Some people like the clean start of January, some people like the fresh-notebook smell of September.
As you have already gathered, I like to set up my calendar from solstice to equinox to solstice and back around again.
Let X = Three Months.
Let me set up my space for the known quantities of these three months, run my experiments, learn what I learn, see what changes, until Three Months Later.
I wrote up some solstice wishes, and can share them here later if you like. And I wrote up my notes for the next quarter, and for my winter quarters, named the Known Quantities, and can share those too.
Of course there is much room for unknowns, because unknowns is most of what we are working with.
But there are known elements…
Known elements, for example
- I do not love being cold!
- It helps to actively notice as the days get longer!
- I will be sad on certain days because of past heartbreak, and this calls for a Feast of Liberations or we can invent a new holiday, a Feast of Small Gods!
- Menu-planning helps! Candles help! Soup helps!
- It’s okay to have soup every day in winter! We are refining something that is nourishing, sustaining and delicious.
- Winter is challenging for me, but also I can call on the superpower of We Trained For This!
What else about Known Elements?
Known elements help me strategize.
Some known elements lead to mysteries that need solving.
Some known elements lead to solutions.
Example of a mystery that needs solving
Known element: Ten days is how long I can go without a shower before losing my entire mind.
My trailer doesn’t have hot water or a heated bathroom or a fan, so I have to heat up water for daily wash cloth baths, and what I have learned is that this solution works fine for a week, and then it kind of works for up to three more days, and then it doesn’t work at all.
After ten days I require a real shower or I land in the pits of despair, but actually I need to arrange for this shower to happen every seven days because if something goes wrong with the logistics, then whoops, I’m in the pits of despair again, and it turns out that clawing my out of the pits of despair can be very difficult, even with a map. Even with a shower.
During this period of up to seven days without a shower, a shower will magically cure mild depression, moodiness and irritability.
But if things go sideways because of circumstances (snowed in, icy roads, various situations) and we get to twelve days, then acquiring a shower will no longer solve things, because I will already be in the pits of despair, and it takes a lot more than a shower to get me out of them again.
Erased from the brain
Somehow I forget this entire phenomenon, and by “somehow” I mean ADHD plus traumatic brain injury plus long covid (the trifecta), but also I have learned that it can be mysteriously hard for many of us to remember the basics of self-care, and for that I blame external culture.
Anyway, I have this information about what I need to not fall into the pits of despair, and at the same time I forget it, or I forget to prioritize it, or I try to prioritize it but circumstances get in the way, and the past three months have involved too many trips in and out of those pits.
See, we are learning things. Learning and refining. This is also the crux of the mystery.
Asking for new solutions to reveal themselves
Currently, way too much of my energy and attention go to either a) trying to Solve For A Shower, or b) trying to solve for Clawing My Way Out of The Pits Of Despair because I did not solve for a shower, or c) recovering from my time in the pits.
I am hoping that in this next period of [Three Months Later, Dot Dot Dot…], a perfect simple solution will reveal itself, or maybe there are multiple solutions.
We have talked about this before, but solution is also a word for a body of water, a solution is liquid, a solution solves-and-dissolves.
Solutions are like quarters in that each word has two meanings that sometimes overlap and sometimes don’t. Solutions come in waves. Quarters come in quarters.
I can live in my quarters and bathe in solutions. May it be so, or something even better.
Three Months Later, Dot Dot Dot
I am wishing you all the most beautiful solstice wishes. If you are here with me in the northern hemisphere, battling the bitter cold, then I am wishing you warmth, comforts, coziness, high regard hygge, luscious upgrades, whatever is needed, and the hopeful reminder that in a few weeks, we will have noticeably incrementally longer days.
If you are in the southern hemisphere, then I wish you cool breezes, ease of ease, replenishment, sweet comforts, whatever is needed.
And for all of us, as many glorious reassuring permission slips as we need to support us in existing outside of any cultural pressures to reinvent ourselves for the new year, or come up with resolutions or do anything at all in this period of extreme temperatures and indicated nap-time.
Siesta life is what is indicated, not taking up running.
Though of course, whatever brings you joy is what I wish you, and if that’s running, then god bless. I support it.
Grand experiments
As you already know from reading and hanging out here, I am not a fan of new year’s resolutions but I am a big fan of experiments, so maybe something I will write about soon is past and future (and ongoing) experiments in my life, many of which are related to quarters and quarters.
And one of my experiments is sharing more of what I write instead of keeping it to myself.
Though to be fair, sometimes I keep it to myself because I forget about it, but that just makes the experiment even more about pattern-mapping, and all experiments are about pattern-mapping, and much of what I write about is on the theme of pattern-mapping, so it all works!
Another experiment is about having more ritual around my writing, so maybe that’s something to share as well.
Looking forward-and-towards
I am looking forward to these new cozy winter quarters, this period of time and space in which to chrysalis, to emerge with a Three Months Later title card and see where the experiments take me, I am looking forward to updating on my experiments as I experiment.
Of course I am looking forward to green chile cauliflower potato soup, and I am looking forward to getting better at making shredded non-dairy fake-cheese.
Obviously I am not looking forward to visits to the pits of despair or the work of clawing my way out, but I am looking forward to being a better observer, especially when it comes the Refinement Ops of getting better at not falling in to begin with, and strategizing ways to bring more ease into my life so that I’m not spending so much time at the pit edge.
At the very least, I have done some refining when it comes to how I find my way back to the surface, and to how much I can trust that process and my own skill level. Hey, I trained for lots of things, as it turns out.
Good surprises
And I am looking forward to good surprises, as-yet-unknown treasures and pleasures, the reframings that have not yet been reframed, discovering how to imbue this process with even more compassion, and learning how to making a sweet home inside this new quarter.
Maybe I don’t dread winter as much as I think I do, or maybe there is a new way of relating to this time period.
More than anything, I am looking forward to rededicating and redecorating, symbolically and otherwise.
Here’s to time-space and feeling at home in new quarters. Safe passage for this. Wishing all this for you too, or something even better…
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
You can brainstorm experiments & practices, for rewriting any patters or for whatever you might going through, People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship is healing.
Wishing you a solstice full of light, happy Hannuka (festival of dedicating & rededicating if you are celebrating), and an easy safe joyful passage into the new year, with whatever rearranging of cargo that entails, or blissful guilt-free hibernation time, whatever is needed.
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, it’s still slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, and it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, currently focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
Immersion
Immersion
Each day it gets a little colder here, and I wake up with the daunting knowledge that my first and biggest challenge is going to be finding my way out of bed. Bed is, if not the good place then at least the comfortable place: burrowed under a weighted blanket weighed down by more blankets, snuggled up to a heating pad, toasty-warm, inviting me to stay a while longer…
Getting up is the opposite of enticing: cold, anxiety-inducing. A source of dread.
My tiny house is unheated, I know that I will see my breath for at least the first few hours, already anticipating the shriek I will let out when I go to wash my hands, the water so cold that it almost burns.
Some way or another, I am going to have to be my own hero, braver than I can imagine from within my cave of blankets, braver than the marines, and just do it. Just get up, babe. I believe. Mostly.
What time is it? Bravery time!
I keep my clothes in my bed, like on a camping trip, so I can change out of sleepwear and into a different set of warm layers, safely beneath the covers. In between I reach out a hand for the wooden handle of a dry brush, hanging from a hook on the wall.
Dry-brushing skin is good for my anxiety, good for keeping me grounded, but is also the part that demands the most bravery.
I have learned that it helps to play music or a podcast to help me focus, and also that this is not enough: always set a bell as a timer, or I might end up staring into space for hours, caught up in a stim-cycle closed loop, running fingers through my hair, or drumming them on the bed.
Then it’s bravery time: hat on, run into the front room, turn on the space heater, light three candles, measure out two mason jars of water to heat, one at a time, start running. 3:33, let’s go.
3:33
Running is an exaggeration, it’s more of a light jog, which might also be an exaggeration, let’s call it slightly faster than a brisk walk, tracing figure eights on the kitchen rug, arms crossed tightly or hands folded, thumbs pressing into my chest because I definitely don’t have the ability to navigate a sports bra these days, the goal is to keep painful jostling to a minimum.
3:33 = the time the timer is set for.
One set of 3:33 of kitchen-jogging, combined with the humming space heater and the steam from the kettle, warms me up enough to be able to take my hat off. The second 3:33 might get me to unbutton my top layer. Progress.
I usually do 3:33 x 4, or 3:33 x 5, depending. One of these is the right amount of time for a jog. By the time I’m done, the sky is less dark, I am slightly more energized, and am rewarded with a steaming jar of hot water with lemon to drink. The second jar of heated water is for washing my hands, delaying the shriek until later when I inevitably forget to heat more water.
Progress, again. It all counts.
What’s in a habit
The word habit is so boring, and yet the work of rewriting patterns (and what is a habit if not a collection of patterns 👀) is maybe the thing I am most passionate about, the reason I started this business nearly twenty years ago.
And if I know anything about shifting habits, it’s that the work of [Trying Things, Without Judgment], always yields results. All experiments are useful experiments, maybe even especially the things that don’t work, or don’t work the way I think they will.
We try things, but mainly: we try them with a playful, compassionate approach
This practice is also how we accidentally stumble our way into things that do work, many of which we might never have come up with through trying to be practical or logical (like 3:33, why does it work? I don’t know, it just does, for me, right now, and that’s enough), it works until it doesn’t, it is until it isn’t, and then we try something new…
Transitions & sweetness
The difficult thing for me (after being the bravest person on earth and getting out of bed, despite all odds) is the transitions, whether that’s the transition between Warming Up and starting my workout, the transition from breakfast to getting things done, the transition from doing into rest time.
This is also heavily ritualized for me. Ten minutes on the balance board. Dance around the room for three songs. The right snacks, currently: a dried banana and a slightly caffeinated warm beverage.
I am also big believer in the twin superpowers of Dessert First and Solved By Cake.
Yesterday I made chocolate halva pudding and this morning I had some for pre-breakfast, and it was the answer to so many things.
Enticements: what are yours?
But then again, I really, really like enticing things (yes, I mean both the practices and rituals that feel enticing to me, and also of course the verb, being the enticement), and so this is information I have about myself that I can use both playfully and strategically.
The pieces of intel you acquire as you do reconnaissance on yourself, or the things you already know to be true about yourself that you can use (to tempt, motivate, inspire, or simply remind you of the things you know you will forget) might be different than mine, which is fine.
That’s why we experiment.
We are just gathering information about how we function in this world, and what we need to function better, and both of these might change over time. That’s okay too.
Use what works, take notes, try again
Being a human in a body is complicated and weird, and that might be both the least and most wise thing I have to say on this topic in the moment.
All experiments are useful experiments, a thousand points (at least!) for trying.
We use what works (or what might work), we take notes, and we bravely try again.
Hot water and other mysteries
Do you remember when my hot water heater stopped working back in February (probably from the pipes flooding, but also it turned out there was a rat’s nest inside of it, love this journey for me), and then I was stuck in limbo waiting on a small and hard-to-find part that was delayed indefinitely due to supply chain issues…?
The missing piece was located, but it turned out that the heater is still unfix-able, so now it needs to be replaced, which launched a disagreement that turned into a series of fights between me and former handyman.
He wants to keep things on propane, while I am still traumatized from last year’s house fire and want to move to electric. He wants to install a larger heater underneath the house, I don’t want a situation where if the heater stops working again, someone needs to take off the siding and slide into a crawl space, especially when the only people who fix things around here are close to seventy years old and recovering from hip surgery.
So is this even about hot water, I’m not sure
I am told there are places where people will just fix things the way you want them to be fixed? Like, you can just say what you want and the person you are paying to do it will do it? But not here apparently, or maybe this is yet another ongoing experiment in Boundary Stuff, we will see.
Anyway, the point is that I don’t have hot water, the situation seemingly has no solution other than that I need a new hot water heater and someone to replace it, and somehow there are only two people in the entire county who know how to fix things if you can catch them when they aren’t busy, also I do not particularly trust either of them, and at least one of them is going to fight me hard every step of the way.
Immersion
I make do with daily hot towel “baths”, dipping washcloths in a jug of steaming water, fresh from the kettle, using wooden tongs to fish them out.
When I can’t take it anymore and need a proper shower as well as the experience of being immersed in water to satisfy my piscean nature and to tend to the trauma self who wants to basically live in warm water full-time, I take myself on a day trip and visit some hot springs.
Some are nicer than others. I’m not sure how this is going to work when winter comes for real and the roads are snowy or icy, but I also don’t currently have another way of solving this other than lighting candles at the altar of And It Solves Itself.
May it solve itself, easily and beautifully, without my input. I welcome all simple, sustainable solutions.
Talk to me about IMMERSION
Hot springs are an obvious form of immersion: source from the source. Into the waters.
But writing is also an immersion. 3:33s are a form of immersion.
Immersion supports wishing. Immersion supports new ways of seeing things. Immersion is hope-based (may things get better), and immersion is a release-mechanism (may I stop trying to push and force my way into answers when I can let the warmth of the water remind me about softening…)
Immersion versus Immersive
I am thinking about experiences of immersion and immersing, and how they are similar and different, like meditating and meditative but also not like that at all.
Similarly, I am thinking about containers of time as a form of intentional immersing.
What qualities, wishes and experiments am I immersing myself in for November, or from equinox to solstice?
November wishes and superpowers
This morning it was easier than it has been for me in a while, to bravely get out of bed, to launch myself into 3:33s, to flow through 36×17 sun salutations (another form of immersion, another form of stimming) and to get myself to eat warm, nourishing food, with less coaxing needed than in October.
So that’s a hopeful noticing, and I am collecting good omens like this for It Solves Itself November, which is also Resetting The Rituals November and Higher High Regard November, a November of Surprise Ease aka Even Easier Than That November, which might also be Find The Fun Way November.
My friend Kathryn suggested NO-vember (to help refuse things that are Not Yes), which I love. Just Say No (vember!) to whatever is not needed here.
I also love Vember, a mystery word that rhymes with remember, and after all the work of rewriting habits is in the remembering. I love how Vember is not a word but it contains V + Ember.
V + Ember
V = Victory, Vengeance, Voluptuousness, and things that are Very-Very (over the top, delightfully too much which is just enough)
Ember = still burning actually, aka even when I think I have lost hope or my sense of self or a sense of what I desire or where to go next, the fire is still lit, a small sweet spark, eternal flame, still going.
Wishing some wishes for November and beyond
I am wishing for:
- more immersing (in delicious warm water and in general)
- sweet sweet focus
- a simple easy solution to having hot water in the trailer
- simple easy appealing solutions for showering
- rituals that are fun and enticing (how can I make them so luscious that I crave them)
- treasuring myself even more (new levels of high regard)
- reinforce what needs reinforcing
- no worry no hurry (but also not going into tendencies of being overly-flexible, cough, people pleasing)
- finding the joy in trailer life
- what is the opposite of dread / what would it be like to stop second-guessing everything?
Calling on (and in) some superpowers for November and beyond
Superpowers of…
It Solves Itself
Victory From The Embers
A Thousand Points For Remembering (and no judgment for forgetting again)
I Am A Badass Cowboy Actually
I Am A Creative Force
The Return Of Desire
The Fun Way Exists And Will Reveal Itself When I Look For It
Even Easier Than That
The Fun Way Exists And Will Reveal Itself When I Look For It?!
Tell me more about that please…
Things That Solved Themselves In October
So many things in this category, actually! An astonishing number.
Including: finally convincing the wifi company to send out a tech to adjust the satellite so now I have signal again. A friend who is possibly an actual angel came to visit from Washington State, camped out on my property, and insulated beneath my trailer, and also made a list of all the things local fix-it people did not do, despite having said they did, and then did those too.
Oh, and as you may have noticed from this long-form piece that was not finger-typed on my phone, I now have a working keyboard again! With love and gratitude to a retreat person / blog reader who sent me a spare keyboard, so now I can type again, the joy!
Another retreat friend researched local flu shots for me when I was having an especially bad brain week.
And I finessed some recipes I’ve been playing with for a while: green chile cauliflower potato soup, a chocolate dandelion root powder banana bread, and the perfect pre-breakfast halva pudding.
It was solving itself all along
Sure, there may be many items still in the Ongoing Frustrating Unsolved Mystery category, and yet, when I remember to pause, pay attention and ask the right questions, I am able to recognize all the ways in which things have been solving themselves all along, problems generating their own solutions, is that not also an immersion in luck and love and magic?
If it was solving itself all along, what else is solving itself right now, beneath the surface, generating its own solutions?
Let’s keep remembering, noticing, asking, playing, wondering, wishing, getting out of bed (when we can, if we can, if that’s an option) or the symbolic equivalent, being brave for three minutes and thirty three seconds at a time, getting back into bed because that’s also a win and sometimes it’s really the only indicated answer, and let’s keep investigating these questions.
What do I need? What might help? Where is the ease?
Lighting a candle for the questions.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
You can brainstorm experiments & practices, for rewriting any patters or for whatever you might going through, People Vary.
And as always, you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, themes you’re playing with, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship is healing.
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, it’s slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, and it all helps with fixing what needs fixing, currently focused on making it through winter.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️