The Fluent Self

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?

* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.

Friday Chicken #100: Calling all Chickeneers of the High Seas!

by Havi Brooks | Jul 2, 2010 | updates & announcements

Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.

And you get to join in if you feel like it.

We did it.

The first one hundred chickens.

It’s official.

And thank you for the sweet, insightful things you guys came up with on the 100 Chickens announcement regarding the art of chickening.

That was lovely.

The hard stuff

So tired that half my vacation has just been recovery mode.

Schleepy and out of focus.

Trying to catch up to myself.

And then a long troubled sleepless Monday night.

Oof.

The timing. It was the wrongest.

I lost my temper.

And snapped at some poor kid.

She was probably thirteen. And had just discovered that when one rubs the edge of a wine glass with one’s finger, one can unleash a vibrate-ey ear-drum-piercing sound that echoes through the room.

And I let her re-discover it four or five excruciating times before I just couldn’t stand it anymore.

That was the first mistake: better not to wait until you’re considering aiming a plate at someone’s head.

Right. The first rule of being a Highly Sensitive Person: remove yourself from situations that cause the crazy.

Anyway, I am highly sensitive. And that unbearable sound was cutting into my soul. So I made her stop.

It was a little harsh. It was not the most sovereign behavior. I felt bad.

I still feel bad, actually.

Because then she was all slumped over and awkward, the way thirteen year olds are anyway, and I felt even more bad. And then the family left.

Sigh. I’m sorry, kid.

What can I say. Nothing that helps.

I’m a fairy, and fairies don’t do well with high-pitched noises. It’s no excuse.

I’m Israeli, and we don’t really censor ourselves. It’s no excuse.

I’m sorry.

Not long enough.

Stupid addictive vacationing.

I want more nothing!

The good stuff

Actually, I love napping.

So yeah, maybe it was kind of boring to go to bed at 8:30 and spend big chunks of the day in bed, but yay.

And as the week moved along, my strength came back, slowly but surely.

As it always does. Which I know. And forget.

(That sound you hear is me scribbling away in in the Book of Me.)

Horizon.

Deep blue sea.

Nothing to look at but all that blue.

This is what always restores my sanity. Getting my Piscean self across from wherever the water is.

All that water. Remembering. It’s good for me.

Straight into the Book of Me. Again.

All sorts of crazy insights and epiphanies.

As always happens, the act of Intentionally Not Working accidentally launched all sorts of ridiculously great project ideas.

So I’m coming back with an entire notebook of scribbled bits of goodness and newly minted techniques that I’m way too excited about.

The two Mary Russell novels I had on the iPhone.

Were my salvation on a desperate sleepless Monday night.

That and room service. Bless those people.

And bless Laurie King for being such a thoughtful, entertaining writer.

Saw a bald eagle.

And then it landed on a church spire, perched on the top of the cross and looked extremely pleased with itself.

Just exquisite.

No internets.

I thought this one was going to go in the hard section, but it’s actually been really great.

The only time I had access to the internet this week was yesterday afternoon for a couple hours.

All the stuff I thought I’d miss? Nope. Not even slightly. The only thing I missed was checking in with you guys.

Results!

So I did this one day Shiva Nata teacher training in the beginning of June.

And now all the people who thought they weren’t ready and were never going to actually teach this stuff anyway are teaching it.

One of them even got a gig teaching it at a retreat.

Go go gadget neural-connections! And hooray for more Shivanauts in the world doing fabulous shivanautical things.

100 Chickens, people.

I honestly never thought this little weekly ritual thing would ever be anything that anyone would enjoy other than me.

THANK YOU.

(And a good from last week that I forgot.)

We had the brilliant Communicatrix (Colleen!) at my Kitchen Table program last week to do a call with us.

She said all sorts of smart, interesting, useful things that I’ve been playing with in my head.

Plus we got to talk in gangster voices. Feeling lucky and grateful that the thing I do for a living also gives me an excuse to hang out with people I admire and talk about stuff.

Yay.

And … playing live at the meme beach house!

Yes, that’s a Stuism too.

My brother and I have this thing where we come up with ridiculous band names and then say in this really pretentious, knowing tone, “Oh, well, you know, it’s just one guy.”

This week it’s that one band.

Bavarian Variant.

They’re pretty good, actually. Except that it’s actually just one guy.

That’s it for me …

And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.

Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?

And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day and a restful weekend-ing.

And a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.

The Pirate Queen’s Vacationing Notebook

by Havi Brooks | Jul 1, 2010 | stuff I think about

So I’m on Official Non-Emergency Pirate Queen Holiday this week.

As you might imagine, there has been much journaling.

Thought you might like a peek at some of the bits and pieces in the Pirate Queen Vacation Spiral Notebook.

I hope it mostly makes sense.

The part I’m putting here started out as entries in the Book of Me, and then turned into something else.

The question/challenge.

The thing I’m trying to figure out:

What do the most creative periods in my life have in common?

I’m interested both in determining the defining conditions that these periods share and what happens to me when I’m in them.

These creative periods. What do I know about being in them?

I invent.

And there is an enormous amount of reflection. An enormous amount of working on my stuff.

I come up with new techniques. I sleep well. I bring things into the world.

Have organizational impulses.

Aesthetic opinions become stronger.

I am, for the most part, relaxed and happy.

I am in a state of flow.

Not the best term, maybe. But really, all the words I can think of that people use to describe this thing (“peak performance”) are kind of depressing.

What happens is this: things come together. I am the process and the do-er and the observer. It is sparkly.

What do I know about the setting and the elements involved?

Or: What are my own personal ideal conditions for this kind of creativity?

away from internet
not working (or at least not working regular hours)
lots of walking (especially the kind that doesn’t involve interruptions — in a park, in the woods, around a lake, on a ship, places with minimum traffic)
plenty of non-walking exercise (yoga, Shiva Nata, dance, movement, stairs)
lots of time outdoors (especially near trees or water)
time for writing and thinking
time for napping

Times in my life that were major periods of creative output:

1) Working in the orchard.

2) The infamous Zebra period.

3) My year in Berlin.

4) The three Pirate Queen vacations.

These are the times in my life when I’ve done my best writing, my best thinking, had my best ideas.

These are also the times in which I have had all or most of my personal conditions of creativity met.*

* Note: I am not in any way implying that these are THE conditions of creativity. Your own Book of You will be different from mine.

What I know (and need to remember):

There may be more elements I’ve forgotten.

And I may not actually need all of these to be in play. But: the more conditions met, the greater the state of creative happiness.

Sometimes I tend to think that these are luxury conditions.

But they aren’t. In two of these scenarios I was unemployed and barely getting by.

However, it is much easier to create when survival stuff isn’t at the fore.

The elements are more important than the form.

Is that true?

What if my dream job is not my dream job?

The orchard job was the best job I’ve ever had. It’s been sixteen years since then and I still love those trees. Even though they’re gone now.

Climbing all day.

Alone. With steady hands and rich smells.

Writing in the evenings. Crawling exhausted into bed.

Perfect.

But I didn’t have a Book of Me then. And so: what if I’ve been wrong?

What if it wasn’t the orchard-ness but the elements and the conditions?

What if movement + tired + smells + outdoors + time + free wandering mind is the combination? Or close to it?

What if I can have all of that without having to find the orchard?

I need to recreate the orchard without the orchard.

And in order to do that I need to take this to more of an extreme. I need to plan a sabbatical.

But it can’t be called that.

And it needs to meet these conditions of creative flow.

And I’m pretty sure it needs to be away from Portland.

At the very least, I need access to outdoor exercise that is not hampered/interrupted by people.

This is going to be interesting, since I have no idea how this is going to work.

And that’s where I’ll stop for now.

Most of the stuff I wrote this week was a) super practical problem-solving biggification stuff, b) theoretical philosophical musings or c) emotional destuckifying and talking to monsters.

This was the one bit that wasn’t any of those things. Not sure why that’s the piece I wanted you guys to have. But that’s where I ended up. And maybe it will end up being useful in some unexpected way.

Comment zen for today.

I’m not interested in advice. Still in processing mode.

But if you have notes for the Book of You or stuff you’re working on or reading this made you think about your own relationship to creativity, that’s awesome. And you’re welcome to share any and all of that.

Because you never know when where you are ends up being useful to someone else reading.

We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a process. Blowing kisses from far away.

Item! Who doesn’t want a Tweedle Bug?

by Havi Brooks | Jun 30, 2010 | stuff I think about

Fluent Self Item! A somewhat goofy mini-collection of stuff I’ve been reading, stuff I’ve been thinking about and oh, some completely random crap.

Basically the stuff that never gets mentioned here because I’m not the kind of person who can just make some teeny little point. Not into the whole brevity thing, as the Dude would say.

Actually, I’m under the strict compulsion to write ten pages about anything on my mind. So this is me. Practicing brevity.

Stuff worth reading.

Item! Post No. 61-ish in an occasional on-and-off series that comes and goes and is sometimes on a Wednesday.

Item! How to get a truck driver to trust you.

Every time my friend Kelly from Copylicious (yes, the one who bullied me into starting this blog once upon a time) writes a post, I decide it’s my absolute favorite post in the entire world.

But they just keep getting better

This one about how to get a truck driver to trust you is brilliant. For so many reasons.

Read between the delicious lines and learn.

But then this: the 34 stages of editorial enlightenment.

She reads my brain.

She’s @copylicious on Twitter.

Item! These are beautiful

Daily photographs from Walter Hawn.

I really liked:

A moonlit night.

And the cook’s station.

And you can buy prints, which I think is lovely.

Walter is a stand up guy. And he’s @WalterHawn on Twitter.

Item! All universal truths sound stupid because they’re not supposed to be heard with your ears.

Wise, wise words from Frank.

If you’re a Shivanaut, you’ll hugely appreciate everything he has to say.

And if you’re not a Shivanaut yet, please read this.

All universal truths sound stupid because they’re not supposed to be heard with your ears.

“Then things can shift and change because you’re dealing with what’s real for you, instead of trying to filter your reality through someone else’s words.”

He’s @elimossinary on Twitter.

Item! Speaking of.

Erin, another lovely Shivanaut from Australia, passed this one on to me with the hysterical comment “and Shivanauts say ‘duh’ to this revealing scientific research”.

An article from the Boston globe, suggesting that we think with our bodies.

Uh huh.

“The term most often used to describe this new model of mind is ’embodied cognition,’ and its champions believe it will open up entire new avenues for understanding — and enhancing — the abilities of the human mind.”

The applications are way more interesting than anything they come up with in the article, but it’s a place to start.

She’s @erinibbertson on Twitter.

Item! I am Eloise. I am twenty-three.

Got to this via Colleen, of course.

Eloise, all grown up. And working as an intern.

Genius. Thanks, McSweeney’s. Thanks, Sarah Geller. Love it.

“THINGS I AM AFRAID OF: Girls who don’t wear pants, Graydon Carter, the eight-feet tall models who moonlight at Vogue, the cafeteria, everyone in gladiator heels, my boss, the guys in the mail room who don’t respond to my flirting, the bipolar blog editor, everything.”

Item! A sweet post

This bit from Jacquelyn about how abundance works better than fencing is about Facebook contests.

But it’s also about gardening and about business and imagination.

I really like Jacquelyn.

She’s @jacquelynkitt on Twitter.

Item! More monster conversations.

In which Maryann talks down her procrastination monsters in a wonderfully down-to-earth way.

Monster: It’s all the same?

Me. Yes.

Monster. Hmm.

She’s @maryanndevine on Twitter.

Item! I have a crush on Ugly Gerbil

I love everything about this Etsy shop but ohmygod the copy.

It’s so great.

Not only do I want to buy every single one of his charmingly nutty monsters but I want to read every description. This is Chad the Tweedle Bug.

“Chad the amigurumi Tweedle Bug saw what you did there, and he is shocked. SHOCKED I tells ya!

Now fer the love of jeezlepete, step away from the mayonnaise.

He’s got three rows of noodly pincer arms, but he’s much too shocked to do any serious pinching. His mismatched pop-eyes are an astonished shade of deep blue.

I thank you for looking, but Chad can only stare in mute astonishment.”

Yay!

Item! Comments! Here’s what I want this time:

Things you’re thinking about.
A name for a game. It involves patchwork quilts, crowns, iguanas, chickens, points that matter, points that don’t matter and silliness. The name does not have to be related to any of these. Thanks!

My commitment.

I am committed to giving time and thought to the things that people say. Even though asking for what I want still feels awkward for me, I’m just going to remind myself that this is a thing I’m practicing.

That is all.

Happy reading.

And happy Blustery Windsday. See you tomorrow.

One Hundred Chickens.

by Havi Brooks | Jun 29, 2010 | updates & announcements

I like rituals. This is not a secret.

I like the way they can be tiny and silly and mysterious all at the same time.

How they cultivate mindfulness but not in some annoying “ooh I’m being mindful” way.

How they can be private and communal at the same time. How they mark time and encourage discernment and reflection.

How you can just make them up whenever you want to.

Two years. Almost.

Just about two years ago (August 8, 2008), I started doing this thing on Fridays where I listed the hard stuff and the good stuff in my week.

First it was called the Round-up. And then it was the Check-In. Which eventually (by Friday Chicken #59) became the Chicken.

The Friday Chicken!

Partly because of the extremely charming chicken graphic my designer made. And partly because the more it became apparent that this was only funny to me, the more I liked it.

And then we couldn’t stop.

I didn’t think I could keep it going for more than a few weeks. But people started joining me.

Pretty soon we had regulars.

And not just what you’d think: everyone chickening about whatever happened in his or her week.

People actively helping each other out, cheering each other’s good stuff, sending love for the hard stuff.

Kind of a weekly get-together. And always a mix of people who have never chickened before and people who do it every week. We care about each other.

I started getting over my “oh, nobody cares about the stupid stuff that happened in your week” monster-stories.

It started being fun.

Like most rituals, it just got kookier over time.

After about fifty-five of them, I was able to stop referring to each one as an “edition”.

Then we started collecting Stuisms.

And thanks to Stu, the meme beach house was born, which quickly became a venue for our Fake Band Of The Week (hint: it’s pretty much always just one guy).

Our Lucy (okay, so we have four commenters named Lucy, but definitely one of ours) came up with the brilliant phrase Chickeneers of the High Seas, which stuck.

Some people call it the Chick’m. And sometimes it’s chickening in, sometimes it’s chickening out.

That’s what happens.

And now we’re just about at one hundred chickens.

Fun Friday Chicken facts!

It was Chicken #8 when the Round-Up became a Check-in.
Apparently I am fabulously inconsistent about the structure and form of Chicken titles and I never know if I’m going to capitalize anything or not.
While I’ve never missed a week, I did accidentally label #41 as #40, so yes, we had #40 twice in a row. That’s corrected here.
I know this because I have a lot of readers who are Virgos.
Even though I talk about being a vegetarian kind of a lot, some people think that I am eating these chickens or making them into soup or things like that. Not even slightly.
For some reason I seem to put quotation marks in most of the early ones. Jazz hands!
But I’m also really inconsistent about that. Go me.
Chickens #15 and #32 actually have the same title, and I totally never noticed that until about five seconds ago.
It’s hard to say which one is better. Which one is good enough to deserve the title?
On the one hand, #15 has the Monty Python Lumberjack song in German, which is AWESOME.
But on the other hand, #32 has the Big Jew Frog. Come on!

Here they are: the first 100 chickens

(Because it’s crazy impressive seeing them all together, and because I want to pick my favorite titles and you can do it with me.)

Okay, here are my favorite titles.

an intrigue of spies
trombones
Moonshine Tailbeam Waterloo Jones

And here is what I like best about chickening every Friday.

The Chickens are about choosing connection over isolation. But also about connecting to yourself.

They’re about remembering what is important and about remembering what didn’t seem important at the time. And giving meaning to things you see and feel and experience.

They’re about making room for the good while not cutting ourselves off from things that are hard and challenging.

Also: I am officially declaring Chicken Amnesty!

Not that you have to leave a comment on a Friday Chicken or ever, because you don’t. I will like you just as much either way.

But if you’re one of the people who has thought that it’s somehow a closed group or that you’ll feel weird being there, I want to give you a loving invitation to chicken with us. Consider yourself welcome always.

Yay Chickens!

A couple weeks ago I was at Pistils on Mississippi watching the chickens do their thing. And they (the store, not the chickens) were selling baby chicks.

There was a girl who was probably three, holding a purple balloon. Her daddy was buying chicks.

And she was just beside herself with joy, running up to everyone in sight and shouting YAY CHICKENS at them. It was perfect. Anyway. Yay, Chickens.

And comment zen for today …

What I would love:

some of your most-loved things about the Friday Chicken or other rituals
some of your most-loved Friday Chicken titles
celebrating the unlikely event of one hundred chickens (assuming I don’t screw it up and we make it to Friday).

Love to all my readers, the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who has ever been a Chickeneer of the High Seas. You guys are the greatest.

Ringing the bell.

by Havi Brooks | Jun 28, 2010 | biggification

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, there’s a restaurant* called the Gandy Dancer.

I’d link to it but they play outstandingly annoying music on their website.**

Trust me.

Anyway.

The name is a slang term for early railroad workers. And the restaurant itself is right next to the railway station. In the restored Michigan train depot building from 1886.

This means:

During at least a couple different points during your meal, a train is going to go by.

Loudly. Because it’s pretty much right next to you.

Here’s what happens at the Gandy Dancer when a train goes by.

They ring this huge bell.

And then everyone applauds.

Every single time a train goes by.

You know what I can’t stop thinking about?

How completely freaking brilliant it is to turn something potentially annoying, disruptive and jolting into a ritual.

And not just a ritual, but one that’s communal. And fun.

They took something that people could (justifiably) complain about — “Sure, the food is good but a giant train rumbles by every twenty minutes or so.”

And drew attention to it. To turn it into something participatory, silly and joyful.

Unbelievable.

Applications.

Obviously I’m thinking about this in a business sense.

Specifically, how I would do something like this at the Playground.

But not just in a real live storefront space. In an online business too.

How many irritating aspects of Doing Business Online are there that are both predictable and unavoidable?

And which of those could be transformed into something that make my people laugh, conspiratorially, with me?

My mind. It is being blown.

But also outside of the world of having a business.

What things in my own life that cause disconnection and irritation could be turned into rituals?

What things that drive me crazy could be opportunities to ring a bell?

I love how this gives me the power to allow That Thing I Hate to morph into something that’s essentially a mindfulness practice.

And I love how much room for fun and play is in this.

Because there is no limit to how kooky your rituals could get.

Like?

Oh, I don’t know.

What if the next time my neighbor’s yappy-ass mini-doglet starts ruining my concentration, I didn’t shake my fist at the window?

What if I took that as a sign that it’s time to put on my feather boa and start doing jumping jacks?

Obviously, that doesn’t solve my “hey, I’m trying to record a teleclass” problem, but it solves something.

Or maybe my students will already know that whenever the barking starts, we all need to sing the Butt Monster song.***

But rituals. Silly, carefree rituals to turn distractions and horribleness into things that make us laugh.

And a possibly unrelated post-script.

We did this post-shivanautical exercise at Camp Biggification where we wandered around in our brain-altered state looking for clues.

And I kept getting this really clear message to Ring The Bell.

Which was getting on my nerves, because there wasn’t any other information after that. Just the same thing over and over again.

And also because then I couldn’t get that Anita Ward song out of my head. Disco!

Anyway, maybe this is one of the bells. At the very least, I need a new feather boa.

My goodness we have a lot of asterisks today.

* Yes, this is the second time I’ve written about places to eat in Ann Arbor.

** Yes, all music-that-starts-playing-when-you-go-to-a-non-musician-website is annoying but this is somehow especially annoying.

*** If you don’t know the butt-monster song yet, you should really come to one of my events at the Playground.

Play with me?

If you have ideas for ways this can be applied, or thoughts on where something like this might be useful in your own life, bring it on.

Any business or personal situation is fine.

Maybe we can brainstorm up some brilliant bits of something or other.

Worth a try.

« Older Entries

Next Entries »