69 // Nourishing Our Knowing
How do we know what we need?
❄️ THIS SUNDAY! January Writing Workshop! Please sign up here (Sunday, 1/30, 10am - 12pm PST).
❤️🩹Next Sober From Bullshit Recovery Club: Storytelling Edition is Wednesday, February 2nd. Register here.
Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
Good morning to my favorite people.
I am vibing out on the above photo, imagining us all on an island together, invite only.
BIG SIGH.
This week’s essay focused on bus driving as a metaphor for how we fortify our inner selves. Here are a few ideas for how to figure out how the hell get started:
Identify your non-negotiables. These are all the things that help you maintain yourself as a redwood tree, which is to say, all the things that allow you to stay grounded and steady inside yourself, no matter how life-y life gets. Sometimes, it’s hard to know what these things are at first. This is normal. Throw things at the wall, see what sticks. Let it be an experiment. Do not become beholden to yet another to-do list; see what it’s like to feel your way in.
My current non-negotiables: 5am wakeups to spend an abundance of time with myself and my creative work before the day gets rolling; five days/week at the gym; one social something each weekend day; no caffeine after noon, 1pm at the latest, no work email or Slack on my phone…I could go on but this gives you a sense.
Investigate your obligations. Another gateway into discovering what you need is to ask yourself what you are still doing out of obligation. Now, I understand that some of us have legit obligations we can’t cede—you know, like parenting, or showing up to work. And, I bet there are some things you are doing but don’t need to be. What are those things? What would it be like to reclaim that time, energy, brain space? Not to fill with other things, necessarily, but to simply experience your days as more spacious, simpler, less urgent?
Get off the hamster wheel. Often, when I’m first starting to work with someone, they want to keep going full throttle, and have recovery or whatever else they desire to just fold into what they are already doing. I’m going to be real with y’all: it doesn’t work like that. We have to disrupt the default. We have to blow up the engine. And, the invitation is more subtle, despite the hyperbole: this is not about sweeping changes. It’s about small, sustainable changes, over time. It’s about creating pockets (pockets! I’m talking 5, 10, 15 minute pockets!) of time throughout your day where you are checking in with yourself. This might look like an alarm that buzzes in your phone at a certain hour of the day that signals you to pause, hand on heart, and take ten deep breaths: how I’m I feeling? Where am I? What do I need? This could be a walk, a nap. This could be reading a poem. Remember: it’s an experiment.
If y’all want to party in the comments, I’d love to hear your non-negotiables—or! what is one thing you could remove from your plate and into the compost pile?
I hope you are finding pockets of stillness and quiet in your days. I hope you and your people are as safe and healthy as possible. I hope that alongside all the everything, you are present to even the most humble moments of delight: flowers growing in the curb. Hummingbirds and their zum-zum. Sloppy kisses from an ultra-eager puppy.
Ok last thing: January Writing Workshop is this Sunday, 1/30 from 10am-12pm PST, and there are still a few spaces available. Come play, we’d love to have you and your words and your listening and your vigor and verve and your spark.
All my love,
xxoo,
dani
📖Read: “Building a Community of Love” - a conversation between bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh
👀Watch: I signed up for this free course, “The Science of Well-Being,” and you can, too.
🎧Listen: Maybe one of the reasons the entire month of January has felt like one long out-of-body experience is because I keep listening to this over and over (yeah, I’ve linked to it before. I don’t know why I consume the same piece of media over and over and over 🤷🏽♀️).
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