✍🏽April Writing Workshop is live! Grab your spot here (Sunday, April 24, 10am - 12pm PST). I’ve reduced the overall capacity so please be sure to sign up in advance.
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I am still swimming about in the Murky Soup of Unknowing™, which is a phrase I made up to describe what it feels like to be inside of a transitional time (and maybe also sounds like a something one might get dropped into in one’s attempt to outrun The Nothing).
This is an uncomfortable soup, and one best served cold. I’m leaning hard on my tools, and staring at the post it above my desk that reads:
Right now, “trusting my life” means checking in with my (freshly updated as of last Monday) Baseline every day:
It also looks like:
❣️Prioritizing time with friends
❣️Reading every day
❣️Not making any decisions, or even letting myself worry about decisions
❣️Listening to music, LOUD
❣️Making art
I have learned (I am learning) that the moment I feel the inner engine rev up, the right thing is to slow it down, keep it from leaving the station, AKA, take the exact opposite action of what my brain would have me do.
I tell myself what I tell the people I work with:
Let’s practice a relentless return to the present moment. Let’s put our intellect in a shoebox, shoebox on the shelf, just for a while.Let’s tend to skin, muscles, bones; let’s rest and be tender. Let’s receive instead of reach.
LET’S FLIP THE BIRD TO INTERNALIZED CAPITALISM 🖕🏽🖕🏽🖕🏽🖕🏽🖕🏽
Happy Friday, y’all. I adore you and if you’re swimming in the soup, too…know that I’m here splashing about with you.
The other morning, Elena woke up late – around 8:15 – and I gave up on any possibility of getting to school on time. I served her oatmeal and went to prepare her lunch and when I came back to the table, she was totally immersed in a Babysitters Club book. I was about to urge her to get ready, but I didn’t. Instead, I went into the living room and sat down. I watched. I watched my seven-year-old raptly and carefully absorbing each page, turning it and moving on to the next, taking bites of oatmeal with maple syrup. My daughter, age 7. Our living room. That table. That wall. Those plants. This was my life, I thought, as if I were looking back on it from a great distance.
It was a luxury just to watch her. How rarely we really see each other. Our lives. This is the house I live in. This is my husband, my child. The morning where we always do this, fuzzy purple hat, oatmeal. Life TV, I thought. This is Life TV.
👀Watch: I’ve been having a wonderful experience working with a nutrition coach after finding myself inside of some weird food behaviors at the end of last year/post Sad Eyes breakup and the sentiment in this quickie video had me waving my fist to the sky.
🎧Listen: That Rut You’re In? This One Word Could Pull You Out. Click-baity title aside (I’ll tell you the word it is “boundaries” which doesn’t even make sense because the word doesn’t do shit, the enactment does), this is a great conversation with Nedra Glover Tawwab about, pues, boundaries, and it’s practical and I just always learn something from her.
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Dani I LOVE the idea of doing a regularly updated baseline! I’m going to start this on Sunday and see if it helps me frame the week. You’re brilliant, as always!
Dani I LOVE the idea of doing a regularly updated baseline! I’m going to start this on Sunday and see if it helps me frame the week. You’re brilliant, as always!
love love love it