Do you want to be perfect or do you want to be free?
In praise of earnestness.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
🗣I’m so excited to announce that I’m opening my books to *5* new coaching clients for January 2022. Click here for more information and to apply for a spot. I like working with folks who are newer to sobriety, or those of you who are stable in your recovery, and looking to evolve into what’s next. Let’s connect if you’re ready ❣️
❄️ WINTER SOLSTICE writing workshop is Sunday, December 19th. This is the last writing workshop of the year! Please sign up in advance here here (Sunday, 12/19, 10am - 12pm PST).
❤️🩹Next Sober From Bullshit Recovery Club (final one of the year!) is Monday, December 20. Register here.
Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
Forms of Love
Daniel Baylis
Sometimes I wonder,
what’s the point?
Why be good? Why care? Why try to change things?
Why—when we continue to wreck each other?
Yet I keep moving forward.
Not because I am confident of any outcomes,
But because I am still susceptible to sweet things:
a sunset,
a cup of coffee,
a warm blanket,
the smell of lilacs,
the sound of my mother’s laughter,
and all the other common forms of love.
Sometimes I wonder,
what would the world look like,
if each of us decided to become,
a form of love?
*
The first two episodes of Ted Lasso annoyed the hell out of me.
This is a familiar feeling, in that I’m used to being confused by what other people find humorous. Just like when I tried watching The Office, I found Ted Lasso’s humor to be tedious, annoying, more grating than funny. But I stayed curious, as there had to be something that warranted the glowing recommendations from all directions, including from a few people I trust most in the world.
Halfway through episode three, it hit me: I was feeling the same way about Ted that the characters surrounding him were feeling. Nobody knows what to do with someone like Ted. We are not used to such effervescent optimism. Instead, most of us hold our cards close to our vests, gauge the safety of the environment before speaking, scan the room to sense status. Rarely do we wear our hearts on our sleeves—and certainly not in our professional capacities.
After my realization, I gave over. I let myself be swept into the world of Ted Lasso, where even the biggest of pricks, the most skeptical of hearts, the grumpiest of temperaments are softened by his genuine care and earnestness.
Ted moves through the world heart first, which is something I think about a whole lot.
*
We build up our armor for good reason. We harden our hearts to feel safe, to survive. Then we become adults and the armor becomes a weight. The strategies and skills that worked are less effective, and the work becomes learning how to free ourselves of the anchor.
Do you know how I see this expressed most often? Both inside of my own self, and with the people I work with?
It’s the beast of perfectionism. It’s the constantly moving target of control.
We believe that if we are perfect, managed, figured out, put together, that we will be free. We believe that checking boxes will bring us the safety we’ve been chasing since we were kids. We believe status will protect us. We believe we must look a certain way to be desired. We believe that if we can crack the moderation code, we will be normal. We believe that if we can manage other people’s experiences of us, we will be accepted.
Do you know what this complicated, ever-elusive dance leads to? A falling short. A deeper entrenchment of the well-worn groove: there’s something wrong with me. Inside of the dance of perfectionism, we remain at the mercy of the inner-pendulum, that force that would forever bandy us back and forth between good and bad, light and dark, sane and fucked-up if we don’t learn how to slow it the hell down.
The armor hardens.
It’s a conversation I return to again and again: when I put all my sacred effort into managing my life, I miss out on my actual life. I lose sight of reality, which is that I am a human, not an android.
In my work, I refer to what I call “the messy middle.” Being human is gross and dumb and gorgeous and awkward and absurd and tooth-achingly beautiful and terrible and awesome and mundane and tragic and confusing and weird. Pretending otherwise is exhausting (and this shit is already exhausting).
When we turn toward the mess, instead of doing everything we can to pretend that it doesn’t exist, we come into our own.
Isn’t that what we want?
Sure, Dani, you are thinking, of course that’s what I want. But HOW?
When you feel the beast inside you, stalking it’s way around your nervous system, here’s what you do: you stop. You disrupt the beast. You do this by coming into the present moment, however the hell you know how to do that. Maybe it’s some deep breathing. Maybe it’s heaving around an almost-too-heavy barbell. Maybe it’s furious scribbles on a notepad. Maybe it’s taking a quickie walk in your neighborhood, climbing a hill, taking in the view, letting your eyes scan the horizon, remembering horizons. You do whatever the hell you have to do to return. Come back, right here. Get out of your head, that rumination, future tripping machine, get down here, into reality, and from here, you take the next right step (a nap is a great option, if I may).
Next, you must learn to take your relationship to the mess a step further. Turning to face it is important, vital. From there, we must learn to love the mess.
But this is a tale for another time, for the sun is already up, and Tater needs a walk.
*
Perfect is boring, sterile, suspicious. Give me your messy earnestness, your soft underbelly, your starry-eyed excitement. Tell me about all the things you love. Show up with your cheesy jokes and nuanced asides and enthusiastic hell yeses. Lay down your armor. Cast it off, there are no dogs left in this fight, leave it behind in that battlefield where chaos is only a memory. Say the hardest things out loud, I promise I will love you all the more for it. Remember that you belong here, no one is getting kicked off the team, you’ll have a cubby with your name on it in this clubhouse until the end of time.
From the archives ~ this time last year:
SELF MADE is a newsletter for fellow 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA.
SELF MADE is reader-funded. The small percentage of readers who pay make the entire publication possible.
You can also support me for free by pressing the little heart button on these posts, sharing this newsletter with others and letting me know how this newsletter helps you. Thank you.
If you have a question for the advice portion of this newsletter (whether you’re a paid subscriber or not!), reply to this email, or send your own to urbansagesf@gmail.com.
In Ted’s words, “I appreciate you” Dani! ❤️