A coworker once described me in a 360 review - #minimalist desk, maximum output.
To understand my fondness for order, you’d have to look no further than my mom’s to-do lists
and my dad’s
closet (I swear the hangers are equidistant)
and pantry (Marie Kondo would be jealous)
and garage (pegboards galore)
and especially his tool chest.
Sometime in the 1980s my father traced the outline and depth of every single tool he had into foam, carved out a cavity, and placed his beloved and expensive tools in their dedicated homes. If tools could be described as "cozy", these are.
Since that decade, I think he’s misplaced only one socket for his socket wrench, and I’m not exaggerating.
Give the man a 3D printer and he’d be out of control.
You see, my dad works as a pre flight inspector on the specialized boroscope team at Delta. Which is to say - every tool he uses is expensive, and needs to be quickly accessed. The detail of order at the hangar where he works could only be described as MAGNIFICENT.
//
It wasn’t until my 20s that I realized that not every tool chest is equally matched. In fact, some people reach for a hammer in a drawer only to realize it has not been put back, and they have to replace the hammer. More hammers than any household needs can be accumulated in this way.
[I haven’t had enough coffee to make a Hammertime joke, but it’s there somewhere]
I once knew a man who organized the bills in his billfold in order of crispness. And a roommate whose room was filled with piles and piles of things (order undetected) but whose drawers were organized to an astounding level.
We all have different relationships to our tools, and different needs for order. Our spaces are as unique as the humans who use them. In my short time on earth I've begun appreciating our differences rather than trying to box everyone in (get it? an organizing joke!).
//
I’m curious - do you have any unique processes for organizing your physical space? Do you have any specialized tools that need to be well-ordered? Or are you a replace-the-hammer-because-I-cannot-find-it type of person?
I have no idea what I'm doing
Is it okay to admit to the internet that I have no idea what I'm doing?
Is it okay to admit to LINKEDIN that I have no idea what I'm doing?
I spent a lot of time on Pinterest this evening. I love collecting, and since I was a teenager I've collected ripped out magazine images of beautiful spaces, pouring over design magazines in Barnes and Noble and occasionally dropping more than $5 on a beautifully bound, beautifully curated magazine. I heard Pinterest referred to recently as a place of hoarding. That stung - because the collections of beautiful items, landscapes, interiors, and food on Pinterest have served as a pleasure point and a weekly or even daily renewal space for me for years. Beauty revives me when I'm stuck in a task-oriented week or when I'm bored and lonely. Just as the magazine pages served as inspiration, taped into wire bound notebooks, these images fill me with something indescribable - awe, comfort, creation.
I have no idea what I'm doing, and I wonder if I'm doing it wrong.
I didn't set out on my life or career to arrive someplace, and watching others climb career ladders and become business owners has caused me pause recently - maybe I've been going about this all wrong? Maybe I've been stupid. Maybe I've been naive?
But, I've collected a lot of experiences. I've collected a lot of beauty. And somewhere somehow along the line, a theme began to emerge. This is what I love about Pinterest - a theme begins to emerge as you travel the internet and seek out things you find beautiful. A collection begins to emerge.
I have no idea what I'm doing, but maybe there's a theme emerging?
Accidentally, I have lived my life and career in the same way. Seeking out rich experiences, developing relationships with beautiful people, stopping to collect, notice, appreciate, and respond along the way. I have only known what draws me in, what next thing sparks my interest. In doing so, I've collected really interesting knowledge sets and developed adaptable skillsets. By being in a lot of professional spaces, I have a wide network of relationships and am able to make connections between disparate themes and build a web between many people - THIS is my version of a fulfilling life.
What if life is more a CURATION and a COLLECTION that, looking back, emerges as a theme, as a living being, as a really interesting life?
I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm having a lot of fun doing it.
Your soul's work won't fit in LinkedIn
I’ve spent more than a year transitioning away from social media addiction, folding away Facebook newsfeeds and unfollowing everyone on Instagram, seeking a different pace and a new relationship to the ever-constant feed of other people’s lives.
//
In November I transitioned jobs. My reasons for a job transition are still unclear to me, though I’m quite sure there are many. It seems, though, that the pace I was living at did not align with what my body and soul needed. It seems that there were energies that I needed to reconsider, recover, and reconstitute. It seems that I needed to step back instead of stepping forward.
I took quiet action and made a change.
Even as I made the transition, I felt a tiny tug (or a big tug, depending on the day) to be acknowledged. To be seen. To hear the roar of celebratory cheers. I spent time lurking on LinkedIn, gorging myself on the happy announcements of strangers, overhearing conversations about others’ success. My own decision and timing did not feel like it merited a big old Russian “Huzzah!”
For as much news goes around about social media addiction, very little attention is paid to LinkedIn. There is so much keeping up with the Joneses, everywhere. This trend is a constant theme throughout history, taking on different forms, always always morphing and melding into new variants and living within its hosts - we humans are built to look to the left and the right to see “am I doing this…. right?” This anxiety that builds up in me as I scroll through halls of local fame and pass by virtual celebrations is highly addictive, attempting to inform me with the intensity of the digital age of my ability to belong in this society.
//
There’s a quieter voice inside of me. It says - your soul’s work cannot fit into LinkedIn.
It was the voice I listened to when I took my new job. It was the quiet voice I heeded when I entered a spiritual director training program. It is the whisper that becomes louder when my feet are on a trail in the middle of the woods, when I am hearing a perfect harmony, and when I am attending to the murmurs of Love inside me.
This voice becomes quieter when I lurk the many splendored halls of LinkedIn, when I traipse through the dressed-up rooms on Instagram, and when I compare-compare-compare my accomplishments to the accomplishments of my peers.
//
So, I am seeking ways to feed the voice. To step away from the clanking of the champagne glasses and sit with my neighbors on the pot-holed roads of Atlanta. I like to think about how we all had a different day, a so-so day or a brilliant day or an utterly defeating day. I like to think that these days outweigh the celebratory days. That our soul is thriving in the moments between the potholes and the champagne, in between the cars on the surface roads of this southern city, when you walk with your bedhead and your doubts and your joys and your soul, when I drive with my concerns and my delights and my deepest regrets. Here we are, walking this path on the same dirt, finding a way forward.
Questions about a difficult and invisible journey
In our second session of our second year of learning to become spiritual companions, I sat with my friend-whom-I’ve-never-met-in-person-but-already-love-a-lot. As we practiced this thing called companioning, I shared about the suffering I am experiencing in my physical body. The aches, pains, fatigue. The long journey of healing. The confusion. The breakdowns. She listened thoughtfully, responded carefully. She sat with me in the unknowing, and offered insight.
Questions that came up before, during, and after -
What if this suffering is of the Spirit? What if, when I break it down and deconstruct and build it back up, I discover that all of the components of this experience were already infused with Spirit, with Wisdom, with Mystery?
What if there is no Answer to this? What if it is a journey, a calm quieting, a revealing?
How do I become a friend to this experience? How do I sit with my body and soul as we together make meaning of this? What if my body is asking me to abandon its stubborn reliance on my brain, to let the energy drip down into my muscles and tendons and joints and ligaments?
Who might I befriend, who might I understand? Who might I be more compassionate toward, as I live through and with this experience?
What if…. this experience never truly goes away? What if this is chronic, and not acute? What then will it mean for the way I move through the world - to be engaged in this body that has limitations?
What am I learning about the world as I navigate it with a more-than-invisible disability? How does this deepen my compassion? How does it deepen my connection? What hidden possibilities exist?
Autumn Equinox and the essential self
Autumn Equinox always feels like a revelation to me. This year, we woke up the day after the equinox to the most brilliant September sky, the most incredible, idyllic cool weather. The question resonating with me today is - how does one return to one’s most essential self?
What has to fall away - in our habits, in our fears, in our enculturation, for us to return to and live from the truest and most essential form of ourselves?
My exploration of minimalism is not an exercise in seeing how little I can live with. It is a discovery of my most sacred and enjoyable objects. It is a curatorial experience - a playful experiment of identifying exactly which items I most want to employ during this experience of living. In doing so, I release the items in my life that don’t offer joy and meaning when I use them.
In the same way, my discovery of deep essential self seems to demand a letting go - a curious undertaking of the discovery of meaning. A rich and winding road of releasing all undesirable experiences and elements of my ego self to allow my true and most essential, most connected self to shine through.
Remember
Remember how long you waited to get exactly where you are today?
I’ve been spending a lot of time in conversation with my younger self lately. Hey, Erin. We’ll be okay. Yes, I know you’re scared and sad and you have no idea where things are going. I know you are wondering how it will turn out. I know sometimes you think that you could go either way - yes or no - on this being alive thing.
I promise, though, you will look back and be glad.
You will be grateful.
I am grateful. Grateful for you. Grateful for your grit and your hutzpah and your bravery. I am so glad you shed all of those tears. I am glad you wondered and you kept showing up.
It is not all okay. Everyone who promises you that is looking for something to say and landing on something trite. It is hard, and brutal, and magnificent. It feels okay in some moments and then very much not in others.
The way down is a little easier than the way up, and it looks very different. You will miss the view from the top but you know there will be other ascents. One of your boyfriends will comment on a hike together that on the uphill climb, he imagines that you are cheery and whistling. You adopt this as your attitude toward the uphill climb, though it is not at all your demeanor. Really, you are stubborn about getting to the top.
Climbing feels good for your legs, and often requires a nice long rest. Some days you feel weak.
Remember how long you waited? We are here. We are still waiting for some things, and we have arrived in the places you always imagined for us. We still love shoes.
You will get there. Here. Keep climbing.
Dirt
When I was a kid, we had a long commute to church. And because we were Good Christians, that commute happened twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays. My parents were excellent at side hustling, and so took on the maintenance and cleaning job for the church, which meant we spent much of Saturdays cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming carpets, mowing grass, and cleaning the giant glass windows in the vestibule of our church building.
Not much of that has to do with dirt except that on this long commute, my favorite moment happened to be the passing of the huge piles of dirt. Top soil and manure and compost, mulch and clay and everything a landscaper would need. It’s still there - this dirt factory on the road between two small towns in middle Georgia, and it still smells delightful. I’d roll down my window and breathe deeply. I’d ponder at what one could do with that much dirt.
As an adult, I’ve had less to do with dirt than I did as a kid, making mud cakes and splashing through puddles and managing the complicated maze of creek beds on our property. I remember planting annuals with my mom, wandering through the greenhouse with my grandmother, and watering our very thirsty garden patch.
But this fascination with dirt carries through, rendering any purchase of garden gloves a bad investment, while professional-worthy manicures are ruined. I think so often about the quality of the soil in our garden bed that you might think me crazy. I frequently daydream about being buried in dirt, and occasionally feel the urge to eat it… geophagia, they call it - borne from mineral deficiency. Pica, an eating disorder. When the nursery worker, tattooed and sweaty, loads bags of compost into the backseat of my car, he warns me that it smells bad. I take a deep breath in. I don’t mind, I say.
Once, as a teenager, we took a trip to a beach town. Texas? I vividly remember the pounding of my heart as I sat next to the redhead of a crush-turned-boyfriend in my mom’s dark green Mustang convertible. He could drive a stick shift… isn’t that dreamy? I also vividly remember the youngest kid of a large brood sitting squarely in the middle of the sand, shoving grit into his mouth. His mother laughed at her laxness as a mother - she’d been worn down by her many children and took things like babies eating dirt in stride.
Last week, I dog sat for a new client who’d recently dug up their driveway, in preparation for new concrete. It was a rainy summer weekend and the driveway became a muddy moat, engulfing my brand new white running shoes in its red clay magnificence.
I relish composting. Yesterday, a huge bag of uneaten vegetables, turned into the compost bin. A spin, a look. Happy fat grubby worms and ants eat their way through last week’s rinds and scraps. The slimy mass slowly becomes rich, silky, hungry. I bury some unfinished compost in the garden; it sprouts enthusiastic squash plants. I laugh.
Words for dirt are so satisfying. Loam. Smut. Sludge. Petrichor. Teach me another language so I can learn their words for dirt. Mail me a small container of your soil so I can paint my face. Smear me with your mud.
The process for reclaiming old clay is called wedging, a favorite task of mine in the studio. When I die, I prefer to be sunk into the clay, turned over and over in a muddy trench, poured out in the garden bed so I can reabsorb. I prefer to be wedged back into the earth. Part of me might go with the wind, another part in the ocean, but please plant me where I always wanted to be - buried beneath the ground, anchored in recreation, sprouting new growth, rich and loamy and satisfying.
Beyond Gratitude
Gratitude gets a lot of press these days as a life-changing practice. Gratitude is studied and recommended and suggested by all types of practitioners. I love gratitude. It brings me back to the present (usually) and reminds me of what I have. Sometimes, though, I can’t quite get to gratitude. When I am in a sour mood or when the world feels darker than normal, moving to gratitude feels like shifting from first gear to fifth. My gears grind to a halt, my engine complains. When I can’t feel grateful as everyone tells me I should, I resent myself and end up more frustrated than I was before. I needed a way to change up the cycle of frustration-forced gratitude-frustration, so I’ve developed a few gratitude-adjacent practices that feel more attainable.
//appreciation
There is so many different ways to express appreciation. You might start with the flowers outside- appreciating their bloom. You might offer a simple acknowledgment to a friend, appreciating them for something they have done for you, or offering an observation of something you appreciate about their character. Perhaps your family or your neighbors have been present for a difficult time in your life. Sending a quick note or a text with a simple, straightforward appreciation will remind them, and you, of all that supports you and carries you through this life.
//satisfaction
We, infiltrated with toxic capitalism, are addicted to What Is Next. The to-do list is never finished, the commitments are always present, and the Next Thing is always on the horizon. What if we took a moment, or a year, or a month, or an evening, to sit with satisfaction? Perhaps you are craving your own acknowledgement, the draw to be with a job well done. Maybe you have used a big burst of creative energy to bring something into the world. Maybe you had a good day with your child or a pleasant dinner with friends. Maybe you have cooked a favorite meal and it turned out just the way you like it. There are so many moments we can sit with and so many experience we can abide with in deep satisfaction. We can turn the events of the day over in our minds; we can savor the flavor of a finely-tuned recipe. We can close our eyes and listen to the laughter of our favorite people. I think we need more extended moments of satisfaction…we need to feel in our bodies what it means to appreciate and live deeply with something we love.
//admiration
On grumpy days, I tend to externalize my Grump. My inward thoughts leak their way out into the real world and I start to criticize others. It’s not a habit I am proud of and one I’ve tried to reduce. One way I have found to challenge this default is to begin expressing admiration for others. As people pass on the street, I will offer my silent (or verbal) compliment. I love their shoes, or their dress, or their smile. I am impressed with their commitment to running. I would love to emulate that style. That family seems so happy to be together today. As I shift from criticism to admiration, I am spreading a sense of true appreciation for others in my world. This modifies my own worldview and makes me a more generous person.
Grandmother
My grandmother was stern, and gentle.
She had a way of getting straight to the point. Of bypassing all of the menial information and finding the truth of the matter. She had a way of commanding a room without ever saying a word. The eyebrow raise was enough.
Over a soul-reviving conversation with an old friend last night, I had a chance to remember some of what she meant to me, and perhaps, what I meant to her. My dinner-date-old-friend survived the sudden loss of her father when she was only in her 20s. Her words were so exact - there is no one else in the world who sees me the way he did, she said. No one else in the world who loves me the way he did.
Tears welled up and choked me as I thought of the spaces my grandmother created in my life, of the particular way she saw me. I think of her lenses every day, of simplicity. Of justice, of rightness, of servanthood. I adopt her lenses of the world, and try to see things as she did. I try to see community through her loyal, consistent eyes. I try to see family through her eyes.
And I turn my eyes on myself, trying to see myself as she did. She was proud, caring. Never effusive, but always present. She had a way of letting me be whatever I needed to be in the moment, and not trying to control or manipulate my actions or feelings. In retrospect
My grandmother could command a room with her strength. She carried love in her in a way that was strong, consistent. She dutifully, loyally, and consistently served the people in her community.
I will continue to remember her, to carry her sternness, her eyebrow raise, and her command in my bones and in my breath.
A Gentle Return
No matter what you’ve been through this past year+, you have experienced trauma. The profound change in our daily routines, coupled with fear and scarcity and aloneness and loss in every sense, has had an effect on our bodies and psyches that will have ripple effects for our entire lives.
I find myself activated and frustrated by the assumption that things will “return to normal” and that we might just jump back into the river of life as we knew it as if a global pandemic and a full interruption of life never happened.
Our nervous systems need time to emerge from the contraction of this past year - we have been worried, nervous, stressed, alone, lonely, separated. Our familiar ways of comforting ourselves vanished in the period of shutdown, and we were forced to find new ways of being. We may have had different ways of doing so, but we all had to protect ourselves, and it stands to reason that a return to a new reality won’t be as easy as we think.
Let’s learn how to be gentle together. Let us embrace a gentle return.
//don’t rush
By this I mean, go slowly - in every sense of the word. Move your body slowly as you ready for work, move gently through your to-do list. Drive more slowly. Take every new step - the commute, the coffee shop visit, the school drop off, the entrance into your office, with a deep breath and a slower pace. With each return, we have the opportunity to remind our bodies that we are still safe, even if we are no longer tucked away.
//create new rhythms
I’ve been thinking about this Return as a New Thing. I have a tradition of buying myself a new, handmade coffee mug when I start a new job. I love ceramics, and I love the transition to a new rhythm. A handmade mug and a morning coffee is a perfect anchor in a sometimes soul-sucking office environment. My coffee anchors me to the artist, to the clay, and to something outside of the world of email. It is a rhythm that holds my morning in place. I bought a new mug for this new life, this post-pandemic life, even though I am in the same office, in the same chair. It feels important to mark this change. Maybe you can think of ways to mark the change for yourself.
//clear the air, clean the space
Returning to your workspace or your old routine may feel like walking into a time capsule. Just today I threw away a sticky note from last March and removed 2020 calendars from my corkboard. I am cleaning out a cup of water that gathered film and dirt and grime. Our spaces, just like our bodies, need time and space. Offer your space some gentle cleaning, some sorting and throwing away. Wipe down surfaces, spray the air, or play a new album all the way through. Find ways to refresh the air and wipe the slate clean.
The Void
Nature abhors a void. I’ve said it over and over - this little phrase of advice from a friend in response to a long ago breakup. I can’t remember who it was now, just that I was devastated and looking for distraction in its wake. I was immediately trying to fill a hole in my life with something else, and I was suffering because of it. Since that time, my relationship with the void has morphed and changed, and I have changed as a result.
I’ve always been an extracurriculars person. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an endlessly curious person or a passively guilted person or if I came of age among go-getters and overachievers, but I have always been involved. This involved-ness has become so much a part of me that I don’t even question it. Of course I’ll be on that committee, of course I will lead that project, of course I will say yes to that demand on my time. Recently I’ve begun to question this niggling part of my identity… who would I be if I wasn’t so goddammed …. involved? Would I still regard myself with respect? Would I maybe even like myself better if I took some things off my plate? If I create a void?
Voids come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes, voids are created for us. Breakups, shifts in relationship status, deaths…. pandemics. A trip is canceled, a plan falls through, a job is lost. Sometimes, we create voids. We are less adept at this in our little universes of overcommitment and multitudes of demands on our time… but we can create voids too. We can cancel plans, we can back out of commitments (I internally gasp when I say that), we can change our schedules. We are not at the whim of our schedules. We are in control of our lives. Even when everything in our lives feels like a fact and a given…. it can be changed.
I am starting to believe that creation and management of the voids in our lives is one of the most creative forces we have to work with. Voids can shape us - sudden and incredible shifts in our lives offer us incredible opportunity to work within a new form, to create within a new space. We are altered, and the terrain of our lives are altered as well. A whole new pallet is opened up to us.
I wonder what our lives might look like if we stopped unconsciously filling every void, and started consciously creating them? What creative energy might swoop in? What healing might occur? What deep self respect might strengthen? What might we unearth? How might we become more of who we are by managing, dancing with, and creating meaningful voids in our lives?
Cicadas
I’ve been thinking a lot about the cicadas lately. You know, brood X that is currently singing and eating its way through part of the United States? I have half a mind to get into the car and drive so I can hear their thrumming song and see their gnarled bodies. To be honest, I am jealous of the cicada-drenched lands of 15 states.
As a child, I remember taking exoskeletons off the trees and hanging them on my brother’s clothing. I remember marveling at the open shell of the bug, which had just climbed out of its brittle outer clothing into a new life.
Apparently, cicadas can spend decades of their lives underground. According to the internet, broods can spend anywhere from 2 to 17 years tunneling, feeding, and otherwise making a life under the loamy soil we tread above.
Isn’t this fascinating?
Of course, a metaphor emerges (like the brood!) from this information. What in my life is underground, what is tunneling and feeding and hiding, and - when will it emerge? Is it a love, a revelation, a form of self love? Is there trauma I have yet to uncover? Is there a life I have yet to live, a dream I have not found, a version of myself I am meant to be? Where and when will it emerge, with the singing and the eating and the… peeing?
What wisdom will hang from leaves and branches and leave its exoskeleton for me to discover? What tender fruit will it consume? What sacrifice will it require? Who will I be then? And, what will I be after it has gone?
Unwieldy
Years ago I exchanged letters with a boy who had played baseball with my brother (a favorite pastime of my youth was falling in love with my brother’s teammates). This boy had moved to Tennessee with his family and we began exchanging long notes. Long meandering descriptions of our days, sealed into envelopes and sent across one state border to the other’s mailbox.
One particular description he shared with me has stuck with me since I was 15 years old.
It was about a man, carrying a box. The box was heavy, so he shifted the box, a slightly unwieldy box, from hip to hip, arms, shoulders. Every way a box could be carried, this man carried the box. In that way, he carried the box a long way.
This box metaphor has stayed in the recesses of my brain since I read it, representing for me all manner of unwieldy things. All manner of heavy burdens, difficult to carry. We shift its weight in our hands. Our hip aches so we move the box to our shoulders. For a while, we carry the box on our heads.
Pandemic, an unwieldy box, a heavy burden. Illness. Parenthood. Heavy relationships. Grief. Heavy boxes, unwieldy burdens. Shift, carry, ache.
In this way we might carry a burden a long way.
Strange Noises
I’m no gearhead, but I do occasionally drool over a vintage Mustang. My relationship with cars is fraught - I wrecked a car or three in my teenage years, and also killed an engine.
Just now I was researching “what does an alternator do” and “what is a sign of a failing alternator?” for no reason except that someone mentioned an alternator and I realized I have no idea what the f*ck they do.
Here’s what Google tells me:
6 Symptoms of a Failing Alternator
The indicator light.
Headlights are dim or flickering.
Other electrical failures.
Strange noises.
Car stalls or has difficulty starting.
Battery dies
What I know about cars and car mechanics - besides how to identify a ‘66 Mustang from a ‘69 Mustang, is that the best mechanics have highly attuned ears. The first thing my dad, my stepdad, or my good friend will do when I mention an issue with my car is to listen. They’ll have me turn on the engine and they will stand quietly for a while, listening. Then they will say “sounds like the alternator” or “sounds like the timing belt” or “sounds like the starter”, to which I’ll nod as if I understand and then quickly Google the issue. Even with limited knowledge of engine mechanics, I have learned to listen to my own cars over the years. To hear the little wheeze of the starter when I turn the key, or the crackling whine of a failing electric window. To hear a squeaking starter belt or a cranky brake.
For the past 24 or so months I’ve been on a healing journey from adrenal fatigue, which has settled into a semi-chronic state for me. I’ve read and researched and experimented. I have paid thousands for functional care, for supplements and appointments and chiropractors and massage. I have realized, now, that this is a potentially lifelong condition I will live with - not quite an autoimmune condition but not something I can actively ignore.
Instead, I have learned to listen - when my back starts to ache in the place just above my kidneys, I know I am worn out. When I don’t have the get-up-and-go that I normally feel, I tune in. “It sounds like the timing belt,” I say to myself…. “it feels like fatigue. I’ve been pushing myself too hard”. “The alternator is starting to go….uh-oh - time to go to the mechanic”… “I need to cancel everything and lean into rest”. I learn to stop and listen to the strange noises instead of rushing through, ignoring the warning signs and sounds. I learn to connect the dots - the whine of my back, the resistance, the urge to stay in bed.
Our modern world does not teach us to attune our ears to our own needs. I am tempted, often, to gulp down a giant cup of coffee and use the twitchy energy to get through the day. To pump myself with artificial energy in order to mask the depletion of real energy I am experiencing.
I wonder how our communities would change if we were attuned to our own needs, and if we could then attune to one another’s needs. My commitment to myself is also a commitment to my community, because if I cannot show up fully - with real instead of artificial energy - I am unable to contribute to real health.
I continue to listen, to Google and ask questions and stand quietly over the engine of my body, taking note of what feels right and what feels out of whack. I am committed to tune-ups and long periods of rest. I am committed to my own health, and by extension, to the health of my community.
Quieter Voices
I hear voices. Perhaps you hear them too. You know, the voices that say “you’re not doing enough, you haven’t accomplished enough, you must do more!” More, more, more, it screams at me at night, waking me up from my confusing dreams. More, it nudges hurriedly in the mornings, starting fires of anxiety. More, it yells at me from my inbox. More, it calls to me from the universe of social media. Consume, produce, achieve. Consume, produce, achieve.
Today, a quieter voice said to me “what if you focused more on the quality of life?” What if you stepped far enough outside of din of the dictatorship of more and tuned into to that quieter voice?
This quarantine, or “coronatide”, as one of my pastors has taken to calling this time, I’ve had time and space to attend to the qualities of my life. To pay closer attention to the subtle light dancing on my floor, or the time I spend with my cat. I’ve sorted through belongings, and let go of the lesser-quality items. I have sought out less quantity in relationships, and deeper, quieter quality.
The MORE MORE MORE monster may always be there, the death-spiral of consumerism and capitalism. In many ways, this monster has chewed us up and spat us out. We are sitting, surveying the destruction that this pace has left us with. In some ways, we’re still running on the invisible hamster wheel of productivity and answering only to the loud voice that asks “have you done enough?”
And, as I listen quietly and faithfully, I hear new voices. I hear the voice that asks if the quality of the time I have spent with myself this day has nudged me toward gratitude, toward gentleness, toward generosity. I hear the inquiry about what I’ve learned, not what I have accomplished. If I listen quietly enough, I hear whispers of nourishment, and healing.
Those of us who have had the privilege of staying safely at homes, who haven’t been on battlefields of essential work, service, and medical attention, we have some time to attend to these questions.
Maybe it’s the quality of your family time, or the quality of your eye contact when your partner is speaking. Maybe it’s the quality of your food, the steps you take on a long walk, or the time you spend really attending to your pet’s needs. The quality of attention you give to yourself, your needs, and your thought patterns.
Maybe you’ve sorted through your physical objects and identified what doesn’t offer life to you. In this strange coronatide you may have discovered a strange new way of being in the world. You may have discovered more of yourself.
A fruity cocktail
I try not to apologize for things unnecessarily, but this morning I found myself doing just that. “I’m sorry I don’t sound cheery,” I said to a friend I’d run into on the train. Our three-stop catch up gave us just enough time to share small snippets of life with one another. Playing the conversation back to myself, I had realized that most of my reports were neutral or negative. I felt guilty.
What is it in me that demands cheeriness? What is it that reviews a recent conversation and deems it under-optimistic? What conditioning do I have that requires me to apply a sheen of cheer to what was an honest conversation with a kind friend?
In seasons of life that feel difficult or challenging, I often find myself wishing for a short vacation. If I could go to the land of optimism, sit by the ocean and have a fruity cocktail, then perhaps I’d come back to the land of ordinary life with renewed energy.
Life doesn’t always offer fruity cocktails. It offers laundry. It offers viruses and stress, arguments and debt, confusion and loneliness. Our time is spent checking off the next to-do, answering the next email, filling the car with gas, taking out the trash, and making dinner.
I’m resisting my tendency to apply the sheen of convenient sentimentalism on this post. Instead, I’m offering myself the opportunity to take up space here, in difficulty, in transition, in learning and care. I trying to see the doldrums and the drag and the slogging as a slow, credible place of learning. I am trying not to demand cheeriness, but to offer authenticity. To be real in this real life, to offer truth. To offer myself.
Making Space for less space
You can disappear until April, everyone will understand.
She told me this with a strange confidence.
I’d just disclosed my recent life stressors. A sudden and traumatic death, a coworker leaving their position. Months of sustained depression after difficult physical fatigue. A year of giant waves crashing over me, one after another. A year where I’d stand up just to be hit in the face again, breathless with salt water in my nostrils and eyeballs.
She offered me what she knew to be true. That we can sit out a few innings. That we can close our books. That we can say a blanket “no.” That we can take time to be away, from the extra stressors that life offers, from the expectations and mania that is our modern social reality. When life seems like Too Much, we have permission to hide away and re-form ourselves.
I’m reminded of nature. The moon wanes and waxes. Flowers bloom and fade. Our cycles are built into the natural order. Pain and joy, depression and elation, quiet months where we can only nurture ourselves in safe spaces.
Let’s see how gentle we can be, how we can meet our difficulties with generous amounts of grace.
When the situation calls for judgment, may we apply compassion
When the situation calls for anxiety, may we apply understanding
When the situation calls for depression, may we apply nourishment
And for as long as it takes, dear one…
You can disappear
You can cancel plans
You can hibernate
You can put your phone on airplane mode
You can show your face only at work and at home for as long as it takes.
As long as it takes to gather strength again. As long as it takes to dust yourself off again. As long as it takes to find a new rhythm.
When the harvest seems so far off
I’ve been on the waiting list for a plot in the community garden in my neighborhood for what seems like ages. I had forgotten all about it until I got an email last week. You may have a plot in the garden, it said. I rolled my eyes with the tease of it all. The “wait just a little longer”. The “it just might happen” message.
I’m staring anxiously at this imaginary garden plot in my head, wondering what it will be like to plant and water and weed. I wonder what it will be like to sit down next to my plants and read. I wonder if I will find it easy to make time to walk over and water my plants when the sun is hot and I’d rather be in my air conditioned home. The harvest seems so far off when I consider everything that I’ll have to do to get me there.
We wait a lot in life, don’t we? I have friends waiting for job offers, for positive pregnancy tests, for proposals, for acceptance letters, for book deals. We wait for resolution, for diagnoses, for healing. We wait through addiction and conflict. We wait through presidential terms of office, through divorce and adoption processes and separation. We wait for laws to change and systems to update. Waiting is painful. We feel so little control over the mystery of life. We plant the seed and we can’t see anything grow. We set out a path but we get lost. Our glasses fog over and our maps get soggy.
I’m in that long stretch of life that feels no longer young and hopeful and not yet wise and weathered. I’m no longer a maiden, not yet a mother, and a long way from being a crone. I feel ill prepared for this stretch of uncertainty. I wait out the long stretches of grief, the sweet uncertainty of the question of finding a life mate. I wade through the muck of hesitation and stress, trying to navigate a professional path through what sometimes feels like a swamp. I try to wipe my glasses off but they become more foggy, as the ground becomes more muddy. Waiting feels like wading… through sand, through mud, through tears.
I’m trying to find the gem here, the glimmer of hope in this tremendous struggle. Just as I’m waiting to get the email that says “you got the garden plot!”, I’m waiting for some profound answer to show up so I can tell the internet that I solved the puzzle, I won the game.
The harvest seems so far off, but I bet we have stories to share with one another. I bet we can offer someone a cup of tea. I bet we can give someone a boost of extra courage when they don’t feel like watering their plot. Maybe we don’t come upon the gem of the Final Answer, but we celebrate with others when their seasons of waiting are over. There are friendships to be found here in the waiting. There is love. Maybe through the waiting, we’re finding the answer that’s been buried and growing from the deeply rooted seeds we planted long ago. Maybe the harvest is not a tangible thing at all. Maybe the harvest - the answer, the Thing - is being together through it all.
An infrastructure for grief
We lost my maternal grandmother three days before her 87th birthday, after a bad car accident on Highway 16 in Jackson, Georgia.
I have never known grief like this. The strange coincidence was that my grandfather died the same way, in a bad car accident. His death happened right before I was born, while I was in utero. My mother’s comment was “at least when my dad died I had something to take care of, a baby to nurse.”
Western society has so little infrastructure for grief, so few rituals. I’ve often wished in the past 5 days that I practiced Judaism, or that I lived in some other era. To sit shiva for a deceased person is as much a ritual to to support the living as it is to honor the dead. I need someone to bring me food. I need someone to sit with me. I need lots of someones coming and going to keep watch over me and my family, to make sure we are still functioning.
And I need stories. The handful of years before my grandmother’s death were richer with stories than the many before them. She was raised in Louisiana right after the Depression; it was a difficult childhood. Her stories of a life lived mostly in poverty always struck me in a tender place. The fact that she was even sharing them - such a private person she was - was even more tender.
My grandmother was beloved of her community. She showed up faithfully to her community of faith, and it was clear during my few interactions there that she was dearly loved. In no uncertain terms, she directed my uncle to forego a service. We will not be having a funeral or memorial service, and the loss of the communal grief ritual is causing me deep sorrow. I am grieving the opportunity to hear the stories about “Miss Betty” that many would surely share.
Without ritual, we are left to our devices. My uncle chooses to light a candle in the Catholic church where he is in Paris, I listen to Sanskrit chanting, I share her photos on Instagram. We will plant a tree. My mother sorts through photos and shares stories about their sweet daily intimacies, living on the lake and watching the beautiful sunsets. Mom’s daily life is forever altered, the presence of her one remaining parent had been a comfort to her during the years my grandmother lived with them.
How else will we honor her? Social media is not enough, and the comments there scant comfort compared to the thousands of hugs and stories I wish I could receive. We are a quiet, private family. I a quiet, private person. But I do wish for the communal gathering, the tears flowing or not, a knock on the door and yet another casserole to fill the refrigerator.
We need a return to communal ritual, guidance on how to hold space. Together with a friend who has suffered a loss recently, we bemoan the lack of functional grief rituals for every loss (her words). She wants an armband, I would be satisfied with Sharpie marks on my forehead, Something to say, as she puts it - “a chunk has been ripped out of my life and the pieces that are left don’t know how to function together.”
We need the coming over and visiting. It’s a way of saying “you might not see much point in going on right now, but I want you to live.” In this way our friends become the physical keepers of our life for a while.
Casseroles and mourning clothing, wailing and shiva-ing and holding a wake - these are all functional markers of the grief that I carry so awkwardly. I desperately wish for a few weeks of falling apart but instead continue to go to work and operate in this mindless capitalism. I need to be held together by hugs and simple foods. I need someone to remind me to drink water. I need someone to listen to my ramblings. I need my community.
We are so convinced that consumerist self-care will soothe us, but where is communal care? Where might we fill in the gaps in our aching, show up for one another with a casserole and a hug, and sit together in the terrible deconstruction of life that happens when a loved one leaves us?
Overdrafting
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about reserves lately. Reserves, not preserves... though now I’m kind of craving raspberry preserves.
You know when you overdraft your bank account and, if you’re smart, it’s linked to savings and quickly makes up the difference? Have you ever done that multiple times? Have you ever spent all happy-go-lucky without thinking about your balance only to realize in horror that not only have you overdrafted and incurred overdraft fees and multiple savings withdrawals and and and....
Yeah, me neither.
So I’m thinking that energy is kind of the same way. We are bee-bopping along steadily with our energy, saying yes to every stinkin’ opportunity - to volunteer, to go that event, to go on that trip, to hang out with friends, to do whatever-pops-up. We are “hustling” (whatever that means) to make sales goals and strategic goals and Type-A goals. We are romanced by the idea that our identity is wrapped up in all of these markers- what we do, what we accomplish.
And the world is hard. And the news keeps coming. And the internal struggles and emotional pain we feel about Life are there, always, taking subscription fees out of our energetic bank account, sometimes without our noticing.
A couple of times, without warning, an unexpected cost comes up. A tragedy, a death, a Really Big Project. Sometimes in the quiet of an afternoon we are struck with the reality of an old trauma. And it hurts. We’re forced to withdraw more from the account.
All of these costs, these commitments, these emotional realities, these Big Unplanned Trauma - they have a cost. They deplete us - sometimes without our knowing. They keep drafting fees and recurring more costs.
If our accounts our shallow, if our reserves are few, if our emotional Rainy Day Funds haven’t been fully funded, if we haven’t thought to set aside enough reserves to cover us, we tank. We squirm and we hide and we cover our eyes when we check the balance. We do not know that the fees will keep coming.
So what I’m wondering- what I’m exploring - is how to fill up my reserves. How do I diversify my savings? How do I fill the deep deep pockets of my soul with enough nourishment to fully sustain me through those Hard Times? How do I stop before swiping my emotional credit card or saying yes to yet another commitment? How do I evaluate which activities and which people will provide the fulfillment and replenish my account? How do I keep an eye on the balance and not blindly spend my energy? Which activities pay dividends? Which people have a high interest rate? Which life goals are just an empty pit of emotional-validation spending?
Anyway, the metaphors are getting out of control, but you see what I mean. I think we owe it to ourselves to fill up when we are depleted. I think we owe it to ourselves and our bodies and our hearts and our souls to keep an eye on our emotional reserves and know when we are reaching our limit. And I think it’s imperative to discover the unique ways our souls need replenishing.
For me, that’s - home, light, quality time with myself and with my cat. It’s long stretches of life that require nothing of me but daydreaming and consumption of questionable television. It’s daydreaming about decorating and art. It’s going down rabbit holes of nerdy material. It’s laughing and joking with friends who feel like family. It’s walking outside, even if I only have a small amount of physical energy for it.
I hope you’re paying attention to your account. I hope you find the strength to stop and pour some love back into yourself. You are a good human. You are doing good things. Do not let the good things that you do in the world become a drain on your own Being. If you’re nearing burnout, please stop and find the unique ways that your soul is asking for replenishment.