Last year in January I kicked off #postcardsfrom39 with a bunch of New Year’s Resolutions. They were, in brief, to speak and write truth (where truth=love), to meditate, to write two pages a day, to listen for body cues for hunger and thirst, to keep a bedtime schedule, to enjoy ideas without plans, to Make Shitty Things, and to allow change to happen.
I’m still working on them, but that’s okay. Nobody makes eight major resolutions at once and actually keeps all of them. But I’m starting to see some positive kickback from these changes, and realize that I’ve been fulfilling them in ways I didn’t plan to. To speak and write truth involves opening up rather than hiding, manifesting as Instagram selfies and Substack newsletters. To enjoy ideas without plans (or without translating them into idea debt) is part of the Creative Focus Workshop I’m currently taking.
The only thing I added this January 1st was a resolution to give myself permission to be happy. Sounds trite, right? Print that up nice and stick it on the wall. But what I meant was, well, this, from my daily Insta post on February 17, 2020:
I’ve been pondering anxiety lately. It’s not a label I would have used even a year ago. (I can get dressed and leave the house. Therefore I’m not anxious.) And I do get a certain kind of intense anxiety in certain social situations, that is pointed and sharp and easy to name — the anxiety of not knowing what expectations are, that I’ll probably say the wrong thing at some point and, even worse, try to fix it. But this... is different. This is slowly becoming aware of a baseline level of something that I’ve stuffed aside for so long it feels weird to think it might actually be anxiety, because I basically ignore it until I hit a bad downward spiral, at which point I kick in with enough self-care to get right side again and carry on. Last year I got better at managing those spirals. This year I’m wondering... how do I shift that baseline?
Whether anxiety is the right label or not doesn’t really matter. Once I acknowledged it, it seemed to take over because I could feel it all the time. After a week of feeling trapped and paralyzed and grinding my teeth every night, however, I had another realization. I had to put the anxiety down. I acknowledged it as something present that I’d been ignoring and avoiding, but that’s it — it’s just an old shed in my garden and I don’t have to live in it. It’s just a place I wander to once in a while. I don’t have to stay there. It’s got a musty dirt floor and a drippy roof and a hole in the side of the tin cladding and spiders. It’s fine to store the shovels there in case we need to bury some bodies, but I’m not curling up in the dirt with my pillow and my blankie.
So. Back to baseline shifting. How ‘bad’ have I been okay with allowing myself to feel, and what can I do to make it better? How do I start noticing when I’m on the path to the shed, instead of waking up after a week-long shed bender?
When I go looking for answers on how to feel better, the answer that keeps coming back to me, time and time again, is meditation — something so simple, literally all you have to do is sit down and close your eyes. I made that resolution over a year ago, but the intention’s been floating around in my head a lot longer than that. So why hadn’t I done it?
We’d been trained to think that having a positive outlook means we had to June Cleaver our way through life — grit your teeth and grin — and we hated nothing more than the blatantly false happy picture this painted. (So sayeth the remnant end of Generation X, which I don’t quite fit into, but that’s a different Oregon Trail we won’t go down today). If your teenage rebellion involved a heavy dose of being miserable because people are stupid, there’s a side dish of identity crisis involved in putting that down.
Let me be clear: this isn’t about putting on a happy face when you feel dead inside. It’s just having a regular old day of a day where I haven’t had any time to work, the milk spilled, and the toddler’s standing on the table screaming and throwing things on the floor, and the 6yo’s yelling Mom can you play Convoy again? for the fifth time because he’s into semis and just discovered C.W. McCall but supper needs to come out of the oven five minutes ago and why can’t I cook my kids stuff that doesn’t come out of a box? because oh yeah, they won’t eat it and there’s that tense frowning pressure that gathers in your face, in that divot between your eyes and in the corners of your mouth and just hardens there like cracks in the sidewalk and I know I’m headed in a direction I don’t want to be going, picking up speed around the bend. But.
I want to change this. I don’t want to yell again tonight.
Let’s put on some dance music. Let’s make this fun again. I’m not a bad person because my kids get chicken nuggets twice a week. The 6yo can help keep the toddler busy dancing while I get supper out of the oven and onto some plates. I’m still not sure what I’m eating yet, but the kids are fed and I love sandwiches to an absurd degree and I’m also going to mix up a garlic mayo aeoli for those sweet potato fries. Everyone’s going to be in bed in an hour and a half and then I’ll have quiet time. I got this. I think.
So, maybe we can back away slowly from the identity crisis and just look at it like an exercise regimen. Because I don’t have a good baseline to come back to, if I’m not making time to meditate. Let’s just… start with putting in an effort to switch to thinking about things to appreciate and look forward to, first thing in the morning. And find fifteen minutes a day to sit in a quiet spot with my eyes closed and listen to the fan. Like going to the gym, the first hard part is attempting it, but it’s getting easier the more I practice, as long as I remember to do it.
Are you willing to put up with not feeling good? Where does the path to your shed start?
This week’s Dept. of Sunshine & Sanitation folder:
file under:
the purpose for the destination is the journey.
Ithaca, poem by C.V. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeleyfile under:
if it seems like you’ve seen it all, it’s only because you don’t understand how much more is out there.
Gretchen McCulloch is someone I first came across because of a podcast she runs with Lauren Gawne called Lingthusiasm. But she has this six-part series on her blog that I’ve slowly been working my way through, called Weird Internet Careers, and there’s some real gems in it.file under:
note to self.
Knowledge-stuffing is a form of attempted anxiety management. Shovelling words from the internet into my brain at an accelerated rate (aka “research”) will not help me feel less anxious about things. Go meditate.file under:
productivity hack.
If you tend to go to facebook or twitter to post, but get sucked into the feed instead, make a shortcut link directly to your own profile. You can still post from there and you won’t see anyone else’s stuff.file under:
things you did not know you needed in your life but now you do.
My latest Instagram obsession is @visible_creative_mending. Now I just need a roaring fireplace with a fleece rug and a big comfy chair in a deserted mansion to get started.