To Those Who Subscribe to My Walk

Beloved Reader;

I've been encountering nervous "should" energy that's telling me how to live my life lately, especially as I lean deeper into sharing vulnerably.

You'll notice defensive energy. That's real. That's from feeling excitement about my work and feeling shame in sharing that excitement.

Please read with an open heart. Please notice when you are emotionally triggered. Know that I'm doing my best. Know that I Love you.

I've been told I "seem less happy" by close friends and family. Acting "off".

I want you to know that's true.

It feels appropriate that I SEEM less happy. 

I no longer am catering to YOU to make YOU feel comfortable when it comes to MY spirit, MY well-being. 

I am taking ownership of my own relationship with Myself and I am honoring that foremost both to bring a gentleness to my spirit and also to believe you mean it when you say you Love me. 

It's much harder to accept love if I do not believe the giver understands who they are giving their love to. 

I have hid beneath a projection to avoid:

Conflict

Abandonment

Unworthiness

Advice

Mistakes

It's like how failing is much easier if I don't try. Conflict is much easier when I don't actually believe my side of the argument. And so on.

I've spent my life up to this point figuring out how to "seem" happy (which is to say happy to YOU) instead of how to "be" happy (which is to say happy in ME). I rarely even have the conversation in my head of "how am I?" It's typically "why aren't I happy? What should I be doing differently? Am I making a mistake right now?"

For me, "being" happy has started with figuring out what I'm "being" in the first place. (I must know how a string is tuned NOW in order to tune it to a particular note. What note do I want? Is the string sharp? Is the string flat?). And that's usually been a human mix of uncomfortable and messy and inarticulate and wordless and full of light.

~

Please check in with yourself now before we continue. Do you feel reactive? Energized? Calm? Curious? 

It's a pretty big share. It's more rambly than coherent. It's full of sensitivity. It's all so real. 

The short of it is: "Here I am. I invite you to be connected with me. Please also help me stay accountable in my connection with myself. "

~

I've been noticing an old slow-burn trauma 

(separating myself from trusting my heart, my intuition, my Truth) 

from the idea of "someone else"

(history, statistics, science and news cycles who speak truth, friends who care deeply, family who love me unconditionally, partners who know me at my worst, teachers who can see my struggle) 

knowing "better than me". 

(I have allowed Advice to muck over my compass.)

If I don't know best, how am I supposed to make any of my decisions on my own? (I hope you see that while guidance is critical to the human experience, that this message can get out of hand and work its way all the way down to how I justify choosing my toothbrush or flavors of ice cream, choosing the "best" one or "most popular" instead of the one I like).

Growing up, I did not learn how to build trust and relationship with Myself in the way that I've been learning the past year. Whether it was taught to me, whether I was listening, I do not know. What I do know is I did not receive, accept, or seek the healing message I've been so hungry for: 

"I have perspective that will inform your life to avoid the pain I found or the suffering I've heard of. I have notes and a map for you. But you know best, I invite you to review my notes, my map, see if it feels true, decide if it helps. If not, I trust you to make the right decision for your path on your own. You know yourself best. Your struggle will uniquely give way to your Light." 

That message was absent until recently. I instead accepted "Should" as gospel, and used it to judge myself and judge others. "This is how you need to live" and "You can't just X and expect Y." I refused to take responsibility for my relationship with myself when it felt WRONG. I was living as I ought to, and my job, my title, and reputation, who I hung out with, and what we all did evidenced that I am (or I am not) a good person. 

Nurturing trust for my intuition, and instead abandoning it with utilitarian logic (authoring a rubric for being a good person and falling short every day). Nurturing trust in myself for me means owning my decisions. Acting against the grain when it is right and accepting the consequence. Listening to other perspectives, sure. Learning. And also practicing discernment. Then choosing. Then owning the consequence. And forgiving. Trusting, too, that my intuition is Good, and not just selfish instinct or impulse.

In angling my life for sainthood, I've bourne a constant self-correction, self-judgment, presented false happiness (fake-it-till-you-make-it happiness where the only milk and honey is external validation), made "good" feelings bigger (puffing up my cheeks), made "bad" feelings smaller (sucking in my belly). All to attract what others are looking for me to have (money, relationship, job) and to avoid what others are looking for me to avoid (sadness, confusion, instability).

I've built myself up by correcting and pushing down and looking down on others. I've shamed myself by looking up, at those who I believe are beyond my capabilities. I've been hiding (incubating) behind goofiness and persona, finding my light at 3 in the morning late night talks of philosophy and spirit and feelings less often with friends and sometimes more often with strangers.

It's uncomfortable to consider what I'm really capable of in this moment now.

In rest. In love. In care for the world.

I'm responsible for seeking that. I'm the only one who can bring my potential to life  (and I do mean to say my actual potential, not some fantastic achievement).

because I'm the one with the most direct view of my nervous system.

The responsibility is Uncomfortable.

I'm working on sitting with Discomfort in the day:

Letting him in. 

Listening to her.

Offering them real consideration.

Discomfort for so long has lit up the instruction to cover, hide, numb.

Today I lift the intention for my life be willing to lean in and fall down even if I can't get back up on my own. Fall down until I have to ask for help. Submit my pride to ask for guidance. I believe if I do not choose this in my life of really trying and really failing and so really finding Love, discomfort will grow, discomfort will find me and amplify in old age against the raging of my ego. This discomfort will go unnamed and manifest itself through blaming everything around me instead of allowing it to teach me where it came from.

All to say:

I am in a season of growth and it is uncomfortable and I welcome that because it is redefining how I accept and pass along energy in my life.

How You treat me (how I feel treated) when I'm uncomfortable tells me how you're doing with Your own Self-Work. I no longer believe You know better than Me about My Path. I no longer want to ask for You, my friend, to help me avoid pain, but to stay with me as I walk through. Because I also believe that You Care.

Pity, Obligation, and Loyalty, I release you. I accept the abandonment found in dying alone, so I do not build my life around an expectation. I reserve the right to release all advice and guidance, at the risk of my own stumbling. I ask for follow through, witness, and check-ins. I offer gratitude.

I accept the heartbreak at feeling abandoned when I speak my truth, when in reality, the abandonment is my own guiding light to a place where my truth is resonant. I accept that ache as a growing pang as I walk into what each day has for me Now.

I invite in those who feel Called to be in my life.

(Please take a moment to notice if you feel obligated or act out of loyalty)

I invite readers who feel Called to fall down the scripts of my heart.

(Please notice where you are "efforting" forward in contrast to feeling drawn in)

I invite Witnesses to my struggle, My growth. To learn my story and know I Was Here. That I'm doing My Work.

I invite you to share what moves you to be shared.

Know the value of my sharing for me is knowing own my willingness to make this process public. 

If you feel called to speak into my life, I ask you to express that through curiosity and sharing what you hear before a Should comes out. I ask that you hold yourself and approach me with gentleness and patience.

I am in pursuit of what I believe to be real Love. Of my Light.

Rome in Filthy Rags

December 4th, 2014
I wrote this upon return from my only out-of-country excursion from my Europe-based headquarters in Ireland. I was judgmental (and jealous) of those who traveled to different countries every weekend. I viewed them as wealthy, proud, showboaty list-checkers who were thinking more about all their stories they'd tell when they got home than the times they were having now. I was also jealous. I was proud of working hard in my academics while abroad. This trip was my one indulgence I took on my own. I ended up getting sick right between taking a weekend for my adventure and my upcoming finals. Here's what I wrote:

I am writing in the crock-pot of a sick day.
Lots of words. Lots to process. [I want some good reading material.]

I went to Rome and I took about eight pictures.
My visit was so bad by so many standards. I spent most of my time hungry and tired.
I was swindled, ignored, treated politely, begged to, guided, and walked, walked, walked.
Too sad to order food on my own, without the spirit to order wine on my own more than once, I kept to fruit stands and ice cream shops. I met the peddlers, the homeless, I met the rich and vacationing lost souls caught still in adolescence at a bar,
looking for the world just like I was.
Most people I talked to, usually ended up with some of my money. I was sad about it.
There were a few people, though, where we really saw each other.
We waved.

Now the downhill rush,
I've got finals coming up, there's this rich smoke in the air and I can't breathe right through my own snot.

But really
I'm so out of touch with so much of this university junk.

Honestly, over the last week or so, I just fell so in love with God
and I don't even know how to express it.
My heart is aching at how I haven't been celebrating it,
how I don't know who to celebrate it with.
Like
I've been a Christian,
I've gone to church,
worked at church camps
recited the creeds,
held hands during prayer,
I've been tolerant and pious,
I've tithed or not tithed,
I've researched other religions,
Seen the global perspective,
Marveled at how little I know,
Felt so small,
felt so big
but
never
have I
been
this in love.

"Cake and Eat" Anxiety Speak

A blog post I wrote about my heart before the beginning (November 2018) of all my self-work this year.

I present this as a measuring stick for the work I post hereon.

~_~_~_~

I am a Christian in my heart. I believe first and foremost in relationship, and believe in my heart that God as the holy trinity is the most perfect manifestation of relationship in the universe. That the holy spirit is always moving and is easy to ignore or misunderstand.

In my life, I so believe (whether I am right or not) I am responsible for understanding that Call. I 
should 
have time for writing and reflection. For reading and thoughtful media consumption. To be caught up on the news. To know the expert words for my job. Time to listen to myself, know what I want, and understand the world, to be torn by suffering, and work for justice, to live most rightly, fully, without regret.

I do not know if these kinds of things are best planned or experienced in routine, or with friends, or alone. My schedule gets filled up by "can you do this?" and "would you do that?" and "could we both go?" While I get swept away by such whims, I selfishly guard hours for empty space in my schedule. I believe I should use time for both studying and living, but it is a worried task to know which one should happen first. Empty space quickly becomes an exercise in filling empty space.

By studying, I mean being present with the quiet hours of reading the news, working on my blog or journal, more creative pursuits, and by living I mean being out with people, taking trips, finding experiences.

So here I am here writing because all I've thought this week at work are reasons why I'm living my life wrong and how writing out the reasons would make me realize how to live my life right. And while the week's living goes on, the writing has gone worriedly undone. I do not write during the week because it involves a screen, and I cannot work all day with a screen and write all night with a screen without being unhealthy. However, without that writing, I must be making wrong decisions all week, and will continue to make decisions that lead me deep into a life that I never intended to live.

I hope in my writing I can fix myself before I hurt somebody, or fill myself with regret.

I believe that there is every chance I will always be wrong in how I live. Even the most assured people have been wrong. Reflection becomes criticism and wears on trust in myself. I have stopped listening to myself as much, sometimes even at all.

...

The book Ecclesiastes was the first I ever took seriously from the bible. In it, The Teacher has lived a perfect life and still has not accomplished the satisfaction of heart he was always seeking. Here below, he talks about those hard-working fools who waste their time with work that will never amount to anything. He says:

They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.

I think, too, rightness is always and has always been within me, and my writing only serves to justify all my most convenient and evil behaviors. That's got to be at least a little bit true. So in the day when I have time to write, and all my words are wrong. I spent all week thinking that writing out my troubles would heal me and direct me, when it turns out there is more profound healing in watching trees blow in the wind. 

Again I say: Here I am writing and I firmly believe that I should be doing anything else. Be anywhere else. All of these words will be meaningless, and none of them will bring me answers. This article, it turns out, is a way to justify being afraid to go out into life. Experiences pass by like a river, untasted, unused, only to be wasted by the brine of the sea, and fill me with regret when the mountain springs run dry.

But I must also believe that writing, as a mode of expression, allows me to listen to myself. To notice unhealthy behaviors and beliefs that are festering under my skin. To speak my truth, rather than go unrecognized and to weigh on me until being let loose in less healthy ways! Whether I am able to mold a concise thesis from these words or not, I am able to catch a freeze-frame of my heart, and remove the bias of all my anxious in-the-moment-ness, and listen to myself as an outside person.

I remain afraid that chasing this "gladness of heart" by hiding from my writing will lead me away from who I intend to be. I'm afraid I won't know what I want. Routine will clog my most meaningful hours.

So when the sun is out and I have time to properly reflect, it kills me to waste such a beautiful day. Finally I have made time and space to hear myself out, to better understand if I should redirect my life, and when, but my words march in circles. Language takes laps around my eyes.

I resent the fact my verbiage is so lyrically redundant. Perhaps instead it is rhythmic like a chorus, but I still resent the time it takes me to speak real truth and art into my works (songs, poems, blog posts, and the like)

. . .

How woefully I find myself most able to speak when it is so late.

So I use these sentences to construct my own wisdom, to build a persona of the thoughtful and wise teacher to myself. I am arranging a logical argument that will guide my life away from waste and regret, and towards accomplishment, a rich and checked bucket list, and satisfaction that I did all I was ever capable of. But maybe it's a mistake.

All the while, I am ignoring the holy spirit. Or what the holy spirit is capable of. I know what I should do, what will guide me, and I use distractions to "recharge", to "build up energy" to be ready for when the spirit calls me. When already I believe there is rest in the holy spirit. That there is love of humanity in the holy spirit. That the holy spirit is always calling me to perfect living. It is already resolved. There must be all the incredible energy of the whole earth in that movement. I do not need to be rested, or accomplished, thoughtful, wise, loving, or anything. I just need to love the spirit and seek the kingdom of heaven on earth.

In my head, my heart, my day-to-day, I know there is so much I cannot understand, and I always fear that I will misunderstand and be ignorant of all the most hurtful tings. For this, I hate the ignorant for making such confident decisions that turn out to be wrong. The racist. Especially now, those taking stereotype and hearsay as truth. I want to know that I'm right in what little I understand, so that I know my decisions are made rightly. That I am a good person.

But I may never know, and still I must live.

Still I write in some mix of pride and scheming, in some hope that I will hear the spirit calling, offer some words to the reader who has been looking for them. So I bring that writing to a close. To rebalance my reflect-fullness with the day.

Perhaps, too, it is more important and wise to say less.

Take 1, Leave 1

~~~ The following is a historic marker of an important life event for me. A snapshot of my psyche. Know that I write this with a resolved heart and an eagerness to continue living my life this way and with this perspective I've been gifted with ~~~

It begins like this:

At the Oregon Country Fair (OCF) campsites, a wandering camp tenant can find dozens of trade blankets with the sign "take 1/leave 1" above a neatly arranged pile of stuff.

The idea is to take one thing you want to take and leave one thing you want to leave. Some people trade up between blankets one at a time, increasing value incrementally until they leave with an equivalently improved value for all the time they put into carefully rearranging blankets. Others, I'm sure, just take, take, take, and feel like assholes. In most cases, people aspire to leave something of the same value, sentimental or otherwise.

The cool part is it doesn't really matter who takes what when or what leaves where who because nobody's tracking the transactions. Everyone who's left something on the blanket has already let it go. Some people put energy into the collective value of all the trade blankets added up, and others take from the trade blanket energy. I like to believe whoever has more to pour out from their life leaves more energy (or net worth) and those who take more need the energy. In observing the camp blankets, one can learn about the camp tenants available resources.

This is what the trade blankets look like:

The difference in this case is all of this stuff once belonged to the person who stole my car.
This is what they left me.

The first thing I noticed when I saw my car parked was, in the passenger's seat, a fully spun spider's web. My car was a home, part of its environment's ecology.

It had been abandoned for at least a day, maybe two, maybe a week. There were two dents on the driver's side. The car was coated in a sticky film, rendering the windshield unusable. The radio was turned low and set to a pop station. The CD I had in was set carefully in the otherwise unmolested glove box. The windows were all in one piece, the locks still worked great, and a gentle CHECK ENGINE light gave me some comfort as to why it may have been abandoned for me to find again.

Having had my car stolen two weeks ago taught me release, taught me both how I react to invasion and what a car is worth to me. Losing my car was reflective of the difficulty of my own exchange with a trade blankets at Oregon Country Fair. In understanding the blankets to be a place for telling stories, for leaving energy behind, footprints, I left behind a childhood toy that I held onto like a sentimental battery. That I held onto as a comfort to bring out nostalgia on tough days.

An unmolested slinky. Somehow leaving that perfect childhood slinky was harder than my car being stolen.

I imagined the skill of whoever took my car. The practice it takes to make a car disappear in a careful neighborhood. What was his or her motivation? Was it a habit? What started the habit? How many cars came before mine? How many will be after?

I tried to imagine what they thought of me when they saw how my car was arranged. What stories they invented. The stories I invented about them. Now I know he or she is a painter. He or she works or knows someone who works at a construction company. He or she knows how to find tools and the usefulness of a headlamp. He or she had something to do the weekend they took my car. He or she got something out of the experience. He or she stopped by McDonald's and had a drink at some point, and at another point the cupholders broke. He or she took my CD wallet and left the ten or so discs I'd set up on the visor. This must have been a last minute decision because the console was open when I entered the car. I imagine they picked the music they liked and left me my own taste.

And now in losing those two weeks, but finding my car, I get to learn how to receive with grace. I get to withhold vengeance and offer grace. To practice forgiveness to my neighbor so that I can continue to practice forgiveness with Myself.

I get to continue to treat my life in terms of energy exchange. The energy I take is my breath, my Life. The energy I leave in the world, the energy I give away is my Legacy.

Little posts, scattered in the dirt

This particular reflection has been simmering on a back burner since I turned 24 in September.

I finally started going out on the town after my cousin brought me to a concert in Billings. He reminded me how his life changed when he did the things enjoyed instead of the things he felt like he should enjoy.

I decided to just start buying tickets for myself instead of waiting. In so doing, friends have found me and I kept going out until I signed up for a professional licensing exam that forced me indoors and deep into books.

Meanwhile, my new friends clamored for me to join in so many more excursions!

And how thankful I've been to find a regular group of good people.

Between going out and studying, I've been almost entirely away from writing since November. 

I've spent time and money and time again away from my art and expression. The end of studying left space for ways of spending my money to spill in. Considering myself a writer, the lack of writing has been different.

I can't tell if I miss the writing, though. I'd been writing for proud reasons, for selfish and self-interested means. Self-preservation, immortality. To hang on to time, and in so doing, miss the day. Since putting it down, I've been noticing the minutes move faster and with richer colors.

So I say this: 

Let the arguments go.

Remind yourself of outer space and death however you can.

Look back to life, give names to things. Listen to them, be always curious because you can never fully understand.

Watch animals who do not worry, just as you watch the plants. Look how great they are. Products of the healthy soil around them. Focus on the music around them and around you. Do not try and bend the spoon. That is impossible. Only try and realize the truth.

There is not always something to seize. Do not chase so much as listen.

Add goodness to your life. Burn yourself out if you have to, but learn how to rest. It looks different every time. When your life is full, pay attention to what falls away, notice what you miss, leave behind what you do not.

Almost nobody reading this should find use in it, but maybe comfort. These things I have found for myself and yours will (or have) come when it is time.

Until then, if you are here, be lost in my mirror with me. My muse speaks faster than my hands can move and I have grown out of the idea that my words will immortalize my personhood. They are only as lasting and useful birdsong. 

I resent how puddly and stagnant the pride of writerhood becomes. The moment it shifts from expression to selfish ambition. When I am no longer welcome with that muse. 

I spin about the delivery of envelopes. Writing absent replies instead of inspired truths. I believe myself to be too self-involved and fear that I will always misunderstand the people I meet, just as I fear they misunderstand me. I hope here to write into this fear. Embrace it. To write outside and see myself or have others see themselves in me. I believe in so doing, I can be soil, and see myself as soil.

Now I want to go forward, craft these as little posts for anyone who is traveling behind me.