Just popping in to recommend the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. It’s not like any other time management book I’ve read – there are no ‘tips’ or ‘tricks’ to exercise while cooking dinner or write a book while running a marathon. It’s more about recognizing that we have limited time and tough decisions need to be made about what is going to get done and what isn’t. It’s helped me focus on what’s important in my creative pursuits but also life in general.
This book is a part of the reason I’ve been pretty quiet here on my website – it really changed how I look at my creative work and I’ve been (slowly) more productive in the things that are truly important to me. One of my biggest lessons from the book is not to try to do too many things at once. I have so many creative projects and I used to think that if I touched each one that I was somehow still making progress on all of them at once. But that wasn’t the case and this book helped me to see the truth of that. Now I am actually making measurable, exciting progress on the children’s book I’ve wanted to write for years.
Unfortunately, this means thatmy comics, which I was really using as drawing practice for the children’s book, have intentionally fallen by the wayside. As has my music creation. And my other writing projects. Sometimes the hardest decision is choosing between two things we REALLY want to do. One day, I’ll have time again for my other creative pursuits and I look forward to that day. But for now, I am enjoying getting closer and closer to my goal of publishing my picture book.
I’ve been wanting to do this drawing and accompanying quote since the first Fantastic Beasts movie came out. YEARS later and I’m finally getting to it. XD It was great for practicing shadows, my lines, and just getting used to all the tools on Rebelle 4.
Made on Rebelle 4 with watercolor, pastels, airbrush, ink, and acrylic. And the glorious Undo button. 😉
I’ve gone through quite a large paradigm shift during the pandemic – I no longer believe in a higher power or afterlife.
Time in the pandemic is strange and bendy, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it was about four months after self-isolation began in mid-March 2020. I just turned to my husband and said “I think…I don’t believe in a higher power anymore.” It was not something I agonized over or researched extensively although I think I’ve been inching towards this conclusion for years now.
I’m not sure what caused the final push exactly but I would conjecture that the pandemic laid the truth of the situation out so clearly in front of me that I could no longer ignore it. I’ve never experienced something that was so completely out of my control and endangered my life and the lives of my loved ones on such an ongoing basis. Normally, if I’m in a situation that is dangerous, I’ll leave (I am aware of the privilege here). There is no leaving this pandemic; there is no ignoring it or pretending it will go away if I just live my life and ‘trust god’. The science is clear and unwavering on this.
I think many people, when faced with that lack of control, chose to lean towards their faith and belief in a higher power. For me, it was quite different – I leaned more towards science and released my belief in a higher power. And I would guess that the hordes of people blatantly ignoring the science during a pandemic to go on and endanger others while saying “god will protect us” probably contributed a bit to my choice.
At the same time, I also realized that I no longer believed in many of the pseudosciences I had previously advocated for and enthusiastically partaken in or even studied. When faced with Covid-19, these pseudosciences could do nothing and it was dangerous to think that an unproven herbal supplement would protect me.
These realizations were quite a monumental shift for me and it caused me great anxiety for about two months. Many of the tools that I had used to comfort myself emotionally were gone. I was raised Catholic and was quite devout in high school and early college, even going so far as to attend a Catholic university to study theology while simultaneously becoming a youth minister at my local church. There were even many months that I wondered if I was being ‘called’ to become a nun. Then I realized that the patriarchal and homophobic mentality of the Catholic Church no longer fit for me (the big pedophilia story hadn’t come out yet). So I spent the next many years drifting from one Pagan-esque, New Age idea to the next, even ignorantly dabbling in some cultural appropriation (I’m so sorry) but then eventually settling on the idea of the ‘Divine’ and ‘Energy’ and using tarot cards once in a while. This was my vague belief in the ‘divine’ until…one day, it wasn’t. After the two painful months of adjusting, it was actually incredibly freeing to release this belief that had comforted me over the years.
Then, to my surprise, I realized that, overall, I was actually LESS anxious. Releasing my belief in a higher power and pseudosciences had released an entire layer of worry and stress that I had been carrying around. No longer did I wonder: “Am I doing the ‘right’ thing?” “Is this fulfilling my life’s purpose?” “Is there a dark spirit in that closet or is it just drafty?” “Will holding onto this anger give me cancer?” “Am I on the right ‘path’?” “Should I be getting Reiki treatments?” “Are my dead grandparents’ spirits watching me when I have sex?” I had freed myself from imaginary monsters and ailments and could deal with the world as it was, real and present in front of me, with science by my side. Instead of trying to treat my seasonal allergies with herbs and honey (neither of which have been scientifically proven to help), I took cetirizine hydrochloride (as my doctor had suggested) and found out that I wasn’t actually tired all the time – it was just untreated allergies! And my sinus issues not only never developed into something more serious but went away because I was actually treating my allergies now. And I no longer see “sending healing energy” as a viable response to a crisis or a problem; scientifically proven action is now my go-to response.
So now I’m many months into being an atheist although I’ve only recently embraced the term, preferring agnostic until I was able to accept that I am in, in fact, an atheist. Atheists are a minority in the U.S. and so many people wonder how we find meaning in our lives without a higher power. The truth is, I make my own meaning and I am now free to choose how I want to live my life instead of adhering to what I think a higher power wants me to do. And I feel even MORE compelled to live my life to the fullest and effect positive change in this world. There is no longer this ‘afterlife’ that would allow me to continue living. THIS IS IT. There is no do over for me. There is no extra time with my family in a heavenly abode. There is no ‘more’ and there is no guarantee. Because I no longer believe a higher power is protecting me or my family, I know this life or theirs can be taken away from me at any moment. So I’m living it as best as I can and as fully as I can because I now see clearly that I only get this one shot and I’m sure as science not gonna waste one second of it.
Our lives have shifted quite a bit since the pandemic began and some of them have been good shifts. In March, after many mornings of waking up grumpy, I started a morning exercise and stretch routine. All I committed to was 5 minutes of stretching or exercising each morning. Some mornings I would do random stretches for 5 minutes, other mornings I would follow along with a yoga or exercise YouTube video and some mornings I would dance and exercise for an hour. This has been the first time in my life that I’ve ever exercised with this much regularity. And I’ve seen the results – I feel stronger, I’m less grumpy when I start the day with exercise, and I’ve seen improvements in my menstrual cycle, back health, mood, and stress levels. We had to go on a short weekend trip in August and I even did my morning exercise and stretches there! At that point, it had been months of this routine so it was nice to have it to ground me and help reduce stress. It was almost like my morning cup of coffee.
One of my fitness goals in particular is to learn the splits, something I’ve never been able to do. And although I’m not there yet, I can definitely see that I’ve made progress. I even watched this YouTube video by Physics Girl about the science behind stretching and improving flexibility. My daily routine was just the ticket because improving flexibility requires around 1 minute of stretching that particular muscle, 6 out of 7 days of the week.
I also set a goal of learning to hold a handstand but I hurt my wrists early on in that endeavor (pretty common in learning handstands) so I had to table it as it healed. Did you known that wrist injuries take a long time to heal? Me neither. But they do. Did you also know that you use your wrists in about everything you do? Another thing I discovered.
Some other routines I’ve started since this pandemic: setting out a nightly surprise for my daughter, doing a big clean on Sundays, and morning nature walks or outside time with my daughter.
And every single one of these routines, including exercise, was abandoned this past week.
It wasn’t really a conscious choice – I just didn’t want to do any of it. We’ve had heat advisories and high humidity for most of the last week so going outside at all has been…unpleasant to say the least. The nightly surprise for my daughter was fun for a week but it has since fizzled. It was no longer a surprise, but had become an expectation for my daughter and was stressing me out. One morning she raced downstairs before my husband and I were even out of bed to see her surprise. Next thing I heard was the Google Broadcast of her saying she was unimpressed by the friendship bracelet materials I had left out for her. At least we got a nice morning laugh out of it.
As for the big Sunday clean and daily exercising, I just couldn’t. No reason. I just needed a break from the routine. In the past, I would have forced myself to do these things that I set for myself despite my exhaustion which would then lead to hating the activity more and more until I abandoned it completely, never to touch it again. Thankfully, I’ve grown up a bit since then and no longer hold myself to such punishing standards.
And then this morning and yesterday, after a week of not exercising, my body felt sluggish and achy and just tired. So I decided to pull out the old trusty yoga mat and stretch for just five minutes. And then I remembered why I had set that morning exercise routine in the first place – because it feels good! Because my body gets a chance to stretch and wake up and feel better and stronger.
In her book, I Quit Sugar for Life (another thing I’ve been trying to slowly incorporate because it feels good to eat well), Sarah Wilson talks about ‘lapses’ – moments when someone who is following a no sugar diet indulges a little too much in sugar. This is what she has to say:
“Well, first, I don’t freak. Quitting sugar for life simply means making the best available wellness choices and doing your best (by yourself). It’s a gentle, curious experiment, not a mean diet. Also, this: so-called lapses are good! They are perfect for reminding us why we choose not to eat sugar.”
And that is exactly what happened to me – by taking a break from ‘making’ myself exercise, I was reminded why I’d started the habit in the first place: because it feels good! And by taking a break from a big Sunday clean, I was reminded I was not alone in keeping a clean house (my husband stepped up and did some of the things I normally do) and I was also reminded of why I do a Sunday clean – because I like a clean house! Of course, not being able to go outside for an extended period of time has definitely reminded me how much I enjoy being outside and how much I’m missing it right now.
My backyard mulberry tree.
Of course, not all things I take a break from end up back on my daily routine. The surprises I left out for my daughter? I feel relief at not having to do that on a daily basis anymore and our days flow much better without it. And now, I have the opportunity to leave out a surprise every now and again when I am excited to do so and I think she’ll enjoy the surprise.
Plus, I think breaks are just good for having time to curl up on the couch and read a good book which is exactly what I did this past Sunday. 🙂
To be fair, I think a lot of other people have this superpower as well. And I think I’ve known about it, vaguely, for quite some time, but I don’t think it’s been this clear until today.
I have the power to take on a character’s feelings when I read a book and sometimes when I watch a TV show. So if a character’s heart has been hardened by trials & tribulations and is filled with anger, I am pissed. If a woman is furious with her thieving, cheating husband, I am angry with my husband (sorry, honey). And if a character has lost a loved one and is desperately sad, so am I. But it’s not all ‘bad’ feelings I get from these fictional characters. Good feelings pass along too. I just finished reading a romance novel and as I read it over the past few days, I was walking on air and feeling blissfully content, as if I had just fallen in love for the first time too. And if I watch a New Girl or Parks and Rec episode, I am imbued with the indomitable optimism of Jessica Day or Leslie Knope.
This power is partially what Jonathan Gottschall was talking about in The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (which I’ve mentioned before – it’s a good book, you should read it). Stories are extremely powerful for all humans. Combine that with my empathic nature and BOOM – you have a woman who has to choose very carefully what she reads and watches. As they say, you are what you eat and we eat with our eyes first.
With all the heaviness that has been overwhelming in reality lately, I’m choosing to feel blissfully content when I can and read me some romance novels. 😉
One of my dear friends recently wrote me a letter (for you younguns, that’s a really long text on paper) and she included with it a lovely poem by Mary Oliver:
The Uses of Sorrow (In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
Unbeknownst to my friend, I had had an entire afternoon of cleansing, freeing crying and this letter with this beautiful poem by one of my favorite poets arrived that evening.
I know a lot of people don’t like poetry or don’t get it. However, I think that poetry, like music, is something that’s deeply personal and sometimes it takes a while to find the style you like. I read many poems as part of my high school education and I disliked a lot of them. But every now and again, I would read one that felt as if it was speaking directly to me.
My favorite poetry is often succinct and reflects the truth of life back to me. I can garner the same lesson from a well crafted poem as I can from a well-written, multi-million dollar, two hour movie. Poems, simply put, are stories, real or imagined, that like any other art form, reflect life back to us and, oftentimes, help us to change, grow or return to that which is our deepest joy.
Poetry can be raw, sweet, clever, life-affirming or speak to the secret and not-so-secret aches that live within all of this. For some, reading poetry can be a spiritual experience – a supplement to their weekly religion or a full replacement. For others, it’s a constant wake up call and challenge to grow. And for others still, it’s a reminder of what makes life life. Poetry often leaves no place to hide and no stone unturned. In its presence, pretense and illusions fall away…and that is why I love it.
I was making a playlist of favorite songs and I realized that a lot of them happened to come from movies. I think this is because the story of the movie imbues the song with even more power. It cements it in my mind as a powerful emotional piece.
Later in the week, my sister was telling me about Ariana Grande’s new songs and she kept saying, “The music video is so good too” and telling me I needed to watch it. The thing is, I’ve never really been into music videos. Many of them add nothing to the music listening experience and some even detract from it. But then I realized that good music videos do the same thing as movies – they cement the story of the song in my mind. And in fact, this had happened to me before.
Katy Perry’s song, “Wide Awake”, had been playing on the radio for a while. I liked the song well enough but had no deep, emotional connection to it. One day I was on YouTube and stumbled across the music video for “Wide Awake”and I was blown away. As I watched the video, the story that I was seeing played out before my eyes was helping me see the song in an entirely new way and I was able to connect to that song on a new level. In addition, every time I hear that song, I’m reminded of the video and the deep emotional connection just as I am when I hear a favorite song from a movie. The song on it’s own was not very powerful. But when I was shown the meaning behind it, through the visuals of the music video, it became very powerful for me.
I suspect this ties into the power that stories have over us humans. As Jonathan Gottschall says inThe Storytelling Animal(an excellent book that you should read):
“When we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to leave us defenseless.”
“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. . . . Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.”
So a music video, a good one anyways, is taking the emotional power of stories and the emotional power of music and combining them in a profound way. Wow. I hadn’t given much thought to making music videos to accompany my music album when it’s done, but I definitely will now.
I was laying in bed having just finished Hannah Gadsby’s riveting special, Nanette, on Netflix – I was in awe as it had been full of vulnerability, courage and wisdom. There were many great moments in her special, but I think my favorite line was “There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.” I was so moved, I had to post about it on Twitter. A preternatural sense had had me avoiding Twitter all week and that’s when I found out why.
The Brett Kavanaugh hearings and commentary overwhelmed my feed. As I scrolled Twitter, the anger inside of me had hot tears of anger rolling down my face. I remembered all of the me too stories that had recently been shared (and all the shaming and non-believing). I also remembered my own me too story – I’d done my personal healing around it years ago but I’d never dealt with my cultural anger and sorrow. As my daughter slept safe and sound in the room next door, my anger reignited. Not as a survivor of sexual abuse but as a mama who was fiercely determined to not allow anything like that to happen to her daughter. Or any more daughters or sons.
But what power did I have? What could I do? I quietly marched to my office, my anger and sorrow turning to resolve and I opened up my sketch book and began to write the first things that came out. To my surprise, they were not words of anger but words of comfort, understanding, empathy, and hope. They were words to sexual abuse survivors everywhere, including that little girl inside of me.
They came out in a flurry and then started to peter out. It had been so long since I’d been in that place of pain and intense suffering. So I did something I thought I’d never do – I got out my 10 year old journal from when I was healing and I read the fears, pains and sorrow of a young woman touching her deepest childhood pain for the first time. I cried. And the words began to flow again as I wrote to her the things she needed to hear.
This is my #metoo collection. They are reminders, affirmations and messages of connection and hope. If you need to print one out for yourself or a friend, please feel free to do so. They are my offering. They are my hope and my healing.
Humility – it’s something I learned an awful lot about back in my very Catholic days and every now and again, it pops up from my subconscious. Just as it did one day when I was sitting on the couch, feeling rather pleased with myself for finding a clever solution to a challenging problem. As I contentedly thought about the work I had completed, a voice in the back of mind whispered “Stay humble. Humility is a virtue.” And for one deflating moment, I believed it. But then I wondered, ‘What is humility, exactly?’ I’ve always had a vague understanding of what humility is but didn’t know the exact definition. I opened my phone and got this: “hu·mil·i·ty (noun): a modest or low view of one’s own importance; humbleness.” Well, now, what about humble? So I looked that up too: “hum·ble (adjective): having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance.”
Well, that is definitely not something I believe. I don’t believe it is a virtue for me to keep a low view of my own importance. In fact, I think it is detrimental for anyone to do! The world does not need people who think they are less than others – the world needs people who are not afraid to recognize and claim their own power. Perhaps that’s part of the reason our world is in the state that it is in – people have been told that keeping a “low view of one’s own importance” is a good thing. So we’ve doubted ourselves and quieted our voices all while the person who told us to ‘stay humble’ is tooting his own horn louder than anyone else and enjoying all the space he created at the top of the tower.
No, humility is not a virtue – it is a tool to keep people ‘in their place.’ And I will no longer allow that lie to take up precious space in my head or my heart. It is my belief that we are all just as important as everyone else – no more, no less. And when we claim that equality and the power that comes with it, great things can happen.
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