What are we attempting here?
...and after all that, my cup was moldy! 🤢
Its been a wild way to start the year, but if i’m being honest I think I said the same thing about last year so maybe we’re just really off to a bit more of the same start.
Last year for me had a huge theme to it, uncertainty.
Which for some of you who might have any kind of trauma or issues around boundaries and abandonment in your life might know how hard one might work to anticipate that kind of thing/feeling - and/ or head it off at the pass so to speak.
But theres just been no going around this one, no amount of preparation for my life to be shifting in the way that it has that was going to bring any balm to my nervous system.
Its been a real ass ask to just work with what you’ve got and work with the tools and skills you’ve been cultivating and keep trusting putting one foot in front of the other even if it feels like you’re just going to fall flat on your face!
( In my case it was a fall flat on my ass due to a slippery tennis court scene two days before the Gregorian New Year LITERALLY)
In doing so- I learned a few things :
All the work I did to strengthen my body and create deep routines helped stabilize my body from having a more severe injury to my knee ( knock on wood hallelujah) but all the strength in the world isnt saving me from needing to work on my mind body connection in reminding myself always to slow down!
There was a REASON there were two empty courts on the far side of the park (THINK before you ACT)
Even though I have a Coco Gauff racket i’m not exactly training for that event right now and reminding myself to stay to the path that i’m on ( despite the appeal for a wide variety of movement and cardio currently as my constant stair stepping can be BORING)
As I was in the thick of last year drinking my water daily- dare I say religiously as a means of self care- I looked inside my trusty water bottle while I was laid up on the couch- only to see that INSIDE my cup was molding ( i may or may not have a little Liquid IV issue for a caffeine pick me up before the gym hahaha🙀). No matter what I had going for me in the most positive sense was met with the new challenges it seems.
And so i’ve not given up the ship and instead steered back to the course i’ve been on this whole time- continuing to look at the work in front of me as there is still MUCH to do there and finding new ways to engage myself in the ‘same old same old’.
In working to stay the course and slow myself down I have been curious about my mind and the ways it so lovingly works to distract me. I cannot remember a time in my life that I feel MORE disconnected from a train of thought and unable to finish something that I have set out to do midstream.
Why is it that I have been able to show up for my body for an entire year consistently and when it comes to any and all of my creative endeavors it has felt like an unending chore just to STAY on task?
Or that my attention span to the ideas teeming in my brain have a 2 hour window of efficiency before I become an absolute hummingbird flitting about the house…..
I have been trying to take THAT feeling and work it out in my body, and although I find that a good channel (gym is the new church lately) that I feel accomplished with- it hasnt really CHANGED anything with my brain patterning.
And so I’ve taken to the new mission of slowing down EVEN more in my morning routines and working to journal each morning pen and paper style as a re emergence into a daily meditation practice.
Ideally journalling will accompany stillness but for now I am glad to find the active meditation of thought to the page as a means to find my brain into a version of emptiness in order to better sort myself throughout the day.
Lets say I’m about a week into this process, its ALSO something I attempted and put down last year because it became ‘less prioritized’.
And so i’m putting the need to have a better connection with my heart mind AND body at the top of my list this year. Putting it into the non negotiable category as a means to find my way into practice with things that I have really been meaning to get to for quite sometime.
Like knitting/ sewing/ tea meditation/ tattooing+ ritual adornment….basically crafting and creating in ways that feel good to my heart in the face of all that is happening on our planet.
It feels like solace and a balm to my spirit when I have the opportunity for that open mind and playtime with my own hands and heart.
Heres a little picture of one of my heroes Elizabeth Zimmerman who was a trailblazer when it came to knitting ‘outside the lines’ or working with simplicity to achieve unexpected answers from being open to trying new things as a fiber artist.
I’ve been back this week at the people who’s work or whom i looked up to over the years that were defining themselves in their own era of craft.
Who are some of your champions in this life?
A few of mine that I have been revisiting or exploring in one way or another lately whether it be via circumstance or just things I have come across that have reminded me of pieces in my own explorations of humanity.
Elizabeth Zimmerman
Michael Jordan
James Vanderbeek
Georgia O’Keefe
Hilma Af Klimt
Catherine O’Hara
Ansel Adams
My grandpa Glenn
Clearly i think theres likely a hundred or more here but these are just ones that surfaced for me this very week in doing a bit more of a deep dive with myself.
And I’m out to make a plan for myself this year will prove to be powerful and overarching, i’m really ready to be moving slow and steady in the direction of my heart each and every day, using what I know as a conduit for good in myself, my community my work.
This year I am finding the theme already is ‘action plan’- but a thoughtful measured one whenever possible 🤣
I finally think I picked a show to be competing in for the spring- in the fit model division, maybe you’ll come and cheer me on?
Did I mention I’m ALSO designing a rug and furniture collection for market ? LOL I’ll leave that one for the next installment here….
Cheers!
Also here’s your open ended reminder to wash your water bottle each and every week so you don’t get grossed out like me HAHA.
All my very best!xo xo