Happiness is as Happiness Does

I feel like I start every blog with "so I was struggling..."

I mean, really, how much can one person possibly struggle before realizing just how much they're responsible for the struggle?  The answer to that is another post but suffice it to say, I've been in enough of a quandry about my own happiness that it's starting to seep out of my pores.  I've been made become aware that I look and act like I'm miserable.

That's just great.

It doesn't at all bother me to hear this news.  I'm not happy about it (do you see the conundrum?) but I'm glad that friends alert me to this. At least, they alert me to the fact they can see it...and I do believe its because they care.  But I'm never sure what it actually means.

Well, I wasn't until yesterday.

I got my hair done yesterday and I wanted to take a picture that would basically re-create my current facebook profile picture that's about 3 years old.  The process was an unexpected moment of enlightenment for me.  I took the first picture, recreating the pose as much as I could, and immediately saw it.

I did look miserable.

I was smiling the best I knew how.  I was doing everything I thought I did in the last picture.  I couldn't escape the fact that my eyes just look sad, my smile forced, my shoulders ever so slightly slumped.  As I took the picture, I felt "normal" for me these days.  And that was the reflection of normal--miserable and tired.  I took about 20 versions of that picture before I had to have a talk with myself that started something like, "Katie, you have to try to at least look happy."

Eventually, I did get a picture that doesn't look miserable.  Now, it doesn't look ecstatic.  But the smile looks genuine, the eyes are lit up at least a little.  But there is a definite change; it's not the same face of 3+ years ago.  I think this face has seen a lot in that time.  It's worried a lot, felt a lot of anxiety about a lot of things.  Those changes might be permanent.

It was a striking exercise for me.  I now know exactly what people mean when they say I look miserable.  But I think the lesson for me was in the process: I can get there, I can find something that makes me reflect happy, if I try.  And it might take me a long time, but I'll find it.  It's not negotiable, though, that I have to try.

I think it's so weird and unexpected for me that happiness is something practiced and sought after.  Especially now, our culture here tells us it's everywhere around us and all we need do is become aware of it.  That's true to a degree.  But that which keeps me up at night isn't not seeing flowers or getting hugs.  I'm worried about how to support myself.  I'm worried that my best years are behind me.  I'm worried that I've made irreparable mistakes in my life, that I haven't seized the moment enough.  I'm worried that I'm not a good person, that my intellectual pursuits have taken me far afield of where I should could be.

I'm sure to those older and wiser this seems like such a superficial set of worries.  Inevitably there will be some discussion of the soul and it'll surely be yearning for something.  But those are the waters I'm trying desperately to sail without capsizing...in my little dinghy...with what feels like one functional oar.

So I wonder now if I can actually make my way back to my own "youth" of 3+ years ago.  To that face that look so thrilled to get it's picture taken.  I do think I can.

Maybe I more hope that I can.
That's a start.

Detaching

No, I still have done no yoga this week yet.  Well, not asanas.  I've been deep into reflection this week for sure. And I can feel the usual rise of guilt mixed with a little exhilaration at the fact that I'm breaking a rule.

Sidebar: When did that love of thumbing it to the rules kick in?  As a kid, I was the best rule lover, the most ardent rule follower of all time.  I loved me a rule.  Alright, if I'm being very deeply self-reflective, I still love rules and I know this because when other people break them it drives me insane.  Yet, somehow, I love the temptation of breaking a rule.  Maybe now I'm just a rule lover with a deep core of not following rules.  I think the day you realize rules are created by idiots just like you, the less it seems imperative to bend to them. Sidebar done.

Despite not physically practicing, what has surprised me is how much past yoga clings if you let it.  Though I've been resisting the physical practice (I'll need to dig more into that later...I'm still not so sure why that's such a problem for me), I'm noticing that I'm still practicing yoga in other ways.

Which brings me to detachment.

This is one of those ideals in Buddhism (and probably not something you'll find in your local Core Power class) that I find, at the same time, to be inspiring and perplexing with an ever so faint aroma of sadness.  We can all understand that detachment is ideal when you have to figure out how to not hold on to negative things in life.  "Like water off a duck's back," we might be inclined to say and that's truly what it is.  Don't engage it and if engaged in it, let it go.

I found myself reflexively practicing this this morning as I was making my way through a package of clothes I had ordered from that once great store, The Gap.  Shit was just not fitting.  In the past, this experience has completely wrecked my outlook on life for days (or maybe weeks) at a time.  "THE SIZES ARE ALL THE SAME AS THE ONES I OWN!!! HOW CAN I NOT GET THESE PANTS EVEN PAST MY KNEES???" I have wailed to myself in anguish right before doing a landscape scan of all the places I could get a donut I could consult about this horror.  Not good for mental (or physical) health.  So this morning, as the same goddamn thing was happening, I had to remind myself of what a huge win it was that my first reaction to the situation was almost neutral.  These don't fit.  They have to go back. No pain, no anguish, no derailing.  It was what it was and that was neither good nor bad...it just was. 

A win prior to 9am.  Always a win for me.

We can easily see how this practice is desirable.  It keeps us nimble, it allows us to truly flow with whatever life will send your way.  Even though it's an over-used word, I think this is awesome in it's literal sense.  The ability to move with life and not always in a counterpuntal reaction to it is an incredible gift.  Where I find myself challenged and maybe saddened by it a little is when it applies to things almost overly positive in life.  This same idea of detachment should apply to those moments when you feel most splendidly in love, satisfied, fulfilled, content.  Just as we can't hold on the the negative too closely, allowing it space in order to engage with it appropriately, we cannot become too enamored with the positive.  We need space there too.

I found myself struggling with this in the past week.  In my life I've had incredibly close friends for periods of time.  In those, there have been wonderful moments I would never trade.  But inevitably, these do not last and when things seem to come crashing down, I am devastated by them.  We might consider this a normal pattern but "normal" and "healthy" are not the same thing. Nor are "normal" and "ideal."  In each of these cases, I now see in hindsight, a little detachment would've gone a long way.

So, this past week, I caught myself gripping so hard at one of my friendships.  It was almost an actually destructive gripping.  It turned me inside out, making myself miserable (and I'm sure I was awesome to deal with as a result...see, bad use of "awesome" right there).  Finally, some tiny, breathy little voice from deep within me said, exhausted, "Katie, just let go of it.  It's not going to play out as you want it to.  Change the perspective.  Change the approach.  Do something other than you're doing now...which is slowly killing you." I grudgingly re-routed my approach (and I'm serious on the grudging...I was very unhappy about having to be the one who bent).  It was the right thing to do.  It made me see that my anger, frustration, and hurt really had nothing to do with my friend and everything to do with my own little orphan taking over (see my last post about yoga and hip opening...my orphan lives in my hips, I swear).

I needed to detach before I could see the forest for the trees.  It wasn't easy.  It never gets easier.

Detachment is one of those things that I'll always chase after (and I'm certainly not the only one).  I do think it's a worthwhile chase, though.  Even if I never master it (and I probably won't), the process of trying can only be valuable.

30 Days is a Long Time, Especially on Day Seven

In typical fashion, I've attacked my 30 days of yoga with gusto and I'm about ready to flame out.  It's been a week.  There are so many learnings there, of course. Here are the biggest and best so far.

1. 30 days is a long time. 
At some point in my life, I stopped being able to commit.  Actually, I take that back.  I'm not sure I ever learned.  I have grown up on a "project basis."  So now I'm faced with the question of what to do when I don't have an explicit project.  There are crickets there.  That is all.  I think this is why humanity has kids.  Kids are the ultimate project and only until they leave does that become apparent.  So I'm basically having an "empty nester" experience.  I am not yet 40 and I don't have children.

It's bizarre.  Not much of a peer network there, it seems.

2. Yoga will bring massive shit to the surface.
I hesitated to pick yoga as a project for this very reason. My commitment to restart a practice can be 30 days but yoga itself will bring up a lifetime of turmoil that you've unwittingly stored in the great void that, apparently, are your hips.  So, after about 4 days of a pretty light practice, I was a wreck: anxious, agitated, distracted, uncomfortable, sometimes inconsolable.  All because of yoga.  Not a bad thing; I see it as a "flushing out the crud" exercise but, geez.  I should've built in breathers (ironically) which I ended up taking as some days I just didn't want to couldn't seem to fit it in.

3. Amazing things can happen.
Where's there's massive shit, there's also the potential for great, great opening.  For the first time in a long time, coincidences or serendipitous things started happening again.  I think those things are a kind of manifestation of hope.  When you lift a little weight off or change things up, the world around you flexes to accommodate that in sometimes the most unexpected but spectacular ways.  It really can be a seeing with new eyes.  If you're keeping track, this paired with the last learning amounts to what could be seen as significant mood swings.  Ah well, can't win 'em all.

4. I thrive on novelty.
I think this is the key to my commitment hesitation.  I'm definitely a "when the newness wears off..." kinda girl.  I've not really ever seen myself this way but even this project makes it an unavoidable truth.  I was beyond enthusiastic about this for the first 4 days and then I started getting bored.  I haven't given up on it but I do have to acknowledge my growing "meh-ness" toward the whole thing.

5. Sense memory is everything.
I have always known about myself that I live in my brain's world.  I can outthink just about anything and come around to the rational conclusion that I want to come to if given enough time.  Commitment like this requires a quieting of that stupid, chattering "monkey mind" and a subtle but sound resolve stemming somewhere from the core area that, "No, we're going to do this today because the sun rises and sets with complete regularity every day and not just when it feels like it." What I've noticed more particularly now than ever is that the motivation for that gradual "slow and steady" approach has to come from something other than reason (which is where my motivation for literally everything else comes from).

In this case, I think that's sense memory.  I have to tuck away the exact feelings that I have at the end of the practice and go back to those to find motivation.  It's not what I think about it but how it feels in the process.  Somehow, I always get into the middle of a practice and think, "It's absurd that I fight doing this so hard every day."  It's that moment I have to return to.  It's the feeling from the core that has to drive it.  Because if it's up to my mind, I'd rather lay on the couch.

I say all of this with trepidation because I haven't even cracked two weeks on this thing yet and I can already feel the urge to just toss the whole plan.  Maybe that's part of a sort of detox in a way.  It's retraining what is ultimately impulsivity into a balance with longevity.  Both are good but impulsive is definitely winning right now.

Well, the urge and not the practice.

All There Is

My least favorite moment is the one in which I realize that I want something to happen one way and it's not going to.  Especially when I've tried really hard to bend in the direction I know is right.  It's actually a manipulative thing to do.  And always a hard lesson to learn that, regardless of what I think will happen, once I've put it out there, I cannot control what comes next.

But the movies always tell me I can.
They lie.

This is one area for growth that has so much potential (in that I'm not very far in my growth at all...).  Kindness will not always be met with kindness.  Generosity can feel overwhelming.  Love can befuddle.  And because all of these are true, I can't write the script on how I want them to be received.  Because with all of these, it's not really about me.  It's about these things.  In this case, intention is mostly everything.  But it comes with no guarantees.

Sometimes I want people to react in ways they never will.  I want to be validated for the good I've done.  I want to feel like it was worth it to me.  But in those moments, I always have to re-learn, I'm actually much farther away from where I need to be.   If I'm going to love, then I have to do it.  If I'm going to be generous, then that moment of generosity is everything.

And that will be all there is.

And that's the way it should be.

Where the Past No Longer Serves

It's been an interesting couple weeks.

First, to report back on the reflection I was going to try during Lent: that was a total bust.  In fact, not only have I been less reflective, I've been much more irritable than usual.  I'm not sure if the initial reflection opened up Pandora's Box or there have been other things going on but, suffice to say, I've been concerned about this latest downturn in my own world view.

What is happening?

In part, I feel like there's some something brewing in the ether.  My annoyance is a symptom of perhaps the realization of something larger going on.  I generally believe this to be true: when I'm feeling really off-kilter, I start looking around to figure out what the pressure points are.  When I did this, I began to see, left and right, things changing in big ways.  People I have known for years just dropping out of sight.  People (and places) I once counted on suddenly folding or changing into things I no longer knew.  Roads closed where once they had been so unapologetically open.  Shifting sands.

Of course, that's the normal course of things.  I can't begrudge anyone or anything that.  But what I also realized was how sad I felt about it.  Truly sad. And my own ignorance or acknowledgement of that feeling, I do begrudge myself.  How could I have not listened to that al all?  One day in the shower, I found myself actually pining for what seemed like older, better days...before things had been scattered about.  Before people changed forever.  Before doors closed.

It was that feeling of loss that was actually causing the irritability.  Unaware, I was living in the past but dealing with the present.  Once I realized this and started trying to bring myself back into the present, I wish I could say I felt easier.  I did not.  I felt the ache of having to let go of the hope we could ever go back there again.  We cannot.  Back there is gone.  And when I knew I was starting to pull out of the initial pangs of letting go, righting my vision forward, I saw a path illuminated letting me know how to go.  What I also saw was how not perfect "back there" was.  How much of not great was contained there, softened in my own memories to be a gauzy time of only laughter and fulfillment.  I know for a fact that wasn't true.  Isn't it funny how the pressures of today make you want to believe that with all your heart?  Once I settled that score in my head, a weight on my chest lifted.  We can't go back but why would we want to?

I'd also like to say that I wished that path forward to be easier.  We have a funny way of assuming that once a path has made itself known, it becomes easier to traverse.  No.  What I saw was a path but not a road.  I could see the way but it still remains to be built.  And even then I could only see it to the horizon and not beyond.  This is a continuous cycle.  Maybe one I haven't paid enough attention to cultivating continuously in the past.  In looking backwards, I stopped building, developing, creating.  And so I'm back to some dirt and a plan.  In some ways, that's so frustrating.  In other ways, it's nothing but hope and light.

The last year feels like a bizarre cautionary love-letter to myself.  "This is what happens," it starts, "when you check out for awhile.  Things change and you don't notice it...until you go to find them and they're gone."

"Pay more attention," it warns.  "Enjoy today.  Tomorrow will offer that same chance then."

"Okay, I'm learning," I say back, making a swirl in the dirt path of today, planning how to cut it in a way that serves me anew.  At least until tomorrow.

Culminating Moments

There's something to be said for creativity and abject exhaustion.

I have had a week of very early morning meetings and, because I'm a creature of the night, I haven't had much sleep this week.  It's Friday and after the third 8am meeting in 3 days, my eyelids are drooping at half-mast and I'm starting to question the meaning of life.

But not really.

I think for anyone who runs on the nervous or anxious side, this kind of involuntary exhaustion brings incredible clarity.  Usually my mind is overwhelming firing on all 10,000 cylinders--sometimes to the point that I get physically exhausted.  I think that's why online games are such a source of relaxation: it's a single-minded activity.  I can recoup during those times.  Without the nervous chatter, I can see how things are.  Life is no longer a dialogue or a trialogue in my head; it's just me seeing things for what they are.

When I lack the energy or strength to fight, amazing things start happening.  I think these should be called culminating moments.  Just as in growing plants there are times to be active and times to be passive, so too is that through in the life-cycle of a thought.  Actually, many thoughts.  Without the prattle of everyday chores and actions, things can make sense in profound ways.

Such is this moment.  And the thing I like about this moment is not that it's a reckoning or reasoning or coping; it's actually just accepting things as they are because I don't have the wherewithal to fight right now.  Singing: whatever comes will come.  Maybe it's time to grow silent for awhile.  Organizational life: I have a voice that should be heard more, thoughtfully.  Intellectual life: the dragon is re-awakening.  I feel like this could become a very productive time, I just need some focus.  Physical life: I could be a kick-ass tennis player if I get my shit together.

There are times that you need the energy to climb mountains and you do.  And then you risk getting stuck up there.  Coming down is so much more careful, tricky, unexpected work.  Funny how you can't bound down a mountain.

That's just one step at a time with a path fully in sight.

Reflection: Might have jumped in a bit fast

I'm not sure this reflection business is such a good idea.

I know it's good.  But it's disruptive.  And that's probably good too.  But what I'm finding is that it stands in counterpoint to the status quo.  So far, nothing that I've written is inherently bad.  In fact, it speaks to change.  But change, you see, makes things change.  And that's disruptive.

So I last reflected on the principle and foundation and for the next three days my life ran off the rails.  I got depressed and weepy.  I felt fairly unable to function.  It was upsetting, probably because I came face to face with the fact that establishing (or accessing or identifying with) a foundation and principle right now is really hard. The act of doing it isn't hard; the act of realizing the things you're spending your time on might be not all that purposeful or meaningful is very hard...and it invites judgment in.  Confusing when judgment, especially in this first exercise, is exactly what you're not reflecting on...in fact, you're thinking about unconditional love.

And that is extremely overwhelming.  What I've realized is that I have a hard time even beginning to accept this.  I made light of it in the last post but even the thought that something greater than me, which has created me, doesn't even look past but loves me in spite of my faults actually makes me angry.

How dare God.

This sounds funny but I'm totally serious.  Maybe I've become so consumed with the idea of working hard and reaping rewards, that the fact of love unconditionally is completely annoying.  Because guaranteed no one will work harder than I do...so I should get that love...and others

wait...how did others get in this mix.

This sounds like so much of the creeping message of Martha (of Mary and Martha) and the older brother in the Prodigal Son parable who serve to teach us this unconditional love lesson very clearly.  In both those stories, the end is basically, "it doesn't matter what you've done, which is good and appreciated.  But you could've not done those things and I would still love you."

It's so incredibly annoying!

This is clearly a first-world problem.  And it's an American problem.  I'm annoying because this flies in the face of everything I've ever been taught about means and ends.  So, this is a huge basic stumbling block for me.  I wonder if I've become more militant about this over the years.  It feels like I never used to be so annoyed by this.

Ultimately, it's a power issue.  I want to know how it works so that I can make sure I'm where I want to be in it which, of course, is being the best.  But when something is unconditional, it means I am not the controller of that destiny.  It's given, whether I reject or accept it, it's there.  And I have no responsibility to do either.  It's just there.  Smiling at me.  Why do I resent that?  Because I don't trust it?

This has completely thrown me off guard.  The only place I can actually access these ideas with acceptance and curiosity is [gasp] on my yoga mat.  So, I'm going to take this reflection there and see what I can do with that.

For next time: It costs to be a lover. 

The hits just keep on comin.

Principle and Foundation

For Lent this year, I decided to switch it up.  As I was wondering around in my head about what I could "give up" or "work on" I realized that, though a spend a lot of time at church, I'm experiencing a distance of faith that irks me a little.  It's been a long time since I focused on actually looking inward and not just turning inward.  So I thought I good spring cleaning in there could be helpful; thus, of course, I turned to my man St. Ignatius to lead me.  Though his Spiritual Exercises, borne of boredom in a hospital, are done as a total retreat, the modern adaptation of these is called the 19th Annotated Spiritual Exercise or Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life (leave it to the Jesuits to annotate something 19x before it's to their liking).  Nevertheless, I need to reflect verbally, quietly, to the hum of my typing and so this is where I'm going to do it.

And, nothing like jumping right in.  I forgot how hard this is.

The first step is the Principle and Foundation.  What is that in my life?

[crickets. Jeopardy music. more crickets].

I'm going to write it down today although I think it'll evolve and grow the more I think about it.  I think my life is about knowing.  Knowing for the sake of discerning.  Knowing for the sake of seeing change that has to happen and acting to evoke that change.  But this is really to find beauty and truth.  And wisdom.  My principle, where I start, I think is truth.  And seeking it to bring everybody to it, whatever it might be.

This is Ignatius' statement:

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God, our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. Alright.  Not exactly the same.  He's more Lord-y about his.  But the essence is there, I think.  Although I'm maybe more communally focused.  And maybe not so heaven-bound.  How about some soul-saving right here...and not, like, in the huge "end of days" sense?  C'mon Ignatius. Although this is the one that requires significant reflection, I think: The great turning point in life comes when I realize and fully accept the fact that God loves me unconditionally with a love I cannot earn or ever be worthy of, not for my possessions or for my accomplishments, but for myself, for myself not as I could be or should be but as I really am with all of the physical warts, psychological quirks and spiritual infidelities.  I think this is an incredibly hard truth to get a hold of because it's not a human thing.  As much as people (or a person) might say this at some point and you might believe them at some point, they are limited by their humanness, and humans are somewhat hardwired to be conditional (probably for literal survival).  We take things one step at a time.  We embrace rules.  We look for the familiar and normal. We work within the parameters of our lives.  So, unconditional to me is completely foreign.  I don't know what this looks like.  I cannot promise this to anyone else because I cannot imagine every condition that could exist that would render, no less guarantee, my same reaction to it.  So unconditional is a cosmic thing.  Which obviously requires faith.  Reasonably, the only way to respond to this, to accept it as true, is to suspend reason and go with faith.  I feel very iffy about this. The look on his face is the look on my face.  He clutches his heart, I clutch mine. This is not a revolutionary idea but what this requires is very hard. Complicating this even further is that you can't earn it or ever be worthy of it.  There's no blood, sweat, and tears in this.  You can't put a nose to the grindstone.  Frankly, this is an un-American kind of love.  I can't boostrap my way into this.  Even worse, I don't have to.  It's there for my taking. What kind of deal is this?!?  If I'm going to be honest about it, this is exactly the start of all of my struggles.  I don't know where or when (and likely it involves Sociology) that I lost the ability to trust in things, in people, but I just don't.  I anticipate disappointment. I forecast exactly where people will hurt me.  And I'm usually right.  But what if I didn't do that?  And what if I thought more about this in terms of God?  What if I reflected more on the fact of this?  Suspended my reason and actually dug into what this is and what it looks and feels like? It wouldn't kill me.  In fact, it might just let me unfurl a little bit.  Sometimes I forget that I'm not done growing.  I think I just need to figure out what that path looks like.  This could be it. And it could be just invisible to me now as that walkway was to Indie.

Less Tension

This past May, I started playing tennis.

I've played backyard "smashfest" tennis (we'd stand at the baseline and swing away for three hours and hit about 10 shots in bounds) with my brothers before but I have never been serious or systematic about learning the game.  So to get outside more and run around, I grabbed my racquet and signed up for group classes this summer.

And it took only two short months for me to develop horrible, awful tennis elbow.  I've never, ever had that issue in the past but holy cow; had I been smart and listened to my body, I would've been sidelined for awhile.  Instead, I pressed ahead.  It wasn't until early November that I started taking a lesson with a different coach who, within about 12 minutes, said, "Your grip is way too tight.  I bet you're feeling that in your elbow."

Yes, sir.  Yes I was.

The next four lessons, every time I stepped up to the ball, he would say, "Katie, loosen your grip." "Katie your grip is too tight."  "Get loose." "Take a deep breath." "KATIE. LOOSEN. YOUR. GRIP."  For two hours, this mantra played on repeat.  Sometimes I'd get frustrated and completely annoyed. And then, after I realized I was not going to cure this in an hour, I started internalizing it.  It became like a heartbeat.  And when I really concentrated--I mean like beads-of-sweat-forming-on-brow-from-thinking--and I promised myself I would get it all together, and I let go and relaxed...magic. That shot would drop just on that baseline with power but also with finesse.  I think that happened, like, twice.  But in those two times, I could both see and feel the balance, the interplay, of strength and release.  I needed to play tennis to understand yoga.

Because this was such a mantra for those two hours, I found this message appearing to me at other times throughout my day and one day it finally landed as though I had never even heard it before.

 "Katie, loosen your grip.  You're holding on too tight."  

I almost laughed at how obvious the message was, as if the Universe was like, "um, right...I wondered how long it would take you to realize that I wasn't channeling this to you because I think you'll make it big at Wimbledon some day." DUH. Everywhere I looked in my life, I could immediately see tension. And of course I knew it was there all along.  I'm not so unaware of myself that I can't see I'm tied up in knots all the time.  But I was seeing it in a new light; maybe there was another way. Was I worried about things out of my control? Yes.  Was I holding on to anger and frustration about things in the past? Yes.  Was I feeling under-appreciated  without good reason? Yes.  Was I wanting things to be different? Yes.  I mean, like, every nook and cranny of my life had tennis elbow; so much fretting, so much fear.  I was suffocating everything to the point that no day or occurrence or moment had a chance to be seen as joyful or hopeful. And everything was showing signs of the wear and toll of tension.  Like a body gets tight, achy, and generally out of sorts, that's exactly how I felt about life in general; my heart and mind were boxed in, cramped, and struggling to breathe.

This diagnosis for my tennis game was nothing short of revolutionary.  In the moments I was able to let go, I tapped into power and grace that I didn't even know I had at my disposal. But loosening my tennis grip has been one of the steepest challenges I've ever met.  Finding it requires so much quiet, calm patience because gripping your racquet is very much like breathing: fundamental but not necessarily something you ruminate on with every swing.  So now when I approach the ball, I have to think on every shot, "am i gripping too tight? Loosen."  If I don't think it, I am surely gripping too tight.  And Ramon is right there to say, "Katie.  Loosen your grip."  And the only way to cure it is to not get tight when you realize you're not doing it.  This is about changing a response that feels innate.  In life, I know, most of my successes and what I'm known for is my brute strength (I'll push through, I'll get it done, I'm a workhorse.) Now my approach requires that I forge a new path...one that isn't something I'm familiar with.  One that seems very counter-intuitive to the goal.

Loosen.  Loosen.  Stay Loose.  Loose.  Loose. Loose.

And of course, that's true for life too.  To apply this there's a vigilance that I have to choose to maintain.  But the outcome will always be worth it.  I have had few moments of such joy that could equal the times that I hit that tennis ball correctly and see how beautifully graceful that shot is...and it's usually a winner.

I'm just starting to understand what loosen could do for me in my life but it's obvious that it could be a real game-changer there, too.  The mantra has been switched on.  Now it's time to practice.

Reflections

I have always written.  I started keeping journals when I was in grade school and I kept paper journals clear on through college and beyond.  And I didn't keep them.  It was not for edification or for some other reason than that was the medium through which I processed life.  And then there were the blogs...oh the blogs.  So much weird, wandering writing just sitting out there with no one looking at it.  Same purpose.  There is something to be said for sitting down and just thinking something through.

And then I wrote a dissertation, a process that completely changed my interior life.  Always an avid reader, I found myself shying away from that place of imagination; fantasy, fiction, and just the simple act of reading before bed all at once left me cold and, oddly, restless.  Similarly, always an avid writer and content with no audience but myself, my writing style and the process of it became stilted, rigid, and uncomfortable.  Words on a page, whether written by me or someone else, became restless and uncomfortable.  Imagine my loneliness (and other readers can and will).  What once was such a joyful space had transformed into something full of anxiety and unrest.

As I was wrestling with this the other day, forcing myself to read before bed (and actually winning that battle thanks to a series my friend Paul turned me onto by Andrea Camillieri, who is a man, by the way), I began to think that just like every other habit, reading and writing again are things I can cultivate.

But I have to try.  And I have to be willing to stick with it for awhile.  And I have to re-orient myself to that space and discover again that it, in fact, is not something to be endured, as writing had become for some many years in recent past, but that it can be and should be the chosen expression of one's best self, especially someone who revels and fascinates on the world of ideas.  

So I've been trying to figure out how, exactly, to go about this and sometimes when one asks, inspiration gives one a break and responds in very obvious terms.  There is a movement in writing called NaNoWriMo, which is a collective promise that writers make to themselves and others that in the month of November they're going to write a certain amount of words everyday for a certain total at the end of the month.

Obviously, I'm late to that bandwagon but inspiration told me that I should do this instead: 

Reflect on the same theme every day for the entire month of December.  If successful, do the same thing on a new theme for January.  Don't think farther ahead than January.

It actually spoke to me that exact way and it was so simple and straightforward that I'd be remiss not to take heed.   So that's what I'm going to do.  I attempted this only half-heartedly in November, trying to reflect on "less" and I nailed it in spirit as I only wrote four things of very dubious quality.  BUT, I'm going to take the last weeks of November here to get ready for December and I'm going to do the same with "less" for the rest of November.  There are no other rules except that I have to write something every day which is not a rule but instead a commitment.

I am very curious to see what happens.

And I am contemplating on asking others to try doing the same and seeing what happens then.  I've already got the December theme picked out.  I can wait to reveal it.  It'll be something I've never really thought about before.