Tag Archives: slowbloom

Why Borrow Poverty?

I saw a post on Instagram Annie had made about creating a necklace as a talisman for a client, and even though I’ve seen previous posts she’s made before, for some reason it clicked that I could ask for something now! But why now? Annie and I have had a connection about menstruation for several years now, and last winter I had talked to her about my experience around perimenopause. With the advent of the novel coronavirus in Feb/March and the increased level of change/uncertainty, I wanted something to ground myself as I move through this experience of my body changing. When I went through puberty I was very disconnected from my feelings. I often joked about wanting to be like Spock, and was very shut down around physical desire. As I’m transitioning to a new stage, I am incredibly aware of my emotional state as it changes. I like to joke that I am on the hormonocoaster.

When I talked to Annie about what I wanted, I threw a hundred ideas at her. There was Mary Ruefle’s poem, Pause and Ursula Le Guin’s essay, “The Space Crone,” which I have from her collection Dancing at the Edge of the World. Le Guin says, “… it seems a pity to have a built-in rite of passage and to dodge it, evade it, and pretend nothing has changed. That is to dodge and evade one’s womanhood, to pretend one’s like a man. Men, once initiated, never get the second chance. They never change again. That’s their loss, not ours. Why borrow poverty?” [emphasis mine]

As our conversation continued, I repeated something my therapist told me several years ago: “You don’t have control, but you have a choice.” As I go through this experience, I certainly don’t have control, but I can choose how I respond to what is happening. I likened this to Penelope, waiting for Odysseus to return, and how every day she would weave and every night she would undo her day’s work in order to delay potential suitors. She had no control over her situation, but she did have a choice as to how she would face it and where could exercise her choice.

I also asked Annie to make the earrings asymmetrical, to represent the unbalanced feeling, as well as three different phases of life. We talked about including rubies for menstrual blood, but also moonstone as a connection to the moon and space (crone!), as well as bloodstone.

I couldn’t be happier with what Annie created. I see all of the things we talked about in these earrings and that also gives me strength, a reminder of these various threads.
If you want to see Annie’s work, please visit her at her website, Dotted Line Jewelry

And here is what the earrings ended up looking like!
Earrings

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The Long Con

I’ve been thinking about seduction, falling in love, and the creative process. I keep thinking there are multiple strands I have to weave together, threads to embroider, knots to untangle, but it turns out there aren’t.

I’ve written about distractions before, so I’m not going to spend time on that. I’m just going to say it’s easy to get pulled away from the things I want to focus on – to a point. And that is what I want to talk about.

Heart birds

For the last several months I’ve been tweeting a good night/morning message. Last night it was: “good night existentialists. Good morning absurdists.” I do this because it amuses me. There’s no reward. Sometimes one or two people will respond. Mostly I feel like it just gets lobbed into cyberspace. It’s enough for me that a couple of people here and there seem to like it. I probably ignore a ton of stuff or don’t let the creator know necessarily that I liked something they did. I don’t take it personally that I don’t get much feedback.

It’s easy to get discouraged, to think no one cares, but it matters less and less to me as I let myself fall in love with the work. I feel the pull of the creative process and I’m resisting it less.

This is to say that a slow, steady, persistent effort turns into something else. Recently I had a few friends tell me how much they like these tweets. Individually they don’t stand up to scrutiny, but together, they’ve turned into something else. A little ritual. It’s something I love doing. And even though it might seem like no one else is noticing the effort, it turns out when I raise my head up out of the sand, they are.

There is a second part to this immersion: valuing what you love. I think it’s easy to get distracted when I don’t think what I want to spend my time on is worthy. Over the course of a year there was construction going on across the street from the yoga studio where I practice. I went to a morning yoga class, three times a week. The construction noise was constant. At the beginning of class, I would notice all the banging and clanging, but by the end, I had become so absorbed in my effort that all the noise faded away. It didn’t even bother me in savasana.

Having had this experience, I know I can create the same kind of focused effort in other areas, in areas that I care about. I just want to make a note that I’m not discussing the financial component of making art in this post. I will probably get there one day, but I’m not to that point right now.

Part of my effort this year is enjoying the seduction, and not just in the passive “oh look you brought me flowers and chocolates and wine” way, but bringing myself as an active participant in the process. So I’m doing what I love, and not worrying if anyone else will love it or not. Because just like the tweets, the truth is, there probably are people out there who will.

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Push, Pull, Release

Last spring my friends Otts tweeted this:

That last line resonated so deeply for me. “I’m still trying to figure out who I am without the struggle.”

We had a brief conversation on Twitter which led to a collaboration that I’m super excited to share with you. Otts is a visual artist, and I work in the medium of words. He encouraged me to write something up and said he would draw a comic based on what I wrote. I had never worked with a visual artist, and I didn’t know what to provide. I barfed up a bunch of words about resistance, righteous anger, defending the boundaries and self care. I don’t want to say too much about what I wrote, but instead share what he created:

Push, Pull, Release

Panel 1

Panel 1

Panel 2

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Panel 3

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Panel 4

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Panel 5

panel 5

Panel 6

panel 6

Panel 7

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Panel 8

panel 8

Otts shared his process with me, and I will post that in a couple of days. In particular, I love that he included the tea ritual in this piece, since many of you know what an avid tea drinker I am!

Here are a couple more examples of Otts wonderful work:
Sisters – animation for LoopDeLoop
Motion Corpse No 3

Please let him know what you think! Personally, I think he is a wonderful person AND artist.

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Hermes and the Tyger

In the spring of 2001, my girlfriend took a trip to France. At the end of her visit, she called me from Paris and asked if there was anything I wanted. I told her I didn’t want anything, but she kept bugging me, so I told her to get me an Hermes scarf.

One thing you should probably know at this point. In French, Hermes is pronounced differently than in English. English speakers are more apt to say something like “her mees”; but in French, it is pronounced like “air mez” or “air may.” I explained to my girlfriend this difference, so if she asked someone, they would understand her. In my experience, not using the French accent on a word means that no one will understand you, even if the word is essentially the same, like “vegetarian” (true story). On the flip side, I couldn’t understand a French speaker saying Richard Chamberlin’s name to me, so I have complete sympathy for pronunciation.

Back to the scarf. I really didn’t want anything, and I told her to get an Hermes scarf because a) I knew they were super expensive and when she saw the price she would balk; and b) I find their scarves aren’t really to my taste.

It was J’s last day in Paris, and it was a hot day. She wore a tank top and shorts and carried a backpack. Nothing terribly glam. She and our friend went to Le Bon Marche, a department store. J searched the store, trying to find an Hermes scarf, but had no luck. She is fiercely independent and doesn’t like asking for help, but finally reached the point where she had to.

She found a saleswoman and asked her if she spoke English. The woman said she did a little. J stumbled through her request, her self-consciousness over the pronunciation adding more stress. J murmured to the saleswoman, “I’m looking for a scarf. We say ‘Her-meez’ but I think you say ‘Air-mez’.”

The saleswoman didn’t understand what she said, so she asked her to write it down. J did, and when the saleswoman turned the paper around to read it, her demeanor changed entirely. Where she had been brusque before, now she was solicitous and friendly. She said, “Oh no, we don’t carry those here. But let me go ask someone else and I’ll find out where you can get them.” It turned out that the Hermes store was closed by the time J got there. I was spared her spending any money on a scarf I probably wouldn’t like, and even better, we got this fantastic story!

Which brings me to March 2015. Last year my mom gave me money for my birthday to buy an Hermes scarf, in part motivated by this story. In the pit of my stomach I was sure I wasn’t going to find any scarves I actually liked. I looked at their website, but it was so awful and I couldn’t figure out what they might look like. I kept putting off going to a store. I really wanted to go with my mom, so we could share the experience, but our only chance to do that was last summer, and there ended up not being any time.

Last week I made plans to meet up with my friend Lauren, who lives on the Eastside, because I had something I wanted to give her. I decided to combine meeting her with a shopping trip, since there’s an Hermes store over there. Saturday was a cold and dreary day. I headed out in the rain and dodged the raindrops. Since I don’t have a car, I took the bus over.

Hermes store

Bellevue is very different from Seattle, even though it’s separated by a small body of water. The Hermes store is in a high-end/designer shopping center. Everything there is so foreign from my daily life. It’s hard for me not to be super judgmental about all of it. I arrived at the store around 3:30, expecting that it wouldn’t have many customers. How wrong I was. The small space at the entrance was filled with women who surrounded the scarf case. They were throwing scarves in the air, one after the other, gesturing and talking loudly. In retrospect there were probably about five women, but it felt like twenty! I stood in front of the case amidst the melee for a good five minutes, hoping that a salesperson would appear out of the fray, but none did. I finally went over to a young man standing to the side who wore a suit. He seemed to be a cross between a security person and concierge, and I asked him if he could help me find a salesperson. He welcome me to the store and then apologized profusely for me having to wait.

A salesperson was procured and began helping me. She started by asking me if I wanted a classic scarf, etc. etc. I asked her about the size, because I don’t understand centimeters. Then she took me back to the case and asked me about colors and what I was looking for, what colors I liked, etc. I told her pinks and reds, even though before I got to the store I was thinking I wanted something with blues and greens. I don’t know why I didn’t just say that. I was so overwhelmed by the frenzy! She pulled out one scarf and tied it around my neck. I looked in the mirror and didn’t feel anything. I pointed out another scarf that had a cheetah on it, with bright pink splashes. The saleswoman said, “Let me get that before it gets snatched out from under us,” but that also produced a meh reaction when I looked in the mirror. You can torture yourself by trying to figure it out on their site. I can’t even find the scarf I ended up buying.

While I was feeling meh and overwhelmed and starting to get a little fed up with the whole thing, the saleswoman came back with something totally different. No pink or red at all. It had a giant tiger with a green background and these bright, lush orange lilies.

Hermes scarf

Some people know I’m not a fan of green. I don’t really wear it that much. I don’t gravitate toward it. I will pass it over for pretty much any other color. But I have a thing for lilies, and so I decided why the hell not? She tied it on, and I looked at the mirror, and something in me sang out. I told her, “This is the one.” She showed me five different ways to wear it and was super willing to show me other scarves, but I just knew. This was it. No matter what else I saw, it wouldn’t please me.

Hermes scarf

She rang me up and I left the store, feeling completely triumphant. When I got home, I posted a few pictures of the details on the scarf, including the one above. And when I was taking the pictures, I saw that it has the line from William Blake’s poem: “Tyger tyger burning bright in the forest of the night” … which you can just make out here:

Hermes scarf: tyger tyger

That line also has a special resonance for me (and possibly for many people), and was such a delightful surprise. On top of that, a friend posted this lovely piece about the symbolism of the tiger:

The confidence of the tiger is contentment. Contentment comes from discernment, the virtue of touching our feet to the earth of every moment. As we slow down and consider our thoughts, words, and actions with the question, “Will this bring happiness or pain?”, we become like tigers who carefully observe the landscape before pouncing. In looking at what to cultivate and what to discard, we are remembering our precious human life and deciding to use it well.

And that perfectly sums up the theme of the work I did with my therapist, so now this scarf has become a talisman for me, too!

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On Rejection

CakeSpy has a lovely post up about the process she went through when her book proposal got rejected. As an artist and creator, it’s incredibly hard to separate rejection of our work from rejection of ourselves. In my own process, if I am being true to my work, I put pieces of myself in it. These artifacts are extensions of myself, little arrows I shoot out in the world, with the hope they will hit their mark.

love every wish

It was when I got to this part that I recognized my own response to rejection:

But I’m not anorexic or bulimic anymore.
I let myself have the freaking cake, and raised it one by adding a cup of milk. And then, while I was eating that cake, I acknowledged to myself that I was deeply, deeply hurt.

In some ways, it felt awful “sit” with the awful, gnarly feelings of rejection. But even less bearable? Trying to ignore those feelings and then constantly feeling them on the periphery of my thoughts, lurking in the shadows.

When I can recognize that I feel hurt and can sit with those feelings and then articulate what I believe those feelings are telling me, I always come out the other side realizing that thoughts generated by those feelings aren’t true. Something happened recently and I felt awful. I went for a swim and let myself listen to the thoughts that arose. They told me I was unlovable. Once I stopped avoiding the pain and actually faced it, I realized those old beliefs aren’t actually true. I am loveable. I am worthy of love. We all are.

Learning to face those painful feelings was hard. I’ve already detailed what I learned from therapy. My conclusions was:

I had to learn that what I had to offer was enough. That I am enough. That I have value and what I have to offer has value. If what I have to offer doesn’t work for someone else, it’s not my fault. It’s not their fault. It’s just not a fit.

But I have another piece to add – or perhaps an addition to it’s not personal. I can think of two concrete examples where decisions were made behind-the-scenes that had nothing to do with the people who were affected. There is so much that we will probably never know about the decision-making process, particularly when it comes from an organization with a lot of people.

Cakespy also said:

By strengthening connections to people and things that don’t have to do with my work, I don’t have to place all of my self-worth on the work.

This is the other thing that rang like a bell. I make my best effort and put it in out in the world, but how the world receives it isn’t an indictment or endorsement of me as a person. It’s just a piece of information that what I’m offering doesn’t fit. It might have nothing to do with me OR what I’ve put into the world. It find that incredibly comforting, and I return to those examples as reminders that there are often reasons I will never know that have nothing to do with me.

I hope you find that a source of comfort, too, and I’m curious like Cakespy, how you respond to rejection.

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Do. Try. Do be do be do.

At the beginning of 2014 my friend Louise Knight encouraged people to pick a word as their theme for the year. I loved doing it so much, I decided to do it again this year. Last year my word was return. That turned out to be a great word. It was the same idea as meditation. In other words, whenever I noticed that my focus had changed and I was distracted by something, I could gently return my attention back to what I wanted to create.

Last year, while working with my therapist on issues around fear, he told me: Curiosity is the antidote to fear. Armed with this knowledge, I began experimenting. I would try something out and see what kind of results of got. Fear leads to paralysis; curiosity can unlock that frozen state.

Failing is something queers do

This brings me to this year’s theme. Yes, I realize it’s the end of February, but I chose it at the beginning of January. I’m just now getting around to writing it up. I first thought it should be curiosity, but that wasn’t a verb. It didn’t impel me to any action. I considered experiment, but that too wasn’t compelling enough for me. And then I landed on the sticky verb try

Those you familiar with Star Wars will remember Yoda’s famous injunction:
“Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Yoda gives this instruction to the young Skywalker after he watches his ship sink in the bog. For many years I subscribed to this approach. But recently I’ve come to realize that this sets up a false dichotomy: Do, or do not. There is no room for effort, for error, for learning by failing, which is how we all learn.

When I speak of trying, I speak of failing. I mean making the effort and not getting it quite right, but learning something with each round. There is a wonderful children’s book, The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires that describes this process wonderfully. There is a little girl and in her mind, she envisions the most magnificent thing. She sets out to create it, but her first attempt doesn’t hit the mark. Nor does her second or third. But in each attempt, she learns and sees something that she can adjust that will improve her product until she attains her goal.

When I try to do something, with focus and intention, and I see the result isn’t what I intended, I have hopefully learned something that I can apply when I go back to do it again.

I read in the book Art & Fear a story about a ceramics teacher who demonstrated this very concept I’m describing:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

By Yoda’s definition, those focused on quality were “trying.” I like to think of those focused on quantity were trying in the way I’m describing. Even young Skywalker kept making the effort. In today’s tech world, people talk about iterating. Would Yoda say, “There is no interate. Only do.”? I don’t know, but I like to think of him exhorting Luke to iterate!

Do, or do not, it’s not a zero-sum. I wrote last year about failure, and it’s the fear of failing of that keeps us all from trying. What if the first effort is a failure? Or the second or third or tenth? At what point do we define our efforts as a failure? For me, I’m going to put that at the end of my life, so I can have as many chances as possible.

We can all make the effort. We can keep aiming our arrows and drawing back the bows. As one of my yoga teachers says, “No effort is wasted.”

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Slow Bloom at the Liberated Life Marketplace!

llpMarketplaceSquare-1

2014 has been a year of transformation for me. In the spirit of trying new things and seeing what sticks to the wall, I’m offering my note cards for sale! I love to create, using a mix of things. I love sharing how I see the world. Creating note cards is one such avenue of expression.

I was invited to participate in The Liberated Life Project Marketplace this year, which is how this offering comes to you!

Even though the prevailing wisdom says, “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” there are things the pictures themselves can’t tell you. So I will. I started making cards for my mom several years ago. A few years later, I posted a few of my dahlia pictures on FB and I had another friend say, “If you ever make your pictures into cards, I would totally buy some from you.” A seed was planted.

I’m offering two different sets of note cards. There are 5 cards in each set, each with a different image. The cards are 5″x7″ and blank on the inside.

The first set contain details of architectural elements from Bethesda Terrace in Central Park.
rail detail

I was there in October with my mom, partner, and niece, and in my slow bloom fashion, lagging behind them. As I approached the staircase that leads down to the fountain, a man walked up the stairs. He wore a khaki vest and an air of authority. He asked if I knew anything about the Terrace.

I said, “No, I don’t. But I don’t have time. I have to catch up with my family.”

He said, “Well, did you know that all the details are different? Every design element that on first glance looks like it should be the same is actually different.”

I peered closer and was delighted by this new information. I thanked the volunteer and ran off to tell my family. We then spent the next thirty minutes exploring the variation and variety that we would have otherwise missed! I was delighted that my speed meant I learned something special about the place, as well as opening my eyes to the details I would have otherwise glossed over. Sometimes it really pays to go slow(er).

**

The second set are made from dahlia pictures. I’ve been taking pictures of the dahlias in a garden in Volunteer Park, down the street from where I live.

peach dawn

Regulars will know that I have a particular fondness for dahlias. I love their bright, bold, throw-caution-to-the-wind blooms. I love their variety. They remind me that I have my own speed of blooming. I’ve posted this quote from May Sarton before, but I’m going to repeat it here, because this is the heart of this blog and also the inspiration for the dahlia cards:

“It does not astonish or make us angry that it takes a whole year to bring into the house three great white peonies and two pale blue iris. It seems altogether right and appropriate that these glories are earned with long patience and faith … and also that it is altogether right and appropriate that they cannot last. Yet, in our human relations we are outraged when the supreme moments, the moments of flowering, must be waited for … and then cannot last. We reach a summit, and then have to go down again.
Maybe patience is the last thing we learn.”
~May Sarton; Journal of a Solitude

In addition to my note cards, there are many other wonderful offerings, from books about transformation to coaching and mindfulness/livelihood support, to prayer flags and other beautiful artwork. Even if my offering doesn’t appeal, I encourage you to go check out what other people have to offer. Perhaps you will know someone that will connect with a piece in just the right way.

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Fall in Love With Your Work

I am using this space to promote my friend Maia, because I believe in the generosity economy described by Kelley Eskridge.

wall starfish

I met Maia in the winter of 2011, when I was traveling around SE Asia. We met in the charming town (if you could even call it that!) of Chiang Dao. She boldly inserted herself into a conversation I was having with another woman I’d met that evening, and we became fast friends. In fact, in the three years since we met, I’m surprised to realize that that evening was the only time we have ever been face-to-face.

In the fall of 2012, I was spinning my wheels and lacked direction. I knew I wanted to move in a different direction than the one I’d been going in, but I couldn’t seem to figure it out on my own. Maia invited met to participate in her online class, Fall In Love With Your Work. This definitely appealed to me. I have always struggled to love what I’ve been paid to do.

In slowbloom fashion, another layer of myself and my history were revealed through this process. I began to clarify what I valued (hello (hu)manifesto!). I came to understand some of what I considered my failures in previous employment situations. And I took the first steps in opening back up, after having shut down. As a matter of fact, this entire blog exists because of her encouragement!

I’m saying all of this because Maia is offering her course again. She is a gentle and compassionate teacher, and if you are looking for more clarity in your own life, or have questions about what your right livelihood might be, this course is for you.

So stretch yourself! Go sign up. Registration closes on September 29th. Please contact me for a discount code if you’re interested!

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Shopping for therapists

I promised Summer and Carla yesterday that I’d tell them the story of finding my therapist.

Day Lily on fire

In December of 2012 I knew I had a problem. I was interpreting everything as a threat. I couldn’t tell what was what. I felt like the Farside cartoon, where the amoeba wife is saying to her husband, “You’re just stimulus, response! Stimulus, response!” I felt like I was living at DEFCON 1, ready to push the red button that means nuclear annihilation. Recognizing that this response was utterly out of whack with the external stimuli, I decided to get help.

I have gone to counselors before, so this wasn’t the first time I’d gone looking for one. I had at least a little bit of experience and idea of what I needed. I got a referral from a dear friend and went to see her therapist. He turned out to be awful. Case in point:

  • In response to me saying I’d stayed at my job 2 years past the pain point, he said, “You’re a masochist!”
  • For some reason Jodie Foster’s coming out came up. He said something along the lines of, “I don’t mind if women are lesbians, but why that one?” Ironic because I’d seen something on twitter a few days earlier saying that sentiment is so ridiculous. I mean, like he would have ever had a chance?
  • I told him about the first manuscript I wrote, and he said, “You’re not nice.” Um .. it’s a story. And it has to be interesting. Which I said to him. Also, he could have said, “That’s not nice.” Me not nice? Grrr.

So after that first meeting, I went home and thought about it. I talked it over with some friends/support people. I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t right for me and I fired him. I felt so vulnerable and exhausted. I didn’t want to go through this ten more times. I didn’t think I could go through this ten more times.

I took a step back. I thought about all the people I knew, and if any of them were therapists. There was one person who fit the bill. I had met him on Twitter, through a mutual friend. And not only that, he’d visited Seattle the month before and I had met him in person. We’d connected and I knew I could trust him. I contacted him and asked him if he would be willing to work with me. He said he’d give it a try.

As much as I’ve gotten out of therapy, I cannot emphasize enough how powerful this first action was for me. I’d learned to dismiss my intuition and sense of what was right for me. This was the first action I’d taken in YEARS that was in alignment with my core.

In the last year and a half, I’ve spent a lot of time learning to identify what I’m actually feeling. I’ve learned to scan for support, rather than see everything as a threat. I’ve learned not to take things personally. I used to worry about being an asshole. I still do, a little bit, but mostly I consider whether or not I’m being kind. I’ve learned to recognize and go after what I want. I’ve learned that if I want people to see me, I have to be willing to show myself (eep!).

I’ve worked on developing my awareness and slowing down the time between reaction and response, so I can choose my response, rather than the two being laminated or magnetized into a single action.

My therapist told me, “Look for where you fit, not where you fit in.” I could have made excuses with the previous therapist. I could have found reasons to work with him. But I didn’t. I knew in my marrow he wasn’t the right fit for me. And I did feel a little bad, then. Now I understand. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t personal. And he wasn’t the right person for me to work with.

If you are currently shopping for a therapist and you are having trouble finding someone to work with, I hope you won’t be discouraged. Keep looking. There will be someone who is kind and who can help you.

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When the going gets tough …

leap leap

I swim laps a few times a week. In my ideal world of lap swimming, I would have my own lane and never have to share. The reality is, there are usually more swimmers than lanes. Which means sharing lanes. I generally don’t mind sharing. It’s about finding a rhythm with the other swimmers and then praying no one runs into you.

My point is, sometimes swimming is easy and effortless, sometimes there are obstacles. I’ve been working on paying attention to my reactions – that is, the knee-jerk, unconscious responses. I have a tendency to quit or shut down.

On Sunday, I started swimming with my own lane. Ahh, perfection, I thought. Soon enough, one woman joined my lane. Then another. And then another! Before I knew it, there were 4 of us sharing one lane. The flow was fine, but I noticed I was getting annoyed. They had disrupted my peace. MY peace, I’m telling you.

I contemplated getting out of the pool. I’d swum enough. But then I paused. A thought surfaced: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Fuck that shit, I thought. I hate that. But then I relaxed, and I had another thought. What do I want??

What did I want? I wanted to keep swimming. Focusing on what I wanted, rather than on toughing it out, changed my experience. Rather than having to prove myself, I could return to the activity. I could relax and let go of the irritation.

The next time I feel frustrated, when things are hard, and I feel like quitting, I hope I can remember this. It’s good to stop every once in awhile and re-evaluate. Am I still on the path? Is this serving me? Is this the direction I want to be going?

I want to pause and say, When the going gets tough, what do I want?

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