how to be in process with yourself

an example 🐢

in the backyard in the valley, summer 2022.

greetings, greetings to you, dear reader.

i’m watching the streams of rain pour down from the upper deck onto the backyard. it’s been raining for a day straight, and there is still a days-worth more of rain to come. it’s needed and it’s necessary and we are in a drought.

but the gray clouds make me want to phone it in today.

i woke up at 6:15am with the hopes of tackling more of my to-do list than usual.

granted, this usually gets derailed the moment i try to wake up (and today was no exception, as i finally rolled out of bed at around 6:55am).

i am feeling stiff and sore from three days in a row of swimming: saturday was an hour-long practice, sunday was a 2 mile hike and 2 mile swim to two rarely-visited lakes in the region with a small crew from the team, and yesterday was another, unexpected, hour-long practice with a longer distance than usual. that makes my total swim length for the past three days closer to 6 miles. and there’s practice tonight, an open water swim tomorrow night, and another practice thursday night.

i feel like i’m complaining about all of these facts. perhaps this is a bit of a complaint, if only from my body. i have to be cautious and careful about how much i extend myself. i love to swim. i love the way that my body feels in the open water. i love when it feels good. i hate when it feels bad. and the further i swim in a short period of time, the more i risk hurting myself.

combined with the gray skies and lack of sunlight, i want to dive under a rock and abandon all plans. i want to mope around and feel gross and wait for the storm to pass.

i suppose that is an option. but i’m only allowing myself the chance to skip writing one week a month, and that week was last month, and i’m here back at my computer, trying to pull the threads together to create a seam.

today, so far, i’ve folded (most of) my clothes and put (most of) them away. i’ve sent several emails, i’ve updated my credit card information for two subscriptions, i’ve scheduled two meetings for later in the week and cancelled another, i’ve worked on business planning, i’ve written 6 social posts, i’ve made two more to-do lists.

it feels like i haven’t done enough at this point in my day. i’m writing this at 10:48am. i feel like i wasted my weekend by swimming three days in a row on a holiday weekend. like i didn’t do enough to make money this weekend, that i haven’t worked enough this morning.

this is what the mean voice in my head likes to say to me: not only am i too much and too sensitive and too loud, i am also (paradoxically) not enough.

so i’m giving myself until 11:11am this morning to write this dispatch, to hit send, and to continue along with my day.

i know that the day, the week are better when i sit down to write, when i hit send.

on the hike to the second lake of the swim this weekend, one of my beloveds asked me this weekend what i want to be when i grow up. and we had a deep dive into what it means to be recovering perfectionists, to drop the ego, to walk away from what we’re told success is supposed to mean and define it for ourselves.

i’ve been rereading pema chödrön in the past week. it feels like i’m being asked to let go of control again, on a deeper level than before. and her writing often feels like a balm to the anguish of release, of change. this time last year, letting go of control felt like the main message i was being asked to learn. it’s back again, and with more of a vengeance. or it seems to be so.

chödrön writes: “not causing harm requires staying awake. part of being awake is slowing down long enough to notice what we say and do. the more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. it becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice.”

she then goes on to say: “we experience [death] all the time. we experience it in the form of disappointment, in the form of things not working out. we experience it in the form of things always being in the process of change. when the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, that’s death in everyday life.”

may we all stay awake enough to notice when the day feels hard. when the day feels easy. when we align ourselves with the weather and passing of the skies. when we accept change and fight against it. may we notice, may we slow down, may we refrain long enough to learn something new.

onward,

sara

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