The Crafty Key-Eating Ether

My house key vanished into the ether today.

I left home this morning, reattaching my house key to my key ring (sometimes I take it off because my car keys are bulky, as is my unicorn keychain) as I walked down the path.

I got home this evening to find that my house key was nowhere to be found.

My car key was there, my unicorn with glowing horn was there, my house key was not.

It was swallowed by another dimension, presumably a dimension that also houses a lot of unpaired socks.

Because I am intrigued by the hows and whys, I’ve been wondering how it happened. Did I not put the key on the ring? I remember starting to put the key on the ring, but I don’t clearly remember finishing. Maybe it only went on half way and fell off later. Maybe it fell off while I was handling it and I was so unconscious, so swallowed by whatever I was thinking, that I didn’t even notice.

Or maybe the ether just ate it, the way it ate my iPhone in 2013 when I left it in my car during dinner and got back to my car to find it still locked, no sign of forced entry, but the phone was just … gone.

Maybe my 2013 phone and my 2019 house key are having a good laugh at me right now, from the dimension with all my socks.

Either way, no house key.

As to the why: first off, is there a why? Maybe, maybe not. If not, if this is just the random whim of the universe, okay, fine. It’s a rather innocuous whim when all’s said and done.

If it’s not a random whim of the universe, it must mean either the universe or my subconscious doesn’t want me to be in my house tonight. (By the time I drive to Petaluma to borrow the nearest set of bolt cutters, there is no way I will be driving back.) Or maybe it wants me to write this blog post? I have been getting lots of blog blog blog guidance and I’ve kind of been ignoring it and we all know what happens when I ignore guidance. (Spoiler: lots of annoying things.)

The only reason I’m writing this now is because I’m sitting in the nearest home-like placed - namely, a Starbucks with water, a bathroom, and sandwiches. Waiting for traffic to clear and my blood sugar to stabilize, thanks to a chicken sandwich the cashier kindly heated up for me, so I can drive to Petaluma and the bolt cutters that will free my house.

(If the bolt cutters thing doesn’t make sense, perhaps I should explain that I live in a glorified garden shed, albeit a Mill Valley garden shed in back of a million dollar garden and with a deck overlooking a stream, and the lock is a padlock. Finest home security available, yo.)

But as blog posts go, this one ain’t exactly revolutionary. And I can’t imagine why my house is off-limits, because I really like my house and I’d really like to be inside it right now.

So, either I am supposed to be blogging or in Petaluma or paying more attention.

It’s not the clearest lesson I’ve ever received, but maybe I just wrote this blog posts too early. Sometimes the answers to questions posed take longer to land than we prefer.

Me, outside a lot of houses, because that feels appropriate for a key-devouring ether post.

Life Happens in the In-Between

I’m sitting on my deck, listening to the stream and wind chimes. My zen frog statue sits happily in the balmy air. I’m wearing a blue t-shirt emblazoned with a giraffe in sneakers.

I may be leaving my little garden cottage in Mill Valley soon. I may be here for many more years.

My work may be completely changing. It may simply be in a rest period between two eras.

Yesterday, my network chiropractor said, “It’s like being in mid-air. You’ve let go of the trapeze but haven’t caught the next bar yet.”

That’s exactly how life feels. Things are moving now, differently than they have over the last ten years. I can see possible directions, but nothing has landed.

We’re floating in the in-between.

Everything is possible in the in-between. Potential unfurls in front of us like rainbow streaks through oil on asphalt after the first rain.

I’ve always had this sense that I’m waiting for my real life to begin, like it’s some fairytale just beyond my reach. Whether that’s something I came in with or the effect of too many Disney movies and Danielle Steele novels on my impressionable young brain, I can’t say.

But even the Disney movies know this: the adventure comes before the happily-ever-after.

Because life is happening now.

In fact, now is the only time life is happening. Life is not happening in the past and it’s not happening in the future. All we have is this moment, this one, right here.

Happily-ever-after never comes. 

Because that’s the end, and we don’t end.

So I pause every so often throughout the day and take a deep breath and notice what’s here now.

I feel my butt in my red deck chair, my slippers on my feet. Watch the sun float through the leaves to form lacy shadows on the ground. Notice the energy in my heart, the thought forms swirling around my head, the way my ankle hurts a bit for no good reason.

Life isn’t later, life isn’t what happens when I’ve finally checked the boxes on my list. I know that but I haven’t always felt it.

I don’t have to create some magical experience for myself, I simply have to notice all the magic that’s already here.

Yes, a nearby bathroom when you really have to pee counts as magic.

We’re just living life. It’s all happening now, even when you’re floating mid-air. Especially when you’re floating mid-air.

Life happens in the in-between.

Summer solstice sun, filtering through the trees. Seen by living life.

Absolution

You know what’s exhausting?

Trying to fix everything about yourself.

When I say it out loud (type it into a blog post, same thing) it sounds dumb. Like, dear god, woman, what are you doing? If that’s how you’re spending your time of course you’re drained.

But this fixing of the self situation is insidious.

We’re hardwired to believe that if we don’t enjoy how we currently feel or don’t have something we want, that means we need to fix something about ourselves or our life. Because if I had just done it right, been more successful, healed faster…I wouldn’t feel this way. I would have what I want.

Again, when you type it out loud (go with me here) it really does sound kinda stupid.

Which isn’t to say that I am stupid or that you are stupid, if any of this resonates with you.

It’s more of a “Hey, this pervasive societal plague of “Must Be Better” is stupid.” We’ve been trained to switch automatically into the Fix It gear when we aren’t enjoying something, be it a feeling or a life situation. If we don’t enjoy, we must require healing or our life must require a big change.

It’s a rather extraordinary act of rebellion is to say “You know what? I don’t have to fix anything about myself. I don’t have to get a job, start a business, get married, have a child, pay my bills, run a marathon, lose ten pounds, write a book, make a certain amount of money, or start meditating in order to be a worthy human being. I already am worthy. So are you. So are we all. I can just be in my experience from moment to moment, however it feels. I don’t have to do anything about it.”

But oh my god it’s hard.

Because we’re trained to jump. Trained to jump out of our bodies, out of our feelings, out of our experience and into something that feels better, whether it’s ice cream, a new sweater, red wine, a new job, a new project, a new relationship.

Because being where we are right now is hard.

But I’m finding that it doesn’t have to be hard. Who knew?

It can be incredibly easy to just take things moment by moment. To just notice and be curious about the thoughts and sensations that are happening right now. Without worrying about what’s happened before or what might happen later, because none of that matters even a little bit. Because nothing but the present moment exists.

I’m even going to put that sentence in a different font, that’s how much I want to visually represent the brain popping that happens whenever I remember it.

Nothing but the present moment exists.

Because I am the kind of person who wants exactly what she wants and wants it yesterday, it’s taken me a very long time to get to the edge of this. To get to the place where I don’t want to fix myself or my life any more.

Mostly because I simply don’t have the energy. I don’t have the energy to want anything I don’t have, I don’t have the energy to move anything around, I don’t have the energy to heal any more of the many things my brain tells me I need to heal.

It required complete burn out to get me here, possibly because I am wildly stubborn and will ignore nudges and signs until the proverbial cows come home to take off their boots and turn on the TV.

Frankly, I am thoroughly sick of moving energy around. I just can’t do any more shifting, processing, clearing, calling in, manifesting, transforming, healing or quantum leaping. It’s too exhausting to try to fix all the energy everywhere.

I’m too tired to do anything but be.

Be present with my current experience of my thoughts and physical sensations for a few seconds before going back to the (truly delicious) truffle potato chips.

($3 at Trader Joe’s, guys.)

“Hold not heal” is something Jeff Foster says, and I’m really happy I happened to hear him say that. Because I kept getting the “we are already whole and healed’ message, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to integrate that into the human experience of … everything.

Labels like healing and anxiety and emotional neglect and depression and codependency and all those oh-so-loaded concepts drag me down every time they float across my brain. So I’m done with those too.

It’s okay if my head is pounding, my brain is spinning, my body is shaking, my emotions are careening wildly. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean anything at all, except that I’m human.

Maybe anxiety is sacred. Maybe depression is sacred. Maybe all those other “you should probably medicate that and go to therapy” experiences are no better or worse than any other experience.

Maybe we can just let it all be okay. Let it all be safe. Maybe we can experience all of ourselves in each moment, and take a breath with it, without carrying it into the next moment. Unless we do, and that’s okay too.

My favorite way to return to the moment from wherever I happened to be - floating somewhere in the future or the past or the ether or in some precarious state of disembodied overwhelm - is to notice what’s around me. The leaves on the trees, the smell of star jasmine, the squirrel dive bombing my roof, the steam swirling up from my coffee, my butt in the chair, my feet on the ground, my hair touching my collar bone.

Just noticing these things grounds me in this moment.

When I’m actually in, I can notice what’s rising up in me.

Then I can hold it, be curious about it, love it. Or just fall into it. Fall into being held. Like when your muscles just give up after you’ve run twenty miles and you have to crash into the grass.

I give up on trying to ascend to some level of peace where there are no triggers.

Because - apparently - the universe just laughs at me when I try.

So I’m just going to exist in the triggers. While still doing things, because I’m tired of letting the triggers take me out.

When he was full of fear and anxiety about taking over The Late Show, Stephen Colbert said, “It was my job to calm the fuck down and go back to work tomorrow.”

I love that. I feel like that’s my job. Notice what’s happening in whatever trigger shows up - or not, no big - and then calm the fuck down and go back to work. Every single day. Even though what my work actually is feels very vague right now.

(All my info points away from channeling and energy healing and toward writing again, but the kind of writing that shares my experience (rather than sells anything for anyone) and I’m not 100% sure how a person gets paid for that, and burn-out or no, I still have bills to pay. So that may mean a job? And blogging when I have time and energy? No idea, but I’m open to anything.)

In this moment, I fully absolve myself of having to change anything, fix anything, heal anything, do anything.

Me, trying to exist in the sun and shadows without being dumb about it.

Let's Discuss Vultures

One of my major life challenges is How To Not Be Drained Always.

This shows up in work, in relationships, in going to the grocery store without needing a post-produce section nap.

I get drained because I want to help everyone feel better. So I let them in. Way in, energetically speaking. While that’s awwww sweet on some level, I'm ready to officially declare the Amber Buffet closed.

So much about how our energy intermingles and interacts is unconscious. Even for those of us who make it our actual job to know (raises hand), half the time it’s “wait, what the hell just happened?” after coming home from something only able to climb into bed and stare at Queer Eye for three hours straight.

I believe that energy vultures are just trying to survive, the only way they know how. When someone’s been drained their entire life, they will naturally be drawn to energy they can drain, just so they can get through the day. It’s unconscious, until we get a clue and start working on good boundaries.

I’ve been both the drained and the drainee. I’ve been both the vulture and the tasty roadkill.

Vultures are just doing their best to get through life. If you have some tasty energy on offer, they’re going to partake. Like any one of us would if we missed breakfast and Starbucks had banana bread samples sitting out. Obviously you’re going to take it. They wouldn’t offer it if you weren’t supposed to eat it, right? Right.

There’s nothing wrong with being a vulture. Vultures are their own perfect part of the food chain.

But it’s my choice whether or not to let the vultures feast on my carcass.

So I’m declaring again, here and now:

THE AMBER BUFFET IS CLOSED.

Hey, cool, but how do we close the buffet?

Good question.

I’m still working on it.

What I’ve been doing lately is simply paying attention.

When do I need to crawl into bed? When do I just want to watch Netflix and hug a pillow? When do I land face first in a bag of kettle chips? When do my thoughts circle endlessly on something that doesn’t help or doesn’t even feel like me? Those are all signs that my energy has been drained.

What precipitated the poaching? A trigger? A conversation? An internet troll? A social gathering?

Energetic hygiene - clearing, cord-cutting, shielding - is great for empaths and sensitive peeps. But ultimately, the best protection is connecting with your own heart, your own energy, your own light, and blazing it through your own field.

When you’re all wrapped up in your own light, outside intrusions can’t get in nearly as easily.

So I’ve been chanting “I nourish and cherish myself”, putting my hands over my heart whenever possible, paying attention to my breath, being as conscious of my thought patterns as possible, and doing whatever I can to bask in my own goddamn light.

These past six months, I’ve felt so drained that I couldn’t even find my own light. My rib cage was as dark as a haunted house on November 1st. So I finally had to stop everything I was doing and make myself my number one priority - over my business, over helping others, over money, over relationships, over everyone and everything.

ME ME ME.

While this may be a controversial opinion, I highly encourage any and all empaths and sensitive people, especially those who feel drained and overwhelmed, to adopt a ME FIRST policy.

When you’ve been giving so much of yourself for so long, a wild swing in the other direction is often needed. In the ME ME ME direction. When we’ve been offering our love, energy, talent, care, money to anyone and everyone for our whole lives without receiving enough in return (from ourselves, others, or a particularly wretched combination of the two), we need to put our foot down and declare THIS IS THE ME MONTH. (The Me Day, the Me Year, the Me Decade, whatever.)

Then you do whatever you have to do to take care of you.

For me that means writing with big pots of tea, scrubbing my house, going to the beach, quitting the soul-sucking task of selling myself, doing my best to break a sweat everyday, re-reading Harry Potter, taking off my shoes so I can feel the grass between my toes.

Plug yourself in so you can recharge.

Prime re-charging spot. The beach is like the empath genius bar. Just walk up and your connection gets fixed.

On Overcoming Triggers and Downward Spirals (After Much Stubbornness)

Since I still don’t know what I’m doing with my life, business, home, relationships, writing - with anything at all really, thanks, quantum shifts! - I’m doing my best to just keep myself happy and in a relatively positive state. “Vibration” if you live in Northern California.

One thing that’s always made me happy is blogging. Just sharing my experience. Not in a “this is what you should do!” way - in fact, I would generally advise against doing what I do - but simply because talking about what’s true for me in this moment feels important.

Apparently that’s a real thing for empaths. We see and feel a lot and we get trained out of sharing it as kids and then we end up choking on unprocessed information as adults.

Blogging clears the throat chakra (apparently) and hot damn could my throat chakra use some of that.

So I’m going to talk about my week, because that's what you do on a blog.

First up:

The universe is trying to trigger the hell out of me. 

… and it succeeded with vigor on Monday. 

Mostly because my internet went out, which is the most first world of problems, besides maybe being denied your favorite flavor of green juice. But I still find it deeply aggravating. Mostly because it’s a solvable problem that somehow never gets solved.

Side note: One of the best descriptions of the United States I’ve ever heard is that we solve problems no one else can solve (internet and space travel) (the Russians might disagree with that, but I don’t think anyone from Russia reads my blog) and we can’t solve problems that are a major “duh” to everyone else (healthcare and guns).

Anyway, whenever my landlords call Comcast to fix something, my internet gets disconnected. This leaves me full of rage. Because 1. this keeps happening even though I’ve asked for a heads-up so I can make sure the Comcast guy doesn’t sail off on his merry way leaving me without a connection and 2. because I work from home and I need that shit. 

Rage was felt, triggers were acted upon, and if that was a universal test of my maturity and / or spiritual growth, I failed miserably. 

So I drove to Petaluma in high dudgeon to use internet that actually worked while simmering in my frustration and rage, because that’s always a great idea. Rage is good for the skin. 

HOWEVER.

Even though I massively failed the universe’s perverse little test and made life rockier for myself thanks to said rage and high dudgeon, some good things still arose:

Good Thing Number One:

While I was in Petaluma, I went into one of my dark Everything Is Bad, I’ve Done Everything Wrong So I Never Get To Be Happy, I Can’t Do This Any More, Let Me Off The Planet spirals. There was shaking, there was crying, it was not pretty.

I used to get stuck in these dark spirals for hours or days or weeks, 100% certain that I would never get out of it, that there was no light at the end of the tunnel and everything would be bad forever. Which is not a fun place to be, especially if you’re there for weeks. I rarely go that far down the spiral any more and I pop back out fairly quickly. This is big, and I’m doing my best to be conscious of how far I’ve come. Possibly even congratulatory, because while it’s not a sexy achievement, it is an important one.

During this particular dark hell spiral, I was able to recognize that there actually was dark energy spiraling above me and I was held in its thrall.

It freaked me out. I didn’t want anything to do with that dark energy, I was scared, get it away from me.

But then I noticed that I was feeling calm again. The relentless and wildly painful cycling of my brain had stopped. I felt peaceful.

Post-dark spiral peace is absolute bliss. It’s the best high on the planet and this, my friends, is why the world has drug addicts.

So I asked the person next to me if he was doing anything and he said he was. I replied that whatever he was doing was working and please continue.

When I asked what was actually going on, he said he was cycling the dark energy through his heart. He likened it to the obnoxious kid on the playground who just wants to be included. If you try to push the dark energy away, it gets worse. But if you love and accept it, it settles down.

Cue head explosion.

Because I knew this intellectually. But in practice I was too scared to welcome in the dark energy. Partly because I feel like I’ve been welcoming in dark energy my whole life and that’s part of why a reasonable portion of that whole life has been one giant festival of pain. *

*Slight exaggeration but not nearly as much of an exaggeration as I would prefer.

But maybe it’s because I welcome it in but then get scared of it and try to push it away. Maybe by fully loving and accepting it - and myself - everything gets easier. Peaceful.

I’m still chewing on this, but it was a profound experience.

And one that may not have happened if my internet hadn’t gone dark.

Good Thing Number Two:

Even as I was feeling righteously enraged by the egregious internet offense, I knew that there was going to come a point when I realized it wasn’t a big deal at all. Hot on the heels of that point would come the point where I feel rather sheepish.

Yes, that moment came. But no, I didn’t feel sheepish. I don’t have much shame any more.

At the appointed time - well, technically an hour and a half after the appointed time but still half an hour within the given window - a friendly bearded man with a thick southern accent showed up. He admired my hobbit house - he even called it a hobbit house, which is exactly what I call it, and this endeared him to me forever - and said he wanted one just like it. He had just moved to the area from Tennessee and this was only his third day here.

So I told him that there were hobbit cottages aplenty in Mill Valley and how to find one, along with where my favorite beaches and pizza places live. He labeled my internet line with a “Back cottage, do not disconnect” so that Egregious Internet Offense doesn’t happen again.

It felt like one of those encounters that needed to happen for some reason, obvious or otherwise.

So I was feeling good about the whole thing.

Then the universe tried to trigger me again, a mere day later.

Because the universe is nothing if not determined, and also I failed the first test so I guess it wanted to give me another chance? 

But this time I didn’t trigger. Hahaha, take that, universe!

Because I didn’t trigger, I just let the parking meter eat my debit card and calmly reported it lost. Then I calmly walked to the bank and a very friendly teller handed me some cash so I can eat and buy gas for the next week. When my card comes, I will calmly re-set up all my automatic bill withdrawals.

Like a goddamn grownup.

Then I went to my appointment and we worked on receiving (because I am apparently not very good at that) and forty-five minutes later, I got a whole bunch of free soup and bread. Because I was working at Arizmendi’s and it was closing in ten minutes and they had to get rid of all the unsold soup. So me, the college student sitting at the next table, and an elementary school teacher all got big containers of free tomato soup and fresh bread and it was great.

The moral of the story is: Everyone wants to help. Everyone did their best to support me through my (minor first world) challenges and since I’ve been deeply wanting to feel more supported, this was a much needed reminder that feeling taken care of can happen.

Even if the universe was being a bit of a dick.

Me, wearing a stolen hat and triggering only slightly.