Things To Remember:

Breakdowns are not to be feared. Today’s breakdown leads to tomorrow’s epic productivity and general satisfaction.

(Here’s looking at you, Wednesday morning.)

I’m allowed to do things that feel good and stop doing things that don’t.

(Like Facebook. Why am I still doing something that? My god, why?)

Read books on paper.

(It feels so much better. Like an actual, physical sensation of betterness. Kindle is great for $3 romance novels but the experience of reading on my phone is like the difference between reading Facebook and talking to a good friend in person.)

Eat some goddamn vegetables, Amber.

(You have energy when you do that, and energy is something you greatly enjoy.)

Don’t be lazy about exercise.

(I know it’s tempting but don’t.)

Water helps everything.

(When in doubt, drink some, shower in some, sit in some, go to the beach and listen to some.)

Pause and appreciate what you have as often as you can.

(Petting the cats, drinking the coffee, listening to the fountain, basking in the sun, staring at the oak trees, reading next to the man. Notice it, appreciate it, be in it.)

Joy Is Knocking On the Door

Yesterday afternoon, I wrote up a business plan.

Yesterday evening, I wrote “FUCK THIS” across the whole thing in blue felt tip marker.

One of my themes lately is doing things because I think I should, not because they bring me any particular joy. 

Reframing the oatmeal to bring you joy is always a possibility - even if that doesn’t make it taste like a fresh chocolate croissant - but it takes some effort. If you’ve let the joy drain out of you for so long that you don’t really remember what joy feels like or why you should make that effort, you’re screwed. (Meaning, I've screwed myself over a bit.)

So I’ve been thinking about joy and how to have some.

One of the things I've noticed about joy is that it’s like working out. You can’t just target your arms and do a bunch of weight lifting and expect your arms to look amazing. You still have to eat nutritious things and do cardio and work on your whole physical self before you get to have amazing arms. Unless you’re 23 and can thrive on pizza and tequila shots and still look amazing, in which case don’t talk to me.

You can’t just say “Hey, I want joy.” You have to target your whole emotional body. You have to feel all the things. Now, this is for those of us who habitually repress. Joy can be one of the easiest things in the world - just look at a happy baby. But if joy is hard to find, you’re probably a feelings represser like me.

After my dad's death, I went through a few years of enforced feelings because none of my well-honed repression techniques were working any more. Anger and frustration joined the grief standby of crying on the floor. The up side of my dad’s death was that joy came more easily, because all feelings came more easily.

But I don’t think that means that having joy requires a whole lot of grief. Joy just asks you to feel all your feelings, not just the fun ones.

Babies can be little joy machines - and they haven’t had to plow through deaths and breakups and getting fired and whatever else life likes throwing you as an adult. Babies find joy in flinging oatmeal onto the walls. Babies find joy in yanking the dog’s fur.

Sure, babies can be jerks and some of that joy comes at the expense of the caretaker who has to scrub the oatmeal off the wall and the dog who has to hide under furniture until the yank stops smarting, but joy is joy.

Babies get that kind of joy because 1) someone else will clean up for them and 2) they’re taking care of their whole emotional selves. If a baby is unhappy, you will know. Everyone in earshot will know. They aren’t repressing anything, they don’t know how. So as often as they shriek with utter abandon in the grocery store, they’re just as often beaming out instantaneous and effervescent joy.

It's time for joy again. Because joy is necessary for humans - and it can fuel all the other things that need to happen too, the ones like job-hunting and weed-pulling and tough-conversation-having that don't necessarily scream "Hey, this will bring you deep and abiding joy!" but will ultimately make your life better. 

We don't even need to make it that complicated. Because, hey, meeting a new tree brings me great joy:

Joy is Holding a Baby Goat

Someone once told me, “You really understand pain.” 

What a terrible tag line.

While I would argue that every human on this earth has a more thorough understanding of pain than they’d like, this is still true. Pain and I have been bunkmates on a fairly regular basis.

We could say that those who understand pain understand joy on a deeper level, but do we really want that to be true? Can’t joy just show up without needing a PhD in Ouch first?

Here’s a new world belief I would like to instill:

JOY HAS NO PREREQUISITES.

Doesn’t that sound nice? Can I call myself god and make it so? [Poof! It is done. You’re welcome, world.]

My real problem with pain is that sometimes I take a nice snack of pain and turn it into a multi-course meal of suffering. I need to stop doing that. Pain, fine. No one gets through life without some pain. But suffering is a more self-inflicted syndrome and I for one call bullshit on suffering.

I stopped writing for awhile, because I worried that I was getting whiny, what with all this pain and suffering and who wants to read that? But then my soul started shriveling up from lack of verbal expression and that’s not a good look on anyone.

Apparently, I would rather whine than let my soul shrivel. Or declare myself god and prescribe joy that doesn’t require an equal balance of suffering.

Or maybe I’m just thinking about this too hard, because clearly the only thing joy requires is a baby goat.

Here’s me and a baby goat in Half Moon Bay awhile back. It fell asleep in my arms. Best thing ever.

Lap Tiger

My boyfriend went to a pet psychic, because that’s what we do in this house. 

He was concerned that Cosmo, our boy cat, was beating up on his sister Sera. They’re siblings, born to a stray cat on the property around the time my boyfriend and I got together. They make little chirping sounds and enjoy eating rodents and watching TV with us. Sera is especially fond of Jamie Oliver’s cooking show.

According to the psychic, Cosmo has always been a dog in the past - most recently a German Shepherd - and was just rough-housing with his sister because that’s how he enjoys interacting. But Sera was acting traumatized because she’s used to being at the top of the food chain. She’s always been a big cat, like a lynx or a lion, and being harassed by a nine-pound domesticated house pet is a real comedown for her.

All this explains why Cosmo follows us around to beg for attention while Sera is weird about being touched and her main hobby is racing out of the room to hide under a large piece of furniture.

Despite her skittishness, I’ve started calling her my lap tiger. Proud queen of the household who occasionally deigns to sit near me.

What To Do About Self-Doubt

I wanted to say “What to do about crippling, soul-sucking, anxiety-ridden self-doubt” but that seemed overly dramatic. But also not a bad description of where my self-esteem has been lately.

So I’m in a steady process of rebuilding my trust in myself and recalibrating my health - mental, physical, and emotional. Which has become quite a task, I don’t mind telling you.

I read French Women Don’t Get Fat and now we’re eating insane amounts of vegetables and whatever delicious meat is on sale at the market, plus a croissant on Saturday mornings because pastry is crucial to any French diet. I’m making sure I move my meat suit - either up the hill in the back of the house or through a yoga video or with those weights I always glare at. I’m trying to catch myself when I retrace my steps into the land of regret or stray toward the horizon of “oh my god, what’s going to happen next”. I’m not allowed to guilt myself or beat myself up or otherwise be a silent jerk.

Daily Trust Exercises (#DTE) have been instituted. That hash tag doesn’t represent some social media community of fellow trust brethren, it’s so I don’t have to write out all three words on every to-do list I write. Without that hashtag I would’ve already quit.

My first #DTE was “Get all your crap out of the hall, Amber.” After going through every single thing I own and deciding whether or not to keep it, I had a freshly re-organized office (bliss), an accidental capsule wardrobe (no more guilt over all those things I never wear), and a hall full of the random detritus I needed to get rid of post-cull. After staring at the hall o’ junk for a week, I decided that Day Number One of Amber Rebuilds Her Trust In Herself was going to feature getting all my shit out of that damn hall. And I did. (Mostly.)

Since my trust in myself would’ve plummeted straight into a fiery pit if I made it contingent on day-long escapades into Things I’ve Been Avoiding, I’ve made the subsequent #DTEs more manageable.

Currently, my daily “do the thing you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it so you can trust yourself again” is meditation. Not my usual agenda-ridden meditation of “I want an answer to this question” or “make me feel better about this thing” or “tell me what my next business idea is and also how it will make money” because all that just stresses me out, which is contrary to the general theory and principle of meditation. Instead, my #DTE requires returning to meditation 1.0, aka Chill The Fuck Out And Let Your Brain Stop For a Hot Second.

I’m not very good at it.

But being good at it isn’t the point. Doing it is the point.

Slowly and surely, I’m learning to trust myself again. Trust myself to not be a flaming jerk to myself, trusting myself to do what I say I’ll do, trusting myself to do the things that help.