Bread is the Answer

Last night I baked bread for the first time.

It was garlic rosemary pull-apart bread, and I’m quite smug about the way it turned out.

I kneaded the dough like I’ve watched every single episode of The Great British Bake-Off (which I have) and knew exactly what I was doing (which I don’t).

Bread baking is something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time but since I haven’t had an oven in five years, opportunities have been thin on the ground. After moving into a house equipped with more than a dorm fridge and a hot plate (garden cottages are magical but not if you want to engage in cooking anything more complex than soup), it took me precisely 25 days to get my first batch of bread in the oven.

Yes, I am terribly proud of myself. Doing things just because they’re fun, just because I want to, is something I’ve gotten noticeably bad at recently. Baking some bread turned out to be a solid way to shift that particular tide.

Bonus: kneading dough is quite satisfying.

Creative people are happiest when they’re making things, and I’m a big fan of having hobbies that you don’t have to be good at, that you can play with just because you want to, just because it’s fun. It alleviates the stress of being a wild perfectionist of doing a creative thing that you’re being paid for or building a business around. I really want to type “ugh” or “stupid bills” here, but I’m spending a reasonable portion of my time re-wiring myself around money and that seems like a step in the wrong direction.

If money is reading this, I love you! Let’s hang out! I have a very nice bank account for you to stay in.

My usual methods for cultivating the child-like wonder that soothes my soul are brightly colored converse, a weird obsession with giraffes, and a willingness to utilize empty swing sets to the best of my ability. But I have plenty of giraffes and hot pink shoes, and there aren’t any public playgrounds nearby.

(However, the new house could definitely support both a foster giraffe and a swing set. There are already plans for a goat train and a cat-copter so the kitties can better chase hummingbirds.) (Maybe lack of childlike shenanigans aren’t my problem.)

So, bread baking. Next on my list is singing lessons. Not because I’m good at singing, but because I want to sing. I want to take my Not Great Singing and make it Better Singing. I want to see what progress I can make, when I’m not already good at something. Like most people, I tend to gravitate toward the things I have some talent at, because the ego enjoys nothing better than being good at things.

But I know that creative endeavors fuel more creative endeavors (please note my first blog post in six weeks!) and so I am stating this here and now so I don’t forget again:

Making things is fun. You are happiest when you are making things. Make more things. If you can’t make the thing you were planning to make, make another thing, until the first thing shakes loose.

When all else fails, bake yourself garlic rosemary bread in a place where you can walk out into the garden and pluck rosemary straight from a bush in the ground, which is apparently where rosemary comes from.

Your Soul Cheers As Your Human Self Wonders WTF

Nothing about the last ten years has gone according to plan.

Maybe plans are just my brain's way of helping me feel safe. Maybe goals are just my ego's way of keeping itself satisfied.

Not that there's anything wrong with plans or goals, I just seem to rebel against any and all prescriptions, even if they're my own.

Don't tell me what to do, goal.

Something about dancing on the edge of the unknown appeals to me. Which is good, because a lot of unknowns are looming right now.

I'm moving at the end of the month. Leaving my Mill Valley cottage, my haven for the past five years, to move in with someone. I haven't lived with a man person in over a decade, and it didn't go well when I did. I honestly didn't realize the depth of that particular trauma until I started losing my ever-loving shit at the the thought of trying it again.

I've had the worst financial year of my life. In the past, I would have a bad month or a bad few months - the perils of working for yourself when money is one of your big life lessons - but I would always turn it around before missing being late on a bill or having to skimp on groceries.

I didn't pay the minimum on my credit card last month and my bank account is overdrawn. None of these things have ever happened to me before. Straight up, the only reason I ate a few weeks ago was because a friend sent me some money out of the clear blue sky.

While this isn’t precisely the situation I wanted or expected at this phase of my life, it's showing me that worrying about money serves no purpose. It's showing me that people are deeply kind. It's showing me how to have deep and tremendous faith in myself and my work, even as everything in my current reality is telling me to have zero faith in either of those things. It's showing me that I'm getting ready to expand big time.

I'm getting better at diving into the scary, here-be-monsters depths. I'm getting better at not judging myself. I'm getting better at plunging into joy whenever possible.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe my soul is cheering, even as my human self wonders what the fuck is going on.

You Can't Fail At Being Spiritual. Because You Are Spirit.

I went to see a guru a few weeks ago, because he was appearing across the road from my boyfriend's house and when a guru appears on your virtual doorstep, you might as well say hello. So we crossed the street to watch an Indian spiritual leader in action.

We sat with hundreds of followers under a gigantic tent and listened as people asked him questions for two hours.

One woman got up, crying, because she felt she was failing spiritually because she always fell asleep in meditation.

The guru was very kind and had the same reaction I did which was, Let yourself fall asleep! Don't worry about it!

But what broke my heart was how harshly we judge ourselves around being "spiritual." And how many hoops we make ourselves jump through before we consider ourselves enough in the eyes of god.

Heart. Breaking.

We are always, always, always enough in the eyes of god. Or spirit. Or the universe. Or the flying spaghetti monster. Whatever.

The phrase "practical spirituality" keeps running through my head. Not every human is cut out for a daily hour of meditation. But anyone can use stop lights as their moment to pause. Any one can make doing the dishes a meditative practice. We can live our lives as a meditation.

I do this approximately 15% of the time and I teach this stuff, so I'm not saying it's easy.

But the point isn't to be perfect, because we ain't none of us perfect.

The point is to continue grounding into a practice, whatever that practice is. Your practice can be dancing, walking, meditating at stop lights, petting your dog, pulling weeds in your garden. Whatever returns you to you.

Devote ourselves to ourselves, and allow that to be enough.

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.