The Magic of Showing Up

Posted on October 18, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

If you take a look at my archives (don’t you do that on a regular basis?) you will note that there is a big drop off in my posting frequency starting in June. I mean 6 entries in August? 3 in September? 3 in October (so far)? What the heck? Did I run out of things to say? Hardly.

It was June 7 (ah-ha, the first slow posting month) when @mattsingley posted a quote on Twitter that came through my feed.

I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often. – Brian Tracy

It was the “show up more often” part that gave me a *PING* moment. And I decided to give it a try.

Because I had an epiphany:

I like hiding. I use my family, my distance from the city, my introversion, lack of money, non-professional artist status, as my default reasons for not showing up. And sometimes those are legitimate reasons, particularly my family. But lots of times, these are excuses. Because often the truth is I don’t show up because of the great unknown of what ifs–what if I don’t know anybody, what if no one wants to talk to me, what if I can’t think of anything interesting to say, what if the cool kids won’t let me sit with them, what if my idea isn’t good enough, and a thousand and one variations on the what if theme.

So that’s what I’ve been doing since then…showing up more often. Being afraid. Having my excuses and showing up anyway. Recognizing that my right people are there if I would allow myself to be there too. Letting myself step outside of “Here I am again, in the place of stuck that I always come back to.” I’ve had many a negotiation with myself. “Just go for five minutes, just say hello, just say thank-you, just pop your head in, just stick your hand out, just pick up the pen. That’s all I’m asking of myself, and then I can go back to something cosy.” 

Sometimes, I’ve really only done that bare minimum and I pat myself on the back for doing that. And other times, I’ve gone way past the bare minimum with no further negotiations required. I’ve been going places I might have found a reason not to go to. I’ve been talking to people that I might not have talked to. I’ve fessed up out loud to having ideas. I’ve been showing up in my studio instead of the computer. And as the quote predicts, lucky things have been happening. It’s been like…well…magic. Suddenly I can see I’m in a different place relative to my dreams. Instead of spending my energy pining after what I don’t have, I can spend my energy thinking of next steps.

I’ve been establising an offline presence in the words of the always mildly brilliant Ken Roberts.

And part of showing up other places was showing up here less.

I also decided it was time to declutter my online world. My Google Reader was becoming a huge burden. I’d subscribed to so many wonderful, funny, thoughtful, well written blogs that I was spending far too much of my free time just reading other people’s stuff and never getting to my own.

So, in a surprisingly painful exercise, I deep-breathed my way through unsubscribing to fully half the blogs I was subscribed to. Half.

Would you like to know what I kept? 

Of course, my family, friends, and any blog that’s been kind enough to link back to me.

Havi of The Fluent Self because she’s changing my life with every posting. She’s woo-woo without the ‘ew.’ 

Ken Roberts of Mildly Creative because his creative ideas and rhthym synch up marvellously with my own.

The Woman Who Talked Too Much — Marie Phillips. Because damn she’s a good writer, and I love her total commitment to her obsessions be it David Tennant, the guy who heads up The Choir, or Strictly Dancing.

The Woman In Black. Humour from the dark side. When I’m feeling all rainbows and big-eyed kittens, she’s a great antidote. AND she left me a damn fine limerick on my birthday.

Okay, Fine, Dammit. Because oh my goodness can this woman write. The images, the lyrical turns of phrase, the startling insight woven into her prose, which is more like poetry. Just. Beautiful.

Pearl, Why You Little. Because I have a huge crush on Pearl’s writing. She delights me.

Dilbert. Because the Scott Adams brain is a weird and wonderful place to peer into.

On the Brain. The makers of Fast ForWord. Need I say more?

Dream Garden Coaching. My accountability coach.

and a couple of others that have kind of gone silent, but I’m still hoping for a resurrection.

It’s been SO freeing. Now, I follow people on Twitter to test drive them and occasionally check out what’s going on on their blog, but I don’t feel obligated to read EVERY SINGLE WORD published on the internet everyday. I go days without even opening up my Google Reader…or tweeting…or updating my Facebook status…and apparently without posting anything here.

But at least now you know why.

The power of showing up, in person, in real time — don’t underestimate it. Even if it’s showing up in your studio, or at your lap desk.

Be afraid, show up anyway, and see what happens.

I’ll keep you posted. Sporadically anyway.

Posted in Aliens and uncharted planets, Big Bang, Observatory, Rainbows, Wonderment | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

My Excalibur, My Oil and Sauce Dispenser (No. 111)

Posted on October 11, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

I stopped by the dollar deal shelves at the grocery store today. I was in pursuit of mandarin oranges for the semi-annual Tomorrow Salad, but first I detoured over as the stacks of plastic and cheap glass beckoned me.

I’m a sucker for the dollar deals.

Today, I was no sucker. I was amply rewarded for my loyalty to the Dollar Deals when I victoriouly yanked out of the heap of cheapness…

 

Oil & Sauce Dispenser (No. 111)

 

The promises of this Oil & Sauce Dispenser (No. 111) are…well…read for yourself.

From the label:

The pursuit of convenience and pleasure spend time merrily & happily in kitchen.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Insert thematic voiceover at the beginning of my new anime series: Adventures in Dollar Deals

Oil & Sauce Dispenser (No. 111) you will be my tool, my companion, my veritable Excalibur in the pursuit of merriment, pleasure, happiness and let us not forget convenience for the foreseeable future, or at least a week.

How have I lived without you thus far?

Let us now all blink in unison.

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Persona, have you met your Shadow?

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

A man is standing beside the road. He is a middle-aged man. He has a bald spot and a circle of brown spiky hair. He is dressed in a pressed tweed jacket, pressed dress pants, shiny dress shoes–all high-end labelled merchandise. He is a fussy man. The kind who has a formal living room, irons his napkins, and drives his wife crazy before guests arrive for a dinner party because he’s not convinced she has perfected the correct ratio of radhicchio to arugula. He stands behind his polished silver sedan–an expensive make and model. This is a man who was on his way to the office, a place where he has a reserved parking space by the front door and an assistant. He holds a position of note–probably a Vice-President of Finance. He is talking on his cell phone, looking at some papers in his hands–perhaps he is reading some information from the papers to the person he speaks to on the phone.

There is another man.

This man stands in the parking lot adjacent to the first man. In stark contrast to the first man, this man has a wild mane of black hair, that connects to his wild beard. Rasputin-eyes and a Hagrid-beard. He wears a mack jacket, wife-beater and filthy jeans. The dirt on this man is only matched by the filth of the gang-banger car that one must assume he was driving, although it hardly looks road-worthy. The car is a matte-black, missing an entire headlight and looks quite literally beat up. The man slouches in front of his car, hands thrust deep into his jeans’ pockets, looking at the first men with a look that reminds me of the teenager caught by his parents sneaking into the house after curfew.

Mr. Fussy and the Wild-Man have had a collision of a minor nature — no damage is apparent on Mr. Fussy’s car and I can’t believe you would be able tell if the Wild-Man’s car had any extra damage from what it had before the accident.

The meaning of this is clear. This morning the Ego collided with its Id. Persona with Shadow. Light with dark.

Both these personalities so cut off from their other side that they effectively polarized themselves into magnets that coming into close proximity couldn’t help but put them on a collision course.

It isn’t always quite so literal.

I wonder how this moment will change these men. If it will change these men.

Or if they will wait for their polarizations to build to a head-on, high speed collision.

Posted in Aliens and uncharted planets, Little Bang, Minor notes in the celestial chord, Observatory | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Muse Sighting II

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

He cycles past me going the wrong way on a one-way street. He is mounted on an old city-style bicycle. Of course the bike is old enough that when he bought it, it didn’t have the descriptor city-style, it was just a bike, maybe even simply, a bicycle. He is quite a bit older than the rusted bicycle. He wears some worn khakis that I’m sure he says have quite a few good years left on them, a dusty windbreaker, and some shoes (not sneakers). His only concession to bike culture is his bike helmet. And to that he has affixed a doughnut of corrugated cardboard–all the better to reduce the glare from the sun. It is unclear whether this cardboard doughnut (patent-pending) reveals that he is a genius, a nut-case, or simply couldn’t give two plugs what the world thinks of him. The sun is bright dammit! and cardboard is cheap.

It could be that he is the Oberon to the Titania I spotted the other day. Perhaps they divorced and she got all the money, which is why he’s on a 40-year-old bicycle and she is driving a Harley.

Who can say?

Regardless of their checkered pasts, both of them in their own way have a certain regality about them–an owning of their own world–that I admire.

Posted in Aliens and uncharted planets, Observatory, Winter Solstice | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Muse Sighting

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

She pulls up behind me at the traffic light. She’s old. Her lips lined like someone permanently tasting a sour lemon, although that’s just the state of her face and doesn’t appear to be connected to her personality. She’s good-looking in a Dove Campaign for Real Beauty way. She’s well-heeled. Someone who goes to a good hairdresser and gets a facial on a regular basis. She is the kind of woman who you expect to cultivate a rose garden that’s the envy of the neighbourhood. She bakes cookies for bake sales. Reads at the local library.

But this is no prim and proper church lady.

She wears a white fitted zip-up waterproof jacket with mesh accents, a pair of Top Gun sunglasses and a helmet. She is driving a Harley-Davidson.

This is one Bad-Ass Granny.

What I love about this particular Bad-Ass Granny is that she’s even being a bad-ass on her own terms. No leather. No peroxide. No visible tattoos or piercings. All her own teeth. And she’s driving by herself, on her chopper, not on the back of her man’s hog. It’s all her own.

I’ve never wanted to drive a motorcycle before, but I do now.

 

Inspiration shows up in the strangest places.
Muses knock on our door wearing the strangest of get-ups.
And isn’t it delightful?
Posted in Aliens and uncharted planets, Observatory, Sun | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Griffin–the One, the Only, the Not-to-be-Copied

Posted on September 20, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

The five-year-old has turned from the spitting, screaming, biting that got him euphemistically categorized as a “spirited” toddler into a bright, loving, bouncy Kindergartener. I adore him. Really. It’s just so lovely to see the transformation in him. Not that he still can’t be ridiculously stubborn and demanding sometimes, but it does not define him anymore.

He has this lovely habit of coming up to me–unprompted–and saying:

I love you Mom, so much.

My heart melts and I give him a big, don’t grow up too soon my baby, hug.

The other night we were having our ritual bedtime snuggle in the big chair. The television was on, and someone on the show said

I love you so much Mom.

Immediately, I felt his little spine straighten, and with just a hint of righteous indignation he declared.

Hey! That’s what I say!

He was silent for a few moments except for the whir and clunk of the gears inside his brain.

I awaited the results of his calculating.

And then he looked at me:

I love you Mom…greatly.

A true original, my Griffin.

What do you think? Future screenwriter? Copyright lawyer? Patent clerk?

Posted in Mothership, Observatory, Sun | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Accountability Coach Update

Posted on September 13, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

Prompted by a comment from Bullwinkle, who wondered if I’d followed through on my personal ad looking for an Accountability Coach, I thought I’d stop in after my long unexplained absence to give you the update.  

I am happy to report that I did.

Follow through that is.

I’ve hired Liz from Dream Garden Coaching who was the first commenter on that post (well, the first after MahoneyMusings commiserated about the guilty pleasure that is known as dill pickle chip dip). We have our second session this evening, which is really the first where I’ll actually be held accountable to something. Namely, recording what I ate–check, recording my workouts (I committed to three)–check and check, and filling out the SMART goals worksheet–uh, not so much. But I will before our session tonight, I promise Liz.

Oh, FYI, I’m using FitDay.com for recording these things. It’s pretty good, although I’ve had to go to my-calorie-counter to look up some stuff and then make a custom food in FitDay. I find it very strange that FitDay has a listing for Ground Hog, cooked (230.9 calories for 4 oz cooked with bone) but not any kind of Thai Dressing. But maybe that’s just me and my Pacific NorthWestness talking. I just can’t think that anyone who resorts to cooking up a ground hog for their vittles is the kind of person who is a) concerned about their waistline or b) going to be recording it on an on-line program. It’s me isnt’ it?

Oh, and here’s another peculiarity of Fit-Day. Their extensive activity catalogue has no listing for pilates, (the closest I could get was Hatha Yoga), BUT, happily, they do have 3 separate listings for sexual activity:

  • active, vigorous effort (15 calories every 10 minutes)
  • sexual activity 
    general, moderate effort (13 calories every 10 minutes)
  • sexual activity 
    passive, light effort (kissing, hugging) (10 calories every 10 minutes)
I love how it’s characterized in terms of effort.  And I better stop here because the dialogue that’s going through my head is just…well…inappropriate, although I assure you it’s hilarious to me.
Don’t worry Liz, that’s one thing I’ll leave uncatalogued for you.

 

And thank you Bullwinkle for de-lurking to check up on me. I think that’s delightfully charming.

It’s been an interesting week knowing that someone else would see what I ate and what I did for exercise. But I tried, despite that knowledge, to do what I normally would because I wanted to observe my default behaviours around food.

I swear this isn’t going to become a weight-loss blog because seriously — yawn. But of course I will continue to use it for free therapy, because really, what else is a blog for? Well, okay a blog is also for discussing cute celebrities and recording for the world the annoying things your my kids are doing, but PRIMARILY it’s for free therapy. And I will brook no argument on the subject.

So, back to my free therapy.

I’ve definitely got two conflicting lifestyle personalities: Granola Girl and White Trash Girl. I think these are self-explanatory but you would be wrong if you thought that their self-explanatoriness would stop me from further description.

Granola Girl eats organic, mostly raw foods, large green salads, multi-grain breads, fruit salads, nuts, yogurt. Her grocery list a list of nons (non-wheat, non-dairy, non-gluten, non-GMO, non-sodium). She meditates, does pilates, walks the dog and does her gym workouts regularly and thoroughly. She would like to do a tri-athalon.

White Trash Girl never met a white carb she didn’t like. She thinks potatoes totally count as a vegetable and claims she is way too tired to exercise but then stays up way too late sitting in the big comfy chair watching Law & Order. She would like to do a West Wing marathon.

Because I think we all contain these darknesses and contradictions, it doesn’t trouble me that I’m both these people. But currently White Trash Girl takes the day a little too often. She just lays there right on top of poor Granola Girl who despite her pilates-toned-core and sushi breath can’t yet bench-lift the weight of White Trash Girl.

So, my plan is to give one off-the-books evening a week to White Trash Girl. Let her hold court in the throne of the big comfy chair, and accept any and all offerings of bad food, good television, and Mike’s Hard Lemonade (125% of the RDA of Vitamin C, it’s a friggin’ health drink!).

Granola Girl gets the rest of the week. I hope she’s up for the challenge. Because I think White Trash Girl is going to throw a hissy fit. And we all know how those kind of domestic calls go down. Things are going to get broken. Words will be said that can’t be unsaid.

GG you gotta know it’s just the white carb withdrawl talking. It’s nothing personal.

So, comments. I will gratefully accept all “you go girls” and inappropriate imaginary dialogue inspired by FitDay’s somewhat bizarre catalogue. I don’t want any “try my proven success system” pitches and I don’t want any comments telling me I’m doing it wrong. I am becoming my own expert and figuring out what works for me, I don’t want “you should try” or “how dare you betray the fat sisterhood.” I don’t mind “I tried this and it worked for me” because I am curious what has worked for other people, unless of course you’re trying to sell me something, in which case, don’t bother.

Whew, I’m tired after that paragraph.

Pilates or nap?

I’m going to let GG and WTG duke it out.

Posted in Aliens and uncharted planets, Sun | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

And Now for Something Completely Different

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

It’s just been too much earnestness, yearning, and thinking this week hasn’t it? Time to lighten up.

This is perfect. The brilliant Big Honkin’  team imagined what it would be like to have Google for a roommate. High-lair-ee-us. 3 episodes (about 3 minutes each):

Content warning: some swears

 

Episode 1:

 

Episode 2:

 

Episode 3:

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Tuesday BITs — I can’t fight this feeling anymore

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North
Today is the Discussion of Trinity of Brain Issues (Learning Disabilities, ADHD, and Aspergers) and the Treatment Thereof Tuesday (DTBITTT) or in short form Tuesday BITs.

 

Anxiety, like free-radicals, floats around my body looking for something to tether itself to.

This is one of the minor side-effects of the thyroid medication I’m now on. I resisted the urge to put quotation marks around the minor, because although irritating I guess in the grand scheme of things it is minor.

It took me a couple of days to realize that the restlessness I was told I might feel I was identifying as anxiety. And to me anxiety has to have a source, so I kept pulling stuff out of my closet of anxieties, examining them carefully, trying them on in front of my worrying at 5am for no reason mirror, wondering if this worry made me look fat, if that one was too threadbare, maybe the other one that one had faded too much in the wash, or if I’d hung on to this one long enough that it might be considered retro and therefore cool again. 

I was fretting about fretting. 

And all in an effort to and make some sense out of what I was feeling.

It was a big relief to realize that what I was feeling was biological and chemical, and not a feeling attached to anything specific. But it’s a strange thing to be telling yourself: 

I know I FEEL anxious, but I’m not actually anxious about any THING, I’m just FEELING anxious.

A feeling without a cause. Weird.

At least I had the benefit of knowing (or at least realizing based on prior warnings) that that’s what was going on. But it got me to thinking…

My daughter can be a bit obsessive. She goes through phases where certain thoughts, ideas, or behaviours repeat themselves. We have dealt with them in the past by unravelling the trigger thought. For example: when she was obsessively worried about her safety after our neighbours were burgled, we taught her relaxation techniques and thought patterns that addressed her nighttime fearsfears. “I’m safe. My parents are home. The doors are already locked.”

But I’m starting to wonder if perhaps we should also be dealing with it on a more mechanical level. We need to teach her that her brain has a tendency to focus on one thing. And that when she finds herself (ah, there’s the rub, realizing that she’s doing it) thinking the same thoughts over and over again, to realize it’s not the thought that’s the problem. The problem is that the brain has gotten itself stuck in a tape loop (ah, there’s rub #2, will she know what a tape is?). Well, however, we describe it (the page keeps refreshing itself, reading the same page in the book over and over again), she needs to learn to deal with obsessiveness itself, not what the obsession has attached itself to. Just like I needed to recognize and deal with my free-floating anxiety on its own, and not try to attach that anxiety to an external source.

Woah. Had to give my head a shake there. Grasping on to that concept is like trying to read upside down. It takes a while for the eyes to adjust.

Just another little mind-bender from the friendly folk here at Tentative Equinox.

So, what I’d like for comments. I would like to know if anyone else out there (I’m talking to you there looking at these words on your screen) has dealt or is dealing with this issue in themselves or their loved ones? Do tell. I’m curious to know if the mechanical approach I’m describing here has worked for anyone. Did you try something else that did (or didn’t) work?

Remember, our goal here is to get these diagnosed kids to lose their diagnosis. And the more we share our experiences and knowledge, the quicker we can get through this labryinth. You with me on this?

Posted in Aliens and uncharted planets, Big Bang, Mothership, Observatory | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Resistance Epiphany

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Tentative Equinox North

This video from Barbara Sher may have changed my life:

 

 

Knowing that what I feel when I’m trying to change something is anxiety and the desire to quell that anxiety is what keeps me where I am, is frankly epiphanous (which is a cool word I just made up, so remember when you see it listed in the New York Time you read it here first).

It makes me wonder how much possiblity is out there if we can just get past the anxiety and resistance.

What could you change if you could get past that resistance?

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