Note to Self

(be bolder)

First off, I wanted to plug a book that my acupuncturist wrote: Beginning Meditation After Trauma, by Dr. Sydnie Bryant. It’s really really good; it’s single-handedly changing my life for the better. If you feel stuck in big patterns that you know are sabotaging the good, this is the kind of book that’s worth every minute of your time!

I’ve been pairing my beginning meditation practice with this youtube video’s sounds. For now, it fits.

Second, a short pep talk to remind myself to be more bold in articulating why I need what I need when it comes to my wellbeing. Perhaps you can relate. I hit a situation this past month where my need with time management was steamrolled. I knew it was an issue and ignoring it would have consequences but I didn’t do anything except try to make it work (and fail).

I know “my need with time management” sounds a bit cringe but time management is not a Type A thing only, or a control-freakish thing only. I live with the potential for symptoms to derail days or weeks of my life at any moment and I have been learning to build in a buffer with everything I do. My pace is rather slow and steady now which is dull at times but not when the alternative is self-created crisis. (I get plenty of crisis anyway.) The buffer also gives me time to feel and integrate experiences and emotions, both lovely and challenging, something I am learning I have skipped over by being so driven as a working artist for so many years. You’d think artists are tuned in…and in songwriting and performing I was. But in life I was not. I don’t think it’s a leap to guess that I’m not the only artist who has lived this way.

(I have all kinds of thoughts about whether artists have to be unbalanced to create, but that’s another topic for another time.)

I watched the situation completely fall apart this week and the consequences unfold, which are many and unpleasant and will last a good long while.

So note to self: be bolder. When someone indicates to me they are going to ignore my time management requirement, describe in detail what the consequences are going to be. Get out ahead of the train wreck by deciding my changes in response right away. If a train is coming, get off the track.

We’re all in various states of expansion and contraction, we’re not all gonna agree or align, and some people simply can’t roll with slow and steady (trust me, I’ve been the steamroller in service to a song many times and I understand the energy and mentality quite well!), but the permission to tell people why you need what you need exists as an inherent right by simply being alive in the same way that people have free will (to ignore you). Neither is superior and both matter.

I’m not sure how useful any of this is to read but I need to put a wellness and art pin it it today because I allowed a screwed up situation to chug along to its bad conclusion. In other news, the red amaryllis are in full bloom at my kitchen window. A flame to color the new year does its own magic to take away some of the sting. Grace and joy, my friends.