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I like lists. I like writing in list format, parsing my thoughts out in small doses. It helps me focus. It helps me sort. Giving them some semblance of order, regardless of how nonlinear the subject matter actually ends up within the structure. I like the ironic way that sometimes the nonsequitur-ness of it ends up sort of slotting connections into place unexpectedly. I like the process of being surprised by my own process.

Something I have been thinking about lately: Life is messy, and it is beautiful. Not but. And. // Two things can (and almost always are) true at once. There’s something here about learning how to expand our capacity for holding contradictions without turning them into limitations. There’s always a way for the multiplicity of our lives to harmonize.

Sometimes a sense of shame crops up about certain aspects of where I have landed in life for the moment. The reframe I work with is this: I have cultivated beauty, love, connection. I have made and am making the best of a life that was given to me. No, it's not perfect. It's better than perfect. It's real. It's deep and it's wide. It's expansive and vast. It's rich and fulfilling and heart-centered and interesting. In each and every chapter I have discovered an opportunity to keep learning and growing and evolving. And I continue to choose to see these opportunities around every corner. // I would be proud of anyone I know for doing all of this. And so I practice being proud of myself for doing it. I practice refusing to feel ashamed for showing up, for learning, for experiencing. For doing exactly what we all came here to do.

"Shame is a destroyer. Let's destroy the destroyer by loving who we are." —Jeff Warren

“Reckon with the unknown. Find excitement in the idea that there will always be more for you to learn rather than harboring shame over it.”

The world is a rich, constantly shifting blend of concepts and perceptions and possibilities, and part of the point of being here in it is to say yes to the experiences that we are given.

Befriending uncertainty, again and again. Seeing the unknown as something exciting rather than something terrifying. Choosing this as a lens, a worldview, because it takes me farther than the fear does.

Rerouting: Go into the stillness, and choose again.

If you want kinder love, tell kinder stories.

"We are each other's harvest. We are each other's business. We are each other's magnitude and bond." —Gwendolyn Brooks

1. I feel like I’m constantly straddling the line between striving for productivity and striving for leisure. As with most everything, I guess it’s about seeking the balance between the two. Both are vital.

2. It feels amazing to get back into a creative routine. I feel so much more... myself when I'm making time for art.

3. And not only that - it magically creates more space in my brain to remember other basic but important things. Like taking my daily vitamin. And getting to bed at a decent time. And I feel more engaged with the process.

4. being curious about your story

5. your shadow subconsciously worn on your sleeve

6. Letting go is hard. Trusting that something new & better will grow in that space is hard. But sometimes all it takes to make it just a little bit easier is a shift in perspective. A conscious choice to focus on the good, to retell the story in a way that centers growth, healing, and hope.

7. to live authentically is to live vulnerably. to shoot arrows into the distance, not being able to guarantee where they will land but recognizing the power in shooting them to begin with. process over result. truth over smallness. love over fear. (3/10/17)

8. Maybe, in relationships, no one will be the happy medium fulfilling all of the qualities you search for. Maybe you just need to love fiercely the people you have found with all the imperfect beauty they carry, and fill in the gaps with your own adaptable, shapeshifting self. Maybe this is enough.

9. "If you can't find truth right where you are, where else do you think you'll find it?" —Dogen

10. Clouds, they look like mountains / Your eyes, they look like stars / We will fill our hands with clay / And try to shape our hearts

1. witnessing the poetry of what can become of what remains (March 2020)

2. Some days on my timeline are empty, devoid of any sort of record-keeping, and I always feel a sort of regret for all of those moments that slipped under the radar.

3. self-identified archivist of experience

4. Things I find in my notes app: “Who funks on a Sunday?”

5. moments: closed eyes, a particular sequence of notes in a Moby song

6. creativity for its own sake

7. “sometimes the most profound changes are the simplest”

8. I am remembering what a joy it was to tend to my creativity, in whatever way that looked like.

9. I like the idea of slow & steady. Sustainability. Building something sturdy in the material realm, making small but concrete progress. Concepts I'm leaning into exploring yet again and what they might look like for my own life in the shape my life is in right now, and the shape I hope it will take in the future.

10. Use constraints to your advantage.

1. re-realizing the value of this practice

2. The point is simply to express.

3. I've been drawn back more and more towards my relationship with the written word. I think I need to honor it more, engage with it more, carve out time and attention for it to exist in my life in the more prevalent ways that it used to.

4. the inevitable return

5. I like the idea of writing as non-negotiable, as ritual, as sacred practice. I've always been drawn to the written word, but I haven't always prioritized my relationship with it. Which is fine, because as a person with multi-faceted interests, often my frequency of engagement with certain mediums comes and goes in cycles. But writing has been my lifelong companion and balm. Finding the words to express what I feel and experience has been a home in many ways. So I'm trying to come back home.

6. I've noticed that I can't write when I feel frantic. The language center of my brain just powers down or is somehow overridden by the rest of my anxious mind ricocheting its mess all over the place.

7. It's like I can't figure out how to turn all of those raw thought forms into solid ideas that exist outside of myself. There are too many to keep track of. Too many paths to follow.

8. All along the undertow / a thousand pairs of hands are grasping / for something to control the flow (Excerpt from a poem from 2017.)

9. "Let us take hold of the root and not worry about the branches" —Yoka Daishi

10. Writing as rooting.

1. respecting the void. holding space for the unseen. taking your hands off the wheel and trusting the alchemy happening below the surface.

2. Sometimes I just need to pause the music and let the wind and the heavy rain outside be my soundtrack while I work.

3. listening to what wants to be heard

4. "Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking." —Antonio Machado

5. "The only way to know where a path will take you is to walk it."

6. So many messages lately about creating the future by showing up to the present. And about choosing uncertainty as a way of life. Which, of course, is the way of life anyway, whether we choose it or not.

7. I consider myself to have a better relationship to change & to the unknown than most. I thrive on novelty, adventure, spontaneity. I am adaptable and resourceful. But I'm learning more and more that what is *really* ideal to me is finding that sweet spot between stability and flow. Both are essential. I'm still learning how to get the ratio just right. I suppose I will always be learning about how to do this. And I suspect that the ways that work best will keep shifting over time.

8. Everything is a process. Everything is a practice.

9. I want to trust what I am shown and meet it fully.

10. I can feel changes ahead, and they excite and intrigue (and mildly terrify) me. I feel ready for and open to them.

1. Reframing the value of this exercise: What if the writing, the gathering, the sharing — what if all of it is just for me?

2. restless shifting wayfarers

3. bridgekeeper

4. “Meditation is the art of getting out of our own way.” —Jeff Warren // From this perspective, many things can be a meditation. Running. Writing. Making art. Making music.

5. “Be unafraid to tie yourself spiritually to someone else. When you fear the power someone holds over you, you fear love.”

6. I was catching up with my best friend and I told her how I was doing: “Just the usual mixed bag of meltdowns & peace.” Truly, that’s just a day in the life right now. (Maybe always.) I’m learning to accept this. Not with resignation, but with compassion towards myself.

7. So many things in my head and heart. Too many things. What do I do with all these things? This sting of memories, these rattling questions?

8. Keep tending your own garden. Be your own lover. Be your own partner. Be your own muse.

9. You are the light. You are the pulse. You are the center. A sun burning bright. A mystery. An intrigue. A force of life and vitality and the creative impulse arising.

10. “The medicine is inside. Go inside and get it.” —Tepahteh “Oso” Hutze

1. Today I am making a recommitment to writing a list every day (or at least as often as I reasonably have time for). It is an act of self-care. A way in which I show up for myself.

2. re-engage with the process & with the moment // reacquainting with the vision

3. I felt existentially hollow yesterday. But I tried to seek the small joys - like the metallic blue on my nails, a new color I picked up over the weekend.

4. “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.” —Bruce Barton

5. It is life-giving to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged. Attention and intention are gifts. They are acts of love. Some of the dynamics within my web of relationships are teaching me this more than others.

6. Just finished season 3 of Stranger Things last night. Definitely lots of sobbing happened. “And when life hurts you - because it will - remember the hurt. The hurt is good. It means you’re out of that cave.”

7. I would really like to replace my “all or nothing” tendencies with a “great things are built from small steps” framework. Sometimes I feel like I am getting this down, other times I’m not so sure.

8. “I want to come home to the words — and I want the words to change me —“

9. Everything is alchemy.

10. Everything is here to help you.

1. I've been asking myself some things:

What do I have to offer the world?

Does my creative work matter?

Is my self-expression truly of value to others?

2. I am continually challenged by consistency. By finding the most sustainable flow that honors my own energy levels, that is productive without burnout and restful without stagnation. Life perpetually feels like striving to find that balance, and to be honest, I'm tired of it.

3. I've always liked this format of list writing when I free-write because it doesn't require me to reach any sort of conclusion. Or even to coherently connect the dots. I can just make statements and move on. And sometimes, the dots connect themselves.

4. The self-doubt and perfectionism feel heavy, like a thick layer of hot fabric in an atmosphere that's already uncomfortably warm. I'm restless to throw it off and make stuff, do the thing, create! — but it's too heavy to lift.

5. I keep getting mayonnaise all over everything because the lighting in this room isn't bright enough for me to see where I'm touching my sandwich.

6. Messes irritate me sometimes.

7. My creative process is a mess and I think that's why I avoid it. But it's supposed to be a mess. Swimming in the chaos is how I make sense of things, how I emerge with some sort of order and insight.

8. I think maybe I am not very good at letting the chaos just be chaos. I feel the urge to shape it, mold it, sort it, refine it. These urges aren't inherently bad, but they do get in the way when I'm facing something I can't easily define or explain.

9. I keep coming back to words to try to save myself from the swirling vortex of my inner world but they're also not enough sometimes.

10. All I know is I'm compelled to try, and to honor that compulsion even when the expression is not perfect, when the results fail to match the experience I am having within. I'd like to hope that this compulsion counts as an offering. If it's not, I don't know what else I am doing here on this planet.

1. It is all too ridiculously easy to squander my time at night. The mindlessness kicks in hardcore. It’s so hard in the evenings for me to prioritize quality time to myself. I’d like to change that.

2. It keeps getting darker earlier, and I keep denying that it is already November.

3. small and cozy fall comforts, like whatever sweater I’ve been living in for days

4. and spiced apple cider in the evenings

5. and caramel apple flavored everything

6. There are certain people whose company is enough. I don’t need more than their conversation, or their comfortable silence, to feel loved, seen, and safe.

7. There are things nagging at the corners of my mind, but the universe keeps delivering messages of letting it go, of not holding on so tightly, so I am trying.

8. work to release

9. it takes effort to trust

10. Reroute.

1. Slow living, slow art-making, slow consumption. I feel like I'm craving it. A life of purpose, intention, ritual. I'm craving more time — not in hours, but in attention. In energy. In rich, indulgent thought and experience.

2. I miss the pace of quarantine last spring. It was a blessing to receive all that time back to myself. I will reiterate all the time that I am grateful for and happy(-ish) with my day job but having certain places to be at certain times always makes me feel constricted, no matter how much I am emotionally invested in the obligation. I've tried over the years to have a healthy relationship with schedules but I'm finally owning the fact that I just don't like them.

3. November is for circulation. Re-committing to the work that matters to me. Picking up where I left off, cleaning up the mess, and beginning again.

4. There is a lot to reassemble.

5. I feel a deep breath of my whole being, returning to my creative work.

6. There are a lot of fears to release.

7. RELEASE is my intention word for this moon cycle. Earlier today I thought about how release doesn’t always need to mean letting something go for good. It just means letting go of the death grip we have on it. It’s still there. But there isn’t so much constriction around it.

8. boa constrictors

9. snakes shedding their skin

10. I feel myself going back inward, cocooning, and it is this that is the deep breath.

1. laying to rest

2. an arrival

3. Another September comes to a close. I found some things, I lost some things.

4. Everything keeps telling me I’ve reached the end. The end of this chapter. This path. This river. Time for a new direction. Time to move on.

5. Did I get what I came for?

6. I don’t really know what comes next. And I guess that’s okay. It’s okay that I don’t have the answer. It’s okay that I still don’t feel like clarity has arisen entirely. There is time to keep looking. Maybe just in a different way.

7. just a Fool under the moonlight, stepping into the unknown again

8. Put it all down. Walk on unencumbered. Don’t take this pain with you into the bright sunshine of a new day.

9. You will find it again, what you are looking for. Everything comes around in a new way. Everything changes form.

10. “Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, / ... / The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires, / The light in the eye grown dim, / shall duly flame again” —Walt Whitman

1. "September is open hands and clear vision, a sharpness, visibility beyond the dust and shimmer." // Something I wrote at the beginning of the month, full of hope for a powerful shift.

2. But so far, it has been... something else. The rough edges before the shift, maybe.

3. There have been beautiful days and memories made, but there has also been molasses energy, the weight of stagnance. There has been inertia and melancholy that visit me in the middle of the busyness, in the silent spaces, threatening my peace.

4. But I have come to recognize this as periods of descent necessary to rise once more. I am learning to allow them. The silence, the nothingness, the inspiration and vitality and zest for life sucked straight out — this, too, shall pass.

5. The weather is finally mild enough to leave the windows open while I work, thank GOD. No central air means choosing between roasting inside a house-turned-sauna, or skulking around in darkness keeping all the curtains drawn and windows shut in an attempt to keep out the heat. Zero sunlight all day is no way to spend the summer. Yet we've spent every summer that way since I've lived here. It's depressing.

6. Why does change feel so heavy and difficult to grasp or cultivate here in this space? Why is it so hard to circulate freshness in this house, to facilitate larger scale changes?

7. I'm letting the lens get to me again

8. gentle, patient, compassionate

9. Sunflowers are my favorite but they look kinda creepy when they start wilting. Not elegant like other flowers when they dry out. But I learned that sunflowers drop their seeds around this time. I like that metaphor. Creating the new as the old fades out.

10. craving time and space that I cannot quite figure out how to create // This, too, shall pass.

1. my hair smells like coffee

2. sliced carrots & radishes in bed for a sick stomach

3. I wore socks last night for the first time since February

4. Year 33 arrives in four days

5. I feel softer, more tender, more open. I feel a sense of expansion occurring within the heart space – a wider lens. I think this is where trust lives. And courage, too. —6/21/2020

6. The night air is the perfect temperature through the open window.

7. What about being here, in this moment, lends more ease to being open?

8. Sometimes I don’t fully understand my own questions. Sometimes I like that.

9. sometimes

10. “Success and failure are a normal part of life. What could you produce today if you did not live in fear of either?”

1. Feeling the urge to strip down and simplify, to prioritize resourcefulness and using what I have rather than accumulating more. I have enough. Earth energy; Virgo season.

2. listening to the body: allowing · self-compassion · trust

3. I always have spots of ink on my workout clothes somehow and I’m so confused about why that is.

4. Last night I walked past a boarded-up house with an overgrown yard on my way home from work to visit the group of little black kittens who had been staying there. I think they were strays. Someone had been feeding them. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and they were just starting to get comfortable enough to come sit closer to me, so I was looking forward to visiting them. But the lawn had been completely trimmed and the house was in the middle of being repaired. I didn’t see the kittens anywhere and it made me sad. Goodbye, kittens. :(

5. It's 9 AM. The light ripples across the curtains, makes a shimmering tidepool on surfaces inside the room. In her peripheral vision, the dance of the patterns upon floor and table look instead like flickering candlelight. For a split second she wonders when she lit one before the knowledge lands: this was natural magic, the dance between the sun and the trees. // a story (?) snippet from 2018

6. I miss that room. I miss sitting underneath the window in the light.

7. I guess there will always be things that I miss.

8. You love what you love.

9. not every knot will be undone. not every mess will be tidied up. not every stray thing will find its home. but consider the beauty in this. consider the perpetual mess and movement of life as a source of inspiration.

10. redirect the narrative

1. Today I am thinking about hope. As a verb, as an action, as "something we do before it is something we can have". Like love.

2. Hope is an openness to the world.

3. "eyes open, heart willing"

4. I wish my heart felt more willing.

5. "Find new ways to celebrate each other."

6. One night, one of our open mic community members said this: “All art is a resolution, and all artists are in some way unresolved.” That shook me in the best way and stayed with me. There's so much felt truth in that.

7. I keep thinking about rain lately. I miss it. I miss gray days and wet streets and the musical sounds of raindrops on various surfaces.

8. just letting it all flow. outward, onward, away.

9. deliquesce (v.): to melt away.

10. keep flowing

1. sound/space/silence

2. There are a thousand little seeds that want to sprout. I am practicing watering one of them at a time, so that it gets just the right amount. Not too much, not too little. A moderate, diligent tending. Even when I can't see the growth, even when I think it doesn't matter.

3. (I can't say I am very good at this just yet. There always seem to be too many sparks flying too fast. Reaching a clear, focused, steady headspace seems rare, and fleeting. I know that what counts is that I keep trying again, but damn, the mental chaos that so quickly ensues every morning can be discouraging.)

4. What I need is to sit with myself for a little while before moving into the day. Before the noise of the internet, the outside world, the tasks and chores and interactions. I just need to wake up and make my coffee and write in my journal and meditate before anything else, even before art.

5. What fascinates me today?

6. A question I want to begin each day, perhaps even each moment, with: How can I work with where I'm at rather than against it? Maybe trusting the flow IS my discipline.

7. I think cultivating discipline in my creative process is such a challenge for me because I am motivated by spontaneity. I took this quiz about my work style and one of the choices was "trusting". I thought this was an interesting option. I never would have described my process as "trusting" before but the more I thought about it the more I realized that is a pretty accurate descriptor for how I work. When I'm in flow it's an act of listening. It's one ear to the universe, translating what travels through. I am never fully in control. I never really know what comes next, until it comes next. And I love it that way.

8. I tried to have these writing sessions in the afternoon but I'm too wired and impatient then. Morning and evening work best.

9. “Sound: a body’s way of making itself known. Silence: a way of knowing.” —Diana Khoi Nguyen

10. “Words are not good for the secret meaning, everything instantly becomes a bit different when we utter it” —Hermann Hesse

1. Sometimes fatigue comes from sitting too long with questions that may not have answers. Let it go. Stop *thinking* so much about the questions and try to *live* them. Like locked doors, said Rilke, that may one day open.

2. There are times when examining my feelings just keeps me entangled in the chaos. If that’s where I am, then that’s where I am — but no need to bury myself deeper.

3. Some things are starting to make sense. To fall into place. To click quietly along, gears whirring softly.

4. “Let the moment meditate you.”

5. How does the body want to breathe?

6. equanimity

7. unconventional desires

8. “shifting between what she knows and what she remembers”

9. Maybe the constant revolution of focus / distraction / refocus / re-distraction can be harnessed as useful somehow.

10. I am perpetually determined to thrive, to deeply enjoy life, even when the highs and lows throw me off. Joy is my center. Optimism is one of my superpowers. There is a light in my heart that I know will never be extinguished, no matter how much darkness fills me at times. And this is more than just a statement. It is a conviction. A belief that will sustain me for the rest of my life.

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