I have come to a resting place. I am caught. I am safe. I am on solid ground. I have my own storage space, within my own dwelling. I don’t have to spend money on movers or cabs in order to move items from one place to another.
I can get things done right here from my studio apartment. This is what I’ve completed.
For two years, I distracted myself with the material and the physical. I allowed for more things to pile up until it started to get uncomfortable and crowded. I was overstuffed. I was overwhelmed. I had no balance, or had any sense of control with my desires and the accumulation.
I am now able to see just how gigantic that pile has become. I wouldn’t have been able to see if I didn’t slow down. If I hadn’t taken the time to reflect. To enjoy this place that I have. It is my favourite resting place, full of art on the walls. My colours. My favourite things. I’m lucky and grateful to have this safe space.
By mid-year, June/July, unless I decide to extend the lease, I will have exactly one more year left in this studio, I want that milestone to matter.
(Notice I use the word redundancy… versus inefficiency.)
A cramped creative space
Lists and lists without deadlines
Awareness of my own awareness of being a hoarder, and yet perpetuating maximalism and hoarding
Defining boundaries and telling people how important they are but not clearly communicating them in every single one of my own interactions.
Not following my vegetarian weekdays and omnivore weekend diet and then falling ill
I left the above list open and hanging, unpublished as I stewed in bed, with whatever illness this is. Is it a cold? A flu? COVID? No idea. I’m returning to this window to babble and then hit publish.
As part of the lecture-performance I went to, we did quite an intimate thing passing our mobile phones around in a circle last Monday (long story) and I suspect that is where/how I might have caught a bug. Somewhere in public, exposed to other people’s hygiene habits. Bah. How dreadful. I could barely raise my head for the last two days. I don’t think I had a fever but felt very dizzy. I haven’t been this sick since last year… I thought I was doing okay building my immunity and strength again. I got that weird stomach bug exactly a month ago, but it wasn’t too bad. It barely lasted a few days.
I was telling a friend that I intuited getting sick. I had this thought just as we finished passing each other’s phones around. I was so excited about the lecture-performance piece that I lost track of whether or not I sprayed my hands with hand sanitizer and if I washed my hands as soon as I got home as I normally do. Then, this. Constantly resetting, helps to train our attention to be mindful and to notice how every single thing is connected. Hands. Phones. Mouth. Eyes. Bacteria. Touch. Taste. We’re so distracted, we have all the technology to be well, to live well and yet, here we are still making ourselves sick.
Today, when I publish this, was a day full of sleep and dreams. In one, I was late for a meet-up that was supposed to happen at 5pm IRL, but in my dream I woke up at 7pm and was late to meet my friend. Thankfully, because of that…I ended up waking/getting up out of bed and arriving at the meeting-point right on time. These anxiety-filled dreams feel directly linked to the precarity of my current living situation. I’m living a different sort of life and it’s not for the faint of heart. Because of this non-mainstream choice, I think it’s natural to have anxiety and fear come up. This life is a matter of great faith and hope, that everything will be okay.
I am definitely remembering my dreams more vividly, and I am dreaming more than I used to compared to when I was overworked. My dreams are bizarre, but I haven’t been disciplined enough to meditate regularly and write about them as soon as I wake.
I’ve also resurrected this Swedish deck, called the Outgrow Yourself Tarot and Oracle deck, which was originally in Swedish. It’s been lovely to spend the afternoon with it and studying it.
I have now done a handful of readings for friends in the last weeks and I marvel how natural it has all come about.
There is a demand for intimate self-knowledge and deep knowing.
We are surrounded by dire fires and it’s not too late to thirst and ask for water.
We don’t just need cups, we need buckets.
We need vessels for all these feelings we suppress and repress.
We need love, and more love still.
I am grateful to be in a place where I am so at ease talking about the feminine and the yin. Unapologetically feeling and female. Silent in my determination, to love.
I look over my shoulder and I see old and younger versions of me, so full of joy for the woman I’ve become.
My storage room haunts me. It contains my skeletons, metaphorically speaking. If my life were to be cut short and my home exposed to my family and friends, they will learn for themselves that I was not that okay. They would see that I have way too many suitcases for a household of one and that I also have way too many clothes. At least, that’s how I fear they would judge me, however, mindfulness reminds me that these thoughts are merely thoughts and therefore an add-on to my suffering.
Besides, it is more likely they would be in their feelings and more focused on my death, than whatever post-humous life statement I leave behind.
This is my motivation to get my life in order. The prospect of sudden death and my beloved friends and family having to deal with what I leave behind. I plan to lessen and remove things from the storage, a few times a week—let’s say three—but so far since quitting one of my part-time jobs at the end of January, I have only managed to do two legitimate excavations of mostly clothes, since there is a thrift store conveniently located across the street from me.
I feel no guilt about this. I am just stating facts. I promised myself to rest all of February and to only really “plan” and make bigger moves in March.
Friends have complimented my style, but many don’t realize I tend to love to repeat outfits. When I went away for my silent meditation retreat, I brought enough underwear but only 3 outfits for the ten-days. That time was the most “myself” and liberated I have ever felt.
February came close to that feeling. I slept so much last month and feel so clear-minded. It is quite absurd and ridiculous that rest is an exception and not the norm.
Her memoir was much more measured than you would expect from a Sagittarius woman. She was so observant those first five years with Picasso, and in a way, it felt like she was locked up in her body, moving and responding to the different situations that she was thrown into—until it dawned on her—2 children later, that she was losing herself, and could no longer live in the shadows of someone.
I do remember being 20-something and ‘letting’ things happen to you, feeling somewhat less in control of your destiny. She was 21 when she met Picasso, who was 61. Reading her memoir gave me some empathy for an ex of mine, who had muttered under his breath, after a couple of years of a long-distance courtship that he had felt like my shadow.
Though, I was no Picasso. I was no tyrannical egotistical painter, who would throw tantrums, when I think of him “fading” within my confidence and poise, I can still understand what he might have meant, a little better. He was 10 years older than me, but I can see why it feels like I have lived more lives than he has.
What they should be teaching us in schools, is the resiliency and confidence that most people try to find in others first. We think that we will get stronger and better, in a duo or couple. Our culture trains us to look outward for it, but a lot of it is self-knowledge…and then the true test of being human, is being able to be part of a community, to be in communion with others—not just in romantic relationships.
Here’s my release for the evening. A word appetizer. A salad before the main course. The last time I was in this space, I spoke of love vampire energies. I don’t need to, but in case any person with conscious awareness is reading this, I have decided to mindfully explain myself.
Every word or action we choose is powerful enough to change or affect other souls and energies. I take responsibility.
There was something about a certain situation that irked me. I was irked because I allowed myself to feel “more” than the situation required. Upon further meditation, I refuse to react so irrationally either. I have vomited the previous entry, and I return with more peace in my heart.
I was referring to certain people as vampires, because they move and act as such. As if they are not human, as if they are not mortal and fallible. They act as if the laws of the universe do not apply to them. They travel and move about in this world, as if they can pick and choose when to appear and disappear from people’s lives, and everyone else on the receiving end, simply must “accept” or risk losing them completely. This is not love. I shall not even attach the word to what I had previously called them.
Alas! We are all mortals. Everything is impermanent and as such, no matter how you choose to live your life—there will be consequences.
Every cause has an effect and vice versa. Everything is connected. And hurtful action is hurtful. Intention is one thing, but if you care for someone, no matter what you intended, can you soften enough to repair? To take steps toward into love?
You can’t love someone who doesn’t want to be loved.
At first, it was a saying, a reminder for me to be open, and that I could easily fall pray to my old habits of being a love vampire myself.
This is important to keep in mind when opening yourself up to someone else too. Allow yourself to be met where you can meet yourself.
If they are unwilling to meet you where you are willing and open to meet yourself, what’s the point?
You will have to learn your lesson again and again. You will meet the same person again and again.
If they don’t want to stay, they are not your person. If they don’t ask to be invited, they are not your vampire. They are just another lesson, yet another love vampire, living in a fantasy world.
They would rather run in circles around you and in their heads than live out the present with you, where they inevitably must meet themselves.
What the heckin’ heck. I was just thinking to myself that the last time my body felt this way, S was hanging around my energy field. And by the way, it was not a good feeling. It’s lethargic. Weighed down. Heavy. Like something had taken a hold of my body. I was just letting a video on YouTube play (and hints of this person came into my head) and then I fell asleep and napped. When I woke up, I saw a letter on my doorstep from S. It looks thick, like it’s at least 7 A4 pages long. My intuition tells me not to open it and to cut it outside.
No. No mister. I grew in my peace. I tilled my body for this peace. I cultivated and watered my peace. I watched all the flowers and fauna in my garden grow. I let the weeds grow wild. They are plenty. But my garden is peaceful and loving and there is no space for you to be in it.
I forgive myself for letting you in. I forgive myself for being lonely and needy and hungry for someone to care about me. I forgive myself for allowing you to enter my sacred space and for even giving you my address. I accept what I have done and forgive myself. I release you. I let you go. And no, you remain uninvited.
Happy 420am as I write this. I’m sitting crossed legged on the floor with the laptop propped on the edge of my bed. An AI-generated Spotify playlist is playing in the background while I type. On Instagram, I was served an ad with a catchy tune by an American indie band that wrote some songs in Spanish and I got hooked. The playlist was generated from that track.
I’m awake because I slept through the first of February. No regrets, except I’m wondering, what time I should actually nap later or should I just stay awake until early evening tomorrow?
I announced this sabbatical very privately within my work network, but not all my friends know about it yet. I still have access to my work email and can see the different colleagues and clients responding to my goodbye. I had forgotten to cc my personal/work email.
This feeling of “emptiness” that I don’t have to think about a company’s goals as I putter and idle in my house, feels extra luxurious. I still have my other part-time work, but the lightness is incredible. Miraculous.
I look back on the month and so much happened. I haven’t wrapped my head around the happenings of the year, either. I’m poring over my journals and various notebooks. How do the days pass so effortlessly and fleeting ? In August last year, our local indie theatre closed and now, it’s February and they’re opening again. They chose to hit reset, which is what it feels like I’m doing. I intended it to be a mental break, but it’s only my second day and I actually feel the “reset”. A little before my card pull, I started to “feel” and “vibe” certain things. Goosebumps as I went about my day and noticed things.
I feel the alignment and clarity, again.
It’s crazy how we all need to pause, take a step back, in order to feel this present and well in our bodies. Most of us feel shackled and chained like we aren’t allowed to catch our breath or have a moment to ourselves. I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be.