Coupla Things

Last year was crazy for us--you've probably picked up on that by now.  We moved and had to deal with living on less than half what we were making before.  I handled that pretty badly, and although we had some awesome times last summer, I also felt like there was a whole lot of constriction going on.

Every week it felt like I had to figure out something to "cut" from our budget or from our lifestyle.  I hated that.  I cried a lot.  I said many mean and inappropriate things to many people, and especially to E.  I was also very mean to myself.

What I can see more clearly now is that we had some serious lifestyle inflation happening there for a long time before we moved here, and also had developed a lot of coping mechanisms for being two working parents in demanding careers, no family (of origin) nearby, and a resistance to asking for help.  We really got into the habit of paying for most things--doggie daycare, childcare, food, house cleaning, entertainment.  Because that was how to survive.

I guess there's nothing wrong with that per se, and I'm grateful we had the means to do it.  But moving here I've learned there are lots of other ways of doing things, and that those other things can lead to something that looks a lot like connection and happiness.  I had really got to thinking I couldn't be happy without all that noise.  And though I'd love for us to be making a little more money than we're making now (that's the plan, too) I also wouldn't go back to the old model--both of us stressed and exhausted and not fully living our lives--either.

There's some clarity developing around what I don't want, is what I'm saying.  I don't want to work all the time, and I don't want E. to work all the time.  I don't want to feel financially precarious, but I don't need all the "goodies," either, if that means I'm just coping.  I don't want to veg out on shopping just because I feel sad and can't figure out why, and I have really been thinking about my choices to self-isolate and my loneliness habit.

But what I've ALSO been thinking about, and taking classes on, and doing a bunch of work around, is figuring out what I do want.  That's harder.  Way harder than I thought it would be.  But, the good news?  It feels a lot better than focusing on constriction or dwelling on what's going wrong.  It feels like cake on a mother fucking platter after a year of starvation diets.

Here's what I've learned about what I want:

I want to belong to a community of people that I can ask for help and who ask me for help.

I want people around my dinner table and parties at my house.

I want my girls' friends to just come on over and be over here a lot, and I want to be able to call their parents and say we need a night out please take our children away, gah.

I want my brothers and sisters to drop their kids off at my house, and I want to take my kids to theirs.

I want lots of time for writing and being outside and for cuddling and watching tv and reading.

I want to travel.  I want to go camping.  I want to do scary-exciting things I haven't done before.

I want to be surprised, and create surprises for other people.

I want to make choices at work that set me up to do what I love doing:  writing and working with students.

I want to keep figuring shit out myself, either in classes, or on trips, or in groups with others.  I want to be a student.

I want to set up a sweet, delightful life for my family.

I want beauty, and treats, and the space to enjoy both, rather than managing clutter and suppressing cravings.

I've been thinking about this list a lot.  I had to make tons of other lists in order to get here.  Lists of things that I like to do, ways that I like to feel, divine experiences, gratitudes.  Lists of who I'm angry at and why and how I can forgive and get over it and get on with it.  Lists of things to let go of.

What I haven't been doing is making to-do lists.  Oh, I have a master task list, sure--I have a bunch of projects always going on at work and it's useful to keep general tabs on due dates and stuff.  But I used to live every day by a very detailed to do list.  Oh my God, that was my religion.  I could have given you a seminar on the topic, and if you asked me, I probably did.  I'm sorry about that.  How incredibly boring.

I mapped out my life in fifteen-minute increments, treated things I wanted to do as tasks to be crossed off, scheduled in "personal" time and time with the kids, time to pray, time to take a bath.

Lord, it was a sickness.

Here's the coupla things that I think have cured me.  What I really want in life is to

make magic

and

make space

That's it.  That's all.  Everything I want from the list above fits into one of those two things.  And, I'm trying to use these two things to make decisions in my everyday life.  

This is taking some time as I'm mostly used to doing things because I think I'm supposed to do them, not because I want to.  Here's how I operationalize it (which is a fancy of way of saying here's how it looks in action).

Someone asks me to do a job at work.  That job might come with extra money attached, which we could sure use.  But make money is not one of the two sentences above.  I make money, of course, but focusing on that first, as the objective, makes me feel all tight and unhappy (see "constriction" above).

What I'm saying is if that job doesn't allow me to make good connections with students (which feels like magic to me, in a work sense) or work on a topic that truly floats my boat (intellectual magic) or open up space in my schedule, Ima say no.

Or, another example:  I used to really dread holidays.  Easter?  Bah.  What is that holiday even for (I mean, if you're not totally into the Jesus thing).  And you know how I feel about Halloween.

But guess what?  If my job is to make magic, holidays become super important opportunities for me to build the life I want.  Take St. Patrick's Day this year, for example.  Usually, St. Patrick's Day=meh or some weird approximation of drunken frivolity which I just don't get.  But my words are make magic, so I ordered some silly leprechaun kit for $17 online, and I stayed up late on March 16 to hide all this leprechaun stuff all over the house, and sprinkled green glitter in the girls' hair while they were sleeping, and we all had the greatest time doing the treasure hunt in the morning, for ten minutes before school.  The girls talked about it all week, and they are too old to be believing in leprechauns, but who cares.  They loved it+I loved it=magic.

I don't have time or energy to make magic if all I focus on is work and cleaning the house, though, so I also have to make space.  Because space=freedom.

Operationally, that has meant another round of clutter-busting so that I don't have to clean so much.  More space in my house has made me feel weirdly optimistic about the future, too.  Making space also has meant another round of trimming down activities and commitments so I have more space in my calendar.  Because everyday I want to choose what my day is going to look like, at least a little bit, apart from what a calendar and a list say.

Both of these activities have meant violating some "rules" I thought I had to live by when it comes to "stuff" and "commitments" and "good habits."  So I've been making some mental space, too, for new rules.  Mental space to try some new things outside my comfort zone, too, like shamanic healing and self-help classes.  Which has actually been super fun.

So far, I'm still kind of sucky at the operationalizing.  I've been working too much and haven't had time to plan some things I have in mind, or to have more fun every effing day than I've been having, which is another goal (and not a very high bar, I might add).  But I'm getting there.

Very refreshing, these coupla things.  Mother fucking cake on a platter.