On Killing Your Darlings (Blog #1060)

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Today I’ve felt squirmy about money, mostly because my therapist recently encouraged me to “make a plan” to make some. And whereas I don’t have any problem making a plan, I do have a problem with all the issues money brings up for me–worthiness, people pleasing, and so on. Granted, these issues aren’t nearly as “heavy” as they used to be. I’ve made a lot of progress. Still, it’s almost always a challenge for me to hold the line or stand up for myself when it comes to my personal value. This last summer I challenged a former client who tried to pull a fast one and get me to work for half my quoted and agreed upon rate and was nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof.

But I did it.

As far as I can tell, this is how we grow and move forward. Not steadily, but with our knees shaking. Ugh. Anytime I’ve broken up with an ex, distanced myself from a friend, or challenged a client, everything in me wanted to throw up. And whereas at one time I would have let this feeling of nausea convince me to NOT say something, I eventually learned that it was my signal TO say something. Like, I’m just going to keep feeling like shit if I don’t. The good part being that every single time I’ve stepped outside my comfort zone and done the thing I was afraid of doing, my comfort zone has later increased in size. Mark Twain said it this way: “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” Another benefit being that for the rest of my life I can’t tell myself I CAN’T stand up for myself–because I have time and time again. Even if it’s never FUN for me, I can’t say I can’t.

After having a wonderful experience with myofascial release and a tuning fork this last week, tonight I went down a rabbit hole and started reading Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy by Eileen Day McKusick. (So far, it’s fascinating.) In it McKusick maps the human energy system, noting where certain emotions or issues typically get stuck in the body. For instance, she says the health of our knees relate to how we’re moving forward in life and that if you have problems with your left knee (which, um, I had surgery on mine just over a year ago) it can indicate that you have a difficult time letting go, either of things or an old story about yourself. For me, this resonates as true. For example, I’ve spent so much of my life in one income bracket that, despite the constant encouragement of my therapist that I can move to a different (higher) one, it’s difficult for me to fully believe and embody this fact.

You know, I get queasy.

Another mind/body/emotion connection McKusick mentions that resonates with me is that right hip (sciatic) issues often have to do with being chronically busy. “The hip of overdoing,” she calls it. Ugh. Somewhere along the way I got it in my head that you have to try, try, try, push, push, push. And yet for all my staying busy and really working my ass off, lately I’ve had some healing experiences that were, well, just the easiest thing. In an instant, my body let go. Likewise, some of the best money I’ve ever made has not only been the most fun, but has also required the least amount of work. What’s the saying? Easy money.

Byron Katie says that’s everything’s a story, and I suppose that this blog is largely my effort to rewrite mine. To change the way I think and speak about money, my relationships, and how easy or difficult life and healing are. And whereas it’s been a process, it’s working. More and more I’m believing that the stories I grew up believing about me and my body and what we’re capable of were at the best incomplete, at the worst flat wrong. Ugh. I wish I could just cross these stories out, throw them away, start over. In writing this is called “killing your darlings,” scrapping your beloved creations because they’re just not working, just not serving your overall plot. Alas, killing your belief-darlings is a slower process. Not because it’s difficult to see what’s not working, but because old beliefs die hard and new beliefs take time to take root, sprout, blossom, bear fruit. And so I remind myself, Be patient, sweetheart. Trust the process. Your story is far from over.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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In other words, there's always SOMETHING else to improve or work on. Therefore, striving for perfection is not only frustrating, it's also technically impossible.

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On Rearranging Yourself (Blog #1045)

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I spent most of today working on a 1,000 piece puzzle. And whereas I didn’t finish, I did make good progress. Indeed, this afternoon I worked for several hours (at which point I took the picture below), and this evening I worked for a couple more. Ugh. When I get in puzzle-solving mode I lose all track of time. I skip meals, put off going to the bathroom, and delay blogging. I think, Just one more piece. Just one more section. Last year I completed a different 1,000 piece puzzle only to realize it was missing a piece. (So it was really a 999 piece puzzle.) Anyway, now whenever I can’t find a piece I convince myself it doesn’t exist. Then when I finally find it after looking “just one more time,” it’s the sweetest relief.

Earlier this week I bought a painting for four dollars (and a frame for the painting for eight), so this evening I set out to rearrange my “art wall” in order to accommodate it. And whereas I thought this would be a simple task, alas, it was not. Y’all, I spent almost two hours playing Tetris with my framed art, photos, and brooches, the main problem being that once I put the new painting above my bed I didn’t have a good spot for the old art that used to be there. FINALLY, after much frustration and upset, I decided to put the old art in my bathroom (above the toilet). After that, things were relatively simple. Well wait. Now that I think about it, they weren’t. Before it was all said and done, I hung or rehung a total of eleven framed pieces (two in my bathroom, nine in my bedroom).

Only four of the pieces on my “art wall” are in the same location they used to be.

Let’s hear it for trying new things.

I’ve said before that when you change one thing you change everything (and this is why we often avoid change), and this is what I mean. Everything’s connected. You buy one new painting, and it inevitably pushes your other ones around. Likewise, you get one new belief (like, I’m worthy of being treated well), and it can seriously upset your applecart. I mean, it sounds good to say that you deserve to be respected, but if you really believe that, what are you gonna do the next time someone (including you) disrespects you? Because this is where the rubber meets the road, where you have to speak up for yourself, have a hard conversation, or, if necessary, walk away.

Again, this is why most of us don’t buy new pieces of art, buy new pieces of art being a euphemism for change our beliefs. It’s not that we don’t like the idea of something new, fresh, and beautiful (I’m patient, I’m kind, I stand up for myself), it’s just that the rearranging we have to do in order to accommodate something new, fresh, and beautiful is seriously a lot of effort and often involves fallout.

Take money, for instance. Most anyone, myself included, would tell you that they’d LOVE to have more money. And yet most of us aren’t willing to do what it takes to have it. And no, I’m not just talking about getting a side-hustle. I’m talking about really getting honest about your relationship with money. For me this has looked and continues to look like digging into where, when, and how my beliefs about money started, realizing that despite the fact that I give myself a lot of crap about not being more “successful” in terms of worldly wealth, most if not all of the money concepts I have, for better or for worse, were handed down to me (by family, church, school, and society).

In terms of money, for decades I’ve had dreams about a particular person that I’ve always considered wealthy and successful. And whereas for years this person appeared in my dreams as far off or unapproachable, since starting therapy and unpacking my issues around money with my therapist, that’s changed. For instance, I’ve had dreams in which this person’s house has been for sale or I’ve been moving into their house, one possible interpretation being that their lifestyle is AVAILABLE to me. Last night I dreamed that, instead of me looking up to this person, THEY were looking up to me, literally serving me.

Keep working on the puzzle that is you.

As I see it, these dreams and especially last night’s dream mean that my beliefs about money are changing from “I’m intimidated” to “I”m in charge.” Better said, since this dream-person is just a part of my consciousness (and completely separate from the actual person), these dreams mean that my relationship with myself is changing. Earlier this evening I meditated on money (and relationships and all the things), and I realized that I’m accustomed to loss. Not that I’m used to always losing things or having people leave me, but it’s a FAMILIAR feeling. You might say it’s a comfortable one, albeit not a healthy or accurate one. All this to say that this is The Hard Work, the willingness to take an honest look at the beliefs that run your life and, if needed, change them by changing yourself. By rearranging yourself. This, of course, means carrying yourself differently, more confidently, and this is a scary and uncomfortable thing to do. Do it anyway. Keep working on the puzzle that is you until all your pieces fit.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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When the universe speaks—listen.

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Let It Go, Nancy (Blog #953)

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Well, hell. My internet (hotspot) is running slow AGAIN. It just took me twenty minutes to get online and upload tonight’s picture. Which means every ounce of patience I had before I sat down to blog is now gone. Poof. Evaporated. Out the window. (Just like Donald Trump’s tax returns.) Not to worry. I’m sure my patience will return tomorrow after I’ve gotten a good night’s rest. Ugh. Maybe that’s my problem. Last night I didn’t sleep well. I’m sure it didn’t help that I was up until four in the morning looking at my phone. In my defense, I couldn’t shut my mind off. Maybe it was the coffee. Regardless, this is one of the great tricks of life–you’re often wide awake when you need to be tired and tired when you need to be wide awake.

And impatient when you need to be patient.

Which I guess means I need to be patient now.

Breathe, Marcus.

Something that’s on my mind today is the idea of letting go. For the last few weeks my mom’s been going through our house and garage–throwing away this, donating that, and setting aside everything else for an eventual yard sale. Well, I’ve recently gotten involved. This afternoon my dad and I took our broken lawnmower to the dump, and this evening I started sorting through the small storage room in our garage. Oh my gosh, y’all, talk about a trip down memory lane. When I was a kid, this storage room was my playroom, the place I used to invent contraptions and gadgets. Anyway, tonight I noticed a clothespin nailed to the doorframe. And whereas I don’t remember exactly why I put it there, I’m sure it was for some sort of booby trap.

My point–that clothespin has been there since Tupperware parties were popular, and it’s never once complained. Clearly that clothespin could teach me a thing or two about patience.

While going through the storage room, I began making piles–trash, keep, yard sale. Y’all, I wasn’t always this way, but I love a good trash pile. I guess because whenever I get rid of something I no longer need I feel a sense of freedom. This is what I mean by letting go. I literally don’t have to hold on to that thing any longer. To be responsible for it the rest of my life. To insure it. To dust it.

One of the boxes I opened tonight was full of cassette tapes. Remember those things? They came AFTER 8-tracks but before compact discs (CDs). Well, since I grew up on cassettes, I kept thinking how familiar they felt and how I kind of wanted to hold on to them (but kind of didn’t because they were mostly country music). But then I remembered the last time I tried to play a cassette tape on my boom box (yes, I own a boom box!) and how it ate the tape the way I eat pancakes when I’m starving. That’s right–no more tape.

Tonight it occurred to me that we often hold on to both physical objects and our beliefs (resentments, judgments) simply because they’re familiar or because we can’t be bothered with something new, even if it’s better. Like, after cassette tapes came CDs, and now there’s digital music, which is the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps some quality is sacrificed with digital (right, vinyl lovers?), but think about it. You’d be lucky to get two cassette tapes in your front pocket, but you can easily fit your phone there, and your phone will hold thousands of songs. And yet there are those who refuse to catch up with technology, folks who still use VCRs and cassette players, folks who have yet to learn that video killed the radio star.

If the idea of continuing to use cassette tapes when you could simply use your phone sounds ridiculous, that’s exactly my point. It would be ridiculous to hold on to something that’s no longer useful, especially when you have other, better options. Getting back to the idea of holding on to your resentments and judgments, it’s equally ridiculous to refuse to let go of your drama/trauma stories about people or events that hurt you back when Tupperware parties were popular. Caroline Myss says, “You’re still upset about something that happened twenty years ago? Stop it. You’re wasting your precious life.” Like, let–it–go, Nancy.

Breathe.

Forgive.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Storms don’t define us, they refine us.

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On Others’ Beliefs and Two Left Feet (Blog #951)

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Well hell. My home internet (hotspot) is running slow tonight, and it just took me thirty minutes to get online, download today’s picture, and start a new post. I swear, at some point in my life I must have made the mistake of asking God for patience. First he made me a dance instructor (just imagine teaching an uncoordinated married couple how to samba), and now this. Seriously, if you ever want patience, come try my hotspot on a night like tonight. And no, I didn’t mean for that to sound dirty. Unless, of course, your name is Zac Efron.

Awe, it’s been a while since I’ve made a Zac Efron reference.

Recently I read an article in Psychology Today about boundaries. And whereas it was mostly focused on what we choose to share online, it brought up a good point–if you wouldn’t take out a billboard with whatever you’re saying on it, maybe you shouldn’t put it on Facebook. Because that’s essentially what you’re doing. Telling all your friends, neighbors, and God knows who else–I’m heartbroken, my bowels are WAY off today, Trump can suck an egg. This morning I saw my therapist, and she said, “That’s right. If you wouldn’t print it on a t-shirt and walk down Main Street, don’t say it.”

One idea the article presented was that Facebook and other social media platforms by design create a false sense of intimacy, that it FEELS like we’re sharing the personal details of our lives with a select few, but in fact we’re not. We’re sharing them with EVERYONE. (Don’t tell me you haven’t creeped on a stranger’s feed. Well, someone’s creeped on your feed too.) Another phenomenon that happens online is that whenever you read or watch something, it FEELS like it just happened. People watch dance videos I uploaded to YouTube years ago and respond as if whatever I did just occurred, as if they were right there in the room and I’d asked for their opinion. Don’t wear flip flops when you dance!  Get off your heels! The blonde hair was a mistake!

Of course, few of us would be so bold–so fucking rude, frankly–in person, especially with strangers. But there’s something called cyber courage (cyber rudeness) that makes us lose our boundaries and our manners. It makes us lose our patience with our fellow humans.

Something I’ve been chewing on the last few days is having sympathy and empathy for other people and their experiences. What I mean is that–like we all do–I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about myself, trying to understand me. And whereas this has been extremely helpful, it’s also often left me scratching my head when it comes to others. Part of this head-scratching, I think, is simply a matter of what comes easy to one person doesn’t necessarily come easy to another. This is why teaching dance has been good for me. I pick up on dance things fairly quickly, so any time I run across someone who doesn’t, especially if I’m hungry or in a bad mood, it’s a chance for me to consciously practice patience. A chance for me to take a deep breath and remind myself that this person isn’t tripping over their two left feet IN ORDER to piss me off.

There’s a popular idea that people are doing the best they can in any given moment. I once had a friend who told me some of the most intimate details (traumas) of their life the very first time we ever hung out. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this should have been a red flag–because when you have good boundaries, you reserve the intimate details of your life for those who have earned the right to hear them. My point being that I don’t believe my friend was intentionally having poor boundaries; they simply had never been taught them. My therapist and I talk about this a lot. Most of us (including me and my therapist) didn’t grow up being taught to set limits with ourselves and others, being taught to be direct (and kind) in conversation.

Getting back to the idea of a thing being easy for one person but not for another, I often make the mistake of believing that simply because I’ve learned or have started to learn something, the entire world has. Of course, this isn’t true. Today I told my therapist that I wished people could be more straightforward, and she said, “Marcus, for some people, being straightforward would be as terrifying as you walking out that door, suddenly being in China, and not knowing a lick of Chinese.” This is what I mean about having sympathy and empathy for someone else’s experience. In writing there’s the idea that even if a character isn’t the hero of YOUR story, they’re most certainly the hero of THEIR story. My point being that you may get upset with people in your life for having certain political leanings or–I don’t know–being bad dancers, but for them, their beliefs and two left feet make perfect sense. Absolutely perfect sense. For them, you’re the odd one.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Allowing someone else to put you down or discourage your dreams is, quite frankly, anything but self-care.

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On Motivation, Belief, and Self-Empowerment (Blog #764)

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It’s eleven at night, and I’m house sitting. This, often, literally amounts to sitting (or lying down) in a house and getting paid for it. This afternoon I rushed out the door to meet my dad and aunt at the gym and forgot my key. Well, I had my KEYS, but not THE KEY to the house where I’m staying. So I locked myself out. I hate when I do this. (I do this a lot.) Thankfully, I’d left a window open, so when I got back later, I just crawled through it. I say just, but I had to climb up on a chair, crawl halfway through the window, balance myself on my stomach like a see-saw, teeter myself down into the bathtub on the other side of the window, support myself with my arms, then finally bring my legs in for a B+ (somewhat wet) landing.

Seriously, I felt like I belonged in Cirque de Soleil.

Once I had a middle-aged student tell me they tried to keep themselves in shape in order to have more options. That is, if they got the chance to go roller skating, hiking, or dancing, they wanted to be able to say yes. They didn’t want to HAVE to say no because their body couldn’t perform because they hadn’t cared for it. This story has stuck with me, and I feel the same way. I want to be able to dance, run, um, crawl through windows well into my senior years. I want to be able to travel, hike, play with my nephews. Sure, I know shit happens beyond our control. Recently I busted my knee up (sort of my own fault, but I wasn’t PLANNING ON busting it up) and had to have surgery. But on a daily basis I have a choice about how I re-hab the damn thing, whether I stick with my program or not.

Some people say I’m motivated in terms of my leg. Recently I shared with someone how writing every day has truly transformed my life, and they said, “I wish I could find that motivation.” UHH–I don’t know what to tell you. Personally, I don’t think of myself as all-the-time motivated because I think motivation is fleeting. You get excited about something–feeling better, starting a project–and there’s this window. You think, Okay, I’m going to start. Or not. But after that, either way, the window closes, meaning, the excitement fades. After over two years of blogging or four months of rehab do I consider myself motivated? Not really. More than anything, I’m committed–because I know this stuff works. Said another way, I’ve gone from being motivated to believing.

That’s the ticket–belief. Motivations make you TRY. Beliefs make you CONTINUE TO ACT.

That’s nice to hear–that I believe in what I’m doing. (Sometimes I don’t know things until I write them down.) But I guess I do. At some point over the past few months I’ve begun believing that as I continue to do my leg rehab I’ll get back to doing the things I love–running, jumping, dancing. At some point over the last two years, I’ve begun believing in this process of sitting down daily (uh, nightly) to meet myself and figure things out, to heal. This is to say that I’ve come to believe in myself, that I know no matter what life throws at me, I can handle it, that even if no one else can, I can be there for me. This, I think, is called self-empowerment and is perhaps the closest thing you can get to solid ground in an unpredictable universe like the one we live in, where shit happens, where you can lock yourself out of a house or bust your knee up just as easily.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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There’s nothing you can do to change the seasons or hurry them along.

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On Our Stories (Blog #734)

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Today’s thoughts–

1. On slaves

Today my friend Kim told me that she recently read that only slaves work seven days a week. Slaves, and bloggers like me, was her implication. Ugh. She’s kind of right. As much as I enjoy and reap benefits from this project, I often feel chained to it. Am I ready to quit blogging every day, every damn day? No, not yet. But perhaps until I reach my next goal (1,000 days in a row), I can find other ways to let up on myself.

2. On enlightenment

This morning I woke up tired, tired, tired, and despite going back to sleep and even taking a nap this afternoon, I still am. And whereas I’m always paranoid that I’m getting sick, it’s probably just whatever’s in the air. And what’s so bad about sleeping all day?

There’s this story about enlightenment. A student asks his guru, “What do I do before enlightenment?” and the guru says, “Chop wood, carry water.”

“What do I do after enlightenment?” the student asks. To which the guru replies, “Chop wood, carry water.”

In other words, don’t complicate things. Psychologist Sheldon Kopp says your life is your life; enlightenment means accepting what is. So don’t make things harder than they already are–eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired.

3. On our stories

This afternoon I worked through another chapter in Mastin Kipp’s Claim Your Power. And whereas I’ve been thinking that the exercises related to releasing emotions associated with old traumas probably wouldn’t work (because I’ve tried everything and nothing works), they actually are. According to Kipp, a lot of self-help material talks about changing your thoughts, but that’s only part of the puzzle. He says our thoughts (and emotions) ultimately stem from our beliefs or our stories, that each of us has a handful of core beliefs that–how can I say this?–fuck with us. For example, I just mentioned one of my core beliefs–I’ve tried everything and nothing works.

You can imagine how frustrating a belief like this might feel. That was the gist of today’s exercise–to read out loud and FEEL what my core beliefs, well, feel like. More specifically, to feel WHERE my beliefs live in my body. Again, I approached this task with a lot of skepticism. I thought, Maybe it’ll work for someone else, but it won’t work for me. But as soon as I began, I started getting answers. This belief (there’s not enough) lives in my sinuses. This belief (life works for other people but not for me), lives in my stomach. This belief (the world is not a safe place) lives in my (extremely tight) shoulders. That’s when I started crying, when I said out loud, “The world is not a safe place.”

I imagine we all have core beliefs that would bring us to tears (or rage) if we finally admitted them. For me, I know I’ve been carrying that one about safety around for a long time. Decades. And whereas the cathartic moment I had this afternoon did help–it felt like finally letting go of a heavy load–it’s not like that belief completely disappeared when I stopped crying. Healing happens in pieces.

4. On hope

This evening I re-read some more of my old blogs. As I’ve said before, I’m finding a lot of compassion for myself through this process. Not that I’m trying to read my story as if it belonged to someone else, but I still find myself having that experience. I keep thinking, This guy’s all right. He’s pretty funny. He’s doing the best he can. So this has been on my mind, that this person I’m reading about is me and that I can apply all those positive feelings I have for the me of the past to the me of the present, that I wouldn’t treat him like a slave and I don’t have to treat myself like one either.

I’ve also been thinking about hope, about what would happen and what my life could look like if I dropped even one of my core beliefs. I mean, how would your life be different if you all-of-a-sudden saw the world as a safe place or believed that life could work for you too, that the universe was on your side? Wouldn’t you breathe and move easier, freer, if just ten percent of you were less afraid? Wouldn’t you swing your hips a little more? Wouldn’t you let your shoulders relax? I know I would.

I’m beginning to believe these things are possible.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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In this moment, we are all okay.

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