Pieces and [inchoate] thoughts from 2019.
All I Have - Intro
“All I have is all I need
All is love”
Quote
“The gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace.” - Mo Gawdat
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.” - Eckhart Tolle
The mundane: this could be your life, forever.
You wake up to a 6:40 am alarm. Not By the Seaside (four years of high school ruined that alarm), but Radar. You rush to the shower, shivering on the way, because the heating, at least not in the bathroom, has fully kicked in yet. You have your routine down to a science. Ten minutes. Shower. Fifteen minutes. Hair and makeup, the Daily -- and Michael Barbaro’s melodic voice -- playing in the background. Twenty minutes. Somehow wasted on a Google search or an extra ten minutes of sleep. Fifteen minutes to iron and clothe yourself in time to be out of the door by 7:40 (and 7:40 because if you leave any later, you run the risk of getting stuck behind the school bus, waiting for the little girl who clings to her mother, unable to easily be sucked away by the yellow school bus.)
You park. Spot 411. Or 413. Depending on whether the stoplights are in your favor on this day. You make it to the 7:59 am. 30 minutes into the city. You sit right in the middle of the train, in the car where your two favorite conductors converge. You anxiously await the, “Please have all digital and mobile apps ready,” announcement, panicking at times when you are so immersed in whatever book you’re reading that you forgot to buy your ticket… you don’t want to become the bottleneck in their smooth operation.
It’s winter. (Well, technically fall, but Chicago.) So you get off at Millennium, and retreat into the Pedway and see the same lifeless bodies resting on the concrete, covered, between the section after the cultural center but before the redline and Macy’s.
[At a point or two in the day, maybe in this tunnel or out on the street, you run into someone from a past life or experience and promise to grab lunch or coffee. Often times, following through, you do.]
You get to work and pass through security, seeing the same faces that have been here since you started this job some 76 weeks ago. At work, you work. And 8 hours later, your day is really only just beginning. There is a 1:1. Or a two hour meeting at the Harold Washington library. Or a panel. Or a call or a workshop. [These are all great, the things you do. But what’s more jarring are the things you don’t get to do. Meditate. Boxing. Sit for 2 hours with a book. Visit your grandmother(s).]
And you take the trek again, this time, out in the bitter cold because the tunnel, now, at this time, is closed. You take the late train. Your father messages you again. Where are you? It’s late. Why are you on the train so late? I told you… what happened the last time. And yes, what happened the last time scared the shit out of you for weeks. But if I drive, I can’t read on the train. And parking downtown is expensive. And gas… and climate change. You rush to Chipotle before it closes because it’s the only decent food around. And you head home and get thirty minutes to yourself before you have to go to bed and do it all over again.
Hm.
This could be your life. Forever.
Like Serena Williams on a soccer field.
It can weigh on a person's soul to be in a place or space that hinders them rather than accentuates and amplifies one’s greatest talents.
Challenging oneself is a virtue. But it is not naive or idealistic to aspire to exist in spaces that validate your purpose, rather than diminish it.
Books that moved.
Freshwater Akwaeke Emezi
Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells
Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
Fall is my least favorite season.
Sunday’s are like fall for me. And Sundays in the fall are even worse. (Fall is my least favorite season.) I don’t have a vehement hatred for many things. (Terrible drivers. People who clip their nails in public. People who litter.) But I can say with conviction that I do not like fall.
Journal slices from the year.
“Had this really weird dream last night that I was trapped in this house. But the only way to get out was to destroy the house. (To kill the people in the house looking for me.) But to destroy the house (fire was used) meant to destroy myself.” (Feb)
“A purported ice storm but I hear nothing but tears. I am torn with my time and unsure if I am doing too much and spreading myself thin or doing too little. Still. I’m also unsure of the impact.” (Feb)
“Also realizing there’s a healthy way to dissent. If you don’t like something, vocalize that, but also have a solution to follow up. You can’t dig a hole and expect air to fill it back up solid.” (Feb)
“Have to have a bit of skepticism to get to the truth.” (Mar)
“We had our board meeting today. Lori Lightfoot popped in. Idk how to feel about her. She was very small. Very mousy. A little robotic; like someone at a computer far away has occupied her brain and is operating her. Maybe she’s overwhelmed. I couldn’t imagine being bequeathed the shit show Rahm Emmanuel has passed on.” (April)
“If you weren’t the first person to always reach out and initiate, how many people and friends/friendships would you still have?” (May)
“there ain’t no [expletive] on the roof. and other summer things.” (July)
“Fear can be crippling. And make normal, logical things seem incredibly scary. I have tried to sit with this fear. And feel it in my body. The tightening in my chest. The heaviness in my stomach. By focusing on the physiological reaction fear incites in my body, it dissociates the action itself, the thing I fear. And I’m realizing that through those feelings, there is still life and joy on the other side.” (July)
“I remember thinking, God, if I got this [insert thing], I’d be the happiest person on Earth. And I got it. And several months in I was unhappy and stressed and this goes to show that the present is all there is. That by wanting more, and thinking that more will somehow make me content is just wrong and flawed.” (Aug)
“Moral of the story. Don’t like people. It’s a waste of time. Hah.” (Always)
“Nostalgia is a damn thing” (Aug)
“It is a pain. To see the manifestation of a desire for another human being go wasted.” (Aug)
“ego ego ego ego” (Aug)
“Where does your mind go to wander? Answer both internally and externally. Where my mind pulls me in my physical body. To water. To nature. To people I’m attracted to and fascinated by. Also, internal, introspective. The caveats in my mind I’m suppressing.” (Oct)
“Current fears. Being alone. Rejection. Getting older/making tougher decisions. Bodily pain that comes with getting older. Someone ghosting me without explanation. Outerspace. Feeling stuck (in my job, in place, w/someone.)” (Oct)
“Sometimes I feel like we focus so much on the gaps in our life that that does a disservice to all those areas that are overflowing with abundance.” (Dec)
Songs on repeat.
TOO DEEP TO TURN BACK by Daniel Caesar
IDGAF by Dua Lipa
All I Have - Intro and Feels by Snoh Aalegra
My Bad by Khalid
INTRO by DaBaby
Could Be a Curse and Life Me Up (OUTRA) by KAINA
CPR by Summer Walker
Work. work. work.
Drop the desire to be a genius, intelligent, or smart. Intelligence comes with time and experience. (Intentional experiences that challenge you.)
Drop the ego; especially when receiving feedback. You don’t know everything. (You don’t know ⅛ of everything). Feedback isn’t about you, so don’t take it personally
Passion matters; there is more joy in doing what you love
Who you work with is just as important, if not more, than what you work on
Communicate. (People truly are trash at communicating.) Ask for help. Say no
Think root cause, and approach issues/everything with curiosity. Ask why, then ask why again, and again
Understand your own personal theory of change, and question whether the work you do aligns or doesn’t with that
Project management is a skill in and of itself; there is incredible value in process
Identifying the problem isn’t enough; come with a solution
Ax.
When someone throws an ax your way, harming you, you either have a choice to use the tool. Or, kindly bury it and actively work to heal instead of harm others.
I am trying to do less harm.
desire.
a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
Grateful
For the stars around me whose radiance has helped me see the light within myself.
Albums that resonated.
Death Race for Love by Juice WRLD
Ugh, those feels again by Snoh Aalegra
thank u, next by Ariana Grande
Sweet ASL. - EP by Bedows, Burns Twins & KAINA
Awareness 9:15pm
The desk lamp shone light over the corner of a Chicago flag, that is tactfully stuck to the wall by two clear thumbtacks. A zebra-colored make-up bag, holding your Glossier highlighter, NYX photo-loving primer and other essentials sits atop the desk covered in headass Tumblr quotes from 2012. A Head tennis bag rests gently on the marble CalPak carry on travel bag that wears a Lexington, Kentucky baggage claim sticker. A collection of plants, one a Montserra, another a succulent (weeks later, now dead) grow, reaching towards the window, expanding towards its lover, the sun. A Sunrise sign, like a shield, rests atop Moleskin journals, tucked between books read to get closer to minds (when only intimacy and time could do that.) Cotopaxi water bottles, black and gray, sit thirsty, empty of water. Born a Crime rests between Pedagogy of the Oppressed rests between Being in Love. Out of the face of the clear Target storage container, wild cocoa butter peeks out, as does a melon colored Obama sticker, several dry erase markers and Crayola colored pencils. A book -- for a photography class -- you wrote, When You Did Nothing, sits atop a shelf above the bright red Cornell mug that still has coagulated honey stuck to the bottom. Beneath the mug is a clay pot that sits atop a Canon camera with memories. With photos.
Repulsion
My body has a way of repelling me from the things that I need most. As if being guided by a spirit that derives joy from drinking from the spigot of a fire hose.
Any time that I have meditated, it has brought a deep sense of grounding and awareness that I often so desperately need in life. And anytime I begin to sit to meditate, I experience this deep repulsion away from it. Why?
What do you value?
Always somehow, somewhere, I end up in a conversation with someone about values.
And values are cute… but often idealistic, better caricatures/versions of ourselves and the people we aspire to be.
While at a talk a month or so ago, the speaker on stage (okay, it was Obama) said “It’s easy to talk about values, but have no accountability to them. Where do you spend your time?”
The quote deeply resonated with me. (Especially because I’m always looking for tactical ways to live more in alignment with the person I say I am/aspire to be. This was an easy test!)
If you were to ask me what my values were, pulled directly from my journal, I’d say: community (family + friendship), education/knowledge, justice/equity, sustainability, and mindfulness.
Where do you spend your time?
When I used this question as a metric to assess whether I acted in alignment with my values, it exposed gaps. For example, while I value mindfulness, I have an incredibly bad habit of spending much of my time in the past or future. While I have family, I see my family far less than I’d like to. (Sorry grandmothers!) Though I say sustainability, there are a great number of ways that I can live more consciously of my environmental impact.
So maybe. Instead of talking about values. Let’s talk about how we spend our time. Then derive what we value there. And work backward to see if we’re living in alignment with the things we idealistically/theoretically value.
It’s not about you.
The thing that causes us the greatest unhappiness, is making shit about us.
I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone was talking about public speaking. (Something I am getting more comfortable with, though not there yet.) And how someone they knew got all worked up about public speaking. And their response was, by getting all frazzled, you’re making a presentation about you. About how you look to other people, how articulate and smart you sound, about your credibility, etc. It’s not about you. It’s about delivering a message to the audience… (ah, yes someone was talking about Kamala Harris.)
We could benefit a lot more in life from de-centering ourselves from a narrative/story we often put ourselves immediately in the center of.
11/15/18: journal a year ago
“I never felt sure of what I craved more: solitude or attention.”
thank you.
to every friend who has sat with me at 8:30am in the morning talking (and crying) about therapy. (and tried to convince me to go.) who has shared pancakes at Peaches with me. who has maintained long-distance relationships, despite it being over a year and a half since we’ve physically seen each other. who don’t text me back but make up for it in 2-hour phone calls. who entertain my random questions or thoughts during work. who text that I made it home safely. who have contributed their time or funds to my endeavors. who show up. who explore with me (talks, marshes, lol PULLMAN).
I truly have an infinite amount of love for you all.
2020.
Balance.
Communication + radical candor.
Community + love.
Therapy.
Green New Deal.
“Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever / only nothing is eternal.” - Audre Lorde
