finding my way

I feel like I’ve started my mornings the last two days more consciously than I have in quite a while. I think I’ve simultaneously rediscovered gentle curiosity with myself. (Coincidence? I bet not.) It’s rather nice, and rather a nice change; the voices in my head haven’t been especially gentle ones of late. This morning I even started the day with a little bit of qigong. I’m moving in baby steps right now, but I’d love to get to the point where I’m adding some regular sitting meditation back into my routine again, too. Hell, I’d love to have a regular routine again, for that matter. Baby steps.

I think the gentle curiosity is a good place to start. Yesterday morning, as I lay in bed procrastinating getting up because I didn’t want to go to work, I asked myself, “What would it feel like if this day were one I wanted to meet?” It felt like a really abbreviated form of the feeding your demons practice I’ve learned. What’s the essence of what I’m longing for right now? What does that essence feel like? Can I just offer that essence to myself and skip the story about how or why or for how long it’s been missing?

And sometimes, some days, I can. Often if I can think to ask the question, I can. And even when I can’t, I can learn more about what’s really going on with me, about what’s driving the stories. Baby steps. I’m sure there will be plenty more long walls, and plenty more corners. But this tiny piece of change feels good.

There are plenty of ways that my unconscious thinking is governed by scarcity rather than abundance. I do my best to explore and question and invoke curiosity to uncover those ways, because when my conscious thinking is dominated by scarcity rather than abundance, there’s a much greater chance that I can shift the pattern.

I realized a few days ago that the last 2 (of 5) navel oranges I’d bought had been sitting on the counter for a number of days. (The first three disappeared about one a day.) So I had a little conversation with myself, and realized that I wasn’t eating those last two, because then they would all be gone. Which is patently silly, of course, but true nonetheless.

So when I went to the grocery store this past weekend, I bought a 5# box of mandarin oranges, reasoning that if I have a whole boxful, it’ll take me longer to get to the “but then they’ll be all gone” stage. Because sometimes, it’s easier to change the externalities than the internalities, and this seemed like a good time to remember that. It seems to be working, too; I’ve eaten at least a couple of them every day so far. And as I eat each one, I’m reminding myself how easy it is to go to the store for more when I run out. Because small steps seems like a good way to address the internalities.

I’ve seen a couple of end-of-year memes going around that I like.

The first is places I slept in 2011. It’s a pretty short list for me this year, but it covers pretty diverse parts of the country: Portland, OR; Eugene, OR; Lafayette, LA; Boulder, CO; and Groton, MA. I think that next year I’d like to see someplace in eastern Oregon and the Bay Area make the list.

The other meme is five memorable moments from 2011. I have more than five, and some of them are more than just a moment. But when I think back on what the year contained, good or bad, happy or sad, these are what come to mind.

• My birthday week, and especially my actual birthday afternoon, going from having a massage to playing go with E and M at the Chinese Garden.
• Uncle Doris’ funeral, which sort of blends into my birthday week in my head, but I’ll list it separately.
• Christmas week in Groton.
• The picnic at Laurelhurst in the fall.
• Visits to the Japanese Garden in all 4 seasons with L.
• Riding a motorcycle again.
• The second-to-last drawing class of the term, and the sense of “I can really do this, and it’s FUN” that I had.

I’ve decided that I’m not up for being out and about tonight, so I made a quick trip out to the grocery store and picked up snacky-foods and a little bit of real food and a single-serving bottle of bubbly for midnight. I may do a little introspecting; I may do a little drawing; I may watch a movie or read a book. I’m feeling pretty content, though, to be here at home with the cats and to see 2011 out and usher 2012 in quietly, with only a little fanfare.

Happy new year to you. Yes, you. May 2012 bring lessons easily learned and joys deeply felt and days full of compassion to all of us.

I’ve finally been taking small steps again to move forward with getting back into massage school. A couple of weeks ago I went to an open house type evening at Oregon School of Massage, and yesterday I met with an admissions rep at East West and toured their campus.

• East West is a beautiful campus, and is really convenient, and sounds like the sort of place that would be really lovely to learn in.
• OSM sounds like they’re slightly more used to an evening student who’s only taking one or two classes per term.
• OSM is cheaper, but their program is only 555 classroom hours versus 800 classroom hours at East West. The cost per classroom hour is still a little more expensive at East West, but includes (I think) the use of their linens and oils/lotions for all hands-on classes.
• Both schools sound like they alternate evening sections with daytime sections, so scheduling for somebody like me, who’s not planning to follow a “program”, might end up being hit-or-miss some terms. OSM sounded a little bit more flexible in the scheduling department, though.
• Classes at East West are typically 3 nights a week, versus one night a week classes at OSM.
• The folks at both places seem really nice, so I think whichever one I end up choosing will be a good choice.
• The bookstores at both are open later than the start of evening classes, so I’d be able to get there 5 minutes before class and still pick up something from the bookstore.

In short, it’s still pretty much a toss-up. I must admit, going into these meetings I was leaning slightly toward East West. It’s pretty, and damned convenient location-wise. But I find myself leaning slightly toward OSM at the moment, although I’m kind of dreading an hour-each-way commute to and from school. I guess I’ll spend the next week or two (or three) going through the information I have and asking any more questions that come up before I make a decision and fill out an application. I rather suspect that I’ll end up deciding to apply to OSM, though. Classes 3 nights a week just sounds really daunting to me in terms of maintaining any sort of work-school-life balance.

I’m finding myself feeling frustrated that I haven’t done more about this desire of mine over the years. That here I am starting over again with this thing that I’ve wanted to do for more than a decade (and likely coming up on two decades, but I’m not going to stop and count up the years). But then I’m in general seeing the negatives more than the positives right now, so I suppose at least I’m being consistent in this particular context. And whatever I have or haven’t done in the past, I’m taking steps now, and doing my best to make them sustainable steps.

I know, it’s not quite the 18th yet, actually. But I know I’m not going to have time to post this tomorrow, so I’m putting it up a couple of hours before the date changes. Highlights and lowlights this week included:

• Some work frustrations. I wish I could have stayed oblivious of the politics of work, but it’s not happening that way. Thankfully, I’m not especially *involved* in the politics at work (yet), but even knowing they’re there is disheartening and sometimes disconcerting.
• I’ve been feeling both sad and guilty that I didn’t do more to support the Occupy Portland encampment before it got dismantled. I was dragging my feet about going down and talking to folks there (although I’d intended to do so), and now it’s too late, and they got shut down and I didn’t do anything to help. It’s not that I think my presence would have changed anything. Anything other than me, anyway. I’ve had a lot of fear about participating in this thing. It’s messy, in all sorts of ways. And it feels important for me to work through my fear and take some sort of action, but I’m apparently not there yet.
• Social time, ohmigosh, whee! I went out with a friend Friday night, and Saturday afternoon, and had a friend over for projectizing Sunday morning, and went out Sunday night, and had classes Monday and Tuesday evenings, and went out again Wednesday night, and had a come-see-the-school-and-talk-to-people thingy tonight (Thursday). Whoa. It’s been awesome to get to spend time with fabulous people. And I’m approaching the point of needing to hide away somewhere for a couple of days straight, I think. Except I wouldn’t mind taking one or two friends with me to hide away somewhere for a couple of days straight. I’m having a helluva time balancing my needs for socializing with my need for curling up and recharging. I kind of feel like I always need more close-friends time. Except that I don’t have the energy to keep this up. It’s definitely a conundrum. Of the sort that has me thinking, once again, about co-housing sorts of living situations. Because there are times when I think I’d really love to be living with a close friend (or some close friends). Except there are other times when I’m really, really glad that it’s just me and the cats. Definite conundrum. I’m trying to just stay with it without necessarily feeling like I have to do anything about it, unless and until it really becomes time to do something.
• I’ve started taking baby steps about massage school again!! Tonight I was at OSM, hearing their spiel about things and getting a feel for them and their space and their approach. I liked what I heard. The commute will be a bitch if I decide that’s where I want to go. I have an appointment to go see East West in a couple of weeks. Their location is certainly a lot more convenient to me, but I’m trying really hard not to let that weight my opinion disproportionately. Commute times (and difficulty) will definitely be a factor in my decision, though. It’s feeling pretty exciting to be rediscovering my desire to do this massage school thing.
• I have a bike stand!! My friend Val found this awesome Instructables on building a bike stand, and she made one for herself and then posted about it. And when I expressed interest, she offered to come over and help me build one of my own. And she did, and I did, and now I have my very own bike stand, which means I don’t really have any excuses for not doing the tune-up that my bike needs now. I’m pretty stoked. It was about $45 worth of materials (or ingredients, as I tend to want to call them). Which is significantly less expensive than buying a ready-made bike stand. And it seems like it’ll work just fine. And I realized that there’s plenty of room in the basement for me to work down there, which means I can stay relatively dry and warm without having to haul my bike up 21 stairs to my apartment. YAY!
• I didn’t do sitting meditation as often this week as I did last week, but I still did it some. And I think I’ll go do it some again just as soon as I post this. It does good things.
• Dancing! Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are aMAzing to dance to. Even on a dance floor that’s packed with people mostly standing still. (WTF?!!) That lady has phenomenal amounts of energy and heart in addition to a very gifted voice.
• So I usually aim for posting these things by noon on Friday (if I’m going to post one at all). If it happens after noon on Friday, it counts as a light for the next week. But since I’m actually posting this one on Thursday night, this hasn’t actually happened yet now, but it will have happened before noon on Friday (assuming everything goes as planned), so I’m going to include it anyway, because I know it’ll be a highlight of my week, because it always is, because bodywork is AWESOME. This is a Dana-month. (I have two regular LMTs, and I alternate between them every month.) Starting my Friday with a massage is one of the best ways of starting a Friday (or any other day, for that matter).

How’s your week been?

Highlights and lowlights this week include:

• Saturday–Whee-fun-drawing! We had a live figure model in class. And it was awesome. We’ll have one again once more before this class ends, and I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime, I found a couple of pictures on the internet that I drew from during the week, and had the blinding realization that they sell entire books for figure-drawing students! Full of different life models holding different poses! Which, all things considered, is probably a lot more efficient than trying to find appropriate pictures of nude life models on the Internet.
• Sunday: Road trip to Salem with Val and friends! Where we got to hear Takohashi play taiko, and the Salem Concert Band perform a whole lot of other music. Mmmm, taiko. And then hanging out over dinner afterwards, and road-tripping back home. Such a lovely outing!!
• Monday: Urgh. A very prickly-feeling day. Of the sort where I’m tempted to quit my job and never go back, regardless of the consequences. And even though it was fairly obvious that I was projecting some of the other stuff going on in my head onto work things. On the bright side, though, I learned to use a multi-router!
• Tuesday: Qigong. How I love that practice with those beautiful women! I have such a sense of community about that group, which is extra-special to me, because right now it’s really the only area of my life where I feel that sense of community.
• Wednesday: I spent most of the evening drawing. It’s a little bit addictive. And I’m loving the different way of seeing that I’m cultivating by this practice. Artists really do see the world differently, on a literal level, I think.
• Thursday: It doesn’t suck to be me. JoCo and TMBG were great fun, made even better by running into Em and S. as I was locking up my bike on the way in. Traded texts briefly with another lovely friend who was up in the balcony. And it’s always fun to dance on the floating floor at the Crystal. I stopped at the food cart pod at Hawthorne and 12th on the way home and got a fig, prosciutto, chevre and honey crepe, which I ate whilst sitting by the fire. I finished the ride home casting moonshadows from the beautiful full moon, and kept catching whiffs of woodsmoke from my hair once I got home. It felt like a stereotypical Portland night.
• And I’ve been continuing to meditate since that retreat weekend led by Pema Chodron. Not always every day, but close to it. My mind is slippery and tricksy and sly sometimes. And my heart is big and warm sometimes. Watching is intriguing.

What about you? What’s lighting up your world?

I feel like I’ve been sitting with a lot lately. Not that there’s more going on (either internally or externally) than usual–I’m just actually sitting with more of what’s there.

I (mostly) attended a (virtual) retreat led by Pema Chodron last weekend. It was a goodness to listen to her speak, and to listen to Meg Wheatley, who also spoke, and to spend time sitting in meditation both with others and on my own. But the single thing that is sticking with me is an image of Pema standing up on the stage, holding her arms out to embrace the (literal–and figurative!) emptiness of whatever sticky emotion she was talking about in that moment. And inviting us to embrace and welcome those uncomfortable feelings, to ask them to stay longer to teach us patience.

And I feel like there are old, damaged parts of me that I’m starting to really embrace and welcome into my life. Yes, I want to understand them, and yes, in part because I want to be able to unravel the triggers they represent. No, I don’t think they serve me. But my attitude has shifted from “need to fix this” to a much more gentle curiosity and love for those painful, abandoned, shadowy parts of me. I think that I may even, sometimes, occasionally, every once in a while be shifting from wanting to do this so that I can be in a healthy romantic relationship to wanting to do this because it makes me more whole. I can feel a gentling in my heart about these parts of me. Yes, they’re uncomfortable. Sometimes radically so. But I’m opening to them without asking anything of them other than to stay. I don’t know if they’re teaching me patience or not, but it feels like the right place for me to be.

A couple of days before the weekend retreat started, I caught myself thinking about the retreat and hoping that it would help me get my meditation practice tightened up some (i.e., help me start having a regular practice, or even an irregular one, again). And then I realized that in some sense, having that sort of hope is futile. If I want to be practicing, then I need to practice, not hope for things in the future that will help me practice. So I sat down, then and there, and meditated for 10 minutes.

And I’ve continued in that trend. Rather than hoping that things will shift, whenever I catch myself hoping that, I sit.

And I feel like, even after just a handful of days, I’m coming back to myself again. And I’m starting to take action in other areas of my life where I’ve been hoping things would shift.

It feels a little odd to have such a sense of movement and impending movement now, as the days get shorter and darker and colder, as the world turns inward. I think it especially seems odd because it also feels like I’m slowing and turning inward, but somehow slowing and turning inward is speeding up the pace of change right now.

This isn’t quite the post that I thought I was sitting down to write, but it feels complete now, so I’ll turn it loose on the world anyway, and let go of my expectations for what it should have been.

Highlights and lowlights this week:

• Still sick. Ugh. It’s especially disheartening because Monday and Tuesday I felt like I was getting better, but the trend didn’t continue.
• I’ve watched almost all of the making-of DVDs that came with the extended release Lord of the Rings I’ve owned for years and years. They’re pretty fun.
• I’ve taken naps as needed.
• I’m thoroughly excited and anticipating this weekend’s (virtual) meditation retreat with Pema Chodron. Really, really looking forward to that.
• I’ve had confirmation, once again, that sugar really doesn’t do good things for me. And that once I start eating it, it’s hard to stop again.
• I stayed home from all my classes this week (drawing, woodworking, and qigong). I’m glad to be taking care of myself while I’m sick, but I really, actively *missed* being there.
• My mood’s been low. And I’ve been almost completely escapist about it (see above about watching LotR). (At least I can say, “almost completely”, though? Instead of just “completely”?)
• I’ve been consciously trying to find things to be grateful for this week. Top of the list was whoever invented freezers (and refrigerators). I pulled out both gumbo and a lamb/black bean chili this week that I’d made months back, and it was awesome to have real food to eat without needing to buy groceries (or food from the deli at the grocery, as the case may be).

How’s your week been?

Highlights and lowlights this week included:

• Hearing words that stung, and then looking for and finding compassion for what was likely behind those words. Being able to step outside of my own hurt and see into the likely motivations of someone else feels like a huge victory, even if it was a small hurt and a relatively unimportant conversation. Gotta start somewhere. Hooray for defusing triggers!
• Work has been a little weird this week. My manager’s out all week, so I’m sort of filling the “team lead” role temporarily again this week. And things have been an interesting mix of slow and busy.
• I rode my motorcycle last weekend! And it was FUN!
• New socks. I rode my bicycle-bike over to Sock Dreams last weekend. I love Sock Dreams. I came home with several pairs of nifty new socks. Including at least one pair that’s not my usual style. But some of the orange in them matches my motorcycle helmet!
• Applesauce! And *sigh* applesauce. I’m very glad to be making what will hopefully be enough applesauce to last me for the next year (for eating and as a sugar substitute for baking). I will also be very glad to be done making applesauce. I think there have been apples cooking on the stove every day since Sunday, and I’ll be out of town this weekend, so it’ll probably continue into next week. Turns out 40 pounds is a lot of apples.

What snippet (or snippets) of your week stand out in your mind?

Pretty isn’t an attribute that I usually claim as my own. It’s just not part of how I see myself. At times, I can look at particular attributes in isolation (my smile, my eyes, sometimes my hair, particular curves on my body) and think they’re pretty, but “pretty” doesn’t really describe me. At least, not usually in my head.

And while I don’t think people are lying when they say that I’m pretty, I also don’t generally believe them. I mean, I believe that they believe it. But I don’t see it as a reflection of reality. Or maybe I only see it as a really distorted reflection of reality.

It’s only been recently, initiated by some challenging conversations, that I realized that there’s been a large part of me that doesn’t want to be pretty.

[An observation: If I recall correctly (and I'm pretty sure I do), one of those initial conversations actually included the word beautiful rather than pretty--as in, "...you're a beautiful woman...". Most of the time I can't bring myself to use "beautiful" at all about myself. So pretty it is, for now at least.]

It was a bit of an eye-opener to be having a conversation with myself and hear one of my internal voices proclaim, “I don’t want to attract a boyfriend; I just want to find one. I don’t want to be attractive.”

Some of what I’ve unpacked from the thoughts/beliefs of this part of me:

• It’s dangerous to be attractive.
• I need to be able to set and maintain boundaries if I’m attractive. (Yes, I know that if I’m unattractive I still need to be able to do this, but this part of me feels like it’s more necessary if I’m attractive.
• If I’m attractive, I have to trust myself and my discernment to sort out the people who see my body versus the people who see me.
• I’m afraid to trust myself–my ability to maintain boundaries, and my skill at discernment.
• Ultimately, in some way, there’s a sense that I’m not worth it. That being attractive is for other people, but not for me. That it’s beyond what I can hope for, much less attain.
• (There was also a sense of laziness in this: I don’t want to work to attract a boyfriend, or change myself in any way to accommodate having a boyfriend; I just want one to fall into my lap and fit into my life without any effort on my part. And while that’s definitely not a self I want in the driver’s seat, it’s not especially pertinent to the direction of most of the rest of this. Still, I include it for the sake of completeness. I think there’s an entirely different set of conversations that I’ll need to have with myself to unpack all the cruft behind this sense/belief/thought.)

The fear of trusting myself is an old pattern, and one I’ve been working with in various ways for a while already. I’m starting to play with the idea of being pretty now, too. Exploring what the world might be like if I were pretty. Not wearing glasses anymore was a great way to kickstart that for me. Extra-special dress-up occasions have always been extra-specially dressed-up if I’m wearing contacts instead of glasses. And being dressed up (or feeling dressed up) is an easier way for me to access a feeling of being pretty.

About the same time I had the lasik done and stopped wearing glasses, I also started plucking my chin whiskers again. A good friend asked me (in the first of those challenging conversations) why I let the hairs on my chin grow, particularly given that I so often seem so unhappy about being single, and given the impact that being a woman with beard hairs has on making first impressions. In digging into all that came up for me on this subject (there was–still is, I suppose–a lot), I was a little bit surprised at how much my sense of self had become tied to having those wispy beard hairs on my chin. The digging happened through some more challenging conversations, mostly with myself, but occasionally with one of a couple of friends. And those conversations led me to that lightbulb moment when I heard myself say to myself, “I don’t want to be attractive.”

I want both to be seen and liked and considered attractive because of who I am rather than how I look, and also to be appreciated for how I look. I want not only to feel pretty inside and out, but to feel like others appreciate that prettiness both inside and out. And I think that has to start with me appreciating that prettiness both inside and out. I don’t believe I have to pluck my chin in order to be pretty, or to feel pretty. But I’m playing with what it feels like to do so. It feels like the right thing for me to do. So far, I have to say that I’ve felt pretty more often, but I can’t tell if it’s because of the physical changes I’ve made (and if so, whether it’s attributable to not wearing glasses, or having a smooth chin, or from choosing different clothes, or a combination of them all), or if it’s just because of the attitude I bring with me as I play with this part of my life.

And even if I never figure out exactly why (and I think it’s likely that I won’t), it’s kind of fun to spend more time feeling pretty. Maybe one of these days I’ll even work up to feeling beautiful on a regular basis.