#109 - Rabbit Rabbit! Resistance Requires Energy

Well hey, hi, hello, welcome to July!

I am, uh, not a fan of summer months. Hate it! Hate the heat, hate the humidity, I am a self-identified sweaty person and summer is my least comfortable season. Would always rather layer up, there is no such thing as a breezy enough fabric to get me through any day above 72 degrees.

And like, even that’s pushing it in the summer I’m more of a 66 degree girlie if I’m being honest.

But now I own not one but two forms of mini-fans. So, I’m trying my best and I’m not getting mad at myself or down about it this year. We’re dealing with it, and everyone is just going to have to accept the fact that I am 90% grumpier in any situation they require me to leave my home for. I’ll even put in my best effort to meditate on the way there and do my best to not be bothered by the fact that there is sunscreen in my eye and my skin is probably getting burned because my pale pale skin does a pisspoor job at providing any sun protection whatsoever and they haven’t made sweatproof sunscreen and I still have a forehead so here we are.

I’m learning about myself, I’m giving myself the best shot I have to not lose my mind over how sticky and swampy this city I love so much is for at least the next two months. I got away with June, which isn’t always true!

I also got back into journaling in June and I gotta say, I get why I gave myself the last six months off of purposeful self-work but wow is there joy in talking to my own brain for six pages in the morning. I really do know myself better now, and I have a new voice to speak to myself with, and there are encouraging words to be found inside my heart now instead of just derision over my failures and reminders of what hasn’t worked in the past.

It’s also in some ways more annoying because I like know the real reasons for things and then have to tackle the deeper ~things and not just the ~things that have been easier to tackle via an action like journaling, walking, meditating, movement, drinking more water, and eating the leafiest greens all the damn time, you know, the basic principles of life that we have to redisover over and over again.

Oh! I do feel better when I take conscious breaths and give myself a moment of not engaging with anything except being.

Oh! When I connect with my body and stretch and move around and massage myself it leaves me feeling more whole and energized and at peace with the home I spend my life in.

Oh! When I get to have long chats while sipping on a bev I feel a primordial sense of rightness with the universe? Because I think humans are mostly meant to sit around and chat with each other and process our days because it’s lovely to live in community with other complex people who interpret situations entirely differently and that’s not bad or meant to be a place of shame in not knowing or having seen it a different way it’s a place to grow with and from each other.

I used to think that I knew myself really well, and in some ways I did, but in other ways I was just good at articulating the root of my emotion and the reaction I was having.

I wasn’t so much in tune with my why.

Like I had a really strong sense of identity, but I think it was ultimately a list of things I liked/disliked/knew a lot about rather than like an actual understanding of my wants, wishes, and needs. Because it’s come to my attention (over and over again until I like, learn the lesson apparently or something) that I have been living my life in search of approval above all else, and it’s been a limiting experience that is so bone-deep frustrating to talk about because it’s somehow really embarrassing to be your own worst enemy.

To feel ready but feel stuck from stepping forward.

Recently I’ve felt like a hermit crab in search of a new shell. And I keep trying on a shell and it’s not fitting quite right, and all of my past selves are trailing along behind me, ready to take on this shell once I find a new one and pass their shells down to the next, and the next, until we all have room to grow into a better understanding of our actual selves and not the imaginary one that lived in the pretend world we were stuck living in for so long.

I’ve always had an idea of my hopes and dreams but also had an advanced awareness of how silly/outlandish/hopelessly unattainable a lot of them were.

But, uh oh! That’s just, say it with me now, the lack of self-worth talking!!

So when I gained some of that, I thought it was time and I was ready and I couldn’t figure out why I was so stuck in the production of a script or first draft. Like, they’re written, they’re almost done, but I always change projects or get in my own head about the worthiness of the idea, and then it’s done and it takes another six months for me to come back around.

So the cycle continued! And I felt somehow even worse because I felt ready, so I was itching, but I had failed to like reanalyze my goals in the new world in my new understanding of self.

I have always wanted to be a writer, so why was I finding it so hard to write?

Oh, I wasn’t? It was just not happening in the forms I had long associated with my wildest dreams? I was writing every day in some form, I was actively creating a catalog of work week-to-week on this very substack?

It turns out, I actually don’t think I missed out on achieving something because I never bothered to try to write for SNL. I don’t think I want to sell a show or be in any writer’s rooms. They sound honestly kind of worst nightmary but that was What Writers Did and there were so many podcasts to listen to about how everyone got there and the paths and then suddenly there were fewer paths and they really didn’t seem all that appealing at the end of the day. Honestly, I don’t want to work in the industry because it seems rotten and bad and soul-crushing for most people and I don’t want to be famous so it just has almost 0 appeal??

I think I want to talk, I want to tell stories that I care about, but I think I’ve always been resistant to the idea—because if I’m going to have to do it my way, I have to commit to the bit and send it. Because right now I’m not doing that, nor am I effectively Playing The Game. So it turns out that now I’m just playing the game kind of shittily.

A waste of energy!

Very needed energy that could be going to other more important places. I think the guilt I feel when I focused my time on things that felt like they weren’t telling stories I thought mattered was trying to alert me to the fact that I wasn’t spending the time correctly. I don’t think of writing as a slog, I hate that most books on writing open with diatribes about how no one likes to write.

If you don’t like to write, and you’re not getting paid to write, maybe don’t force yourself to do it? Idk, just an option!

But if the only thing stopping me is that the result of working on things that matter to me will like, matter to me and therefore require more time/planning/effort, I owe it to myself to do that. To try that. Because what I’ve been doing certainly isn’t serving anyone!

Things have felt bad recently. Like not (just) personally, earth-wise. The smog, the blood orange sun (she’s so pretentious. it’s fucking red), the orcas taking back the ocean (ayyyy long time comin’, you go girls!), the imminent doom handed down from nine (six) unelected lifetime-appointed for some reason judges.

I kept joking at the beginning of the year that 2023 didn’t sound like a real year. And in some ways it doesn't because I think 2020 rattled my brain so much I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it, but it’s also because it always felt like we had more time before things got this bad. Or at least, enough time that someone else would take care of it before we hit critical mass.

Leaders, who we, you know, elected to lead.

But it’s here. And we had made a lot of progress but then according to the UN address (that I only ended up watching post-BTS’s speeches so you know what? They really got me there!) Covid undid a lot of the progress we had made in terms of global advancement.

And it’s a global issue that demands we all pay attention to it and we have things like the UN and I guess now it’s just incomprehensible to me that they’re not a more effective body?? Like we know we need this, but then we made things like the UN Security Council and it’s like, oh no I don’t know why they thought that was ever going to work at all!

And then politics has become more cult-like and so when you criticize leaders it feels weirdly personal and we always have to reassure everyone of our opinions on the current situation lest anyone think we’re even slightly advocating for the fascist alternative when we’re just desperately trying to point out that someone being unwilling to actively opposing fascism isn’t going to work anymore. We have to hit undo!

(Roe fell so why the fuck is the president saying he’s “not big” on abortion??? I don’t care about his religion, he’s not the president of a religious country and there was a LAW that was passed that stripped 50% of the population he’s leading of their bodily autonomy and on the anniversary of that decision he can’t even muster a “it’s important that regardless of anyone’s personal feelings—and I understand those that do—we do not allow that to interfere with the law and a person’s right to choose.” Look I’m being super generous with this alt I even let him have a little caveat in my little fake speech!)

But things feel bad and it makes sense that they do because they are bad. But then I feel guilty talking to people about it all because I don’t want to make them feel worse and I don’t know what the solutions are and apparently work-brain “come to me with solutions not problems” poisoned my actual person-based connection brain.

What are we doing about the Supreme Court though? Because they’re not going to stop doing this horrendous bullshit and the scholars are all very worried about interracial marriage and no-fault divorce being next-up.

And if you think for one second that Clarence Thomas wouldn’t rule against interracial marriage I have news!! Hypocrisy is not enough to stop a fascistic traaaain!

They’re literally all bought by billionaires.

(Sooooo many videos online telling girlies how to score a rich man and yet none of them ever suggest becoming a Supreme Court Justice and honestly feels like it may be one of the most successful routes to take!)

But what are we doing? Are we marching? Are we emailing and calling our senators every single day until they know our names and we show up shaming them into doing their job as elected officials even in their dreams? Because I’m up for whatever it is, but I am quite broke so I cannot donate money, only time and energy. But I have a lot of the latter two and I’m very loud!

I’m willing and ready! I’m voting in the primaries because that’s where you can get progressive candidates on the ballot (was truly SO HAPPY to vote for Paperboy Prince on my ranked ballot this last Tuesday!) and honestly so few people manage to show up that it might be easier than we all think!

I have hope, but I also have anger right now. Because we are up against a rigged system and the options don’t feel all that possible because we’ve been told they’re not and subtle changes haven’t worked so how would radical overhauls?

But if it’s all rotted, we have to throw it out and start again. Or we have to seek a break in decorum and have three of the best justices we’ve ever had tell us how to help them not be the only three ones with any sanity or compassion that have to always been captured in the dissents!

A better future is possible, but I’m also getting increasingly realistic about what it’s going to take and the things I’m going to have to will my way through and simply get over in order to make the future possible.

But hey! Paris is doing an incredible job moving towards a carless future and I’m really really heartened by that because New York City is finally going to impose Congestion Pricing babeeeey!!!

Our mayor may be the absolute worst but this managed to still happen and I am excited! Better late than never let’s make 99% of the roads pedestrian or bus only wheeee!!!!

I think I’m ready to let go and stop trying to alter the narratives I have and stop focusing on the What It Means and focus on the How It Feels and keep moving through the world with an open curiosity and integrity of self. Instead of spiraling alone, I have to make the call and let others help me sometimes.

And I will continue to rediscover this until it settles. Embracing the fact that I thought I had reached a place of understanding in the past—because that was the best I could do with the information and amount of time I had. There’s no shame in changing course. I don’t have to eat the food if it’s not that good—because my body is not a trashcan. I don’t have to force it when it stops feeling good just because I think it will be embarrassing to tell people that I made a mistake in previous proclamations, or not even a mistake I did a thing and tried a path and it wasn’t that great so I’m turning back around.

(I’m saying this as if having to turn around in New York is not one of the top 5 most embarrassing things to do in the city and we all feel that way so I don’t even worry about ~what it says about me.)

We’re not meant to do this all alone. This is the most isolationist version of society we could have possibly ever created. We’re meant to help, we’re meant to touch, and we’re meant to be there without a lot of daily doubts and frets over past behaviors.

I think I’ve given myself a lot of time to heal, to assess, I think I have the answers even if they’re a bit scary and mean that I have to develop new skills and rebuild from scratch.

It might just come down to the push. The will. Accepting the self-given gift of taking a chance and committing to making my life into whatever it can be rather than continuing clinging to the rafts I thought would carry me ashore.

Because I see another island in the distance.

And I think I now have enough strength to swim over there.