#83 - Rabbit Rabbit, Welcome to February!

Well hey, hi, hello Smoke Show-ers!

Welcome to the shortest month of the year!

Apparently we’re kicking things off with a bang down here in NYC—I woke up to the lightest dusting of snow on the ground and even some flakes swirling through the air. This year we broke the record for the longest streak of no snow (today’s flakes still might not do it because it’s gotta be at least 1/8” accumulation to count) and have had above-average temperatures this entire season. The vibes have been a mix of weird and grateful as we all walk around in light jackets (or the less fun version, get immediately sweaty in our puffers) sipping iced coffee and basically having a long and strange spring.

But hey! Pack up the January vibes and make way for 28 days of: no! new! ideas!

Last year, me and my sister/boss decided that for the entire month of February, we were not allowed to come up with new ideas for the business. Any that we did come up with (project, task, ad idea, article) was plopped into a “backburner” list and revisited once the month was over. (So often new ideas have such a collective push of energy and excitement when they first pop up so it was clarifying to gauge our reaction to the idea after the new/shiny feelings had faded. Really illuminated why having fresh eyes when it comes to editing your own material is so important for me.) Instead, we just had to focus on the things we had already decided we wanted to do. Dig in.

We called it the “Get shit done” model.

And I am once again, applying it to my actual life! And hey, even my co-star notification from yesterday agrees with this idea!

January was a much more adventurous month than I had anticipated. I went to a bunch of yoga classes, I went on dates, got trapped in an elevator and had to be rescued by the fire department, saw some sunsets, bought a scarf, wrote a bunch, and honestly spent a huge chunk of time outside of my comfort zone like evolving or whatever.

It was good! I am exhausted but I like ~grew as a person so fine, FINE, it was worth all of the temporary discomforts because connection is only possible when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with other people blah blah blah.

And now it’s February! So! No new ideas!

It’s not that I can’t try new things, but the point of this month is to finish up all the lingering projects that I allow to nag at me during my downtime. I recently made a list of all of the drafts I am still committed to finishing and there were 23 of them. The most annoying writing advice (because it’s just devastatingly true) is that you can prep, and make notes, and outline yourself into oblivion, but the only way to write is to write. Plug away, make the edits, and go again.

It’s not a secret formula! Are there conditions that make writing easier or more pleasurable? Sure! But ultimately you still have to get the words on the page.

I once had a boss tell me that the reason he stopped going to his therapist was because of the advice he received when trying to come up with a plan that would help him ride a bike to work instead of driving. His therapist had told him, “If you really wanted to, you would.” Turns out, my former boss was more of a “ten-step plan to a better you!” kind of dude. I meanwhile, would have been perfectly motivated by that therapist. While I think that making big sweeping extreme changes to one’s lifestyle often results in an equally extreme revert in behavior, I do believe in the “just start” method.

Just start waking up early. Just write one sentence. Just do one lap around the block.

I think there’s a lot of pressure to indulge the hardcore version of making a change. To go from an 8am alarm to a 5am. But there’s nothing wrong with a 7:30, or even a 7:45 step! The difference between one page and three pages of writing is the number of sentences. Stacked up, one at a time. Doing any movement with your body is better than no movement, so why include a moral barometer in the framing of finding what movements we like to do?

Apply moderation! It’s all about temperance, babes.

Maybe it’s the drama that pushes us towards making a change exceptionally noticeable because we want data and results, but we’re not tracking this shit on an excel spreadsheet, this is just life as we choose to live it.

I haven’t been journaling as much this year because I wanted to have fewer Big Revelations and just allow the strides I’ve already made in understanding myself to really take hold. And it turns out that even without wracking up a certain number of pages, I am a lot more honest with myself about my motivations and understand my blocks. Oh, writing is hard because first drafts are always improve-uponable and I hate the idea of creating subpar art?? Cool cool, why don’t I just like, get over that and write anyway and do it with absolute abandon? Why don’t I push myself to write the worst possible version of a sentence to prove to my brain and body that it’s actually fine and there is no harm in being cringy or imperfect? The devastating truth of the matter is that I am often the only one standing in my way. The good news about that though is that it’s like pretty easy to trick myself by simply changing the parameters. I’m writing this rubric baby! So I can change any time I want to. Whooooa!

I’ve recently written three lists that have served me every single day since writing them: my big audacious goals, things to remember, and my commitment to self.

Having physical reminders that my most centered self wrote allows me to remember that I wrote that, that I do believe I am capable of accomplishment, and that I have a lot I actually want to do. Are some of them so cheesy that I physically recoiled while recording them? You betcha. But if I can’t be honest with myself I don’t have the hope of being authentic with anyone else.

I almost very seriously wrote “I will live my life even if it kills me" to open this paragraph with and now I’m laughing to myself in my apartment. But also like, true! I think I allowed myself to really live in January. Not perform, not posture, I got out there and tried new things. I had to call 911 for the first time and also immediately removed it from my “recent calls” because I am cursed when it comes to phones and often call/facetime people without meaning to. (In college I once read an essay by someone whose ex had “accidentally” facetimed them and she spent the entire piece outlining physical impossibility and how ridiculous of an excuse that was, while I sat there during the critique figuring out how to tell her that I had managed to do that three times in one evening with my phone in my pocket.) So, while I will not be getting back in that elevator (at least, not on the floor we got stuck on) I will be continuing my journey of rediscovering that the world may not be so scary after all. (The internet? Terrifying. Actual people interacting in real life? A genuine pleasure for the most part! Yes we are all generally more nervous and living at varying levels of denial about how rapidly the world has changed due to the respiratory virus that the government is full-on minimizing the dangers of in order to float a profitable economy for the six dudes in a boardroom who want to hoard all of the money/resources, but in general, I think people are trying their best and «irish accent activated» God loves a trier.)

I’ve been trying to be less guilty. Shame might be hard-coded into my DNA, but I am trying to align my actions more with my actual desires and be honest with people. I have to trust that people will tell me if I’m doing something they’d prefer I not do again, and I can reinforce that belief by telling them when things bother me. The kind > nice mentality, ya know? Resentment is the death of relationships and it can start from such tiny actions. Don’t let things build to a point of no return, release-valve the pressure of perfection by admitting to imperfections in the moment, and understand that sometimes things just need a tiny course correction and that most people are actually quite desperate for any form of actionable feedback!!

So. No new ideas! We’re sticking with the shit already on the plate! Unburden ourselves of any ideas that no longer serve so we can better focus on the ideas that do. Check things off the list, allow ourselves to feel accomplished, and finally get to put down some of the shit we’ve been tasked with carrying in its final resting place. It’s a short month! There’s snow in New York City!! Quick, everyone go get hot chocolates and gaze up at the sky in wonder!!!

I hope you have a fantastic month. I hope all of us make it through the next four weeks with some semblance of grace and ease. I hope some of this month’s accomplishments cannot be measured by any capitalistic system and instead exist entirely for pleasure.

Welcome to February! Let’s do this shit.