I’m looking at all the posts from January, and just musing about January in particular. A long time ago March started the year, it still feels that way somewhat… January is like the alarm that is intended to be snoozed (a bad habit), February is the years get up and get ready alarm and March is like the alarm that says actually leave the house to be on time.

I want to look at problems I used to have that I resolved and other changes:

(Reflections about ✍️ The Day I Became a Professional Writer 🌻 Post)

In the past: Wanted to feel like a writer (Tried Grammarly Premium, it did not help, followed a casual better writing course with the Writing Under the Olive Tree blog, it did help, Did a lot of writing, it did help).

In the past: Poverty Mentality (Video by David Lee helped, Book “Happy Money” by Ken Honda helped).

In the past: I felt bad for not helping out every charity or good cause, but now I’ve come to find one that resonates with my heart. (Found Elevate Orphan charity, it does help cheer me up to help them, and read “Fu*k No” by Sarah Knight, it did help me set better boundaries in many aspects of life).

Reflections from last year: One we humans are all a family regardless of having different preferences or appearances; two what matters more than avoiding failure, is striving to stand for what is right to the best of our abilities as common people; and three, though we can’t do everything about everything, we can make some difference in some way.

In the past: My resolution was to never yell at my kids, now I don’t think it has to be never, if someone is throwing a rock or if they are just repeatedly throwing fits and I yell, I no longer think any yelling = verbal abuse and I’m no longer going to beat myself up for occasional yelling. It may not be the most effective communication, but I’m human and it’s not fair to expect me to constantly forgive my kids and others their human error and deny myself the same courtesy, I’m not going to hold that double standard against myself anymore.

In the past: I was really inspired by Lokahi, the Hawaiian concept of restoring something broken to wholeness and life balance, since last year I’ve learned that it is a concept the ancient Egyptians lived by as well, and is the top value of both China and Japan (under the name harmony or wa). I’m still striving for life balance using Russ Harris’s free worksheets right now to work on aligning my values and life balance and in the past used Michael Sheridan’s dream interpretation from his book and also from taking his amazing class in Seattle.

In the past: I wanted to find a way to help charity more, and I did that’s to Fun Raising, I’m still at the beginning of that journey, but taking a few first steps is the right direction.

In the past: I really hated not knowing my purpose in life, now I still don’t know, but it isn’t bothering me as much. I’m doing good things for others and I’m doing things I enjoy that are just simple things like playing music, having tea, playing building games, both those things make it seem like I’m living a pretty good life even without knowing my purpose. I also am taking a purpose workshop this Thursday, so hopefully that will help.

In the past: I felt like I was not really living at all, just doing mindless chores and childcare, I don’t feel that way anymore (as much), playing music helped, getting CES treatment helped a lot, taking more time to look at chicken artwork helped a lot, basically the antidote to feeling not alive was doing fun things even if they didn’t seem important to other people in my life. It was really hard to make it happen, no one took care of my kids more, I just let them play independently and was much more flexible about taking breaks that were at weird times and not caring as much that their dad thought they could be doing more (going out, doing class with me) and turning down people who wanted support from video chat or who wanted me to go on errands with them so they would avoid feelings of loneliness. Not only did I have to step back from my kids, but I had to tenaciously defend my break time and emotionally deal with the fact other people (in my family) look down on my very reasonable amount of break taking when it doesn’t suit their agenda.

(Reflections about the 💐 Journey of Kujichagulia (Self Determination) 🌻 post)

In the past: I struggled really, really hard to adapt from 1 child to 2. Dishes, trash, laundry, putting most things away, school, family dynamics, discipline ext. I was ill for a time, that meant doing much more, on much less energy. When I could exercise I did, but that didn’t help me on the front of taking back my life, focusing on expecting nothing at all and than adding back in what I could in a prioritized way was more important than eating well or exercise to a sense of control over my life. Making a schedule was really hard, so I just wrote down what really happened as a back dated schedule and that helped me trick my mind to believing I could follow a schedule and than I really made one, things got shifted, skipped and adapted, but having a schedule gave me some torque to take back the day out of chaos… into semi-order.

Last January it was hard to answer the “who are you, are you really who you say you are, are you doing all that you can for humanity?” questions that are part of Kwanzaa’s January 1st reflections. This year it wasn’t as hard:

2021 me,

I live by my values, upholding them matters to me, it somehow gets me through the day inspired instead of worn down.
I keep my eyes open to the truth.
I am make mistakes, but I believe in trying anyways.
I am surrender my children’s learning goals and results to them, but I still try to create a learning environment.

I am as far as I know who I say I am and in general I am doing all I can, I donated the cost of some sneakers for orphans and that’s about right for the mental and emotional reserves I currently have, not because it sounds like a lot or not because I’m tooting my own horn, but because this time I could feel it, it felt right and it made me happy, but I also left a pair of shoes in Cuba once and it was symbolic to donate one pair to Africa as well… I hope it helps the person who gets them, but it also helps me be happy and I’m okay with both sides of that.

There are some parts of me I still don’t understand, like the intersection of who I am as a parent and an individual, but I do notice the childcare workload is getting more manageable as my son approaches 2, (my daughter is 5 going on crazy), they are both learning coping skills regarding the pandemic stress (which I never wanted them to have to deal with at those ages…) and as they calm down and play independently I can breathe and clean (which are related when you have allergies to pets, and also pets).

(Reflections from the Procrastination and I post)

I had heard of Edison testing thousands of light bulb materials that didn’t work, his friend Walter S. Mallory asked ” ‘Isn’t it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven’t been able to get any results?’ Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: ‘Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work!'”

In the past: I needed new coping mechanisms ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), radical acceptance, mindfulness and stoicism to deal with the transition to motherhood which was unspeakably difficult and unnatural for me. Gratitude also helped a ton, much more than I expected before practicing it. Stoic philosophy, and values based living also helped me feel like I had the power to make my life matter and decide if I had a positive impact on the world or not based on my actions in my small (but real) realm of control (my mind, my choices).

In the past: I had trouble getting out of bed, not because I was a late riser, but because I was scared of another day of dealing with my daughter, screaming, crying, yelling, kicking, asking, demanding, refusing, questioning me non-stop (only much later found out she was not normal). Marcus Aurelius really helped me shift my mindset about getting out of bed:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”

– Marcus Aurelius

In the past: Marcus Aurelius wasn’t enough to give me hope on the darker days, but Stephen Hawking was, because of who he was. Marcus Aurelius was the Emperor of Rome, he was wealthy, well educated, had family, had helpers, but Stephen Hawking had been through divorce, the debilitating physical conditions of advancing multiple sclerosis, and problems at work, so for him to keep getting up and working on his projects and motoring his electric chair out of bed everyday instead of telling the nurses just leave me alone, that made me feel like I could do it too.

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the Universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

– Stephen Hawking

Old Me > Current Me

Felt desperately wanted to feel like a writer > Am a writer, but noticed it’s not all leather jackets and book signings, it’s mostly writing.

Felt so guilty over not being able to help all good causes and not being able to be nice to my kids 24/7 > Am doing the best I can in real ways, but have let the pressure to be perfect leave and told it not to let the door hit it on the way out…

Felt guilty about my student loan > Am not guilty, paying interest on the loan when I can pay for it should be punishment enough without me beating myself up over it and if I can never pay it, then I don’t need to be guilty for what I can’t even do.

Was desperately seeking life balance > Am interested in increasing balance, but I’ve been able to do noticeably better and seeing results helps me keep moving forward.

Was desperately seeking impact > Am really satisfied with the few people who reached out to thank me for some of the work I’ve already done that had a positive impact on them, one chalk drawing in particular and a comment on Coach.Me for some reason were enough for me. I wanted to know I was making a difference “at all” more than I wanted to know I was or could make a “big” difference. So two small moments, two individuals taking the time to say thank you, really made a huge difference to me, made me feel like I can check the “do something good in life” box.

Felt like a failure because I don’t know my life purpose > Am okay with knowing or not knowing what my life purpose is, but I’m not desperate to find out, because I’m okay with just doing my best to live in harmony with myself and help others when I have a pretty good opportunity to do so.

Felt like the day was going to be horrible before it even started > Am waking up happy and then sometimes get annoyed that my kids woke up at 6:30 and I don’t get alone time, yet at least I let bad things happen before getting annoyed instead of just assuming each day will be horrible.

Felt like a failure because I struggled immensely to parent my daughter and I hated myself for struggling with it when it seemed like everyone around me could do better than I could > Am okay with knowing I did my best, especially because my daughter has always had Sensory Processing Disorder and I never knew, I’ve been struggling with something that was hard the whole time and I never gave up, I never hit my daughter and I did the best I could even though most people would have medicated someone like my daughter, I kept trying “normal parenting” tips and classes and seeing them fail and fail and fail and I found “several thousand things that won’t work!” Sometimes it’s me not you, but this time it really is her and not me, and I won’t lie that’s nicer than feeling like I’m inherently dysfunctional as a parent.

My mantra for this year is: “If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.” – Seneca

I look back and see that I’ve already taken many steps forward, but I can feel that my life isn’t in balance as much as I would like it to be still, so it will be a work in progress, but each day that I notice more about what I really, silently want in life, not exactly what I say out loud, or even what I can put words to, but what is silently in my heart, after that recognition, it doesn’t take longer than a week to start discussing it, start finding ways to make preliminary steps happen, ways to push past the seemingly inevitable first failure. Between the dream and the blue print is the longer wait, between the blue print and the building is surprisingly doable, maybe not easy, but doable.

The journey of 1000 steps begins with 1 realization:

☸️

 

There is a book about our emotional world called “Permission to Feel,” it uses RULER (Recognize, Understand, Label, Express and Regulate) to teach people how to cope with emotions in a healthy way. Long before I read that I was looking for a way to increase my EQ, which I was pretty detached from in a repressive, PTSD-ish kind of way.

Recognizing my feelings was almost impossible for me, even still after a few years of practice it takes me the longest to express how I feel in my family. I encourage my daughter to look for her feelings and save a “captain’s log” Google Keep note with how she felt that day, sometimes my sister or husband join in. I seem to always need the longest, but it’s gotten easier over time. I started in a place where weeks would go by and I couldn’t notice anything expect apathy, my emotions would surface in my dreams and I would analyze my dreams to know how I felt rather than to learn what they were guiding me towards.

It was at first hard to know how I felt in the moment, than after a long time I knew in a given moment, but to decide what the dominant feeling of the day seemed impossible. It was hard to see the forest for the trees… but over time that got easier. It helped knowing it was okay if I made a mistake, no one was grading me, no one really cared (in a good way though). It felt silly and it was hard to justify to myself why I was taking the little time I had after work, cleaning ext to capture a little slice of each day.

But it gave me a sense that I owned at least a small sliver of my day, every day, even on work days.

I noticed I was getting better and that made me feel good about myself, a tiny bit, but sometimes a tiny bit helps a lot.

Sometimes I went a long time without making time for it, or I lost my phone or my computer broke ext.

I use Bitmoji, it’s a free app, you sent it up on a cell phone with the Google Play App, then it’s able to be used on a computer with Google Chrome as an extension.

This is the first year I haven’t missed a day so far… which is kind of cool, a small amount of consistency.

When I pick my meta feeling for the day that’s Recognizing how I feel and Expressing it, somewhere along the line I also validate myself that it was fine to feel however I felt, but I haven’t been Labeling or Understanding on an average day, a few days ago I decided to try to work on that also.

So working labeling for this week, starting with the basic 4 from Yale’s Mood Meter App:

Sad, Calm, Happy, Mad…

Sun: Calm 💚 Mon: Calm 💚 Tue: Sad 💙 Wed: Mad ❤️ Thr: Happy 💛 Fri: Happy 💛 Sat: Happy 💛

Expressing the feelings with finer detail is supposed to increase a skill called “granularity” that is supposed to help improve self awareness and also EQ. So looking deeper…

Sun: Thoughtful Mon: Tranquil Tue: Uneasy* Wed: Frustrated Thr: Balanced* Fri: Inspired Sat: Hopeful

I had thought I was sad Tuesday, but the scale says mad, which makes sense since I was pretty high energy. I had thought I was happy Thursday, but the scale says calm, which seems like it could be right.

I haven’t often used this scale, but it’s the one my daughter uses so I feel like it’s good to know some of the same vocabulary to help us be on the same page.

I kind of know how I feel, but on most of these days if I had to say how I felt in 3 seconds, I wouldn’t be able to say correctly… my labeling skills haven’t caught up with my recognition yet. I’m surprised at how much the lag between them is.

I think only on Monday would I have been able to say Tranquil, the rain was really soothing that day and I felt really deeply tranquil, which was nice after many stressful days lately.

My quote of 2021 is:

“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”

– Seneca

That was happening to me Tuesday, it’s also called “metanoia” in Greek, a journey of the mind, soul and heart turning away from darkness. In a game I didn’t play, but my daughter did, Paper Mario (the Origami version) the princess has become an origami, she asks “Will you crease yourself and be reborn, like me?” Despite what you answer she puts you in prison, it’s a bit scary for a Mario game.

The stoic quote of this week was:

“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”

– Seneca

So immediately I thought of meditation (which I don’t really enjoy), but I read a great article, by Neriman K from Reading Under the Olive Tree about creative introspection specifically from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain edi­tors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that.

You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody.

There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all-ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

– A letter from Rainer Maria Rilke to a friend.

Meditation can be so many things, sometimes I use ACT meditation or mindfulness meditation, but it seems to take the time and energy I would have much much rather used to have a tea, or play cello, or look out at the rain without in a casual way. Often I find it more draining or frustrating to do meditation than to do something else that is more joyful or more of a flow activity for me. I also don’t like yoga… but I can sit with myself with writing or doodling or music or questioning my mind in a way that I have never equated with meditation… Meditation is at the moment muddy puddle for me with a lot of different kinds of things going on, why I have always preferred something quite clear and simple.

For me questioning, is not meditation, questioning is a very energetic and active process and meditation is more subtle and calm.

I think we all want to live with balance, and I’m already usually fairly calm, but almost too much, almost stagnant, such that questioning brings me in touch with myself and lets me sort out my cognitive dissonance with a certain vigor and excitement that brings me towards a lively normal that I’m usually out of sync with…

Meditation may be what some people need to slow down, but sometimes I need questioning to speed up.

I re-evaluated my values for the year using Russ Harris worksheets, but I decided to work on all 83 pages instead of just the 2 pages of values I usually work with (23 and 24). One thing I found interesting that I had never noticed is that both Chinese and Japanese values are not there in a list of 58 values. How different Western and Eastern values are for the Eastern values to not even rank 58th… also the Latin value of Family is not there as a value, but as a section of life.

I still find it is a good system to work with, but the traditional African values that match well with Hawaiian values as well as Asian or Latin values have to be added by the individual as needed.

My top 7 for this year are:

Harmony             Self Awareness      Gratitude            Humor           Persistence           Sincerity      Joy

I was very proud of my daughter, she struggles with some things, but one thing she doesn’t struggle with is knowing her own mind and opinion, she ranked what was not important, quite important, very important and of the top importance very quickly and accurately and when something had changed she told me why and it made sense to me.

Her values for this year are:

Creativity Honesty Love Respect Fun Patience Assertiveness

Two were the same as last year, fun and assertiveness, but many are different. One interesting thing is that she had been lied to and now she values honesty, so that in bad experiences, wisdom develops… I had always been honest with her and she lied to me and didn’t think it mattered, but when she was hurt by dishonesty, honesty became important to her for the first time.

Perhaps values are like college classes, you can only study a few at a time and really learn well.

I can understand some of what drives her choices, being loved and loving is a major focus behind the scenes until a certain security forms and it takes a back seat without being absent. She is just beginning to have a lot of control over her hands (she is 5) with a brush and a computer so creativity is ever more interesting, because it’s less frustrating, honesty and respect and patience are good values that for her grew from bad experiences in 2020. Assertiveness is interesting because she both values it and also struggles with it, she told me so, and I also see it… she yells for something rather than say please, doesn’t get it and then is frustrated by the whole situation.

It’s harder for me to see myself from the outside in, but a lot of this year is based on the feeling of struggling too hard last year, the gratitude, humor, persistence and joy help me make it through tough moments of parenting through parental burn out, self awareness is hopefully going to let me take enough breaks to climb out of burn out and harmony is both what I need now, but also feels like a deep value that I want to learn more about anyways.

Sun: I was thoughtful because I was able to resume my “stoic meditation” (which doesn’t feel like meditation, it feels like a quandary) of reviewing the quote of the week.

Mon: I was tranquil because I was deeply at one with the rain and nature in a way that pluviophiles would understand.

Tue: I was uneasy because I recognized that I kept participating in little habits that made my life horrible for me that I was in charge of and yet repeating and I wanted to somehow make a new life.

Wed: I was frustrated because even though I wanted to make good habits my brain was quite fuzzy and it wasn’t working well.

Thr: I felt really good and balanced not because I fixed my problems, but because I accepted that I couldn’t make life not how it was in the moment nor could I have what I wanted that I didn’t have.

Fri: I felt inspired because I did 30 pages of self work from Russ Harris’ worksheets, something I didn’t think I would have been able to do and many of the ideas about trying new solutions and expansion rather than avoiding negative feelings seemed like it could change some of the issues that led to my burnout as a parent.

Sat: I feel hopeful (it’s today) because I am writing my first article about this years values, something that almost always feels good. I guess it’s not the most sexy, but I really find values enjoyable. They do get stale when they aren’t the ones that resonate with me in the moment, but when they match me where I am in life, they energize me and what I’m doing with them, writing or drawing ext, becomes a passion project.

I’ve been going through a lot of negativity lately, not sure if it comes through or not in writing, but at least every other day I’ve been going through hating the kids when they yell, or feeling guilty about something or angry about something that usually wouldn’t get me angry. But I think it’s because I feel better, that some of the things I was afraid to feel before, when I was already overwhelmed are venting.

It’s supposed to be my lucky year this year coming up (Feb 12th), sometimes I mark people based on their Chinese Zodiac animal, Marcus Aurelius was a rooster, Seneca a snake, Epictetus a dog and I am a cow. I know people are all different, but I always found the animal zodiac fun, and even had my two kids based on their zodiacs, I had a sheep and a pig to try to promote harmony between them (and they do get along amazingly).

So, I’ll conclude the first of the “Self Awareness Saturdays” Series, but what I will say is that it’s a decent mental exercise to go through the day and at least once try to know how you feel (whether it’s bitter or frustrated or tired or happy ext) because it’s not only going to help you live a more balanced life, but it’s something that helps you notice when your loved ones are repressing their emotions or when they could really use a helping hand, or you could teach someone who doesn’t know where to start (by example), mindsight and EQ start with you, but they don’t end there, it’s a small way towards a better world.

🐄

I didn’t always know it was possible to love a mountain. This one is the one that gets to me… Half Dome in Yosemite. It used to have trees, but now it doesn’t, I can only imagine it with trees. As you go up you sometimes pass by eagles flying below you. That’s wonderful.

One thing about eagles is that they never look up, other birds like hawks do, because they get eaten by eagles, or finches get eaten by hawks, but eagles don’t look up, such is their confidence in themselves.

The first time I heard that, it reminded me of being young. I was kind of a falcon who imagined there were no eagles.

Anyways, things feel like they are lightening up in the world. Like the sun coming back to my hemisphere bit by bit each day, life seems like it will be easier this year (I hope).

I’m doing little things to change my attitude and environment to a new year: changed my wallpapers to the above image, changed my passwords, changed my “color or the year” to red (pink was last year).

Changing from pink to red represents to me, really diving deep into the fundamentals of life, I’ve been very ungrounded for a long time and I’m starting to keep a new agenda, make 1-3-5 priorities, get a bit organized, check in on Coach.me again, make goals again, try to feel like an adult again.

Basically I want to live an INTENTIONAL LIFE, rather than a reactive one, I want to feel like I’m the captain of my soul, instead of saying it, but not feeling it, I want to feel ahead of or in the moment instead of a week or two behind…

I signed up for a cool “stop negative self-talk” presentation that I’m struggling to get through, the kids enrichment actives and daily routines are pretty scattered and chaotic, the family meetings have been abandoned for a few weeks, and I have a (free) workshop about life purpose (ikegai) coming up Thursday that I already felt guilty for missing, because I thought it was two Saturdays ago.

So my life feels a bit too chaotic to me right now, I’ve been trying to take breaks for over a year and it didn’t work out YET.

I recently watched “Less is Now” on Netflix, about Minimalism, it gave a metric for thinking about items, “what is necessary?”, “what is essential?”, “what adds value to my life?”

As opposed to “what sparks joy?” provided by Marie Kondo.

It’s useful to find what sparks joy, but I found I needed more, most of my stuff doesn’t spark joy.

I wanted to take more notes from the movie, but it’s going to take awhile.

Something I was working on today was some slides from the end negative self talk presentation from Heather Davis.

An educational game I was playing today about building Rome (Cesar 3) said on level 2, if there is a problem, pay attention to it and fix it, there is no warfare in this area so your success will depend entirely on your management skills.

This is pretty true of my life in general… but there was the feeling of synchronicity that the presentation was saying the same thing.

It was nice that Heather kept talking about the feeling of the problem being the problem more than the event, I often act like it’s stupid what my kids are crying about, because it is usually stupid. Ex my son wants to throw rocks at me and I gently hold his hand and don’t let him… It’s a bit stupid to cry for that, but whatever he feels, betrayal, powerlessness is just as valid as any betrayal or powerlessness that I’ve ever felt on its own. Feelings are valid, but actions can be restricted. Kids can’t be controlled, but they can be guided. There are very fine lines that are tricky and I appreciate Heather telling me about what really works and what doesn’t.

Heather does something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time in finding where neuroscience of the amygdala taking over the mind meets ethics and stoic philosophy.

Ethics being that mom lives matter, that I don’t have to find solutions for my kids problems (though I can try to help them build tools to generate them).

Stoic philosophy being that you “paint your own cloth” (found a great article about that and the pandemic on Daily Stoic today)

A wise man dyes events with his own color.

– Seneca

Heather mentioned a more modern take:

It’s the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings, not the circumstances themselves.

– Dale Carnegie

What if being stuck isn’t a problem, what if it’s how the problem is perceived that is the problem?

Our kids get stuck when they think they should be something that they are not.
Or that life should be different than it is.

– Heather Davis

So, Heather mentions a lot of things I’ve heard before, such as “the obstacle is the way”, “problems are opportunities”, but she really wraps it up tighter with action plans such as the above redirect your mind slides that I was working with earlier.

I want to help my kids make their own charts to redirect their behavior, but I felt I really had to make my own first and really own it, really walk the walk. And that got my mind spinning as to what am I doing now? What did I used to do when things were worse? What did and didn’t work?

The reason I had never redirected their behavior is that I didn’t want to distract or invalidate their feelings, but sometimes they get stuck, so sometimes you let them vent, they vent, it’s over, but other times it becomes more than it has to… sometimes they handle their own feelings, sometimes I try to “name it to tame it” and validate and verbally label what they feel (but it doesn’t work well in our family as of now), I think that you could say “you are feeling bad, it’s okay, but here are some options to try to shift your mind if you want/when you are ready”… I didn’t think of a way that said your feelings are okay and valid, but we could try to shift them if you want.

Which looking back seems silly, but that’s what kept me from trying before, I thought it would somehow invalidate the feeling and be disrespectful, which I think I picked up from RIE parenting, which says don’t jump in all the time, it didn’t say none of the time, but somehow that’s the message I got. RIE is all about “your child is a whole person, they are capable of handling more than you think” but I think I push my little ones too hard like the story of the lion who throws the cub down the mountain to teach them the strength to climb up… sometimes I think I don’t guide them because I don’t know how or how much to guide them.

I’ll mention one last thing she said, because it was helpful for me as a person, she mentioned the skill of “Flexible Habit of Mind” understanding it’s okay to be stuck, it’s not about “them” (you), it’s about having the right “tools” or “strategies”. That was exactly what I was pondering in my last post and I find it interesting for it to resurface exactly at the right time for me to pick it up. Kind of “when the student is ready the teacher appears”-ish.

So, I’ll try to end this extra windy post, but I’ll end with a metaphor I always think about. When I hiked Half Dome, the first time snow stopped me, the second time I was alone and it was a thunderstorm, the third time with my husband, each time it was a special hike. One special thing about that particular 14 mile hike is you have a hard hike to the hike, there is a small but super steep trail that takes you from the nearest parking lot to the start of the hike. The prehike is harder in a way than what follows. Another interesting thing is that the forest is so thick for a long way you can’t see any progress, you move along seeing similar pines and flowers until suddenly it’s almost over when you reach the rock. The rock section has a metal ladder that was put there from the first climbers, which is what made it possible for a novice climber like me to easily get to the top (you don’t have to be a climber at all, it’s a hike with handrails basically).

It’s all very metaphorical for my learning process, the very beginning is the hardest struggle, like the initial decision to try something or drop a bad habit is the hardest part for me, I always feel like I’m not improving as I’m improving (I’m blind to progress), and through the shared work of others greater than myself I am able to do things that otherwise I never would be able to do.

🧗

The chickens we eat are therapods, descended from the same family as T-Rex. When times get tough someone who needs “a lot” struggles and someone who needs less suddenly thrives, or at least survives.

In life, the moments we expect to be great, graduations, careers, weddings, births, parties, often let us down, they are often unexpectedly of small significance to our life overall. Whereas the small moments are sometimes the great ones that stay in our hearts like treasures.

My wedding was not the biggest, but it was a lot of planning and stress and some money, conversely, there was a day my husband and I took our dog to a golf course and let her run free and played with her, she ran in wild circles, happy as a bird on the wing. I wouldn’t trade my memory of being free and relaxed and happy with my husband (when we took the dog to play) for anything, but I wouldn’t mind forgetting our actual wedding day…

Real life is a mystery and real people behind the mask become interesting and subtly unique.

I’ve been wanting to live an intentional life this year, been wanting to clear my head, ground myself in the Earth, in the vast universe, in the beautiful ancient starlight that bathes the plants at night, but I haven’t really.

My head is just clearing again, not the clearest, but at least with some amount of clarity above 0%.

What I intended to do was review the same stoic quotes I did last year, one each week.

But I couldn’t even. I didn’t forget, I just couldn’t even.

But it’s not horrible, because I didn’t do what I wanted because I was giving the mental energy and time I had to a worthy cause.

 Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Yeah, realistically sometimes what doesn’t matter more comes first, yet since reading this, the words give me power to try harder to get my priorities correct for me and live by my own values.

That’s one thing Martin Luther King Jr and I have in common, he lived by his values everyday, his were not mine, and I am not him. But I also do my best to LIVE my values not just TALK or THINK about them. It’s not always a huge event, but internally it makes a huge difference to me.

I’m always exploring new values, because my values are not static, I learn about life, I try something new, it works or it doesn’t. It’s a free life, it’s expansive, but it’s also turbulent and draining. Not having a pattern to sew a dress or pants usually means wasting a lot of fabric and I waste/use a lot of effort compared to other people who are more “set in their ways” but I’m also happier with a really low amount of anxiety on average. Because I “lay off” a lot of things that cause anxiety when I can as soon as I can (sometimes I can’t, but often I can).

In an ideal year I would have reflected on these four quotes already, maybe talked about them with my kids already brainstorming how to explain them to a 1 and 5 year old, preferably with visual or kinetic examples…

But in real life I’m starting where I wanted to be mentally 17 days late.

Because I wanted to get my daughter some treatment for her neurological condition and that took so much energy it’s not easy to explain, time wise it didn’t affect us so much, but getting and meeting a new doctor, exploring 9 different options, going over her life with a fine toothed comb to help determine what is going on, getting a diagnosis I had never heard of before (sensory processing disorder), adjusting myself to knowing what to expect and what my daughter goes through, adjusting myself to the rest of the family, trying to fill them in on what I know without them having had physiology or any neurology background, trying to make life work with 2 kids who want more than I can give in a burnt out state… I protected what mattered to me, for once my priorities were straight, and even though exhausted, it’s a triumphant kind of exhausted, even though burnt out it’s a hopeful for the future kind of burnt out…

I’m not perfect, I won’t be EVER, learning this at a visceral level has set part of my soul free.

I also want to set the past on fire and forget it, but I don’t know if it’s true the past has important lessons or if it’s just a weight that holds me underwater? I don’t know my own answer about that yet.

Anyways, the way the stoic quotes (as listed by Willem Van Zyl on Coach.me) randomly fall when applied to the year January (named for Juno queen of the Roman Gods) starts with:

1. “While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing … is ours, except time.”

– Seneca (the Senator Philosopher)

2. “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

– Marcus Aurelius (the Emperor Philosopher)

3. “Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.”

– Epictetus (the Slave Philosopher)

4. “Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”

– Seneca (the Senator Philosopher)

1. “While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing … is ours, except time.” – Seneca

The first quote is a good fit for New Years, sometimes one can rush through life feeling like our jobs or someone else owns our time (in my case it feels like my kids own it, since I spend it choosing to care for them).

Sometimes it feels like we don’t have time, but “time is all we have” in that we can’t buy things with money without spending the time to browse and buy, we can’t use the things we own simply because we own them, without having the “free time” off of work and then using the time to use those things. Time is a key that all things are accessed with, it’s like insulin that allows sugar into our cells to feed us. To buy we need money and time both, to dance we need energy and time both. Time is kind of the most precious thing we will ever have, but it’s so overwhelming to live with that gravity that it’s easier to turn away from that truth and think either we have all the time in the world or no time at all, both of which are wrong. Those of us living still have 24 hours each day. Not 0, not a life time. Each day we have 24 cubes of time. Our body needs most of it back, sleeping takes a third more or less, working takes a third more or less, of the last third eating and washing, laundry and dishes take some, what is left becomes scarce… different than money, because it isn’t interchangeable. No one can loan you time to live in a normal scenario and you can’t gift someone else time to live in a normal scenario. Do parents give life to children or does God? That I’m not sure. Because some people want children so much and never have them… it seems outside the hands of parents, but I’m not sure. As a parent it felt like it wasn’t me giving anything, but more of being a witness to a miracle that is pretty far from being fully described as of now by science.

I probably needed that lesson, but reviewing it today was the best I could do this year. I’ve been missing things left and right and forgetting things and avoiding making a new set of daily habits for quite sometime. Sometimes parenting gets harder and I take 2 steps back, other times it gets easier and I load up so many “enrichment” activities that when it gets harder again, I can’t bear the same load.

Anyways, summary of quote 1, “in one sense, time is ALL you ever really have.”

January Week 1 in Summary:

2. “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius

This quote was meant for the second week 1-3 to 1-9, it has been the overarching source of emotional strength I turn to when things go wrong. When a family member takes something the wrong way and sulks, when I cut my finger in the beginning of the day, when my kids tell me to die if I can’t get them a pet golden dragon (which I can’t), when a boisterous lady feels like cursing at me while my child has a fit downtown when the baby dragon toy she wanted to buy is gone… and I have to carry her out screaming and kicking and I’m telling her to stop, because it is more than enough for me and I have the parental choice of saying stop or sitting in the middle of the sidewalk and trying to talk someone through a melt down that has never and may never respond like some street lady expects her to respond. The misunderstandings, small cuts, annoying “townies”, childhood meltdowns, culture clashes, the stress of my husband moving, the stress of social distancing, those things are out of my hands. What I have power over is if I take a moment to see how I feel (using Bitmoji to journal it easily), if I beat myself up for not being what I or other people want me to be, if I make a healthy metric for what I can even really do in a given day with two kids (yes some other mom can do X with 2 kids, but what I can do is not necessarily what she can do).

I have power over, if I’m on my side, if I take a moment to see how I feel so I can at least monitor burn out since I was too late to prevent it, if I enjoy the small enjoyable moments that pepper most days despite the winter or despite the drama of politics in my country being a bit “extra” right now.

I was thinking when I was a kid I would have loved to get an ocarina and play it, now we have one, and I don’t play it. I still didn’t, I wasn’t in the mood, didn’t have the energy, but I got thinking about doing it, about doing the things right in my own home that I want to, but don’t do.

I would have liked to remember to check into this quote, but it wasn’t vital, because it never leaves me, this one has gotten down to my bones sometime in the past 5 years that I’ve been reviewing the stoic quotes often.

Quote 2 Summary: Knowing what is out of your hands leaves you the strength to care for what IS in your hands.

January Week 2 in Summary:

So starting week 2, I felt so weak, I looked for strength in music, in nature, and I found it instead in my own attitude towards life, and I didn’t communicate kindly, but I did communicate effectively at least, I returned a lot of baggage my father had put on me throughout the years back to him, it was ugly in the way it aged him so much in an instant, but actually it was uglier for him to expect me as a child and adult to somehow soothe his anxiety rather than him getting professional help or taking action such as meditation or yoga or just facing harsh truths and making changes to his life. Really that was uglier. It’s hard enough to be a child without your parents asking you to do their homework on top of yours.

3. “Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.” – Epictetus

This quote was meant for 1-10 to 1-16, this seems really similar to quote 2, but it isn’t really the same. Quote 2 talks of strength to do things in your own mind and own life, power, quote 3 talks about happiness and freedom. Strength lies directly within knowing you have power over some things and not others, the martial art of jiu jitsu is almost entirely a meditation on that fact, it relies on leverage and torque ie changing what you can (your position) and not what you can’t (the strength of the opponent). Happiness and freedom are not found from this understanding, but instead understanding proactivity is the beginning towards them, a foundation to build upon. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is very much a longer meditation of the same theme of building happiness on a foundation of proactivity. That book was life changing for me because it gives a breakdown of how to stop being reactive to life that I needed to be able to apply some of the advice (from Never Get Angry Again by David J. Lieberman) that was right, but above my proactivity pay grade at the time.

Quote 3 Summary: Happiness is surrendering what you can’t hold and freedom is owning what is truly yours.

January Week 3 in Summary:

4. “Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” – Seneca

This is the quote for today and the upcoming week, so now I am “synced” between where I wanted to be and where I am, which is nice. It’s okay to be late, but it’s nice to be on time once in awhile.

Challenges I faced while writing just this article remind me why I haven’t finished a book yet, an article is a bit of a river raft and a book is a ship for sea…

Today’s challenges:

1. Not being able to install a night light app into the new Linux even though I tried… having to decide to risk getting wired at bedtime due to blue light vs red light on the screen.
2. Worried the typing would wake my kids. But it didn’t.
3. Gnawingly uncertain as always that it doesn’t matter what I write, so why write at all rather than read or take a break or play a game.

Today’s support:

1. You, the reader, it’s inspiring to write in today’s world, where maybe what I wrote was meaningful or helpful or uplifting or helped someone remember a word they were thinking of to someone out there.
2. My persistent readers, having so many cool writers that read and comment (and also kind individuals) is very uplifting. It inspires me to write freely, this or maybe someday a book, and also to be more kind. Receiving kindness seems to give me a little more patience, in a way that simply being commanded to be more kind never replicated.
3. My sister, she worked really hard fixing this computer on January 2nd, without her, I wouldn’t have most of the problems solved I have solved because she is an excellent problem solver.
4. The Gallium OS team, they are Linux, which supports my Chromebook which is so old it’s operating system is no longer supported, meaning it was abandoned by Google and Chrome OS, but that Linux team supported it so that I can use my same physical computer as a new computer instead of scraping it.
5. David Attenborough, he made a new show in 2020 at 94… so kind of shamed my unproductivity, but at the same time comforted me to see his new documentary “A Life on Our Planet” (on Netflix right now).
6. Jean Craighead George author of Julie of the Wolves and The Talking Earth. (from 1972)
7. Laura Ingalls Wilder of the Little House books. (from 1871)
8. Scott O’ Dell author of Island of the Blue Dolphins. (from 1960)
9. Marcus Aurelius author of Meditations. (from 180)
10. Rachel Macy Stafford, an author, but kind of a blogger first in a way. She runs Hands Free Mama she kept going throughout her tough times and is very honest and open and it inspires me that it’s possible to do all those things.
11. Actually many more bloggers, Lovie Price, Mark Manson, Nomzamo Madide and Thomas “the Happiness Nerd”. Lovie because she has really interesting insights into everyday life I haven’t seen anywhere else, she also always inspires me to take action towards change.
12. Mark because he covers intellectual debates and philosophy in a current way and covers a lot of habit change and values based living struggle points.
13. Nomzamo because her writing opens my eyes to a different level of reflection and social responsibility that widens my horizons externally and internally.
14. Thomas because he gives me so many suggestions that I eventually try and enjoy, so many solutions to adding mindfulness, or simple joy or shifting perspective to enjoy life more that I always end up with a few that work for me.

I wanted to explore what I love about the authors that inspire me, not as a compliment primarily, but because it tells me a lot about myself, what I like to explore and what matters to me as a reader is not exactly who I am as a writer, but it gives me some clues about perhaps where I am headed.

I guess when support outweighs challenges something difficult like writing/publishing becomes enjoyable and possible and perhaps instead of beating myself up that I haven’t finished something major like a book, I can instead wonder how much support I need to find and accept before I have the capacity to do that, and also be grateful for the time to meditate on where I fit in the world without rushing into a project that turns something I love (writing) into a 9-5 kind of job that leeches the passion out of what I once enjoyed?

Perhaps.

💞

I read an article today, by Lindsay Tigar, I want to share.

It was about this major shift in my mind where I just don’t care at all about the struggles of others. I’m so emotionally tired, even though I’m not physically tired. I can’t pretend to care, which is always hard for me, but today I CAN’T.

It was scary, because I was at my normal level, maybe 38% or at best 68%, but today 0%… It was scary, because it was like a light switch going out. I was one way, then I didn’t down spiral, I snapped.

I have been feeling like I don’t have enough support for my kids, husband and extended family for a long time, since last March at least… but now it’s worse, a whole level worse.

On the outside it doesn’t look much different, I did music lessons for my son, I always shower, I took both kids out to play, I cuddled my daughter, it wouldn’t look so wrong from the outside, but from the inside it’s terrifying to know the cupboard is now empty, I’m not being grumpy or worried it will be, it is already empty.

I’ve never felt like this before, so I was worried about what it was.

I read an article that called it “compassion fatigue” and it helped me to have a name for it, know it is “normal” and know it’s probably not permanent.

2. You don’t feel compassion for others.

You used to have empathy for the colleague who always arrived late to Zooms because they were juggling a toddler and school-aged kid while working. Or, you may have gone easy on the recent hire who needed everything explained to them not once, not twice, but three times. But now that you’re eight months (and counting) into a state of lockdown, your emotional tolerance could be waning. According to licensed marriage and family therapist Laura Rhodes-Levin, this is a key signifier of mental fatigue, since meeting the needs of others requires forethought, energy, and consideration.

When you don’t have enough motivation to do routine tasks, giving extra to those around you is all but impossible. “Compassion fatigue is the sense that you just don’t care enough to make this much-needed exchange,” she says. “Sometimes it feels like you are zoned out completely and feel numb and disconnected.” This doesn’t make you a bad person. It just signals that perhaps you need more self-care periods within your week.

– Lindsay Tigar It’s not that you don’t care. It’s that you’re mentally exhausted

One thing that is scary is that it’s energizing to not give a damn about anyone else. If I don’t care 2,000+ people died today it’s a lot easier to get the floors cleaned today, and they look great!

I did care, I felt bad for each family loosing someone, the ill (like my aunt), and suddenly I don’t care.

People thought I didn’t care because I didn’t fear getting sick, that’s two different things completely. I did care. But I don’t. The part of me that did care basically got broken. Someday I’m sure I’ll care, but it’s been 3 or 4 days and a good night’s sleep didn’t fix it and I don’t know if I will care again. Because caring doesn’t help much, it drains me and it saves no one, so why even care and be exhausted by it?

I also stopped drinking coffee and eating oatmeal so that in 2021 my life will be a little different than in 2020. Now I eat potatoes and drink black, green and lavender tea. I really needed 2021 to be different… because I could feel myself at the breaking point mentally.

Until I went past that.

It took three traumatic incidents with my daughter, two with my dad and a small argument over white lies, I think that small argument was the final straw and I went off on my dad for the first time in my life, over everything. I felt better, he felt worse, I felt intellectually guilty, but honestly justified. Lies are easier often, but you pay for that someday, it comes back more often than not.

People can apologize when something is over, that doesn’t repair the damage in and of itself, a good start and a bad finish.

All the messes in 2020 got left as is to be dealt with “when the pandemic is over” my mind didn’t make it that far. Christmas made things worse for me as always.

It’s scary not caring, because I don’t look different, but I DON’T CARE. So all the people I thought cared about me in my life, maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t. It’s hard to know.

But it doesn’t feel like enlightenment, it feels like I’m a psychopath who could wipe out a small nation to raise my internet loading time to read my ebooks with less delay. It feels both wrong and good. It feels like I can breathe again, like I can dance again, even upon the graves of others.

I’m so much less tired. I feel vigorous, but then when my kids cry, I hate them. And I didn’t before. I didn’t hate my kids for crying. I’m not hitting them, I’m tending them, but I do not empathize with their pain, I want them to grow the fuck and shut the fuck up. My kids have been so needy.

So it’s like okay the world is all fucked up, have to deal with that, then my husband has extreme political views and I don’t, so have to deal with that… then I have to explain to my kid why the world is noticeably all fucked up and also seems pretty conflicted in general. I was trying to be nice, trying to make it seem very okay, but it’s not super okay, it’s very almost not okay. It’s like a powder keg, nothing too not okay has happened, but it feels like it’s about to like the end of a Dragon Ball Z episode, every single episode feels like almost a fight will start, but then it doesn’t, but it feels like “any time now”…

Day by day the stress slowly broke my mind until it was broken in the compassion department at least, it worried me, but having a name for it made it seem much more “fine”.

So… I hope someone else suffering from compassion fatigue will feel better about being human or maybe other readers will just know why some workers are so much less nice than normal.

🖤

This year my computer is running Galliumos OS, which is an upgrade of the same system.

My husband decided to move out of the house where both my children were born, financially and logistically smart, but emotionally it’s different never returning there again in the same way.

I am living in Hawaii rather than back and forth because it’s in better shape than the area in California where we did live back and forth.

The kids are apart from their dad more, but it’s a better school system, child support system, life style overall.

Looking at my journal from last year it’s easy to see a huge difference in life style,in 2020 on the 1st I was looking at things I wanted to write and reflect on, the 4th I went to the mall (now closed) for $6 dresses I loved, I went to RIE a class for babies to play with other babies for my son (now closed), I went to the Discovery Cube Science Center for my daughter, two floors of fun science displays and toys to play with for kids (now closed), I went to a personal favorite place the Ikea restaurant (now closed), and I taught MMA (now over).

All that in the first 5 days of the year. And this year… none of those things are back, some will never be back for me. I didn’t grieve them, because I thought it was a pause, but the pause became a death or so it seems, a long cryo sleep possibly? More than a hibernation, because it’s been almost four seasons, much more than one.

Civilization the way I knew it is on break.

It’s hard to know if it will come back the same way.

In Long Beach there was once a half circle shaped pier, there was once a roller coaster, constant live music, before I was born. I was born in Long Beach, much later. If I hadn’t read the signs I wouldn’t have known what the city once had been like.

I don’t think life will spring back into the shape it was only a year ago, I don’t know if that is good or bad, or mistaken, but I don’t think it will unpause, I think changes are happening more than a break.

What hurts the most is the martial art’s class I taught gone, that gave me a lot of meaning, a purpose beyond childcare, which I crave so much. Caring for kids is kind of a gift, but it’s not fulfilling in a total way for me doing 1 thing I did before kids made life fuller because it kept alive the spirit of who I was and who I wanted to do and the dreams I hold as an individual separate from my family.

It wasn’t a big class, but it was very cherished, it was the shining part of the week for me to look forward to during all the days and enjoy once a week. Now I’m starting to doubt I will have the courage to restart that, it took a lot to get started, and I don’t know that I will really have the mental audacity left to rebuild from scratch. I really don’t think I will.

Things are so different this year and last year. Last year I was with my husband, this year we are still married, but we live apart.

Last year we had the same home we had since I was pregnant with my daughter, now my husband is moving to his mom’s garage and saving for a new home.

For our family things are very different, but not bad. I’m grateful we are doing reasonably well financially, emotionally, physically. It’s still stressful not knowing when and if we won’t need a mask to go out, if we will be quarantined again by the new president, if places will open, in our area many places look like they won’t reopen… the restaurants, the food trucks, the golf course my dad built his house near to be able to use it all seem like they won’t reopen.

The stress is about half as bad as the food shortages, but it’s still at least twice what a normal year is like. I haven’t been able to maintain all the good habits we once have, but I forgive myself that, I know I did my best considering the stress of being with two small kids during what was quite a tumultuous year.

It may sound the same as when I was examining myself before, but it isn’t. Now I feel strong enough for some changes. The New Year has mentally refreshed me. So before I was taking stock of life to understand it, notice it, integrate it, but now I’m taking a look at what I have and where I am to get ready for changes.

I guess I buried last year in last year, I still bear some scars of it, but no more wounds.

I’m ready to go forward right now, maybe not without a break, or not forever, or not in a way I have a grand plan and concrete steps with real dates of when things can and may happen, but at least in some way I’m ready to go forward. There really is no rush, but I feel invigorated by the New Year.

Recently some black mold started growing on the ceiling of my shower, I grew up in a very moldy home. Mold is political. Some families clean it and other don’t. Mine was a house where no one cleaned. So I had asthma and allergies and generally didn’t like it, but I didn’t know how to clean. Neither of my parents cleaned, I learned the first glimmer of how to do it at work when I was 14. A lady named Ida had rags, she bleached them everyday in a bowl, they looked so nice, they cleaned very well, it wasn’t hard, but it was something never done in my house.

My mom didn’t clean the counters but if she would have she would have used paper towels. She would leave most of the mess behind or smear it around or knock it from the top of the counter to the floor, if she even bothered.

My dad didn’t clean much either, I don’t know if he thought it was women’s work or he just didn’t want to, but he cleans the garage, cars and outside of the house with no problem and shies away from cleaning living spaces inside.

So it was filthy, hoarders filthy, and I suffered health problems absolutely related to it. When we cleaned up the apartment for my dad to move to a new house there were mice crushed to death in boxes, it was too dirty for us to have mice. There were cockroaches crawling under most large things. It’s always been pretty far past a jacket on the edge of a sofa rather than hung up…

And I hated it, but nor did I know much about how to keep up with housework. It was quite awhile before I could contribute to “be the change you want to see”.

Now my sister, my father and I keep a much cleaner home, same people, but better habits.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a crazy improvement. If we were capable of living in a normal range of dirty it makes me feel a bit sad and angry that we lived in extreme filth for so long.

I do more cleaning once a week and just a few basic things everyday and with the same three family member who none of which (including myself) like to clean it’s regular/cluttered instead of condemn-able/extremely cluttered. The clutter is so much of a problem towards cleaning. If a counter has nothing on it I may clean it once a day, if I have to move a bunch of junk it will be once a week or less. I have limited time and energy so I’m not really going to move someone else’s soy sauce bottle to clean a common space, I’m not. Baskets and “launch pads” are invaluable in that regard. My sister has a trey with “stuff” a fish tank with no fish, ext, so I can clean around the trey easily. I’m not going to be emotionally responsible for reminding or encouraging others to declutter, I just get there stuff respectfully out of the way of things that are communal such as cooking areas and worry about my own clutter.

I get really grumpy with a lot of clutter so I hate the Christmas gifts people send the kids that I’m sure are sent with good intentions, but rarely enhance my life quality and not even often the kids. We get duplicates balls when we have balls, cars when we have cars, dinos when we have dinos, we get things that are too advanced or don’t suit their taste, we get a large volume of crap with a small amount of gems. Then I feel either guilty to throw out stuff and hateful to live with it, everyone I offer it too offers me twice as much, somewhere someone would like it, but it’s so far that sending it costs more than buying new stuff, so eventually it becomes part of the pacific trash gyre after I’ve lived with it more than I wanted to until the guilt/hate ratio shifts far enough into hate. I’ve asked two years in a row for “no gifts” the amount my husband’s family respects my boundaries is pretty damn low though, which is both irritating and empowering. It’s irritating because they tell me they respect my wishes and then with their actions they don’t. It’s empowering because I don’t have to treat them with consideration after being treated with disrespect (I still MAY, but I don’t OWE them that).

Went to the beach today, the kids swam in the ocean, my daughter without a floating vest, a year ago she couldn’t swim and was a bit afraid, this year she is a strong swimmer and a happy one. There were sea turtles, including a little one, a rainbow, it was nice. I baked my first bread, it was thick and poor, but not burnt or horribly wrong. The kids made clay, they went to preschool on Zoom for the first time. It’s a good life, but an exhausting one.

I restarted finding one bitmoji image for the day, it’s a way to see how I feel, but it also becomes validating that it’s okay to feel that way and helps me notice my feelings change, I don’t always feel stuck, though I sometimes do.

So goodbye 2020 coronavirus and 2020 pandemic life, but hello 2021 with a full raging pandemic, rather than expect it will be over any day I’m going to assume it will mar most of the year, if not the whole year, and I’ll be pleased to be wrong instead of sad and angry how long it lasted during 2020.

🐢

I just finished a book by John Holt (“Learning All the Time”), he was dead when it was published. It was the first book I read by a dead author, dead at the time of first publication. I loved the book, it had a better way to do education, it was 1985 when it came out, the year I was born. None of his advice was taken in the US, but it’s interesting to know solutions were there then.

Perhaps there are also solutions to the pandemic already that just don’t correspond to the decisions the people with power choose to make? If not I’m sure there will some day be solutions. Will they happen? That I don’t know. Will there be solutions, I think so.

The world is filled with bright minds, minds brighter than mine, but so often society punishes those people for being abnormal, it doesn’t matter if you are abnormally above or abnormally below the average, the society I live in venerates the average in almost every way, with the exception of sports and some other things it’s constantly encouraged to be average in a world of natural diversity.

The roman gardens were very straight and controlled, I think in the US every attempt has been made to keep the minds of children and then the adults they become like that, in line, dull, coordinated…

My mind is more like an English garden, ramshackle, with lilacs spilling way over where they were “meant to be,” for so long I tried to prune myself into the average I was told to be and it was a large and painful chore to me.

But I’m done with that.

Kwanzaa was a good vehicle for me to reflect on who I am, who I want to be.

Part of Kwanzaa is the “Tamshi La Tambiko” as we are very mixed I adapted it last year, we are African, but also mixed, I feel strongly that Kwanzaa still exists for us and was unintentionally meant for all of us as we are truly African Diaspora.

THE ORIGINAL TAMSHI LA TAMBIKO:
Our fathers and mothers came here, lived, loved, struggled and built here. At this place, their love and labor rose like the sun and gave strength and meaning to the day. For them, then, who gave so much we give in return. On this same soil we will sow our seeds, and liberation and a higher level of human life. May our eyes be the eagle, our strength be the elephant, and the boldness of our life be like the lion. And may we remember and honor our ancestors and the legacy they left for as long as the sun shines and the waters flow.
For our people everywhere then:For Shaka, Samory, and Nzingha and all the others known and unknown who defended our ancestral land, history and humanity from alien invaders;
For Garvey, Muhammad, Malcolm, and King; Harriet, Fannie Lou, Sojourner, Bethune, and Nat Turner and all the others who dared to define, defend, and develop our interests as a people;
For our children and the fuller and freer lives they will live because we struggles;
For Kawaida and the Nguzo Saba, the new system of views and values which gives identity, purpose, and direction to our lives;
For the new world we struggle to build;
And for the continuing struggle through which we will inevitably rescue and reconstruct our history and humanity in our own image and according to our own needs.

– Maulana Karenga

OUR FAMILIES TAMSHI LA TAMBIKO

Out of Africa our first mother and father lived and died, their lives are a mystery to us, but without them we would not be here and their blood runs through our veins and their DNA builds our bodies and powers our cells with energy from mitochondria past directly from our shared mother. Over time we traveled far and wide, from the east country of the rising sun, the middle kingdom, the cold mountains, the islands of endless summer, the country of corn, and the country of the eagle and the snake.

Our fathers and mothers came here, lived, loved, struggled and built here. At this place, their love and labor rose like the sun and gave strength and meaning to their days. For them, then, who gave so much we give in return. On this same Earth we will raise our children in tenderness and patience, seeking a higher level of human awareness and unity intil someday world peace is possible. Our eyes are the eagle, our strength is the elephant, and tour courage is the lion. We remember and honor our ancestors and the legacy they left for as long as we have air in our lungs and love in our hearts.

For our people everywhere then: for all the just defenders of virtue of all times and races, for all those who spoke and speak for human rights and harmony with nature; for our children and the fuller and freer lives they will live because we struggle; for Kawaida and the Nguzo Saba, who founded Kwanzaa, for Mamoe Tanaoe who founded our family, for our own soul which revels to use our views and values which gives identity, purpose, and direction to our lives; for the new lives we struggle to build; And for the continuing struggle through which we all go to live our best lives possible according to our own needs, courage and wisdom.

– Maulana Karenga adapted by Sakura Mendoza (November 6th, 2019)

The reflections for January 1st: “Who am I?” “Am I really who I say I am?” “Am I doing all I could be?”

A note on faith from the past: “Living fully means… tuning into the small, still voice of belief, even when doubt is loud and obnoxious.“

The last day of Kwanzaa is about Imani, faith, for me that’s faith in myself.

So it begs the question who am I?

I don’t fully know that, but I know I don’t like owning dogs and cats, that’s a start. I guess I’m a book and people person, I’m a coffee person, I have kids, but I’m not a kid person… I’m a music person, an idea person, an action person. An honest person.

In this cartoon from the Daft Punks there are blue musicians from another world painted peach and enslaved on Earth:

I guess I’m still unpainting myself, a lot of times when I do find who I am, I don’t like what I find, because when I find doesn’t fit with the life I have, so finding out who I am means work of change and sometimes that’s too much for the energy I really have in the moment.

I’d like to start this year in gratitude, five things that are good right now, 1. My son and I connecting over colors, numbers and letters he is authentically interested. 2. Leaving behind the habit of trying to teach my daughter more than she wants to know now that she knows basic reading, writing and math. 3. That I am much more able to forgive myself and others than I was before. 4. Balloons, we blew up balloons for my sister’s birthday and I just still love balloons. 5. Steam from tea cups, it never gets old to me, the simple things make the day wonderful or bearable, if I don’t let myself enjoy them, there isn’t much to enjoy then.

🍵

Inspiration vs excitement, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for almost a year.

Excitement seems to drive many people to do things, try things, accomplish things, buy things, but not me, not that much.

So the question became what does drive me?

One of the things is truth, I’m haunted by truth, I’m bound to it.

If I had the most attractive, easiest to live with husband in the world, and I knew it wasn’t real love, because he was gay, or loved another person, or perhaps no one else, but not me, it wouldn’t be anything to me. I’m sure I have inconsistencies and mistakes in my knowledge, but I just can’t overlook the elephant in the room the way many of my close family or friends seem to be able to do.

I don’t have autism, although one of types causes inability to lie as normal (Asperger’s), I can lie if I needed to do so to save my life, but I hate it, it drains me, it weighs on me.

My daughter was diagnosed today with sensory processing disorder, and I don’t know too much about it, the doctor did explain, but I had never heard of it before so it will be a bit longer until I understand it at a deep level.

My resolution for 2021 is to get a CES machine that can stimulate her vegus nerve to help her calm down. It’s a very specific resolution this year to get and use a CES (Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation) machine.

I was crying myself to sleep earlier tonight, and for some reason I thought I’ll write, just in case anyone else was crying themselves to sleep on New Year’s Eve, they may someday know they were not alone in that.

I was crying because while my five year old daughter was trying to kick my father, he tripped her and she fell on the floor. She should not be kicking anyone, but she can’t act properly, her brain is a bit stunted. Her prefrontal cortex shuts down, her executive center is approximately like a two year old, even though she is five.

Her father was working at her age, I was attending public school, and my daughter can’t get through 1 week without hitting or kicking a family member.

But she isn’t at the level of a normal person. Maybe someday she will be, probably so, but not yet.

I want to always keep my daughter safe, but she is so annoying she isn’t safe with her father, my father, my sister, and barely me sometimes. I don’t really blame anyone, if you haven’t been with her for 3 hours or more you really would have no idea someone like her existed, unless you have a relative like that, then you know…

The reality is that she shouldn’t have been kicking anyone, the reality is that adults should walk away or put the kids away rather than hurting them, but the reality is that it doesn’t always happen like that either, adults hurt kids, kids hurt adults, families are super messy microcosms.

I really hate that, I love order, I love serenity, I love justice, and families are such gray areas, such disordered meshes of varieties of ethics, personalities, preferences and hobbies, families are ripe with small, medium and large injustice that go unchecked, unexamined and uncorrected.

I’ve lived alone, I’ve lived with family, I won’t deny they both have advantages, but I wouldn’t say family is better than no family, it’s close to even, lots of benefits, lots of costs. In my life, family member were the ones who hit from you, lie to you and steal from you more, not less, but they also cook for you, support you, and keep you alive.

If I didn’t live with my dad currently, my daughter may not have been knocked down with her head hitting the floor. I consoled her about the event, she feels better, she will probably heal physically and mentally, but possibly not, she says she wanted to die because of it, very dramatic, but possibly how she actually feels, who would know better than her how she feels. I worry for her emotions, I worry for her brain, but I already have a doctor for her, I have a treatment plan, we go, we try, it’s not “perfect” but it’s not an emergency in that it isn’t emergent meaning “new”. Modern brain research is that the brain is incredibly fragile physically, a small bump causes micro bleeds, they typically heal well, but each time they possibly won’t heal well. The brain isn’t tough. So I don’t like the whole damn thing, I get it, it happens, in real life it happens, but I hate it.

My father apologized, my daughter apologized, will the brain bleeds mend properly, maybe so, maybe not.

It’s painful because 1. It’s painful to know that I can’t really take a break and have my kids be 100% safe, when they are not with me they are not 100% safe (even when they are with me they aren’t). 2. It’s painful to know I don’t have the family I would like to have where we would protect each other from violence not engage in it. 3. It’s painful for me because my daughter’s brain is already not 100% and getting knocked on the back of the head isn’t the best for improving it. I’m trying to go the other way. 4. It’s painful for me because it’s my sister’s birthday and I wanted the day to be without drama, fighting, emotionally trauma/neediness/counseling my daughter which I hate to do and am not good at.

But I look at the truths, 1. My kids are not ever going to be 100% safe, that’s out of my hands, they get hurt in front of me all the time, 2. I’ve never had a family life I liked, ever, the fact I’m still trying at least says something for tenacity and optimism (I come from a broken family, I hate passive aggressive comments and our beliefs vary so widely that there is more tension than I enjoy), 3. Accidents have, do and will continue to happen, dealing with them is better as a strategy than fearing them, 4. I can want the day to be without drama as much as I want to, but odds are it will have drama. Perhaps someday I will look back and miss the kids, but I very much doubt I will miss the drama, it’s not something I like.

So life isn’t perfect, I’m not perfect, my family isn’t perfect, 2020 wasn’t perfect, but it won’t be perfect in 2021 or ever, I won’t be, my family won’t be, but I’ll do my best, I’ll give my kids the best effort I can. I’ll try not to wallow in negativity, but I don’t turn away from it either, it shows me who I am.

I read many quotes that hate is bad, poison ext.

But one day I found the idea that it protects us from evil, by showing us what isn’t good for us that we are in the presence of evil.

I believe that.

I believe hating my family hurting one another is correct for me, that it will focus me to find solutions of conflict management of adults needing breaks, of safe spaces for children.

Hate drives me to work into the night, to ask an expert, to pay an expert, to not let things stand indefinably that should not be let to stand.

Some hate is silly, some hate is destructive, some hate is not worth it, but I don’t believe the world is a good enough place that it’s not a valid tool to have in my tool box. I still unfortunately find a place for it, if people are stoned to death for silly things like made up adultery ext, that is and does quality as evil to me and I hate it, I realize the whole world isn’t falling apart at all times, but I know there are still evils in the world that I don’t feel the need to forget, overlook, or embrace as if they are not evils.

I don’t have all the answers about myself, about how to live with my family well, but what I find surprising is how much what works for someone else won’t work for me, what works for other children, won’t fit my daughter, how distinct people can be on the inside seems to be so much a vaster range then the outside. I wonder if someday we will have an easy way to see ourselves and one another as we are rather than to seldom find out about anyone else apart from best friends and spouses?

So kind of a dark post, but I wanted anyone else in the darkness to know they aren’t there alone.

Sometimes it seems counter intuitive to name the ugly things in life, and it doesn’t have to be public, but it should be done, to not name them prevents the dissolution of the victim-hood that corresponds to them, when you don’t name them you are tightly bound together, that makes it harder to walk away and not walking away makes it harder to more forward. We are the captains of our souls, but not the captains of the planet, one of the hardest things is to know how much we can do to change our lives and our world and another is how much we struggle to let go of what we can never change in our lives and our world, but there’s always tomorrow to work on that.

Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain. We all have sorrow, but if we are wise, we know that there’s always tomorrow.

– Bill Withers (Lean on Me)

This is the first New Year’s Eve I’m away from my husband in a long time, since we met… but in my heart I’m with him. I wonder if he will notice? Because I don’t know if there is something real that connects people in love or just something imaginary, even after thinking it’s real, I know that I don’t really know.

I don’t know why people from the same families can be so different, why it’s so difficult for people in general to get along and what motivates me to do the things that I actually do vs the things I think I would like to be doing. The world is a mystery, other people are a mystery to me and I am a mystery to myself still at 35.

But I have some peace in my heart because I have hope for the future, hope to do well for those I love who need me, gratitude to those who help me like the neurology team and the makers of the CES, hope that people are generally good and usually do over time find solutions to large and small problems. I have a lot of hope that things will get better and everything will be all right, although largely imperfect if not next year, then the next and if not next generation, then the next, eventually…

The issues my daughter have have been in recorded history for over 3000 years, the treatment has been around for 6 years. For some people this is the best time to have ever been alive, it’s easy to forget that.

🕯️