Well, hello there.
Long time, no see.
It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long? But, in actuality it’s been over a month now.
Time continues to feel like a construct, as life lately has been a lot of a little bit of everything.
In the days leading up to me coming to BC, I’d have some silent and still moments – usually early in the morning or late at night – where I’d check in with myself, and issue a reminder:
“No matter how excited, laser focused, and optimistic you are now… remember to temper yourself. Life isn’t going to stop happening just because you move yours to a different location. And when that happens… go with it. You are not in control like you think you are.”
Which, as it turns out, was not at all incorrect and is a sentiment that has been both humbling, and haunting as life, indeed, has not stopped happening now that I’m here. And no matter how pure my intention to keep up with this blog, I keep finding reasons not to.
I have such a complicated relationship with consistency.
On one hand? In some ways, I am almost offensively, predictably, consistent. (Just ask anyone who has ever been irritated with me over virtually anything, for any reason).
Regarding the opposite hand however – the things I am aching to be consistent at… the habits I am dying to build (and rebuild) that I know are good for me… they elude me in a way that makes me feel like I have absolutely no self control whatsoever.
For example – I have learned unequivocally over the last decade, the less time I allow myself to spend stewing in my own head… the better. I made a decision several years ago to intentionally dedicate more time to occupying my body, instead – to exist in the physical world, and be present there.
I started moving. Walking like crazy, working out.
I WATCHED it make me feel better. I proved it to myself. I was there.
And so, with that lesson in mind, I got a gym membership here a few weeks ago.
… Do you think I’ve been more than once so far?
Even though I know it’s good for me?
(To be clear… nope)
Just like showing up here and getting some words out. Splling some guts. Sitting down in front of a blank screen and forcing myself to untie some mental knots. To get up from the keyboard with a refreshed sense of some mental clarity. It’s my oldest form of therapy. I know it’s good for me.
Sometimes I have this nagging thought – “If I could just push myself to make these things into habits – to be consistent – then, holy shit.” (I mean, honestly, if I knew how to harness my own stubbornness for my benefit, I would have done so by now. It’s a work in progress.)
Despite all that – it has been a really incredible month of creating.
I’ve had this fantasy idea for a novel/screenplay kicking up mental dust for yeeeears – pages and pages of notes, spanning multiple notebooks, and inkwells, and eras of time. And finally, I’ve been doing something with all of it. Which has been a little bit of a mess? – But a fun one.
I’ve had to kill some darlings though. I’m such a different human now, compared to when it was all originally conceived. I feel differently – I believe differently. And perhaps most important, I write differently. I still love a lot of the ideas, but I needed to reshuffle them. It was like a bin of blocks I flipped upside down onto the floor. I just stared at all the pieces until I figured out how I wanted to re-stack them. It’s still gonna be such a long endeavor of a journey – I am a quite a ways away from having it all “cracked”. But the absolute fucking joy it’s been to get lost in a world I’ve built myself… It’s been a long time. I have consistently worked on it – but it’s been at the expense of lots of other things (like showing up here).
This is the only other way I know consistency to make an appearance, comes in the form of fixation. Just, pure and blatant disregard for almost everything else. Even all the other stuff that is good for me.
All of this leads me to believe that maybe, consistency is more about balance than it is anything else. Which is also, an absolute work in progress. But the progress is indisputable. Especially as I allow myself to lean further and further into living a life full of the things I love. The stuff that makes me feel like me. My own consistencies, so many of which, I had somehow fallen away from.
I’ll find a way to “crack” my own code, and end up here more. And eventually, I’ll go back to the gym as well.
As a random side story – on the bus yesterday, the driver told us all he wasn’t familiar with the changes on this route. Evidently it had been over a year, and he didn’t know how to navigate all the construction changes. Several of the passengers directed him on how to go, and it was one of the kindest and most wholesome interactions I’ve seen in a long time – I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It feels like such a contradiction to be alive in this time in history, where I have seen the best and worst examples of humanness co-exist like shadows in the afternoon sun.
We, too, continue to be a work in progress.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
MV
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