My daily ritual is to get in the sauna and do my morning pages. Sometimes this happens in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes after dinner. Sometimes I do my morning pages on the couch when I wake up and then do another set later in the day. Are they morning pages if you just keep doing them at all different times, or are you just journaling at that point?
I pray to keep the channel of creation open, and as times of despair and sorrow and loneliness strike it feels harder and harder to do this. I notice in the absence of Instagram on my phone or in my world I refresh the gmail app and check my bank account, not just for something to do, but to feel like I am doing. To feel like I am working, making an effort. Even though these refreshes rarely lead to any productive or deep work, my thumb travels to the icons in hopes of finding something valuable there. Some thread of human connection, a glimmer of being witnessed. My bank account never tells me what I want and my inbox reminds me of the time I haven’t protected to respond to emails.
I am noticing now more than ever the importance of no phone time to channel clearly. It really can’t even be in the same room as me if I want to get any downloads, new inspiration, and new ideas coming to me. I have to be phone free, pen in hand, or fresh google document open. I have to ask what is next, I have to ask for the new idea, I have to ask what the next class is. I keep hoping the new thing will just appear out of thin air, but it is in the inviting of spirit into collaborating on the invention that fruitful new ideas come.
Leaving Instagram has been a strange experience that has left me with just as many questions as it has answers. I knew how it was affecting my brain but in this short time without it I see the long term effects its had on my self esteem and my addiction to validation. There is a withdrawal period I am still very much in and I reach for my phone, searching for god in any crevice, unable to find the spiritual remedy I am looking for. A few of my most validating relationships are on pause, Instagram being one of them, the others with humans, and I notice what an empty vessel I have become. One that needs to be filled by the well and the water jug in new ways. Creative ways that I must now search for, be open to, spirit willing.
When inspiration runs dry I want to forage everywhere for the new ideas. I don’t want to let myself off the hook even for one moment, fear that if I lose momentum I will lose it forever. This has never been true though, resting from the hunt brings me closer to what is coming next. I try to figure everything out, be a few steps ahead, I find myself bracing for impact but I don’t know what I am bracing for. My shoulders tense up, my nerve pain flares, and I succumb to the pause I know is being asked of me.
My friend has a bumper sticker that says I’d Rather Be Here Now. I’d rather be anywhere but in the clouds and in my head and in my future. I’d rather be anywhere than the bracing for impact of something that is so far out of my control. I’m thinking a lot about how to apply the twelve step principles I hold so dear to this time of worldly crisis. How can I step into my role as cultural worker and writer, while inventing the next thing, while also being here now? Remembering that what other people think of me is none of my business, figure it out is not a slogan, easy does it, and one day at a time. I ask god to enter everything I do just before me so that I am never truly alone.
So the well runs dry, and we ask spirit for a little more. The weather runs dry and we ask the sky for a little more. The time changes and the sun sets earlier and we trust that the light will fade day by day. We await its great return next month, but for now we must surrender to its lessening.
Dear reader I wish you creative abundance today and all days. If that means doing very little, I hope you can release perfectionism and be in acceptance of your capacity. The fight for liberation is long and arduous. If your momentum is already lost this is normal, so we rest a bit so we can pick the pieces back up and carry on. When inspiration runs dry trust that the creek bed dries up, and sometimes must wait for the swell of rain to fill it back up. We don’t get to plan for when that happens, how frustrating, yet what a gift to let god do the heavy lifting.
Keep using your voice, keep asking god1 for the answers, keep on, keep on, onward.
talking from her home cafe in a sweet video
The latest installment of the Yes Yes Advice Column is about when you are judging other people for not doing enough, while also reminaing ready to usher them into the great work at hand
Wishing everyone else would step up to the plate
Yes Yes Advice Column
Don’t miss in Detroit on December 7 to celebrate her new book!
All of bumper stickers
From newsletter which deeply inspired me this week
I signed up for Tarot for Change class on November 29
I finished reading Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A History of My Brief Body and I think it might be my favorite book I have ever read, which used to be Bluets - maybe they are tied
This is my favorite book about tarot and I’ve been digging back into it - Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom by sacred trans ancestor Rachel Pollack
I have also been playing with The Secret Dakini Oracle Deck and I love it
This song
A portion of November’s paid subscriptions goes toward the Palestinian Youth Movement
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Wow I said god a lot in this newsletter I hope you replace it with any word that means NOT YOU