Talking about living

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Today’s newsletter brought to you by Venus Retrograde : The portal is open! Go forth!

In a twisted act of fate I was chosen by god to have a job where I talk about life. I talk about living for a living. To be chosen for this is an honor, one I take very seriously. One that lead me to write a book to help myself and other people not always be working.

It is commonly pointed out to me by the people that I love the most that I spend a lot of time processing the art of living without … living. This is something Jackie calls : Talking About Living. It can also be called a healing crisis, obsessive thinking, anxious attachment, generalized anxiety, inability to stay present, insert your own sentence here.

The great balancing act of life, the great waiting game, the great why are we here game requires one thing - it requires us to live. It requires us to cease fire, to fully surrender, and to pay attention. Not just pay attention as an act of remembering to process later with others, but to pay attention because we don’t actually have much time here and when we put down the constant modalities of healing there is a lot of fun to be had.

I come to you live from the realization of : I have been trying too hard to fix myself. Perhaps since 1988, but really in the last year and REALLY in the last five months.

When something ruptures in the structure of what was giving us the illusion of safety, it can spin out little cogs in the system that make it feel like we are actually dying. Ok so I am not a neuroscientist but what I do know is that it feels like drug withdrawal to have whatever you are addicted to taken away, and even if isn’t “technically” a drug, if you are relying it on it to fix your state of being and keep you safe and it isn’t god or you filling your own cup - it will cause a sense of physical withdrawal when it is gone.

There are a lot of things I am working to heal, parts I am tending to, and it’s tiring. I let it be tiring. I let it be tiring because I don’t filter the information to the right place, and I don’t let it bring me to sitting with myself. I let it bring more and more up with little integration.

I TAKE MY HEALING VERY SERIOUSLY. AND THEN COMPLETELY FORGET TO ACTUALLY LIVE MY LIFE.

I attend my little meetings, do my morning pages, make my outreach calls, read a ton of self help books, watch documentaries, read articles, listen to self help podcasts, listen to Pema on repeat, go to therapy, talk to my psychic, go to my chiropractor, the list goes on. If you’re like WOW this sounds like narcism don’t worry I talk about that with my therapist too.

I have been in Colorado for over a month and a half and I have barely hiked. Hiking is how I know what I like. Hiking is how I know literally anything. Hiking is how I don’t work, don’t try to fix myself, hang out with god, hang out with myself, and talk to the ground. I get messages in Morning Pages and I learn things in books but walking is how I KNOW. And when we lived in Tahoe and New Mexico I just walked out my door to a trail. Now I have to drive to a trail. Driving to a trail is a very easy thing to do and in my head I have made it very difficult. And I have been spending a lot of fucking time talking about HOW HARD IT IS now that I don’t have a dirt trail out my front door instead of just … going to a trail in my vehicle.

Something that works for me is whining to myself so much that I cannot stand the sound of my own whining and I do something about it. The other part is choosing a partner willing to set boundaries, look you in the face and say - I miss you, where did you go? Come back. I would like to whine less to myself and to other people. I would like to not have to be obliterated before I learn the thing.

Coming back is a bitch. Laying down the sword of the pity party, not trying to get everyone else to fix it for you, this is humility. This is the emotional bottom we get to climb out of.

Talking about living : the art of not actually living and just being in a body and walking through the world in endless fear and attempts to control but not actually surrendering to groundlessness and seeing how good everything is.

So here are some things I have been doing to actually live :

Listening to my podcasts again : Las Culturistas and Seek Treatment. I can think of the exact moment I stopped and can actually track that that’s when I started taking life way too seriously

Going to sports games

Planning ski trips

Not telling Jackie everything I think about every three seconds

Not telling anyone what I think and remembering I have containers in my job to put those things (books, newsletter, classes)

Cooking

Hot tubbing

Karaoke

Taking June to the Dog Park

Going to Baby Showers

Holding Babies

Trying wigs on

Took myself to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum

Solo breakfast at Breakfast King

Things to add back in this week : Dancing and Walking

I think the biggest thing is : talk less. Mania mixed with being a Gemini and a Human Design 2/4 Manifestor mixed with anxious attachment will really make a guy talk a lot. AND it makes me extremely good at my job. The problem is when they are not separated. I honestly thought they were because when I am sharing my thoughts with someone I am NOT typing or putting them into my work so I think I am not working. But I am working.

I turned my life into a self help research laboratory and it isn’t going well.

There is part of me that doesn’t think I deserve fun and ease. And I haven’t fully figured that part out but I did put some honey out for my spiritual gay ancestors and for the part of me that feels guilty for thriving.

Thank you to Madison Morrigan who interviewed me for her podcast last week where these revelations began. Specifically around guilt when it comes to joy and pleasure. It is starting to feel like I might have to act as if. I might have to act as if I am just fine with not trying to fix every part of myself. I want to heal ten steps ahead of where I am because I am terrified something will happen that will require the next level of healing and I won’t be there yet.

I would make a resolution for 2022 but that seems so far away, so I’ll just make this resolution for right now :

I want to have fun. I want to release shame about earning. I want to make so much fucking money it explodes out of my ears. I want to buy a house and I want to buy Jackie a dirt bike and I want to pay my taxes and I want to invite you all to make art at the motel I will buy us on Lake Michigan. I want to start my own organization that gives away quilts and redistributes tens of thousands of dollars every year. I want to pay off my car and I want to pay off my tax debt and I want to buy a truck. I want to save money and I want to start a 401k. I want to buy hot jeans that make my ass look like a miracle. I want to take me and Jackie to Iceland. I want to make out with a stranger in a tropical place. I want to hike hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles and use the pack I invested in. I want to float in my hot tub and feel my spine heal. I want to buy fabric just because I fucking like it and it makes me want to make art. I want to sell out quilt class over and over and over again. I want to write another book and have it be a bestseller and have it be in so many people’s hands. I want to fly my brother and Jackie’s sister here and not even skip a beat because it’s so easy to give the gift of flight. I want to feel proud of myself for being an amazing teacher and writing a chaotic newsletter with run on sentences. I want my self esteem to fly through the roof. I want to make everyone feel like making art is their favorite thing and the best way to live. I want to stretch my arms to the sky and know no one can take this away from me ever ever ever. No one has that power. I have this power.

I have done enough

I have done enough

I have done enough

Time to get back to being ALIVE ALIVE ALIVE without guilt, without shame, in gratitude and humility - this is what my Higher Power wants so as the kids say, let’s fucking go

1. I came out to Jackie, my family, and then the internet as non binary and my pronouns are they / them - May the expansion ripple out forever

2. This week I mostly looked at the dirt of the Earth and my mind with Jade - Jade made new teas drink them 69 herbs 4ever

3. HERE ARE SOME TREATS :

Take 25% off all of the replays to my classes! CULTIVATING CREATIVE ATTENTION, FROM DISCIPLINE TO DEVOTION, NEWSLETTER CLASS, and THE WORLD NEEDS YOUR ONLINE CLASS Use code venus25 at checkout

Venus Retrograde is NOW until January 19 and is a beautiful time to get in alignment with your relationships to art, money, yourself, and others : TREAT YOURSELF 2 CLASS!

CLASS REPLAYS

4. There are 4 SPOTS left in Tuesday’s Quilt Class and then January is sold out and I have no idea when the next quilt class is! Maybe March? Is it cold then still?

5. My little hun Jake Kmiecik put out Horizons - get your ambient music freak time on!

6. Elsewhere Studios is hiring

7. bell hooks forever

8. From Trisha Brown, Group Primary Accumulation, 1973

   

9. Liz Migliorelli (Sister Spinster) brings us FLOWERING ROUND - a new class offering all you flower essence heads (and beyond!) will not want to miss

10. Stevie never misses with the memes

    

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