Dear reader,

One of my biggest fears is looking crazy. Not of actually being crazy, that part I can manage on my own and with a myriad of people and resources and meds. But to be perceived as crazy, unhinged, not all there - this is my fear.

You see I have this newsletter, the one you’re reading now, and I’ve been writing it since 2012. In many ways it acts like a traditional blog. I write about whats happening and report the inner findings of my mind. At almost fourteen years of doing this at least monthly, and for nine years weekly, I have shown my readers my whole soul. I have left few stones unturned. And for a person like me, it runs the risk of looking crazy.

I write about being drunk all the time. I get sober. I start a business, I get married, the business shifts into a residency and art gallery, I get divorced, I move across the country, I’m gay now. I move back to Michigan and in with my ex husband to run an artist residency, I move out west, I experience a polyamorous nightmare, I move back to Michigan, I deactivate social media a bunch of times, I buy a house, I meet a girl I dated when I was twenty and invite her to move in, I permanently delete my Instagram accounts, I publically regret it, I get a new account for a week, I deactivate it, today I quietly sign back in.

The flight of the Gemini, the moves of a bipolar person, the malleability of being non binary. In my worries of looking crazy I want my students to feel like they can trust me. This push and pull between writing the personal and performing the professional. I want to say - you can trust me because I always tell the truth, it’s just that my truth is always changing. I remember that if people can’t keep up it’s ok if they fall away, as painful as that may be.

I want to tell everyone about Landscapes and I want there to be an easy way to find it, to find the way in. This was part of my logging back in. Today Amelia Hruby is our guest teacher to talk about finishing writing projects (recorded if you can’t make it live). Your first week is always free, jump in the water is warm. The people are connecting and the writing is happening!

I want to paint my office blue. Right now when I am on zoom the background looks so bleak and I don’t know how to spruce it up other than to paint the walls a bright fun color. I also think it would make me happier to be in there. I don’t have a line item in my spending plan for house paint. I’ll wait.

I am really struggling to clean up lately. My clothes are everywhere and I have too many. I’ve been reading a book about having a minimalist home and I keep wondering if I just took the time I was reading the book to actually pick up my clothes I would solve the problem. But I do believe there is something about the preparation, the mindset shift, the getting ready that solidifies something as being more than a habit, but a lifestyle modification.

I’m not exactly sure I am trying to be a minimalist but I am certainly trying to have less to clean up. And in order to have less piles and less to clean up one might argue for a minimalist home.

I have been reading a lot of self help the last few weeks. Mostly about planning and time management. I usually don’t read books by seemingly neurotypical people but then I remember I am an excellent translator. I can translate their normie lives and patterns into weird and wavy ones. And I have done exactly that.

I have been working with a nested goals system from the book Best Laid Plans and its doing wonders for my mental health. I know when work ends for the day and when to turn my phone off and when to stop checking emails. I’ve been doing inbox zero every day and it’s not hard once you get caught up and stick to it. I have been keeping my numbers in YNAB everyday and getting stricter about my habits.

I wrote about money for paid subscribers last week :

When the Math Isn't Mathing

Working Through Money

I know I said I was retiring from writing about social media but I always say shit and then need to figure it out again. Maybe I should retire from saying I’m retiring. I think what I am actually retiring from is explaining myself. Or feeling like I have to publicly share my rules or my boundaries or my new practices. I am retired from trying to prove myself. What other people think of me is none of my business and I am not here to prove anything.

The realities are - leaving Instagram, while being incredibly illuminating, has never changed my life in the same way integrating my practices has. In The Practice of Attention I go through five practices that greatly helped me restore my attention : Hobbies, Movement, Creativity, Research, and Spiritual practices. Culminating in my greatest effort : Being of Service. Filling my life with purpose, planning, and community is what restored my attention, not leaving an app behind.

While I stand by digital detoxes, breaks, and unhooking from the pings of extractive technology, I do think there is a way to let it stoke your creativity. I do think this requires complete detachment from the outcome. Not caring how many likes something gets or how many new followers come into the ecosystem.

One reason I felt the desire to leave Instagram was a perceived pressure to post in a certain way to be constantly signaling my virtues. And that if I wasn’t doing that I was somehow doing it wrong. Today I weave myself into the needs of my in person community, stay tethered in with this newsletter, and don’t see the social media world as one I need to participate in in any specific way. Especially if it’s fracturing my attention from what I could be doing locally or directly with neighbors.

Nothing is real! Everything is an illusion! Except my spending plan that feels concrete and like something I’d like to stick to. And my sobriety, this weekend god willing I’ll celebrate fifteen years without a drink and I can hardly believe it. My one unwavering committment.

I made a spreadsheet of everything I want to buy so I can keep track and see if I actualy want to buy it. I am doing a sort of spending ban right now but I am not calling it that because its more just that not much can fit into the plan right now. So I am not restricting, I am just floating with what I can actually afford to spend money on. It also helps me pause to see what it is I actually want and what I can do without.

I also am experimenting with time tracking in a spreadsheet in half hour increments to see how I am spending my time. Knowing I will have to write down what I am doing has really affected my behavior in an amazing way. I feel very little shame and just a lot of curiosity.

Ever since I started using the nested goal system and tracking my time I have been reading so much. Multiple books a week. I never thought this would be possible with how distracted I had become. Doing the book study for The Practice of Attention has been so valuable to my own practices and experiments, I am so grateful to be in the midst of that group.

Also - I turned in my thesis! One semester left of grad school. If you are a paying subscriber you can read parts of it in Cody’s World. 35,000 words of poetic prose poetry sweeping essays of the no genre variety. I might shop around and see if a small press wants to put it out or self publish it.

Finishing up projects feels realy good. Or at least completing phase one of them. I look forward to seeing what emerges in the space in between. To seeing what books or classes or projects want to come forward.

And in the meantime I’ll fill the space with slowly picking up my piles, going for my little runs, and seeing what will be revealed to me next.

→ The next writing class I am teaching is The Pattern of Words : From Idea to Shape on Sunday May 24 from 12-3pm EST : Registration is open

CLass is $75 and two part payment plans and scholarships are available. We’ll outline the fragments of your writing into books proposals, project descriptions, and prepare them for their final form.

We’ll work with what you already have and generate new material.

→ In my new running life I watched this little documentary about the Barkley marathon and Jasmin Paris who was the first woman to finish it. I cried!

→ I miss the free stores in both Madird and Bolinas and the magical things I would find there. Here is a great article about starting your own. (Maybe this is what the roadside stand is supposed to be?)

→ I was inspired by this newsletter about the actions of voters in rural Wisconsin saving local nursing homes

→ I am looking forward to being a part of the NW MI Art and Culture Summit this week Thursday and Friday - Join me on Friday to talk about self publishing

→ I have a few creative advising sessions left for May - book one hour or deep dive with me for two!

Now more than ever, having a health record in your own hands is vital to your agency and care. Try Cycles Journal for a deep discount here. 🌗

A therapist-guided backpacking retreat on Lake Superior with pre + post virtual support. Move your body. Silence your phone. Remember why you create.

A substack about art, why we make it, and whether or not we should care about the money that may or may not follow.

A full-system evolution that goes beyond therapy, The Alchemist’s Sanctuary is a sacred, transformational container for mastering your life instead of just managing symptoms.(Discount Code: ALCHEMY10 for 10% off)

FREE EDITING SERVICES. DEV, LINE, OR COPY. Focus/ready your writing for its intended audience. Personal projects welcome. Ltd availability.

Want to book a classified ad for May ? Read all about it here.

If you have an art raffle or mutual aid effort you’d like included for free in Monday Monday you can email it to info@codycookparrott.com

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ www.codycookparrott.com
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What new time experiments are you trying today?