Be bad at ANYTHING

I’m a big advocate of journaling.  The habit of indulging myself on the page has become a life-changing, enriching, emboldening, expansive endeavor.  I write about stupid things.  I joke that if my posterity ever read my journal they’ll be like, “Who is [fill in the blank] for whoever is causing drama in my psyche?”

“It’s not important!” I’ll reply. 

“Yeah, but that name is mentioned like 7000 times in here!” And because it's in a word document they can ctrl+F and actually get an accurate count. *Sigh.*

Then I’ll reply with some sage wisdom about how what is going on in life is always more about you and less about the other people that step in to fill certain roles.

Because it’s been such a helpful tool for me, I have trouble not advising everyone to journal all the time.   But this isn’t fair—because some of us aren’t writers!  What if someone told me, Michelle, I really need you to sculpt this life experience—like pour it all into a sculpture.  Make me know what you are feeling and doing and being in this moment with clay…or worse—marble.

I would respond with a lot of fear and drama in my head because I know nothing about sculpture.  I could do it.  I’m confident of that.  If I applied myself, I could produce some piece of sculpture that would represent a piece of me.  It might take me 30 years but I could do it.  But WRITING is so much EASIER--for me!

So there is something to are said for picking a medium of expression that feels somewhat natural.  Maybe you have some skill with drawing or photography or singing or welding metal fragments.  There are so many ways to express oneself--the point is to pick one!

What holds us back from picking one is the inner critic.  It’s the voice that develops at some point between the time we are first introduced to crayons and the seventh grade.  It’s the voice that says, You aren’t any good at this.  This is stupid.  No one wants to read this.  That drawing doesn't even look like a person.  That critic becomes somewhat helpful as we navigate school, friends, college and career selection.  That voice can push us into areas where we have natural ability.  But eventually it becomes a crippling companion.  It’s the Tanya Harding brute force that takes us out at the knees.  It’s ugly.

So the first step is in identifying the voice of that critic.  When it pipes up, just take note, hear what it says.  Then realize that you are not bound to it.  You are free to be BAD at anything you put your mind to!  

There it is.

You can do anything as long as you’re willing to be bad at it.

You are hereby liberated!

So the choice in medium becomes less important—do what fills you in this moment!  I’ll admit, writing was a natural choice for me.  I chose it because I felt I was already a little good at it.  That’s okay!  And some days I draw and I’m really VERY mediocre at drawing but, when I’m most successful is when I’m willing to be bad at it!  I like drawing and maybe some day I’ll take some classes and figure out how to be better at it, but why should that stop me from expressing myself that way now!?!

There’s an unspoken rule, once you reach real adulthood (I’m not talking age 18—I mean the time in life when you can really do you) that you should only do things you are good at.  That rule is silly.  And it sucks.  Literally it sucks all the fun out of life.

Recently, I’ve been reacquainting myself with the piano.  I took lessons from age 8-15.  I *should* be quite proficient with that amount of lessons under my belt, but I’m just okay.  That just-okayness held me back from playing for years and years!  And I LOVE playing the piano.  Finally I decided that was silly.  When I got a piano in my home, I considered taking lessons to get myself up to a proficient state, but then I chucked that idea right out.  NO!  I’m going to allow myself to be bad at it. Taking lessons so I feel worthy to grace an instrument I love with my music was so silly.  I’m worthy right now.

I’m taking opportunities to challenge myself in this way.  I selected some challenging songs that I love.  One of them is from A Star Is Born and performed by Lady Gaga.  I do my best to play and sing like Lady Gaga, which is hilarious!  But I tell you what!  I get a lot closer to sounding like Gaga by shamelessly TRYING than I ever did by playing small.  You won’t see me on America’s Got Talent EVER, but if you want a private, amateur performance in my living room—then I’m your gal!  And all that’s changed is my willingness to be bad at it.

The same thing applies to surfing.  Every time I paddle out, I face some of the same old insecurity demons.  Then I just decide I’m totally fine being the worst surfer in the water and sometimes I am, and sometimes that mentality allows me to immerse myself so fully into surfing I completely forget about the ranking system and just surf!

I love how Mark Nepo describes this.  He says that when we are gifted with something, it’s tradition to be told that we should become that thing.  If I’m decent at writing, people will say, “You should be a writer.”

“But the power is in the DOING, not the in the BEING,” Mark says.  The power is in the verb, not the noun.  So forget about being a writer, and write!  Forget about being a singer, and sing!  Forget about being a surfer, and surf!  Focus on the verb!  Do the thing!  Pick the medium!  Be the YOU doing the things that bring you to life!

This is my commitment to myself—to continue to allow me to be bad at things—because that’s where all the power and all the life is!  Here’s your permission slip to do the same!  Namaste.

Kids are the best examples of immersion. R just spent 90 minutes outside tonight relocating muddy water in cupfuls to different locations in the yard...mud might be his preferred medium...

Accelerated carousel of mommy guilt

I’ve been kicking around ideas of what to write about all day today.  And now, as I am finally summoning the courage to write what I’ve been avoiding, I’ll probably get this posted about the time you are all headed to bed.  But no matter, it will be waiting for you bright and early Monday morning.

We had a non-conventional Thanksgiving.  Because it was just my mom, R and me, and because I didn’t feel like cooking, we decided to go out.  We actually had a really nice day.  We went for a walk in the morning, then to Cabrillo National Monument for some tide pool exploration.  Then we went out for dinner at a restaurant that served a nice Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a good day, even though I felt a little off all day. 

On Friday, I decided that getting a Christmas tree and decorating it would help things feel more holiday-ish so we loaded up and went to Lowe’s to pick out a tree.  We found a decent one.  The cashier gave me $20 off because the universe loves me (look for evidence—it loves you too!).  We brought it home and Mom helped me get it set up in the tree stand.  I did this all by myself last year and I’m not even sure how I did it! 

R was soooo excited.  He was down on the ground with me, tightening the supporting screws around the tree.  He was testing the branches by hitting them with a ruler.  He was chattering about Santa Claus and snow and presents.  When we opened the box of ornaments, it was all my mom and I could do to keep him from destroying the breakable ones.  He wanted to inspect them all.  We had Christmas music playing and I was frantically trying to get the lights on the tree so we could unleash R with the ornaments.  I think it was our personal record for fastest tree decorating.  R jingled all of the bells and cuddled all of the angels. 

As I’m describing it, it sounds really fun—the wonder and magic of Christmas for a 3-year-old playing out in front of me.  But the truth is, I felt held back.  Damn foreboding joy.   

I got R to sit down and eat a little lunch by putting on an Amazon Prime movie about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Then it was time to load him up to go to his dad’s house.  When I put him in the car he cried.  He looked at me with those big, brown eyes and clearly said, “I want us to be together,” meaning his dad, R and me.  “Don’t leave me, Mommy.”

Words fail to describe the heaviness, the crushing weight, of that phrase falling from his precious, innocent lips.

I paused, with him in the carseat and me standing by the open car door.  I told him that I understand his wanting that.  I told him that his dad and I love him very much.  I told him that we had a long car ride and that I would be with him in the car.  This last pieced seemed to satisfy him.  After a few minutes on the road, he asked me, “Is it okay if I take a little sleep?” He slept the rest of the drive to his dad’s house. 

Sometimes we don’t get what we want.  Even if it’s a beautiful desire.  Sometimes it’s a no.  And it’s heartbreaking.  How would I explain to a three-year-old the twelve and a half years his dad and I tried to make it work?  How could I convey the sense of self that I sacrificed to that relationship? Of course, it’s impossible.  But it’s also not his to know at three.  It’s something that he will come to know over all of the years he walks this earth.  He will add to it his own experiences.  And this might be one of them—his first Christmas with the consciousness that he doesn’t get to have it with his mom and dad together in the same house. 

There are not many perks to having a divided family, but I count this as one—perfect is not an option.  Any idea that we are carrying on a perfect life over here is immediately laughable.  We are all just people, doing the best we can.  And sometimes our best is pretty terrible.  But it is our best. 

In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown wrote a chapter called “Wholehearted parenting: Daring to be the adults we want our children to be.”  I came across this chapter at a time when I really needed it.  It’s easy to question how well I’m doing in the parenting department.  This time in my life is an intense struggle for myself, let alone the little human, with whom I’m entrusted.  I don’t always show up how I want to.  On days when I have R, I often feel overwhelmed and tired.  On the days I don’t, sometimes I miss him like a piece of my soul is gone.  It’s like being on an accelerated carousel of mommy guilt where the highs and lows are too dramatic to be fun. 

Brené encourages us to focus on becoming the adults we want our children to be, rather than parenting in the right way. 

“As Joseph Chilton Pearce, ‘What we are teaches the child more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.’  Even though the vulnerability of parenting is terrifying at times, we can’t afford to armor ourselves against it or push it away—it is our richest, most fertile ground for teaching and cultivating connection, meaning and love.”

So who do I want R to be?  I want him to be resilient and hardworking.  I want him to see the world as an abundant place where he can do and become anything he wants to.  I want him to be kind, both to himself and to others, even when they fall short.  I want him to feel connected to friends and family.  I want him to be spiritual, to see the divinity within himself.  I want him to understand respect.  I want him to feel love and to feel loved.  I want him to know that love does not require the sacrifice of self, but that it celebrates and champions the self to become as big and complicated and beautiful as this diverse, messy and wonderful earth God has set us within. 

And so this is my work—to become.  God, help me.

Just in case you ever feel ungrateful

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  I’m not thankful.  At least, I’m not thankful for probably 95% of my day.  I don’t walk around in a cloud of gratitude and satisfied bliss.  For all my talk about mindfulness and the positive spin I work to put on my life, I spend a huge amount of time buried in unimportant details and worrying about the future or the past.  I am often investing my thought energy in other people’s business (their thoughts, actions or feelings) or God’s business (things that are fully out of my control), instead of my own business.  And none of this makes me feel very thankful. 

Sometimes this fills me with incredible guilt.  Moms of small children get this a lot from older women  who say things like, “Just enjoy these moments because they go by so fast.”  Now, not only am I suffering from the barrage of toddler emotions, but also the weight of guilt that I’m not enjoying his cute little hands placed on my face after he’s just handled a public toilet seat.  Seriously people!  That IS too much to ask. 

I shared with my sister a couple of months ago that I made a short gratitude list in my journal.  I felt particularly edgy because I only put on there what I was feeling gratitude for in THAT moment.  When I told her this, she was unimpressed, “Yeah…so…what?” 

Me: “I mean, I didn’t put all the stuff on there that I’m SUPPOSED to be thankful for!”

Sis:  “Oh [pause] I guess I never think other people will read it so I don’t really worry about what's supposed to be on there.” 

Of course, then she was the empathetic genius she normally is, and tried to make me feel LESS crazy for writing gratitude lists that no one will read but anyone COULD read because they are complete and thorough and no one is left off.   Gratitude felt like a chore for a lot of years (not surprising given this little glimpse into my psyche!).  It was something I was supposed to feel but was terrible at summoning, which only resulted in more shame and it’s impossible to feel gratitude when you’re in shame.   

I think I’ve learned a little about gratitude this past year.  I’ll try to shed some light here incase you are in the same boat as me. 

First, stop living in the future.  As someone who spent seven and a half years in college and grad school, and THEN put her then-husband through four years of grad school, I know a little about this.  I spent a lot of years waiting for my life to start.  I held on to the belief that something magical would happen when school was finished.  And it would transform me from this limbo state into the rapture of fully formed adulthood.  I’m guessing no one is surprised when I say—that didn’t happen. But putting that aside, I spent a lot of years waiting for the next thing, instead of living in the now.  When I was always anticipating the next vacation or step in my education, it was impossible to feel much love for the present moment.  The truth is, there are different phases in life and they each have things that are easier and harder.  Things that I liked more and less.  But anticipating the next phase never did anything but litter the current phase with discontent.

The second is to be kind to myself—to give myself what I need to truly feel cared for.  Giving that responsibility to others is a quick path to resentment and discontent.  Ignoring my own needs leaves me feeling depleted and it’s hard to feel thankful when I’m an empty vessel.  So make yourself a sandwich, fit the workout in, go to bed early or stay up late, binge watch The Office, clean off your desk--then let go of the guilt for things that go undone while you do this.  

The third is something I’ve been learning from my therapist.  It relates to time.  There are two types of time.  Chronos is the time of the world.  It’s the actual minutes and seconds until bedtime.  It’s the hours spent crawling in traffic.  It’s the two minute time out.  It’s the time that passes slowly, that we feel. 

Kairos is the time that we don’t feel.  It’s the hour that goes by when I’m writing in the flow, where I suddenly remember to look at the clock and realize I’m going to be late for work.  It’s the quiet moments floating on the rippling ocean surface watching for the next swell and taking in the sky and the sea.  It’s catching up with a girlfriend over the phone.  It’s late night pillow talk between lovers that leaves me floating and sleepy in the morning.  It’s a long kiss on the lips from the 3-year-old love of my life. 

Chronos is always ticking away, but Kairos only visits, often just for a moment.  And Kairos is where real gratitude lives—sparkling, warm, immersive, flowing gratitude.  The key is to catch it.  To notice when I’m in it, or even after the fact, that I WAS in it. 

Gratitude is a practice, which means it takes practice.  I can’t beat it into myself with shame. I can only hope that as I gently nudge my brain back to the present, I will more readily notice all that I have and all that I am, for which I am thankful.  Namaste.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.  Eckhart Tolle