Best stuff I ever did to be happy, part three
Best stuff I ever did to be happy, part three:
- say one or two or twenty fewer things than I want to, every day. Choosing what those things are – micro-judgments and stray criticisms, useless observations, tepid personal assertions – is easy.
- mostly quit caffeine; drinking only my KC Special version of “Bulletproof” coffee when I do (two shots of espresso blended with a quarter-teaspoon of coconut oil); never experiencing mid-day jet-fueled jingle-jangles ever again
- went back to therapy, after deciding what kind of therapy I really needed (“trauma”), what I was willing to do beyond just “attend” (a lot), and what kind of therapist is best for me and my therapy baditude, a.k.a. my resistance to moving out of my head and into my heart and body (“smarter and cooler than me”)
- acknowledged the very real limitations of my scope of feelings-focus, to the point where I sometimes listen to the same podcast episode or song over and over for days or a week because my immaterial and psychic boundaries are still, like, gelling
- became realistic and reasonable (words I typically need a textual version of “trigger warnings” for) about time and how much I have and how long things take and what, then, is worth it – like, not taking assignments because they sound cool or pay well if they also need me to spend six days talking to the kind of selfish, incurious person I hate being around. AS A FOR INSTANCE.
- sought out “softness” everywhere, in everything. Softness as a guide, a goal.
- I’ll throw “meditation” up on the board as a stuff I did to be happy, but on a technicality: meditation has smoothed out some of my most protruding mental edges, one-hundy-thundy percenty, but it’s also the primary source of confidence-poison in my average day because I’m still really bad at it.
- stopped spending money whenever possible not only to “save money” (doydoydoy) but because the acts of buying, shopping, participating and getting accumulate to another kind of labour, and other kinds of costs
- “When you change who you are in a relationship, the relationship necessarily changes.” This line comes from a nice woman named Cheryl Richardson who I interviewed for a magazine story about self-care, and I keep that line whole and close and active. Thinking hard about what I’m doing to create or re-create or just allow for shitty dynamics, be they subtle or overt, has allowed for wowie-zowie-level changes in many kinds of relationships in my life. My liiife!
- confronted the absolute, swift and devastating failure of my industry to adapt to new circumstances (that had made themselves entirely clear by, say, 2008) by taking mad time off to do something else, and then reorienting myself to new work using the exact same abilities and interests I used before. “Rolling with it,” or moving quickly between realities, doesn’t come naturally to me emotionally but it turns out it does professionally because as a freelancer I’ve been enrolled in a secret and elite cowboy school for many years without even knowing it.
- outsourced everything possible, because there is no moral favor or economic advantage to hauling dry cleaning (especially as a weak-limbed, 5’2” doe-baby) if someone will pick it up for less money than it costs in time and effort
- I know that this is fucking it. IT. This moment is every moment, and this is the only moment I have – ever have had, ever will have. I like touching my husband’s back in a sort of suit-smoothing motion before he goes to work – is this outlay of personal but unsexy detail too gross? – and knowing that it might be the last time I ever see or touch him. Use up a day like I got a blank check that expires in twenty-four hours, like I won’t see or touch it or my husband’s massive granite sports-guy back, ever again, like I should be so lucky to ever see another day, another person that I love, because that is all precisely true.
- decided not to participate in other people’s strategies of passive-aggression and avoidance and emotional sneak-attacks by enlisting an almost kindergarten-simple style of feelings delivery, when necessary. Just, “What do you mean by that?” will make a pass-agg homie’s pupils dilate!
- use things up; don’t assume I’ll ever go back to a book, or a blog post, or a music video. I mean, I might, but I do much less in the way of “I’ll read this for real later.” No, bitch, you will read it now or not at all, because later is a grainy projection that may or may not exist. NEXXXXT.
- want what I already have. Actively want, not accept. Def helps that I tend to choose things and run them down, like work and places to live and friends and feelings. It is always a choice, though, to hold up a thing in your life that is good and working, and realize the gold-dipped miraculousness of even that, the hysterical luck of something that is even just fine.
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