Saul Good and Co.

OK-ish

I think I might have said this is going to be a big writing year for me, or I intended for it to be in any case, but if the first month of the year is an indicator - well, let's hope it's not. It's a pandemic, who cares? (How long can I milk that sentiment, you think?)

I've become aware over this last year or so just how much I depend on the idea of comfort, how my happiest, safest place is snuggled down, physically as well as mentally. It's understandable, especially now, but I can't deny that I have structured my life in a way that I'm rushing through everything without really experiencing in order to get to what I love the most. Most everything I do--work, household chores, exercise, eating a fucking salad--is something to be endured, something in service to my true goal which is to end up on my couch as soon as possible to wrap myself in blankets and read and watch things and generally zone out. I have an ever-expanding adventures list for when the pandemic is over and I can move about the world, and it makes me happy to dream and add to the list, but the nook I've carved out is increasingly more attractive than anything else, and I've gotta say, that's maybe not 100% healthy. Sure, I've always been a person who craved her cozy space going back to my childhood bedroom, but this year of isolation has thrown me out of balance. I don't think it's depression. Ok maybe it's a shade of depression, but it feels so good to sink into doing nothing. What a life of contradiction these days - I have so much time, so much opportunity for great ease, HR is in heaven with remote school, yet the circumstances, the background, is but constant anxiety and heartbreak and pain. It all feels so wrong. 

 

Anyway, I cried so much on inauguration day. Did you? Everything just got to me. By 1:30 I was exhausted, and I barely watched anything in real time because I was holding my breath in case something went tragically wrong. What stood out to me the most is how much we have been collectively holding these 4 years. The dawning of an official new beginning had a physical effect, I've heard it from a lot of people, the relief in their bodies. Shoulders relaxed. Muscles unclenched. What a time, what a time. I followed everyone poppin' bottles and celebrating all day and I wanted to celebrate but it took me awhile to get there. What trauma that makes us suspicious of our feelings of joy, christ on a cracker. I slept like a baby that night, though. 

 

So in the past week I did take some time to celebrate and to appreciate the historical significance of this moment, but I'm not under the impression that everything will magically be ok. It certainly helps that everything from the top down is so much less chaotic, the overload and damage pile-on seems to have slowed. Every day I wake up with a skosh less existential dread than the day before and that's not nothing. But it's more important than ever to stay on top of the fight, keep up the momentum. I can't disappear into a pile of mental blankets. Bernice King's words drive it home for me:

 

"Kindness matters. But kindness does not = justice. Civility counts. But calling for civility is not the humane response to injustice. Justice is. Love is essential. But love is not a passive, weeping bystander. Love puts in work."

 

The inborn comfort of white privilege is seductive and easy to fall back on, but every day I can choose to do the good work that this kind of deliberate love requires, even if  I only sometimes I feel like I've succeeded. 

 

Takeaways

Gee whiz guys, I write a halfway positive blog entry and within hours there's an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. COOL. I'm hesitant to court that kind of jinxery in the universe again by going on about things that aren't strictly horrible, but I'd like to shine a light on things that have kept me going over the course of this endless period of suck.

 

- I quit my longtime yoga studio after doing some serious thinking about what I want from my practice and re-examining yoga in our culture. I still love it, but I decided if I'm going to pay for instruction, it would do me good to seek out studios with philosophies that line up with mine. This led me to some great online classes through some local studios like 4 Corners Yoga and JP Centre Yoga, places I would not have gotten around to checking out if I had stayed in my complacent, mindless bubble. I also bought a monthly subscription (it's super cheap) to Underbelly Yoga, which I highly recommend, especially if you're a beginner, and if you like your teachers playful, profane and hilarious. Jessamyn is a personal heroine. 

 

- I joined a few groups to help keep me inspired and accountable, to push me out of my comfort zone and help me to be a better, more committed accomplice in the ongoing fight for racial justice. To my white ladies who want to do better, Becky's Anonymous is a cool community and a great resource. I've only been attending their circles for a few months, but I've learned a lot. 

 

- After a stagnant, unsettled few months of not being able to get into books, my library re-opened for curbside pickup, and I started making online requests whenever a book I'd heard of or always wanted to read popped into my mind and I read a TON. So much good stuff, just to name a few: Deacon King Kong by James McBride, Luster by Raven Leilani, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, Mill Town by Kerri Arsenault, The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, the entire Jasmine Guillory catalog (too short but she's still writing!) and the almost-complete works of Joan Didion, another heroine. Books are medicine.

 

-Mike and I have been making a ton of Spotify mixes, and picking up a lot of new music along the way, which is good for our old butts. Music is also medicine.

 

-I have put a high premium on being cozy, My life is the pursuit of hygge and will be so as long as it has to be. I don't have a fireplace but invested in some high-quality candles and I have a full wardrobe of soft, warm clothing and I'm just riding this out. Yes I look forward to going out and dressing up again someday--I have complete envy when I watch a movie or show set in non-pandemic times--but for the forseeable future, I'm about that homebound life. About making the best of it, anyway.

 

I'm still working full time and I'm trying to write with varying success and I'm having fun with my latest social media endeavor, and I'm spending way too much time obsessively following the news and I'm worried about all my loved ones all the time. All in all this is how I stay occupied, relatively sane and sometimes even happy. 

Don't it Feel Good

See you in hell 2020, I'm going to take a cue from the staggeringly hard-won results in Georgia and start this year INSPIRED. Inspired to be a better person, every day. To write. To move. To have the hard conversations that scare me. To volunteer my time, energy and resources to help end systemic racism via ending systemic poverty, voter suppression, police brutality and carceral violence. To make up for lost time in restaurants and bars and clubs and airplanes and highways and in the faces of my loved ones as soon as it's safe. To put clothing on my body that isn't strictly activewear. 

Look, time is arbitrary. I know that. The change of a calendar year is meaningless in a lot of ways but it's not entirely without meaning. We have a chance, because the year changed, to make real change in this country. To further the fight for what is right and just for all, to distance ourselves from corruption and to make strides to heal the Earth and its people. I truly believe this and embracing that belief makes me sit up straighter, breathe deeper, hope harder when my first instinct for so long has been to hunker down, cowed, too scared to hope. 

I don't do resolutions, and if last year taught us anything it's that making plans is like peeing into the wind but I DO occasionally have goals and giving them a loose calendar year structure helps me stay accountable. This year I am going to get my damn book published and finish a draft of the sequel. That's roughly 359 days to make good. Piece of cake, right? I've got more that I want to do, a fuckton of a lot more, but that's the only one that gets a timeline for now.

Welcome, 2021. Welcome, love and light.