Practice Thanksgiving

Recently I have been considering my toolbox on how to live in life, from the narrative I tell myself, to the awareness my meditation practice brings, to the challenges I face in this year’s pandemic and themes keep reoccurring for me as I have been trying to build my life and habits. The change in environment to Seattle was really good to change a lot of my mentality, but it took a hefty blow at the start of this year when the pandemic hit. Being trapped in the same room, day after day, without a community at work really took a toll on me and despite managing to still lose 30 pounds from the start of this year, other habits and tools dulled. In the last few months my normal wave of anxiety, depression and mood hung over me like the cloud in Seattle, but I’m encouraged by my recent awareness of it and my pushes to stave off the more difficult parts of my nature. At times, I wasn’t winning, and I am not going to win every day, but I am taking heart that I am living which means I still have time to practice and get things right.

I have managed to get lucky and find a small group of people outside of work these last few months and have tried all sorts of things from rock climbing, to crazy backpacking and even jumping off small cliffs into some of the most beautiful water I’ve seen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAhKF066Tvw). Building these new relationships has really helped make my first year in Seattle less of a bummer and now that I have a 1 bedroom apartment versus the studio and actually have a bed I can fit on, I really feel like I am starting to settle into the city and my objectives with the rest of my life. One of my more recent revelations because of this is that the best way to get out of your thoughts is to bring awareness to them, and even quash them by doing.

Practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect. There are lots of sayings that push this key notion, and even jokes like, “Yes, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?” It is easy to shrug these sayings off, or even to take them lightly, but there really is something powerful about just jumping into something head first and figuring it out as you fail. Getting accustomed to failure, whether it be attempting to pull up on a rock wall route, or falling face first because you decided to dance across some rocks, is something that I feel might be starting to level me out. I’ve been failing a lot and mostly just had to deal with it, this recent push is what has me writing in stream of consciousness right now in an attempt to put another desire into motion. Taking -A- next step versus trying to figure out -the- correct next step has been really important recently in keeping my attention and focus sharp, otherwise I drown in ambiguity.

I said hey, what’s going on?

So, what have I been up to? It has been on my heart for awhile to start keeping up and communicating better with my friends, even if it comes out spastic, I’ll just refine it later and one of the goals for this was to just let people know how I have been living. Life in the Pacific NorthWest has been dream-like, climbing mountains on the weekend with my dog versus reading during the week. I have managed to keep up my frantic reading pace, on track to hit 50–52 books by the end of the year and considering the non-fiction I have been binging, it has all been rewarding in growing myself and giving me new tools to test out. There is my new push to try and live more sustainably by shopping at stores like Patagonia that stress having longevity on their clothes, making them ethically, and even repair, OuterKnown for being transparent, and researching the food I purchase to make sure it is made in a manner I can be proud of, things like free range chicken for eggs and cows that are only grass fed when I embrace one of my new favorite hipster trends of raw milk (Shout out to Pure Eire dairy!). I use to write poetry in middle school/high school and I’ve recently gone back to it, using it as a tool to remember hikes or different patterns of ideas that beat in my head like a drum.

I’m here, anxious but thoughtful. I’m open and reflecting as I journal every day and I’m still searching for the proper way to expose a bit more of myself to people. Things like hiking/backpacking with others have helped me deepen relationships with new and old friends and I’m taking that level of exposure a step further. There was a recent conversation I had with someone I loved where they were uncertain that the steps they took in life were the right ones, but they were glad it helped lead me to where I was and I found myself reflecting on that. If I am where I am because they did what they did then maybe those were the right steps? And maybe I have not made the right ones, but they were the ones I made and practice on taking the next one, what good does it do me to dwell on paths not taken? We are all riding on a world of which we have no control and the older I get the more I realize we should all just reach out, buckle in and enjoy the ride together.