It found me: putting a bow on 2023

I promise that this isn’t going to be one of those year-end lists that opens with false humility like “Oh, perhaps a few good things happened,” then goes onto regale you with one thing after amazing other. Nor will I give you a list of tragedies that I’ve survived, and I count myself blessed for that. No, God gave me another challenge this year, one that looked very much like last year’s and that was for this experience-seeking, pink-cloud chasing lady to not only live through another ordinary year, but to come out weirdly feeling fortified by the abundance of uncertainty. Yep, said that.

Let me explain, but first, all of the ordinary:

As my landscape of opportunities (in both garment-making and photography) got more and more quiet, I’m proud of the efforts I put forth to create my own. The slowdown encouraged me to inspect what I was doing and what I really wanted to gain. Call it burnout or full-body rejection but to remain a joyful creator, I could no longer participate in the hustle to compete for clicks. Done. I’m grateful for the pedestrianism of part-time jobs to keep me tethered to a rhythm, to people and to financial flow. Out of that, I found that my ambition does still exist but only insofar as the organic growth that happens by reciprocity: putting forth effort and intention and seeing that not only be received but valued. Call me old-fashioned. And more on this later.

Surprises? That I got to see all of my favorite 80s bands this year and all but one show was with my oldest kid. I discovered that we both love to dance, hard and sweaty and unapologetically and just like when I first laid eyes on this kid, I fell in love all over again. The other unexpected love shown through the bright lights of Friday nights and high school football. I can’t tell you the story of despair that was middle school for my youngest, it’s not my story (even while it is). I’ll just say we needed a redemption and she (we) got one. In this area, we’re thriving and I’ll boast Formerly Reluctant Cheer Mom any day of the week. Oh and Taylor Swift.

This is the year that I was asked a question: In the absence of mass appeal or even positive feedback, is art still worth making? If this was a friend’s question, my answer would be an unequivocal YES, of course you should make your art, regardless, in spite of. But experience is meatier than advice. I got to live into my response, really forge answers. What did I come up with? Maybe my art is mediocre, or maybe instead of mass-appeal, my art is specific-appeal but either way, it doesn’t matter. My work as an artist is to remain in a constant state of discovery, adjusting my sails towards truest expression. I’ve learned what it isn’t: Trying to be someone other than my unapologetic self, editing myself, making concessions to please (gesturing to hypothetical people out there somewhere). And what it is? I only need be present to the mystery.

I mentioned the other unexpected delight and that has been the creation of my Substack space: Special. I can be impulsive and shocker, it doesn’t always serve me. There’s something to be said for low expectations. The thrills come easy, for one. And this has been my experience there. Many of you that receive this newsletter have subscribed, thank you! Organic growth feels like true, honest work and I’m steady and patient for it. This essay has probably been my most well-received and it’s entirely free.

I’m excited about the effort I’m planning for Special in 2024 and combined with my acceptance into Life In The Trinity Ministry’s Enneagram and Spiritual Formation cohort study I’ll be doing this year, I now understand why I was given two years to practice ordinary, to practice stillness, to practice meh.

Whatever I’m looking for—truth, God, me—I’m willing to manage the discomfort of ordinary because my hunch is, this is where I’ll find it.

xoxo

PS. This will be my last blog post here. If you want to stay in community with me, please sign up for my new-ish newsletter at Substack, Special: A Serial Memoir. If you like reading about recovery, creativity, midlife, spirituality and a dash of memoir, you’ll like it there, promise.

Clowns to the left, Jokers to the right

And here we are, stuck in the middle, again. At least I’m with you! However, in this letter, I want to suspend reality for just a moment and pretend that all of our 2022 plans aren’t going to be sidelined again. But before I get to my dreaming and scheming, let’s reflect, shall we?

2021: Remove The Claws, Sister.

Because that’s what it takes for me to properly drop something and move onto the next. It sounds so easy when I say it like that, but what I always forget to build into that process is allowing time to remove the claws, even more time to grieve the thing you are no longer dug into, and the inevitable depression that comes from feeling unmoored. 2021 was a whole year of that: saying goodbye to the Unruffled podcast, finally deciding to put wedding photography down, feeling entirely untethered to parts of my identity, (eventually) letting those parts dissipate, and accepting that spectacular failures are part of life’s trek.

Remarkably, I didn’t pick up alcohol this year, though there were occasions that I wanted to. My creative work saved my recovery, again, as it always has. I made a whole lot of beauty with my hands this year from pounds and pounds of materials that didn’t go into the landfill. I bonded with other like-minded folks from my community while helping to produce a reuse fashion show that felt like a reprieve of joy and celebration that we all desperately needed. I landed a part-time job that feels like a position that was written expressively for me. Yes, “let things go to make room for something new, blah blah blah”. What is left out of that tidy little meme is the extraordinary pain that envelops that process and my dears, it is a process.

When you are in the drudgery of that process, it feels like infinity. And not until you wake up one morning on a random Tuesday in November and see that you’re finally on a New Shore is the infinity suspended. The New Shore is my favorite place. They sell Moleskine Pro Planners on the New Shore that invite you to map out your big dreams for the year (of which I’ve done). They encourage you to pull your tarot Year Ahead Spread, in which you’re so eager to do so, you pull 13 months of cards instead of 12. And because the New Shore can fill one with so much gratitude for its mere existence, it can make you think that if there is a Word of the Year for you in 2022, it’s simply: Not Me. And not because you’re selfless, you just want to think of yourself a little less this year. The process of 2021 was just that exhaustive.

In all seriousness, I am asking myself questions around stewardship for this coming year: How can I be a good steward of self? Of community? Of the planet? While those are big questions, they also help me narrow my focus for 2022. This book gifted to me earlier this year by a friend, Making a Life, Working by Hand and Discovering the Life Your Are Meant to Live, has been the perfect companion during The Taint (as I lovingly like to refer to this week) as I lay down some answers to those questions.

In some practical matters, I’m moving the sale of new handmade goods into a monthly drop system. What that means is that I’ll be releasing new upcycled handmade items in my Marketplace once a month. The “drop” date is still to be determined but it will be the same every month. Yay to new systems! I have other personal projects planned for 2022, and more of that will be revealed next time. For now, you can still shop lots of lovelies if you’re still shopping!

So hey YOU, what do you have brewing for 2022 (full permission to suspend Covid-reality for a minute granted)? What did 2021 have to teach you? What is on your New Shore? I’d love to hear about it.

Can You Fill Up This Need-Hole For Me, Please?

And that is the problem with need-holes.

When my life gets tedious, mediocre, BLAH is exactly the place I struggle the most. When I have to do the dishes, again, when I have to make dinner, again, when one week becomes indistinguishable from the next is when my brain starts seeking stimulation. And yes, a trip to the museum or a movie would most likely satisfy, but that is not where my thoughts go first. That feeling of lack, void, is the hole I filled with booze or sex or new shoes, so now when I feel its insatiable mouth gaping open, my first thought is ACT OUT.

I can't always see these feelings coming, but the longer I'm sober, the more certain patterns become clear. This is that time of year with Halloween on the horizon, I know Christmas and the New Year will come blazing in like a speed train and I'm already regretfully looking back at 2018 wondering if I've done enough, if I've landed where I want to be.

Um, future-trip much?

I've found myself fantasizing that I'm floating in a lake with my ears underwater, where all I can hear is my  own heartbeat. If I stay there, time seems to stop. I just want to float and float, oblivious to time, ignorant of its slippage. 

Let's face it, I still want to change the way I feel. I don't want to sit with it, move through it, lean into it. I want to throw any self-helping book-quoting meme across the floor and watch it smash into a bazillion pieces. But I don't. I don't act out either. I stitch. Stitching, with a threaded needle, is the one thing I've found in sobriety that forces me still except for my hands and that thread, in and out. It's the one thing that makes me okay with the maddening idea that I have to just stew in my feeling of lack, that there is nothing outside of me that is going to fill my hole so I may as well stitch up my fucking jeans because nothing else is going to get done and I have to be okay with that because I am okay. Time will still slip, dishes will once again accumulate in the sink, I'll make burgers for the 20th time this month and soon enough, it won't all feel so dreadful as it does now. I once heard that if you are drinking (or insert whatever you use to fill the need-hole) to make life tolerable, you must look at what is intolerable. Even though I haven't had a sip of alcohol in four years and some change, this feeling is here to remind me that I'm only tolerating some things and my guess is, it's bigger than dishes.

*Addendum: I published the above words in a newsletter that went out to my subscribers earlier this week. It resonated with many, so I wanted to add some thoughts I’ve had since.

I don’t think there is a cure for pain, as Morphine’s Mark Sandman’s words searched in song, but if he ever arrived there, he surely wouldn’t need his drugs. I wish that Mark’s addendum would have been that he found it, but his heart finally broke all the way on a stage in Italy in 1999. I guess my conclusion thus far is no conclusion. When pain comes, we have to see it, acknowledge it like I did in my words above, recognize that it’s in the room, give it a comfortable chair. Let pain prop its feet up, as it may be here for a while. See pain as a teacher because without the contrast, we wouldn’t really know joy. And when pain gets up to leave, know that it is never Goodbye, only Until We Meet Again.

It is no cure, but what I have realized in the last few days is I am much better when I have goals. Maybe that is my future-focused tendencies but I got out my Name-It Journal and jotted down the Big Ideas that I’d like to see to fruition in the coming months. I put so much energy around that yearly calendar flip, but it really is just an arbitrary construct and time is as expansive as I intend it to be. Over four years ago, I left the particular pain I co-created with alcohol behind, so I now have room to see that when I am feeling angsty, it is always something bigger than the dishes. The creativity I am not bringing forth will always be a pain-point for me, the universality of that said best in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas 70,

If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you.

It’s no cure, but it is a solution.

Evolve.

Do you pick a word for the coming year? For 2015, I didn't officially pick a word but it picked me and kept showing up in my life over and over. That word was THRIVE. For the first time in a couple of decades (yes, decades), I really feel like I did more than survive, I thrived. I started things that I wanted to start, I did things, actually followed through with action, I joined some amazing communities, in person and on-line and I tried to just raise the tide so others could rise with me. It's really been an amazing year and it's been so long since I've said that. I am marveling at the fact that I can reflect back on an entire year and see every ebb and flow with such clarity. There are no gaps, no missing weeks or entire months gone. I can see it all, big, wide and open. I am in awe and it is nothing short of a miracle. 

In picking a word for 2016, I got a little more intentional, so much so that I thought Intention would be the word. There was also Abundance and that wasn't so much as to manifest abundance but to acknowledge the abundance that already exists in my life. Then there was Supernova! That came to me from Rob Brezsny's astrology forecast for the 2016 Gemini. I could just visualize 2016 blasting the brightest light as my old stories and fears burned out to make way for a new star.  Great imagery, right? And then I went hiking with my family a few days ago at one of my favorite places in Texas. It's called Enchanted Rock and it holds my spirit, this place. We found a butterfly in a grassy enclave in the granite and she chose my word for me. I think she was dying and she was beautiful.

Evolve. Evolve into this new star, this next, new layer of life. Evolve to my better, best self. Evolve this site, the stories I want to share, the community I want to build. 

How will you evolve? Do you have a word for 2016? Comment away!

And if you want some brass tacks, some tactical information, intention and purpose, here it is: I will be adding more consistent content and creative ideas to the blog. I will be featuring more stories in the Meet the Unruffled section, which bytheway, if you know or happen to be someone in recovery who relies on your creative pursuit to guide your journey AND you live in TEXAS (sorry, this is my baby *cough*controlfreak*cough* and for now, I'm the sole photographer) and you want to be featured, please contact me! And I will be adding art/product from featured Unruffled artists in the Marketplace. You will also be able to find more essays from me over on the Since Right Now/Recovery Revolution's amazing site and I'll be on the podcast next week (Ackkk! first of the year, no pressure, right?). Love these guys, love their work, check them out if you haven't. And more, MORE. Big, wide, open, blessed and lucky. Happy 2016! And if you need help recovering, please reach out, you don't have to feel this way ever again. If you extend your hand even one inch, I promise I (or someone) will grab it. Big love.