Be the change you want to see.

Gonna go visit family and a few friends this week in Sacramento.
All summer for whatever reason my anxiety flared hard whenever I thought about going to Sacramento in the heat, and I couldn't make myself go.

But it's November and should be nice, temperate.
Birthday month for me, my sister, my niece. I was last up in May, and that was the first visit in like 20 months because pandemic!

I'm feeling decently balanced, emotionally, right now, and like I'll be fine without my emotional support husband. :)

(I do think that I'm going to pack my own pillow from home to sleep at mom's because her house always has Unexpected Dust and my allergies kick my ass for a long time.

Packing list:
* The usual clothes and toiletries (ALLERGY and regular MEDS)
* At least 3 fabric masks
* Charger collection for phone, laptop and hearing aids
* Laptop/sketchbook bag, daily planner/address book
* PILLOW
* Mom's stuff that I meant to mail to her and never did
* Birthday present for my niece
* Some fresh figs off our tree to eat at mom's.

Altogether I feel like I'm traveling pretty light

In a lot of ways today is no different than any other day of the last couple of years. I'm puttering around the house, doing household chores. I'm reading, I'm writing a little bit, I'm being sat upon by the cat...

But I have a unique perspective on today, perhaps partly because of the recent two weeks in Australia where everything was springtime uncertain instead of autumn uncertain. There were flowers instead of falling leaves, there were purples and pinks instead of yellows and oranges.

Today's been a beautiful day. Sunny and warm at first, clouding over and getting dimmer as the afternoon progressed.

I find myself welling up with tears, for no reason I can actively identify, it's just a little tangle of feelings in the middle of my chest and down into my belly I don't even really want to identify it. I'm just going to let myself feel whatever it is and, it looks like, cry a little bit.

I think one of the hardest things I've had to learn in the last decade is that there really is, and never can be, just that one path that we're "supposed to" take with our lives. You may think there is, and you can spend years beating yourself up for failing to meet those imagined goals, or benchmarks, or, I don't know, life crisis points. But the best thing I did in the last 10 years was to realize that it's my life and nobody else's. That my meandering path is just as valid as something that looks straight as a ruler's edge. That nobody but me gets to set my goals for me, regardless of scripts that I have in my head from movies and television and other stories. It's like that one XKCD comic where the first character fills his apartment with ball pit balls. They're all bright colored against the black and white drawing and he says from inside the apartment, "we're grown-ups now, and we get to decide what that looks like."

In the next year I want to practice radical kindness. Radical generosity. I want to practice speaking up, and calling out b******* oh come on now say it bull crap (voice to text). I want to be there for my friends and family. I want to be there for my husband and my home. And I want to be there for myself. Maybe, that's still the most important thing I'm still learning, how to be kind to myself and when I think of all the bologna I had to shovel in order to just get down to me... To get past childhood and adolescence and young adulthood's indoctrination of this is what you're supposed to be.

You know when I was teaching I always had a hard decision to make as far as where do you spend the majority of your your attention, your time, and your planning? Do you spend it with the stars? The kids who are already smart and have it together and are on it? Do you spend it with the kids at the tail end of the class where if it was a physical education class they'd be lagging behind the rest of the class by a lap or half lap? Do you spend your time and energy in the middle and hope that the ones behind will catch up and the ones that are far ahead won't resent you for it? Wow I haven't thought about that in a while...
One of the best things about leaving teaching If I can say there are good things about leaving teaching, which, honestly my mental and physical health appreciate that I'm not doing that anymore. I don't have to make that decision anymore. The world is full of places I can help, and all of the work that I do does something somewhere. And I can forgive myself for not helping absolutely everyone I come into contact with, which was not a headspace I knew at all while I was still teaching. I blamed myself for every child had an f, or who moved away or every perceived failure piled up.

My failures now are softer, they don't have edges of self-hatred. I don't have to have shields up every day cuz I'm not getting attacked every day.

Somehow I am both softer and stronger than I was then. Some of that is just having lived longer, and having been in therapy as long as I was. But I don't hate myself anymore. And I'm not constantly angry with myself, or disappointed with myself. I do feel guilty for having the leisure to do the healing work for myself when 95% of the people who I know don't have that opportunity. which is why I try to use the healing work I've done to benefit other people I offer literal, physical help or emotional support or sometimes I have wherewithal...

Anyway, tonight is a tipping point. And there's no holding it back. There's no rushing it forward either for that matter!

Happy birthday to me. I still have hope in the future, I have hope for the world, I have hope for myself and my loved ones, and I acknowledge that the world is complicated and it's broken in a lot of ways and I promise I will lend a shoulder when I can.

I've been writing these posts for about a year now, I believe. (correction: since April 2012, so 18 months or so)
I have had difficult time rebuilding a fitness habit since I damaged my leg taking TaeKwonDo in 1998. It was the first time I could remember in my life where my whole body felt strong, balanced, powerful. My feelings about fitness and strength got very complicated after that injury, for various reasons. As feelings often are the motivation for actions...

Well. Due to the Waldorf teacher training, I shored up the foundation of my emotional life, started to take better care of my health, discovered my knee was indeed borked. Had surgery two years ago to replace my ACL, and worked to build my strength up in "pre-hab" and also in re-hab...

I started this 100 things series, like a lot of people did, to write many posts about something that interested me. But I had a sneaky second reason.

I was writing with much more regularity than I was exercising.
*shrug*
So I decided to chain the two habits together.
The one motivated the other, you know? I had an excellent excuse to write, IF I got off my duff and got out or got to the gym. It did work, and I wrote a lot about how I was changing, what body part hurt the most this week and why I thought that was, my hopes and dreams and goals for the whole endeavor, and so on.

But this post today, is because I have realized that I now... I just GO to the gym.
I've successfully built a habit that I wanted to build, and I am seeing remarkable results. I am SO much STRONGER than I once was. Body looks better, functions better, than it has in nearly 20 years.

Building for the future, me. And I'm glad to be doing it for ME (and for Jeff... Keeping up with a younger man can sometimes be *ahem* arduous) and not to fit into a wedding dress or to please someone else.

The other habit I'm proud of building, over the last few years, is the habit of speaking to myself with kindness, of touching my body with kindness. I noticed, today at the gym, gently massaging my tight shoulder and tight knee, that I was speaking gently and encouragingly to my body, moving slowly and gradually stretching as well as I could without judging... "There now, you can do this... It's okay, breathe... Relax, honey... There you go!"

I had to teach myself so much of this. Respect for the body, love of self, valuing self, and what self can do, what bodymind can do together... *wry* was not in the toolbox we got at my house growing up.

So now, having freshly turned 44, it feels as though I have a baseline of fundamental self confidence and physical strength that some lucky bastards have by the time they finish their teens.

Gonna keep moving, keep building strength, enjoy this being embodied thing, spread joy and help out where I can.

Okay. Step out in faith and Get Some Shit Done, now I've got the tools.

For one thing, we got one of our favorite lecturers back, so that was great.

Then after Recorder and lecture, I went back to the barn with a bunch of people (like 10, we had an alumnus stay over for the night)...

however.
Before we went back to the Barn, we went out to the Bar.
*wry*
I had a suspicion that was what was planned; they've talked of doing this for other Birthday Celebrations, (and it was the Celebration for Mary as well) so I wasn't totally unprepared.

I had already discussed the sobriety-plan before school with my friend Mauricio (who is kinda a pothead, but whatever) and with another friend, and wound up soliciting Joanie and Sarah for support as we were walking up to the door of the bar. Nothing desperate, I was relaxed, but people knowing what's going on with me, felt like it would be more than half the battle. Joanie said, well, I know they serve tea, and I'll just have tea with you.

<3...

So I had Lemon Zinger, and she had Apple Cinnamon, and I talked briefly with the bartender about going for my 30-day chip (which I should be eligible for Wednesday). He was supportive - he asked what was my goal; I need to work more on verbalizing what exactly IS my goal; right now it's an exercise in Will/willpower.

To return to the first bit, both flavors of tea went admirably with the OMG ginger-cake with little BEESWAX birthday candles on top (Yeah, Jessica blew them out and saved them, no surprise here)... the cake was so GOOD and quite honestly unexpected, and I'd had a sniff of Sarah's beer (a new brand for me) and Evangeline's hot toddy (I think it was rum and lemon), so most of curiosity was satisfied...

But the cake? no pun, no lie, that fed me and Fed Me better than any booze would have done. And sharing it and the recognition, was beautiful too. I got a bead bracelet from Willow, a little beeswax taper from... I think it was Sarah, and a teeny little holder for it; a cool 4-in-1 color pencil from Mary, who brought one for everyone, and a handmade card from two more people... Evangeline... and... I need to check. (memory test)

and they sang us (or we sang us, cos I sang also) happy birthday, right there in the pub...

Here's the lyrics to the Waldorf birthday song:

We wish you a happy birthday
A joyous and celebrated birthday
To Our Dear Friend
May you have a joyful life!

We sing it once thru, straight, and then it becomes a round - it's gorgeous, truly.

After we ate and laughed and talked and listened (I need to do some more listening, but I'm not talked out yet...*sigh*) we cleaned up after ourselves and went back to the Barn, where we built a scary-hot fire in the woodstove that stands in the middle of the room (I discovered today that I did indeed singe my scarf-fringe on the stove last night!)... and I put on PJ's, laid out my bedding and Joanie offered to rub my feet. Which was bliss, truly. A light rose-oil scent... and I just relaxed, near enough to the fire to benefit from the light and warm. When she was done, (I hope I expressed my true thanks for the effort!) I put my socks back on, tucked into my bag, and started to doze off, with laughter and conversation nearby and the heat from the stove warming the top of my head.