LIFE
I’m revisiting an old charge in a new way, and that is to learn to value my work and my creativity as much as I value other people’s. Actually, it’s more of valuing my relationship to my own work as much as I value my relationship to other people’s.
The number of times I find myself emailing or texting, I’d be happy to do that for you, is staggering. Particularly if I compare it to the minimal number of times I find myself saying that I’m happy to do such-and-such for myself.
How did that training get in?
Maybe being a girl is enough.
It happened this morning on the elevator when I realized that I hadn’t responded to a text from last night. (Setting up a meeting with a playwright who wants me to dramaturg their play. For free. It’s a student project).
My mind immediately jumps my gut to guilt. There’s a pit in my stomach. I have to respond as soon as I get in the house, I decide.
But then, I catch myself.
No.
You said the first thing you would do when you got home was meditate. So, meditate.
This happens hundreds of micro-times a day. Often, I don’t catch it.
Often, I yield to the pangs of guilt or fear and I realize that valuing my commitments to myself is defined in those little moments when I choose not to challenge the guilt.
Guilt is learned. Children don’t go around guilting all over themselves.
ART
Yesterday at Watch me Work, I was gonna ask Suzan-Lori Parks for tips on cultivating patience. But I answered my own question: Living is cultivating patience. It’s a day-by-day practice that requires starting over everyday until maybe you don’t have to anymore, and you’ve just made more space in the bottom of your heart to tolerate your “mistakes.”
So here are the tips for cultivating patience:
Be with yourself more and practice listening to yourself and others as much as possible.
More tips?: Stop and question why that text is now seminally more important when its time to meditate.
STYLE
There is a part of me that really struggles with, who does she think she is? Who does she think she is, is my secret prison. I think this is what people are thinking about me all the time. It stops me from taking selfies on the street at least once a week. I want to take selfies when I look really, really good, and I look really, really good a lot.
I know for a fact there are some folks who do think this about me, around me, because they’ve told me so. I also know that they are doing me a favor. I get to face my fear of this statement every time I have these kinds of encounters. I get an opportunity to unlock my own prison by releasing my obligation to be anything other than satisfied with myself.
To that end, I’m re-doing my wardrobe. It’s time to simplify. New base items are needed. I realize I’ve got three things I really love to wear, and they’re all leotards. Leos will be my new bases.
Have you heard of a capsule wardrobe? I’m researching to see if I can use one as a template. My ultimate desire is to build a wardrobe of simple and expensively-made bases layered when necessary or desired, with very special well-made designer and vintage statement pieces.
I am working on owning less of other people’s shit. How much stuff I own that I have accepted from others without actually wanting it is also staggering:
Sweaters, kitchenware, free shit from fairs, and “who does she think she is.”
Having a sale for these things in the coming months.
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