Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice, Vol 4, Iss 15: Working With Where We Are At Right Now
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Hi friends! 2023 continues to be a Greek tragedy for me so I have been clinging to bits of joy wherever I can find them. If you’ve been here a while you know I get joy from cooking so the other day I felt like making something involved and delicious so I made these Green Bean Bundles with Bacon and Brown Sugar. Over the weekend, Nicole graciously made space for me in the room that is to be the office/studio (but is currently full of boxes) and we got my desk and workspace set up. There are still piles of boxes next to me but it feels good to have a space to work that isn’t also the rest of our living space (we’ve been working at the dining table). Of course, I put large prism stickers up on the window so right now, I get extreme rainbow action in my workspace for about 1 ½ to 2 hours each morning.
Today I want to talk a bit about meeting ourselves where we’re at right now and not where we used to be. It’s a way of thinking and moving through the world that can be applied to a range of things and it’s something that I often struggle. I’m going to start with perhaps the most obvious example of what I mean before we dig in and look at other applications.
I ran track as a child for both my elementary/junior high school and for the city I grew up in. I was a sprinter and would run the 50m and the 100m and I’d also do the 400m relay. If I tried to run in the same way right now in my adult body which has not sprinted in over 30 years, I can tell you that it would not go well. I do not have the stamina or lightness of my 12-year-old self. I know, without trying, that I am not the same person I was at that age in many ways and that I cannot do what my 12-year-old self did running track and it would be silly and dangerous for me to try. I could, if I so wished, start slow and learn how to be a runner as an adult (I would never do that. I fucking hate running).
When I was in graduate school, I was doing school full-time while working a full-time job, a part-time job, and volunteering with a nonprofit for a couple hundred hours (at least) a year. While that version of me is still a part of me, I am trying to work with where I am right now and not where I used to be. I have a bajillion creative project ideas and while 15+ years ago I’d do them all at once I realize that I was incredibly burned out and that behavior of my younger self was unhealthy in multiple ways. Working with where I am at right now means prioritizing what I want to do with my time and considering questions like:
Does this thing I want to do align with my values?
Does it align with where I want to be in my future?
Does it bring me joy?
Will it leave time to rest?
What will I sacrifice in order to make space for this thing?
It does not mean: trying to do everything all at once because I still think I am invincible.
This framework is not only for “productivity.” It can be incredibly helpful to apply it to emotions around how we react to things, or ways in which we communicate, or ways in which we self-soothe.
A previous version of me would constantly go more than halfway to maintain relationships. I was raised to be accommodating and to anticipate the needs of emotionally immature adults and so in other relationships, I would always be the first to reach out, the first to show up to help or to celebrate a win and I truly enjoy being there for my loved ones.
But friends. My mother’s car was still in Lahaina because the company never reclaimed it and it was lost to the fires. Much worse, her friend who was taking care of the car lost everything but at least she and her family are safe. I’m going to a funeral on Monday for one of my Mom’s friends who unexpectedly passed away within the last month. To add insult to injury, one of my favorite elementary school teachers just died. I can’t even blame anyone for any of this.
I have very little to give right now, so working with where I am at right now and not where a previous version of me was means being very judicious about where my limited spell slots are focused. I’m leaning into relationships and things where I feel like I am getting equal amounts in return, like this newsletter. I hope that 2023 stops being an absolute shitshow and I’ll have more to give but for now, I’m recognizing where I’m at and working with that. I hope that you find ways to be gentle with yourself and tune in to what you need now and not what a past version of you may have needed (reparenting excluded, of course).
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That’s it for this week! You can shop many books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. In fact, any Bookshop, Amazon, or Etsy links in this newsletter are affiliate links so if you shop through those, it helps support my work. Or you can leave me a tip on Ko-fi, Paypal, or Venmo.
If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481.
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