31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 15

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

March 14, 2019 – a watery day.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and Creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: The moment that one definitely commits one’s self, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~

100% this. A theme for the year ahead, perhaps.

31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 14

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

The lovely, boggy swamp near the tiny house’s old parking spot.

It’s my birthday today.

I am one of the wateriest of the Pisces fishes, my birthday coming as it does in the last week of the last sign of the zodiac. I am all of the intensely good things about the Fish and all of the intensely not-so-good things (it’s true).

I love my sign. It’s potentially one of the more annoying things about me, so I try to keep it under wraps to prevent that – except on my birthday. I share the day with Albert Einstein and imagine we have tons in common, and it’s also pi day, which is nerdy and delightful all at once.

Side note: The Child’s birthday is May the Fourth, arguably the second nerdiest birthday of the year. Possibly the first nerdiest.

Yesterday at acupuncture I found out that my heart is excessively warm – the source of anxiety and insomnia and all of the other wicked things that have been swirling around me lately. My lovely yoga teacher and acupuncturist, Martha Rogers, advised oat straw tea and more water both inside and out, which makes sense.

She also said that coffee exacerbated the heat, which is just too bad because my coffee consumption is minimal and a joyous thing and a public service. I am doing it for you people.

I can think of maybe worse things than to be warm-hearted. But as I officially enter my late 40s, I find myself drawn to soothing, deep practices and flowing water.

So today I will take advantage of the sunshine and go for a walk near water, then to a bookstore, and certainly home for a nap at some point. There will be no dogs in my day, thankfully, and dinner at Alma Cocina Latina tonight with my sweetest love.

I want to take this small moment to offer gratitude to the universe and to all of my people inside of it. I am grateful every day for the wonder and kindness of the people I love and who love me back. Without you, the world would be a small and lonely place indeed. <3

31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 13

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

Today’s “bad news-good news” cycles goes thusly:

Bad news: I got a rejection email from The Sun.

Good news: It’s not taking them as long as it used to.

I choose to see this as good news (the rapidity with which they politely blow me off). I am not sure why, but it works for me. And maybe someday I will be published in that beautiful publication. Truthfully, it’s the act of submitting that holds more power for me these days (although, if I am honest – which I always try to be – publication would be lovely. Let’s not kid ourselves any).

So the rejections pile up, and still I am working to unearth and uncover and disclose. It is harder than you might imagine, this actual being honest with yourself. We are all stars in our own movie, and as such it is easy to cast ourselves in a favorable light.

But it’s the shadow I am now (and always have been) interested in. It shifts, though, and is hard to catch (I think there is a cartoon about that, catchiong your shadow, but it escapes me).

Anyway. Today is the last day of 47. Tomorrow I am officially in my late forties. Two years from Fiji (is how I am choosing to look at that factoid). Twenty-two years from taking up smoking again, and 32 years from smoking heroin in a shack on an island.

It’s good to plan ahead.

31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 12

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

It’s a day that ends in “y,” so this means I wake up to wade through a lake of dog piss in the kitchen in the morning on my way to coffee. It seems more than a little unfair that I should have to navigate said lake prior to caffeine.

Suffice it to say, it is not delightful, and this is the third day it has happened, even though extraordinary measures have been taken to prevent it in the prior two days (last night the fault was The Child’s, and I wake her up to inform her that she is responsible for the cleaning of it today).

I add it to the list of un-delightful things, which is just like complaining and probably not going to earn me a book deal any time soon.

Drinking my coffee in bed this morning, I consider the day – a walk, two yoga classes, an early-morning invitation to a birthday drink after the second class. I am tired, sleeping poorly, but very much aware, even with the dog pee, of how grateful I should be as this day unfolds in birdsong and sunshine in front of me.

Later in the day, with just a few hours between teaching small children yoga and teaching adults yoga, I feel the siren call of social media. It’s a little craving in the center of my chest. It has been nearly two weeks, and it is still a thought in my head, to visit The Facebook or pop in to Instagram.

I have figured out that I can view Facebook events without actually logging on, the public ones anyway, and that makes me feel like staying off Facebook is the best choice – for good. We will see. Still plenty of time left.

Instagram remains problematical. I have not been taking nearly any pictures on my phone or DSLR, partly because the weather has been heinous, and partly because…I don’t know. I am working to slim down my digital life, and I have been more discerning in what pictures I take and what I keep when I take them (as evidenced by the scant photography on this blog).

In general, this social media break thus far has afforded me the luxury of a minor creative crisis. I am working on many different projects at once with more time and less static in my brain, but still struggling to pin something down and get immersive with it. I think this exploration is ultimately positive, but it is unsettling as well. I cannot seem to commit to food or non-fiction or poetry or fiction or photography or painting, so I am doing a little bit of all of it.

We will see what happens.

31 Day Social Media Fast: Day 11

In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.

“Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things…joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our live and the lives of everyone and everything we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.”

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights