Category: Manifest
Tuesday, Apr 19, 2022 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Books, Confessions, Current events, Family, Francie's Got A Gun, Fun, Good News, Lists, Manifest, Parenting, Peace, Play, Publishing, Readings, Sick, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, The X Page, Travel, Work |
Life. It’s bigger. It’s bigger than you and you are not me. The lengths that I will go to. The distance in your eyes. Oh no I’ve said too much. I haven’t said enough.
Fellow Gen Xers probably recognize that song (REM’s “Losing My Religion”). I don’t know why exactly it came to me as I sat down to write about Life. Maybe because it’s bigger. It’s bigger than it’s been, anyway, even after weeks of recovery (or maybe especially after that). I’m making plans, though they may change last-minute. My plans are mere sketches, a few chords on which to improvise; they delight me.
Last week, I took a spontaneous trip to Toronto on the train. Got me some vocal cord physio and an intensive on how to use my voice, in preparation for reading the audiobook version of my new novel (!!!!). Reading the audiobook goes on my bucket list (I don’t have a bucket list, but if I did …). Recording in studio is set to start next week. While in Toronto, I also visited my sister and her delightful pup (pictured below). I saw a man dance with a pigeon on the subway (not pictured). My eyes were overwhelmed by the sights out the train window. I was in bliss. It was exactly what I needed. Good medicine.
This weekend we hosted family. I didn’t feel like cooking, so I asked my eldest to make the scalloped potatoes — and he did! On Monday our second-eldest kid moved back home from residence, so the house was fuller when we woke up this morning. And our Open House for the 2022 X Page Workshop is tomorrow evening. In person! I feel myself buzzing with energy and new life. It’s not anxiety, it’s excitement. It’s a desire for connection that’s leaping out of me, off my skin, I can almost see it flashing from me in pinging waves, or like antennae reaching out. I don’t think I’ve turned into an extrovert during the pandemic, but I’ve clearly built up some extra space for social interaction.
Something I’m noticing about myself, as I return to life, bigger, is that I love being the still centre of a whirl — the ringmaster at the circus. Does this mean I enjoy stirring things up? I don’t know. I hope not. It isn’t conflict I’m after, but contact, connection, a performance that’s almost entirely improvised and feels natural because it relies on mutual trust, and self-trust.
This reflection came from a recent 100-day creativity prompt …
A list of things that are true about me.
I’m on day 2 of listing things. Here’s day 1 —
1 I love being the still centre of a whirl — the ringmaster at the circus
2 I am happiest when I am with people
3 I am trying to become less controlling
4 I love relating to teenagers — I think it’s an especially beautiful, searching, changing, vulnerable time of life
5 I experience big swings of emotion
6 Writing fiction is a form of therapy, for me
7 I love the feeling of trusting myself, it feels like a safety net into which I can fall
8 Discovering I’ve hurt someone is incredibly painful news and I resist hearing it, and/or respond defensively, and/or torture myself for it
9 I can be very self-pitying
10 I am oddly comfortable at the front of the room
11 I love learning new things and challenging myself to leave my comfort zone
12 My first instinct isn’t always right
13 I value strong relationships built on mutual trust, and care
14 I am not perfect at all
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Mar 31, 2022 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Family, Fun, Lists, Manifest, Sick, Word of the Year, Writing |
What felt good this month?
This has been a confusing month. It felt good to get to visit people again, to travel to see family, to go to the movies, go out to eat, host a kids’ birthday party. It felt good to embrace the human desire to connect and be together in person. I really loved it. I’m even glad for the desire to do things again. When everything shut down two years ago, I was so burnt out and overstretched that my main feeling was relief at not having to do everything all the time for everyone. In the interim, I’ve recalibrated my boundaries, and I feel more capable of saying yes and no with greater understanding of the costs and benefits of each. Having things to do — and wanting to do those things — the combination is a gift.
What did you struggle with?
In practical terms, I’m currently struggling with a case of covid. Because, yes, there are costs to the grand reopening; and it’s challenging to make informed decisions when the information available is limited and contradictory. I’m also going to say, I struggled with feeling impatient and ready to move past these endless covid-times, or at least figure out how to feel as alive as possible during these endless covid-times. I might have erred on the side of wanting to feel alive versus wanting to feel safe. That’s a struggle too — I don’t honestly know what’s right or what’s best or wisest. All along, we’ve made choices, often difficult, about how to keep our loved ones safe, trying to balance mental health with physical health, trying to maintain relationships and connections from a distance or in constrained circumstances, and on and on. I wanted to believe we could start to live with just a little less caution, but it looks like covid isn’t done with its part in our collective story yet. So that’s what I’m struggling with. (FYI I’m the only one in our household to test positive, and I’m hoping it stays that way; we are all doubled vaccinated and boosted; my symptoms have been like a very bad cold.)
Where are you now compared to the beginning of the month?
Funny. I’m less worried now than I was at the beginning of the month. I’m more optimistic about writing projects underway. I’m convinced that people are resilient and relationships can be healed. I have no particular evidence or logic to support any of this; in fact, there’s probably ample evidence to support the opposite conclusion, particularly when it comes to how people are coping in these really hard times. But this is where I’m at. I admit to feeling hopeful! Oh dear. I’m almost too superstitious to declare such a thing out loud … dare I? I’m trying to let myself feel joy from time to time; hope and optimism too; and not believe that just by feeling or expressing such wonderful things I’ll attract the eye of a vengeful and punishing god. Consider this part of the experiment. I’ll let you know how it goes.
How did you take care of yourself?
I made a list of fun things to do. I did some of those things. I wrote even when it seemed like I was writing in circles. I got somewhere interesting. I pushed myself to try new things, even when it risked failure. It was a good month for those reasons. I went on lots of walks with friends, and enjoyed putting # 34 on my list of fun things into action: surprising friends with small gifts. Honestly, that brought me such joy. I talked about hard things in therapy. I made plans.
What would you most like to remember?
Beautiful plants on my desk. Dinner with kids and their friends. The joy of the Canadian men’s soccer team winning at home to clinch their ticket to the World Cup. Watching movies at the theatre. Heartfelt walks and talks with family and friends. Writing and writing and writing.
What do you need to let go of?
Ideally, I would like not to act or speak from a place of fear. Or at least to be aware if I’m acting or speaking from a place of fear. There are so many things in life that get broken. So often they’re broken by fear, which manifests as judgement, as anger, as dependency, as control. I don’t want to break anything, especially relationships, because I have fear that is unexpressed or unacknowledged, or blocking me from being truthful, open, clear, first with myself, then with others. I need to let go not of fear itself, which would be an impossible task, but of being swayed or deluded or misled by my fears. Life is complicated, relationships are complicated, desire is complicated. Fear is natural. But it doesn’t have to steer my choices.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Feb 8, 2022 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Friends, Manifest, Play, Source, Winter, Word of the Year |
This will be a rather obvious window into the thrilling state of my evenings, but I am getting through February on puzzles and podcasts. Puzzles, podcasts, and pots of herbal tea.
Last night’s Puzzle ‘n Podcast podcast was on how often we misinterpret how others perceive us: apparently, a lot. It’s a show called The Hidden Brain, and the episode is “Mind Reading 2.0: How Others See You.” Listening to this I was thinking about friendship, and wondering what prevents us (sometimes? often?) from saying what we really mean. Politeness? Fear of rejection? False assumptions about what may happen? Or maybe assumptions based past experience? Maybe we don’t always know what we really mean. Or maybe we get mixed up due to the social setting, confused by the extra information we’re taking in (and quite possibly misinterpreting!). Anyway, it’s fascinating.
I keep puzzling over why it’s not common practice to set out boundaries or expectations or even state hopes for our friendships (it really isn’t, though). Why are friendships more tenuous, undefined things, when other relationships carry expectations, stated and otherwise? Maybe in friendship there’s both more at stake and less. Friendship enriches life. But we don’t usually buy a house with a friend, or share a pet with a friend, or move to another city if our friend moves to another city. We might go months without seeing a friend and then fall back into closeness in an instant. We know in advance that we may lose friends in a way that’s more baked in than in other relationships. We probably also expect to have many friends in different contexts over a lifetime. I’m riffing here.
and yet, and yet, and yet … I acknowledge that big emotions get stirred up in friendships, fears get tapped, there can be jealousy, envy, comparison, grasping, insecurity … and love, caring, commitment, thoughtfulness, kindness, spontaneity, fun … friendship is a spacious concept, elastic, flexible … that’s a good thing, but it also means there’s more uncertainty … maybe friendship is an almost liminal space where we have the opportunity to become comfortable with not-knowing, not-clinging, letting go?
I’m riffing.
A friendship is a relationship that can change as we change; and/or it can offer the familiarity of someone who knew us when. There’s insecurity in the uncertainty of what being a friend means and demands of us. I feel it as I try to write about my experience(s) of friendship.
For myself, I think friendship is always and forever an opportunity to learn, to be challenged, to get to know myself more honestly (weaknesses, strengths, boundaries, sense of humour). If I’m feeling down or low the cure ALWAYS is to reach out to a friend. ALWAYS. Paradoxically, this is also the moment it’s hardest to reach out. (This is what texting is for!)
The other thing on my mind (unrelated to friendship) is how people seem really angry right now. People are struggling with their emotions, looking for easy targets of blame. Positions are getting entrenched (which always seems dangerous to me). The pandemic years have been a good reminder that I can’t assume I know what anyone else is thinking or feeling. Maybe in friendships we dance around this, maybe it’s one of friendship’s most important gifts — maybe within the uncertain structure of a friendship there’s an implicit understanding that we aren’t always on the same page, and we’re trying to listen and be curious about our differences, we’re paying attention to another’s experiences.
In friendship, there’s so much room for exchange. Generous exchange. Friendship is a practice in curiosity, attention, lightness, vulnerability, caring, holding and letting go.
xo, Carrie
P.S. Please send podcast recommendations. I’m addicted to the puzzling (the puzzles shown above are just from the past week!!!! True confession). And winter continues.
P.S. 2 I’m adding this note in post-publication, with thanks to Julia who tipped me to a fabulous (and recent) article in The Atlantic about friendship, in which appears this memorable (and useful) analysis of what holds friendship together:
Practically everyone who studies friendship says this in some form or another: What makes friendship so fragile is also exactly what makes it so special. You have to continually opt in. That you choose it is what gives it its value.
Tuesday, Jan 11, 2022 | Art, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Chores, Confessions, Dogs, Drawing, Dream, Francie's Got A Gun, Laundry, Manifest, Money, Peace, Play, Publishing, Sleep, Space, Spirit, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
The secret to writing books is to give yourself a ridiculous expanse of luxurious empty time and space to dream, play, and not do anything that taxes the mind with external cares.
Is this true? Well, I’ve found it to be true.
It means you might not do much else with your day, your hours. You might cook dinner. You might go for a walk, or a run. You might see a friend. You might do a puzzle. You might scroll through Netflix watching the intros to thirty shows as entertainment before bed.
I struggle justifying how much time is spent on staring out the window. Or writing things that don’t turn out, writing draft after draft after draft. So many words assembled tenderly, hopefully, excitedly, only to be discarded.
If this is what it takes to write books, is it worth it? Who am I serving? Just myself?
Well, what if the answer is yes? Yes, I’m serving my writing, at the expense of many other things I could be doing with this one precious life.
What makes you feel purposeful, as you go about your day? What tells you, gut-deep: you are worthy? I don’t know. I’m asking.
It’s a funny thing to be a human, to want to be purposeful, to want to make decisions independently, freely, but to be inextricably embedded in a culture, context, generation, family structure, biology, language(s), place.
I notice that I easily accept the value of tasks or actions that measurably help someone else, like donating blood; concrete chores also have value, and doing them feels valuable, like laundry and cooking; it’s also easy to measure worth by monetary reward, doing X and receiving Y in return. In my experience, writing is generally untethered from any of these logical measurements. But I don’t believe anyone’s worth rests on external evaluation; or on evaluation, period.
You are worthy because you are fighting it out here on planet earth.
You are worthy because you are worthy.
I drew that cartoon a few days ago. I keep returning to look at it. There’s something there that’s whispering to me: peace, and calm, and acceptance, and worthiness. I’ve been drawing daily cartoons again, as a way of journaling. I draw a moment I want to remember, and on this particular day, the moment I wanted to remember was being asleep and dreaming about my new book, which has a tree on its cover — the dream vibe was contentment.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Jan 7, 2022 | Books, Cooking, Current events, Exercise, Fun, Lists, Lynda Barry, Manifest, Play, Reading, Yoga |
Reading The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
Bookseller is haunted by irritating former customer during pandemic, in Minneapolis-Saint Paul where George Floyd was murdered. It stirred stuff up in me that I wanted stirred. I want to be stirred. Plus Louise puts herself as a character into the book — and I learned that she owns a bookstore in real life, called Birchbark Books + Native Arts.
Watching Reservation Dogs (Disney+ in Canada)
I want this show to go on and on. More stirring, good stirring. Damn, this show is good, the young actors are so so good. Set on a reservation in Oklahoma and shot on the Muskogee nation, this comedy tears my heart out and gives me hope and appreciation for what art and artists and dreamers can pull off, over and over again.
Listening to “Good Times” by The Persuasions
This song popped up on my Lynda Barry playlist on Spotify, when I was cartooning yesterday. It’s actually about times that are not so good, but they’re coming, and we’ve got each other. So, you know, like right now.
Eating two poached eggs on anything
My go-to breakfast. This morning, I put two poached eggs on corn tortillas (which I keep frozen and steam in the microwave to heat up) — I eat eggs on tortillas often, with avocado, spinach, feta, crema, hot pepper rings, leftover black beans if I’m lucky, or whatever else we happen to have around. Yesterday, I put two poached eggs on half of a leftover falafel sandwich (it worked!!). Earlier in the week, I poached two eggs in leftover turkey noodle soup. Yeah, for breakfast. I like a savoury breakfast.
Doing thirty days of yoga with Adriene
Her new series is called “Move.” Kevin and I are moving the couches in the living-room so we can do this together every morning. We are on Day 6. We actually both have a daily yoga practice already, but it’s fun to follow a series, and to do it together.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Dec 9, 2021 | Family, Fun, Holidays, House, Manifest, Meditation, Music, Organizing, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Winter, Yoga |
It got cold and snowy in addition to the dark, and I haven’t run since Sunday. Instead, I’ve been spending about an hour, first thing in the morning, doing yoga.
I’m on my second Christmas puzzle of the season. This has become a bit of an evening addiction: cup of tea, podcasts, and puzzle.
My to-do list for this weekend includes making two extra-large batches of cookie dough to wrap up and store in the fridge, to be baked on demand. Ginger cookies and plain butter cut-out cookies.
Over the past week and a half, I’ve cleaned the house bit by bit in preparation for advent and hosting. How long can we keep these surfaces clean and clear? It looks dazzling to my eye.
I’m potting clippings from my plants, a small ongoing project to green our rooms. Side note: My amaryllis bulb has come to life, miraculously, after I left it outside for a few months this fall. It looked dead and I thought it was dead. Then a bit of green started to poke through, so I brought it back inside and set it on one of the few windowsills where we get good light. A red flower is beginning to burst from the very tall green stem.
I’ve been playing (and singing) Christmas songs after everyone leaves for school and work. This is best done without witnesses.
This week is the calm before the busyness. (Next week rather randomly includes a dentist appointment, a photo shoot, donating blood, and leading the x page’s last writing club meeting of 2021.)
As I prepare for the holidays, for intense family time, big cooking projects, hosting, gathering, imbibing, keeping safe and healthy, establishing and maintaining boundaries, dealing with the hormonal spin-the-wheel of perimenopause combined with teenagers and routines being rocked, I’m reflecting on ways to stay present and whole. Strategies. Reminders. A mantra. A cue to return the self to the body. Here’s what I’m thinking (beyond morning yoga and low-alcohol-consumption): focus on others. Pay attention to the needs of those around me, allow them to be, and this will allow me to be, too. Be where we are. Be who we are.
I’ll try to remember that there are many languages for love. (And my own include: spending time together, talking one-on-one, making music together, doing an activity together like going for a walk or doing a puzzle, and acts of service. I love feeding the people I love.)
The antidote to disconnection is connection. The path to connection includes: slowing down, looking at the world in its detail, taking a breath, trusting your instincts, acknowledging what the body is holding / feeling, and being kind and gentle to self and others. You can take a break when you need a break. Someone will catch you.
I’ll remind myself of that.
xo, Carrie
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Last week, I took a spontaneous trip to Toronto on the train. Got me some vocal cord physio and an intensive on how to use my voice, in preparation for reading the audiobook version of my new novel (!!!!). Reading the audiobook goes on my bucket list (I don’t have a bucket list, but if I did …). Recording in studio is set to start next week. While in Toronto, I also visited my sister and her delightful pup (pictured below). I saw a man dance with a pigeon on the subway (not pictured). My eyes were overwhelmed by the sights out the train window. I was in bliss. It was exactly what I needed. Good medicine.
This weekend we hosted family. I didn’t feel like cooking, so I asked my eldest to make the scalloped potatoes — and he did! On Monday our second-eldest kid moved back home from residence, so the house was fuller when we woke up this morning. And our Open House for the 2022 X Page Workshop is tomorrow evening. In person! I feel myself buzzing with energy and new life. It’s not anxiety, it’s excitement. It’s a desire for connection that’s leaping out of me, off my skin, I can almost see it flashing from me in pinging waves, or like antennae reaching out. I don’t think I’ve turned into an extrovert during the pandemic, but I’ve clearly built up some extra space for social interaction.
Something I’m noticing about myself, as I return to life, bigger, is that I love being the still centre of a whirl — the ringmaster at the circus. Does this mean I enjoy stirring things up? I don’t know. I hope not. It isn’t conflict I’m after, but contact, connection, a performance that’s almost entirely improvised and feels natural because it relies on mutual trust, and self-trust.
