in which we examine our navel

and gaze at it expectantly

it’s a whole mood today, y’all.

It’s raining today.

I know, I live in the Pacific Northwest, where complaining about rain is like someone living on the beach complaining about sand. But we had almost a full week of the most Springy Springlike weather, where I literally didn’t even bother to eat inside, just sat on the patio, sneezing from the pollen, and soaking up sun in the vain hope of storing it up for exactly this kind of cloud-cover.

Don’t get me wrong…I love the rain and the moss and the green most of the time. It’s just that after a long four-ish months of slowly morphing into a slightly-more-damp version of Smeagol in his cave, I was very much enjoying having my hair dry completely in less than 36 hours.

Complaining aside, I’ve been picking through this book:

“Soul Mapping: an imaginative way to self-discovery”

I have this tendency to pick up all these books with activities, thinking that I’m going to actually take the time to sit down and not just read them, but do all the things. Sometimes, I’ll do some of the things¹, but my optimism is usually thwarted by my attention span². Plus, I’ve got an inherent internal side-eye with most things that promise self-help, since I’m of the mind that I’m just fine with the help I already have³.

So I’ve kind of surprised myself by picking this up again after impulse-buying it at a library sale⁴ and actually starting to read it and do the things. I’m pretty sure it’s the title, which combines imagination and maps, which are two of my favorite things.⁵

The whole concept is that you can make this kind of map based on your past experiences and such, and divine a kind of path forward with the insights you gain from it. It sort of shepherds you through a bunch of different sections with activities and journal prompts and such, and then shows how to put that all together after you’ve got these giant tomes of personal data points upon which to plot your course, so to speak.

I’m making it sound boring, but it’s actually been pretty fun.

And kind of eye-twitchy, since a) I will literally forget a thing five seconds after it happens, so bringing up examples, even with prompts, is sometimes like stepping barefoot on hot sand made of lego, and b) I’m pretty sure I’m missing things that I’ll have to add later, once my subconscious file-retrieval system actually accesses that particular data. Also, things like this can sometimes trigger my Not Good Enough™ self-recrimination, which is absolutely NOT the point of this little exercise.⁶

One thing that kind of randomly struck me, though⁷, was a part where we were kind of listing all the lives we don’t have. The ones where we kind of wanted our paths to go, but we never did for some reason. Alternate lives/selves, really, but with a little more intention behind it. Like, for example, I changed majors from music to poliSci. What if I’d never made that change? What life would I be living now? Would I want that life? Would I be in New York, in a crappy shoebox apartment, completely happy doing off- off-broadway shows about the inner lives of jellyfish⁸ or something⁹?

I have a whole long list of paths not taken. Some of them, I’m kind of happy I didn’t follow, in retrospect¹⁰. Some of them, like the one where I’m some kind of mobile artist in a van in the woods, making weird field guides and travel narratives…I’m still kind of wistful for.

And here’s where all this brain archaeology has a practical application: If there are “lives” that I’m wistful for, I don’t have to abandon this one like it’s an either/or situation. I can look at those things, find the things about it that I think I’d really love, and do those things. I don’t have to abandon this life to go get the good parts of the other one.

Like, duh.

Anyway…I mention this because I thought it was quietly revolutionary.

We sort of live in this world where you are things. We live in the labels, putting everything outside of that label into little archival boxes that we stow away on a shelf marked “SOMEDAY/MAYBE”.

And we’re making ourselves small in the process.

Go be big. Giant, even. EXPANSIVE.

Do all the things you want to do. Consider this my pledge to be your Alternative Life Slice cheerleader.

What lives would you tap into? I really want to know. Leave me a comment or send me an email or whatever. I’d love to pick up the pompoms and shake them in your general direction.¹¹

And all of that aside, here are:

A couple of other things I’ve been consuming gleefully this week and thought I’d pass along:

• This long and pretty in-depth article that’s a strong argument for why algorithms have ruined the internet and how they’ve messed with both your head and your posts. All of this is why I’m here and not annoying you on Facebook instead.

• The whole reason I started wanting to turn everything into games is because I stumbled upon Beth and Angel (Make Games). They make the most interesting, real-life, solo games with a bent toward self-development that I’ve found so far. They’re not the slick, highly-produced, in-depth kind of thing, which removes the whole perfection factor for me and I’ve never failed to enjoy playing. (I’ve made “games” out of tasks since before I knew that was a Thing, so these are all right up my alley.). Plus, they’re just two really cool chicks.

• This quote:

“When you name something, you label the thing; frame it. This is an important job, before anyone has actually encountered that thing! But, very quickly, the flow of meaning reverses. The thing’s specific characteristics and its performance — its great success, we hope — fill the vessel of its name, which was pretty empty all along. Then, instead of the name defining the thing, the thing (re)defines the name. This happens with companies, with works of art, with people themselves.”

— Robin Sloan, about his upcoming book, Moonbound
(and who also has the best monthly-ish newsletter on the internet, IMHO.)

• I’ve been sort of obsessively binge-watching Stacey Budge-Kamison’s month-long project where she livestreams her art journaling literally every single day of the month. If I don’t feel like making anything on any particular day, I just pull up a livestream and watch along so my muse will find me in motion. (Stacey doesn’t just make art journal pages, btw. She’s also a prolific, creative weaver of non-traditional textiles.)

Hope your weekend is the fantastic-est! I’m planning on hunkering back down while we have eleven more days of rain up here. Pretty sure I’m sprouting temporary gills, but, as they say, it’s what makes everything so green, so…fine. If we have to for the green.

Good thing I love moss so much. :)

1. (I’m looking at you, The Artist’s Way…)

2. Which, thanks to the ADHD, is generally equivocal to that of an overcaffeinated goldfish.

3. here’s where I could rant a little about how the assumption that we’re all broken somehow is super-annoying and probably dangerous. Making us feel like there’s something wrong with us is how They, of the ubiquitous variety, keep us buying things to fix ourselves, and I’m getting annoyed at being a nice little misinformed consumer cog. But I’ll refrain. Ahem.

4. in, like, 2017. Not the point.

5. see also: rocks, dogs, art supplies, and trees. And 80’s song lyrics, which have overwritten all the basic math in my brain’s hard drive.

6. Let’s hear it for internalized shame and generalized anxiety! Yay! (grumble)

7. which is probably common knowledge to most self-aware people, but…yeah. :D

8. CLEARLY a musical. Clearly.

9. the Magic 8-Ball says “probably not”.

10. to continue the previous example, I do not like cockroaches. At all. So, probably no small apartment in NYC for me, thankyouverymuch.

11. figurative pom-poms, because I’m pretty sure Porkchop would try to eat real ones, and that’s a vet visit I don’t want to have to pay for. Just saying.