just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

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In many ways, having arrived at the halfway point of twelve days feels kind of like the false security of having got to the top of a rollercoaster, combined with the sudden realization that what’s next is a very fast, unstoppable drop. It’s fun and it’s terrifying, which is ostensibly part of the thrill (I think, I cannot handle what my body does with the cortisol produced by roller coasters, so I haven’t been on one in decades).

Halfway through makes me very glad I’ve been in therapy throughout this year. If I don’t continue unpacking my messiah complex, it steers me into blind spots and I become overconfident.

Halfway through challenges my assumptions about how much I can do; and how much I can’t, and where is the wibbly bit between those two things.

Halfway through means WE’RE DOING IT but also OH MY GOD THERE’S MORE.

I am proud of all of us for how much work and heart and sweat and love we are putting into what we’re doing right now. We are trying hard and we are sending messages when we’re nearing our capacity to say ‘I think I need a break,’ while at the same time understanding that there might not be someone who can take some of our plateful of things for now.

I am once again reminded that our anxiety — which kicks up when things get hard — wants us to hide forever but also to say yes to everything. Because we could, right? We could do that. Pile another thing on. I got this. I’M SO GOOD AT MULTITASKING. I’M PLAYING FOUR-DIMENSIONAL CHESS.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

I have the privilege of being trusted by my little family of people. They know that I am going to do my best, and they know that I know that they are going to do their best. Sending up a flare to say ‘I’m stuck here, please help’ does not make you a shitty person. Asking for help is hard, and passing out from overdoing things is worse.

I am doing the math of harm every day, sometimes minute by minute, so that we can keep this ship on the water. If you prefer a driving metaphor: staying between the lines, shiny side up.

And I am learning as I go, because I have to, because I don’t know everything about myself yet, because I don’t know what wisdom I will need for next time, because to stop learning is to become a stone that never moves, never thinks, never experiences the kind of life that I want to experience.

I hope that your understanding of your own capacity is healing for you, even if it takes years to get there.

— Nix

P.S. There’s nothing at all wrong with being a stone, I like them very much, but I do not want to be a stone. Not this time around, anyway.

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Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

I need a nap and also another nap

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

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I’m tired. I’M SO TIRED. Not exhausted, not so tired that my executive functioning is totally gone, but tired. It is not easy helping tp keep this ship afloat some days, and today was one of those days.

A lot of scooting people around to do different things needed to happen today, and one has to be careful about doing that, because every person has their own ways of dealing with stress and sometimes they deal with it by saying ‘yes’ to everything, just in case, please don’t be mad at me. And I don’t want to create a situation where that coping mechanism kicks in.

I think we did okay; there are still extra dirty dishes that need doing, and the laundry isn’t getting done today, and we haven’t unpacked all the packages that have come in the mail. But we made it, we all had food to eat, we stayed warm, and even the toddler — who had a massive meltdown this afternoon — got his naptime that he desperately needed.

I had plans for some reading and maybe watching a movie, but with my in-between-things idle time I played Stardew Valley or updated the project task list statuses. And I took several very small ten or fifteen minute naps while I was waiting for dinner, because sitting on my comfy warm bed with ASMR in my earbuds practically sang to me the song of napping.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I just need to remind myself to go to bed early tonight because that would be a really nice thing to do for me. And I deserve thoughtfulness like that.

May there be a bank error in your favor, or at least a pocket of time that opens up unexpectedly like a gift and you can just relax a bit. And maybe get a nap.

— Nix

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Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by Tim De Pauw on Unsplash

it’s a marathon, not a sprint

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

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Usually Sundays are my day off from everything, but right now there are important things to take care of each day, so I didn’t have a proper day off. There will be time for those later. So instead, I floated between things and lent a hand here and there.

I discovered an incredibly good audio adaptation of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. I haven’t read the entire series, so there have been things in the episodes that were brand new to me, but many of them felt familiar. If you have the time or inclination, I wholeheartedly recommend it. The BBC’s link for it is here and I am listening to it with my usual podcast app, so I believe it’s probably easy to find. The first episode came out on December 19th, and each day since there’s a new episode. I believe it is a twelve-episode series.

Hmm. Interesting.

It was a little tricky today in our cocoon in the snow. We are enough days into this process that the initial burst of beginning energy has begun to wane, and we are feeling tired, sore, and a little cranky. This is normal, especially in a house full of chronically ill people with our daily mystery number of spoons clutched in our fists. It’s taken us years of trying and failing to understand how to inhabit bodies that do not follow any of the rules very well, and which are often extremely fucking confusing and let us down when we need them to pull through instead.

Hopefully, tomorrow we will all feel a bit better. Hopefully we can forgive our brains and our bodies for reacting to stress like they do. Hopefully we can take some deep breaths and shake the darkness off.

The sun has stood still since the solstice on the 21st. Tomorrow, we will finally gain one more minute of daylight, and the light will wax, moments at a time, until the summer solstice in June; when the sun will stand still and daylight will slowly wane throughout the green and the heat and the harvests, until we arrive back at this point again, spiraling upward, ready to do the Work once more.

May you find a quiet delight in the natural cycles of the earth.

— Nix

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Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by Christiaan Huynen on Unsplash