Dancing Geek

I’m so excited waiting to see if the seeds I’ve planted will sprout.  I feel like a little kid in primary school who’s planted a sunflower (I have some, but I’m waiting to put these direct into the ground) and looks at the pot every day to see if anything has changed yet.  I’m totally fussing: have I given them too much water or too little?  But in a nice, fun way rather than a stressy yucky way.  Or at least in a self-aware way which means I fuss but then I see myself fussing and go: relax…

I’m calling it meditation

As well as playing with soil and sand (for drainage) I’ve been doing my meditation practice (I’m calling it meditation for short, because ‘sitting/writing/feeling thing-a-me-bob that I do maybe once or twice a day’ is just too much of a mouthful.)  The result of which has been some awesome noticing and writing to release (so pretty much what Joely said).

Dissolving emotions

What amuses me the most is that it was only when I started writing just to have it written down that it caused them to dissolve.  Before, I always had the intention of ‘letting go’ or ‘getting rid’ of the feeling, which causes it to stick harder or, as often happens for me, for the feeling to go back in it’s box and sulk and wait for a totally inopportune moment to get its subtle revenge.

I even caught myself thinking “It’s ok, you can come out and talk, I’m not trying to get rid of you.”  Which was thankfully rapidly followed by the understanding that I can’t fool myself and was just lying to myself, which is not a healthy thing to do.  I’ve been there and am not going back.

It’s hard to record emotions though without wishing them away, particularly when others have written about how noticing and witnessing the emotion will cause it to fall away.  It’s like saying “Don’t think about pink elephants!”  But I finally got out of my head enough to find that sweet spot, and now that I’ve found my way there I can thankfully get back there again and again.  Muy bueno!

A spot of detail

Just to share what I’m doing in more detail, in case you want to try something similar or compare notes or just mock me, I sit down (usually in my jammies and over-jammies* sitting in the sun, if it’s first thing when I get up) and write out the date, time and the question “What am I feeling right now?”  I then write the names of whatever emotions come up.  Sometimes it’s a simple word, like angry, confused or relaxed other times it requires a phrase (usually because I can’t think what the name is) such as ‘like dancing’, ‘a little time pressured’ or ‘fear or isolation’.  I may end up writing out whole sentences if I feel like I’m getting a particular message come through, but this is the rarest of all.  All this noticing sometimes also kicks off an epiphany and I will write down what has come up, boxing it off so that I can find it easily later on.

*over-jammies are a loose jumper and jogging bottoms to keep me warm but which are completely manouvreable enough for me to do my stretching in them without having to work around them

Onion style

This process is iterative, like the peeling away of layers.  So each time I feel I have written a layer out I will return to sitting still, putting the pad and pen down.  I try and reach stillness, but rather than force it upon myself (like that would work anyway) I will see if anything starts to come up into the quiet.  If it does I give it a little while to come and make itself known (basically as long as I can go without having to write it down, but not so long as I will forget the name of the feeling) and then get my pad and start writing again.  I can usually tell if there is something left to come as I can feel it sitting in my body.  So I will go through a body check and ask each part of my body how it’s feeling.

It comes in shifts.  I will do many short meditations as each layer comes up until finally I will be able to sit quite still and have nothing coming up in my mind.  Once I’ve gone through this process completely I am usually left feeling very clean, clear and bright and ready to face the day.  It’s an amazing transformation, which would leave me totally blown away except that that’s just another layer I’d write down until I find the peace beneath that.

The juicy stuff

I got a couple of epiphanies this morning, which made for a pretty long and scribbled entry. (58 emotions, and yes I totally counted them again, and no I’m not going to do a big graph and chart how much emotion I’ve got at different times of the day and plan out my peaks and troughs and plan my life around them because that would kind of be me over-planning again now wouldn’t it.  What do you mean that’s not what you were thinking?  Oh, I’ll get on with what I was saying then.)

Epiphany #1: bitching is about bonding

I realised that the side of me that likes to bitch and moan about stuff comes from the desire to have people like me, and one way to bond with someone is to have a common enemy (even if only perceived).  Of course, all that negativity is totally yucky and draining, but I do it anyway because it makes me feel a lot closer to those I’m bitching and gossiping with.  So, let’s see if I can replace bitching with making a genuine connection by trying to help people.

Epiphany #2: good vs evil marketing/sales

This is less of an epiphany and more of an odd, half-formed, thought.  I started to think about making money.  I would like this to be through my giving real social value to others, without the need to fabricate the feeling of demand in the others I am serving.  However, by letting people know how I can help them am I not automatically going to remind them of some sort of lack in their lives?  Is there a way to offer value without making people sad first?!

I wondered if there was a difference between corporations that advertise on a grand scale to let everyone know that they’re making something that could improve their lives and me telling as many people the same thing.

Obviously I can talk about intent, how mine would be to provide value and corporations are about making profit.  But I’m still not sure where the line is here.  Still, these are useful thoughts on my path towards becoming a confident, balanced and powerful social-preneur.

Epiphany #3: My left hemisphere is sneaking up in new places

I found myself considering “soap is a compromise for not washing often enough” in the shower.  Complete with suggestions (like some wacky Victorian guide for Gentry) that simply rinsing/scrubbing thoroughly in warm water is enough, so long as the key areas (you know, the sweaty bits…) are washed 2 or 3 times a day.  Now obviously doing this is inpractical for most, hence soap is the compromise we make to help us last longer between washings.  Truth is, however, that soap is not great for our skin – I’m pretty sure modern soaps are better, but still not ideal.  It was all kicked off by my own little ‘no poo’ trial (which has been very successful, to my sister’s confused amazement).

Also, and seemingly unrelated, is my comment on chas’ blog.  I suddenly started looking at a trend that I’d seen across a number of blogs and was drawing inductions left, right and centre.

It appears that my pattern spotting, theorising tendencies are finding new ways to express themselves.  Only question is, are they useful?

P.S. Day 4 of my thing without a name is due up shortly – you can check the others out on my channel while you wait.

I have a point to make, and I actually want to make it quickly so I can get back to getting ready for bed, but before I do I have to let you know about a comic called Monique Marvez.  Go check her out.  It’s totally hetero-centric but it’s still some of the funniest (and truest) stuff I’ve heard in a long time.  Totally made my night/morning.

The Epiphany

So, yeah, I’ve a point to make.  After trying my morning practice for a few days, and having a great success from it, I decided it might be cool to try it before going to bed as well.  This comes from knowing that meditation is recommended either first thing or last thing (or indeed both) in some places, and I suddenly thought: “I get so clear headed after this in the morning, and hence ready to get on with my day, that maybe I can use that at night to get to sleep better.”

Bam!

As I sit here, at what was 3am but now thanks to Monique is 3.50am, and asked myself the question “How do I feel right now?” there was a whole pile of yuck that just tumbled up.

Sploooge! Ick, ick, ick. (Do the sound effects help?  I’m not going to stop if they don’t, because I love them, but I’m just curious.)

Well, gosh darn it, no wonder I avoid going to bed if the moment I start thinking about it a whole kit and kaboodle of gunk goes squishing through my wetworks!  Who’dathunk that the act of going to bed could have so much baggage attached?

Well, ok, you probably have, given how much I’ve written about it (recurring theme, much?) but the whole point of an Epiphany is when you suddenly go ‘ding!’ and realise (that is, remember) what everyone else already knew.  As Joely calls them: ‘Oh Bugger, Really?’ moments.

Hurrah for live-blogging at 4am

So now I get to go back to my feeling practice as it closes on to 4am and my feet lose all sensation from sitting still in this chair for hours on end without any heating turned on because I thought I was going to go to bed soon (I mean, come on, do I never learn?!) and know that I told you all how I crazy I was.

Wait, no, that’s tired cranky talk.  I’m actually really grateful to have reached a point and found a practice that work together so well for me.  I’m off to enjoy freeing up my mind to go sleepy-bies and I’ll catch you all on the flip side.

P.S. Today/tomorrow (given time-zones the day technically starts in a few hours for her) the Urban Panther is re-opening her blog on WordPress complete with fancy widgets and the ability to subscribe to comments (FINALLY!).  So I expect you all to head over and shout up the wonderfulness.  I recommend starting with the story posts – brilliant characters and setup.

So it’s Day 3 of my thing with no name and I’ve tried something a bit less obvious today.  I wanted to try using my webcam rather than my camcorder (just because I could, and because my geek side wanted to get it working under Ubuntu, which I managed by the way, but not before something like 5am.  Bleurgh, I am so over all-nighters, I don’t care if that makes me ‘old’).

There’s an idea floating around in my head (source unknown) that more constraints can lead to greater creativity.  So I decided to sit down and started playing with movement.  After trying a few things along the usual lines it just didn’t work so I started to try playing with the webcam format a bit more and came up with a mini-dance that isn’t necessarily what I’d think of first when I hear the word dance, but decided that as a work in 12 seconds (the brevity being part of the constraints and part of the attraction to my scanner brain) it could stand on its own quite happily.

Tomorrow’s?  I have no idea, I am not planning these.  I’m working on lots of my stuff by doing these.  Putting myself out there as a dancer/choreographer/internet bod/video guy, not worrying about getting it perfect, doing a little bit everyday to build momentum.  There’s probably other stuff too, but that’s all that comes to mind at 1.11 am.

My medi-journaling thing this morning?  It went well thank you (I did it again, which is  cause for celebration in itself, and yes I celebrate it by writing it in my little book of ‘Awesome things I did today becuase I’m awesome’) and was oddly quick (just 11 emotions today).  Not sure if that’s due to lack of sleep (had to get up to meet family after my geek out last night) or because I needed food first thing and then played the piano for a bit before sitting down to do my morning practice thing.  It could just be because I’m pretty calm at the moment, but where’s the drama and hypothesising and blame in that, eh?  Oh wait, are they maybe not such a good thing?