Category: reverb

We are all lightning rods, conduits for that which the Universe wants born into this world. What energies did you channel this year?
This year has been about acceptance – acceptance of who I am, acceptance of what other people are.

Everything that I have written this year has, somewhere along the line, been about that, saying, ‘You and I have a right to be in the world, the way we are just at this minute, imperfect, hesitant, apologetic as we are, none the less, there is a place for us.’ All the jewellery I have made has said, ‘Look at this thing! Isn’t it gorgeous?’ Even in my day job I have been thinking about better ways to work with what we already know.

And acceptance isn’t really the right word, either; it goes too far and not far enough. I don’t necessarily want to accept all situations, and I want to do more than just accept people. What I am trying to say is that I want to meet people where they are, without trying to change them – frustrating as that is when those people are not themselves accepting, and are trying to change me or other people. I want to let people be who they are, not who I think they ought to be. That’s what I’ve been writing about all year.

I want to see what is really there. I want clear-sighted love. I want to show that this is possible for everyone. That is, it turns out, what I have been striving for all this year.

It’s all too easy to put off loving where we are until everything is perfect. What can you love about where you are now?

I’m in a good place, a safe place. I’m warm and I’m dry and I’m in my study, my nest in the heart of this house, with a lavender candle burning, and Tony’s cheesy music drifting in from the conservatory. I’ve got a very long weekend: tomorrow and Friday off, and then Monday and Tuesday, and a party and a show and all sorts to fill it with. Tomorrow I’ll go out and remind myself how much I like this city I live in now.

Eighteen months ago, in the middle of all the terrifying changes, I identified four conditions in which I planned to remain, and here I am: alive, sane, married and employed. The sanity is a bit wobbly sometimes, but the more I remain in the now, the more secure it is.

I came off my bike on the way home this evening, but nothing was damaged except a pair of tights that was on the way out anyway. My bike, my mother’s birthday present, and I, are all intact. Tony ran me a bath and lent me his huge fluffy dressing gown. I smell faintly of lemon bath stuff, and my belly is full of shepherd’s pie, and I’m pleasantly sleepy. My nose isn’t bleeding. That puts today ahead of most of the last week. I’m getting better, and in the mean time I am being looked after in the most delicious manner.

This morning was stunning. I left the house at quarter to seven, and the sky was clear enough for a couple of stars still to be straggling above me, while the dawn was brightening across the river. The red lights and the white lights of the city glowed. This evening it was all moonlight and moody clouds, and there were ginkgo leaves on the pavement.

I like my job. I have reasonable prospects of moving up the ladder. I’ve written a novel. That’s a hell of a thing. I can and will write another. I’ve learned to ride a bike. All the time, I am growing. And, much as I whinge about being ill, I am an awful lot better. I am not just better than I was five years ago, I am better squared. I have discovered whole new dimensions in which to be better. I’ve come an amazingly long way and barely noticed.

I am thinking of various friends who are in difficult places, and wishing (really wishing, you know the sort I mean) them well. I’m thinking of my eldest little brother, whose birthday it is. I am thinking of my ex-colleagues, with some of whom I had lunch today, and how much part of my life they still are, and after I was so worried about losing them all. Thinking, too, about friends from way back with whom I have reconnected this year. I have such wonderful people in my life.

I don’t know how to finish this entry. Every word brings in a new moment, a new now, and each now another good thing. Now is all there is, the only moment that time touches eternity.

What unfinished projects from 2014 am you willing to release now? (Regret not required.)

I have lengths of silver wire in various different gauges lying around the house, the relics of an autumn in which I didn’t achieve nearly as much as I’d intended. I had so many grand dreams for this autumn, but I had a cold, then stress, then seasonal depression, and then another cold. All that writing, all that smithing, all those things I simply did not have the energy to do… I have done some things. I’ve written about 20,000 words, in various places. I’ve made a ring, a bangle, another ring, a sort of torc thing. I have done some things. I have just not done as many things as I wanted to.

I’m not sure that I’m ready to let go of any of that, yet. Part of that is knowing that they will come back to me, one way or another. These things always do: I have lost count of how many times I abandoned Speak Its Name, before it was even called that. I’ve finished it and abandoned it again, for the moment, trusting that when the spiral brings it back to me I’ll know what to do with it. The same with The Slowest Elopement, which is a book I’ve been writing for even longer. I haven’t completed any projects, because I have been so damn tired; but I am releasing the need to have completed them. I have demoted the whole lot of them to ‘one day’, and that’s fine. They’ll come back to me when they’re ready.

That leaves this other project, this terrifying, overarching idea of ‘real life’, and ‘getting on with it’. 2014 has been huge. It’s a year today since I started my new job, and within that year there has been a graduation, a move, and all manner of subtle readjustment.

I unpacked and broke down two boxes at the weekend. There are still a few about the place, but it is time to acknowledge that this project is, to all intents and purposes, done, or as done as it’s ever going to be. The year (eighteen months/five years) of transition is over. We are back in the same house as each other, and we both have ‘real’ jobs, and we still like each other. Time to let go of Project Grow Up.

What can you say right now with certainty?

Certainty is a word that I find enormously difficult. I have spent so long trying to disentangle ‘certainty’ from ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ that I am much more comfortable with plain old ‘doubt’. Talk of certainty puts me on the defensive, reminds me of all those years feeling that I was a fraud, before I understood that ‘faith’ doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘belief’, and that ‘belief’ that isn’t strong enough to amount to ‘certainty’ is equally valid, anyway.

Go off in the other direction, and the mundane starts wobbling, too. I’m suddenly very aware of how relative everything is. I can say for certain that it is five past nine on the first of December, but then I remember that time is an artificial construct. I start wondering about certainty, and I start wondering what’s ‘really’ true, and before I know it I’m wondering whether I really exist, and what this bottle of nail varnish I’m looking at is made of, I mean, really made of. And that way leads nowhere useful. What can I say for certain? Absolutely nothing at all.

I’m not certain of anything, particularly myself. My mind doesn’t really deal in certainties. As someone who spends a lot of time in a state of mind where it is necessary to discard apparent self-evident truths about who and what I am and what is my place in the world. I am constantly questioning my own perceptions, for my own sanity.

I cannot afford to let myself be too certain. And, even when I come out the other side of all that, what I emerge into is something entirely different from certainty. It’s more reality than certainty, I suppose; a fizzing, sparkling reality that I don’t have to be certain about. Certainty is a state of mind that I can’t produce with any kind of reliability, and over the years I’ve found that I don’t feel the lack of it.

What can I say with certainty? Now, as ever, not very much at all. All the same, I don’t really think that matters.

Day 21: On our last day

The shortest day is over, and the year turns. I am already three weeks into my new year. I like this way of counting it. No fireworks, no countdown, no midnight stroke; just easing into the long nights, letting time pass, thinking, and watching, and listening. This works.

2014 is going to be MY YEAR because… I’m going to go bravely on, to walk with an open mind and an open heart into the new life that is stretching before me, and reach out and claim everything that is waiting for me.

In 2014, I am going to do… my very best to find an agent and a publisher for the novel that is so very nearly finished. I am going to proceed in my new job with enthusiasm and integrity, and with the joyful intention of moving on sooner or later.

In 2014, I am going to feel… scared, and exhilarated, and eventually, I hope, settled.

In 2014, I am not going to… forget everything that I have learned in 2013 about who I am and how I work. I am not going to pretend that I don’t feel what I am feeling. I am not going to be cruel to myself.

In December 2014, I am going to look back and say… thank you.

Looking back at last year, I am impressed by how right I got it. I do know where I’m going next; I’m already half-way there. The novel is all but done (at least in terms of words on paper; it still needs at least two savage edits). I have been scared, and I haven’t shut myself off.

And yes: that was a good year; it all makes sense now.

Day 20: The way forward

Forward is the only direction.

The mirror never lies, but everything in it is backwards.

Look at what you see in the mirror. How does it change if you view yourself with eyes that can only look forward?

Here it is again: go bravely on.

Once this year I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise myself, not really because the face was puffy and red-eyed with crying, streaked with unfamiliar make-up, but because I was tired, and heart-sick, and had forgotten who I was.

Today, I see: ruffled hair, undeniably greying but doing it as if it meant it; a half-smile (has my expression of repose become a smile? wonderful, if so); square-framed spectacles, worn enough of the time now that they’ve become part of the way I look; blue eyes, rather cat-like in this particular mirror, because of the way they reflect the double lines of LEDs down the sides of it; much nose, little chin. No make-up today – it’s Saturday – but I’m enjoying playing with it. Can I see that I was crying last night? No.

This is a hard question, because so much of the work that I have done this year has been visiting the past, talking to the people I used to be, talking to the people I might have been. My future self showed up once and told me I needed some new jeans, which I got, and am, as it happens, wearing today.

Looking forward. Looking forward. Days that get longer. This face. Laughing more, listening more, looking other people in the eye. Looking myself in the eye.

Day 19: Self-compassion

The Buddha said, “You, yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

In the past year, I have been on a mission to understand and practice self-compassion, which is sometimes defined as “extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering,” and what I have learned has made me realize that this practice is at the heart of everything.

How will you practice self-compassion?

Thank goodness: an easy question.

This is not remotely original, but I only learned it this year, and it is remarkably helpful.

The golden rule: treat others as you would have them treat you.

The silver rule: treat yourself as you would like others to treat you.

One can never really know anyone else, but one never knows oneself, either. One doesn’t know the full story, and so it is worth stopping, and listening, and finding out what is really going on.

Day 18: Peace

I am often surprised where I find peace, it is usually in the midst of chaos.

In the midst of living, did you find moments to breathe? Were there moments that held you in the embrace of peace and quiet and pure contentment?

Did these moments catch you by surprise or did you create the space for peace to find you?

How will you make space for greater peace in 2014?

This was a good year for peace. Long strolls at lunchtime; the ten minutes between arriving at choir practice and beginning to sing, while the boys are rehearsing; walking to the station before sunrise; long evenings mid-move, sitting among the ever-dwindling furniture and boxes, with a few good books; wandering around Wells and doing as I pleased, so long as I was on time for choir practice.

Some of that was deliberate; some was inadvertent. Some was experimental; some was taking advantage of situations over which I didn’t have much control.

Some things that have worked: Hanging around on The Fluent Self. Making and using a Wreath of Christ. Reading The Cloister Walk.

What I would like for 2014: to find a way to work more peace into my morning train ride. To put things away so that there is space for me between them (thinking here how remarkably peaceful it was at the end of each day during the move). To spend more time out of doors, to get some really good long walks in.

Day 17: It’s your word

What word did you select to be your travelling companion in 2013? What gifts did this word bring?

What word will you choose to guide you through 2014? What do you hope it will bring into your life?

Last year’s word was love. I got everything I asked for. I learned how to treat myself with compassion, remembered how it felt to be eighteen, found friends, discovered friends I didn’t know I had… There is still work to do – mainly around my relationship with various family members – and of course next year will call for loving readjustments, but even so 2013 has been far more about love than I expected. It has mostly been wonderful and only occasionally painful. I would like to keep on with love.

This year’s word is freedom. I have been working, this year and last, on breaking free of the mind-forged manacles, of the shoulds and oughts, of other people’s expectations of me, and of what I think other people’s expectations of me might be. I want 2014 to be a year where I am free of vicious circles and limiting untruths, free from fear, free from shadows, free from the lies I tell myself about myself. I want to be free for endless exploration and going bravely on. I want to be free to live in the real world.

I want to live in freedom. I want to work towards freedom, for myself and everyone else.

Day 16: Habits and addictions

Habits and addictions, some are silly, some serious; when we have issues without answers, they can hold us so tight that we stop moving forward with the life we intended.

Were you able to loosen those fetters this year, and if you were successful, how did you manage it? Did you accept outside help, or work alone?

If you still feel that grasp of addiction or hurtful habits, what will you do differently in the year to come?

Content note: discussion of habits in general; also eating habits and deliberate variation of same

I am not really a creature of habit. I am more, I suppose, a creature of enthusiasms. I fall into them fast and hard, and out of them just as easily, and then, after months or years, remember about them and fall just as hard as I did the first time. Since this appears to be just the way I work, I’ve decided to let that happen, ride the waves when they come in, and enjoy the beach when they don’t.

Conversely, I seem to be fortunate enough to be largely indifferent to commonly addictive things. I can drink every night for a month and not miss it when I stop, give up chocolate or coffee or whatever for Lent without a struggle. There are little irritating things that I do, on and off: nail-biting, finger-chewing, hair-pulling. Like a bored budgerigar pulling its feathers out, I suppose. Largely these seem to be related to how happy, or at least diverted, I am. The answer would therefore appear to be to keep myself occupied; but I’d rather be doing that because I enjoy whatever it is that’s keeping me occupied than because it’ll keep my eyebrows intact.

One thing that has been of significance this year, however, has been finding and turning off the thing in my head that says uneaten food is wasted food: it is your duty to eat this. I am not entirely sure how I did this, but here are two things that helped:

– ordering a weekly veg box delivery, which stopped me having to shop when I was tired, hungry and cross, and cut out most of the ‘wandering glumly around the supermarket wondering what on earth to cook’ aspect of it. A supermarket contains all sorts of things I don’t want but will buy anyway, and then have to eat; the veg box engages my brain, challenges me, makes me find out what one can do with chicory or chard or celeriac (all the tricky ones seem to begin with C) and then do it.

– getting myself a money box, and, every time I had a piece of cake or leftover sandwich from the staff room, putting a quid in it. Every time there was cake or sandwich there that I didn’t have, I put 20p in. It seemed to work largely by making me more aware of what I was doing or not doing, by assigning a more obvious consequence to my actions; also, it was quite handy to have a ready stash of pound coins to go into birthday card whip-rounds.

The remaining contents of the money box went into the kitty at my leaving drinks.