YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ENERGY (GIFTS OF TEENAGERS)

 Between working with our youth group and moonlighting

at a coffee shop, I've spent an inordinate amount of time with

teenagers this year.  

I love teenagers.  Really.

Like toddlers, they remind us of the magic and intensity

that is always surrounding us but that we've learned to ignore.

Everything old is new again,

we get to relive and reimagine our first semi-adult choices

through the lens of their fresh perspective

including our fashion, music and slang.

Teenagers get a bad rap and one of the reasons is that

they reflect our weaknesses back at us  

through an emotional megaphone.

They're are feeling everything and sharing some portion

of that intensity with their words, actions, and facial expressions.

Of course, adults experience all the emotions that teens do

but most of us have learned to shut up about it.

No one needs to hear all that even if it's screaming as loudly

inside our heads as it is in the teenagers.

Right?

Art made by my daughter (Trashpanda with a duck)

Don't think so?

I guarantee you have intrusive thoughts running around

inside your head during most of your waking hours.

Let's see if I can remind you.....

Are your jeans fitting well after the holidays?

How about your arms-bingo wings tight or flying free?

Maybe it's your hair (or lack there of) that sparks your insecurity.

How about the future?  Worried about your 401(k) performance

or the stability of your industry or 

whether your boss thinks you're a slacker?

How did navigating the holidays go 

with your family of origin?  

I'm sure one or all of those reminded you that

even though you're an adult,

you're not impervious to insecurity. 

After all, we're all human, with brains designed

to prioritize negative thoughts so it's

practically impossible to remove them.

Most of us adults don't voice this never ending litany

of anxieties out into the world.

It's just not acceptable behavior to move through the world

verbally cataloguing every feeling or emotion,

reacting like a pinball on the events of our lives.

But being with so many teenagers has reminded me

that a lot of us could use a refresher on effective and ineffective 

ways to manage these thoughts.

Teens say it out loud with words but a lot of adults

are still letting their anxiety seep out

sideways in moments where they think it doesn't matter.

If you're someone who is absolutely triggered

by teenagers and all their loud feelings

or reactive nature,

I would like to suggest that you might 

need this lesson too.

After all, the keys to the lessons we need are 

often in the things that frustrate us.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about how many adults I interact with who are practically

suffocating themselves with inauthentic behavior

or lack of presence in the real world.

How do I know?

Oh honey.  It's so obvious when someone

is struggling, it's barely less noticeable than teen angst.

I bet you know too.

When the script doesn't follow the expected path,

when the car won't start or the washing machine leaks

or the waitress got your order wrong or 

your colleague asked you that question you'd outlined

in three previous emails...how do you feel?

I'm going to bet you feel frustrated or disoriented

but I'm also going to bet that sometimes you shove that down

and wait for it to leak out into venting with your best friend

or the silent car ride to work.

A few of you might be actually taking it all out on strangers,

blaming them for confusing you with harsh words under your breath

or vicious glares as you pass by them

or having righteous tantrums in the comments/review section of that business.

I get it.

I do it too.

Many of us learned to shove these thoughts down,

to lower the volume externally

and leave the gremlins to do whatever damage they want

to do in the protected prison of our minds.

Instead of healthy reframing, we learned performance.

Instead of direct communication, we learned to appease.

Instead of saying what we need, we learned to avoid.

Instead of navigating conflict, we learned to bully or complain.

This can be a fine short term strategy but it 

ultimately lets you (and those you are around)

down in the long run.

There's a better way to move through the world

but it requires good boundaries

and a rested soul to pull it off.

Here's the basic idea:

You are responsible for your energy.

You.

No one else.

You decide (or fail to decide) how you're going to show up.

It's a choice.

It's 100% on you no matter what excuses or

circumstances or trauma or triggers

or other people's bad behavior you encounter.

One of my favorite teachers, Laura McKowen

has a great set of phrases to remind us that it's not our fault

but it is our responsibility that you can find here.

Last time I saw my car before the great wait for parts 2022 (and 2023)

This feels obvious right?

Most adults will admit on the surface that of course

they are responsible for their actions but few

of us actually think about the energy we're bringing to 

those actions or how they might ripple into the world.

It can get hard in the chaos and relentless tempo

of this world we live in to remember to choose.

We remember to behave (which just means to perform)

in the stable moments that go as we expect.

We know our lines.

We hit our marks, do as expected and we call that success.

Owning your energy is a different level

that is clear and tangible to other humans

whether we want to admit it or not.

I guarantee you know if someone is authentically

present with you in an interaction

or if they are acting.

You are probably just too polite to call them on it.

And you might be hoping that no one calls you on it either.

Have you heard T-swifty's latest album?  There are some gems there.

I'm aware that even bringing this up sounds both smug

and a little too woo-woo for many of you.

As a teen, I learned to behave a certain way and that behavior

 is the most important thing for an adult to have.

I am an excellent performer

and I thought for many years that 

the performance was more than enough for this thing called life.

Even now, after working on #quitting this fakery,

I have a gazillion moments a week where 

my attitude threatens to run away with my intentions

and I find myself acting instead of actually meaning it.

I have to work on choosing my energy

daily.  Sometimes hourly.

Anybody else feel that way?

Want to stop?

Everything is better when you're authentic,

even if it's not perfect or instagramable.

Our washer recently broke and leaked this onto our downstairs ceiling.  If you're not laughing, we probably can't be friends in real life.

Which brings me back to what incredible teachers teenagers 

are for us adults.

Because they look like adults instead of big-eyed

adorable puppies anymore, we tend to 

 forget that they actually aren't mature yet.

Teens are drowning in hormones, growing and changing

in front of our eyes so fast it can be painful.

They get hungry, tired, and overwhelmed 

with the same predictability of any toddler.

When they reach their breaking point, they need to be hugged,

need to eat and rest and play a bit before they can 

do anything too serious again.

Their expressions of frustration or exuberance

are opportunities to remind us what it looks like

to be healthy, not just behave as if we are.

That the choices they make will impact our reality.

That there are better options than simply behaving

but that it requires intention and support.

Because as much as we'd like to deny it,

adults need all those things too in order to show up fully.

My dog Curry hiding out from the teens in our life.

Adulting is super hard-

because we are responsible for our own damn selves.

And when we aren't, there are consequences

the ripple past our own lives.

Barking at your children or your spouse

for little minutiae will bubble around your house

just like a bad stomach bug.

Biting off that waitress' head for a mistake

instead of asking for a remedy will get passed along to the next

exhausted, poorly supported person in her path.

Yelling at the car in front of you the whole way to work

will probably take minutes to dissipate once you reach your destination.

Minutes where you try to greet your colleagues with something

that doesn't come close to matching actual friendliness

even though you are 'behaving' by saying all the usual things.

That energy will roll out into the world

until someone chooses to hold a boundary with it.

That person should be you.

Choose your energy.

Choose your behavior.

If you can't align your energy and your behavior

then take a walk,

have a snack,

or a nap.

Once you're centered, take a deep breath and decide

how you're going to move in the world.

Intentionally.

My favorite teenagers cooking waffles on Christmas morning.

SCHEDULE SITUATION (FREEDOM FEARS)

Almost a year ago, I was discussing my intention 

to leave my employer with my therapist during a session.

She asked me what I was planning to do in the weeks 

immediately following my end date.  

I told her I thought I'd get a job at a local garden center and just spend some time watering plants and soaking in the sun.

She gently reminded me of some things that I'd already told her 

regarding this upcoming change.

I didn't really need the money, I had saved enough to take a 

break for a good long time without much risk financially.

I already work in several gardens around town including my own yard 

so I had access to plants, sun, and water without the garden center.

I was burnt out and exhausted, physically and mentally drained in a way

that made it hard to recognize myself anymore.

What was my reason for rushing to put myself on a timeline again?

What was behind my desire to be once again tied to someone else's schedule?

Therapists are very annoying which is why they are so valuable.

Like usual, my therapist had managed to hone in on exactly the thing that I wasn't willing or able to see inside my own little head.

Quitting my job was fine.

Not having a plan for the future was fine.

Spending time focused on myself was fine.

Exercise and eating right and trying to figure out how to sleep again was fine.

A wide open calendar free of expectation was NOT FINE.

Not even a little tiny bit.

Space that does not need filling

Like, I started to sweat when I thought about how open ended

and available my time would be for the forseeable future.

It wasn't just anxiety or a mild form of unease.

It teetered on the edge of panic; sweaty palms, racing heart

preparing for the worst possible kind of threat.

What the hell right?

Who feels terrible because they have free time?

<clears throat>

Apparently me.

It took me a couple of days to get still and focused 

enough to understand what was happening.

This was obviously a trigger. I've had a lot of experience

exploring those and figuring out what to do with them

so I know how to dig in when they start popping off.

Ultimately I determined that I was scared that 

no one was expecting me to show up somewhere.

If I didn't have an appointment outside of my house

then no one would be aware that something was off with me.

I've said this before but since it's one of the central themes

of my character development, you'll get to hear it at least a few more times.

My over-acheivement and performance habits were developed

as a response to the abusive system of my family of origin.

I was smart, driven and capable because I was rewarded to be that.

It was how I found love and acceptance

AND

it was how I got away from my abusers.

There were two ways to get out of the house when I was young.

Work and school.

Both highly schedule driven.

Both tightly commitment bound.

I spent as many hours at school as I was allowed

and then when I was almost 14, I started working in restaurants.

That was very young to start working

but I would have fought you tooth and nail if you tried to make me stop.

Work was freedom, safety and access.  

Hillary McBride will walk you home.

If I was scheduled to be at school or work, then someone was expecting me.

If I showed up at either of those places visibly unwell,

then there would be consequences and questions.

I was never safe in the confines of my house.

I was never free or able to trust the motivations of those around me.

Life was unpredictable there and I did everything I could do to get out.

My life got much better once I started working and

by the time I was sixteen I was working full time while going to school.

The money I made meant I had access to things like food,

clothing and opportunities that I wouldn't have had without my own income.

I was very successful at this kind of multi-tasking.

My life depended on it (and so did a few other people's)

so even my abusers encouraged that outlet.

So I learned to stack my schedule with as many 'outside of the house'

things as I could possibly fit into a day.

A full schedule meant freedom and safety to teenage me.

There are a lot of things about the human maturation 

process that feel real dumb once you have a little experience with them.

I'm starting to think the definition of a mid-life crisis is refusing to deal

with your childhood wiring in an effective way.

 Those that learn to parent themselves, come out ok in their fifties.

Those that can't learn to parent themselves, 

look like a citrus fruit wearing a bad tupee.

#sorrynotsorry #roevemberiscoming

I've had to do quite a bit of rewiring this wrongly plumbed idea.

A packed schedule did actually mean freedom and safety for me

for about a decade of my life.

However, it doesn't mean that anymore and hasn't meant it 

for about two decades now.

I've created a life of safety and security.

I don't need to run away from home anymore.

I made myself safe finally.

Finally.

But my body didn't know that and 

was having a hard time accepting it.

When we need our body to accept things, we often

have to actually DO them so the body can experience the opposite

reaction and get used to it as a positive experience.

Remember, your body also has to learn to tolerate things that are 

good for you just like you've made it tolerate things that are bad for you.

You can get used to anything.

Even the good things.

Rupi Kaur's book Home Body is gorgeous.

I now have more than six months of experience with a fairly 

open-ended schedule and thankfully, 

it's starting to feel more natural and less scary.

Along with this new perspective on freedom, I've come to 

understand something fundamental that I didn't before.

I need time to take care of myself.

(did you just say duh?  I promise I'm smart in some ways.)

It takes about three hours a day for me to make sure that I am healthy.

Three hours!!!  

Does that seem like a lot to you?

It feels like a LOT to me.

Like who can take a whole three hours away from

all the other needs of the world to take care of themselves?

Except....it does take at least that long.

Sometimes it takes even 

more if I am tryin to thrive 

instead of live my life

like I'm in a combat zone.

I'm working on owning that care as my rightful inheritance

as a beloved child of the Creator because the world 

FOR SURE will not reinforce that for me.

I'm getting there, one long walk and one good night of rest at a time.

View from last week's mid-week grocery walk-10 miles and 25 pounds of groceries are a really good way to spend some workout time.

So what is on my professional schedule for the last few

 months of my year of #quitting?

Thanks for asking.

I've got some things going on that are different

than I would have ever expected six months ago

but I'm really excited about them.

I'll be finishing up my book draft by the end of October and

then I'll move into editing, book proposal drafting, etc.

I am taking on several coaching clients and have space for a couple more.

You can check me out here if you're interested or know someone who might be.

 I think I'm going to try and get a job at a coffee shop 

because I fricking love spending time in them.

I have three other ideas for books including another memoir

and an urban fantasy set in my home state.

I'd like to try and get some short stories published

and get a sense of that industry.

I've got a lot of hiking goals too.  I'm not going to miss

the upclose view to the seasons changing ever again.

Icy cold, sweltering heat, pouring rain, gentle breezes all

remind me I'm alive in a way I'm unwilling to give up.

Just a few things right?

My schedule has space to stretch now

and I can only recognize it as freedom.

Finally.

VERSIONING (A WORD SEARCH)

 

Ya'll know that I think and play with metaphors all the time right?

The way I experience the world is

all wrapped up in pictures and imagery inside my head and 

then I use words to make sense of it.

I don't know how to speak or think in a straight line with words first.

The process of putting words to those images often

helps land the idea more fully-

it takes it from knowledge to wisdom; 

from fictional to concrete somehow.

Sometimes I wrestle with a metaphor for months or years

before I understand it enough to put words around it.

Today's weird image revolves around versions of a person.

Who are we and when does the idea of personal growth

or maturity feel insufficient to describe our lived experience?

I've been sitting pretty regularly with the notion

that there are different incarnations of a person

within this actual lifetime that might be so 

different from previous incarnations that they

look almost as if a wholly different person is present

compared to the same physical entity from a previous point in time.

And that word salad is why this is taking me so long to unpack.

I don't have language to describe this succinctly.

Here's my shortest effort:

Is the 'me' that is alive and moving through the world

the same 'me' that was alive a decade ago?

My personal response to that question is NO.

There have been multiple times where I have been made new.

I don't know if reborn is the right description

but it doesn't feel wrong necessarily either.

The best way I can think about this is by using lego kits.

Many of the same pieces are there-

same human, same social security number,

same parents and lived experience.

But they've all been rejiggered and moved around

so that the function and action of the pieces

is altered completely.

I don't really know what to call this process

but I have lived through it at least two times now

after I reached adulthood.

It's more than maturation.

In both cases, who I was before

died/ceased to exist/was transformed

so that something else could

be present/thrive/exist.

I can remember those versions

but I can't ever be them again.

I can understand that earlier version of myself-

what motivated her, what scared her,

the precious altars of hopes and dreams and shame

that she protected at all costs.

But I am so fundamentally different than her

that it feels like walking through the life of a 

beloved friend.

For example, I'd like to submit the version of me from my twenties.

I was an adult-a fully realized incarnation of myself.

I had a career, dreams for my life, relationships,

partnerships and a mortgage.

I had enough lived experience that I wasn't naïve,

I had tools to navigate the world, and 

a fairly strong identity.

I lived successfully as that version of myself

for around a decade or so.

Through an intense series of circumstances

and experiences, I became something else.

Something new and different than I had been before.

In that case I became a mother.

And it altered me so irrevocably that 

all my decisions and perspective changed.

How I saw the world, 

the level of compassion and 

the foundation of all my decisions was different.

I was a whole person before I became a mother.

I was a whole person after I became a mother.

I was not the same person though.

Now lots of people talk about how impactful

becoming a parent is on their character

or their perspective.

Surely that's just maturity or growth right?

I respectfully disagree.

I have definitely grown since I became a mother-

rounded out my edges, navigated new challenges

and added some layers.

But the version of me that is a mother

also lost some elements that were essential

to that earlier incarnation.

It's like a bit of me cracked off and 

fell into the big lego bin

to be repurposed.

I can see why the twenty-something me

needed those bits and I'm not altogether sure

why they no longer fit in with this new version.

They just didn't and I couldn't make them.

When I think about them, I don't feel sorrow

or longing for that version of myself.

It just was time for that version to be revised

and some of the edits had to be harsh

to allow the new version to function.

Each time I've gone through this

I've inverted my life-

turned it upside down and inside out.

Like an episode of hoarders

everything has to come out onto

the front lawn before I can decide if anything

at all is useful for who I want to become.

I've sometimes had help dragging all my

crap out onto the veritable front lawn of my life.

And yet every single choice for what

gets carried forward is on me so that 

I can create a revision.

When I try and put words around this

it feels sort of maniacal-

like I just got up one morning and decided to change

lives like someone changes clothes.

I keep trying to come up with words for this 

process and they all fall somewhat short.

Is it a mid-life crisis?

A makeover?

A stroke?

A mental illness?

Why do all of those words

pull up such a negative feeling?

Every time this has occurred

it has been painful

but also essential and necessary.

It's not a surface level transformation

and it occasionally requires professional help.

There are real shifts in identity, opinions,

perspective and ultimately-

changed actions; consistent behavior modification.

Is there some incredible German or Greek

word that supports this?

I'm a little too self-centered

right now to try and explore it

with intention so if you know

please DM me the insight.

I find myself wondering lately whether I'm 

experiencing another of these major revisions

right now.

I have been profoundly impacted

by my lived experience of the past 2 years.

Am I about to experience a new inversion

and the resulting revision?

Or am I experiencing a profound season of growth?

One thing is for sure-

I won't really know until after the fact

when I can reflect on it.

Maybe by then, I'll have a single word to describe it-

this way of taking a whole, complete person

down to the raw materials 

and then building them back up into 

a completely new configuration.

Until then, I'll just keep wrestling with lego analogies.

TURNING STICKS INTO GAUGES (Moving Myself Gently)

As someone who spent a lot of my educational years in labs,

the idea that something can be exactly right (or wrong)

has always held a certain appeal.

In labs, specifics are vitally important

to getting the experiment right.

Being precise, moving within the 

strictly outlined parameters,

and taking exact readings of the situation

are just basic perspectives of any scientist.

But in my own life,

especially in the voice in my head,

nothing good has ever come from having some hard and fast line

against which to measure myself.

From the number of pounds I weigh

to the dollars in my paycheck-

if I'm using hard numbers to somehow 

measure myself, it's sure to turn out badly.

And yet, for years I used measurements to be sure 

that I was somehow keeping myself in check.  

Whenever I felt anxious, I could dig deep 

and find a metric that would ensure my overall

success/happiness/safety if I just managed to achieve it.

Once I targeted that metric, I'd use my drill sergeant voice

to get myself back on track.

I beat myself back into submission until the next time 

I somehow didn't measure up.

a random stoplight in New York State from my summer road trip

I mentioned here that I took a very long road trip this summer 

and I had several revelations, including that I needed to get back

into therapy to support my mental health.
Another of those was that I needed to really pay attention 

to my physical health because many things were very off.

The old way I used to do this was through

my internal drill sergeant to break out the measuring sticks

so I could figure out exactly how far off the mark I was

and then get back within the lines.

The therapist and I agree:  that method is not good for me anymore.

It is important to me that I speak peace to myself

as the method by which I get back on track.

Until recently, I didn't really have a tool with which to do that.

I think and breathe in metaphor-

if you don't know this by now I don't know what

you think has been happening here.

This situation is no different.

The drill sergeant/measuring stick metaphor had to go 

and that meant it was time for a new one.

 Like many of my most useful ideas,

this one came to me while talking and walking with my spouse.

He was talking about something automotive

and since that is boring as all hell not my interest

my mind started wandering.

 I thought about the gauges on a car dash.

I have no idea what RPMs my car normally putters around at,

how much oil is needed for proper engine running,

or frankly what most of the gauges that I start at

every time I drive mean.

But if I ever see the needle up in the red

on any of those gauges I'll take action.

Even better, they're kind of designed to keep you from freaking out

unless you really need to do something.

They help you know that you're functioning mostly in the 

acceptable range for the car

AND they also make it clear when you're dipping into something

that isn't recommended for the machine as designed.

I began to wonder if that was a metaphor that would work

for me to approach this physical body.

Instead of focusing on a specific target or detailed data,

I've could try to stay in terms of red/yellow/green.

That sounds kind of simplistic

but it was really quite easy to begin with.

All of the gauges were buried in the red.

my daughter is a talented artist- this one is titled 'anxiety'

It will not surprise anyone who knows me that I took 

the opportunity of the pandemic 
to hit an all time record on ways to ignore 

the basic requirements of this body that I live in.  
I fought a weak and tepid fight for a few months-

attempting to work out daily using slightly adjusted tools.  

Attempting to draw boundaries around the start and end of my day.  
Attempting to keep some kind of structure with eating, sleeping, moving.  
And at some point, I forgot to care and just gave up.
On sleep.
On vitality.
On eating anything with nutrient value.
On moving.

I'm not exaggerating.
I was very successful at turning into a person who stares into the computer 
like it's the source of all my salvation with eyes that rarely blinked.
I had a slow slide into pod-person-hood.  
I wanted to just keep tripping down the endless zoom calls 

clinging tightly to that skinny connection with other humans.  
When that void wasn't filled, I found covid dashboards to watch

 and political news to mine through.  

Each day in an effort to retreat from all that ambiguity, 

I'd inevitably end up reading fanfiction or trolling reddit until 3am.  

All gauges were redlined by any objective measure.

semi-ironic advice from a Starbucks wall

But how to get the needle moving in the other direction?

For a while that felt almost impossible

to even contemplate.

So I decided to focus on just one of the gauges and see

if moving it out of redline had an impact on the others.

Sleep was the place I started and I gradually moved it from red

to orange and then a kind of puce green.

A few weeks after working on sleep

I bought a very basic fitbit and only

used it to see if I had hit or passed 10,000 steps.

More than that was mostly ignored.

Less than that meant dancing in the kitchen,

jogging in place while I watch my favorite rugby teams or

going for a walk on the greenway by my house until 

I felt the buzz.

I'm not back in the gym doing crazy weights

but I am really happy to say that

I'm moving my body every single day

and I actually enjoy the methods by which I do it.

The last area I've paid attention to is eating.

Eating has been such a complicated area for me.

But I think I've finally found a method that keeps me

from obsessing about it (calories, nutritional content, macros)

and allows me to just gauge how I feel.

I have a window in the day where I eat (usually noon-8pm).
I try to focus on getting a lot of veggies in that window 

but I also don't restrict or forbid anything.
I've noticed that I'm spending less time ruminating about what 

I might eat or could eat or should eat.
I just try and give myself the food that feels joyful for that day.

doughnut gauges from Portland Maine

I'm proud that I'm back on track towards physical health 

but I'm more proud of this shift from measuring sticks to gauges.
I have always been much more care-filled for other than people than for myself.
The pandemic forced me to be with myself so much, 

it's almost like I had to have any friends at all,

I'd definitely have to include myself in the party.

It seems really simple but I 
am starting to think of it as something truly radical.
I have proven to myself how much I can harm myself.
Again and again and again.
But over the past 6 months, I've started to prove to myself 

that I'm capable of something else.
Sitting still and listening to what is happening inside of me.
Taking care of myself as the first steps of my day

instead of the last fringes of energy.

This gauge metaphor may or may not be useful to you.

You might have some really strong reasons to keep

hitting yourself with sticks

or you might be one of the lucky few

who never raised a hand in harm to yourself.

I love hearing about tools and tricks 

that make a difference with real people's

actual lives so feel free to let me know what works for you.

slow as you go, anyway you measure it