This week, my beloved souls, started out with the best intention and then continued with life having seemingly other plans. I am lucky to believe that the movements of the planets above have an impact on us, so I could partially blame Pluto moving into Aquarius and shaking things from the core up. However, I also am pretty good in blaming myself. So I did that too, just for good measure. To give you the picture of what happened (partly because I said I would document the journey and therefore even the parts that I feel shame around, partly because I am just so happy right now that I feel called to write again... I've missed it!):
Monday to Wednesday morning
I poured all of my energy and love into the podcast episode number 49 and the workbook I created to go with it. If you feel called to do so, here is the episode where you can also download said workbook for free. It took me about twelve hours and I did it in two days. Maybe this comes as a surprise, but on day three I somewhat felt absolutely exhausted. Especially because, in order to stick to my self proclaimed routine of tending to one project per day (see explanation here!), I invested what little creative spirit remained, after the podcast production, in furthering the book I am currently writing. So day three started with me abandoning the plans to meet up with a very special friend of mine and instead staying home.
Intention: peace and rest and maybe enough creative recovery to actually continue my week's program after.
Instead the reality looked like this: I felt like a lousy friend, like a weak example of a human being and overall a lost cause because instead of doing what I wanted to do, namely be nice to myself, I beat myself up. While I was spiralling in my head with negative self-talk, on the outside I couldn’t admit to it, so I kept a facade going where I did excellent cooking and baking and cleaning. The only respite I had was when I went out with Marjorie for a nice walk. Apart from that I poured what energy I had into coping: doom scrolling on social media, comparing myself to others on their journey with well over 100k likes on a video that is very similar to content I had already put out, then reprimanding myself that comparing is the death of creativity and anyway, one step at a time, then an awful gut feeling like missing a step on a flight of stairs that I am doing nothing anyway, I am a user and not a producer and therefore will never, I repeated this with emphasis, EVER, get closer to reaching my dream.
Thursday then consisted of continuing that behaviour. I know, helpful, isn't it?
I wasn’t able to bring up one creative fibre to sit down and work on my next YouTube video. And because I was unable to do that, the next logical thing to do was, exactly, you got it, hate myself more. In essence the talk took a sharp left turn towards a deeper level, naturally so, as this was the second day where I wouldn’t use my timeneither productively nor efficiently. Who was I thinking I could turn my dreams into a reality, and who was I thinking I could do it differently when all I did differently with the time given to me was sit around and feel miserable. Wasn’t the world my oyster? Wasn’t I in the pretty luxurious situation where all the time was mine and I could invest it in furthering my true longings? Instead here I was, second day in a row, not doing anything productive, moaning around that I was unable to be creative. Some cooking helped me get a few breaths of fresh air, the magic seemed to fade from my life, and after delivering a care package to a friend, the heavens suddenly opened up and magic was pouring down in heaps. 30cm in overnight snow fell down, to be exact. And all was well for a glimpse when I was out with Marjorie, although she found it so peculiar and did not trust it a lot, meaning I got twenty minutes of bliss with her outside, took myself another ten minutes on my own enjoying the huge snowflakes and how they covered everything underneath a thick blanket with pure grace and beauty.
That was over quickly.
After I went back inside, the next 48 hours would consist of nothing else but squirming back and forth. I became conscious only to walk Marjorie, unconscious (as in sleep, please no panic!) for the most part because of some sort of food poisoning. Everything was spinning as soon as I switched any position, whether it be lying or sitting or standing, and every and any odour my nose caught made me immediately seek out emergency help from the toilet seat. Obviously, the best part of that was that I had no time for putting myself down, as my whole body did that literally. There were moments of consciousness when I did tend to the negativity in my head though, circling thoughts of not being good enough, not ever amounting to anything, having to abandon all and any plans of a future containing freedom of time, space and creativity.
Saturday marked the hardest part of this story. I got up, went for a walk with marjorie, came back and lit a fire in the stove. I wanted to get back to my morning routine, when I felt like I still had everything under control by maintaining the ritual of journaling by the fire and then moving on to QiGong before I went to work on my projects. I was set on doing that. I wanted it so bad. And yet the moment we returned from the walk and the fire was lit, I felt as tired as I though I had had no sleep for three days while simultaneously fulfilling the Herculean task of holding the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I had emerged from the depths of my bed this morning, to realise that I felt a bit weak but not nauseous anymore. And although I had made my bed in an attempt to keep me from giving in to my weakness of character, to my lazy personality, I found aloophole and proceeded to lay straight down on my mat in front of the window. The sun peaked in and threw warm rays onto my head. I felt like this was the only thing I was able to do, just lay there and receive the warmth and the charge warmth brings to nourish the body. I am not going to lie, I shed a few silent tears too. Inside the battling of the ages continued.
One side enforcing the righteousness of my actions, the clear and visible exhaustion and the need to bring balance by stopping and having a break, by asking rhetorically if this inner work wasn’t as important as anything I created in the outside, because I wanted my outside creations to reflect the inner growth I strive toward, I wanted to be real and allow my own struggles to enable me to expand and further my experiences in order to be of better service to others, didn't I? Wasn't this part of being human? Wasn't I allowed to weigh down under the pressure of my current financial situation?
The counter from the other party was swift and effective, smirking. Without effectiveness and results and sweat and work and accepting this world as the harsh place it was, nothing would ever become out of me. To think, to dare envision, a future where occupation equals joy and direct service to others, when you are a bloody mess and good for nothing yourself, how do you think you are? No money, almost a month into your journey and no results! Disgusting! Nothing will ever come to fruition without money anyways. Neither inside nor outside could you ever be able to support people on their journey, look at you with your whiny attitude and no perseverance, no strength, no backbone to work toward goals. Never will you reach the extraordinary life you wish to create, because you are ordinary, and weak, and useless.
Then I fell asleep, probably because so much nasty self talk costs a lot of energy to recover from.
When I awoke next, the sun still infusing my head with warmth and energy, suddenly these opposing forces were gone and I simply felt like a small, wounded, weak child that was totally and utterly alone.
Do you know that smile that a movie mum has on her face when she goes into the room of her child late at night, sits by their bed and strokes their cheek very lightly so as to not wake them up, and then she smiles because this picture of her sleeping child simply evokes the bliss of purest love within her? I am not kidding you, and it may sound weird, but that smile spread on my face, gently and softly, while I was still lying there on my mat in fetal position. Why? I don’t know, I suddenly just wanted to be nice to me, nice to that child within I sensed was in pain. I somewhat thought nothing, I just started talking in my head with her... me.
I said things like
You are trying, aren't you, why are you so hard on yourself?
Isn’t it alright to rest the head once in a while?
Imagine pouring everything you have into a project, neither acknowledging the beauty of your creation nor some time to fill up your creative tanks again, and then directly moving on to the next and the next and the next, without a proper break?
You are exactly where you are meant to be, even if you have big dreams to catch, you know!
Who is to judge how much you should be able to do, doesn't it matter if you jsut do and not feel not aligned with it?
Where is the pure and authentic light of bliss and joy, has it gone into your creativity without being cared for?
Now wouldn’t it be sensible to simply be in the now and accept you wherever you find yourself and however you feel?
I know something, imagine, your cold feet stepping into the rays of the sunshine and a bit of QiGong? How about that, and nothing else for today? Warm feet and that cosy feeling of alignment you get after every practice? And then allow yourself to go back to lie here?
And it took me another five minutes, and it took my inner mum another few soothing sentences to really bring me up. But I rose, I did my practice and I even felt the urge to write all of this down just now.
I am crying while I write this, maybe all the more reason to post this as the post that should have been published yesterday and wasn’t, because maybe it had to be this one in the first place. I am also crying because even though I have risen and practiced and written something, I still feel very vulnerable and weak and unsure on how the rest of the day will go. How the rest of my winter will go, or even the rest of my life. But if I learned anything from that sweet sweet feeling my inner mom, or the mum I became for myself, evoked it is that I don’t need to know.
It is okay to feel overwhelmed and insignificant and uncertain- the bulk of my load is nothing else then the trajectory of my life, the survival in a world that has a hierarchy of needs. And while I am trying to meet the base needs of food and shelter as they are limited but still present for another two months, as I try and find a way to an income stream that allows me to be of service to myself and others equally, I also am in the whirlwind of figuring out all of the other needs on that pyramid of Maslow. So while on the outside it may look like I have all the time in the world to work on my dreams and should slowly see some ripe fruit on that tree (or otherwise it is time to rip that tree out and sell the wood in a slow, soul-draining process I call earning money for giving away my energy to someone else’s dreams), I also need to be aware of the underlying pressure on myself and the forces that are at work here. Huge forces. And they can bring someone to their knees.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear.
There is something within that makes you get back up, over and over again. A knowing deep within, a pull in a certain direction, a defiance to give in, a strive to find a way. No matter if, after a period of days or weeks when you forget who you are, bully yourself, put yourself down, at first it is all about little steps. The bare minimum, like getting up or allowing to rest, let the feelings take all of you to realise they are not you, they go through you and then they let go because they are temporary. Steps that release the pressure. And suddenly you find yourself making your bed, practising QiGong, heck even cooking for yourself or baking for a friend. You gain momentum, gently, and then you make it outside and put every thought about a looming future aside successfully.
There it is again, a glimpse of it, a surge through your veins- the magic life has to offer.
And once you are able to feel even a nanosecond of that magic, you may well be on your way to finding YOURSELF again.
All the love and light in my heart to all of you that face hardships as well,
All the kindness and compassion, my beloved souls
Nadine
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