Jess lanai

Before anyone gets too excited this is not quite the subject matter the title might suggest.

It also is the subject matter the title might suggest. We’ll see where it goes.

I’m about halfway through my summer. And I’ve been considering this summer my vacation after a long winter in which I faced a lot of things and actually made some progress after many years of rotting in place.

Some of this progress that I’ve made is very concrete things I can point to and show as real evidence even a stranger could understand and congratulate me on.

And some of this progress is noticed in only very little moment where a really close friend or family member will look at me and say, ‘wow, you’ve really changed.’

And some of this progress is so subtle and so internal that only I notice it.

When I say progress I mean the things I have set my mind to and actually accomplished.

But mostly I mean a happier existence. Where I’m calmer. More fulfilled. Have more good days than bad days but even the bad days I feel I can handle.

I just got back from staying in a cabin in the woods with two other women. And as always we alternated between laughing our butts off and arguing.

Women are quite magical. I can see why men like them.

But they’re also insane.

The things we argued about were insane.

Our main arguments had to do with spirituality and manifesting.

I have a gripe with the whole manifesting thing.

At the time my arguments on it weren’t very well identified so it was mostly just me being a bitch about my opinions even though I didn’t yet know what my opinion even was. Only that I was deeply irked.

But now that I’ve thought about it I know what irks me.

What I hate about manifesting, as I understand it, is that I’ve noticed is it lets people put all their energy into something they don’t yet have. Instead of using the resources they do have.

I think that is a recipe for disaster.

I still have half a summer left but I’ve already started to think about how I’ll spend my winter.

I have some dread over thinking about the winter. Because even though I have made a lot of progress I still have a very long way to go. I’ll have to do a lot of things that will require a lot of discipline and discomfort.

In anticipating it I’ve already started to try to acclimate myself. When things get really hard at work for example and I feel like losing my cool I practice patience and acceptance because it’s going to be worse later.

My life has gotten easier simply from the fact that I can better tolerate unpleasant emotions. I have a higher tolerance and therefore don’t incur the consequences of what low tolerance to unpleasant emotions brings.

Without the accumulation of consequences I have more residual resources like extra time and extra money and extra friends.

And that just makes everything easier.

There are three things currently helping me in life that I can point to.

One of them is the book I’m reading.

I started reading this book called the gatekeeper that is meant to be about breaking bad relationship patterns.

I didn’t realize the book is only meant for men. But I’ve been unable to stop reading it and have found fantastic advice in it on finding a career.

How important is having a career to me?

Honestly?

I don’t much care. I enjoy being adequately useful to a group of human beings and I enjoy team work and earning my money because all that is very fulfilling.

But do I care about having a career? No.

Do I need a career?

I guess yes. I do.

I need to make enough money so I should probably find a career.

I don’t want writing to be a career necessarily. I want it to be a source of income. Enough of a source that whatever other job I get doesn’t need to be super intense.

Like a thirty to forty hours a week type deal. Rather than the fifty to sixty I’m anticipating over the winter.

So the question becomes how do I get money from writing?

Not really a clue.

But I’m going to take advice from that gatekeeper book and just find an action to take.

So I think I’ll start with submitting my writing.

I’ll finish a short story. And submit it twenty places.

Twenty seems like a good number to me. Like if it gets rejected twenty times that’s enough to try a different short story. And submit that twenty times.

If I do that with five different short stories and none of them get accepted anywhere then I suppose I’ll have to switch gears and try something else.

But even if those five short stories are not accepted what I have created is a little investment. Because they’ll be ready. They’ll be loaded. And if ever something pops up that looks like an opportunity I can simply shoot them off.

Submission.

That is my winter plan for writing.

I’ve studied writing enough to know it’s a very long and very hard game that might never see an ounce of success.

Or its success might very lightly trickle down and provide very little success very infrequently. But it is a fun hobby and it does help center me.

The second thing I’m doing that is really helping me is taking Dr. Alok Kanojia’s advice.

I recommend him if you don’t know who he is. He’s a psychiatrist.

I hate psychiatrists.

But I like Dr. K.

His advice is quite simple. It has to do with not using up all your dopamine first thing in the morning by looking at your phone.

He advises going on a walk first thing in the morning. Which I’ve been doing. Between 5 and 7 I’ll get up and go for a walk or a swim and usually do a work out and then have my coffee.

It’s pretty magical. It makes me very excited to wake up in the morning.

Doctor K’s rule is that you go for a walk, then you do the hardest thing of your day, the thing you most don’t want to do. Then you do the fun creative thing you enjoy doing. After that it’s all the little chores.

The idea behind it is that you have the most energy at the start of the day so it should be spent on hard stuff and creative stuff and then the rest of the stuff doesn’t need as much focus.

I’ve found it very helpful.

The third thing I’ve been doing that has really helped me has been watching twin peaks.

Great show. Definitely one of the very best ever made.

The first fifteen minutes into the first episode I saw I immediately was like ‘whelp, this is going to be the best show I’ve seen’ and the more of it watched the more I knew I was right.

What I like most about the show, without giving anything away in case you haven’t seen it, is how incredibly human it is.

The characters swap their places at lot in terms of likability. Strengths become flaws and flaws become strengths. I feel very conflicted on whether or not I love or hate a lot of the characters.

It’s a way to remember to see people. That people are not just what we can sum up in our own minds. That they have so much in them that is beyond our perception and they should never be underestimated.

What I would like most in life seems even more improbable than writing. And I’ve spent my entire life failing at it.

I would like a man.

Why don’t I have one?

As I’ve progressed in my life I’ve realized how much of it is entirely my fault. How much I repelled what I want by wanting it too much. By being too afraid not to receive it.

That’s what I can agree with on the whole ‘manifesting’ thing. I’ve certainly manifested my own problems. I suppose it’s possible to manifest my own solutions. Or perhaps manifest my own lack of need for solutions because I simply stop creating the problems.

As for the submission part of the submission. I don’t think I delivered, but I’m allowing myself random tangents and a complete lack of sense now and then.