Well hello! Groundlessness!
Me at the beach a few days ago, on a spontaneous solo work / spiritual retreat
If you’ve been paying attention to the date, which you are in no way obligated to do, you may have noticed that that it’s been two months since I’ve sent a newsletter. Two MONTHS! I said it was going to be two weeks!! But then it was two months, and while that still makes a small part of me freak out, I actually feel pretty joyful and empowered about how I took the time that felt right to me.
Because I needed to recover from burnout. It’s not the first time I’ve needed to, but it was the first time I was like “I am willing to REALLY change some shit to not do this ever again.” And who can say if I will or won’t burn out again, but if I ever do, it sure as hell won’t be as hard as I have in the past.
Because these last two months, I’ve been learning. I’ve been going at my own pace and listening to the fears in my mind and unwinding the ones deep inside my body. I’ve been noticing all the small and large “nonnegotiables” that are, in fact, VERY negotiable, and I’ve started negotiating my way right out of them.
One example is this newsletter. For many months prior to April, I wrote this newsletter pretty much every Wednesday morning from a table at my favorite coffee shop. I would get a ginger mint tea and maybe a muffin, and I would sit down and write my novel for an hour and then write this newsletter.
For a while, that routine was AWESOME. I loved it. But then it quietly and insidiously became a nonnegotiable.
This is Patrick Wilson in the movie Insidious. I picked the least scary GIF, but if you are a weirdo like me and like scary stuff, google Insidious GIF for scarier ones
Because this Wednesday routine worked for me for a little while, I thought, it would Work For Me For A Long Time. I’ve had this revelation before - I’ve visited this point of healing before, as we often do.
The last time around, I realized I didn’t need to come up with evergreen routines for anything. I could change them every half year or so. This time around, I realized that my routines might not last nearly as long as I thought they would.
I thought an “every half year” or even “every couple years” routine switch up made sense. It sounded easier - reinvent the wheel fewer times! But I realized during my rest and unwinding this spring that I needed a whole different wheel, one I won’t EVER have to invent. I needed a wheel that I could retune and change the tire and ride backwards and alter in myriad different ways as I went along, based on my intuitive knowledge of what I needed in that moment. I needed a magic wheel that could flow and changes into different shapes all the time.
“But if I don’t have a predictable wheel, what will be reliable?” I wondered. I didn’t know the answer, but I was still willing to forge ahead and see what eventually emerged from the void. Burnout sucks, and I didn’t want to live in cycles of it anymore. I took a courageous leap, one of several I am still in the midst of taking.
A lot of things feel apart. My daily routine. My weekly routine. My picture of where my business was going, goal-wise. My client schedule. Most potently, my identity as a routine-driven task-accomplisher who thrived on those things. That fell apart A LOT.
“What if I’m not that person at all,” I wondered? “What if I’m a flowy person? What if the ways I define myself change completely, and I like the person I find more?”
Because the person I’m finding has a lot of integrity. They don’t do things because their intellectual brain put those things on a list - they do things because they matter. This means doing fewer things, and I like that a lot too.
This person doesn’t have a daily schedule or even a weekly schedule. This doesn’t mean they float aimlessly; they very reliably accomplish the things that matter.
My “right now” is made up of periods of processing all the new stuff (and feeling confused as I do), interspersed with periods of being very alive and doing and making what feels the most meaningful to me. Everything that isn’t important just falls away. This means enduring, and even sometimes enjoying, what Pema Chödrön calls “groundlessness.”
My daily schedule has become defined by my intuition around what I should do next, and next, and next. This has meant I spend more time in the day taking care of my mind, spirit, and body. This has meant that when I go to do the stuff that is technically “work,” it goes a lot faster and feels way more fun.
I learned all this from my friend Serena, who is hosting a Magic Hour to tune into just this sort of perspective shift on this coming Monday. I’ll be there, if you want to join us. Serena’s amazing.
So far this month, my intuition has lead me to Women’s Camp at Clapping Hands Farm (I’m gonna write a whole newsletter just about how magical that was) and a 4-day solo retreat on the coast of North Carolina. I saw wild horses. I did a lot of transformation, really fast. It was tiring and fun and special. It was the first time I’ve taken myself on a solo retreat, but it definitely won’t be the last.
You’ll hear from me again when I have more to share, and not just because it’s a Wednesday!
My containers for working with me and what I’m excited to offer this season as Your Village Witch is all emerging, and I’m pumped to share it with you when it comes out of its cocoon :) I don’t think it’ll be long now.
Happy summer! Happy almost solstice! Happy big green leaves season!
Love,
Isabel
I wasn’t gonna NOT show you the wild horses
