Good luck drapes itself in robes of misfortune and comes looking for me. I used to fall for the ruse, sulk in rumination, questioning why circumstances like these often stop me in my tracks. An alternative ending would soon reveal clarity: through the necessary pivot around an obstacle, I find a more desirable route directed for what I am destined.

Let me explain.

Last week presents a shining example. I was in full-fledged burnout. As of January, my partner now has a ninety-minute commute each way, Monday through Friday, in addition to regular air travel. This is the worst commute situation for our family yet. I have sixteen year old and a six year old sons. I don’t elaborate on that experience for their privacy, but I have a hunch that you, my dear reader, don’t need elaboration. I have many projects running at once as I expand my art business, commissions coming to a close, studio renovation, marketing, admin, and a couple of new series in the works.

Many loose ends and I’m burning from both ends.

My teen is getting out of school only 4 hours after my youngest leaves every other day. Our district keeps getting snow days. All that on top of that whole democracy in America and peace in the western world being threatened thing.

I snapped. Two nights in a row. With tears streaming, I blubbered: “I just need a break!” That was Wednesday. And Thursday. Friday was day one of a four day weekend, wherein the only thing I had planned was a cleaning overhaul of my teen’s room.

😳

😩

Thursday night, as I lay me down to sleep, I decided I wasn’t going to try and strong arm the Room Cleaning Situation in the morning. I’d help him if it was his choice, but I didn’t have the energy to wake him up early and be the force behind it. As expected, he slept in. With his urging around noon, piece by piece, screw by screw, bolt by bolt, we took down his loft bed of eight years.

Flashback to when we kept it tidy in our old house:

Anyway, we unbuild the bed and the room is still full of absolute trash. We take a brief break, and a friend from his fellowship reaches out to see if he can hang. He says he can after he gets his room cleaned up. THE FRIEND OFFERS TO HELP. The friend comes over. I step away. They Marie Kondo the whole room. It’s cleaner than it has been since he was a freshman, I overhear the friend convincing him to trash things he’s overly sentimental about. The result is a full transformation. We joke that he got queer-eye-for-a-straight-guy-ed.

Because I let things go, I let things get better. Minus my meddling.

The next day, I wake up with a pinched nerve in my trapezius. This pain is unfathomable, the only situation in which Jigsaw could trap me in a room and convince me to saw my whole friggin’ arm off.

Y’all. I got regular spinal taps when I was four. I was diagnosed a few years ago with a chronic pain illness that had me laid out more than upright until April. I’ve labored so hard I threw up on my doctor and they had to keep giving me meds to slow contractions because there was no time between. I’ve been beat up by a grown man. I know pain. Yet, if I didn’t know this pain would subside I would have amputated, no hesitation.

I went to the doctor on Monday and received medication for muscle spasms. My bicep and tricep still feel like I received a lifetime’s worth of vaccinations this morning, my neck pain makes it hard to sitstandliedownbealive, three to four of my fingers continue to be numb, and the overcompensating *other* part of my arm has led to tennis elbow. I got my first full night of sleep in a week last night.

You know what this whole situation forced upon me?

A break.

A break bigger than I would have allotted for myself by force, despite my weeping prayer. A break from fitness classes I fully commit to and put in my calendar, because it is “non-negotiable me time.” A break from waking up early and doing habits I love like my ten minute drawing. Breaks from the same things I think sustain me were actually just what I needed to fully disrupt the spiral I was in. It showed me I could give myself a full shift in my habits and routines to realign actions to values in a different way.

Though I knew I needed a break, I didn’t realize part of what I needed to break from was stuff that is working for me. Not just what wasn’t.

Shifted Schedule

There was much I had to cancel through the week, but by Wednesday I knew I wanted to go to a meeting I had preregistered for at the Fairfield County Story Lab. I’d already paid my drop-in fee for the lunchtime meeting, and it only happens once a month. I built my day around it, picked up lunch, and arrived to find…the host wasn’t there. The meeting wasn’t there.

But Carol was there. We talked about my writing, my writing goals. We talked about books, her career in journalism and teaching writing. Literature, art, community. We even talked about NATIVE PLANTS—both of us. Usually I’m the only one talking when it comes to native plants. We talked about phone zombies, about Society of the Spectacle.

I didn’t have an exact goal when I was heading to the meeting I thought was there, but our conversation far exceeded any expectations I could have had.

Who are your favorite people to be around?

dailyprompt 1854

My favorite people to be around are people who read, write or make art. Craftspeople. Observers. People who see things, feel things, and try to understand things deeply. Creators, disrupters.

Last week, much of my burnout was due to my attempts to connect with local friends as our schedules consistently conflicted. This struggle felt larger than face value, because it has been a longterm goal of mine to create a local group of artists. I was mid-read of The Private Lives of the Impressionists, yearning for intellectual and artistic friendships in cafes, parties with revolutionaries and camaraderie with my people. If things kept misaligning with several individuals at once, how would I ever get a group together?

I was already mid-shift in strategy when the Mysterious Missing Meeting brought me to an already-established communal space for thinkers like me at the Fairfield County Story Lab.

As I continue to take this pause, strong-armed by my now-weak arm, I will consider rebuilding my schedule around my writing craft in balance with my art.

That looks like good luck to me.

🍀