Dear Athena,
I'm out of bed before 9am, spending money I probably shouldn't on food that I probably ought not to eat. I've chatting with Liz, the server, about DnD and shared my mario kart d&d rules with her. I'm wanting to start doing resumes and cover letters, but it puts me in the wrong headspace. Taylor Tomlinson was talking on Pete Holmes podcast about morning pages and I want to write more. To put myself in a head space for the rest of the day. I looked up some prompts and maybe on other days they are the thing I should write to, but today, the only thing I can think to ask myself is what is it that I want to tell Athena? What is it that I want to tell myself? For myself I just want to "solve" the joblessness, but I thought this morning about how I'm always unable to lose weight so long as there is another problem to solve in my life. My body goes into "crisis management" and it's been living there even as I've been looking. I want to "solve" for this Thursday's interview at Boulder or make a plan for what comes after that falls apart. It's all part of the thinking and the chatter, it's not that I shouldn't do it, it's that I will get part of the way through it and find myself burned out and needing to recover. Letting go, it comes after 'avoidance', 'scapegoating', and 'fixing it.' It is 'acceptance' of how things will be.
“The
fears that assault us are mostly simple anxieties about social skills, about
intimacy, about likeableness, or about performance. We need not give emotional
food or charge to these fears or become attached to them. We don’t even have to
shame ourselves for having these fears. Simply ask your fears, “What are you
trying to teach me?” (Richard Rohr)
I'm
afraid of losing the ability to tell a story of my life that I am happy with.
That everything will just become pain, exhaustion, and loss. I'm afraid that
our society will construct a day to day life so miserable that I don't want to
live it. But…but…BUT I've already been
there, I am there now some days. I was there while I was working. I'm so afraid
of losing work and housing outside of my parents and that I'm somehow
"falling behind" because if it gets bad enough then my life won't be
worth living, but I already thought of my life as bad enough to not be worth
living.
I
can hold onto all these tangible achievements and I can still lose the story of
the life that I want to live. It already feels like a ship on the horizon,
routinely moving on without care or notice of me, in need, on my life raft. The
only thing I have is to let it go. Maybe I'll still be "rescued" by a
ship, and yes I can still shout and wave my hands when one passes by. But
largely, it will be the currents and shipping lanes that determines if and when
I am spotted. What is left to me while adrift?
“All
great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you
are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough,
you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than
enough and is all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove
to anybody and nothing to protect.
That
place is called freedom. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t
feel the need to eliminate anybody . . .” (Richard Rohr)
You
do not need to be good. I do not need to be good. We do not need to walk on our
knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
Love,
Augustine
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