Let's put things back together, together.
Mending party! You’re invited.
Image: Mormon women tacking a quilt to be used by a sheepherder, Box Elder County, Utah, 1940-47, Russell Lee, New York Public Library. Public domain.
Hi friends! Last 4 1:1 zoom sessions available. If you've been thinking about exactly how you're going to put eating issues firmly behind you, this will get you there.
Some problems the ppl have solved during these 1:1s:
how to find your eating groove again after a time of great life disruption
how to stay in your own groove when your partner's eating is, ah, very different from yours
how to reformulate everything after a comprehensive change like leaving employment
how to reconnect with the body of knowledge you already have about what's uniquely best for you
making an explicit plan for going forward
These may be the last 1:1s open until November. Info and signup right here.
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Now then: I'm going to be dropping more chapterettes from my book in here, in random order. Here's one from the first section, Start Eating. (You know you want to.)
Why will eating meals work when, hey! nothing else has. Answer me that, Mrs Lady.
In Buddhism there’s a saying about the dharma: It’s good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end. I don’t care about religion but that’s a smart test for any project you’re thinking of taking on, like whether or not to eat meals.
Any quit-bingeing method should be good from the get-go. Anything that promises happiness down the road if you’re willing to suffer now is worthless. (And it sounds like a scam, or a religion. Or, you know: a diet.)
It's not necessary to settle! You can have it good now and later. When you eat meals, there’s no finish line to struggle toward as you grind yourself down, like you would on a diet. The journal is the goal: You eat meals today, and tomorrow and the next day.
Consider yourself authorized to eat regularly from this moment forward. You’re going to eat because without exception, human animals consume food. You don’t have to beg, justify, argue, explain, defend or "deserve" any more meals, ever.
Eating regularly is a great method to overcome binge eating. There’s no fighting your true nature, as there is with dieting. You already want to eat! You already like to eat. Go ahead and enjoy it.
Mending party! You're invited.
I have a big ol basket of mending. You too? Maybe it is not a fun task? But maybe it could be more fun and sexy??? How bout if we tackle some mending together? Let's just see if it helps us GSD.
We'll do it this coming Saturday, 9am Pacific, noon Eastern, 5pm GMT. (I am sorry Asia Pacific! If you are mending tag us on Insta #mendingparty)
I picked this time because Saturday is my day to putter slowly. We'll use my free Zoom account and thus will have 40 minutes together. It's long enough to make a dent in the pile, but not too long. Hit me for details.
Other things are...
NOTICING: I used to spend so much of my precious life energy—let's call it PLE—on trying to be cool so I could hang with the cool ppl so I could get some cool shit like the approval of the cools. (Or business referrals. Ugh, is that why people buy consulting?) OMFG it's as pointless as being obsessed with a celebrity, just as unreal and remote.
If I could have all that PLE back to give to my actual non-celebrity friends, to my KIDS. What is sadder than an adult with children who still wants to be COOL? Tragic. Don't be like me! Save yourselves, I beg you!
Anyway, we don't pick our friends for their coolness because that's not friendship. We pick our friends for their weirdness because ... haha, exactly.
I was thinking about this because I remembered this bumper sticker I saw one day in Palo Alto. It read: I WAS UNCOOL BEFORE IT WAS COOL TO BE UNCOOL. That is actually cool and I would put that on my car.
READING: The Sunset Route, by Carrot Quinn. Loved this ripping yarn that is also a healing balm. Liked the structure; it’s not weird but it resists convention. Near the beginning there’s an event that many memoirs would have saved for the big climax, no matter how much twisting and bending and popping they had to do to get it there. Carrot lets you understand something important about that thread by weaving it in exactly where she does.
It’s a smart book, beautiful and heartbreaking. I especially appreciated the way Carrot treats the theme of forgiveness, offering nothing conventional there, either. Having read Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart, which was self-published, I was suspicious about what Penguin would do to this woman's voice. But I needn't have. This new book is a rare creature of weird goodness, and now I'm just sorry I've read everything Carrot has published—that I can get my hands on; if you have a source for her old zines hit me ASAP—and now what? Bereft!
We do get the story of how Carrot came to be called Carrot 🥕
MAKING: RASH PROMISES! I've had a look at the budget. I'm working less and reading more and spending a lot of $$$ on books. And have decided this:
I shall buy no more books until I've read everything I own, or January 1, 2022—whichever comes first.*
I have probably 50 or 60 books lying around unread. A lot are from Little Free Libraries; I'll just return a lot of those. I have a dozen or so books I'm really excited to read, like Girl Walking Backwards by Bett Williams, Trip by Tao Lin, Cruddy by Lynda Barry, and The Incarnations by Susan Barker.
There are also about 10,000 "duty reads", things that All The Good People read but, yeah, I'm not really excited about. I don't know what's going to happen there. I mean, no one wants their tombstone to read "Here lies a person who completed all her duty reads".
I finish about 100 books a year, so it could happen? I will update you. And if you are already doing something similar, or are just now inspired to start, let me know!
*Except I feel a terrible weakness for this one:
We'll see if I can be strong!
Okay that is the week! Link for problem demolition session again right here. MWAH!!!