008—Staying Open to Change
I’m sitting at my kitchen table, a wobbly high-top, sipping hot water with lemon and writing my morning pages. It’s 6am and still dark here in Miami—too dark for me to see my writing—so I turn on the light above the stove, a soft yellow. I periodically look out the kitchen window and observe the morning light, shifting from black to a deep midnight blue to a soft baby blue to a light golden yellow and finally to an awakened white. Across the small easement of a grassy field behind my building, I see a taller three-story white building. I notice a small window with shampoo and body wash lined up on the high sill. The light in this bathroom typically comes on around 6 or 6:15am or so. One other light, from a living room or bedroom of another unit, comes on around the same time as well. Upstairs in my building, I hear my neighbor starting her shower by about 7am, when I’m wrapping up my morning pages. Occasionally I hear a siren leaving the fire station that’s a couple blocks away. I revel in this new early morning world and its intricacies and routines.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve considered myself a night owl. As a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons or Saved By The Bell, I rarely got up before 9 or 10 am. Even just a few weeks ago I was still staying up late—1, 2, 3am—doing not much of anything, mostly going down Instagram or YouTube or Google rabbit holes. Yet I still do love my sleep and need at least 7-8 hours to function, sometimes 9. This meant I’d be waking up at 9, 10, 11am, sometimes even noon! As if I was a hormonal teenager. I’m 34!
It’s crazy how seemingly small, innocuous changes can be difficult because they are tied to a core part of our identity, our narrative, and we don’t even realize it. Maybe it’s someone who is so connected to the narrative of being ‘not a reader’ that they don’t even try reading different genres or try listening to audiobooks or serial podcasts. Or someone who says, ‘I am bad-tempered’ yet who’s hesitant to try meditating or yoga or kickboxing or running or some other activity to manage anger and stress.
I’ve been waking up at 6am and it is serving me really well in my life right now. Maybe I was subconsciously so reticent to try this new habit because ‘being a night owl’ has always been so tied to my identity. It had been hard to shake that habit, that pattern, because it felt like I was changing my identity—who I am—when this is just a habit, a trait, a thing that I’ve historically done but that can be changed. It’s not something that makes up the entirety of who I am as a human person. I can totally change the narrative. Any of us can. Sometimes it takes such a small change, like me changing my sleep and wake patterns to realize how open or resistant to change I can be. I thought I had been so open to change, so adaptable and flexible, willing and easily able to change course when something was no longer serving me. But maybe that was just another trait that I was tying closely to my identity.
In the Irish language, you don’t say ‘I am sad.’ Instead, you’d say ‘tá brón orm,’ (TAW BROH-N UR-UM) which translates into ‘sadness is upon me.’ The language, and thus its speakers, recognize that things like emotions—and by extension thoughts and habits—are fluid, ever changing. These mutable things are not something that wholly defines a person. I am not my sadness, or happiness, or a night owl or early bird, or this specific label or that. I am me, and I experience lots of emotions, have lots of thoughts, engage in lots of behaviors. These behaviors eventually evolve into patterns, yes, but because these patterns are based on malleable, fleeting things like thoughts and emotions, the patterns themselves can be changed, however rigid and foundational, however good or bad.
Being a night owl isn’t bad, until it is. Being sad or angry all the time isn’t bad, until it is. Being trusting or forgiving isn’t bad, until it is. We can change whatever patterns are no longer bringing more good to us than bad. And within that new pattern, we can stay flexible. Sometimes I will stay up later and wake up later; I want to give myself that, if my body needs more rest. Sometimes I’ll feel sadness or anger, if my mind needs to express those emotions. And sometimes I’ll trust and forgive someone, if my heart is saying, ‘just one more chance.’
My previous routine of exercising in the afternoon or dusk, walking through a highly congested touristy area had me smelling and tasting fried food, ice cream, cigarettes and weed in the air. It had me recoiling at the obnoxiously loud blaring music from a place called Bacon Bitch and all the other bars along Ocean Drive, weaving around hordes of stumbling drunk tourists. Earlier this week, when I started this new habit of waking up at 6am, I walked to the beach a little before 8am. A bright sunny June morning. I kept observing the light in this new morning realm, and observed new sounds, tastes, textures, smells. It’s a lot less crowded. Most businesses haven’t opened yet. It’s quieter. Or rather, I hear more birdsong and caws, less traffic and loud engines. At the beach, already so hot, a haze hangs over the horizon and beaming sun. Smells are easily carried on this thick humid air: the salt spray coming off the ocean, the cologne from the guy walking past, the trash wafting up from a garbage can. But this time I smelled something different. It didn’t come from one place. The smell was one of excitement, one of adventure. I’ve smelled it before when I’ve traveled to new places or experienced new activities. It’s a smell of newness. If not necessarily of a new physical place, then one of perspective, attitude. One of staying open to change. <3
This week I’ve been:
Reading:
These Amtrak Train Routes Make Stops at Some of America's Most Scenic National Parks from Conde Nast Traveler
Swap a window with someone around the world from The Good Trade (and Window-Swap.com)
A Brief Guide to Imagism from Poets.org
Photos: Smoke From Canada’s Wildfires Drifts South from The Atlantic
Oldest of 4 siblings who survived Colombian plane crash told family their mother lived for days from AP News
Will a Dollar General Ruin a Rural Crossroads? from The New York Times
Asteroid City Is Wes Anderson at His Best from The Atlantic
Summer Vacation is Moving Indoors from The Atlantic
1155 Book Summaries with Personality from Actionalbooks.com via The Good Trade
Hope dims in search for survivors of migrant boat sinking that killed at least 78 from AP News
Klimt portrait ‘Lady with a Fan’ up for sale with $80M estimate from AP News
Let it bee: The women on a mission to save Mexico City's bees from AP News
Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida from The Conversation
Using high-tech laser gear, UN-backed team scans Ukraine historical sites to preserve them amid war from AP News
I also finished Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack. I’m nearly finished with Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway. And I’m still reading through my Reiki manual.
Writing: I’m still writing my daily morning pages (Day 99!), affirmations and gratitude list. And working through edits for the next revision of Julia’s Orchids.
Photographing/Photo Editing: Mostly I’ve been getting my gear ready for my trip out to California on Monday where I’ll be doing some work at Jackrabbit Studios in the high desert with friends, and then heading up to San Francisco to visit other friends. And, of course, I’ve been photographing things around town throughout my week here in Miami. A couple photos, below, are of a beautiful small black and teal butterfly that I noticed had collapsed on the ground. I picked it up and held it in my palm, sending it lots of healing Reiki energy as I brought it back to my building’s back garden where there are a few milkweed plants, which provide nectar for several species of butterflies. The more energy I sent, the more it flitted its little wings. After a while I laid it atop a stone near the milkweed; when I returned the next day, it was gone. I like to think it survived! (When we can never know things for certain, I try to always think it was a positive outcome. I prefer to imagine the butterfly grew strong, nibbled on some milkweed nectar, and flew away and made lots of new butterfly friends, rather than think it got eaten by a cat.)
Watching: I rewatched Avatar: The Way of Water with friends who hadn’t seen it. Love me the Avatar series—a beautiful, vibrant, colorful blend of Pocahontas and Ferngully. I watched the NBA Finals, up to Tuesday’s wild final where the Heat lost to the Nuggets in Game 5. The game was intense! But both teams played well and it was a great series. I’m happy the Heat made it all the way to the finals after an inconsistent season. I finally bought and set up a Roku for my TV and I watched the fourth and final season of Never Have I Ever on Netflix. So cute. I will generally watch or read anything by Mindy Kaling. I watched one YouTube video on near-death experiences and now the algorithm has it blowing up my feed. So now I’ve watched several! And, for some reason, my feed has also introduced videos on ‘mole people’ in New York, people who live under train tunnels, or who had lived underground there before being kicked out by the city as the area gentrified.
Listening to: A ‘made for you’ Running Mix playlist on Spotify. It was ok to run to, not great but not bad. I need to give myself time to curate a proper running mix. Though I am still enjoying running to Spotify’s ‘made for you’ Dancehall Mix :) As part of my morning routine I’ve added listening to the Guided Wim Hof Method Breathing video on YouTube, which has been incredible. I listened to the Life with Marianna podcast episode A New Framework to Prevent Burn Out with Self-Care Expert Taylor Morrison and learned about something called the Feelings Wheel, which is really cool. And thanks to an excellent recommendation from my aunt Angie, I listened to the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast episode Rick Rubin ON: Why Unconventional Methods Lead to Success & The Secret to Genuinely Love What You Do. It was so good. I bought Rubin’s new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being and can’t wait to start reading it.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads that are with us across time and space, in the here and now and there and then <3.
Per usual, I leave you with some snaps of trees, plants, and flowers that caught my eye, heart and soul this week.
Xo,
Jessica♾️