Tag: habit

Addiction · Mental Health · Personal Development

Hover

Ruby Pipes19 Comments

“Hummingbird” © AnnCam, 2010. CC BY 2.0.
“You’re running to stand still,” he said as he mimed the motion. “The way you describe it is like the way a junkie describes shooting up just to stay level, you know. You know. Just to keep from getting sick. It sounds exhausting.”

I glanced out the window, then back to him, and pulled one foot underneath me. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that. I mean, I guess I just figured I kind of have to do this stuff because…” I trailed off in a light giggle. “This sounds so fucking ridiculous.”

“It sounds dangerous, is what it sounds like. It sounds unachievable. It’s just another way your perfectionism is coming into play.”

He doesn’t usually get preachy. Usually he lets me get there on my own, so I can tell it’s important when he doesn’t. My religious avoidance of things that might be addictive or may cause unhealthy habitual behavior has become just that.

Taking care of myself is getting closer and closer to becoming just another avoidance tactic. Just another thing I do to not deal with what is happening. Focusing on my health slips from being a good idea to a dangerous obsession with just a few additions.

There’s got to be balance somewhere. An understanding of the things I need to do to take care of myself and the way I need to do them. Room for the just sitting, space for doing things just because I like them. There’s has to be a way to have a cup of coffee without thinking, “This is addictive. Caffeine is addictive. Everything is going straight to shit. I’m going to start drinking again.”

Flexibility has never been my strong suit. But I like to think I can learn to stretch. Learn to believe I have the capacity to live somewhere between the perfection that doesn’t exist and passed out drunk in a ditch.

Mental Health · Writing

One Thing

Ruby Pipes20 Comments
“Slow – Hwy 101 old growth” © Sam Bebee, 2005. CC BY 2.0.

I tell myself to do just one thing. Put clothes on. Eat something. Open up my computer and write a sentence, a word. One thing. Just one.

Then I think of how it will compound. How one thing leads to another and that’s how everything gets built. I lose track quickly of how important just focusing on the first step is. I start to zoom in on how all those little pieces will join together to make something I deem worthwhile. Then I’m not thinking about each individual part anymore. I’m thinking about the entire lifespan of the thing. Seeing the tree in the seed.

But there are seeds that never become trees at all. And trees that never soar above me. Never make me feel safe and small and powerful and insignificant all at once. Trees that turn into tables or door frames. Paper for notebooks. Trees that burn in fires. That live high in mountains, where the air is thin, and put in everything they can, but never get over three feet tall.

And I’m reminded not to get too caught up in the building. Not to cling too hard to the idea that one thing always becomes another and another. Or that it always needs to. Sometimes one thing is just that. You write one sentence and then you curl up on the floor and sob for the rest of the day. And that’s okay.

You don’t have to get bogged down by the bigness of the possibility. Not every word has to be part of the next great American novel. Not every day has to be dripping with productivity. Has to have tangible accomplishments to point to.

Not every seed exists to become towering.

Mental Health · Personal Development

Dopamine

Ruby Pipes33 Comments

"The journey is the reward" © Nishanth Jois, 2012. CC BY 2.0.
“The journey is the reward” © Nishanth Jois, 2012. CC BY 2.0.
Faith. It’s all going to come down to faith, isn’t it? Establishing belief that if I work hard on the things that matter I will see improvement.

Noticeable difference.

Faith. Even when it seems like I know better, I don’t. Forgetting every time I felt like I gave my all and got burned anyway. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I am not finite. There is no “all”. No matter how empty, how hopeless, how beaten down I feel. I can always get up again. There is always something I haven’t used yet.

It’s easy to feel I’ve been doing everything I can my entire life. Easy to assume that if any of it were going to make a difference it would have by now. Harder to learn to see the difference between fighting and learning. It’s never been about how hard I can punch, only how quick I can dodge it.

Divert. Disperse. Learn a different tactic.

Don’t try to stop the river. Rivers always find a way. At some point, the dam breaks, and you’re worse off than you were in the beginning. You must be gentle. Coax it. Day by day.

We don’t need elaborate gestures. Don’t need fireworks that draw our eyes up, then fade out into nothing. We need constant pressure. And I know that’s harder.

Harder because there are no grand ceremonies. No celebrations or finish lines. We just trudge forward and hope we’re doing better than we were.

Faith. Understanding that growth, that improvement, has always been gradual and near invisible. Only observable by looking back. By remembering where we were a month, a year, a decade ago.

This is not a fight. It is a slow and steady climb. And yes, it’s easy to feel like Sisyphus. But the boulder isn’t rolling down. We never go all the way back to the bottom again.

All the work is always counting. We will continue to push our limits and surprise ourselves. It’s okay to take a moment and throw some confetti.