S.E. Reichert's Blog

Remember Darkwing Duck?

Anyone? Anyone out there?

A child of the late 80’s and 90’s will remember the daring and billed crime fighter and his catchphrase of “Expect the Unexpected.” I’m pretty sure that phrase has since been taken over by an insurance company, or pregnancy tests, or police searches; but once, it was the mantra that a hero lived by to always be on the ready.

Adults live by it in more boring ways (insurance, family planning measures, radar alert gear on the dashboard of our cars). We’re taught to prepare for the unexpected. At least, in all of the adult ways we live by. But to expect the unexpected isn’t just about saving for a rainy day or assuring ourselves, in the most pessimistic of ways, that something bad will inevitably happen and we must be prepared for it, it’s also about preparing for opportunities.

How do we prepare for something that can’t be predicted? In a similar way as with expecting the worst; by keep open in our mindset that anything can happen and allow for flexibility in our plans.

Now, I’m a big believer in the fact that the only constant in our lives is inconsistency. Change. We can always count on things to change. The world turns, human’s doot around in their peculiar and quirky little ways and the tides of life fluctuate. Sometimes they recede, sometimes they tsunami. The more rigid we are, the harder we are pushed against by the ever-changing, chaos-driven shift of time that swirls around us. Or the more disappointed we become when that tide draws ever farther away from us.

But if we can shift our mindset to accommodate this certainty of the quirky dance of life around us, then we will be prepared to deal with the challenges and also find opportunities in them. Because when you open your mind, you can look past the immediate hurdles of a change, to the bigger picture beyond. This is the important part. Remember how I italicized that “anything” up there? Pay attention to that.

I like to call this the “Anything Can Happen” moment. Here’s the caveat; shhhh…come closer and I’ll tell you…little closer…little closer… okay that’s too close, did you have onions at lunch? Back up a bit, here’s it is:

You have to look at what’s beyond the obvious challenge, with a positive lens.

UGH! Positivity! No! I’m a bitter and jaded, starving artist! I don’t DO positivity! It’s sooooo naive!

Yep. Sometimes it can be. Trust me, I’m a former, card-carrying member of the Pessimistic Society of Debbie Downers. I still get stuck in that rut too. But, it always leads me to nothing but dead-ends because I’m limiting myself by the perceived constraints change seems to bring.

I’m not asking you to be all zipidy-do-dah-Disney-slap-happy-blind to reality. I’m asking that you take a step back and be a realist with an eye for what good can come from the situation. There’s always something good.

Expecting the unexpected means being at the ready. Not just for danger and doom, but for the possibility of something better. To always be in a position where you can slip through the crack of those opening doors and explore new paths, different ideas, an unobstructed view. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but this can lead to an ever-increasing sense of well-being and a little more calm when faced with upheaval.

Stagnation may seem safer, but it will leave you treading water eventually and you’ll look back on the things you should have, could have, done but didn’t have the open mind and the faith to try.

In your writing life, which can often seem to err on the side of challenging rather than rewarding, I urge you to keep your mind open. To throw yourself into opportunity and be willing to accept with a sense of curiosity and humor the outcome. Life is chaos and beauty; destruction and creation. Remain flexible and willing to see the challenges in your life as opportunities to grow, to learn, and thereby succeed.

Good morning. Wednesdays are what I affectionately call “Therapy Thunder Dome” (would have a better ring if it were “Therapy Thunder Dome Thursdays” but we work with what we have). So since my little peabrain will be too tired to blog well (as if my rested brain does it ‘well’) I’m recycling an old poem from a supposed former contributor. Here’s what I what once wrote:

“Today’s poetry comes to us from a former and continuing contributor to The Beautiful Stuff’s Poetry Anthology. Ms. Byrne has a knack for gripping the guts with her poetry and, as an almost graduated student at the University of Boulder, she is finding her way with a powerful voice in the world.

Elliana spends her days reading (sometimes for fun…most times for class), daydreaming, and writing. She studies English Lit and dabbles in short stories and poetry when possible. She enjoys life best curled up with a good book and her cat, Gil. You can read her work in last year’s anthology “No Small Things” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1692331558/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1“

The truth is that I am Elliana Byrne. And I used the pen name because some of the poems I had written felt too visceral to put out into the world. But after having gone through this last year, I’ve realize life is nothing but visceral and I don’t have a problem trying to hide the gory truth of what it sometimes means to be human in all of our messy failings. So…please enjoy, and think about what masks you’ve worn, and if maybe, in light of these lives of ours being unbelievably short, if it’s time to take them off, and just be unapologetically you.

And now this:

Clean Slate

I want to wipe away
the grievances of your skin
and its heated strokes against mine
and darken the unforgiving universes
of your eyes
that know and
do not know me

But the treasonous mind
casts wayward glances,
over shoulders turned cold
and the love and ache of wounds
that should be healed over
still echo in weakening heart beats

this disloyal heart
casting out lines
into currents that have battered the boards
of my ship
and sunk it deep,
where it now lies
desolate and quiet a tomb
on the ocean floor
waiting, in vain,
for a tug of interest

treacherous
and dissonant soul
vibrating in time
to the sound of yours
even when the harmonic waves
shake my teeth and
dislodge my brain
and seize my nerve endings

I will sit in this heavy deep
and wait
for reason or worse
divinity
to tell me how
to clean you off
by needle or by blade
I will close my eyes,
turn my back
and huddle in
to the shipwreck of me
and cut lines
until
i bleed clean
again

I’ve been thinking a lot about Viktor Frankl the last couple of days, and in particular “Man’s Search for Meaning” as well as Logotherapy. Front and center in my life is the battle with a disorder that eats away at the brain’s ability to rationalize, be introspective, and self-calm. So I’ve been returning to this book and to this theory about our ability to shape our own lives through the perspective that we approach even the worst situations.

Listen, I can swing between a jaded-hard ass cynic to a calm-enlightened Buddhist as well as the next half-baked philosopher. But if it’s anything that tough situations will do, is force you to look at your own behavior and perspective, and how they can make things better or worse in the particular storm you’re in. In these dark and torrential seas it’s easy to let go of any idea you have control and just let the deluge overwhelm you. It’s easy to be tugged down to the bottom. It’s the easy path to let the worst parts of every journey define your day. But despite common belief, I’m not easy. (ha, Frankl also believed in humor as an excellent way to untether from the weight of heavy situations)

I believe that we are given mountains to strengthen us. I believe that we are handed hardships because that’s kind of the point of life. To see how we flow, learn, or falter in the face of trials. We are not meant to sail on smooth seas, or calm seas make for bad sailors…some metaphor with boats, you get the point. These things will come to us all. And the difference between surviving them and coming out with a better understanding of life, and coming out battered to the point we succumb to sadness and depression, lies in how we react to the circumstances.

This is where I finally get back to the title. Gratitude. I’m no Suzy Sunshine. And I’ll happily admit that there are days I struggle to find a single thing worth being thankful for. But I have this dumb little bright yellow notebook and I make myself take it out every dumb day, and I open it up and I stare at the dumb blank page, pen hovering and I MAKE myself think of three things that I am grateful for.

Why is it hard? Well, sometimes I think the world makes us believe that gratitude is only earned by big things. I’m grateful for my six-figure job, or I’m grateful for my unfailing health, etc. I think it’s a great disservice to gratitude and the inherent beauty of life to discount it if it’s not grand. Little things can be found everywhere. Little things add up. The smallest things are what we should be paying attention to. Because they’re more abundant than you realize, and, like tiny little life preservers, if you find enough of them, they can actually help you pull yourself out of that dark, enough to breathe.

So my dumb little book is filled with dumb little sentences. Warm coffee. The fox I saw on my walk. Fall leaves. Cat spit on my elbow. Dumb ass Blue Jays landing on too tiny a feeder. And from those little drips, sometimes the faucet gets turned on… Such good friends with big, open hearts that lift me up when I’m down. My parents’ laughter. My daughters. My daughters. My daughters. That we have a plan to help her. That I understand my own power. That I can cultivate my own peace. Breath.

The point is that reminding ourselves that life has light as well as dark and we have access to it at any time we choose, is inherent in shaping and creating a better life for ourselves. We get to choose how we react, and if we are reacting from a place of gratitude, and finding all of those tiny floatation devices around us, we can remain above water, and ultimately ride any wave that comes our way.

So, part of my daily routine (right after I write this blog) is to find those three things. And part of the new routine, is to share them with my daughter. Who will roll her eyes, and probably think I’m nuts for finding any happiness in such a dark time. But seeds are little things too. The tiniest ones can grow the strongest, tallest tree. So I plant them in her mind every morning, despite her reluctance. Because someday soon, her mind is going to be nourished enough, that those seeds will take root.

Be good out there today. Be grateful, even reluctantly.

Hey kids. Today’s blog won’t be long or detailed. For the last three months, I’ve been engaged in trying to support and treat my youngest’s eating disorder on my own. Taking her to multiple appointments a week, doctors and therapists and dietitians. Monitoring every meal with her, coercing and begging her to eat. Lab work, consults, admissions to programs that turned out to be abusive…

I’m in the middle of it.

On Tuesday we admitted her to a better program. But it requires that I be here, in Denver, with her. Monitoring a few meals, learning better techniques, taking her in at 7 and not leaving the facility again until 7. They are long, hard days, filled with meetings and often a lot of tears over grilled cheese sandwiches. We’re lucky to have a space at the Ronald McDonald Charity house and it’s honestly been the biggest blessing. It isn’t home but they provide a safe place to be in the times we’re not in treatment.

This blog is just a reminder…that even on our hardest days and maybe especially on them, I want you, as a writer or poet, to remember the comfort and the break that your craft can be. Even a sentence a day counts. One stanza. A paragraph, a dialogue. Hell, a journal entry (man…I’ve never journaled so much in my life) can work wonders. These things can switch the tracks in your brain for just a few moments, bring you out of the chaos, and into a world you can control, into something brighter. Or make space to hold all of the hard thoughts you can’t put out into the world in the moment.

So that’s it, that’s the blog. Write. A little. Everyday. Use a hospital napkin, or the edge of that overpacked therapy schedule…doesn’t matter. Just stay connected to who you are, and that there are stories still to tell.

I don’t have much to say about this one. Today we’ll be in the hospital. Next week, a new world. In a month? Who knows. Every season feels like fall these day, minus the comfort of repose.

Confetti

Fall afternoon
where asphalt splits
the glory of some
reticent nature apart and the
contrived quaintness of our street
twenty years-lived
sits picturesque and soft

our voices are silent and
our thoughts are loud
and we are so alone,
next to one another
each a leaf fallen
even as the confetti of mountain ash
dances down like glitter
the aftermath some big show
we've just missed
the end of a celebration
we held no part in

Tomorrow we run more tests,
tomorrow they measure you again
to see the
failure to thrive
and the insistence of dying thin
rather than living
with anything over your bones
but shivering skin

and the dark bark of trees
reaches up to claw the blue skies
and I hear
you giggling from your stroller
at the leaves of confetti
just somewhere down our street

it echoes, this joy
even as you stare sullen
beside me, alone

This particular phrase came to me me during a few years ago post, on the subject of home. This week, I’m on limited mental and emotional bandwidth due to stuff and things, so I decided to dust off this still-timely look at what home means, where home is, and all the hats we wear when we go ‘outside’ of it.

I’m from Wyoming, born and raised, with some detours along the way.

Wyoming has some pretty awesome colloquialisms (for more on that, please check out my Sweet Valley Series, set in Wyoming—very romantic-west) and “Home is Where You Hang Your Hat” is no exception. (Some other, unrelated, favorites; “wouldn’t mind if his boots were under my bed,” and “wish I had a swing like that on my back porch.”)

I could go into the history of hats, cowboy and otherwise, what they meant, where they came from, who wore them, the political and pop cultural significance each one carried, but you didn’t come here to listen to the historical social scientist in my back pocket, you came here for an expansion on home.

Hanging your hat up was something you used to do when you came in from a long day of work. I’m looking at you…slack-jawed twerker, with your suuuuper cool trucker’s hat turned sideways at the dinner table…you realize that it’s the same ‘model’ my 97 year-old grandfather would get free from NAPA (that’s the part store, not the wine country) and wear until the brim fell off… And, he wore it better but never at the table… sorry where were we?

Yes, gentlemen used to take off their hats inside and, in the case of coming home, would hang them on a hook or rack by the door.

A simple move that signified something so much more profound.

Hanging your hat, coming home, dropping the world at the door and breathing. Breathing in the place of your own, the space you occupy, the people who wait for you; who love you, who have seen your head without hat, your hair going gray. Coming home meant escaping the life’s demands and the outside world’s burdens and just be.

Why is it important, that we take off our ‘hats’ in today’s world? Why does it matter?

I’m glad you asked. It’s kinda why I’m here.

Humans these days are so connected by technology and the speed-of-light information bursts, that there’s really no such thing as a safe space anymore. Now your home has multiple outlets for this information to stream in, constant and blaring.

And the ‘hats’ have changed too, haven’t they? We used to wear one, maybe two. Now, we’ve got them stacked one on top of the other until they tilt in the breeze and wobble when we try to move forward. We’re doctors, and scientists, social activists and martyrs. Writers and poets, librarians and board members. We’re frienemies and friends, lovers and exes. We’re husbands and mothers, daughters, sons adopted or otherwise. Victim and accuser, the pious and the demon. We are presidents of PTAs and the one mom that always forgets cups. We’re the one to takes the dog to the vet and the kids to the dentist and forgets to pick up their dry cleaning. We’re the ones who need more sleep, but don’t get it. The ones to work long hours, for little recognition. The ones who scoff and say ‘its fine’ when it isn’t.

Caps For Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys, and Their Monkey Business. Esphyr Slobodkina (how is it I never knew that was the full title?)

We’re chained to the images that we build on our social media pages and constantly feel the need to live up to the happy smiling selfie that the world thinks we are. It’s getting so one can’t even close the door and drop what’s not real for a few minutes.

And if you can’t ever drop it, how do you even know who you really are?

It’s no wonder we’re overmedicated, depressed, anxious and stressed. People constantly shoving hats into our hands, telling us what we should be, what we could be, showing off how beautifully they’re balancing their own stack with perfect pictures of perfect lives through perfect filters that they post fresh every day.

It can leave a person feeling that if they aren’t getting enough ‘likes’ that no one actually likes them. That the measure of being loved is dependent on some superficial and meaningless emoji.

Listen, kid, ain’t nobody that happy. Ain’t nobody that perfect.

And the brilliance of those images, I guarantee, is hiding the same nasty, visceral darkness that resides in each of us, fed on self-doubt and anger. Jealousy, dis-ease with the person in our skin, and the pressures squeezing through our walls each day.

I just want to go home.

Let’s go back to that place.

The place where you put your phone on the shelf by the door and kick off your shoes. Leave your meal un-Instagramed. Your run un-shared. Write down the cute thing your two-year-old said, and then tell your mom face-to-face over a cup of un-tagged, un-pinned coffee.

Wait for your meal in silence and anticipation. Look up something– in a book. When you feel the need, the itch to pick up that screen, or turn that television on, or otherwise disconnect from real life, don’t. Over half of our lives are spent looking at the world through our screens and its becoming a new, cold, disconnected home where we find no respite.

The ball is in your court, the stack of hats in your arms. Drop them all, for just a moment and pick up only the ones that satisfy your soul. Even those, hang up once in a while and sort through how they make you feel when you wear them.

Find your home by letting go of the things that are outside of who you feel you need to be. Find the home in the center of your chest, your truest self, and come back to that. Hang your hat there. That’s your home.

Shhh…can you hear that? It’s something rustling through the back shelves of the library to the north. Up there in Wyoming, my home state. I can here it, in those churches of knowledge that helped educate me when I was cut off from the rest of the world. In that god-like place of words and stories, something foul is afoot.

Idaho did it. Wyoming is following suit…but with even more extreme regulations. The governments in these fine, god-fearing states, are trying to ban books in libraries that might be ‘sexually explicit’ for children. These hellfire books would certainly condemn these innocent youths to a life of sin for the knowledge of such things as… ‘masturbation’ and ‘menstruation’. Yes, parents cannot simply be asked to pay attention to which books are on shelves and might get pulled off by their sheltered (and not-at-all-on-the-internet-where-FUCK ALL EVERYTHING-can-be-found) children. The almighty hand of the government must step in to ‘save the children’. Not from actual death by gunfire from an assault rifle easily bought by anyone breathing mind you, that would be silly, but from the immoral leanings of condemnable ideas that maybe gender doesn’t really exist, periods are actually pretty normal, sometimes people touch themselves, poop jokes are funny, and that women can actually have orgasms. So much worse than a bullet to the brain of a 6 year old right?

It’s really god’s work. And I know I’m speaking, sort of, in jest, but the really NOT FUNNY thing about this situation is that should these bills pass, it would mean a cut in funding, fines, and an overstretching of already overstretched resources for local libraries. Some of which, are the only ones in the county for multiple towns. And the beginning of what can only be described as the Fahrenheit 1984 Syndrome (trademark by me) Wherein they burn what they don’t like, brainwash the masses into believing they didn’t like it either, and then spoon-feed the applesauce of Christian extremism down everyone’s throats until ours souls are so worn down that we don’t remember a time when we could have fought back.

Like today. As in, this is still the time we can fight back. It starts with a rustling. It starts with one book that seems suspect. But the machine of this fascist regime taking power is never satiated by one. It wants all of the books. It wants all of the thoughts. Because words are thoughts. Books are thoughts. These books in turn create thoughts. Thoughts create more thoughts. Thoughts support and connect other thoughts. Thoughts make us curious and wondrous and compassionate. Thoughts free us from man-made systems that are only real because someone has gotten hold of all the funding and weapons. Thoughts cause anarchy against systems that are no longer ethically or morally right.

So… if you live in Wyoming I urge you to get involved. Call your representatives. Go to the hearings, the meetings, the protests. Be vigilant. Fuck, be a vigilante for books. Be aware. Our country is at stake yes, but so is the future of our humanity. First they came for the books containing even the slightest whiff of sexuality. And maybe you did not speak because you do not write or read them. But then, they will come for the mysteries, the horror, the coming of age, the fantasy, and magical realism. The newspapers and magazines that don’t tow the line… The science (in and out of fiction), the christian that was not christian enough, the cookbooks for vegetarians…and on and on…until soon there will be no one else left to speak out for you…or your book.

Get out there and do an anarchy, kids.

Hey kids. My life has been a bit of a shipwreck these last couple of weeks. Transitions, seemingly impossible battles, lost luggage, and forgotten obligations. I am not feeling my best self, though I know I ought allow myself more grace for the days that are in a constant state of upheaval. So my grace today is in recycling an old poem. Because my mind is too on fire, and yet still disconnected, and I do not have the space for much else today.

My River

My river runs deep
and walks shallow
into the porous nature
of bed-rocked layers
the clay and sand
and above to deer-perked ears
silent hoof prints on banks
sunk in

My river is the tumble of rock
into sand
and foamy puffs
in swirling whirls
quick eddies of frantic joy
released
and the unforgiving relentless call
to keep moving

My river begs spotted trout
slip through the icy fingers
of its burbling caress
wet swells against
the willow banks
and plays below the soft wings
of mayflies dancing
round poles of half-sunken timber

My river is the mirror
a night of stars
the giving dark
splashed with milk
and splattered with a forgiveness
of perspective in light years
of still thoughts
and letting go things
too far away,
too long gone
to be mine

My river is the blood
hushing through veins
the secrets in history
the timeless genomes and
photographs carrying ghosts
with no remembered names
but they have my eyes,
the rise of cheekbone
the propensity to carry
all this grief
in the generous swell of my hips

Approximately three days ago, my daughter Madelyn was a boisterous and fancy-dress-loving two year old. She would wore through not one but two (in growing sizes) Tigger costumes, bringing light and bounciness to her preschool, the grocery store, the library story hour, and daily walks. She would sing and dance (usually in her underwear and draped in all the scarves she could find in my drawers), splash in puddles, cuddle up to me for hours a day, and she taught me everything I know about patience and the importance of staying present in the moment you’re in.

Today we’re getting the keys to her apartment, in Leeds, UK, where she’ll be attending University. Thousands of miles away from home.

Away from me.

And I knew this day would eventually come. I just didn’t think it would seem like three days worth of time, squished into 18 years. Getting to be next to her as she grew up through her boisterous youth, to her unsure and difficult middle school era, to the renaissance of her bloom where she came into her own thoughts, and opinions, and power in the last few years has been, hands down, the best adventure of my life.

Honestly, I don’t know how I managed to steer her little boat down this great big life river to where we’re at today. She’s such a sturdy and reliable vessel, that I often wonder if someone else raised her. Because on this day, and for the past few months really, I’ve been a wreck of a dingy.

Her resilience and perseverance are the only reasons I didn’t lock her in her room and tell her she could pick a nice online program to attend instead. For someone who has worked so hard to be self sufficient, patient, kind, hard working, and just in an unjust world…it would be a grave disservice to not let her spread her wings into this world that so desperately needs her. As my grandparents and parents have always said. We don’t raise them to stay at home and need us. We raise them to go out into the world and be good humans. So I’m learning to let go, I am leaning into embracing this time of her. Because it is. It’s her time now. And how amazing that she gets to spend it, invest in it, experience it, with me still as her mom?

There will be, inevitably, a lot of letting go and holding on in our lives. Family, jobs, relationships, loved ones, hopes, dreams…change and flow with the actions and inactions of the world. Learning when to loosen your grip and when to hold tighter is a difficult dance and the choreography is always changing. So this week I encourage you, as a writer, a human, and a soul…to think about what you’re holding on to. And ask you if it serves you…If not, why are your fingers so tight? What would happen, if you let go of something meant to fly? Not everything is ours to keep, after all.

For me, and Madelyn, letting go is an act of love that tells her I trust her, and I believe in her. It tells her that I’m excited for her life and for what she’ll do out there in the world. It tells her that I know she has brighter (and probably darker) days ahead and that both with teach her about life and finding her purpose. It tells her that I know she’s got this. But it also tells her that I am here and I will hold on to her in my heart, where she’ll always have a home. A big old oak tree to sit beneath when the world gets too loud and too busy. My roots will be there to sit within. My branches always here to give shelter. I will hold on to the bright memories and the endless giggles and curiosities, to remind myself that we are all borne as stardust into this universe and we are all born knowing. We are all, always, undeniably connected. Only the world makes us doubt these undeniable truths. I will hold onto this knowledge for her, in case the world makes her doubt it.

Hug your kiddos, hug your loved ones, hug yourself. (I’d caution against hugging strangers…best not to unless invited and both consenting) Remember you are stardust, glowing and bright. And that means, in terms of the vastness of the universe, that we’re never, really, very far away from each other even when we’re miles away.

Hey there. I see you. Staring, blank eyed, into your screen. Just a thousand more words. Just get this poem revised. Just submit to one more journal. Post one more eye-catching reel. Just call three more bookstores. Just, just, just, just…

It isn’t hard to get caught up in the loop of hustling for your art. And I don’t mean that’s always a bad thing. We care about our work. We love our work. We want to share and celebrate our work. This world has a variety of pathways to do that (an overwhelming and convoluted sphere in itself), but it often amounts to at least a part time job in itself. Beyond the writing, the poem-ing, the editing, the revision, our creativity is in constant competition for the pesky day-to-day of living.

Psh. Family. Day jobs. Grocery shopping. Cleaning. Taxes. PTA meetings. Board meetings. Bake sales. Yard work. Caregiving. That contest you said you’d judge. Simultaneous vaccinations for every furry thing in the house… everything competing for space in your brain and on your schedule. I get burnt out just thinking about it all. So this week, we’re going to take a step back, put down the balls I’m juggling (I can’t type balls without giggling a little–Jesus Christ Sarah, pull it together) and talk about some things we can do as creatives/writers to keep ourselves sane, calm, and focused, in these over productive lives. I think you guys deserve a bullet list. It’s been awhile.

Sleep. Protect your goddamn sleep at all costs. Seriously. Priding yourself on four hours a night is only super cool to tech bros and cocaine addicts (or do I repeat myself?) Create a bedtime routine like you were a toddler. We turn off our phones, we brush our teeth, we stretch and meditate, we read something calming, we shut off the light and we settle in. (or whatever combination works for you) Every night. Limit your caffeine and your booze. Find time to write for fun. I get it, all of us write and it’s all ‘supposed’ to be fun. But sometimes there are projects and deadlines. You should always have some outlet that isn’t related to your bigger goals. Journaling every day counts. I have a tiny notebook and every day I sit down to write one poem in only the space of two tiny pages. Only have 5 minutes? Do that. That’s enough. Have 20? Take it and make it your downtime. Exercise. Listen you don’t have to run marathons. You could to chair yoga or mobility stretches. You could go for a walk or a bike ride. You could Jazzercise for all I care, Richard Simmons your heart out. Power lift or join a Cross-Fit cult. The brain works better when the blood is flowing. Not only that, but it will kick up your endorphins and hopefully help your sleep, posture, and overall sense of well-being. Movement mattersRead. Holy shit, I used to be terrible about this! I’d only pick up a book at the end of the day, maybe make it through a page, and fall asleep. I told myself I didn’t have time. I was a big dumb liar. There is time in the day. I read in the morning now, and a little at lunch, and again in the afternoon. A variety, some philosophy, some writing books, some fiction. A healthy diet of words help me to have fuel for my own.Don’t take it so seriously. I’m not talking about just your writing. I’m talking about your life. Here’s a secret that capitalism and social media doesn’t want you to know. The statuses, the Amazon ratings, the likes and comments–none of it really matters. It’s an alternate plane of information that really doesn’t mean anything. Have you ever sat in your own skin consciously for a minute. Felt the reality of being? Known that if a giant EMP took out all technology suddenly, you would still exist in the world. We only get this one time, we only get the moment and the breath we’re in. If you never published another book, the world would still keep spinning. If you were rejected 600 times, the sun would still rise the next day. Silly human, stop obsessing about the trivial and just be present. Find your joy in the here and now.

Well, there you go. Take care of yourself. Get sunshine, good food, movement, and water. Treat yourself like your favorite houseplant. Talk gently to yourself. Forgive yourself. Take lots of big, deep belly breaths, and trust that whatever you have to give for today, is more than enough.