Commute/commune

A month or two back, one of Ruth's friends* threw a party to celebrate the end of work on her PhD.** While we were drinking wine and snacking, she thanked me for some advice I'd given her a year or two ago. I asked what advice that was, since the occasion hadn't stuck in my memory, and she said, "something like, 'the external systems we relied on for structure are all gone by adulthood, so you have to create your own systems to support you and keep you accountable.'" Then she said she'd even copied it onto a post-it that she kept on her monitor through the entire process.

🌻I HAVE NO MEMORY OF GIVING THIS ADVICE AND QUITE FRANKLY IT SOUNDS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE SOMEONE MUCH WISER AND MORE GROWN UP THAN ME.🌻 It also happened to be exactly what I needed to hear lately, which is hilarious.

So, anyway. I've been working on trying to design the systems and routines of my life in a much more conscious and deliberate way. It's, uh, hard. Deciding what I want and where I'm going in life is hard. Deciding what I care about enough to wedge into each day is hard. Following through on my plans is extra hard.

One thing I've been doing this week is going for a 20m walk every morning, after I make coffee and feed the cats but before I eat breakfast. Commuting to work used to be a nice boundary between work time/home time and also a way to see the same area a little differently each day, and I miss it now that I work from home, so now I'm commuting nowhere. Or maybe it's more like communing, IDK. It's real good for my head, though.

Actually, my walk today reminded me a lot of walking around the neighborhood in the morning in Minneapolis back in '06/07, first while I was unemployed and then later on days when I didn't go to the bakery until 12. I went south from our house, and made it almost down to the Convention Center MAX stop. It was sunny, there were a bunch of people on their way to do stuff I didn't have to care about, the maple trees were finally all leafed out and casting proper shadows again, someone with the raddest blue extension braids was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the barber shop on whatever the street is that's south of San Rafael, I noticed some weird structures that seemed only conditionally real (like the second car wash, and the power substation behind the Wendy's). Yeah, I'm gonna go with "communing." I felt oddly plugged-in to the flow of life in general.

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I'm also trying to meditate for 20m at the end of each workday, as part of "clocking out." Previously I've meditated as a break in the workday, but I think I like this a lot better. I have more luck with wrangling my brain, and the outcomes seem more useful.

There are a bunch of other things I'm trying too, and I'm not really sure yet what's working or not. IDK. I'll probably talk more about this later.

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Oh, and as I went to paste in the current music, I remembered that there was a whole story behind this DJ mix, and it finally just made it online for the first time. Check it out if you're into drum & bass at all, Stary is such a good DJ.

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* By the way, isn't it weird how we track deed and title to transitive relationships like this? Anyway, this is a person I'm quite fond of, but I don't have her contact info or anything and only really hang out with her via Ruth.

** Later, Ruth got her a 5 ft. long plush snake toy, a printout of that classic McSweeny's bit, and a certificate of snake fighting mastery.