Tag: caregiving

blessings and burdens of taking care of others

Persistence and Payoff

When I hosted the first social studio in 2023, it was quite an experiment with few expectations. Toward the end, as moment built up, that changed. I wanted to deliver big.

Of course, I did. I’m a conscious capitalist, a proponent of the circular economy. I believe in progress for a purpose. Also, I was dearly wanting to move on from a recent prickly past. Haste, I have very few professional days left to waste!

Also, it was the end of a big deal.

I planned a 10-week online social studio, hosted it, and succeeded by my own hand and measure.

I experimented and failed at everything there was to do, at first. Then, much of it became rote and routine in a newly formed way.

No longer do I fear the weekly missive, for example. Lately, I like to write on my phone from a nearby park. After a short walk to sort my thoughts and find the story, I sit and touch tap my minor truths. Duck quacks are great applause.

The first ten essays I wrote in September 2023 were an excruciating cosmic childbirth tended by dueling doulas. Do it, or don’t. Now, writing each week is like feeding kittens.

Also, the social studio is excellent for quiet, parallel play. After a little chatter and a conversation, dense trust fills the air space on mute, even thousands of miles away.

I connected with past colleagues and met new ones. We deeply discussed familiar notions in creative practice, revealing more and more from the roots of ancient, common wisdom.

I completed last year (did I?)

I am creating the year ahead (am I not?)

It’s not so simple.

The book ahead of me delves into a past long before I existed, and only a faint version of that past at best. AI is revealing new historical evidence about my genealogy and DNA, alongside its unintended consequences.

Digging up the dead is forbidden in most cultures, and for good reason. Some leave us out on a windy mountainside to let vultures pick the bones. We endlessly wrestle with competing tomes.

The same creative tension lives in all the professions, including medicine and mental health. Long dead brain surgeons are buried with their ice picks. Ketamine dreams are revealed decades on. Closed cases openly weep for what’s inside.

Luckily, one lobotomized woman lives just below my ribcage on the left. Lacework from tiny papercuts, effects of a life swallowing knives. But somehow still alive in me and beating my blood to get out.

I know the book will release her, but it’s not fit for public just yet. One insight from the social studio–we still have to contend with the lonely unknowns. No amount of friendship or fostering (or an effing robot) will entirely alleviate the internal ache of being humane. That’s the work of writing and a patient readership.

When brutality is unearthed, swaddle it like a stillbirth and give it a proper goodbye. The book ahead of me is a quiet way to say goodnight to a granny I never knew and to reclaim the family between us over time.

Until the end of the year, I’ll take some time to write and publish here. Then new social studios will begin. Connect with me directly in the usual ways, especially if there’s no one else to call. For comfort, I will read you the terrifying stickies on my wall.

Divine Diversions

My footsteps find their own way most days, following familiar patterns on walks in the neighborhood. Room to room, too. Both GPS tracker and continuous glucose monitor reach a general truth about me, a cadence. My pace and patterns–even my blood and energy–have a signature. I move, therefore I am.

Of course, my thoughts, words and actions make up me as well. I enjoy a little Descartes, with hummus.

Aligning with the mantra, Go to other people’s parties, my task takes me beyond my usual path. Instead of being in the studio, I’ll be on a plane.

It’s the third DC flight diverted by weather since I’ve been in Arizona. I love a good ‘ghost day’ to tend to the trusty to-do list I carry around like a hip flask.

Divine diversions. There is another way alongside the familiar. Short trips sideways around the sun. Hours when you gain a year in a day. I tend to think that a journey leads toward a far away place. More often, it’s a weird turn off a side street called Obvious Lane. I plainly ought to be here but wouldn’t have arrived any ordinary way.

I expect to get a liminal nudge up in the clouds I have come to know.

Other People’s Parties

Like clockwork, the first week of my new cycle has gone off plan. Client deadlines (and a side of electrical repair) quickly pushed any creative writing off my plate. I know what I want to say but typing takes time!

Also, choosing the right words, feeling the emotions, thinking through the ethics of writing about the living and the dead, and sometimes facing the dark mirror myself. Eating, walking, and showering, too.

All that, and tend to others?

Yes, this week I’m going to other people’s parties. Another useful mantra for the new year. Creative practice most definitely feeds on distraction. For me today, that’s writing in a different voice, another purpose, a reason beyond me. Tomorrow it’s studiously inquiring about cloth wiring.

And reading a lot. What a relief to get some space from the familiar voices. I am taking the pause on my own work as a break to listen to other stories unfold.