Or, a year and a half in additions, subtractions, and alterations
- Sending messages just to say hi when I think of people, with no expectation of a reply
- Writing things down immediately when they cross my mind, meaning there are post-its all over my room & I sometimes wake up to a Notes app full of seemingly nonsensical phrases or a very strange voice memo
- Using the royal ‘we’ (we love to see it)
- Going on long walks, like an hour and a half to two hours at a time
- Stopping myself, literally, from boarding a self-hating train of thought
- Scheduling one thing I really want to do/treating myself to one activity I love every day
- Wearing sunglasses anyplace that feels too bright, indoors included
- Revisiting stories I wrote in my teens (the favorite so far features one character yelling to another in a crowded bar, and I quote, “now gimme some lip action!”)
- Telling people when I need space
- Experimenting with self-portraits
- Creating songs by drawing on influences I didn’t realize were so important to me
- Sleeping whenever I need to (a freelancer’s perks, I’ll admit)
- Actually replying on Twitter when I feel I have something meaningful to contribute (‘meaningful’ can also mean ‘hilarious’)
- Speaking of Twitter, reading threads that interest me all the way to the end, because I never know where the most pertinent or resonant information is going to be
- Rebalancing, and overall reducing, my social media time
- Journaling—not even about my feelings, usually just scenes, doodles, & disjointed thoughts
- Indulging in small luxuries (lavender lotion, cucumber water)
- Reminding myself that everyone is going through their own stuff and I have very little, if any, control over it
- Drawing up the definitive master list of people I would invite to my celebrity dinner party
- Organizing photos into archives of personal and family history
- Reading aloud to myself
- Letting hurtful stuff go, because I don’t have time or space for that
- Quoting Vines I haven’t seen in years
- Mailing physical letters & postcards
- Deliberately and consciously saying thank you to a compliment or apology instead of deflecting (harder than you might expect—or maybe not)
- Delivering stand-up routines in the mirror
- Trying to be more spontaneous (is there anything less spontaneous than working on being spontaneous)
- Playing dress-up
- Just sitting in silence sometimes honestly
Now gimme some lip action!
In the character’s defense, he was very drunk, and somebody was writing him into a story
Need to read this.
Writing things down immediately is such a great thing, because I always overestimate my ability to remember things, and barely five minutes would pass before I’d regret not writing that idea down. Thanks for this post!