Relational connection is powerful. I think connection with the natural world is also quite potent. I’ve been in a space recently that I think I used to aspire to in meditation. There’s this concept around observation that has to do with how we interact with our internal landscape. In kind of simple phrasing it would be like “who watches the person who thinks they are you?” This idea of getting to a place beyond the confines of my own ego’s entrapment. To just being present to what is in a sort of detached way. Anyways yeah that was something I worked with for a while. I don’t find it to be as helpful in my practice currently, but it was apart of my journey and I think has helped me understand other things more fully. I’ll come back to this later, if not directly, indirectly.
Something that I’ve been noticing in this new season of life I’m in is that I’m more aware of what I need. Intuitively. I got the job! Yay! Now I’m in the process of finding housing in a region of the country that is hard to find housing in. A lot of folks want to be here I guess.
So I’m in the process of looking at and sending out an introduction and I’m aware that I’m experiencing anxiety. Instead of falling in and being crippled by it though I’m in a place where I can offer myself compassion and look at what I need to do, but also allow for other things to carry on. For instance, it came up in my mind that I’d like to go to my favorite spot that I’ve found and spend a few days. It’s a high campground and the views are quite something, but there is also cell service, so I can still get things done that require that.
I got to the exit off the 101 and the sun had set and was making the sky a most beautiful and unique tapestry of transient things moving through our atmosphere. It was really something. Part of my anxiety I realized later last night was that I’m beginning to have buy in. Meaning I’m getting invested. Meaning I have more to lose. Meaning my brain is really interested in helping me preserve myself in this space. Thanks brain! Having a plan is great and I’m learning to roll with it while actively engaging (like getting up to highway speeds with a manual transmission). There is something about making plans and then allowing for conversations to happen inside those plans. Allowing for new information to come in and inform rather than paralyze. It’s a tension I’m learning. For someone who has spent a good portion of their life terrorized by fears, it’s refreshing to be learning to move through the world in a different way.
The game is changing. Jo~el, (side note I have a friend who affectionately refers to me as Jo~el and it makes me so happy), is no longer just free floating unsure of where in California he is going to land. Your boy is landing in Santa Cruz. Now it’s a process of getting into that space and figuring out my flow. I expect that there will be a continued conversation with my creativity in this new season. It’s like there’s something in the water. Maybe it’s that and also because my heart was out here and I just had to get the rest of me in the vicinity. Whatever the case may be, it’s refreshing to feel curious about the challenges facing me rather than overwhelmed and apathetic. That is a huge shift for me and one that is leading me into healing in areas of my life that have been pain points for a long time.
I was catching up with a friend recently and they said, “I was reading your blog and was like oh, Joel is on some hero’s journey shit” If you aren’t familiar with this concept I’ll link something for you. Roughly, it’s a literary conception that posits that there is really only one story told in different contexts. There’s this moment when you step your toes into the ocean out here and the water feels really cold to your body. In response my brain goes, oh hell no. There’s some serious rip currents out here so being aware of that is good too. Anyways, timing it and then going in is quite the feeling. I think what is more interesting to me though is what happens when I emerge. It’s as if the perspective of fully being taken in by the ocean brings a different experience of the air I’m breathing above water. The major difference I found was the the fact that it feels so much warmer. Having that contrast of a shock to the system and then feeling the sun on my face again and the air around me is exhilarating. Our bodies are wild. It’s interesting how much it works to take care of me. How sometimes those mechanisms hold us back and how I have to learn to engage and have an intelligent conversation with this process of being human.
structures of home 