Inventures in Inconsistency
When your "all" is imperfect
Dear friends,
It's been a minute, right?! I'm so happy to be reconnecting with you all, old friends and new, after a little glitch in the matrix which kept this newsletter out of circulation for a few weeks.
It seems fair to tell you a little about where I've been, even though it's not a very interesting story. I'd like to say I was imprisoned by a wizard in a tower that had broken wifi.
The truth is that I was prescribed a new medication, which promises to be truly life-altering in its long-term benefits. In the shorter term, though, my body has had some trouble adjusting to the new drug and I’ve been dealing with some pretty serious fatigue.
I got tired. Really tired.
For a while there I couldn't really work much at all. I did a lot less than I wanted to with my daughter. I slept during the day… a LOT. I leaned on my partners... a LOT.
And inevitably, I felt all the guilt and shame and self-loathing our culture teaches us to feel when we can't be machines.
I'm working on this. But I do want to say: SORRY, my dears, for going dark like that. If I'd understood what it was or how long it would last, I would of course have sent you all an update... but (does anyone else do this?) I kept assuring myself that "tomorrow" or "this afternoon" or "after the weekend" I would "catch up".
Catch up? What even is that?
The Trouble with Consistent
In a lot of areas of life—including newsletter writing—the received wisdom for success is "just be consistent." Like that's the big secret.
I know a lot of people can do consistent. I’m in awe of every one of you.
Me, I can do a little bit of consistent, here and there:
my heart is consistent
my good intentions are consistent
my wish to do better is consistent
But thanks to health, family responsibilities, and Life In General, sometimes
my actions are inconsistent.
I care very consistently about this community and the connection we share. In future it's my intention to update you when I seem to be having a bit of a pause. (I will also, at these times, pause payments for paid subscribers.)
Warning Pages
It strikes me now that if I had been able to embrace my inconsistency, instead of denying it altogether, I would have been able to take steps to communicate better. It’s ironic that my very insistence on perfection from myself (I’m not pausing, I’m DOING THIS! VERY VERY SOON!) is what caused such a long silence on these airwaves.
This is the cool thing about wild inventures. They’re always surprising.
I realize now that when I started sleeping later and stopped my practice of morning pages, I lost the bird’s eye view of my life that enables me to make smart judgements. Instead, I groped and staggered my way through my days, just dealing with the Next Essential Thing, falling into bed at night and then crawling out of it and straight into action (not early) the next morning.
When I was dictating the first draft of this letter, the AI bot did me a favor and wrote down “morning pages” as “warning pages.” And I realized this is exactly right. When I do my reflective practice, I’m able to get early warning signs about the trends and dangers in my life. Without that perspective, time became unknowable and my passage through it became totally invisible.
Cool with Imperfection
Muse of my soul Ani DiFranco has a song (and an album) called “Imperfectly” that kind of sums up my relationship with consistency:
I’m okay if you get me at a good angle And you’re okay in the right sort of light We don’t look like pages from a magazine And that’s all right…
The refrain is “let’s do it all imperfectly.”
So, want to join me in showing up whole in our imperfection? If the alternative is not to show up at all if we can’t guarantee 100% every time, I think we have to accept inconsistency as part of a package that also includes grace.
I can if you can.
Consistent love,
Ro
PS For any of you who chose to pay for your Wild Inventures subscription, I want you to know that I’ve been ESPECIALLY aware of y’all through this last month. There’s a podcast on its way to you soon. And if you feel hard done by financially by le pause, please drop me a line and I’ll gift you a paid subscription. x
First off, it's so good to hear that you're ok. That you're getting the support you need both medically, and that you had the TIME and SPACE to be able to slow down and take the rest you needed with all of this. I truly wish the whole world was safe enough for that - and you are so worthy of that safety.
Second, consistency in nature just doesn't exist - and isn't that reality one of the things that strikes the MOST fear into us as humans?
For all of human history, it's been the unknown, the change, the threat we didn't see coming, the drought following the harvest, the storm, the 'other tribe' that has caused us SO much of our pain and suffering. That quest we all have to find something settled, something permanent, something we can PREDICT and be ok within - it's us trying to find safety where safety can never, ever exist.
As 'evolving' humans, we've created SO many systems and structures that DO provide some semblance of consistency - we've figured out crop growing, shelter, weather prediction and so many other things that HAVE led to a sense of stasis where we can feel safe. But we've never been able to engineer change and the threat of that change out of our experience. And this is constantly lurking in the back or front of our minds, triggering us every time our plans get shaken.
I think in a lot of ways, when we try to make OURSELVES consistent - when we look for our 'personalities' or when we try to find that ONE CAREER that we can do forever or when we try to be the same socially all the time - we're looking to find some form of security within ourselves. We're trying to make ourselves that safe place of predictability we haven't been able to find 'out there.' We can even see that people will seek out unhealthy relationships and circumstances over healthy ones because the unhealthy ones are FAMILIAR and that reads as safety MORE than the healthy situation does. We want to be consistent because society promises us that when we are, we will be rewarded with safety.
But the reality is, again, consistency is never going to exist. Not really.
So how can we work WITH that? How can we be honest with ourselves around what we ARE capable of doing in terms of structure so that we feel supportive/can be supportive, without expecting ourselves to be something totally unnatural and impossible? How do we show up for the stability we can create, without expecting machines of ourselves?
It's hard, because again what we're capable of is always going to change.
Those warning pages - or any kind of checking in with ourselves and self honesty - I think that's the ticket. Allowing ourselves to admit the fear we have and not being in total control is also key.
Then finding the stability that IS available within the inevitable chaos.
What a trip.
Ah, how refreshing! Raw honesty and “imperfect”, just like ME. Thank goodness I’m not alone. I hope you can regain your stamina soon, but even if not, know you are loved for exactly who you are .