New year, same 💩

I recognize that time is a continuum and not an integer, so there’s no reason to expect that at 12:00 am on January 1st there should be some type of perceivable shift or, like a thorough cleaning of a whiteboard using the proprietary dry erase board cleaner (mostly alcohol), everything that transpired the year before is erased and we start over with a completely empty canvas. I’m not sure why “we” put so much significance into this date and time. But then, I’m not sure why “we” do most of the things we do.

I’m not making resolutions. I’m not making any promises to exercise more, eat better, or journal every day. Among the many things I’ve accumulated by my mid-forties, one of the most superfluous is broken promises to myself and the disappointment associated with them. But, I do need to create a path. I don’t know what that will look like – on hands and knees laying paving stones carefully and evenly, or hacking and slashing with a machete through the garbage underbrush of my mind? Maybe both and more. I can’t say it’s a path forward, because it may not be. Also, I’m coming to believe that not only is “forward” relative/subjective/impermanent, it’s also a farce or an illusion. Another lie we tell ourselves. Maybe there’s no such thing as forward or backward, and every step we take is just the motion of our lives.

2021 was another dumpster fire of a year for pretty much everyone and I can probably speak for a lot of us when I say I’m glad to see it go. One of the things I was acutely aware of when we all went into lockdown in March 2020 is just the sheer magnitude of trauma we were all going to endure and have to figure out how to recover from. Sadly, reality has been much worse than I could have ever anticipated and maybe I could remind myself of my initial naivety for comic relief. In addition to my own mental health issues, I’ve been developing quite an existential crisis just for funsies. I know I’m not alone in this. Even though first and foremost I’m here for me and to be real with myself, I’m also here (OD) just in case my thoughts accidentally provide some validation or relief for anyone else, or help them feel less alone. Additionally, I hope to list resources I’m finding useful to create a catalog for myself, and maybe some of those same resources will resonate for someone else.

For my personal 2021 recap, it feels like just another year that didn’t happen. I locked up everything and went deep underground for yet another hibernation, and a lot of the work I was doing was just left untouched. The problem with this is that it’s difficult to just pick it up where I left off. I keep having to reorient, remap, and retrain myself over and over. Maybe organizing some of this into a journal will create my future training manual. Also, I now believe that one of the reasons I haven’t gained much traction is because I’ve been avoiding this – creating a space where I can confront and sit with my thoughts, feelings, etc., and to organize them into something useful instead of the chaotic mental tornadoes, or the empty storm bunkers I created to weather them. If I’m honest with myself, working on my mental health is probably the most productive use of my free time. All the to-do tasks that I avoided during my holiday break (and now judge the hell out of myself for not accomplishing) are not nearly as important, and are fully dependent on me doing this work yesterday. Or next best, right now.

I started the year exploring self-compassion (Kristen Neff’s “Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself” is a good place to start and available to read free with a Prime membership) which lead me to attachment theory (Annie Chen’s “The Attachment Theory Workbook: Powerful Tools to Promote Understanding, Increase Stability, and Build Lasting Relationships” was recommended to me by my therapist, but I’m chronically single so it was difficult for me to do serious investigation with it). It feels like these things are definitely important and worthy of my time and attention, but they’re also just pieces of a bigger puzzle I haven’t completed. Or like one of those photo collages where tiny thumbnail photos are strategically placed to create one big picture, but I’m zoomed way in so I can see some of the individual composite photos and can’t see the overall picture. I also can’t tell if there’s a necessary order to place the pieces, like the reverse of a game of pick-up sticks. I’m grateful for each and every piece I find or resolve, but I know I have a lot of work left to do. Some of this process is developing a vocabulary to describe my experience to myself (and therapist when I have one), and some of it is accepting the truth and the discomfort that comes with it. It took me a year in therapy to just simply acknowledge that yes, my past was traumatic. I experienced trauma, I made choices based on that trauma, and I am experiencing consequences based on those choices. Prior to this acceptance I had convinced myself that I couldn’t claim the word “trauma” for myself because it was reserved for only the most extremely heinous and critical experiences like war, torture, or near-death experiences. Accepting that one word provided both relief and pain.

I ended the year discovering Pete Walker who seems to know a lot about CPTSD, and has a list of books that he recommends under a link titled “Bibliotherapy” on his website, and I will be heading off into and discussing some of those in the short term.

Some of the other topics I find compelling and take really deep dives on (and thus my thoughts on are likely to end up here) are: climate crisis, the history and evolution of humanity, psychedelics and their impact on our evolution and as therapeutic vehicles, and intentional communities.