Everyone else's is theirs

Everyone else’s—advice, experience, energy, emotions—is theirs. And it’s just that. Theirs. And it doesn’t have to be yours. It doesn’t have to be yours to take on, to do, to become. Everybody is different. Every body is different. Reflect on your boundary; set your boundary; be in your boundary. Exhale, gaze outside, meditate, take your space, put down your phone. Boundaries are a concentration of power.

And! Everyone else’s—beauty, intelligence, success, magnetism and magnificence is also theirs. And it shouldn’t be yours. Because you have yours. And them having theirs doesn’t diminish or detract from yours, doesn’t make it any less. In fact, it makes it more special. It guides you to lean more into yourself; the ways you, specifically, as yourself, are blessed.

This doesn’t have to be yours, either. You can read it; you can be with it; you can leave it. You don’t have to take anything with you except what’s yours. And even that, you can leave, too.

Written on the day of the Leo New Moon from 34-year-old me to 14 -year-old me, and for all the years in between, and probably for moments to come, too. Because it’s taken time with myself and with wonderful, strong, supportive and celebratory friends, and reading things like Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World for Men* that have helped me to open my eyes and arms to all that is mine.

(*So many years of following food, fitness, medical advice just for and by men, like all of “biohacking,” for example, that did not serve me at all and actually hurt me at points and that’s OK, because we’re here now and stronger, more self-assured and understood now.)

Everything is play

Everything is a canvas; everything is play. Life is an act of constant creation, and, therefore, an act of infinite creativity.

We use “working on” so much, so much in our capitalistic, output-oriented society. So much so that it’s even used to describe how we’re feeling pulled to explore, evolve, change. (Eg: I’m “working on” this with myself.)

Since I started substituting the term “play” when I would use “work,” things have gotten so much more fun. Really, really so much more fun. There is right/wrong in play; no outcome to strive for except the joy of doing it. Plus, if we’re “working on” it, then we’re already doing it. (When we’re trying, we are doing.) So, why not make it fun. Playing on a blog > working on a blog. Playing around with writing > Working on writing

(Also, thinking about even my full-time job/”work” in the traditional sense as “play” has reframed even what at first feels like the most menial of moments and tasks.)

Play in this moment; play with this idea; play through this process, through learning and exploring. Everything is play. We are creative, creating and creators.

(Recommended reading for further play in this space: Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert.)

Dedicating this post to childhood neighbor and amiga, Carissa, with whom I still live and play on an infinite timeline of weekends, evenings and afternoons on Meadow Lane in our yards, in the pool, on swing sets, around the block and in our imaginations, To continuing to play through, and in, life. <3

It's all right

The other day I was thinking of the term “all right,” or “alright.” Broken down, it’s “all” + “right.” Everything is right.

Except, we’ve somehow made it mean, essentially, “OK.” Like, fine, I guess. “How are you?” “I’m doing alright.” When a friend says that to me, I’m going to follow up, concerned.

What if, instead, I thought, I used this to start to think of things as “right,” always right, all right, even when they just seemed OK? That everything is always perfect as it is; that in every moment, any situation, I am having the exact right experience I am meant to be having. Try it, alright? All right. Let’s.

Even when things are OK, they are, it is, all right. Correct. Alright, all right.

The difference between 4 miles and 24 miles

Is actually nothing, except creating the space for it.

I had this thought during a recent 4.5-mile Wednesday night run with Venice Run Club. I ran the Los Angeles Marathon in late March, blooming into spring, and since then, I’ve enjoyed flowing back into a more varied fitness routine, which usually includes running about one day a week. I was pushing at that point in that run, calibrating to keep myself at that intersection of personal challenge and ease + enjoyment, a space where I’d found much to come in the past and consider ideal. It felt like so many moments of so many other runs in that all it felt like there was, was that very moment. It didn’t matter the length of the run it was part of.

In it, in that very moment, and all we have ever is this very moment, whenever and wherever that is, this actually doesn’t feel any different from any other run. Four miles, to fourteen miles, to 24 and more. You just prepare differently, and create the space. Train up to it, know you can do it, take the time to do it. And when you’re in it, you’re just with it.

I’ve heard a similar recommendation in relation to thinking about wealth, or financial abundance: It’s just about creating the mental space for it. In that, the deservingness for it. $80k and $80m is a different scope/ It takes up different space, and still, it’s all money. How do we prepare for it? ( “What if” positive thought play is a recommendation, especially for women, because women are socially conditioned to do this much less than men, of thinking and playing in the space of financial abundance. So, what if, I receive a financial windfall, X amount? What would I do with that? How would I manage it? What would I want to do with it?)

I wrote some additional things about running and the marathon, and the whole process (writing, running, all of it) felt expansive and cathartic. Posts are:

The luckiest person in the world

The other day I decided I was the luckiest person in the world.

I decided I was the luckiest person in the world, because “the” world is just my world, and your world is yours. I hope you’re the luckiest person in the world, your world, too, because you deserve to be.

When I decided this, I began to affirm it, in writing, in saying, in thoughts and self-talk throughout the day. I almost dropped that—caught it. Lucky. The light turned green. Lucky. That meeting got moved. Lucky!

There’s science around how and why things like this work: It’s related to our Reticular Activating System, which layers between the conscious and subconscious and decides what gets through to us, and what gets filtered out. (More here from Entrepreneur.) When I started to think of myself as lucky, I pressed play on the little program that generated all the proof I needed to believe that. And in that process and proof, perception becomes reality.

It’s been such a fun way to play, and to reframe my days. So, wishing a wonderful day to the luckiest person in the world. You, me and all of us.

I have compassion for my past self

A couple months ago, happily nested in my Venice Beach apartment, I kept finding myself being so critical, so hard on myself, for the life I lived in my Brooklyn apartment.

It was specifically about living in that apartment, too. I felt claustrophobic thinking about how I spent day in and day out cramped in a studio, how that whole wall of window bore sunlight into my soul every morning, how I was ungrounded on the 14th floor, on display for all of Brooklyn on that terrace. (Even in writing this, I feel a tightness start to form; I feel the need to shake it out.)

The truth is, I felt none of that when I was there. In a session with my healer and friend, Ryan Glassmoyer (whom I see for guided meditations and healings through her Abstract Therapie program biweekly, 10/10 recommend!), she reminded me of how special and important that home, that time, was for me. I moved, often dancing, through my days in the fluidity of a studio space that spilled into the outside that was licked by sunlight most days, welcoming to rain on others, collecting snow in winter. I spent evenings on the rooftop patio watching the sun set across the Williamsburg Bridge, Domino Park, Manhattan. I jumped rope and hula hooped on my terrace, gleeful at the amount of outdoor space—in NYC—that was all mine. I had friends over and re-thought my prior assumption of self that I didn’t like to host; instead it was about having a space that made it feel easy, inviting and comfortable. I could walk the water, bike up to Greenpoint, strut Berry Street every evening with a friend who lived just across the way. We had a gym. There were grills. I made friends in the building. I had an in-unit washer and dryer! (Re-writing my memories now from the more recent above, I’m rediscovering the joys, rest and rejuvenation that life, and apartment, gave me.)

It was a cocoon for me, and it gave me everything I needed. It was in that time that I moved that I started seeing butterflies, too. Monarchs. Far more than I ever had in Manhattan. (Out there in the wilds of Brooklyn..) Now, in LA, I feel like I see even more than I saw then; they lilt in the front yard of my building; they pause near the palm tree outside my balcony. And it makes me smile and remember, how big and special that all felt then, and how big and special this feels now.

I needed that then, and I loved that then. It took that for this, a West Coast move, and I deserve to give myself gratitude for that time, and to remember that time for how much I appreciated it, and how proud I was of myself for all of it.

I have compassion for my past self. Where she was got me to where I am now. Who she was informed who I am now.

And thank you, to 325 Kent. You really were a dream.

What if it all works out?

It took me going to a psychic in 2018 when I was living in NYC to begin to believe, to be able to let myself believe, that everything could be, would be, OK. Great, even. Maybe. Maybe? I wasn’t ready believe that big and openly yet, but then, there, in a small storefront tucked off Bleecker Street and on display for all the Saturday NYU-ish pedestrian traffic, gripping my friend’s hand, the curtain had started to part.

It took me needing someone in a storefront on Sullivan Street with a tarot deck to reflect things back to me like I would be “successful” professionally. Even though, by all traditional markers, I had been up to that point, and also was then. To tell me that “money would never be a problem,” even though—and I feel fortunate—it never has been. (Sadly, this has a broader, gendered context; it’s consistently reported that financial insecurity is higher for women than men, across demographics and time. I think we inherit some generational fear, too; women weren’t even allowed to manage their own finances and open bank accounts in the U.S. until 1974.) She predicted one big thing that came true within 24 hours, too, and was really so special, which is maybe something I’ll write about another time. I know it’s because I was open after that; I know it’s because I was light, lighter after that. Still, it also was that. It’s all always connected.

I told a friend at work about my experience that Monday, and we had a long, animated talk about it. He shared in the excitement of it, and shared what someone had once said to him, that had felt so profound to him then. It did to me, too. What if it all works out? Like, what if it does?

I think of that often, and I thought about recently when one corner of TikTok started talking about the Tinkerbell Effect recently. As packaged in the “manifestation” context, is essentially the idea that believing in something enough will make it happen. The recommended wordplay setup is apparently to frame it as a “What if” to bypass doubt otherwise triggered in the brain, and instead get us thinking of it in more of a concrete way. Laying imaginary bricks it into existence.

I think of so many what if’s in a day. It’s a mode of survival we have; it’s preparation for protection. What if I’m wrong? What if everything disappears? What if this car veers suddenly? And we end spending so brain time in imagined crisis; imagined crisis that can register as real.

Are we as prepared for "good” things to happen to us? Big things? Bountiful, beautiful things, in whatever way that means to us? Will we even see them or be able to receive them? We may feel like we need them, but have we played in the thought space of what it would actually be like?

What if everything works out? What if it’s all already worked out?

What if we have everything we need? What if it’s all already here?

For my friend Chuck and his ducks, because, what if it all works out?