FN 003- come & go eh? edition

wherever you go there you are... (ugh)

I’ll ignore all inconvenient body sensations in order to send one more email or upload one more file if I’m in a state of hyperfocus. Hours will pass until I notice I haven’t looked up or stretched. My last few years have felt like this too—ignoring that I need to stop and reset. I’ve barely left California, and honestly I’ve seldom left my neighborhood.

At first this stillness was a welcomed phenomenon, since I spent most of 2019 running around the world from my feelings. Until my entire life felt like the feeling of sitting for too long—you know when your feet fall asleep, you need to pee, and a sciatica pain shoots down a leg?

I was comfortable until, out of nowhere—ouch—I noticed I had been frozen for three years so I felt emotional pins and needles. I knew I needed to stretch out of my neighborhood, but didn’t want to, which was strange because that was not how I used to be.

I was perplexed by what changed. Had California sucked me in because it’s so pleasant, I wasn't clawing my way out? Or was it a reaction to the pace I’d been moving at before I got stuck in LA…Aware of my general stagnation, I knew I needed a plethora of adjustments and I decided travel would be a start. But the last three years had been pretty stagnant money-wise too, so financially an intrepid adventure didn’t make sense.

Until, an entirely free opportunity dropped into my lap: an apartment swap. With my airfare covered by the credit card points I’d accumulated while frozen in LA (this one is best for travel!), my trepidation evaporated into a feeling of correctness.

So I’m in Montreal, trying to figure out the next change I need to make…

I only have a few more days here, and I haven’t figured out much. I’m optimistic it will hit me… at the last second…in Q4 of the trip…

I barely know what day of the week it is, so I don’t claim to know anything about the fiscal year, but annually this is the quarter where things come alive for me. (Or more accurately, I annually hope things do.)

I write this in a city where I'm a stranger to everyone…and wonder…why does it have to take until the bitter end for me to get going? In the year, in the trip, in the day?

Despite removing social distractions, I still feel the sentiment of Julie Delpy when she says: “so many things that I want to do, I end up doing not much.” I’m so sick of quoting this but it’s perhaps a perpetual state I will remain in, regardless of the freelance job I’m doing, where I live, or who I’m with…all excuses that I’ve blamed my overwhelm on, but the truth is maybe it’s…
…me.

I want to accept responsibility for taking on too much and doing too little. To learn to exist within the chaos of both having panic levels of computer work and plans with people on the same day. Deadlines and dishes, etc.
As we all do.

To find my own way to feel completion within a reality where there’s always more I could do, even if I’ve already done a bunch that day. To relax despite a constant feeling of homework looming. It’s challenging to allow myself to rest if I haven’t even chipped away at the pile of tasks. And the more days that go by without touching the pile at all, it morphs into a boulder I’m pushing up a hill…

In Albert Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus, letting the rock go and accepting the absurdity of the recurring situation actually shows power. And in friend-of-the-podcast Andrew Bird’s song interpretation of the myth, Sisyphus says, “to hell with this just let the rock roll.”

But this has consequences, in this interview with Dave Eggers, Bird said,

“I’m happiest when I’m struggling up a literal or figurative hill. Sometimes I stop and say, ‘What’s the collateral damage ….of abandoning this eternal task?’ Maybe the rock’s going to roll down and hurt somebody.” 

Although there isn’t a cure for this, I could offer a prescription: choose quickly to push, or to roll. Here, in my hermitage, some days, I’m productive. Others, I sleep late, cry, and my heart beats too fast (luteal phase) and on those days I try to choose quickly to abandon my fruitless pile and let the rock roll.

Here are a few field notes …from Canada and from right before I left LA… more soon…. 

Thanks,
KD

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FIELD NOTES 003 ______ DATE: 9/22/23

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TRIED:

I made a rule to say yes to every invite for the entire week before I left… this meant I didn’t have to make choices between work or hang…chores or hang… sleep or hang… it was always hang! My thought process was basically, I’ll fix it in post… with my looming hermitage; I planned to binge and then restrict plans which, like dieting, didn’t quite work. Instead it made me overwhelmingly behind when I arrived.

But I don’t regret squeezing in every second of time with people, right down to seeing Lindsay while doing laundry. When she asked when I was free, I asked her to meet me at my laundromat because it was the only time I had left before my flight but a rule’s a rule…

Maybe my dance card was more full that week due to some pre-trip magnetism where, the energetics of non-attachment were at play… I want to see you without the strings attached of having to think about seeing you again or at least for a while….

Either way I now return to case by case determination on invites and attempting balance between time alone and together. Unfortunately, I can’t live with an ON / OFF switch for work and life, they are both on unless I shut them down. My temporary experiment with isolating them didn’t work as well as I hoped, but I want to try again because I think with better preplanning it could.

And in the meantime I’m trying to quit my delusion of thinking: I need just a tiny bit more energy to get done what I need to at the end of the day, rather than thinking I need less to do…

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SCALE  

1 -hermit cocoon — social butterfly- 10 I’ve been at a -1

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WILL MISS:

• the small compost bins 

• Riding the subway 

• Walking not driving 

• Alone time 

• Nowhere to be 

• No one to run into 

• Taking my time 

• Walking 11 miles a day as transportation

• Not missing meditations even the tricky afternoon ones 

• In-home laundry

  

HOMESICK FOR:

• Garden 

• Turtle hike

• All my friends 

• Warmth 

• Somewhere to be

• Jicama (it’s at every grocery store in LA regardless of season like bananas, which I took for granted)

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WATCHED: 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen (1965) on the plane. It focuses on his time in Montreal when he was 30. What stood out was a scene at the end when he watches back all the footage of himself and that he looked like two of my friends.
Reprise (2006) - Crystal’s been recommending it to me for years, so when I arrived I finally watched it on my computer. It’s the first, in the director Joachim Trier’s trilogy which ends with his latest: The Worst Person in the World (2021).

I talked about Vidiots last time, so I was delighted to find the Montreal equivalent: Cinéma Moderne was a few blocks away… wish I’d discovered that sooner…but I saw:
Past Lives (2023) - an emotional yet fun must see and excellent for talking about with friends after and/or crying for the entire walk home.
After Hours (1985) - a wild ride of a dark comedy that I loved seeing in a crowded sold out theater. My time here feels like a fever dream and this film sunk me into that more. have you seen it? I’m dying to recreate Marcy’s outfits and bangs—they are perfect.

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WORE:  

Speaking of outfits… its beanie season here…What’s the opposite of a hot head called? I would rather be wearing a soft hat at all times.

LA weather rarely requires warming one’s head with a giant beanie however… if you’ve felt this one… you’d get it… next time you see me, ask to try it on… I will be wearing it from Mid-October to Late-April regardless of temp…. it’s Ozma so my code works for 15 percent off if you want to join me.

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READ:  

Re-re-re-reading: Kristina’s copy of I Love Dick
Newsletter: Michelle has been working on Spacies, read the first issue & sign up it’s great. Mentioned her in the last edition, with this essay she sent me on the weirdest idea and here’s my favorite quote from it.
Article: New magazine called Nuts by Richard Turley the editorial and design director of Interview. “Each magazine will have its own profit and loss statement,” he said here.

Nuts apparently drew design inspiration from: The Whole Earth Catalog which I now cannot stop reading about. And have 2 expensive copies on ebay I’ve been eying.

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ATE:

Related to my saying yes social strategy pre-hermitage… I had some non-Oliver Twisty hits of meals….
-Dunsmore for the first time with Captain and Tim and Dede with a 10/10.
-Queen St. for the first time with Captain also for the first time. 11/10.
Captain’s been back since and now has a bell with his name on it. And Kate went to a special opening, so if you scour BS you can read about the unmissable dishes there.

Despite Montreal having some of the best food, it’s honestly been Oliver Twisty-eating since I’ve been here. I took myself out to dinner once and today, to breakfast at a hotel thinking it would cost my rent and it didn’t. 20 bucks for endless coffee, eggs and toast and a beautiful dining experience. Idea for a budget-friendly interloper: breakfast out, dinner in.

And my time/budget-friendly O. Twist-meals have been special due to fresh stores to explore. And the rice cakes are better… yes I’m back on them and this will be the last you hear about this boring cycle where they become my hyperfixation food only to be repulsed by them, then crave them again.

The superior Canadian selection, I tried most of them.

MAILBOX WILDCARD:

I was gone so in lieu of snail mail I will give you a wildcard…. fragments from a small journal Captain gave me. I take it with me everywhere. It’s great for when you’re out for a drink or dinner alone and don’t have a book and don’t want to look at your phone. It’s ideal for public use with welcomed interruptions leaving sentences alone on their (small) page.
Here are two of those fragments:

1. September 7, 2023- The golden retriever stands outside the coffee shop and waits.

2. September 19, 2023 -The 4 men playing chess in a very 90s looking mall I wandered into accidentally late at night.

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LISTENED TO: 

This song came on shuffle the other night and every time it comes on I happen to be experiencing an emotional dip down which always makes me laugh.

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FOUR THINGS I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU…. (PODCAST RELATED)

1. Spiraling my co-hosted podcast with Serena is back for season 5. Listen here.

2. I got to be a guest on executive coach Liz Tran’s podcast, RESET NYC talking about a very specific situation that she executive coaches me through…this is the episode:

3. I’m producing and co-hosting The Twelfth House if you want to listen to MP and I in the Green Room over there. Or about the Semmelweis Effect here.

4. And last but not least, my first born:LET IT OUT returns this week … sorry for the unplanned 3 week break in weekly episodes… it was nice to be missed but we’re not back to weekly release starting with this week’s episode with MOBY! listen here…

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PS.
Spots are open in the CREATIVE CLINIC… if you want to talk to me more about the themes of this newsletter… that’s a great place to.

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images:
After Hours (1985) watching Reprise (2006) on my computer, a few from Montreal, and The Whole Earth Catalog