I had a busy week last week and was feeling quite overwhelmed. One of the ways this manifested is that I felt emotionally clogged up... I knew I had a lot of feelings but I was mostly just numb to them.

Then last night I woke up in the middle of the night and started crying. I can’t even say what I was crying about, just… everything. And it was real crying - snot flying, loud sobbing, etc. Like a dam breaking.

Then I guess I fell back asleep, because the next thing I know my cat is on me, tapping my face with his paw to let me know it’s 30 minutes until breakfast.

Today I feel emotionally hungover. My eyes are puffy and all of my muscles are achy and I am tired and in a haze.

I’m sharing all of this because I want to help normalize that these are trying times we are living through and there isn’t a right or wrong way to process it all.

But the way dominant culture is encouraging (demanding?) that we just carry on like everything is normal is not serving most of us. I think it helps to acknowledge how we are feeling and what the impacts are.

As artists, healers, visionaries and activists - we can’t really afford to be clogged up. Feeling our feelings is a part of the work, if we want to be good at our work.

I mean we can’t help but get clogged up sometimes, we're likely going to get lost in conspiracy theories and distraction - but it’s a part of our work to process and work through our feelings and try to stay present with that is actually happening.

And I was doing plenty of doomscrolling and noticing that I wasn’t even really processing what I was watching in reel after reel, I was just 100% trying to distract myself from the world.

And each time I noticed that, I reminded myself that I feel better when I stay present.

Even though today I feel like.. this is crappy and hard and none of us asked for this, when we do the work to stay present, we can access our creativity, our power and our inner knowing. And with all of that - we can find our way through.

So what to do on days like this? How do I want to show up?

I don’t know.

I do know I’ve already had too much coffee, but I’d like to make a note to self for the future: matcha would have been a better choice for how it impacts my mind, compared to coffee. And I do have a tin of matcha! So next time I could do that.

(sitting quietly with the question: how do I want to show up today?)

I think I just want to focus on art today. 

I had a list of admin things to do, but it would be ok to do them tomorrow instead. 

And if do those tasks - that means pushing my vulnerable emotional hangover feelings aside to get focused and that doesn’t feel right.

If I do art - something new could emerge out of these feelings. Or I just give myself the space to really be with this and let it move through me.

Either way - this is what feels right today, so this is what I’ll do. Some days are just a jumbled mess.

 

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