Old Me, New Me

the pressure of the new year

Some of us feel hostile in response to all the pressure of betterment in the new year. As if with a turn of the clock/calendar we can, as if by magic, make all the changes we already know we need to make. Another fix, another fail. Apathy arises as an answer to despair. If I care, I must do something! While still managing everything else! A perfect storm for our autonomic nervous system. 

A cold, gray day at the beach. Photo cred: Scott Sherman.

Brave Space Schedule for January 2024

Brave Space Schedule 1/2-5/24
Tuesday 12pm ET includes Poetry Workshop sharing (see below*)
Wednesday 1pm ET
Thursday 10am ET
Friday 12pm ET

Brave Sched for 1/8-12/24
Monday 3pm ET
Tuesday 1pm ET w/ Poetry Workshop
Wednesday 3pm ET
Friday 12pm ET

Brave Sched for 1/15 - 19/24
Monday 12pm ET
Tuesday 12pm w/Poetry Workshop
Wednesday 1pm ET
Thursday 10am ET
Friday 12pm ET

Brave Sched for 1/22 - 26/24
Monday 12pm ET
Tuesday 10am ET w/Poetry Workshop
Wednesday 1pm ET
Thursday 12pm ET
Friday 12pm ET Brave Sharing Salon (last Friday of every month!) 

Tuesdays Brave Space with Poetry Workshop Sharing will be a Brave Space as usual (any genre) with the addition of sharing and accountability for those who are writing poetry. Anyone can come and participate in Brave Space. @120pm we'll shift to sharing til 2pm w/structured feedback and check-ins for those setting goals. 

Do Less in 2024:

Who says every holiday should be about judging ourselves and making changes? Why must everything be fixed? Everything changes anyway? Why not embrace the changes? Aren't we already doing enough? 

What could we do less? What doesn't serve us? Instead of all the new habits we might try to make, how about throwing some old habits out? 

I used to spend a lot of time stressing about stress. How I didn't want it, how to avoid it. In 2023 I learned to befriend my Autonomic Nervous System. 

It’s the energetic wash of chemicals that comes flooding in when I fear or worry or zip-line! It revs me up and shuts me down. It puts me on high alert.

Zip-lining in Costa Rica! Yes, that’s a sloth on my t-shirt.

I’m learning to embrace my stress response. Instead of adding the second arrow (beating myself up for having a reaction, instead of a cool/calm response), I’m claiming that energy as a way to get me through my challenges.

Yes, I refused to go forward after my first zip on the line. I had a full blown panic attack 50 feet in the air, and I used that adrenaline to zip back. I never have to do that again.

The truth is anxiety is my body's way of saying how much I care. (It also said, I’m not a bird or a sloth, and I want to live!) I’m learning to welcome it and use it to spur myself in new directions. Forward is not the only option!  

You can learn more about this in my upcoming Brave Group Coaching. I’m offering a very affordable workshop for 6 weeks starting Tuesday January 9th from 7-830pm ET via zoom. All about our nervous system and an introduction to parts work.

You can also read more about embracing stress as a good thing in Kelly McGonigal's book The Upside of Stress

Writing Prompt: a question you might ask yourself or your characters... what does it mean to be human? 

Start with a list of what it means to be human. 

What are some of the lenses that you use to answer that question? You might answer as a white female or a BIPOC female. You might answer with your experience of gender or sexuality. You might answer as a working class person or from the lens of a political party affiliate. You might answer with your humanity connected through caring about a specific issue. You might answer outside the lines implied by the question: as a species threatened by extinction or as a spore or a sapling or as the earth herself. 

The lens is up to you. LIST all the lenses you might want to play with/use to answer the question of what it means to be human or if not human then what it means to be alive/sensate. 

How can you use those human qualities and impulses to create the high stakes and 3D characters people can connect to? Think about what you or your characters would provide to everyone if you/they could? What would you or your characters like to give away for free? Write a short scene or story/play/poem where someone does that.  Or write a scenario where someone wants to do something to feel better about being human, only it's a really bad thing to do. Let the character do that or intend or try to do that, while another character tries to talk them out of it. Make something happen. Write 2 characters who are different in every category listed above and give them a task to accomplish together as they discover these differences. Add wonder or awe, add a great view... give them a place to be, a setting full of sensory details. 

Announcements:

For NYC playwrights: https://www.rattlestick.org/terrence-mcnally-incubator-apply

For those who are looking for create vision boards and manifest more in 2024, Rhonda Musak’s Leap has helped me enormously! Watch this!

Starting 1/4/24: I have 2 spots left in my 2024 Playwrights Workshop, 6-9pm ET Thursdays via Zoom! MORE INFO HERE

Brave Group Coaching begins Tuesday 1/9/24 7-830pm ET MORE INFO HERE

For those who want to write more and better poems, try Kelly Grace Thomas's Workshops.

Happy New Year!

Penelope shares, “Here is Colette, the dog a trainer said in 2018 was so dangerous she should be put down. With lots of cheese, patience, an amazing vet, a trainer who turned reactivity into play, a friend who believed in Colette's basic goodness, and positive reinforcement training only, we proved that trainer very wrong.”