Plate spinners, what a beautiful anxious analogy. For myself, you become so efficient, it becomes a fire dance of sorts in managing everything. I had some massive life events take place and I considered this very real topic. What if I let the plates stop? What happens if I stop and let someone else worry for a while? As it turns out, it’s a lot more complicated to get everything spinning again once all the dinnerware collapses to the floor all at once. Likely, that is what I need to focus on… allowing myself the grace and the space to be perfectly imperfect. I need to gather and pluck my capacity for giving and in what doses.
This is so exactly it. To clean them up, to re-spin them, is so much more exhausting to me than to keep them turning. Plus, there is such beauty in watching them all dance in one revolution together. You're amazing.
100000% I struggle all the time to let plates fall because, what happens when they do? Does that mean I won't be able to pick them up again, ever? I have a very all or nothing mindset with life and it feels like I have to capitalize on the activity before it all stops. Which really just means that I burn myself out, then I HAVE to stop.
Penny Dreadful is AMAZING and what a perfect arc, I really appreciate a show with a good ending. And OMG Eva Green reading your poems?! I need to find those videos!!!
Awesome Tyler! I’ll take the Royal Quiet typewriter. I make arrangements vial email with you. I have not written on a typewriter in 40 years, so this will be fun and nostalgic at the same time.
Yeegads! ... my mother had the 1950's Royal. I learned how to type on it, AND I typed high school papers on that thing. It was awesome and long-lived.
The poem speaks to the seizing, plucking, gathering of thoughts. Very serendipitously apropos, I thought. :-)
Kevin ... I love 'gathering' even more than 'pluck'. Seizing the day was said to me time and again while I was unmedicated and deeply depressed. As if saying the words would make it so [that and 'fake it to make it', which I hate even more somehow]. It made me more anxious, to be honest. That if I didn't seize it, I was bad and ... wrong. And I felt so wrong; I didn't need one more thing to deepen the dark.
I just wrote a short piece on radical acceptance [https://gayleellisondavis.substack.com/p/radical-acceptance ... if you want]. That is because I have taken to practicing it at work. I say 'yes' and 'will do' to everything that is put in my path. And then I HUSTLE. Actually seizing the present moment to embody the yes. ... In a sense, spinning my >manager's< plate and minding their monkeys. There are places and times when I become zen, though, and wrap myself in what I'm doing. I think maybe I would like to do that more. Finding the zen even in the yes and gathering the now in peace instead of hurrying more than I actually need to ... because I hustle probably more than is >really< needed, lest I be chided for not. OOOOoh .... people-pleasing!!! I need to let go of that [!] and notice the wonder in what I am doing, the fabric/texture of the clothes, the colour, etc. There HAS to be wonder somewhere at work. Right?
Plucking the day encourages me to work in time for simple pleasures, the things that so often get pushed aside because of my responsibilities or because I think I need to do something big for it to count as "seizing the day." A few minutes to write or paint. A morning at a new coffee shop. Time for a walk. A phone call with a friend. It feels to me like these moments are what add up to a meaningful life, probably more than the peak experiences.
I'm seizing time, no question. My epitaph will be: "She spent most of her life cleaning, organizing, and putting things back." It's ridiculous really; I should just let the spinning plates fall, but that will just make yet another thing to clean up. I think in a world that feels so volatile, it's a way to at least control something, when there are so many things that feel out of control. It's to the point that I feel guilty just sitting and reading during the day because there are so many things that need to be done. And most days I log 18,000-36,000 steps per day looking after the house or the cottage, or the garden. I vow to my self to pluck 18 minutes each day to sit and read and let it grow from there.
Oh Kim, if you see it, you know what you need. We're here, we're here to help you get to the rest you deserve, to all that plucking. I'll keep giving you reasons to slow, here, always.
I am 100% a plate spinner. Always have been. And being an entrepreneur and creative makes it even worse 🤪 It can be tough sometimes to slow down or turn my brain off. It's extremely hard for me to stop if I'm in the middle of something or to leave something unfinished. But I'm trying! I have always been one to seize control or push hard to get the things I want in life. If I have a dream or a goal, I go straight for the seizing. I am learning lately that it's better to step back and let things come to you. That doesn't mean I can't work hard and move towards a dream or goal, but it means I can be gentler along the way and less attached to the outcome. I can let go of expectations of "how" I'm going to get somewhere and just enjoy the journey more. Thoughts are powerful. Mindset is powerful. I'm starting to see things coming to me in ways I never expected because I am shifting the way I think. Plucking life in general is better than trying to control every second of it. The best things that have happened to me didn't come from seizing or from control - they came when I remained open, when I had hope, when I allowed myself to dream and wonder and then let the mystery unravel itself. Overall in life right now, I'm trying to surrender more. Live the questions. Sit with the uncertainty. BE PATIENT (which has always been hard for me). Allow the universe to guide me where I need to go. I have to actively remind myself that it's okay if a plate falls once in a while. I'm only human. I can be messy and still be worthy. I don't have to get it right all the time.
Plate spinners, what a beautiful anxious analogy. For myself, you become so efficient, it becomes a fire dance of sorts in managing everything. I had some massive life events take place and I considered this very real topic. What if I let the plates stop? What happens if I stop and let someone else worry for a while? As it turns out, it’s a lot more complicated to get everything spinning again once all the dinnerware collapses to the floor all at once. Likely, that is what I need to focus on… allowing myself the grace and the space to be perfectly imperfect. I need to gather and pluck my capacity for giving and in what doses.
Oh what a lovely way to describe this!!
This is so exactly it. To clean them up, to re-spin them, is so much more exhausting to me than to keep them turning. Plus, there is such beauty in watching them all dance in one revolution together. You're amazing.
100000% I struggle all the time to let plates fall because, what happens when they do? Does that mean I won't be able to pick them up again, ever? I have a very all or nothing mindset with life and it feels like I have to capitalize on the activity before it all stops. Which really just means that I burn myself out, then I HAVE to stop.
YES. We always end up letting them fall, just sometimes we don't even have the choice we think we do.
Penny Dreadful is AMAZING and what a perfect arc, I really appreciate a show with a good ending. And OMG Eva Green reading your poems?! I need to find those videos!!!
YES! Me too, when they drop an ending it ruins me. And yes, her videos reading it, OOF. I know they are on her Instagram in her Reels.
Awesome Tyler! I’ll take the Royal Quiet typewriter. I make arrangements vial email with you. I have not written on a typewriter in 40 years, so this will be fun and nostalgic at the same time.
I CANNOT WAIT FOR YOU TO HAVE IT!
Yeegads! ... my mother had the 1950's Royal. I learned how to type on it, AND I typed high school papers on that thing. It was awesome and long-lived.
The poem speaks to the seizing, plucking, gathering of thoughts. Very serendipitously apropos, I thought. :-)
Kevin ... I love 'gathering' even more than 'pluck'. Seizing the day was said to me time and again while I was unmedicated and deeply depressed. As if saying the words would make it so [that and 'fake it to make it', which I hate even more somehow]. It made me more anxious, to be honest. That if I didn't seize it, I was bad and ... wrong. And I felt so wrong; I didn't need one more thing to deepen the dark.
I just wrote a short piece on radical acceptance [https://gayleellisondavis.substack.com/p/radical-acceptance ... if you want]. That is because I have taken to practicing it at work. I say 'yes' and 'will do' to everything that is put in my path. And then I HUSTLE. Actually seizing the present moment to embody the yes. ... In a sense, spinning my >manager's< plate and minding their monkeys. There are places and times when I become zen, though, and wrap myself in what I'm doing. I think maybe I would like to do that more. Finding the zen even in the yes and gathering the now in peace instead of hurrying more than I actually need to ... because I hustle probably more than is >really< needed, lest I be chided for not. OOOOoh .... people-pleasing!!! I need to let go of that [!] and notice the wonder in what I am doing, the fabric/texture of the clothes, the colour, etc. There HAS to be wonder somewhere at work. Right?
Gayle WONDERFUL Piece. My goodness. Thank you so so much for sharing it with us!
Plucking the day encourages me to work in time for simple pleasures, the things that so often get pushed aside because of my responsibilities or because I think I need to do something big for it to count as "seizing the day." A few minutes to write or paint. A morning at a new coffee shop. Time for a walk. A phone call with a friend. It feels to me like these moments are what add up to a meaningful life, probably more than the peak experiences.
"Work in time for simple pleasures" is wonderfully put. This IS life, all the rest of the nonsense we add is so simply silly.
I'm seizing time, no question. My epitaph will be: "She spent most of her life cleaning, organizing, and putting things back." It's ridiculous really; I should just let the spinning plates fall, but that will just make yet another thing to clean up. I think in a world that feels so volatile, it's a way to at least control something, when there are so many things that feel out of control. It's to the point that I feel guilty just sitting and reading during the day because there are so many things that need to be done. And most days I log 18,000-36,000 steps per day looking after the house or the cottage, or the garden. I vow to my self to pluck 18 minutes each day to sit and read and let it grow from there.
Oh Kim, if you see it, you know what you need. We're here, we're here to help you get to the rest you deserve, to all that plucking. I'll keep giving you reasons to slow, here, always.
I am 100% a plate spinner. Always have been. And being an entrepreneur and creative makes it even worse 🤪 It can be tough sometimes to slow down or turn my brain off. It's extremely hard for me to stop if I'm in the middle of something or to leave something unfinished. But I'm trying! I have always been one to seize control or push hard to get the things I want in life. If I have a dream or a goal, I go straight for the seizing. I am learning lately that it's better to step back and let things come to you. That doesn't mean I can't work hard and move towards a dream or goal, but it means I can be gentler along the way and less attached to the outcome. I can let go of expectations of "how" I'm going to get somewhere and just enjoy the journey more. Thoughts are powerful. Mindset is powerful. I'm starting to see things coming to me in ways I never expected because I am shifting the way I think. Plucking life in general is better than trying to control every second of it. The best things that have happened to me didn't come from seizing or from control - they came when I remained open, when I had hope, when I allowed myself to dream and wonder and then let the mystery unravel itself. Overall in life right now, I'm trying to surrender more. Live the questions. Sit with the uncertainty. BE PATIENT (which has always been hard for me). Allow the universe to guide me where I need to go. I have to actively remind myself that it's okay if a plate falls once in a while. I'm only human. I can be messy and still be worthy. I don't have to get it right all the time.
I think so many problems could be solved with those two words: BE PATIENT. SO MANY. :)