Sweating through summer
while wishing for winter
It’s that time again. The Substack Stage of the day. But the juice seems to be dispersed. Rather than sitting down with an idea burning in my heart and mind, with fingers ready to race, and with a complete obliviousness to my surroundings, I’ve placed myself on the bench with an emptiness in heart and mind. My fingers are ready to race, but they have the feeling they’re better prepared for a cross-country marathon, as opposed to a sprint. I’m aware of the smells and sounds that fill my space. Writing is always different when I meet it from this place.
The thin sheen of sweat that covers my brow has plenty to answer for. I spent a long time in discussion with a friend recently, pining for the depths of winter that the Northern continents offer. The blistering heat and, surprisingly, consistent humidity keeps me in that place where I feel able to get the body to work, but not the brain. Kicking, punching, gardening, walking slowly, these things tempt me all day, but reading and writing, sitting peacefully and letting the mind roam? God no. The mind can’t rest on a single point, it can wait only for the temperature to drop.
And, when it drops, all I desire is to drop into the world of sleep. Let me tell you: of late, the dreams have been an extra level of batshit crazy. The kind of crazy that, if I weren’t totally aware of the fact that we’re in a new moon phase, I’d have put all my money on us being in a full moon phase. Indian men popping out from cupboards beneath toilets, only to sic their pet kangaroos on me; old yoga friends falling like pins into deep, peaty lakes beside Scottish styled castle walls to be rescued, before passing Hagrid - who has clearly been dieting as he is stick-thin but still a giant - as we walk up the street. Mental stuff.
On recounting these dreams to a family member, to the hilarity of those present, my uncle commented that it was a particularly high level of detail to be able to bring back from a dream. It’s something I forget, and neglect, and miss when it’s gone. When I am aware and engaged with my dreamstates, I bring back wild stories. There is a certain time of day where I can recall these dreams, and it’s all in that late dawn phase. This is a reminder for myself: when I wake up shortly after 6am I have a choice: get up and be warrior-mode minded, or go back to sleep and collect wild stories. If I’m on the clock the dreams disappear as soon as I get up because THE NEXT THING is already calling me.
THE NEXT THING is calling me in life, but it’s a nebulous, formless, as yet unrevealed thing. I feel the anticipation and excitement that comes in the knowledge that somewhere over the horizon my life is preparing to flip on its head, but I also feel the weight and suffocation that comes with it not yet being here. It’s that 37 degree day that’s carried over until 9pm, when you were promised an evening storm. You can feel the electricity in the air, you can see the lightning in the distance, but the wind hasn’t turned and you have no idea when the change will arrive. But you’re sure that, when it does arrive, it’s going to arrive with force.
The change has a few defined, clear, apparent words that reach out to me. Meaning, success, home, freedom, flexibility, change, community. On any day of the week, were I to be quizzed on topics of interest to me it’d be a safe bet these words would appear. Now though, they’re taking on a different importance. I’m seeing them from this ‘Both, and’ lens, as opposed to an ‘either/or’ lens. They’re both strengths, and deficits. At first this seems contradictory, but when I sit with it a little longer I understand that I’ve spent a fair chunk of time learning my weaknesses and improving where I can. It makes me think of something I believe I saw from Nassim Nicholas Taleb: ‘things that you need to optimise, don’t.’
Instead of working to identify the blindspots, implement appropriate workarounds to get them good enough, and generally dillydally around with troubleshooting on the 80% of things that aren’t going to yield any results, I’m coming into the Power Phase. I think of it as the time where I focus on the 20% of things that I’m naturally a beast at, that I can do with one arm tied behind my back, so that I can bring the most benefit to myself, my community, and the world at large. I will save the Wordpress website development to the people who love it, and I’ll focus on the reflective questioning that brings people to realise The One Thing that they’ve not been looking at, and work towards solving that instead. I’m a good listener, questioner, and reflector. So I’m going to do more of those things.
I’d really like to use this Substack to that end. I love writing this every couple of weeks, and I’d be happy to do it more often if the motivation was there. I would love to hear from you, my readers. I want to know what you’re struggling with, what you’ve been thinking about, what you can’t seem to understand, whatever. If you can give me something to reflect on, sink my teeth into, make fun of, then perhaps we can all get a kick out of it!
There’s a whispering of coaching on the horizon, and I am certain that words will form a core aspect of it. Writing is thinking over time. It’s both a muscle and a skill that develops with time, effort, and love. And it’s available to every literate person on the planet. You don’t have to write to become a writer, you can write to become a better thinker. I’m not sure the opposite is true though.
That’s enough for this mildly scattered Substack. Blame it on the weather. There’s a time to sweat, and a time to think, and we’re absolutely in sweat time.
Best wishes to you all <3
P.S. As an ego metric, I would like to get 5 more subscribers before the end of the year to bring it up to a round hundred. Share with whoever you think might like it!
