barking up the right tree
Happy New Year friend. Whoever you are, I hope you give yourself a chance to separate from the old dread old and embrace the new. I hope that for myself as well.
I rang in the new year sick as fuck. Covid, flu, who knows. I’ve been isolating so hasn’t mattered, plus testing lines are crazy long.
Anytime I get sick, I go on a psychedelic journey, but like, if psychedelics were designed by someone who hated you. When you do acid, they say it fills your brain with serotonin and helps you see connections between things in your life.
When I’m sick, its opposite acid. I dig up every choice I have ever made, every thought I’ve ever thought. I try hard to block it out, to sleep, watch netflix, but its tough. Its like trying to sleep late in a room with no blinds.
I don’t know if this is normal or common or healthy, I just know it is.
Its funny to not be drinking, but wake up on new years feeling hungover and thoughtful.
Mostly what I feel this morning is grateful. I’m grateful to not be as sick, but also to get some release from that end of the year dread. I think big markers of time put pressure on the human brain. I want to do this or that by the end of the year, or be this or that. The implication is simple: if I don’t, I failed.
Today I am reflecting on how i use my energy. How I decide what things to obsess on what to let go. I think I could use some adjustment in this field.
Recently, I had a bad guest at my air bnb. They claimed they heard a gun shot in my neighborhood and wanted a full refund and when they didn’t get that they left a 1 star review. I tried to get the review taken down because it violates multiple review standards but was denied.
My normal instinct in a moment like this is to go kamikaze. I feel i have been wronged, so I will spend any amount of time to fight and get what I think is mine.
This is a weird part of me. The rest of my life, I’m a painfully easy going person. So why this weird turn when things don’t go well or when i feel like I am wronged?
I don’t know. I’m guessing its because I think I’m nice, so I deserve to be treated well. But what I’m realizing is this obsession with getting what you deserve or whatever is often a trap, and your efforts would be better spent elsewhere.
I was on the phone with Air bnb when i got the bad news of this review, and I could feel that obsession rising. Then I had a different thought: what if I took all this steam and did something good for me instead of fighting a losing battle?
i have never cross posted my listings on VRBO, which would over time lead to more money and an increase in my business.
What if every time I am getting drawn into a losing battle, I could retain my fighting spirit but choose the theater of war so to speak?
This year what I hope for more than anything is to not let myself fall into little quick sands like this.
All of this, no surprise, comes back to the wisdom I have found in the writing of Steven Pressfield. When we run from our true work, the worst possible outcomes bloom. When we sit down to do our work however, power concentrates around us.