Overthinking it

[greenstorm]

The fact that every time I talk to them specifically (like the talk is about how things will go down when we're there) I'm more reassured than the previous time I talked with them, that's good, right?

Now am I more reassured every time I talk to someone outside us about it? Not yet.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

a very good sign indeed.

other people take longer. some of them never entirely "get it." others will glamorize or romanticize it. i lost a few people, for reasons i have never understood, when i moved to SR. i had a girlfriend tell me, in the midst of what would prove to be our final break-up fight, that it was outrageous that SR was more important to me than she was. and i was like - hello? have you never heard me talking about the ongoing constant full-time effort i am making to form a community and live in it? for years? and no, one person (and a problematic person at that) was not worth more than actualizing this dream, so. it shouldn't have had to be an either/or choice. i remain, 15+ years later, slightly outraged that she was so surprised and outraged herself. ha.

[greenstorm]

I'm very gently trying to lead the people involved into not glamorizing it. Have I mentioned, I gave them that book Creating a Life Together and, when I was talking to A about the fact that their finances and their plans didn't line up, he said "I got to the chapter on wishful thinking and I think that's what we've been doing".

I... am really tired of this role, "you have a dream, here's how to operationalize it". I'm tired of it in poly, I'm tired of it with my friends, I'm tired of it.

Such a relief in some ways for a person to so clearly self-select out! I lost a ton of people when I moved up here, and not necessarily the people I'd expect. I think I like the ones I kept though.

[yarrowkat]

you hadn't mentioned! i'm glad they're reading it and immediately finding value and that it's helping all y'all guide your thoughts productively. and wishful thinking is a hard trap to avoid, and also still a trap. i guess good communication gets us through it here - "oops, i didn't think that through, let me mull on it some more before i bring it back to the group" or "i need help thinking this through can we all do it together" because the gestalt is smarter than the individual most of the time. i hope that is true for your gestalt, too.

[greenstorm]

They hadn't mentioned that they were reading it, and this is the first time someone has brought up something from within it, so I was/am trying not to be too hopeful. I'm used to getting takeaways from things that other folks don't feel apply to them. E hasn't seemed to be convinced that budgeting is useful, which, we'll see when we talk next how it's settled in.

I wish I didn't dislike this process so much.

[yarrowkat]

budgeting is unfun, but i would think it's undeniably useful. here's hoping the whole book sinks in!

[greenstorm]

I think budgeting is like job hunting.

It can be thought of as a limiting chore, super stressful and hard.

Or it can be the scaffolding for a future visioning exercise, a way of seeing the future and willing it into being in just the way you want, a way of sorting out the most joyful things your imagination can produce and letting them pull you into that future instead of stumbling directionlessly into a much less enjoyable one. It can be a way of talking with other people, accurately and practically, about how to join each other in the best parts of a shared future, and about how to jetisson the parts that really don't serve anyone.

I am definitely hoping it does sink in. We did some good digging in the call yesterday, down to "we haven't been thinking about money because it's stressful and we're scared" and that feels like the part of the springtime where you've managed to clear away all the weeds and finally have that fertile soil below to start growing in.

(Funny to think of that metaphor, up here I guess it would be the snow melting away. We don't *have* winter weeds)

[yarrowkat]

will there be winter weeds on Vancouver Island? i would think so - perhaps your mind is already moving into an experience of the land & weather there

[greenstorm]

Oh, there most certainly are! Though I hesitate to call anything a weed. Skunk cabbage, oemlaria, and how can anything named "rubus spectabilis" be called a weed even if the berries are what gathering guides call insipid? But yes, that is exactly the image I had. That wan yellow sun crumbling through the blanket of old leaves, and the scent of spring.

[yarrowkat]

insipid berries remind me of sunberries, which sound lovely and are certainly vigorous and naturalize easily and are indeed *edible* ... and that's about what one can say of them... "rubus spectabilis" sounds delightful! insipid berries notwithstanding.

i'm learning to think of weeds as opportunities. i keep seeing people selling globemallow and i'm like, why would you *buy* that? it does have a pretty flower. and it's so. freaking. persistent. it's in every garden bed on our land. so my new trick is to dig it up and sell it, and gather its seeds and sell those. and use it medicinally in teas & soaps - i'm going to start making hair conditioner rinses to sell on etsy, as i used a rosemary/nettle rinse for years and loved it (when i cut my hair it became pretty irrelevant as there wasn't enough hair to make it worth it anymore but it's great for long hair) - and that stuff is useful as a brown hair colorant. and so on.

[greenstorm]

Just google rubus spectabilis. How can anything that looks like that - they really are a rainbow - be a weed? No doubt I'll be cursing it soon enough though.

It's a rich moist soil indicator <3

People buy the weirdest things, myself included. It's energy exchange, I guess.

How do yo udo hair rinses that don't go bad? Or do you make them daily?

[yarrowkat]

that's a gorgeous flower!

the secret is vinegar! my recipe is a couple tablespoons each chopped rosemary and nettle leaf, half that of yucca root, and then something that brings out the desired color - hibiscus for red, globemallow for brown, maybe lemon zest for blond (i need to research that), and I'll make an uncolored version. boil the crap out of it in a quart of water. let cool, strain, add a quart of apple cider vinegar. shelf stable hair rinse! it lasts a couple months. apply to the shaft of the hair, not the root, leave in for a minute, then rinse out thoroughly. it improves body, shine, and overall health of hair.

[greenstorm]

I think chamomile for blond? I think I remember doing sage rinses when I was a kid, but it would always go bad. Up here I tend to use a really replenishing conditioner so my hair doesn't completely dry out, but when I move back to the coast it'll move towards an anti-grease anti-fungal. Perhaps I will even try vinegar :) My hair is a default thing that my body does lately, not a thing I try to do stuff about, that may change if I'm back near a hairdresser but maybe not because I'll be poor and picky.

I _still_ mourn my amazing hairdresser from years ago, who moved to LA.

[yarrowkat]

chamomile! i think that's right. i've never tried to put blond highlights in my (naturally dark brown, usually dyed red or hennaed) hair so i didn't have the the info in my brain.

i really loved the vinegar rinse. you do rinse it all the way out after it has set for a moment, like commercial conditioners, so you don't carry vinegar odor around with you. it does wonders for volume and shine. i first started it in July here, and y'know it's really freaking hot here in July, and i had 2' of hair, and it about doubled in body and i was like WHOA, WHY DID I DO THIS but it felt so lovely, heat and all, that i kept using it for years. til i cut the hair.

[greenstorm]

I store it in the herbalism part of my brain, which apparently still exists. Most of it was more fun to know than to use, I think.

I know I was using my homemade soap on my hair for a little while and it fried it -- which was great when it was short, but is not great when it's long. Unfried, I only need to brush my hair once a week or so. Fried, it's hard to get a comb through it. The vinegar is acidic rather than basic, I guess it wouldn't be a ph issue.

Hm, hm.

Though I have given some thought to shaving my head and burying this hair, which is from the years at Threshold, up here on the land. So much of my body wants to stay here and at least that way I'm leaving a little of what I've been given, and appropriately marking the loss.

On the other hand a sunburnt scalp and months to years of annoying hair don't feel like suitable tribute.

[yarrowkat]

a ritual with hair like that sounds potent and meaningful, even if it doesn't take this exact shape.

what is in your soap that strips oils? coconut oil? you could make a shampoo bar with carefully chosen nourishing oils. jojoba & olive maybe.

i took meticulous care of my hair when it was long. now it's so short i'm willing to do almost any experiment because anything at all will grow out in a month.

[greenstorm]

I want to telegraph my grief very clearly, shaved head and ashes and wailing. I also never want to let go of the parts of my body that are made up of Threshold. It's complicated. We'll see how it evolves.

[yarrowkat]

<3

[greenstorm]

I don't know that it's stripping oils, necessarily. I was told by my friend it was probably a ph thing (they make cosmetics stuff, I haven't looked into it though).

Yeah, my least favourite thing about short hair is having to get it cut all the time. An even-length buzz cut, which I can do for myself, is probably the only hairstyle I think looks actively bad on me: half of it is always smashed down and the other half sticking up. I'm so pleased with how little work the long hair is. It just goes away and stays there.

[yarrowkat]

yeah, i had like 3 days where a buzz cut looked good and for the rest i just wore hats. it's a challenging cut. i'm about to figure out how to maintain my current cut myself, or something like it, because my stylist friend is moving to NYC for 8 weeks. and my backup stylist friend is in Alaska for the summer. they're both back in the fall, so whatever i do isn't a permanent change, but the hair is going to be a ride for a few weeks here.

[greenstorm]

Ugh, the buzz cut sticking up with the ring of pushed-down hat hair is my least favourite of possible haircuts for myself. I've known people who just hack pieces off their head when they feel too long and maintain nice short hairstyles that way but I'm not so sure I could do that.

Hopefully you figure something out! How often do you get it done normally?

[yarrowkat]

monthly. I'm seriously considering growing it back out. i miss the weight of it, if not the bit where it's always caught on something. of course i would decide that in the summertime, sigh. idk yet. i may get Terra to trim the back with clippers. i can more or less maintain the longer part on top.

[greenstorm]

The more other folks talk about their hair, the more I understand how well-behaved mine is. It stays in its braid, and now its braid-and-clamshell-thingy, and isn't too heavy or tangly or catching on things except my one necklace.

I guess you don't need it short to make space from the lumpy wheel anymore. Would you grow it out with an undercut, or just trim the back as the top was lengthenining?

[yarrowkat]

I'm wearing it in an undercut now, with the part on the right and the longer bits around 6-8", and the right side, back, and beneath the long part all buzzed short. #3 fade up the back. i don't like it getting in my eyes, and it's presently short enough not to, and that would be the most annoying part of growing it back out. i miss the weight of it - i have thick heavy hair - and being able to actually do things to dress it up, and the sense of it moving around me. i miss it as a dance partner. and i looked a lot more femme, and i miss that, too, even as i enjoy looking visibly queer now. because i dress like a farmer, nobody reads me as femme.

i used to wear the hair down regularly, hence the catching on things. but also, it was over two feet long, hair down to my ass. i don't think i will grow it quite that long again. half the difficulty was simply from that.

[greenstorm]

"I need help thinking this through can we all do it together" is a line and a tool I need to steal and put over my mirror or something (I don't actually look in the mirror, maybe on a mug?)

[yarrowkat]

i... am not as good at it as i think i should be after almost 15 years living in community. but when one can remember/ bring oneself to do it, it is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal.

(i had the kind of childhood that leads people to be excessively self-sufficient, emotionally, physically, etc. i have a feeling you understand this. :) and my go-to is to solve literally everything myself, even when that's clearly a less-useful way to go about things; i have to shake myself out of it fairly regularly.)

[greenstorm]

Yeah, I definitely understand what you're talking about. This is the first time I've thought of that as a potential issue; it was probably the gentlest the world-as-is could ever be for a PDA person. Having always considered it through that lens, and that it's often challenging for me to agree and implement with other people because one imperative statement can throw me right off, it never occurred to me that I also just learned that doing it myself was the way to solve things. Or, maybe I just now realized that it's not everyone's go-to first-try? That gives me a lot to think about! Josh and Tucker are both more self-sufficient than I am, so I'd been positioning myself on the cooperative end of the spectrum, but I now see that there are probably miles of it beyond me on that other side.

I need to sit with this awhile. Huh. What if I think of myself as in the middle or the other end of that? What is valuable in those two ends of the approach? How can I internalize a levelling of those values by situation, rather than privileging one over the other?

[yarrowkat]

i think situational might be a useful frame for it. i have categories of things that i just have a ton of trouble asking for help around, things that are linked to my autonomy in some inextricable way. it did not even occur to me to ask for help around the divorce stuff until it had gone well beyond intolerable. i just kept trying to imagine solutions on my own. no reality beyond "i will find a way to fix this/ i don't know how to fix this" was even imaginable. when Tristan made me talk about it (he walked up to me and said, "something is wrong with you. please tell me what it is." and i just sort of spilled everything) then suddenly many other futures opened that were not there before.

there are many smaller things that i should solve for myself and do. it's that balance beam of community & autonomy, and it rocks back and forth a bit as you move around.

[yarrowkat]

o i also meant to say. some years ago a friend put in a poem a line their mother used to tell them - "growth requires the temporary suspension of security." i wrote that on my mirror, it felt so important to remember. i do look at mirrors and so it has stuck with me from being written there for a year or two. i put little notes around my computer monitor if i want to see them a lot, too.

(one of J's tricks around ADHD brain, when she can remember to do it, is to put sticky notes with tasks on them in front of where her face would be in the bathroom mirror.)

[greenstorm]

Hm, I wonder if the amount of growth I've done has been because I have had nothing to lose?

At the same time there's a significant amount of growth that I, and Tucker, and I guess a lot of neurodivergent people need to do in the presence of security. And maybe you'll relate -- folks who need to learn to ask for and receive help, to feel okay being honest about who they are to the people around them and know they'll still be loved, to be comfortable with failing. I feel like this relates to your definition of queer somewhat, maybe: the difference between folks who have done most of their growing in security, vs those who have done most of their growing or forming in insecurity.

I avoid mirrors, or specifically looking at myself in mirrors, because I get stuck. When I make eye contact with myself I lose time, from minutes up to an hour. Looking at bodies or sunbeams or whatever is fine.

[yarrowkat]

i think i kept Zed's line up for so long because it felt like new information, like something i needed to learn to trust about the process. i solve my life into extremely stable structures - routines, job, home (technically i own, in a legal sense, three dwellings - the house, the yurt, and the travel trailer we house interns in - this feels like a manfestation of the way i create security for myself) - and those rigid structures box me in and prevent me from taking necessary risks. possibly this is an adult reponse to a childhood that lacked emotional security/safety (though i was always comfortably housed and was not physically abused, so it's not physical insecurity per se). possibly it's just a real excess of Taurus, fixed earth with a focus on the home, in my astrological chart, lol.

i'm not sure i take your meaning about queer community/definitions - are you thinking that folks who have done their growing in secure/insecure conditions are more likely to identity-police their communities? or that growing in insecure conditions leads to queer as a political identity more than sexual?

[greenstorm]

I have been chasing security and stable structures my whole life. Chasing, and chasing, and chasing. I keep feeling like I'm giving things up for them, but I still-- this is the longest I've lived anywhere, at Threshold, since I was seventeen. I've lived here almost five years. I have long relationships but they flip and fold and change and there's nothing stable about them except that we're in something. So I've aspired to what you do but have never had it. My process has been more like surfing, which I've never done, learning to find stability by always balancing on the edge of powerful swirling almost-chaos.

Let me take some time to formulate my thoughts better on this. Basically I was saying that I think people who have been unstable try to build stability, and queer folks tended to feel unstable so to try to do that through black-and-white rules and immovable structures since it feels more comfortable to enforce than to ask for understanding and trust in other people's goodwill (?) or something. It is loud here and I'm not thinking well.