Free Refills

So have I been living the way I claim to be living? Have I been living my deepest truth? Clearly, unavoidably the answer was No. I learned that I am able to teach flow and yet ignore my own teachings.

What a mind-fuck that was.

You can rest assured that since that discovery, I have begun to make significant changes. I am a person who can learn when he’s wrong. I am a person who releases old, self-limiting beliefs.

I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.

Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.

I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.

In my piece from a week ago, I described asking myself, “Am I living what I claim to be living?”

Yesterday, I was given the opportunity to see clearly how much the answer has been, “No. No, I am not.”

I was teaching about overcoming self-limiting beliefs. Usually beliefs of that nature are tied to a certain linguistic expression, something along the lines of, “I can’t do _____.” I was teaching that if you were to take what you desire to replace the self-limiting belief and turn it into a positive sentence in the present tense (“I can do _____”), over time you will find the grip of the self-limiting belief loosening.

Now, this in not a new idea. This practice is often referred to as “affirmations.” Yesterday, I chose instead to call them “incantations,” declaring it the more accurate term: that speaking something as though it were already true and having it become so is a form of magic.

The teaching was obviously correct. I could feel the flow of it as I was speaking it. (When this happens, I can barely take credit for what I’m saying–I’m basically just a channel.)

But then I took a moment to look at my own behavior. I asked myself, “From the perspective of the actual practices in my life, do I actually believe what I’m saying?” And the answer, quite clearly, was, No. I have in fact always rejected affirmation practice.

How interesting to discover that I am capable of teaching one thing–a correct thing–and doing something else entirely.

I think it’s more like this: Free Refills might be seen to contain a blog, or, ultimately, even several blogs (relating to different subjects, for example), but the site itself is not a blog. It’s simply bigger than that. As I start to assemble pieces into bigger pieces, the not-blog nature of what Free Refills is and has always been will be far more apparent. Reverse chronology implies that my pieces lose value as they recede from the present. I’ve never accepted that idea and I never will.

That said, there may be times when the right approach is to dive back toward process and explore from there. That approach, to me, is the very sort of thing that blogs excel at. Still, it remains critical to me that as many pieces as possible connect to greater wholes; I won’t lose sight of that goal. And I’ve noticed, looking back on my work, that even when a piece fits the standard idea of blogpost, I retain a faith that there’s something ultimately valuable–to the world, not just to me–in the play-by-play of figuring out exactly what it is I’m doing here. I have faith that something truly helpful will ultimately come into focus.

And if not? If I’m wrong about that? It’s nevertheless been personally helpful, and also fun, to operate As If.

This idea came to me in the shower and I’m pretty sure it’s worth playing with. It may not yet be fully baked. Shit, I’m not sure it’s even been in the oven. But I think we might at least have here some tasty batter.

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I no longer work. It’s such a nasty word in its verb form, with all its pejorative senses of loss of joy and freedom.

Instead, the things I occupy my days with, the kinds of things I do with the goal of earning money: I don’t work. I give.

I give, and the universe gives back in return.

I made my first declarations that Free Refills is not a blog back in April of 2015, about a month into my work here. And I realized on Monday that at this point, I’m willing to set that whole idea down. The zero-draft work I did Monday told me that I need to have space to explore without forcing the direction of the exploration. If the goal is long-form work, then letting the zero drafts do what they do best–figuring out what needs to be said, to make space for depth of exploration in later drafts–is far and away the best approach. For a zero draft to be maximally useful, it needs permission to not simultaneously be a first draft. But if I’m always trying to pull a piece from the zero drafts, then I’m constantly putting that kind of pressure on the zero drafts, and it’s getting in the way.

At the same time, what I can no longer do is create situations in which the daily publishing ends up being hard. I need to find ease. If I’m going to keep doing the daily publishing–and I’m getting increasing positive feedback, which suggests that the value of it is getting more clear to my readers–then when there isn’t an obvious piece from the zero drafts, I need to have a path to something easy. Stepping back from the zero draft’s exploration in order to get a little perspective looks like it might be the perfect approach.

I had rather a different approach to my piece yesterday, in that it kind of wasn’t a piece. The zero-drafting I did yesterday morning went really well; I found myself exploring interesting places. However, when I initially sat down to write, I had the idea that I’d find my way rather quickly toward a finished piece on the topics I was exploring. Instead, things turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than I initially expected. This is not an unusual occurrence. Something that seems relatively straightforward in my initial thinking turns out to be far less so when the zero drafting starts. This is exactly what I want from a zero draft. I follow the zero draft where it wants to lead, and I learn a lot.

The problem is that at the end of that process, I feel like I’ve done great work, and yet I’m still no closer to finished piece for the day’s publishing than I was when I started.

So it hit me that I should start making more space for exactly that kind of thing to happen. Rather than beat myself over my head, I thought maybe it would be useful to do what I did yesterday, namely to step back and take a kind of bird’s eye view on the work I’d done that day.

It definitely felt useful. On the other hand, it wasn’t lost on me that what I was doing there, irrespective of all my claims to the contrary, was pretty much one-hundred percent straight blogging about my work.

Maybe it’s time to put my protests down and evolve my process.

Two major themes today:

1. Over the past week or so, I’ve found it something of a challenge to find and maintain center while on the meditation cushion. This morning, I found my way to the question, “Am I living what I claim to be living?” In asking this and then exploring what I found in my body, I discovered a spot on my back that suggested a block worth examining. From there, I found myself thinking of a comment a friend made a couple of days ago: she said that I’m not as happy as I claim to be, an assertion with which I disagree–but a comment that also raises alarm bells, because I remember that I was in denial about my depression for a long, long time. These two thoughts in rapid succession told me meditation was done for the day, and I went to the computer to zero draft. I found my way to some interesting stuff, but nothing that has yet resolved into a piece.

2. Within the zero-drafting on these subjects, I found myself again regarding my propensity towards clutter. Two points worth making: (1) Clutter is stuck energy made physical. (2) Clutter represents a physical manifestation of a scarcity mindset. (“I better hang on to that. What if I need it?”). If I am trying to invite energetic opening and abundance into my life. I need to deal with my clutter. So I devoted a little time today to doing so.

The weather in Colorado this late fall has been pretty shitty, and by “shitty” I mean, “sunny, and about 20 degree above what we used to call ‘normal.'” Beautiful weather for late September; downright creepy for late November. I would love the outdoor opportunities it’s presenting were it not so indicative of just how quickly the weather patterns are changing. As a skier, it just sucks.

I’ve learned over the years that keeping myself away from the madness of Black Friday is crucial for my sanity. I had thought of going on a mountain bike ride today–the weather certainly cooperated–but instead, I just got outside to hit some tennis serves, and otherwise kept substantially to myself. Erie, where I’ve lived for the past several months, is kind of the exurban boondocks, which can feel isolating some days, but today gave a welcome buffer between myself and the poison energy of Black Friday.

I’d rather have been skiing. But taking care of yourself means controlling what you can control, and letting the rest go.

You know, if you make Thanksgiving a celebration of abundance and gratitude rather than a paean to overindulgence and media shrieking that urges you to buy! Buy! BUY!! (which is actually a means of insidiously reinforcing a scarcity mindset by disguising it in the robes of abundance), it’s actually a pretty sweet holiday, well worth celebrating.

Today I spent time with family, and also with people I didn’t previously know, and I felt welcomed by all. There was too much food, of course, but the Too Much was in part because so many different people contributed to the meal, and it’s hard to look askance at people sharing what they have and what they enjoy. I sent messages to people I love, telling them that I’m grateful to have them in my life.

I’ll save my disgust for what tomorrow is about until tomorrow. Today, I feel gratitude.

I asked my cousins what I should bring for Thanksgiving dinner. I was told that I could bring whatever it was I wanted to drink. “I know,” I said, “I’ll bring cocktail fixins’ to share.”

So I’ve packed two bottles of gin (one admittedly already open), sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, some fernet, some bitters, my cocktail glass, a measuring cup, a cocktail spoon, some olives, some homemade ginger syrup, some lemons and some Luxardo cherries. I still need to get a bottle of bourbon or rye for Benhattans. Once I do that, we’ll be set for martinis, Manhattans, Benhattans, and whiskey gingers.

This is Free Refills. Are you surprised that we tend to go a little, um, overboard where delicious beverages are concerned?