The Practice of Decision-Making

This is the first in a series of articles about The Practice of Decision-Making – 
situating the experience of decision-making in the context of healing.

Decision making. OH. There is that feeling in my solar plexus – tight, full, dense. My shoulders squeeze up along my back in hopes that if they could just cover my ears then I wouldn't hear all the voices of doubt in my head. 

My heart races to match the pace of my thoughts.

My heart races to evade the claws of commitment, each choice threatening to define and confine the rest of my young limitless (until now) life.

I’m standing still but I’m panting from the loops my brain dances.

Decision making. That shit stresses me out.

I’ve noticed that a lot, and by a lot I mean all, of my friends have had to deal with anxiety around decision-making. I think there is something generational about this – we do live in an age of endless options and infinite information, after all. Many folks nowadays are over-educated, over-informed and over-whelmed by the possibilities of existence. If this is going to be a theme then we better start developing our decision-making skills accordingly. And let’s not settle for simply reducing anxiety. Let’s actively thrive. I mean, we might as well while we’re alive and whatnot.

I recently faced a deep ‘ol decision making experience with all the trappings of a Big Decision – time commitment, monetary commitment, potential commitment to career and life path. Dear Ones, I came through, and I’m damn proud of my decision. Not because I think my choice is so awesome, which it is, but because I feel so empowered through my process of decision-making. I got to know myself better, especially the parts I usually try avoid. Through this experience I’ve singled out some tools and approaches to decision-making. I hope they will help others find healing and clarity as they navigate their own juicy, possibility-filled lives. This advice is mostly geared towards life-path style decisions – where to live, where to work, where to learn, etc. If the tactics I mention don’t resonate with you, great. The main point is that we deserve to feel empowered and inspired by our decision-making processes, and we can be. Figure out what works for you; then tell me about it.

Decision-Making as a Practice

People have yoga practices and meditation practices. I’d like to talk about developing a decision-making practice. That was the big switcheroo for me this time around – as I realized that a big decision was going down, I took a deep breath and some wiser voice deep down inside reminded me that this was just one more opportunity for self-healing. The narrative went something like this –

“Well A-Ro, we didn’t see this one coming, but for today’s self-healing exploration, we will be 

investigating how we deal with decision making.”

Cute. Don’t get blindsided by the decision on hand. It might appear that the biggest deal in your life is figuring out the right way to turn, but that’s a decoy. The biggest deal in your life is your life, and this moment is an opportunity to get intimate with your own unique anatomy of big-decision-navigation. Say “yes” to this learning, let it be valuable in and of itself, and the immense pressure on your decision will lift and all that ensues will be caste in the light of self-love and healing.

So now we have two co-developing processes – the process of the decision itself and the meta-process of you, beautiful holy and complex creature that you are, making that decision. The tools I am offering address both processes simultaneously. In other words, the very way that we go about making decisions should be self-reflective and healing, while supporting clarity and good, solid decisions. One hand washes the other, eh? But actually. It’s true. You will make a better decision through holding a healing lens over the process. This is pretty standard knowledge. Has anyone ever told you to “just follow your heart?” Yeah, easier said than done. It’s not like you can knock on your chest and ask if anyone’s home. Listening to our hearts means radical self-acceptance - accepting our truths, our unspeakables, our vulnerability. It requires grounding and meditation, even if that is a 2-second meditation. When someone tells you to follow your heart, they are asking you to engage in a self-healing practice. They intuitively know that our healthiest wisest selves speak from that still place, and that’s the self we’d like to enlist in decision-making. Please. Thank you.

So then what?

The next few posts will go into a handful of aspects I’m currently finding important for decision-making. I have too much to say for one post. Some are tools and some are perspectives to hold on to throughout the process. The whole practice is always spiraling back, reflecting on itself. So I’m not posting in order of “steps,” but rather in the order of my own natural flow of awareness through the process. Mix and match, jump in and out, develop your own story. Here’s what’s up in the posts to come:

Yo’ Body – Centering and re-centering the body as home-base throughout the Decision-Making Practice.

Writing Is So Awesome  - Game-Plans and Personal Reflections. Utilizing the written word to articulate our underlying needs, dive into the bigger truth of the situation, and alleviate stress.

Play All Day – How approaching your Decision-Making Practice with an attitude and expectation of playfulness transforms the experience, motivating you and honoring your dignity.

I’m looking forward to hearing others’ experiences of decision-making and the approaches that have helped them. Please share! We’ve got lots of big ol’ decisions coming up on in the world, what with the need to protect the planet and liberate the majority of people from massive marginalization and oppression. Here’s to walking our truth with every step and loving the crap out of ourselves. May this practice and all practices serve all beings, sentient and not, through space and time. Bless it and be it. MMmmmmm.

A Return to Communication! A Poem about Loving Myself! Maybe communication is loving myself! WOOOOAAAHHHHH

Oh the Juicy Yummy Goodness of writing, of output! It can all seem so arbitrary at times, right? But that doesn't matter, what matters if the feelings excited in my belly by writing things down, by sharing them with others. Hello Others, already so much closer than we could have ever expected.

I am grateful to share this moment with you.
First I am going to catch up a weeeeee bit but if you'd just like to read a poem you can scroll to the bottom of this post.

I am signing back on to this blog because I think we have more conversations to have. I'd like to hear from you. So this is me leaving you the first voicemail. Tag. You're it. Ha.

Since we last shared moments, I have been in many places. Physically, my body has rolled around the island of Puerto Rico, it has sublimated into ether on the mountains of Tennessee, it has condensed into cold rock at the altitudes of Colorado, and it has spread broadly into the countless memories and creativities of Upstate New York. Emotionally and spirituality, well shit. That is many stories. All of which have shaped me into this present moment, so though we can't catch up on all the juicy details I trust that the all tastes I've accumulated along the way will flavor the words I put out today.

What's real right now:
I am living alone in a one room cabin in New Paltz, NY.
I am spending most of my time on self-healing practices, which right now looks like yoga, journaling, and meditation.
I am alive.
I am very excited to use this space to get real about healing, about gender, about hope. Themes coming up are boundaries, commitment, lunar ritual and coughing.

For now, here is a poem I wrote in my attempts to address my intention of the day: Absurd Obscene Self-Love. Sometimes it's easier to embody something by pretending it is a dream. What does your dream of Self-Love look like?

Self-Love Dream

In my self-love dream I have many fishes to tend to.

My thighs cup the glowing bay where they found a safe place.

Their flickering muscled movements paint me back my secret colors

So I’m cultivating many, many fish.

Each Spring I spill them out into the roadside gullies and they feed the whole Earth.

Even you.

In my self-love dream the struggle is the best part.

Strangers gather on Thanksgiving around TV sets and watch me weep on the big screen

They eat chicken wings and knead moist tissues in their moist hands

Afterwards they are silent

Or they cheer

One sighs            “Masterpiece” 

 and another pledges that one day they will weep like me.

In my self-love dream

My fingers are my lovers.

My palms orient to the soft parts of my hips

And the whole truth is renamed                              

pressing.

I hold up Pleasure again and again to marvel

Before I melt back into the tide.

Inevitable.

In my self-love dream all of the ants know my name

And even when no one smiles at me at the library

All of the ants still know my name.

In my self-love dream

I am not sitting in this chair.

My ass sits in the outstretched hand of Mother Earth herself. She’s just holding me here.

Even though it’s silly and I could really just use the chair,

She doesn’t mind.

She says              

 Sometimes Love is silly.

In my self-love dream

I am sitting in this chair.

I am breathing and I notice that

                                I am still breathing.

It’s too late,

And im too tired,

                                                                And my hair’s wrong,

And I cannot believe how impossibly beautiful

I am.

In my self-love dream

I wake up.           

     

Asheville, NC: Who's laughing?

Undocumented, underpaid, migrant labor was used to make this mouthwatering corn-fritter, not the henna-ed hands of that white guy with dreads at the farmers' market? What a zinger!!! Photo credit: Ashevile Travel Blog

stream of consciousness poem:

Being in Asheville is so...
beautiful
confusing
money
organic
white
lies
normal
bubble
disappointed
obvious
vegan
gluten-free
accessible
priviledge
everywhere
pseudo-liberal hippies
confusion
what's real?
whole grains
farms
work-trade
secret possibilities
hidden currents
normal abnormal
cool different
real different?
mountains
sunsets
clouds
dramatic
jokes cause we're uncomfortable
jokes cause we have to
running up mountains
running down mountains
yoga
cultural appropriNation
duh
is it funny?


I've been around a lot of jokes about the lack of people of color and the general homogeneity of whiteness here in Asheville, NC. It's an effort to make it funny, to acknowledge it, to let people know that you notice, to make you feel better about it cause you're in on how fucked up it is so you can't be a perpetrator of racism. I'm not sure it's very funny. It's good to acknowledge it, better than to pretend it's neutral or absent. But I can't help feeling that this is a handy little tool to make folks feel better about it instead of getting mad about it. Instead of asking hard questions about why that is; instead of doing something about it.


The people who I'm thinking of have excused racist behavior as "just a part of things." which, yea, is obviously true, but the whole point of bringing up how things are racist is to change the fact that they are a part of things, not to prove that alien's must be temporarily inhabiting the flesh of these usually-normal-but-suddenly-extraterrestrially-racist people. These jokes come from people who say things like "all people have a responsibility to know what compost is," clearly assuming middle-class, mildly-liberally-educated, and most likely white people. These are, I assure you, not bad people. They are just isolated in a white-dominated culture that teaches people how to think critically about earth practices but not how to think critically about modern race in the U.S.

These jokes come from me too, so what's that? Comedy can play a huge role in getting folks to talk about what they don't want to talk about. With all of the controversy around Daniel Tosh's fiercely defended rape jokes, it's clear that there's a real re-evaluation of the role of comedy needed in this country. Comedians have long held an important role in airing out dirty laundry, getting a nation to see what it wants to ignore. But it can also reify bullshit. So if I respond to someone's comment about a black person with "What? a black person in Asheville?" what does that do? My intention is to show how ridiculously homogenous it is here. The snarl of my lip is there because this upsets me. But am I actually just doing what white people have done for ages and ages - made jokes at the expense of people of color? normalize racism?

well shit. I'm going to have to think about this.

Detroit: Yeah, But... and why I'm so tired

Two other people were also couchsurfing at the Goldengate Restoration Project. They were around my age, early twenties, lived in DC. And I can't stop thinking about what one of them said the first night we met.

 

I asked her what she thought about the AMC (she hadn't been yet) and she responded "The AMC is cool, but it's problematic."
Not Detroit enough.
Only a certain kind of person comes.


And it made my heart sink. Like sink. Suddenly I was barely breathing to stave off the collapse. I wanted to cry but my face was so moist from humidity that it felt superfluous.




Will it ever be enough? Everything is too narrow, too broad, too radical, too reformist. I don't want to discount these problems, in fact I want to live inside them, every damn day. But shit. When do we get to sink deep into our trying; sigh and say "we're doing our best" and not mean it as a cop-out? Cause let's be real - that's all we've ever been doing and if we can't celebrate it right now then when the hell do we get to celebrate at all?

Yea yea yea we're always pushing, but that isn't the same thing as not being there yet.

Allied Media Conference Thoughts: Pragmatism, Buzzwords and Metaphor

note: this advice and rant is so deeply happening because, of all people, i live in abstract theory land and this is my struggle on the regular. i've noticed that my advice is generally stuff i'm trying to believe in myself.





Skills vs. Discussions. Workshops need to be labelled clearly skillshare, discussion, lecture, or performance. Have you ever gone to a workshop expecting some skills and it turns out everyone's sitting in circles theorizing about what the word "skill" means? Point is I have learned something important about myself at the Allied Media Conference.

I have no patience for metaphor.

I have no patience for theory. 

I want to learn what you tried yesterday, how it went, and what you are going to try today.

Display from the Maine-based Beehive Collective

The AMC is a conference full of Radical Activists (note the capitals). A lot of these folks know the language and the grammars of this community. I swear if I hear another buzzzz word.... liberation. oppression. I don't even know what liberation means! I don't even know what oppression means! Don't just drop that as though you're saying something when in fact you're saying everything/nothing!






Mind you I drop that shit like an exhale. I'm all "feminism"-this and "liberatory community practices"-that. Cause I'll admit it - it's useful. I need these words so I don't have to talk all day just to explain the first sentence I said when I woke up in the morning. But nah, nah, nah, ENOUGH.






Being in the high-density-buzz-world of the AMC has convinced me that this language is dangerous. We can talk in circles all day about the word accountability, but if I still have no idea what tactic you tried out last time there was an assault in your community, if I have no idea what that conversation looked like and what steps were taken, then what have I learned?
I've learned that a lot of people think accountability is important.
Cool. Check. 




Of course education is extremely important, but let's be conscious of our audiences and our opportunities to move into action-mode. DOING is more important than theoretically-doing-but-it's-cool-cause-I-have-a-list-of-references-I-can-google-later.







Have our brains been so academicized, so made to privilege intellect, that that is the inherent mode in which we operate? We slip unblinkingly into analysis, criticism. & yes, that is essential. But at a certain point it rings hollow. What are we talking about? Are we too afraid of making mistakes? of being remembered negatively? of speaking for others? So we stick to abstraction. Better that than allow the vulnerability of giving a single detail. Our vocabularies are so bulked up, our brains so used to filling out multiple choice surveys, that all description,  all experience, all detail have fallen to the wayside. I think it also has to do with not trusting that our experiences are truly worthwhile and relevant.




This happened so much in femsex. Big ideas, suggesting at experiences, got traded around like abstract playing cards. We sat inside a flurry of hints forming clouds of people that I maybe knew something about. It took months and one much-needed conversation about masturbation to put some spine into our concept clouds. Some intimacy. Yes darling, imagine for a moment that you're truly around friends. Tell them what happened. They'll try to understand. You don't have to convince the room that your head is in the right place or that you read the right zine.


Pragmatism. I'm taking about what makes us do things.
How we spend our minute of our days is not besides the point. Are you trying to guess at how best to change the world? Or are you trying shit out on the daily to see what sticks?

Detroit Day 3, AMC Day 2. Or was it 1.5?

Have you ever been to a conference? 

 What were your first thought when you arrived?

How did you stay grounded?

Detroit! + some tips for cheap travel

Welcome to Detroit!

i say to myself.

I've stepped off the bus for the last time (until next Monday) - no more connections to catch, 20-minute stretch breaks to squander. The brutally hot and broad boulevard is home now, unless I can find a spot better suited for survival. For thinking.

This headfirst tumble into the east/middle of the U.S. was obvious, thoughtless when all I had to compute was where and when the next bus was coming in and how to secure a window seat. But walking wordlessly away from the bus's hissing hydraulics, I can't help but notice that I have no idea what I'm doing. The 30 or so strangers on the bus with whom I barely exchanged glances now feel like a veritable community compared to how new all these people on the street look. Ok. Here I am. Whew.

I am in Detroit, MI for the 4-day long, widely-loved Allied Media Conference. The conference brings together artists, organizers, educators, techies, and media folks of various stripes to talk about how all these tools can make things, in a word, better. Several activist friends of mine have referred to the conference as "dreamy." Apparently it's so full of passionate people and actual movement-building that it'll make ya pinch yourself to see if you'll wake up. I've never gone before. I'm not even sure where I fit in to all this (am I an artist? an educator? Ahhhhh who am I?!?!? ok crisis over) but I'm volunteering for registration and documentation and I'm super pumped.

But all that's gonna come later. Right now I'm in Detroit a day early to "get a feel for the city" and I have no idea what's going on.
Ah yes, that sweet chaos-feeling.
I love travel.

Cafe Cass

Here are some of the ways I'm make this trip affordable, for all you would-be conference goers who can't swing fancy trips every time some activists decide to hang out:

1. Volunteering for the conference

You can find ways to volunteer or work trade for almost every conference, gathering, or festival. I volunteer for lots of reasons, only one is the free-ness. The biggest reason is that it gives me a chance to participate in the making of these things. It's far easier for me to make new, real connections when I am working side by side with people; I get lots of appreciation from everyone attending; and I don't get lost at sea in the craziness that is a large gathering. Sometimes I also get a free t-shirt and maybe even a soda.

1. Couchsurfing

I actually haven't couch surfed before this, but it was super super easy. Couch surfing is a free website where you can find places to stay, people to hang out with, and stuff to do all over the world. The most amazing thing about this to me is the community. When you're a couch surfer, it's like you're in on this crazy secret (hey! you can stay anywhere in the world for free! and with people who will take you out for a beer and introduce you to their friends!) and you're in the family immediately. 

1. Packing food ahead

This might seem nuts, but I went to the grocery store before leaving Providence and I bought enough snacks (nuts, dried fruit, hard cheese, some fruit) to pretty much last me the weekend. It's really not that big of a hassle, and now I don't have to watch my hard-earned singles disappear into the hands of every over-priced food truck trying to tempt me.

1. Megabus

Megabus goes all over the place (not literally) now. I had to separately get 3 trips to get to Detroit from Providence, but all in all it took the less time than one single Greyhound  bus doing the same trip. So even if it looks like there's no direct line, see if you can get some connecting ones. If you get tickets early it can be ridiculously cheap, and if you miss your bus you can get on the next one for an extra $5. You can also get creative with paying, but if you want to talk about that let's chat later.

Unite? and Fight!

I wasn't comfortable, necessarily.

Poster by Jenine Bressner

Not the way I usually am in these sorts of things: all fired up, all action-planning, all here-we-are-and-aint-it-cool-that-we-have-the-answers. I found my breath often held, slightly, partially engaged and partially waiting to see what would happen next. 

Last Thursday the Rhode Island Anti-Sexism League and Queer Lil Rhody hosted Unite & Fight! A Forum on Queer Liberation and Feminism at Libertalia Autonomous Space. This panel was a part of Queer Lil Rhody's month of radical queer events, a massively awesome fest of queerness that has rocked Providence's lil June socks off. There's been a youth-organized dance party, a political poster-making workshop, 8 films, a farm day, and so much more that I've given up listing each thing. Basically the queer community in Providence is popping and it's extremely delicious.

So back to that circle of folks sitting together and talking about how, why, when, and what is up with the union of queer liberation and feminism. So many important concepts were brought to light, but I want to focus on that slight discomfort that crept in to this seemingly obvious discussion. Turns out, uniting is more complicated than a hand shake and an agreement that gender oppression sucks. The discomfort I am speaking of came from the very raw realization that many people in the room did not in fact share the same politics, or the same priorities, or the same reasons for being there. This is true for any group of people hanging out, but often in activist circles we cling to our categories of oppression and hope that broad titles; "feminism," "queer liberation," etc; will keep us all convinced that we are in the same boat. 

How do we organize people whose priorities often fail to coincide, in fact sometimes contradict? One participant, who was queer-identified and male-bodied*, shared his first-time activism story: his mother was an anti-choice activist and he too became involved. He said that many of his beliefs had not changed since then, but he still wanted to stand in solidarity with women. He said this to a room scattered with some of the fiercest pro-choice activists I know. Did I cringe? Of course. But instead of jumping down his throat, the response was one of gratefulness. Grateful, because he went out on a limb to share his beliefs to a room full of those who fight that very belief. Grateful, because he broke the ice in a conversation that for a large part assumed we all already agreed. Grateful, because now we could get real about the challenges we face in movement-building in the real world. This might be one of the biggest ideological chasms I've seen accepted, openly, in a room brimming with political passion.

I have been reading the classic collection of essays, This Bridge Called My Back. These essays were written by radical women of color in the late '70s, and the collection addresses head-on the issue of assumed unity in a movement that in fact contains many differences. White, middle-class women's priorities are not all women's priorities. Experiences get excluded and oppression reiterated when we refuse to acknowledge these differences. It is essential that we stand alongside each other in struggle, but to claim unity numbs us to the complexity of our struggles. This assumed unity damned the women's movement of the 60's and 70's to a limited, elitist and fundamentally racist shell of what it could have been. 

This book helped me freak out with happy when tensions arose in the room last Thursday. There we were, feeling in real-time what it means to hold differences side by side without shying away. The discomfort of a situation that ain't so simple is the exact sort of discomfort that must be embraced if we are to build tolerance and respect and, ultimately, change. We will never all agree on every bullet point, but we can create tools for respecting each others' struggles and fighting together. This does not just apply to queer liberationists and feminists, but to every gradation of identity and struggle. The discussion was a meditation in listening that was sorely missed from most Occupy spaces I participated in, where the desperate rush to solidarity swept differences under the table.

This is exciting. If we can, within our own activist communities, finally start sitting with discomfort so that we can push through to understanding; if we can swallow our pride and our fears and allow people to actually be different from ourselves without pushing them away; if we can cut the politically correct bullishit and start speaking frankly about what keeps us from fully loving each other, then I am convinced liberation is unstoppable. 

The brilliant panelists and moderators blowing everyone's minds

Also, this is unrelated to the meta-conversation tone of the rest of this post, but I can't talk about the Unite & Fight panel without sharing panelist Malcolm Shank's response to a debate about the merits of radicalism versus reform: "I come from a more social services perspective... Helping people survive is the most radical sort of reform you can do."

* Male-Bodied: A term used to recognize a person who was assigned a male sex at birth, or who identifies themselves as having had/has a male body.