📷: March 1, 2020 – Self Portrait

I want 2020 to be the year of play. Be a little less serious. Approach the world with game show contestant enthusiasm.

February had some super highs and a lot of really deep dark lows. I’ll explain the latter more after the jump. But first, I want to call out the roses and thorns of this month*.

Roses:

• Celebrating my birthday with a day filled with skeeball and mini golf with my number one!
• Blindfolding Dan and surprising him with a dinner at Crab Pot for his birthday, where playing with your food is encouraged.
• An Instagram friend reached out and shared with me the impact of my Coachella style story had on her. The meaning of the message? It’s 100% ok to shine like a diamond and be seen, you are deserving, you are beautiful.

Thorns:

• Depression

Sometimes the best intentions fall victim to my unpredictable mental health issues. I’ve dealt with depression my entire life, a gnawing persistent depression. I pride myself on my ability to move through it and ride the wave like a pro-surfer. My life experience and toolbox of self-help techniques are the board that keeps me afloat. But in February, I finally admitted to myself that I was in a full depressive episode. Violently thrashing in the dark waters of depression. My entire body ached and the physical pain reflected the mental pain I was experiencing. I was oversleeping, the negative self-talk became more vicious, and I was self-medicating with alcohol.

Admitting that I was/ am in a depressive episode, forces myself to bring out a different roadmap for self-care. I’m not in maintenance mode like I thought, and maintenance techniques aren’t going to work when it comes to the strength I need to pull myself out of the darkness and into the light where I want to be living my life. I need to approach this differently. I have more work to do.

Last night, instead of Dan and I going out to a listening party at a bar, where I would be tempted to drink and further aggravate the chemical imbalance in my brain – we went to a coffee shop, enjoyed matcha lattes with macadamia nut milk and read while listening to some other great albums playing over the speakers. It was a nice vibrational shift and satisfied that desire to get out of the house.

I am in a place where I need to make a conscious effort to do contradictory behavior, have contradictory thoughts. My default mode is negative at the moment, not positive. And like a heavy switch that is stuck in the gears, I have to push on that lever repeatedly until it flips to positive again. Ask myself, does this serve my highest vibration? Does this call in light or darkness?

Darkness can be really damn cool and romantic. I definitely find myself romanced by dark thoughts and lately I haven’t worked at keeping them away. So no wonder, I’m going to bed at night filled with a hollow feeling and a body that is screaming in pain. The darkness is like a chocolate-dipped rice cake, it looks all delicious and rich on the outside, but once you dig in – it’s dry and tasteless. It gives you nothing and encourages you to waste away.

The Light, it’s a bunch of raw vegetables, herbs, and nice olive oil. It’s a lot of work. You have to wash the veggies and chop up the veggies. You have to mix the herbs in with the oil. You have to assemble the ingredients in a bowl, any kind of bowl, let’s say a beautifully glazed ceramic bowl. Then you can go outside sit in the sun and eat, be nourished by the sunkissed vegetables. The light can be really damn cool and romantic too, but it takes more work to get there. It isn’t obvious.

And when you’re used to chocolate-covered rice cakes, making a salad seems tasteless and exhausting.

But that salad is amazing. It’s a really damn good salad.

What I’m trying to say, is that I have to do everything in my power to choose the light. Not isolate. Reduce alcohol consumption by a lot. Eat clean. Get my body moving daily – dancing counts as exercise. Change my patterns. Change my behavior. Be kind to myself as I work on getting my mind into a healthy place again, and have more fun!

My birthday was a day filled with fun and play! I want 2020 to be the year of play. Be a little less serious. Approach the world with game show contestant enthusiasm. Tap into fun in everything I do.  A respectful yet playful attitude can add a bit of glitter to a dull or stressful day.  

*I’ve decided against having Roses and Thorns as it’s own post. I will just include it in my Snail Mail letter and have my playlists as a separate post – in case you were wondering.