There are eight (really, more like six) weeks of summer break provided to teachers and students in the school district that I live. Spending that time in San Francisco leaves me regularly checking the weather as I plan my days. This summer (after a helluva year!), has urged me to start regular weather checks of my own mood and capabilities every morning. How am I feeling? Why? Then I take that emotional inventory and start to make decisions of what to do with my day, just like when I check the weather.
As an American, I am subject to market and societal pressures that prefer data over feelings although both are forms of knowledge. "Educated" people sometimes mistakenly privilege data over feelings, romanticizing and fetishizing objectivism that is never really objective. You can easily imagine a person in your life who prefers “facts” over “feelings” without acknowledging that the way we view and interpret the “facts” is often informed by our “feelings.” This summer, I have been learning (present-progressive verb usage to emphasize that this is ongoing) how to honor and operate from my feelings but not simmer in them.
It has allowed me to enjoy summer in ways that I have not before. I have not thought much about work in terms of productivity. Okay, I'm lying. I always think about work, but I have not signed up for any class or task this summer. I have read books for pleasure, watched and cheered loudly at baseball games, laughed out loud, twerked in bars, watched my dog limp around the city but loving him in his old age, spent more time with my parents than I have since before I was 18, ate food that satisfies and nourishes, and drank wine out of Bordeaux glasses, mason jars, and plastic cups. I met new friends and reconnected with friendships that I had let smolder because of my own skewed priorities prior to this year.
Honoring my feelings allows me to be able to express them through smiles, tears, and words, and hopefully, once they are excreted into existence instead of remaining in my head, they compost into something that allows and fosters future growth.
Update: Yrsa Daley-Ward has a Substack called The Utter. I highly recommend subscribing for regular content. During the pandemic, I have really enjoyed reading poetry regularly. Novels and non-fiction feel intellectually exhausting and I'm getting through less than I used to, but that's okay. Here is the link to a poem about the body that fits right in to what I was trying to write here. Of course, she does it better. Or maybe just different. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. :)
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