Organizing My Holobiont
Organizing My Holobiont
Embedded Files
Excerpt from Assata's Autobiography
Excerpt from Assata's Autobiography
*****
The only other person who stayed on my case and prodded me to go back to school was my friend from Kenya...
One weekend we had arranged to hang out...
My apartment looked like some kind of hurricane had hit it, and i was trying to ease out the door without letting him in. Somehow he managed to get a glimpse inside. "No, we aren't going anywhere," he said. "How can you live like this? If your house looks like this i can just imagine what your head looks like."
He suggested that, instead of going out, he would help me clean up and get organized. "You'll be all right if you just get yourself organized. You can do almost anything you want as long as you organize yourself to do it."
I decided he was right. It was time to get my life in some kind of order. It was time to take control. Life was like a bus: you could either be a passenger and go along for the ride, or you could be the driver. I didn't have the foggiest idea where I wanted to go, but i knew that i wanted to drive.
— Assata Shakur
Assata, pg. 159
(edited for length)
I knew that Assata's friend was right, and Assata was right; and you can build concentric circles around that metaphor from your apartment to your relationships, community, culture, the entire ecosystem in which you develop.
Only Assata's bus isn't like a typical one with a steering wheel — the wheels are made up of the habits and choices we make every day; which, over time, accumulate into muscles and behaviors. What you're able to do is always a product of what you've been doing.
From the lowest molecular level on up, I've been trying to organize habits that generate intentional movement in four main wheels.
Mental Organization
Gut Check
Physical/Material
Vibes
Mental Organization
Mental Organization
Everything starts internal because that's the only place you really have control. Organization is about making intentional choices, systems, and abstractions that serve your health/happiness/goals.
I've been trying to be nice to myself and find small things I can do every day that accumulate into some sense of fulfillment, or at least a calmness that carries over.
Examples:
Sleep
Exercise
Talk therapy
Chores
Journaling
Creative Outlets (music, comics)
Rules:
De-stress
Clean as you go
Gut Check
Gut Check
My gut can really affect my mood. When it's upset, I'm upset, and I can't focus on much else. I've been getting better at trusting my gut as a feedback mechanism in all ways.
Everlywell lab results detected stomach sensitivities to wheat and dairy, and a new diet emerged pretty organically as I trimmed wheat/gluten and dairy around the margins. Hangovers got progressively easier, and I was late to stuff less.
Cooking As Though You'll Cook Again taught me about cooking, and staying calm and confident in the kitchen. It got me eating a lot of beans and starting to suspect that the "musical fruit" jingle was a CIA op to nudge us away from full self-sustenance.
Rules:
One pot of beans/week
Read the labels and substitute gluten-free sauces and carbs
No beers D:
Lactaid as needed
Physical/Material
Physical/Material
On a long enough timeline everything's on a journey — the air in your lungs, the clothes on your back, and the art on your wall are all moving through the same space at the same time.
I'm prone to inertia, and I had to practice thinking about everything else as being suspended in a perpetual flow. For each general malaise, I started by adding specificity, and looking for tiny creases to chisel away at. I focused on the fundamentals. There was no flipping a switch to fitness; I had to learn to like jogging.
Over time, movement calcifies into small habits, and can build an inertia of its own.
Rules:
One mile/day
20 push-ups/day
Stretch daily and repeat as necessary
Vibes
Vibes
There's all kinds of ways how everyone's different, and here are some translation layers for talking about why I am sometimes.
Aquarius
Tarot
ENFP
Life Force — I've been drilling into listening for what gives me energy, and what takes it? And managing that balance better.
Rules:
Nothing good happens after midnight
Be kind to yourself like you would to someone else
The Program
The Program
Mental Organization
Mental Organization
De-stress
Clean up as you go
Gut Check
Gut Check
One pot of beans/week
No beers D:
Manifestation
Manifestation
One mile/day
20 push-ups/day
Vibes
Vibes
Nothing good happens after midnight
Be kind to yourself like you would to someone else.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse