Sometimes I feel like I have so many creative ventures and unfinished artworks, jewellery, textiles, and even books to read, that I know I will need to pick up where I left off, in my next lifetime, something most of the other creatives reading this will also deeply understand. There is also the drudgery of having to do things we don’t enjoy, to make the money to fund this creative life and also to “buy” the freedom of time to even execute these things, to bring them to life from our forever ticking minds.
Buying our own time…woof…but that is a subject for another story.
Over these last few weeks, I decided I needed to stop wallowing in my partially self-made rut, because yelling at my datura plants to telepathically poison the elites of the world who uphold the current narrative, wasn’t getting me anywhere.
I am sure the datura was thinking “Bitch…just give me some powerfeed, smoke some klip dagga and chill the fuck out”.
I was in my childhood home out in the bush, just brewing…nothing unusual there, trust me! And I pulled out my phone, and proceeded to delete all my subscriptions, delete my social media apps off my phone, so I no longer get notifications. And muttered something like…fuck you Meta and fuck the time sucking streaming services that waste not only my time, but also a fair chunk every month from my bank account.
I then decided to take it a few steps further, because us dramatic Aries, really love to rain down hellfire and take things to the 10th degree. So, I quit drinking coffee too…and was only homicidal for the first two weeks, not bad…not bad.
Especially for someone who almost solely survives on caffeine, maybe with some birdseed throughout the day.
That saved me another $130 a month…and that is with my own coffee machine…granted I was only drinking soy milk, ever bothered to look at the additives in barista soy milks? Wasn’t hard to let it go after that realization.
From there I cut out all refined sugar too, and as someone who has been baking “healthy” cakes and desserts for years with things like monkfruit sweetener, I thought…pppfffft…. easy. Agan, take a look at what all those healthy alternatives are bulked up with, and the side effects. I also dread making these alternatives, it is time consuming and costly.
So out the window went all my baking, and treats have now become fruit from the garden or what I pick up at the market. This same sentiment echoed through everything I and my family consume, which leaves not much else but mostly raw whole foods, or very simple meals, with hardly any processed foods at all. Great! Just saved some more time out of my day and a massive chunk in food shopping.
What cutting all these consumables and time suckers out, really illuminated for me, was how much useless and often harmful things we fill our lives with…and for what? Because it definitely isn’t need. What it looks like, is this constant “growth” that is drummed into us since birth, people come up with more pointless rubbish to make a profit, not because it has any real benefit to us, and it definitely doesn’t benefit the environment.
Imagine what cutting out all processed foods could really do? Less disease, less anxious undernourished people, less pollution, less rubbish, and waste.
Less vices…
This next part is going to sound tone deaf, and as someone who has for the most part treated alcohol and plant medicines in a ritualistic way throughout my life, and who has never felt the pull of addiction, I can only speak for myself and my own experiences here.
I knew I was doing it, practicing little mindfulness in what I was choosing to consume, and letting the lust of enjoyment rule, which the insidious nature of food and caffeine is expert at, it is also so accepted, so heavily marketed…I mean…” You deserve it”.
I feel like so many of us are just trying to “get through it” and “pass the time” especially when doing things, we don’t want to be doing, which is deeply tragic. For most of us, we may not be able to avoid the trappings of this modern life, but we can alchemize the experience.
That Is truly on us.
The biggest catalyst for me recently was a wake-up call that had been a long time coming, I had been too stressed, too tense, too tired from regulating the emotions of everyone around me, and then having to swallow my own, that I cracked a back tooth in my sleep…
At the dentist I also had them explain to me something else I already knew, but was not addressing, which was that I now also had a miss-alignment in my jaw, from holding so much internal stress for so long, that has no-where to go, because If I lose my cool, the house of cards will come crashing down, without the hierophant, forever holding them up…I then thought to myself.
Fuck this…
I am not the hierophant, I am the Queen of wands, motherfucker!
The thing that I could control first, was using all the time at the dentist getting my tooth fixed, to listen to podcasts that needed my full attention, ones on philosophy that I had already listened to before…but not actually…really listened.
The first step was alchemizing a usually anxiety inducing experience, into one of learning, and having some uninterrupted time to myself, something I rarely get.
More little catalysts came, sparking even more change and shifting perspectives, one of the biggest being at the end of my treatment, my dentist asking me “so how stressed are you at the moment?” and then commenting on the amount of tension she sees women hold in their bodies.
Why was this a catalyst? Because when asking my partner to be more mindful and start regulating his own anger and emotions to take some of the burden off me, the burden of always softening situations and his general consistent irritation at everything and everyone, and to try and voice to him that this environment had created so much repressed frustration and tension for me I had cracked a damn tooth!
All I got as a response was “well, that’s your thing” as he continued playing video games.
I felt the disappointment in my stomach and that familiar prickly sting of anger, mixed with disbelief and hurt, but most of all I felt what was happening in a somatic sense…I felt what was happening in my body…I listened to it.
I immediately became tense from head to toe, started holding my breath and sat on my own for a good half an hour, frozen in a state of blankness, wondering if I should clean the house, or go and read a book…because there was no way I was wasting any more energy trying to be heard.
So, I went on a six-kilometre walk.
The afternoon was absolutely fucking magic! One of those days when the breeze is just right, the sky is pink with glowing orange bursting through from behind the clouds, and just to top it off, a flock of red-tailed black cockatoos glided past to sit in the trees up ahead.
I was feeling a lot better by this point, I mean how could I be miserable while entangled in that! But I still was not quite there, I was still mulling over the events of earlier and processing how little control I have over changing them, and trust me I have tried, in every way you can imagine.
Which has just left me demoralized and exhausted.
I find that it is the little things that shake us free from those mind states, which for me was walking past an older lady, who looked like she was just on cloud nine! She smiled at me, and almost danced out of the way to let me pass, and I actually struggled to smile back…I felt that struggle hard, it really got me by the throat.
I walked on and had a good stern talk to myself, for those who have heard my views on toxic positivity, they will know how I feel about the darkness having a very important place and function, but this was not it…this was not that place.
I had a choice here, I could continue being a walking raincloud or I could really soak up how many beautiful things I had seen on the last hour, and how many nice people I had encountered on the way.
Because rain clouds do eventually rain, and there was no way I was going to rain on anyone else and then drown them in the deluge.
Looking after ourselves, is a hard lesson, and I know for me personally, it has been one of the hardest. I have been sound boarding with some of the people who know me best, especially exes from my teens and early twenties, who I am still close with, and giving them the space to tell me their thoughts, without limit, has been incredibly insightful.
How openness can cure.
My first big love, who has known me since I was little, my first lover and first best friend, who would have moved mountains for me, and still has time for me all these years later, told me recently that I have always been a glutton for suffering and recklessness.
For context he makes very good choices, he was always the rational one in the friendship, while I was busy burning things to the ground.
I took a moment to soak that in, and he isn’t wrong.
I have always been inspired by tragedy and pain, which has been transmuted into everything from art and music, to giving me the drive to push limits and take big leaps, maybe that is why I have always been so resilient to it, found it so transformative and regenerative…why I have always landed on my feet.
But this cat is tired, and maybe it is time to as my mother says “resign myself” to just give in a little, to actually put myself first.
I had always felt that I had been selfish and looked after number one, but really looking back I now see it in a different light, I see that I would do something grand and wild when the lid blew off the boiler…like running away on a whim to party with friends in New Zealand, or Jakarta or Melbourne…
See the theme? So much running away.
During a conversation at the beach, I had been asked by someone “what is your worst fear?” and before I had a chance to answer, a past lover jumped in to say “commitment!”.
He definitely intended that to mean a commitment to him, but what it is truly means, is a lack of commitment to looking after myself. Forget those grand and wild adventures to get as far away as I could from myself, but the commitment to make small and consistent, non-negotiable rituals daily.
I was actually pretty proud of myself for booking a remedial massage a few weeks ago, I had never been in my life, and never intended to. Speaking of cats, I am very…stroke me in the right place for a few seconds and then go away.
Hugs…until a few years ago, forget it!
That had been remedied by a few friends who like to hug you for so long, it surpasses the few second rule and starts to get weird…what do you know, it seems exposure therapy works.
I was still sitting on the realization that I needed to start addressing my tension before by jaw got any worse, when I rushed down to catch an art exhibition that was in its last day. I broke my caffeine rule and bought a coffee from what was one of my favourite places in Fremantle and has now conveniently located itself even closer to me, so I felt it was my duty to support them.
While making my through the visual splendour, my eye was drawn to a little table that had apothecary bottles displaying the properties of plants, sulphur, mercury and salt. Drawing a parallel to my own works encompassing these elements into talismans, amulets, and the rituals in which I live my life, I especially enjoyed this display.
Salt…the physical body in occultism…the aspect I have always so deeply neglected…yeh alright universe, ease up.
On my way out of the exhibition, and deep in caffeine regret, I had to squeeze past a few tightly packed cars and move a sign, to make my way through. A sign for remedial massage, by the same person who added the alchemical display I enjoyed so much…My mums words rang in my head “do something for you Jess!”
On a whim I sent through an enquiry and made a booking (with an almost immediate urge to cancel or gift it). But I did follow through, and was greeted by a giant Viking, I was tempted to ask if he could just carry me around for the hour instead so I could experience touching the highest shelf for once in my life, but instead I literally begged him not to hurt me…because clearly, I am a big baby.
I really feel as though some people make taking time, looking after themselves, and not feeling those pangs of selfishness, look so easy, and to be honest…I used to think it was rather self-serving, with my extremely modest views on what putting yourself first looked like.
It turns out those hurtful words, with words themselves being magic that breathe themselves into life, were right.
It really is a “me” thing.
And I won’t make a single apology for being under this “me” magic spell, any time soon.
My dentist Dr. Yashu definitely deserves a mention and I highly recommend her, they can be found below.
https://www.palmyrafamilydental.com.au/
If you want a massage from a very patient Viking, I also recommend Ben from RŪNO.
https://www.runoapothecary.com/
For some fantastic anxiety juice, beautiful food and a super lush setting, check out Hinata located at 19 Blinco St, Fremantle WA 6160.
