Hall of Fame - SPEECH!

After getting it all out in my last big, long post here, here’s what I landed on for the speech I gave at the banquet Saturday night for the induction of the 2025 class to the Prior Lake High School Laker Hall of Fame:

Thank you for that introduction, Otto :)

I'm surprised at how much effort I ended up pouring into this speech. I thought I might just improvise, as improvisation is critical to who I am as a professional jazz dance artist, and I'm certainly comfortable performing in front of people! That said, I don't tend to improvise in front of people with WORDS - unless you count the ridiculous yet, at least I'm told, often funny ramblings of my St. Paul Saints Baseball Entertainment Team character Nerdette! 

I struggled to land on something that didn’t feel self-aggrandizing. But I love to reflect and write, so, I’m gonna take the whole five minutes - she says, to the shock of NONE of her English teachers :) 

Being inducted into the Prior Lake High School Laker Hall of Fame really is an honor I feel quite proud of, and I know my K-12 schooling had a big positive impact on my trajectory as a professional artist, and my life in general.

That is to say . . . I think my life so far has been neither ordinary nor extraordinary. I've built a pretty unconventional career, in as competitive and sometimes unforgiving a field as the performing arts no less, but I'm not a household name (is there such a thing as a 'famous choreographer'?! Depends on who you ask!). In the grand scheme of things, my work only directly impacts a small group of people. At least once a year, I find myself wondering whether how I spend my professional time makes any difference beyond myself. But I do keep landing on 'yes, it does.' If I didn’t, I’d change careers! I’m proud of the career I’ve built in the arts, the teaching I do and the professional dance performance company I co-founded and run. I do believe that what I've chosen to spend my career on - dance - creates a worthwhile positive impact. It fosters free expression, which is critical to the health of ourselves and our societies. It asks us to joyfully reconnect with our embodied selves alongside others. It, like any art, encourages finding the beauty in our seemingly mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary.

It means a lot to me that my nominator Carol Ottoson has seen the extraordinary in myordinary, in context with the education I received in independent public school district 719, and nominated me to be recognized for it. My own equation for success has included elements of both hard work and privilege, both intentional living and good fortune. Within this, most importantly, I've had many overlapping circles of outstanding people who see my spark and support me. People like my English teachers - many of whom were also my theater teachers - Myka Hanson (who was Flanny to me), Jeff Hoeg, Chuck Lundstrom, Carol Ottoson and Sarah Strege. My music teachers - Rob Hahn, Thomas Hassig, Keith Koehlmoos, Jim Miller and Terri Thomas. 

These teachers really understand how important it is for young people - and really, all people - to express themselves, no matter how mundane or ordinary that expression might seem on the surface. While I’m under no illusion that as an artist, I’ve thought or created anything “new,” per se, these teachers taught me, among many other things, that what makes an expression impactful is the unique perspective of the person that delivers it. Many teachers in other subjects, throughout my schooling, also made a big difference in my life, including math teacher Jeff Yost, who, despite knowing I strongly disliked the topic, showed up early many mornings while I was in his class to help me understand lesson content that was hard for me. It made me want to achieve, even when it comes to tasks for which I don’t particularly care (see how I didn't end that sentence with a preposition, English teachers?!).

I also want to thank my parents for the love they've poured into me. Being a parent now myself, I have a different kind of appreciation for how they often bent their lives around the many interests I pursued, driving me countless places in the process, and how, when many parents would discourage their child from doing so, they supported my desire to become a dancer and artist. They continue to show up for me, in so many ways. As do my colleagues, my friends - many of whom I met at PLHS - and my incredible spouse Kris. Not to be left off this list are my little kiddos Niko and Jovi, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for being constant reminders that the world is full of beauty just waiting to be noticed.

Let's keep finding the extraordinary in our ordinary, friends. Thank you for this honor!

Again, this honor brought up a LOT for me. Through it all, I’m really grateful for the experiences of this past weekend, and for the honor itself :)

Hall of Fame

I'm being inducted into my high school hall of fame this weekend.

(there she is on the right :))

It's brought up a lot. It's gotten my brain waxing. Which, to be fair, a lot does. Normally, I'd say now that "I'm an overthinker," but really, I'm an artist. I'm a person primed for meeting such moments - and any moments that inspire me, tall and small, light and dark - as spaces in which I am called to reflect, and to see what I can create from that reflection. Sometimes it's dances. Sometimes it's giggles from my children. Sometimes it's writing. In this case, I suppose it's writing that I'm going to speak out loud to people who have gathered to honor me for my accomplishments.

I ended up here, in my semi-public writing space, in hopes that I can organize what's come up for me within this particular space of inspiration into words I can share in a speech tomorrow night at the banquet celebrating this. I'm surprised at how much effort I've decided to pour into this. Upon receiving an email reminder this week that we'd be asked to give a less than five minute speech to accept our nomination, I at first thought I'd just wing it. After all, I thought, I have a lot to do, I'm an improvisor, and it's not that big of a deal. 

To respond to my own chain of thought there, first off, there's always 'a lot to do.' I am getting better and better at not falling into this partially self and partially societally-created problem in my brain, but it still gets the better of me sometimes. That said, the 'getting better at' is winning out right now, as I was able to remind myself that this Fall is, schedule-wise, much more spacious than normal, and that I need to embrace these times, as I know I've avoided burnout in my career in part thanks to understanding that I need to embrace the 'underextended' parts of the cycle that sometimes has me overextended.

As for being an improvisor, wanting to prepare for this moment in time and the speech it's requiring of me has me thinking again about how I'm a performer, sure, and generally quite comfortable expressing myself in front of people, but how I don't usually do this with words. I DO love writing - I have luminaries Hanson (who was Flanny to me), Hoeg, Lundstrom, Ottoson and Strege to thank for that - but my writing does not often translate into speaking. Seemed like a good reminder to prepare some remarks.

And that it's 'not that big of a deal?' I think I might hear the voice of a particular friend who made the decision to cut me out of her life without much of a dialogue about it this Spring, who I imagine I would have been celebrating with. This has and will likely continue to be painful, and can come up for me at times that catch me off guard and feel surprising. Like now, trying to prepare to write this speech. 

It seems like there's just a lot I need to process and get out here, in order to suss out what actually should go into this speech, and what . . . just needs to be processed.

At this particular juncture, I'm also processing swirling ideas about free speech. I find ABC's decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air - cloaked as a disagreement on what kind of speech they feel is appropriate for their late-night host but seemingly really to preserve Disney's ability to undergo a big merger that will make their top executives even richer than they are already because they must be cleared by the sycophants of a federal government led by a petty, wannabe autocrat who cannot handle being joked about like any normal public figure because he's got enough wits about him to know Kimmel's politically-savvy comedy causes people to question, among many other deeply troubling decisions, his self-motivated over-reaches - as horrifying as I find Charlie Kirk's murder. As I do think humans are quicker than ever to move into outrage-mode, I do NOT use the word 'horrified' lightly. There is no better word for brazen public murder of anyone, even someone whose views I found abhorrent and who I believe fomented violence. There is also no better word for the alarmingly fast ramp we are sliding down into government censorship. One of many alarmingly-fast ramps we are sliding down into fascism. Another word I do NOT use lightly. One I am only using HERE online, in long-form, not-very-social writing.

In getting ready to have a verbal platform this weekend, however slight, I cannot help the need to process all this before I set onto it. I don't know yet whether any of this will work its way into what I'll say. But at least now I have it off my chest somewhere.

Another thing that's come up for me is consideration of privilege in tandem with consideration of love and community. Specifically, thinking about how my ability to pursue a career in dance has been considerably aided by my economic privilege of being born into an upper middle class family. This thought came in tandem with consideration of the love I've been offered, as this economic and class privilege would not have manifested into what it did for me without the love my parents poured into me. It shows in their choice to save their money in education funds rather than spend it on any number of things. It shows in their willingness to bend their funds and their time and our family's time around the many interests I pursued, driving me countless places in the process. It shows in how they supported my desire to become a dancer and artist, when many parents would discourage their child from doing so, for countless reasons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the above is an example of how privilege and love can work in tandem to propel a person forward. Being able to discuss them alongside one another does not negate either. Two (or more) related things can be true at the same time. For me, this recognition of privilege in no way waters down the multitude of expressions of love shown by my parents and the other people who supported me growing up, and throughout my life. It simply reminds me to be thankful for those people and how they've treated me, and to be humbled by consideration of the conditions into which I was born: it is possible to think of oneself as both talented and fortunate, knowing that had their own life conditions been different, someone else equally as talented (or perhaps even more so) would be running with the baton you were handed. Another example of the possibility of two related things being true at the same time: I can believe I'm talented and hardworking and deserve what I've built and the accolades I've been afforded for it, while also understanding that it could have easily been someone else had my life conditions been different.

I was raised, like many of my peers, to follow my dreams. I'm grateful to have gone through my K-12 schooling during a time in which one could explore a lot of things and still have a shot at creating a career in something as unusual and competitive as concert dance - and even more niche, concert jazz dance. In a way, I think being taught to find (which is a whole other can of worms) and 'follow your dreams' this is a beautiful and encouraging sentiment, and that to not believe it creates a rift in which we can sell ourselves shorter and shorter. In another way, I think it can set people up for a disappointing future. I'm trying to articulate this not to be a downer. I'm trying to suggest that equally, and perhaps, in healthy counterpoint, people should also be taught to not only identify, but seek out beauty in the seemingly-mundane and appreciate those things as what they are: extraordinary in the ordinary. One wild and precious life and all that :)

Which I suppose brings me to this. I think my life so far has been neither ordinary nor extraordinary. I've built a pretty unconventional career, in the performing arts no less, but I'm not a household name (is there such a thing as a 'famous choreographer'?! Depends on who you ask!). I don't think life really has to be either ordinary or extraordinary. Perhaps, extraordinary is implied, when you are taught and choose to implicate your life - ordinary or not - as such. 

I think I'm realizing my good fortune in having been taught to implicate my life as such. By people like my aforementioned English teachers - who were also my theater teachers - who understand how important it is for young people to express themselves, no matter how mundane that expression might seem at first. Have these topics been threaded through many perhaps 'greater' minds, time and time again, before I created my own thoughts and writings on them? Definitely. Is it still important that I move through the cognitive exercises of considering them myself, and how they apply to me in my own life? Yes. Is my perspective still unique because there is only one me? Yes. 

I don't suppose these reasons alone qualify these thoughts to be worthy of orating to others. But maybe they do. I did not nominate myself to the Prior Lake High School Laker Hall of Fame. I was nominated by someone else who saw value in what I've offered to the world, in context with my education in Prior Lake, and decided I should be recognized for it. 

Aren't we all just ripples in the same - albeit REALLY BIG - cosmic ocean? 

Which brings me to this thought: every year - at least once, and sometimes multiple times - I wonder if what I spend my professional energy on makes a difference beyond me. More often than not, after sharing that "I'm a dancer" in response to the "what do you do?" question, I would be met with "So you just dance all day? That must be fun!" I've since adapted the language I use when answering that question to "I'm a dance artist," which usually elicits the kind of curiosity that provokes more thoughtful follow-up questions and allows me to unpack what this entails with more depth. Regardless, despite understanding that such responses were generally not meant maliciously, I couldn't help that they usually evoked within me several things that caused me frustration. For one, there are definitely things about it, like any other career that seems like it must be fulfilling, or passion work, or FUN, that are NOT fun. It's not fun to get injured and have your ability to make a living put on pause. It's not fun to make paltry wages for highly skilled work that required many years of expensive training for it to become even a possibility to build a career within. 

For another, unfortunately, I do NOT dance all day. That probably would be fun (and also still difficult, per what's mentioned above, among other things)! While I do make me entire living from dance-related work now, getting there included a lot of time spent in unrelated and sometimes draining jobs to support myself financially. Throughout the whole of it - especially now - I've spent a LOT of time sitting in front of a computer. I realize a lot of people do this, but at the heat of my career is moving my body. It's counterintuitive to me - and likely, the "so you just dance all day?" people - that I spend so much of my professional time sitting in front of a screen.

Related is the thought that I'm grateful to have done a lot of my 'growing up' prior to the advent of social media and lives lived online. My memories of my high school experience are, fortunately, devoid of online bullying. While chat rooms and instant messaging were a thing in my middle and high school years, they were not accessible on a mini computer always in my pocket, begging me to disengage from my embodied, physical reality. These statements are not meant to detract from my appreciation of digital communication technologies - they've done a lot to move the world forward - but to note my thoughts that we must continuously seek to uncover the ways they bring out the best in us, and step away from how they bring out the worst. I'm heartened when I read stories about young folks who are intentional and measured in how they use social media and other digital communication technologies. Related is the importance, in increasingly disembodied times, of endeavors that invite people back into their bodies to connect with themselves and others in their physical realities. Things like dance classes and performances :)

All of that said, it's partially all that screen time that has enabled me to build a career in dance in which I am the decision-maker. The spark. The one bringing visions into physical realities. This is not to suggest that I am a one-woman show: as previously discussed, the success of my endeavors has been in no small part thanks to the support of loved ones and the communities of people around me. Indeed, I work in an art form composed of other people. Even so, and in spite of the several seemingly self-deprecating things I've pondered in this writing, as previously discussed, I suppose I can be open to being recognized for what I've accomplished and the beauty I've added to the world. I suppose the spark of me has been an important part of these equations too. It can all be simultaneously true.

So, here I am, at 40 years old, in the middle of a career in dance that I'm proud to have build. It feels like a complicated juncture, as my knowledge matures and my body does too. In a way, I can't believe I can no longer check "emerging artist" on applications. In another way, I feel I've built a strong enough foundation that I can start to scale back, or at least stop being obsessed with 'pushing forward,' at least how I've come to understand it over time. As an entrepreneurial artist, any time not spent on furthering the art can feel like lost or missed opportunities. When I became a parent for the first time in 2021, I found myself having to confront this subconscious belief. I say subconscious because it felt ridiculous to write. Consciously, I know that 'balance is important,' but subconsciously, the thoughts to 'achieve more, do more, be better' are always floating around in the back of my head. Another part-nature, part-nurture situation. 

Regardless, it was quite the challenge for me to let go of two work days a week to be with my kid - and as of March, kidS. I've found that while I've been able to maintain a lot of my work, I HAVE had to come to terms with doing less, and taking on fewer things, despite continuing to have new ideas that feel worth pursuing. All of this said, I am also acutely aware that burn-out in the professional performing arts is common. I have come to believe that this very thing of doing less is in part what has enabled me to avoid burnout and continue working in a career that I love, but can be pretty unforgiving. As far as my equation for success, alongside doing less and my own unique spark, are the many trappings of both hard work and privilege, intentional living and good fortune, such as: financial stability, a high level of education, freedom to express myself, and, most importantly, having many overlapping circles of outstanding people who love and support me, including my husband Kris, my parents Wayne and Joy and other immediate family, my friends - many of whom I met during my schooling in Prior Lake. Not to be left off this list are my little kiddos Niko and Jovi, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for being constant reminders that the world is full of beauty just waiting to be noticed, a pretty important thing to be reminded of not only as an artist, but as a human trying their best in their one wild and precious life.

After cutting through all the above, I am left with a final thought to unpack: that at least once a year, I find myself wondering whether how I spend my professional time makes any difference beyond myself. I do keep landing on 'yes, it does.' If I didn't, as a person with deep empathy and care for the greater good, I would have made a career change long ago. I believe that what I've chosen to spend my career on - dance - creates a worthwhile positive impact, for reasons I've already touched on in this soliloquy. Like how free expression is critical to the health of ourselves and our societies: what we each create individually does matter, even if it serves only the purpose of us each giving ourselves an outlet or outlets. Like how finding beauty in the mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary, often requires the kind of spark ignited by participating in or witnessing artistic and aesthetic expression. Like how joyfully reconnecting with one's embodied self, alongside others, can do ONLY good. 

While my own ripple can only go so far, I try to remember that, in aggregate, such ripples turn tides. 

It's concepts like these that allow me to work through what you could call characteristically Minnesotan self-deprecation and simply, in the face of this honor that's caused all this difficult, sweet and worthwhile reflection, say, "thank you."

Now, I just need to figure out how and what to distill of this into a five minute speech for tomorrow night :)

I'm Just Here Because I Cannot Write with a Pen :)

"I'm just here so I don't get fined . . ."  :)

Can't remember which player on which team in which year for which press conference said this, but I do remember Kris thinking it was hilarious when it happened, and it's stuck in my head since. I'm really just here because I cannot write with a pen right now due to the pregnancy carpal tunnel (OOF). I've been craving journalling, and just haven't been doing it because it's so painful to try and write. I wish I would have sat down with this space open sooner, I think I just had a mental block with it because usually, what I write here I post about publicly, and I haven't really felt the push to write anything to share publicly lately.

That said, I make my own rules with this shit. No one but me has said that what I write here needs to get posted about. So sure, while whatever comes out tonight may be accessible publicly, I doubt many (if any) will end up reading it if I don't post on socials about it.

So here we are. In a semi-private space. Honestly, even typing is getting a little hard, carpal tunnel-wise, but I have just been so desperate to create. I'm not really making new class material, I'm not in rehearsal, I'm not taking class or improvising much. So my normal creative outlets are not being accessed, and I think I feel extra-concerned about that out of fear that they won't be touched for quite awhile after the baby comes either.

Almost immediately after I wrote that, I found myself thinking how figuring out how to manage a new baby IS a creative outlet. So I will equal parts recognize that while also recognizing that it's NOT dancing. But all of this returns me to the consideration that raising a newborn is a finite time. And I think when I really dig deep, I really DO trust that we will find the right routines for us that will allow us (specifically Kris and I, when I say us) to maintain senses of individuality as well as a grip on our own relationship. 

It may actually help me to put it in these terms: I OWE myself that trust. I am a person who craves guidelines, general understandings of how something is going to go. When I don't have that, I feel unsure of myself. For awhile there I thought it was anxiety, and while there may still be an aspect of that at play, I think it's actually more a drop in self-confidence. I have always considered myself quite a self-confident person, but I think it's taken me until recently to realize that confidence tends to be contingent on having workable plans. So moments in which I don't make the plan or cannot feasibly make an exact plan (like for what this particular new infant is gonna be like and need), I lose some self-confidence.

All of this said, I think I have proven to myself time and time again that I am capable of handling what comes at me. While I don't believe one has to earn self-confidence, if ya did, I think I've done it. So I have to remind myself of that, and use those reminders as a foundation on which to build the trust required to head into adventures like this next one, in which I will not have a guidebook.

As I said with the pregnancy that turned out to be Niko, "I'm not ready, but I'm capable," and he has turned out to be my favorite thing on the damn planet. I'm feeling not ready, but capable this time too (remind yourself, "You are capable, you are capable, you are capable).

And it's 9:15, so I actually cannot believe I made it THIS long. Time to set down my metaphorical pen and start winding down for the night. Computer keys and blog space, thanks for being here when my body wouldn't cooperate with my paper journal. We found a way to get some thoughts organized and documented :)

New Year Intention: 2024 Into 2025

Here's my 2025 New Year Intention:

And a listing of my the big edit this work yielded on my 

EKLOS (Erinn Kellie Liebhard Operating System :)):

Reflect

Connect

Move

Create

Rest

I believe this is the first year I'm not titling this annual post with the word 'Intentions' (ie, multiple instead of singular). As it turns out, my propensity to think A LOT usually yields A LOT of material that can help me, but A LOT can be hard to keep track of (like so many personal tendencies, this one's a double-edged sword, baby). In the case of New Year Intentions, by the end of this year, I was not able to recall all my Beliefs, Values and Manifestation words (the EKLOS), let alone my New Year Intention/s words, without going back to look at my writing. While all of the ideas I landed upon could be helpful, HOW helpful they could be - in the immediacy of the fieldwork of life - feels limited if I could not even recall them all on my own. It is in the spirit of simplicity and ease that I declare just one concept - Adaptable - my New Year Intention for 2025. I'm feeling excited to have ONE big concept to ask myself to keep in my mind and my heart: it feels accomplishable to ask myself to remember this concept each day. 

As I tend to do, I have put perhaps too much thought into the tense of the way I chose to express this concept through a word. 'Adapt' feels to forceful. 'Adaptation' feels permanent/ singular. 'Adapting' felt confusing when not applied to a specific example. I thought about writing it as 'Cultivating More Adaptability,' but that made it feel like an assignment I have to do long-term, as opposed to a nodding at a tool I'm already familiar with and just need to use. Perhaps this is another case of words not quite being able to capture the exact essence of what I'm meaning to express. This is not a jab at you, words. I do love you. This train of thought just makes me giggle, further reenforcing why I've ended up choosing a more abstract medium - movement - as my preferred mode of expression :)

But if word/s, WHY THIS word/ concept for my 2025 New Year Intention? To be Adaptable means one is "willing to change." While that meaning can be interpreted as pretty broad, for me in this time of life, it feels pretty specific: to be willing to adapt my expectation of how something will go to reflect what is actually happening, as well as to allow more flexibility into how I expect something to go in the first place. Examples: When I'll fall asleep. What time I/ we will leave for something. What time we'll arrive. How a lesson plan might be received by students. How much I will get done in a day. What I will get done in a day.

While I believe I've subconsciously understood for quite awhile, it consciously came to my attention this year - thanks to experiencing chicken-or-egg anxiety and insomnia that necessitated therapy for the first time in my life - how rigid, ie NOT ADAPTABLE, I am with my routines and expectations. Understanding this better has created a bit of a catch-22 for me, considering how I see myself artistically (which is a big part of how I see myself in general), given how much emphasis I put on improvisation. But even with this example, I usually impose a lot of specific parameters! While this tendency helps me juggle a lot of balls and get a lot done, it also feeds a lot of my worries and anxieties. The more I unpack all of this, the more I'm learning to truly believe that I can keep a lot of worries and anxieties from forming in the first place by consciously and regularly practicing being Adaptable.

A 'New Year Intention' like this can be gentle in its generality, and also tricky in its lack of specific steps for making happen. But here's the thing: I KNOW HOW to be Adaptable: I adapt on the fly as an educator all the time. I'm a pretty kick-ass movement improvisor. I'm getting pretty good at being responsive to the moment in parenting a toddler. I have proven time and time again that I am CAPABLE of adapting. It is a tool to which I already have access. With this Intention, I'm asking myself to access it more often, in more scenarios. Like when I'll fall asleep. And when I'm determining what time I/ we will leave for something. And when I'm figuring out what I think I will get done in a day.

I arrived to this concept by going through the New Year Intention-setting process I've developed over the course of many years (grounding writing in my journal, revisiting last year's NYIs, thinking through big happenings from the year, and re-reading my personal writing for emergent themes to determine Intention/s). To differing degrees and as I suspected from the beginning of the process, the themes that emerged can all relate back to being Adaptable. The concept of being Adaptable has been on MANY of my previous NYI lists, so its certainly not a new concept to me, but definitely one that feels apropos to the digesting 2024 and moving into 2025 with an easy to recall concept that will help ground my experience of life. 

When revisiting last year's intentions - Kindness, Spaciousness and Levity - I came to feel that they can all be seen as facets of Adaptable. I see allowing myself to adapt as a kindness to myself that will spare me from unnecessary mental strife, a sense of spaciousness regarding how I can choose to react to things, and a measure of levity, in believing that I can navigate anything without taking it more seriously than it might need to be taken. 

Thinking through my big happenings from the year also helped provide some context for why being Adaptable emerged as my New Year Intention for the coming year:

January:

St. Olaf J-Term

New Work Commission: Ballare Teatro

Decision to only by 5 new items of clothing in the year

February:

Mardi Gras

New Work Commission & Residency: Concerto Dance

March:

Cowles Center Closure

Last Cowles Residency

April:

Halifax Trip #1: Rooted Dance Project's PER Residency

IUD Removal

May:

Intensification of Insomnia

Onset or Major Career Worries

June:

Beginning Therapy for the First Time

Major Self-Doubts

July:

Starting (and Stopping - see below) an Anti-Anxiety Med

Confirmation of Second Pregnancy!

August:

New Work: Rhythmically Speaking 16th Annual Summer Show

Beginning Sleep Therapy

Booking a Lot of Unexpected Fall Work

September:

New Work Commission & Residency: University of Minnesota - Duluth

Major Sleep and Mental Health Improvement

October:

Taught at Texas Dance Improvisation Festival (+ Texas State Fair Trip #2!)

New Work Commission & Residency: Breck School

Making It Through My First Truly Awful Residency Experience

Family Trip to San Diego

New Work Commission & Residency: Winona State University

November:

New Rhythmically Speaking Production

Halifax Trip #2: My First Time Setting Rep Work on Another Company

December:

Niko's Golden (3rd) Birthday

While I do believe all the small moments matter just as much as the big happenings, it does help give me perspective to conjuring up a timeline of the big stuff. This one shows me a year that had a lot of trial and error in areas of focus that usually don't require a lot of my attention, like mental health. Going through experiences with insomnia, anxiety, therapy and medication this year is a big part of what led me to this desire to focus on being Adaptable. 

When I moved on in my process to identifying emergent themes in my journalling from the past year, the following phrases stuck out to me as 1) impactful in general, and 2) also affirming of this overarching concept of being Adaptable:

6/14 - "As life is ever-shifting, so should be the ways we engage with it."

6/14 - "Just because something doesn't work out at one time doesn't mean it never will."

7/22 - "I'm not in control of everything, but I'm capable of navigating anything."

8/16 - "I can manage what I expect and how I handle what actually happens."

9/23 - "Focus on the wins."

12/30 - "One way or another, everything will work out."

While I could muse for many more characters on how I arrived to these standout phrases I hope to revisit here and there, I'll let them speak for themselves. While not all of them scream 'originality of thought,' what matters more to me is that I arrived to each of them not by reading internet self-help listicles or even therapy texts, but through the process of ringing my brain dry throughout the year by processing my own experiences in writing. 

I've now handwritten on a piece of paper and taped up to my bathroom mirror the word 'Adaptable' to remind me every day of this intention. While I've never been one for leaving sticky notes all over the place (or even in one place!), it did feel good to take this ideation into the physical world with a little paper reminder. And with all that, I say:

Cheers to discovering how choosing to be Adaptable will better my experience of life :)

Bleak is Beautiful

This is my favorite tree in my neighborhood.

While its leaves are absolutely stunning in the Fall, I love it this way too.

In it's Bleak, skeletal November form.

I've written before that 'Bleak is Beautiful.' It may have been a full post here, but I think it was just a caption to a similar picture on social media. This theme often comes back around for me in November, a particularly bleak month. My favorite ideas, among Bleak's definitions, are "exposed to the elements" and "charmless." Upon first consideration, these characteristics may not seem so great. But with deeper thought, I think they are actually really beautiful. 

"Exposed to the elements." Nothing to hide. Vulnerable. Open to the winds of change. 

"Charmless." In its most simple form. Without unnecessary adornment, and without the need to impress. 

November skyscapes feel Bleak to me in these ways.

I talk about this with my Dad, nearly every year, it seems. November has a bad reputation for being grey and Bleak, the thrill of Fall fallen away and the jingle of the Holidays yet to arrive. I think for me, it is this very simplicity that makes it so appealing. Brush away the extra, lay it all out.

As I got thinking on my walk right before this about how 'Bleak is Beautiful,' I couldn't help but remember that I also used the word Bleak this week to describe how the world is feeling for me and many people I know, choosing it in this case for its negative qualities - like "inhospitable" and "dreary.” This November's elections have made things feel very Bleak to me, in these ways.

That said, I think I have had enough distance - in this case four days - to have shifted through some of the stages of grief (which I honestly cannot even name, but it's felt like this), and to be starting to consider that there will be Beauty in the Bleakness. A large portion of America laid some shit bare, and now we are at a precipice in which a lot feels vulnerable. In this Bleakness, I suppose we are given opportunities to see where care is needed in the face of vulnerability, and to step up, without the need to impress, to provide it.

At the risk of sounding Pollyanna, I suppose this is the juncture at which I say that like my favorite neighborhood tree, America is Bleak right now. I still love her. And as I move through the stages of grief - of which a quick Google search turned out that the last is Acceptance - as a show of love, I am working toward continued appreciation of vulnerability, and the opportunities it offers us to provide care.

Bleak is Beautiful.

Doing Anything Else

I've been thinking a lot, up here on my work-play trip to Duluth this week, about how there are so many things one could try in this life, far more than a person ever has enough time (and often other resources) for. Going on lots of hikes triggered these thoughts - it got me thinking about how I've become curious about light/ ultralight backpack hike-camping. And about how it's unlikely I'll really ever do it. And how that's ok.

Turns out, that is not a thing you DO a time or two. It's a thing you DO. I've noticed other things people DO here, being in Duluth. People mountain bike. People through-hike. I think all of these things are REALLY cool. And that kind of makes me want to do them. It seems what I am actually thinking is that I want to TRY a lot of things. And when I consider this deeper, I think it's actually true that I might not necessarily even want to TRY them. And that's ok. 

When I watched people hurtling down trails on the mountain bikes as I hiked, my thought process was "Wow, that's so cool. Wow, you could really get hurt doing that. Wow, it probably takes a lot of specialized equipment. Wow, to invest in this practice, you'd really have to put in a lot of money and time. Wow, I like hiking. And dancing."

Part of me is a little disappointed in all this realism. Where's the zest for life?! I don't know if that fleeting thought will ever go away entirely. But I also feel pretty happy with what I have chosen. In fact, I have had a couple distinct moments in the studio this week of feeling as though I honestly cannot imagine having done anything else with my life. This is not to say that I don't feel myself capable of shift or change, but to say that the things that I actually do really fulfill me.

I feel like the luckiest person in the world to be up here this week, creating with a group of great new people with very few pressures surrounding the process. I'm making something I really like that's also pushing me, and getting to enjoy some other pursuits that also fulfill me - lots of hiking, some good food and some time with friends. I have also rested when my body has asked for it, and as much as that's not my favorite way to spend my time, I'm proud of myself for giving my body what it needs during a time in which I'm asking for a lot from it.

I didn't thrift. I haven't gotten to the gym (both things on my purposefully short list for the week). Who knows? Maybe I'll end up with time this afternoon that I hadn't planned on. It's ok if I don't. 

All of this is to say that this week, I've been circling the familiar, unending spiral around one of my forever quandaries - how to best use my limited resources. I think as long as I accept that there really isn't a BEST, and that there is no way to try EVERYTHING in this life, I'll continue to build comfort around the idea that, as long as I'm keeping conscious around my choices, I'll use my limited resources well :)

Some images from this week's choices:

Happy to be doing what I'm doing this week :)

Seven Habits of a "Highly Effective" Erinn

[A note from the editor (haha): I started writing this on Wednesday night, and revisited it several times between then and when I published it to try and get it to a place that feels solid. Even though Wednesday was a day of big relaxation, it was also a day of big progress, and by the end of all that, my brain felt pretty jubbly (which may have also had to do with being at the end of a couple weeks of flitting around from Melatonin to Magnesium to CBD to Benadryl, in attempts to get to and stay asleep - which worked until it didn't). As a measure of the 'psychological flexibility' I'm working to grow (more on that below), despite my history of 'getting it all out in one sitting' when I write, I opted to set it down then and revisit later. I think the writing below is all the better for it, good evidence that I deserve to offer myself some shifts :)  With that note registered, here's the post.]

Ooooof. Deep breath. Lots of them. I both love and loath this satirical title. 

'Highly Effective.' Something I thought I WAS to my core until anxiety came to get me. While I started experiencing insomnia on occasion in November, it became more frequent and intense in mid-April and has become chronic, which was the trigger for me to seek help. I got access to that help a couple weeks ago, when I started talking with a therapist and a sleep psychologist. Long story short, all signs have pointed to anxiety I've been able to muscle my way through until I couldn't anymore and it broke my sleep.

It's been frustrating to not know WHY the dam broke, but break it has, and now there's some hard work to do in the wake of that. So I'm working hard - not to rebuild the dam, but to find more flexible ways for the currents to pass through. I will say that in talking with my dear friend Jesse today, she helped me realize that the intensification of my insomnia (along with mysteriously developing a B.O. smell when I've never had that before) times perfectly with when I had my IUD removed. MIND. BLOWN. This, paired with the therapist having noted that hormonal changes due to pregnancy can be culprits of anxiety formation, gave me a WHY on Wednesday, and that's feeling really good. A great deal of the pressure that's been building and remaining in my chest in the last couple weeks was released with this revelation. It has definitely snuck back in a bit, but I gained a bit of ability to feel it there, yet also say to it "Hi. I see you, and I understand a little better why you might be there, and that's helping me."

So here, in a return to writing after a couple week break, I take some time to identify and consider what I'm jokingly referring to - as a way to cultivate some fucking levity (!!!) - as the "Seven Habits of a 'Highly Effective' Erinn." It's tongue in cheek, as I feel I'm learning these 'habits' or tendencies are both what pull me down and bring me up. It has been hard for me to learn, while I seek help, that things I like about myself - that feel like part of who I am (like moving a mile a minute) - are also causing me pain. In other words, they kept me "highly effective," until they didn't. As a part of this big process, I'm trying to consider these tendencies as things that need examining rather than extermination, working to negate how they hinder and uplift how they help. I think it will help me say to them "Hi. I see you, and I understand a little better why you might be there, and how you might go from hurting to helping me." So here goes:

1. Habit - Efficiency: My approach to 'getting things done' has been, for as long as I can remember, moving through them as quickly as possible, in order to have any 'free time' at all. While I have long seen this as efficiency, talking with the therapist I've started seeing has help me come to see that this is also a way I can move around without having to really feel the present. Subconsciously, it's perhaps been a way to stave off anxiety that's now moved from the background to the foreground. The therapist asking me to pick something up at half and quarter speed of how I usually move around really made this clear for me. In the couple weeks since, it has been really helpful for me to ask myself to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. All the time. Is it causing me to get (just a little) less done in a day? Yes. Is it helping? Yes, it feels like it. Interrogating my physical and mental habits is feeling really hard - it feels like it's taking up all of the brain space and time I don't have to dedicate to caring for Niko and keeping myself functioning well enough to manage my work commitments. It also feels like something I NEED to do. I am working toward accepting this not as something that needs to be solved as quickly as possible, but an ongoing project that will take as much time as it needs. A relaxed project, if you will. All of this said, I do believe there is still space for managing my time Efficiently - I just have to learn how to do it without employing the kind of hyper-speed that keeps me from really feeling the present.
2. Habit - Conscious Consideration: I've long prided myself on being someone who consciously considers what's going on in her mind. I've maintained a pretty consistent journal practice since 8th grade (I've got a whole row of black and white composition notebooks on a shelf in my basement to prove it) as a way to sort it all out and figure out what to do with it all. And this was effective. Until it wasn't. While crying talking about all this during a recent session, the therapist asked if I ever cry while I write. After giving it a little thought, I realized that I NEVER cry when I write, but I cry when talking with people about this (and plenty of other things - I've never been shy about feeling the feels in front of people) ALL. THE. TIME. It seems sorting my thoughts by myself sometimes causes me to logic my way into solutions without feeling my way through what's going on at any give time, which I'm thinking might be contributing to my anxiety. It's been really helpful to realize that, while writing may assist me in thinking logically my through challenges, it does NOT provide an outlet for the emotions that come with. Since realizing this, I've been actively seeking people to talk with about all this, and it's really helping. It seems that Conscious Consideration can remain one of my super-powers, IF it's done both by myself in writing AND verbally with other people.
3. Habit - Assessing Critically: As I've been working my way through this learning process and coming upon new tools that might be help fun yet challenging for me to employ, my first thoughts have often been things like "Oof. Good luck, Erinn." As much as I consider myself a pretty positive person, I often subconsciously frame things about myself negatively. I think I need to work on harnessing that self-talk toward better ends, critically assessing them and arriving to something more like, with this example, "You've done plenty of hard things and you'll do it again." Assessing Critically imply the application of an objective lens, which can help me strip the negativity away in attempt/s to understand how my attention to my thoughts can help me. 
4. Habit - Two-Sidedness: Part of me thinks I need to recognize the 'negatives' of how I think and act in order to reframe them. Another part of me thinks that seeing things I usually like about myself as negative has added to my difficulties as of late. The 'negative' v. 'positive' of this reminds me I of mainstay of Chinese philosophy 'Yin & Yang,' but I'm beginning to think there is a third space (or maybe fourth and fifth spaces and beyond, too). As much as we often want it to be, it seems life is rarely ever as uncomplicated as 'This bad, this good,' or even 'Sometimes this bad, sometimes this good.' Perhaps the tendencies and habits that are part of what make a person who they are manifest differently at different times in life, in response to different challenges and excitements. It seems that what is necessary to accessing these third, fourth, fifth spaces is having enough psychological flexibility to accept and respond to WHAT IS. Not 'What was supposed to be' or 'What I wanted it to be,' WHAT IS. Perhaps the two sides here are not 'the only two ways a situation can unfold - how I expected v. anything else,' but whether or not WHAT IS will be accepted in order to move to responsiveness based in calm self-trust.
5. Habit - Thinking Forward: When thinking through something, I tend to move very quickly from what is happening in the present to what could happen, a practice in which I tend to let fear of negative future outcomes take the fore. I've experienced this over and over again, with a specific example being fear that one night of difficult sleep for Niko will turn into him not sleeping well from there on out. While this fear has yet to manifest, something Kris reminds me of frequently when he's trying to help, it just keeps coming, in this example and with many others. Once again, I think I need to lean into developing more 'psychological flexibility,' a concept I came across when learning more about 'Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (upon suggestion of the therapist with whom I've been talking). I believe being able to accept what is will help me figure out how to commit my tendency to Think Forward toward flexible plans rather than fears.
6. Habit - Considering Long-Term Affects: Related to the above discussion is my tendency to assume - when considering the long-haul - that things I am fearing will become permanent when they haven't even happened! Take the example of when Niko has a tough night's sleep. Not only do I think forward to it becoming a pattern, I tend to assume that the pattern will be permanent! Not helpful. That said, I do think part of how I've been able to live a conscientious life is my tendency to consider the long(er)-term affects of my actions, both on me and on others. I think this tendency can be committed toward good in my life if I focus on it generating thoughtfulness rather than fear.
7. Habit - Taking Everything Seriously: While I consider myself a joyful, fun-loving and funny person, I take most of what comes at me and what I do very seriously (even the creation of joy and fun - perhaps because much of my work, which I take seriously because I want others to do so too - involves the creation of joy and fun). This tendency has made building, much less maintaining, a much-needed sense of levity hard for me, but it has also been part of what has allowed me to accomplish a lot of things of which I'm proud! Writing my first exclamation point within the body of this post feels like a little levity. I feel that encouraging myself to feel more levity - about everything, really - would work wonders in my ability to build that psychological flexibility I've been talking about. In other words, if I take what comes at me a little less seriously, I believe I will be less likely to see each thing that goes differently than I expected as potential for a permanent crisis. Doing so would leave more room for seriousness surrounding things that might actually yield significant consequences. 

So, there it is. My "Seven Habits of a 'Highly-Effective' Erinn." It's felt really difficult but encouraging to identify and assess these tendencies, taking them from things I like about myself to things that are causing me pain to understanding that these are things that will likely continue to hinder and help me. The encouraging part is that the more I understand and accept these things, the more likely I am to be able to direct them toward the later. 

I do have fear that getting help might be making things worse, or creating problems I don't really have: I've never been more down on myself since starting therapy and appointments with a sleep specialist. I feeling like I still LOVE myself, as I always have, but that I don't LIKE myself right now. I HONESTLY don't feel that anyone else struggling with aspects of their mental health is weak, but I tend to think that way about myself. Despite evidence that my current experience of anxiety has manifested due to the hormonal change of having my IUD taken out, I'm having a hard time letting go of the belief that the anxiety first I experienced two years ago while breastfeeding Niko hasn't gone away but I've been muscling my way through it until now - leaving me to think that I should be able to just keep doing that. Regardless of the why, between the near-constant tightness in my chest, crying to hysteria more often than I'd like and lack of reliable, quality sleep, I DO LOVE and DON'T LIKE myself right now, and that's why I'm getting help. I'm starting to recognize the fears at the root of this as what they are - fears, not reality - and I'm committed to working my way past those fears and toward seeing my 'seven habits' not as 'problems to be fixed' but 'tendencies to reframe.'

And now feels like the right time. It HAS to be the right time. Emergent anxiety has broken my sleep! It is helpful to remember that I have help with the day-to-day and grant writing for Rhythmically Speaking for the first time, which has helped to ease up what has previously felt, mostly, like manageable commitments. I actually DON'T feel all that stressed or overextended, a state of being I have come, since finishing grad school I think, to not prize. While this may be part of why I have felt confused about why anxiety hit now, it might also be part of why this is the juncture at which things I haven't known are packed away are begging to be unpacked.

I DO LOVE myself. I think - or at least I have thought before - that I'm pretty fucking rad. And I know I can think that again. It's already starting. So for now, I will say thank you for reading (assuming anyone does!), state that if any of this resonated with you that you can and will like yourself again too. 

With that, I will wrap this up, post it, enjoy some down time and pop a Benadryl before bed. Because yes it's getting me to sleep in the short-term, yes getting several nights of solid sleep in a row will help me with ALL OF THIS, no it is not habit-forming and yes it's ok to take night after night if need be say both the sleep psychologist and family-doc-dad, and no it does not have to become permanent! G'nite :)