The joy of not responding (aka using social media wrong)

When I took my current role, I locked down all my social media. I set everything to private, changed some user names, and removed as much public information about myself as I could. This was all in the name of making it harder for upset students to find me. 

For the most part this has had little effect on my life. I am clearly not an influencer, and while I love a good selfie and bit of positive reinforcement, I am past the heyday of my social media use. This had roughly zero change on my social media habits on most apps. 

Except one. The blue bird app (the one with short, 140 character [or is it 280 now?] responses) has been really interesting with a locked down account. I think it comes from the nature of the app - said tweety app is designed for interacting in short messages with people you don't know. With my account locked down, I cannot respond to anyone I don't know. I get a polite little message reminding me that they won't be able to see my response. 

And it is glorious. I love not being able to respond to people. It is one of the best things I have done for my mental health. 

I love that I cannot argue with people saying awful things that I disagree with. I was never a huge internet-fighter, but I had my topics that I would let myself get sucked into arguments about. And that was playing into their hands. It gave them attention, encouraged the algorithm to spread their awful words further, and often destroyed my mood. I highly doubt it ever got anywhere anyways. There are plenty of other folks out there engaging in those fights. 

I love that it encourages me to take time. Not being able to respond to people encourages me to take time with their ideas, reflect on them, and decide if I want to do something with them later. It slows the process down (the same thing I like about blogging), which allows for better understanding and a more thoughtful approach. 

I love that it forces me to do the virtual equivalent of listening more than I talk. It reminds me that I don't always have to share my thoughts; that I can keep them inside, explore them, reflect on them, and nurture the ones that I want to see grow. It helps me practice the art of listening to understand, rather than listening to respond. 

On an app designed for short, fast responses and people shouting over each other in more and more extreme ways, I have forced myself to engage with it in the opposite way. I do post a bit, respond to friends, and share things with my little world of followers. But on an app based on everyone shouting their thoughts into the world, there is something wonderful about only being able to listen.

(All of that said, there are times I truly dislike it. I can't try to befriend the wonderful people that I see but don't already know. When I want to encourage someone who is having a bad day, I am limited in my ability to do so. Those are the times I curse the need to be private). 

I share this because it goes beyond social media. It has helped me practice these same skills - not wasting my time arguing with someone who just wants to argue, taking my time to respond to things, and listening rather than responding - elsewhere. If those are skills you also find valuable, I encourage you to joyfully practice not responding. 

(But respond to me and tell me you like my blogs. I do like that positive reinforcement after all <3)

Cultivating connection

This morning, as with most Saturday mornings, I went to the fitness studio. As I walked in, my trainer's mother was leaving. We have taken a few classes together, years ago now, and often bump into each other at the door. We smiled, said hi, and exchanged a few words about hair. A few steps later, I greeted a trainer I haven't worked with before who complimented my shirt. I talked with one of the owners about a project they are launching today. A dear friend ran out and gave me a soul-feeding hug. And then I had a powerful and healing session with my trainer (and did awesome things with my body that felt great, but that's not the point of today's post). 

Every one of these interactions made my day. I love connection. It is one of my values that I sorted out early - little moments of connection nurture me in a way little else does. These little moments of connection are also the threads that come together into the social fabric, that form a community. Some threads are tied tightly together, romantic partners and close friends and family that you build long shared histories with. Others are looser - the Second Cup barista recognizing you and knowing your drink, running into your neighbour on the street, smiling at someone you regularly see on the bus or in the parking lot.

We cannot talk about connection without talking about its absence. Our society has a problem, and that problem is loneliness and isolation. We talk about a loneliness epidemic, about a society that feels unconnected, detached, and uncaring. This is real - and it is explainable. We replaced public spaces with businesses. Town squares turned into shopping malls turned into strip malls. We have to work more to survive, and we don't have time to stop and talk. We moved from careers to gig work, from coworkers to contractors. We built our cities around cars, not buses or sidewalks. (Cue listening to Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell). 

Each of those changes reduced how often we bump into each other. They reduced our free time, made it so we see the same people less often, and pushed us into our own survival treadmills. And all the while, we have been told that that's okay. That we can replace those connections with things. That we can spend our way out of the pain that isolation brings. And I say this acknowledging the irony that my ability to enjoy a Saturday morning of connection depends on my resources and privilege. I don't have to work weekends. I can afford to have a fitness membership and to drive across the city to be there. I am not exhausted from working multiple jobs. 

Connection is a basic need that we have been told to try and live without. Yes, we need food, shelter, and water. But those are meaningless without connection and community. And, at the same time, actively cultivating connection is an act of resistance in a world that wants you to replace it with consumerism. So I have a challenge for you this week. Pay attention to connection. Where are the places (physical or virtual) you encounter it? What are the things that prevent connection? Who can you smile at or say hi to that you haven't in the past? Who have you been meaning to reach out to but keep putting off? How can you add a couple threads to your social fabric?

(This was supposed to be a blog post about celebrating acquaintances and the many types and shades of friendship. But this is what wanted to come out today, so that will have to wait)

Movement update and retrospective

This time of year in 2021, I was pretty sure I was going to die. Not of COVID, or at least that wasn't the only fear. I was essentially completely sedentary. Standing or walking for more than a minute was almost impossible. Taking the stairs in my house felt, at times, insurmountable. My knees would get angry, my back would hurt, my hips would protest. I was convinced that I would have a heart attack any day. 

I didn't do anything reasonable like talk to someone about it, or even practical things. I woke up every day, amazed I hadn't died in my sleep and simultaneously already exhausted for the day ahead. 

I have had a lot of cycles of increased and decreased movement in my life. In 2008 I was a runner and glowed with pride crossing the line at fun runs. By 2010, running was a distant memory, but my job and lifestyle kept me walking. In 2012, I was attending burlesque classes (is there video evidence? Yes. Will I share it? You have to earn that. And it's worth it for comedy reasons alone, I promise). In 2013, I was running again, hitting up the indoor track at nearby city gyms multiple times a week. In 2015, I was not but I walked a lot for work still. In 2017 I was attending a boutique fitness studio more days than not. 

And then the cycle changed. 2018 was both an amazing year (I married Kyle, I bought a house) and a devastating one (I planned a wedding, I bought a house, and Grandpa Tony passed unexpectedly). I took a couple of big falls, including (I believe) breaking my tailbone after slipping on stairs. I didn't listen to my body and tried to push through grief and pain even when it said no. I have a distinct memory of trying to push myself through a cardio class while sobbing with grief and refusing to give up even though my body was refusing to function.

And so it shut down. By Fall of 2019, I cried while trying to move boxes across campus for an office move. I was walking less because it hurt. My knees hurt and physio only went so far. My hips hurt, my back hurt, my body was saying no as loud as it could. 

And then COVID hit. I went from working on campus, where I was forced to walk even though it hurt (and I had already cut way back on unnecessary forays), to working at home. For the first few months I tried to get out and walk around the block. But it still hurt, and so I walked less and less frequently. I fell off from working with my trainer (the amazing Zita), for reasons that are all on me.  And this brings us back to when I thought I was going to die. It felt like this time I had gotten stuck. 

So, I reached back out to Zita. In June of 2021, we started small. I practiced walking by doing laps of my back yard. We found songs that made my heart sing and put moves to them. We build stability with focused work. And we focused on finding joy in movement where we could. That movement changed over the months - with weather, with pain, with interest. Some days I was doing a few songs of cardio or Pound. Other days I was aiming for 5 minute chunks of movement of various forms, or going into the studio to try things out, or doing part of an online class. 

More importantly, we got to work on my brain. I faced the fear and hurt that my body had not processed, and did not understand how to let go of. I incrementally taught it trust again, in tiny steps. I slowly, very slowly, started to get to understand what my body was telling me. I started learning how to recognize the smaller signals of 'yes', 'no', and 'I'm scared'. I began unpacking the ways I have been told, over and over again, that I can't trust my body. 

Jump forward. Today, I did fun stuff. I did back-loaded squats on a Smith machine with joy. I giggled as I did balance exercises and felt my body adjust without fear. I relished doing lat presses and tricep pulls. I played by choosing things that sparked feelings of fun and curiosity. I asked for more weight, because my body told me it wanted more of a challenge. And I stopped when it said it was done. 

And then I cried happy tears, because I am no longer walking around convinced I am about to fall over dead. I am excited to see what my body can do next, and what it tells me it wants to do. 

If you go back in these entries (I strongly suggest you don't), you will see a long journey with my body. You will see lots of work on trying to shape it, and learn to love it, and learn to live with it. You'll see a slow shift in focus, and a lot of fumbles along the way. That journey is far from over, at least I hope I have a lot more time with it. Because there I hope I have a lot of life left and a lot of joy left to experience. And a lot of time to play. 

Conflict Stories

My work involves conflict resolution. If you have known me for very long, you might be laughing right now - I am incredibly conflict averse. But, I am capable of learning and growth and have fallen in love with this work.

This week, I had the dubious joy of watching an incredibly bad training on conflict resolution. It had a good template, which I will happily adapt, but was awful. In it, the trainer described a conflict between herself and another person, in which she made multiple assumptions, called the other person a bully, and insulted the other person's intelligence, all while saying she was modelling how to break down a conflict rationally and reflectively. 

It was... fascinating. 

One of the biggest things that I have come to understand about conflict from my work is that it is all about the stories we tell ourselves. And there are a few things that are common to how we* tell stories about conflict:
*It is important to consider worldview. Coming from a Canadian culture, our worldview is highly individualistic (similar to the US). This cannot be generalized to other cultures without reflecting on underlying values, beliefs, and ways of being.

• We all tell the story in the way that makes us look as good as possible. While conscious lying does happen, I truly believe that much of this is unconscious - we remember a story in the way that we can live with, and that's with us in as good of a light as possible. (Inversely, we also tell the story in the way that makes the other person look as bad as possible. 
• We are quick to assume we know the other person's intent, and we will default to the worst intent possible for them and the best intent possible for us. 
• Most people are fundamentally irrational, but we crave rationality as an explanation for others' behaviour.
  
• We assume that the person's actions are about us (i.e. we center ourselves).

In the fall, someone did something that harmed me. It was a small thing, inconsequential in the grand scheme of life, but it's a good example for considering stories of conflict. The core of the harm came from them doing something that resulted in my exclusion from a group without talking to me about it first. It stung, and I did not practice what I preach. Instead of approaching them and having a compassionate curiosity-based conversation about it, I let it fester. Not ideal, but handy right now because it allows me to look back and reflect on the three stories I told myself about this act and how they relate to unpacking conflict.

Story One: this person did this because they don't respect me and/or don't care about my feelings. 

The first version of this story was one that put the person in the worst possible light. It assumed that the action (or the omission in this case) was deliberate and purposeful. It centered me - it assumed the decision was based on thinking about me. 

To be honest, this story served me. For the time that I held it, it allowed me to feel the hurt and anger I was feeling. Practicing compassionate curiosity is not just for others, it is for myself as well. I needed this story for a bit while I let the initial metaphorical wound scab over. 

Story Two: this person did this because they are a chicken and were too afraid to talk to me.

Eventually, I reflected and moved into a second story. In some ways this story is kinder - it doesn't assume worst intent like the first did. It still assumes rationality, however, insisting that this was a conscious choice made to avoid a difficult conversation. It also applies a negative personality trait (cowardice) to the person. 

This story also served me. It allowed me to move past the initial anger into a place of semi-understanding. It was a step in de-centering myself and having compassion, but it was still flawed in it's assumption of rationality and related character judgement.

Story Three: most people will avoid uncomfortable conversations if they can help it, often by 'putting it off' until it's either too late or no longer feels necessary. 

I finally landed on this version of the story. I don't know if the other person made a conscious choice to not talk to me, if they put it off until it was too late, or if they were in denial about needing to. But it is very human to avoid tough conversations. Let's face it, I have done the exact same thing by not talking to them about this situation. I have told myself I was going to talk to them multiple times and then just keep putting it off.

This story no longer assumes rationality or intent on their part. It also recognizes that they were likely making decisions out of the impact on them (discomfort) rather than centering me and my needs. It also doesn't assume or apply a negative personality characteristic based on my perception. All of that said, this story still doesn't mean it wasn't harmful or that it was the right choice. If this story is true, the person displayed a lack of leadership in a situation where they are in a leadership role. That is a failing on their part. 



Does this mean that every action or harm done by someone is excusable? No. Does it mean you should put up with bad treatment from others? Also no. For me, reflecting on and revising the story I have told myself is less about the accountability of the other person and more about my own healing. At the end of the day, they still messed up and I still have the right to make decisions about my boundaries and future interactions with this person based on the harm. What exactly that looks like might be different with story three than it would have been for story one, but that's up to me. What matters more is the healing that comes with the realization that it was never really about me in the end. 

Reset Part Two - Looking Forward

I have a funny relationship with New Year's. In many ways, September still feels more of a true 'new year' for me, having never left that school-based cycle. But there is something beautiful about a new cycle starting in the cold, dark days of winter. Of declaring possibility when the air is frigid, the ground is covered in white, and the light is just beginning to return. I have had my jaded years where I declared New Year's pointless and made up (ignoring that most of what we engage in as a society is made up) and silly. I have had my gung-ho years where I convinced myself I was going to change everything about who I am because of this symbolic date. 

Lately, I have mostly had reflective years. I think there is great power in symbolism, and in a date that we collectively pause to reflect, dream, and reset. A date we ask who we really want to be, and what it would take to get there. I think the problem is we see it as a linear path. That we can make a decision once, and either have 'will-power' (also a made up thing) to stick with it or not. And once we 'fail', that's it until the next year. We see a resolution as a single decision, not as a way of being. 

I don't make those kind of resolutions. But I do remind myself that I have resolve - I have determination, I have willingness to try, I have the ability to pick myself up for the fiftieth time and get back on the metaphorical horse. Life is made up of cycles, and that's not a bad thing. We can still set goals and work towards who we want to be, knowing that it will be a spiral path there rather than a straight line. 

So, who do I want to be?

I want to be kind and giving to myself. I want to listen to my body and continue rebuilding a relationship based on understanding what it needs and giving it that. I want to continue deconstructing all the ways I was taught to disbelieve and disobey and hate my body. I want to celebrate it, listen to it, and nourish it. 

I want to be curious. I want to continue learning and finding new ways to understand the world. I want to hear peoples' stories and understand their values and beliefs and consider the world through their lenses. I want to ask questions and sit with things that spark my brain and let myself ponder. 

I want to be in community. I consider community building and connection to be my fundamental purposes on this planet. I truly believe the only way to survive the crumbling of society is through community. If you are in my community, I am responsible for you and to you. Existing safety nets are being torn apart, so the only safety net we truly have is each other. 

And lastly, I want to be slow. I want to slow my responses, because responding before I have all the information is harmful. I want to pause and consider the nuance of situations, not jump straight in with an opinion. I want to celebrate the shades of grey in every story. This is one reason I am returning to this blog - I think one of the cardinal sins of social media is that it prioritizes quick, short responses. It encourages us to hit that 'like' or 'share' button quickly. It asks us to put our ideas into a limited number of characters. But there are very few situations that can be truly understood that quickly. I think we lost something when blogs got subsumed by social media. Blogs allow us to take as much space and time as we want to engage with an idea. They allow a reader to choose when to engage, and to spend as much time as they wish with our thoughts, without an algorithm trying to get them to scroll to the next thing. They remind us that we are speaking in and of our own world, that it is not a universal world but one shaped by our unique lives and experiences. This is why I am back here - my one concrete goal for this year is that I want to do weekly blog posts. I am going to pull way back on my posts (and shares) on social media for at least January, and instead I am going to be trying to post here each week. I don't know what they will all be about yet, but I'm excited to see what I end up with.

With that, I wish you a beautiful day and year to come. I look forward to how we navigate it together.