Licorice and Self-Help

If you are curious what I’ve been doing recently, I’ve mostly been getting to know myself better, and chief among my discoveries is that I actually really like candy and likely much more than carrots despite several years of pretending otherwise, and also that I require a steady diet of inspiration for the sake of my soul’s wellbeing. The latter includes a not-insignificant quantity of the sort of “self-books” that you probably laugh about with your cool friends, of which I am not one. I will never be the cool friend besides that one time period in fifth grade when I was wearing really on-point baggy jeans and faded Nirvana shirts inherited from my older siblings. I’d appreciate if we all stop pretending that we aren’t secretly devouring woo-woo books and podcasts and proudly mark these texts as “read” on our goodreads accounts and our hearts so that I don’t feel like I have to sneak these books in between my solemn volumes of Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen. Like, excuse me, yes, I’d like to help myself, since I seem to only become needier AF with age. So, yes, I’m going to rent that goddamn book about the Enneagram and that other one about setting boundaries, take dutiful notes like a freshman college student and talk about it to everyone I come within a 6 foot radius of. 

 Candy and inspiration! Sufficient, and dare I say, abundant quantities of each to help fill in my soul food pyramid. In terms of candy, I’ve recently and historically been enjoying licorice of all stripes: twizzlers, red-vines, bougie Australian soft liquorice. I also enjoy chocolate that combines salt with crunch/texture. But, I’m pretty open. 

 In terms of inspiration, I find it in a lot of places, including but certainly not limited to self-help books. I not only find inspiration in the content but also in the actual process of finding it (insert some multisyllabic word starting with an “e” that could be epidemiology or epistemology or something, but actually maybe is heuristics?). I am a weaver (this concept not only applying to how I ideally show up in social movements but also how I tend to show up in lots of parts of my life), which means I am happiest and most aligned when I am finding/making/facilitating internal and external connections between people, ideas, groups, things. It makes me stupidly (smartilily?) excited to consider something as mundane and delicious as Old Dutch Dill Pickle Chips in the context of living in an ever-expanding multiverse; like, how thee fuck doth that crinkly bag of vinegary goodness emerge from and interact with the cosmos? I also light a sacred heart-fire anytime that a conversation with a friend relates back to an idea I read/wrote/encountered/mused about, vice versa. I enjoy imperfectly tracking (and forgetting) themes that arise in my life and am satisfied and proud when they start to organically mate with other themes that have arisen, creating theme-babies and families, which sometimes in-fight and get divorced and other times implode into new mental black holes to fall into. 

 I really like projects like The Marginalian (Formerly Brain Pickings), because as best as I can tell, the creator also spends her day underlining gorgeous sentences emphatically and noisily and probably keeps at least 16 journals for slightly different purposes and yet somehow (?!) churns out beautiful, mind-opening syntheses of literature and art on a regular schedule. Such undertakings are truly the highest form of my love language. And, while “regular” I am most surely not(!) and while my 16 different journals remain on uneasy and perplexing terms, I would like to actively water this love language of mine by intermittently and arbitrarily noting some sources of inspiration and connection that have been lighting up different parts of my brain! I would also like to note that weaving is a beautiful tendency even when there is no active creating or producing, such as found in The Marginalian, and that it’s okay if your brain, like mine, is less equipped to create beautiful, meticulous, multimodal blog posts like Maria Popova does. It feels equally as valuable to keep these connections mistily swirling around inside of my skin. Today I feel called to note a few of my recent inspirations/connections, but adroit synthesis is not the goal:) I also used the hefty support/structure of a padlet to help me show my thoughts! (A padlet is a sort of easy and visual organizing tool that a lot of teachers use.) 

 You can check it out here on my Padlet! I’d love to know any of your related thoughts; please feel free to comment on any of the posts!