Well, hello there, negative voice.

Well, hello there, negative voice.

It’s Monday and it’s beautifully blustery here in Sausalito. I say “beautifully” because I’m working on tricking my mind into thinking that beautiful means windy and rainy and the fact that I live on a hill and possibly someday my house is going to fall down said hill and what would I do if that happened?

The past month has been a bear for me, mentally. Like wowsers. I wonder if you can relate. I was on a high in December and early January – soaring into the Near Year! Sleeping so well! Exercising and eating healthfully! My energy was through the roof.

But then, a black cloud slowly creeping in the distance, too far off for me to see it, had suddenly taken residence over my mind, sat there and took a shit in my brain.

Thanks to years of therapy, listening to self help podcasts, going on retreats, etc, etc, I knew was happening. December and early January involved a state of thrilling expansiveness in my work and my personal life – I signed new clients, my relationships were getting stronger, I was practicing healthy boundaries.

In response to this new way of being, my ego was pissed as hell.

Like, I’m going to take you down pissed. Like, more angry than I could remember. Yes, I’ve had negative thoughts and yes, I’ve had hard times, but this voice was a demon from a crypt I didn’t know existed.

It lashed out on Tyler, big time. It turned me into a dragon – with spikes. It wanted to take down my marriage. Thankfully, I have another voice inside of me that is calm and stable and wise and wouldn’t let that happen. Tears ensued, I felt like crap for picking fights over nothing. The voice was lashing out on the things that mattered to me most:

My marriage
My feelings of worthiness
My feelings of worthiness around my creativity
Basically, if something was truly important to me, it lashed out

I’ve read about this. Author Steven Pressfield calls this “the resistance” in his masterpiece The War of Art. He says everyone—every.single.person.—experiences resistance when trying to start something new. And that, importantly, resistance isn’t ourselves; it is another voice entirely. If you even remotely connect to this, please consider listening to Steven on Oprah’s SuperSoul podcast. He explains it eloquently.

I’m happy to say that with mountains of therapy and some of the best friends on the planet, I’m on the other side. I’m feeling stronger. I’m asking for help. I’m thinking of joining a mastermind to help transition some of my creative ideas into realities (more on that in a future newsletter).

Looking back on that mental shit storm, I realize a lot of my feelings were tied up in shame (shame for not being happy all the time, shame for thinking that I could make a dream a reality, shame for thinking my ideas were any good….), and the struggle with self-forgiveness. That is a toughie. I went into a full-on shame spiral the other day at my co-working space after rolling my eyes to a friend after another woman was loud and having a hard time. It was cruel, and I hope the woman who was struggling didn’t see my eye roll. It was mean-spirited.

The topic of self-forgiveness reminds me of a quote by author Glennon Doyle:

“The only way to live is to forgive yourself constantly for being human.”

So, yeah. Thanks for reading. If you’ve felt this way, I’d love to hear from you. We aren’t alone out there. We all feel the same things, maybe at different times, but they are all part of the human experience, and it is my mission to give voice to these feelings. To see joy in giving voice to them, even if joy isn’t the first term that comes to mind when in the moment.

I feel joyful that you all are in my community, that you share with me and that, by reading, you are opening yourself up to being vulnerable, too. Thank you.

Last week my friend Nikki sent me her newsletter and in it, I read a poem I found so profound that I sent her this note:

“Jack's poem spoke so directly to my heart and my current experience, that I felt myself holding my breath while I was reading, afraid of how the next line would put words to my soul that I wasn't able to articulate otherwise.”

I hope it moves you, too.

For Courage
By Jack O’Donohue

When the light around lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside,

When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,

When one voice commands
Your whole heart,
And it is raven dark,

Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world.

Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light,

Know that you are not alone,
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes,
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night-corner.

Invoke the learning
Of every suffering
You have suffered.

Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.

A new confidence will come alive
To urge you towards higher ground
Where your imagination
will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!

Very important disclaimer: I am *still* in the “delicate flower” phase of this newsletter, so I would like to request zero feedback - Z.E.R.O. - other than overtly positive comments (i.e. “love it, Katie!” “this is awesome!”). I may want constructive feedback on this project at some point, but today is not that point. Thanks for understanding and respecting the delicate flower inside me.

Oh, business jargon,
how I love you.

I’m lucky to work from home most days. Lucy is a fabulous companion and, without judging eyes, I get to break out into solo dance parties at my leisure (for proof, check out my new IG account: love_on_the_sidewalk). I also enjoy going into client offices for the socialization, but there’s one aspect of office life that never ceases to amaze me.

That aspect: business jargon.

I mean, wow. At times in meetings I feel like my brain is doing linguistic somersaults trying to figure out plain-speak for what the person across from me just said. Here are a few of my favorite zingers and what I think they mean:

Business jargon: Our team is going to have to climb the mountain for this one.
Translation: We have to do a lot of work before getting to our goal.

Business jargon: Jim has to do a lot of heavy lifting for this to work.
Translation: Jim sucks. We don’t think he’s going to do a good job.

Business jargon: Lets circle back when all is said and done.
Translation: Email me when you’re finished with the project.

Business jargon: I’m not sure if this is in our wheelhouse.
Translation: Please pawn this off on someone else; we have no idea what we’re doing.

Business jargon: We need to circle the wagons on this deliverable.
Translation: We all need to get on the same page because none of us know what we’re doing.

Brenda’s Back.
(R.I.P. Bruce)

Back in December’s newsletter, I wrote about Brenda, our resident skunk. She was getting nice and cozy under our house and, in a neighborly gesture, I decided to let her enjoy the holidays with her skunk friends while Tyler and I visited our families. I thought, if she wasn’t gone by the time we got back, I’d call the most humane pest control person to delicately pick her up in a diamond-encrusted box and place her gingerly in a forest filled with skunks so she could live our her life in peace.

Well, this turned out not to be necessary because upon returning home, big-B was gone. I sent her good wishes and went about my life.

That is, until last week. It started raining again and pretty soon, Brenda’s presence was unmistakable. At one point, our downstairs smelled so pungently like skunk, I had to go upstairs for air. Tyler and I had a convo about this, but neither of us went so far as to call pest control. While walking Lucy one night, Tyler ran into Jim, our 70-year-old optometrist neighbor, and Luke, his labradoodle. Jim was peeved at Brenda’s existence and said he was going to do something about it.

Tyler told me, and I groaned. Poor Brenda. But then again, I wanted my downstairs back.

So fast-forward to the following morning and Tyler wakes up early to go to the gym. I decide to sleep in, and when I get up he is upstairs and cannot wait to talk to me.

Tyler: You aren’t going to believe this.

Me: OMG, what.

Tyler: I saw Brenda this morning.

Me: YOU WHAT??!?!? Tell me everything. Every minute. Leave nothing out. (I’m standing half way up the stairs at this point and am unable to move because I’m so riveted.)

Tyler: So, I'm driving down our street and I see something moving. I look closer, and it’s her! She makes a left, so I decide to follow her because I want to get a picture.

Me: Wait, you turned the wrong way--away from the gym--at 5:40 a.m., just to get Brenda’s photo?

Tyler: Of course.

Me: (Speechless and beaming at the realization that this is a major reason why I married this man.)

Tyler: I’m driving suuuper slow because I don’t want to scare her. She was so sneaky. She kept snaking between cars and I almost couldn’t catch her.

Me: She must do this all the time. Maybe it’s her every-morning routine.

Tyler: Finally, she goes up a driveway and stops. I figure this is my only chance to get photo evidence of her existence, so I pull up the driveway after her.

Me: You pulled up the driveway?! Up another person’s driveway? With your brights on?

Tyler: Yes, obliviously. Right at that moment she turns around to look at me and I get in position to take the perfect pic, but then I spill coffee on my finger and it slips and my photo turns out blurry.

Me: YOU GOT THE PHOTO???!

Tyler then shows me the photo above and I’m so happy about this that I run into his arms and thank him profusely.

Hands down, best part of my day.

Later that day, I'm on the phone with my Mom while driving home from the gym and, right as I'm telling her the photo part of the story, I pass a pouf of fresh skunk hair in the middle of the highway.

Me: Mom!

Mom: What, are you OK?

Me: It’s Bruce! Brenda must have been going to visit her lover Bruce this morning. He must have tried to cross the highway and gotten flattened.

Mom: Um, hate to cut you off, but I gotta go. Talk later.

So maybe not everyone is as riveted by the Brenda/Bruce saga.

By the way: yesterday an exterminator was parked on our street. Sigh.

Our memories of Brenda will live on.

Smoothie Saga 3.0

My smoothie saga continues. Lately, I’ve been wondering if I should expand my horizons beyond my mainstay ingredients. I verbalized this thought a few weeks back before getting ready for bed and asked the rhetorical question to Tyler as to why I’m not losing weight (not exactly a goal, but I thought would be a byproduct) after eating daily smoothies for nearly three months.

Tyler’s sheepish, yet loving response: “You might want to look at your smoothie ingredients.”

This stopped me short. What did he mean, my smoothie ingredients?! I use only whole foods and animal protein and almond milk and and and…you get the idea.

I went to bed wondering what he meant. The next morning, upon adding up the calories in my smoothie, I found out.

Yeaaaaahhhh. This realization was followed by a shame spiral/rapid text messaging to friends that I had been eating a triple dessert smoothie every fucking day for months.

I vowed to put more spinach in my smoothies, but by day two of that plan, they tasted like crap.

Within the same week, I spilled smoothies all over my kitchen counter twice – thanks A LOT to the people who designed the Magic Bullet cups – not workable at all (see below). What were they thinking with those little legs on the bottom - MADE TO TIP OVER?!?!?

I capped off that week by catapulting half of a blueberry smoothie all over our living room rug, purely by accident.

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