Happy 2024, friends.
This time of year always feels a bit like what I imagine a wormhole might feel like. In astrophysics, a wormhole connects two distant points in space in just a fraction of the time. It’s like a trapped door in the universe.
One day you’re putting up your out of office and feeling like you have miles of time to relax with family and eat cookies. And then *bloop* the next day you’re in a new calendar year starting to plan Spring Break trips YIKES.
Somewhere along the way you were supposed to live life to the fullest, completely and entirely relax and rejuvenate, catch up on reading / articles / friends / family, send a holiday card, reflect on the entire year and also set visions or intentions for the next.
It’s a lot. It’s unsettling to say the least. Be kind to yourself in these early weeks.
I try not to put pressure on myself to make intentions or goals at the beginning of the year, but I do adore any arbitrary opportunity for ritual and meaning making. I’m addicted! This year I loved trying out
‘s “Five lists” which offered a brief but comprehensive wraparound of accomplishments, yearnings, and dreams.The best lists, in my opinion, are those where we can surprise ourselves with what we write. We look forward so often, but it can be illuminating to look back. I used to be a prolific and chronological journal-er, but these days it’s delightfully random and sporadic. I miss big moments! But I capture meaningless others. Plus my penmanship has become absolutely horrid. Anyone else?
I’ve been doing this so consistently that I’ve stopped judging myself about it and just accepted this is my weird brain now!
I was leafing through my 2023 journal the other day (which is only a fraction full) when I found a scribbled snippet from a dream I’d had in May lats year.
In the dream, I very clearly said, “make duds like clockwork.” And I had a mouthful of Oreo crumbs which sprayed and spat out of my mouth as I said it.
Make duds like clockwork.
I have continued reflecting on the possible meaning of this dream as I’m shot out the other side of this wormhole into 2024.
One interpretation may be how funny it is to do spit take with a mouthful of crumbs (it is). More Oreos in 2024!
It’s a perfect reminder for me as I face another year of conjuring and putting things out there which are almost always terrifying. Another year of standing by myself, most importantly, in what I write, create, try, and share. I don’t think of “dud” here as meaning a literal failure (that is subjective anyway!). Something becomes a “dud” in the relative sense if I can release my grasp on how it lands or who likes it in order to justify its existence. Instead, I can work to focus on the authentic heart of the idea and the courage to put it out there. The making, rather than the landing.
A dud isn’t necessarily an idea that’s fizzled, but simply an idea (value neutral!) that’s part and parcel of a continuous string (a practice) of ideas being put out there. Does that make sense? Bringing the just keep going / keep making energy into 2024.
Recently, a friend sent me the below clip of Rick Rubin talking to Andrew Huberman about creativity. He’s talking about “making something with the freedom of [thinking] ‘this is something I’m making for myself for now.’” He says, “everything I make is a diary entry.”
That hit for me, though I was kind of peeved it did. My friend and I have this ongoing joke that while we loathe the circle jerk of white male brains interviewing each other endlessly for their very longwinded podcasts (the full ep is here, at a whopping three hours!)… we somehow keep listening. Do you see what the patriarchy has done!?
I wrote last year about my relationship between creativity and my womb, which took me by surprise. I wrote about the need to let go of my clutch of creative ideas and let them hatch, fall to the earth and be crushed, or perhaps carried away by a hungry raven.
To make duds, you gotta wrestle with your perfectionism, your grip of control on how you’re perceived (as if you have it!), and the scarcity mindset that your creativity is limited. It’s not. I love to read
daily to remind me of this.If everything I make is a diary entry, then maybe every diary entry is a seed of making. I leaf back through my motley journal, which is no longer guided by the “dear diary” it was for many years. Here are some of the fragments I find:
Everything we experience is SACRED.
Dangerous old woman; Crone energy.
Motherhood as a profound practice in impermanence.
Accept all the love holding you.
Soft underbelly; Beautiful plumage.
Weakness is not receiving.
Freedom is relative.
Hot mess; Typos.
You get the point (maybe? do I?)
So, I am committing to continue to make duds like clockwork and inviting you to do the same.
In the 1997 sci-fi film Contact starring Jodi Foster (which I consistently and lovingly refer to as “Jodi Foster’s Contact” as it has a mythic place in my 14-year old heart) she plays a scientist who decodes instructions from the distant star Vega to build a machine — she guesses maybe a time machine? Said machine is built to spec and Jodi Foster gets into the pod. Once inside, she experiences almost 18 hours of mirage where she travels to distant places and sees her deceased father. A wormhole. To the spectator, though, the pod simply drops to the ground and Jodi F. is out for just a few seconds. Ground control captures only static.
It’s a dud by some standards. But a cool, very expensive, and worthwhile dud.
Speaking of awesome duds, I’m officially returning from maternity leave and very excited to get back to working with clients in the various ways that I do: narrative coaching, executive thought partnership, mindfulness and yoga, and now — support navigating fertility in all its wildness. And more. I’ll share more about this other work I do in a later post! But reach out if something sparks your interest.
And starting this week, if you’re in LA, you can find me teaching yoga at Love Yoga in Venice on Fridays at 6pm. I’m also cooking up a monthly series of ‘meditating with plants’ at Merrihew’s plant nursery in Santa Monica - stay tuned!
Yours in duds,
Jess