patience

Hello again. I hope this letter finds you well. (If you'd like, access the audio recording here.)

I’m sitting on my porch listening to the hum of buildings all around me. It’s been hot lately, and I've been pacing back and forth between the air conditioning and the sauna right outside my door. I'm a cool weather person I think, but I really can’t stand air conditioning. So I practice patience, as the days slide by, as the seasons change, and I relish every cool breeze against my skin.

I’ve been thinking about patience and timing, not only with the seasons of weather but also with the seasons of my life. I'm remembering that this is a new season I am in, a new experiment, and have been in since I left my job last year. Really, I can’t believe it’s only been a year, or a little over at this point. I feel changed. My world feels changed.

Trust has been so important in this season. Trust that I don’t need to know all the details all the time, that I don’t need to force anything, to hurry up and get over or through it. Trust that in those moments when it feels like nothing is happening, I'm being given an opportunity to shift my focus, to loosen, to soften. To rest. To play. To connect. To go slowly. To take care of myself. To prepare for that thing I'm calling in. To honor that which I already have, to be grateful for the treasures in my life. Each and every moment of this life is an opportunity. Even the moments that feel like a standstill. There’s an opportunity there.

During these unknown moments I feel there’s a temptation to read meaning into everything. I could do that. At times it feels like it could be quite playful, and I've recognized moments where it could get rather heavy. It’s not necessarily about balancing between the two, but about experimenting with what feels good. And that’s something I realized the other day - one of my guiding ideas is to experiment with what feels good. And I mean really feels good, in the deep layers of my body, not just what seems good to my mind.

My mind isn’t really equipped to make those decisions. My mind likes to avoid things. To know things, to define things. My body is calling for me to go deeper. To seek the harmony that can exist when I go another route. When I have tough conversations. When I remain detached and curious. When I set meaning free and allow it to mutate, never clinging too tightly. Fear can play a role here, and it isn’t to stop me in my tracks. It isn’t to say - this doesn’t feel good, turn around! Its role could be to guide me to those spaces where real liberation is waiting. In the confrontations. In the acknowledgement. In the suppressed emotions. There’s opportunity there. And sometimes when I follow it, suddenly when things had seemed to be going so slowly, I can witness such rapid energy. In those moments, time feels like an illusion.

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Time can also feel so pressurized, so adrenalized. Lately, the calendar is often on my mind, bill cycles, money due. It can sort of feel like a carousel I don’t remember getting on, but just found myself there one day. Even within this patience experiment, there are many days I'll wake up in worry, because another day has gone by and I just don’t know if I'll have money to pay my bills. It feels like I can’t keep up sometimes.

I've been redefining what bills mean, what they symbolize, and coming into a new relationship with money for this new season. I’ve unsubscribed from the old rhythm of exchanging my body’s energy five days a week for eight hours a day, receiving every two weeks. I understand this works for some, and that it wasn’t working for me. I don’t set up my receiving and exchanging mechanisms to run for a given number of hours for a given number of dollars anymore. I'm inviting in new ways of receiving. New ways of exchanging. I'm allowing for something different, without forcing myself to figure it all out right now.

And even when I'm in that space, remembering patience, remembering my worth and value and gifts, remembering myself, I can still feel the pressure of time, of the calendar. I experiment with smiling at the pressure, with acknowledging it, but not acting on it. I experiment with staying in that remembering space, where anything can happen, and smiling at the part that says - time is running out. You’ll likely fail.

Time is running out. And what is time? I've heard many say that life is not counted in time, but in breath. Time is a way the mind organizes life. And what is breath? Could breath be the way the body invites life in? Is breath life itself? Could it be that money is in the air I breathe? My breath could be the exchange. I breathe in all that I need to be free, and I exhale all that I have to share.

It takes patience, I remind myself. Not necessarily time, but patience and trust. This is a new season. And I also remind myself that transformation, that receiving can happen in any way at any time in any amount - leaving space for nothing to happen, and for everything to happen all at once, and for things to happen bit by bit. Time can be an illusion.

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Patience and timing remind me of my responsibilities: remaining open, being aware, redefining and unsubscribing, caring for myself. They also remind me that I am not always in control. This isn’t an equation I can solve. It isn’t a test I have to master. There’s nothing I need to prove.

I don’t have the answers, but I do have the will to experiment, and I do have trust. I also have the remembrance that money isn’t the point. That focusing on money might be a distraction. Maybe it’s my mind that’s fixated on it - that seems likely. In zooms awareness. Not fact, but awareness. An idea. Another layer of the experiment.

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I’m so grateful for everything that has shaped and enriched the landscape within me. On my porch sits a person very much changed from the person who sat here a year ago. Thanks to experiments. Thanks to trust. Thanks to patience.

Thanks to you, for being here as it all pours through me.

Keep an eye out for my next letter, take care, and as always...

...if you need me, come find me - I've gone gnomin’.

-katelyn