prompts for looking forward
turning the page
Hello again!
Thank you for joining along here. For the new folks in the room, I’m (very belatedly) offering up my responses to year-end reflection prompts — courtesy of Moon Lists, a divine prompt journal with an equally inspiring Substack — for 2023. This is part two, “Prompts For Looking Forward” and part one can be found here.
I’ll end with my Away/ Toward list — it’s similar to the In/Out lists we all have, but a little less black and white. I move slowly and instant changes have never worked for me.
Next letter will either be prompt responses, or be a short essay. I haven’t decided yet! See you then!
🂱 ♡ Espero que tu año vaya bien ♡ 🂱
Prompts For Looking Ahead
“First Thing’s First”
I’m starting off the year putting my pursuits first, but before I can do that I need to clarify them. I spent a lot of time this year, 2023, tamping down on my own desires out of… Fear? Embarrassment? I’m not sure. But I think fear. I want to regain my power so I can once again go out, be fun, talk to people and feel genuine joy. I am a human capable of loving, showing up and being sensitive. From the rubble I can tell this: creating art, going outside, and meaningful relationships are the things that let me fall asleep unburdened at night. These days, I try to do the fun thing first. Why not? Mornings have always sucked for me, I might as well get up and read or paint instead of lying in bed pretended to sleep in but rolling over and trying to guess the time on my phone across the room every few minutes.
Minor Edit
Okay so, more often than not I fall flat on my face when trying to implement ~big lifestyle changes~. I’ve traced it to this: I’m trying to make too many life changing changes all at once, and I’m not investigating these desires past the bright car they showed up in. “Get really skinny” and “become extremely and devastatingly well loved by the general population” — are not realistic goals, and only really set me up to feel terrible about myself when they magically don’t come true. What am I really asking for here? Maybe “get back in tune with my body” and “call a friend once a week” are more apt places to begin.
Zooming back out, I have a few habits I’m slowly trying to cultivate. I have a habit tracker that allows me to check off daily completion of a habit.
I’m trying to focus on this month:1) stretch
2) sit with and study a book in Spanish every day
3) tidy my desk up at the end of a day
4) write
5) paint at least 30 min a day
I try to do these daily, but I don’t punish myself if I miss. At our yearly NYE journal reflection gathering I shared how I dislike New Year’s resolutions because I don’t like starting my year off with a deficit. I like a life of “could” not “should.” If I drift I can reorient without issue — a ship leaves no path to be compared against.I’ll Dabble
Experimentation! What do I want to dabble in this year? Exploring femininity and sensuality. Conscious consumption. Enjoying my town more. Becoming a regular somewhere new. Getting better at the drums. Telling you all this.
I want to live larger than life!Still Me
At the end of the day, no matter how much stuff I pack up onto myself, I’m still here under the plaster, the flowers and all the rest. I know what I want but don’t always know how to listen to myself. Last letter I touched on my propensity for psychic self-flagellation, and it’s a foundation that serves no purpose. I think a lot about me in my memory — a wide eyed, sad little girl, hiding from anger and confusion, opting to throw my body underwater for somewhere invisible to cry. She’s still here, but I’m so much larger than that. I’m a race car driver, a lasso, a mountain on rollerblades. I don’t need to settle into grooves carved out by someone seeking shelter from catastrophe — that canyon will always be there to receive flowers and coins.
Me, me when I had my "I have teal eyebrows phase," me cheesing exhaustedly while running a show, me on my birthday a few weeks ago Mark As Spam
Okay, so this is maybe obnoxious but: I need to get over feeling embarrassed to be open with people.
For the last five years I’ve been walking on eggshells online because I’m afraid of being perceived incorrectly by………. “the haters1". I am opinionated, loud, and have dramatic eyebrows — I’m walking around practically begging for the label “massive bitch.” This isn’t baseless paranoia either, believe me this: the haters walk among us.
The haters fall into two categories:
- those who directly message me to be haters (honestly, power to them)
- and those who are a brick-face in the invisible wall of people who’s identity I’m unsure about, but am convinced they exist and are watching my every move
Is spending time worrying about people who may or may not exist healthy? Definitely not. Did I once publish an extremely vulnerable comic detailing the violent assault I’d just experienced before finding out a day later someone I worked with told all our friends and my boss (who she was sleeping with at the time and was convinced I was trying to fuck… Girl, no that’s your mess) that I made it all up to get sympathy points, and people believed her? Yes, and I’m ashamed to say that fucked with me more than I wanted, and still does, five years later. I was so devastated by the whole ordeal that I gave up drawing comics, deleted my Instagram and left Missoula. Why try to fight back? At my lowest, my emergency flare was cause for ridicule. I had nothing left to offer.
But now (positive time) I’ve got some more resolve: giving these people — who honest to god probably don’t even think about me — continued power over the trajectory of life is so stupid. Unsubscribe! Block! Report! Delete! The season of blogging is in!Budding Obsession
Watercoloring — I’ve mentioned this a bunch already, but god it feels nice to have a visual medium click after so long. I was a freelance illustrator/ designer for a few years and so thoroughly burnt out my desire to create visual art that I thought I’d never recover. I’m happy to report I have, and am back to using art as an exploratory form of relaxation once again. I’ve finally freed myself of the nagging insanity of “is this piece gonna be my meal ticket out of here?”
Scrolling — Ugh, lately this one has gotten so bad for me. I’ve struggled with a legitimate addiction to Instagram since probably high school, and while I’ve kicked it a handful of times, I almost alway end up crawling back… First deactivating, then reactivating but only using on Safari, then boom — 3 hours of reels in bed.
Businesses share their hours online, shows are posted in stories, and DMs are pretty much where conversations happen these days (specifically the casual ones with acquaintances). I’ve taken it off my phone and iPad, but when I need to post something, I download the app, do my business, then immediately get sucked into reels, and then delete the app. I have no solution here other than I am hoping to steer more positive change.
An anecdote: During my most recent bout of extreme scrollddiction I took IG off my phone, blocked every social media website on Safari, and thought that’d put a swift end to the zoned out phone-facing, but no…. I found myself sinking serious time into change.org! Like excuse me? What the fuck? How did I even get into scrolling and refreshing on change.org? I couldn’t tell you! That being said…. I fell down a hole for petitions looking to ban LED headlights and signed every single one, because fuck those things.Notebooking — This year I returned to notebooking and journaling, an act I’d pretty much abandoned entirely sometime around 2019. The change comes from two notebooks: The first, Moon Lists.
Moon Lists is a glorious weekly prompt journal that fit easily into my cadence of coffee shopping and ideating on the weekends. I switch up where I go, but take a Cafe Roze session for example — I savor a cortado or glass of wine, write my responses, read my book, have a cheeseburger, and unwind. Sometimes I’ll go sit in the park with my tiny backpacking chair when it’s nice out and watch the river. Sometimes I go to Smith & Lentz for a beer and chit chat with the lovely staff between answer segments. Setting changes, but unspooling my brain at the end of the week has been a very impactful change for me.
In addition to this, I implemented a daily planner. Jacob got me this one for my birthday and it’s amazing to use! It’s honestly how I got my shit together enough to post here, and keep track of all the other little good-for-my-life things I try to do. I no longer worry about keeping everything in my brain at all times, because well, I can’t.Writing here! — I’m grateful to have a space like this where I can write freely and at length. I’ve long struggled how to talk about anything ~real~ on Instagram for a few reasons: It feels like you have one shot to sum it up, you gotta choose the right image, you can’t be too open, and once you share about some hardship you can never ever ever mention it again. Maybe that’s not true, but it’s certainly felt that way and I’m glad I took the leap to brain dump for myself here. Plus, I always liked Instagram for the finsta captions.
Yesterday's watercoloring session before I had to cry uncle. Nobody is more familiar with the Smith & Lentz light switches arrangement than I.
Cultivating Care
Something I’ve noticed is that I have trouble nurturing relationships, and then wonder why they’re not strong. Realistically I’m just a little out of practice and have had a years-long fling with being extremely shy / agoraphobia stemming from my assault. I will flake on a hang because I can’t bear the thought of someone having a bad time. I will take a tiny shot of tequila before meeting up with someone new to settle my nerves. I will push a hang endlessly to outrun admonishment and disappointment that probably doesn’t exist. It sucks, and I want to show up for others and work on befriending new folks. BUT before all that, I need to cultivate the care for myself. I struggle with preemptive punishment, and know that the sick comforts of self sabotage can be released.
Me and the queen of nurturing friendships suntanning by the pool with a piña colada — she’s an inspiration in nurturing friendships, and very gentle with me, perhaps her most emo friend of all. The Projected Possible
It’s all starting to come together! I can be glitter, I can dance and laugh and not be afraid to stand in my self among others. I want to be goofier and less preoccupied with trying to read the mind of the person I’m talking to. I want to read my own, it’s sure as fuck been long enough.
Away — Things To Move Away From
Waking up and immediately deciding to be pissed the fuck off
Daily coffee
Hyperfixation
Wondering why I wasn’t there
Flaking as a protective measure
Anonymizing my ideas
Wondering and getting extremely stressed out about if there’s a bunch of dandruff on the back of my head that I can’t see but everyone else can
Finishing books I don’t really like
Stress-buying
Expectations, generally
Toward — Things To Move Toward
Smiling as big as I can
Tea in its many varieties and medicinal aspects
Morning routines of joy / doing the fun thing first
Letting myself win
Turning my phone off
Inside / outside clothes
Just being fine with being embarrassing (*dies immediately*)
Talking to myself
Realistic quality of life upgrades
More skin
Making the move
Walking instead
My lil’ camp chair and my journals down by the river.
Thanks again y’all, talk soon. Also, I promise I’ll stop futzing with the settings and title stuff, I’ve finally settled on a name!<3
“The haters” to be read in the style of Wendy Williams, “The Killer”