2023-01-17 Journal Entry

🍃 Season: ❄️ Winter 🔆 Weekday: Tuesday 🗓 Date: January 17, 2023 📅 Week: Jan 16 – Jan 22, 2023

I’m baaaaack, didn’t you miss me. I’ve been off on retreat for the past week, and it feels weird to be staring at a screen right now. When I got in the retreat center and they asked if I’d like to give up my phone right there or wait and give it up later. I just about threw it across the room just to get rid of it as quickly as possible. So far, I looked at Twitter for about 20 seconds, and I was already like “wait why do I really care about this,” then responded to some texts, and that was about it.

Retreats are interesting! They’re a bit of a weird mixed space — at least in the week I was there, maybe you settle in over time — where everything is fast and slow, great and terrible, joyous and miserable. This was a metta retreat, where everyone is essentially learning to orient more towards kindness, joy, and love. Of course, that involves sitting still in silence, walking back and forth in a room in silence, and never talking to another soul the entire time you’re there. To inspire happiness, of course.

Joking aside, those things do seem to work. I wonder to some degree why it is that if we actually can orient ourselves more to the things we meditate on and push our brains toward, why that isn’t a more common practice for many things. Why are there no teachings orienting us towards business success, sexual prowess, or winning friends and influencing people? I’m surprised there’s no Business Buddha who took on that same role — the world is full of suffering, so if you can capitalize on that in some way you’ll be rich. I suppose that’s what the phones are for, huh.

That technology bit is some of what I thought about while I was there too. Not really the technology part, but the way we orient our lives. I was struck by how nice it was to have so little light and wishing that cities were just darker most of the time. After the final evening sit, when the sun has gone down and all that’s lit is the ambient soft glow of the sidewalk lights and the kitchen below, it’s like our own version of sending paper lanterns off into the sky, little balls of light with our wishes, carrying us forward.

Beth Sternlieb was one of the teachers this week, and I found her to be the most insightful and moving of the teachers there. (Not as if it’s some competition!) What I really appreciated was that her orientation towards teaching was firmly grounded in us being compassionate, especially to ourselves as we go through the practice. In some way, I appreciated the implication that kindness and compassion to ourselves is one of the ways we learn to be more compassionate to others. Acknowledging when things are hard or painful for ourselves and learning the patterns inside us is the same practice we need to recognize it in others and help relieve their own suffering.

I’m writing this later in the day than usual — it’s about 3pm at this point — and I can really feel my energy dying out. I’m also struck by just how loud this place can be sometimes. Loud not just in the auditory sense, but also in the emotional sense. I have this sense that there’s so much for me to do and decide in this moment, and there’s not really a way to do less of it. I’m trying to stick to some core practices (like my morning pages!) that help me stay grounded, but I also just know that there are so many things I should be doing along the way. That said, I’m also noticing that I have a bit more focus after the retreat, so I’m somewhat actually doing them instead of sitting here and thinking about doing them, which is really helpful. I should probably write out a list of things to do tomorrow, since I think there are several: submit my passport stuff, send Dad’s letter out, and so on. Ugh.

I’m also currently kinda fishing for some freelancing job opportunities. Independence, babyyyyyy. Let’s get it. I’d like to be able to spend more time doing other things like writing and have the flexibility to go on longer retreats and so on. That said, my current strategy is basically just going to startups that send me cold emails and “no … unless?”, which so far hasn’t worked out. By you know, gotta ask or you’ll never get it.

I’m writing this on an iPad with an external keyboard, and not gonna lie this is actually kinda nice! I can see this being chill when traveling or going out to coffee shops and so on. Is it worth buying a whole new iPad for? I don’t actually know, honestly. Seeing how VSCode with GitHub spaces is the real test here.

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