Turning It All Over
May I remain willing to engage in self-study
hi there.
How are you managing the crisis of authoritarianism? I am, of course, heart-broken by the snowballing cruelty perpetrated and enabled by the president and his administration, but I’m also deep in action-mode. Making calls, writing letters, singing and chanting in the cold with other people, talking about it… it all helps. How are you?
I started writing this post on the first day of what felt like the longest January in history. The beginning is a bit long, a rambling preamble that creates one context for reflection.
Something I decided just now is that if I’m going to write with more regularity on this platform, I need to get comfortable with publishing the roughest drafts: like the kind of drafts where the connections I’m moving towards are not even visible to me yet, and where my precious readers will inevitably think “ohhhhh, I see where she is trying to go… maybe if she moved the first paragraph to the end and wrote a little more at the beginning about the context….” that kind of thing. My inner critic is quite loud these days, so I’m mostly working on things that I promise myself I’ll never publish or show, but I know I need to get over that. The internet turns everything over so quickly; the first page of my inbox fills and spills over in a day or less, and I can never find the same article twice on any homepage or social media platform unless I text myself a link, though the texts keep crashing in on the shore, too, so I don’t know if that’s a very sound way of keeping track of what I want to get back to later anyway.
Plus, when is this magical “later” anyhow?
Better to just write the things that are on my mind, now, knowing that those thoughts, too, will soon be part of the sediment that sinks to the bottom of the river, and that the specific meanderings and markings will as quickly be soaked up into a general consciousness or zeitgeist, never to be traced back to the fingers currently typing them.
Five years ago, the president incited an insurrection. I was in composition theory class shortly after watching footage of Trump followers storming the Capitol; erecting a noose; and threatening the lives of the Vice President, members of Congress, and anyone who stood in their way. I was already thinking a lot about rhetoric at that time, but the realization that came through with crystalline clarity that in addition to our intelligence, our reality is shaped by the rhetoric we’re exposed to. The river of rhetoric that we stand in creates who we are and what we believe, and we need to be vigilant about choosing that rhetoric and reflecting on how we’re allowing ourselves to be shaped.
The next day (or maybe the day after), in her Space Weather Transmission, Paramatma Siri Sadhana asked “what are you holding onto that is hurting you?” I immediately knew that I had to let go of drinking alcohol. I had already nearly stopped, holding on only to a comical a half-glass of sparkling wine cut with sparkling water on Saturday evening, a half-glass I had held onto because I was maybe afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop and because I was definitely afraid of making myself even… stranger(?) with my sobriety. The substances and sounds we expose ourselves to matter. The relationships we nourish and hobbies we feed expose our values and fears. Letting go of alcohol creating space for greater depth of feeling— something that is equal parts wonderful and wild. At the root of this strange connection is intentionality, agency. Is my life my own if I surrender my agency around who or what is shaping it?
‘Tis true, ‘tis true: circumstances and systems that are beyond our control shape the context in which we make those decisions and often determine what choices are even available. To me, this makes exercising agency at the available choice-points more crucial than ever.
Critical thinking trains a person to question assumptions: what values does a particular argument, behavior, or text assume in order to make sense in someone’s reality. At essence, this is what many teachers (myself included) encourage in the classroom, particularly in higher education. Self-study (svadhyaya) in yoga and Buddhist practice is similar in that the practitioner trains themselves to examine their own actions, responses, and thought patterns and to practice discernment (viveka) in broadening their perspective as well as deciding whether or which actions are truly aligned with their values.
A culture that prizes productivity, convenience, and complacency makes it difficult to practice critical thinking and the actions that challenge productivity, convenience, and complacency. To step away from a numbing agent (like the phone, like the vodka-soda, the cannabis) takes effort on every level. Living with intention takes guts, if I can very loosely collate and paraphrase a few of Atisha’s Lojong verses for training the mind. Looking back, looking forward, looking within all take time and fortitude.
Each year I’m alive, I feel my reverence for planet Earth deepening. I feel a simultaneous increase in compassion for all beings and a significant decrease in desire to spend time with folks who aren’t engaging in some kind of self-study, who aren’t appreciative of the miracle of being alive on a planet that is perfect for our species, who are committed to upholding some untenable fiction about themselves because they’re too scared of change.
End-of-a-Gregorian-Year Review
I feel no internal sense of the new year on January 1, and I imagine this is true for many of you reading this now. I absolutely feel it in spring and again in late-fall. In my skin and bones, I feel the year end about a week and a half after Halloween; leaves dry and curl as they and their acorn kin fall like rain, the wind dances and tangles, and the sky toggles between brilliant topaz and low, flat gray. The wind hollows out a trench in time, lasting two to three weeks. Anything is possible. My senses are sharp, or “pricked clean” (if I can quote May Sarton’s “The House in Winter”). November is the space between the old and the new. In early December, only shortly after the last of the leaves had dropped and rain had just begun to fall in earnest, the new buds start push through on the trees. That is one kind of new year for me.
Nevertheless, being the devotee of possibility and champion of hope that I am, I like the opportunity to review and reflect that comes with the turn of the calendar leaf.
One lie I told myself almost immediately upon beginning my new year review was that I didn’t make that much art in 2025. Totally not true. I drew and painted a lot. I made a few collages. I sewed a little bit. One of the most fun creative projects I worked on was the online class “An Ode to Flowers,” with Dr. Chanti Tacorante-Perez (with whom I have taken many wonderful workshops— from Dreams to Community Immunity to Yantra Painting— and whole-heartedly recommend).
But the lie that “I didn’t make much art this year” deserves a bit more unpacking, I think, because I didn’t just tell myself this kind of lie with respect to painting and the like. Such a lie also led to my “Grateful Dead Summer” project, which I think I wrote a little bit about here, but much more on my Comp/Rhet blog Slow Rhetoric. The short hand version is that I undertook a deeper study of the band The Grateful Dead, because in spite of having listened to them since I was in my early twenties, I would always say I don’t know anything about the Grateful Dead. It wasn’t until I was 3 hours into a four-hour podcast exploring the impact the Dead had on Rock music that I started to realize that this is a pattern of mine: I tend to understate or under-appreciate my own interest in or knowledge about a topic unless I have gone like waaaaaay “into the weeds” (to quote my longtime Grateful Dead fanning husband, who used that expression to describe my G.D. research project). All this to say, I made a decent amount of art, and now I know more about the Dead than I did before.
And this relates back to the necessity of review in general. Without a conscious practice of looking back, naming and acknowledging our efforts, I’m likely to just push on to the next thing I haven’t done yet.
If the joy-of-life factor isn’t compelling, there is a body of research within the field of composition pedagogy on the idea of “transfer” suggesting that without intentional review of what we’ve done, we won’t fully integrate that learning or be able to consciously apply what we’ve learned to new situations.
So, with that, a list of some of the things I did in 2025 that I’m happy about:
I drew and painted a lot.
I dressed in the spirit of joy and color theory.
I worked on my manuscript of poems a decent amount.
I ran shorter distances faster.
I lifted heavier weights even though I don’t always enjoy it (LOL understatement).
I started writing in a 5-year journal right before bed, and I love it. There’s only room for about one and a half sentences. Perfect for capturing the essence and nothing more.
I joined a book club.
I finished my first full year of teaching part-time at the community college.
I work with amazing people who I like hanging out with(!!!).
I applied for a full-time position at the community college (fingers crossed) even though it’s a total long-shot.
I figured out a way to continue teaching yoga while teaching college writing. YAY!
I hiked up Mt. Tabor at least a few days of every week, sometimes every day(!!!).
In addition to the Tabor hikes, I was in the forest a lot. (I want more forest time in 2026).
to the forest I continued to meditate every single day, sometimes twice, sometimes more than that.
Swam in the ocean whenever I could, even the totally freezing Oregon coast. ;)
ocean eyes I found an alternative to Spotify that is AMAZING (Qobuz!!!!! the sound quality is so good), now I’m just migrating my playlists before deleting Spotify forever.
I donated to the following organizations:
So, even though it was a hard year, it was full of efforts that brought me joy and challenges that revealed interesting new layers of opportunity for practice.
Okay, this post was quite the ramble, but in the spirit with which I started writing it, I’m pressing “publish” even though I know I could revise (ad infinitum).
Love to all+++
kelly
Reading + Recommending
I just finished reading Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead, and it is a true masterpiece: woman who survives a shipwreck as a baby grows up to become a pilot and plans to be the first woman to fly around the world over both poles. It’s wonderful on every level. 10/10.
Have you seen The Testament of Ann Lee? INCREDIBLE. I went to see this film in the theater knowing nothing about it, and my mind was blow.
Opportunities for Practice
I’m reconfiguring how to share practices in this online space. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Live? Pre-recorded? Yoga movement? Meditation? Writing? Please share your thoughts. 💜
Portland yogis, I teach on Fridays at noon at Yoga Refuge. Would love to see you there.
Dear Kelly!,
Thank you for sharing all your creative delights and artistry of the year!
I'm so sorry - I thought I responded to your query about sharing practices on-line, though apparently it never posted.
Personally, I'm missing your monthly yoga classes, which is why I initially joined Substack.
I do appreciate the live aspect, though if it makes more sense for you, a recording is also an option.
With Love 💗
BA