I recently completed reiki level 1 training and have now added that to my morning routine, which is already lengthy (meditation, reiki, journal, light yoga flow/stretch session), and also which I love and feels supportive and fun. Yesterday after I finished, I noticed the thought pop up: “OK, now my day starts.”

And I was like, wait. My day has already started. That was part of my day, and this is all part of my day. My day is not just work, turning on a computer, plugging into the “productive” side of society. (Also, rest is “productive.”) It’s also this, and this is also mine.

That slight reframe, a soft zoom out, felt so nice as soon as I noticed it. Even in the past day, it’s already helped give me more perspective with myself (or, helped me give myself more perspective, you know!) in relation to work, and my job. It’s part of my day, and it’s part of my life, yes. And there’s so much more. The same could be, can be, said for any role and any identity we hold, too.

I remembered the thought again when I was biking home from Pilates later that day. I was waiting at a traffic light, eager to push out and pedal home, and looked around. I came to present on that corner, under the palm trees, in the summer nightfall. This moment was also my day—and my evening—my life. And it was a beautiful one, and I wanted to be with it.

It’s also this. It’s all of this.

When I was thinking of creating this blog, this is one of the first sayings I can remember repeating with friends: Both of these things are true. It was back in Brooklyn, and that summer when that first heavy wave of COVID lifted and we all got a little reprieve, to be outside in parks, to reunite with a little less fear, to be in some form of revelry and normal. I spent a lot of that summer with a core group of Brooklyn friends after moving across the Williamsburg Bridge; we started most weekends on my rooftop and then walked up Berry Street to The Lot Radio, which somehow could stay open past midnight, everyone sitting in clusters on the triangular street corner among warehouses, a church, and McCarren Park, between Williamsburg and Greenpoint where no cars really went and the little Lot Radio stand could blast music and there was, one time, a pop-up fashion show at 2:30am. We called it the vortex, bopped around to different groups, had conversations with a lot of lines like “I have a lot of air in my (astrological) chart,” and ,for a suspended time of reality, felt like anything was possible in those endless summer days-to-nights.

At some point “both of these things are true” started to come up, be said and ring true. Things were hard and weird in the world, and, still, we were really having a great time. We were holding all these truths and, in acknowledging them, I found capacity for so much more. I learned to be able to hold them without them having to be so heavy. They could just be there, in the same space, and I could be with them, coexisting. Life got richer, easier, fuller, more beautifully complex, in acknowledging the multitude of a moment, and the prismatic refractions of any one experience.

I had dinner with one of these friends, who also had since moved to LA, last weekend. It was our first time getting together in a couple months, and it felt like a homecoming, that way it always is when we reconnect with people with whom we have a relationship of love, acceptance and knowing. I told her how challenging the week had been in my personal life, and also how some big, beautiful things had come from it, like registering for Reiki Level 1 training. She held the space for me and thanked me for sharing with her. It was a less emotional moment and, still, I felt that deeper level of processing and sharing do me good. We continued with the evening, laughed about instances where we were like, it’s not that deep, and made plans for a beach cabana getaway in a couple weekends.

A few days ago she checked in and said she had been thinking of me this week. In the message, too, she shared a heartfelt reminder: “Friends are here for the worries, too.” The worries, the fun; both of these things are true. I guess, after all, it is one.

For Sam, who thrives and alives in both NYC & LA. Happy to have had you in both places for days & nights of saying & playing.

IN Playing & Saying

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