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A six word mantra
Sep. 28th, 2024 02:29 amActions are Controllable, Feelings are Not.
It's a mantra that I came up with some years back --I don't know if it was officially created That Time Sparr Lied About Why We Broke Up (And So I Raised The Advent Tenor About It)1 but it was definitely cemented around then, so like...seven or eight years now? It doesn't have it's own card above my desk (like "Radical Acceptance of Incremental Progress" and "You Can Always Start Again") but it certainly belongs in the same realm.
And when I think it out, it covers a *lot* of ground. I used it as the value I shared with the students during circle time on Thursday, I bring it up in various circumstances, it's a good reminder of a bunch of things: that it's okay to feel mad/sad/frustrated/whatever, that I'm still responsible for myself no matter how I am feeling, that feeling jealousy is not a sin, that I have agency in how I respond to things.
And that last one is what I'm thinking about tonight, as I deal with a situation where I didn't immediately receive some good news because of Apple's very frustrating walled-garden situation2. I sorta realized through other references that I would've missed it, and so I managed to find myself a private space to scream for a while (metaphorically) and then I could approach the situation with joy and love and support and "hey did I miss a text I wanted to see?" without being some gross harbinger3 of rudeness and doom on the good news in question.
Actions are Controllable, Feelings are Not.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: It was the precipitating event that got me to unfriend him on Facebook because like, if you care that much about radical honesty, then you need to be honest about things like the immediate reason we broke up, and if you don't actually know that reason, then you need to consider that maybe _that's_ why we broke up. But at any rate, I happened to read the post when I was already on the red line to Advent one day, and wound up reciting the mantra quietly and forcefully in my head until I got to bells, in order to Not Reply To Something That Didn't Need Replying To. Anyways, arrived at bells and was all "I would like to do something physical to channel my anger, yes, attempting to raise the tenor for the first time sounds great" and you know, after hauling a rope connected to a literal ton of metal for long enough, you don't have any feelings except tired!
2: IF you had a phone number hooked into imessage in the past, like I did since I used to have an iphone, and you no longer have access to imessage, like I don't because I have replaced both my laptop and phone with non-apple infrastructure because they made hideously bad hardware choices that I wasn't willing to support as a consumer, THEN it turns out you will be fucked for receiving texts for the rest of time, especially texts sent to group-chats of iphones started before your number changed.
I *think* I receive all individual/direct/solo texts correctly at this point, but if you've ever wondered "gee, Kat is being quiet in this chat since 2021" this is why, I literally haven't seen any of your messages.
I am _not_ looking for solutions at this time, unless they involve forcing Apple to unwall its gardens (and while you're at it, unenshittify the rest of the internet too.)
3: Wait shit, did you know this word doesn't have a second r in it? I think I've been saying "harbringer" my whole life, and not writing it often enough to catch it flagged as a misspelling and actually look at it to see what was wrong!
(yes yes, it has a second r at the very end regardless, so I guess I mean "didn't have a third r" except that's confusing because it's the second r as you write it that I should leave out. "Did you know this word only has two r's.")
It's a mantra that I came up with some years back --I don't know if it was officially created That Time Sparr Lied About Why We Broke Up (And So I Raised The Advent Tenor About It)1 but it was definitely cemented around then, so like...seven or eight years now? It doesn't have it's own card above my desk (like "Radical Acceptance of Incremental Progress" and "You Can Always Start Again") but it certainly belongs in the same realm.
And when I think it out, it covers a *lot* of ground. I used it as the value I shared with the students during circle time on Thursday, I bring it up in various circumstances, it's a good reminder of a bunch of things: that it's okay to feel mad/sad/frustrated/whatever, that I'm still responsible for myself no matter how I am feeling, that feeling jealousy is not a sin, that I have agency in how I respond to things.
And that last one is what I'm thinking about tonight, as I deal with a situation where I didn't immediately receive some good news because of Apple's very frustrating walled-garden situation2. I sorta realized through other references that I would've missed it, and so I managed to find myself a private space to scream for a while (metaphorically) and then I could approach the situation with joy and love and support and "hey did I miss a text I wanted to see?" without being some gross harbinger3 of rudeness and doom on the good news in question.
Actions are Controllable, Feelings are Not.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: It was the precipitating event that got me to unfriend him on Facebook because like, if you care that much about radical honesty, then you need to be honest about things like the immediate reason we broke up, and if you don't actually know that reason, then you need to consider that maybe _that's_ why we broke up. But at any rate, I happened to read the post when I was already on the red line to Advent one day, and wound up reciting the mantra quietly and forcefully in my head until I got to bells, in order to Not Reply To Something That Didn't Need Replying To. Anyways, arrived at bells and was all "I would like to do something physical to channel my anger, yes, attempting to raise the tenor for the first time sounds great" and you know, after hauling a rope connected to a literal ton of metal for long enough, you don't have any feelings except tired!
2: IF you had a phone number hooked into imessage in the past, like I did since I used to have an iphone, and you no longer have access to imessage, like I don't because I have replaced both my laptop and phone with non-apple infrastructure because they made hideously bad hardware choices that I wasn't willing to support as a consumer, THEN it turns out you will be fucked for receiving texts for the rest of time, especially texts sent to group-chats of iphones started before your number changed.
I *think* I receive all individual/direct/solo texts correctly at this point, but if you've ever wondered "gee, Kat is being quiet in this chat since 2021" this is why, I literally haven't seen any of your messages.
I am _not_ looking for solutions at this time, unless they involve forcing Apple to unwall its gardens (and while you're at it, unenshittify the rest of the internet too.)
3: Wait shit, did you know this word doesn't have a second r in it? I think I've been saying "harbringer" my whole life, and not writing it often enough to catch it flagged as a misspelling and actually look at it to see what was wrong!
(yes yes, it has a second r at the very end regardless, so I guess I mean "didn't have a third r" except that's confusing because it's the second r as you write it that I should leave out. "Did you know this word only has two r's.")