On Friendship, Writing, and Living Through End Times

a last post for 2024

December sunset, Northern New Mexico

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December 30, 2024 / New Moon

Earlier this month, I offered a Reflection and Intention process to carry you into the new year. If you tried it out, I’d love to hear what is surfacing for you.

For the first time in a few years I’m giving myself the gift of going through this process. I’m still in it. It feels like the spiritual equivalent of making bread--time is needed to mix the dough, let it rise, knead it, then another rising period. All of that before finally baking it. (I think that’s how it works. To be honest I’ve never made bread, I’m just going on a memory of watching The Great British Baking Show!)

In a similar way, I’ve been letting these five questions “rise” in my soul over the past week, and writing in my journal now and then to capture what’s emerging. Here are some of the highlights:

1. What am I celebrating? What am I grateful for? What has been wonderful and magical about this past year?

FRIENDS
I’m grateful for the ways I have shown up as a friend to others this year, and the way friends have shown up for me. In a year that had some rough moments, including my pup Lucy and me being attacked by a neighborhood dog in March, friends have been a lifeline. For the purpose of this question I count family members as friends, and celebrate that I’ve re-connected with cousins I had lost touch with over the years.

Friendship often gets relegated to secondary status but as someone who doesn’t currently have a spouse or lover, life has taught me the value of true friends. I am reminded of this exchange between the Buddha and his disciple, Ananda:

Ananda:

“This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.”

The Buddha responded:

“Don’t say that, Ananda. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.”

good friends: Jose Shinzan Palma and Maia at Upaya Zen Center

COMMITMENT TO WRITING
The year began with intentionally taking time off from income-generating work to focus on my own creative writing. The phrase that came up was that I wanted to be a “working writer.” To me this meant engaging in writing not as a “hobby” but placing it at the center of my life, as a primary way to express my work in the world. Monetary compensation is a part of that definition, but this wasn’t primarily about income. It has been about embracing my journey as a writer, as an artist whose medium is words. My whole life I’ve felt that calling, but mostly have ignored it to tend to other tasks or gotten distracted down many other bunny trails.

January was also when I started this Substack after hearing about the platform for months. Letting go of paid work for a while to follow this thread of writing felt like a huge leap of faith, and that was the title of my very first post:

A Leap of Faith

I headed into that January and February writing period with the intention of crafting a long-form essay on the year I lost my mom and dad to COVID, and a beloved friend to cancer. The piece quickly took on a life of its own and it became clear—to my terror!—that this would actually become a memoir. I wrote more about that here:

Have Faith in the Story

Then I got a little crazy and started a second Substack, Postcards from New Mexico. Fun but not advisable from a time management standpoint!

I signed up for

Summer Brennan

’s Year of Writing Dangerously, and through that structure have done a generative writing practice about 75% of the days this year. Recently I subscribed to

Jeannine Ouellette

’s Writing in the Dark and am about to dive into her intensive, “The Art of the Scene.” It feels good to finally and fully recognize my path as a writer and continually learn how to refine my craft.

Even though income wasn’t the primary focus, I’ve actually brought in more money through my writing this year than ever before:

• A monthly paid column for Buddhist Door Global

• An article on right livelihood for Buddhadharma magazine

• My first-ever royalty checks for a book published in 2017, Work That Matters

• Substack paid subscribers, now up to 47 here plus another 10 on Postcards from New Mexico. Thank you!

Now, we’re not talking a lot of money – all of the above combined totals about a month of living expenses. But it’s something. I chalk up this cool feat to sustained writing over time, and to relationships I’ve nurtured in both the Buddhist and writing communities.

By the way, the themes of friendship and writing have intersected beautifully on Substack, something I didn’t expect when I signed on here. Over the past months, I’ve found a vibrant community of writing friends here. They include:

John Lovie

,

Don Boivin

,

Satya Robyn

,

Logan Juliano, PhD

,

Kert Lenseigne 🌱

,

Swarnali Mukherjee

,

Sandra Pawula

,

James Ford

,

Dana Leigh Lyons

,

Sal Randolph

,

Diamond-Michael Scott

,

Noha Beshir

… and more. Even though we’ve never met in person, I have no doubt that if and when we finally get to meet in real life, that warm feeling of friendship will deepen even more.

2. What is one aspect about myself that I have especially loved this year? What am I proud of?

My ongoing commitment to inner work, particularly some shadow side material that’s been coming up in strong ways this year.

I believe working on a memoir has amplified this process. In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr notes, "In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it's done right.” Now I completely understand what she’s describing. Even if you’ve done years of therapy, there are whole new layers of insight that arise on the journey of writing about your life, and a lot of them carry deep waves of regret. Or at least that’s been my experience. It can be brutal. One learns to be gentle with oneself… or not. I have been opting for a lot of self-forgiveness and gratitude for the lessons learned.

I’m grateful for years of contemplative practice, including zazen, that offer a container of self-compassion to work through this material, as well as tools learned from my friend Luisa Kolker, a therapist here in New Mexico. But yeah, maybe don’t write a memoir ; )

3. What would I have done differently this year? and 4. What do I want to let go of?

I found these questions worked best when I put them together so that’s how I’ll respond here.

Well, I’d love a re-do of the U.S. presidential election. That’s beyond my locus of control, but I’m a strong believer in finding and expressing our power through multiple channels, including political and artistic. The November post, “Here we are. What now?” is my attempt to find a path through the devastation of the election results, and to chart a course through these apocalyptic times we’re living through.

On a personal level, I don’t feel good about the many times I slipped into mindless addictive behaviors, particularly around social media and eating (specifically turning to sugary foods to take care of my emotions). It’s not that I think we have to be super mindful every moment of our lives but I got sloppy more times than I am okay with, and I want to shift that pattern.

5. What do I want to call in for the coming year?

I don’t think I’m being pessimistic by saying we’re in for rough times ahead. I believe that’s a realistic call. Given that, the question is how do we meet these times? The phrase that’s come to me as a mantra for the year ahead is:

Walk toward the Light.

That may sound a bit sappy, but there’s a powerful truth there I need to listen to. It’s all too easy to “feed the beast” and sink into hopeless. We can’t afford that.

I’m calling in a whole lot more positive use of my energy. Above I described some mindless addictive behaviors that have been plaguing me. Currently I’m working with a way to use those slippages as “mindfulness bells” and make different choices that feel more wholesome. I’m limiting myself to two social media sessions a day, each no more than 30 minutes. Doing so has freed up a whole lot of time and energy, and I’m re-directing that to do these things instead:

• Connect – to myself, through meditation, journaling, and other practices; to others, in many ways except social media: in-person visits, texts, calls, letters, etc.

• Create – writing, cooking, art, singing, more… moving the memoir into a place that is closer to completion.

• Clean – literally! I am not the best housekeeper, so this is about paying loving attention to my home space so that it feels nourishing.

• Organize – this has a couple of meanings, first sorting through my piles of papers, bills, etc, and creating more order. Second, community organizing kind of organizing. Listening to what’s important to my neighbors, finding ways that we can work toward those goals together to create a world that works for everyone, right here where I live.

Heart’s Refuge is a phrase that’s been with me for a number of years. It’s the name my friend Katya and I gave to a project we had big visions for. At the center of it is thinking of “refuge” as something we can nurture inside of us through contemplative practices, and something we offer to each other in tangible ways. As we walk through difficult times together, this capacity to create and offer refuge will become even more essential.

After Katya’s death in 2021, that vision went dormant. Lately it’s been calling me back again, and I’ve responded in small but significant ways. This fall I started a monthly meditation group in my home, calling it Heart’s Refuge Sangha. It’s wonderful to share meditation practice in person again, right in my neighborhood.

In the coming year I want to cultivate that vision more and some of that may find its way into what I offer on Substack. The great majority of my writing here will continue to be offered without a paywall. But there may be some special thank-you offerings for paid subscribers, stay tuned!

Finally, dear readers, I want to let you know that I’m taking time off from Substack in January to do some of this re-envisioning about what is offered through The Practice of Life, and also to do another round of intensely focused writing on my memoir. I’d love to have a first draft by the end of January, and I think it’s possible if I do this. I look forward to seeing you again on February 13, the full moon. Until then, I wish you well and am so grateful for your presence here.

I’d love to hear your year-end insights and visions…. click that button and start a conversation!

Going through a career transition and want to do it in a mindful way? Check out my book Work That Matters: Create a Livelihood that Reflects Your Core Intention