First Cup of Coffee - July 15, 2024

How gardening is a great metaphor for life and creativity - accepting loss and treating that as an opportunity to plant anew, embracing change, and giving up control. Also, ways to be kind to ourselves.

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Transcript

00:02.72
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of the Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Delightful. Today is Monday. I have to think about it. Monday, July 15th.

00:27.20
jeffekennedy
So how are all of you? I had a good weekend. um Let's see. Trying to think of like what all I wanted to tell you all about. um It was a pretty low key weekend um overall. Friday evening I was supposed to go have drinks with my friend Megan Mulry, the delightful and beautiful and vivacious Megan Mulry. But we were not feeling delightful.

00:59.51
jeffekennedy
Or vivacious she had messaged me in the afternoon asking me what time I was ready to go start drinking and I said I was done and I was ready and She didn't get back to me and didn't get back to me And I knew this is very standard for her like she's I know she was working. She was working on her stuff so finally so I went ahead and you know poured my wine at happy hour time and and sat on the portal in red, still reading a ballad of songbirds and snakes. And she finally texted me at like 5.45 and said, I just finished. And and I could tell that she was worn out. And I said, you know what? We can bail out tonight because we were planning to see each other for yoga in the morning, yoga and brunch. And so that's what we did. and

01:54.04
jeffekennedy
She's and we kind of went back and forth laughing and she said thank you and you know And I I've told her before I said I love our friendship You know that this is something where we can be like have to cancel can't deal and there is like absolutely no emotion or drama around it so um So yeah Yeah, so we so I just tucked in did early to bed Friday evening and I Then we did yoga Saturday morning, my favorite teacher's back so second class in a row and gosh was it a spine twister. I'm still sore. But it was great class. And then we went to brunch and caught up on all of the things.

02:38.13
jeffekennedy
um My mom commented that Megan and I are both busy people, and I suppose that's true because we had a lot lot of stuff to catch up on. In fact, Megan had on her cell phone her memo pad notes of things two to talk to me about or ask me about, which I loved. And I was like, I should start doing that too. So that took up you know half the day right there. I got the laundry started before I left, so that was good. because I knew I would be back later. And I didn't get home till about one. And then I just had like an hour at home before David and I had to turn around and go get our COVID boosters. So we went and got those and then just kind of chilled for the the rest of the afternoon. I worked on a few things. I'm actually caught up on most everything. There's a couple of big outstanding things, but for the most part I'm done. And then I, uh,

03:36.65
jeffekennedy
Yeah, ah not a lot of stuff. It was pretty low key. Spent a lot of time being outside and enjoying being outside. And then Sunday morning I got up early and did dog walk and had my coffee on the portal, which was nice. and then went and got my horse manure. So that was great. i Went and got the horse manure, first time I've done that. and i So I was sort of figuring it out. I'd read up on what to do. I don't know, is that like, I don't know, getting an older thing. It's like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

04:10.59
jeffekennedy
ah So I went there and they'd said, you know, like the manure would be in these dumpsters. So I saw some dumpsters and I left the car idling, went over and peeked in and it was indeed full of horse manure. And this gal came out from one of the nearby corrals and she said, we love you people. Meaning the older auto gardeners who come and get the manure. So I filled up my bin with manure and then came home and I planted my rose bushes and I did like soil amending as I went. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. um My roses and my rose of Sharon and some Delphinians and some cosmos. So David was commenting on how lush the garden looks. So that's nice.

05:00.66
jeffekennedy
And then I've kind of like set aside Sunday in case I didn't feel good from the COVID shot. But I actually felt fine. A vague headache, but mostly fine. And so I went down in the afternoon to Albuquerque and had lunch with friends and that was um very restorative. It was really good. I, I've talked about this many times before, but for those of you who haven't heard it or need to hear it again, you know, I'm really interested in that whole idea of the um breaking the stress, stress cycle oh from the book ah by the Nagoski sisters,

05:40.97
jeffekennedy
um burnout, the secret to unlocking the stress cycle, I believe it's called, something like that. If you look up Nagoski, you'll find it. But one of the things that they talk about is how um to purge stress from your body that you kind of take a page from the ah you know, like why we have the flight or flight. but I can't talk this morning. Fight or flight reaction in the first place ah because like the tiger bursts out from the undergrowth and chases you. So you run, you run very fast in or you fight and you escape the tiger.

06:18.35
jeffekennedy
and then you go back to your village where everybody surrounds you and hugs you and you're like i escaped the tiger and everybody's like hooray let's get you something cool to drink and something warm to eat so there are ways to create those those parallels in our lives so you know that's one reason why exercise is so good for us um and one reason that i love my yoga teacher because she is um very non-judgmental, but also she does things like, um, she, she's very intuitive and she always seems to know exactly what to say. And so she like started off the yoga session by suggesting that we say something to ourselves, um, you know, letting, what do we need from, you know, what do we need to tell ourselves? Um, you know, kind of like with the idea of accepting ourselves.

07:29.34
jeffekennedy
ah just like I don't know how to look down the other end, but it like totally froze here. um So anyway, about you know like being accepting ourselves, um you know she was saying to speak to our hearts. and you know So that's ah that's a big piece too, you know like being able to tell ourselves that, and I i told myself something along those lines, that like what you are doing is is good, you know that you are doing your very best. And like it makes me slightly weepy right now. I think it's so important to to remind ourselves of that, to confirm that with ourselves. ah you know So like whether I am doing spine-twisting yoga or um writing a book or dealing with business that you know ah I am doing things for the right reason and for reasons that I believe in.

08:25.58
jeffekennedy
And total aside, um I bought myself a present. but I got myself a couple of Stephanie Law. I got a giclee of hers and I also got her tarot deck and I got to email back and forth with her. ah She has like this exclusive box set deal. I'm going to link to it. So this is Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, who I believe I've mentioned before. I love her fantasy art. ah And so I showed Kelly Robson this giclee that I bought and she said something about the Tarot deck. So I'd go look at the Tarot deck and you get all of these great things with the exclusive and it's not very much money. um

09:09.38
jeffekennedy
Let's see if I can see. Oh, so this it's the Artist Special Edition of the Tarot that comes, it's $94.95 and you get the autographed kit plus a major arcana print of your choice um and then a unique original ink sketch. And so you get to to pick like which major arcana print you want and then we're she emailed me because it wasn't clear like the form didn't capture what she needed and So now I got to email with this artist um So that's been cool. Anyway, so that's like a total aside except that it was about you know I've talked about on here you know like the whole concept of being kind to yourself and like what the hell that means because people will say that oh well you need to be kind to yourself and it's like I

10:02.08
jeffekennedy
And i shouldn't I shouldn't make fun. i like I shouldn't do the voice because people mean it very sincerely and it's very good advice. um It's just like one of those things like, well, what what does that mean? you know that ah I always say that like there's always the image of the bubble bath. you know The bubble bath with the candles and the wine and it's like, well, what if it's hot out? What if you don't want to take a bubble bath? and um How do you find other ways to be kind to yourself? So, find myself a present. It was kind of a and nice thing. I also bought myself a couple of dresses. So, did I mention that my money came in for the ah Italian rights for Never the Roses? So I was feeling a little um frisky but with the spending. That's all I'm going to buy, though.

10:52.19
jeffekennedy
But still, I do think it's really important, especially when we've been working very hard at things, to we reward ourselves, to buy ourselves presents of something that we want and that pleases us. So this was all a bit of a tangent. Oh, the stress cycle. So, you know, like doing the yoga, working physically, planting the roses. I was drenched in sweat. And so then I went inside and took a shower and fixed myself up. And, and it just felt really good. And then to go spend time with, with friends, with people who care about me and to, you know, purge emotionally and all of that kind of thing.

11:40.21
jeffekennedy
so So I feel like this was a weekend well spent.

11:45.88
jeffekennedy
So um the other thing I wanted to do was talk about ah the gardening metaphor because on Friday I was talking about um the you know the gardener metaphor for writing if you're an intuitive writer but also the idea about, um you know, that you cultivate a garden and you see how it grows. And I kind of never came back around to one of the main things that I wanted to talk about because I was, I did say that, you know, I wanted to keep learning that I needed to learn new things about my garden, you know, to try to make it be better, make it be the way I want it to be. And,

12:31.44
jeffekennedy
I think an important thing for me to remember, maybe for all of us to remember, is that I do regard the failure of some plants to overwinter as as a failure. right ah and And I clearly still wrestle with failure. I had a couple of things that came up for me. And I know that I'm always telling all of you not to regard things as failures, you know, like the the knife throwing metaphor. I think I talked about that last Monday, you know, trying to enjoy missing the target as much as hitting the target. ah It is and is difficult. I think partly in this culture, too,

13:14.86
jeffekennedy
to get away from the idea that failure is a bad thing, that missing the mark, that something not surviving is is a bad thing. So like when my roses don't overwinter, it's a death, right? It's a death and it's a hole in the garden and it's a problem, a problem. I'm putting that in the air clothes. but it's also the cycle of life. And I was, because I was doing research, being dutiful gardener, I was reading up on roses and how um most of the rose, I wonder if I can find this, hold on.

13:55.72
jeffekennedy
Okay, so if you're on video, you'll see I had to put my readers on to look at this book. But this book is Lauren Springer's The Undaunted Garden. I got this many, many years ago. It's great for gardening in the Rocky Mountain West, if you are one such person. Also, and it has beautiful photos. She has beautiful pictures of flowers. so ah But she says, the last and most important lesson I learned about rose growing in this harsh climate is that many of the modern roses I fussed over so diligently back east will succumb to the winters here. If not in may immediately, then after only a few years, no matter to what lengths the gardener goes. Nursery people won't let the cat out of the bag regarding this because replacement rose bushes account for a lot of spring business." And she goes on. but

14:50.59
jeffekennedy
I really love that because I love finding wisdom in unusual places, right? And this whole thing where she says, if not immediately, then after only a few years, no matter to what lengths the gardener goes. And I think that's really important because

15:19.46
jeffekennedy
it'll seem like a rose bush is doing fine. And then after a few years, all of a sudden it doesn't. and And I think we always want to look for reasons why, you know, like, what did I do wrong? And sometimes it's just, it's reassuring to know that a professional gardener like her, that, yeah, sometimes shit happens, right? Things don't survive. They don't overwinter. And, ah but I love this idea of that you recreate that. you accept the fact that a garden is not a static thing. And that when something dies away, that's an opportunity to plant something new. Right? And so I think this is really important for our lives. um You know, if when we lose people, when somebody passes away or somebody leaves us, you know, it's an opportunity to plant a new.

16:15.76
jeffekennedy
um And you know the one thing we can count on is change. And the garden is not a static thing. It's this you know changing from day to day to day and year to year. And it doesn't just you just don't put things there and then they're there forever, much as I might want them to be. I always want things to stay forever. um So I think that that's really useful for like writing process too, right? yeah

16:45.27
jeffekennedy
it doesn't stay the same. That each book is a new challenge and that um some of the things we used to be able to do we can't do anymore maybe for one reason or another ah things die away and it's an opportunity to create a new and and this applies to so many things so much of life right you know that like when um when people go that this is a chance to start over with a clean slate to build something ah solid and exactly the way you want it. So I think that that's um yeah really useful to to think about and to look at and

17:30.08
jeffekennedy
in In Chinese philosophy, which I'm obviously into, ah the the cycle of birth and death is viewed as a cycle. It's drawn as a circle where you have birth, growth, maturity, decline, death, birth. So it connects around and around and around. And so what's really important is that following a death, following a loss or destruction, that we move back into birth. And I think that a lot of people don't want to do that. They get stuck there because they don't want the death to have happened, right?

18:11.92
jeffekennedy
they they want to try to pull it back. They don't want to acknowledge decline. David and I were talking about that, you know, like people who have a chronic disease and are, you know, like their death is coming and they're in denial and they're like, oh no, I'm going to be fine. And it's, no, you have to embrace each stage. And it's like, okay, this is decline and that's not a terrible thing. I can, I can work with decline because that means that you are ready for death when it occurs and then also for the next step of birth, right? So, philosophy lesson for the day. Hope that it sees you through the week. um I had a good writing week last week, especially considering that I had drama, but I am looking forward to, I think, a better writing week this week.

19:07.83
jeffekennedy
So I wish that for all of you. Let's get out there and let's see, I'll give a quick update. 66,000 words, almost 67, on Reluctant Wizard. And then next weekend I'm going to my high school reunion. Go figure, 40 years. All right, you all take care. Bye bye.