So I started leaving the baking soda in my hair for a few minutes as I shower, and that seems to have cleared up the oily issues I was having around my scalp. A side effect of that is that the length of my hair has gotten super dry and prone to tangle, but I’ve started massaging oil into my hair while it’s damp. We’ll see if that works better.
Today I am so so so so happy.
“We’re deeply ambivalent about the truth. We parse it out on an as-needed basis, sometimes for very very good reasons and other times just because we don’t understand the gaps in our lives.” –Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting
Sucked out of this TED Talk.
This is me testing a post wkth the WordPress app. Also I am using Swype.
So I’ve settled into a routine–I seem to have to wash about a day earlier than I do on shampoo, so I’m washing it every 2-3 days, rather than every 3-4 days.
I still have some tedious oil shit going on that I’m not a fan of. It seems like as soon as the hair is completely dry, it feels oily again and only gets worse as the days go by. I know the transitional phase can be longer for some folks than others, but it’s been about 6 weeks now and I’m ready for it to be done, thanks.
I’m considering upping the amount of baking soda in the mixture OR trying to wash every day… but frankly, given my schedule, trying to commit to washing my hair every day sounds like I’m setting myself up for failure. I think I also need to let the mixture sit in my hair for longer–after years of shampoo being on my scalp for longer than 10 seconds resulting in an overabundance of dandruff, I’ve been pretty fastidious about getting whatever I’m putting in my hair out of my hair as fast as possible. Baking soda needs time to start working that saponification magic, so we’ll see what leaving it in place for a minute or two does. Apparently it’s supposed to tingle, and I haven’t been feeling that at all.
On the upside, combing my hair rather than brushing it has been a total game-changer. My sink is no longer littered (and I mean LITTERED, that shit was nasty) with two-inch-long broken hairs, and my frizz problem has pretty much disappeared.
I need to get this shit cut sometime before Alaina’s wedding (next weekend!)–I’m thinking I’ll end up losing between 4 and 6 inches of dead stuff, which fills me with glee and OMG. I’m really looking forward to having happy hair I can take good care of, but DAMN that’s a lot of hair.
On and up!
The only goal of self-work can and must be self-improvement.
Nate and I were having a conversation about relationship stuff this weekend, and I had a lightbulb moment: until recently, I’d been laboring under the misapprehension that my self-work was only okay if it contributed directly to our partnership.
I’ve never felt entitled to my relationship with Nate. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad perspective to have in a romantic context, as long as both partners have it–if everyone feels a little lucky, a little undeserving, a little nervous, that makes them contribute more. Someone smart once told me relationships aren’t 50/50, they’re 75/75, and far as I’m concerned whatever gets you that extra 25 percent is useful.
The tricky thing is, while I try to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, abundance, and consciousness in my relationship with Nate, the flip side of that is fear. Feelings of inadequacy. Anticipation of rejection. The fear that you’re on borrowed time, on a short leash, trespassing on the other person’s patience. It makes your relationship hierarchical, with you at the bottom.
So what does this mean on a practical level? Well, I realized that I was legitimizing my self-work efforts to myself by convincing myself I was making them for Nate, for our relationship. Obviously doing them for myself was selfish, right? Way too self-centered. Way too narcissistic. Better to pump my drive into something more worthwhile.
So every new choice I made which I felt didn’t contribute directly to our relationship came fraught with guilt and second guessing. I felt like I owed more to our relationship. Like I didn’t deserve it (the relationship or the self-work) for myself.
I was terrified of letting him down, of letting our relationship down, by changing too much, by becoming the wrong person. I was scared that I would grow away from our partnership or exhaust it with constant new experiments. That I would wear out my welcome.
But at the same time, one of my biggest fears in general is that my life will stagnate, that I’ll get stuck in a rut which makes and keeps me unhappy, that I won’t examine my choices or recognize the patterns in my behavior when they occur. Telling myself that I’m doing this work for Nate, for us, and choosing to restrict my explorations because of my fear of fucking up our relationship is a way of forcing stagnation. It makes the status quo static, and something to maintain and protect, rather than something to stimulate, and that’s wrong.
I’ve always tried to face things. I’ve tried to suit up, as they say, to show up, to do the work. The work has been the thing, the work is the thing, which has kept me going when I’ve felt like the rest of my life is falling apart. Obviously my life isn’t falling apart right now, but the ethic is still there–the same bit-between-my-teeth tenacity which has gotten me through the worst of depression, the shittiest parts of my day job, the days I seriously don’t want to go to the gym and go anyway, even the days I just don’t feel like doing the dishes. I’ve always had a bit of an attitude about that shit, like I’m going to fly in the face of life and do my plans and then what?
Realizing I’ve been using my relationship with Nate as an excuse not to face what are clearly some pretty prominent self-esteem issues is a bit of a blow to that. Bit-between-my-teeth tenacity doesn’t mean much if it’s allowing me to avoid doing the real work of confronting my own insecurities.
I can’t make building our relationship the thing that makes me awesome. I need to make myself awesome, and let our relationship’s awesomeness be a by-product and goal of that. Pretending this growth shit about is anything other than cultivating my best self is not going to satisfy me in the long run.
Self-care is not selfish.
Self-work is a form of self-care.
