Internalizing the Process

Los Angeles, California

And so, the Covid year passed, and for me it passed, more or less, alone. Long phone conversations with Joel, and with my friends, stood in for socializing. I looked forward to my gardeners spending time on my property each Saturday. Usually I would engage in a conversation with them: A conversation about our struggles with learning a second language (Spanish for me; English for him) with the father; a conversation about the Dodgers upcoming season with the oldest son; a conversation about random subjects with the younger son. My other constant was at the small market where I shop on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I know a lot of the cashiers there, and one of the managers well enough to converse (Dodgers a common subject there as well). Lesson being that at times like this, relative strangers can stand in for friends and family.

I am a social person, within reason as I also do enjoy time spent alone. But not this much time spent alone. Still, I am confident that I have done better than most people through this time. I believe that is, at least partly, as a result of how I filled my day with activities and not TV. But it is also about the sheer abundance of time, and the absence of deadlines. Don't get me wrong, this abundance encourages procrastination. And procrastination is one of my more-than-seven deadlies. But there has been a certain luxury in knowing that what doesn't get done in one day can easily be done the following, or even after...

Still, there has been pandemic angst. I often go to bed with some anxiety and wake up in the territory of the blues. But generally, neither stays with me, and lately I have been feeling more hopeful. This could be attributed to the fact that I am fully vaccinated, and Joel will be fully vaccinated when his vacation begins in two weeks. This vacation being something I am greatly looking forward to. But perhaps my hopefulness is more attributable to a practice of meditation which I began a few months back.

The meditation practice started after a conversation with my friend and pilates/acupuncture/Chinese medicine guru, Cathy. It was in January when we were all reeling from the unspeakable crimes we saw domestic terrorists perpetrating at our nation's Capitol. Capping four years of such unprecedented upheaval, I was feeling distressed in the way that I hadn't felt since 9/11. I had already made the decision to step away from politics here on my blog, but I was still profoundly unsettled by the violent extremism, and the bullying of Capitol Police that I saw on the news on 1/6. Cathy suggested meditation. She didn't exactly suggest that I meditate, so much as share that it was something that was working for her. She was meditating first thing in the morning before she looked at her phone; before she turned on any media. And the next day I did just that. I have toyed with meditation in the past, but could never establish a practice. My mind was too active and the attempt go slow it down was frustrating enough to make me abandon the process. I had tried several meditation apps, which I still had on my phone. This time, the one that I settled on was Insight Timer. In fact, I later deleted both the Calm and the Headspace apps from my phone. Insight Timer is free and easily navigable. On that first day, I cheated by making tea and sipping my tea throughout. There was no way I could do this, or anything else, before drinking my morning tea. But in spite of that cheat, I was able to follow the guided meditation. Did I feel better? Not initially. But what changed for me was that once having completed the meditation, I started my day without a news round-up. I stopped watching CNN, and got back to the more-balanced NPR. I began to get going more quickly in the morning, getting earlier to whatever projects or errands I needed to accomplish.

After about three weeks, I realized that I was feeling better; that my thoughts were clearer and lighter. In the meanwhile, I was able to get vaccinated, so that might have attributed to this optimism. But, overall, I think the meditation has helped a lot. Shortly after beginning the morning practice, I began to meditate at bedtime as well. That continues to be challenging for me, chronic insomniac that I am. But, while falling/staying asleep is still a challenge, I feel I am sleeping better on the whole.

Internalizing the process is my reference to the process of therapy. It means that, after having gone through a successful process of therapy, when you get stuck you rely on what you have learned. I have my therapist in my head. When I have struggled with something, I am able to access where she might guide me in the situation. Much like the title of my blog: What Would Sandra Do, I am also able to think: What would Robbie advise? In spite of having meditated daily for a couple of months, I am not at a place where I have internalized the meditative process well enough to let loose of my guides and allow my mind to provide a blank canvas. But that's ok. Again, it's a process.

I try to work out five days a week. That's my goal. I probably average 3.5 to 4 days per week. I have done this for about a year, pretty faithfully. I never thought I could work out alone at home. I always required a class and instructor, or later, a trainer. When the pandemic started, I did a few instagram workouts with a former instructor. I even did a Jane Fonda workout from you.tube. But I quickly found my way to my own workout. Well, sort of my own. I have had three great workout instructors in my life: Trina; Kim, and Donna. And they all found their way into my workout, providing a foundation for what I created. I could still remember some of their music choices, so even music from each of them showed up in my workouts. Trina's warm up to Tainted Love by Soft Cell dated back to my early days working out at Jane Fonda's Workout here in LA. But mostly it was their cues and corrections that I remembered, having internalized the process through so many years of working out with them.

If you are very lucky, you internalized a process when growing up which made you strong, resilient, and balanced. And this would have come from your parents, your teachers in school, your athletic coaching, perhaps your religious training. If you were not so lucky, and some of this was not so positive, you may have internalized processes later in your adult life. Hopefully better ones to replace those which were not so good.

On a lighter and barely tangentially-related note, the parents of my best friend in high school and college shared a cocktail hour every evening after her father returned home from his work as an accountant. They sat on green leather barstools at the bar in their home, drinking either martinis, Manhattans or Rob Roys. They had a silver cocktail shaker and small martini glasses. That was their before-dinner ritual, where they caught up with their day spent apart. We were too young to be a part of this, but I saw it. And, at the time, I thought it was the coolest thing. To this day, I continue to believe that a shared cocktail hour is a lovely ritual. It's not an internalized process, just a nice, social thing to do when you can. I miss it.

I hope that I will continue with my practices of meditation and working out as we come out of the pandemic. And once we are able to spend time with our friends, I trust that sharing cocktails will again be a part of our social lives. While internalizing a variety of processes is beneficial in life, there is nothing wrong with internalizing tequila when the occasion arises. Especially with Cinco de Mayo up ahead. Surely this, along with other aspects of our pre-Covid lives returning, is something to happily anticipate. I might even meditate on it. Thank you for reading my blog. Don't forget to breathe. And salud!