Day 2 In The Big Apple, Let’s do it!
🌅 Morning vibes: Joni Mitchell – Chelsea Morning
Bright Lights, Big City. BREAKFAST.
6- am… waking up to the soundtrack of New York, sirens, reversing trucks, a couple of screams from who knows where, and hollers, but nothing like the hustle and bustle of last night. It is a sleepy city this morning. Only a handful of people are moving around down there.
Good morning, fellow morning birdies.
There’s something about knowing big cities never really shut down that makes me not want to shut down either. Even half-asleep, I could still feel it moving outside, like I was going to miss something if I closed my eyes completely.
Eventually, a couple of minutes with the sound machine did the trick, and I was out like a light.
I am now officially in the thick of the morning. I’ve perched up in my little writing nook, which I created, with my tea and oatmeal… a continental breakfast-ish. It was a croissant with maybe three “good” (bc you know the mushy ones I speak of) blueberries and two pieces of strawberry. Not the best spread, but hey. Carbs, bc we are carb loading now. – either way, happy girl.
Room Service always makes me feel pampered.
This is probably because I’m not the one preparing the food this time…mom life. – Again, Happy Girl. Period.
The sounds of the city are growing louder the later it gets – I love it. It makes me want to get out there and walk around. However, still in my nook, watching the lives of strangers being lived. I know I’m not the only one, but it’s hard not to imagine what each person’s life may look like – someone walking a dog. Are they a dog walker, or is that your pup, friend? Also, can I pet that dog!?
I’m a curious person by nature… my brain likes to fill in the gaps. People watching is one of my favorite things in the world.
Sociology is a quick second to psychology for me. It’s not just about watching, but also about noticing. This is a quick tie-in to my books, which is probably why I’ve picked up Jenny Odell’s book so many times.
She writes,
“To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system.”
And sitting here, doing absolutely nothing but sipping tea and staring out at strangers, feels like my own tiny rebellion. Resting in place, that’s a new favorite for me! 🙂
She also talks about the attention economy. This one is a little contradictory for me right now, because I am starting this new chapter of the attention economy. This blog, putting myself out there, encouraging engagement rather than shying from it. It’s another perspective that has really taken me out of my little box.
I’ve said before, keeping myself in the middle of it all will be a balancing act. It feels different when you’re choosing to participate, which, until now, I hadn’t actively done. It was a vicious cycle of deleting followers, removing following, deactivating, and then reactivating, all because I didn’t feel comfortable putting myself out there. Now I’m forcing myself into this attention economy.
This isn’t because I’ve suddenly developed a love for it; I would say it’s something else…. I’m curious. What it feels like to stay rather than to disappear.
Holding my ground in this space, even when it’s uncomfortable, is getting a little easier every day, as I find it’s becoming easier to jump in both feet first. I’m excited to write & I’m motivated to share.
That’s the balance.
Gloria Jean Watkins, aka her pen name, bell Hooks, was an American author, theorist, social critic, and teacher.
She wrote somewhere (I’ll include that link later) that visibility and voice can be acts of resistance.
The shift from being an object – to being a subject!
The moment you start naming your own life instead of letting someone else narrate it. She called it talking back. Not just speaking, but speaking against, with the risk of being told to hush. For her, that defiance wasn’t only political, it was personal. A kind of medicine….
SHE was such a badass.
Sitting here in this little hotel nook, typing into the attention economy that I’ve avoided for so long, I get it. This is me talking back. This is me turning silence into speech and turning the ordinary into resistance.
Ms.Watkins has obviously done this on a much larger scale, and her impact far exceeds what I could even imagine…Her legacy alone in feminist and social theory is groundbreaking… So it is no surprise to me that her words would continue to push me, or pull me. Either way, she’s encouraging continuous motion on my part. A little nudge in the right direction, if you will. Embracing the balance of the attention economy and the quiet null that I sit so comfortably in. I’m inspired.
PIVOTING, STILL…
F*Ck- that hits so perfectly.
So much of my life has been reactive. Jump. Fix. Run. Fight, repeat. Always quick to move, handle, and problem-solve. The thing about fight or flight, when you’re in fight mode, you don’t get much space for pauses. I estimate that about 2/3 of my life has been spent in a state of fight or flight, and I am only now reaching a point where I feel truly grounded in the places I choose to stand.
Like in New York. The city itself is Chaos… but I feel steady in it.
Today should be fun. I get to go to one of the shows to watch our girls walk. It’s now 9 a.m., and I have to get ready for the day! No plan yet, just the show later.. so I will keep ya posted.
Maybe that’s the thing about being here: the balance between being a spectator and being part of the scene, watching and walking, noticing and doing. Either way, I’m here for it. I’m in it. Thanks for sharing the space with me.
