So here we are, over a week since I launched my blog with much gusto, and since then haven’t written jack shit. Not only have I not posted, I’ve also spiraled from my personal journaling, broke my 60+ day streak of meditation and my Duolingo Spanish informed me that my discipline is no bueno. Also, I ate a chili dog yesterday.
These waves of ambition followed by a floundering sense of defeat pretty much illustrate my personal creative struggle. It’s something that I’ve wrestled with – being my best self means being my best self all the time. So if I’m not always my best self, am I never my best self?
But I’m from the Bay, so for the past years I haven’t faced any of these questions because it’s so much easier to blame it on lunar cycles.
So I should make it clear that I still believe in it. I believe whole-heartedly that the 75% liquid that comprises our bodies are tugged and nudged like the tide. Often on sleepless nights I lie in confusion as to why my eyes won’t stay shut, until I glance outside to see the full moon standing there like a bouncer keeping me from my slumber. Once, a singer named Golda Supanova read me my Mayan totem. “You’re a blue rhythmic monkey,” she said, with voice smoky and eyes half-mast. “You organize in order to play.” Truth is the truth is the truth.
A couple years ago I came across a lunar calendar for self-optimization, in the pages of Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock. Here’s a fascinating video breakdown, but if you want to skip to the lunar cycle part it’s at about 3:45 when he starts talking about chronobiology.
When I first read it, I didn’t internalize it. Just wasn’t written in the stars at the time. But over the past few months I’ve been trying to be more understanding and accepting of my routines, my inclinations and my reclusions. I’ve been trying to find a better explanation for why one week I’m bursting with ideas and energy and vision, and a few days later all I want to do is watch Boardwalk Empire forever and ever. How do I reach such moments of zen that I feel I’ve risen above the silly game of social media pseudo-fame, and the next day wake up feeling all bitter that no one liked my IG picture of a door.
It’s so easy and neat and productive-feeling to just compartmentalize it neatly in a weekly moon calendar. Here’s a creepy graphic I constructed as a quick reference:
The problem is, I never know where the hell we are in the lunar cycle. I really wish I was the kind of person who could detect things like this based on how the hairs were standing up on my neck, but the truth is I have an app that tells me, and even still I can’t keep track. I only check on the moon cycle when I’m feeling shitty, because it’s a safety net. Because on weeks when I’m not waking up on time and my conversations are awkward and I have anxiety for no reason, it’s comforting to stare at the sky and attribute everything to magnetic pull.
There is so much potent wisdom in reading the cosmos, but it’s also so tempting to let it be an excuse. Mercury in retrograde, gemini tendencies, planets not aligning – I’m not saying they’re not real dynamics, but you have to admit they’re also good excuses for dropping the ball while sounding hella deep.