# notes to self: 1. If you aren’t sure what to do next, prepare and clear the spaces in which this “next” can appear. Unsubscribe from emails, deep clean your bathroom, declutter your desktop and bedside. Open up space for it to arrive. The invisible adores your symbolic maintenance rituals, and matter loves its breathing room. 2. A big open space, an unknown, is always a friend. We are pros at the unknown, as it is with us in every second of our lives. At one point, you left a tight, watery womb and took a breath into a mysterious and grand landscape. You had to be taught how to count and speak and learn the words for your own organs. All of your fears may occupy the unknown, but so do all of your future joys and teachings. Honor the big open space instead.

3. Making new friends and being around new people in adulthood may feel daunting, but the quest toward “breaking the ice” with another being is a worthy destination, a potent practice in connection. Maybe it’s the first time you make them belly laugh or maybe it’s when they reveal something that counters your previous characterization. Or, it may just be the instant you realize you are both comfortable sharing a silence or mutual scroll. The goal of connection isn’t to impress or entertain another person at all times, it is to learn how to be with them. It is to share the weight of existence, for a moment, between two bodies.

4. Hanging out just for the sake of existing together is a practice that should not end in youth. Make time with friends in adulthood to wander around malls, join them on errands, have a lazy midday facetime. Many of the most healing and defining connections we’ve felt with others were not ruled by productive plans or glorious backdrops. Sharing space softly as you are is enough.

5. If you don’t feel you have a “life purpose”, here is one: de-stressing. This is an ever-changing, worthy feat that will challenge you and uplift you for a lifetime. And don’t be surprised if your “life purpose” casually enters your life while you tend to all of those frayed circuits. 6. My north stars right now: daily B-Complex, full nights of sleep, and green tea over coffee.