(37) surrender
structure to give up, giving up on structure
If you couldn’t tell by the name of this newsletter and maybe some previous times I’ve said it on other posts… I’m a virgo. Virgo season’s coming up and I’m feeling the energy shifting for myself: I’m writing again, bought a camera and I’m taking pictures again, returned to a kind of strict routine again, I also did my nails (a thing I haven’t done in ages and felt like the first time). I’m feeling very happy and at home taking myself out to museums and long walks, eating my favorite meals, having my morning tea, listening to soft music, ticking off boxes from my notion daily to-do lists, reading a bit every single day. And writing this post is one of those checklist items that I feel like finally doing.
I wanted to write today anything that comes up when I think of this word that followed me around all summer. I heard it in so many songs, two that I can think of right now: Surrender by Suicide and Lost in Your Eyes by Tommy James & The Shondells.
/ Time is a good muse of never knowing /
/ There is magic in this wonder
And desire to surrender/
This summer made me think about the fear I had of letting go of things, leaving situations I’m not comfortable in. Actually, summer made me feel and made me surrender to my senses. I felt like my intuition was screaming at me to just let things happen and be patient, to not expect quick results. I was on a month-long practice that my therapist kept reminding: do > think. I wrote this on a post-it and had it in sight to remember. I think that is a way of describing what surrender means. To cease resistance. To me, sometimes, thinking is resisting and so I stopped thinking and started doing.
For months I felt like “having to” do (anything, almost everything that I did daily was a bit of a burden and couldn’t do it without complaining) and summer finally gave me the chance to either just do it and not think about it again or not do anything at all. I wanted to get bored and stop worrying and I did that, the only thing is that I only gave myself a week to do that. So when I came back home I knew I needed to make something up to give myself more time to keep doing it… nothing at all.
So in my way (how a virgo’s mind works), I kind of made a structure to surrender to resistance. I read somewhere that having a routine and discipline actually gives you more freedom and room to create, so I felt validated to do this, this works for me okkkk? I hope it works for you if you want to.
For startersss, I just write… which means I think about things BUT writing them down is where the magic happens. Trust me, I have done and have so many things that I know where they’re written down and sometimes I’m in awe with the power that a pen can have. So think…
what is limiting you?
what are you giving up?
what’s the worst that can happen?
what’s the best that can happen?
Then fix up your routine and make it around the best thing you could be living at this exact moment. I have a label on my journal that just pops out and says “check daily”, this page is filled with
things i want to ADD to my routine: which are mostly things I already do like meditating, writing down how I’m feeling with some affirmations to start the day (the one I’m writing a lot atm is “take it easy”) and take my vitamins; things I actually added were to make myself breakfast and pair it with tea, read 10 pages of any book i want and have at least a 20-30 min walk every day.
things i want to CHANGE from my routine: I just wrote down that I wanted to clean my e-mail inbox instead of using instagram or tiktok. (eaaasy, kind of)
things i want to LIMIT from my normal day-to-day: like eating less from delivery services… so I would have to choose wisely when I order from uber eats.
The hard part for me is always doing, but I never force myself to do something I don’t want to so I choose things that I actually enjoy to do to do them everyday. It gets easier over time to just wake up and sit myself down, put on a mantra and meditate, from there I think the hardest part is done, then I just continue.
So yeah, at the end, what works for me is sitting down one day to write down a plan that’s gonna last me long enough to not sit down again to think and plan jaja and just do. Until I get bored and all of a sudden everyday it’s 10 am and I’m free from ticking boxes because I’ve done everything I “had to” do and now I get to do what I want and this post today is what I wanted to do.
Now from those bits from my routine (like reading gives me the words, ideas and rythms for me to write) I come up with things I wanted to give energy to… like a poem (which I wrote down sometime in this month that I wanted to get back into poetry, and so I did).
the time for despair has ended
i left my window wide open
on the wall drops melting
and sometimes i let dust fly in
crimson and clover over and over
bird songs sound sweeter at 6 am
i get shivers but i don’t care, it’s not rare
to be counting your freckles
as i get lost in my nails
and sometimes i forget about
the water i left pouring in the sink
because all i can think
about
is just
crimson and clover over and over
jaja i surrender.