- "Anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast."
I know some of hubski have a terminally jangled lifestyle - but jangled or not, give some thought to "what anchors you" if anything, or whether you are adrift on the cosmic sea.
Even a one-word response would interest me.
My family keeps me anchored. They live in Denver and I go down to see them on weekends. I remember once, coming back, my roommate said something along the lines of, "your family isn't going to be there for you forever, 8bit." It made me really mad, perhaps for no reason. I realize there's an emphasis in American culture that you need to be pushed out of the nest asap or whatever, but that's not how we roll. We have houses in Sudan that are packed end to end with family, sometimes multiple families - cousins, uncles, grandparents, etc. etc., all supporting each other and backing each other up. And even if you took culture out of the equation: my sister is my best friend, no question. We understand each other better than anyone else. Why would you assume that that's not going to last forever? I think it's the opposite. Significant others come and go, friends come and go, but for the most part, barring some significant detachment (and usually that's for a good reason), you're stuck with your family for good. You may as well stay on good terms with them. Anyways, tl;dr Boulder drives me nuts sometimes and my family keeps me anchored from a sea of hate and self-loathing and/orinsanity.
One of the last times I was with my cousins that are around my age, the elder one asked me if I would like to meet our nephew's kid. I said I would. He walked across the street from our grandmother's house and came back with a frightened looking 2 year old. Now, my family (on one side) includes a lot of bastards, but we take care of our own no matter what. Within the hour, the child's grandfather (our other cousin) had been called over, as had most of the rest of the family. Luke is now very much a part of us. I don't buy into the American idea of what family should or could be and I don't expect them to understand what family means to me. And frankly, I don't care. My family is big and messy and one day I might even be the head of it. While we might betray each other in certain ways, we very much are a family and we all work hard to maintain that, because that is the culture we've created for ourselves. I for one, am down to continue that (hopefully sans bastards on my part).
My kids. When things get real dark, all I have to do is remind myself that there are three little creatures that (for now) love me unconditionally and rely on me to keep them alive and well-adjusted from day to day. Has a way of keeping me from falling off the edge. And in another sense: when daily life starts to feel too hectic, and the stresses of giving my life so completely to other people all the time start to bear down, all I have to do is remind myself that my kids are happy and healthy, and although they push my blood pressure into the red sometimes, I've seen the alternative to good health and total stability, and I couldn't imagine a life without any one of them. I'd rather be stressed with them here than less stressed with one less kid.
I suspect thenewgreen would agree with you wholeheartedly.
It's not weird at all. Sometimes it's easier hanging out with a person, once you've left the pressure of being in a relationship.. It's the 'hanging out' that we love. It's kind of the same as being in a relationship, except without the pressure of being in a relationship.
In the vein of Hunter S Thompson's quote, for me it would be showering. I pretty much have to take a shower every day or I feel like I have never properly woken up. The thing that keeps me going though is music, so I suppose my "kite" would have its string tied to a guitar.
travelling is potentially a joy because everything is jangled and every day is different -- but I tend to wake up in another city looking for something to anchor me to the day, to the coherent flow of time...a plan, a routine. Lately I've been going for a walk first thing in the morning, around 7:00 a.m. -- that's a kind of anchor, because I know I'm awake and the day moves forward - in the sense that you speak. Lately, too, when my classes start -- I try to anchor the class to the present: breathe (breathe in the present, breathe out the past) or do a short activity (going around the room, tell me in one word how your week was -- don't repeat any words used by a classmate.)one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours
I enjoy every interpretation of the question - but yes, in the HST sense, the question might be what anchors you to the day --
thx - I never called it "anchor to the present" until writing that post. I am aware that all of us come from so many crazy lives, yet somehow manage to arrive in the same place together at the designated time, our minds full of pressures, worries, and due dates. If I don't get them to shake off their stresses and be present, I'll feel like I'm talking to a bucket of hammers.
Iron, cold to the touch
cold to its very bones
and yet, when held to flame
burns hot, and stays hot
Whatever direction pulled upon
it holds fast to the deep,
resolute in continence
in that cold, briny well A heart of Oak
to temper my heart of clay
as yet unkilned, unmoulded, unshaped
with cool, calm Iron to hold me fast.
Anchors can be negative or positive. We can be hung up on an ex or "the one who got away" and refuse to move on from that person, who may often become an idealized representation of a series of events in our past history, and so anchored to a person who not only is not reachable or a part of our lives anymore, but who may never have existed as we choose to remember them. We may become anchored to goals which are not truly viable - I saw my former roommate do this over the past year as she was hell-bent on getting her doctorate in communications at a prestigious university (at any prestigious university) despite having, at best, a mediocre performance in pretty much all ways (master's classes, GRE scores, publication credits) that would qualify her to do so. There are anchors like obsession with physical appearance - anorexics undoubtedly feel anchored by their disease, but we can generally agree that anorexia and such obsession is a bad thing. To have good anchors maybe it is necessary to be realistic. But maybe not. I want to write, after all, but find myself faced with general "failure" time and again through repeated, near-unanimous rejections from poetry journals to which I submit my work. It doesn't stop me from writing but it discourages me from submitting. It's worth positing though that "publication" and "writing" are different goals and I do care more about the latter - however, the former is the easiest/best/quickest/most theoretically unbiased way to validate the latter. I suppose this question can be interpreted as, what do you do (or try to do) every day that reaffirms the place that you would like to occupy in the world? This then makes me ask, what do I do every day? I don't write every day, I only try to. In the loosest definition of writing (casual texting, Hubski, email, etc being included) I do write every day, but in the artistic sense I write somewhat less. My goal is to write every day. I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of answers for you lil, only navel-gazing.
sometimes navel-gazing is necessary. You never know how much lint is in there until you check.
(I interpreted this question in a more literal sense, so this is what anchors me to where I live right now.) Fear, I harbor a consistent fear that if I left my city, I would be completely alone. Friends (and to a lesser degree, family) are what I value most, and leaving all of them behind is a very scary thought.
I thought more carefully, and I can say my anchor is meditation. Whenever I let the habit slip for a few days I always start feeling more lost and unstable. Irritability increases and the fog of miscellaneous thought envelops my life. So much so that I forgot that it would apply here. If I can't give myself 20 minute to literally sit and do nothing, there's some issues that need to be addressed.
An anchor is what keeps you from drifting away. I can't say an anchor keeps you rooted or grounded because that wouldn't make metaphorical sense. Let's just say an anchor keeps you tethered to this plane of reality. Maybe your internet connection is your anchor, given the floating bed situation.
I've realized this last year that love is the only thing keeping my sailboat from crashing into the rocks. It is my lighthouse. Without it I live my life at the mercy of the waves. Ref makes a good point too. Anchors can be a blessing or a curse. I have another anchor that sometimes traps me in stormy weather far from sunny beaches. Love and addiction. Two anchors that stretch me apart in a roiling sea. I'm not making much sense. I haven't written anything worth sharing since my stint in college almost ten years ago. Let's see some more navel lint from others.
Love is the only thing keeping my sailboat from crashing into the rocks. It is my lighthouse.
That's a pretty gorgeous couple of sentences there camarillo. I hope love keeps you afloat. Or addiction. Or both. I'm not making much sense.
Actually you make perfect sense. You drop anchor at love, then set sail to addiction and sojourn there for awhile. I'm not sure how sustainable that is, but it's keeping you afloat for now.