The cubbies are full.

My daughter’s first birthday, my daughter’s first Halloween, rehearsing and playing my first live show in almost 3 years, my wife’s 40th birthday, teaching my first live in person indoor hot yoga TLO class since the pandemic started and then jumping on a plane to Kansas City to go to my mother’s memorial. All the while teaching 6 days a week and being a dad. This laundry list is all jam packed into a 2 week window. A lot of plates spinning in the air. A lot to “think about”.

Over the last couple months with the planning and anticipation of all these events, I’ve found myself “full up”. Packed to the brim mentally and emotionally. I’ve been describing it as… those mail cubbies with all the little squares is like my brain and heart and they’re all full. I can’t put one more thing in them. I was looking for a screwdriver the other day and my wife informed me that it was in my hand, that kind of full up. Going to the fridge and forgetting why, that kind of full up. 

Life gets hectic sometimes, to the point of reaching an emotional and mental limit. We all get our cubbies filled up from time to time. I think a good way to deal with it is… look at it. Take a step back, breathe deep through your nose and just recognize that the cubbies are full. That there isn’t anymore room for anything else. Now, my first instinct is to walk over to the thing and throw it on the freaking ground but that couldn’t be more counter productive. We have to start to empty one cubby at a time and move to the next.

To “empty out”. To recognize without resistance. Simply recognizing how you feel about something and not resisting it, good or bad, can start to empty one of those little square boxes in your heart, little by little. Know that you feel a certain way, look at it, breathe and accept it. What can you do about it right now? What’s in your power to empty the box? If you can do something about it, move slowly and do it. If you can’t, recognize with compassion and move to the next cubby. One step at a time.

A lot of times feelings can masquerade as friends but they’re neither. You could feel a certain way about something that’s coming up and 97% of the time the actual event is never as bad as how we felt about it before it happened. We just fill up those cubbies with metaphysical junk mail. Everything is going to work out. It always does and it never materializes the way we think it will. Half the shit in your cubbies is junk mail sent by… YOU!

Empty them slowly without turning away from any of them. You’ll eventually have a manageable mailbox. A cup is more useful when it’s empty. Ah crap, the baby’s got a fever now. One box at a time.