i've done it my whole life

reading deprivation, caffeine withdrawal, and loop hole kittens

It’s not that hard, Mom, I’ve done it my whole life, says my ten-year-old. Delivered with a mocking stare as she stood filling her bright green, sticker-covered water bottle.

(Her whole life, her whole looooong ten-year-old life)

I had been complaining out loud, as any other normal adult would, gingerly sipping my first cup of coffee in two days, about how painful, miserable, and downright awful it had been - not to be able to drink coffee for an entire 48-hour period.

A weird stomach flu had descended upon me and only me (as has been the strange and questionable trend the past few months as far as illnesses go) and anything other than water or ginger tea had been off the table ever since. Which then opened the door and waved right in a 24-hour migraine to, please, just go ahead and make itself at home.

So when I woke up with a stronger stomach, one that had some daring and actual hunger in it, and no headache, instead of thinking ya know what, maybe I’ll take it slow, I don’t need coffee today. I jumped right back in. Because caffeine withdrawal is real. I sat at the table in denial muttering how I was just going to see what happens.

After those first few sips, my brain giggled with instant caffeine-induced relief. Meanwhile, my stomach grumbled from the corner, too soon lady.

There are just some things that are easier to do than not do.

Convincing myself not to do them even when it’s what’s good for me is real - real - real hard.

We’ve recently finished the fourth week of our Artist’s Way workshop: Recovering a Sense of Integrity. This means we’ve also just finished an entire week of READING DEPRIVATION. By reading deprivation, I don’t just mean just books hahahahaha (insert hysterical laughter) that would be too easy (not really but it would be easier). Nope; I mean emails of substance from that site you signed up with for that discount, Substacks, the news, social (which I’ve been off now for quite a while but still), audiobooks, podcasts, and or if it’s a thing for you, television binging. Perhaps even long rambling stories that come before the recipes you are perusing before making dinner. Normally I hate these and click the “jump to the recipe” button but in reading deprivation week, you get desperate. I found myself lingering and had to pull myself back. That was a close one.

Reading deprivation is meant to be used as a tool during the week, along with morning pages to get you closer to personal integrity. Not the moral kind, but the second definition of the word, which is the state of being whole and undivided.

If you’ve ever closed your eyes and listened for a while and then opened them and listened again - you’ll hear a difference. With your eyes closed you hear better. Same environment, same sounds, but suddenly you have a different ability to listen.

Reading deprivation is a bit like that. You take a break, not forever, but for a week, and see what you hear inside yourself when you’ve turned down that background noise you’ve become so accustomed to. And I’ve got to say the reason I and so many people find it so hard is that what you often hear are very personal calls to action.

At first, as one would expect, those calls are immediate and urgent requests to pick up your phone, please!!, to find something yummy and entertaining to think about, something, anything else, to consume yourself with...besides your own thoughts and opinions. It’s just wildly uncomfortable. You’ll think to yourself it shouldn’t be this hard. But it just is. You’ll bargain with yourself and argue that reading is good for you! That what you read is vital and important! That outside inspiration is necessary! But then things will start to land in more personal territory.

And if you’re like me, and have ADHD, within 24 hours of said reading deprivation, where you land might be in the territory of kittens.

Yup, kittens plural.

Because well…she never mentioned kitten deprivation. It’s a loophole. I know. I know. And I did not entirely rescue two kittens to avoid sitting with my own thoughts and only my thoughts for a week - but I did stop and wonder about the timing. Less than 24 hours into the week I was holding two little purring machines.

Meet Charlie and Sadie

Even with the kitten distraction, which was quite all-consuming for the first few days, I STILL found myself reaching embarrassingly every three minutes for something; a book, the New Yorker, my phone to check that thing, the weather, anything! Anything to feed my brain really so that I could get rid of that empty mouth/soul feeling. And I would slowly, sadly back away from the library book pile, put the phone in a drawer and sit myself down and shake my head and take a breath.

I thought I would do better, I guess, as anyone addicted to anything knows, it takes a while, sometimes a lifetime to admit you have a problem. But I seriously didn’t think I was one of those people - always reaching - for SOMETHING ELSE.

I started thinking a lot about this idea of factory settings. The habits we make, the ones we’re born with (our nature), and how hard it is to step back from well, anything that we have created repetition around. I have a lot of reading repetition. I check my email, I check my Substack, I check Marco Polo, I check the weather, I check The New Yorker. I do this every hour without realizing it. I know this now because I started writing down every time I reached for something to read. My kids don’t do this. They haven’t built in this pattern yet. Just like with the coffee, Esme doesn’t get how hard putting something down you pick up every dang day can be…not yet.

And that’s when it got a little scary because suddenly I knew what I had to do was let the boredom into my mind. Something I hypocritically say is good for you to my kids, but which I rarely practice. I had to let it sit down right next to me. And watch as it turned happily and smiled and began to gnaw at my neck until I couldn’t take it anymore - because it tickles, and it kinda hurts, and I couldn’t take it - I had to get up and move and start…doing something. Anything! But what?!!!

First, I cleaned. My house was a mess because of the spontaneous kitten debacle and it was an easy choice. One that was full of false virtue but necessity.

Instead of holding a book or my phone, my hands stayed very busy (for a short time) wiping down every surface, watching horror-stricken as kitty hair flew in the air with every swipe. I vacuumed steadily (to calm my kitty acquisition anxiety), and sticky rolled our dark green velvet chair. The chair I had bought for MYSELF (because I’d always wanted a wingback), but which the older (and original) cat Vera claimed long ago as her own and regularly chases me from by climbing on top and pawing at my head the moment I sit down in it. It’s humiliating. And every week I clean the chair for Vera and wonder if I got one for myself if she'd claim that as well.

When the cleaning was done, I sat at my kitchen table wide-eyed. What to do now? I was thankfully pulled out of my head by the sounds my house was making. I could hear the refrigerator humming, and the oven ting and thumping as it cooled down - this post making butter cookies for the neighbor who loaned us a jump pack for our 1999 Honda CRV whose battery literally froze last week.

Apparently, you have to use them or they freeze up - hmmmmm, maybe brainy brains are the same way.

Sitting listening, I felt kind of swirly and like I was out of my body. I don’t know, my head just started to spin around and around - very much wanting something to do. But I also felt tired and I didn’t want to start anything big or serious; a painting, a scarf, a zine. I just wanted to sit, but the sitting was hard.

I suppose if I’d just decided the whole week was a meditation it would have been easier but I was still fighting the loss of the input. And maybe avoiding what might come up if I held still too long.

Then the plant babies on the table, I had moved to get some sun, asked to be seen and photographed.

Plant Babies. Watercolor by Melissa Thompson-Viera

The ammonite fossil, I bought four years ago in Tucson at the Saguaro National Park gift shop with Esme, chirped up from the corner, Hey, over here, remember me! I fit in the palm of your hand and was born before people ever existed, and now I sit on your piano

Ammonite Fossil Circa 185 Million Years Old

It took a good long while to settle into the day, the space, mySelf. It was uncomfortable for a long, long time. Many days actually until the feeling that maybe this moment was enough, that I didn’t have to do (or want to do) anything right now but breathe and look, and hear, and touch was an okay feeling to have. That, yes, there were things to do, but not right now. Right now I could just be a person watching and listening.

Right now the light coming through the glass in the kitchen was making a rainbow on the floor, and my daughter was putting her foot under it - so now she has a rainbow for a foot.

It went this way with little moments of delight and discomfort all week.

All because without the reading, the pouring in of others’ words, advice, urgencies, laughter, and stories. I had to turn to my own cup as they say. Mine got cold, left there in the corner, but I could stir up the dregs from the bottom, and take some sips - still tasty - just forgot it was there. Might need a refill.

Last week I got an email from The Minimalist Podcast, which I highly recommend, and they signed it off “Keep it very, very simple.”

I thought about it for a while. I wrote it on my left hand in sharpie where I could see it whenever I reached for something. It felt like something to apply, and then reapply, everywhere and hold onto. Especially right now.

The call is simple but difficult to swallow. Do what needs to be done to wake up to a more personal life.

It brought me, as the quiet always does, to my edge, as Sarah Wilson talks about here. She shared a quote by Pema Chodron which I’ll share as well. Because Pema!!!

Buddhist nun Pema Chodron wrote in The Wisdom of No Escape:

“Life is a whole journey of meeting your edge again and again. That’s where, if you’re a person who wants to live, you start to ask yourself questions like, “Now, why am I so scared? What is it that I don’t want to see? Why can’t I go any further than this?”’

But we can’t even ask these questions if we’re not listening…to ourselves. We don’t go looking for edges when we’re sipping steadily from everyone else’s ideas of what’s important. We have to get bored and lonely unfortunately. This is what I tell my children anyway - as I sit with my pile of library books and tea not allowing a minute of boredom to sit next to me.

Sarah shares another one here:

A final thought from Rumi

“Stay together, friends

Don’t scatter and sleep

Our friendship is made

of being awake.”

Don’t get me wrong, I attempted a cup of coffee again - the one I made that morning didn’t make it very far. My habit of steady caffeine intake is still one I plan to hold onto somehow! Some way! And if you’ve read here for a while you know, on occasion, I actually have to give up coffee and drink tea double time - the coffee makes me feel like life is an emergency and not in a good way. But I’m not ready to set it down yet! And I can’t wait to get back to reading. Seriously can’t wait! Baby steps!

But man, when it gets quiet and we sit with the boredom and loneliness; that’s where we meet ourselves and the edges we’ve been ignoring. We ignore them because they’re insistent once they start talking, and they’re going to ask us to do some work, take some action. It’s waaaaay easier to ignore them.

Esme would say, it’s a place that’s been available, our whole life, and it’s just waiting to pipe up and give us a piece of its mind. If we don’t take the time to listen, we’re kind of just operating on someone else’s settings, living our life divided up into pieces of words and ideas that are a repetition of what someone else has to say. And that’s not the point if, as Pema says, you’re a person who wants to really live. If we want to really live we have to be brave enough to listen to ourselves for a good long while.

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If you’re curious and give reading deprivation a try, I’d love to hear from you! It’s a wild ride!