[The Books of Vries] Get Luna

[Ann of Owlshire]

The Prologue 

So, I had originally envisioned a LotR-themed challenge in which I engaged in beauty and running around the woods (or at least local parks) and singing to the trees. But it rang hollow, and I realised something important: I'm no elf princess.

 

*

 

I’ve also been pondering a Harry Potter-themed challenge, but nothing ever came together. Until it did. 

 

 

Forget beauty and serenity. WEIRD and WONDERFUL is who I am. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that. I need to re-embrace my inner Luna.

 

 

Okay, Let's Back Up

 

 

I'm Ann of Vries, aged 39; a storyteller, a diarist, a fiber artist, a gamer, a traveler, a hiker, and a new mother. I’m madly in love with my partner, Mr of Vries, and my 6 month old son, Rowan of Vries--usually known as the Enting. Warning: There will be baby pics on this thread.

 

I’ve been in the Adventurers Guild for the last several challenges. I love the Adventurers, but recently the class hasn’t been quite fitting right… and it, oddly enough, took a recent adventure for me to figure out why.

 

About two and half years ago, I emigrated to the UK from Seattle. I love it here, it sings to my bones. It speaks to my soul. This is the place I want to settle. But I’ve realised recently that while I intend to make my home here, I have been treating my stay like a long term tourist. It’s time to live here. To belong. To dig deep and grow some roots. I can't do that in the mindset of a visitor.

 

The Challenge

Note: This challenge is in conjunction with the 12 Week Year System. I'm still figuring out the details of this particular "year" so you may see some tweaks in my challenge as I sort that out.

 

Get Weird and Wonderful:

Engage in my creative projects: writing, knitting, other crafts (I was recently given some acrylic inks to use with my dip pen and have I even opened them? No!) .

 

• Do my hobbies at least 10 minutes per day, 5 days a week.

 

Be my weird and wonderful self. I used to be this eccentric weird girl with an odd charm. These days I just feel awkward and unsettled. I suspect that culture change has something to do with this (Seattle is full of awkward charm; London is full of sophistication), but I don’t feel like myself anymore and I want to change that. I’d rather be myself and stick out than try to fit in and feel uncomfortable in my own skin.

 

Internal journeys are hard to track with SMART goals. So I’ll start with the physical: I want to look like myself again.

 

Unshockingly, I gained weight during pregnancy. Not a lot—I’m only carrying about 10lbs of it now. But it’s enough that my wardrobe no longer fits (or fits poorly when it does). I told myself I’d wait at least six months before I fussed about it.

 

That time has come.

 

• Lose at least 2lbs during this challenge. I'm for gradual changes, and anyway it's hard to do a strict fitness routine with the Enting.
• Return to drinking at least 2 litres of water a day. I can't seem to stick to this one without tracking it, which annoys me, but it is what it is.
• Clean out my closet: pack away maternity/nursing clothing, sort for the season, figure out what is missing and make a plan to replace them. 
  • For example, I know that I’m short of autumn/winter footwear. They all wore out last year, but I didn’t want to try shoe shopping whilst pregnant.

 

Study to Become a Wizard Naturalist:

• Get walking. Walk at least 10k steps, 5 day a week, as per my fitbit. Note that this will usually involve carrying my 20+lbs-and-growing baby for an extra workout.
  • There is a known inaccuracy because it counts patting the Enting (while winding/burping him) as steps, but I'm opting to accept that for ease of tracking.
• Observe my surroundings: Note 3 interesting things I’ve encountered, at least 5 days a week in my journal. This is meant to get my out of my head and engaged in the world around me.
• Eat more healthy homecooked meals. I’m so bored of living on ready meals and prepared foods. 
• Keep records. Create a layout to track these items in my shiny new Bullet Journal. I've been keeping daily to-do lists these last few mad months, but I think I'm now ready for more long term coherency instead of disconnected daily episodes.

 

Let's see how this goes, shall we?

 

AoV x

[Salinger]

Hey, welcome to the Rangers   and welcome to LONDON! (i live in Manchester but im in London a LOT for work) 

 

Trust me, its weird down there, you just need to find it  im an artist, and all my friends down there are artists too...weird wonderful freaky awkward anxious friendly...is how id describe my times there. 

 

I hope you do amazing with your goals, and ill be following to support you xx

[Ann of Owlshire]

1 hour ago, Salinger said:

Hey, welcome to the Rangers   and welcome to LONDON! (i live in Manchester but im in London a LOT for work) 

 

Trust me, its weird down there, you just need to find it  im an artist, and all my friends down there are artists too...weird wonderful freaky awkward anxious friendly...is how id describe my times there. 

 

I hope you do amazing with your goals, and ill be following to support you xx

 

Thanks! Mr of Vries grew up in the North (specifically, Lymm), and I have in-laws and his childhood friends up that way. I keep wanting to get up there to see the Annie Swynnerton exhibit at the Manchester Art Gallery. Have you been?

 

I know all sorts exist in London, it's just finding them in the big sprawl. It's even harder now with the babe, but I can't really blame him since I wasn't succeeding much before he showed up XD  Oh well. Maybe I'll have more luck wherever we land next (leaving London is in our medium-term plans, but we'll stay in the UK).

 

Part of the issue is probably where we live. I'm sure it's not all Yummy Mummys here, but it sure feels like it from where I'm standing  

[Arkania]

3 hours ago, Ann of Vries said:

Be my weird and wonderful self. I used to be this eccentric weird girl with an odd charm.

....

but I don’t feel like myself anymore and I want to change that. I’d rather be myself and stick out than try to fit in and feel uncomfortable in my own skin.

 

This sounds really great, love your challenge!

I can also identify with that!

 

(And you are so pretty! )

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Welcome to the Ranger Corps! I'll be following along.

[Ann of Owlshire]

2 hours ago, Arkania said:

(And you are so pretty! )

 

Aw, thanks *blush* It's a particularly flattering selfie.

[Elastigirl]

I love Luna! And baby pictures  are even better

[oromendur]

Here! And following, since I can't stalk you by reloading the Adventurers page this time around.

 

11 hours ago, Ann of Vries said:

So, I had originally envisioned a LotR-themed challenge in which I engaged in beauty and running around the woods (or at least local parks) and singing to the trees. But it rang hollow, and I realised something important: I'm no elf princess.

 

Well, if you're sticking to narrow pop-culture definitions of 'elf princess,' good on you for realizing what you aren't.

 

<puts on pedantic Tolkien scholar hat>

 

I do want to point out, though, that 'noble elf lady' and 'badass Ranger' are not quite mutually exclusive: "Three times Lórien had been assailed from Dol Guldur, but besides the valour of the elven people of that land, the power that dwelt there was too great for any to overcome, unless Sauron had come there himself. Though grievous harm was done to the fair woods on the borders, the assaults were driven back; and when the Shadow passed, Celeborn came forth and led the host of Lórien over Anduin in many boats. They took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed." (The Return of the King)

 

<removes pedantic Tolkien scholar hat>

 

Ahem. Anyway. Sometimes I can't help myself, sorry  

 

 In the end, finding a metaphor that fits is really, really hard -- and you could certainly do a LOT worse than Luna Lovegood!

 

11 hours ago, Ann of Vries said:

I’d rather be myself and stick out than try to fit in and feel uncomfortable in my own skin.

 

Try to remember that you're playing this particular game on extra-hard mode. Being true to oneself is difficult enough for people who never leave home. In a new country? A whole new continent?? That takes guts. Go on with your bad Ranger self! 

 

Looking forward to reading about your success (and to more pictures of the Enting, who -- whatever you might be doing or not doing -- is putting down roots there without even thinking about it). 

[Ann of Owlshire]

33 minutes ago, oromendur said:

<puts on pedantic Tolkien scholar hat>

 

I love your pedantic Tolkien scholar hat  Thank you for schooling me. I'm not saying the elf ladies aren't badass, so much as I don't feel that Galadriel (or Arwen's) personality is necessarily how I view myself, let alone my Best Self. It would be pretending to be someone I'm not.

 

Mostly, I had wanted to use this meme for a challenge:

 

 

Maybe the opportunity will still come.

 

PS: The selfie I used was taken on the train to Oxford to see the Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth exhibit at the Bodleian.

 

36 minutes ago, oromendur said:

Try to remember that you're playing this particular game on extra-hard mode. Being true to oneself is difficult enough for people who never leave home. In a new country? A whole new continent?? That takes guts. Go on with your bad Ranger self! 

 

 Thanks for pointing this out I was decent enough at it in Seattle, but I am finding it so much harder here!

 

37 minutes ago, oromendur said:

the Enting, who -- whatever you might be doing or not doing -- is putting down roots there without even thinking about it

 

I like to say that our ambition to put down roots may have played a subconscious role in naming our son after a tree....

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, Ann of Vries said:

PS: The selfie I used was taken on the train to Oxford to see the Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth exhibit at the Bodleian.

One of my goals in life is to visit England and do a bunch of Tolkein tourism. 

[annyshay]

Found you. Love Luna. Love baby pictures. Love your challenges!

[Ann of Owlshire]

Yesterday had magic.

 

A few weeks ago, one of my favourite singers, Eliza Rickman, announced she was doing a European tour. YAY! Except! Except! The London concert was a house concert (but open to fans). I mentioned it to Mr of Vries, and we considered for a moment whether we dared. It was on a work night. London is big. We're parents now.

 

Then a couple of hours later, I got a message from some friends of ours.

 

Who happened to be the people sponsoring the house concert. And we were invited.

 

We know awesome people.

 

Then we wondered about trying to get a babysitter. And they told us to just bring the Enting with us.

 

(We still tried to find a sitter anyway, but the trusted person who was most likely to be available to watch him so late on a work night was actually attending the concert himself. :P) 

 

So last night we got to go to a small concert of ~30 people, listen to one of my favourite musicians, and I got to sway and snuggle with the Enting who was a perfect audience member the whole way through.

 

I need more of this in my life.

[Salinger]

Sounds incredible !! London can be amazing

 

So so glad you had a fun time! xx

[Ann of Owlshire]

27 minutes ago, Salinger said:

Sounds incredible !! London can be amazing

 

So so glad you had a fun time! xx

 

London is massive and we struggle with it, but sometimes it can be a small world. She's coming to Manchester on the 20th, although it won't be a house party.

[Ann of Owlshire]

If things come in threes, I'm not sure what's going to happen next....

 

Mr of Vries is coming home from work now. Which is not work anymore. He--very bravely--resigned his position this morning. We knew it was a possibility--even inevitable--, I supported him on the decision, and we're in a good financial situation to float through it.

 

The whole situation leading up to it is unfortunate (without going into details, his workplace is drowning in toxic ooze), but Enting and I will be glad to spend more time with him until he starts whatever and whenever comes next. 

 

I may rethink some of my goals for this challenge given changes to my daily life, but being more flexible to changes in life and the seasons thereof is part of my longterm mindset aspirations, so perhaps the universe just gave me a chance to practice it....

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Having left a toxic workplace or two in my time I fully support Mr. Of Vries and his decision. 

[Arkania]

I am soooo close to do this also. (Even if in my case the toxic is not about mean colleagues or something but about work I have to do that don't wanna do anymore and because of my struggle with this job (it is so unneccessary....) it's toxic for my mind and led to burn our earlier this year. If that's understandable? No? Ok, first world problem )

[Ann of Owlshire]

37 minutes ago, Arkania said:

If that's understandable?

 

It's understandable to me! 

[Ann of Owlshire]

Challenge Patch 1.0

 

• Removed home-cooking goal (as Mr of Vries will be doing a lot more cooking since he’s home)
• Replaced with “eat more healthy homecooked meals.”

 

• Changed movement goal from 10 hours to 10k steps a day.
• Added note about known inaccuracies.

 

• Added goal: Keep Records.

[deftona]

Here to follow! Welcome to the Rangers! Welcome to England! Welcome to your super cute little baby ohmygosh :hearteyesemoji:

[Ann of Owlshire]

Enting is now 6 months old. I can't believe it's gone by this fast! 

 

At his advanced age, we decided he was ready to take on Eldritch Horrors. You've got to start these monster hunters early, it's a nom or be nommed world.

 

 

(This child was incubated during a LARP campaign of the Rippers setting (think Victorian Monster Hunters). He was kind enough to let me attend the campaign finale--very, very pregnant--, but we missed the epilogue game because he was busy being born.)

[Salinger]

He is beautiful!!!!! x

[Ann of Owlshire]

I spend too much time thinking.

 

But while I spend too much time thinking, I thought I'd share with you this short piece by Amal El-Motar about "Tapping the Long Tale" of life.

 

Quote

In the last days of last year, I was in a car with my cousin Eliana and her husband Andrew, driving home to Luskville, where they were visiting my family. We were talking about activism. Andrew was saying he preferred to put his energy towards his local community rather than have anything to do with the internet; I said I found that interesting, because to me, moving around as much as I do and frequently being in quite isolated places, my local community is the internet, to a certain extent. 

I began telling him of how much good is in my life because of the people I've met online, because of projects I've begun online; I began telling him about Goblin Fruit and The Honey Month , and how those things would not have been possible without the internet, without social networking, without the people I am fortunate enough to have in my life as a result. 

"Ah," he said, eyes on the road, "you've tapped the Long Tale." 

I went very still. 

Minutes are passing as I try to explain what happened in that moment. In that stillness, a profound clarity was growing faster than I could apprehend it; there was this gold-brown path of a word, TALE, that was a root growing from my heart through my solar plexus and shivering my skin. Tapping the Long Tale. It was a winding, snaking path, that Tale, and it was full of warm sunshine and earth and it was inside me and I was walking it and I think I forgot, for a few seconds, to breathe. 

"What does that mean," I asked, even as I knew, intimately, completely, what it meant. It meant that we have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours -- a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It's the opposite to living our lives episodically, where each day is only tangentially connected to the next, where we are ourselves the only constants linking yesterday to tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with that, and I don't want to imply that there is by saying how much this shocked me -- just that it felt so suddenly, painfully right to think that I have tapped into my Long Tale, that I have set my feet on the path I want to walk the rest of my life, and that it is a path of stories and writing and that no matter how many oceans I cross or how transient I feel in any given place, I am still on my Tale's Road, because having tapped it, having found it, the following is inevitable. Not easy -- it will probably be hard, and may be steep and thorny or wet and muddy or beset by badgers, but to not follow it is inconceivable because it is mine. 

I knew all this, and could not believe that my cousin's husband, a hardcore pragmatic materialist who doesn't even like the internet, could know this too. 

"You know, Tapping the Long Tail," he said. "Long Tail economics?"

I blinked. 

"So you know how in a regular distribution you get a bell curve? And towards the end of it you have this long tail, and retailers like Amazon have tapped into it to sell less of more, and..." 

And I was trying to listen, I really was, but I also wanted to laugh and clutch at that feeling of everything locking into brilliant, shining place. 

I tried to explain what I'd misunderstood, and through it what I had understood, what a gift he'd given me -- but I don't think I did a very good job. I'm not entirely sure I've done much better here. But still, every time I think of that phrase, something shimmers behind my eyes, and I want everyone I love to have this moment, even as I struggle to hold on to it and be worthy of it and not take it for granted. I want them to know that moment of feeling that everything they've done, no matter how disparate an aggregation of things it may seem, has brought them to a point where they are clear-eyed and self-knowing and full of purpose, making their way towards their best selves.

 

More later,

 

AoV

[Ann of Owlshire]

I've been working on my Aspirational Vision (which is a keystone for the 12 Week Year plan), and I've kept getting stuck.

 

Part of this is because I have trouble fully removing myself from societal (and occasionally familial) expectations and they tend to creep in and I come up with something that sounds great but isn't actually me and I don't feel any enthusiasm about. The other is that they want you to come up with really specific things. I can understand this in a way--it's got a business/work focus, and "make 60k a year" sounds more concrete than "make a comfortable living." But the thing is, I don't function that way. And it's problematic when I try. I don't want to envision my dream house in detail. I want to be open to making any home a dream. We don't have exact plans on where we're going to live, or if we're going to settle down somewhere in the long term at all. I'm not sure what I want to do for money once the Enting is older. The best job I ever had was a hobby that suddenly turned into money and sidelined me out of nowhere. And I'm not sure I want to approach that for purpose of making it a business again. And I'm happy not knowing those things. My life has rarely gone according to "plan," and when it went most off the rails brought me to the place I am now.

 

Anyway, today I ditched that and thought about my Long Tale as per my post above. I considered my peak life experiences. I found the general commonalities. 

 

And I think I can craft from that a "vision." But it won't be specific. But I think I just have to accept that that's the way I am. (And maybe I need another system than the 12WY, although there's a lot about it I like. Including the concept of the Aspirational Vision.)

 

(Also, I like "how would you want your life described in one sentence" from Pink's Drive, and I've using that as another way to focus.)

 

Have other NFers tried to craft Visions or Mission Statements and the like? Do you find them inspirational?

 

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, Ann of Vries said:

 

Have other NFers tried to craft Visions or Mission Statements and the like? Do you find them inspirational?

Like you, I don't find them helpful. I resonate a lot with the idea of making any home a dream rather than specifically figuring out what a dream home is before you buy it.