"Life coaching" and therapy services are both exorbitantly expensive, so I guess I am going to have to coach myself.  What a relief and so convenient that I already know everything.  Just kidding, but I feel like I am getting closer having been coached by romantic misadventure, miscarriage, cancer, the pandemic, years of being a working person, etc. 

Here's one belief I have that keeps reverberating through the years: you need a lot less than you think you need to be happy.  A lot less.  In terms of relationships, in terms of possessions, in terms of physical/mental abilities, in terms of everything.  The additive process as a path to joy is a capitalist lie.  Subtraction is the way.  

Shave off the branches and you strengthen the core.  I am going to write a song about it.  Take away beauty, take away the validation you get from others, take away a bunch of physical junk that only gathers dust and weighs you down, take away all the things you thought you were (daughter, teacher, singer, young, pretty, smart, friendly, generous).  What's left?  Can you be happy with that?  Can you learn how to be?  

More and more I realize, the essence of joy is just consciousness, experience.  It's that simple.  Against all odds in this swirling universe some particles got thrown together and became self aware.  Just enjoy it.  Like Judee Sills sings, "However we are is ok." 

Put me outside the "I fought cancer," the "I beat cancer" talk.  Put me outside the conception of cancer as sparring partner.  That's not how it is.  I MADE cancer.  Somebody had to cut it out of me, and I was grateful, but the cancer was me.  My body humbled me, terrified me, put my brain through its paces and in the end it taught me.  Showed me things I have never seen.  

For a person who is already always existentially crisising, this was not just that.  This was something experiential, not just theoretical.  Like when I lost my baby, I felt like a wounded animal.  Around me the world became more real, came into focus.  My senses sharpened.  I could feel oblivion all around the edges of everything, waiting.  

You have to make friends with what's waiting or you can never relax.  Not saying I've done it, I just know it has to be that way if you're going to have real peace.  This got me closer, that's for sure.  Look how each blade of grass shines and turns, feel the facility of breathing, sit down to have a pee and get up again. Again, and again and again.  Every moment is a miracle.  Every moment is borrowed from the thing that's waiting.