Before we get into the newsletter:
a year long reminder that now is good
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In honor of the calendar, I wanted to bring you the origin story of Now is Good. If you’re a day one, you may remember this dispatch—I updated it slightly to reflect my current state. As I was creating the calendar, I was thinking a lot about the why of this project. It led me back to this story, which is a comfort and reminder of how I wish to chart my path. I hope you enjoy.
Oftentimes when I call my dad, my phone is turned up to the highest volume because cell reception is spotty in my apartment. I’m puttering about, my hands busy cleaning dishes or trimming split ends as I ramble through the details of my current conundrum. These phone calls occur because I’m consciously or unconsciously in a moment of transition. A place between other places. A crossroads.
I’ve always had a bit of trouble with transitory points (both micro and macro, literal and metaphorical) and my dad is well aware of this. He noticed early on I’d have anxiety before getting out of the car or paralyzing fear before stepping over the threshold of a classroom. This has evolved into general fog of indecisiveness. I’ll stay in a relationship because it’s so hard to experience that week before and after the breakup. I’ll avoid quitting a job for far too long, in part to avoid having awkward conversations with coworkers.
When my dad pointed this quirk out to me, I was about 8 years old. He addressed it and promised we’d work on it together. It was my first brush with utilizing self awareness. In present day, these phone calls conclude with me realizing that the waiting period is over and the inevitable time to act has come. I’ll say something along the lines of I guess I’ll do—irrationally scary thing—now. my father, who has listened patiently countless times while I hypothesize and self-analyze will say yeah, well now is good.
It’s his subtle way of saying No time like the present! What are you waiting for? This is only as big a deal as you make it.
now is good
This is my open ended rallying cry, echoing through my mind at all times of day and night.
I offer it up as a universal reminder to check in with the moment at hand. It’s a chance to take stock of stories playing in the mind and recenter in immediate reality.
This moment feels especially like a communal transition. The world is turning itself inside out, as much or more than when I started this newsletter. Systems of power are shifting, the earth is responding in real time.
Through it all, our external environments reflect the internal ecosystem that we alone can cultivate and truly care for. As we move forward each day into the brave unknown, it can be helpful to remember that now is good.
Even if that means now is a good time to finally experience the emotions that you’ve been unable to fully feel because they were just too hard to face.
Maybe now is good, as you actually digest that lesson the universe has provided again and again.
Or now is good to recommit to living the way you wish to.
To devote yourself to life in the moment at hand, rather than living one step ahead and two steps behind.
Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum of experience, we are here together framed by the concept that now is good.
I’m most at ease when I am firmly within the experience of the now. I live for those moments of self awareness that overcome me with the perspective of oh yes, this moment that exists is all that is. I am within eternity right here, right now.
Being wholly in the now if even for just a minute, feels like a subversive, radical, stunning, revolutionary thing to do.
The more moments we get, the better off we’ll be.
That’s all for today.
xx
James