Jen Knox's Blog, page 9

Resolve to love yourself right now exactly as you are & week 33 of 52

As we enjoy, process, and evaluate (for better or worse) our holiday celebrations, I thought I’d offer something different this week. We need authentic voices more than ever (note that this belief fed the birth of Unleash).Who is we? We as in all of us . We need storytellers, poets, artists, and seekers to share their journeys and ask questions. So in a world of artificial everything, my ask of you in 2025 is to love yourself a little more. Love your sweetness and your quirks. This short audio is about radical self-acceptance and how simple changes can make a difference, even offset the less-ideal messages from the world around us.

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AYTL exercise: Enjoy the meditation and create a mantra for the year ahead that reflects who you are, not who you want to be. Writing exercise: Write something totally for yourself, and when you’ve completed it, take a breath, reread it, and toss it out. It'll resurface all the stronger if it’s meant to be shared. I promise. Photo by Kelly Sikkema

Day 1 of 4: Meditations to Flourish

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

– Michel de Montaigne

Happy New Year, friends!

To bring in 2025, I wanted to offer a four-day meditation program that will accompany my weekly posts. The first session is open to everyone. If you are completing the full program, I recommend practicing at the same time each day and having a notebook handy.

This meditation is centered on creating a foundation of strength and awareness from which you can build a sense of self-trust and self-love. To cultivate awareness, we will use visualization and reflection. The meditation set the stage for the rest of this 4-day journey.

xo

Photo by Natalia Y.

If you enjoy what I’m offering here, please consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber. If you cannot afford this but would like access, request it here. If you are a paid subscriber, the next episode will be available next week.

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On the magnificent and its hiding places & week 32 of 52

Imagine you had 20 weeks to live and a flooded kitchen. How would you “show up” to live fully?

On the energy scale, I generally sit on the low side and ride intermittent adrenaline highs till they taper out.

Because I fluctuate between having virtually no energy and feeling the creative charge to write, I often talk myself out of going to things or starting small talk when I could be writing. I need to stay home, I tell myself. I need to spend all my limited energy creating.

"The more you show up, the more the muse shows up." —Isabel Allende

As I write this, my kitchen is sectioned off with a barrier of thick plastic and duct tape. The isolated space contains three industrial fans, a dehumidifier, and a HEPA filter to counteract the demo of my vinyl and moisture in the subfloor.

Oh, and the muse is here with me.

Over the last few days, as a parade of plumbers and insurance people filtered in and out of my house causing varying reactions from Potato and Ahti, I found myself hard-pressed to live in the moment and create joy. Chris was out of town, and I was tired of hearing fans and banging.

It would’ve been easy to think it was all just bad luck. But in the spirit of this AYTL experiment, augmented by a recent podcast interview I hosted with Stoic philosopher William B. Irvine (for the day job), I reframed my thought process to clarify my focus on the ephemeral even more.

As Irvine suggests, acknowledging that all experiences will move and change and, ultimately, cease to exist, can be freeing. This means treating every encounter (as I can remember to do so) as though it were the last time.

Of course, this is the point of the year-to-live experiment, only magnified. And it’s about more than living in the moment. It’s about exploring the moment.

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.” ― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

So I did all I could think to do. I began asking questions about the plumbing, the trade, the odd things plumbers see on the job, and what everyone liked to read. I heard some great stories and gained insights, including the way one master plumber characterizes various customers by profession (educators generally follow instructions and leave equipment alone, so I was immediately liked; doctors and engineers tend to move the equipment, thereby slowing the mitigation process; lawyers and salespeople are the best with insurance companies).

I enjoyed hearing these stories, and while the fans whirred in my house and Potato howled at various workers, some of whom began to howl back when they got used to her, I began to find it all rather amusing. I told myself that the whirring was quite similar to white noise, which I claimed to some agreement when teaching a qigong session with it in the backdrop on Insight Timer.

In An Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron suggested taking ourselves on artist dates for a reason—she wanted to break us from our routines.

A plumbing issue can offer just as much of the unexpected as a trip to a new cafe or a local play—if only we had the right mindset. Exploring the world with a curious eye, no matter the view is to find the spectacular: the stories that live everywhere around us.

As artists, we don’t have to do anything crazy. Sometimes we can move the tiniest rock and find some form of ignorance waiting to be addressed. For instance, how much do we take for granted when we turn on the faucet?

So if you have 20 weeks to live and a parade of people in a small home, why not get to know some of them? Everyone has a story, after all. Most have quite a few, but not many people ask.

So this week, I suppose my lesson was to inquire about something that could otherwise be seen as a problem. After all, there is alchemy in the exploration of the everyday.

Writing prompt : Write about missed connections or the story that goes unshared due to inconvenience.

AYTL prompt: Do the thing you’d otherwise talk yourself out of. Show up with curiosity this week, and see what happens. If you don’t have any invitations or unlikely events, make one for yourself. Show up in places and spaces you’ve rarely been.

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On creative focus & week 31 of 52

“To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole.” —Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

A tiny bit.

There is nothing like the struggle to recreate a bowl of fruit with heavy oil paints as part of a community center art class in Newark, Ohio. After twenty minutes, I started watching the clock. Every additional paint stroke made my situation worse.

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Even though I come from a family of artists, I never found myself naturally inclined to draw or paint anything that resembled reality. I’d occasionally have fun throwing paint on canvas in various patterns and positions to see what would happen. Still, when trying to recreate something intricate like a human hand or a fruit bowl, I usually just found myself frustrated.

I felt the same sense of defeat creeping up at this art class/date with my husband. My apple looked like a deflated dog toy. My bowl was too big, and my background was all odd angles and uneven lines.

The teacher, who I hadn’t thought much of, said, “Jen, here, let me show you something.” She told me to cut a small hole in the middle of a piece of paper. She then asked me to look through that tiny hole and recreate what I saw. Move it slightly, she said, and repeat.

In other words, she helped me to focus. It was a seminal moment.

When attempting to recreate or fully understand what I saw, I was too busy looking at the big picture (a proclivity for many writers) and trying to process all aspects of an image at once.

This habit has shown up in my writing as well. And it seems to be a crippling force that arrives with the onslaught of information constantly coming at us from our online haunts. We micro-dose news and trade pseudo-psychological diagnoses with social media friends. We worry over political decisions and wars.

When we sit down to write—or do anything some days—it’s easy to feel the head spin to the point of intellectual dizziness. We’re overwhelmed by noise, and we might benefit more than we can imagine by doing something as simple as narrowing input and looking at one aspect at a time.

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AYTL exercise: Close your eyes for a few seconds and take a deep breath while you tune in to the sounds around you. When you open your eyes again, focus on one thing—whatever is right in front of you. Do this once daily, and see if it helps slow down your mind. If you’re like me, consider doing the digital version by keeping only one tab open at a time (*gasp*, I know).

Writing exercise: Revise an older piece of fiction or an older poem by taking one line and expanding it into a piece of its own.

The Art + Beauty of Revision

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On the seven (7) thoughts revisited & week 30 of 52

We are always changing. Inside, we’re always recalibrating, finding a slightly different balance point as our bodies regenerate one cell at a time. As we age, the way we see the world is in flux.

Let’s do a thought experiment.

Where were you and what did you look like this time last year? What did you think about most, and why?

Around this time last year, I wanted to complete a new writing project after my essay collection. Specifically, I wanted to create something influenced by vision and presence rather than memory (forward momentum, not backward). And I wondered if the tone of my writing voice would still resonate if I changed course.

I wrote here about John O’Donohue’s concept of the 7 thoughts and shared a few of my own. Rereading them just now brought me back and made me realize how different I am today. Just a year removed.

As O’Donohue said, our thoughts exist in the darkness, where no one else can see. Our “doing” or accomplishments are only a fraction of who we are and often have little to do with our artistic expression.

What lives behind the silence, behind the polite smile, is what feeds our art. And what’s living there sure can change.

If you were with me here on the blog last year, let’s do this again. If you weren’t, here’s some background: O'Donohue suggested challenging ourselves to think about the 7 thoughts that dominate our inner lives. A year ago, I asked … If there are 7 dominant thoughts, and we change them, will that change our work [as writers]?

So take a moment and ask yourself what 7 thoughts dominate your inner landscape right now.

A year ago, I thought about the beauty of small moments, the discomfort of being copied as a writer and not being given credit, the journey of my life and whether I’d leave anything of value, and how I needed to show more gratitude. In my private journals, I realized some of my regular thoughts were quite negative. I found worry and pain in the messaging. I doubt this is unique.

A year later, there’s still a mix. Here are my dominate thoughts in November 2024:

I'm grateful.

I need to relax.

Teaching is the most rewarding thing I've ever done. I hope I do it well [today, this week, this workshop].

Suffering connects us, but is it necessary? Is that why all this is happening?

Honest words will be rarer and all the more precious each day.

Reach out more to the people I love.

I should probably be writing, but I think I’ll walk the dogs first.

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So much of what sustains our mental space daily can be encapsulated in 7 or so recurring thoughts. Maybe more or fewer, but if you can distill things down to 7, it’s a self-study practice like no other I’ve done.

It allows us to ask ourselves where we can benefit from change. The call to action is that our most transcendent capabilities lie within our projection of the world.

When we are stagnant or carry forward certain thought patterns, it might be because we haven’t yet fully explored what’s behind them. I truly believe that repeating ideas is not a mental illness but a mental technique. We repeat ideas to lessen their power over us.

AYTL exercise: What are your 7 thoughts now, and what do you most want to create? What would you like these thoughts to be? Keep them somewhere safe, and revisit them toward the end of 2025.

Writing prompt: Write a poem that leverages these 7 thoughts and distills each into a unique image.

I would love to know what came up for you. If you feel safe to do so, share one or two below.

Day 4: Creative Flourish

"When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity." -Martin Seligman

In our final session, we'll examine what flourishing means to us. What are feelings we want to cultivate in our lives? Have a notebook ready.

Thank you for practicing with me. I hope these offerings support you as we move forward in t…

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On love & week 29 of 52

The Netflix algorithm is usually wrong.

Late last week, Netflix said I’d “love” a movie so much that I’d give it not one but two thumbs up. This movie, “Hot Frosty,” is a Christmas tale about a snowman who comes to life and falls in love with a restaurant owner in a small town. The restaurant owner, a widow, begins to love him back, but she can’t ignore the fact that he is, in fact, a snowman.

He will inevitably melt.

My husband and I had a quiet time at a cabin because he’ll be traveling for most of the season and a few family members were joining us there. We missed the traditional get-togethers this year, but we were trying to make the most of our time before his travels.

Chris and I had all intentions of changing the channel after five minutes. Exhausted after a relatively challenging hike that concluded with a lengthy call from one of the people we were supposed to meet up with, we settled in with our two large dogs at our sides and a healthy number of ginger snaps within arm’s reach.

The movie was horrible from the get-go. The acting was unconvincing. The story made fun of science. At one point, the doctor in this fictional town said she believed the snowman (who was “hot” because he was muscular, I guess) had once been made of snow because, despite her medical background, a hot frosty was believable. After all, it was Christmas.

When all the women over fifty in this fictional town began to fawn over the hot snowman come to life, Chris and I made a bet about how the movie would end. We couldn’t go back after that (we were both wrong). We were locked in.

In the movie’s defense, love is hard to write about without being cliche. It’s easier when you add the forbidden, the unlikely, or the impossible.

But when we think about love as the sheer relentlessness of dedication to and belief in the beauty of what is, rather than romance alone, we change how we see the world and those we share it with most. In a way, I needed that message.

There was a backdrop of this scene: a middle-aged couple watching a bad movie in a cabin flanked by snoring dogs and laughing about how creepy it is that a woman would want to kiss a man whose body temperature is similar to a corpse was not funny. Earlier that day, a loved one felt her internal world break apart and questioned her ability to keep going. She sobbed over the phone and apologized for her existence. I listened and supported, let her know I was here.

If only a season could heal and make people believe in themselves again. This loved one of mine is suffering greatly and, unfortunately, is far enough away that I can only reach her by phone. I’d told her how much I loved her earlier that day, and she heard me.

I believe in this woman and see the beauty in her life, even if she can’t see it. I love her relentlessly and believe she can come back from what seems, to her, an impossible situation. This is not blind optimism or a denial of reality but a hope that stems from somewhere real and grounded.

We can relentlessly love people and believe in them more than they believe in themselves. We can do this for ourselves, defying all odds to love what is, even when we disagree with what’s happening around us.

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To love someone who used to be a snowman is a bad metaphor, a bad metaphor, but I have to say that sometimes this feels true—that we are loving someone who is slowly losing their sense of self. We are loving people who will one day cease to be or cease to be who they are.

We can’t save them, we can’t keep them from pain or a sense of loss, but we can hope for them and never give up that hope, even if a situation seems impossible.

Watching bad Christmas movies on an early holiday in a cabin in the woods is not a panacea, but slowing down long enough to engage with any love story—no matter how idiotic—might be worth our time here and there, if only to remind us how ridiculous life can be for some of us and, still, how much potential there is if we continue to love beyond the pain of circumstance.

I want to go on record that I would not give “Hot Frosty” a double thumbs up, nor would I recommend watching it. Life is precious, and two hours is a lot of time.

But I appreciate the time I had to decompress after a worrisome conversation with someone I will never stop loving for who she is. So many suffer around the holidays. It seems the time to double down on our ability to recognize what lies beneath and beyond the pain.

This is the time to love relentlessly.

AYTL: Where can you let love lead in difficult conversations or around people who are being difficult (even impossible)?

Writing prompt: Write about love amid something or some place that makes it feel impossible.

A holiday offering: Loving-Kindness Meditation

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Compassion Break

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Here’s one for the holidays. The music at the beginning and end is “Adrift Among Infinite Stars” by Scott Buckley.

On(e for my) misfits & week 28 of 52

misfit: a person whose behavior or attitude sets them apart from others in a conspicuous way.

by La Balaur

“Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Maybe it’s the Batman villains taking over the leadership of the U.S., maybe it’s the mass adoption of AI and its subsequent impact on the environment and our waning social responsibility—not to mention creativity, maybe it’s the three-day migraine I had last week, or maybe it’s some combination…

All I know is that something recently nudged me into a sense of vulnerability reminiscent of my past, and the subsequent insights were hard-won.

I’ve been reliving and reevaluating, digging deep into self-evaluation and reflection because I feel a strong call to action. It’s possible that many writers and artists feel this—a desire to advocate and pave the way toward a better social world, and we realize how necessary it is to take action. But it’s getting harder to be heard.

I wrote this CTA a few weeks ago. I stand by it, but I want to acknowledge the other side of this emotional and social equation and create a different call to action, mostly for myself. But if it resonates and you find yourself at odds with the trends, it’s your CTA, too.

Let’s embrace the misfit energy. Let’s seek it out and celebrate it.

Being a misfit takes courage. Courage is necessary. And for the artists whose heckles are going up right now because they think they can’t, I disagree. In a world of curated algorithms, we need to be willing to stand out.

If you think you don’t have courage, you’re wrong. When we don’t have a choice, we find the courage.

When I was a kid, my neighborhood was not safe, especially as I began to approach puberty. I was a small person who loved to walk to collect her thoughts. But wandering by myself then often meant being approached by shady older men with shadier intentions; no matter my self-belief, I had to be on guard and decide whether their claims on my value were true.

“I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then…”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

When a person is surrounded by distortion, internal clarity is still possible. But we do need to be aware. Otherwise, we lose ourselves.

I’ll admit. I lost myself when I was younger.

At one time, I was a misfit trying to fit in. I believed I was broken because I let those around me defined me. Losing myself as I tried to fit in wasn’t the painful part either. Breaking away from that conformity was.

Once I sought to steer my course no matter what, things got EVEN tougher.

For me, anyway, being true to myself meant steering a rickety-ass boat with no compass on choppy waters. It wasn’t like the self-help gurus promised. There was no obvious “alignment.” It meant rebelling and facing what I feared head-on. It meant being where I was but being uncomfortable.

Blue boat on the sea in Cambodia by Jonathan

But I had to do it because I knew I’d have a better chance of getting somewhere new.

We live in an age in which it’s easy to give away a lot of our power in the name of convenience, and very few people are making a lot of money and gaining a lot of power accordingly.

I get it! Comfort is addictive. So is complacency. And so is a feeling that we are safer where we are than where we’d be if we were showing up in a bigger way, navigating the unfamiliar, rickety-ass boat we’ve been offered.

It might be true that it’s safer in the short term. It was true in my case. But the pain is worth it. I promise.

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I’ve been studying with David Whyte for the last few weeks, and he offered our group a Koan that went something like this (butchering it, I’m sure): Where have you been the most foolish? And how, in those foolish moments, were you actually wise?

For me, the answer was my willingness to be humiliated. It took courage and a bit of foolishness, but when I broke away from trying to fit in, I began to fall into purpose.

I hope to one day share my full story as it is meant to be shared because I’m finally ready. But for now, I’ll leave it vague and invite you to think about yourself—how are the parts of you that feel different, embarrassing, awkward, or wrong actually right?

To build on David’s prompt, where is the wisdom within shame or humiliation?

Standing out can be incredibly painful. But then, it’s not. And then, so much later, the pain no longer matters. It doesn’t matter because it’s that beautiful.

Be awkward.

Be the misfit no matter how shaky it feels.

Be in integrity, even if it means a willingness to be seen as a little crazy.

Or really crazy.

After all, as I say (paraphrased) in WAU, it’s the world that’s truly crazy. And as J. Krishnamurti said long before me, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

AYTL: How can you lean into your version of being a misfit? Answer in action.

Writing prompt: Journal about what authenticity means to you. Where in your life are you most authentic? Who and when do you shrink away from yourself, even for a moment? Why? Where can you find strength?

Posting early because I’ll be gone for the holiday. Wishing you a joyous and safe one. xo