Rhena Writes

Tag: blog

  • Back being a human on IG

    Well, I started a new Instagram account (Rhena Writes) yesterday or maybe it was two days ago. In any case, I’ve already wasted a bunch of time getting sucked into the scroll. But! I posted one thing on my account. It was a collage-type, multimedia thingy.

    In any case, two observations about my experience taking the leap back into social media. For a while now something (an inner voice? or an outer calling?) has been telling me to get back on Instagram. I have an internal drive towards self expression. This is called, “being human.” And, sadly, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get someone else to see my talents, gifts, and self and to grant me some kind of permission or approval to express myself. This is nonsense. And this is perhaps especially nonsensical in the age of the internet. And nonsensical to the point of tom-foolery in the age of AI.

    A lot of my hesitation around IG is that I was afraid that once I was back on, I would end up getting sucked back into doom scrolling or even hope scrolling. Either way, I’d be flicking my thumb over and over in hopes of getting another hit of … of what? Confirmation that the world as we know it is ending? Confirmation that it’s not? Some sort of sense of connection to the other?

    Well, and of course, this fear came true. I got back on IG and as soon as I opened it, I was sucked into the scroll. It was just like when I get on Duolingo (the free version, of course) and after my lesson, I’d get sucked into the advertised games. I had to encounter a few puzzle-game-app hangovers before I woke up to realize, “Where did the time go?” In a way, maybe I had to have those experiences in order to overcome the challenge of not falling into the Duolingo advertised game trap (while still getting my free Norwegian lessons). So each time an advertisement comes up now, I have the script to just click by. I have my habits and routines on stand by. (I do Duolingo with a journal, a book, and my knitting nearby so that I am ready to move on to something that brings me more joy than game apps.)

    So fortunately, I had my strategies and I was familiar with how my brain would work in these instances. So, yes, I got sucked into the scroll a few times over the past day as I went on to IG to set up my account and then to post, but by the second time, I had my journal, book, and knitting at the ready to pull me out of the scroll.

    That was issue one with getting back on IG and I dealt with that handily. Rhena: 1 Scroll: 0.

    The next issue was the doubt that comes into play when creating a post. Creating the collage brought me great joy. My watercolor paints are these charming nuggets in a little tin. I love to tear paper and watch the raw edges emerge. But I also love to use scissors to cut and reveal the shape of the paper. In any case, I was quite pleased with my final product. When I took a picture of it though, it felt flat. Of course, I went down the hole of “Oh, this isn’t worthy of posting here.” This train of thought is worsened, of course, when I’ve just been sucked into beautifully produced images and reels against which, it feels like my little paper and glue stick crafts will not stand up.

    Well, I also thought: fuck that.

    And, I posted my little picture of my little craft that brought me so much joy to make.

    So that’s what I’ve decided to do when I can: wave my little joy flag from my little corner of the internet.

  • I’m writing this instead…

    … of playing that game that was advertised to me on my language learning app. Those ads are a small price to pay for a free service. The one I got sucked into most recently is the one with the balls of yarn and the dragon going after the kitten. Did the algorithm know that I knit and what my eastern zodiac sign is? Sure I also have a cat allergy but that doesn’t make me a monster. I’m still going to try to save the kitten, right? I’m frightened by how much they know about me. It’s not really those little details about my hobbies and autoimmune issues that I’m worried about. It’s that they seem to know how my mind works. Like, how difficult a task has to be to get me and keep me engaged without it being so challenging that I give up altogether. It was so easy to just keep clicking “retry” — so much easier than putting down the phone. And the music? It just built the tension, made me feel like I was on an adventure that I needed to complete, made me feel like matching these colors was somehow important.

    I got sucked into it for far too long last night. My problem — or one of them at least — is that I didn’t prepare myself by having something else to do instead of playing the game when it was advertised to me. Next time, I’ll have a book on hand that I can just pick up and read while I wait for the ad to time out or whatever it does.

    I used to play Tetris as a kid and I remember that feeling of the little shapes falling in front of my closed eyes as I was trying to fall asleep. Last night, it was those balls of yarn and the fiery dragon.

    And somewhere in the back of my head, I think, “Well, games and playing are good for me and my brain. Puzzles keep my brain engaged and active.” But do they, really? Am I actually having fun when I’m matching these colors? Or is it just that the games are tapping into some primal part of my brain that developed when searching for patterns in the environment was tied into basic survival.

    The other day, on my walk, I went to retrieve pinecones from a nearby tree. I was aware that this was the season when this specific tree would drop its pinecones that are the perfect size for the firestarters that we like to use and make. Searching around the base of the tree, it’s that same sort of primal lizard brain that the game activates. It’s the foraging brain looking for a specific shape and color against the grass. But outside in the open as my pocket filled up, it was easier to turn that off and walk away. Easier, anyway, than clicking “retry” on the yarn-dragon-kitten game.

    And this, too, this blogging … this writing and sending my words out into some unknown world … this is one of the ways in which I’m trying to replace the easy “retry” clicks. I leave my blog page open. I joined a challenge this month in my writing community to write a certain number of words each day. In this community I’m getting cheered on and supported in my writing endeavors. I try to remember every day that what I have to write and say is important. And in these ways, I try to make writing and blogging … if not easier than clicking “retry”, then certainly more rewarding. After all, the kitten is just pixels. I’m a real person.

  • Still learning.

    Is it a boundary setting hangover? Is it a vulnerability hangover? Is it a lack of boundaries? For all of my talk (writing) about how I’m trying to focus on myself, I still do it. I give too much of myself. I let other people make decisions about how I’m using my time and my energy. I keep putting oxygen masks on everyone else because, “What will they think of me if I’m sitting here putting my oxygen mask on when there are other people who don’t have oxygen masks on?”

    I keep forgetting the rules: What other people think of me is none of my business. And also: Do unto others what I would have done unto me. I am perfectly capable of putting on my own oxygen mask. I’d rather do it for myself than have some random passenger who thinks I need help but doesn’t have his own oxygen mask situation sorted help me.

    Here’s the thing. I’m learning.

    The other day, I went for a swim. A few days later, I felt rather sore. I probably pushed myself too hard. And I can kind of remember the exact moments when I pushed myself too hard: when I wanted to get another lap or a few more strokes in when I should have actually just slowed it down a little. So the next time I went into the pool, I was a little bit better about listening to when I need to ease off a little. My body is good about telling me.

    Another day, I gave someone just a little more time than I actually had. It threw off my whole day. And it probably disrupted my sleep that night. Next time, I’ll back off a little bit more in that arena too. When I was younger, it always felt like I had endless amounts of time to give to other people. Like a cup of coffee or a beer could easily turn into two or three and then a whole afternoon or evening. When I write about it now, it sounds kind of romantic. Youthful. This kind of feeling that I had all this time.

    Maybe it’s the cliche of the mis-spent youth but that feeling of just having hours and hours, endless days? Too often I spent it on the wrong people. Not that these people who I was spending time on were bad (although some of them were) but that I wasn’t spending that time on the one person I should have been: myself.

    I’ve only learned very recently that I actually really enjoy my own company. I enjoy being by myself. Yes, of course I also enjoy being with some people, some of the time. But I enjoy being with myself all of the time.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Moving on from the Daily Prompts

    For the past several months, I’ve been posting every day to this blog. They’ve all been responses to the daily prompts. It’s been immensely helpful in building a daily posting habit. And I’ve been actually quite pleased with a lot of the writing that I’ve done in response to the daily prompts.

    There was a time in the past when I would have viewed daily prompts as a sort of crutch. What I believed was that I should be generating my own writing and ideas and creativity on my own, with no assistance from beginning to end. “Real artists”, I thought “are spontaneously inspired.”

    Of course, now I realize the ridiculousness of this way of thinking. Inspiration can come from anywhere and that includes daily prompts (even ones that are AI generated). More often than not, having the prompts pushed me into the flow state that I needed in order to write.

    They ushered me to this point of being able to push myself into that desired flow state on a day to day basis.

    Here’s the other thing. I realized that part of why I was using the daily prompts is that it connected my blog to other readers. The result was that I got views and even likes. I’ve written a big game about how I’m not in this for the likes or even for the views and yet here I was, responding to the daily prompts each day in part to get the views and likes. I’ve gotten pretty good at linking the daily prompts to whatever I wanted to write about anyway, whatever happened to be on my mind. Even today, the question is about retirement and it would be easy enough to think about this as a “retirement” from daily prompts.

    But I’m not going to do that.

    I still believe, perhaps even more fervently now, that inspiration can come from anywhere. But I’ve also decided that this blog is my own space, to do with it as I please, to express myself as I’d like to, to write about what’s on my mind and what my interests are. That is inspiration enough. I am my own inspiration. I’m glad I had these daily prompts to get me here. And also glad that I’m ready to take off on my own.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Would a job by any other name smell just as sweet?

    Daily writing prompt
    What jobs have you had?
    View all responses

    What’s in a job? Does there need to be payment?

    Cash, ducats, affections exchanged.

    Does there need to be an exchange of tangible goods?

    Care, food, health, love.

    I was once a secret keeper. I was terrible at that job. I didn’t know which ones should be kept and which ones thrown away, whispered and carried away on the wind, which ones to bind up in my heart and which to shout out.

    Needless to say, I’m a terrible judge of character.

    I also spent a summer smearing cream cheese on bagels. This was before there were tip jars on counters.

    My first paid job was babysitting. I probably wasn’t very good at this either. Sometimes, I suspect that parents confused “good at babysitting” with “available and cheap, relatively.” Oh, and a girl in roughly the right age range.

    I even convinced myself that perhaps I really had a gift, a purpose. And so I ended up a teacher for a while.

    I’ve been an assistant editor, a research assistant, a sandwich maker, a camp counselor, a guide for a group of teenagers traveling, a creator. Those are things that I’ve more or less gotten paid for.

    Is getting paid a requisite for a job?

    Because the job I’ve had the longest is a mother but I don’t get paid for that. I’m told it is its own reward.

    I don’t get paid for this either.

    Still, one must carry on. Job or no job. Paid or not. And so I do.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Becoming unraveled with this question: leader or follower?

    Daily writing prompt
    Are you a leader or a follower?
    View all responses

    A few months ago, my husband bought a two-player cooperative video game called “Unravel Two.” Soon after, my son asked me to play it with him. I’m not a huge video game player. I’ll play the occasional round or two of Mario Cart and I think I might have an animal crossing account that hasn’t been opened in years. I sometimes like to watch the kids play something, but if it’s something they’re really excited about, I’d rather hear about it from their perspective.

    So sitting down to play with him was a novel experience for me. And for him.

    It’s a charming game centered around two small yarn creatures who are attached to each other with a string. They have to work in tandem to swing from place to place, build bridges, jump and climb through various scenes. It’s a bit like parkour. When we sat down to play, the duo was in a park and had somehow gotten so tangled up in what looked like a bike rack that we had no choice but to start the scene over. As a knitter, the whole thing was very relatable. As a non-gamer, it was, well, not.

    My son tried to teach me what buttons to push when and I managed to muddle through some sections. Thankfully, my character could also jump on his back sometimes and we could piggy back our way through bits and pieces. But that didn’t work for everything. Sometimes, he just took my controller and pushed the buttons to move my avatar. But there were times where both the little red one and the little blue one had to be moving simultaneously. Sometimes one had to lead and the other had to follow. Connected, as they were, with this yarn umbilicus, both had a role to play.

    My son was immensely patient with me. Probably far more patient than I sometimes am when I’m trying to get him to do something in person. This is in an of itself a lesson to me about leadership and much more.

    So what’s the answer to the question?

    I’m a leader following myself.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Writing this post is one small improvement I’m making in my life.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
    View all responses

    An underground lagoon of water inside a cave. On hot days, it is cooling. On cold ones, it’s a hot spring. Either way, it is eternally refreshed by a constant stream of clean, fresh water. High above the pool, there is a space in the rock ceiling through which sun and moon light alternating stream through. The sunlight feeds the mosses and ferns that grow on rock outcroppings on the walls.

    This cave can be accessed from a tunnel. But at first, the tunnel was very small. I’ve had to dig out the tunnel bit by bit to get to the pool. I shoveled and scraped a little bit here and there, carried out the dirt and stones back out of the back of the tunnel. I had to carry it some distance from the entrance lest it built up too high and the whole thing caved in. One day, I could finally see the pool clearly. And so I kept going. Each day, the work of widening the tunnel and carrying out the garbage became easier and easier. I could even say that I enjoyed it a bit, even though it was work.

    Finally, I could reach the pool. I swam and rested. I drank the clear water. I floated and let the water hold me. It flowed around me. I could stay in here forever. But I won’t.

    The world above would miss me if I stayed here.

    And in any case, the pool is infinite, ubiquitous, ever-present. All the work I put in wasn’t for nothing, after all.

    When I started writing this blog, I didn’t set out to write every day. Even once I found the daily prompts (or they found me, perhaps?), I didn’t set a goal to respond to them every day. And yet, here I am, having just posted to this blog fifty days in a row. I didn’t ever set this as a goal. Still, it feels like something of a milestone which, in turn, feels like an appropriate moment for reflection.

    Or not.

    I had this sort of idea in the back of my head that at some point, maybe today, I’d write a “what I learned from blogging for fifty days in a row” post. Or “what happened when I blogged daily.” Or “the benefits of posting everyday.” My understanding is that those are very SEO friendly terms … or something. (The word “understanding” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.)

    But none of this has been about pleasing any other person (much less an algorithm, search engine, or even, I’m sorry to say, readers). It’s been about me. Making myself content. Giving myself space. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s been about digging towards that pool of my own creativity. And there’s still possibility there.

    So. Will I be back tomorrow?

    I really don’t know. Because the other thing this has been about has been to give myself permission to just be in each moment, to do the things that feel most nourishing to me, to always look for opportunities to extend myself grace. Who knows what tomorrow’s daily prompt will bring?

    I’m just focused on the grace, the space, the nourishment of this moment, this breath.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • “The community” of one.

    Daily writing prompt
    What do you do to be involved in the community?
    View all responses

    I definitely do not understand the what is meant by “the community”. And this is one of things that I do to be involved: I wonder at the meaning of things, I spend time parsing language, and I write.

    I do a lot of other things too, but this is what this daily prompt has inspired me to think about.

    Which community is being referred to here? The neighborhood I live in? The county? The state? The country? The global community of humanity? All of earth and every living thing? Depending on what is meant by “community”, either everything I do is to be “involved” or none of it is.

    I have an uncomfortable relationship with the word “community”. Sometimes I’ll read it or hear it in the context of “Asian-American community”, of which I am supposed to be a member. But I never asked to be a member of that community nor was I ever “invited”. There is no central council of Asian Americans who decide who’s in and who’s out. Or, at least, not that I’m aware of. Maybe there is one, but they decided that, in spite of my heritage, I’m not a member. Of course, the reality is that that term, Asian-American “community”, is usually just lazy, white supremacist journalism or writing or speech by whoever is using it. What the (often white) speaker usually mean is that they spoke to one or two people who they’ve identified as being “Asian American” and decided that they spoke for an entire group of people who may or may not personally identify as Asian American. In other words, when a racialized group is referred to as a “community”, it’s usually white supremacy in action.

    I’ve had to participate in “community building” activities several times for work or school. Are these “the communities” that this question is referring to? These fleeing, temporary groups of people brought together briefly because they all happen to work or go to school in the same place? I never really felt like this “community building” activities ever connected me to my co-workers or fellow students. Primarily, they worked to connect me to the institution or organization or even the manager, administrator, or teacher that was leading the activities. Isn’t community supposed to be about lateral connection, not hierarchical? “Community-building” is often used as soft language to mask a much more nefarious indoctrination.

    So when do I feel a part of a community? Or when do I feel like I’m involving myself in community? Well, blogging, is one way that I attempt to involve myself in the world outside of myself. I have many pages of notebooks and docs that are for me, but when I come here to post and write, it’s for someone else. In other words, it’s for “the community”. (Along these lines, I published a post this morning that included two book recommendations and a discussion of “the white gaze”. It was NOT a response to a daily writing prompt.)

    Didn’t Jesus say something about how he is present anywhere two or more are gathered in his name? If we apply this to this daily prompt, am I suggesting that anywhere two or more individuals are gathered for “the community” (for, in other words, the greater good of humanity) is “the community” present? Yes. I am suggesting that.

    Here’s the other thing I am suggesting: community doesn’t have to be human bodies/ minds coming together. I can experience community with the tree outside my window, the birds that I can hear, the blades of grass, the sunlight. I can gather with someone else by reading their words in a book or, yes, even on the computer. Eating that bagel I had for breakfast? Yes, I am in community with the people who grew and harvest the wheat. All the way to the drivers who delivered it to my local grocery store where. And then some.

    And lastly, of course, I can be a community of one. Jesus did not say that he is ONLY present where two people or more are gathered in his name. Every time I tend to myself, care for myself, listen to myself, I am doing all those things as a way to involve myself in the community of myself.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Keeper of all knowledge…

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
    View all responses

    … of myself. (If you’ve been following my posts, you saw that coming.)

    I’ve sometimes thought that it would be nice to be a postal delivery person. They walk a lot of miles. I enjoy walking. And I like the idea that maybe I’ll be delivering a love letter or a postcard from some far-flung destination or a homesick lament from sleep away camp. But then I remember that most mail is bills. And advertisements. And I remember how much my dog hates delivery people and that that and the weather must make their jobs very hard. I talk myself out of it.

    So maybe I’d like to be a wizard for a day. Or a bullet proof shield, able to place myself around American and Palestinian children alike. All the children, in fact. But then I remember that one day would not be enough.

    Maybe I’d like to be a fan, strong enough to blow away all the climate change (but not so strong as to throw us back into an ice age). I think it would take less than a day. But is a fan really a job? Or just an object?

    I think I’d like to be a people pleaser and when I say people, I mean myself. I’d like to be a greeter like at Walmart — but just greeting myself, continually all day. Asking myself if I need any help and then giving it to myself.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a park ranger. I’d like to be an elder. An ancestor. I’d like to be a child again, imagining like it was my job. I’d like to be a swimmer.

    I’d like, for 24 hours, to be a connector, like of ideas. Did you ever notice that both Joel from The Last of Us and Hopper from Stranger Things are father figures in fraught relationships with super-powered teenage girls and a variation of the name Elle (Ellie and Eleven) AND they both have biological daughters named Sarah who died? I would like to connect these sorts of ideas for people because clearly SOMETHING is going on here and I cannot be the only person who is thinking about it.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a weaver. An illustrator. A singer and musician. A storyteller. A shaman. A healer. I’d like a day to heal the world or at least the little patch of nature outside my back door. That would probably be enough for me. I’m no one’s burden, after all. I’m no one’s savior. Are we talking about jobs? Or skills?

    If I had a day to be any job, I’d like be the keeper of the flame.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • …making self into its own new religion…

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
    View all responses

    “For how else can the self become whole save by making self into its own new religion?” Audre Lorde, New York City, 1970

    This is the quote I wrote on one of the first pages of (one of) my 2025 journal/ notebook. It’s a hard question to internalize into a mind and soul full of demands to be selfLESS. It begs the question: How can one be less oneself? Or more importantly, why would one want to be less than oneself?

    I do not.

    How does one make self into its own new religion?

    I wrote a bit about this here in this blog post: Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!

    And I wrote a bit about how important Audre Lorde’s writing has been to me here in this blog post: Tomorrow, I Will Learn to Whether I Will Become an Archer.

    Yesterday, I wrote about my holidays and posted rather late in the day. I’m reposting it here because it’s connected to this quote about making the self into its own new religion. Celebrate This Breath and Then the Next.

    I’m sitting here trying to figure out how I can write a longer post on this topic. Why? There on no word counts here. This post will not be graded or assessed in any way. There’s no one watching over what I write and telling me “not enough!” Well, except for me.

    So I have to dig deeper. What do I want? Do I want to have a longer post? Do I have more to write about this topic at the moment? I must be quiet and listen to that deep, deep inner voice: the self. What do I want? What do I need? I need rest. I’d really like to read a little bit. I’m in the middle of two books that I’m really enjoying right now. And I’m rather hungry, so I’d like to get some food. And I’d like to get a few sentences written in a few other projects. I’d like to play the guitar. And I will do all of those things at some point today. None of these things feel like they are particularly selfish, even though they place my self (my needs and wants) at the center. And nowhere is my deeper self asking me to write more in this post. So I won’t.