take care of myself

Jennifer Louden’s Virtual Retreat ended Monday, but I didn’t end my retreat until yesterday afternoon. Like any good conference retreat, it was way too much information in way too short amount of time, some of it helpful and some of it not so much. The best thing I got from it, I think, was how to retreat. I’ve tried doing retreats on my own many times and never been as successful as I was this weekend. I’m really excited about doing many retreats of various kinds in the near future.

Jennifer Louden’s Virtual Retreat doesn’t start until Friday, but I’m already getting helpful things from some of the preliminary material. These tips all fell out of a recorded conversation between Jennifer Louden and Molly Gordon.

• the distinction between disciplining myself and practicing a discipline
• the distinction between judging myself as making good or bad choices and judging my choices as being supportive of me and my life or not
• the distinction between real fear (the lion is about to eat me) and chronic fear (False Evidence Appearing Real). If fear is lasting longer than I can run if a lion were chasing me, then it’s probably worth some contemplation about what is really going on.

For a practical application, those things together have led me to realize that playing computer games is not really serving me well right now. They aren’t as fun for me as it seems like something called a “game” should be. For me, playing computer games is what Jennifer Louden calls a Shadow Comfort. I want to establish a new practice of reading, writing in my journal, or listening to more conversations like the one between Jen and Molly instead of playing computer games.

I just signed up for Jennifer Louden’s virtual retreat at the pre-registration price (ends tonight at midnight). And I marked those days (MLK weekend) on my calendar so that I keep them free to really use as a retreat. I’m pretty good about planning retreats for myself, not so good at actually taking them!