Putting Some Pants on My Monkey-Mind

This morning, I was having a conversation with one of my many parts (as defined by the Internal Family Systems model): my wife, my Writer. She and I were attempting to sort through how best to make my writing process and writing life central to my actual life. 

To be clear: I did not see her or hear her. I was fully aware that this conversation took place within myself. I have a rich and layered understanding of my own internal landscape that has come from years of working with the Internal Family Systems model. I have found that this work has helped me in a variety of ways but primarily with emotional regulation and goal-setting/ goal-completion. I will, almost no doubt, delve more deeply into this in upcoming writings.

This morning, as I conversed with my (internal) wife, my Writer... I found myself arguing against trying to start another daily web-based writing log. Even though all the cool kids are now on substack and my wife very much wants us to be one of the cool kids, my point was that I have a hard time wrangling my brain to the daily task of publishing random musings. My wife argued back that this is because I am afraid to be heard and seen by fellow humans and I had to admit, she ain't wrong. 

As our conversation continued, I found myself saying-thinking, "wrangling my brain to write and publish daily musings feels like trying to put pants on my monkey-mind and making it sit still." Then, I laughed out loud. 

Monkey Pants. If I try again, I said-thought, I shall call it "Monkey Pants" and I shall try to fight through the feeling of being seen and heard -- which isn't such a hard thing to fight when one is writing pretty much in total secret. "But the goal is, eventually, to stop writing in secret," my wife offered. And, as always, she is correct. 

---