Trialing a new thing (because why not?)

I enjoy a prompt or an invitation or a question to respond to; not because I think I particularly have answers (I don’t believe answers exist, though that is a topic for a piece or conversation all unto itself). I enjoy a prompt/invitation/question because my mind can incorporate them as temporary anchors from which I get to connect myriad threads together begat from my inquisitive and foragey brain, therefore getting to see what wants to come out (and how) in any given moment.

Recently I put that prompt/invitation/question — for prompts/invitations/questions — on my Instagram stories and it garnered one, delightful response. It was as follows:

Here’s a theme that I would be interested to hear: “What do you want? No, really!” I don’t think we hear this enough, from you or anyone else.

My initial response was to talk about ‘want’ and the sort; intellectualise the invitation. I don’t want to do that. Intellectualising is one of the things of which I am practising relinquishing. What happened next was a slight existential wobble as I got nervous to allow my body to want; to let flow through desire that lay outside of the learned wants that come as Shoulds. I let the question be in my body for 5 days (not as part of a plan but, instead, I wanted to intentionally avoid putting wants down on the page that were simply part of said Shoulds, of the learned story that ‘not responding quickly is rude,’ of the desire to pick ‘good’ wants.

I happened to be at work, leaning on the end of the bar at which I do a few shifts, during a particularly quiet early afternoon, and my wants came steadily and powerfully into vision and through the channels until it reach earth and was absorbed into its next phase. I managed to capture them as they ran rivulet and runnel through my body…

I shocked myself. This collection of words felt visceral in its immediacy. They all felt fizzy and true. And so, this is what I want. Thank you to Alice for the question.

The new thing I am trialing here came from the immediate nature of my wants list. I will compile groupings of prompts/invitations/questions that any of you ask and share them in one post with short responses; a glimpse into my thoughts and intuition at any one time. So if you have anything you want to ask or invite then put them in the comments of this post.

If I don’t get any questions then I won’t do these compilations. Either way, I will continue writing and sharing my stuff and continuing my experiment of jettisoning.

I do really enjoy a question or invitation, though.

Much ginger love 🧡