Align Your Orbit: Be Human First

Align Your Orbit is a series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide ourselves toward intentionality and impact. Synthesized after years of conversations and now with inspirations from ChatGPT and MidJourney, we’re fully embracing our cyborg natures. Find delight in these journeys of exploration. If you would like to receive these offerings as a monthly email, sign up here.

This reality has broken our hearts open more times this year than we can count, and what flows out is determination, resilience, and liberation from cycles of violence. We are the era of rapid change—welcome its arrival. Listen when your community says, enough is enough.

Live for yourself. Live for another. Live for this day, this hour, this second. Live. Claw your way out of this black hole and have the audacity to hug what threw you in. Embody more than impulse, more than revenge, more than simple reaction. Build the future alongside the present.

We did not curate a Spotify playlist this month on account of Spotify’s new policy to not pay artists until their songs hit 1,000 listens. We are looking into new options, with Tidal as the current frontrunner. Stay tuned!

New Experiments

1.      invite all grief – There is little point in comparing your trauma to someone else’s. We all carry a piece of the collective grief. You must face your own pain before you can sustainably address other’s. Increase your community’s resilience by giving your grief a seat at the table. Open and be tender. Bring your heart everywhere you go.

Challenge Mode: See the crisis in front of you as an opening for new futures. Don’t despair—ask yourself, what’s next? Wait until the conditions are right to fruit, but don’t miss an opportunity to act. In the absence of action, build and strengthen your network.

2.      but don’t collect the coins – Capitalism loves cowing its cogs with arbitrary rewards, tempting you to climb the next rung of the ladder or collect a few more cents per hour. Pay attention to what you sacrifice when you collect so-called rewards. When you opt out, wear the consequence as a badge of honor.

Challenge Mode: You’ve been conditioned to see the world in a series of extended metaphors, many of which only serve those in power. Unpack the Puritan impulse to equate a high work ethic with personal value. Make friends with your obstacles.

3.      speak your native language – There is value in knowing which methods of communication flow easily from you. Respond to video messages with texts, respond to texts with emails, respond to emails with invitations to in-person meetings. Explore which styles of communication give you optimum levels of agency and help you maintain a settled nervous system.

Challenge Mode: Even in inclement weather, find yourself in a copse of trees or a handful of soil. Nature continues—life continues—relentlessly, even in the face of collective despair. We are capable of great transformation when we remember to connect with our roots. Allow yourself to be one small piece in one enormous sense of awe.

4.      & sing your praises – Don’t wait for the gratitude others might offer you—give it to yourself. Write a letter about all the ways you love having you in your life. Write until urge to stop leaves and comes back again.

Challenge Mode: No one else gets to tell you how to love being a body. Eat what makes you feel strong. Learn where your food comes from. Admire yourself in a mirror. Wear what holds you together. Find the friction and grieve the conditioning.

Andra’s Recap of Next Permutation

The experiments for last month included taking steps to be the person you imagine yourself to be, asking yourself how you have changed after engaging with media, remembering the pitfalls of anecdotal evidence, and embodying justice in every aspect of life.

This month has been an extreme challenge to my mental health, and I have watched many friends and their family members sinking below the waters of despair. It’s easy to feel like you don’t matter in the context of several ethnic cleansings happening on several continents. But we are being called to feel and grieve this collective trauma, and I have to remind myself time and time again that grieving my small piece of all this is also part of doing the work. I can’t fix everything myself, but I can build the networks to make solutions more viable as we move into the future.

In terms of taking active steps to become the person I want to be, I continue to stretch and bike in the morning, which I often couple with Czech and Spanish lessons. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I want my professional future to look like and have been talking actively about running for City Council in Portland (District 4). I have been amazed by the outpour of support from those in my community. I look forward to yet more opportunities to speak about the platforms I care about going into the new year.

I’ve also done some work to use filler less in spontaneous conversation. I noticed last month that I had started saying “I don’t know” instead of “um,” which I found to be an even more annoying habit. While it’s still an effort to assess and redirect my speech in real time, I have made noticeable progress.

Engaging with media and experiencing satisfaction has been a tricky balance this month. I have been watching a lot more TikTok because that’s where a lot of the news from Gaza is coming out firsthand. I am grateful to the content creators who are risking themselves to get information out to the rest of the world.

Any engagement with media unrelated to the present genocides happening feels hollow and irrelevant, but I have given myself time to rest and recover by exploring virtual reality, and I’m hopeful that I can make that a new way to relax and disengage when I need to.

I finished The Free People’s Village this month, which is an alternative history where Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change rather than the War on Terror. For anyone struggling with white guilt and hoping to unpack their colonial conditioning while reading an enjoyable narrative set in an alternative present, I highly recommend it.

Sorting through information about the crisis in Gaza and the West Bank has been an extraordinary mental challenge. I have been most successful in seeking out firsthand accounts and then comparing multiple news articles to try to get the most accurate information. But, in the end, nothing feels fully accurate, and I know I must act on the limited knowledge I am able to collect. If I waited until I understood something 100 percent to do anything, I would never do anything.

Additionally, I experienced firsthand how the media is downplaying the reaction regarding the United States’ support of Israel. For the tree lighting ceremony in Portland on Black Friday, hundreds of protesters showed up, proclaiming “Jesus was a Palestine” and chanting “Free Palestine” through the entire event. There were more protesters present than traditional attendees, and yet the event continued. Attendees sang Christmas carols such as “Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer,” and still we chanted. Later, looking at the local news, the media outlets cut out huge sections of the livestream when the performers acknowledged the protest, used photos from last year to avoid displaying the protest signs, and even cut to only the top of the lit tree in video footage of the event. It was the most direct media gaslighting I have ever experienced. While it’s easy to believe that the media exaggerates what’s happening, it is perhaps even more alarming to know that they are also downplaying and outright ignoring the outrage happening right now.

I’ve been working on accepting my flaws and moving forward with them, but it’s a process, as ever. The most helpful strategy I have cultivated is recognizing that the present version of me cannot possibly understand the full context of the decisions the past version of me made. Therefore, some grace and understanding are necessary and reasonable. While I, of course, want to take accountability for my actions,

I can also understand my behavior as a product of the times and move forward as a better, upgraded version of myself.

I feel like I have done little else except embody justice this month. I have been extremely active in advocating for equal rights and treatment in my workplace, I have attended several ceasefire rallies, I have served on the art team for two environmental actions in Portland this month, and I have been using my social media platforms as a way to encourage others to get involved. It was a busy and very activating month on all fronts.

I did make calls to my representatives, but I struggle to feel like doing that more than, say, once a month per issue is actually making a difference. It has been difficult to find information about how the phone calls are counted. But, I still think it’s worth it. The app, 5 Calls, continues to be an excellent resource.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy this month’s experiments!