Align Your Orbit: Ground Level
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 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.
Welcome. You’ve made it here, and that’s saying something. We’ve got an even deeper drop in this roller coaster coming. Use this momentum to gently pull the whole world off balance and watch it roll casually toward liberation.
We’re going to need everyone.
Make peace with new realities, discover your humility, offer yourself up to the fabric surrounding everything alive. These are the moments that will define our lives, stories, and futures to come.
We are still looking for a decent Spotify alternative, but for now, we couldn’t help but make a playlist. <3 Here’s the link.
New Experiments
1. relish in the collapse – Inspired by this interview with Jem Hendell, we remind ourselves to be unattached to the outcomes. We are headed toward, at minimum, societal collapse of the structures we are familiar with, if not also ecological collapse. As a result, we remind ourselves that, while it is still worth it to try to heal the wounds, our efforts are gifts rather than debts or expectations. Our patient may still die, but we want to be people who can say they did everything they reasonably could have to help.
Challenge Mode: Living inside of this late-stage empire world, there is no possible way to escape being partially culpable for what’s happening. Even buying groceries is participating in the system. Everything is complicit. Name the compromises you make and continually look for alternatives. Offer yourself grace in the meantime for what you cannot change.
2. soften the gods’ fall – More people than ever are aware that the systems we exist in are flawed. Rather than criticize them for being late to this party, invite them in. Teach with patience and care. Offer resources. This is how we start building mutual aid communities. This is how we build the future.
Challenge Mode: Ostensibly democratic governments break down quickly when you look at any of the “free” systems in place. At the first chance, corporations opt for top-down hierarchical structures that have nothing to do with democracy. Point this out. Be vocal about where you don’t have a voice. Don’t let anyone forget that the system is rigged.
3. embrace focal points – Don’t forget that your body is a tool. Disembodied emotions need a conduit to move through. Use physical focuses on the body to work through intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dilemmas. Add pressure, pain, pleasure, or paint to bring the abstract back to ground level.
Challenge Mode: Everyone has their favorite coping strategies. Everyone has ways of moving through this collapse. Share resources and communicate your strangest pleasures. Ask questions you genuinely want answers for.
4. reassess resilience – Take the time to get real with yourself about what you can and can’t do, what you will and won’t do. Protect your free time with every fiber of your being. Seek boredom. Remember how you like to rest.
Challenge Mode: There was a time when all creatures began their lives on the ground. Return to the floor at every possibility. Stretch. Yawn. Take up space. Be unconventional. Your spine will thank you.
Andra’s Recap of Be Human First
The experiments for last month included bringing your grief wherever you go, opting out of meaningless rewards, exploring modes of communication, and writing yourself a letter.
This month was so enormous and held so much.
I turned 30 years old two days after I attended a children’s march for a ceasefire in Gaza and Palestine. As a person riding the bus during the winter, I encountered death. I buried a small, sweet rat body that had fallen asleep in a hole my rabbit had dug.
Grief has been everywhere.
It was easy to despair, to fall into the black hole void of why does life even exist at all. And honestly, I had to spend some time there to remember why that’s not what I want.
Grief, yes. But also so much love. Love and compassion everywhere.
I watched my roommate play the game Horizon Zero Dawn, and in it, a non-player character, Elizabeth Sobeck, does not despair when she learns robots will destroy all life on earth. Instead, she sends a seed out thousands of years into the future instead. I remember that when I wonder if all this is worth it.
As a result, I have decided I need to meditate more. I need to be with “the black box of answers” more than ever before.
In terms of opting out of rewards, I decided to resign from my position at SCRAP. I’m going back to freelancing for the moment and will soon be announcing my campaign for Portland City Council in 2024. It’s my attempt to understand what our local government looks like from the inside and see if there’s anything I can do to help. My website is currently in testing/review, but you can check it out here.
I have my lovely wife to thank for helping to catch me as I transition toward a new path, and I am sincerely grateful for the privilege of that.
I felt very brave in reaching out to a relation this month to see if she wanted to reconnect after a long period of not talking. She has responded positively, and we have plans to begin the process of healing this wound together. I’m looking forward to the prospect.
As part of all that, we had to realize our differences in communication styles. She prefers phone calls—I prefer emails. I took the time to explain where my preference for email came from and suggested strategies to make phone calls feel a little safer for me. Analyzing the reasons behind my preferences has helped me transition well between one platform and another.
In terms of having my hands full of soil, I counted the large trees in my yard today and reached 20. I am really looking to spending more time with my garden as I transition into having more free time.
At the advice of my mother, I wrote a letter to myself about all the ways I am grateful to have myself in my life. It has proven to be a good documentation of my accomplishments, as it’s easy to rush past them on the way to the next goalpost. It’s certainly been an effort to learn how to slow down again.
But doing so has offered so much love to myself, and I look forward to writing at least one letter to myself a year much in the same vein.
Additionally, if you haven’t done it already, I have been getting a lot out of doing this free Year Compass to plot out this year transition. Check it out!
Thanks for reading!