The uses of precision

Snow, recovering from perfectionism, and photos from childhood

Note: This written text is a minimally edited version of the dictation that came through on Microsoft Word as a I recorded this video.

Good morning, Muses, I'm trying to get a shot where you can see the incredible snow that we got yesterday here in Massachusetts.

So beautiful

so grateful for the experience of getting to see snow

(Now you’re getting some interesting shots of my drying stuffed animals and now I’m gonna sit down)

I am very grateful to have a number of friends old and new who have already subscribed and more importantly Muses - people who bring me a sense of inspiration, a sense of being able to breathe more deeply, know myself more truly and express more fully in your presence –

So thank you to each of you who is listening and attending bringing some of your heart/spirit/energy into my life by communicating about this little creative project for 2024

I don't know if this is gonna be a thing every week but this morning early in the morning like somewhere between sleeping and waking the words came into my mind

the uses of precision

For a long time in my journey as a recovering perfectionist I have used the word precision to describe my intentional use of being really careful precise you know accurate

OK, so I looked up the word precision this morning because I wanted to use it precisely and found out that it does not mean what I thought meant

So the origin of the word is French to cut short or to cut off so “cise,” cutting like in-cision

In my mind precision had a more artful connotation of getting things “just so” and I think that can be a connotation of it as well, but this idea of it being a matter of cutting really surprised me and then I started to think about what exactly I wanted to say about precision and I know that if I was writing a blog entry about this (I used to write a blog decade or so ago) …

I don't want to say I would spiral, exactly, but I would spend a lot of time trying to write precisely and have a really clear message that I was giving about the word precision

So using this media of breathing and speaking from my heart and

(then for those of you who are reading this my apologies I feel like it's gonna come through in a not so precise or artful manner)

And maybe that is part of what I'm getting at in this evolution that I'm doing by way of Monday Morning Muse

You might see behind me I've started to put on the bulletin board images (I'm not going to show them very close up right now), but they’re images of muses

Some of them are pictures that some of you have sent me already

Some of them are old pictures of family

Some are even pictures of the pets of friends and some are pieces of artwork

The space of that bulletin board behind me is going to be (I imagine by year's end) covered in images of you, my muses

Specifically I'm trying to put a lot of pictures of friends and sources of inspiration from when you were a child

Because there is something so singular and real, so pithy and to the marrow about each of us in our childhood, something that can be harder to capture in image format once we reach adulthood, because we get to an age where we like know “how we're supposed to look in pictures” and start posing even though we're trying not to

So there's also in childhood a quality of simplicity

I'm looking out my windows at the new fallen snow

There's a quality of just beingness, like the way the snow falls and simply hits everything it touches, right?

This morning as I was first thinking about the uses of precision, I was thinking about how when you see the snow, it precisely lines each tree branch, each shingle of each house,

how in the hours to come as the sun rises and there is a gentle melting, the snow will settle a little bit and you will see every bit, every fir leaf, every branch, all the contours of this splendid world will be outlined with greater precision - and it's not because anyone needed to come and you know place things precisely right which is what I think precise actually has to do with this like very exacting accurate cutting energy - no there's a precision that is more of a releasing, a realness, and that is the precision that I am aiming for now in my life

So precision maybe is not the most precise word for it, but there is something …

Maybe it's a great word, maybe cutting is a great image, because I do think that each of us can become an instrument of immense specificity, singularity

It's interesting: I'm looking into my own eyes as I say that, watching myself in my camera

Most of the time I find myself like looking elsewhere in my room and out the windows and then sometimes I look in my own eyes because I wanna remember:

Yes, each of us can become a precise instrument of love

of artful

compassionate

breathing

blessing

gracious

exuberant

heartful change

we can each be an instrument of powerful precision by becoming ever more fully who we are which has to do with those muse images behind me and

I'll say those of you who are joining this community of Musing - both the musing of being an inspiration, a source of breath and expression and musing as in, putting your muzzle in the air and just pondering or laughing –

(if you don't know what I'm referring to read my description of this enterprise, it's going to be in the About section of this of Monday Morning Muse)

Those of you who want to be part of this community, who are already part of this community because you're watching it now, I invite you to send me a picture of you as a child. You might have my mailing address, you can send it there, or you can text it or e-mail it to me, message it to me in some fashion. If you are watching this and you don't actually know me, Hannah, feel free to message me and we'll figure out a way for you to get me an image of you, but it's fine if you just send it to me by e-mail or text because I'm gonna print a bunch myself; you don't have to go about the work of mailing it in the mail unless that would feel fun for you.

I'm thinking about the uses of precision again. I want to circle back to that idea and ask in what ways you,

my beautiful, breath-filled, feeling-full muses,

are using precision in your life in this season and in what ways precision can be abandoned

I know that I have been learning to be precise where it serves me and others and to release that as unnecessary in a lot of areas of my life

So for example I used to be really precise about emails, like you know read and reread them, I haven't done that in years

Now if I leave some typos in an e-mail, I feel like it's giving others permission to be less perfectionistic in their own lives

But I still love to be really careful and precise when it comes to things like putting things up on my bulletin board I'd like to do it and “just so” and it brings me joy to do that,

Or like, we have this built-in bookshelf in our living room (maybe I'll put in an image of it in this post), and I love to arrange and rearrange that space - I think of it as curation and that kind of precision - I really enjoy.

I think there are ways in which me being thoughtful about using my tendency toward perfectionism or precision, me using that in a precise way, is part of me offering who I am in the world

So I'm curious to you, my Muses, where are you precise, where are you not so precise, and what other heartful, artful musings arise as you watch this today?

I would love to see/hear your comments, whether that's in the postings or whether you reach out to me directly

Blessings on you, may you muse sweetly over the week to come