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I seem to have settled into the limbo nicely. The stress of not-doing or non-direction is mostly gone. I've seen an improvement in dealing with disappointments. I gained the confidence to quite in the moment and painlessly inform my family of my newest name change. I attribute this overall progress to:

• continuing the stoic journal and thinking on the prompts,
• daily review of my “Things That Work” index-card vision-board thing,
• doing a re-read of Tosha Silver's “Outrageous Openness”, I love that approach to spirituality and it's something I forget, to be honest. Maybe I should add it to those index cards...
• reading “Feeding Your Demons” by Tsultrim Allione and half-assedly practicing the technique outlined therein. I think I remember already having done some stuff based on the psychology of that a few years back, but I'm looking forward to giving the full thing a solid shot.

Of course doing anything of this sort, especially when it involves asking for guidance, produces synchronicities and bread crumbs to follow. There have been old but relevant videos from my favorite content creators popping up on youtube's very broken main page. Strangely apropos affirmations and conversations in my usual internet haunts. A fanfic I'm reading has a character going to therapy and practicing a technique I learned from Jonice Webb's “Running on Empty” – just a basic emotional check-in a few times a day. I don't really understand why, but when I first practiced it it led to a big leap forward in self-compassion, I think I should try again. Then again this is beginning to look like a lot of “shoulds” all over again. I'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, in between all the above, I'm still playing around with decks without much conviction. Spent the day just reading, without guilt that I should be doing something “better.” Started on our balcony garden with my partner – we planted tomato and strawberry seeds into the little seed trays. I can't be certain but I think I'm more accepting and open, if not yet significantly more present. Slowly but surely going deeper.