Inspiration
Self-Care: The Weekly Chicken
I am secretly fascinated with the idea of goal-free living, and suspect it may be the apex of human development, which is a paradox, because obviously goal-free living = enlightenment, and how can that be an apex? There are no comparisons in the enlightened state! There’s no up or down, good or bad, winning or losing! Oh, my head is spinning …
Here’s what I mean to tell you: I’m not an enlightened being. I’m a being who kind of loves goals. And along with that, I love me a review. A look ahead, a look behind: that is the cherished self-care ritual I know as the Weekly Chicken.
Lexical note: “Chicken” is Havi Brooks’s deliberate corruption of “check-in,” because that just sounds too corporate, like something you owe your overlord before you can leave on Friday. A chicken is just … lighter. Fluffier, you might even say.
Like Sunday lunch, the Chicken is best enjoyed with a small crowd. I do my Chickening with a group of sister entrepreneurs, in an intimate online forum.
How to Chicken
Every week, one of us finds a goofy chicken image on the internet, and posts it with a slightly ridiculous reminder that it’s time to offer your weekly review.
We use a bullet-list format of positive events, negative events, and what we’re looking forward to (or not looking forward to, but are perhaps braced for) in the week ahead. We will often (optionally!) use themely category names, such as:
- Rainy Days, Silver Linings, and May the Wind Blow In
- Plain Sailing, The Swamp, and Leaving the Harbor
- The Good Place, The Bad Place, Asking Janet for Encouragement
- (and continuing with the Good Place theme) Welcome! Everything is fine; Royally Forked; DEREK DEREK DEREK
- The Juiciest, Sweetest Plum; The Most Disappointing Mealy, Flavorless Plum; More Plums Please!
So you can see we’re pretty dualistic. Winning good! Losing bad! We loved this; that other thing was a disaster. The weekly Chicken isn’t a path to enlightenment. It doesn’t ask us to be grateful for our difficulties, or to make lemonade from lemons before we’re ready. The Chicken is an appreciation of life’s pageant, both the parts we welcome and the parts we can’t avoid.
The Silent Retreat
Speaking of parts we’d rather avoid, an important Chicken side dish is the Silent Retreat, another Havi Brooks coinage. (She has a gift.) This is the little dodge in which you acknowledge something happened, but redact the particulars. So for example, in my personal-use Chicken, which I keep on my computer, I might write:
I went to Geoff’s costume party in lederhosen and when I did the Time Warp™ in them, the seat ripped, so everybody saw my Fighting Irish leprechaun skivvies and I’m afraid there may be evidence posted on social media but I’m too humiliated to look. (If you’re thinking this kinda sounds like an example from my real life, you’re wrong. I did not attend Notre Dame!)
But for the group, I would take a Silent Retreat on some aspects by posting an item peppered with initials, aliases and vague notions inside brackets:
Went to G’s [big event] where [seriously embarrassing thing] happened, and I’m not sure when it’ll be safe to leave my house.
My friends don’t need the details to be compassionate in their responses. They might make reassuring comments, or show their solidarity with little fist-shaking emoji, or with some beating hearts. When I post my woes, everyone feels less alone in theirs.
And where life has gone well, and we have things to brag about, we all cheer, and respond with triumphant Oprah gifs. (YOU get a car! and YOU get a car!) We’re there to party or commiserate, as needed.
But mainly, we’re there to witness each other.
There have been times when I have Chickened quite late in the week. There have been weeks when I have cried I don’t have tiiiime to Chicken! Then one week I realized what I was actually saying: that I didn’t have time to be a witness to my own life. And you know what? That’s never true.
We may not have time—or the inclination—for a whole memoir, but a few minutes each week acknowledging the hard times and the good is time well spent. To care for ourselves is to see, to witness, and to be present. But to Chicken with a group of compassionate external witnesses is to practice self-care with friends, and that is the some of the most fun self-care a person can have.
Image: A rooster with Hens and Chicks, Albertus Verhoesen, 1855, Rijksmuseum.
Wow, this is just what I needed this morning.
I could seriously use a group of chicks to chicken with.
I thought that this sounded a crazy, stress-inducing, competition encouraging (and as a Brit) very American idea. Definitely not my thing – but then I’m not a planner or list maker either. Then I realised that when I write my morning pages I often review my yesterday and write about how I felt the day went, the good, the bad, the cheering and the effect it all had on me. The other day I mused on the value of a daily review whether spoken in reassuring exchange with a partner or in email to a friend or written to oneself and wondered: is the review a vital part of memory forming? Is it like dreaming where our mind sifts and sorts experiences and files only the necessary and valuable things? I understand how the, apparently trivial, conversational run through of our days is a bonding exercise as well as a greeting ritual with our partners or housemates and am aware of how much I miss it now that I live alone. I can’t see me developing a weekly chicken routine but I know how much I gain from writing morning pages not least the knowledge that only I see them, no one else can judge me nor am I tempted to compare myself to anyone else.
Oh, I will be so interested to hear what your experience is! I will admit, Nat, that stress CAN be introduced to this process, and I have to dial it down sometimes. But what you say about “our mind sifts and sorts experiences and files only the necessary and valuable things,” well THAT is the point, and you’ve made it better than I did. YES to all that! <3 and thank you.
For Nat and Max, this is so good to read. My ‘work wife’ recently retired, and I feel at loose ends, “I understand how the, apparently trivial, conversational run through of our days is a bonding exercise as well as a greeting ritual ” is IT!
MLegan it’s often when we lose something we become sharply aware of its value, isn’t it?
Aww, thanks for your kind words Max, I always enjoy your words and insights. I got back into writing morning pages a few months ago in order to help inspire me creatively again but have found the practice very cathartic and definitely good for my mental health. It is a great way of discovering what is really going on in ones head and life as thoughts flow unbidden, sometimes surprisingly, and you realise what has been festering at the back of your mind and can get to address it.
Thanks Max. You’re brilliant as always.
Thank You !!! Reading this made me look foreword to my ” Chicken ” in my kitchen,where I have my wonderful chicken sitting on top of my fridge. I hope everyone has a great day!
Thank you
THIS IS COMPLETELY FANTASTIC.