“I am a pink potato,” I think to myself as my mind drifts elsewhere. I’m laying on the floor with my eyes closed in the middle of a sound bath. I try to keep coming back to it. “I am a pink potato.”

A few days prior to this, I voicenote my friend about how emotional and all over the place I am. She voicenotes me back and says the astrology is insane right now & to hold tight & that she and another friend are holding a sound bath + reiki session that weekend to clear the energy and that I should come. I sign up.

So now I am there, lying on the floor and she tells us that for the next hour, there is nothing to do. We just need to lay there & be potatoes. She tells us to think of a color and that when our mind drifts, to come back to that color. I immediately see pink in my mind. So for the next hour, I will be a pink potato.

Except I’m not, because my mind won’t stop drifting. It keeps thinking about the next thing I want to write. There’s another substack post I’ve been working on that I can’t get quite right, (my forever challenge of being both a perfectionist and a writer). So in my head im playing with the tone and editing the structure of it…but no-I need to be a pink potato!

As a kid in school I got good grades but I was also always told to “stop day dreaming” “to stop looking out the window” and to “pay attention.” As an adult im often told it looks like im zoning out. I don’t mean to, but if I’m zoning out I am usually just writing in my head. Writing my next blog post or instagram post or book chapter. 

I try really hard to be present and I have so many tools; meditation, breathwork, pink potatoes…and still, it’s a struggle.

This morning I woke up and I told myself I was going to take a shower / bath, slow down, be present, and just be a pink potato.

But then I think about this story, and I start writing this story out in my head while sitting in the tub, so instead of being a pink potato I get out of the shower & now I’m typing this out with conditioner still in my hair because I’m afraid that if I don’t do it right away, I will lose all the thoughts.

So now it’s posted and I’ll go back to finish my shower.

Is this what it is to be a writer?

We are not very good at being pink potatoes.