Rina Pritchard | Boss Over Shoulder: Assorted Reflections

Ahimsa, I can be me in this industry.

Ahimsa, meaning non-harming, is the first Yama on the eight-limbed path to samadhi, oneness or pure consciousness. Ahimsa asks that we stop managing ourselves, our experience, and others. It dares us to  trust other people's journeys and love and support them in their highest image of themselves, not of ours. In this grief-stricken climate, compassion lies as this ever-present backdrop. But it is hardly, if ever, accessed.

In the evening, I retire to the sofa and retreat from my restlessness. I begin to write so things can fall back in order.

I worry less about being somewhere, as someone. But rather, being nowhere now as no one is fine, really.

This bottomless chasm broadens from here to there with no end in sight. The part-time nihilist in me feels all this is pointless. Some days I am floating, practically being carried; other days, I’m falling nowhere fast.

Aparigraha means non-attachment. To acknowledge the impermanence of worldly pleasures, states of being, objects, nature even. To remove oneself only to be placed elsewhere. To migrate to new places, begin new chapters, and adopt a different practice. To enter new roles and get out of our somebodyness.

I thought I was disenchanted with yoga, as though I were ready to indefinitely step off my mat and delve into equally important pastimes. But perspicaciously, I realized that one, I cannot separate yoga from everything else–it is alive in everything– and two, my practice wasn’t so much lost as it was evolving. Lately, my practice has been happening off my mat, in private, and is hardly talked about. It’s when I hold space for my son during a meltdown or allow myself to detach from a thought I created a story around. It’s uncomfortable.

Rarely do I find my edge anymore. But I am not surprised by my impulsivity to seek a higher anything. I am less anchored in my beliefs and mosey through this world like a walking contradiction, navigating competing identities. Feeling overpriced, I do not cling to any role for too long, afraid I’ll lack in fluency and performance as a mother, wife, daughter, and worker.

"We're all just walking each other home." -  Ram Dass

I wonder obsessively about progressing in a career that I felt never took off. I hold an onslaught of information and perpetual wisdom that I’m still parsing, articulating, and adopting. This sinister desire to be better, known, or more enlightened misrepresents my waywardness toward humility. So, I nurture this newfound joy in emptiness as potential, protecting this soft underbelly. These days, I stay wary of my inflated ego and separate professionalism from personal. I see everyone tangling their spirituality with profit and becoming a somebody or someone’s somebody. There is a lot of undoing, rearranging, as I stand knowing absolutely nothing and knowing no better and no different.

I’m not ahead of the next guy. I am feeling neither more certain nor self-realized than the next.

I’m walking right beside everyone else.

An opportunity knocks, do you answer it?

I noticed the sun because the tree was in the way.

When an opportunity knocks, do you peek through the curtain, expecting a puerile prank? Do you slide the deadbolt over for good measure? Or invite it over for tea?

All the scraps of writing I’ve been doing are loose sheets of paper on the floor. A mound of crumpled paper spills over the brim of a tin trash bin. It’s good to feel casual about an abandoned, unfinished book. Nothing is ever really complete, just abandoned. I sit here and make peace with the disorder, yielding to the process.

The dizzying meanderings of my life are now, in motion, reeling from one bad decision to the next, one exchange to another, and lessons that will only be learned too well and then forgotten. I accept the waywardness of life itself and remove my person suit to slip into moments instead. Celebrate the whims, the naivete, thwarted plans, and my bedraggled appearance. Bangs cut a bit too short, saying something and taking it back, and spilling over onto the floor. I draw stares and make a peep in a quiet crowd. I tell them, “I’m as surprised as you are.”

I stay passive without altering anything around me. This bigger idea of nonchalance lends itself to the richness of life.

I’ve avoided life, and now I’m walking back into it.

Maybe the last entry of the year

^{"Our proprioceptive and interoceptive systems are constantly talking, activating both involuntary and voluntary responses of the body. These reactions dictate our mood, our perception of the world, and our perception of ourselves."}

The thing about nature is that it not only involves the trees and the sea, but people. The speed of traffic. The climate in between. The day in its entirety. In Indian philosophy, particularly Hinduism, it’s called Prakriti.

_{Energy does not only exist; it flows. It shuffles.}

I look at mindfulness as an empirical study of thought and feeling. But the thoughts turn up unannounced. I hide in the coat closet on a frantic phone call to my husband as I yet again pluck him out of his daily toil.

“I spent the day puttering around the house, avoiding their menacing presence. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, go back to work,” I say.

I prefer finding that thought before it meets a feeling.

I am in a state of urgency, in this lost state of agency. There is a demand that needs meeting. I oscillate between two pairing thoughts, and I send text messages faster than I should, my boss asking me whether we need to talk.

“I was only recording my thoughts,” I say. “I did not have to involve you in it.”

_{A balancing scale sways up and down, softly pendulating, responding to two opposite forces before it can reach equilibrium. This is no different from the nervous system responding to a hyper-arousal state, or the body wobbling in a balancing yoga pose.}

Here lies another day wasted, staring at a blank screen of an unfinished thing, of what will be another forgotten account I’m documenting.

I’ve been spending cold mornings with my dog, watching him play. Observing him as I try and write anything. I am weary, at a loss for words, mostly, and meaning, a compass spinning.

The moon at daytime

The moon at daytime is a strange phenomenon when you think about it. But we see it because it’s there.

When I can’t make sense of present thoughts, I return to rewrites. On August 29, 2025, I wasn’t normally as capricious. I crave familiarity most of the time, and on other days, I reject it. But on this day, peace was not an afterthought. I did not dwell too long on daily preoccupations, like composing a text message or my route back home. I smiled at strangers. I availed myself to move on and stay put. My cup was full, but I did not spill my contents. I took a seat, drew a sigh, and sat down. Traffic on the interstate was steady like the breath. Beyond the highway and rolling hills, I stared into Pixar clouds against the backdrop of the azure sky. The air felt right, just like out west.

The moment was a gift. But I fumbled with two feeble arms receiving it.

Watching the daymoon float back as I drove toward its direction, dodging the same potholes I’ve memorized, I thought, couldn’t I imbue this elusive encounter rather than compare and contrast? Every song that played on my commute back home sounded splendid, so what was the catch? Everything felt aligned but illusory. The day’s fleeting minuscule qualities give credence for rejoicing in a rather rare occurrence, but what gives? Am I waiting for a moment’s passing to wistfully stare into what was? Did I bolt in an attempt to elude an impending disappointment because what goes up… must come down?

One has to be here to have this. So, land here. Gently.

I pulled into the driveway, entered the house, and sat down in my son’s room. Marbles, train tracks, cars, and books were strewn throughout. But I did not see a mess. I saw color.

when summer motions for autumn

As summer motions for autumn, I adopt patience into my practice. The seasons don’t turn overnight; they ease into the next. My dilatory response to recent activity has rendered me a curious desire and bold attempt to sit with things. I don’t enjoy things as they are; I wait for the next best thing I fool myself into believing. Right now, my son has plagued the silence per usual but this time by plugging in two Alexas in the same room, side x side, and telling both of them to count to 500. As Alexa counts, I draw up my thoughts.

I am disconnected from the world of fiction wondering if I’m finally closing the flap of my own book. Drawing up characters, building dialogue, and structuring plots have been few and far between. Is this something writers grow out of like like a pair of Wrangler denim or a teenage love? Dribs and drabs here and there, but I’ve been primarily carving time out for journaling. I hold all this; it has to go somewhere. Might as well land on a page or two.

Tellingly, motherhood makes you malleable. It jacks you up if not in the best way, in the way you never saw possible. I thank my progeny for these deeply lived, heart-stopping, -twisting, and -warming experiences. If you’re jacked up, you’re likely mutable, nostalgic, and spiteful, grieving an archaic version of yourself that you lost touch with as though they have become someone you now envy. That debatably funny free spirit who unapologetically shared life through social platforms now belies this neurotic perplexed soul who squanders minutes on an overthought grocery list and thinks pulling weeds from the rock garden is the hottest pastime.

During this paradigm shift with AI doing our jobs for us, the more writing I want done. I take its illusory emergence as some sort of fad, but its disruptive force is here and staying for better or for worse. As a last-ditch effort, I’ve applied myself to newer disciplines and punctuated on current ones. But it’s important for me to acknowledge that what one does is only a fraction of what or who they are.

Maybe it’s for the best, maybe it’s not for anything.

Teaching back-to-back classes, burning the candle at both ends, I’ve been writing guided meditations that sound like affectations as cues roll off the tongue. I’ll put students to sleep on a good day. Other days, some will walk out as I try not to take any of this seriously. My self-absorption puts me in check as I’m too careful of any spiritual bypassing. Another sweaty sports bra, another downward dog or spiral. It doesn’t wash for you? That’s cool; I have my sights set on humbling experiences nowadays.

There is something that is working, though. I’m learning to laugh things off when the day upends. The other day during a back-and-forth bicker, my son told me, “I’m angry, too,” before I dwarfed in size and my heart swelled. I softened and kissed him on the forehead. We are layered with calcified sheets and devastated by all this social-political information that wonder has been sucked up dry.

Our ego, the residue.

As I wear and take off these well-worn hats as a mother, teacher, and storyteller, there lies distress in being performative and having answers to things like, “How are you?” I’ll turn to the misguided child in tow and say, don’t follow me, but continue to clutch his hand. Most days I feel like I’m giving bad yogic advice while watching my empty words land flat on the bare feet before me. Most days, I prepare to be misunderstood and forgotten yet continue to ask myself, “How is everyone affording therapy?”

Exteriorization

This Monday afternoon feels a lot like a Sunday evening. The streets are damp from rainfall. The rain’s slick attempt to assert itself without becoming a full tropical depression threw off my plans. Representing an inner state, clouds arrive and leave, and the asphalt is fragranced with petrichor. We are several days into rainy weather. I forgot how the sun looks suspended in the lofty azure. I took the dog out for a walk at 2:00 p.m., and the streets looked as though it were a quarter before seven. It is now 4:00 p.m., but it looks like 1 p.m. Just like the weather, I am confused. It has outdone itself in attempting to be everything. Recent changes distress me, and it will be only weeks until I recoil to familiarity.

Could you make yourself useful?

Lately, dense clouds that eventually disperse greet me on weekend mornings. They are neither portentious in color nor productive of any rainfall. If you stay, could you make yourself useful? I thought. They loiter, confabulating near my parked vehicle.

Typically, I enjoy the rain and the thought of it. I support the idea of precipitation and how the sky needs to release. I support everything related to it: thunder, dry lightning, puddled gutters, raindrops on window panes, the sound, wet bangs. But I could also reposition.

We are of space.

You feel stuck, unable to escape this body, but you get out of bed anyway. You are riddled with the same preoccupations, continue to do someone else’s job, and somehow get through the day to spill into the evening. You wonder if something will fall onto your lap as you are busy doing something else.

It’s been a dread dragging these feelings, sulking, paralyzed by overfelt emotions, reeling thoughts, and identities.

This evening, I read a book. I was exposed to words that weren’t my own, and was hit by a creative compulsion. I thought about these rainy days. I thought about integration. Then I delighted in feeling at all.

Are we not what happens to us?

Today, I feel distracted but aware. Stagnant and paralyzed by either thoughts or their absence. I suppose I am trying too hard to make things work, to make myself useful and good. I had a soul-enriching conversation the other day. I left the room elated, ready for any shadows lurking around the next corner. I felt proud. I hardly feel like that anymore. The default lately is listlessness. My willingness disappears before it even falls into the periphery. I asked someone the other day if we mistake melancholy for contentment. I knew they weren’t the same, but the somber, this suspension, seems not uncommon. I wake up to the emotion, faint in its appearance but apparent in its imposition, as it looks at me straight in the eye as though I must nurse it all day. I sweat the day’s efforts so I can marinate and soak up the dregs. The week wears me well. I reify the week’s emotional residue by emoting what this is I am experiencing, before I can allow myself to leave my desk.

Write anything. Write shit.

The day’s highlight: my son’s deliberate arrangement.

Write about the impermanence of worldly pleasures and pain. Write about new buildings, deforestation, and lavish getaways. Write about isolation. Write about squeezing yourself into a space that you don’t quite fit in. And how you oscillate, deciding how to perform, that you fold into yourself anyway.

I stare into boxes where I am shelved, but I don’t stare long. I nod at assumptions, without agreeing to them. I save the small talk and prepare for misunderstandings. I hear the familiar dial tone when we disconnect, and I still hear it when I hang up.

Through this evolution, we emulate ideas and identities, and become ourselves anyway. We wonder if we would be confronting the unconscious mind if we were to leave what isn’t serving us. We ask ourselves whether we are only allowing the good and not the whole in this lived experience. We shuffle through work and passions and misplace our values.

I am divided between seeking growth with caveats and authenticity and peace. Then I forget why I began in the first place. I remember where to find the exit door, yet my paralysis keeps me directionless.

We try to become and embody as much and as many as humanely as possible, and are reduced to feeling empty, frayed, and corroded.

reorienting, moving through time and space

Reorienting from losing your balance; moving through time and space. Yeah, it feels like that. Those two are never too far apart.

The cerebellum, a component of the cerebral structure, receives unconscious signals from the body. The cerebral cortex deciphers these signals, noting where the body is in space, particularly during movement. Shifting and flowing through poses can help with balance and proprioception.

The cerebellum is responsible for muscle memory. It detects imbalances and coordinates body and eye movement. This helps us adapt to complex movement patterns, making them feel more second nature.

Anais Nin offers tender insights on the artist, the male counterpart and the new woman

Any work I read by Anais Nin, I prepare myself. The house must be quiet, and the chores must be done. I dim the lights. A prefatory setting must be made as though I’m setting out my finest cutlery for her impending visit. I know I’ll spend a great deal of time on the corner section of the sofa, and I’ll have already chewed my fingernails to the point of tenderness.

on writing

I read her essay, “The New Woman,” retreating to the deep reflection of her senses that lured me in the first place. She wrote about why one writes, liking it to breathing. She wrote profusely about how writing allowed her to experience life twice.

Writing can help one become increasingly aware. In moments when a writer feels bound, writing can liberate and create more room.

on artists

Anais Nin lived through other artists, and not just those who draw, compose music or design architecture. In her essay, she broadens this representation to those trapped in the house of the creative spirit — those with ideas and wanting to share them; those who seek to embody their internal world and who still bear their child-like fantasies into adulthood. She believed the creative quality that manifests in one makes an artist. She adds that psychologists often validate what poets have spoken about long ago, following a quote by Freud, “Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.” Nin aspired to both men and women creatives, particularly Henry Miller, whom she esteemed for the writer he was and the context in which he wrote. “I think I saw Miller very clearly,” she said.

on the new woman

On “The New Woman,” Nin envisions the novel woman blossoming today. This woman is courageous and adventurous and harmonizes with her strength but is quiet about it. She rations sharing her growth and success. This woman is no longer homebound through chores while wearing an apron. Rather, this woman encourages the man to be a partner with her, not a provider, and a sensitive man, at that, not threatened or compromised by this new woman.

Women have served as muses for a long time, and Nin cleaved onto this desire to be this inspiration to avoid having to write herself. For years, women were not asked to be pushed into the direction of a great writer, doctor or philosopher, but to marry and raise children. This new woman, however, faces her trauma and fear, falls in love hopelessly, taps into her sensuality and explores the confusing world of her own neurosis.

Anais Nin and her psyche

In her complex framework, Anais Nin finds poetry as essential as philosophy and psychology — which we lean into to recenter our misaligned selves. An artist rearranges herself to write fiction and dismantles herself to write her diaries, but the division is complementary and integrated. Her intuition sloshes along rationale without blending, like water and oil, and coexists when contained.

If you have read her diaries, you know she has delved into her vulnerabilities and explored her curiosities. Plunging into her psyche, one will come out soaked and disoriented from the depths of her perception. Nin does not highlight the disparity between women and men, femininity and masculinity. She blurs the lines, leading you to where the two converge. Where there is poetry, there is intellectuality. Where there is devastation, you will find creation.

In days when I’m confounded in my reverie, I look to Nin for having dreams and penchants. To assert myself. To have passion and communicate through the channel of emotion. To be moved by impulses and to stand rooted in personal conviction.

a good place to wait

The other day, I was at a good place to wait. I shuffled through my options and browsed a few job postings online. The job descriptions sounded inconceivable, leaving me tone-deaf. They were resoundingly plangent and eerily atmospheric like from a bad dream or an alt sci-fi world beyond me. They were lengthy and esoteric. Like, What does this even mean?

I’ve eaten the dust of trailblazers, envied the prosaic lives of my wealthy peers and known the ridicule of highbrow intellectuals. It must be common to feel like this: to live parasitically off others to satisfy, or at the least address, that pang of literary hunger, and to feel a tad dated with the slow, yet aggressive prevalence of artificial intelligence.

I am in this interim, but I was just here. I haven’t recognized whether to capitalize on what I know or deviate from a path I’ve been walking. Lately, it’s a lot of feeling stuck, waiting for any available opportunity to emote what this means. Opportunities these days mean a quiet empty house for a couple of hours, a good sleep and being aware of my thought patterns. If the opportunity presents itself as accessible, I’m lucky to string a few words together. A few years ago, I convinced myself to stop looking for meaning, but to start, to throw myself into the abysmal vacancy knowing I had nothing to lose.

I needed to humor myself.
I needed to write like them.
Move and shake like them.

a good place to wait

But I also needed to retire this idealistic view of where I needed to be and instead, identify the process.
I needed to write words on Post-its to keep words close to me at all. I found myself referring to dog-eared pages of books from seven years ago to recoil in emotion. My subjective attitude toward reality has always shackled me to this writer-life, far from a career that I found only exists in my daydreams or others.

I needed to continue feeling alive, despite feeling unwell. Recognize where the fount of my inexhaustible force, that zeal, is. Is it dormant in the continuity of thought and feeling? Found in the relentless quest of finding meaning? Is it deep in the crevice of struggle? Somewhere in between relationships or fact and fiction?

Lately, the world has been loud and infallible at cajoling me to move and live based on the grounds of logic. But as writers, we know that we are spurred by sensations and instincts, qualities we ration to keep our identities preserved, ourselves known or our sanity whole. It is our insanity keeping us alive, albeit brittle, and functional to seek greater depth in understanding and connection.

However, the disconnect, the chasm, never felt or looked so vast as it does now.