WeLab · a private page
Most days you move between three places. This page has one job, which is to show you what you already do to get from one to another.
Nothing filled in yet. Start with Present.
Write what is true, not what is good. The things that get you through a Tuesday go here exactly as they are. Some of them cost you nothing. Some of them cost you a lot. Both belong on the map, and you will see which is which faster in writing than you ever will in your head.
Every line you write is something that once worked. Your system built it to protect you, and it is still running the program. You are here to see the program running. That is the whole job.
One thing per line is easiest, and it makes the next step work properly.
The three parts are below in the order worth doing them: Present first, then Racing, then Faraway, gently. Inside each one, fill on my own before with others.
Nothing you write here is sent anywhere. It stays in this browser, on this device. Noy cannot see it. When you want him to have it, you choose to send it.
Someone else’s map, so you see a full page before you face an empty one. Yours will look nothing like it.
| On my own | With others | |
|---|---|---|
| Present | Cooking with music on. The first ten minutes of a walk with no phone. Playing guitar badly. Long shower. | Sunday breakfast when nobody has a plan. Driving with my brother. A light hand on my back. Cuddling with my dog. Longer, slower sex. |
| Racing | Work later than I need to. Third coffee. Scroll until my eyes hurt. Reorganize something that was already fine. Going for a run. | Start the argument I have been avoiding, then win it. Exercise with my trainer. Dance. Rough, fast sex. |
| Faraway | Laying in bed at nine with the TV on. Drinking the extra beer alone. Slow breathing exercise. Cuddling with a stuffed animal. | Let her decide everything so I do not have to. Asking a loved one to just be with me. |
The blank map, two filled examples and the marking pages, ready to print and fill by hand.
The charge came up to carry you through something. It lands when it completes. Split wood, run, push against a wall, growl in the car, have the vigorous kind of sex. The long breath that arrives afterward is your body saying that is over.
Coming up out of it fast tends to send you back down. Weight, warmth, low light, a low slow voice, small movements, someone sitting near you and asking nothing. Stretch the system and let it stay stretched. Things that last in nature grow slowly.
This is where a nervous system wants to sit, and it manages that some days better than others. When you are here, everything is working the way it was built to work.
You will still leave, probably today. The map is for the trip back.
A friend. Your sibling. Your partner. The person at the next desk. A group you show up to on Wednesdays. Your dog, if your dog is who actually settles you.
It does not have to be deep, and it does not have to be about you. Someone cooking while you sit in the kitchen counts. A voice note you do not have to answer today counts. Someone who lets you be quiet next to them counts.
Inspired by the works of Dan Siegel, Peter Levine and Linda Thai.
Noy Carmel · welab.love
This one lands better on a different day than the one you wrote the map on, once what you wrote has had time to settle.
Go through your map line by line and say what you want to do with each one. Four marks, and leaving a line unmarked is fine. Tap a mark again to clear it.
If you are working on paper instead, pick four coloured markers of your own and use those. The shapes are only a suggestion.
Nothing gets swapped until you have something to swap it for. Nobody gives up the thing that gets them through a Tuesday on a promise. The old one stays on the map until the replacement is real.
The replacement lives in the same part of the map. A Faraway thing gets swapped for another Faraway thing. The extra beer at nine gets swapped for weight, warmth and a low voice, not for a workout.
As is for now is a real answer. Something can cost you more than it gives and still not be this month's work. Mark it that way, leave it on the map, and come back when there is room.
One or two at a time is plenty. Three is more than enough.
Finish each sentence with something you would actually reach for, in the same part of the map. Not what you should do. What you would do.
A plan that names the moment beats a plan that names the goal. When I am here and I reach for that, I reach for this instead is the whole shape.