Cat Skinner Club

Summoning Mythical Beasts

Photo by Igor Saveliev

What does love look like when you’ve exhausted every convention, and tried everything you knew how to do to make it last? Does one resign oneself to the notion that they ‘aren’t the marrying kind’? Do they give up on any type of domesticity with a person to share that with?

I see a path where I’m a lone wolf, only keeping company when mood and opportunity align. There’s something deeply alluring about that path. And yet…I just can’t stop chasing this notion that somewhere out there, a true Pegasus awaits. Some mythical, winged beast of a man who can land in my unicorn pasture and slay convention by my side.

Here’s what I know about love and partnership. Here’s how I’m working to define what love could look like again:

Truth and transparency is more important than monogamy.

Truth can only come from self-awareness. I need a partner committed to realizing their higher self and understanding and articulating their own needs. 

All we have is the present moment. I want someone who can occupy the present with me and who will strive to remain there.

My sexuality is sacred. My passion runs deep. In the rare instances where I’ve been met with chemistry and connection that seem equally balanced, my heart and soul get involved faster than I want them to. I need to learn to be the master of that powerful energy.

I want to cook with someone, nurture them and care for them. Help them articulate and realize their dreams while feeding my own fire and realizing my own dreams. I want to lavish them with love, and I want that kind of willingness to reciprocate.

My children deserve someone who will adore them and bring something beautiful into their lives. I want someone who will love my children as their own, while understanding that their role isn’t entirely parental.

My place of pain limits me just as anyone else’s does. I don’t want to be on a pedestal. I want someone who will navigate the dark waters with me. 

Family and my family of friends are deep and powerful connections in my life. I need someone who also knows what this means. I want to merge our tribes and have a house full of memory-making.

I want to see someone as they truly are and still love what I see.

I want a lifetime of playful, adventurous, sacred sexuality. I want to feed and nurture that with my partner with as much loving attention as we give to all of the other important facets of our life. I want to honor that space by showing up in my honesty and vulnerability, by exploring and experimenting, by challenging boundaries, and I want to do this as a unit.

I want a horned god that I can worship, who will fall to his knees before the goddess in me.

I want an intense and visceral physical attraction that is reciprocated. I want to know how much my partner loves the way I look, feel, smell and taste.

I need someone with true alpha energy, not that bullshit toxic masculinity, to create space for me to enjoy my alpha female tendencies. I want that primal shit, but back when they worshiped voluptuous goddesses. (Does anyone else feel like this is an entire blog post right here?)

I am an artist. I need someone who has their own passions that they are compelled to explore, just as I am compelled to lose myself in my writing. I need my partner to have tremendous respect for my artistic space and my talent.

I want a kind of hedonism that is tempered by consciousness, financial responsibility, healthy living, and self-care. Is that a thing? Can we start a movement?

As I type these words I find myself laughing. How could any one person tick off these boxes? Have I become so jaded that I’ve raised the bar to Olympian heights because I’m too afraid to be hurt again? 

Some of you will read this and say, “Why not be all of those things to yourself?” I am. I strive to be, every damn day. I’m really nailing this, as a matter of fact. It’s a good exercise; list everything you dream of in a partner, and then be all of those things.

I’m not lonely, and I’m okay alone, but to allow myself to imagine the kind of life I could live, with my flanks cooled by the powerful wings of a Pegasus? Now that’s the kind of magic that I want. 

Meanwhile, the grass is tasting pretty sweet in this unicorn pasture of mine.

You Don’t Need Me

You don’t need me to tell you what loneliness feels like,
How the yawning silent void can sound like the loudest roar,
Or how the vast expanse of solitude can be crushing.

You don’t need me to show you how it hurts
to watch yourself grow irrelevant to the one who matters most,
to reach for the family you’ve built as they slip away.

You don’t need me to hold you, and run my fingers slowly
along the map of your body,
the constellations across your shoulders,
the granite slopes of your thighs…

You don’t need me to make hotel-crisp corners
of the bed we unmade
in the morning, while you shower.
Or to forget my earrings, little pieces of me, on your side table.

You don’t need me to coax out your secrets,
curl up in the scent of you,
to listen to this, to watch that
or to do that thing, that up until now,
you’d only imagined.

You don’t need me.

We are two trees rooted in possibility,
our branches touching briefly
as we bend with the wind that moves us.

A Pep Talk for Creative Types

Hey you artsy soul, trying to make an impression on the world…

a pep talk for creative types

You’ve picked a hell of a path, haven’t you? People think it’s crazy to spend so many waking hours living with your imagination once you’ve hit age eleven or so, but you just can’t help yourself, can you? I’ll bet there are days you think it’s crazy too.

Sure, you have a job that pays the bills. Sometimes you probably even like it. You and I both know there isn’t a single second when you aren’t thinking about your other work. That creative work that doesn’t pay you a dime most of the time, but fills your soul until it’s near to bursting. Except when it doesn’t.

You know those moments where you take a good long look at yourself and say “Seriously, why are you still doing this?” When you stop and count the hours you’ve devoted to your creativity and measure that against the financial dividends of that time investment, do you feel a little sick sometimes? Is there a niggling voice inside your head telling you that it’s time to ‘grow up’? Is that voice telling you that your art isn’t going anywhere?

Well, guess what? I feel the exact same way. Especially right now as I’m typing this. My nay-saying inner monologue is practically screaming, but I know with certainty that as sure as I will not make a cent from my writing this month, I will also come back to it again and again. I will write until my dying day, and it’s not because I have some delusion that I’m poised to become the next bestselling novelist, it’s because I have to write. Even if my stories are absurd, even if I never quite master this craft, I know that when I am not writing I am slowly dying inside.

I’ve had a lot of creative pursuits that I’ve left by the wayside. You’ve probably done the same. There are other avenues I’d like to explore (like pottery!) before I leave this life, but writing is in my blood. You know the feeling. Even in your most frustrated moments you can’t walk away from something that is so much a part of you.

And you shouldn’t.

If your art does nothing more than feed your soul and give you a reason to keep moving through your days, that is a gift worth more than any pay check. If your art helps you contextualize the insanity of the world and seek out the beauty in any situation, you are armed with a power few possess. Build your life carefully around your gifts so you can support your creative space and keep enjoying those personal rewards. I have total faith that if you invest so deeply and create from a place of personal pleasure and power you will make exactly the kind of mark you hope to leave on the world. You probably already have.

xoxo

cat skinner

 

 

5 Ways to Stay Focused on Your Passion

My three-year-old son is asleep. (Scratch that, was asleep.) I know he’s not himself because he willingly allowed me to bundle him up in the stroller and wheel him into unconsciousness on this glorious pre-spring day. This is something he usually fights tooth and nail (literally, sometimes). Unless there’s a mob of other three-year-olds, like at school, Noodle isn’t napping. He’s not at preschool today because he’s staying home to smear snot and spittle all over every square inch of me. He’s lucky he’s cute. All of this to say that when you’re a work-from-home mom, ain’t nothing getting done with a sick baby. What better time to take a look at staying focused on the things you are passionate about?

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The Important Link Between Passion and Gratitude

On this journey of mine, I’ve learned that negativity is one of the most powerful ways to cripple creativity, halt forward motion, and strangle my dreams of living the kind of life I yearn for. I’ve also learned that I can’t control other people’s negative comments and behaviors or their discouraging words. Generally, trying to change other people is at best exhausting, and at worst futile. Big dreamers like little ‘ol me have better ways to spend their energy. I’ve noticed too that even well-meaning loved ones can be the first up to bat when it comes to nay-saying. I’m learning to take their good intentions and leave the rest behind. At the end of the day, it’s my own negative thinking that has the most potent influence over my life, and I’ve learned that there is one guaranteed approach to a more positive mindset. It’s an utterly simple concept – gratitude. Today, I’d like to explore the important link between gratitude and passion.

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