Chapter 55: How to Start

Second blog in a row! Woah! Don’t get excited. I’m writing this in light of yesterday’s blog and the upcoming series of videos on my channel around the “Sister Book”. Per requests, here is what Amanda and I did for our book and some suggestions for your own.

What was the “Sister Book”?

The sister book was a scrapbook that Amanda and I shared over the course of a year. We would each create one page per month for said book. Each page would include a response to a prompt, challenge, task – call it what you want, that we gave to each other. We would give each other the task sometime around the first of the month and we would each have the duration of the month to complete the task and the page for the book. We would then exchange who had the book each month. You could use any method for keeping track, including one of those big time capsule tins and just dump everything in there. Or maybe you exchange it all through digital media via a USB. It’s up to you – make it your own!

What prompts/tasks/challenges were included?

Anything! The only task we had that was the same was the final one in September (which we actually just completed last week). All other tasks were different for each of us. Some examples (from what I can remember) are:

• What is one thing you love about yourself? Not your life, but yourself.
• If you could trade places with anyone for 24 hours, who would you pick? Why? What would you do?
• Have one person fill out a questionnaire about anything – personal, fun, silly, whatever. You can find some examples or ideas online.
• Take a picture every day for the month.
• Have a photo scavenger hunt. Create one yourself, or examples can be found online.
• Write a letter to your past, present, and future self. Include whatever you want in the letter.
• Write a short story about a given topic, or about a topic of your choosing.
• Give yourself a Valentine’s Day card.
• Plan a trip (short or long) for the two of you. Include every detail and imagine that money is not an issue.
• Write the emotion you are feeling at the end of the day, every day, for the month.
• Write about someone who you’re jealous of. Why? How is your life better than theirs?
• If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? To visit? To live? Why?
• Plan a party for yourself (like a birthday). Include an invitation and a full itinerary of events, menu, music, etc.
• Create something about the two of you – a collage, story, song, etc. that celebrates your relationship.
• Choose a letter of the alphabet and write down every word you hear that begins with that letter for the duration of the month. Then write a story using all the words you wrote down that month.
• Make a collage about yourself – think grade school.
• Write a letter to each other. Include whatever you want.
• Describe what you thought the first time you met. How has that changed?
• Share a deep dark secret and why it’s been a secret. Include how you feel about finally sharing it.
• Sit in a public venue and people watch. Write a story about someone you observe.
• Write about one regret in life. Include what it was. Why it’s a regret. And what has been done to move beyond it.
• Plan an adventure for the two of you. Give details about what you would do. Where you would go. How you would get there. Why you would do it.

Who should you do it with?

My sister and I decided to do it on a whim while shopping at Michael’s one day. Or maybe I thought of it during that trip and then told her about it…I don’t remember. What I can say is that ANYONE can and should do it. Siblings, partners, parents with their children, friends, roommates, ANYONE! The tasks/challenges/prompts may need to be altered to fit the relationship, but I think it’s a great way to learn about yourself and each other – and if you do it like us, it’s a two year commitment. That’s kind of a big deal, but so worth it! And it’s a lot of fun to create the pages that go with your prompt.

The final interview that we did came from the NY Times. (NY Times Article). As you’ll see from the article, it’s targeted to romantic partners, but love and intimacy exist in all relationships, so we gave it a go! I would highly recommend doing this regardless of whether you have a long-term project like the “Sister Book” or not. I thought it was the perfect way to end our year of discovery, so answering it for a vlog was our final challenge – together. We also wrote (are writing) short letters to each other that we’ll read at the end of the second year – the year of unveiling!

If you do it, I would love to know how you’re making it your own and what your thoughts are along the way. #TimeBook and share your story.

Until Next Time,
Courtney Chivon

Chapter 54: Opening October

October!

There isn’t any real reason October is exciting, but it’s been a while since my last entry and I felt like I needed it to start with a bang.

Really, this blog is meant to provide some context for a series of Sister Weekend videos that are going to make their way to my channel over the forthcoming year. Last year, my sister and I decided to start a scrapbook. This scrapbook would serve as a year-long time capsule, whereby we would each fill one page a month as it related to a specific task/challenge that we gave to each other. I have one more page (August) to complete and a video to edit, but our book is otherwise finished. We also decided that we would spend the next year (starting now) unveiling each task during each respective month and recorded it for the vlog.

Over the past weekend we went away to Cripple Creek for a haunted ghost-hunting adventure, and while in our hotel room, we decided to start reminding ourselves of where we were a year ago. The first vlog is up, entitled “A Time Capsule for Sisters” and while the content may not be super interesting to you, our hope is that you will find some inspiration to do something similar with your sibling/friend/lover/family member. The first year is a journey of self-discovery, but the second year is bound to be a journey of rediscovery for both self, and your relationship.

Whether it’s inspirational, entertaining, or something entirely different, we hope you’ll enjoy spending time with us once a month for the next year as we reveal some of our deepest thoughts to each other and to you.

If you’re inspired and would like to exchange ideas or suggestions, comment below or tweet me (@c_chivon) and let’s share a little.


Until Next Time,
Courtney Chivon

Link to vlog: A Time Capsule for Sisters

Chapter 53: Something About Control

This is a topsy-turvy world we live in; one where right is left, and down is up, and the only thing for certain is uncertainty. I take it back, there are two certain things in this world – uncertainty, and the certainty that a single note from a particular song will send a person on a journey they thought they only had to live once. You know what I’m talking about. Like the moment the opening chords of “Crash” come on, you’re no longer driving your car, but instead you’re being grabbed by the wrists and thrown against the wall – crash, indeed. Or like hearing that one song you forgot existed because it was kind of a one-hit-wonder, and suddenly you’re flying down a winding road in the dark, crying so hard you can’t even see, because you just learned that the person you most trusted has decided to help the person who violated your innocence, and all you want to do is drive off the cliff.

Sure, some songs lend themselves to those other, happier moments, like dancing in the rain after the MB20 concert with your best friend while your crush watches you with sweet amusement, and then joins in. Or the achingly beautiful memory of your first real kiss every time “Just Like Heaven” surfs soundwaves to your brain. The memories of those songs, however, are further and fewer than the ones that rip through our bodies like a harpoon leaving a whale to bleed long after it’s struck.

I had these thoughts last night while driving, being in parts of CO that don’t illicit real memories, but for some reason breathed a sense of nostalgia into my lungs. It’s like every experience is sound tracked, and each corresponding memory has replaced a piece of my broken heart; haphazardly stitched together with rusted wire. How long until my heart is no longer a muscle pumping blood to keep me alive, but instead a fragile artifact encased in the resin stained glass shell of my withering body? Am I becoming the walking embodiment of what is a museum for my soul? Will I stop being human? Or, is it those visceral memories that keep me human by reminding me that emotions and memories are a part of growth?

To be honest, that all sounds so cliché and perfectly convenient for the heartbreaking raw emotion that is actually felt, lived through, relived, and brutally destroys the spirit. Memories that are so encompassing that they evoke physiological reactions can’t just exist as reminders of our history. I refuse to believe that they’re there just to teach us to be strong, or to show us how strong we’ve been. Are they perfectly timed when our egos are on the verge of losing control? Like a slap in the face to remind you that you aren’t perfect? That your feet are meant to tread earth and not to walk on water or air? If we were meant to be that high, we would have been graced with wings. 

Yes, I believe that’s it, but I wonder if the message has to be so damn painful every time. I’ve also wondered who is more prone to experience the desolation that comes from the perfectly orchestrated soundtrack of their life.

Is it because I have a more creative mind than pragmatic one that I’m so easily affected by nostalgia – even if it’s false? Is it because I see music, and I hear color, and I feel sound that every part of my being is shaken when just one element is just slightly askew? What causes the pendulum to swing so violently from one side to the next? This isn’t the life I would have crafted for myself if I had all the control.

Control.
Control…
Control?

Maybe that is the Mellon Collie OR the Infinite Sadness – control and how humans don’t actually have it, ever. We search for it, we fight for it, we believe it matters, we trust some version of it (structure), but how does it actually service anyone. When I’ve had control of myself, I’ve felt liberated, happy, but when the control shifts to either that of me over another or another over me, or FUCK! a song over my memories, I’ve felt ugly and chained, and mostly destroyed. I’m told that how we choose to react to things is what gives us the control over ourselves, but is that true? Hearing that one song tonight certainly didn’t make me feel like I could, in any way, regain the control of my emotions or my memories. I was immediately cast back to a dark and uninviting place; a place I would never choose to revisit on my own accord. Could I change how I reacted to it? Certainly, one would think so, but I’ll say from experience that it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Control.

That’s what this is all about. My thoughts driving last night to my thoughts writing tonight – they’re all embedded in or shrouded by lost control that could never and will never be lassoed and tamed. What does any of it even matter? Maybe it doesn’t matter at all, but as of late it has taken precedence in my mind – in my life. Maybe it’s because I’m really tired of those brief interludes that are so seemingly insignificant to most people being so devastating to me. Maybe it’s because I’m tired of living in a moment that can be stolen by a memory from the past. I feel as though I’ll be trapped in solitary confinement for the rest of my life with only padded walls to offer me any kind of cushion. Invisible chains stay locked around my wrists and ankles – keeping me grounded, yes, but also preventing me from ever stitching pieces of my heart back into place with invisible thread instead of rusted wire tethering me to memories I wish would disappear.

In the grand scheme of things, none of it matters. We’re all going to die someday, and it won’t be relevant who had control, when. But I suppose I’m concerned with what happens between now and then when now is so hard to breathe. I’ve had that suffocating feeling before, hands gripped tightly – and I have it still at the hands of all those memories locked in lyrics wrapped in chords where left goes right and up looks down. 

Until Next Time, 
Courtney Chivon