The story behind
Composed of Carbon

I didn’t start Composed of Carbon because I had figured out how to live well. Quite the opposite.

There have been plenty of times when I’ve felt overwhelmed, disconnected from myself, or simply unable to keep up with everything life seemed to require of me.

None of these things were revolutionary. But paying attention to them changed something.

I started thinking less about getting life right, and more about returning to it.

Not perfectly. Not even consistently. And definitely not as another list of things I was supposed to be doing. Just as places I could return to when I noticed I’d drifted away.

I’ve been making tools to help myself navigate life since before I would have called them tools. As far back as childhood, I had journals and notebooks, pages of graph paper, lists and diagrams — and, later, whiteboards on the fridge.

I learned early that visual and tactile reminders helped me. So did having somewhere to stop, notice and reflect. Decades later, I’m still doing it.

The earliest versions of tools like Re-Compose Yourself lived privately in those notebooks and homemade systems. They were just things I made because sometimes I needed help remembering what I already knew.

And that idea of remembering became important.

The practice is about remembering.

Over the years, I’ve been privileged to learn from teachers, friends, music, books, nature, my heart, traditions and experiences that have given me ways to better understand and care for myself.

But knowing something once doesn’t mean I’ll remember it when I need it.

So I wanted somewhere to gather those teachings. A library of resources, ideas, practices and reminders I could return to instead of continually searching for answers I may already have. Sometimes the practice is simply remembering what we already know.

Why “Composed of Carbon”?

Because we are. For all the complexity we pile onto being human beings, we are still spiritual beings, living in physical bodies and interconnected with the living world.

Carbon is ordinary. It’s everywhere — in the earth, in plants, in the food we eat, and in us. In the stars and space dust that preceded everything else.

And Composed — as in made of, not as in calm, organized or in control.

We are composed of our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions, our environments, our relationships, our experiences: our needs, our habits, our curiosities — and all the small things we repeatedly return to.

Composed of Carbon isn’t a prescription for how anyone should live. It’s a place for noticing, experimenting and finding somewhere to begin. For making this life a little more supportive of the human being who is actually living it. And for remembering that taking care of ourselves doesn’t have to begin with transforming our lives.

A practice of paying attention. Of noticing and returning to what helps. That’s what I’m practicing here.