Love finds its way home.

By on January 26, 2012 in love, musings, this blog, unstuck

My dear friend Viki has thrown down the gauntlet. She is challenging herself to make space for her writing by posting on her blog once per week this year and has challenged me to do the same. 

I want to write more. But there are times when I don’t always want to share what’s going on with me in my life, and writing to the public is hard. Despite the fact that I write on a blog with my name on it, I’m a pretty private person. Things may be unsettled, or busy … or maybe I just want to ruminate on a thing before saying something about it. 

But this blog is a journal. And so being, the purpose should be to authentically document the process, not just the conclusions. I accept Viki’s challenge and will not wait until I have a conclusion about a thing to write about a thing. And so: 

What is true love?

I have been thinking about this question for the last several years, most especially since I became single — which was a choice I made not because my relationship at the time was bad, but because I wanted something else. (It was mutual, and I’m happy to report he now has a wonderful girlfriend and this fills me with joy for them both.)

I didn’t know what this “else” was, though, which is the tricky part. At least I was wise enough to know I wouldn’t be ready for the kind of relationship I craved until I understood something, though. About myself, about what I wanted, about how to love. Because whatever this unknowing was, it was standing in the way of fulfillment. I only knew that when I knew, I’d be ready — I’d recognize love and be open and available to it.

“… It can be said that we cannot even know what it means to be in love with another until we are at home with ourselves. Before that, our own special gifts and strengths may not be accessible to us. It takes courage to become who we are. In order to do this we must yearn to live a life in which we are fundamentally true to ourselves. We risk losing others or their approval of us. When we live from our true selves, however, a new kind of strength comes to us. This strength is not relinquished when we love another, but grows more intense.” — Zen and the Art of Falling in Love

Being single at this age is a strange, strange thing. I think some people may perceive me to be someone who has chosen a life of solitude or independence. Some assume that I must be desperate to find a husband (this is typically an assumption made by men who are looking for a wife). Both of those assumptions are wrong. Quite the opposite in fact: I want more than being alone or just being “not alone.” Call me crazy — I want true love!

So about dating, oh dating … I’m so not cut out for it. I crave a deep spiritual and emotional connection, but how can I find that in this strange scenario where people are dating volumes of people, judging me on superficial qualities and first impressions? I give people who can do this and find love in the process so much credit, I really do. But because I fundamentally don’t believe this is how I will meet the love of my life, each date I go on generally reinforces this belief.

And so it goes, as Vonnegut says.

I simply believe when we don’t know who we are, when we don’t know how to find fulfillment from within, we will always look to someone else to meet our needs — which is impossible, and inevitably creates suffering, dissatisfaction and loneliness from inside a relationship. My path back to love has not been a journey of dating, it has been a journey of self-discovery. I needed to be alone for that. It’s not the state in which I want to live forever, but it’s what I needed to do at the time. And when I was ready, it came to me … just like I always knew it would.

Love found its way home when I understood we must be complete from within and capable loving without expectations and attachment. But my lessons don’t stop there. They’re just beginning. For one thing, not being afraid of happiness itself is something I know I’ll have to practice daily.

Willy Wonka: “Charlie, don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.”
Charlie: “What happened?”
Willy Wonka: “He lived happily ever after.”

And this is where my journey is in this moment.

“Being with someone we feel is perfect can make us even more painfully aware of our own imagined inadequacies. Deep down we may also believe that this relationship cannot last because we do not really deserve it. Waiting for this rejection to take place can be so painful sometimes that some do things to actually bring it about. They show their worst side, pick fights, test the other continually. Anything to get the painful rejection over with! Many destroy the relationship before it sneaks up from behind and destroys them instead.
Is love a game of destroy or be destroyed? Needless to say, this sense of love is bound to bring fear in its trail. The more we are aware of how we  unnecessarily shake up our relationships, the easier it is to stop ourselves. We do not have to live our life on automatic pilot, listening to our secret serpents.” – Zen and the Art of Falling in Love

By now I know you’re wondering, “Does this mean she’s met someone?” Perhaps in time I’ll share a little more, in the meantime if I’m not writing a whole lot on this blog know that it’s probably because there are very good things occupying my time.

:)

“Si tu veux tracer ton sillon droit, accroche ta charrue à une étoile.”

 

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Word of the Year

By on January 3, 2012 in musings, unstuck

Happy New Year to you all!

A good friend of mine recently asked, “What’s your Word of the Year?” (Hope you don’t mind I stole this, F ;) )

I love this. It’s a much improved twist on the usual, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” It requires you to dig deep and set an intention for the year rather than create a laundry list of promises you’ll likely break by January 4th.

Sure the new year is a great time to re-commit to things that are important. With enough momentum new habits are formed and in that sense, there’s nothing wrong with resolutions. If you keep them. If you don’t, you’re subconsciously programming yourself to believe that you can’t trust yourself, which erodes self confidence, and that makes you feel like ****, and that makes it even harder the next year, and … oh who needs all that?!

Nah. I’m going with a “Word of the Year” this year and see how I do.

And my word is alive.

I commit to this simple mantra for the next 363 days or so. When things go well — when I’m giddy with happiness or pride or love — I will be mindful that this is part of the experience of being alive. I will remember that joy is not a permanent state and we can’t force it to be, it’s just part of aliveness. I will savor it, and let it go. When things get rocky — when I disappoint myself or others, when I slip back into the habit of being fearful (of risk, love, change, whatever) — I will remind myself that this is simply what it means to be alive, too, and let it go.

I will commit to more awareness of aliveness, of the moments and experiences as they come — so many of which never unfold the way we plan. I find this uncertainty exciting and strangely comforting. Life just is sometimes and all the resolutions in the world aren’t going to dramatically change any of it. We can only do our best, and when we can’t, we can only hold on until the storms pass. This is the weird and wonderful dance of life, and I intend to experience it fully; completely. To be awake for it, aware of it, to be alive.

The last couple of years have been a real crap sandwich for me overall. I was numb to a lot of it, avoided it … that’s not being alive. That’s existing. Not for me.

Over the last few months I’ve become “unstuck” and the momentum has been strong. Things are going unbelievably well in so many areas … with work, friendships, family, love, health, peace of mind and on and on. It’s a daily practice and discipline to remain unstuck and to move forward, and this year I will continue to work hard to not only keep up that momentum, but to believe that I deserve all the rich rewards that come from it.

There will be times when I am not able to be disciplined, but with the help of my Word of the Year, I won’t stop remembering to be alive. (By now I’m hoping it’s clear I don’t mean this in the biological sense of the word. ;) ) I commit to reminding myself “this is aliveness” during these lazy, challenging and trying times as well, and treat myself with compassion and try to keep a sense of humor about it all. If I’ve learned one thing about aliveness in these 42 years, it is that the universe has a twisted sense of humor. I’m gonna try to laugh with it as much as possible.

Every day we are alive is an adventure.

I, for one, am going to enjoy the hell out of this year’s adventures!!! :)

How about you?

What’s your “Word of the Year?”

Comments { 9 }

On Being Thankful

By on November 23, 2011 in musings, unstuck

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of thanksgiving. Not the story of the bounty shared between the Pilgrims and the Indians, but the meaning of giving thanks. What is the point of it, how is the best way to do it, and what should we be thankful for? Our material possessions? Family? Health? Football and turkeys?

Over the last couple of weeks time and again, conversations I’ve had with friends turned to family and relationships in surprising ways. I think the holiday season brings that out in people, myself included. I think it’s because relationships tend to be what we are most grateful for, or want most — but are some of the hardest things to control. I observe many people enjoying their traditions, but also fearing and struggling through. Painful things from the past and reflecting upon things we lack are intensified when we’re told by the outside world this is a time we should be celebrating and giving thanks.

Sometimes our relationships are not everything we want them to be, or we don’t have the material possessions we desire, or we don’t have good health or football or turkeys. Then what?

I found this lovely interview with Oprah about gratitude, and what amazes me about it is that here is this woman who has the world on a string — millions of people affected by her positive messages and even more millions of dollars in her bank account — and yet she too has moments where gratitude doesn’t come naturally, she practices it, works at it.

A lot of readings that deal with gratitude these days seem to be framed as though there is some end goal: the more we practice gratitude, the more good things we’ll receive.

But I don’t think being grateful so you can have something different in the future is real gratitude. Are you really grateful if you’re giving thanks just so you can have something different than what you’ve already got?

I think gratitude itself is the end goal. I don’t think it’s about giving thanks as much as being thankful. Feeling truly grateful reframes everything. For me it’s something that takes more than a passing prayer on my way to the mashed potatoes, though. Each morning I take a few moments before I open my eyes to visualize all I am grateful for. (You might have made an appearance on this list!) Some days are harder than others, I won’t lie. But usually it’s incredible how long this list can get if I take some time with it, and how good it feels. I love the advice to just start with the breath — if you have air going in and out of your lungs, that’s a something to be thankful for.

No matter where you are (in your life) this Thanksgiving, whether you have abundance and joy all around you (and I hope you do), or you feel lonely and fearful (which is okay too, this is where transformation is born if you let it) — there’s something to be thankful for.

Of course I could enter this holiday season with a list *this big* of things I don’t have, things I wish were different, things to complain about, feel hurt, fearful, resentful and angry about … but I don’t have to.

I can simply be, or practice being, thankful. Leaves little room for that other stuff.

Have a very happy Thanksgiving all. And thank you for reading.

xo~T

P.S. Following the link is a beautiful essay by Eckhart Tolle on the nature of gratitude. If you’re the spiritual/philosophical sort, read on.

Continue Reading →

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God on My Plate

By on November 11, 2011 in book review, unstuck

I didn’t have much of a weight problem until about seven years ago. One day I woke up and decided to get on the scale — I mean I knew it wasn’t going to be good — and was utterly shocked when it read 50 pounds heavier than the last time I weighed in. That folks? Is denial.

I started dieting, of course. And of course that didn’t fix it. The ups I’d feel when the scale would go down, and the downs I’d feel when the scale would go up, determined my mood for each and every day. All day thoughts about food played on loop in my brain. If I wasn’t shaking mental pom poms at myself, I was kicking myself in the gut for not being able to fix something that has a very simple solution: eat less and burn more calories, duh. What simple fool (me!) can’t get simple math right?

I was exhausted from the frustration and the stress this was creating. So I talked to my doctor, who asked, “Do you think about food a lot during the day?” Like, isn’t that normal? Doesn’t everybody? Is there another option? Not sure I understand the question, um. Huh? 

She sent me to a nutritionist who asked me to read a book called Intuitive Eating, which I still highly recommend to anybody unfamiliar with the concept of not dieting. It was the beginning of my understanding that my obsessive thinking wasn’t doing me any good, I needed to stop the dieting and start making peace with food.

I lost about 40 pounds. Got a trainer. Dropped a couple of dress sizes. And I’ve kept that off for the most part for the last few years. Though, the scale goes up or down 15 pounds depending on what’s going on in my life*, and below that (“the finish line weight”) has completely eluded me. Stuck.

*So back to that. The “what’s going on in my life” thing has been rolling around in the back of my mind for awhile now. Last spring I was losing weight consistently and in a healthy manner, I was happy and had big plans for the summer and I had a lot of motivation to look my best. By the middle of the summer I was faced with some stressful financial and relationship issues and you guessed it, up went the scale.

Rather than go back on Weight Watchers (which works, it does, I’m not dissing it), I decided to focus not on losing weight but on finding peace of mind and being compassionate with myself overall. I focused on eating healthy foods that I know keep depression and dark moods at bay, being disciplined about how many junk food treats I allowed each week, and getting regular exercise. And the weight started coming off again.

I’m sure a lot of people can relate to the story up until this point, there’s nothing special. I know that there are millions of us who struggle with this.

But something interesting has been going on the last few weeks. Combined with my work to be less stressed overall and to be more present in my life, I started thinking deeper about the relationship between weight and ego, identity, stress, thoughts, and feelings.

I looked for some books on the topic and read a couple too, but they were focused on the losing weight part. What I was after was some guidance about how to get through life’s ups and downs without seeing that reflected on the scale. I wanted to understand something, whether I lost weight in the process or not.

Serendipitously, a friend emailed me to cancel some plans and in the PS she wrote, “I’m reading Women, Food and God … OMG!!!”

Because she’s a smart lady who I always learn life lessons from every time we talk, I downloaded a copy to my iPad and …

“This!”

Not to be dramatic or anything (but okay I will): this book will — no, already has — changed the course of my life.

It’s not for everybody, but it’s what I was searching for and it came at the right time. I was ready for it.

Over the next few days I picked it up and would, after a short time, have to put it back down again because it was too uncomfortable. In a couple of places I actually cried — it brought up some pretty intense stuff and it was not all about food. It was about relationships, how I value myself, lots of things. My reaction was what I was after though, because that’s where change happens.

Okay so the story goes that the state of your life — who you take yourself to be — is on your plate. And that food can be a spiritual path if you let it. That was the something I was after. I won’t get too deep into all that, it’s rooted in eastern philosophy but can take the form of whatever you define as God, or however you make sense of the something that is bigger than your ego. It gets above this issue, shines a light from a different vantage point.

I already knew (duh) that I eat when I am not hungry to soothe stress, fear, and boredom and that’s why I’m overweight … but the part that was always missing for me was the what the hell to do about it. I know, I know, lots of weight loss programs will address this issue and offer strategies for how to cope with compulsive and emotional eating. But the emphasis is always on the end goal: losing weight.

That’s not what I wanted. I wanted more. Because these “strategies” are going to let me down the moment life gets too tough again. No strategy I’ve ever tried came between me and a Nachos Bell Grande when life is unbearably painful. I eat to soothe when I feel powerless.

As long as I believe that pain is bigger than me, as long as I define being open and vulnerable to annihilation, I believe in an image of myself: that I am someone who can be annihilated. And when I believe this, I bolt from different situations by engaging in various mind-altering and body-numbing activities. I shut myself down or walk out the door when pain threatens to destroy me — which is in any situation that involves another human being or whose outcome I cannot control. I live an autistic experience.

Um yeah, that.

The part that resonated with me most is that when I eat when I am not hungry, when I throw cheesepuffs at my face and look down at an empty bag and wonder how it got there, this is my attempt to feed spiritual hunger. The “something is missing” or “I’m not quite enough to take this on” stuff that cuts to the core of how we view ourselves and approach life, and makes me check out from whatever I’m doing and head for the fridge on impulse.

This book does not directly address weight loss. (Good. Fine! ) Instead of giving me another top 10 tips, it made me realize I am more powerful than my feelings … and that’s going to serve me far better than any new diet discovery (which, by the way, happens every three seconds in America).

What I learned is that power comes from sitting with these spiritual hungers (feelings) and not running away from them, to the border or anyplace else. To then get the ego and thoughts out of the way and approach them from a more expansive place.  That’s much bigger than a weight loss strategy, it’s a strategy for coping with, as the book title says, “almost anything.”

Oh and bonus! I don’t have to diet and I am allowed to, forever and ever, really, really enjoy food — every single time I sit down to eat. *Drop the balloons and confetti!!!*

My commitment to weight loss is this, and I kid you not: I am never, ever going to attempt to lose weight ever again. Ever. My journey to rid my brain of 30+ years of abusive, torturous thoughts, of feeling bad about this every single day, of having less-than-pleasurable eating experiences (how can you really enjoy food if you hate that it ruins your life?) is over.

It is going to take a lot of practice, and time, years maybe, to recondition myself and my approach to problems. But it’s a pledge to myself that I make whether I gain 30 pounds or lose 50, doesn’t matter. Lots of work, but unlike obsessing about weight, this process will be life-affirming and empowering.

That.

 

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Pretty Girl from High School

By on November 2, 2011 in musings

Freshman year in high school was . . . awkward. My haircut was ridiculous, let’s just start there. I had shown my hair “stylist” a photo of Nick Rhodes because that’s what you do when you plan on growing up and marrying somebody, obviously. And she obliged without so much as a “You sure? Really?”

I didn’t have nice clothes because my parents didn’t have a whole lot of money back then, and I was too young to get a job to buy my own. I had a penchant for pink frosty lipstick and had no idea how to apply makeup — I remember using those little foam applicators you’re not supposed to actually use that come with the eyeshadow trios you get at the Walgreens (the best combo being the teal, brown and yellow – natch) . I wasn’t a hobo or anything, but I wasn’t exactly Seventeen-magazine-ready.

It was English class where I first saw pretty girl from high school  – she hurriedly entered the room, tasked with dropping off a memo for my teacher. She was wearing a cheerleader uniform and had bouncy blonde hair, flawless tan skin, and white sparkly teeth. She was thin and fit and wore seven or so shades of eyeshadow (love the 80s!) blended to perfection, framing her piercing blue eyes.

I was star struck. I couldn’t. Stop. Staring. How could someone so glamorous be in the same room as me . . . this wasn’t Hollywood?!

Every day I saw her walking down the hall, cute sweaters and cuter boys following her around. Oh how I wanted to be just like her. One day she stepped on the back of my shoe and apologized. That was the best day of my life.

Somehow I went on to have a fairly non-traumatic high school experience, eventually learning to sort-of apply makeup. I got a girl’s hairstyle and it looked pretty okay (with the exception of a few months during sophomore year after a tragic misunderstanding of the proper use of Sun In). I even made the cheer leading squad and got myself a cute boyfriend.

Flash forward 20 years. Pretty girl from high school “friended” me on Facebook (I know!) and my reaction was not unlike what it would have been in 1984: “Oh my God, ME?! You know my name?!! Squeal!!!”

And I get that, every time she “likes” a status or leaves a comment on a photo.

Star struck. Still.

I would never reveal who it is, that would be more embarrassing than freshman year itself. But it’s kinda fun to see how her life turned out: still stunning, a gorgeous family, what appears to be a beautiful life, and from what I can glean on Facebook anyway — she turned out to be a substantial, intelligent, kind and decent person.

Still star struck.

I think it’s kinda cool, and I sometimes laugh and wonder what she’d think if she had any idea that she had this affect on me (and probably hundreds of other classmates). Maybe she’s reading this now (squeal!!!). If so, I hope it makes her feel good. And not totally creeped out. Maybe I should tell her. ACK! NO WAY!

Do you have a pretty girl from high school?

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Social Media : The Phantom Limb

By on October 30, 2011 in social media is bad for you, web culture

If you Google “addiction to social media” you’ll find all kinds of studies and evidence that this is happening: we’re checking Facebook before we put on our morning coffee and we’re diverting our attention from work and life to Twitter and Facebook and back again all day long. I’m not a psychologist, so I’m not going to argue whether the word addiction is appropriate or diagnose myself or others with a behavioral addiction, but these words ring true for me:

 The notion that underlies the “addiction” concept is that the substance use (or behavior)  originally intended for pleasurable recreation is now  compulsively driven. Although the act is no longer the source of much pleasure, it has become so deeply ingrained that the person continues to perform it in a repetitive fashion despite great and mounting negative consequences.

The evidence supporting the idea that someone is  ”addicted” would consist of  the continuation (or even increase) of seemingly autonomous and driven behaviors despite the ever diminishing gain and the ever increasing cost.  Subjectively, the person feels an escalating loss of  control over the act and instead comes to feel increasingly controlled by it.

In my language: If you feel a phantom limb when you turn off the internet, or an anxiety about being disconnected … you might have a problem. I totally have a problem.

The negative consequences, for me, include never feeling like I accomplish as much as I want during the day (distraction, procrastination) and the degradation of my real social network (a feeling of being disconnected to my friends and family and the world around me).

My social media drug of choice for awhile was the virtual world Second Life. I worked at an art gallery and organized events and met artists from all over the world, and I started an online magazine and got really deep into telling the stories of creative people doing incredible things in the virtual space. I built a community of friends and co-workers — talented, educated, and interesting people from all over the world. Those social bonds, more than anything else, kept me going back for more.

But. After awhile, the time I spent there had diminishing returns. As some of those relationships became more important, my relationships with friends in  real life suffered. I was spending time in front of my computer when I should have been enjoying life with five senses. I was compulsively drawn to it even when it was no longer enhancing my life in any way.  That’s when I returned to real life.

I’ve gone to the deepest, most addictive parts of the social web and I’ve come back to share my perspective, and I could not say it better than something I recently read by a colleague:

Social media is bad for you. Go outside and talk to people.

I am an observer of the social web and I see this compulsive behavior to varying degrees all the time. I have seen people replace their real identities with their online identities entirely, living life exclusively via their avatar from the time they wake up in the morning to the time they go to sleep at night. Milder examples are people unable to share a meal without updating Twitter, or go on vacation without sharing each and every activity on Facebook, checking obsessively whether people “like” the photos of their morning at the beach.

I tell people that I live my life online, and I do, and I don’t feel bad about that. It opens the world to me, it allows me to make a living and keep a roof over my head, it entertains me and allows me opportunities for creative expression. My online friends are very real and important to me.

But. I now believe it’s healthy to disconnect wherever possible. Life is meant to be lived with five senses (or as many as are at your disposal) and I am working toward being in the moment in life without compulsively relating it to social media. Examples include:

  • Cooking a meal and letting the house fill up with glorious smells and sharing a meal with a friend or my family, with music playing in the background, and having engaging conversation in real time (without checking Twitter or posting a photo of my meal on Facebook);
  • Going for a walk in nature and letting the air and colors and sounds cleanse the palate of my mind (and just letting that experience happen without mentally drafting my status update or blog post when I get back to my computer);
  • Going on vacation or even taking a “disconnect day” here at home where I don’t check the internet. I feel the phantom limb, but the more I do it, the easier it gets. People may get frustrated that I am difficult to reach, but somehow humanity evolved for thousands of years without these technologies and it is still true today. The internet is always right where I left it;
  • I try hard not to turn on my computer until I’ve been awake for at least an hour. I spend that time reading, eating breakfast, journaling or going for a walk. The internet can wait an hour;
  • I am trying to be ruthless about single-tasking. If I am working on a client project, I am working on a client project. If I am cleaning my house, I clean my house. Only when I’ve accomplished a task do I allow myself a “social media fix,” and when I feel I’ve done as much as I can for the day, I relax and socialize online — but I’m as mindful about that as I can be, I try not to let the social web fill up my time when I’m just bored because that’s when hours, days and years can slip past you with very little to show for it;

Plus, having something to share on social media requires that you have well, something to share. When all you’re doing is blogging about things other people are blogging about or sharing things other people are sharing … you’re probably not taking the time to experience, learn and think enough outside of the social web. You may disagree, but I believe without a doubt that reading books is better than reading blogs, having a conversation over coffee with a friend is better than replying to a Tweet, giving someone a hug is better than liking their status update.

Mindfully monitoring my online activities is an ongoing experiment and I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it in future posts. While social media is very much a part of my life, it is not my life. How about you? Do you ever feel the “phantom limb”?

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The Anti-Vegetarian

By on October 27, 2011 in vegetables

What you need to know right upfront is that you can put anything you want into  your piehole — eat a raw cow for all I care — I’m the last person on earth who would ever judge you. Over the years I’ve gone from strict vegan to mostly-vegan to vegetarian to pescatarian to mostly-vegan-who- sometimes-eats-seafood.

I still overindulge (working on that), I’m overweight (though my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers are, to quote my doctor, “absolutely beautiful”) and I don’t base my identity on my vegetarianism. It’s just something I mention because it’s not the default setting, and people need to be aware when they offer me steak that it’s nothing personal if I don’t eat it. I hate labels, I just try to eat what I feel is right for me. Despite all this, which seems perfectly reasonable to me, being a vegetarian annoys the crap out of a lot of people.

Take this image for example. I see messages like this from time to time on Facebook and the like and I never give them too much attention. I completely understand that PETA is to blame for the anti-vegetarian jokes circulating around: their messages can be pretty judgy and extreme and I don’t like that either. It’s a joke, I laugh … but then I found out, by engaging this poster, that people actually take their anti-vegetarian arguments seriously. That’s a thing. Huh.

Him: Who’s anti-vegetarian? The post just points out the hypocrisy is all.
Me: Hypocrisy?
Him: ?”Don’t kill animals for sport or food, while we kill these plants…for food.”
Me: You can’t be serious.
Him: Well sure…is it any less offensive to have a garden where you raise plants in an enclosed, confined space than to raise animals for consumption in the same manner? … but both types of people are killing something so they can consume it. Meat eaters (generally speaking) just don’t try to be morally superior about it.
Me: That’s because they are not morally superior.
Him: Isn’t the choice of food just that? A choice? Vegetarians are killing something for consumption as well, ergo they aren’t morally superiort either.
Me: It’s hypocritical to post this message and then claim that vegetarians behave in a morally superior way. I don’t ever post anti-meat messages or talk about a million things that would make meat-eaters uncomfortable. I wonder where this anger comes from. :)
Him: As do I…clearly the post struck a nerve, LOL

Ohhhhhhhhhh the snide “LOL”. I guess he schooled me!

Comments { 10 }

Sharpening the Axe

By on October 25, 2011 in productivity, social media is bad for you, unstuck, web design

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
–Abraham Lincoln

New Axe

One of the reasons I get stuck at work  is that sometimes I have an underlying fear that I won’t be able to perform a given task.

It’s absurd when I really think about it, because I’ve been doing the same tasks for more than ten years and have the education and experience that has allowed me to follow each project to completion without fail. And where I might have gaps in knowledge, I have a helpful community of designers and developers to offer a helping-hand, their eyeballs, a second-opinion.

Still, some skills get rusty — sometimes I may go weeks or even months without coding a website, for example. That may be because I’ve got a heavy project load and have been outsourcing those tasks. (When I’m busy, I focus more on what I do best — strategy, design and project management.) Or maybe I’ve just got projects that don’t require any coding at all — purely consulting projects or maybe I’ve been hired to just do the branding graphics for a WordPress theme.

Whatever the case, eventually the day comes when I need to sit at my desk and code a good old-fashioned website. That’s when the panic sets in. I just don’t do this every day anymore, what if I can’t figure something out, what if it takes me all day, what if I get frustrated … I’m a failure, I should not even be a web designer, who am I trying to fool?!

This is the kind of thinking that leads to procrastination, and I will do just about anything to delay getting started. I look on my project list (which includes not only work projects, but life-stuff projects like keeping my environment clean and pleasant, getting in shape, etc.) and pick a task that will keep me busy. Busy, busy doing laundry, reading and responding to emails, emptying my in-box … anything but the one thing I should really be doing: coding that website. Worse, and this is where the blog gets real people: I will convince myself that because I’m a web professional, I really should check in on Twitter and Facebook to see what’s going on on the internet … the very place where minutes and hours can go by with absolutely nothing to show for it. (More on that in a future blog post. Or a thousand.)

In learning to conquer procrastination (learning being the key word, I have not yet conquered it), I’ve learned that recognizing that self-defeating self-talk is the first step. Replacing those thoughts with more proactive ones is the next:

“Self, what will it take for you to feel more confident in this task so you’re not letting fear stand in your way?”

Thanks for asking, self! Well, I suppose I’d relax and look forward to the task if I felt more confident in my skills.

And from there, the answer is simple: just sharpen the axe.

I have a choice to sit down and feel tense and uncomfortable, struggle to remember how to troubleshoot this or how to achieve that, and it might take me all day. This is not so pleasant.

Or I could sit down and re-read a book on CSS mastery for a few hours and then sit down and give it a whirl. This? Is pleasant. Not only do I remember that I’m not starting from “zero,” my brain has actually stored years and years of information, all it needed was a little refresher. A few hours of study and sitting down to code a website happens in a fraction of the time, and it’s actually FUN, because I’m approaching it with a calm and focused energy, applying what I just learned.

For many professions, web design is one of them, on-going education is critical. And I don’t mean the kind where you do a Google search to figure out how to achieve something, skim it until your eyes land upon the solution, and rather than taking the time to really understand the concept, quickly copy and paste the answer so you can get the whole thing over with. I mean the kind where you are reading books or taking a course online and really mastering what it is you do. Mastery sparks passion and learning is accomplishment — something that feels good. Better than doing laundry or zoning out on Twitter. The desire to procrastinate fades.

In my practice to become “unstuck,” I now take a bit of time each morning before I sit down at my desk to study my craft. Maybe it’s only 15 minutes, sometimes an hour or more, but even 15 minutes on most days means something like 60 hours a year of continuing education and that’s better than zero. I can refresh old skills or learn new ones, and it gets me excited about my job — and that’s the very best I can offer my clients and myself.

I think sometimes it’s easy to think of yourself as an expert, or that you don’t have anything to learn — or that by now you shouldn’t need to learn anything more. Your axe may be sharp, but it can always be sharper, I think.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
– Shunryu Suzuki, “The Beginner’s Mind”  

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The Year of Becoming Unstuck

By on October 24, 2011 in this blog, unstuck

Today I turn 42, and my birthday present to myself is starting this blog.

It’s not ”designed,” and it really “should” be considering I’m a web designer. But I’m so over “shoulds” and totally into “what is” these days, so instead I’m starting with a theme framework called Canvas, which is appropriately blank and white. A metaphor for the starting point for the year I intend to have, beginning today.

While in years past I’ve given myself far more extravagant gifts — a week of spa appointments, a shopping spree and even a trip to London — this year I am giving myself the gift of starting. Not just this blog, but living.

I made the decision to start blogging again months ago. I made a mindmap and a blogging strategy, I consulted with colleagues about the strategy, and I brainstormed concepts for the design. I had a big folder filled with great ideas and plans and sketches but what I didn’t have was a blog.

It dawned on me on the eve of my 43rd year that this was a metaphor for my life. Big dreams, goals and plans; skills, talents and a helpful community of people around me — all shoved in a folder while I spent my energy yearning for things I didn’t have and imagining who I wanted to be rather than becoming it.

Dreams are vital to personal growth, we need goals both big and small or we’ll just tread water. But visualizing something intensely, wanting it, asking the universe for it — that doesn’t make it magically materialize, turns out.

The things we are and have right now are a product of what we thought and dreamed about in the past, but they’re also a result of the choices we made and the actions we took. Without the right (or any) action, I have come to realize that dreams can work against you.

Too much thinking, too much feeling the need to be more or somehow different than I was, for me, lead to some pretty dark periods of depression, anxiety, self-loathing and eventually, isolation. To soothe myself I would immerse myself even further in distractions — the internet, reality television, cheese puffs, this bottle of wine or that book or that video game … I’ll start my diet tomorrow, I’ll get up early and go running then crank on work tomorrow, I’ll begin/change/enjoy my life tomorrow. Anything to avoid the reality that I was stuck, and if I wanted different results, I needed to do something completely different.

So I  began doing things differently. Hell, I just began doing things:

  • I disconnected my cable television (turns out you don’t die from that);
  • I reconnected with friends and I even told them they needed to help me get unstuck and I made them commit to spending regular time with me (I know, I’m a dork. LOL!);
  • I joined a dating site (not all ideas are good ones);
  • I set some limits on the time I spend on the internet in mindless activity (mindful goofing off on Facebook is okay, though, obviously);
  • I signed up for meetup.com groups (best site ever invented for the person who feels isolated);
  • I enrolled in some professional development courses online (“sharpening the axe” if you will, and man, I freaking love having a sharp axe);
  • I began doing that French language Rosetta Stone program I bought over a year ago (Je parle un peu le Français!);
  • I started going to bed earlier and waking up earlier (to study, read, exercise, make a healthy breakfast);
  • I began meditating regularly (turns out this is the opposite of “thinking” and that’s exactly what I needed);
  • I visualized what I wanted to accomplish the following day for a few seconds every night before falling asleep, and woke up setting an intention for the day to remind myself that life is not for “someday,” it is for today.

I start this year of becoming unstuck with the premise that the sole purpose of  my life is to be alive. Everything else is just a dance.

Whether I work from a laptop in a café in Paris or from my home office, whether I could lose 30 pounds or whether I’m a size 6 … I am going to show up to life anyway. And while I’m here, I might as well do the best I can, for no other reason than it just feels better.

Where I used to get overwhelmed by all that needed to happen in order to “get where I wanted to go,” not even knowing where to start (so why not just put that off until tomorrow?), I am just showing up to my life. Not the one from my dreams, but the one I have. And turns out I like it far more than I ever realized. There can always be dreams of “more,” but not at the expense of enjoying today. Over it.

I started feeling grateful for all I have around me that I adore — a cozy home of my own; an exciting, challenging and rewarding job; incredible friends; loving and supportive family; interesting and wonderful clients and people wherever I look who help me and make me smile. I am not alone in the world, so the feeling of isolation began to loosen its grip. I am living a life that others might only dream about (including a younger version of me, I might add), so the over-thinking of things that “are not” are becoming replaced by a pretty damn lovely “what is.”

Pardonne moi but why the hell should I wait to be a size six or have more money in my retirement fund before enjoying what is? Why do we always have to be something else? When can we just enjoy who we are?

I’m questioning these things. And becoming incredibly aware and critical of the “input” that goes into my brain. While I love books and blogs and ideas that intend to inspire (or make the author some quick cash if you’re the cynical sort), my new hyphothesis is that some of the stuff people are sellin’ to motivate just might be causing more suffering in the long run.

Showing up for life is a different strategy than I’ve had for a very long time, and the results so far have been incredible. Funny thing is? By letting go of my dreams a little, and becoming more awake to life in this moment, I have begun the process of becoming “unstuck” and I’m moving toward those dreams. They are now something I feel entirely confident I will achieve and I don’t put off the things I need to do to achieve them until tomorrow, I do what I can today. And if they don’t come true that’s okay too, because I’m still alive and that’s all I need to be.

Who knows where I will be a year from now, maybe updating this blog from my macbook in a café in Paris, or maybe still right here in this chair — doesn’t really matter. Life will throw me curve balls and it will twist and turn and there will be suffering and unexpected joy along the way, but that’s part of life too and I’m going to show up for it either way. That way, I won’t ever become stuck again.

I only have to be alive, the rest is just a dance. 

As I move forward, so will this blog. I intend it to be both a personal and professional blog, to write more about personal development and life, web design and marketing, web culture, philosophy, thoughts about books I read, technologies I use, things that inspire me and whatever I feel communicates who I am and what I am passionate about.

That’s what a blog used to be when I used to blog in the olden days (2004+), I guess I kinda just want to kick it old school and just let this blog be what it is and not hold too tight to any strategy. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be personal, hopefully it will be helpful and I will try to make it as transparent and real as I can make it. If you like it you will read it and if you don’t  you won’t.

For those who have read this far, I thank you and I hope if you do come back, you will enjoy reading it as much as I am looking forward to writing it.

xo~Taughnee

PS If you forgot to get me something for my birthday, it’s okay, you can leave me a comment! But no pressure! ;)

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