Learning in Slow Motion

"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher

Patience. Ugh. I can have all the patience in the world for other people. But myself? Not so much. In this case, patience when I want to change an annoying habit. Like Procrastination (linked directly to the FEAR quadrant of my cranium). I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't struggle with that bad boy, Procrastination. (And Fear.) Fear is usually lurking behind Procrastination. Fear of failure, Fear of change, Fear of feeling stupid, even Fear of boredom. But this isn't about Fear. It's about patience and really understanding that change can be slow. Painfully slow, especially for a whirling dervish like me.

As a Life Coach, I often point out to my clients that change takes time. A lifetime of habitual thinking and acting is not going to change overnight. So I'm learning patience as I learn to procrastinate less.

The first step in changing a behavior is to NOTICE it. Pay attention. I've gotten real good at noticing that I'm Procrastinating. Suddenly have the urge to bake cookies? There must be a real scary art project I'm supposed to start. The dog needs a bath? Ohhhh, I was going to start my will today. So I made a list one day of all the things I did INSTEAD OF the task at hand (doing my own taxes, which terrifies me.)

• Didn't get right up out of bed when I woke up.
• Cooked a big 'ol pot of red beans 'n' rice.
• Hand washed a sweater (one of my least favorite domestic chores).
• Created a new way to remember to take items somewhere to be fixed/returned/donated (now I place them in a spiffy red basket that's in a room I frequent).
• Cleared off as many surfaces as possible (fear of being a hoarder/feng shui/feeling of control).
• Read email.

I gave myself a good talking to about what I had to gain if I procrastinated less. Writing these down is a good idea. Make them concrete.

Then I made a second list: the classic Procrastination behaviors I've practiced in the past that I almost did but made a conscious point of NOT doing.

• The next day I got out of bed an hour earlier. (Next step, get up as soon as I wake up.)
• Didn't read every single email and even deleted and unsubscribed to some.
• Didn't water all the plants in the house.
• Didn't clean the kitchen cupboard doors.

I even told myself at one point that it was time to get back to the task at hand. Maybe no big deal to you but for me, this is progress. I also gave myself time limits, 2 hour chunks, then a break, so it felt more doable. 

So, are the taxes done? Not quite. They're started and in the plan for the week. And the up side of Procrastinating is, I take care of chores I don't like because something even more distasteful has nudged me there. The beans and rice were delicious, items are being fixed, returned and donated and feng shui is flowing. The lists were a big help - documenting progress feels good, providing evidence of learning. It can even push some of that Fear away. And it's easier to be patient when I see there's progress. 

So next time you want to change a habit, notice it, write down the benefits of changing it, document your progress and, for goodness sake, don't beat yourself up if change doesn't happen overnight. If that was true, I'd be black and blue. And now that all those stalling behaviors are out in the open, you can bet your bootie taxes will be done by the end of the week. Now that's something to leap out of bed for!

A Lorax Libretto

                Anxious seeds settling into the slushy snow. 
                                      

                                                        Frosted stream edges mimic froth on root beer.

  STOMP THE SLUSH.  I had forgotten how much fun it is to test the exact fall-through-itness of layers of ice, licking trickling ice water slicking the underbelly of the snow. Thank you little Gage, for reminding me with your two-footed STOMPS in the driveway puddles.

     Trees hold up trees hold up trees hold up          trees.

Big trees hold up big trees.

Wow. Two chums, both TREES but different kinds, different ages,  grow

 leanin' on each other. 

Oh, strong and flexible Wolf Tree, unchanging, 57 years a mere minute in your cycles of sap, 

new growth, lightning strikes, swaying in the wind forever. 

Home Sweet Home

Assignment: go on an adventure, take a path you've never been. So, it's 5 degrees outside, I slap on my "sleeping bag with arms", warmest gloves and hat and head up the road with my dog Cooper. We're going to find our way to Matt's pond. He's my nephew. When I met my late husband Lance, he owned 10 acres near where I live, which he promptly sold to Matt. I'd been there a few times when we first met, when Lance was 26. In his late teens, he actually lived in what was once their campground's bathhouse. Pretty rough but hell, I lived in a house with no water for a month in my twenties. Same attraction as he had - it was free. I'd forgotten all about that bathhouse.

What surprised me most was that I felt no emotion. My husband's been dead a little over 4 years and I never know what will trigger the sadness that has become part of me. This was not a trigger.

Cooper and I found a convenient road down to the pond. Again, I'd been there a few times with Lance when we first met but I barely recognized it. Mother Nature can change things in 21 years.

So another lesson learned about how I grieve - things/places that weren't a big part of my life with Lance don't necessarily bring on the tears, even if they were a big part of his life before we met. Plus I am currently well rested and in a very good place mentally. Fatigue and feeling vulnerable brings the sad closer to the surface. Or maybe I'm processing things differently as time goes by.

As I walked home, I thought it was too cold for a pretty sunset sky. I had hoped for a picture of the pond with color behind the trees' silhouettes. As I got nearer to my house, I realized I was wrong about the temperature affecting the color. The sky glowed behind the trees, behind my home, the place Lance and I shared it all. No tears. Just Home Sweet Home.

Of Mice and Me

Mouse-Eye View of my live trap

Here's a cool thing - 31 Days of Adventure. In this post I've combined the 1st & 2nd days' prompts - take a picture from an unusual angle and notice the little things. GREAT! I've been wanting to tell the world about the most amazing mouse. So here it is.

I live rurally in a very old house which will never be mouse proof. I simply share this space with the critters of the North Country. But I draw the line when they start eating my food, leaving deposits and scratching in the walls. Early on, I used the cheap traps. My husband would set them, since I was sure I'd lose a finger doing it. But I was the first one downstairs in the morning and sometimes, the poor mouse would only be partially nabbed, dragging itself across the room to die. I hated it. So I started buying more expensive UBER efficient, you-don't-see-the-dead-little-body traps. They were supposed to be throw-aways but I would eek 4 or 5 uses out of them, turning my head as I unsprung the trap over the garbage can, then taking a peek to see what a smooshed mouse looks like. I thought this was the right thing to do. I considered it nicer than my neighbor's way: rigging a bucket of water so they fall in and drown. I don't like that much. 

Then I realized I really don't like killing them at all. Plus I kept having to buy the darn traps. A-HA! Buy a  live trap! Every morning I walk in the woods so I could release them then. So that's what I've been doing. Then I wondered how far from the house they have to be let out. So I put red nail polish on one mouse's tail so I could see if it would come back. (Then I worried I killed it with the toxicity.) One cold morning I set a trapped mouse on the porch for an hour before my walk. In that time it died. Maybe it froze. So there I was, cuddling it in my mittens as I walked into the woods, trying to revive it. I felt awful. I laid it in a pretty, mossy spot and told it I was sorry. I didn't set the trap for a few days after that. 

I catch mice maybe every other day. I would stare into the cage, trying to notice markings, characteristics, something distinct. Some seemed smaller, others more intent on cleaning themselves, some sticking their little pink noses out the holes. One day, I found a great spot under a tree to release an especially cute little feller. I opened the door and it bounded over a boulder that held a stack of smaller rocks. I watched it go. And then the most amazing thing happened - it came back onto the top of the stack and looked at me. Just for a second. Then it was gone. I couldn't believe my eyes. Suddenly I felt connected to everything around me - the snow was sparkling in the sun, the bare trees spectacular, shadows dancing, beech leaves whispering. Holy smokes, was I connected!!

(Here's a preliminary sketch - the tree on the left is all wrong so the final drawing will be different.)

I put the trap away for a week, kind of my Christmas present to the mice in the neighborhood.
But tonight it's set again and who knows what joy or pain it will bring? What a gift to have such a memory to remind me to pay attention, look around as I walk and notice how beautiful the world is. Thank-you, little mouse.

Let's Have a Look-See

 Last night I wrote about some of the ornaments that adorn my tree. I thought some pictures were called for.

Did I imagine my five-year-old self on that little balcony?






Don't EVER glue pretty paper onto ponytail holders... unless you need a good laugh at what you think is a good idea that turns out to be, well, dumb.  Tracy and I get a really good laugh every year when these come out of the box.

My dear friend Myriam got such a kick out of buying ornaments after a Jewish lifetime of not trimming Christmas trees. When my husband died, I found a story he'd written in which he imagined he was the wind. That fit him well, the freedom, seeing the world from above, the occasional mischief. One December Myr found a bagpipe ornament and thought that was perfect as a memorial to Lance as the wind. Sometime in transporting it, one of the pipes broke. She wondered if she should have it fixed. But being broken seemed a better fit.                                                                                                            

Living in the Adirondacks in the winter is not for wooses. My friend Jane Jenks epitomizes the self reliance Adirondackers learn. Pair this up with her artistic soul and you have someone who has never lost the "eyes of a child", is always learning and lives with joy. She made this little pack basket - I think it's missing little logs. I'll find some in the back yard.

I've known Danielle since she was 5 and now, as a young adult, she gives me beautiful ornaments. Love that.

And here's the clothespin Playboy Bunny by Lillian, my downstairs neighbor when I lived in an apartment in Glens Falls. What a hoot! The boobs are so low, I always wondered if she subconsciously glued them on where hers (and all of our) boobs end up at 80. I wish I'd spent more time talking to her but that was a time in my life when I was holding onto life's ledge with my fingernails, trying to make sense of life from the outside in instead of regaining my original self.

The little girl who gazed at a glittered house and saw magic.

Merry and joy to everyone.

Globs of Glittering Houses

Nearly every December since my early twenties, I've had a tree trimming party. Everyone invited was asked to bring an ornament. Now I'm 57 and I had to stop the ornament tradition as the trees just couldn't handle the ridiculous amount of ornaments I'd collected! You see, I don't buy those sturdy, stiff-branched commercial trees. I go out on my land and cut a tree that looks great in the woods, haul it home then frown at how puny it looks in my house. Then I laugh. The lack of branches actually allows you to see the ornaments better. This year I thought about trying to dig up the roots too, gradually bringing it indoors so it would survive the heat inside, then replanting it in the spring. Maybe next year. I know it's okay to cut down a tree in a populated forest because the trees around it often need some breathing room. Foresters have educated me.

Back to the ornaments. And why I love my tree so much. Every ornament on the tree has meaning. If I don't connect a memory to an ornament, it's a goner. I have my dear friend Kathy to thank for also remembering, especially all the ornaments SHE gave me. Cactus from Arizona, a telephone because we don't live close, ornaments from trips we took together. Her daughter began giving me ornaments, too, a beautiful fish, a jointed clown. I have an ancient fish that was my grandmother's, a red & green Star of David from Myriam who trimmed her first tree with me, the leather boot Jill made, the luscious fish from my brother, the clothespin droopy-boobed Playboy Bunny from my 80 year-old neighbor, Tracy's birch bark We-Know-Not canoe and the ridiculous collaged ponytail barrettes we made and thought we could sell. Needlepointed squares made by my late father and those from my mom that highlighted whatever was up in my life that year. Beth's pool table and a tree made of fused Mardi Gras beads, a project I did with 2nd graders when I was student teaching in New Orleans. There's Bill and Patty's maple syrup bottle, Dennis' turkey caller, the tap from a Genesee keg, Brenda's Red-Rum bear, Jane's handmade tiny pack basket, the God's Eye from the cook that was always chewing garlic. And so many more.

I have an ornament that was my favorite when I was a little girl. It was a little magical house that absolutely thrilled me. Ten years ago when I asked my father if I could have it, he said "Of course." I was so surprised when I saw it - a very plain cardboard house that happened to be covered in glitter with a couple of marker lines hinting at windows and a door. How jaded my vision has become! Picasso once said he spent his entire life trying to get back the eyes of a child. Boy, do I get that. So now when I look at this house, I can step briefly into the past, loving the feeling of how incredible that little glitter house looked to me as a child. Christmas through the eyes of a child - what magic.

So thank you to all of you who gave me ornaments over all these long years. My tree is a tribute to the magnificent friends and family I am so grateful to have. Ya know,  I have new friends and now I wish I'd asked them to bring an ornament. Next year. Better look for a bigger tree. In the woods, of course.

Letting Control Slide from my Hand

 So. What the heck was the gigunda lesson for me in 2011? (So many lessons, so little memory.)  It’s like choosing a favorite color. And that changes, then I always go back to Black (I love you Amy Winehouse, wherever you are now – everywhere?)  Black is the absence of color OR all colors, depending on which color mixing system you are abiding by. There goes THAT metaphor out the window.

Okay, back to my original thought. The lesson that popped into my head was around control. This freaked me out; since I pride myself on being a flexible, go with the flow kind of a gal. But I had an epiphany: anxiety that I have to manage dwells in that place between conjuring up a plan that is based on what I clearly want and seeing it manifest.  My working brain thinks if I do enough, keep after it, massage it, obsess over it, it will happen. Work, work, work. This is the only way. When did I get so dogmatic? 

Sometimes I need 2 or 3 or 5 two by fours to hit me in the head to learn a lesson.  Seems letting go is the biggie for me this year. Or, the ow-ie -hard-to-admit version: understanding I cannot control the outcome of the things I set in motion. I’d like to blame this on having lived through the worst thing I could imagine, losing my husband suddenly. Good excuse, eh?  Makes you want to control everything so that bad things won’t happen. But I know I’m fooling myself. This need to control goes back to the lesson I’m here to learn – trusting myself.  Trusting that whatever it is I’ve put my energy into is the best for me, not based on anyone else’s opinion. I’ve been weaning my way away from books and asking others about major decisions. Well, not completely. I still do “research”, but I learn more and more to trust my gut, elusive sometimes but lately I’ve had a few intuitive hits and I noticed!  I actually paid attention and acted on them before my analytical mind could talk me out of it. It felt good to be true to myself, knowing there’s always the possibility for misinterpretation. (There it is again, other people’s opinions.) I believe I can get better and better at noticing my gut as I learn to, dare I say it, trust myself.

Folks who seem to have a better grasp on their spiritual side appear to get the next piece: set it in motion then let it go and trust that the Universe/God/Spirit will take it from there. If it’s meant to be, it will happen. Trust. In something intangible.  Part of me is saying, “yeah, right.” That’s the part that wants to keep working on it, to keep controlling things. Trusting means that an idea that felt right that didn’t come to fruition didn’t ripen because it wasn’t the right time, place or thing for me to be doing right now. NOT because I’m a big fat loser who didn’t work hard enough.  THAT’S the lesson.

If I sound like I have it all figured out, believe you me, I am a constant wonderer. That’s why I take long walks in the woods. That’s where I think my plans through and often it feels like a conversation going on in my head. If there’s a sarcastic, common sense response to my mental queries, I know it’s my late husband popping in with his own two cents.  

I’ve already gained so much by letting go – the freedom to love another man, a feel for the okay-ness of imperfection and getting clearer on what I am not responsible for fixing. My biggest lesson of 2011 will be something to practice in 2012. And my favorite color right now is red-violet. The color of love with a bit of blues mixed in. Perfect.