The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The older I get the more the days seem to all blend together and the years disappear in the blink of an eye. Last January I made a decision to keep a journal near my bed so I could capture the essence of each day in a one word sentence or, at the very least, a well-chosen word.  

Now that the year is complete I can marvel at what each month offered up: the good, bad, and the ugly. Having just completed a Life Purpose Bootcamp with my favorite meaning maker and creativity coach, Eric Maisel,  I feel compelled to summarize these snippets of my life in order to make sense of the bigger picture and my place in it. 

The Good

As those nearest and dearest to me moved, I recognized that home is where my heart is.  The decision to buy a home a few years ago had me fearing for my freedom-loving life.  But aligning with my Taurus nature grounded me and introduced this Wander Woman to an entirely new kind of adventure.

From landscaping to deck staining to furnishing my bedroom and office with fabulous and functional furniture, the to-do list slowly morphed into the ta-da list.  For me, there’s no place like home.  And there's nothing like sharing my home with friends, my firefighter, and a few canines.

The Bad 

In the bad - or perhaps I should say challenging - category I learned that I can run but I can’t hide.  I’m only as enlightened as I dare to act. Expressing anger in an authentic way doesn’t require a lot of drama, just more courage than I’ve been able to muster most of my life.  

Fierce conversations, difficult decisions, and painful losses are a necessary part of adulthood.  I can consciously confront co-workers, make the devastating decision to put my dog of 17 years down, practice tough love with toxic people and live to tell about it.   

Learning this ultimately shifts these lessons to the good category.  It just doesn’t feel good  going through them.

The Ugly

The ugly category is reserved for IRS audits and really bad customer service experiences.  Part of what makes this area so ugly is the inordinate amount of time that gets wasted on the way.   

It also tempts me to embrace the victim role.  While blaming someone or something else is initially more palatable than owning up to my part of the problem, it gets me nowhere and inevitably the cycle repeats.

The bottom line is despite what an IRS agent tells you, never go into an audit alone.  By their very nature audits are designed to make you feel defensive, insulted, and assaulted on a very personal level.  It's Big Brother in all your business. Send your accountant and save yourself six months of grief. 

Lesson learned? I need to be more accountable for a number of things.  Having Quicken or downloading Mint is different than using it on a regular basis.

I also need to have my own back.  My experience with the accountant who prepared the taxes that triggered the audit was horrific. I told him my taxes were complicated.  He told me they weren't. I conceded to his "expertise" instead of advocating for my own experience. It came back to bite me big time.   
After all was said and done, I sent him a letter explaining what transpired and what I learned.  I figured there was something for him to learn as well.

In regards to questionable customer service, buyer beware:  if you choose a GE dishwasher from Home Depot and have any issues, you're screwed.  Ten months and two replacement dishwashers later I no longer own a GE dishwasher or shop at Home Depot.  Granted, your experience may be better.  I’m just saying mine went from bad to worse and took a year to resolve.  

On a positive note, Sears offered exceptional customer service and some spectacular deals on appliances.

Hope Springs Eternal

And finally there’s this area I’ll call you-just-never-know.  It has something to do with the grace of not getting what you want when you’re absolutely sure you want it.  

It’s (my namesake) pennies from heaven moments when I’m going through hell. 

It’s faith in my Divine Assistance Team (they oversee such things as Divine Order, Divine Timing, finding the perfect parking place, and revealing the right resources) that allows me to relinquish control over all I think I know in order to appreciate what I don’t. 

It’s the synchronicities and signs like the eagle that appeared overhead the instant I pleaded for a little grace to catapult me out of my stinkin’ thinkin’.

Because I can look back and see the gifts of not only the good, but also the bad and ugly, I once again resolve to be all that I can be in the New Year. 

Specifically I'd like to right-size my life. Some areas need a sabbatical. Some need to be reinvented.  Some need to shrink.  Some need to be super-sized.  Some need to retire.  Some need to reassigned.

This idea holds two meanings for me depending on how I choose to spell it... write size  (every year I resolve to write more but this year I have projects that insist on making it out of my head and onto the page) and right size (redefining and living according to the noble truths I hold dear).

What about you?  What were the redeeming good, bad or ugly lessons you learned in 2013?  What will you name and claim in 2014? 

Share if you dare!

Grace Period

Oh, how I love Thanksgiving time.  To me it’s the most wonderful time of the year.  It combines all the elements of a great gathering - the sights, the smells, the tastes, the textures, solitude and space mixed with friends and family – and it has the good grace to last no longer than necessary.

I especially like it because by this time in the academic year, this small break is the grace period that allows students and staff alike to refresh, rejuvenate, and refuel for the final stretch before beginning the whole cycle again in January.  

This year I was fortunate to be able to add on a couple of vacation days to the Thanksgiving break. Ironically I learned the value of structure by allowing myself to operate without it, relationships by seeking solitude, and home by being away for a few days.

A couple of days in Galena served as the perfect get-away.  Because of its proximity to Chicago, the population of this small art town swells on weekends the way Best Buy does on Black Friday.  Consequently, my strategy is to visit during the week when I can have the place pretty much to myself.  

For me the whole world feels different when I’m not rushed or crowded.  Things are much more manageable when I do not feel the need for speed to get through the day, return phone calls or endless emails, or acquiesce to another's agenda .  

I feel much better when I have some breathing space, some room to pause, ponder, play, sleep in, write with exquisite new pens discovered in my favorite stationery store, watch movies, read a book, explore a new town, enjoy an amazing strawberry salad at the Desoto House Hotel, swim laps unobserved, and soak in an over sized tub with a roaring fire in the fireplace.  

Having time to indulge in a few of my favorite things for even a few days makes me a much happier camper at family functions, holiday parties, and when the time comes to return to work.  It’s like following the flight attendant’s instructions and putting my own oxygen mask on first.  Despite my best intentions, I can’t save anyone if I can’t breathe. 

Too often I feel swept along on this frantic journey to “do, do, do” leaving the part of me that wants to “be, be, be” pleading for peace and quiet.  When I was telling my friend Tom about this conundrum, he reminded me that perhaps Sinatra was on to something when he sang, “do-be-do-be-do.” I'm sure there is a  right balance that's unique to each of us.  Knowing this and honoring it when possible makes life less stressful.

So today as I tackle the task of decorating my home for the holidays, I am acutely aware of the gift of being able to move at my own pace.  I realize to others this pace might resemble someone who has  alternately had too much turkey and too much pumpkin pie, which would explain the stops and starts, the nap (tryptophan!), intermittent  internet shopping between blogging breaks, and the competing calls to action.

Tomorrow I will be on another schedule as I head over to Prophetstown for a bustling day (Small Business Saturday) at my sister and sister-in-law’s new shop, Beans and Burlap.   I already know the day will have its way and my schedule may not be entirely my own, so my intention is to let go and flow.  Otherwise, I fear what the magnet I found in one of those great Galena shops states will come to pass.  “Let go or be dragged.”

Times Change

Today is one of those days when times literally change.  Unless you are in Arizona or Hawaii, you've miraculously gained an hour and are probably more discombobulated by this event than traveling across multiple time zones. 

As a child I dreaded this day.  I could not figure out why the light would concede to the dark and allow it to run the show for the next six months. 

This fact fueled my decision to move to the Southwest where I could experience more sunlight in 365 days than I could in two decades of living in the Midwest.

The light is different in the Southwest.  Even if its hours are limited, the sun makes no apologies for rising and shining as impressively and consistently as possible.  During Iowa winters, the sun often seems hung over, as if it were having way too much fun Down Under to make an appearance here.

Despite repeated recitations of the Serenity Prayer, I railed against this perceived solar slight upon returning to the Midwest.  In an attempt to follow the first two suggestions to accept what I cannot change and have the courage to change the things I can, I purchased a Happy Light to combat SAD  by serving as a substitute for the sunlight I was so sadly lacking.

This is when the wisdom to know the difference, the third part of the Serenity Prayer, kicked in.  Or maybe it was that song from The Byrds that played like an earworm every time the seasons changed reminding me for everything (Turn! Turn! Turn!) there is a season (Turn! Turn! Turn!) and a purpose under heaven.

It’s that purpose thing and possibly all that turning that had me befuddled for decades. But the great thing about midlife is what really matters makes itself known, the same way the exact location or precise name of everyday items makes itself an enigma. 

All those u-turns, detours, and other distractions that were not mentioned on the map to Success City are what brought dimension, depth, appreciation, and ultimately illumination to the one I’m destined to follow, which frequently looks like a map to Funkytown.

With age also comes the realization that we can never change a person, place, or thing by loathing it.  Dissing it – whether that be disliking immensely or disrespecting it – binds it to us like superglue.

So at the risk of sounding clique, as the days get shorter and the nights grow longer I'm attempting to embrace the idea that all I need is love... and a super-sized side order of grace.

After all, if these were pleasant people, places, or things, they’d be easy to love or forgive.  The reason I wrestle with them is because they push my buttons.  And not just one button occasionally.  Within a 24-hour time period they can easily get on my last nerve.
 

This is why having a Happy Light – or your own personal equivalent – is essential.  There are situations that require nothing less than a miracle.  Left to my own devices, I'll sit and stew in the dark for ages. 

Even though I know better, I still find myself forgetting to shed a little light on the subject simply by asking for help from my Divine Assistance Team made up of any and all deities, patron saints, good dogs who've gone to heaven, mythological figures, loved ones, and favorite authors. 

My first step is  to no longer blame the light for conceding to the dark.  The sun has a big job to do.  But so does the night sky.   

My work requires a good deal of hunkering down and hibernating before it can ever see the light of day.  So today I fall back, grab my Happy Light, and look forward to harvesting the ideas that germinate as soon as the sun goes down.

 

 

 

Fireworks

I, for one, have had my share of fire. 

At age five I watched our town’s theatre burn. Standing in our yard at 112 Short Street in Prophetstown watching the flames envelope what seemed like my whole world, I couldn’t really understand what was happening.  I only knew something had changed that would forever shape our town’s history. 

This week, decades later, I had the horror of watching it all again, this time on the six o’clock news.  And this time I know full well the devastation that follows and the new world order my home town will have to embrace.

Fire has always lived on the fringes of my awareness.

For many years I lived in the high desert, where forest fires were a constant threat.  Living in the Land of Enchantment had its price.  The real currency there was not cash but cool, clear water.  One lightning bolt or careless camper and the whole forest could catch fire.  Lives, homes, property, wildlife, and ecosystems could be destroyed.

When I left the high and dry lands of New Mexico for the flat and humid lands of Illinois, I was startled awake not once but twice to the terrifying sight of hay bales burning at an alarming rate and firemen rushing to the rescue.  Watching the product of all that labor go up in smoke was enough to make me move closer to water.

So in November of 2007, I took a job in a quiet Iowa farming community, comforted by the fact that a river runs through it.  Within three months of moving to Maquoketa, the downtown was on fire. The smoldering didn’t stop for days. The destruction gaped like an open wound for two years as the clean–up stalled and the downtown lay partially paralyzed.   

I remember standing on the steps of my home a few blocks from downtown that seriously cold Saturday in January when the town was ablaze, feeling just like I did when I was five standing in our front yard in Prophetstown.  I still couldn’t grasp the full significance the fallout of a major fire would have.  I just knew it was bad, I felt terribly sad, and firemen were good.  Very good.

Then came the frantic call on the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving in 2010.  The building on our farm we thought was fireproof that housed our office,  garage, farming equipment, and every conceivable farm tool burned like it was on a mission to prove us wrong in the shortest time possible.

My dad was devastated, my mom was heartbroken, and my nieces had their version of trauma by fire to tuck away in their nightmares.  Firemen everywhere were elevated to saints in my book.

Watching a fire burn your possessions, your memories, your business, or your livelihood is a surreal experience.  There is a finality to it that is simultaneously sobering and liberating.  The realization that everything is on loan to us for this short ride around the sun suddenly sinks in.  As long as lives are not lost, we can recover, rebuild, reboot.  Like a phoenix, we can rise from the ashes.  However, we might just need a minute.

The grief for what is lost comes in waves.  Many times it’s the $2 plastic sun and moon chair that a friend gave us or the box of photos from our glory days that cause a greater sense of loss than the major appliance we may have temporarily stored in the burning building.

Ultimately we can let a fire define us or allow it to refine us.  We can be the victim of a fire or we can realize how very much we have to be grateful for that cannot be taken from us.  Of course, the jury may be out while the loss is still fresh and the feelings are raw.

It always touches me how a community comes together after a disaster.  I truly believe we are all everyday heroes just waiting for a chance engage our superpowers and do something meaningful, helpful, and caring for another person. 

Whatever your faith or whatever you believe, the prayer ceremony at Eclipse Square in Prophetstown on Wednesday night helped the community heal.  The bricks the firemen handed out gave people something tangible to hold on to.  This is how we move on.  Moment by moment.  Brick by brick.

With that in mind, I’m  also going to politely ask “the powers that be” that we be given a break from the fireworks for now.   Perhaps we could simply be allowed to flex our superpowers in small yet significant ways to those who show up in need of them?

But for good measure, I might just marry a fireman.

Fishing for Meaning

Today I sit in a cabin looking out over the Canadian waters we drove ten hours to take in.  The men in my life left me at the crack of dawn, convinced there are other fish in the sea.  In this case, I sincerely hope they find them.  After all, it’s these fishing expeditions that bring them unfathomable joy and bring me to a place of peace and quiet where I can read, write, nap, or do nothing.

So far I’ve been spent most of the day observing my own dysfunction looking for stuff and avoiding the very thing I came here to do.  I warmed up by journaling long hand with my favorite pen and select journal and thought I was off to a promising start.  But my progress was foiled when I attempted to fire up my laptop and discovered the power outlets in our cabin require an adapter to plug into any one of them.

This in turn required a trip into the unchartered territory of the local bait and tackle shop, followed by a hike to the hardly handy hardware store, and a side trip to Lake of the Loons grocery.  Feeling sufficiently discombobulated by the unfamiliar layouts of each store, I was in serious need of a sandwich and a nap upon my safe return to Cabin #5 at the Borderview Lodge.  

Unfortunately the sandwich seemed to dull my sixth sense so locating the adapter the clerk cleverly hid inside the collapsible coozie prompted a further delay.  I had no choice but to espouse the 12 step approach and admit I was powerless over my writing day, my writing habit had become unmanageable, and that only a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

By declaring this vacation a writing retreat, I may have unwittingly subjected myself to too much pressure, thereby leaving myself vulnerable to distraction.  Especially since the Wii Resorts game, which hasn’t been used for six weeks at home, seemed to insist I engage in just one round of Swordplay instead of finishing this blog post.

The funny things is, when my world is crammed full of commitments, all I can think about is creating the spaciousness that an uncommitted week near the lake provides.  Now that I’m lucky enough to be in such a place, I realize I need more discipline than usual to make the most of my time here.  

Writing requires the kind of solitude, silence, and space that is hard to come by at home.   Home remains a juggling act between time intensive work, continual home improvement projects, quality relationships with family and friends, and the need to write about how these things shape me or the world I live in. 

For awhile, six months to be exact, I tried to convince myself that not writing didn’t matter to anyone other than me.  But I was wrong.  I discovered life makes more sense when I am writing.  It helps me metabolize the events that baffle, surprise, or delight me and give meaning to ordinary occurrences that might otherwise go unrecognized as the minor miracles they are.  Sharing these insights might shed some light on a similar situation you may be experiencing as well.

We are wired to connect through stories and recognize patterns and potential and plots.  You may intuit where I’m heading long before I figure it out, but the fact that we eventually get there together is an incredible thing.  And hopefully, we’re both better off for taking the journey.

Remembering this, I postpone Swordplay until this evening and work through my distractions so I can finally settle into a rhythm and write.  And though I may be on the Canadian border hanging with the loons, when my fishermen return with their catch of the day, I can say I, too, have had my “catch up” of the day with some of the finest fish in the blogging seas. 

If teaching a man to fish feeds him for life, teaching this woman to read and write, guarantees she'll write for life, with only the occasional sabbatical. 

  

Sweat It and Forget It

Popular wisdom advises us not to sweat the small stuff.  This bit of advice is often followed by the big reveal that it’s all small stuff.

I'm all for not fretting and sweating unnecessarily.  But I've come to realize that left unattended, the small stuff can and will come back to bite me. I’m also aware that unless I sweat from time to time, I get lazy.  

For instance, my six month sabbatical from blogging or my reluctance to participate in several one minute bursts of activity throughout the day or my inability to produce the right receipts for an unexpected IRS audit for 2010 may not seem like things to get all steamed up about.  But the cumulative effects of not posting consistently, not exercising daily, or not keeping Quicken records up to date can lead to serious sweat later.  Or now, as the case may be.

Like the protagonist in any good story, we don't want perfect. Even if we think we want our life to be all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, or at the very least void of IRS audits, our weapons of mass distraction will quickly convince us that the good life alone is a wee bit boring. We’ll start demanding drama.  Or it will hunt us down.

We secretly want what we want our heroes to be; challenged, flawed, quirky, able to overcome all odds, and capable of wielding super powers at strategic moments.  We want them to face the things we avoid at all cost and be forced to do the things we think we can’t so we can test the “what would we do” waters without getting in over our heads.

Of course our heroes must be just different enough from us so we cannot be expected to perform the miraculous feats we fully expect them to perform. Their stories must consist of big, dramatic, cliff-hanging stuff.  They must be agile enough to run backwards in heels without wondering where they are going or why and will naturally be accompanied on their life-altering adventures by sexy sidekicks who are always ready with clever comebacks or brilliant solutions.

By contrast our stories consist of small, mundane, every day irritants like lost keys or cracked windshields.  Despite impressive juggling abilities, we are middle aged, slightly arthritic, and unable to retrieve the name of everyday items and/or our youngest child at will.  However, we shall overcome.  This, in itself, is miraculous.

Because our brains are designed to figure out the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of stuff, we readily escape into our heroes’ story lines far more often than our own.  What we forget is fictitious characters have writers and editors who meticulously edit out anything that isn’t essential to the moving their story forward. These stories are supposed to be riveting.

The small stuff makes editing the events of our day to day lives more difficult, rendering our lives less riveting.  Many at midlife are fine with this.  We're tired.  But we’re still wired for a good story. This brings me to the conclusion that a better motto for us might be, “Sweat it and forget it."

An engaging story demands ongoing effort, i.e. sweat.  I'm not saying it has to be hard.  I'm just saying once we sweat it, we'd do well to “forget it”. (It being the attachment we have to things working out according to our plan.)  If not, we run the risk of sweating the small ego stuff.  Trust me, sweating that stuff is not attractive.
 
Regardless of the blood, sweat, and years I have already spent writing, exercising, or futilely looking for random receipts, the only thing that matters now is what I do now.  

Even though I have written a few books, if my royalties do not exceed my expenses, the IRS will call my writing a hobby.  Because I've now been a certified fitness professional for more years than I've not, if I don't show up at the gym for a few month, people assume I've retired.  And who knows what the fallout will be to my unintentional blogging ban?  In an world of instant messaging and infinitesimal attention spans, what happened an hour ago is old news. In cyber years, I may already be extinct.

Clearly it's time to get back to basics in hopes that paying attention to the small stuff now will prevent future perspiration when the tax man comes calling, the YMCA can use a senior fitness instructor, and friends mention that they haven’t seen a blog post since Christmas.

What about you?  What's worth sweating this summer?

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

It’s ironic on the first day of my Christmas vacation I should wake up at 5:30am with words in my head that refuse to let me sleep in.  It could also be the Mexican food I ate last night, but for the sake of this post, let’s allow my muse believe it’s her insistence that writing now will make me sleep better later that has gotten me out of bed and glued to the keyboard.

Just because the world did not end Friday does not mean there is not a new world order being imposed upon my household.  I call it the Creative Imperative.  

It may have something to do with hand-made gifts not being ready for their December 25^th delivery date that makes it imperative that I be exceptionally creative in the next twenty-four hours.  Or it could be because I have one of the best Christmas bonuses available to me – paid time off – that makes me giddy with possibility and creative options.

In any case, just like the last hour of the day before leaving for vacation suddenly becomes my most productive hour of the week, suddenly it seems important to connect and share a Christmas wish with you.

While every year brings its share of ups and downs, this year lived up to the prediction of end of times – specific times – for me.  Whether it was the milestone birthday, the Alaskan adventure, ending a long term relationship, creating a new poetry website, or purchasing my first new car in fourteen years, to paraphrase REM, it's the end of the world as I know it and I feel fine.

It’s not that any of it was easy to accept.  Every new person, place, or thing I welcomed into my brave, new world required me to release another person, place, or thing that was very dear to my old existence. 

Of course, the groovy denim pantsuit I wore to the seventh grade sock hop was also very dear to me.  Sometimes I just need a clear visual and trippy language to remind me of the importance of time and perspective, don’t you?

I'm guessing you have had a year of upheaval and change and surprise and joy as well. Despite Herculean efforts to be masters of our universe, it’s the nature of our lives to be predictably unpredictable. 

So what I wish for you this Christmas Eve is what I'm holding out for myself … that we find a way to embrace it all with good humor, keen insight, and amazing grace.  These gifts seem way more practical than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Plus, I have no idea where to get the other stuff.

Thanks for reading, responding, and passing my words along.

May you have yourself a merry little Christmas now.



P.S.   On January 5, 2013, I'll be leading a Name It and Claim It in the New Year workshop at my workplace.  If you're interested in attending, let me know.  If you're interested in the virtual version, send me an email.