Meditation and giving myself a grade

As is often the case when I have several half finished posts, it seems completely reasonable to me to start a brand new one. Ha!

So, about 6 months ago, my therapist suggested I start a daily breathing practice for myself. He was very careful not to refer to it as meditation (smile) but was about the 5th person to recommend it to me including my endocrinologist, my trainer, a dear friend who I wish I had realized was a dear friend when we were in high school together, and several others. I suspect I appear a little . . . anxious, or that the signs of how thoroughly I work myself over show more than I pretend they do, and so people think, "it could help a LOT if she would just sit and appreciate what's good right now."

When I first tried to do this, a couple of years ago, it was on advice from my trainer and a friend, and it was so hard that I barely managed a few minutes each day. I would pull up a cushion, sit, and after a few breaths think, "Uggggggghhhh. That's good enough, right?" My blood pressure and sleep habits said otherwise, and then with two injured knees, that became my excuse to stop - sitting was a little complex then. I felt relieved, because, man had I not done well at implementing that, but still uneasy thinking, "Why can't I just breathe?"

Fast-forward to late 2011 when I found myself mired in dishonesty from a lot of corners of my life. Nothing sets my blood on fire like dishonesty, and ultimately, I wasn't coming clean with myself about what I could and couldn't do. It actually got to the point where I was sleeping only 2-3 hours at a stretch because my thoughts were so restless. My therapist not-so-gently pointed out that I take everything I come in contact with as my responsibility to right, and then judge myself harshly when it doesn't work. A terrible Midas touch that paints me, constantly, as a failure in my own eyes. He suggested that someday it might be possible to stop seeing the world as win-loss, success-failure, good-bad but that for now, the best thing I could do was gently acknowledge those moments that I was steeped in judgement (almost all the time, as it turns out) and then just breathe through them instead of letting them mount and gain momentum.

So, now, I try to sit every day. Here's the truth - it sounds so simple, but it's the hardest thing in the world for me. Given the choice of singing, naked, in front of strangers, and sitting on a cushion for an hour trying to empty myself out and just notice the moment I'm in, it would be a toss up. It's ironic, right? That I might rather be vulnerable to others, than be still and see if I can be vulnerable to myself? Of course, there is no requirement that I sit for an hour (and I don't) but I am very aware that when I am sitting, time goes by very slowly, painfully even. And I am always trying to get better at this.

Yesterday, I had to walk for 90 minutes before I could bring myself to sit. I was always within a mile of Boulder's amazing Shambhala Center but kept walking to get out some of the raw anxiety before trying. Then, of course, instead of heading to the big, beautiful rooms with air and light, I headed for the "practice" room. Translation: small, dark basement room. I don't even light any of the candles, I just sit there glad that it's everyone else's last choice and that I can wrestle with the idea of just. right. now. by myself.

On Tuesday, we talked about my practice (such as it is) in therapy. My therapist (who is still being careful not to talk about meditating or sitting, but instead about a daily practice, by the way) remarked that if I am constantly giving myself a grade on everything, then I am choosing always to judge myself, and worse, often not giving myself the grade I deserve. I told him that sitting felt like work, and that I really can't manage it for more than 10 - 20 minutes. Somewhere in the middle, if I've metered my breath and let go of some of what I carried in with me, there's a quiet moment where all I feel is my hands on my knees and my chest rising and falling, but very quickly, everything comes rushing back. He used the word "loud" in that all of my stuff gets very noisy in my head, as a pendulum swing off of things having gotten quiet.

He reminded me that it's a practice, and that that word is deliberate. That like a runner who practices every day, sometimes times will be longer, and sometimes shorter, but what matters is how they accumulate. Sitting isn't meant to get judged and graded each time - there is no good or bad. It just is whatever it is on that day. He also said that if I'm only sitting when I feel bad, it will take a long, long time for me to feel anything other than tired by it. Finally, he said, trying to get me to ease up and be a little less hard on myself, I suspect, "If you practice today, you can't expect it to solve everything! Just sit and breathe and let it be only that."

Grasping for control, trying to fix everything, and then (of course) not being able to succeed under that weight and thus kicking myself until I bleed is the lather, rinse, repeat I've set myself up on. And it's got to go. I have to evict it, even if I can't give it the boot all at once, because it's that treadmill that kept me in bad patterns and bad relationships. And when I say relationships, I mean all relationships, not just romantic ones. Friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends, my relationship with my work, myself, my former employer, all of it.

So, I sit. I read this book and and this one. I listen to the beginning of "Joking" by Indigo Girls over and over and over trying to understand how it would feel to "Forget about your ego. Forget about your Pride. And you will never have to compromise." this is what I want - to live more out loud, and not compromise my happiness. I talk a good talk here, in this blog, but I admitted "on the couch" this week that right now, while everything is going so well (minus, you know, the obvious absence of a new job) for me, I find I have all this anxiety that I will mis-step and mess it all up in one swell foop.

So I sit. and I breathe in and out. And I try to grok the idea that the only thing I can do is nurture this moment. and in the next moment, and only when it arrives, then that one. But I can't plan, control, fix, heal, solve, berate, pre-ordain, judge, plot, arrange, engineer, project, steer, contrive or chart what happens in the next moment, the next day, the next month, the next year and expect to get it right, get what I want, get that A.

In the vein of Indigo Girls philosophy, I want to not just forget about my ego, and not compromise, but to sidle up on "Closer to fine" in that I understand the smart thing I said to someone yesterday. He said, "I don't always see the full scope of what needs to happen right away." I sounded, I'm sure, like I was assured of the high horse I was sitting on when I answered, "No one does. That's why we use the verb 'process' to describe thinking and coping - it's a process. It's not an event."

It's all fine and well for me to tell those things to other people, but I do a laughable job of reminding myself of them in the day to day. I can say this - I've done much better than I had predicted at keeping myself happy, grateful, calm, and productive in unemployment. This is why I'm doing well enough to fret about messing it all up. But, the choices I made before this frighteningly delicious free-fall of creating a new life for myself tell a less flattering story. It's hilarious to me, actually, how I sometimes lean into danger - I will move more than 2000 miles across the country knowing no one, I will spar men twice my size - but play things so safe and close to the vest when it comes to asking for and admitting what I really, really want and doing the work to arrive there.

"Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable, and lightness has a call that's hard to hear. I wrap my fear around me like a blanket. I sail my ship of safety 'til I sank it. And I'm crawling on your shore."

So, this girl, this one who had to hold one of her best friend's hands when plunged into 20 seconds of pitch black on the Cave of the Winds tour because she is so deeply afraid of the dark, sits in a small, quiet very dark room daily, knowing that everything scary in there is something I brought with me. And knowing, even more, that that means it's with me whether or not I go into that room and sit on that cushion. And I listen. Very hard. To the noisiness in my neurons, but also to that call that's hard to hear. Because I'm pretty sure I'm done signing up to crash ships of safety.

We are bound together

You will all remember that last week saw me reflecting deeply and walking through the emotional quicksand of my past employment in order to start the process of working with the recruiting team I have contracted with.

In theory, I adore their approach. They are very intent on determining what pushes people to perform and show their best side, and to help people identify the jobs and opportunities that will contribute to a career - not just a paycheck. Clearly, this is what I was aiming at when I wrote a description of my ideal job. And in other ways, writing about my core values and thinking deeply about what matters to me, and how I know rightness from wrongness, is about finding the right fit too. I can't go back to how I was before, to that lifestyle, certainly, to giving too much for too little in return. But also, I can't go back to being numb and only letting myself measure myself against my values when on the therapy couch. I'm awake now: I feel. I see. I remember.

I can't go back. this means I have to go forward. So, in theory, the idea of testing my skills and competencies, but also having a recruiter strap on a harness and a flashlight and go caving with me to deeply excavate what motivates and excites me is exactly the right step. But in practice, it's hard emotional work for me right now to try and stay present, in this moment, but think ahead to what I want at the same time.

Wanting things is akin to expectations. And expectation can lead to attaching myself to outcomes that may or may not happen. And that is one slippery slope away form disappointment. So, wanting things feels scary to me right now.

But, of course, I do want things. I want a job I can stay in for 3-5+ years; long enough to not just build skills and extend my experience, but to grow into different responsibilities and/or titles and influence positive change. I want not to move out of my condo. I want to go see my friends on the east coast. I want things.

So, when they asked me to write about what motivated and inspired me, what I thought was, This is the mission statement I can't quite get condensed and succinct enough to write yet. But I sat myself down and made myself write the following:
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I care about people being the best they can be, for themselves first, and for one another as an extension of that. As James Taylor says in one of my one of my favorite songs (If you like this blog AT ALL please click the link and listen, as a favor to me), "We are bound together by the task that stands before us. By the road that lies ahead. We are bound. And we are bound."

I believe people owe it to themselves to be aware, to develop core values and to try and check themselves, their decisions, and their impact on others around them against those values. To be responsible for what they bring to others, and for themselves, and to be thoughtful about who they become. I came from a family that was dysfunctional in most of these ways, but had formative experiences that showed me how deeply people are connected, and how powerful it can be to share positively, and to inspire people to investigate their limitations and make a plan to reach for more.

"There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist, there is a hunger in the center of the chest. there is a passage through the darkness and the mist. and though the body sleeps, the heart will never rest. "

I sing because it opens me up to the vulnerability needed to investigate my deepest emotional motivations. I write because I can’t not write. I pursue photography because it helps me stay awake and aware to how I see things and how they can be seen differently. I am not an artist, but it makes my heart stir to create and contribute.

"It is a hunger in the center of my chest, oh yes."

I spend time with children, and students, because it is a reminder to me of the importance of asking questions, seeing things in new ways, and the excitement of seemingly ordinary things. I am a committed life-long learner because stagnation and complacency are the enemy of the kind of considered growth I care about contributing to.

I care about data, because analyzing information is how I form a picture of what has happened, and where new potential lies.  I run and swim because it gives my mind time to process these things. I organize, and plan because I want to be able to do the most I can do, and get the most out of what I am doing.

I give to charity because I know there are problems I can never fix, but not doing what I can do to make things better isn’t something I can live with - not and look at my reflection in the mirror.

"Oh let us turn or thoughts today to Martin Luther King. And recognize that there are ties between us. All men and women, living on the earth, ties of hope and love. Of sister and brotherhood." 

I place deep attention on being honest and maintaining integrity, even when it costs me, but I try also to balance this with being fair and sensitive to other people involved in any process I’m engaged in.

"Shed a little light, so we can see. Just a little light." 

I am an introspective extrovert, and that allows me to reflect deeply on my motivations, and to listen carefully, collect the data on others' passions, and to draw them out to share that information with me. Knowing people, their plans and passions, allows me to best counsel, consult, and train towards better outcomes. I want to create the opportunity for people to be just uncomfortable enough to experience real change and growth, but not so uncomfortable that they turn away from the moment where they can truly not just see potential for change, but can actually put it into action. I put a lot of my energy into careful articulation and communication in both verbal and written form because persuading and exciting people starts with trust and belief, and communication is one of the best foundations for that that I know or can offer.

I want to impact positive change in the world, in my community, in my loved ones and friends, and in myself by carefully considered analysis, thoughtfully matched goals and action plans, disciplined and inspired life-long learning, and providing and accepting the support to see areas of improvement and work towards taking responsibility to change and grow. 
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Ties of hope and love, my dear readers, hippie and tree-huggery or not, it's what I really think. I didn't use all of those song lyrics in what I wrote for that office, (in fact, I quoted James Taylor only once) but the truth is . . . I have seen that the thing that most stops work, productivity, creativity, and growth are problems between people. Its the moments when people stop talking, and start assuming, blaming, yelling, striking, or giving up on each other that alters the path irrevocably. I've also seen how getting things done, how momentum and growth and contribution is so powerfully impacted by people working and playing well with one another. When we connect mindfully, when we use it to do good things, it is the best thing.

Some day I'll be able to boil all of this down to a mission statement, but for today it was enough that I could articulate that on paper for my consultant, and have deep conversation about it and related topics. Whew. And now . . . I'm tired!!!

Recruited

So, I started working with a recruiter this week. This is a strange experience for me. I've never NOT gotten jobs that I've applied for, never been unemployed, and in fact, what used to happen is that I would get offered jobs before I really had thought about applying for them. I had a series of jobs that evolved this way, and some of them I held for years. So, the stark reality that I've now been unemployed for coming up on three months is a little startling for me.

When offered the chance to work with a recruiter, I immediately thought, "Ummmm, no. I'm good." But if I'm being honest, I've done really well getting myself some interviews; better even than most in this economy. But, it's been three months, and I haven't closed an offer. And here's why - I have a lot of skills, but may not posses a lot of experience in negotiating. I can do full splits, train the heck out of someone on something that is killer boring and make them laugh while doing it, and make some out of this world black bean soup. But negotiating my worth is completely foreign to me.

This office specializes with helping people who want to make a career change, re-packaging skills and experience, and helping people haggle their offers, without making it seem like they're greasy-car-salesmanning their way through it. I need this.

It's funny how I wrote unabashedly about being someone who needs a lot of professional help. I don't hesitate to pay for my pants to get hemmed, because I cannot do that with any degree of even pretending to get a good finished product. I didn't think twice about emailing my therapist today to make an appointment for next week. So, why the stigma about working with someone who does this for a living? I am someone with short legs, so I need hemmed pants. I am someone who wants to process my life and be healthier, so I log hours on the therapy couch. I am someone who wants to get a job, so why shouldn't I spend time with a recruiter who is a professional job-getter?

I think this whole thing feels so amazingly singularly defining, that my brain somehow can't process that it relates to other things I've walked through. I think somehow the lessons I've learned don't apply. When I was training for my black belt test, there were things I could do on my own, and things I couldn't. I put myself on a serious regimen of conditioning 3-4 hours a week, in addition to my classes and running. I worked on my essay for months. But I couldn't tailor my Gi (uniform) without taking it to someone, I couldn't spar without a partner, and I asked one fellow instructor to do an hour of additional sparring with me every week, and another instructor to work mitts with me every week. I couldn't have gotten there on my own, and my essay reflected that. So, expecting the multi-faceted challenge of job searching and applying to include only tasks I can excel at by myself, at my kitchen table is probably not the best perspective.

Now, before everyone jumps to tell me their good or bad experiences with a recruiter, you have to all know that I was very deliberate and cautious in making this decision. I spent two weeks talking to them, talked to almost all of their staff, talked to former clients, got their placement stats for the last year (because I wanted to focus on information pertinent to the economy and the recent market), stats for people in my pay range, and stats for people in my age range. I did my own re-con on their results, and compared them with results for other recruiting groups. None of this negates the tinge of anxiety I feel about handing some of this over to someone else; but the bigger thing for me is that I can't keep doing this by myself and feeling like I don't know what I'm doing well and what I'm missing.

I admitted to a couple of people that while significant pressure would not have induced me to say this, I needed the time not working in January and February. I needed time to re-center, to focus on what's important, to get the expectations and disappointments of my last employer out of my system. But, now it's the third month, and I'm DONE. I'm done second guessing myself, I'm done going on bad interviews. I'm done networking and applying my way into jobs where the employer hasn't decided what they can budget for the position, or ones who are making a nod at an external search when they are already certain they are filling it internally. I'm done not being sure what else I should be doing. It's go time.

What's ironic about all of this, is that after spending two months writing, and walking, and praying, and meditating, processing, rationalizing, and shoring up my self-esteem, and then, abandoning trying to renovate that part of my life in favor of building a whole new foundation and housing my self-esteem inside of that . . . After all of this, the first thing the recruiting team asked me to do is fill out a lengthy survey about my successes, goals, skills, and work experience. No brainer, right? But the second part of the survey was about what motivates and excites me (I resisted the urge to just cut and paste the URL for this blog as answer to those queries), and what tangible results I garnered in my last job.

I worked on this survey for about 10-12 hours. Over the span of 60 hours. I wrote 35 pages. THIRTY.FIVE.

I gather it usually takes most people a bit longer on this, so I am grateful to the people in my network and in my support system who pushed me to define my thoughts about a perfect job, about what I'm enthusiastic about, and defining deal-breakers and wish lists earlier. I was able to quickly synthesize thoughts and feelings and information I had gathered before and complete those parts of the survey pretty expeditiously.


What was hard for me was writing about all of my results, quantitative and qualitative. I went into that part with about 4 things in mind. As I went down the list, four more came out of my typing fingers, almost without my thought. Then five more. And on, and on until I had collected close to 30.

And then I was. so. angry.

After writing all of this, I talked with a friend. And realized, there was about 3% of anger directed towards the people who overlooked my significant contributions. And 97% of regret and bitterness towards myself . . . how could I give so much? How could I do it so blindly without regard for what was good for me and what I was appreciated for? How could I do it for so long, unhappily, plugging away pulling together more and more results, and all the while being less and less satisfied?

And then, it hit me.

I finished the survey. And I read back over it, and saw all I had done, felt, accomplished, was motivated by, and was disappointed by. And it washed over me. And I was completely overwhelmed, and disheartened.

I sent off the survey, meanwhile kicking myself. It didn't matter that I had walked for over an hour that morning, followed by some really clarifying meditation, I was able to speak up (type up?) and say,
"After that I need to go clear my head." So, I went and walked for another hour, followed by cooking for 2. Thusly, the Christie processes, moves towards acceptance, and sees a glimmer of peace off in the distance.

This wouldn't have happened six months ago. I would have been upset, or demotivated, or disheartened or disappointed by whatever, and then just gone onto the next thing on my list without consideration for my all-rightness, without processing even where I was or the fact that I was feeling less than good. Which probably means I was less than alright often.

None of that is good, but if it lead me to a place where I can see that I need help, where I can take advantage of help that is being offered (be it a walk with a friend, therapy, working with a recruiter), and where I am in a position to assess what I need in the moment, and then do it . . . then it's ok that I did what I did to get to this place. I have to forgive myself for the hole I let myself fall down, because getting out of the hole is so powerful and has created so much healthy momentum for me as I climb up.

And that's all for today. I could go on and on, but, I think what this means is that I am ready not just to tear it up in a new job, but to give my best to myself in the new career and lifestyle I discover. And so, with some luck, or effort, or help, or mad recruitment up in here, let's all believe that can happen soon.

Pain

I'm in a little pain today. My knees have been hurting, and that has had some implications for my workouts, but mostly, I've accepted that this is what my knees do. Allowing pain to determine what I can do would mean to give up doing a lot of things I like. So, I go do them and keep a steady supply of ice packs in my freezer. I also have blisters on the soles of my feet, but this is not too awful either.

Today I'm in pain because it's my dad's birthday.

I'm not sure why this bothers me more than other meaningful days. I could get really sad on the anniversary of his death, and often, I do get a little introspective but not usually anything approaching full sadness.  It's possible that because I've attached some other things to that date, that August 9th and 10th mean different things to me now. I intentionally chose to start and end my Flickr 365 days photo project on these dates and so I think about my dad. I think about the hospice nurse coming to the house twice that night - once shortly before midnight, and then again, just a couple hours later. But I also think about managing to finish taking a self portrait every day for 365 unbroken days despite personal issues, a crazy work schedule, not one but two knee injuries, and a knee surgery RIGHT before finishing. I emptied that day out, and refilled it with triumph and closure and accomplishment. I could be bothered over Thanksgiving and Christmas, because I don't have the option to spend those holidays with my father anymore.

You'd think Father's Day would be the problem but, instead, it's this day, every year, that lurks and looms and makes March very problematic for me. I have taken to writing this day on my calendar, as if I'd forget. This is one of the vestiges of my relationship with my dad. I also kept his phone number in my phone (which is just silly, because his phone number was the phone number I grew up with and is imprinted on my DNA at this point. Keeping it in my phone isn't about remembering the number, of course, since I wouldn't need to use the phone number anyways. It's because taking him out of my phone feels wrong). I can't seem to listen to Dire Straits without laughing and then feeling melancholy. And, I write this date in each year, "Dad's Birthday" in the same way that my calendar is marked for "Rob's birthday" as a reminder to send a card or do whatever I do because I think birthdays are the best (mine, yours, everyone's - love birthdays).

There isn't anywhere to send a card. I can't pick up the phone and call my dad (using the number I've known since I knew there were phone numbers in the world) to say happy birthday. I can't make a plan to celebrate his birthday with him. I can't call my brother and see if he wants to join forces for a lunch, a present, anything. Why is it on my calendar? Because not putting it there makes the day feel even worse to me.

On March 26th, it doesn't matter if I'm working, or if it's the weekend. It doesn't matter if I'm alone, or with people. It doesn't matter if I drive up into the mountains or lie flat on my back on the couch and stare at the open canvass of my ceiling. It doesn't matter if I eat chicken and brussel sprouts or if I try to numb out with some really bad carbs. All I can think of is how, somehow, I was the only person who knew on his last birthday that it was his last birthday.

It was actually a great day, but with my moving cross-country two months later, and him going so severely down hill two months after that, it was the last time I got to do a family celebration of any kind with him. And the fact that it was for him made him that much more excited and pleased. We had a great day, but in a place that was nowhere near the back of my mind, I knew with deep certainty and some not insignificant sense of peace, that there wouldn't be another birthday with him, and that that almost surely meant we had already had our last Thanksgiving, Christmas, . . . I drank a shot with him and my brother and thought, "I hope this day is good enough to count for everything we won't have."

I think that there are days that I tell myself that death is part of life, and that I can live with that. And there are days that I tell not only myself, but others too, that if he hadn't died, we might not have gotten to the place we got to in our relationship . . . that it took to the end for my dad to be really honest, open, and to tell me what he loved about me in a way I believed it. And there are days where I am very relieved that he's not struggling, in pain, or fighting the demons he dealt with long before the cancer.

But I don't ever have those days on March 26th. On this day I am struck that I'm supposed to somehow be ok with 25 years of what can only be described as troubled and dysfunctional love with my dad followed by 2 weeks of him sharing under what can only be described as enormous pressure. On this day I can't help but think how sad it is that he never met his grandchildren, and that he'll never meet my future-and-hypothetical kids. On this day it's a little heartbreaking that he'll never see any of us get married. On this day I remember drinking that shot with him, but I also remember calling my Jewish family the morning after he died to make sure that when they were drinking wine that night on Shabat that they would change the prayer they had been saying for him and not waste it.

I was lucky today to spend the day with a smart, sensitive, interesting 10 year old and all-around cool kid. My friend thinks I gave her 6 hours of not struggling with what to do with him on spring break, but in reality she gave me 6 hours of talking about karma (with a 10 year old!! See, he is REALLY cool), helping him practice photography, getting some sunshine, and comparing thoughts on the pros and cons of being an oldest sibling. But . . . I have to then be at home and face the fact of this day.

Pain is there to keep us safe. And I know, in that way, pain is healthy. But on this day, pain doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I knew Knew KNEW that he was dying (maybe before he did), and I didn't just tell myself I was ok with it, I really was. But on this day, nothing feels exactly right because 4 years ago shots and salads and lazy conversation did have some unexpected rightness.

So, there it is. I have been writing all week, and unable to finish anything because this date has been clouding up a lot of things for me. A friend who also lost her father asked me a couple of months ago, "How long is it normal to grieve?" I said something ostensibly wise about how grief has no set timeline. I said that we all go through life with a collection of people we think we can count on, and when one goes missing, we can't expect that hole to not be a wound, and one that throbs. I told her however she felt her grief and sadness was "normal." And all of that is more easily said than done.

This is it for me. This 24 hours.

A week without logging

I have been aware that food logging is a valuable tool for managing not only my weight but any issues I face with food for a long, long time. It was mentioned to me as a calorie tracking tool when I was (well, this is shameful) 10 years old. Like most people, the idea of counting all calories consumed, every day, forever, failed before it ever began. As in Benny and Joon, "The answer is in the question." Can I successfully count calories forever? No. For lots of reasons. It's tedious and daunting, and so without my emotional buy in, it will not help me feel helped. It's also really, really easy to miscalculate, because most people don't have a lot of training on judging what a serving is, and carrying around a food scale is impractical. And, I was TEN.

The other problem with food logging, is that without some training, some counseling, and a lot of introspection and self-knowledge, it can easily devolve into just counting calories or servings of food types. Here's the problem - not all calories are created equal and neither are all people, with respect to those calories. Diabetics need to concern themselves very closely with carbs. If making a trade off, protein and fat will always be better for someone with any insulin issues - this was illustrated when someone close to me recently made a birthday cake for a diabetic and told me that she had substituted apple sauce for oil in the recipe. I quietly informed her that I'm sure it tasted good but that she had added carbs to the cake. Meanwhile, someone like my brother who is almost entirely gluten free can eat carbs, but needs to carefully consider what kind (rice, amaranth, oats, and almond flour much better than wheat flour or wheat products). If you lined up my diabetic friend, my brother, and I, and put us all on an 1800 calorie plan, where we got those calories would make a huge difference to our successful eating, but I doubt any of our food logs would match. People have particular needs because of their pathologies, because of food allergies, because of preferences (I don't care how gluten-free and protein-full cottage cheese is. I just can't do it, folks.) and because we're all special and unique like snowflakes. (smile)

Calories are special too. For me, 280 calories could be over my discretionary calorie allowance, could be what my trainer is recommending as a small bump in fat servings for a week (a really good week of almonds, bacon, and some olive oil, I might add), or could count as a way to estimate two carb servings. In my case, I need to also be very, very careful where those 280 calories come from, not just because of my food allergies (which are weird, and more extensive than I'd like. I am lucky in that strawberries and peanut butter aren't off limits, and I have it all figured out as to how to eat dairy in a way that works for me. But, I do sometimes wish I could be a grown up and drink wine or eat dried fruit. ) or my suspected insulin resistance, but because food is my kryptonite.

Like most people, I suspect it would always be better to get 280 calories of broccoli than 280 calories of M&Ms, and yes, I'm gluten sensitive, so brown rice or spaghetti squash is always going to be better than bread. But I also have to think about if the thing I'm thinking about eating is going to set off a desire to eat something ELSE. I do eat bread, about twice a week. This is less than most people eat bread in a day. and I have to carefully place it in my path because if I eat it early in the day, I will metabolize it faster, but it might also fire cravings for other bad carbs. I do eat pizza, sometimes, but I have to decide ahead of time what the "rules" are for eating off plan, and if possible, store up some discretionary eating and extra cardio to "pay for it."

The real price I pay is when something sneaks up on me and clobbers me with its enticing smell, or beguiling voice telling me that popcorn for dinner sounds like a really good idea. I have to work very carefully to avoid these moments, much the way I see alcoholics trying to remove temptation from their lives, particularly early on in their sobriety. Those addicts can choose to seek out new friends and activities, so that they will find themselves confronted with their drug less and less. They can't live in a bubble forever and will eventually be offered a glass of wine or to go to a party, of course. But they can side step it for awhile - for long enough to log some time in a new normal. I've written about this before - I can't. I can't go to a wedding without being confronted with food, or most recently, a birthday party with a lovely funfetti cake. I can't go on a date or to a friend's awesome awards ceremony without food at least being a consideration. What I can do is decide that I'll have twice as much salad on my plate as pizza, on that date, and only eat two slices, to say no-thank-you to the cake, and then get busy doing something else, and to ask someone who is getting up to bring me ONE breadstick at the awards ceremony and then drink two bottles of water and remind myself I don't need to eat dinner twice. (Having someone else get the breadstick was key, by the way, because it meant I never had to be faced with any other food choices, or a plate to fill. I've said it before - I am lucky to have awesome friends). But here's what I can't do, even if I do all of that. I can't NOT bring food into my house, and I can't not eat.

I wish I could reach down and find some supernatural ability to not eat for, like, 28 days. Like the movie I imagine I would magically, and with heartwarmingly hard-won victories and new choices, find my feet on the path of recovery if I could manage this for a month of rehab. I also imagine that if eating weren't such a necessity I'd feel released. It would be a relief because it's actually exhausting to think this hard about food every day, every meal, every snack, every choice, from the moment I wake up (with my low blood sugar screaming in my head, "Wake up! Eat. ASAP!") until I go to sleep. The only thing more exhausting is the numbing, woolly-headed feeling and accompanying guilt brought on by NOT thinking about it and discovering I ate the whole box of Cheezits. So, I choose the lesser of two exhaustions but sometimes wish I had a less thorny, less insidious, less ever-present kryptonite.

So, for those keeping score, I am eating around the following limitations and restrictions:

• Gluten sensitive. In case you didn't know, gluten is hidden in absolutely everything. (Not just things with wheat in it! Tea! Mixed spices! Fruit bars! Protein shakes!)  For me I try to have this work out to one serving or less of gluten a day, or 7-8 a week. I sometimes am way under or sometimes a bit over. (Right now, it's a bit higher because while some things are easy substitutions - e.g. eat rice instead of bread - others are more difficult and things like gluten free chips, waffles, and granola bars are expensive and I'm on a tight budget these days.) But if I'm doing well with it, it makes a big difference in my energy level, skin, and allergies.
• Allergic to MSG - no Chinese take-out for me. Boooo.
• Allergic to preservatives - this means I can almost never eat dried fruit or off a buffet. It also affects me in certain cheeses, dried fruit, and wine. So, when I eat at your house and you make something cooked in a bottle of Merlot and garnished with Craisins I'll have to politely decline.
• I do much better with dairy if it is partially broken down and lower fat, such as yogurt. (Y'all can pry the greek yogurt from my cold, dead hands. I'm unlikely to EVER give it up even if it turns out it's not as miraculous as I think it is.)
• I can only eat 4-5 servings of carbs a day, and honestly, it is better if half of them were during or before lunch.
• I avoid most soy, because, let's face it, I don't need any more hormone issues. (But I love miso soup so I haven't completely removed soy. Also, in case you don't know, soy is secretly in everything too.)
• And I hate Dill and Mayonnaise with the passion of a thousand burning nuns.

Oh yeah, and eating itself is a problem, because it might set fire to the fuse and cause me to rapidly want to consume moremoremore.

This is where planning comes in. I can read all the books I want on strategies to beat cravings (and I do) and I can go to therapy and meditate (and I DO) but the very best thing I can do is to take charge of my food AGGRESSIVELY. This means a campaign of austerity including planning meals, planning what I will cook, and then shopping for that and only that. When shopping it means being thoughtful and ascetic and feigning ignorance of the existence of trigger foods. Then, as quickly as possible, I need to cook said food, because if it sits uncooked, popcorn for dinner starts to sound like a most excellent idea. Once the food is cooked and in my fridge, it should be idiot-proof, but of course there is the matter of avoiding temptation outside my house, and exercising a lot of control inside my house when it comes to portion size, added calories, and making sure I'm getting my 1-2 servings of fruit, 4-5 servings of vegetables, 4 servings of carbs, 2-3 of dairy, 7-9 of protein, and 2-5 of fats. It's a big job, and cruel task-master, keeping track of all of this. (Note: I measure portion sizes, and meet those servings, but only measure calories on certain items. I'm not against measuring calories anymore, but this works better for me to function and not feel overwhelmed.)

So, of course, this is where tracking my food comes in. I've been using various methods to log food for 4 years. FOUR!!!! I've done it online, carried a couple of different journals around, used logging tools created by my dietician, and all kinds of permutations of these activities. One of the best things I ever heard about the value of food logging came from Weight Watchers. I have to say, Weight Watchers should probably have a disclaimer that says, "does not work for those with insulin resistance" because they do treat all carbs as if they are created equal (4 points of M&Ms are just as good as 4 points of yogurt!), alas. Still and all, I would re-pay every cent I spent there to have learned this way of thinking about logging: Logging your food means acknowledging accountability as your best weapon. If you see patterns emerging, you can tackle them. If you find meals that are working for you, or food choices that help you with portion control, you have a record. But most of all, if you mess up, you write it down in full, and then you walk away with clean hands and a fresh start because you held yourself accountable. You don't have to keep beating yourself up about it. If it means releasing judgment, if it means not always hating myself for something I did three weeks ago then I. Will. Do. It.

So, I log food. Every day. At its best, its invaluable for not only accountability but for planning. Because as I'm writing down that I had some lovely (gluten free) oatmeal with breakfast, I'm thinking about what carbs would make sense in the rest of my day - a cup of rice at lunch gives me 2 carbs, and leaves one more for dinner, maybe a pita with some hummus to get a serving of fat in? Planning and anything I can do to support it is a great predictor of success for me, even if it also increases my control-freakishness. And even when logging is not at it's best, at the very, very least it lets me check in with my trainer and he can either nod approvingly, or he can say, "Umm, two beers? Two?!"

Why then, would I not log last week? Well, for one, I was out of paper. And didn't have it in my bank account to go get some. But, then, I started wondering . . . what would happen without my clipboard to keep me in line? This article suggests that logging is a way of evaluating ourselves, and thus, supplying our own behavioral modification. I became really interested to see what new patterns would be at work, and what old pitfalls would await me.

Here's what happened.

• I still did 5 hours of cardio and nearly 3 of lifting
• I had two drinks
• I ate pizza, but only two slices
• One day I was really hungry and had 3.5 servings of dairy instead of 2-3
• I drank two diet sodas instead of one during the week
• I ate half a small bag of M&Ms but then got such a sugar-rush headache I threw them out
• I ate all the vegetables in my fridge. Like ALL of them.
• The two loaves of bread in my freezer remain there
• I did limit myself to that one breadstick at the awards banquet
• I yelled down a serious voice in my head advocating for for yo with reeses pieces on it and had half a mango instead.
• I was still anxious at each occasion where I ate food not prepared in my house
• My only big unplanned eating was a bowl of popcorn with some butter. 3 of the 4.5 cups of the popcorn count as one serving of carbs on a day when I was low on carb servings, but the rest, the butter, and eating them at 8pm were less than ideal

Now, the nature of logging as you go through the day means you have a tighter rein on what you actually ate. So, it's possible that in there, I ate an entire box of Cheezits and forgot, but I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. I ate off-plan, but not radically off plan in any given deviance, and most importantly, when I ate a big bowl of popcorn, or a breadstick, it didn't set off a chain reaction of eating everything in sight. Again, I could be mis-remembering, but since I also lost 2 pounds last week, I don't think I am.

I'm cured! Ha! Not really. Addicts are always addicts, and I will go right back to logging this week, but it's good to know that I'm headed in the right direction and building new habits in a way that is starting to take hold in my brain. New neural pathways are catching fire. They may not be able to burn faster or hotter than the old patterns YET but they are present. It took 10 weeks of grocery shopping carefully (eating healthy on a budget is the subject of another post coming soon), doing something like 95% of my own cooking, and lots, and lots of quiet time to myself to get here. (I would guess but don't know for sure that doing the cooking myself is almost as important as planning the meals and measuring the portion sizes - being intimately connected with my food makes it much easier to know what I'm eating and be very accountable but also to be very mindful when I'm eating our of my fridge.) But, there is a new consciousness taking root from all of this time I've had to do this thoughtfully, all this getting right with myself, all this meditation, reading, logging, and creating a new level of accountability for myself. It now seems like with enough attention, with enough mindfulness, and with enough professional supervision and input, I could handle birthday parties and banquets very differently some day. So, you know, check back with me in 4 years. (smile again)

Core Values

My most recent employer spent a significant amount of 2010 and 2011 navel gazing and thinking about what their values were, as an organization, and how to align goals, action plans, and ultimately department missions and work flow with that in mind.

I spent a large chunk of time in those years helping business owners and prospective business owners write and develop business plans. And, the first section of any good business plan is the mission statement. Often, if I would find items later in the plan that weren't working it was either because someone hadn't seen the longer term of logistics they were plotting. But, even more often than that I ended up in discussions with those people about checking the business decisions and progress they were planning against that stated mission.

We ask businesses and organizations to make statements of their mission and values, so why do we not ask ourselves as concretely what we strive for at our core? Someone recently, without me asking, stated simply that for him, he can strive for nothing more important than having connected deeply with his creative side and shared that in whatever way he could. It was actually . . . astounding to me. It's rare that someone can distill what most matters to them down to one sentence.

It got my mind onto what the mission statements would be of the people I love most in the world? (If I could author some of them, my bet is I have a friend whose mission statement would read,  "To pave a way of changing things for the better by a culture of learning and positive, thoughtful change." Another friend would be, "To do good by doing everything thoughtfully and well." And a third would be, "To know I chose.")  And how would it change people at large if they had not only a good grasp of their core values, but were checking in and aligning their actions and decisions and lives with that well defined core?

Is it shocking that asking myself what it feels like to change is really about thinking about what is most important to me and shifting myself to match up with that? No. And at this point, I shouldn't be surprised that my same blog-assigning friend said, "one of your next postings should describe your core values and how they drive your day to day decisions. What does it feels like when you are aligned with your core values and what did it feel like when you weren't aligned?"

It felt like a bone break. It felt like . . . it hurt so much to make every decision that I had to turn my thoughts off so I wouldn't notice. I have some experience with this. When I was in grad school, I had an adviser, who to put it mildly, was a nightmare. After stealing, well, a lot of things from me, and promising me things that she didn't deliver on, it was clear I had to leave grad school. My idea of what research was and could be was pretty wounded at that point, but, also, she was the only person working on language in my program. It was clear we couldn't move too much further forward, but also that it would be hard for me to do what I wanted to do without her. I determined that I would leave, but not without a piece of paper showing what I had fought for - not without my master's. What followed was an agonizing 4 months where she and I were in an unspoken grudge match. And because I had expressed concern about not only how she was handling her students and lab, but how my program was handling her, at that point, I was in a grudge match with the program as well.

I had no funding, so that summer I had to work a camp job from 7am until 3:30 or 5 each day, in the blazing heat and humidity, and then come home and somehow write, read, and revise every night. I settled into a pattern of cold shower immediately after work, dinner of yogurt, cucumber sticks, and vodka, and 5-7  hours of work before falling asleep on the hard wood floor underneath the paltry and ineffective air conditioner some time around midnight or 1am.

I wasn't often drunk while writing, but I wasn't often sober either. It occurred to me in the second week of this routine (such as it was) that the fact that I was crossing things off my grocery list in order to buy the vodka wasn't good. (I was so poor that summer. Ooof ) I promised myself that once I defended and revised I would take a drinking sabbatical for up to 6 months (and importantly, lived up to that promise) but I didn't stop drinking that summer. I explained to a friend, who I also used to help keep me accountable for this unhealthy behavior, that I needed to drink otherwise the voice in my head screaming, "This hurts and it is AWFUL" would be so loud that I would have no choice but to set fire to my master's and walk away. And I had locked myself down to needing to get it done so that I could walk away with more than ashes and scorched earth.

That decision offended me so deeply because it was an acquiescence to dishonesty, to fraud, to abuse. To doing the opposite of good. Nothing I was doing was going to change things in any measurable positive way - I wasn't going to change the horrible truth of how she treated students, or how the program held faculty accountable. I wasn't going to change what she had stolen from me, tangibly or metaphorically. All I was doing was making sure I didn't leave empty handed . . . which wasn't going to change my prospects significantly in the future. It was what I needed for closure, but it wasn't going to give me, or anyone else, anything bigger than that. It helped a little when in my exit interview from the department the chair admitted that the department owed me an adviser and a chance to dissertate and had let me down, but nothing could give me back those four years or the debt (financial and otherwise) that accompanied them.

That's how doing something against my core values feels. It hurts so much that I have to anesthetize. What worries me is not that I did it with vodka in 2005, but that I now do it without any conscious choice or substance involved. I realized this in mid-2011 when I was taking a respite in NJ with smart, awesome friends, and all of a sudden found that I was using a larger working vocabulary, handling more complex analysis, and feeling AWAKE. Then, startled, I realized, I had been numbing out for the months before. Waking up, showering, and then resolutely unplugging my brain so that I could go through the motions without having to look too hard at what I was doing or feeling. I said to my friend then, who happened to be the very same one who was my checkpoint during the vodka-soaked-second-master's-thesis days, "I somehow learned how to dull the roar of the voices inside me without alcohol." We both had a really long, sad, quiet moment then.

In grad school, I had aimed my life at certain accomplishments and milestones. It didn't negate my deep seated commitment to honesty, to fairness, to doing what's right, but it did back-burner some of those things some of the time. Ultimately, enough had gone wrong that I chose to leave, though I'm sure some people would tell the story differently saying I had to leave. Both things were eventually true, but one was true first. With my last job, that story was reversed, and it would have been better for me if it hadn't been. I should have made the same decision I made when I was in grad school. But . . . one of the things that made it hard to see how unhappy I was was that for a long time, I was doing some good there. And then when I wasn't, I spent an almost equal amount of time convincing myself I was making a difference. I thought I was pushing through something hard for the right reasons. Or that's what I told myself. I failed to pay attention to the fact that if something hurts so much that you have to turn down your brain, it usually means something is horribly off kilter. Pain exists for a reason, and it's to let us know when something needs attention. And usually what needs attention is for our health and well being.

Happiness isn't a value, but it is the canary in the coal mine. Someone very smart said to me, "Your core being defines the happiness you bring to your life." So many times I've seen the evidence in other people's lives that they are creating their own pile of misery. I can't pretend I haven't sometimes done the same. Or, to be clear, at least four memorable times in my life, I have signed on that dotted line for big-ticket unhappinesses. And that unhappiness was always-always-always about my choices, my actions, or something being so misaligned that even if I was acting on one value, another was slipping off the side of the proverbial table.

My values are clear to me. I don't have any hazy moments on what they are. I do have some concerns about trusting myself to act on my own best interests. I'm as self-involved as anyone, but I sometimes forget that acting against my values, even a little bit, wounds me so deeply.  So I need to make sure I sleep on things in order to check everything out with my gut and make sure my values are my first and last check point.

My values are:


Being truly awake - I identified this one very early in my life. You can't get far sleepwalking. You can look like you're doing well, walking down the street, whatever, but if you're not awake you're missing what you feel, what you see, what you hear, the chance to make choices, music, poetry, strange and weird moments, the things that you can pull together later to make sense of where you are and how you got there. I want to be AWAKE.

Honesty - I believe in all honesty, all the time. That doesn't mean I say everything at once, but it does mean I try not to leave things out, if that makes sense. It does mean I think the best thing I can do in most situations is to be honest over being nice.

Redemption - I am so bad at forgiving and forgetting, and am worst at this with myself. But I believe in second chances. (And sometimes third chances too.)

Life long learning - I think part of me would die if I stopped being interested in things I don't know about and just started spinning my wheels on things I'm already knowledgeable about. I am most alive and alert when I'm actively learning

Fighting for the right things - it matters to me to stand up when things are wrong. It doesn't have to be loud, or dramatic, but it has to happen. It matters to me to have the courage of my convictions. Conviction alone isn't enough - the courage to act on it is what makes our convictions a mission statement with an action plan attached.

Responsibility - If I commit to something, it's important to me to take responsibility for getting it done, taking care of it, and stewarding in the right way. Goldfish, work, treating people right, making changes in my life. And if I say I'm going to do something and then can't deliver, I have to own up to it.

Leveling playing fields - I believe that life isn't always fair. I believe that I learned as much from injustices as I did from mercy and fairness. I also believe that when injustices are on a large scale, and brutalize people that don't have the ability to choose other circumstances, it limits the accomplishments, the success, the right-ness of everyone else. I believe in doing what I can, however small, to locate and defend rightness, and to try and change wrong-nesses. My tool for leveling fields tends to be education and honesty, rather than bulldozers. In the same way that I think injustice makes all of us a little worse, I think that giving back makes all of us a little better, including, and maybe especially for the person doing the giving.

Words - I believe humans were built to use language to communicate. My linguistics training tells me that is about some magnificent intersection between evolution and biology and need and accidental benefits. It also tells me all kinds of nerdy things about how language is actually not always a completely efficient or effective for communication. Words fail, processing fails, wet computers in our brains fail, pressures and time and attention let us down. But, the me deep inside tells me that the trying matters. I believe in words, in writing, in language, in talking, and in communication, however imperfect and ongoing.


Your core being defines the happiness you bring to your life. Yes. This is who I am if you strip everything down. I'm not quite ready to pull this into a cleanly stated mission statement, but if I stop, and take a breath, everything that feels right to me, everything that makes my heart happy, boils down to one of these things, or a combination of them.

This is what I believe.

Change and inspiration

A new friend and I have found ourselves in a recurring conversation. The conversation goes something like this. There are two different kinds of people in the world. Almost everyone sorts themselves primarily into one of these two categories, though of course, almost nobody is an absolutist about this. There are people who enjoy following a process, having a routine, and completing tasks generally by checking things off a list. They may or may not have been involved in creating that process or generating that list, but once there is a flow chart or operations process in place a process person will follow it unless there is very strong motivation to do otherwise. Then, there are people who look at a process, list, or assignment and instantly start thinking of improvements, ways to be more efficient, or something cooler to do. These are the people who would not do well as a personal assistant or as a prep chef - they're not going to do it the way someone else wants them to do it, but rather in the way that makes the most sense to them given their knowledge, experience, what seems most pressing at the moment, and what results they place weight on. These people won't follow a recipe, but they'll happily make one up. Or take a recipe and completely deviate from it and re-invent it. And it will at least be interesting, and likely be very good.

It will not surprise anyone to hear me say I am more the former than the latter (I know. Me, solid and boringly process oriented. You guys are all going to have a heart attack and die from that surprise). At least in things I am less confident in, I really want external validation or need to be seen as clearly doing a good job and so I'll revert to a process or shadow someone else's footsteps before I carve my own path. I once stood in a friend's kitchen an chopped root vegetables into a dice finer than a Kitchen Aid could have delivered, and was completely happy for that hour. (And if I do say so, made a fine white-goy-girl contribution to a Sephardic Orthodox Pesach with that salad) When I bake cookies, they are placed in rows as they cool. (Unless Rob is around to make fun of my and push my boundaries all at once by quietly and wickedly rearranging and de-row-ifying them. Smile) And I am the queen of checklists.

It's not an absolute for me, and there are places where I am more creative. There's no right and wrong in my writing life, so there's no operations process to measure myself against. More to the point, my writing isn't anyone else's writing so it's not really worth the time to compare apples to watermelons when I consider my writing. But if I'm baking, my mother is somewhere metaphorically over my shoulder, so yes, I am following the recipe exactly. Then again if I'm cooking? Anything could happen. I'll cook following a recipe only a few times a year and when I do, I'm usually starting to alter it about two steps into the process . . . vegetable broth here instead of water, less sugar there, and this should have rosemary in it!! I also stopped following anyone else's process for teaching after teaching my first course and find it reee-heeally constraining now if I'm limited by curriculum, materials, or too-specific expectations of what I'll deliver in any class meeting. So, I'm not all process, but I'm certainly not firmly planted in the camp of innovation either.

I am driven, often, by concern about doing things well. I suppose I never felt particularly competent at anything growing up, and didn't have a lot of confidence. That started to change for me in college, but it was late in coming. In the back of my head, there is usually a recurring floating thought of, "Am I doing this well enough?" And doing something well is easy to confuse with doing something right. I often feel like what I'm really hoping for is an unambiguous right way to do something so that there is no question of how well I'm going about whatever is in front of me. So, if handed a checklist, I'm likely to follow it for a decent bit before questioning if it's actually working to get the results I want. Over the years, I've gotten better and better at really analyzing what I'm doing or what I'm being asked to do to in terms of what goals I'm trying to achieve and then thinking about the process I'm following, working backwards from the result I want to the process to get there, further back to the starting point I'm standing at present. But if pressed, if it's important to me to seem like I'm doing a good job, or to be seen as being reliable or competent, I'll stfu and follow the process, whatever it is.

There are good things about this, in that I have learned how to be extremely driven, determined, and to make a process work. I am reliable and can often get significantly reproducible results. If given a goal, I will set to meeting it, and then exceeding it as soon as possible. I take everything seriously, even blog "assignments" my friend gives me . . . which this topic is. I will get things in on time, and early. I can translate what someone else was doing into a process, and then write a manual on it. And, no bed that I sleep in ever doesn't have hospital corners. Process people are good for some things, methinks.

The downside is that I often get . . . stuck on things I don't like or aren't working, and fail to evaluate if there is another, better way to tackle it. If I'm teaching, I'll back out and try again. If I'm writing, I'll take a break and then come back and see a better route to go. If I'm cooking, or if I'm doing a job function I've already excelled at, I'll suggest better ways to go about things. But, the rest of the time . . . hospital corners, cookies in rows, and assignments done the day before they're due.

Recently my therapist said to me that with "my personality type," skills, and accomplishments, I am the kind of person who can do something that "changes the world." (Not my words. His. I thought, "umm, really? The WORLD?") He said that people like me who have balanced out all of the pathologies, analyzed, processed, and integrated can write books, give speeches, become president, start movements. (Sidenote: It's always a little hard for me when he talks about "my personality type" because he hasn't really told me what he thinks that is . . . but I'm going with it.) This shocked me, since I'm such a routines person and fall so heavily on the "process" side. Aren't we the boring people? Aren't we the people who become the quiet backbone of the exciting, innovative people's work? Then again, I did very deliberately go to a college where absolutely everything was open ended and structure was there only if you created it for yourself so . . . maybe.

Of course, at the end of this impassioned speech he was giving me, there was a huge BUT. And it was, "you can do amazing things BUT you won't be able to do anything but make the same choices over and over if you don't change this pattern right now. " He was deeply convicted and passionate about this. Any of you who read this blog will not be surprised that some of the things he named as needing to change were making the safe (easy) choice, steeping myself in judgment and obligation, leading to feeling resentful, and taking care of others or considering it my responsibility to fix others before myself. We had talked a lot about patterns in my life, patterns in my family, and hard choices I had made in the last 20 or so years so none of this was surprising to me. And he's not the fist person to note that the overwhelmingly negative voices in my head sometimes outweigh my ability to function as highly as I could - to hear the creative muses, to feel my feelings on time, to think bigger than my little corner of the universe.

I don't actually want to become president, or be a politician of any kind. But moving people, making people think, generating and sharing big ideas does sound like the person I set out to be when a much younger me left home. So I had to sit up and pay attention when he said this. Not because he was flattering me, but because he was describing the painful way in which I have often found myself painted into a corner, holding the offending brush, paint gleaming as it drips down my arm and wondering how I got there.

But changing things means more than just not picking up the brush. It means not going near paint for a long time. It means avoiding corners and their very tempting gravity.

It means doing almost everything differently and shedding all the things that were holding me back before. It means that when I think about working out, I have to remind myself that it's now my pleasure to work out, and get out of the house and out of my head. It means seeing food differently, and giving myself a hand when I get it right. It means I have to find the "grateful" in folding my laundry, which I used to avoid. It means I have to not spend time on people or places that aren't good for me or that hold the same kind of dark gravity corners do. It means considering possible jobs I didn't in the last couple of years, and imagining myself making not just those tasks work, but that lifestyle work. It means asking potential employers hard questions instead of just nodding my head and accepting a job offer in a parking lot an hour after my final interview (which . . . perhaps I did about 6 years ago. Perhaps).

If I look very thoughtfully and brutally at the last two years of my life I see that I fought to find the time and opportunity to put singing back into my life, but somehow stopped listening to music for fun. Not at work, not in the car, and rarely at home. I made lists of what I should and shouldn't eat, but basically stopped cooking - which is really sad since I cook pretty darn well. I started writing, but only read about 5 books last year. How does that make sense? All of this speaks to me that I was very, very unhappy but avoiding staring that unhappiness in the eye. Had I looked long and hard at it, I would have been forced to make some changes, and as I wrote to a friend earlier this week, "You know how flexible and gracious I am about change." (He was my boss and the lead Sensei at a Karate studio and once, at work, gave me the "Most flexible and adaptable" award. Ha! It was ironic because I could do full splits but would have to take a moment to get over my attachment when he needed me to change lesson plans. )

So, now I'm scared . . . you know, more than a little . . . but happy. Sometimes it takes a scary moment, or 2 months of them, to force change. It's funny to me, actually, how I got launched into this by other people's decisions. I am not sure I would have made these decisions on my own, but I am weirdly grateful for them, and learning to find the grateful in folding my laundry too. It's also amusing to me because there are people in my life who see my rows of cookies, and want to mess with them to point out how structured and "process" I am. (I'll note, some of those same people roll their eyes at my itemized shopping lists but are forced to admit that they helped get the shopping done faster, and with no return trips. Ahem.) But then there are people who look at me and say, "you are so brave. You'll just go out there, see what needs to change, and do it." Those are actual words from another friend.

I suppose process vs. innovation is relative. I won't keep doing things once I'm sure they aren't getting me where I need to go. But, I don't always see what isn't working for me personally. As a consultant, I was incredibly skilled at examining other people's data and summarizing what I thought was the right story to tell about successes and areas of improvement from that data. I would do my homework with this data, engineer a conversation where someone would begin to see for themselves what I had already seen, and then use it to convince them of some things we might work on changing together. I think my instructors thought of me very often as being the harbinger or agent of change. Or maybe they just thought I was pushing them to break out of doing the same things over and over and making them change . . . sometimes painfully.

If I think very carefully about it, then, change for me is about three things. The data demonstrating the need, the will to do it, and a thought about how to change or how to go about doing things differently. But then, I also have to say, I need to unglue myself from whatever structure existed before, and that requires some inspiration to motivate me because who has two thumbs and loves structure? Not me. I have no idea what you're talking about. So then . . four things.

But, here is something else I know. There is a limit to how much change a single person can make. Running an entire region by myself for more than three years, I learned that lesson over, and over, and over again at work. I'm not sure it's different if the thing I am trying to change is me. Someone I really think highly of commented early  in this blog that the crux of what I was writing was boiled down to, what would I change, how would I change it, and how much can I change. I think that is still the main focus .  .  . just a lot of things have changed since then! I still need this accountability and mirror. And I'm still seeking other opportunities to push me when I feel like digging my heels in and pointing to  a process I'm comfortable with.

An important friend told me recently, that you never know who is watching you. Who is inspired by you. Who is moved by you. I hadn't thought about that in a long time. I think I . . . focused so deeply on the process that worked for me at work last year, that I stopped thinking about how I looked from the outside. I stopped thinking of myself as an agent of change for those people, even though that's what I was, to them or anyone. My friend is, I think, a little supernatural. She and I hadn't spoken live in weeks when she gave me a blog assignment last week that spoke to the exact thing I had been struggling with in that moment. This week she asked me to write about this just as I started digging deep down into what needs to change for me in order for things to be truly different. And in the same moment where someone else said to me, "I see and appreciate what you've done, what you've walked through, the struggles you've done. You have more courage than anyone I know."

I want that to be true. I want to be brave enough to do the right thing, even when it's not the easy thing. I want to always walk out the door with the courage of my convictions. I want to have the insight to look at my own life the way I used to analyze business data, and pick out what is working, what isn't, and how to change things so I keep the things that are working, and kick the things that aren't straight out the door.

The thing is, I want it to be true more these days because I want to inspire myself to do things, than I want to do it for others. I want, more than anything, to stop caring so friggin much about other people's expectations. I want to define for myself what winning looks like, and then do that. And. Nothing. Else. All the time. I recently said to someone, "when it comes to getting through school, I think inspiration matters more than we often talk about." I was inspired when I was in school. I haven't been since . . . I'm not sure when it wandered off but it now seems to me to be the only way for me to get back to being happier.

It's strange, right? To say I want to be more self-centered? I think it is, but it is also probably the only way for me to be the change I want to see in my own life.

I might be onto something. I sleep better now, read more, write more, listen more, eat healthier, enjoy my runs, and feel somewhat released from judgement. I've made it this far in the process, able to sleep at night (more than I used to!) and look myself in the eye in the morning, and I've done it mostly by not caring what other people think I should do. So, now the voice in my head is usually mine, and not the voice of what I think someone else thinks. That means, if I lie very still, I can hear what I really want and need now, and if I'm feeling judged or penned in by a process or habit, I'm doing it myself.

Change is painful, but funny too. I laugh a lot these days.