I also have to-do-list software. Then I found myself, after running, checking “running” off in three places. And then I thought that my journaling had gone a bit too far.

I started to record all these things in order to measure improvement. I wanted to achieve certain goals and I started of actually measuring whether I achieved them or not. Otherwise one can think that one exercises at least three times a week only to find that, oops, a week has gone by, and then another. That’s all very valid. I also love my morning pages, so I sit down and write them almost daily. And then I don’t for a few days, and then I go back to them. No problem.

I do love putting my exercise time in my calendar, and with the toggle of a button I can see all the days that I exercised in one place, and then I feel all virtuous.

The food journal, that’s another thing. I have started writing down what I eat many times in my life. And I started again on January 1st. At first I was all good, but then I missed a day here and there, then a whole week, and now I find that I’m really not all that interested in keeping a food journal. I don’t count calories or anything. I just write down “1 piece of toast with almond spread, 1 glass of orange juice, 1 cup of black tea with 1 piece of sugar”. Of course food journaling can help when you want to know what’s going on but I don’t need to write down “ate a whole bag of potato chips because I was bored and angry” to see why I have gained weight. There are people who eat better when keeping a food journal, I’m not one of them. I have food journal entries laying around the house from years ago that go, “Was completely pissed and therefore ate a bag of chips, one bag of gummy bears, half a chocolate bar, and two beers. Feel lousy and bloated. Half an hour later: finished the chocolate.” (Just typing this makes me nauseous these days. I think I have come a long way.)

So I try to be good with the food journaling but what’s the point. It helps to show me that the treats I give myself are not exactly treats because they happen just about every day. These days I’m rather good with food, mostly, and so I will skip the food journal.

But you know, every time I write a paragraph here I remember yet another journal of mine, and add it to the first paragraph. It’s clear that the record-keeping has gone out of hand. I’m not quite as insane as that list of journals implies, though, because there are quite a few of these journals that I no longer keep. But right now I’m on the verge of giving up on record-keeping altogether. These journals were meant to be helpful for me, not something to occupy me all the time. I think I might get rid of one or two.

It’s not like I bought about twenty notebooks one day and thought, “From now on I’ll record everything!” I just bought a morning pages book in 1999, well the first of many. And I’ve had general notebooks even longer than that. I remember going into the one big store in the small town where I lived until 1986 to buy a notebook because my life had reached a level of complexity too high for keeping it all in my head. That was about the same time that I started using a calendar as well. Until then there was the family wall calendar for things like doctor’s appointments and that was it.

Let’s see – the morning pages stay because I like them. Having several general notebooks makes it a bit hard to find things later but still I like it. And I have a system. Sort of. So they stay as well. Also the knitting notebook, and the place were I record my reading. I started cataloguing my books when I had bought the same book twice one day. I hadn’t remembered that I already had it. The gratitude journal didn’t really work out for me. When I read back it only made me realize how unhappy I really was. the control journal for housework never really worked either. I do know that I have to clean the house at least once a week. I don’t really need a checklist because a look at the house itself will tell me what to do.

I’m quite attached to weighing myself daily. I even have an iPod app that gives me progress reports on how I’m doing with weight loss. I think I’ll keep that. Apart from that I think I might take some time off from journals. I have taken a bit of time off from trying to improve myself in all areas at once anyway.

So for now I’ll accept that I’m both journaled out and self-helped out. I take a break. And I won’t create a new task on my electronic to-do-list that’s called: take time off from journaling, repeat daily until further notice. I promise.

The third month after a new year’s resolution is always a bit slow. Most years this would be the point where I gave up. Like most people I start with a lot of enthusiasm in January, fall of the wagon in February, and in March I’d be giving up. But not this year. As I told you before I’m making these resolutions to become happy. So far they are:

1. Go to bed on time.
2. Pick up after myself.
3. Write 500 words of fiction at least six times a week.
4. Think about the things I love about my family, students, and friends.
5. Exercise three times a week or more.

And I can tell you that I feel like I’m playing this party game (it’s German) where somebody starts by saying, “I’m packing a suitcase and I’m taking – a hat.” And then the next person says, “I’m packing a suitcase and I’m taking – a hat and an umbrella.” and the next, “I’m packing a suitcase and I’m taking – a hat, an umbrella, and an elephant.” and so on. Good thing the year only has twelve months, don’t you think? So here’s this month’s report:

1. I’m still not going to bed on time! I can report, though, that sleep is directly related to happiness. It’s very easy: if I sleep enough I’m easy-going, nice, patient, and happy; when I don’t sleep enough I’m cranky, irritable, forgetful, prone to mistakes, and don’t get anything done.
   Still, every single day at 9.30 I think, “Oh, it’s not that late, I can still watch something on TV, read, write, knit, whatever.” at 10.15 I think, “Well, I should be in bed by now but if I hurry it’s not that bad.” and then I just sit a little longer only to go to bed at 11.30.
   I’ve watched myself, I do this every single night. Any every night I think that something else is at fault. It’s my husband who wanted to watch an episode of DS9 with me, it’s my son who went to bed too late so that my evening routine got screwed, it’s the knitting project where I just want to knit one more row, it’s the fight I had that made me unable to calm down, it’s the book that was so gripping, it’s the e-mail that came in (and why I’m checking e-mail at that hour is fodder for yet another post), well, you get the drift.
2. I’m better at picking up after myself. As always when I become aware of it, the minute I do it I feel better. This doesn’t mean that the house is all tidy or clean but there are less small messes lying around, and that’s a very good thing. I have to keep working on it, though, already there’s a stray ball of yarn on the dresser, a half-empty water glass on the desk, and assorted papers all over the house. I also would like to find a solution for the stuff I’m currently keeping on top of the fridge, like my PDA, and it’s keyboard, pens, cables and such. the kitchen has become my second office/studio since I still have to spend my evenings there. My son is sleeping in his bed all right, but he still wants one of us nearby all the time. I don’t really mind spending my evenings there but I do mind the stuff I put there.
3. I will have to change that resolution to “write at least 500 words five times a week” because that’s the most I can get to. I’m still stuck with my story, and therefore I haven’t been as enthusiastic with my writing as I had wished for but I did write. Most weeks I wrote about 2,500 words, and today when I printed my story out in full I ended up with an impressive stack of paper. I think my problem with being stuck results from the fact that I only ever have written very small increments of this story, I don’t have chapters or scenes or even lists of characters. And because I’m acting under time constraints every single day I never find the time to look up the name of that tall blonde woman that keeps reappearing. And that’s just stupid. I downloaded a writing software and will use Easter break to go through what I have.
   I’m happy to report that writing those measly 500 words makes me happy every single time I do it. And it doesn’t matter if the writing is good or bad, or I’m feeling stuck or not, it never fails.
   Also, I remember when writing the one NaNoWriMo first draft that I still like I had the same feeling of being stuck and boring through most of it. And when I read it I couldn’t tell.
4. I’m struggling with the ‘”think about the things I love about the people around me”-resolution in a massive way. But every time I remember and try it it makes me happy. Instead of thinking about the fact that I have to work now, and sit there listening to the same pieces played badly over and over again I think about what I like about that student, and how he or she has come a long way. And by this little trick of the mind I find myself anticipating the students instead of dreading the work. This tool also makes me realize how much I still love my husband after all these years. We both work on being nice and polite towards each other, and of giving each other and our son frequent hugs. Definitely a win-win.
5. I’m especially proud to report that I am actually exercising three times a week or more. I have been doing my running and walking thing for six weeks now, and I’m actually able to run for twenty minutes straight (well, very slowly) without keeling over. I’m still doing this in the safety and comfort of my own room which is a bit silly, but when I ventured outside into the garden last week I found that, yes, running in the grass is very different of running very small laps inside, and that it’s hayfever season. So for now I’m staying indoors. After finishing my nine weeks of training I will go outside, and hopefully even run with my husband. He is very patient with the unfit.
   In related news I did lose about a pound of weight, not that much but still a very exciting new trend. And if I ever manage to get enough sleep I hope to maybe lose another pound in the near future.

I also went to a really nice tap dancing workshop one day, and did some yoga on two days. Seems I’m moving again, which makes me very happy, indeed.

My new resolution for this month is to play the piano every day. So far I’ve been playing and not playing on and off but I’m making a bit more time for it, and that’s a very good thing.

The other things that made me happy were that I bought two new spindles, and my new project of spinning and knitting a cardigan. I had been all sensible and told myself not to buy any new spinning fiber before I had spun up all that I had, and then I sat there spinning the same oatmeal colored roving day in and day out. This has been an ongoing project for years now, and while I will finish spinning that eventually I started to feel a bit down looking at that oatmeal brown especially when the weather was not at all spring-like. I went wild, ordered some new roving, and now I’m busy spinning bright orange silk and merino and I love it.

Sometimes it’s doing the sensible thing that makes me happy, and sometimes it’s doing the wild thing. As you know, “It’s not easy being green”:

We all have these things that we think we should be doing more of, or that we want to do more of. I bet that each of you has a list like:

• write more on my blog,
• write more novels,
• write more songs,
• spend more time with my child/children,
• exercise more,
• clean the house more,
• spend more time with my significant other,
• be more happy,
• meditate more often,
• spend more time with friends,
• lose more weight,
• spend more time in the garden,
• finish more projects
• get more sleep

You all know your own “more of”-list.

And now I’m wondering, what is it that I want less of? Because you can’t always put more and more and more into your days. They are quite crowded as they are, aren’t they?

In my case I have this feeling that I already slimmed my life down to the essentials. I can’t really do less. Of course there are quite a few things in there that I don’t like doing but the consequences of not doing them would be quite unpleasant. Taxes, meetings with relatives, kindergarten organizational stuff (I just spent three days looking for my son’s recorder that got lost, for example. Three days of mentally being tied up with a dumb piece of plastic. I’m glad to say that I found it in the end, but still.)

So, most things that I could do less of involve either things that are really necessary, or things that are really pleasant. The only thing I’m sure I want to have less of in my life is procrastination. It takes a lot of my energy and time, and it’s neither pleasant nor necessary. And I might be able to streamline my time at the computer a bit, and my housework and such. But other than that I’m at a loss. I also know that I will be thinking about this for the next few decades so there is no need to rush it.

What’s with you, what do you want more of in your lives, and what do you want less of?

This is the third year that I have been choosing a word of the year. In 2007 it was “effortlessness” which made me give up on everything, in 2008 it was “healing” which made me realize that I’m far from healed, and also I got pointed towards therapy over and over again, I don’t know, maybe that’s a sign or something. Nevertheless some things got better, so there was actual healing in some areas of my life where I didn’t even realize I was in need of it, like my marriage.

This year I had the feeling that I needed something different, and so the first word that spoke to me was “discipline”. If you don’t know about the practice of choosing a word for the year, I got the idea from Christine Kane, who wrote about it at least here and here (the second link will lead you to a series of posts, go there – you’ll enjoy them).

So, discipline it was. That’s only fitting since this year seems to be all about getting back on track – again. I already had the feeling that I needed to re-cultivate my “inner parent“. Usually I know fairly well what I “should” be doing but mostly I don’t do it. Which is really lame, and has made me unhappier, more tired, and heavier over the past two years or so. For the whole time that I un-changed all of my new shiny and healthy habits, one at a time, I resolved to get back on track. Every single day. But every single day found myself, knitting in the midst of dirty dishes, dreading the grocery shopping, procrastinating for as long as five days about it. Each week I would firmly decide to do the shopping on Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday, and sometimes it would be Monday until I went and got something to eat for my family.

I know it’s pathetic, and it’s not very good for my self-esteem but I also know that I’m not the only one on the planet doing silly things like this. So, starting on December 27th or so, when I felt like this was about to be my beginning of the new year, I got a bit more no-nonsense about my decisions. So, right now, it’s no question of whether I tidy the kitchen in the evening or leave it until morning, I just tidy it in the evening, regardless of how I feel. Also I do my morning routine which consists of meditation, morning pages, and another round of tidying and cleaning.

For the past two weeks I even have been doing the grocery shopping on Thursdays, and some rudimentary house-cleaning on Fridays. I always want to put off the cleaning (and the shopping) until the weekend, and on weekends I always have the feeling that now is the time for knitting and sewing, and reading, and such. Then I think, “But I can always do it on Monday.” which I then don’t and another week goes by with dust bunnies all over the house.

So, discipline turns out to be a very good word for me for this year. Since I’m not procrastinating as much I have more energy, I’m going to bed on time (again more energy), and I don’t spend all my time and energy worrying about things I should be doing.

When I chose discipline, though, I had the feeling that if I only concentrated on that I would soon feel deprived, and resentful, and so I chose a second word to focus on – abundance. I want to concentrate on the fact that there is enough of everything in the world, even energy and time, that I don’t have to hold on to things I don’t love and need, and that there always will be more.

So far this also has worked very well. While there have been a few students quitting during the past months there seem to be more coming as replacements. When I’m not afraid that there never will be cake any more in my life it’s easier to eat just the one piece that makes me feel good instead of the two or three I usually would be eating.

2008 was not the best of years for me but I have the feeling that 2009 will be decidedly better.

Did you choose a word of the year? Will you? Tell me.

It all began last Thursday, when I realized that since my husband, who is lactose-intolerant, seems to be okay with lactose-free butter, cream cheese, and such I would be able to make a lactose-free Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (“Black Forest Cherry Cake”, I assume) for his upcoming birthday. I have never done such an elaborate cake (three layers, lots of whipping cream, chocolate batter, cherries, and decorating) in my life. So I had to make it into a project, complete with research, lists, the purchase of supplies, and a timetable to get it ready on time.

Then, on the same day, my mother-in-law approached me with a newspaper clipping of a fabric sale. Because my son had told her that he wanted to have a dolphin costume for carnival. Um. I really had hoped he had forgotten. I have tried to steer him towards nice pirate costumes, and books, and stories for months now, to no avail. Because the moment somebody told him the motto of this year’s kindergarten carnival party (above and under the sea) he wanted to be a dolphin. Now I’m stuck with the task of constructing, and sewing a dolphin costume. I thought I had found a clever way to make it easy when I found a how-to in a blog, but that costume was immediately rejected by my picky son. He wants one that looks like this. Which is for adults, has fans and ventilation and costs somewhat about 1,000€.

I spent most of Saturday researching dolphin costumes, thinking about construction, picking out fabric, and ordering some. Both my son and my husband told me they’d help with this but then, none of them can sew.

The third project was another upcoming family event. We have been invited to celebrate the birthdays of my husband uncle and aunt with them This shouldn’t be a problem at all, only I found myself worrying about every aspect of the whole thing on and off. What to wear? Will we go by train or car? (They’re living a little more than 100 km away.) When we go by train, how long would that take? Would they have room enough to take all four of us in their car from the station? How will the weather be? They are living in a place where people go to have skiing vacations. Our car isn’t exactly up to that. When we go by train how will we take the car seat with us? And on and on.

For once I decided to accept that I am a person who will worry about these things way too early. That telling myself not to worry doesn’t work. So I sat down, researched timetables, routes, printed out maps, ordered a lighter car seat for our son, discussed everything with both my husband and my mother-in-law, and now I’m set. I asked my mother-in-law to ask her brother-in-law if his car is big enough, and otherwise to please ask her other son if they could pick up one of us at the train station. Now I’m much more at peace with the whole thing, I have done all I can, for now.

I thought these projects were enough but then I got an invitation on ravelry to join a group planning the first ever German raveler meeting. I looked at it, and I could go because it’s the last weekend of summer vacation. Then I took a look at the workshops they offer. I wasn’t interested much. Then I saw that they are still looking for people to lead various workshops. And then I volunteered to hold one on sock construction according to Cat Bordhi. Then I started worrying again. Trains, hotels, workshops, what to wear (it’s in September, mind you). How to do the workshop. I even started mapping out a plan for the workshop, and again I found that I probably will continue doing this over and over again, until I write it down. So, today I might be doing just that. Sit down and plan a workshop I’ll be giving in September.

Seriously, my brain feels like it’s bursting. I’m longing for the promise of “mind like water” but I’m doubtful if I can achieve that in any amount of time. Everywhere I look in this house there is something screaming “do me!”, “clean me!”, “put me away!”. We’re slowly getting there but then there’s still the other things I already started like: the knitting projects currently on the needles, the knitting projects I just ordered the yarn for, the stories I started writing that aren’t finished yet, the finished knitting that still needs taking pictures of it, the 1,047 things I have to remember, people I have to call, e-mails I have to write. Things like “fill out this slip and bring it to kindergarten on Thursday”, “ask so-and-so about this”, “remind so-and-so of that”, buy this, take that away, go there, do this, and don’t forget anything.

It’s not so much about time management, it’s about brain management, and about emotions management. I have written about this in a post titled “How to be creative when you don’t have the time (part 3)“. Time to revisit myself maybe.

Since I never do that (part of me still thinks that if I miss a meal I’ll drop dead) there’s only one conclusion to draw: journaling my food intake isn’t working. I did find journaling useful when I first started to become more conscious about my eating habits years and years ago but these days it’s not as much about the unconscious inhaling of junk food anymore.

As of this day I release myself from the task of writing down everything I eat.

Phew.

So, now what to do about my size and weight? For the past year or so my motto has been “Eat more, move less.” with rather predictable results. Today in the morning before breakfast and dressing I weighed in at 79.2 kilos (174.6 lbs). That’s about ten kilos (almost twenty pounds) more than I feel comfortable with. Though I have to admit that when I was at that weight for the last time I still had the feeling of being too big. (My height is 1.74 m, a bit more than 5 ft. 8.)

In my head I’m still a lean person that’s just been a bit too heavy for a short time but if I’m more realistic I have to say that I have been overweight for about eight years now with a short intermezzo of being merely slightly too heavy for about half a year or so. In my head I have been on the verge of losing weight again any moment now. For more than a year. While constantly gaining.

And it’s not like I don’t know where it’s coming from, I am the one who, every single day, has “just one more treat”, “just one more sandwich”, or “just this snack”. “Just this once” is not helping me if it’s happening every single day. In the past few weeks there have been times when I stole my son’s candy, and when I broke every single rule about food that I ever made to help myself.

This is not about beating me up. It’s just my attempt at looking at the situation just as it is.

So. I’m heavier than I would like to be, and I’m not as fit as I would like to be. Is this really a problem?

No, really. What if I stayed at this weight for the rest of my life? It’s heavy but it’s not grossly overweight. I’m still fitting into regular sized clothes (thanks to stretch jeans). While I do feel a bit uncomfortable in my bathing suit that doesn’t stop me from going swimming. In fact, my weight doesn’t stop me from enjoying anything I like. The only thing is that I have put off buying a new pair of jeans for months now because I still hope to be able to fit into a smaller one. Any day now. It is as if I were secretly waiting for a visit from the weight loss fairy. One morning I’ll wake up and I’ll look the same as in 1996 again. And everything in between would have been a bad dream.

Why 1996, you might ask? Well, in the summer of 1996 I just had lost weight, and I was in the best physical shape of my entire life. I did step-aerobics, weight-lifting, and walking almost every day, and I weighed something around 65 kg. There’s a picture of me, taken at our annual summer party that year where I look really great. I had that picture of me on my fridge for years as a motivational tool, until I suddenly realized I’ll never look like that again, even if I weigh the same, and exercise the same, because I’m actually 12 years older now.

And that’s okay. This is not about turning back time. In fact I’m not so sure what this is about but I find that I don’t care about my weight or appearance enough to change my eating habits consistently. That’s the fact. All this talk about “I have lost a pound, hurray!” and “I have gained a pound, drama!” will amount to nothing.

My lack of fitness is the thing that bothers me more. I don’t like being out of breath so easily, I don’t like not being flexible, and I don’t like that beer cases and the groceries seem to get heavier every week. My current fitness regimen of a leisurely stroll every three days doesn’t really cut it. So, again, for about the hundredth time my goal is to do some moving every other day. Apart from my walks to kindergarten and grocery stores.

As for the eating I’m really tired of hearing myself setting goals and announcing the new shiny me only to revert to my old sluggishness immediately afterwards. On the other hand I was mightily impressed by another blogger’s account of how she quit smoking by just seeing herself as a non-smoker, and I’ll try that again.

You know, I don’t really care for sweets. They make me feel weak. And potato chips. Blech. Who would want to eat potato chips for dinner? I always feel so heavy and bloated afterwards. And really, I’m not that hungry. You know, I really have to move. If I don’t exercise for a day or two I’m going crazy.

Well, at least I’m trying.

I had the child, and, as a lot of you know already, there still were hormones. breast-feeding hormones that make you not only a bit dumb, and forgetful, no, you also start to burst into tears for no apparent reason. (On the other hand I was like that when pregnant too.) Top that with serious sleep deprivation, and you end up with a woman quite different from the one I was before.

Still, a year later, breast-feeding was over, I was sleeping a bit more – not enough of course – and so I waited for myself to turn normal again. You know, with a functioning brain. One that didn’t forget everything. I felt foggy and mushy, as if I had to make do with a blunt mind. Since it clearly couldn’t be the hormones anymore, I blamed it on lack of sleep.

I already told you that I went to my doctor because I started to have my period about every three weeks which is a bit too often, and that I started to take medicine for it. Agnus castus to be precise with a helping of Vitamin B for additional help with PMS. Well, imagine my surprise when, after a while, my brain went out of its foggy, mushy state. For the first time since April 2002 I almost feel like myself again.

So it seems that indeed hormones had been making me dull, and forgetful, and put me in a low mood for six years.

It’s a bit embarrassing to be so driven by hormones. I feel that my body shouldn’t work like that. It should just function properly without me paying much attention. Please?

Notice, too, that I said “almost myself again”. I fear I will never regain all of my mind power back. And I’m a bit scared of menopause. The time when hormones will go wonky again. I feel that almost 30 years of PMS is enough.

I thought, I’d share though because there might be others out there blaming their foggy brains to lack of sleep when there might be other things responsible too.

Yesterday my husband and I had one of these mornings where we talk, and talk, and talk, about us, and our relationship, and especially the problematic aspects of our relationship.

This, in particular, went on about me not doing housework. Well, not much anyway, and much less than my share. My husband kept asking me what he should do to deal with this. A reasonable approach would be to tell me that he wants me to do certain things, and then I’d go and do them, and everything would be alright. Another approach would be to assign certain work to each of us, then both would do their share, and everything would be alright. Alas, though I know that he’s unhappy with both the state of the house, and the huge amount of work that he has, I keep procrastinating about everything. (Right now, for example, I should have done the kitchen already, made myself a pot of tea, should have written my morning pages, and be on my way to cook lunch. Ahem.)

We both tried everything reasonable, and in the end the housework status between us is little better than about 14 years ago when we moved in with each other. He, of course, like a lot of women do, could just resign to the fact that I’m a lazy chauvinist pig, and do it all himself but then he would have no energy left for his music, something much more important than clean sinks. Unfortunately, we both need to have clutter-free and reasonably clean surroundings in order to be creative.

When he kept asking me what to do, and I couldn’t really say anything besides “I promise to do better.” which isn’t really helpful because I promised the same thing decades ago and about a millions times since then (and I am doing better than that, only this better isn’t very good), I resorted to pulling cards. I figured that might be helpful.

I pulled two cards for myself, one for help with the housework problem, and one to look at my life at general. Well. The solution to the housework-problem obviously is (besides just doing it): Priorities. For everything new something old has to go.

“Current routines, habits and even types of free times must be sacrificed so that you can open up to new energies.” (Sonia Choquette“Ask Your Guides Oracle Cards”)

Duh. That’s where I got my headline from. The book that accompanies the cards, I mean.

Because I still need to lose weight. Another week of beer, beer, Bavarian food, and extra helpings of ice cream, and sweets, thrown together with a definite lack of exercise has somehow failed to produce weight loss. I wonder why that is. Of course I know that I have to let go of, let’s say, eating handfuls of gummy bears at night, only I can’t really grasp the concept that this particular, tiny, innocent looking gummy bear, there in my hand, is the one that makes the difference between weight loss and gain. Surely this particular bite of pork roast can’t be changing anything? If I eat a bit less for breakfast? Please?

Seems like there is still something for me to learn. By the way I pulled a card for my husband too, to find a solution to the “Susanne isn’t doing her fair share of housework”-problem, and his said: Celebration. Seems like there’s still hope.

The card I pulled for my life in general said: Live from Your Spirit, always a nice one. And there it was, saying,

“If you feel that everything you’re doing right now isn’t working, or that every situation you face is working against you, be glad!” (Sonia Choquette: “Soul Lessons & Soul Purpose Oracle Cards”)

What? Be glad. As if. And then it goes on,

“Above all take a close look at how much of your behavior is simply an unsavory, unconscious “goulash” of conditioning acquired from childhood, peer pressure, the media, society, or even past lives, and not a reflection of your true spirit.”

It said I should eliminate overthinking and bad habits. Oops. (In German I’d say, “Treffer, versenkt.” that hit right between the eyes.)

I’m at a point where I don’t have much hope left that I’ll be able to do it. On the other hand I refuse to remain stuck in my old habits. If only they weren’t so comfortable and familiar.

It’s funny because if you back into my archives and look at what I wrote in the beginning of this blog you’d see that at that point I was quite hopeful that I could conquer my old bad, unconscious habits and build new, healthy, shiny ones. Now I’m telling myself that I can do it again, and again, and again, regardless of how long I’ll have to practice, and how often I will have to start over. All the while my poor husband will be suffering. And all this about things like cleaning, and eating.

What would you do in our place?

So far I only read the book once, and – I’m sad to tell you – reading the book doesn’t really change much. I will have to change my behavior. Again. But that’s not what I want to write about today. I want to write about one of the first tools that she gives you, right after the Morning Pages and Daily walks, both things I have been doing almost daily for the past nine years. That tool is that you keep a food journal. It is for recording what you eat, and when, and how you feel, and sometimes for writing instead of eating.

I have found myself strangely reluctant to start this food journal despite the fact that I already bought one, and have been carrying it around in my purse for the past week, and despite the fact that I think it’s a great idea, and will help me a lot, and despite the fact that I unearthed food journals that I kept in 2001 and 2003 and found them very interesting to read. Or I might say insightful and a little disturbing. So, despite all this I was reluctant and kept telling myself I’ll start the journal tomorrow, or maybe next week, or maybe in September.

Then I thought about that for a bit because that’s what I do, I sit there and think, and I found that my reluctance partly stemmed from the multitude of journals that I’m keeping. I can scarcely look anywhere without stumbling over a journal of mine, and journaling already consumes quite a bit of my time. This is what I have so far:

1. Morning Pages journal (That’s three pages written by hand every day)
2. Practice journal (A notebook where I write down when I play music, what I played, and sometimes how I felt, or ideas for songs)
3. Quicken (In theory I record every cent earned and spent. In real life I have a high stack of bank statement and receipts sitting on my desk waiting to be recorded. I haven’t done that for about six weeks already.)
4. A gratitude journal (Every evening I sit down and write down five things I am grateful for.)
5. A general notebook (Filled with bits and pieces, phone numbers, ideas for blog posts, stories, notes on PTA meetings, everything.)
6. My “notebook” on ravelry (All the details of everything I have knitted since last summer.)
7. Flylady control journal (In theory this is where I keep track of housework and such, in real life I haven’t opened it for ages and, instead, transferred all the really important reminders to my PDA’s to-do list.)
8. And, not the least of them, this here blog.

So, self-improvement is a nice goal but right now I’m not sure if maybe I’m trying a bit too hard. Also who wants to keep a special nice journal just to record things like “Ate a whole bag of potato chips, and two candy bars because I was angry. Afterwards I felt bloated and still angry. Waited for fifteen minutes and ate a whole bag of gummy bears.”

I know there are people who change their behavior in order to not have to write down things like that. I also know that there are people who cheat when keeping a food journal. There also are people who are too lazy to get out the notebook for a handful of almonds and so they don’t eat the almonds. I’m not one of them. In the past I have written down minute detail of everything I ate and why and how I felt afterwards but it never kept me from eating still more even when I wasn’t hungry at all.

On good days I think about all these notebooks and journals as my legacy and hope that some future scholar will gain insight in the everyday life of our times (though that insight might be a bit warped). On bad days I imagine my poor son reading hundreds and hundreds of pages that his parents wrote. Every single day recorded. Poor thing. I better tell him that he can give that all away without ever looking at it.

So. Do you keep journals? Food journals? Do you think it will help?

(And, on a completely unrelated note, please remember to send me posts you read or wrote for the Just Post roundtable until August 7th. If you haven’t heard about that yet, just click on one of the little birds down on the right sidebar.)

So, why should I? Well, because it might be the one thing that can save me. I’m still a bit down, I’m feeling over-whelmed, and confused. These days that seems to be my natural state of mind. Especially the part about being confused. Some of it is hormonal (always, these days) some is the beauty that’s July, the last month before summer break with all the parties, events, barbecues, and social gatherings, because everything has to happen before August.

If I could get off auto-pilot and into the present moment I might feel calmer ad more at peace. Also I’d have more energy. I know that when I’m really in the moment all those worries, and fears, and unfinished things to do become a sort of background noise. They are less important and less overwhelming. And that often means that I’m getting more done, that I’m staying focused when actually doing something, and am able to follow things through.

I’m reluctant because I am afraid I’ll lose something crucial when giving up all this living in my head. Daydreaming is nice. Writing blog posts in my head while doing the dishes makes my life seem less mundane.

But in the end I’m fooling myself. When I’m blogging in my head while doing the dishes, I’ll be surfing the net while blogging, and knitting in my head while surfing the net, and so on, and so forth. In the end I will have missed most of my life because I wasn’t present to savour it.

So, that’s what I will be practicing for the next weeks at least. Doing the dishes while doing the dishes, blogging while blogging, be with my family while being with my family. And I’ll keep in mind the piano students of mine who say, “But I have been playing the piano for a whole year! Why am I still not brilliant?”. Because some things take a while.

It will be an interesting and unusual experience for sure.

“I wish I could eat like you. I’d have no problems losing weight.” Pia says to me at lunch. Then she looks at my tummy. Well, if I always ate like I do at work I’d have no problems losing weight either. I pick at my salad, limp and soggy, drenched in that kind of dressing you only get at restaurants. White and milky with a taste like starch.

The afternoon at work seems to pass backwards. On top of everybody working as if in slow motion I have to sit through one of these meetings which are held solely because my boss likes to hear himself talk. Also, it’s good to make him feel in charge.

I’m hungry. I’m always hungry. In the afternoon Pia brings a big tray of gummi bears. I never eat sweets at work. There’s no point.

Just when I’m about to leave the phone rings, and I have to deal with my boss yet again. Obviously he feels that I’m not enough of a team player. Ugh. It seems that somebody accused me of pushing too hard. Brain-dead snails, the whole lot of them.

Finally, I’m out. Today I’ll take good care of myself. I’ll take a nice bath, steam some dumb vegetables, and go for a walk later. It will make me feel great.

I’m hungry. My feet walk to the grocery store out of their own accord. I’ll just get a bit of chocolate. I had a bad day, I deserve a little treat. Just one or two pieces after dinner. There it is. Chocolate. Mmm. Home.

Finally there. I kick off my heels, get out of the constriction that’s the “power suit”, jacket with shoulder pads, short skirt, blouse that I can’t lift my arms in, pantyhose, underwire bra. Finally able to inhale all the way again.

While dressing in yoga pants, a tee, a hoodie, and two pairs of soft socks, I put the Red Hot Chili Peppers on. Loud. That’s better.

I’m beat. Open the fridge, get a cold beer. Fetch a glass. Unpack the chocolate, potato chips, gummi bears, and licorice. Pour the beer. Put everything on a tray together with my novel. I sit down in bed with my tray, and the remote control. Finally, I can relax.

I open the bag of potato chips first. They smell delicious, I put them in my mouth, and they crackle as I bite down. I’ll only eat a few, and then I’ll put the bag away. Spicy, crunchy, garlicky, hot. Just a few more, just a few. Now a sip of beer. A bit of licorice interspersed with the gummi bears. Chips, beer, gummi bears, licorice.

I start reading. The next time I look up the chips are gone. Oh no. I did it again.
I’m feeling bad. Bloated. Fat. Unworthy. I finish the chocolate. Whatever. I get up and fetch another beer.

It’s not my fault, food is the only thing I have. It’s my security blanket, my comfort. It’s like a cave. I dig myself in, and then I close the door. And I’m safe.

The taste, the texture, the feeling of being full.

It’s my drug of choice. It makes life bearable. It isn’t really important which food it is. It can be anything.

Of course, I’m not stupid. I know that it doesn’t really help. But I do feel better. At least for the moment.

That feeling of the salt rush comes first. The blood races up into my head. Making me a bit breathless. Next comes the sugar high. My heart beating faster. All the while the fat makes me feel safe and warm. The beer like a clear mountain stream going down. It would all be fine if I could stop in time. Just a bit and then close the bags, and put it all away.

I totally lose control around food. There’s this vortex in my middle. It’s always hungry. It sucks me in, and it doesn’t let go.

Afterwards I feel bad. Fat. Bloated. Weak. Sick. But the vortex still isn’t satisfied. I’m still hungry. If I wait a bit I can finish off the second bag of potato chips. Maybe I should take up smoking. At least I wouldn’t get fat.

If only I could stop eating altogether.

This is sick. Why can’t I stop. Nobody’s force-feeding me. I know I can do it. Tomorrow I’ll eat nothing but salad and yoghurt all day.

Which reminds me that I had promised you a post about the things I like. I have been thinking about it for weeks now but all I can come up with is “Raindrops on roses, and warm woolen mittens, …” (and I just found that I misquoted it, I’m horrible at remembering song lyrics) Every time I try to write a list of things I like I end up with something like this, and it feels totally arbitrary.

So. I’m almost 41 now, and I keep thinking about what to do with my life, where it’s headed, and I still don’t know. Music is important, I now know this, because without music I get depressive. Sometimes I also get depressive with music but without it I always do. I know that I want to sing more, and make up songs, and improvise, and that I want to perform again. I only don’t know how or where or when or with whom. And I find that it feels a bit pointless to hum to myself at home, and so I bought myself a new recording thingie that is sitting on my desk and gathers dust. (I actually recorded something and started to write a post about this at the end of, um, April. Well.)

Last year I had this feeling that I should become a tarot reader. I bought tons of books, and three more decks of tarot cards, bought a spiral notebook, and started learning the meaning of two tarot cards each day. For about a week or two. Because while I enjoy pulling cards and doing readings for people with the oracle cards that I have, I never can remember the meanings of the cards. I always have to look them up. And while I feel pretty good about drawing cards for people it then occurred to me that people might want to know about serious life-issues, and I didn’t feel up to the task. Also, learning while I go along might work for the things I usually teach and do but for this I felt that I needed a better foundation. I haven’t abandoned the thought, though, it’s just one of the things that is swirling around in my mind.

Then there’s the knitting. It has become quite important to me again over the past year (which you might have noticed), and so I started thinking along the lines of, “Maybe I should teach knitting classes.” or design knitting patterns again and see where that leads me. That’s my latest spleen, and so I have started drafting a plan for knitting classes, and have run into my old obstacle of not being able to promote myself. I just can’t do it. I have all these plans, and enthusiasm, and I know people would love the classes but when I put it all to paper it becomes stiff and hollow and brittle. My husband has been going over my draft to help me, and now it’s up to me again.

Then, the designing. As I have said before, having ideas is never the problem for me. (And I thank God for that.) As soon as I decided that I wanted to design something there were a few ideas popping up. I even bought yarn, and I have thought about them constantly. Now all I need is a couple of days to really do something. And, most important of all, I need some space in my head for that.

Just in case you’re wondering why I, all of a sudden, think that I can design knitting patterns, well, back in the eighties when I lived in a small town I pretty much made up all my own patterns. Not always successful but then, these days, I actually knit gauge swatches and such, and on top of that I’m totally willing to rip everything back until it looks like I want it to. The only thing I’m a bit nervous about is that in the eighties sweaters were just rectangles, and these days they are supposed to fit a bit more tightly. On the other hand, from what I see these days, baggy sweaters might be back again soon. And designing fitting sweaters only means doing a bit more math. Which, strangely enough, is not a problem, it only takes a bit more time.

I also would like to teach creativity, and work as a coach but I have this feeling that I need to grow a bit before doing that. The other thing I’d like to do is improvised music. So I’m planning to teach circle singing, and waiting for the opportunity to improvise with others.

Then there’s the writing. I like doing it but I still have to read my two NaNoWriMo-novels. (That still sounds weird, my two novels. Lately someone asked me what I had been doing, and when I told her “I have been writing more, there’s the blog, and I have written first drafts of two novels and a screen play.” it sounded really weird to me. But then, it’s true nonetheless. It won’t do me any good, though, until I do something with what I have.)

I know that this is pretty much the recurrent theme of my blog, my lack of focus on just one thing. So, I have decided that I’m unable to do just one thing, and go in all directions at once. Which is fine, only now all these things in my head keep canceling each other out. Where to start? I start each day with a plan to do one of the important things, like, “Today I’ll be working on my concept for knitting classes!” then procrastination happens, or housework, or blog reading, or exercise, or family, and soon it’s “I’ll do it on the weekend when I’ll be having more time.” (That one’s always good for a laugh.), and so the weeks go by one after the other.

So, this, of course, will be the weekend when I will be:

1. Doing some extra thing with my son like going to the zoo, or riding our bikes.
2. Sew a dress, and about three bags.
3. Knit about 250 rows on Mystic Meadows.
4. Clean the house.
5. Do all the laundry.
6. Design and knit a pair of socks and a men’s sweater.
7. Finish my plan for knitting lessons, write a CV to go with it, take a new picture of myself, write accompanying letter, and mail it off.
8. Sleep for at least eight hours straight each night.
9. Cook something not fast food-like.
10. Read half of “Shadowplay”, “The Mindful Way through Depression”, a third of “Spook Country”, “Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames”, and re-read “Mindful Knitting: Inviting Contemplative Practice to the Craft”. (I sense a theme here with the self-help books.)
11. Watch two games of soccer because of the European Championship.
12. Write my monthly story for the writing group.
13. Mix the improvisation I recorded.
14. Record some more.
15. Write one or two blog posts.
16. Do yard work. (If you knew me in real life this one would be ROFL-worth funny.)

While I’m at it, I could also teach my son how to swim. Or something.

These are not really my plans for the weekend but then I might have taken on a bit more in my life than I can reasonably do. Do you know anybody who hasn’t? Which of the things should I drop? I know, the answer is housework but my husband doesn’t like doing it all alone. And I don’t blame him. So, any advice? I could quit blog-reading of course but that isn’t really an option, isn’t it?

As for the question of the bathing suit I have to confess that I exaggerated for dramatic reasons, I actually own a bathing suit that fits me, and has done so through weight loss and gain for years. When I bought it in 1998 or so I weighed about 67 kilos and it fit me even in the first stages of pregnancy until I reached a weight of about 85 kilos. Right now, of course, I hope to be able to fit into my new bikini again though it will certainly be a bit tight this summer.

I have, as probably most women in the first world, a long history of weight gain and loss. I also am still suffering from an eating disorder, namely compulsive overeating, though I’m much better now and still haven’t given up on healing. In fact, that’s my word of the year for this year: healing.

I still believe that it is possible to just eat, and maintain a nice and healthy weight. I don’t believe in diets. They don’t work. I also don’t believe in any diet foods, in avoiding anything; now it’s carbs again, some years ago it was fat, and I’m just now too lazy to figure out which diet craze will have a comeback after the return of the Atkins diet (I know, it’s totally different nowadays, and it’s called low carb. Whatever.)

What I aspire is a life where food, and my looks, and the question of whether I still fit into my jeans aren’t that important. And I know that it can be done. My great role-model in this is Geneen Roth who spent deacdes on the diet-carousel, was anorexic at one point, and nowdays just eats and stays the same size.

Sadly, I’m not one of those people who read a book, get the idea, and then are changed forever. For me, everything I change has to be a practice. I stumble, I fall, I start over, I stumble, I do great, I fall,…

So, without making this into a mega-post, I just give you a list of the things I changed in the past, a list of things that worked.

1. I learned to love exercise and to do it regularly. I don’t do much, about 15 to 30 minutes every other day. And I do something I like doing. Something that’s easy to fit into my life. Going for walks, doing yoga with a DVD, things like that.
2. I slept more. In fact that was the change that gave me the most benefit of all. By only changing my bedtime so I got enough sleep, I lost weight. I swear. So now I only have to do that again, ahem.
3. I ate more real food. I found that there were three main reasons for my binges: a) I was tired, b) I really was hungry but didn’t allow myself to eat something real, and so I ate snacks upon snacks, c) I craved nutrition that I wasn’t getting, like when I’m eating only cookies they will never make me feel satisfied.
4. I sometimes stayed hungry for a bit. I was eating something like five meals a day before but then I decided that if I get hungry at 11 am, and I’m having lunch at 12, I maybe don’t need a midmorning snack.
5. I don’t graze. Either I eat or I don’t. No shoving of tiny little things into my mouth.
6. No food after dinner. Apart from that one piece of chocolate (it’s a big piece of chocolate, don’t worry). I might, occaasionally eat crackers in front of TV but only very occasionally, and not the whole carton.
7. In the evening I can have either a beer or a piece of chocolate, not both. I altered this rule later so that I’m not allowed alcohol during the week because I became worried about alcoholism in my family, and also about my son seeing me drink beer or wine with every meal, every day. And yes, it does count if you do it after they sleep. I try to model the behaviors I want my son to develop. Not only becausee it’s good for him, it’s good for me too.
8. I think about my mid-afternoon snack in advance, and buy groceries accordingly. It’s no use to think I’ll skip it, especially on teaching days. I need it, and so there has to be something for me to eat. Mostly I go with a handful or two of nuts and raisins.
9. Drink enough water. Apart from a cup of black tea in the morning, and those weekend beers, I drink water and unsweetened herbal tea. Somebody asked me about switching to alcohol-free beer. While I occasionally drink that it a) doesn’t taste that good, b) still has much more calories than water or tea, and c) is a very un-natural thing and I try to avoid these as much as possible in food.
10. I also stopped eating sugar last year, well, mostly and when I do I prefer brown sugar over white. But that had nothing to do with losing weight, I did it because I felt addicted to it. It messes with my feeling of whether I’m hungry or not, it makes me hyper, and I feel better when I don’t eat it. (I feel like a hypocrite typing this since I just had a lovely piece of cake, I’m sitting in a café right now. So, I have cake about once or twice a month. I do better without absolutes. I also savour every bite when I eat something like that. Last year we went out and had ice cream for my birthday. It was a very pleasant experience made more special by being the only ice cream I had all summer.)

To show you how much of a difference these tiny things make, and also the fact that I’m using my bike more often instead of the car and such, I have lost two kilos since the beginning of June. Without suffering, without battle, just like that. I know that you can’t do that always, I’m living proof for that, I’m the one who gained and gained over months despite knowing what to do.

What also helps me is realizing that ultimately it isn’t that important. I could just stay this size forever, and there’d be no harm in this. But also, my life doesn’t end because I don’t eat potato chips every day. There are more important things in life, much more important things, and that’s something I want my son to know not only because I say so but because he sees me living it.

Looking at herself in the mirror Myra thought about what to wear that night. It felt like a day for red. The red dress. The dress that made her look voluptuous, and curvy; the one that hugged all the right places, felt good, and was easy to wear. The only question was whether to go the vamp route this night or more punk-like. High heels or army boots? A hat?

She’d probably regret high heels later in the evening, she always did. She thought of putting a pair of flats in her handbag but that was for sissies. Boots and a leather jacket would tone it all down a bit.
She’d be overdressed either way. Though she wanted this to be the ultimate party it probably wouldn’t be.

But what better place to meet new people than a party? So she put up her hair, put on the big dangling earrings, the red lipstick, the red pumps, and went out in a cloud of perfume.

…

There weren’t that many people at the party when she arrived. She frowned; everybody came late the days until there was hardly any time left to party. She said hello to everybody, fetched herself a beer, and joined a group of people she didn’t know to make new friends. If possible.

…

There she was again, thought Laura. This Myra. Always the same. She entered the room like she owned it in her terrible clinging dress. Laura would never have worn something so tight, so short, so clinging, showing so much cleavage. Horrible.
Wherever this woman went there was a whirl in the crowd. Squeals, laughter, disturbance. She talked all the time, as if anybody was interested in her stupid stories, she went from group to group, on to the buffet, loading her plate with food, not waiting for anybody.

Laura was glad that she at least knew how to behave.
…

Phew, this is boring, Myra thought. Maybe it’d get better later when there would be dancing. Maybe.
So far there were a lot of familiar faces, and as usual, people were stiff and as mute as maggots. She already got tired of her own jokes.
She saw Laura sitting on the other side of the room. In the corner as always. Such a beige girl. Short beige hair, beige face, all her makeup in pastels, and wearing black. Again. That woman looked like she could use some fun. And makeup. Nice earrings though.
And, Myra thought to herself, I don’t know how she does it, already most of the men in the room are drifting towards her. Drawn in by the pale, obviously.

Well, at least I can choose whom I speak to, Myra thought, looking for the promising looking guy she’d seen earlier, going after him, isolating him from his companions, and dragging him on the dance floor. Dancing was always a good way to determine whether someone had potential. Or not.
This guy didn’t look that good on the dance floor. He slinked off as soon as he could. He didn’t like to dance; neither did anybody else. Apart from Myra, that is. So she went right to the middle to dance alone.

…

Laura barely heard what that huge blonde guy standing by her side was telling her. Despite the fact that he was practically yelling in her ear she had forgotten it the minute she heard it. The nerve that woman on the dance floor had. Starting to dance even though everybody was looking at her. How embarrassing. And she wasn’t even dancing properly. No, she had to twirl all over the place, waving her arms about and grinning at people. Laura shuddered. Suddenly she wanted to go home. It had been a mistake to come in the first place. It was boring. She just wasn’t the type for parties, parties were for outgoing, extrovert people not for shy people like her. Inwardly she cursed the friend who had persuaded her to attend. She should have known better. A party was not a good way to meet somebody new. She promised herself to go as soon as she could without drawing attention to herself. Then she would go home, despite what her friend would be saying, eat some dark chocolate, have a glass of wine, and watch “Singing in the Rain.”

…

Boring, boring, Myra thought. At least it was better to be bored while dancing than while standing around next to boring people making boring conversation. The others didn’t look, they never did. As if dancing were only possible without any eye contact at all. Nobody looked interesting. She had checked. Twice. She had even talked to the group of musicologists in a corner between the buffet table and the piano. Dull as dishwater.
There had to be exciting people somewhere in the universe but certainly not here. Should she stay a bit longer? There surely would be more people coming in later.

On a sudden impulse she picked up her handbag and jacket, found the host in the kitchen, told him a big story about how she’d love to stay, how sorry she was, and that she had to get up very early the next day, so sorry, great party, ciao.
She walked home all the way, through the drizzling rain in her spiky high heels. An hour later she opened her door, changed into her pajama and woolen socks, opened a beer and a bag of potato chips, and stayed up late to watch “Funny Face” with Fred Astaire.

A day later I went to another one of Rhiannon’s fabulous improvisation workshops for singers. (I’ve been to quite a few and have written about a few of them in these posts). I was early. (That’s the beauty of going by train, you’re either too early or too late.) By the time the workshop was supposed to begin there was a small cluster of singers standing around in front of the building. Since this was a different location than usual I didn’t know anybody. The other workshops I had attended were all held in the big city, and over the years I have come to know quite a few of the regulars. So, there we stood, nobody quite sure what to do or say. Then Rhiannon arrived by car. She emerged from the car, carrying a basket full of strawberries, greeting me enthusiastically. And that was the first moment where I found myself both in the situation, inside myself, feeling slightly lonely and a bit scared about the workshop and my singing, and outside myself, seeing the scene through the eyes of the other singers who hadn’t met Rhiannon before, who probably were feeling even lonelier and more scared. What they saw was that I was the only one getting a hug. That I was the only one whom the teacher knew.

It didn’t stay that way though. Later there were more singers who had been to workshops before. Most of those I knew. And they knew me. And I’m still surprised when that happens. I’m very used to not being recognized by people. Maybe it’s because I changed my look so much, I don’t know. The workshop itself by the way was marvelous. I had had my doubts before because I have been to so many of these workshops but I went home inspired and much clearer about what I want to do.

A few days later it happened again. I went to the concert Rhiannon gave with two other singers. I was very early because I wanted to have something to eat there before the concert, and I wanted to write the story I had to finish the day after for a writing group assignment. That I went there alone is nothing unusual for me. When I came to the venue I was greeted by a woman coming towards me from the other side. (I think that maybe singers are especially prone to greet people from something like 20 meters away.) It took me about 15 meters of going towards her to realize that she hadn’t greeted somebody behind me. And that I know her. (I’m sorry, she used to be blonde, and now she’s brunette. Also I couldn’t see her face at first.) But the same thing happened to me three or four times in the course of the evening. Somebody was saying hello to me and every time I’d think they meant somebody behind me.

I entered the jazz club where the band was doing soundcheck. As I went down the stairs I heard, “Hi! It’s Susanne!” from the stage. Amplified. I sat down, I had my dinner, I wrote about half of the story, and I met a lot of singers that I know. It was the same thing over again. I knew about a third of all the people in the room. But to me I was there alone, spending a lot of time sitting at my table with nobody to talk to. To the other people sitting at my table I probably was part of the “in-crowd”. Going here and there, hugging people, and talking. Telling stories of other concerts and other workshops. This seeing myself from the inside and the outside at once confuses me. The images don’t quite match. What’s the truth, me being part of a group amidst friendly faces, or me sitting apart, taking something to read with me because I’m on my own with nobody to talk with?

Two days later I went to a meeting of my writer’s group. Again, a group that I know, people that I like. And then there were the many nice comments on my blog. And I realized that though I feel as if I never fit in I am part of this friendly little corner of the blog-world nonetheless. And I had another moment of seeing myself from the inside and the outside at the same time again that week when I stayed in front of kindergarten to chat with another mother. I suddenly realized that I looked like those mothers I had seen standing there before, the ones of whom I thought they were big friends and had known each others for ages. Well, it seems that if you just stay somewhere for a bit of time you’ll get to know people and then you look like you have friends.

So, I’m not as lonely as I often feel. But then I still don’t have many friends. I’d still love to find a friend who loves the same things I do but that might be a little difficult. Even my husband has interests different from mine. When we first met we were pleasantly surprised about the similarities (of course). We both love Brazilian music, jazz, and the same piece of Anton Webern that nobody else loves. (Op. 22, you know, the saxophone quartet. What, you don’t know? Well, never mind, nobody does.) Even other Webern-lovers – of which there aren’t that many – regard that to be one of his inferior pieces.

I remember, back when I still studied musicology, how much I longed to have a friend to share everything with. Webern, classical music, Brazilian drumming, jazz, rock music, science fiction novels, and baking. But now I think that maybe that’s a bit too much. (And in all this I really shouldn’t forget to mention my real life friends who are reading this blog. All they hear me yammer about is how I don’t have friends. But they aren’t living nearby. And our interests only intersect so far.)

This whole thing might be a case of unrealistic expectations. But then I really long to find people loving the same things as I. And through the internet that has become much easier by the way. These days I’m spending quite a bit of my time over on ravelry (where I’m creativemother, by the way) discussing various aspects of sock knitting.

So I learned two things: 1) Other people might feel as lonely and isolated as I even if they don’t look like it, and 2) my quest to find people interested in the same things as I has been more successful than I thought. Only there weren’t any interested in exactly the same things or in all of them.

And now all of a sudden I feel the urge to make a list of the things I’m interested in. It might be a long list. And a bit unfocused.

While I spend most of my time sitting in my house, often in front of the computer, I do meet people on a daily basis. And on a daily basis I am confronted with people, their actions and their ideas, and am startled at how different they are from me. And every single one of them assumes that I’m just like them!

Today alone I talked to somebody who told me – like everybody does – why it’s so nice to use your car when going on vacation, and how safe, and cozy it is, and how independent you are. While I thought of traffic jams, not being able to move around for hours, having to stop traveling for going to the toilet, and having to concentrate and take care for hours on end. And, I’m sorry to tell you, driving is not the safest way to travel. I’m very proud of me because I didn’t give her the “Why air travel is bad for the earth and should be avoided as much as possible”-speech. Or the “Why all this driving around will come back to haunt us in the end, is bad for the earth, and should be avoided as much as possible”-speech.

Then somebody phoned my husband with an unnecessary and dumb request for help assuming that we, of course, would spend today “preparing for tomorrow”. What’s tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Labor Day, and of course, right now everybody is running around like a chicken with its head cut off because they have to, I don’t know, run errands or something. For my husband and me today is Wednesday, the day where we teach a lot, and I had to re-arrange my whole schedule to pick up my son from kindergarten because my mother-in-law is on vacation. It’s also a nice sunny day. Nobody here in the house will starve because shops are closed tomorrow.

Then I went to the tea shop and had the “It’s nice that your son stays in kindergarten a year longer because then he’ll have an additional year to be a child.”-conversation. What? Here I am thinking that school is part of childhood, that learning is fun, and that responsibility is something children crave. Silly me. Everybody else knows that school is only hardship and marks the end of everything good in your life.

And in a way I can’t blame people because from where I stand they are right and their lives don’t look very attractive to me.

All this really happened today. I didn’t put it here to get a better post. And all these things leave me with the feeling of living among strangers and not fitting in. And you might think that if only I were with other musicians I’d feel better but they are full of assumptions too. And most of those don’t fit me either. So even if I’m going to an improvisation workshop tomorrow I don’t really hope for the feeling of being among my tribe.

It’s surely me, I never felt like I fitted in anywhere. Not with the children I grew up with, not with my family, not in school, nada. These days I’m very happy if I find people who understand even a tiny part of my life. Writers to talk about writing with, knitters to talk about knitting with, bloggers to talk about blogging with (well, and a few other things but that would so totally ruin this sentence), and my husband to talk about everything else with.

My husband, like me, is somebody who feels like he never fits in, and I’m very very happy to have him because otherwise I’d feel like I were nuts while the whole word is sane. But the funny thing is that my husband and I are wildly different. And have problems understanding each other. But at least none of us assumes that everybody else is just exactly like we are. (And I’ll just use this sliver of an opportunity to say that we just had our 13th wedding anniversary on Monday and that I felt it was an occasion worth celebrating.)

So you might think that I’m of course feeling out of place all the time because I’m concentrating on the differences so much. No, I don’t. For decades I went into every social situation with a feeling of happy anticipation, I was curious about people, I tried to be like everybody else, I really tried hard, I kept looking up and down, met a lot of people, and tried to look under the surface. And every single time I was greeted with remarks that left me totally startled and confused. And so I find that I’m faring better when assuming that something like this will happen eventually. That I might have to make myself comfortable as much as I can in a square hole.

Also, you might think that this is a mighty whiny post, and you’re right and so I’ll leave you with a nice little picture of something orange that’s totally unrelated to everything I wrote before:

It’s the Mystic LIghts shawl. I love the pattern, I loved knitting it, the whole knit-along was a very pleasant experience, and I’ll surely love wearing it.

And you might want to check out the collaboration between my husband and my son…

It’s surprising the number of women who are unacquainted with their bodies from the neck down. Our mirrors are strategically placed for only blow-drying hair and applying makeup, then we quickly dress without a glance at our reflection. We know our faces intimately, but most of us wouldn’t recognize our bodies in a lineup. When a group of women were asked to identify themselves from a series of headless bodies wearing nothing but their birthday suits, only 20 per cent correctly chose their naked selves. The rest guessed wrong, choosing bodies that were bigger in size than their own! (Debra Waterhouse: “From Tired to Inspired: 8 Energizing Ways to Overcome Female Fatigue”, p 175)

It’s weird that people who are often obsessed with the way they look don’t even really know how they look. That about every single one of us secretly believes she is fat, regardless of actual size. That every single one of us has the feeling she should lose about ten pounds. It always seems to be ten pounds at least, I don’t know why. I know that in my case the number keeps getting adjusted down every time I lose weight so that I never am where I want to be. But today I’m not writing about weight loss (even if I’m thinking about it) but about our body images.

Debra Waterhouse goes on:

Whether we are familiar with our anatomy or not, what’s not surprising, unfortunately, are the negative comments we make about our bodies. It has been estimated that the average American woman makes eighteen critical comments each day about herself and spends one third of her waking hours ridiculing her physical self in some way – getting on the scale and obsessing about the number, getting dressed and grimacing at the way our clothes fit, taking inventory of our wrinkles, catching our reflection unexpectedly in a window and frowning, comparing ourselves to fashion models, measuring ourselves against other women, depriving our bodies from food and nourishment, agonizing over what we will and will not eat – the list goes on and on.

How much time did you spend criticizing your body today?

Just think about it. How much time and energy wasted.

I think that I would recognize my body. Every day I make a point of really looking at myself. From all sides. I have been working on making friends with my body for years now. It’s better to have your body for a friend, and to treat it nicely since you want him to do a lot of things for you. We are not mind alone, even if it might feel like that when we’re sitting in front of the computer communicating with invisible people through a friendly shining monitor screen.

Learning to like what I see in the mirror was hard at first. My body, of course, isn’t flawless. Nobody’s body is, by the way, and you all know it. After a while though I liked myself better. I found that I actually like big butts. Hourglass figures, strong legs. That’s not to say that I’m not working on changing the things about my body that I don’t like but I find that in the long run being free from back pain is more important than having thin ankles. And that, like in any stable relationship, I have to accept what’s possible and what not.

When I actually started thinking about something important to me every time I caught myself thinking about my appearance or weight or food that set free huge amounts of energy. It was about 2 1/2 years ago that I did that, and only a couple of weeks later I had written two songs.

Energy follows attention. Being heavier than one wants to is not a full-time occupation. No, really, not even very heavy people eat all the time.

So, I’m giving you homework this time:

1. Step in front of the mirror, naked would be best, and say something nice about your body. Say it out loud. Repeat. (This is an exercise from one of Geneen Roth‘s books.)
2. Think about what’s really important to you. Maybe something creative. Every time you find yourself thinking about how fat you are or how you should lose weight think about that important thing instead. Bonus points if it is something creative.

The first time I remember being drawn to meditation and such was when I was about 12 years old. However I didn’t know how to do it, found the prospect of sitting still unbearable and so forgot all about it. After being drawn into Christianity for a while, and then slowly becoming disappointed with my church, and then becoming agnostic again, I didn’t think about spiritual matters for years. That changed when I read “The Artist’s Way”. At first I found all this talk about the creator and spirituality off-setting, then I felt drawn to it again until I felt comfortable with spirituality once more. Not Christianity as such though.

I think it was in 2005 when I found the book “Coming to Our Senses” because I was looking for a parenting book. I loved it. And how can’t you. The subtitle is “Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness”. I was hooked. I ordered the guided meditation CDs and started practicing. Learning more about mindfulness meditation, I became interested in Buddhism which led to a visit to the local Vesakh celebration in Munich. We made that into a sort of family tradition (because we already have been going twice, you know). There you can check out all the different groups of Buddhists there are in Munich. We’re fortunate because there are so many to choose from. In 2007 my husband and I thought about joining a group. There were several that sounded interesting, I researched them on-line, and found that the “Gesellschaft für achtsames Leben” held a day of mindfulness every month. No membership required, you can just show up, meditate with them and practice mindfulness for a day.

I have come to cherish these days. I’m still not really sure if I am a Buddhist or not but taking the time to slow down for a day, sit, walk, and eat in mindfulness feels very joyful, refreshing and makes me a bit calmer.

It isn’t that easy to organize. My mother-in-law has to be available to take our son for the day. We’re all busy people. We have to get up at six in the morning, pack lunches, tea, meditation cushions, and such and catch the train at ten past seven. The train ride takes about 90 minutes. It takes us through Munich, out of the city again, and then, finally, to a beautiful lake in view of the mountains. To be frank this view alone would be worth the trip. There are quite a few people taking the same train so we go to the village together. Everybody says hello, gets out the cushions, takes off shoes, and puts on socks. After a bit of chanting we sit for a while, and then walk in meditation, then sit. We have tea in meditation, then we’re allowed to talk and have a short break followed by a lecture. Then eating lunch, partly in silence, walking meditation outside near the lake, then some singing, walking meditation back, talk about the morning’s lecture, sitting meditation again, and then it’s over.

The first time I went there I was sure I’d go nuts, trying to be silent for so long but actually I’m a bit sad every time the bell rings and we’re allowed to talk again. Being silent and mindful all of a sudden seems a rare treat. Which it is in modern life, especially when you have children.

It also is a good way for me to remind myself how good mindfulness feels. Lately I have been trying to wriggle out of it. But that’s not doing me any good. Trying to be mindful on the other hand has done me a lot of good. I have to keep that in mind…

I tried to get back on track by re-subscribing to flylady again, and then I couldn’t stand all the e-mail. I didn’t do anything different and so, I have to confess, the e-mails didn’t do the housework.

Joanna answered in a comment

Flylady was invented for people who have 3 billion hours in a day. The routines look great on paper but they do not work in this house!!!!

And this had me thinking about a reply for weeks now so I decided to make it into a blog post. I hope Joanna doesn’t mind.

First, as I have written too, one of the problems seems to be that the routines and e-mails really don’t do any work. Sadly, housework still has to be done by oneself, or – in my case – by my husband. Which isn’t fair and so I have been working on improving my homemaking skills. That is not Flylady’s fault.

Second, Flylady was not invented for people who have 3 billion hours a day, it was invented precisely for people who don’t have much time, who are easily distracted and therefore a bit challenged on the organizational or cleaning side of life.

For those of you who don’t know who or what Flylady is, Flylady is the nickname of an American woman who started a yahoo-group to help people with organizing and housecleaning. The system is a bit unusual but I can testify that it works beautifully when you do it. Which might go for every system out there, I don’t know, but I can say that I started using Flylady’s methods five years ago and even though I have been off and on in applying them there are a few things that have stuck, and the house never looks as awful as it did before.

Right now I’m working on getting back to where I was before. It seems like that’s what I’m doing in all areas of my life at the moment. But there are things that I started because of Flylady and that just stuck.

Dressing down to shoes first thing in the morning.
While I don’t take a shower or put on make-up in the morning, each morning I get up and then dress into jeans, a sweater, my indoor sneaker, and I put on earrings and a necklace. So, if everything goes haywire that day I’m already dressed adequately for almost all the things I’m doing on a day-to-day basis.
Before I started doing this I changed clothes about six times a day. Sweats in the morning, then dress for doing errands, back into sweats, working out, dress in clean sweats after taking a shower, dress for teaching, back into sweats, then pajamas. Then I found that stretchy jeans and a sweater or tee are almost as comfy as sweats, and I can wear them all day long. Yes, I even work out in jeans sometimes. Then I take a shower and change into clean clothes. I still wear pajamas at night, just in case you may have wondered.

Wearing lace-up shoes in the house
When I first read this I thought this woman must be crazy. Why should I trade my Birkenstocks for anything else. Well, here is why: I’m less prone to stumbling and falling down stairs, I feel like I’m in work-mode, and my feet don’t hurt.

Picking up after myself
My husband will be the first to tell you that I’m not very good at this but I’m really much better than I used to be. Often I even put the dirty dishes away right after a meal. And I’m always glad when I do because it’s just so nice when you come back and hour later and your kitchen is actually clean and tidy.

Dealing with laundry in a timely fashion
Again, I have been better at this at one time but usually laundry gets washed when there is enough for one or two loads, it gets hung up as soon as it’s washed and it gets folded when it’s dry and put away immediately. I fold the clothes on the thing where the laundry dries, put it in a hamper, carry the hamper to the bedroom and just put everything away. Magic. No piles. And since we don’t iron anything…

Put everything into my calendar and check it at least twice a day
Really helpful. Everything is in there, and I check it in the evening, in the morning, and often in between. When I have something like “Bring two eggs, a pair of pantyhose, and a net to kindergarten.” it really helps to know about it the evening before. Because mornings are stressful enough as it is, I don’t have to add the stress of looking for discarded pantyhose and eggs on top of that.

“Housework done incorrectly still blesses the family.”
Yep. Picking up a few dust bunnies by hand is better than doing nothing at all. Taking a bit of window cleaner and wipe at the bathroom window is much better than waiting for those two empty days where I finally will have enough time to clean all the windows in the house.

Making the bed every day.
Yes, you read that correctly. Every morning after breakfast I go and make the beds, and tidy the bedroom. You might think this doesn’t make much of a difference but it does. Every time I go into our bedroom I feel relaxed and a bit more peaceful. Because it’s tidy and the beds are made.

Wiping the sink.
While I still struggle with the ongoing cleaning of the bathrooms every sink in the house gets wiped out after use. Almost every time. Also I wipe down the shower stall after taking a shower. That takes all of twenty second and it looks as if I were really cleaning them every day. Which I don’t.

Small steps done consistently make a difference.
I know, my mother told me that one long ago but she isn’t very good at this either. And I have a really hard time being consistent with anything. Since Flylady taught me that I don’t have to be perfect I have been practicing and becoming better at it. And if I’m not consistent for a while? Then I just start over again. And again. And again. And again.

And here is one last slogan from her (and I should post that one on my mirror):

Progress, not perfection.

So, while not everyone has to use Flylady’s system, and there seem to be a few people who don’t need a system at all (I’m living with one, for example) how do you go on about that? And are you happy with your surroundings that way? Or aren’t you?

I just love to hear how you deal with it.

On the other hand it feels a bit strange, sitting here in front of my computer, writing nice little posts about social things. Armchair activism, so to speak. And it feels like it doesn’t make much of a difference. Sometimes.

I haven’t been the only one thinking about this and so we, that is Jen, and Mad, and Hel, and me, have decided to try something new for the first anniversary of the roundtable. Something that involves actual doing instead of mere writing. But don’t fear nobody is supposed to get out and heal all the world’s suffering all by herself. What we ask for is something small, something doable, something that feels right for each of us.

So, when I thought about my “social post of the month” this month I couldn’t come up with anything. So I almost skipped it. And then I read something that made me think and I remembered something else, and this is what I want to write about.

When I attended a singing workshop back in May one of the teachers asked all of us where we wanted to go with our music. After everybody had said something it was the turn of the two other teachers to respond to that, and Joey Blake said that he wanted to sing to heal the world. He used much more words than that but that was the essence of it for me.

My first reaction was, “Haha, funny, as if you could heal the world through your singing.” But it stuck with me and I thought about it. I still am. And then I remembered how I had felt after the concert the teachers had given the day before. And I wondered.

And then, last week, I read something by Tara Jon Manning that pointed me in the same direction: In her book “Mindful Knitting: Inviting Contemplative Practice to the Craft” she writes about “enlightened society”:

Enlightened society is an idea of a world built upon generosity and kindness where everyone mindfully contributes to the support and well-being of everyone else. Fundamental to this notion, [...], is the recognition of the potential within all human beings to wake up to their own basic goodness and contribute to the world. When we make the connection between our own basic goodness within and the magic of the basic goodness without, it touches us and makes our hearts soft and tender. As you awaken to your own basic goodness, you begin to se it everywhere – in everyone, everything, and every moment of the world. [...] And as you may have already seen in yourself, once you have made that awakening within yourself, you can’t help but let it spill out into the world.

So, in order to make the world more full of generosity and kindness it’s best to start with oneself. And that doesn’t mean that you have to become all Mother Theresa-like overnight. It isn’t like reaching a goal where you (or I) suddenly turn into that magnificent, better version of yourself. It’s a practice. Loving kindness starts with you.

I really believe that we are all connected, and that our thoughts and deeds influence each other. And so each one of us can change the world a little bit at a time. Of course it seems futile from time to time. And sometimes we can’t do it and then we are not kind or generous. But then there’s the next moment and another chance and then we surprise ourselves.

No, I don’t know how that translates into world peace and into fresh water and enough to eat for everyone, but for now it is the only thing I can do and I sincerely believe that it makes a difference. Maybe it’s only a small difference. But then, you all know how one person can make a difference to a small group. Sometimes even the presence of somebody makes a difference. And the world is comprised of small groups of people. Quite a few of them these days, that’s true, but small groups nonetheless. And we should never forget that all the people who really made a difference were after all human beings like us.

May we be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm
May we be happy and contented
May we be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible
May you experience ease of well-being …

May our planet and the whole universe be safe and protected and free from harm
May our planet and the whole universe be happy and contented
May our planet and the whole universe be healthy and whole
May our planet and the whole universe experience ease of well-being…

(from “Coming to our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness” (Jon Kabat-Zinn))

And as I quote from this book and re-read the title I realize where that thought comes from. You know, “Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness”. Duh.

A happy new year to all of you, and please, don’t forget to send me your own posts and nominations for the next just post roundtables until the 7th of January.

Yesterday I “tried” going to bed earlier and I succeeded, only it wasn’t early enough. Judging by the way this has been going since 2005 (when I slept enough every night for about three months) I’d guess that today I’ll be a little later than yesterday and tomorrow I will be back at my much too late bedtime.

This morning I pulled a card from one of my oracle decks which I do most days and there it was: “Back to Basics”. In the booklet it says things like:

If you neglect your basic needs, your higher awareness will diminish, leaving you to operate on adrenaline and anxiety.

Duh. And there are some questions for me as well as for you:

Are you taking loving care of your body without guilt? Are you getting enough sleep, drinking enough water, eating healthy and lovingly prepared food, and getting adequate exercise?

I even have thought of keeping track of my new “going to bed on time”-habit on my blog. But that seems so pathetic. Maybe I’ll go back to the old “sticker on the calendar”-method of motivation and keeping track. And maybe in a month or so I can report back and tell, “I did it! I’m feeling fabulous! I slept eight hours a night for four weeks in a row!”

Somehow I doubt it though. And 8 hours still isn’t enough for me, it’s just better than my usual 6 1/2. What I need is 9 hours. I know I’m insatiable. Do you even know how many hours of sleep you need?

(And speaking of healthy and lovingly prepared food, my dear husband stepped in and cooked a marvelous minestrone (which I forgot to photograph, but I was hungry). And he even cooked it on top of the wood stove!

(And just when I had posted this I read a post by Gretchen from the happiness project:”One easy key to happiness: get more sleep. That means turning off the light!” The universe is definitely trying to tell me something. She cites studies saying that sleep has a major influence on your mood, and getting one more hour of sleep would make you happier than more money…)

I always thought that if you are a real artist you enjoy the whole process of making art from start to finish. I thought for example that real musicians (unlike me) enjoy practicing. Maybe not every single minute of it but seven out of their eight hours a day of it for sure. I have to force myself to play. And every day I have to do it again.

I have heard that it takes 27 days to form a habit. Haha, really funny that. I have had practiced daily for months or years without it becoming a habit.

But back to that epiphany: Lisa Liam wrote somewhere in her blog that she dislikes cutting out the pieces for sewing. And she loves sewing so much that she has made it into her profession. I had thought it was only me! Disliking the cutting, swearing all through the sewing and leaving the almost finished piece for months without sewing on the buttons. Or dreading blocking and sewing the knitting together so much that I’d rather stop knitting the sweater with half a sleeve unfinished.

Or having to kick myself to practice by setting a kitchen timer and saying, “You won’t leave this keyboard until the bell rings. No, no daydreaming. Play. – I can hear that you’re not really working. Get back. Do your scales.” And it’s even a little harder with making music because you’re never finished. It’s just like being an athlete in training.

Or never writing anything but the beginning of a story. Only signing up for NaNoWriMo made me finish a first draft. I recently spoke to a fellow NaNo-participant about signing up for the next one (I’m still undecided, but this time I’ll tell my husband first.), and he said, “The hardest part is starting to write for the day. Once you have written a few sentences it just keeps going.”
Ha! As if! With every writing project apart from writing blog posts I had to force myself to write every single paragraph. Not that I didn’t have periods of free flowing prose where all I had to do was typing fast enough to keep up but once I reached my quota for the day I couldn’t get away from writing fast enough.

So for me doing something that fills me with joy isn’t necessarily about doing things that are fun or pleasurable. The question is why I keep on doing these things even though I find them tedious and hard? There comes Robert Heinlein to mind who said that he felt awful when writing but even more awful when not. (That’s somewhere in his biography which I can’t access now because it’s in the room my son is sleeping in.) I always compare this to climbing a mountain (or going for a walk) versus plopping down in front of TV all day.

The difference is how you feel about life and yourself at the end of the day. The climb or the walk makes you feel strong, confident, happy, and tired in a good way. Sitting on a couch watching TV all day might be pleasurable but at the end of the day you feel sluggish, drowsy, and unsatisfied.

Still, even knowing this, I’d like to change my perspective in a way that I could just enjoy the walk, or the process without feeling bad most of the way. That’s why I made “effortlessness” my word of the year. And I don’t think this is all about being blocked, or my inner critic giving me a hard time. Maybe this is about me thinking that life should somehow be easier. Maybe it’s time to grow up. Without becoming all dead serious and dividing my days into tiny little slices, into a sequence of to-dos. I tried that and while I got a lot of things done it never was enough and I managed to squeeze the joy out of life.

So, do you have any ideas? Are you good about enjoying the process? Did you learn that somehow, or were you always like that?

But I’ve found something new! Sleep deprivation. Makes you feel even worse than having eaten 1 1/2 bags of potato chips, a bag of gummy bears and lots of chocolate in one sitting. Just train yourself to go to bed at 11.30 when you have to get up at 6.45, when you need about 8 1/2 hours of sleep and voilà, there’s your new obsession.

First you don’t get out of bed on time because you haven’t slept enough yet. Then you stumble through your day, bleary-eyed and barely conscious. You promise yourself a midday nap only to find something really important to do, like for example reading blogs, and that’s it for the nap. You promise yourself to be good from now on, to go to bed on time. “Ah, tonight”, you think, “tonight I’ll snuggle in my cosy bed just when I’m getting tired and then close my eyes. Bliss!”. For the whole day you think of bed. In a wholly platonic way. Sleep. Sleep! SLEEP! Interestingly when evening comes around, you get awake again. There’s just this one thing more to do before going to bed. After all it isn’t that late. And it’s not good to go to bed too early of course. So you still have, let’s say, 30 minutes. So you can start to watch an episode of “Angel”. And of course you will be really good today and stop watching it right in the middle. Don’t you? Only this time it’s that interesting, never mind that you already know it. And if you stay up just a little longer you’ll be past some critical point in your knitting. Or you talk to your husband and just forget the time… Never mind the reason, the result is always the same: You go to bed at 11.30. Rinse and repeat.

After a while you are too tired to exercise. You are too tired to play with your son. You are impatient and cranky. You are too tired to make music. In fact, you are too tired for doing anything much, and everything you do takes twice the time it should take because you’re so slow. You get so tired that you shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car anymore.

So why do you continue going to bed too late? Even though you know that you never can sleep in? And you know that sleeping in isn’t good for you either. better to have a consistent routine, like, going to bed at 10.30 and getting up at 6.45. (We’re not talking about you pre-motherly goal of having nine hours of deep, relaxing, and uninterrupted sleep every night here. Just eight hours for a start.)

In a way, it’s perfect. You get to complain, which is always good, so that people don’t get jealous at you. You life has focus and you never have to shift it because nothing changes. When you’re tired it only shows how hard you work and what amazing things you do. Of course you can’t be expected to do anything for anybody before being rested. You don’t have to be creative because you’re much too tired for that. Better to dream about your projects than have them fall short in any way. You get to eat more because you’re always hungry. And since you’re so low on energy you just deserve a little chocolate to make you feel better. And then, of course, a beer in the evening to help you sleep better. Never mind that alcohol doesn’t help with sleep. At least it feels relaxing.

This of course is wholly fictional and doesn’t bear any resemblance to real, ahem, almost forty-ish singers any of us knows.

3. Finding physical space

Most creative things don’ need that much space. Again, writing is a winner, sit down anywhere with notebook and pen, and voilà, instant creativity. For music space isn’t the issue unless you want to play drum set or grand piano. Sculpting is harder but then, if you stick with your play-doh…

When I was sewing my grocery bag a student came early. My whole teaching room was full, with the fabric and the sewing machine and the ironing board. And she said that she loved sewing too, but that one really needed time for this, and a place where one can leave it all. She had a veery longing gaze in her eyes.

Of course everyone of us would like to have a crafts room but then it is possible to do it flylady-style too. She has a rolling suitcase for every project. She pulls everything out when she works on it and when she is finished for the day she puts everything back. Which is exactly what I should have done that day. I plan to empty one of the wooden boxes I have around the house and use that as my “current-sewing-project-in-progress”-box. I’ll put it under the box with all the flutes and the xylophone in it.

(And this was the point where I had written this whole post from beginning to finish while my son was first sitting in the bathtub and then later while I was waiting for him to fall asleep, and I was very good, saving it every other paragraph, and happily typing away on my palm and then it said “unexpected error” and all the rest of it is gone. Very frustrating. Sigh. But no, I won’t give up. So here’s the recreation of the rest. Who knows maybe it’ll be a little shorter.)

So, let’s talk about the big issue:

4. Finding the space in your mind

For most of us this may be the biggest obstacle of all. Our minds are full to the brim with little things and little people. Especially the little people can make the task of finding mind space really challenging. Our minds are constantly cluttered with things to do, things not to forget, places to go, people we met, things we talked about, thinks we read about, … So here are a few tips to help:

Find a little time for yourself in the morning:
Every morning I get up half an hour early to do 9 1/2 minutes of sitting meditation. You might ask, “Why does it take 30 minutes to do 10 minutes of meditation?” Well, I’m not very fast in the morning. But when I am, I also write a little in my journal. I have written about meditation elsewhere, and it really helps to clear the mind, but if you don’t want to, anything helps. Get up a little early and write into a journal, or sit down with your cup of coffee and look out of the window, or take a short walk. Just take a little time alone to hear yourself think, feel yourself before the day starts. (And if you have a child that senses when you get up, either leave it with your partner (if you can), or try to make this time as peaceful as possible with the child.)

Find a little time for yourself in the evening:
Again, just sitting down, turning off TV, radio, or mindless chatter helps. Taking a look out of the window, maybe a little walk. I like to sit down in the evenings and write into my gratitude journal. Mad Hatter sits down and blogs (Um, or not, I just read her blog and she is on blog-vacation.). Either way, taking a step back helps to clear the mind.

Find a little time for yourself during the day
Take the peace and quiet wherever you find it. Do the dishes and let your mind wander, hang up laundry with your baby in a sling, put your child in the stroller and go for a walk, sit down at the kitchen table while the children play in the next room, use the tiny scraps of time that you have, put your thinking and your creativity in the nooks and crannies of your day, and you will see that all those scraps together might result in a big, colorful quilt of thinking and creativity.

Start with clearing the physical space
You can also start with de-cluttering. Nothing refreshens the mind better than a little cleaning or de-cluttering. Only be careful not to stop there. Housework never ends. Just let your hands do the work and feel your thoughts lighten.

Move
One of the best things for me to get out of a rut, get my mind working again, think something over, or solve a problem is a walk. All exercise is good for this. (Well, up to a certain point.) But especially good are those that have a rhythm to it and don’t require thinking. Like walking, running or riding a bike. Or maybe yoga. (Okay, not rhythmic and un-thinking as such, but it helps. I know it.)

If you want to find more mind space it also helps to turn off TV, radio, and also – gasp – the computer. All those things can be very stimulating too. But there has to be a little extra space for ideas, and dreams. So you can go and be creative.

And when you have done all that, or maybe only some of that, all you need is a notepad and pen so you can write down your ideas. And then, some other time, you make something out of those ideas. But first you have to have that space in your mind. Which exactly is the reason why we all get such good ideas in the shower or while driving. There even are waterproof notepads for that but in my experience if the idea is really that good you’ll probably still know it, once you’re dry and dressed.

So now that we have cleared our minds and started thinking, it becomes easier. Remember when you fell in love and couldn’t think about anything else but that person? That’s how it feels when you start a new creative project. And then life comes in the way, and procrastination. Of which I will write another day. The only thing that we still need for being creative is inspiration. That will be the conclusion of the creativity-series.

2. Find resources

Different creative endeavors call for different kinds of resources, of course. As I gave you the advice to grab any minute you could get, when you try to find the time of course now I won’t tell you that you need a big studio, a pristine workplace and only the best tools to get started. So, here are a couple of ideas:

For the aspiring writer: get a notebook and pen. This is one of the things that I really love about writing. It is low cost, clean, easy and quiet. And you can do it anywhere. While you can look for the perfect pen forever you also can use what you have on hand. It is good to have a fast writing pen, but you don’t really need to. While I love my new, shiny, flowery Waterman fountain pen, I have used ordinary pencils for ages. (And when you want to have a new, shiny fountain pen like I do, do what I did: first select one that isn’t too expensive, second ask your parents to give it to you as a Christmas present.).

And then you obviously do have access to a computer. You can use that too but it isn’t as portable or easy. Books and classes and all that can help but they don’t necessarily do. In the end it all comes down to pen on paper or fingers on keyboard. Taking a class or reading a book about writing helps you think about it but, well, only doing gets things done.

For the aspiring musician: of course this is something I’m really experienced in. It’s my job to help people become musicians. But really, you don’t need a teacher. In fact you need less than you think.

• The best musical instrument is your voice. Most of us have one right here. “But I can’t sing!” you say. Don’t worry, you can. Only when you have a voice that’s constantly scratchy or hoarse have it checked by a physician. For everybody else it only takes practice. How to practice? Easy. Just sing. Sing to the radio, sing in the shower, join a local choir, then sing some more, then try to sing the song you heard on the radio, fail, sing some more. If you’re singing out of tune and you hear it yourself, congratulations you have everything you need. Try listening to yourself while you sing. No, really listening. And if you don’t like the sound of your voice, sing some more and try to experiment with your sound. When it hurts or you lose your voice stop. Then try again but this time a little gentler.
• The next best might be the guitar. Ask around and find somebody who has an old guitar that he doesn’t play anymore. Buy some new strings and find someone to put them on the guitar for you. Find a guitar book (the person who gave you the guitar probably has one), find someone to show you where to start with chords, play. Though I’m teaching beginning guitar students how to play chords, you really don’t need a teacher. You can learn a lot all by yourself.
• Also not so hard to find: a piano or keyboard. One of your relatives might have one sitting in the living room gathering dust. You only have to move it. Nowadays a lot of people have a keyboard somewhere around that they bought for the children. Borrow it.
• For the aspiring composer: get a cheap tape recorder, or if you want to get fancy use your computer. I have one with an inbuilt microphone and it comes with recording software. It even has a sort of synthesizer and loops. Julia Cameron taught herself how to write songs by singing them into a tape recorder and later picking the melodies out on a toy keyboard.

So you get my drift: borrow something or use what you already have. Don’t think that you need a grand piano, a piano teacher and a voice teacher. You don’t have to be able to write down musical notes. I once taught myself how to play the trumpet. I borrowed a trumpet and a beginner’s book. A friend showed me how to get a sound out of the instrument and then I just tried and tried and tried. Usually I waited until everybody was out of the house, but then I just made horrible farting noises until I got it.

To me that’s the main problem with making music, it makes noise. But nobody says anything about your singing in the shower. Sing in the car, no problem. And your children will get used to it. I once knew a woman who played her drums in the evening when her children w ere asleep. Those children were used to get to sleep while she banged on her drum set in the adjacent room. (I don’t think this is the best way to do it, but when it’s the only way you can do it, do it that way.)

For the aspiring artist: again, notebook and pen, or pencil. At first you don’t have to get fancy. Use crayons, use your children’s art supplies. In fact fancy art supplies might get in the way. When I expressed interest in learning how to draw my sister gave me a boy of pastel chalks. They’re lovely but I still have to use them. And you know why? First, I’m still not sure that I deserve them and second she told me you had to put some kind of finish to them when you’re done and I don’t know how. (Well, I know because she told me but I have yet to buy hair spray.) Do pastels go rancid? Maybe I should get into the spirit of this and draw something in pastels the next week.

For the aspiring sculptor: use play-doh. Or sign up for pottery class. Go outside, come back with a piece of wood. Find a pocket knife. Make something with paper-mâchè.

For the aspiring film-maker: write a script, draw sketches of what things should look like. Draw them even when you can’t draw. Borrow a video camera, make pictures, use photoshop and make a stop-motion film. Use your play-doh again. Or your children’s action figures. Whatever.

For the aspiring actor: act in front of the mirror, find acting classes, go to improvisation theater.

I think you get my drift. Start easy, start with what you already have. Don’t wait till you have the expensive single lens digital camera before you take pictures. When you find that you’re taking lots and lots of picture, save money and buy a better one. Buy it used. Like I did with my bag-sewing-project use the old sewing machine that drives you crazy. Or do it like my sister. She’d rather have no sewing machine than a bad one and so she is making her beautiful quilts by hand. And yes, sewing and taking pictures count as creative. Knitting too.

I’m sorry, this is too long again. So part three will be about finding the space for creativity. Physical space that is. I’ll deal with mental space in part, um, three or four.

(Anybody tired of this? I could throw in a short post about shoes or about how my son is driving me crazy if you want. Or a follow-up on the sugar-front or on the “no pink shoes for my son“-story.)

Well, though that’s about right, it isn’t very helpful, isn’t it?

There are two parts to this creativity thing. One is in your head and the other one is physical. For today I’d like to start with the practical aspect of it. Why, you might say, do you do that? What I really need to know is where to get ideas and how to get into the groove and such. Bear with me, just try it from the other side. It will work. And if it doesn’t I will be talking about the head stuff in another post. So in order to be creative you need three things on the physical plane: time, resources and space.

1. Find the time

This of course seems to be the hardest task of all the three. We never have time for anything. On the other hand there seems to be enough time around for everybody and so maybe we just have to learn to spend it wisely.

So, what do you want to do? Compose a symphony? Make a film as a writer/director? Bake a cake? Write a nine novel fantasy series? Which one of those projects do you think is most likely to see daylight? The cake? I think so too. Why the cake? Well, given the right equipment, a cookbook, the ingredients and about 90 minutes of time almost everybody can make a cake.

Does that mean that every one of the other projects needs a year of sabbatical? Most people don’t get to have those and if you are a parent or a procrastinator like me then the sabbatical wouldn’t help you because even a year without your paid job would leave your life pretty full. So you’d have to break your project into nice little chunks. Instead of writing a nine novel fantasy series you better just start thinking about your fantasy world. Wow. That was easy. And when did you do that? In bed before sleep? While taking a shower? While driving? Good. That’s how it should be. In addition to that you could also sit down and make a map. Oh wait, better just make a quick sketch of a map. Write down your character’s name. Or just sit down and write. No time to sit down? Write standing. Get a little tape recorder and speak in there. Or, – why don’t you just open a text editor right now and jot down a little something? Yes, now, I’ll wait. See, you just spent 30 seconds on your novel.

For the part of creativity that consists of making things up in your head you don’t need time as such.
You only need a little room in your head to think about them. Mostly while you’re doing something else. For the actual doing, the painting, the writing, the sculpting you don’t need three weeks without work or interruption. To prove this thousands of people everywhere in the world participate in NaNoWriMo each year. That means in November (of all months) thousands of people sit down and write an average of 1,667 words a day each day on top of their jobs and other responsibilities. They move their lives around to make the time it takes to write.

That’s the sprinter’s approach to creative projects.
Find the time by forcing the creative project into your life. Use the power of the deadline. Surfing the adrenaline surge and getting more and more behind with everything else, neglecting friends and family and not sleeping enough. You can’t live like that every day of the year. Some people can’t even for a month. The good thing is that you don’t have to take it all at once.

So now I’ll introduce you to the marathon walker’s guide to creativity:
Set aside a little piece of time every day to do whatever you want to do. Write, practice scales, make a sketch. Don’t sit down and think, “I’ll do this huge phenomenal project.” it won’t work. Just say to yourself, “Only 15 minutes.” Set a timer if you must. Do it every day. Well, plan to do it every day and then be content with having it done five times a week. That’s life. But don’t plan to do it only five times a week. That won’t work. You can even plan to do it once a week but it probably won’t work either. Sunday comes around, only this Sunday you don’t have time because it’s your grandmother’s birthday and there you are, the month has gone by and you haven’t been creative.

At first I recommend making it a habit like brushing your teeth. You know there was a time when you didn’t brush your teeth. Somebody else did it for you. Nowadays I doubt you would go to sleep without brushing them. But it took a while, didn’t it? You can use all the motivational help you can get. Give yourself stickers, tell somebody and make yourself accountable, or join a group (if anybody is interested in founding “songwriters anonymous”, send me an e-mail).

You can find the time by cutting back on things like reading magazines, watching TV, or running to the grocery store for the fifth time in a week because you didn’t make a shopping list. And a lot of people find that doing the creative thing first thing in the morning helps. Only not if you want to sing. Singing is better after breakfast. Believe me. And then you can spend the rest of your day feeling happy because you already were creative.

And keep in mind that professional artists don’t have the time either.
Look at musicians: they are doing one show after the other, traveling around, doing interviews, taking care of the business side of their lives (or communicating with the people who take care of the business side). But they are writing songs anyway. It’s not like they enter the studio, shut the door, let the song writing begin and emerge a week later with a finished CD. I think they too have to squeeze it in. They write on the road, in hotel rooms, on buses, and during sound check.

It’s not like I’m the first one ever to write about this, but usually the advice goes like, “set aside an hour each day”. When you’re a parent, or a parent with a paid job, this is where they lose you. You hear “set aside and hour”, laugh hysterically and go away. So I say, “Just sit down for a minute or two.” Just start somewhere. And if you manage to do something creative then it will be better than having done nothing. And soon enough you will find yourself immersed in your creative project.

Come on. Five minutes. You do have five minutes, don’t you?

So you say, “But I can’t write an opera in five minutes!” No, you can’t but let’s do the math: 5 minutes a day, 5 times a week, that’s 25 times 52, well maybe two weeks off for vacation and Christmas, that’s 1,250 minutes a year, that’s 20 hours. If I’m really working on it I can write about 600 words per hour. So that would be 12,000 words a year. Not a novel but a short story for sure. And do you really think you would stop at five minutes? Because let’s face it if it goes smoothly you’d surely spend up to 15 minutes on your writing at one sitting. So, maybe not an opera. But a song for sure. See? Okay. I know these kind of calculations are ridiculous. But keep in mind that doing a little every day helps a lot to get results. If you doubt it go to woolgathering. A woman wanted to learn how to draw. So she bought a notebook and a pen, sat down and drew. One drawing a day. You can see how her skill evolves. And you can do it too.

For how to find resources and space, see part 2.

I started out quite unhappy by the way. When my husband and I first met we found that even real love with marriage couldn’t make us entirely happy. I talked about it at that time. I thought it was inbuilt. There was something inside of me, a part of my soul that was never quite happy. I also used to be jealous, shrill, judgmental, nervous, impatient and sarcastic.

At that time I even was a little proud of it. It set me apart. It made me special. Never to be content. I thought this was what made me creative and what made me strive. I was afraid of losing it. Afraid of being happy because I thought I’d turn into someone who just sits there grinning, achieving nothing. Well, I was wrong. I can’t say when it happened exactly but nowadays I find that I’m even happy when I’m feeling utterly depressed. I can’t explain why or how but I can point to some of the changes I have made during that time which have helped.

So, what does it mean, being happy? Does it mean that I’m going through my day in a state of coital bliss wearing rose-colored glasses? Certainly not. To me it means being aware of a part of me that always feels in tune with the universe. The part that feels safe and loved no matter what. The part of me that still marvels at life. A part that can’t be hurt. To give you an example I tell you of a moment when I suddenly realized that I was happy.:

My son was a baby then, a couple of months old. I was standing outside the wine store with him sleeping in the stroller. I was waiting for my husband who bought wine. It was raining, there were a lot of cars, it was loud, I was having cramps, was tired and hungry. And suddenly upon standing there I felt happy. Despite all those circumstances. And not because my son was sleeping but because in standing there I felt alive. And I knew all was well.

See, I can’t really explain it. But I take happiness whenever it happens and try to notice it. And the more I think about it the more tips I find. I could just link to Christine Kane‘s blog and say, “Look there. Heed her advice. You’ll be happier for it.”. And I can tell you a couple of things that helped me:

Speak to yourself as if you were your best friend
After I started thinking about compulsive eating and reading Geneen Roth’s books I realized how much time I spent criticizing myself. Especially my appearance. I used to think about how fat I was all day long. Then I thought, “I have a good life, I have a healthy son, a good job, a marvelous husband, is it really important how I look? And if it is, why don’t I do something about it?” and every time I found myself thinking something like, “Your belly is really fat.” I didn’t even bother to scold me for that but turned my thoughts to my music. “I wonder how that song could be improved.”

I try to be polite to myself. You wouldn’t tell a friend, “You’re lazy. You never get anything done. And I know you said you’re gonna lose weight, but be honest, it will never work.” Which brings me to the second little thing:

Be polite and nice
Really. It does make a difference. The old “treat others as you would like to be treated yourself”-rule.

Exercise
I used to be a couch potato. Never made an unnecessary movement. My cardio-vascular system got so week that I wasn’t able to climb a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing. When I realized that I started forcing me into exercise. I hated every minute of it but I liked to be strong and fit. It took me three or four attempts by the way. I’m stubborn. Each time I was so proud for exercising three times a week for a couple of months and then it would all fall apart. I started my final round eight years ago and now I can say that movement really is a part of my life. Easy stuff like walking errands instead of taking the car, 15 minutes of a workout DVD. The animal part of me feels much better when I’m in my body. When I feel capable. When I know that my feet can carry me everywhere even if it might take awhile.

Sometimes less is more
When I gave up my aspirations to become both a scientist and a musician a heavy load was lifted from my shoulders. As much as I try (and despite my old tagline of “I want it all”) I can’t do everything at once. And I don’t have to. I am allowed to do what I love even if there is no social status attached to it.

This goes together with an important one:

This is all the life I got
Of course I could wait for it to get better. But in the midst of life with a baby I realized that there would always be something wrong with it. That there never would be time to do the things I love if I didn’t make room for it. Everybody said, “Oh, it’s just so hard when the children are tiny. Just wait till he is in preschool.” Okay, so I wait three years. And then? Something else will come along for sure. Trust me on this. I know people who have spent their whole life waiting for circumstances to be right for creativity or fun or whatever. I know of at least two people telling themselves they’d pursue their hobbies in retirement. I sincerely doubt they will. So I started using tiny little spaces for the things I love. Ten minutes of singing practice. Ten minutes of meditation. Taking a twenty minute walk because I “don’t have time for real exercise”.

It doesn’t have to be perfect
Oddly enough lately the Buddhist saying that “life is suffering” has been soothing to me. If life is sometimes chaotic and people get hurt and things are never quite perfect that is okay. Because that’s how life is. Otherwise it is like trying to step into a stream without getting wet. You spend all your time complaining about your wet feet without realizing that being wet is the state of water.

I used to be trapped in a thinking that if only I could do everything right life would be perfect. But life isn’t perfect. It doesn’t have to be. It’s life and that’s enough. It’s not a race, you’re not supposed to come out best of your class or something. It is there to be lived. And if you dismiss what you experience because it’s not like you want it then you miss your life while it’s happening.

And this one leads to:

Be grateful
I remember the first time ever when somebody told me he kept his perspective by being grateful that he has enough to eat, a roof over his head and clothes to warm him. I was in the midst of some drama or other as always but I never forgot. There are a lot of people out there without that. We really are privileged. I am. Or as Jon Kabat-Zinn put it, “As long as you are alive there is more right with you than wrong.” So, off you go and start your gratitude journal. This is an order.

Since this is far too long already I’ll just cram the rest in here:

- Stop watching the news and worrying about things you can’t change.
- Start meditating.
- De-clutter, and
- do something creative.

And of course, live in the moment.

Technorati Tags: meditation, happiness

Well, only a couple of weeks ago I would have said there is no such thing but then I had to admit it.

Those conversations with my husband during the last few weeks were not all about gazing into each other’s eyes, holding hands, and declaring our deep and unconditional love; we also had to face some things about ourselves that we didn’t want to face before. We were certain our relationship was sound and extraordinarily happy, yet I felt compelled to buy books like “Getting the Love You Want”. A couple of days ago my husband threw the word codependency in and addiction and something in me clicked.

When I wrote about my depression (and I’m still reluctant to call it that because it is so mild) Esereth said there had to be a deep cause for that. It hit home with me but I didn’t see a cause. I have been thinking about it, trying to unearth something but all I got was “Depression is anger turned inward” on which I started writing a blog post until I remembered that Flylady had already written about that. I know that I am a very aggressive person. Mostly it stays put, I’m mild and polite and smiling and turn on myself with the things I do compulsively. Like eating and reading and computer games (which I had to give up) and watching TV and reading blogs. So most things I do compulsively are things one can do in moderation for fun. And cutting out all of them is not the point because then I’d find something else instead.

What I never thought about was what I am so angry about. Why am I aggressive? And then my husband said “codependency” and I remembered that I already knew that my father is an alcoholic. I just didn’t think about it anymore.

I thought a lot if I should write this or not. I try to only write things I’d tell people in person too but I wouldn’t like my parents to read this. I thought that maybe I should talk to my father first before telling it to all the world but I didn’t. I think I will have to confront him with it eventually but I don’t think this will change anything for him.

And before you all start feeling sorry for my poor mother who is married to an alcoholic in denial let me tell you that she has issues with addiction too. Just try to come between her and her nicotine. So I have to face it I inherited an addictive personality and the psychic wounds that go with growing up in a dysfunctional family.

Not visibly dysfunctional though. I don’t have a father who drinks himself into a stupor and passes out. He never lost a job because of it. When recently somebody said, “Well, every family has a secret.” I thought, not mine. Obviously I’m very versed in denial.

Now I remember how much my parents fought over putting like little fences and rules around the alcoholism. How my father wasn’t allowed to drink before he ate something. How he wasn’t allowed to have the cognac bottle on the living room table but had to put it back every time. How when my father was still working and I was still living at home the top priority of every family member was to feed him dinner as soon as he came home. So he wouldn’t drink his dinner. He never ate at work. He’d leave the house in the morning without breakfast, spend the whole day drinking coke, and come back home where he’d often end the day on beer and cognac before falling asleep in front of TV.

My father is mild, polite, intelligent, a little distant but very caring and emotional underneath. Once in a while he explodes. All his frustration and anger, all those repressed feelings come out in a burst and then that’s it. Only this week did I find out how frightened I am by the least bit of aggressive behavior. I accused my husband of talking to me in a way that I felt as if he hit me, and all he did was tell me things I didn’t want to hear in a very calm and reasonable way. Only then did I think of the two incidents where my father completely lost his temper with me and hit me and then sent me up into my room where I cowered in a corner, wept and thought the world was about to end. Only this time did I realize that I must have been only two years old, three at the most, and that the most hurtful thing about that probably was that nobody came after me to console me afterwards. Now I know why I often have the feeling to expose myself and make me vulnerable when my husband has the feeling that I’m distant and withdrawn.

Now I know why I never drank a drop of alcohol when I still lived at home and never started smoking at all. I’m really, really angry at my family for pretending that all is well.

Alcohol is not the problem for me. I have a couple of addictive behaviors that I might have to give up or not. That’s not that important right now, but my relationship with sugar is worrying and so I decided to give it up.

And since this already is too long, I’ll write another post about that.

Today Christine Kane wrote about her ritual for the New Year. Instead of making resolutions she picks a word to focus on for every year. When I first read it I thought, “I could never focus on just one thing!” And that’s part of my problem. When I read her list of words though the one that spoke to me immediately was “effortlessness”. I even googled it to find the German translation: “Mühelosigkeit” And that in itself was an example for my quest for effortlessness, because usually when I need a word translated I go to that dictionary site that I haven’t even bookmarked. I have to think about its url and get it wrong every time. This time I just googled and there it was.

Since I’m coming from the land of deep protestant work ethics, it is hard for me to accept that even things that matter might come effortlessly. When I was a teenager I even said no to somebody who wanted me to sing backing vocals on his record. Just because I thought it had to be a mean joke. Because that was exactly what I wanted. Later I found out that it was a true offer. Pity.

Something in my mind still thinks that hard work and suffering is needed for everything important. I even managed to take the fun out of the things that I love most. Since I’m trying to change, and since I’m a Leo and don’t like to sweat and suffer, I have been trying to do what Sonia Choquette tells us to do; for the past months I have been asking the universe, and my spirit guides to help me. To send presents. And my life definitely has improved. My job in this is to be grateful and talk about what I received. I write down everything that has come my way in my gratitude journal.

Most things that I attempt to do still seem to be hard and strenuous. So for the next year I will focus on effortlessness. My life will be flowing in the right direction without the feeling of pushing a big stone uphill. Just wait and see. What will you be focusing on next year?

I wish you all the best. Thank you for visiting and reading. See you again next year.

Technorati Tags: self-help

“Why don’t you just relax a little? You don’t have to do all at once all the time.”

I told her that I’m striving because I’m not content with the way my live is. Or the way I am. But that’s not the whole truth. First of all, I know myself. I’ve been living with me for almost forty years and I can tell you this: Relaxing is very easy for me. Saying, “Oh, I worked so hard, I don’t have to be good all the time.” BHAM! Next thing I know I’m back where I started. Twenty pounds heavier, messy home, haven’t made music for weeks. And all that would be perfectly fine if I didn’t get so unhappy about it. And then there’s this:

All my life I’ve been having “great potential”. I was really proud of that. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But then, slowly, it dawned on me: Great potential means nothing if it remains potential forever. If it remains potential, you eventually will die a loser. I’ve had a great role model on this. My father is a intelligent man with big potential. My mother was attracted to him in the first place because of his sparkly conversation and the fact that all of the walls of his room were covered in sketches. He drew. Well, he gave it up when I was a little child and never picked up a pencil again. Because he wasn’t “good enough”. He had lots of interests and hobbies, but all he ever did was sleep on the couch with a book in his hand. I don’t say that my father is a loser, no. But it is a sad sight when somebody doesn’t do anything that he is longing for.

Another example: Since I am a music teacher I often happen to meet people at parties who tell me that they had always wanted to play the piano. My knee-jerk response to this is, “Well you can still do it.” And they are afraid, and they don’t and it breaks my heart to see the longing in their eyes.

I don’t want to become one of those people who end their lives regretting the things they didn’t do. I don’t want to wake up and think, “I always wanted to write songs, or a novel, but I never did. And now it’s too late.”

Yeah, this is called midlife-crisis. And I realized that there’d never be enough time, or space, or money. That I have to change now, and do the things I want to do, now. I’m not obsessed with it. It’s totally okay to write a novel and neglect the music for a month. But not for a year. And as my favorite piano teacher put it, “You’ll never regret not having watched every single episode of “Lindenstrasse“.” (German soap opera.)

But you will regret not trying to live your dreams. For sure.

Technorati Tags: creativity, midlife-crisis, self-help

Then it happened (and I fall for this trap every single time): I thought, “Oh, I’m almost done.” and forgot about it. Put a little reminder in my PDA to mail it two days before her birthday. On the mailing day I had to do this:

1. Burn the CD again, so I didn’t have to give her my only copy.
2. Design a cover and print it.
3. Find a jewel case without scratches.
4. Find an envelope.
5. Find the drawings my son had made for her.
6. Find the photo CD that I had meant to give her for months.
7. Write a few kind words, and maybe find a birthday card. (I solved this by writing directly on the drawings.)
8. Find a marker and put her address on the envelope.
9. Find a stamp and find out how much postage it costs.
10. Go to post office before 5 p.m.

Okay. All of this took 90 minutes! (Never underestimate the time for anything done with computers.) For one measly present. that was “almost finished”. So imagine me doing Christmas presents. And birthday presents for most of my husband’s family who un-conveniently were born around New Year.

I did fell all smug before, because I have done almost all my Christmas shopping. But I’m not so sure anymore. It might be a good idea to look at everything again before Christmas actually comes around. Maybe there are more presents who need a little 90-minute attention.

My husband (who is often wiser than I) says that it takes the same amount of energy to do something from start to “almost finished” as it does to do the last ten percent of it. That would mean my “almost finished” is “only half done”. Argh.

Technorati Tags: self-help, time-management, to-do-list

1. the “The Vein of Gold”-programm
2. “Take Time for Your Life”
3. “Trust Your Vibes: Secret Tools for Six-Sensory Living”
4. some assignments from Christine Kane

The Vein of Gold-programm I have been trying to do since – let me think – 1999. Yep, that’s about right. I started it twice, and have done five of the tasks so far. I’m on page 65. The book has 368 pages. So, seven times six, it might take me the next 42 years to complete this. I have to say in my favor that one of the tasks involved writing down the story of my life. The document has a total of 118 pages and 47,724 words. In between the starting and the finishing of this task I wrote three versions of my dissertation, got pregnant and had a child. “Vein of Gold” is a book by Julia Cameron to help you unblock your creativity.

This extraordinary book of learning through doing features inspiring teachings on the creative process and more than hundred imaginative, involving, and energizing tasks. Each task engages the readers in “inner play”, leading to authentic growth, renewal, and healing.

Read that, “more than a hundred” tasks. Um.

The “Take time for your life”-book by Cheryl Richardson I took up on the suggestion of Christine. I thought, polishing my time-management-skills might be good for me, since I’m struggling a little bit with the “make time for my music”-part. And reading is always fun. I took off on the first weeks assignments, then had to set it aside. Ah, looking through my journal I can say, the last task I attempted was “look for a coaching group”. On July 3. But of this year, that’s quite a relief. As far as I recall, I tried to join a Life Makeover Group in my vicinity twice. No reply. And while I’d appreciate having like-minded people around, I’m not willing to start a group of my own.

“Trust your vibes”: Oh, I love Sonia Choquette’s books about as much as Julia Cameron’s. But I never really worked with one. Recently I have been listening to her radio show, and thought it would be a good thing to pull the book out again, and maybe do one or two of the exercises. So far, I’m at the start of part 3 of 9. It’s a little easier to do than the other two programs since it doesn’t require the completion of certain tasks before going further.

The one “assignment” by Christine I have been wanting to do for this month is the monthly goal-setting. Though I never did it “right”, it helped a lot in July. Well, there is quite a bit of month still left…

I really like self-help books and some of them have helped me tremendously. Like “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” and “Why Weight?: A Guide to Ending Compulsive Eating” by Geneen Roth. But sometimes I think that they are still another form of procrastination and of thinking too much. What Sonia Choquette calls “mental constipation”. Sometimes I feel that I’m – as Leanne Ely once put it – trying to read myself thin. Only I’m trying to read myself spiritual, creative and efficient.

As always I’m ambivalent on this. Doing the exercises helps. But they are not a means of their own. They’re meant to help me to do something specific. So, when I don’t do the specific thing because the self-help exercises are taking up all my time and energy …

Okay, here’s my plan:

1. Forget about “Vein of Gold” for the moment. It has been sitting on the shelf for months now, it can sit there a little longer.
2. Go to the next chapter of “Take time for your life” without having found a community. Do the next task on the list.
3. Next weekend read the next chapter of “Trust your vibes”.
4. Today, write down my monthly goals for October any way I can. Skip the “Do it right.”-attitude.
5. Do assignment 1 and 3 of the “10 days to a better blog”-course. Skip number two.

Sometimes I wonder, if everybody tends to heap herself with tasks and projects all the time. Or is it only me?

Technorati Tags: books, self-help

So, how not to make friends:

• when you’re outside your home, plug in your earphones and listen to you MP3-player all the time
• when you’re with people, avoid eye contact
• when somebody’s speaking to you, instantly say something that signals that you’re feeling superior. (Like last week, when another preschoolers mother complained that van Gogh is not an appropriate topic for preschoolers and I said, “Oh, my husband immediately showed him the van Gogh-book. My son loves these art books.”)
• when you meet another preschooler’s mother that you like, tell her, “We have to meet during summer break! I’ll phone you.”. Then forget all about it, until you meet her after summer break and she says, “I guess we didn’t meet after all, didn’t we?”
• when you’re bringing and fetching your child, always rush in and out without a minute to spare
• when somebody wants your number to call you and meet say, “Well, I don’t think I’ll be having time for anything until November.”

How to lose the few friends you already have:

• never, ever return phone calls
• phone a friend in August, because you suddenly remembered that she left a message at the end of June. Talk to her, promise her to phone her again two weeks later, because you want to visit her. Think about her every day. Don’t call her. Decide to write a letter. Procrastinate about letter writing for weeks. (Note: Just today I wrote it. Phew.)
• after getting a letter of a friend who’s not feeling very good right now – do nothing. When she follows it with an e-mail – do nothing. Leave a message on her voice mail promising to call again and then – wait for her to write another e-mail. then write a blog-post.(Which makes a kind of sense since she is reading this blog, but still.)
• when a friend of yours is moving, don’t help at all. Phone her once after the move, promise to visit her soon, then do nothing.

Here are the biggies:

• when your best female friend ever introduces you to a guy, then tells you, “He’s interested in me, but I don’t know.” tell her that he is a loser and she’s better off without him. Be surprised, when you don’t hear from her again. A year later receive a card from her: “You former best friend and the loser announce the birth of their first child.”
• when one of your best friends in school is getting married to a woman you never met before, look at her very disapprovingly. Tell him that you think she is way to young for him, and that she only got pregnant to trap him. Tell him that he’ll be sorry that he married her. Wonder for twelve years why you never heard of him again.
• when another of you best female friends ever tells you that she’s no longer interested in the guy, she had a relationship with and still shares a house with, believe her and make out with her ex in front of her. Be surprised when she never talks to you again.

After all of these proofs of your superior social skills, complain that you don’t have friends and that all the people you meet are boring and dumb. Wonder why nobody ever knocks at your door in order to be your friend. Turn to the friendly internet and blogger communities. Rarely comment, never send anybody an e-mail. Never follow any comments up.

Duh.

Technorati Tags: friendship

This Thursday’s blog to be jolted is written by Jill Koenig. On her goalblog she offers advice on goal setting and time-management for super-achievers. While I’m still lacking in the time-management department, I never thought that I might lack goal-setting skills. I always thought, my problem lay in the gap between the setting of the goal and the achievement of the goal.

Maybe I should subscribe to her newsletter and profit from her free advice on time-management. (Sadly, there is no permalink, just go to her blog.)

The other blog to be jolted looks really nice. Unlike most of the jolted blogs it’s not a business blog either, but one of the personal mommyblogs that I like best. BlondeMom’s question “Do you ever take your kids in on your day off?” was a no-brainer for me.
Of course! I’m waiting for that all week! Time for me! Time for music! Time to do the grocery shopping. And my son loves kindergarten. (Actually he started crying, when we told him he couldn’t go due to his cold. “But I don’t have fever, I don’t have fever. I can’t have fever, because then I can’t go to kindergarten!”)

Technorati Tags: time-manegement, blogjolt, daycare

1. Sink is shining almost every night.
2. I’m dressed to shoes every day before breakfast.
3. I’m “doing” the kitchen every morning and I “swish and swipe” the bathrooms.
4. Laundry is under control.
5. “Homeblessing” gets done almost every week.
6. I’m going to bed on time – almost.
7. I’m eating less sweets and have stuck to my “only one bag of potato chips per month”-rule since May.
8. Since November I’ve been practicing the piano almost every day. There have been only two or three weeks, where I dropped down to one or two times a week.
9. I’ve been starting to practice singing again, ‘though irregular (mostly due to throat problems).
10. I’ve started to play the guitar again and have been playing every other day. Sometimes more. I’m getting calluses on the fingertips of my left hand. (That’s good. It means, guitar playing won’t be hurting any more in the near future.)
11. I’ve been meditating for at least ten minutes every day since I started last June.
12. Since February I’ve been blogging two or three times a week.
13. Since you’re wondering where I find the time to do all this: I’ve reduced TV and computer time. I stopped reading fashion magazines and those that you get for free at the health food store.
14. Since December I’ve reduced drinking alcohol to weekends.
15. Since applying the principles of “Playful Parenting” I’m yelling less at my son.

Not bad, isn’t it. I give myself a pat on the back. Now I only need to make a list with my goals for July.

Technocrati-Tags: improvements, flylady, housework, self-help

Hm. First, I have to say that I’m feeling sorry for those teachers. If they’re as unhappy as that, maybe they should change their life. But then I had to tell my student this:

While there are people for whom childhood and teenage years mark the best part of their life, I’m really happy to be a grown-up.

The thing I like the most is the degree of freedom and self-reliance. Freedom and responsibility are going hand in hand, and I actually like being responsible, too. For myself and for my child.
In the process of growing older, I have become happier and more content. My childhood and teenage years were full of anxiety and insecurity. When I was about the age of my student, I longed for:

• somebody who loves me and with whom I could have great sex
• to become a musician
• to be cool and accepted
• to have nice clothes (okay, make that cool clothes)
• to feel good about myself and the way I look
• to have curly hair
• to have at least enough money
• intellectual and emotional stimulating company

And now, as I write this, all of this has come true. Apart from the being cool and accepted part. But then, there are people who think that I’m cool. (And no, I didn’t have a perm, it did turn out that having straight hair with strangely unruly bangs translates into really having wavy hair. Duh.)

So, for all the teenagers out there: Don’t believe that life only can get worse. Please. It’s up to you to make a difference.

And to all the grown-ups: If you’re unhappy, please remember that you have a choice.

Technocrati Tags: teenagers, grown-ups, happiness, self-help

It implies that work is somehow not a part of life. That’s real cute. And that’s part of feeling stressed, too. Because while you’re spending hours and hours at work, you feel like you’re not living. But you are! Right this moment. It might not be the life you’d like to have, but it’s all you’ve got.

You’re even living while doing housework – even while cleaning the toilet. My happiest moment yesterday, for example, was hanging up laundry with my son. We had a lot of fun, and it was a very satisfying task.

In my life the boundaries between work and the rest of my life are not that clear anyway. Of course, teaching is work, because I’m getting paid for it. Transcribing songs or learning new ones is part of work even though I don’t get paid for it. Practicing is work (no pay), songwriting is work (no pay). Housework is – not quite work. If I were not a musician by profession, playing the piano and singing would be leisure.

I had an epiphany some weeks ago, when I was quite depressed because of money issues, and a little fed up with teaching. I thought about the way my life would change if I had enough money to do whatever I wanted.

Because that’s the point of the term “work life balance” that “work” is something you only do to earn the money you need for living. (And living is something you do on weekends and vacation.)

My first thoughts were of the things, money can fix: paying off the mortgage, buy a new kitchen, buy a grand piano … But then I found that even ‘though I’d possibly not teach every student, I’m teaching now, I’d rather not quit teaching. I like it. If I had all the money in the world, my life wouldn’t change in a big way. I think.

Imagine thinking about your life and finding out that you’re almost exactly, where you want to be…

I was a little shocked, but really happy.

my inner parent.

The part of me that says: “I know, you really want to eat more chocolate right now, but since you’re only wanting it, because you’re tired, you’d better go to bed. The chocolate will still be there tomorrow.” And for years I had told myself to shut up, ate the chocolate and didn’t go to bed on time. Afterwards I’d complain: “I don’t know what to do, I really shoud have gone to bed earlier.” (And not have eaten so much chocolate). Lame. Pathetic.

Then I found a whole website dedicated to diet journals. Dozens of women complaining that they were not able to resist the cake/chocolate/potato chip/whatever. As if it attacked them and forcefed them. Or me.

So my inner mommy made up a couple of rules for myself (actually I copied the ones I made for my son – only his rule for drinking alcohol is different from mine), and I stuck to them. Amazing. Why didn’t I think of this before? And after being quite stern with myself, once in a while I can say “Okay, but only this one time.” and break a rule.

And since every single journal entry I did for the last weeks started with “I’m so tired.”, I’ll pull out the extra motivational tools. From today on I’ll get a sticker on my calendar for every day that I go to bed on time.

For my inner 3 year old.