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How I did with my goals

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Two weeks ago I wrote about some fancy new goals that I had set for myself. I thought I’d try this “public accountability” everybody is talking about these days. Of course I thought I’d be back to report a week later but I wasn’t. Mostly because I had this really annoying persistent cough that made me want to do nothing but stay in bed all day. My goals were:

  1. only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
  2. exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
  3. play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
  4. post on my blog 3 times a week.
  5. write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
  6. meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I did quite well for about five days by the way. I went walking almost every day, I played guitar and piano, I wrote my words, and I was quite consistent with the meditation and morning pages. Meditation and morning pages has been something I have been doing for years, and so it wasn’t that hard to get back into that. Playing music and writing fiction was a bit harder because I found I never got around to it until late in the evening, and so I really only played for ten minutes, and I stopped writing after 120 words or so. But even when I felt like I was much too tired for writing or playing I enjoyed it nonetheless. And a 100 words isn’t much. It takes me less than 10 minutes. Also I never got the feeling that the story was making much progress at that rate. But then I wrote about 700 words on it in five days.

And then I felt terrible because of the coughing, and then, and then, and so I let everything slide. I’m still doing quite well with points 2 and 6. You can see for yourselves that the blog-posting three times a week did not happen. I may have to resign myself to the fact that these days it’s more about twice a week if that.

You might have noticed that I didn’t write about the first goal on my list. Ahem. This is the goal that I didn’t reach once in the past two weeks. Not once. I definitely won’t be making any rules around food and eating for the moment. I don’t stick to them anyway. Which is extremely frustrating. But it doesn’t help if I pretend that it’s different.

So, I’m suspending the setting of goals again. What I did find out about myself was that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Before setting my new goals I was on the way to get a better grip on housework again, but the minute I concentrated on my new list, I got lax about housework again.

And then I got sick, and then I started knitting a sweater that I want to have right this minute, and that meant I have been doing nothing but knitting for the past week. I started it last Sunday, and if I can go on like I did last week it will be finished by next weekend. And while I really would like to accomplish other things too, there is something very, very nice about sitting around and knitting a warm ruby-red sweater while reading Miss Marple novels. So I’ll just do that for the rest of the weekend.

So for me, obviously, public accountability doesn’t work.

In response to my post about goals PiaPessoa said she wanted to work on exercising two times a week. I’d like to hear how that went. And Anne said that I should strive to reach the point where a new habit is like brushing your teeth. She is totally right with this, of course, and when I strive to form new habits it always helps me to remember how long it took me to brush my teeth twice a day without fail. You know, as a child I was taught to brush my teeth in the mornings only. And I did so for years. Then it occurred to me that brushing them in the mornings and evenings might be a good course of action. I think I tried to bring myself to brush my teeth in the evenings too when I was about eight years old. I never succeeded until I was about twenty. And then I lost the habit again, and had to re-install it when I was about ten years older. These days I never would go to bed without brushing my teeth first. So I finally reached that stage of forming a new habit where I do it every day without fail. But it took me about 22 years to reach that stage. 22 years!

There must be a way to speed that up. Really.

Things which I wanted to write about but didn’t

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  • how to learn to love exercise
  • how becoming a musician has changed the way I hear music
  • how giddy I felt because my husband has borrowed a drum set
  • how proud I then felt when my son played the drums
  • how much my son has grown in the past few months and how sweet he is looking with his blonde curls, blue eyes, and almost skater-like clothes
  • how happy the beret I made from my handspun makes me, and how happy I was knitting it
  • how I made a sweater out of yarn that I bought more than twenty years ago, and how much sentimental value that wool holds
  • how I still long to be cool, and how much I associate coolness with a certain kind of clothes
  • how I often feel that there are many different persons inside of me, and that I should dress accordingly
  • how I realized again today that the things that are most ordinary to me are quite extra-ordinary to others, when a friend of my son – who wanted to look at the borrowed drum-set – exclaimed, “Wow! You have a lot of guitars!”, and my son said, “These are my father’s guitars. That’s his favorite one, it’s a Jaguar. Shall I show you my mother’s guitars? I have a guitar too.” And we didn’t even tell him about the two that live on the wardrobe in the bedroom because we don’t use them. And the violin.
  • how I’m doing with my Christmas knitting
  • how I’m doing with reaching the goals I set for myself last Saturday (mostly good, totally bad on one account; I’ll keep you posted)
  • how pleased I am with what I’m currently spinning, and how I hope to make the yarn into a sweater someday (there are still about 400 grams left to spin, and – as I mentioned before – that particular sweater will make me look about as sombre as a parrot covered in tropical flowers)
  • how Germans celebrate Christmas, New Years Eve, Carnival, or Easter. Or the first day of school.
  • how much I’d be pleased if you sent me your links for the October Just Posts roundtable (You can send me links to any post about social justice written in the parenting blogosphere that you wrote or read.

And, whoosh, the week went by

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I’m feeling a bit stupid (again), here I am, realizing that the last post I wrote was about weekend to-do-lists, and all of a sudden it’s time for a new weekend. I could swear they are making the weeks shorter, and shorter these days.

I had wanted to write posts about how to learn to love exercise, about me and my son, how we had weeks of fighting and yelling, and now it’s all getting better, about how this same son wakes up early every single day now, so that my poor husband who doesn’t respond well to the traditional fighting over getting dressed, fighting over breakfast, and fighting to get out of the house on time, especially when he had been woken an hour early, resigned himself to sleeping in the guest room, well, I wanted to write about the usual things.

Also I have been on a finishing frenzy, knitting-wise. I’m just about to finish a cardigan, and a huge lace shawl, and then, today, in the middle of the day, just a few minutes before my first student of the day was to arrive I decided to do something wild and crazy and start a completely irrational project just like that.

But then I looked at the yarn and saw that it needed to be wound into balls before I can use it, and while I might be crazy enough to try and start a project in ten minutes, I’m clear enough to see that ten minutes doesn’t work if you have to wind the yarn first.

Time for the next weekend to-do-list, I think.

The weekend to-do-list

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Do you do that too? Make a list of what you want to do on your weekend? And I don’t mean something like a grocery list, or a list of chores, my list is all mixed. Chores, pleasurable things, mundane things.

I think my tendency to make endless lists is stemming from a deep desire to live my life as best as possible. It also stems from the experience that if I don’t make lists, if I don’t write down things nothing will get done, and by the end of the weekend I will feel bad about that.

I wasn’t always like this. Back in my twenties I spend weekends mostly alone, in bed. I kept the lists and the things to do for weekdays only, unless I had a big paper to write or something. I remember when I decided to make Saturday a workday, and felt almost shocked about this. Still, Sundays were spent in bed, reading, doing nothing, with a solitary walk in the afternoon.

Now, my life is much fuller than it used to be, and I have begun putting things on my lists like: “talk with husband”, “play with son”, “read comic”, and “take a shower”.

So, on Friday I made a list, and I did almost all the things I put on it, and now I feel quite good about my weekend and myself, only I have this feeling that I shouldn’t be making these lists all the time.

This was my list:

  • seam, wash and block green cardigan
  • spin
  • block scarf that I made for my husband (has been lying around since April)
  • clean house
  • buy groceries
  • go to hardware store
  • play the guitar
  • continue knitting Mystic Waters shawl
  • read Flash and Firefly-Comics

I did everything on my list apart from cleaning, but then my husband vacuumed the whole house so he did my chore for me. What I didn’t put on my list but what I should have put on there was:

  • practice recorder with son
  • give son a bath
  • exercise

It wasn’t on the list so I didn’t do it. Oops. On the other hand I did spend about an hour on Saturday teaching my son how to crochet. It was all very sweet. He had been studying a children’s catalogue full of clothes and toys, and suddenly he said, “I want to knit a bag like that.” Of course I was interested, and after telling him that it was indeed crochet, and that yes, I would teach him how to do it but only after breakfast, I fetched some yarn and a crochet hook. He’s becoming quite good at the actual crocheting part that you do with your right hand but he is completely unable to hold the yarn, and the piece he’s working on in his left, so for now he needs me to be his left hand. Which led to some frustration on his part when he wanted to work on his bag a little more after lunch, and when I couldn’t help him immediately he tried on his own only to discover that he can’t do it without me. Not the best for building self-esteem.

I don’t remember it being so hard. When thinking about how I learned to crochet and knit, I’m left with a feeling that my mother showed me briefly and then I got it. I remember that learning how to purl was a bit more complicated because I taught myself out of a book, and got it wrong but that was that.

On the other hand I was eight when I learned how to crochet and my son is only five years old. He will learn eventually. At least I hope that he will.

But, back to the list-making, I do find it a bit sad that I have to put things like “read comic” on a list to get them done. It’s only because I’m wading through heaps of unread books, comics, magazines, and blog posts.

So, while the weekend to-do-list does work for me, I still have the feeling that I shouldn’t be having one. And, of course, if my life were in order, I’d do the grocery shopping and other errands during the week.

So, what do you think about weekend to-do-lists? Do you have them? Do they work?

So, yesterday was Blog Action Day and Love Your Body Day

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and I missed them both. Remember, how I told you about blog action day? The theme was poverty. Lucky for me things like that don’t depend on me and there were thousands of posts regarding the subject. Even on blogs about marketing craft. Well, I missed it but I have the excuse that I have written about child poverty in the past (If you’re going over there you also should take a look at the comments).

And then I found out that yesterday was also Love Your Body Day. On the one hand I think that we may have just a few too many blogger holidays (Talk Like a Pirate Day, anyone? Towel Day?) on the other hand, of course, every day is a good day to love your body. In fact since this body might be the only one we have we’d better treat it with respect and love. One of the commenters to my last post called her body a “heap of cells” and I felt quite uneasy about this.

I know it took me quite some time to learn to love my body but it was really worth it. Yes, I am overweight (that’s a fact) but I don’t really feel that there is something to hide. From the inside my body feels good, it’s strong, it’s curvy, my husband likes to look at me, and while I see that it’s aging and far from perfect I can tell you that I felt fatter, less fit, and less lovable at the age of twenty than I feel now.

Then all I could see when I looked in the mirror was a heap of “problems”: butt too big, shoulders too narrow, thighs too big, arms too skinny, waist too narrow. When I dressed I thought about things to hide all the time.

I did learn this from my mother. When she speaks of her body she only speaks about the things she doesn’t love about it. She taught me to wear clothes like tents so that people wouldn’t realized that my bottom part is bigger than the rest. Only later did I find out that the tents actually covered everything so that I looked equally big all over. Only later have I learned that there are indeed people who like women to be on the curvy side. And I learned that I prefer real women over coat hangers every time.

I went to the sauna and the pool and looked at other women’s bodies. Look at them in a friendly way, not the “Look at her, if I were looking like that I wouldn’t wear a …”-mindset. Study other women and find something beautiful about each and every one of them. And look at myself in the mirror every day and learn to love me as I am.

I can tell you that your butt doesn’t get smaller if you hate it. And that there is no magic number on the scale that makes you feel beautiful. I have felt fat at every weight between 57 and 84 kilos. And I have felt more beautiful when I was heavier and older than when I was thinner and younger.

I did write about feeling fat back in June so I won’t do it here again, (instead I’m shamelessly pointing you there). So, let’s all step in front of the mirror, take a look at ourselves, smile (genuine smile, please, no faking) and say, “I love my body. I look fabulous!” Repeat until you really mean it.

And once again I don’t quite know what to write about

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And as everybody knows a post that starts like this can only be more than a thousand words, not less. I am, again, in mild panic mode. In fact this may well become my new “normal”. This time it’s because I will be away for the weekend. Yes, you heard right, I, a capable, somewhat intelligent woman, am completely flustered because I will be going on a trip from Thursday to Sunday. Alone. On a train. In fact, all I have to do is to remember to take my wallet, ticket, and toothbrush and be at the station on time.

I really despise people who make a big deal out of nothing but, sadly, I appear to be one of them. I have been thinking about what to wear since June, and have gone into more detailed planning mode since two weeks ago. I still don’t know how the weather will be. So, I asked my husband to please wash all my clothes and hang them up to dry today because I had a very urgent hair dresser appointment.

I’m sorry to say that I spent hours of my life debating which purse to take, and – much more important – which books, and which knitting projects. I decided not to take a drop spindle though. (And I won’t take my spinning wheel. I’m sure you’re happy to know.)

So, where am I going, you might ask? Well, it’s a family reunion. Cousins of my father will meet and I thought it might be fun and/or interesting to meet a whole bunch of relatives that I’ve never seen before. There aren’t even that much stories about them. They are all descendants of my maternal grandmother’s siblings. Of her many siblings (and I don’t know how many there were) none is still alive.

Since most of my father’s relatives come from Saxonia there was a long time after World War II when it was very hard to meet. They lived in the GDR, and we lived in the FRG. Nowadays there is only one German Republic again, and so, some years ago, my father went to see his relatives again. That family reunion seems to have been a success and so they planned another one. Which I’m going to attend.

At first I was all excited, and then I realized that I would spend a weekend with my parents without my son and husband as a buffer between us, and that – because my son will stay at home – they will be smoking constantly all day long. Also, I’m nervous about the 25 or so people that I will meet for the first time. I want to make a good impression. On the other hand, these are people who have known my father for more than sixty years, and they still want to meet him.

I wonder if these relatives of mine will look like me. I’m looking more like my father than like my mother, and I have been told by my grandmother that I resemble her grandmother very much. Will there be more who have heads shaped liked that of Bert from Sesame Street, who have a yellowish tinge to their skin (like Bert again, come to think of it), and freakishly small hands?

My father sent a newsletter to everyone beforehand where he misquote me, told everybody that I was excited about meeting them because I had heard so many stories, and got my whole education wrong. The problem is that I was interested in the meeting because I didn’t hear any stories at all.

So I might be facing a weekend of meeting cousin this, and cousin that without ever getting them straight.

Of course, like usual I deal with all this uncertainty by worrying about the least important things first. What to wear. And I know perfectly well that I always do this, and that I still hope to somehow magically conjure the perfect traveling wardrobe that transforms me into the woman I long to be without having to iron anything or wear heels. It’s like I still dream of this very stylish hairdo that will make my hair look much more thicker and luscious than it actually is and that only needs to be dried off with a towel, and maybe brushed casually. Just today my hairdresser reminded me – again – that she can’t work miracles and so I’m looking like I always do only without my bangs hanging into my eyes.

Same with the wardrobe. I’ll wear the same things I always wear. Though if I manage to buy a button for my new, um, cardigan, and sew said button on I might have something new to wear. My mother won’t like it though. She’ll pull at the hem every time she sees me from behind, and tell me I should have made it longer to hide my big butt. And then I had this fabulous idea of knitting myself a matching scarf from my handspun. Until Thursday. I’ll only have to wash and dry the yarn, and then knit about a hundred hours or so. That shouldn’t be a problem, shouldn’t it?

So I keep telling me that there is nothing to get nervous about, and that I just pack the same things I always pack, and that everything will be alright.

You know what I’m looking forward to the most? On Thursday and Sunday each I’ll have eight hours on the train. All by myself.