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September update on my year of happiness

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That’s what being back to school does to you, all of a sudden you do things almost on time. I hope this goes on for a while, about a year would be nice, and then it could start all over again.

I find that these “happiness reports” depend very much on how a feel in the moment I’m writing them. Which is what everybody will tell you, that happiness is fleeting and can’t be fabricated. But I still think there can be a thing like lasting happiness, and no, I don’t mean contentment.

Yesterday I had one of those dreary teaching days where I felt that every student was slow, and clumsy, and a waste of time, and then I remembered one of Gretchen Rubin‘s mottos, “Act how you want to feel.”, and I was so successful in telling myself how much I enjoy teaching, and what nice and brilliant students I have that by the end of the day I was positively beaming.

Now you might say, “But those weren’t you’re true feelings!”. I have to confess that I’m not that sure about feelings being true at any given moment any more. With all those hormones racing around in my body, and with things like being hungry or tired making such a huge difference it might be hard to get to the bottom of a situation. Slowly I understand what buddhists mean when they say that feelings aren’t permanent, and ever changing. I have days when something tiny like taking a nap or reading something or deciding to act how I want to feel can turn my whole day around. So, since it’s possible to do that why not use it to my advantage. And in my case I had the additional advantage that my students are really lovely people, and so I know that it’s me when I feel like I can’t stand to hear another mangled version of a tune that’s not that great to start with. I don’t complain, I know that comes with the job. When you’re teaching people how to play an instrument you mainly sit there all day and listen to people play things they can’t play well yet. And every time they master something you go on to the next thing.

I only have to remind myself to sometimes listen to some music that’s played by a master to remind myself where we’re all going with this.

But back to my report. As you know by now I made yet another list of things that I want to change in order to become a happier person:

  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.
  6. Play the piano every day.
  7. Wear clothes that make me feel good.

Usually I add something to this list every month. But this month I didn’t. I’m still thinking about the part where my mood is bad because of hormones. It’s now definite since my mood has been much more stable while I’m on chemical birth control. This is not a permanent solution since I have no desire to have a stroke in the near future but it helps isolating the problem.

  1. Now for the part where I tell you how I did. There’s no surprise there, I’m doing mildly blah again. Still I feel better for trying:
  2. Going to bed on time hasn’t happened much but as long as we were still in summer break I managed to get almost adequate sleep. It’s still the same, every day I have slept enough is much better than the ones I have after only six or seven hours. For the past few days I managed to go to bed almost on time, a step into the right direction. I’m also giving myself stickers for that again. (So far: 2 stickers in 8 days. There still is room for improvement.)
  3. I have been getting much better at picking up after myself, and my husband just told me yesterday that he has the feeling that housework is currently divided equally between us. That is great news, Finally some improvement. Of course, right now I’m sitting here typing while he is cooking…
  4. The writing of the fiction hasn’t happened. But again I managed to write today and on Tuesday. I’m hoping to get into the groove again.
  5. The exercise has happened. Not exactly three times a week but at least two times. I also have been going to the pool twice already so that my son can work on his swimming skills. The first time I even managed to swim a few laps in the kid’s pool. There have been an astonishing number of times when I did my walk/run-routine for an hour or more. And I can proudly tell you that I can now not only climb stairs again without getting out of breath instantly, I can even run them up if I want to catch a train, then jog about 50 meters, and all of that without keeling over or thinking I’ll die the next minute. That thing alone makes me very, very happy.
  6. There was no piano playing whatsoever apart from what happened while teaching, I’m sorry to say. But my husband and I played a couple of songs in front of an audience, and learning how to sing a new song and performing it with my husband made me very happy. I’d like to do a little more music with him in the near future. Without going back to trying to emulate a cover band if possible.
  7. Buying new pants has made dressing much easier. The funny thing is that I bought both pairs a size too big. They don’t really look all that great but the comfort of un-pinching waistbands is almost worth it. One of these days I’ll even make myself a new denim skirt. I love wearing my corduroy one. The only thing I haven’t solved yet is how to wear a skirt with leggings and woolen socks while teaching without looking ridiculous. I don’t wear shoes indoors and I have yet to find a stylish slipper-boot. Maybe I’ll compromise, buy a nice pair of Birkenstocks and wear tights. We’ll see.

The other thing I have been doing is to think about the way I eat again. I have been starting to re-read “Outsmarting the Midlife Fat Cell. Of course I did remember most of what Debra Waterhouse wrote about in that book but seeing it again was very good for me. I found that some of my new habits that I started in order to lose weight were quite counter-productive. Also that I don’t exercise enough. And that my portions are way too big. The thing is, I have been going to eating frequent small meals, and drinking like a camel that reaches an oasis after weeks in the desert, and all of a sudden my weight seems to creep downwards again. We’ll see how that goes in the long run, especially since I still tend to counter exhaustion with too much food, but I’m optimistic.

So eating like a sane person who enjoys food is my new goal for October.

The other thing that I started, and you surely have noticed by now is my knitting podcast. It’s in German because there is dire need for a German knitting podcast out there. Doing it makes me ridiculously happy. Especially since people seem to like it. I have plans of doing a sort of “best of”-edition in English at some point, we’ll see when that might happen.

Phew, that was a long one, wasn’t it? Anybody else out there striving for more happiness by making rules?

It really must be 2006 again

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because I have been given a blog award. Winterkatze kindly presented it to me weeks ago, and only today did I read her post. As I usually did back in the days I tried to see where the award originated but I had to give up after being unable to find the relevant posts on several blogs. See, I was wondering why an award presented to me by a German book blogger had all these pictures of nail polish and shoes:

Well, I managed to follow it back to a couple of fashion bloggers but was unable to find it’s origin, sorry. Nonetheless there are of course rules to this award which are to tell you about ten things I like, and to name ten more bloggers for the award. I will gladly show you ten things I like but I won’t be tagging anybody, sorry, I have this feeling that I have done enough tagging for the moment.

Because I’m sadly behind with the posting of my daily picture I thought I’d combine the ten things I like with that (for the rest of my daily pictures please visit my flickr):

  1. 070:365homemade tortillas with guacamole
  2. 069:365 watching my son sleep (this was a picture he wanted me to take, he is actually posing)
  3. 068:365blue skies
  4. 067:365knitting a new hat for my husband
  5. 066:365roses
  6. 065:365beer
  7. 064:365me
  8. 063:365watching my son read
  9. P1010626fiber
  10. 062-365books

What to do when your computer goes boink

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Last weekend I had a case of Computer! Emergency! Panic! It came to me after a week of regular “first week of school”-panic, and on top of “first live performance in five years”-panic. Really, it was lovely.

So, Saturday morning (more than a week ago) after breakfast I went over to my studio to “just check my e-mail” which usually is code for “plop down in front of the computer and lose myself in the depth of the webs for an hour or two”, and when I tried to turn on my laptop all I got was the grey screen of doom. The second attempt got me as far as the “grey screen with blinking question mark”. Bad sign, not good at all.

That was the beginning of 2 1/2 days of me sitting in front of the machine, trying things, doing research on my husband’s computer, rushing off to get spare parts, and dismantling and re-assmebling my computer. I didn’t sleep properly in days and found that there is indeed one thing in the world that makes me lose my appetite, and that’s a computer emergency.

Now, I am a bit embarrassed that my computer is that important to me, and I have indeed contemplated going analogue again, I’m not sure – for example – if my electronic calendar is really worth the hassle; but it was my husband who got me to ponder this question even further.

Let’s face it, we might think that computer emergencies are the exception, and fortunately they are, but I find that there are enough of them to warrant a plan on how to deal with them. This past hiccup caused me to spend about a week thinking about not much else, and I had to spend quite a bit of money as well.

Granted, not everybody has three hard disk failures in four years (and I won’t get another re-furbished machine, that’s for sure) but I had them. And there are quite a few more of the smaller crises like software updates going wonky, or user error, or mysterious ailments that cause half your calendar to disappear.

So I’m making some rules for computer emergencies for myself. And I’ll print them out and put them somewhere I’ll find them again. Before I write about those, though, there is something really important to remind you (and me) of – you’ve probably heard it before – BACK UP. OFTEN. When my first hard disk crashed I lost about half a year’s worth of family photos, digital music, and some other stuff. This time I was fortunate: the computer broke the morning after my regular Friday backup. I’ve been using ibackup, and that has been the only reason that computer failure didn’t turn me into a small ball of whimper. My new computer comes with time machine, and I really hope that works. So, the rules…

… when I get to my computer and something is wrong the main rule is: remember real life first

  1. Do I have any pressing things to do like feeding my son or being somewhere else?
  2. Have I taken a shower already? Chances are that fiddling with the computer will let me lose my sense of time completely. Yes, fixing the problem might only take twenty minutes but what if it takes two days? Which it usually does.
  3. Do I have something to drink nearby? Have I been to the bathroom? Last Sunday I got so mesmerized by working on my dead computer that I only drank my morning tea and a small glass of wine with lunch. Nothing else.
  4. Is it past six o’clock in the evening? Wait until the morning.
  5. Tell my family that there is a computer emergency and ask them to come and look for me once and hour or so.
  6. Don’t panic. It’s just a device, it’s not my life.

The other thing I did was that this time when I bought a new computer I got an extended warranty. So for the next three years whenever anything goes wrong with my computer I’ll go to the nice computer shop, bat my eyelashes and say, “There is something wrong with my computer, please fix it.” And I actually bought locally because of this for once.

I could have fixed the computer in the end but I would have needed a new hard drive (which I already bought), and on top of that a new keyboard/trackpad/top case-part because I managed to break that while installing the new hard drive. And yes, one should be able to install a new hard disk in a Macbook without opening the whole computer but you can only do that when the guys who installed the last hard disk (after the first one broke) put back everything including the white tab that you use to pull the broken drive out. So I would have ended up spending another 130 € on a four year old laptop with a broken optical drive.

So in the end I got a new shiny computer which I really love and have wanted for quite some time now. But it took me almost a week to restore everything, and there are still about three programs that won’t work. Of course, I bought those years ago, and now with the shiny new computer, of course, comes a shiny new version of the operating system.

Next thing I’ll have to get my audio interface work with the computer. Wish me luck.

I had this list of goals some weeks ago

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As you might remember I made a list of projects I wanted to do during summer break. Well, summer break is over now so it’s time to look at it again, don’t you think?

  1. Actually go on vacation for about a week.
  2. “Spring” clean the whole house.
  3. Prepare knitting classes for fall.
  4. Relax.
  5. Teach my son to swim.
  6. Edit my 2007 NaNoWriMo-first draft.
  7. Paint kitchen.
  8. Learn background vocals for songs to be played at friend’s birthday party in mid-August.
  9. Learn how to bake bread.
  10. Take a picture every day and post it on the internet. For details on this you might want to check out Sue Snaps.
  11. Play the piano every day.
  12. Sing every day.
  13. Play the guitar every day.
  14. Finish spindle spun sock yarn.
  15. Spin yarn for Vine Yoke Cardigan.
  16. Try my hand at doing a knitting podcast.
  17. Renovate my blog so that it looks nice again.
  18. Meditate every day.
  19. Exercise.

Out of these 19 projects I did – eight.

  1. We went on vacation for three days instead of a whole week because those there never were more than three consecutive days without rain. We made the most of what we had. Next year we might want to pitch our tent abroad, we’ve had enough of rainy Augusts for now.
  2. There was quite a bit of cleaning and tidying of the house but there was no “spring” cleaning as such. Still, it looks much better than before.
  3. I did start preparing my knitting classes, then I got distracted, there is still one book I want to read – maybe I should just accept that procrastination and mad-dash improvisation is my style and go for it.
  4. I did relax. Yeah me!
  5. My son knows how to swim! With the bad weather I didn’t know if he’d ever learn it but then I took him to a gorgeous indoor pool twice, and he did paddle several meters without help. He still looks a bit like a poodle while swimming but he’s clearly getting there. Yay!
  6. Editing my first draft? What first draft? Oh, that draft – oops – that must be some where in that pile over there on the desk that’s buried in other piles. I didn’t even take it out once. Don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.
  7. The painting of the kitchen was only a faint hope when I put it on the list. We have to have new wiring in the old part of the house, and we don’t want to paint the rooms before that, but we still don’t have the money (or time) to have the wiring done (or even to ask how much it would cost) so we might live in these unpainted rooms for decades. Who knows.
  8. I did learn the background vocals, and performed them at said birthday party. For most of the songs I did not have a microphone because the percussion player hijacked it while I wasn’t looking, and so I could have sung anything, nobody heard me anyway. It still was fun but brought back memories of all the bad gigs I have played in my life *shudder*.
  9. Bread didn’t happen as well. I wanted to make the famous “No-Knead-Bread” but the thing is you have to make the dough about 24 hours before you want to bake it, and that means planning, and having two days in a row where you have time for baking at the same time of day. That didn’t happen. I still have the flour sitting right there on the counter, and one of these days … I did make cinnamon rolls for the first time, though. They were delicious.
  10. I did indeed take a picture every day, and posted it on the internet (not every day). I only forgot once.
  11. Not much piano playing.
  12. Not much singing either.
  13. No guitar playing at all. Teaching on Monday will be great, Mondays it’s almost nothing else but guitar. My fingers will hurt like hell in the evening.
  14. Spindle spin sock yarn is done. And it might even be fine enough.
  15. I started spinning the yarn for the Vine Yoke Cardigan even though I’m still not that satisfied with it. I spin it to what I think is the right thickness, then I ply it, everything looks great, then I wash it and – bang – it’s twice as plump as before. I think I’m getting it right this time but I’m afraid I will spin it all up and then won’t be able to use it for the cardigan.
  16. Knitting podcast is up and on the way.
  17. Blog layout is still wonky, sorry.
  18. Not much meditation happening but I did write morning pages most days.
  19. I did quite well with the exercising, have been running and walking and riding my bike.

I might have to re-think my lists and goals approach one of these days. I still have the feeling that making lists is a good thing but then looking at them to see that most things didn’t happen – not so nice. I might have to check them off more often. Or something. The summer does feel like a good one. Despite the rain that fell most days.

A thing that wasn’t on my list but that happened is that we as a family did a lot of nice things together. We had barbecues, and bike rides, and we went camping and all. That was great. And we all had quite a bit of time puttering around the house as well. That was great too.

Projects for summer break 2010

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This year I will be prepared. I will have a list:

  1. Actually go on vacation for about a week.
  2. “Spring” clean the whole house.
  3. Prepare knitting classes for fall.
  4. Relax.
  5. Teach my son to swim.
  6. Edit my 2007 NaNoWriMo-first draft.
  7. Paint kitchen.
  8. Learn background vocals for songs to be played at friend’s birthday party in mid-August.
  9. Learn how to bake bread.
  10. Take a picture every day and post it on the internet. For details on this you might want to check out Sue Snaps.
  11. Play the piano every day.
  12. Sing every day.
  13. Play the guitar every day.
  14. Finish spindle spun sock yarn.
  15. Spin yarn for Vine Yoke Cardigan.
  16. Try my hand at doing a knitting podcast.
  17. Renovate my blog so that it looks nice again.
  18. Meditate every day.
  19. Exercise.

Sounds all very reasonable and do-able, doesn’t it? [Insert mad laughter here.]

Summer break starts next week.

Thinking about minimalist packing

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There are two reasons I’m thinking about packing right now: 1) I’m about to visit my parents for ten days com Wednesday, 2) through the Unclutterer website I found an article on minimalist packing last week or so.

I like to travel light as much as the next person, and I’m always making fun of people like my mother who always takes about three times the clothes I do, and ends up bringing things home that she didn’t even wear on the trip. Of course, the secret to packing light is not to mind if you look the same every day, and to have comfortable shoes that you can wear day in and day out. (Sometimes I think wearing shoes like that might be one of the secrets of happiness but this is not about shoes.)

Still, when I’ll be getting out of the door to travel my luggage will be quite a bit heavier than the one described on the minimalist blog. Why is that so?

packing.jpg

Well, for one I’m not staying in a hotel so I will bring shampoo, and soap, and a hairdryer (a tiny one but still), I will bring an emergency travel towel (something that really comes in handy more often than you think), I will take a second cardigan, and contact lens solution, and my cell phone charger, my camera charger, my ipod charger, and my PDA charger.

Why do I need all these gadgets? Well, I won’t bring my laptop, and my PDA with its foldable keyboard is my means to get my 500 words a day in.

I will also bring more clothes than her because while I could wash my clothes while away I don’t like to do so when I’ll be only gone for a little more than a week so I’ll bring four tees, a cardigan, four pairs of socks, and four changes of underwear in addition to what I’m wearing the first day. Depending on the weather forecast I might also bring a pair of sandals in addition to my grey walking shoes, and I’m contemplating to add a pair of slippers since we will be spending quite a bit of time sitting around indoors.

I will bring a bathing suit because we plan to go swimming, I will bring a lace shawl or two, and I will bring a bottle of wine and some dark chocolate as presents for my parents.

I will bring a notebook for my morning pages, and another one for just general notes, I will bring my best pen, and a book to read, and I already bought three new books for my son to read, and I will bring a pack of Uno cards to play with my son. Last year I took three books for me but this year I decided to only take one paper book, and I have a couple more on my ipod. But I can think of a lot of situations where you don’t want to bring an electronic reading device, or where you can’t charge your ipod, or just imagine what if it falls to the ground and breaks, and then you’re stuck without a book to read.

We will have two eight hour train rides to fill, and a whole week’s worth of evenings sitting in our rented apartment while out son is already asleep.

I will also take a bottle of water or two, and sandwiches and cookies, as you do when you’re traveling with a child, and a husband who is lactose and fructose intolerant. We will also take tea, so that my mother doesn’t have to buy some that she’d never drink anyway.

And of course I will bring knitting. You didn’t think I would forget that, wouldn’t you? I already started a pair of socks who’ll come with me, and I will start another lace shawl, one that’s intriguing but not as complicated as the one I’m currently working on. I also will bring a spindle or two and 100 grams of fiber, and if everything goes according to plan I might have a nice pair of socks made from that fiber upon our return. If everything doesn’t go according to plan I will have lugged around 100 grams of fiber, a 15 gram spindle, and a set of double pointed needles.

I will also take some sheet music since my husband plans to bring both an electrical guitar and the violin with him, and since the guitar is already there I might finally get around to practice the songs I’ve been teaching my students lately. (That’s the “so you’ll have to play it this way, only much faster, and as you can see you have to look out to not make this mistake I just made”-school of teaching. In my defense I have to say that they are playing quite well.) So. Sheet music, picks, guitar tuner, and a capo.

And two yoga DVD’s. I’m not taking my running shoes though. See, I’m sensible. And I will exercise in my pajama bottoms.

And before you think I’m totally crazy I might have to add that when my husband and I went to Brazil for two months all the luggage we had were our two backpacks (one is about the size of a carry-on, the other is a bit bigger), and each of us had a second backpack in addition to that. We could easily carry all out stuff around. So, the clothes I take for ten days would be enough for any amount of time, I only would have to wash them.

backpack.jpg

We didn’t bring a guitar, though, we bought one there.

So I can never decide if I’m a light traveler or not. I try to be prepared (sunscreen, water, a hat, an umbrella, a pocket knife) but not overloaded. It’s a tricky balance. What about you? Do you travel light or not? How many pounds of knitting do you usually take? Or books?