Daily Allowance

I just made a killer homemade, sugar-free, dirty chai latte with almond milk (okay, so maybe it was actually with heavy cream because I was out of almond milk.  Sue me. It was delicious).

If it didn't have so much to do today, I'd consider cashing it in on this and calling today a "win."  But as I'm wont to do, I used Yogi tea for the chai portion and, of course, have to consider the snapple-like wisp of wisdom on the little tea bag tab.  In the old days, I had a bunch of those taped everywhere.  Unlike Wendy the Snapple Lady, the Yogi tea wisdoms actually do make me think.

As I sipped on my beautiful, hand-spun latte (this sound so precious...it wasn't...I dunked a tea bag in a cup of coffee...still I was so proud I didn't spend $4) I reflected on:

If you let yourself be successful, you shall be successful.

 I was so ready to write this off.  "Yeah, sure," I could hear my little snarly inner voice growl, "it sounds so easy."  But the truth of it, I think, is that it might be that easy.

There's something very compelling to me personally about "the struggle."  I do value work a lot, so a struggle is awesome because it makes the work visible.  If I'm struggling to do something, I'm not giving up on it: I'm wrestling, sparring, climbing, trekking, slogging.  There's effort there.  And effort, in my book, is always noble.  And I know I'm not alone there.  Many, many of our everyday systems reward effort.  That's the very foundation on which the idea of success, careers, the American Dream, and just any old meritocracy are based.  It's Amurica.

If I go down even further, toward my own person and body in the success-driven place, I know I've internalized the idea of struggle as noble.  I do crazy diets, I've gone on nutso fitness binges, and maybe even sometimes I've OD'd on the idea of a journey to happiness.  (For a while I tried to be chipper.  It was no good.  I'm not built for that).  If I'm walking away from something sweaty and out of breath, chances are I'm a happy camper.

When the belief that the only road to success is struggle to the point it becomes a paradigm for everything, the idea that you might be your own impediment to success can blow. your. mind. I just because I used the fashionable three-word-punctuated-to-sound-like-Oprah-talking shouldn't detract from how uncomfortable that is.  When everything you've done in your life tells you struggle is right, the suggestion that, in fact, allowance can get you to the same ends sounds like complete anarchy.

The problem is, a quick review of the high level goals of my life tells me there could've been another way.  I do believe in some things, the hard road is the right road: becoming compassionate (especially towards oneself), the road to tolerance (true empathy and not just the agreement that in public we'll say something because we'll look really bad if we say something else), love are all very hard.  There will be challenge.  But I guess the question is "Where is the line between challenge and struggle?"  At what point does the effort begin to edge out the challenge as the focus?

Whenever I've been confronted with the idea of allowance and I allow myself to sit with it and truly contemplate it and imagine exactly what it would feel like in my skin, I become very humbled.  In those moments, I can begin to see how my struggle has been perpetrated by me.  In many cases, more than I'd like to admit, I myself  have been the reason I couldn't find what I desired.  I sabotaged, I threw up barriers, I caved in a moment of weakness, I was stubborn and/or stupid and/or not compassionate.  All of these, of course, are born of fear.

So the idea that I hold the key to my success and that I've been the obstacle to that for myself creates so much guilt.  In some senses, I've doomed myself to whatever fate I have that doesn't please me at the moment.  On the other hand, the power I have to exact the changes I hope for myself is overwhelming.  All I need, we need, to find the change we seek is to be able to honestly ask these questions of ourselves.

Do I want happiness?  What does that look like?  Do I want [insert  your dream here]?  What does that look like?  

When those answers are simply "yes," our biggest challenge is to be brave on the path to that.  There will always be challenge and the fruit of stepping up to that will always be worthwhile.  But I'm coming to grips with the fact that struggle need not be necessary.  Simply allowing may be just enough.

My Best Year 2017

So I've had this little niggling idea scratching at the back and inside of my brain for awhile.  I can't say the idea out loud yet as it's not ready for the rigors of everyday life outside of the dark and cozy corners of my gray matter.  Let's just say, since the first minute I realized the horrors of writing a dissertation are fading into blood-streaked sepia tones, I've been gearing up for a project.  The problem: I didn't have anything specific in mind.

Recently, though, I've become enamored with the quiet energy of entrepreneurialism.  Seems like we're in its hey day right now--everyone has a YouTube channel linked to Twitter accounts and Pinterest boards.  Despite my last note, espousing the notion of unplugging, there's something new and fresh about a digital landscape that is waiting to be cultivated with anything you want to put out there that, in many ways, is fail-safe.  As long as you don't mind it being captured forever by the NSA on some server somewhere, if a venture on the web fails--[delete]. And you start over.

So I've hooked in and become fascinated with some of these web-preneurs.  People who have managed to figure out how to live completely fulfilling lives blogging.  Ten years ago, that word didn't exist; now it's a verb and an industry.

How do I get a piece of that?!?! Sounds like the best job in the world.

Obviously, it has it's ups and downs.  I just watched a YouTube video of a girl who was "hurt" by all the "mean things" internet trolls say.  These first world problems make for a very, very hard life.  But it feels like the energy that the pioneers had.  The ether is awash in the musk of digital manifest destiny and like a bitcoin panhandler, I'm hooking up wagon to my oxen, dressing June in a sunbonnet, and setting off on a trail into the great black void.

It's like Oregon Trail but not if you see what I mean.

Anyway, I'm exciting to give this a shot:

First of all, it's a workbook.  The last one of those I had was in phonics in the 3rd grade.  I'm down and pumped.  Second, though, it's making a plan for the next year.  I feel like this will help me sleep the slumber of a person once possessed by demons that have been excised.  It's a weird phantom sensation of loss after such a huge project is over and one day you face that fact that, yes, you have no plan.  That's fun for weeks or months.  When the time ticks into years, it's too long.  I need a plan.  Third, I think I'm *full* of awesome ideas and now I finally feel like it's worth gathering up my guts and taking some risks.  I've felt the keen sting of significant failure enough now that I can truly appreciate the non-risk of losing nothing. There's literally no down side to doing something like this.

And finally, it's time to actualize.  Every day I think more and more about how I have somehow, errantly bought in to the concept of time ticking away being a good thing...like each minute is an accomplishment I can cross off my list.  That is the worst possible way to live.  You cannot seize a moment from behind it.  That's grasping at a moment.  Seizing requires planning.  And risk.  And luck.  And night sweats, I'm sure.

At one point in time, those things terrified me.  Now...that sounds like a pretty exciting group of circumstances.

It's go time.  And I'm ready for it.  I do think this is going to be my very best year ever.  Now I just need to make it happen.

The Battle to Unplug

I'm sure the Internet is rotting my brain.  I'm defining the internet broadly as anything digital, include the App Store.  Digitality is rotting my brain (evidenced here by creating a non-word and then trying to pass it off as an existential state.

Many signs indicate this is true: the fact that my dog openly judges how much I cling to my phone, the 10 hours that I played "Fairway Solitaire" on said phone, my branching out into new corners of the digital world--like everything YouTube has to offer.  I think in Facebook status updates and GIF images.  My life has been 30-second soundbites now for too long.

The greatest, saddest evidence to me, though, is how much I struggle to write anything anymore.  I have the urge to write something here but sit down to find myself searching for something, anything, to say.  Always sinfully proud of my powers of observation, my frontal lobe is getting mushy...I can see things but I don't make the same sense out of them that I used to.  Why?  There's a YouTube channel for that that is surely monetized.

One of the greatest revelations I had recently (there might just be hope for me yet) is that when I turn the tv off (or, if I'm really committing to reflection, don't turn it on at all) I have things to say.  I can summon sentences, meaningful ones, that have a distinctive voice and purpose.  When I put the phone down, I can see things I hadn't realized were there.  I can hear my own inner monologue...and it's not a boiled-down quipism punctuated by a hash-tag.  My voice is there and it's wanting to say something probably somewhat funny, somewhat cynical, and maybe, if I'm lucky, with a bit of insight.

When did it come to be that I have to work so consciously to have coherent, intelligent thoughts?  I'm reading "Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson and the other night I was nearly in tears both because the book is wonderful and rich but also because the writing was not just letters strung together on a page written by some know-nothing with the equivalent of auto-tune for writing.  It was art and it was beautiful and inspiring and knowledgeable and the story is exceptionally creative both in form and content.  When did I stop reading things worth my brain cells?

I'm turning 40 in just over a week.  I've decided to dedicate the next decade (yes, decade) to the real things life has to offer.  People (The Decade of People is a potential name for this project), their ideas, their stories, the natural world, the creation of hearth and home, good food (not shitty, processed but delicious food but natural whole nourishing food), and movement in every possible dimension.  For too long I've been waiting and/or just mindlessly watching.  In the past I've delighted in being a voyeur of everything; it's become my hallmark and calling card.  How could that have once been okay with me?

It's time to grab up this moment and explore it--pick through the grains of it, unravel its braiding, feel its pulse and make it my own.

Of course, I'll still blog though because, ultimately, you are what you blog, right?

It would've been so much easier being...nah...I know that's not true.  I'll just disconnect from virtual reality slowly but surely.

To life.

Keto Fool

I've been following a keto diet for the past four months and I've never felt better.

It's been an amazing revelation about food, specifically carbs, and the effect it has on my mental and physical health. BUT, it's had no carbs.  Like none.  Okay, 20g a day--which is equivalent to a 1/2 cup of strawberries.  This has been difficult.  Not without its rewards, but difficult.  So when I went to Cleveland for a week, it felt like it was time to stop feeling so terrible about "cheating" on carbs and for the first time in a long time, I just accepted that I was going to eat a bunch of bread and sugar and I was going to love it. 

And I did.

I always do.  It's like the best energy wrapped inside a hug wrapped inside a firework display.  Especially after months of little to no sugar, bread, refined grains, anything truly delicious in the deep and creepy but mystifying depths of my soul--it was heaven.  Life cereal has never tasted so much like the world's best, most decadent dessert. Except what I've built physically for the past four months--a well-oiled fat burning machine (sort of)--doth protesteth.  While I was unregretfully eating potato chips, doritos, and puff pastry danish (DELICIOUS), I had a constant, throbbing, often skull-splitting headache of epic proportions.  So, I was also on a cocktail of advil and...well...okay, not so much a cocktail as just advil religiously every couple hours.  But I persevered and hit all the carb niches including white rice, bread, refined carbs, refined sugar, and whatever else you got that has any of the above.  And I gave myself permission to do it; the challenge is not in giving permission but returning to the original plan.

So on my way back from Carbland Cleveland I started listening to the No Sugarcoating Podcast, a pairing of Leann Vogel of HealthfulPursuit.com and Amber of amberapproved.ca.  I've whole-heartedly given myself over to HealthfulPursuit and the brand of Keto that Leann prescribes there, a very female friendly, "let's not lose your hair" version of keto that recognizes the importance of hormone balance in all of this no-carb mess...something missing from a lot of my other favorites in the paleo and keto world.

I was mesmerized for 6 hours listening to what was a little group therapy, a little love and pep talk, a little bit technical how-to, and just generally awesomeness.  It made me realize I need to get that podcast regularly.  It also made me realize that, in a lot of ways, I've been going about this all wrong.  Of course.

But I wouldn't have if I had known. 

There's so much out there about dieting: crash dieting, keto dieting, low-carb, paleo, macros, no-macros, keto-macros...the list goes on forever.  In the 1950s, if you wanted to lose weight you cut out Manhattan's one day a week and stood on the machine with the belt that jiggled your belly away.  Today if you want to lose weight you have to be a metabolism ninja, an endrocrinologist, a guru of macro-nutrient effects and counter-effects.  You have to know what phytoestrogens are (although that spelling looks not right).  I find myself wishing I'd paid closer attention in biology-cum-anatomy in high school when we went over the adrenal glands and the importance of the thyroid.

It's a lot.

And in many ways, I've been a keto fool.  But what I'm realizing is that I learn something new everyday and that I would've loved (and still would love) to see someone talking about all of this when I was obsessively researching all of this...and still do.  Maybe that's something I can do.

A little humor.  A little "naturally found" knowledge...via Google.  A little bit of product review...a little bit of cautionary tale with a little bit of humor.

Since I've tried everything and stuck with almost nothing...maybe that's the story I have to tell.

Why do I keep looking for a good ending when what I really love is the story about how we got there?

Clearer Vision

Oh summer.

The time for me to rue the weather and count the days until fall.

Wait. No.  That doesn't sound right. 

I regularly feel about summer like I feel about going to the dentist; that is to say, not excited about it's inevitability.  BUT, if I think hard, there are many, many good things I can point to in my life--pivotal points, even--that should make summer a welcome guest.  So, it's with this spirit that I've actively tried to talk myself into embracing summer and seeing what happens.

And it's worked. A lot of good things coalesced into a time and space that really hinted that something transformative is happening.  I'm no longer on the cusp...things are moving...and I'd be good to stay out of its way and just let the magic happen.

One of these things tingling back to life is a sense of creativity, which in a world of analysis, is often relegated to about 8 kahuna on the list of kahunas.  It gets smashed and trampled in the "hard" world of logic.  But all that might be illogical is not bad.  There cannot be a yang without a yin if you know what I mean.  What's hard to remember is that creativity needs practice to be cultivated just like anything else.  Once I started practicing again, bang there it was with all of its colors and conflicting, nonsensical dimensions.  And life got much more colorful.  And hopeful.  Light and air became regular visitors again.

So while I've been essentially meditating on creativity, I've been simultaneously, consequently thinking to myself, "What do I want this life of mine to be?" I'm always flabbergasted to hear that people don't ask themselves this question, like, every hour or so...like I have my whole life.  But how interesting the response I found when in the realm of the creative.  Whole new answers appeared that I have never considered.  I became unburdened by some of the old stand-by constraints.  My gray cells were working with a new...spark. 

And here's what I was thinking about just today as I was walking home from the car I have to park about a mile away to ensure its safety, "I don't just want to be balanced.  Balanced implies you're already full.  I want to be full first.  Full of the best things I can imagine.  And if I'm careful along the way, full should be balanced."

I'm not sure where that came from but it was new for me.  I want to be full...but what that means for me is probably not what that means for you.  Maybe it is.  But we'll only know after I find out what it means for me.  This felt like an invitation from something either deep within or far, far outside of me to seize the power I have to determine what full means: in my lifestyle, in my career, in my family, in my body.

This gave me the idea to maybe restructure this blog a bit.  I often find I reflect on things that tend toward topics all too similar but vague.  Perhaps the only nod I'll give to my analytical self is my need to quantify and record; a challenge to get specific.  

I think that's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to reflect and write and sometimes record things along those 4 categories...honoring whatever surfaces at whatever time and not purposely working hard to keep things even or equally distributed.  Let's see where that takes me.

I think about these things all the time.  It's maybe time to start writing them down.  So as to be full.

June is Busting Out All Over

June has always been a favorite month for me.  When I was in school, it marked the start of summer vacation.  Now that that monumental joy is felt a little less because I work 12 months a year, at least I can say that June's weather is usually pretty amazing.

This year, June was made awesome by this little girl:

This is Junebug...whom I casually call June.

I've been hoping for a dog for a LOOOONG time.  Dogs are magical to me in a lot of ways and not so much for the reasons people always list off.  Yes, they love you conditionally (because you feed them).  Yes, they are darn cute.  But I have been increasingly feeling that I need a friend who can help me stay in the moment.  I need a pal who is much more spontaneous than I am.  I need a pet who I can watch over.  All of these great caretaking tendencies in me, qualities I think are gifts, have not only gone wasted for probably 10 years but have started to turn in on themselves.  Over the past years I've felt myself harden, becoming edgier, crankier, and finding laughs fewer and farther between.  I've known for a long time, I could not nor did I want to continue this way.

So, magically, when my building suddenly wrote and said dogs were allowed, I started saving.  And about two months ago, when the aftershocks of change I wasn't expected hit particularly hard, I got online and got serious about a dog.  I needed something in my life that would be somewhat of a constant.

It was on June 9 that I saw this face online...and it wasn't love at first sight which was weird.  I was actually somewhat ambivalent but decided going to get a look in person at a shelter that was new to me would be worth the trip, if not just to get myself started.  2 1/2 hours later, this (shedding) furball climbed into the front seat of my car and we were heading home.  I'm not sure exactly what it was that moved me.  In some ways, I think I knew that I had to overcome any sense of hesitation that would always be there.  In other ways, when she came over to me and ever so gently but her head on my lap, I knew we had to be some kind of kindred spirits.  In a shelter that was nothing less than chaos, I found this one sleepy and gentle. "Okay," I thought. "The message won't get much clearer than this. Just do it"

It's now been more than a couple weeks and we're settling in.  Junie's a big personality in a smallish but very long body.  I like her.  And I think she likes me.  She now is the proud owner of a bark collar and a Furminator among a cadre of other squeaky chewy toys.  She is NUTS about peanut butter--both punny and adorable.  She does not love garbage trucks.  But every day that she's been here, I've gotten up with a purpose.  Maybe that, truly, was what I was seeking.

And with a face like this, how can I not sign on every day to this friendship?  

I feel like my old self again, before graduate school or dissertation, or failed jobs and failed friendships.  I think I've been given a chance to start over.  I'm taking it.  To Junie.  We'll have fun.

Thoughts on "Contemplating Being Too Much" and the Single Life

I've never had a period in my life that I haven't seriously (okay, obsessively) self-reflected.  I think this is a symptom of living a perpetually single life: I feel the need to "check in" or "check things off the list" to make sure I'm still normal.  I guarantee not all single people do this and, in fact, if I could let it go, I'd be happier.  If I could embrace the fact that I'm not normal at all but still living a fulfilling life, I'd actually be content.  That's a lot of big "if's."  Suffice it to say: I wrestle with wanting to be normal when, in fact, my life is not that typically experienced by most people...or even enough to say I can even qualify for normal.

So, that's a morass as I've adequately demonstrated above.  But I found an essay on this very thing that made me feel really much better about everything.  Say what you will about Blossom, Mayim Bialik interests me.  She's wicked smart, also cannot make claims to any kind of normalcy, and says some crazy shit sometimes.  But her essay on GrokNation entitled "Contemplating Being Too Much" articulately reflected on a lot of my most current worries.

I have always feared that I, like Mayim (and apparently lots of other women), have fallen into the "too much" category.  In fact, the list she ticks off including "too intense," "too loud," and "too opinionated" are all things I question myself on regularly.  Add to that list that I'm too curious, too serious, too intellectual, too funny...possibly too much of all of these things all at once...I also come to the conclusion that I am, likely, too much.  Yes, there are a lot of ways I can back it down.

But that's the rub, isn't it?  Backing it down isn't natural to me.  I'm "too much" in so many ways just being who I am (and I want more than that sometimes) that I can't even imagine what to pick to back down on first.  And when I imagine doing that or, on the rare occasion actually back down, it's exhausting.  I throw myself off balance.  It's not my natural state. Because of that, all the other parts of me also get thrown off balance and before too long...I'm miserable...and I can't get out of it. 

This is part of the constant conundrum, isn't it?  I'm not sure why.  It's pretty clear to me that the consequences of being too much are generally awesome in that, theoretically, birds of a feather will flock together.  Too much will find itself.  BUT, that also means giving up on the dream of normalcy.  (Wait, why is that a dream again?  Because it's secure?  Because it seems secure?)

For me, there's always a fear that if I fully embrace single life, that I'll go over the edge into craziness.  "The Cat Lady" is mere degrees away from where I find myself in this world right now.  Does the end of "too much" always lead to "too many cats"? (figuratively, of course, because I hate cats...)  And then there's also the fear that fully embracing single life is giving up on some of the things that fall into the normal "palette" that I might really want.  Have I "given up" anything simple because my life doesn't look like it "should" to have those things?

The essay Mayim writes concludes with the idea that there are a lot of powerful, interesting, fulfilled and fulfilling women that find themselves in the same boat and they need not worry: too much is actually just right.  That conclusion (so simple!) gave me the most solace because I don't need to be reminded of that.  I know that my "too muchness," in all of its forms, is an asset.  The truth is, I wouldn't be here where I am today if I didn't make choices that I believed in then and still believe in now that led me here.

I am my worst enemy in questioning that road.  But I am also my best friend in continuing to hope for a community of "too much" to surround myself with that will get me through when the going gets particularly rough.  It's just a road I hope not to walk alone.

We can all be too much together.  I hope.