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.

Happiness is as Happiness Does

I feel like I start every blog with "so I was struggling..."

I mean, really, how much can one person possibly struggle before realizing just how much they're responsible for the struggle?  The answer to that is another post but suffice it to say, I've been in enough of a quandry about my own happiness that it's starting to seep out of my pores.  I've been made become aware that I look and act like I'm miserable.

That's just great.

It doesn't at all bother me to hear this news.  I'm not happy about it (do you see the conundrum?) but I'm glad that friends alert me to this. At least, they alert me to the fact they can see it...and I do believe its because they care.  But I'm never sure what it actually means.

Well, I wasn't until yesterday.

I got my hair done yesterday and I wanted to take a picture that would basically re-create my current facebook profile picture that's about 3 years old.  The process was an unexpected moment of enlightenment for me.  I took the first picture, recreating the pose as much as I could, and immediately saw it.

I did look miserable.

I was smiling the best I knew how.  I was doing everything I thought I did in the last picture.  I couldn't escape the fact that my eyes just look sad, my smile forced, my shoulders ever so slightly slumped.  As I took the picture, I felt "normal" for me these days.  And that was the reflection of normal--miserable and tired.  I took about 20 versions of that picture before I had to have a talk with myself that started something like, "Katie, you have to try to at least look happy."

Eventually, I did get a picture that doesn't look miserable.  Now, it doesn't look ecstatic.  But the smile looks genuine, the eyes are lit up at least a little.  But there is a definite change; it's not the same face of 3+ years ago.  I think this face has seen a lot in that time.  It's worried a lot, felt a lot of anxiety about a lot of things.  Those changes might be permanent.

It was a striking exercise for me.  I now know exactly what people mean when they say I look miserable.  But I think the lesson for me was in the process: I can get there, I can find something that makes me reflect happy, if I try.  And it might take me a long time, but I'll find it.  It's not negotiable, though, that I have to try.

I think it's so weird and unexpected for me that happiness is something practiced and sought after.  Especially now, our culture here tells us it's everywhere around us and all we need do is become aware of it.  That's true to a degree.  But that which keeps me up at night isn't not seeing flowers or getting hugs.  I'm worried about how to support myself.  I'm worried that my best years are behind me.  I'm worried that I've made irreparable mistakes in my life, that I haven't seized the moment enough.  I'm worried that I'm not a good person, that my intellectual pursuits have taken me far afield of where I should could be.

I'm sure to those older and wiser this seems like such a superficial set of worries.  Inevitably there will be some discussion of the soul and it'll surely be yearning for something.  But those are the waters I'm trying desperately to sail without capsizing...in my little dinghy...with what feels like one functional oar.

So I wonder now if I can actually make my way back to my own "youth" of 3+ years ago.  To that face that look so thrilled to get it's picture taken.  I do think I can.

Maybe I more hope that I can.
That's a start.

Compassionate Warrior

When I was in kindergarten, the fire chief came to school one day to teach us "Stop, Drop, and Roll."  I remember I was wearing brown corduroys and a yellow t-shirt (it was 1980...) and he picked me (ME!) to be the demonstrator.  I did possibly one of the best "stop, drop, and rolls" ever done.  I had technique.  I had fire in my belly.

I'll never forget that he called me "tiger."  And I loved that. From that day forth, I thought of myself as a tiger.  It felt like a little tap into all of the qualities that I see in myself and I want to see that I admire.

There have been periods of my life that have been not so tiger-ish.  But for the most part, I think I have some kind of incredible inner strength...I always consider that part of myself the tiger.  In fact, I think it's located in my abs...in the center of me.  When every other thing has gone wrong and I have to return to my very core, I find the tiger there: that same tiger that stopped, dropped, and rolled like a champ.  As I got a little older, I started also truly believing I have the heart of a lion.  Since then, probably in my early teens, I've got these two magnificent creatures governing the central parts of myself.  Sometimes, they're napping.  Sometimes I cage them inadvertently.  But I think they're always there.

It's nice to know the steadiness of that tiger.  It's one of the few things that has proven itself to be essential to me and who I am.

But as I've matured, grown wiser (but perhaps never wise which is as it should be, I think), and evolved through a lot of reflection on what I am and what I hope to be, yoga has given me a wonderful image that pops up every now and then, very clearly, when I'm headed on the right track.

The compassionate warrior.

I met this warrior in yoga practice, as Warrior II pose or Virabhadrasana. It's so easy to write off as a pretty simple pose.  The bottom half is in something of a revolved lunge.  Front knee forward and bent at a 90-degree angle; back leg straight as possible with toes pointing out to a 45-degree angle from your mid-line.  Torso revolved so that your shoulders are in line with your front and back legs leaving you facing the side of your mat.  Arms, supported by your mid- and upper-back muscles radiate outward strongly, extending directly from your shoulders in a straight line, also following the line of your legs.  Shoulders fully engaged, fingers together and straight, chest open, back straight and not arched.  Head facing either to the side (nice) or to the front (at which point you do actually become a badass warrior of life).

As far as poses go, Warrior II is easy to get into and so it's a really basic feature of most every yoga practice.  But, it's not simple.  Powerful on the bottom, the goal is to sink into your lunge as far as you can to 90-degree knee bend.  Powerful up top, the goal is to extend your arms purposefully and with strength to the sides as far as they'll go.  If you really want to know what's killer, your pelvis should not tilt in this pose, meaning you're pulling a bit forward with your lower back, strenching your hip flexors like CRAZY while still engaging and opening your outer hip muscles.  Powerful in your alignment, your goal in your head it to lift the crown upwards while everything else is going on.

This is not just a lunge with fancy arms.

It was in learning how to really get into this pose that I found the compassionate warrior.  Everything about this pose is powerful and fully engaged.  But it's designed to fully expose the center of everything.  If truly working at it, your heart is completely open as are your hips and pelvis.  The core of you is wide, wide open and stretching even futher open.  It's as if it's presented to the world who is looking at your from the side.  Keeping your head in line with the shoulders is a stare-down with the world: here's what I've got.  Turning that head to look forward over your front arm is some bad-assery: here world, here's what I've got, do with it what you will.  It is a powerful, active surrender.

What a paradox.  Turning that head in such an open pose is compassion. And now that I'm thinking about it, compassion feels like it can be a huge paradox, especially in our 21st century world.  It's allowing that open, central core to lead you.  It's asking you to powerfully, with vigor, open and interact dynamically with what's there while surrendering that core to the outside. It's a praying to God that someone won't shoot you in the heart with an arrow while at the same time trusting (and knowing) they won't...but if they do, you're down with that too.

 That is the work of the compassionate warrior.  It requires the heart of a lion and the might of a tiger.  Corduroy pants optional.

Reflecting on it now, today, it seems so easy to explain why this pose has spoken to me so intimately for so long.  It combines those parts of myself that I feel are really my best qualities and it asks them to do what they love: use their power to effect things.  Love with the heart of a lion and tackle it with the might of a tiger.  But instead of using it to aggressive ends, use it to compassionate ends.  The latter is so much more of a complex challenge.

At this point, today, yesterday, a couple weeks ago, I've felt that building this compassionate warrior is exactly the work I should be doing.  It has nothing to do with money or status.  I will not reap material rewards, necessarily.  It may be a big endeavor.  But it will be without fear.

And I do think it's the next major step in my quest that I continue to uncover a little more every time I dare to look further down a road that I, myself, will build brick by brick.

Detaching

No, I still have done no yoga this week yet.  Well, not asanas.  I've been deep into reflection this week for sure. And I can feel the usual rise of guilt mixed with a little exhilaration at the fact that I'm breaking a rule.

Sidebar: When did that love of thumbing it to the rules kick in?  As a kid, I was the best rule lover, the most ardent rule follower of all time.  I loved me a rule.  Alright, if I'm being very deeply self-reflective, I still love rules and I know this because when other people break them it drives me insane.  Yet, somehow, I love the temptation of breaking a rule.  Maybe now I'm just a rule lover with a deep core of not following rules.  I think the day you realize rules are created by idiots just like you, the less it seems imperative to bend to them. Sidebar done.

Despite not physically practicing, what has surprised me is how much past yoga clings if you let it.  Though I've been resisting the physical practice (I'll need to dig more into that later...I'm still not so sure why that's such a problem for me), I'm noticing that I'm still practicing yoga in other ways.

Which brings me to detachment.

This is one of those ideals in Buddhism (and probably not something you'll find in your local Core Power class) that I find, at the same time, to be inspiring and perplexing with an ever so faint aroma of sadness.  We can all understand that detachment is ideal when you have to figure out how to not hold on to negative things in life.  "Like water off a duck's back," we might be inclined to say and that's truly what it is.  Don't engage it and if engaged in it, let it go.

I found myself reflexively practicing this this morning as I was making my way through a package of clothes I had ordered from that once great store, The Gap.  Shit was just not fitting.  In the past, this experience has completely wrecked my outlook on life for days (or maybe weeks) at a time.  "THE SIZES ARE ALL THE SAME AS THE ONES I OWN!!! HOW CAN I NOT GET THESE PANTS EVEN PAST MY KNEES???" I have wailed to myself in anguish right before doing a landscape scan of all the places I could get a donut I could consult about this horror.  Not good for mental (or physical) health.  So this morning, as the same goddamn thing was happening, I had to remind myself of what a huge win it was that my first reaction to the situation was almost neutral.  These don't fit.  They have to go back. No pain, no anguish, no derailing.  It was what it was and that was neither good nor bad...it just was. 

A win prior to 9am.  Always a win for me.

We can easily see how this practice is desirable.  It keeps us nimble, it allows us to truly flow with whatever life will send your way.  Even though it's an over-used word, I think this is awesome in it's literal sense.  The ability to move with life and not always in a counterpuntal reaction to it is an incredible gift.  Where I find myself challenged and maybe saddened by it a little is when it applies to things almost overly positive in life.  This same idea of detachment should apply to those moments when you feel most splendidly in love, satisfied, fulfilled, content.  Just as we can't hold on the the negative too closely, allowing it space in order to engage with it appropriately, we cannot become too enamored with the positive.  We need space there too.

I found myself struggling with this in the past week.  In my life I've had incredibly close friends for periods of time.  In those, there have been wonderful moments I would never trade.  But inevitably, these do not last and when things seem to come crashing down, I am devastated by them.  We might consider this a normal pattern but "normal" and "healthy" are not the same thing. Nor are "normal" and "ideal."  In each of these cases, I now see in hindsight, a little detachment would've gone a long way.

So, this past week, I caught myself gripping so hard at one of my friendships.  It was almost an actually destructive gripping.  It turned me inside out, making myself miserable (and I'm sure I was awesome to deal with as a result...see, bad use of "awesome" right there).  Finally, some tiny, breathy little voice from deep within me said, exhausted, "Katie, just let go of it.  It's not going to play out as you want it to.  Change the perspective.  Change the approach.  Do something other than you're doing now...which is slowly killing you." I grudgingly re-routed my approach (and I'm serious on the grudging...I was very unhappy about having to be the one who bent).  It was the right thing to do.  It made me see that my anger, frustration, and hurt really had nothing to do with my friend and everything to do with my own little orphan taking over (see my last post about yoga and hip opening...my orphan lives in my hips, I swear).

I needed to detach before I could see the forest for the trees.  It wasn't easy.  It never gets easier.

Detachment is one of those things that I'll always chase after (and I'm certainly not the only one).  I do think it's a worthwhile chase, though.  Even if I never master it (and I probably won't), the process of trying can only be valuable.

30 Days is a Long Time, Especially on Day Seven

In typical fashion, I've attacked my 30 days of yoga with gusto and I'm about ready to flame out.  It's been a week.  There are so many learnings there, of course. Here are the biggest and best so far.

1. 30 days is a long time. 
At some point in my life, I stopped being able to commit.  Actually, I take that back.  I'm not sure I ever learned.  I have grown up on a "project basis."  So now I'm faced with the question of what to do when I don't have an explicit project.  There are crickets there.  That is all.  I think this is why humanity has kids.  Kids are the ultimate project and only until they leave does that become apparent.  So I'm basically having an "empty nester" experience.  I am not yet 40 and I don't have children.

It's bizarre.  Not much of a peer network there, it seems.

2. Yoga will bring massive shit to the surface.
I hesitated to pick yoga as a project for this very reason. My commitment to restart a practice can be 30 days but yoga itself will bring up a lifetime of turmoil that you've unwittingly stored in the great void that, apparently, are your hips.  So, after about 4 days of a pretty light practice, I was a wreck: anxious, agitated, distracted, uncomfortable, sometimes inconsolable.  All because of yoga.  Not a bad thing; I see it as a "flushing out the crud" exercise but, geez.  I should've built in breathers (ironically) which I ended up taking as some days I just didn't want to couldn't seem to fit it in.

3. Amazing things can happen.
Where's there's massive shit, there's also the potential for great, great opening.  For the first time in a long time, coincidences or serendipitous things started happening again.  I think those things are a kind of manifestation of hope.  When you lift a little weight off or change things up, the world around you flexes to accommodate that in sometimes the most unexpected but spectacular ways.  It really can be a seeing with new eyes.  If you're keeping track, this paired with the last learning amounts to what could be seen as significant mood swings.  Ah well, can't win 'em all.

4. I thrive on novelty.
I think this is the key to my commitment hesitation.  I'm definitely a "when the newness wears off..." kinda girl.  I've not really ever seen myself this way but even this project makes it an unavoidable truth.  I was beyond enthusiastic about this for the first 4 days and then I started getting bored.  I haven't given up on it but I do have to acknowledge my growing "meh-ness" toward the whole thing.

5. Sense memory is everything.
I have always known about myself that I live in my brain's world.  I can outthink just about anything and come around to the rational conclusion that I want to come to if given enough time.  Commitment like this requires a quieting of that stupid, chattering "monkey mind" and a subtle but sound resolve stemming somewhere from the core area that, "No, we're going to do this today because the sun rises and sets with complete regularity every day and not just when it feels like it." What I've noticed more particularly now than ever is that the motivation for that gradual "slow and steady" approach has to come from something other than reason (which is where my motivation for literally everything else comes from).

In this case, I think that's sense memory.  I have to tuck away the exact feelings that I have at the end of the practice and go back to those to find motivation.  It's not what I think about it but how it feels in the process.  Somehow, I always get into the middle of a practice and think, "It's absurd that I fight doing this so hard every day."  It's that moment I have to return to.  It's the feeling from the core that has to drive it.  Because if it's up to my mind, I'd rather lay on the couch.

I say all of this with trepidation because I haven't even cracked two weeks on this thing yet and I can already feel the urge to just toss the whole plan.  Maybe that's part of a sort of detox in a way.  It's retraining what is ultimately impulsivity into a balance with longevity.  Both are good but impulsive is definitely winning right now.

Well, the urge and not the practice.

All There Is

My least favorite moment is the one in which I realize that I want something to happen one way and it's not going to.  Especially when I've tried really hard to bend in the direction I know is right.  It's actually a manipulative thing to do.  And always a hard lesson to learn that, regardless of what I think will happen, once I've put it out there, I cannot control what comes next.

But the movies always tell me I can.
They lie.

This is one area for growth that has so much potential (in that I'm not very far in my growth at all...).  Kindness will not always be met with kindness.  Generosity can feel overwhelming.  Love can befuddle.  And because all of these are true, I can't write the script on how I want them to be received.  Because with all of these, it's not really about me.  It's about these things.  In this case, intention is mostly everything.  But it comes with no guarantees.

Sometimes I want people to react in ways they never will.  I want to be validated for the good I've done.  I want to feel like it was worth it to me.  But in those moments, I always have to re-learn, I'm actually much farther away from where I need to be.   If I'm going to love, then I have to do it.  If I'm going to be generous, then that moment of generosity is everything.

And that will be all there is.

And that's the way it should be.

30 Day Yoga Commitment

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to a unique friend about feeling a longing for the next big project.  She asked me a question that kinda stopped me in my tracks: "Have you asked God to help you find it?"

Um, no, no I had not.

But the notion wasn't bad.  In fact, I feel like I talk to the Universe all the time.  Funny that I somehow left out that I was looking for something new that maybe, you know, the Universe could help with.  A little.  So I did.  I point blank asked the Universe to show me something that would be true and good for me.

Aaand, I landed back at yoga by way of a re-commitment of sorts to...committing.

Admittedly, I have been adrift in a sea of new possibility.  Not adrift in the romantic, castaway sense.  Adrift like tattered, freezing, and my raft is coming apart with each second.  This feels like gritty, nasty adrift.  It's unsettling.

[Sidebar: what's going on with the dogs recently?  I've never heard barking like I have the past couple days....is it a full moon?  Seriously...I love dogs but there's a limit.  End of sidebar].

Alright, the other problem with being adrift is that you're working only on survival.  Stress is high for no apparent reason.  Fear rules the day.  There is no plan.  There is only chaos.  And scattered thoughts while you grasp at straws.

So, right after making my grand request to the Universe, an add for a pen-and-paper calendar/planner popped up that appealed so much to me it almost made me cry.  It's built around the idea of 30 day projects.  Now, one might say, "Katie, that's...a calendar."  Right, yes, I know.  30 days does a month make.  But this felt revolutionary to me in two distinct ways.  First, I hadn't thought much about it up until that point but writing words on paper feels much more real than writing things on a calendar in my phone.  That's fake planning.  I can change that it 2 seconds with a swipe of the delete key.  Pen, though, requires scratching out and a permanent reminder that a different plan than "lay on my couch all day playing games" once existed.  And it was better than the couch plan.  Second, it's taken those convenient pre-existing 30-day months and made them into distinct containers for finite projects.  This is one of those things that appeals solely because the last project I took on was a seemingly never ending 6 year nightmare.  You forget that you can do practically anything for 30 days and that's the only expectation out there.  

So, the calendar showed up at my door today and I picked it up on my way out this morning.  Since then, I've been thinking about it.  And it reignited my question to the Universe: "So now that I've got 9 months worth of 30-day projects, what should I do?" I then proceeded to have not such a great day and, frankly, felt pretty terrible upon arriving home tonight.  In search of something that made me feel better, I casually asked the Universe, "What should I do that would make me feel better?"  

Lo and behold, the answer was yoga.  And I did a practice that was way too hard (ironically or not called perseverance).  I did persevere which is all I needed to worry about there. Job done.  And of course, I feel so much better [EXCEPT FOR THIS EFFING DOG BARKING]. And it made the think while I was lying in savasana, "Why not make this your first 30 day project?"  

Done.

So I'm gong to do yoga and then I'm going to write about whatever comes up.  I'm committing to it for 30 days.  Let's see what happens.

No excuses.

Where the Past No Longer Serves

It's been an interesting couple weeks.

First, to report back on the reflection I was going to try during Lent: that was a total bust.  In fact, not only have I been less reflective, I've been much more irritable than usual.  I'm not sure if the initial reflection opened up Pandora's Box or there have been other things going on but, suffice to say, I've been concerned about this latest downturn in my own world view.

What is happening?

In part, I feel like there's some something brewing in the ether.  My annoyance is a symptom of perhaps the realization of something larger going on.  I generally believe this to be true: when I'm feeling really off-kilter, I start looking around to figure out what the pressure points are.  When I did this, I began to see, left and right, things changing in big ways.  People I have known for years just dropping out of sight.  People (and places) I once counted on suddenly folding or changing into things I no longer knew.  Roads closed where once they had been so unapologetically open.  Shifting sands.

Of course, that's the normal course of things.  I can't begrudge anyone or anything that.  But what I also realized was how sad I felt about it.  Truly sad. And my own ignorance or acknowledgement of that feeling, I do begrudge myself.  How could I have not listened to that al all?  One day in the shower, I found myself actually pining for what seemed like older, better days...before things had been scattered about.  Before people changed forever.  Before doors closed.

It was that feeling of loss that was actually causing the irritability.  Unaware, I was living in the past but dealing with the present.  Once I realized this and started trying to bring myself back into the present, I wish I could say I felt easier.  I did not.  I felt the ache of having to let go of the hope we could ever go back there again.  We cannot.  Back there is gone.  And when I knew I was starting to pull out of the initial pangs of letting go, righting my vision forward, I saw a path illuminated letting me know how to go.  What I also saw was how not perfect "back there" was.  How much of not great was contained there, softened in my own memories to be a gauzy time of only laughter and fulfillment.  I know for a fact that wasn't true.  Isn't it funny how the pressures of today make you want to believe that with all your heart?  Once I settled that score in my head, a weight on my chest lifted.  We can't go back but why would we want to?

I'd also like to say that I wished that path forward to be easier.  We have a funny way of assuming that once a path has made itself known, it becomes easier to traverse.  No.  What I saw was a path but not a road.  I could see the way but it still remains to be built.  And even then I could only see it to the horizon and not beyond.  This is a continuous cycle.  Maybe one I haven't paid enough attention to cultivating continuously in the past.  In looking backwards, I stopped building, developing, creating.  And so I'm back to some dirt and a plan.  In some ways, that's so frustrating.  In other ways, it's nothing but hope and light.

The last year feels like a bizarre cautionary love-letter to myself.  "This is what happens," it starts, "when you check out for awhile.  Things change and you don't notice it...until you go to find them and they're gone."

"Pay more attention," it warns.  "Enjoy today.  Tomorrow will offer that same chance then."

"Okay, I'm learning," I say back, making a swirl in the dirt path of today, planning how to cut it in a way that serves me anew.  At least until tomorrow.

Culminating Moments

There's something to be said for creativity and abject exhaustion.

I have had a week of very early morning meetings and, because I'm a creature of the night, I haven't had much sleep this week.  It's Friday and after the third 8am meeting in 3 days, my eyelids are drooping at half-mast and I'm starting to question the meaning of life.

But not really.

I think for anyone who runs on the nervous or anxious side, this kind of involuntary exhaustion brings incredible clarity.  Usually my mind is overwhelming firing on all 10,000 cylinders--sometimes to the point that I get physically exhausted.  I think that's why online games are such a source of relaxation: it's a single-minded activity.  I can recoup during those times.  Without the nervous chatter, I can see how things are.  Life is no longer a dialogue or a trialogue in my head; it's just me seeing things for what they are.

When I lack the energy or strength to fight, amazing things start happening.  I think these should be called culminating moments.  Just as in growing plants there are times to be active and times to be passive, so too is that through in the life-cycle of a thought.  Actually, many thoughts.  Without the prattle of everyday chores and actions, things can make sense in profound ways.

Such is this moment.  And the thing I like about this moment is not that it's a reckoning or reasoning or coping; it's actually just accepting things as they are because I don't have the wherewithal to fight right now.  Singing: whatever comes will come.  Maybe it's time to grow silent for awhile.  Organizational life: I have a voice that should be heard more, thoughtfully.  Intellectual life: the dragon is re-awakening.  I feel like this could become a very productive time, I just need some focus.  Physical life: I could be a kick-ass tennis player if I get my shit together.

There are times that you need the energy to climb mountains and you do.  And then you risk getting stuck up there.  Coming down is so much more careful, tricky, unexpected work.  Funny how you can't bound down a mountain.

That's just one step at a time with a path fully in sight.

Reflection: Might have jumped in a bit fast

I'm not sure this reflection business is such a good idea.

I know it's good.  But it's disruptive.  And that's probably good too.  But what I'm finding is that it stands in counterpoint to the status quo.  So far, nothing that I've written is inherently bad.  In fact, it speaks to change.  But change, you see, makes things change.  And that's disruptive.

So I last reflected on the principle and foundation and for the next three days my life ran off the rails.  I got depressed and weepy.  I felt fairly unable to function.  It was upsetting, probably because I came face to face with the fact that establishing (or accessing or identifying with) a foundation and principle right now is really hard. The act of doing it isn't hard; the act of realizing the things you're spending your time on might be not all that purposeful or meaningful is very hard...and it invites judgment in.  Confusing when judgment, especially in this first exercise, is exactly what you're not reflecting on...in fact, you're thinking about unconditional love.

And that is extremely overwhelming.  What I've realized is that I have a hard time even beginning to accept this.  I made light of it in the last post but even the thought that something greater than me, which has created me, doesn't even look past but loves me in spite of my faults actually makes me angry.

How dare God.

This sounds funny but I'm totally serious.  Maybe I've become so consumed with the idea of working hard and reaping rewards, that the fact of love unconditionally is completely annoying.  Because guaranteed no one will work harder than I do...so I should get that love...and others

wait...how did others get in this mix.

This sounds like so much of the creeping message of Martha (of Mary and Martha) and the older brother in the Prodigal Son parable who serve to teach us this unconditional love lesson very clearly.  In both those stories, the end is basically, "it doesn't matter what you've done, which is good and appreciated.  But you could've not done those things and I would still love you."

It's so incredibly annoying!

This is clearly a first-world problem.  And it's an American problem.  I'm annoying because this flies in the face of everything I've ever been taught about means and ends.  So, this is a huge basic stumbling block for me.  I wonder if I've become more militant about this over the years.  It feels like I never used to be so annoyed by this.

Ultimately, it's a power issue.  I want to know how it works so that I can make sure I'm where I want to be in it which, of course, is being the best.  But when something is unconditional, it means I am not the controller of that destiny.  It's given, whether I reject or accept it, it's there.  And I have no responsibility to do either.  It's just there.  Smiling at me.  Why do I resent that?  Because I don't trust it?

This has completely thrown me off guard.  The only place I can actually access these ideas with acceptance and curiosity is [gasp] on my yoga mat.  So, I'm going to take this reflection there and see what I can do with that.

For next time: It costs to be a lover. 

The hits just keep on comin.

Principle and Foundation

For Lent this year, I decided to switch it up.  As I was wondering around in my head about what I could "give up" or "work on" I realized that, though a spend a lot of time at church, I'm experiencing a distance of faith that irks me a little.  It's been a long time since I focused on actually looking inward and not just turning inward.  So I thought I good spring cleaning in there could be helpful; thus, of course, I turned to my man St. Ignatius to lead me.  Though his Spiritual Exercises, borne of boredom in a hospital, are done as a total retreat, the modern adaptation of these is called the 19th Annotated Spiritual Exercise or Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life (leave it to the Jesuits to annotate something 19x before it's to their liking).  Nevertheless, I need to reflect verbally, quietly, to the hum of my typing and so this is where I'm going to do it.

And, nothing like jumping right in.  I forgot how hard this is.

The first step is the Principle and Foundation.  What is that in my life?

[crickets. Jeopardy music. more crickets].

I'm going to write it down today although I think it'll evolve and grow the more I think about it.  I think my life is about knowing.  Knowing for the sake of discerning.  Knowing for the sake of seeing change that has to happen and acting to evoke that change.  But this is really to find beauty and truth.  And wisdom.  My principle, where I start, I think is truth.  And seeking it to bring everybody to it, whatever it might be.

This is Ignatius' statement:

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God, our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. Alright.  Not exactly the same.  He's more Lord-y about his.  But the essence is there, I think.  Although I'm maybe more communally focused.  And maybe not so heaven-bound.  How about some soul-saving right here...and not, like, in the huge "end of days" sense?  C'mon Ignatius. Although this is the one that requires significant reflection, I think: The great turning point in life comes when I realize and fully accept the fact that God loves me unconditionally with a love I cannot earn or ever be worthy of, not for my possessions or for my accomplishments, but for myself, for myself not as I could be or should be but as I really am with all of the physical warts, psychological quirks and spiritual infidelities.  I think this is an incredibly hard truth to get a hold of because it's not a human thing.  As much as people (or a person) might say this at some point and you might believe them at some point, they are limited by their humanness, and humans are somewhat hardwired to be conditional (probably for literal survival).  We take things one step at a time.  We embrace rules.  We look for the familiar and normal. We work within the parameters of our lives.  So, unconditional to me is completely foreign.  I don't know what this looks like.  I cannot promise this to anyone else because I cannot imagine every condition that could exist that would render, no less guarantee, my same reaction to it.  So unconditional is a cosmic thing.  Which obviously requires faith.  Reasonably, the only way to respond to this, to accept it as true, is to suspend reason and go with faith.  I feel very iffy about this. The look on his face is the look on my face.  He clutches his heart, I clutch mine. This is not a revolutionary idea but what this requires is very hard. Complicating this even further is that you can't earn it or ever be worthy of it.  There's no blood, sweat, and tears in this.  You can't put a nose to the grindstone.  Frankly, this is an un-American kind of love.  I can't boostrap my way into this.  Even worse, I don't have to.  It's there for my taking. What kind of deal is this?!?  If I'm going to be honest about it, this is exactly the start of all of my struggles.  I don't know where or when (and likely it involves Sociology) that I lost the ability to trust in things, in people, but I just don't.  I anticipate disappointment. I forecast exactly where people will hurt me.  And I'm usually right.  But what if I didn't do that?  And what if I thought more about this in terms of God?  What if I reflected more on the fact of this?  Suspended my reason and actually dug into what this is and what it looks and feels like? It wouldn't kill me.  In fact, it might just let me unfurl a little bit.  Sometimes I forget that I'm not done growing.  I think I just need to figure out what that path looks like.  This could be it. And it could be just invisible to me now as that walkway was to Indie.

Not Counting

I hate to be cliche, but I had a moment about it being a new year.  In every other part of my life, I give numbers the healthy skepticism they deserve.  Almost everything numerical, to me, is meaningless as an end to itself: my weight doesn't reflect who I am, my face doesn't reflect my age, the amount of money I make has no connection with my value to this world (in my most humble opinion).  Even in my job in which I look at numbers and what they mean a lot, I don't give them much credence....because there's always a story behind them that will surprise you.  Numbers are rarely a reflection of lived experience.

In many ways, numbers have failed me time and again.

But for some reason, they've been haunting me recently.  Perhaps I've turned the quantitative corner, never to look back, but I can't help but keep thinking about things in terms of quantified time: I finished grad school 2 years ago, I've lived in my apartment 7 years, I haven't had a haircut for almost 3 months, I quit 1 job last year, I have done 0 significantly impressive things in recent history, I should give myself 4289 breaks because I'm my own worst critic.  The more I try to observe life outside these United States, the more I believe this tendency obsession with quantifying to be "Amurican."  If I can count it significantly then it must be important and, thus, good.  Even if it's bad.

Despite all of these tallies, the one thing I can claim as countless is the number of times I've started something only to stop too soon. How many projects lay on the dining room table of my life incomplete?  How many self-help steps are left to check off the list? How many miles are left to be counted by my 12 fitness tracking apps?  Countless.  How many good ideas have I not made good on because I'm afraid of what will happen?  How many opinions have I not shared because I want people to like me for who I'm not?  Countless.

As I start really defining this "countless" genre, I can see that many of them are important...in their own ways, of course.  They could lead to things like being healthier, happier, sharper creatively, braver, generally a better person.  Those I give up on.  The stuff that doesn't really matter...like the number of years I've lived in one place...that I can give you an almost perfect accounting for.

Without quantifying or even summoning the word benchmark which is such an over-hyped, bullshitty buzzword, I'm making a pact with myself that in this year I will make good on a couple "countless" things...because they're worth it.  But the method, I think, is key.  And my method deliberately stays away from counting.  Ticking off a box or checking off on a list makes the content of that action so pointless.  All of life, then, becomes about hitting that next "mark."  I don't want to live life this way.  Maybe that is the only thing that I will choose to accomplish this year and that would be tremendous: giving up counting.

Everything I do, I want to count for something...just not for the meaningless tally it often becomes.  

Worries I Have Regularly--Essay 1: Collective Impact and White People talking Poverty

My life is a minefield of worries from large to small that strike in no particular order.  Why is my mail late today? Will there be a dryer open after I do my wash? How can we disrupt the cycle of poverty for so many people?  How can racism continue to exist at this point in history?  When will American fall like Rome did?  I've always had a handle on percolating the small worries; sociology uncovered a whole new, huge realm of macro-worries that now also plague me.

One of these in a trend in non-profits called "collective impact," a term that I feel shackled by mostly because, on paper, it looks so promising but one step into the reality of it, things get thorny quickly.  I've written about it extensively in one case and I think about it almost constantly professionally.  Recently, I've begun to seriously consider the fact that I have been sucked in unwittingly to the shiny trappings of a really impossibly implemented idea.  Here's why:

Collective impact refers to an approach to solving particular, usually social, problems that most often create or undergird social inequality of some kind. I'm most familiar with this approach in schools where, in the Midwest, you encounter the typical but tragic reality that students who are black, Latino, and those who are lower income (usually the blacks and latinos) regularly post lower scores on standardized achievement tests.  In a collective impact model, stakeholders with similar interests that come from a variety of industries (in this particular case, usually it's schools, parents, after-school programs, and philanthropic organizations) to collectively solve this problem by agreeing to transparent data sharing and analysis, program and service integration, and an overwhelming, back-breaking amount of meetings. Generally.

When I first starting hearing and seeing this, I felt like this was a new answer to an age-old problem that was costing us all severe consequences.  No one can or should tolerate this kind of systematic caste system of education, even if we don't understand it or intend it.  Collective impact seemed to be (and still does in many ways) a real kind of re-organizing: of the way we do business, of the way we think about the problem, of the expression of our anger and intolerance for these kinds of outcomes time and again.

It might still be that but that (as one might notice) is mostly lip-service.  The implementation of this model requires an enormous overhaul in how white people think about and try to do something about our own complicity in the state of school and other social service interventions today.  In order for this to actually work, those with traditional privilege and, thus, power have to re-configure their relationship to it.  This means: they have to make peace with giving it up.

I am all for this.  It's high time.  BUT, my frustration with the model comes in that it underplays this cultural shift.  This is a *tremendous* shift for white people who have lived the ideology that if you work hard and put in your time, you will advance, and you will prosper.  Most white people (most), can function within most of our social systems.  That is the paths toward achievement and success are fairly clear, well-defined, and walked by others.  Even the most well-intentioned, most socially evolved white people struggle with truly believing that the same is not true for other racial groups.  They can see that something is not working for poor and minority kids and families but the suggestion of the same system in which they found relative comfort being a thorny jungle that can be, at times, impossible to navigate does not resonate.  They can intellectually see it; they are not willing to concede it at the most basic level.  At the end of every day, people who have achieved a lot want to believe that they struggled to do so and overcame the obstacles and that that game is the same for everybody stepping up to play.  Conceding that the system favors them undermines their own accomplishment.

This is the point that you find yourself at a table with a lot of well-intentioned, very smart people who are mostly white trying to fumble through re-thinking poverty...often without the voice of the very people for whom they have appointed themselves advocates. When it's really listening that's required, they want to make logic models and theories of action.

And identify metrics.  That's the topic of the second essay in this series.

I've begun to see social life as a series of dialogues.  Some have two parties, some have seventeen, it just depends on what it is on the table for discussion.  But each dialogue should have a leading voice that frames the scenario and facilitates the discussion.  For the most part, it's time for relatively wealthy, successful, white people, no matter how caring or well-intentioned, to stop trying to lead the discussion of the intersection of racism and poverty.  The driving voice there has to be one of experience first and not just one of observation.  And every white person around that table should resign themselves to listen first.  And trust the narrative that comes forth; trust it as real and true.  And wait for an invitation to join the discussion in the terms that emerge.  If white people continue to pat themselves on the back for nobly engaging in a race discussion that they never really would've before, they appropriate the discussion itself and negate the point of it.

White people: it's time to listen.  And come to terms with how little you know about the life you'll hear about.

New Year, New You

There's something interesting about the pressure of a new year.  Starting over is such a "thing" these days.  And I was bombarded by "challenges" this morning: a 30-day yoga challenge, a 3 month fitness challenge, a reading challenge, a decorating challenge, a cooking challenge.

How about a thinking challenge?  How about a transformation challenge--not your body or fitness...how about a "becoming better at who you are" challenge?  That's the kind of email I need.

In the past couple months I've tried (in vain) to return to things I've done successfully in the past in hopes that I can find the same kind of satisfaction I once did.  I've hung out with old friends.  I've tried to write on paper again in a journal format. I've gone back to yoga.  Nothing feels right or good. I can't stick with it.  I feel constrained by it in some ways.  And to certain degrees, of course.  Hanging out with some old friends feels fantastic; others feel disappointing. Yoga feels fantastic...but it brings up challenge for me in a new way...and so I'm more likely to not feel overly compelled to do it again tomorrow.

In so many ways I feel behind the curve.  In some ways I need to break free from the expectations I had about finishing my dissertation and finding fulfillment in that.

I need a new dream.

That's what this year is going to be about for me.  Day by day, I'm going to write the script of a new dream.  I have no idea what that will look like.  I think somehow, stories will be involved.  I don't know what that means.  Writing will be involved; I am not sure of the medium.  Happiness will be a goal.  I almost said contentment but I'm not sure that's right.  I need some angst for magic to happen in my life.  Truth will be my guide.  That sounds unbelievably "new agey" but I don't mean it that way.  I mean I will decide on courses of action that feel right a genuine to me, and probably sometimes, me alone.  And I will stop lying to people for the sake of promoting their own delusions, whatever those are.  And I'll really begin again to educate myself.  

Things feel to be coalescing.

I think the method for this is key to everything.  This is not a starting over or even a re-focusing.  This is a refinement.  I believe I have all the tools I need to make something spectacular happen.  I need to practice with them.  I need to make mistakes with them.  I need to learn to craft with them.  But this is making new wine in old wine skins.  

This is the most exciting thought I've had in months.  It's been percolating that long. And I truly believe the fact that it's January 2nd is coincidence.  It was a deadline for myself...in a way.  But the time is ripe now to seize the inspiration and start the movement forward.  

One of the best ways I can describe it is a figure skating metaphor.  Unlike walking to running, in figure skating there's a moment when you're standing in a t-stop with one blade perpendicular to the other.  You're waiting.  And then, when the moment in right, you push off the back blade and take that first stroke forward.  It's not gradual.  From standing, you glide.  If you do it right, you glide gracefully.

That's my method.  The potential energy has been gathered.  Time to go kinetic (and I didn't even have to look that physics reference up).  See...all here waiting for the signal.