challenges

 

“Shoot for the moon… if you miss it at least you will be among the stars.”

I have heard this statement, or something similar, from many a motivational speaker. The idea, of course, is to reach for lofty goals. Why not? This is your life, after all. It seems sensible to live it the way you want. And it does make sense that you will find yourself somewhere improved if you reach for everything you want. If you don’t, it is pretty certain you will stay just where you are.

When a white belt takes their first belt test and are presented with the first board they must break, they sometimes have difficulty. They whack away at the board, slapping it hard but never breaking it. If it goes on too long, their hand will really start to hurt.

My teacher would just tap himself on the chest and say “I want you to hit me right here,” and then hold the board out in front of the spot he had tapped.

“Go through the board and hit me.”

It worked just about every time. Just thinking about hitting a different target, one farther away than the board, was enough for those white belts to make the shift. They would blast through the board and never hit him in the chest at all.

Kinda the same thing, I think. Maybe you want to shoot for the moon so you can at least get yourself to the stars.

And maybe you just want to go through the board.

Either way, aim for what you want and put some energy into it. Go for your dreams. What are you waiting for?

 

Traveling is not as much fun for me as it used to be… probably because I am the grown-up now, and have the responsibility to make sure it all works out. When I was a kid, all I had to do was show up. And pack a few things.

After a lot of effort, I now find myself sitting in the airport waiting for a *hit storm to subside. It takes about two days of solid effort just to get the house ready, pack up the suitcases and get ourselves to this point. A lot of stress, unfortunately. But once I get us to the airport I can usually relax.

It is all up to someone else now.

And that someone has just told us all that there is something wrong with the plane. Specifically, it smells. They are not sure why, but something has gone wrong with the sewage processing and the whole thing stinks. They don’t want to fly it until they figure it out.

I don’t really want them to either.

In fact, I think this whole thing is a load of crap.

(giggle)

The plane is in deep doo-doo.

(More giggles)

I guess the *hit has really hit the fan, hasn’t it?

Belly laughs are the best way to start any trip.

When I was due to have my second baby, I planned to take a leave of absence from work for six months. Six months is a lot of time to take off, and it is easy (at least for me) to fantasize about all of the catching up I will do with that much time. Get photos organized. Clean out the closets. Paint the bedrooms. Refinish the furniture. File all the extra papers on my desk. You get the idea.

But, this was my second time around the baby-block and I knew how foolish those productivity dreams were. Those months were going to fly by, full of feedings and diapers and an occasional shower. I was prepared for the speed of it this time, but I still yearned for something I could do to meet that urge to be productive. Something small and doable.

I settled on learning how to make a pie crust. 

I am a good cook and have spent years of my life in professional kitchens, cooking up all sorts of dishes for all sorts of meals in all sorts of restaurants. Yet somehow the simple pie crust had eluded me. I could never roll one out: it would break, or stick or refuse to spread. Practicing and mastering making a pie crust seemed manageable in my six-month break, and all of the filing and photos could wait until another time. It met my need for productivity and growth without putting too much pressure on. Plus, I love pie!

Mama-amnesia has set in now, and I don’t remember exactly how I found the time to make those crusts, but I did it. Fifteen years have gone by, and we have eaten a LOT of pie in my house. It is our favorite dessert. It is also my favorite thing to make for a thank-you when someone has earned my gratitude.

Every time I make a pie I remember this gift from my second baby, and how I might never have been able to make one at all if he hadn’t come along. It is a great family story that has brought us all a lot more yummy joy than getting organized ever would have done.

 

I am trying to figure out how to tell you about this great thing thing that happened today. So much of our lives involve other people and their opinions and privacy, their ideas about what is interesting and worth sharing. And blog posts potentially go out to the whole world. That’s kind of a lot of exposure. I might be willing to embarrass myself, but I don’t really want to make that decision for anyone else.

So, suffice it to say that someone I love did something they wished they hadn’t and then told me all about it the first chance they got. We discussed better ways the situation might have been handled and then we went together to fix it. Fixing it involved explanations, apologies and honesty.

When we returned home again this special someone said, “I’m sorry. This is probably not what you wanted to come home to.”

Thrilled to the bone, I grinned and said: “What I came home to was honesty and courage. I am really, really happy to come home to this.”

Mama-pride. Nothing beats it.

I was 36 when my first son was born so I know I had “a life” before I had children. Thirty-six years of it, to be exact. If I could just remember it!

I have been a mother now for 23 years, and it has gotten to be a habit. If all goes well, in four years my nest will be empty. I am intimidated and scared by the prospect, even though I know about those other 36 years. I know I used to do all sorts of things to keep my days full but I really don’t remember it and sometimes my confidence is not that strong that I will be happy living on my own. At least not until I began reading Joe Dispensa’s You Are the Placebo. Now, hope is returning because I understand my unease a little better

I have been living as a mom for quite a while, and I have some habits developed, some routines in behavior and routines in thought. My brain, and mind, and body – like those of the rest of humanity – likes routines because they simplify life, and they are set up to keep me going in patterns indefinitely.

That’s what this first chart from Dispensa’s book is all about:

 

• Think the same old thing (Tomorrow is a school day.)
• Make the same choice (Set the alarm for 6:10 a.m.)
• Do the same stuff (Get up, make him breakfast, send him to school)
• Life is the same as yesterday (O.K., that’s done. Now it is my time to do what I need to do.)
• Feel the same feelings (Happy to be needed, another successful morning, now what?)
• Rinse and repeat (Same reality every day)

That has been my life, five days a week, for about the last 23 years. A little different in summer and on weekends, where a new routine sets in pretty quickly. (And boy, is the whole thing thrown out of whack when the kiddo stays home sick from school!) No wonder I feel a sense of impending disruption. According to Dispensa, my brain and body are completely wired to continue to do this forever, empty nest or not. Whatever routine I had pre-children has been long-erased from my physiology.

Then -thank goodness!- just two pages further into this book I find hope in a second chart. A way to prepare for the new reality that is coming, and a way to build my confidence that I can handle it, joyfully, when it does.

• Think some new thoughts (what can I do today to prepare my son and myself for the new world order?)
• Make some new choices (Set the alarm for 5:30 a.m.)
• Do some new stuff (Get dressed, head to a breakfast networking meeting and let him get himself fed and to school.)
• Experience something different (Adult conversation, new connections, new ideas)
• Feel new stuff (Pride in my self-sufficient kid, interest in my new world, hope for the future)

Perhaps Dr. Dispensa would polish my understanding of this process a little if he were to read this, but I think I have the basics down. In order to create my new desired reality, a content mom of adult children leading an interesting life while they lead theirs, I have to do things that will get my brain, mind and body out of the routine it has been in. I have to grow some new neural pathways whenever I get a chance and trust that the new reality will follow.

Which does not mean that I will suddenly throw the baby out with the bath water. There are plenty of little ways I can disrupt my current patterns and get myself ready for the baby heading out on his own.

My friend Carol Ann called me today, which did not surprise me at all, because I had been thinking of her a half-hour earlier and we are Law of Attraction friends. She has recently started a new job in telemarketing, and she is really enjoying it. If she was told by someone a year ago that she would have, and enjoy, such a job, I suspect that she might have doubted it. But now she sees it as a kind of training ground.

“I am having fun with this job and I know that this work is getting me ready for the next thing that I will be doing in my life.”

I knew exactly what she meant. That is what the 30-day blogging challenge is doing for me.

I am involved on many projects and often describe myself as a glacier: I am moving forward slowly, but powerfully. I am carving mountains into rubble and leaving polished granite in my wake. Or something like that. It can be difficult to explain the entire vision, or how the pieces fit together, or what the end goal is. To myself as well as to others. I just keep plugging away at it.

When my co-blogging buddy  told me about this challenge I knew right away I wanted to do it. I have not been blogging at all, just writing a few articles in support of my online presence and the work I do as an editor and proofreader. And the people who advise me in that realm tell me I should only write about self-publishing and becoming an author and such. I have been rebelling against that advice because I want to write about other stuff, stuff that interests me..

I know that forcing myself to find something I think is interesting to write about every day is really pushing me.  Somehow, I also know the push to write more will come in handy when the glacier rounds the next mountain range. I can’t explain how, but Carol Ann gets it.

We are laying foundations for buildings we have not completely designed yet, trusting that the full picture will be revealed to us as we build.

 

 

For years, my kids have told me that all my problems could be solved if I would just buy myself an iPhone. Well, maybe not ALL of my problems, but every question or complaint I had about my old phone was always countered with, “When are you going to get an iPhone?”

So, I finally did. My old Android was shutting itself down, losing contacts, would not display voice mails and quit its Bluetooth capabilities. It was only a matter of time before it fell apart in my hands, so last weekend I bit the bullet and took the plunge and bought the iPhone.

And it is driving me crazy. I have been trying to be patient, knowing there is a learning curve. But this morning I couldn’t even figure out how to make a phone call and I began to think it was time to take it back to the store and go back to Android. It just seemed too hard.

Then I remembered some of the stuff I have been learning from Joe Dispensa’s book, “You Are the Placebo.” Stuff about how we just do the same things over and over again everyday and because we don’t do anything new we are basically dooming ourselves to never change… even if we want to. The big message here is to learn new information and do new things if you want to have a chance of growing. This all makes intuitive sense, but he is backing it up with major brain science and it is hitting home.

I feel my phone-thoughts turn 180 degrees, just like that. Suddenly I see my new phone as my new best friend. I don’t know if I will ever love it the way my kids love theirs but I am thrilled to see that I am holding a key to brain health, elasticity and my own ability to keep growing and changing right in my hot little hands. By the time I figure this thing out, I may have completely re-wired my brain.

I hope I like the new wiring.

I swear, I just woke up. How can the day be over already?

I know it has something to do with daylight savings and the earth’s orbit now being farther from the sun. The day is just too dang short, especially when you have just volunteered yourself to write a blog post every day for a month. Once it gets dark, I want to go to sleep. This tendency seems more pronounced in me the longer I live. Maybe I was meant to be a hibernating creature: it seems pretty appealing right now.

I vote for making National Blog Posting Month in June next time. Give a girl a chance by giving her some time in the day!

Does anyone know who I can call to request that change?

🙂

 

Love that Facebook…

On November 4, 2017, I was looking for  writing inspiration and decided to look and see what I was doing a year ago that day by looking at my Facebook history. I knew that November, 4, 2016 was the tail-end of my second run for office, just four days before the vote. But I forgot that Facebook would also feed me posts from years prior… including 2014 when I made my first run. That time, November 4 was voting day itself, and I have wonderful pictures of all of us voting, hopeful that I would win.

The coolest thing? This was the first election that my eldest son had ever voted in,  and his mom was on the ballot!

When I first decided to run for the board of directors of our local public utility district I had all sorts of sensible reasons. I could serve my community, get involved, support our floundering recreation department, stir a little change, etc, etc. I was completely new to politics and campaigns and learned as we went along.

Once the campaign got going some incredible secondary benefits appeared. A day or two after our signs started going up, my then-twelve-year-old came home from school and said, “Mom, the kids at school say you are running for president.” What fun! That was the moment I realized how my decision was impacting my kids, in a good way. I imagined my boys as two fully-grown men, sitting over a couple of beers one day and saying, “Remember that time that mom ran for office?” Pretty wonderful. I knew that what I was doing would affect their civic involvement for the rest of their lives.

After the 2014 election, when people asked me if I won, I struggled with an answer. I finally settled on something like: “Yes, I won. I did not get enough votes to win the seat, but my kids got to watch me run for office and my oldest got to vote for me the very first time he voted at all. I call that a win.”

And it was.