Category Archives: New Work

Patience

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8377625425_18ec4f860b_bPatience –

even the shape of the word irritates me.  High on the P, round in the middle and flat at the end.  Patience.

Most everything in the world takes patience, but what about when I THINK I need something right now. I don’t have time for patience.  Is the opposite of patience recklessness? Sometimes I want to be reckless and risk it all?  I don’t want to be patient and wait for the answer to come. I’d like to decide and move forward, force it! ONWARD! I don’t want to stand still. What makes me want to jump to the other side of something while not experiencing it all. I want to leap.

Patience, lacks control and yet is all about control. I’m all about wanting to know the outcome – what comes next – my foot is tapping – where is THE PLAN!?

I never like waiting. It would be easier if I didn’t have to wait and there’s the issue. The good things in life don’t always appear when I want them to.

Some of the best things, people, learnings I have in my life came from an exercise in patience.  The best thing I can do for myself is know when to leap and when to stay and wait it out – not forever – not to get stuck – but to  give it some space, to be certain.

Patience. It’s never what I want, but is probably what I need at this very moment. Pause. Patience.

There must be something more to learn from this circumstance. Patience. The next thing will come soon enough. It always does.

When I need to have patience and need to stay and wait it out, I always, always turn to the Four Quartets –

… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing…

…You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not. ~ t.s. eliot, four quartets

your failure

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2925094345_624e28f5e1_bYour failure is to get up everyday and say you are going to do something and then not do it.

Your psyche will soon believe it and will give up on you too. Your self-sabotage will win.

Every day you wake and think – I want to be healthier, I want to write more, I want to volunteer, I want to… whatever it is that you say to yourself – if you continue to say it and never do it – that’s failure.  Stop thinking – start doing. A lot of people will say there is no such thing as failure and part of me thinks that is true, but we can’t always be gentle with ourselves when we want to get something done, when we want to do something meaningful, when we want to heal our own lives. Sometimes we need to kick our own asses and get up off the couch and change something.

That small voice needs to be heard and listened to – believe it just once – and then again.

Sometimes the fear of following through is actually the fear of success – stop thinking – start doing.

Your failure, my failure, our collective failure is to not even try. And then again – there is always tomorrow.

Stop? or GO! – GO!

Accidents_lead to breathing

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This morning I got up was thinking I didn’t want to go to the gym – was mopey about some things and while driving the car to the Max station I ran over something, a medium sized animal of some sort. A gasp fell out of my mouth, uncontrollable sobs and sniffling came next. Through the side mirror, I saw whatever it was run away, it didn’t look hurt, but I just hit it.

Should I stop? Should I get out and see if it’s okay? There is traffic behind me. I can’t stop crying – there is no way I can go look.  Instead I pull to the side of the road and cry for a minute and try not to think of the thud and the crunching sound. My heart hurts.

The things that make us stop are the places I like to pay special attention.

Life is interesting that way, the moment  you think you’ve got it, you’re good, yep this is it. You run over some small furry animal and it makes you take a longer look at things.

It’s almost the end of another year and a good time to pause, a good time to let my heart hurt if it does and to let myself breathe.

Sometimes breathing is difficult.

I can’t get enough air in between the must do, must have, must think about, must provide clarification, must get better at.

I can’t breathe.

So, today – I’m breathing, that’s the goal for today, just keep breathing. No need to do anything else. I’ll think about the future tomorrow, I’ll make goals and plans when I’m finished with pausing.

I hope that little furry guy is okay.

FOR_discourage

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2135698310_c779c2f8d3_bdis·cour·age/disˈkərij/

Verb: 1. Cause (someone) to lose confidence or enthusiasm.
2. Prevent or seek to prevent (something) by showing disapproval or creating difficulties

People will not always understand you or believe in you. Some will even try to discourage you. People who want to take your courage are lacking something themselves. It’s okay – let them talk, but don’t pay it much attention.

You can choose to let it stop you, you can choose to let it in or choose to let it go.  That’s the greatness of being you. You can choose to let people’s advice in or not and sometimes it might be the exact advice you need to hear and yet you still don’t have to listen.

When you’re trying to build yourself up and you’ve not quite gotten to the point of having courage about it – there will ALWAYS be someone willing to say STOP, DON’T GO, YOU CAN’T, BORING, DUMB, whatever else they might say. It might even be you trying to discourage yourself from moving forward, taking the next step, believing.  Don’t listen.  Keep going, keep being you, keep believing you can, make your own mistakes. And don’t take any I told you so advice.

sentimentality

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8254174933_dd536912a2_bI try not to get bogged down in being sentimental.

I read this book years ago Conscious Femininity – Interviews with Marion Woodman and this passage stuck with me.

On how sentimentality robs us of our feeling:
Woodman: To me sentimentality is not genuine feeling. Sentimental people tend to ignore their own shadow, their own darkness. They cover up real suffering with self-pity, for example, and stultify their own growth. Or they may focus their energy on another person who is trying to deal with genuine feeling, perhaps genuine evil, and because they’re unable to face that in themselves they say, “Poor thing.” They take a condescending attitude toward people who are fighting for their lives trying to get to their integrity. Sentimental people refuse to suffer. Real anger or real grief are put into cotton wool that smothers any possibility of transformation because they cannot stand the fire, and real feeling is tempered in fire.  Real feeling moves into the conflict and hold the opposition until the new is born. Sentimentality fears the heat of passion. It takes a holier-than-thou attitude and pretends it knows no evil, feels sorry for anyone trapped in compulsive behavior. Nazis were sentimental. Children are not.

Today, I’m being sentimental about my life and feeling sad for myself and at the same time taking pause for where I’ve been, what I’ve learned and where I’m going.  In a way maybe it  is not actual sentimentality, but a remembering, an honoring of days gone by. Not wishing them different, not passing them off, but feeling them the way they come through to me.

Sometimes, okay most times, when I hear a Christmas song, it brings a lump to my throat or I see a family in front of a Thanksgiving table, it turns me to tears. I used to push that aside and not deal with it at all, thinking it was because of the wonder of the season, the magic, the miracle of it all, but it’s not.  It’s grief for what I missed. What I’ve lost – my mother, my father, my two brothers and all the other things – we all have things that make us sentimental.

So, while I’m feeling sad, I remind myself – I’m no “Poor thing.” I fought life for my integrity, my authenticity and I can be okay just grieving – what might take a thousand more days to grieve, but I know if I keep  letting it come in, come through – things will change. I’ve seen it. Instead of avoiding what’s going on, I ask – what am I avoiding? Am I being sentimental or am I willing to really feel what’s going on? and then letting whatever that is in, without sentimentality, might change your life.

Sentimental:
Marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism
Dig into sentiment when you need to, DON’T forget to dig your way back out.
What are you avoiding? What’s asking you to suffer? What makes you sentimental?

the right words at the right time

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7505372906_226767c8f5_bIt always happens. The right words come at the right time.

I’m just about to give up an idea, a spark, a thought of what I want to do or be doing or how to do something differently and someone says something that urges me on, causes me to change, or to not listen at all and keep going – because it’s the right thing to do for me.

And then sometimes it’s not about hearing the right words at the right time, it’s about listening to whatever question I have at the moment.

In letters to a young poet, Rilke says the questions we have of ourselves may be the answer themselves.

…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. 

I don’t often like when things are challenging and yet I love the challenge. I say I want things to be easy, but I’ll never be happy if things are always easy. I say that I don’t want to question myself but to just keep going toward what I said I was going to do and then I love to question it.

Not everything that is “worth it” is challenging, but most times, for me, anything that is challenging me is “worth it”. It’s worth taking the chance to see what comes from it – what new information is about to blow my mind. It’s the difference between living and being alive. It’s a small risk in becoming more of who I am, to take the challenge to see if it’s worth it and to learn along the way.

In the last couple of weeks two people have said something to me that stopped me in my tracks, that validated my thinking in a way that surprised me that it was true to them. Are they talking about me or just an image of what they believe me to be? And then I thought to myself, it doesn’t matter, they heard something from me at the right moment in time that maybe helped them live the answer to something they were questioning, or challenged them, or was whatever it was they needed to hear.

That to me, is worth it. The challenge is to keep going.

The right words come at the right time as do the right questions.

Keep going, keep doing, keep questioning, keep listening, keep being more alive.

Drama

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The holidays are a perfect time to think about how drama works in my life.  Anytime is actually perfect, but especially the holidays.

I hear people say “The Holidays are stressful.” “My family drives me nuts.” “I feel obligated to do so many things.”

We have work parties, friend parties, family parties and other obligations to give and give of ourselves. It can be exhausting.

It doesn’t have to be though.

We choose to participate. If we don’t like seeing our family over the holidays or being overbooked, why do we do it? Why do we say yes? Obligation?

Why are we so focused on gifts and buying and doing around the holidays? Can’t we spread it out a little over the year? If the holidays are about the spirit of being thankful and for giving and maybe forgiving, can’t we be thankful and give to ourselves and forgive ourselves a little for being human and not being able to go the extra mile every single time?

There is not enough time in the world to participate in all the drama we could. There is enough time to say no. To take care of yourself first. During a plane crash, no one says run around and put everyone else’s oxygen mask on first, they say – stay calm, put yours on and then help others.

We choose to have time for drama and stating the negative about what’s happening in our lives. We give little or no time on getting clear on what we want to do and what we don’t want to do.

What if we could do what we want to do, without obligation?

Drama is a choice.

If your Mother drives you crazy but deep down you really do enjoy spending time with her. Stop complaining, accept her for who she is, learn to set boundaries and keep them. And maybe, just maybe it will feel less stressful. If your Father, brother, sister, friends, coworkers are making you feel pressured, we can choose something different.

But she’s MY MOTHER!/Sister/Colleague/Best Friend – you might say. She’s also a grown woman. Sometimes we forget that.

One of the reasons we choose to stay in the drama is – it’s easier. It’s easier to grumble along being a little unhappy, or really unhappy, because it’s hard to have the conversation that you’re not happy and that you’d like things to change. We don’t give ourselves credit for wanting it enough to change it. We’re scared of what might change, who might get angry and most of all how we might have to change.

I used think and this is embarrassing to admit – that if someone I cared about asked me to do something, I had to do it.  I really believed that.  I had to learn how to say no and not feel guilty. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary for me.

Eleven months ago – I decided making a New Year’s Resolution was not enough and that I needed to create a New Year’s Revolution. It’s been a good, but scary ride.  Change and choices are not always easy. I’m not always where I want to be. I don’t always know what to do, but I’ll keep trying to figure it out.  Sometimes the hard part is knowing what to do when you’re on the other side of whatever was causing you drama, the exciting part is knowing you can do it.

What drama are you letting go this holiday season?

Fear forever or never

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I cannot live in fear forever. It never wins. no fear, know fear, NO FEAR.

Someone once told me that I shouldn’t check-in anywhere on Facebook because people would know I’m not home and then go break into my house. Yeah – they could drive by and see I’m not home and break in – should I never leave my house? All of us have our own fears for our own reasons.

I’m going to challenge myself to ask the questions about fear.

Am I in imminent danger?

Is it a real rational fear? Or am I making it up? (Spiders are going to kill me? – Really? We don’t have poisonous spiders where I live.)

Is it a what if? Where I think of all the bad things that could happen, what if this, what if that? If it is – what’s the worst thing that could happen? Would I die?

If I’m afraid, I can be afraid without being terrorized. Okay, I’m scared, what do I do now?

I started writing this prior to hurricane Sandy hitting New York but realized the timing of this  question in fear was right on. I experienced the power of hurricane Hugo in South Carolina in 1989 and I can say that, that was REAL fear. It brings you to a place where you have nothing left except for fear and the reality of that kind of fear is surrender. There is nothing you can do.

I look back on that time in my life and it taught me a valuable lesson, when fears are real you don’t stress about them, you don’t think about them, you are with them in the moment and you have no choice but to not be overwhelmed. You have to keep living. 

We create a lot of our own fears, which doesn’t mean they don’t feel real, but when we’ve made something up in our heads, we dwell, we stress, we develop anxiety. Those fears aren’t truly real, but made up and in that moment.

I have compassion for what scares me, but I’m not going to let it drive me. I’m scared, now what? Live! GO!

Re_frame

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I’m halfway to my goal.

I’m eight months in and only halfway.

I have 4 more months to post another 51 writing sessions.

Nothing like a deadline to get me going.

I’ve been aggravated lately, something seems to be off in my life and I can’t figure out the exact WHY or WHAT of it, but it’s there. A general down-ness, maybe it’s the end of summer and the beginning of fall and winter. The time to turn in, hibernate, not be so out and about. Maybe that’s what it is. Or maybe it’s something else, maybe I’m not where I want to be in life and then I say – AM I EVER?

In any case, I want to find a way to re_frame it.  Not that I want to avoid what’s going on, but to put a perspective on it that doesn’t suck. That’s the part of working through it for me. Recognizing that I’m in a funk and not fighting to get out of it but being more understanding of it.

That’s what it takes for me to figure things out. ACTION and non-ACTION. Both.

ACTION – think about why I am in the space I am. ACTION – believe I can change it. non-ACTION – don’t do anything until I’m clear, don’t be reactive, or rash. ACTION – settle into and think about how I’d like it to be. non-ACTION – let it unfold. It’s a challenge to stay with it. It’s a challenge to not ACT and yet be ACTING.

So today – I’m re-framing it. Rethinking what everything is about and eventually, I’m going to make a change. I’m not sure what it is, but it will come when it’s ready. Sometimes the change will come when someone else makes a decision and it impacts me, sometimes I have to decide.

I’ll keep deciding what feels right and what doesn’t, what should stay and what should go. Not making decisions right away, but to watch and think on it.

When it’s time – I will cut – as Marion Woodman says – with a sword of discretion. A sword unlike a knife produces an immediate cutting away. Cutting away that which doesn’t bring more to my life.

It takes courage to realize that something isn’t right and to work to change it. It may take all the strength I have to make that cut, but once I’ve cut, I can move on. I can be more alive.

It’s easier to have someone else decide sometimes, but when I choose, the cut is swift and then the door is closed.

What’s getting in the way of what I want? What’s getting in the way of writing? What’s getting in the way?  That’s what needs to be cut.

There is always light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel never really ends, I just go toward the next light.

What’s getting in the way of what you want?

Design – DeSigN

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We love beautiful things.

Even if we have never seen a beautifully designed product, the first time we do, we know it. We know we’ve seen something different.

The problem with the mainstreaming of good design, we’ve allowed some things to become mediocre without question – but with sincere and apologetic acceptance.

Yesterday, I received an email from someone I admire and who has amazing design sense. At the bottom of the email after the signature was: Sent from my IPhone. Please excuse typos.

This is what we’ve become. We’ve coveted a device that allows us to make typing and typos “acceptable”, because we’ve typed them on a supercool beautifully designed piece of hardware.

I was in a heated debate about an approach on a project via email, which was likely a bad idea in the first place, but in any case, there I was.

I responded quickly to an email and was so confident in myself that I hit send without re-reading. Fail.

My email which was supposed to say something to the effect of: I get what you are saying, the strategy we are proposing is one that will move us forward for the next few months, even years, instead of the next few weeks.

INSTEAD: my email read:

I get what you are saying, KoBe Beef we are proposing is one that will movement to forward….blah blah blah, other typos and missed words.

iPhone didn’t create typos for me, it helped me not take the time to read my own email, it allowed me to sound – ridiculous, not engaged, not paying attention to details.  No one thought I meant to put Kobe beef in the middle of the sentence, however they couldn’t even decipher what I meant. It was a failure.

If I had taken the extra moment to read the email again, I would have never hit send.

iPhone has made us lazy, lazy about communication, hiTECH, with low brain activity. iPhone and email in general have taken us away from true communications with other people. It allows us to not be clear, not explain ourselves and assume the other person will figure it out.

Good design shouldn’t create new problems that we accept and add notes “sent from my iPhone, please excuse typos.” Good design should inspire us to create something new for ourselves. To think.

Pause – think – relate – pause – reread. SEND. design.

“Posted from my iPhone and I took the time to read it twice before hitting send. Because I care.”