Self

The Eve of a New Year

By / December 31, 2014

Tonight is New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow morning will be the first day of 2015. Contemplating the new year, it feels bright, sharp, and cold. Possibly I’m just being influenced by my first bleary-eyed look outside my windows this morning. All over social media I see people moving to embrace the new year. Some of them are excited for things to come. Some are just anxious to shake off the dust of 2014 and do something else, because 2014 was miserable for them. I’ll be honest, though 2014 had some really good months for me, the last few were not my favorite. Yet I don’t feel any impulse to rush forward because I know that I’ve got more hard stuff between me and any pleasant months. Just like I’ve got several months of cold before the outdoors becomes hospitable again. Right now I want to hunker down where it is warm, not face the cold.

I don’t get to. I’m going to be dragged into this new year minute by minute. As I reach the appointed time to pick up my regular responsibilities, I’ll settle them onto my shoulders again. Usually I feel excited about that after having a holiday rest. Today, not so much. So I keep thinking about the Winston Churchill quote: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” I can do that. I can keep putting one foot in front of the other. I can keep doing the tasks as they come to me. Then at some point I’ll be able to look up from my feet and realize that all my walking has carried me into different terrain. It isn’t exactly hope, but perhaps it counts as faith. I believe that if I keep going, eventually I’ll end up somewhere else.

I won’t be making resolutions this year. The last thing I need is a new load of expectations for myself. Instead of new goals, I’m going to focus on acceptance. I need to see things as they are and let go of what I think they ought to be. Written out like that, it looks an awful lot like a resolution, so I guess I have one after all. But only one. And I’m allowed to ignore it without guilt if that is what I need to do.

Cleaning House

By / December 15, 2014 / 1 Comment

I knew a freeze was coming, so I rescued some of the blooming flowers from my garden.
Bowl of flowers

They looked lovely there in the bowl, so I took a picture. Then I carefully pressed the flowers in the pages of a phone book so that I’ll have dried pressed flowers to play with in January. Phone books aren’t as easy to come by as they used to be. I’ll be hanging on to this one for a while.

This is the week for me to sort through stuff and clear out the accumulated mess that occurs because of book release and shipping. Kiki and I had the first of many warehouse clean up days. I got part way caught up on laundry. I had enough energy on Saturday to assign out house chores to the kids and to expect them to actually follow through. They did. Our house is cleaner.

My physical spaces are not the only things I’m attempting to tidy. Today I acquired the doctor’s letter which will allow me to do the final rearrangement of Link’s schedule at school. I’ve refilled all the prescriptions. I’ve paid the premium on our new healthcare plan which I hope will do a better job of helping us pay for all those prescriptions. There are a dozen other organizational tasks necessary to make the next month, and next year, run smoothly.

I also attended a therapy session. This one wasn’t for one of my kids (though I had one of those today as well) it was for me. Because, frankly, the inside of my head is as much a mess as my physical spaces were. I’ve got two years worth of insufficiently processed emotional baggage that needs sorting. Also, if I’m going to advocate therapy to my friends and loved ones, then I need to be willing to go myself. So I’m going. And I’m hoping that the shiny new healthcare plan will do a better job of helping to pay for that too. I researched and tried to make an informed decision, but I half expect to get some unpleasant surprises when I actually test the new system.

For this evening I’ll look at my bowl full of flowers photo and perhaps I’ll light a candle so that I can watch the wax melt. Small beautiful things are a good addition to any day.

Longing for a Pause

By / December 7, 2014

I want to curl up in Sunday afternoon and stay here for a while. In this space I am excused from thinking about work. More importantly I am also excused from monitoring all the schedules of everyone in the house to make sure that everything is on track. There has been a lot to track lately and some of it kept spinning further and further out of control. The book shipping and sketching careened across our holiday season at exactly the moment when emotional needs of kids demanded that we expend more energy for family time. Yet as of yesterday the sketching is done. Tomorrow the shipping will be complete. And as of last Friday we declared quits with the chemistry class that had Link so far buried under work that he would never be able to dig his way out. Instead he’ll be taking a home-study type geology class. In one weekend all the urgencies have lifted. It is a little hard for me to believe, which is why I find myself wanting to linger in Sunday afternoon. Monday will return me to all my roles of responsibility and those roles have felt heavy lately.

At church the teacher asked the class what were our favorite things about the holiday season. People listed things like music, lights, family, celebrations, etc. I knew what my answer would be, but I’m not sure my answer is readily applicable to others. What I love is the span of time which begins just before Christmas and lasts through New Years’ Day. During that time there isn’t much shipping work, the internet slows down, we don’t have to wake early for school, there is no homework to manage, and we get fewer emails. For a little more than a week there is a space that is a lot like Sunday afternoons when I’m excused from most of my regular tasks. I love the peace of that week. All the trimmings, food, and presents are part of what I love, but it is the pause I want.

I usually get a pause during Thanksgiving. This year I did not. Often life serves up a pause in October as the kids settle in to school but before school gets serious. This year there wasn’t one. I could list a lot of reasons, but the pure fact is that sometimes things pile on top of each other. Sometimes that is the only way to accomplish really important things. As hard as some of the stresses this past fall have been, I don’t wish them undone. We needed to learn the things we’ve learned. We needed to have all the appointments and meetings to figure out what was going on and what to do next. We needed the books and slipcases in time for Christmas. We needed Link’s eagle project. We needed to recognize that my thyroid dosage was low. I do hope that this next week can be the point after which things are less piled up together. That would be lovely.

For now, I’ll take my Sunday evening pause next to the Christmas tree.

Seeking Happiness

By / November 18, 2014

A few days ago I wrote a post about finding ways to be happy while still being busy. Yesterday Gleek showed me this TED talk which both backs up my assertion that becoming less busy is not the secret to happiness. Nor is it something we achieve after we’ve accomplished our goals. Instead it is being happy that will help us achieve things. The talk is only twelve minutes, laugh-out-loud funny, and well worth your time.

The Happy Secret to Better Work

Signs of Stress

By / November 18, 2014 / 1 Comment

I was sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the heating vent by the kitchen sink. My back was to the cupboards with additional cupboards on all three sides. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, aware that this sitting-on-the-floor behavior is only something I do when I’m stressed. I don’t know why sitting in that particular spot is comforting when I’m upset, but it is. At least in the winter when the vent blows warm. I sat there, eyes closed, sorting my thoughts. One of the thoughts was to review in my mind the various signs of stress that are typical for the other members of my household. Howard gets irritable, particularly about food things. Kiki fixates on small problems and sleeps more than usual. Gleek gets angry and defensive, she also accumulates things. Patch fidgets and gets indecisive. So I review, the girls are both doing well right now. Howard is under work stress, but in normal quantities. The boys are both struggling. They are stressed.

In that list of signs of stress, I didn’t mention Link. That’s because I made a very saddening realization. If I made a list of “Things Link usually does daily” that list will match up one-to-one with the list of “signs that Link is stressed or depressed.” The stress has been so pervasive for so long that none of us recognized it as anything outside of normal. Mental illness is so sneaky. It doesn’t show up with a dramatic change the way that a cold or the flu does. There is no quick comparison yesterday to today. Instead you have a child who is changing and growing all the time. So you assume that everything is just part of their evolving personality. Except there is this creeping, niggling thought which grows stronger. Maybe this isn’t normal. Everyone says the teenage years are hard, but maybe they shouldn’t be quite this hard. I owe huge debts of gratitude to my parenting community. There were people who listened to me and said “no, that’s outside of normal.” I feel like I should have been strong enough to seek help without needing that decision validated.

The good news is that the school administrative staff have bent over backwards to be helpful. I don’t know if everyone has that experience with them. It probably helps that I was able to say that I’ve already scheduled doctor’s appointments. It was obvious that I’m taking all the “right” steps. And yet this still is not easy. There are also teachers in the mix. Some of them understand and work with me. Others, not so much. Which is why I end up sitting on the floor of my kitchen, rehearsing parts of difficult conversations I need to have in the next few days. And I think about how difficult it is to stand strong and say “Yes I know that thing should be simple, but for my child it is not.” And then to have to say it over and over again in different contexts, working to give my child the space he needs to heal and grow strong. My job seems clear when I type it out like that, yet I constantly second guess myself about whether I’m choosing correctly. And once I have the conversations, I’ll probably spend hours rehashing them in my head, thinking of different things I should have said. It is all so exhausting.

Filtering the Voices

By / November 16, 2014

I believe in being open minded. I try to look at multiple sides of an issue. I try to withhold judgement. Unfortunately this has the side effect of making my brain a very noisy place. Other people’s opinions echo in my head and they continue arguing with each other inside my head. I slowly become overwhelmed with the chaos of voices because I can see at least some validity in all the opposing arguments. At some point I have to quell the pandemonium. I have to decide which voices to listen to and which to reject. I have to make judgements about what I believe and what I don’t. This is hard, because it means not being completely open minded. It means that someday someone may accuse me of being narrow, and they will be correct. That will sting. But I can’t function as a human being if I consider all sources of input to be equally valid. I have to filter or I will go crazy with stress.

Accepting the need to filter, I then have the challenge of figuring out what and how. Some choices are obvious. I don’t want to listen to hate-filled voices. They do not make my life, or the world a better place. I don’t really want to listen to fear-driven opinions, but there are a lot more of those than it seems at first glance. I hold a slew of them myself. I try to root them out, but they’re sneaky. Ill-informed opinions can be eliminated, but I have to take the time to become informed enough to recognize them. The hardest part is when I have to filter out loving, well-intentioned opinions. There are so many of them on just about any topic that exists. I wish just being loving and well-intentioned automatically made everyone agree. But it doesn’t. And I have to choose who to listen to.

I wish I could conclude with a paragraph about how I’ve solved this problem. Unfortunately I haven’t solved it yet. I keep finding myself in a state where contrary voices are howling around me. Instead this post just needs to sit here as a marker pointing up a life thing that is difficult. You don’t have to listen to everybody. You can’t listen to everybody. There simply isn’t enough time and energy. You have to choose and that’s okay. It also means that sometimes someone will choose not to listen to you and you have to accept that as well. I do have a means by which I feel my way out of the chaos. I use prayer and inspiration to help me find my core voice. I listen to that voice first and it helps me make the hard choices about what else I should listen to. I suppose that is a solution after all, though I honestly believed I didn’t have one when I began this paragraph. Finding that calm inner voice is difficult when the world is noisy, but the effort is worthwhile.

Finding Happiness While Being Busy

By / November 9, 2014 / 1 Comment

Someone posted a link to an article about busyness as a disease. The content of the post was familiar. I’ve read it a dozen times before in various iterations. It lamented our over-scheduled lives, the fact that we don’t disengage from technology, that kids don’t have time to be bored. Many times I’ve read articles like this one and I’ve agreed. I spent years in an ongoing struggle to slow down my life. I thought that surely if life had a less hectic pace, I would have more happiness.

Then I had an epiphany, how happy I am has very little to do with the quantity of things on my to do list. I have been happy while working full-tilt with no time to stop. I have been miserable when I had long and leisurely days. Busy becomes miserable when I prioritize urgent over important. Busy is miserable if I’m busy at the wrong things or if I have to be busy according to someone else’s priorities instead of mine. That last part is the part that trips me up most often. I share my life with four children and a husband who all put things on my schedule. Then there are relatives, friends, church, school, etc. All of them would like to schedule me. Misery is not the goal, but sometimes it is the result if I do not keep in touch with my own priorities.

For years my kids did not have any after school lessons or activities. They came home and they played. Mostly they played video games. (There’s another set of articles telling me all about how that isn’t a good idea either.) This year two of my kids picked up one activity each. I watched how these outside activities added to their lives and brought them joy. They became more than they had been. Recently my son has become quite easily stressed. As I was casting about for solutions to his stress, I briefly considered dropping his outside activity (cello lessons) to give him more free time. I’ve rejected that, because I can see that free time doesn’t make him less stressed. In fact, sometimes he gets stressed because choosing to play this video game means he’ll have less time for that one. He’s not stressed because he’s busy. The stress is coming from somewhere else. (Hormones probably. Puberty is hard.) The key is that we don’t want to allow stress to steal something he enjoys. We don’t want to let stress make him smaller.

The life I have chosen is always going to be a busy one. I’ll always have multiple projects running in parallel. I’ll always have to use lists to track the things I need to get done. When I’ve got myself properly focused, I like being busy. Not everyone would be happy with a life like mine. Which is fine, everyone has to build their own life and fill it with their own priorities as much as they are able. (Most of us don’t get to be the sole masters of the lives we have.) For me, these past few weeks have been made of schedule disruption as I’ve responded to kid meltdowns and school absences. I have to find ways to reach for happiness no matter what else is going on in my days. That is hard on the days when I feel both stretched thin and emotionally bruised. Yet if I reach for happiness in the hard times, I’ll likely grab it when things lighten up. And I can do it while still being busy. I’m not going to let stress or anxiety make me live smaller.

Heart’s Work and Creativity

By / October 27, 2014

I read a lot of articles online. Truthfully, most of them are a waste of my time. But every so often I find exactly the words I needed to read that day. When I do, I pin it to my Pinterest board. That way I’ll know where to find it if I need it again. More than once I’ve been able to send a link that I pinned to someone else who needed it.

Today started out a little bit raw, which is normal on the day after a crying day. Sleep restores much, but my eyes are still tired. I understand why lots of crying in a short span of time will make me thirsty, I’m less clear on why it makes my eyes feel tired and my face feel tender. The good news is that the tears were gone, the sadness processed. Today I can see that my challenges are not so bad. I could see it yesterday too, but the sadness had to finish flowing once the pocket had been pierced open. This morning it was gone and I was left with tired eyes and a day’s work to do. Fortunately one of the first things I read was an article, linked by a friend of mine, about how often we fail to realize that we are already in the middle of our life’s most important work. The work we are called to do. I was barely halfway through when I could see how all the things that I cry over are a worthy work. I wouldn’t cry over them if they were not. And they bring me joy far more often than they bring tears.

The other article which I found very helpful today was linked on my Facebook timeline by my backyard neighbor. She knows me well. It is an article about doing the artistic work you feel divinely called to do. The ending of the article is a specific discussion of a project to help mother artists, which didn’t really apply to me. Yet the earlier words exactly matched what I’ve experienced in the last few weeks. I finally listened to all that prodding and hounding which I felt any time I opened my heart to inspiration. I finally bumped writing far enough up the priority list that it has been getting done. I can feel the difference in my heart and my life. I can feel a before and after difference in each individual day. Even while I’ve been spending my energy, and my tears, on my hearts work of raising my kids, I was also ignoring my other calling. In fact I was sometimes actively dodging it while trying to pretend to myself that I was not. No wonder I spent so much time feeling stressed and in pieces.

I have crying days in my future. They come to all of us. But between now and then I hope to have lots of days where I’ll do my heart’s work, both parenting and creating.

Things My Son’s Eagle Project is Teaching Me

By / September 27, 2014 / 5 Comments

I’m a bit project obsessive. This is a huge asset to me when I am fully in charge of a project. It means that I keep coming back to projects as soon as I am rested enough to think about them again. When I’m only sort-of in charge of a project, either I’m driven crazy by the schedules of others, or they’re driven crazy because I keep coming at them and saying “What about this? Do you think this would work? I’ve thought of a solution for that, let’s go take care of it now.”

Learning experiences work best when there is no deadline, unless one of the things-to-learn is how to work to a deadline. In that case, the deadline is best if it applies only to the learner and not to the helper/teacher. Or else the helper/teacher tends to over-help in order to make sure the deadline is met.

Eagle projects always have external deadlines because it has to be in service of some other organization. That organization can’t wait around forever while the scout figures things out slowly. As a parent, I feel that obligation and it weighs on me.

Eagle projects take longer than you think they will take, because an inexperienced person is supposed to be in charge. I have to let it take however long it takes, no matter how frustrated I am at having the project continue to reside in my brain. Stress is created because of the gap between the speed the scout figures things out and the deadline hopes of the other organization.

I am good at figuring out where a project will have a problem far before that problem becomes apparent to others and before it impacts the project. I am not good at waiting for others to discover and solve the problem. Instead my brain rushes ahead and figures out solutions. Once I have figured out a solution to a problem, I am not good at keeping my mouth shut so that others can find their own solutions. Instead I end up pointing out problems and sharing my solutions one right after the other. Then I remember we’re supposed to be having a learning experience and I realize that I’ve over-helped and I feel bad about it. Repeat many times. If I’m fully not-in-charge then I can go into a minion mode where this does not happen and I can just wait for instructions.

When rain starts to fall and it becomes obvious that we need to call off work for the day, I will be the last one to admit that it is time to quit. I’d rather work in cold, miserable, wet than have to arrange for tools and people to arrive again on another day. This is particularly true when some of the tools are rented. Even more particularly when those rentals were donated by the rental place and we’ll have to go to them again to ask for a second donation of tool time. This is when my son stands up to me and re-iterates that conditions are miserable and unsafe. No we can’t just keep working until the walls are vertical, we must throw tarps over everything and call it quits for the day. I did not give in gracefully.

It is important to admit to my child that he was right and I was wrong when that is the case. I did so as soon as I was calm enough to be able to see it.

Dry clothes, food, and a nap are helpful to restore perspective. Of course my brain spent some of my half-awake time picturing how the walls of the shed go together and picturing how we need to measure the top boards and make marks for the rafters. We really should do that before we make the walls vertical so that we don’t have to stand on ladders while measuring. We really do need a working nail gun. The one we had today was being problematic, which was probably because I was distracted and never checked the pressure setting on that air compressor. I was aware that they were trying to troubleshoot it, but was distracted by other work and now I don’t have sufficient information to try to solve the problem, but my brain keeps chewing on it anyway because we have to have a nail gun. …and my brain runs onward from there, which points up what I said up there in the first paragraph about being project obsessive.

I do better at letting other people encounter project problems and learn from them when I clearly define the limits of my role. For example: I will remind once and no more. If I don’t have a clearly defined limit, I will accidentally take over and my take over can last quite a while before I remember I’m only supposed to be helping.

I have a hard time staying within my self-defined limits. This is one of the reasons that my kids always make leaps forward in self-reliance and adult behavior when I go away on a trip. I’ve removed myself so that they really have to learn things and I won’t fall in to my plethora of management habits which incidentally make their lives easier and remove responsibility from their shoulders.

These tendencies of mine which have manifested in this project also show up in every day. I over manage school work, house work, etc. Seeing that makes me feel like a failure. Can being too competent and prepared be a failing? It sure feels like one sometimes. Particularly when I’m bothering others with reminders they’d rather not have. Even more so when I spend piles of energy preparing for an eventuality that never arrives. Definitely when my project brain pops me awake at 2am and I spend an hour pacing with anxiety that the project will not come together. Then I’m unable to sleep again until I’ve made lists and plans. Then the lists and plans are done and my son does not get to learn from thinking things through and making them. My anxiety drove me there first. It definitely feels like a failing during those moments when my son says “Mom, I’m supposed to be in charge.” and I know that he is right. So I apologize for taking over. Again.

I’ve heard the jokes so often, about how there should be an award for parents who have survived a son’s eagle project. I’ve also heard the jokes about how it is really the moms who earn the eagle award. I didn’t want to be that mom, the one who drives her son to the completion of an eagle project. Link could have begun his a year and half ago, but I waited until getting it was important to him. I certainly have no emotional need for him to earn this award. But earning this matters to Link. A lot. I see him persevering, stepping up, and trying to take ownership of this overwhelming endeavor. He’s doing so with only a minimal understanding of construction and an active fear of power tools. He’s organizing groups of people and trying to be in charge when he routinely avoids talking in front of groups in every other social situation in his life. Link wants this project enough that he’s stretching his own capabilities. I can’t help feeling that he would stretch even more if I could stop trying to push him into my schedules and my solutions. I wish he could learn more about other things and less about how to deal with Mom when she’s project stressed.

Link and I are both learning from this, but I really wanted today to be the point where we could be done organizing big groups of people and objects. Instead we’ll be building again on Wednesday. I don’t know that we’ll have time to finish with only a few hours to work. So there will probably be yet another day scheduled after that. Most people have told me that the paperwork on an eagle project is almost harder than doing the project. Right now, doing paperwork sounds heavenly in comparison. Especially since I don’t think it will trigger my project brain at all. Instead I’ll be able to step fully into a helper/teacher role and let Link do it all by himself. Which is how this whole thing should be.

All the Things in My Head

By / September 19, 2014

My blogging thoughts have been tangled up this week. I’ve written 1500 words of an essay about Link, impending adulthood, and letting go. But the words aren’t right yet, and I’m not certain I can make the essay public until after Link has already achieved adulthood. It lays him a little bare, which I’m not certain is best for either of us while we’re still in the midst of things.

In theory letting go should be easier because I’ve already done it once. In practice, I’ve intervened and advocated for Link’s education far more than I ever did for Kiki. This means I have many more ingrained habits of thought to dismantle as Link takes charge of his life.

Also impacting this week were several low-level illnesses. Truth be told, they were nothing much, except I apparently have some residual emotion and fear related to the extensive illnesses and absences from last winter. I really wish my brain would stop storing this stuff so that I have to clear it out later.

We’re also approaching the final countdown to the big construction day for Link’s eagle scout project. Logistics for that are filling up my brain and tangling up with the knowledge that every thing I think through is something that Link does not have to think through. Yet not planning creates more anxiety, so I try to strike a balance by planning and then keeping my mouth shut while Link comes up with his own solutions. It is only sort of working, as evidenced by the fact that I snapped awake at 2am convinced that the project was impossible and doomed to utter failure. I couldn’t sleep again until I’d made lists, plans, and contingency plans.

As is usual, the first weeks of school unleash a barrage of requests for my volunteer time. I’m fairly good at dodging these sort of assignments. I’m less good at dodging the guilty feeling that I ought to accept some of them. This is particularly true in the case of my youngest, Patch, who’s in an opt-in gifted class. Somehow my brain says that since he’s getting extra benefits and since I chose to place him there, more is owed from me in return. However I do actively resent when the PTA newsletter uses words that imply “I have other priorities” and “I’m too busy” are inadequate excuses for not volunteering. I also think that weekly emails containing 800 words of specific instructions on how to make my son practice is a bit much for an extracurricular elementary school orchestra.

The good news is that this afternoon I sat down with Link and he wrapped his head around the eagle project task list. We’re in for a work-heavy week, but he’s on board to get it all done. Even better, we brought home the first load of building supplies, 34 wall studs are cut and ready to go. Funny how anxiety backs off when the work actually begins.