No Spend Forever

It's Friday night. I'm sitting on my bed, listening for my laundry and writing out plans in my journal.

It's been a whirlwind sort of week. Sitting on my bed, alone, in the quiet is good.

Last month was All Over October. I didn't know it until the end of the month and I looked back on all the things and realized I had done everything all over. I rearranged my bedroom. I changed my fitness routine, my schedule, how I teach my class on Sunday, my system for tracking my projects at work, my budget, how I use my planner. Nearly everything in October was torn to the ground and built back up again, keeping the parts that worked and starting from scratch where it made sense.

This is not uncommon in my life. I like knocking down everything I've done before and starting over. I find it frustrating that life in general doesn't work like that.

It's six days into No Spend November.

It's four days into No Spend Forever.

Some people have the good luck of considering carefully major life decisions.

I have the good luck of getting hit over the head. In a moment too small to realize, I know that it is time for things to change.

My major life changes happen in the same way that a person remember something they've forgotten. The name of that person or that restaurant you went to on your first date. You can't recall it and then it's there. Maybe in the middle of the night. Maybe in the shower. Maybe when you're studying or watching a show or driving to the store. Bam!

That is how things change in my life. Like remembering something I used to know. There's no dithering or wondering or comparing life plans. My life was like this. The next moment it's like that instead.

These life insights always throw into chaos my carefully crafted and revised life plans and inevitably leave me with a slight twinge of whiplash.

I am pursuing a PhD. I'm not thinking about pursuing a PhD. I'm not doing research and deciding carefully if it's the right path for me.

It doesn't matter that I've never considered a PhD before. That I told people often that I had no interest in the time investment, expense, or credentials that came with a PhD. That wasn't for me.

Four days ago I had a life insight. Bam!

I'm now working toward a PhD.

I have my preferred program and my back up program picked out. I have a timeline and a savings plan. I have study plans. (My preferred program requires that I be competent in two languages besides English. I need to do some serious brushing up on my French.)

What I thought was No Spend November is now No Spend Forever because PhDs are expensive.

Learning to Relax

I am working on relaxing. It's not a skill I came with.

Evidence: My piano teacher would stand behind me nearly every lesson, grab my arms, and shake out my hands. "Relax, relax, relax." I was seven.

Tuesday morning my yoga instructor talking about the importance of being rather than always doing. Learn to not do, to not worry so much about where you are going, but to take in where you are. Slow down, she said. (I'm also supposed to be working on drishti.)

Tuesday afternoon the witch doctor (aka chiropractor that believes in natural remedies for everything) told me I need to learn how to relax. He gently reminded me several times during my ultra sound treatment and following forearm and hand massage to stop holding my arm up. Relax the shoulders relax your arm, relax your hand. He recommend yoga and meditation. Also putting on some music and just lying and listening. (He knows I'm classically trained pianist. That's how I ended up there in the first place.) He also told me I need relax while I'm playing. Once upon a time, when I rocked at the piano my muscles would get so tight that I couldn't move my fingers without shaking out my arms. My proposed method for learning to relax while playing? Scales. Really slow scales. I'm supposed to be practicing fifteen minutes a day. I have a hard time making it happen. It's like I'm ten all over again, except back then it was an hour and a half.

Wednesday my massage therapist told me I needed to relax. "Relax, relax, relax," she said. She told me I should practice relaxing outside of the massage room so I would be better at relaxing inside the massage room. I also wouldn't get so many knots for her to work out and thus wouldn't get so many migraines. Restorative yoga, meditation, and deep breathing would help. (I also apparently need to shake my booty more often. She recommended salsa dancing, which would also help relieve stress.)

I don't know how to relax.

A couple of years ago I had so much tension in my neck and cheek muscles that I cracked one of my teeth. I didn't know until several months later when I went to see the dentist. I've been afraid of overly tight cheek muscles since. I can feel that they are tight now, but not teeth clenching tight.

A yoga instructor, witch doctor, and a massage therapist seems like a bit much for one person. I'm aware.

For the first time ever I'm willing to admit I'm a hot mess and so am able to deal with some of my problems. It's a process. In a few months I'm hoping to drop the witch doctor. I'm also hoping in not too many more months I can see the massage therapist less. It's hard to work out 28 years of knots. I carry my stress in my shoulders and neck and I am always stressed. It's family tradition, after all.

I'm having a hard time comprehending how I can relax, but also add more things into my life to help me relax. I'm doing yoga, but I need to add in restorative yoga. I need to get my meditation in every day. I need to pick up latin dancing or running. I need to take time to just be, to settle myself into myself and be. I need to be okay with getting less done.

I'm not okay with getting less done. I need to do more, learn more, think more, accomplish more!

Also, I need to come up with a new financial plan. I am always stressed about money. I don't know anybody who is more careful with money than I am. Except maybe the little sister. Even so, my financial goals are ambitious. Probably impractical when you consider how little I leave for actual living expenses if I were to meet my goals every month (I don't, which also stresses me out). I'm currently putting about $600 extra toward my mortgage each month. I could reduce it to $400. The thought of doing that makes my heart hurt a little. And makes me feel stressed. Boo.

If anybody has tips on relaxing, please share. Relaxing is not my best thing.

PS My massage therapist thinks that someday I won't have headaches every day. "It may be genetic," she says, "but even genes need a trigger." I don't believe I'll ever reduce my stress enough to not have daily headaches.

PPS Why is taking care of yourself so hard?

PPPS I'm also supposed to be changing my diet. Toxins, too much sugar, not enough of the essential building blocks all stress your body out, not mention make it harder for your brain to function the way it should. Whole grains, organic fruits and vegetables when possible, more vegetables, more protein, more healthy fats. How can I do all the things AND learn to relax? It's a losing battle.

Fall

It's the beginning of fall. Mostly.

Technically fall hasn't started. By my calendar, we're about two weeks into fall. For ease of personal accounting, fall begins September 1.

At the beginning of each season I sneak into the Little Brother's room and write up a list of goals for him. I don't know that he even reads the lists of goals I write up for him. But he knows they are there and he knows I did it and it makes him roll his eyes at me.

Have I mentioned that getting eye rolls from the little brother is one of my keenest pleasures in life? All is right when I get a good eye roll.

A few days ago, while the little brother was at school, I snuck into his room, erased his summer goals, and wrote up a list of four or five fall goals. It occurred to me, as I was kneeling on the floor considering what might be good goals for him this fall, that I should perhaps consider fall goals for myself.

I made goals for my brother who had his own goals and ignored mine. It would be more effective and really just a good idea for me to make goals for myself. So I did.

I've been making summer goals for as long as I can remember. They are always frivolous and full of fun and I make no effort to make them happen.

I tried to do the same with my fall goals, but I couldn't. I suppose I'm a product of the school system I grew up in. Summers are full of lightness. Falls are for productivity and accomplishment. I did manage to slip in one thing frivolous, but it's actually not that frivolous.

My goals, in no particular order:

1. Get my mornings together
2. Establish a yoga habit
3. Finish the New Testament
4. InDesign planner pages
5. tress coach
6. Complete Nanowrimo
7. Order green shimmer nail polish
8. Build things
9. Finish goodreads currently reading list
10. Be Mindful

Goal 1: I'm working hard to establish a morning routine. I'm hoping having a consistent but not too restrictive way to start my mornings will help set me up for better, less stressful days and more productivity.

Goal 2: I'm looking for physical and mental benefits here. Yoga gives me a place to breath, to center myself on myself. It ought to help with my stress levels, my tight neck and shoulders, my weak back, my sanity levels, and my brain chemistry. Win, win, win, win, and win. It's important to me to establish this habit before the shorter days of winter come.

Goal 3: I started it at the beginning of the year. I need to finish.

Goal 4: I've tried a lot of different planners over the years. Nothing has given me exactly what I wanted out of a planner. So I bought myself a mini three-ring binder and I'm making my own planning pages. This way, I can make them exactly as I want. It also means I can easily make changes as my needs change. I have lots of pages to finish, finance pages, monthly, weekly, and daily pages, meal pages. I want to get my basic system established before the new year. 

Goal 5: My work offers me access to health coaches for free. Part of my thinks it's bunk. But it's free so I'll try it. I am trying to reduce stress to reduce headaches to reduce the times I need to hide in my bed. So, I'll try it. Maybe they can offer me strategies I haven't thought off myself.

Goal 6: I'm going to participate in and complete Nanowrimo this year. It's happening.

Goal 7: I've been searching for the perfect green shimmer nail polish for years. I had one as a teenager that I had on my toe nails almost always. I think I've found the perfect one. I just need to make room for it in my frivolous budget either this month or next.

Goal 8: I need shelves in my cold storage and step stools in my pantry and closet. I want to build these things.

Goal 9: Sometimes I need to clear things out completely so I can start over new. I'm tired of some of the items that have been hanging out on my currently reading. It's time to finish them all so I can start clean.

Goal 10: I want to be more mindful. Of everything. Of myself, of the things I can do to help myself and to help others, of the tremendous blessings I have in my life.

PS For me, goals are fluid. I don't tie myself down and I'm happy to change my goals as needed based on changing circumstances and priorities.

PPS I watched this history channel's ancient aliens program on netflix while I wrote this up. I love alien programs. I think they are all complete bunk which is part of why I enjoy watching them so much. You learn a lot about history that isn't mentioned in normal programs because mostly they talk about the things that are inexplicable. Unless, of course, you introduce aliens into the equation.

PPPS When I write, I dump. I usually go back over my writing and delete at least a third. Make things more concise, tighten it up, delete things that don't matter. Sometimes I take pleasure in letting my brain dump stand. This post is a brain dump with no extra time or conciseness added.

Daydreaming and Doing

Daydreaming.

It's funny. Daydreams are nothing at all like dreams. So why do we call them dreams?

"I have dreamed a dream!"

Really he daydreams a daydream.

I daydream more than anybody I know. Daydreams and plans and lists and schemes and wishes. I have more plans in my back pocket than a plenitude of project managers stuck around a conference table.

Some of my daydreams I've daydreamed today:

• a freezer stocked with frozen peach upside down cakes
• apple handpies, strawberry handpies, blueberry handpies, raspberry handpies, peach handpies
• a fresh, homemade loaf of bread at the beginning of each week
• a visit to Idaho
• the tools I'll buy
• the sofa table, kitchen table, stepstools, outdoor seating, and shelving I'll build
• staying in bed for three days straight (I have a killer of a head cold)
• new planner pages I'll design
• the quilts I'll finish
• ordering seeds from the three organic seed catalogs I've requested (I don't have a yard)
• gardening (I still don't have a yard)
• making delicious, simple, home cooked meals from the juicy berries and fresh vegetables I've grown
• fiscal responsibility and financial security
• Thanksgiving in Kentucky
• books, books, and books
• canning beans
• supporting local farmers
• having two freezers stocked to the nines with perfect food rotation

Doing.

I don't know that I'm much of a doer. I do so much less than I dream. Of course, I say that from my very own house that I bought with money I saved from working the same job for six a half years. I have shelves and shelves of books I've read, a closet full of clothes I've worn to see people and places, an atlas squiggled all over with yellow highlighter to show where I've been.

So I must do some things some times.


Daydreaming and Doing.

I'm trying to let go. To be loosey goosey with my life and my time. To not schedule everything to the tiniest, infinitesimal bit and then be devastated when it doesn't work.

Will this help me do more of my daydreams? I haven't decided yet. I wish I had empirical evidence that tells me it will help.

I don't have the evidence. Which is probably a good thing.


Daydreaming and Doing as Part of Living.

The goal is not to do. Neither is the goal to daydream. The goal is to Live. To live happily and well. Doing is part of living. Daydreaming is another part of living. Neither can subsume the most important thing, which is living.

Do you know what it means to live?

I hope I'm not the only one that forgets that living is the thing. I would feel more human and less awkward and gangly knowing it's a common weakness.

I suppose there's no evidence there either.

What do you do that makes you forget living?

Is it the humdrum of life? Anyone who thinks life is humdrum is not living. This I know.

Is it doing, like me? Or the pursuit of people, friends and other types of relationships both more and less significant? Is it knowledge? A sense of freedom? A desire to be thought well of?


Living.

This life is full of so many things. The abundance is staggering.

Stumbling over the sheer everythingness of life is one of my greatest weaknesses.

I want to stand tall and straight without stumbles. To be at peace on the inside but also to get the very most out of this life that I possibly can.

That may be the most impossible daydream of all.

The End of Summer

There's something sad in the end of summer.

I am not mourning the end of my favorite season. As a child it was not the return to school that saddened me.

Rather, in summer we come close to a lost way of living.

Summer days are filled with sweetness. There are always things to do and new games to discover. Summer invites a carefree feeling even as we continue to grow and learn and change.

I wish I could take the feel of summer with me into the crunchy fall and the chilly winter. The seasons change and life becomes a drudgery of sorts. Things that don't matter all that much suddenly matter a great deal. There's no time for daydreaming or adventuring.

And so I mourn the end of summer. The shortening days and cooling temperatures. The increased desire for productivity.

Someday, the magic of summer will enshroud me like a magic cloak, trailing bits of joyful freedom behind me no matter the season.

The end of summer will be no end at all.

Today

I spent most of the week in downtown SLC at a conference my university holds each year for its employees. I went armed with two 2-liters of diet coke, a bottle of vanilla flavoring, and a sandwich baggy of IB, Tylenol, Sudafed, and Tums.

The coke for headaches, the IB for headaches and wrist pain, the Tylenol for when I needed a little more help with my headaches, the Sudafed for when I consumed milk, yogurt, or cream and it clogged up my sinuses and worsened my headache, and the Tums to help settle my stomach when my headache got bad enough that it made me physically ill.

Truth: I’m a hot mess.

I am much better at caring for myself than I was a year ago. Because I feel better, I don’t much care about people seeing me with my baggy of pills or watching me pop pills again and again. At one point I even brought my 2-liter of coke and my bottle of vanilla flavoring into a meeting with me. It was the last day of the conference in the morning, so the lunch soda pop cans weren’t out yet (I also consumed a vast amount of 12 oz cans of coke each day). I was fending off a migraine and in a relatively good mood.

Previous work conferences resulted in me moving between a state of complete zombie-hood and incredible amounts of anger and frustration.

This year I was okay. Still tired and worn out from being with people all the time (my MBTI results from the week before the conference showed me as a serious introvert; no surprise) but okay.

It was weird to be so okay.

I did forget some things. Like my need for sunshine. My need for peace and quiet and meditation time to just think. A few other things, too.

I’ve begun a list. I call it, “Rules and Truths for Taking Care of Me.”

I’ve mentioned some of my truths before. I’ve never tried to consolidate them into a single list. I’ve barely started and it’s long long long.

This list is important.

Rule 1: When I don’t take care of myself, I will fall apart. It’s inevitable.

The list will help me fall apart less often. If I remember to review my rule and truths and act on them.

Someday I might even function almost like a normal person.

Mind boggled.

Another rule: I should never try and figure out at night what I’m capable of the next day.

Today starts our Park City week. I’m in SLC, just a mountain hop away. The parents suggested since I’d be in SLC until today that I join them and spend the night and then Sunday with them. I’m not intending to spend any other time in Park City. I need to be home. I need to work. I need to take care of my life. (See: Megan is a hot mess.)

Last night I called them. They were on a hot date for Friday fish fry and pie. I told them there was no stinking way I could meet them in Park City. I needed to go home.

This morning I woke up and I felt so good and happy and free (conference being over) and of course I could meet them in Park City. I had to check out in the morning time and they couldn’t check in until late afternoon time. I’d pick up a late breakfast or early lunch, head to the downtown SLC library, and get some serious five-year life plan work done. When they set out for Park City, they would call me and I would meet them there. Simple, convenient, perfect.

Last night I didn’t know what I was capable of today.

I used to be very good at gauging what I’d be capable of the next day. I’m a new person. I’m not familiar with me yet.

I made some notes and plans about my five-year life plan. I also started work on my list of Rules and Truths for Taking Care of Me. The list of Rules and Truths for Taking Care of Me must be followed for me to have any hope of accomplishing my five-year life plan. I’ve only got four years and four and a half months left.

Truth: I am a hot mess.

Rule: Deal with it.

Rule 1: When I don’t take care of myself, I will fall apart. It’s inevitable.

For so long I felt entirely incapable, barely holding things together. I knew I ought to be able to do more, but I couldn’t.

I’ve still got a ways to go. Lessons to learn, truths to discover, and rules to follow. I’m headed in the right direction. Finally. Working on becoming the best version of myself.

PS One of my favorite rules: Chocolate is a mild anti-depressant. Use it.

A Typical New York Work Day

He switches from by my side on the piano bench (the chairs have already been sold) to under the desk with the toys. It gives him ample opportunity to ask "What are you doing?" at random intervals. The answer is always work but I suppose he wants to check, just to make sure I haven't started doing something super fun without him.