There was somewhere I was going with these meditation posts, and as is often the case, I can no longer remember where it was. Maybe it will come back to me later. But at the moment, I need a post for tomorrow and this one is already half-written, so here you go.
- Along the lines of mixing up my meditation practice a little, once or twice a week I do a guided meditation--i.e., someone has recorded meditation instructions, sometimes general, sometimes on a specific topic like reducing stress or dealing with anger, that you can play back while you're meditating. I have a couple I've downloaded from Audible, and there are thousands out there on YouTube (the Honest Guys have a bunch). If you want something specifically Christian, search for Guided Prayer.
- I have an app on my phone (go ahead and laugh) called the Insight Timer. There's a free version that just uses really nice bell/chime tones to start and end your session. I use it enough that I went ahead and paid for the full version, which gives you a wider variety of sounds and also allows sounds that play at an interval--say every two minutes. I like the interval sound, because if my mind has started to wander (and it always does), that reminds me to come back.
- When I first started, I would have a pen and paper next to me. If there was a thought I just couldn't let go of, I'd stop and write it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you hear you're supposed to sit utterly still and not move a muscle, but that's way less important than being able to let go of the hamster wheel. If your nose itches, scratch it. If your foot starts to fall asleep, move it. If there's something you're afraid you'll forget while you're relaxing, write it down.
- The Buddhists say that that the mind is innately spacious. All we need to do to experience that sense of spacious, calm ease is to clear away our thoughts. I'm not sure I agree with that. In my experience, that sense of inner spacious ease is something that has to be cultivated, there's nothing inborn about it. If it were innate, that would mean that there was some pre-ordained reason we should all be meditating to reach this pre-existing state. But if it's something that has to be cultivated, it's just another possible function of the human mind. It deepens and enriches my experience, so I think it's worth doing. But I don't know that there's any pre-existing significance to a meditation practice.
- The mental whirlpool that I sometimes experience--what I've been calling the hamster wheel--sometimes takes on a life of it's own. Sometimes when I get really stressed, the whirlpool starts looking for things to obsess about. There's no longer any connection to something real in my life that I really can do something about, it becomes all about the need to feed the brain spins. In grad school, I'd be frantically worrying about a paper that was due, and when it was finally finished and turned in, instead of getting a break from the mental stress, my brain would just grab onto the next thing it could obsess about. Meditation is the one of the few things I've found that breaks that cycle. (vacation is another, but vacations aren't always an option, darn it.)
I told you last week about one of my analogies for meditation--the blinking, flashing, busy helmet that you remove so that you can spend a few minutes away from all that mental chatter. I have a new analogy. I remember when I was a kid, one time when I was swimming with my sisters I got stuck with one of those plastic inflatable rings under my armpits. It was just a little bit too small, so I was flailing around trying to push myself up out of it and getting a little panicky, because I just kept feeling more and more stuck. My older sister called out to me to put my arms straight up over my head and let myself sink down through the middle. It worked perfectly.
Meditation is sort of like that. Your brain is flailing around with all kinds of pointless activity, but if you just relax and let yourself sink down in, you free yourself from the mental trap of the whatever you're stuck in, and down you go into the cool silence of the water. Nice analogy, right?
So give it try sometime this week, and eventually I'll remember where I was going with these posts. Maybe it will be something interesting.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
Unplanned Vacay
I have to stay off the computer for a few days because of the physical therapy treatment I had this morning (I'm typing this on Thursday). I'll be back next week.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
how not to meditate
Usually if you're reading a how-to post, you can reasonably expect that the person writing it has some competence in the subject. That would not be the case with me and meditation. I do realize the absurdity of me expecting you to read a post about how to meditate from someone who is terrible at meditation.
However, despite my ineptitude, the older I get the more I get out of meditation, even though I'm terrible at it and even though I don't seem to get any "better" at it as time goes by. So rather than giving you a set of instructions, this is just a series of disconnected thoughts intended to get you to try it. The only rationale I have is that I learned more from a yoga teacher who was genetically inflexible than I ever did from the ones who could already put their foot behind their head before they ever tried yoga.
- Although meditation has been used as a spiritual practice in religious settings for millennia, it isn't inherently religious. Meditation is a mental skill that helps you reduce stress and get a better perspective on whatever burdens you're carrying. If you have a set of religious beliefs for context, that works, too.
- The type of Christianity I was raised in is wary of meditation because it seems vaguely Eastern. I wouldn't have been able to tell you anything about it, but it seemed suspicious. But actually there is a long history of Christian meditation going back centuries. For example, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and many others.
- You will hear that meditation works best when you do it at the same time in the same place every day. That's probably true, but it doesn't work for me. I do best at staying with it when I mix it up a little. One day I'll actually sit and meditate the way you're "supposed" to, one day I'll try it while walking. I can't meditate immediately after I wake up because my brain is too foggy, so sometimes I do it after breakfast, sometimes in the afternoon, rarely in the evening. Sometimes I use music designed for meditation, sometimes something else (anything without words), sometimes no music at all. Three minutes, ten minutes, twenty. I have no standard practice.
- How not to meditate: Don't sit there with your jaw clenched trying to CONTROL YOUR THOUGHTS. That will just lead to anger and frustration. Meditation is mental relaxation--a chance to sit and watch your monkey mind jump through all its routines: worry, stress, all the responsibilities you're trying to juggle.
I'm not going to tell you that none of those things are important, because a lot of the things we worry about are important. But as I've practiced meditation, I've come to realize that there's an element of my worry and stress that is just a hamster on a wheel. It's not productive, it's not helping any, it's just my brain whizzing and whirring because it's in the habit of doing that.
Gah. I can't tell you how often I sit down to write a post thinking that it will only be 3-4 paragraphs because I don't have much to say. Then I start typing and I end up going on and on. Believe it or not, I'm only about halfway done. So I guess I'll split this into two. More later.
However, despite my ineptitude, the older I get the more I get out of meditation, even though I'm terrible at it and even though I don't seem to get any "better" at it as time goes by. So rather than giving you a set of instructions, this is just a series of disconnected thoughts intended to get you to try it. The only rationale I have is that I learned more from a yoga teacher who was genetically inflexible than I ever did from the ones who could already put their foot behind their head before they ever tried yoga.
- Although meditation has been used as a spiritual practice in religious settings for millennia, it isn't inherently religious. Meditation is a mental skill that helps you reduce stress and get a better perspective on whatever burdens you're carrying. If you have a set of religious beliefs for context, that works, too.
- The type of Christianity I was raised in is wary of meditation because it seems vaguely Eastern. I wouldn't have been able to tell you anything about it, but it seemed suspicious. But actually there is a long history of Christian meditation going back centuries. For example, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and many others.
- You will hear that meditation works best when you do it at the same time in the same place every day. That's probably true, but it doesn't work for me. I do best at staying with it when I mix it up a little. One day I'll actually sit and meditate the way you're "supposed" to, one day I'll try it while walking. I can't meditate immediately after I wake up because my brain is too foggy, so sometimes I do it after breakfast, sometimes in the afternoon, rarely in the evening. Sometimes I use music designed for meditation, sometimes something else (anything without words), sometimes no music at all. Three minutes, ten minutes, twenty. I have no standard practice.
- How not to meditate: Don't sit there with your jaw clenched trying to CONTROL YOUR THOUGHTS. That will just lead to anger and frustration. Meditation is mental relaxation--a chance to sit and watch your monkey mind jump through all its routines: worry, stress, all the responsibilities you're trying to juggle.
I'm not going to tell you that none of those things are important, because a lot of the things we worry about are important. But as I've practiced meditation, I've come to realize that there's an element of my worry and stress that is just a hamster on a wheel. It's not productive, it's not helping any, it's just my brain whizzing and whirring because it's in the habit of doing that.
Gah. I can't tell you how often I sit down to write a post thinking that it will only be 3-4 paragraphs because I don't have much to say. Then I start typing and I end up going on and on. Believe it or not, I'm only about halfway done. So I guess I'll split this into two. More later.
Friday, June 19, 2015
7ToF: hot fun in the summertime
1. The deadline for scheduling continuing ed courses for this fall came and went last week. So I guess I'm taking a semester off. It seems so far away at the moment-- MadMax's last day of school was barely a week ago, summer is just starting. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to teach. I can't tell yet whether or not I'm glad about this. You perhaps will hear my Wail of Woe in October when I'm bored to death. But maybe I'll find some other fascinating thing to do by then and this will be a Good Thing.
2. MadMax goes through sports phases as the seasons change, and when he's in one of his phases, we go through it with him. In the winter it's skiing (not snowboarding), in the spring it's track & field, right now it's golf. He got a season pass to our local public course for Christmas, so he's been playing a couple of times a week. And we're watching (avidly) the USOpen, which is in Seattle. Who knew Seattle was a golf town?
3. The most remarkable thing about his annual golf phase is the change in clothing. From third grade on, only under the greatest duress (a wedding, Christmas eve service) has he been willing to wear anything but those long gym shorts and a t-shirt. Suddenly when he got interested in golf, he wanted to go shopping because he needed khaki shorts and polo shirts. I couldn't have been more surprised if he'd asked me to buy him a tutu. In fact, a tutu would have made more sense because it fits with his sense of humor.
4. And for the MadMax hat trick: he got his hair cut this week. With both of our kids, in exchange for no piercings (except ears) and no tattoos, we have allowed them to do whatever they want with their hair. That doesn't mean that we will restrain our selves from nagging them to get a haircut or teasing them about certain questionable choices, but: hair grows. Do with it what you will. So MM's was just about long enough to put in a pony tail when he finally went and got it cut this week. It's not short, but it's an improvement.
5. We got one of those IRS scam calls. The one that says the IRS is bringing a lawsuit against you, and Please call this number immediately. Which of course sends your stomach into a violent clench of terror, until Dean remembered reading about it in the paper a couple of weeks ago-- the article pointed out that the IRS never calls people, they always start with a letter. (so they'll have a paper trail?) Also, when you listen closely (the sound quality was not good), it wasn't quite grammatically correct and there was a bit of an accent. SCAM. At least we hope so, because we deleted the message and did not call the number.
6. My neck. That's all. It has always been touchy, and continues to be. It's better than it was a month ago, but I still get one of my Things on Friday to whine about it: *whine*
7. Summer Reading List Report: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. Hanna Heath, an expert in restoring ancient books/codices, is offered the chance of a lifetime when she is called in to work on a gorgeous ancient Jewish manuscript. She finds tiny clues to the book's history buried in the binding. In alternating chapters, the reader gets to find out the story behind the clues, but Hanna only discovers the barest outline of the book's backstory. The opening section is terrific, and several of the history chapters were beautifully done. It's well worth reading, and the writing at times is lovely.
But I ended up being a bit disappointed by the end--not because it was bad, but because I was hoping that it would go in the direction of having some interesting things to say about the long history of religious conflict and coexistence in Europe, and/or the place of sacred objects and personal devotion in collective spiritual life, or anything that would give a little more depth to the story. But it went in another direction instead--she tried to add some thriller-ish plot twists toward the end that seemed a step down from the rest of the book. Great summer read as long as you don't expect profound thought. So: one down, four to go.
And a freebie, in honor of our ongoing unseasonably hot, dry weather (however I am grateful to report that at least it's not in the 90s anymore): I ran across this golden oldie while looking for songs about summer. This isn't the best recording, but it's the only video I found with THE HAIR and THE GLASSES and the SATIN. End of the spring and here she comes back....
2. MadMax goes through sports phases as the seasons change, and when he's in one of his phases, we go through it with him. In the winter it's skiing (not snowboarding), in the spring it's track & field, right now it's golf. He got a season pass to our local public course for Christmas, so he's been playing a couple of times a week. And we're watching (avidly) the USOpen, which is in Seattle. Who knew Seattle was a golf town?
3. The most remarkable thing about his annual golf phase is the change in clothing. From third grade on, only under the greatest duress (a wedding, Christmas eve service) has he been willing to wear anything but those long gym shorts and a t-shirt. Suddenly when he got interested in golf, he wanted to go shopping because he needed khaki shorts and polo shirts. I couldn't have been more surprised if he'd asked me to buy him a tutu. In fact, a tutu would have made more sense because it fits with his sense of humor.
4. And for the MadMax hat trick: he got his hair cut this week. With both of our kids, in exchange for no piercings (except ears) and no tattoos, we have allowed them to do whatever they want with their hair. That doesn't mean that we will restrain our selves from nagging them to get a haircut or teasing them about certain questionable choices, but: hair grows. Do with it what you will. So MM's was just about long enough to put in a pony tail when he finally went and got it cut this week. It's not short, but it's an improvement.
5. We got one of those IRS scam calls. The one that says the IRS is bringing a lawsuit against you, and Please call this number immediately. Which of course sends your stomach into a violent clench of terror, until Dean remembered reading about it in the paper a couple of weeks ago-- the article pointed out that the IRS never calls people, they always start with a letter. (so they'll have a paper trail?) Also, when you listen closely (the sound quality was not good), it wasn't quite grammatically correct and there was a bit of an accent. SCAM. At least we hope so, because we deleted the message and did not call the number.
6. My neck. That's all. It has always been touchy, and continues to be. It's better than it was a month ago, but I still get one of my Things on Friday to whine about it: *whine*
7. Summer Reading List Report: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. Hanna Heath, an expert in restoring ancient books/codices, is offered the chance of a lifetime when she is called in to work on a gorgeous ancient Jewish manuscript. She finds tiny clues to the book's history buried in the binding. In alternating chapters, the reader gets to find out the story behind the clues, but Hanna only discovers the barest outline of the book's backstory. The opening section is terrific, and several of the history chapters were beautifully done. It's well worth reading, and the writing at times is lovely.
But I ended up being a bit disappointed by the end--not because it was bad, but because I was hoping that it would go in the direction of having some interesting things to say about the long history of religious conflict and coexistence in Europe, and/or the place of sacred objects and personal devotion in collective spiritual life, or anything that would give a little more depth to the story. But it went in another direction instead--she tried to add some thriller-ish plot twists toward the end that seemed a step down from the rest of the book. Great summer read as long as you don't expect profound thought. So: one down, four to go.
And a freebie, in honor of our ongoing unseasonably hot, dry weather (however I am grateful to report that at least it's not in the 90s anymore): I ran across this golden oldie while looking for songs about summer. This isn't the best recording, but it's the only video I found with THE HAIR and THE GLASSES and the SATIN. End of the spring and here she comes back....
Thursday, June 18, 2015
TBT: Lake Swimming
from July 2008, slightly edited.
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.... During the last bit of our vacation, Dean and the kids took off on a church youth trip while I stayed home. I spent several days at our favorite lake, relaxing and reading and watching the breeze move the leaves on the trees. It was great.
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.... During the last bit of our vacation, Dean and the kids took off on a church youth trip while I stayed home. I spent several days at our favorite lake, relaxing and reading and watching the breeze move the leaves on the trees. It was great.
In the afternoons, it would get quite warm in the un-air conditioned cabin where I was staying. So after dinner the dog and I would walk down to the lake for a swim.
The reason this is my favorite lake is because the water is so clear and cold and deeply blue-green that you can see straight down to the bottom even at fifteen feet. It's not the kind of lake where you swim all afternoon. No one stays in for long, it's way too cold, even in July. In fact, I don't get in at all unless it's really hot. But it was quite warm last week, and I swam every day.
The reason this is my favorite lake is because the water is so clear and cold and deeply blue-green that you can see straight down to the bottom even at fifteen feet. It's not the kind of lake where you swim all afternoon. No one stays in for long, it's way too cold, even in July. In fact, I don't get in at all unless it's really hot. But it was quite warm last week, and I swam every day.
I think it says a lot about one's personality how you do this-- do you plunge in off the end of the dock? start at the shore and wade in? run in and dive? My own approach is the wimpiest of them all, which is to slowly descend the ladder at the end of the dock, letting each body part get used to it before the next one gets wet.
But there is still a moment when you have to push away from the dock and plunge all the way in, and every time I do it, I cringe. I hate that bit. But then you're in, and the water is so .... bracing, refreshing, invigorating-- pick your term. It's so shockingly cold that you feel yourself come alive in response.
All the heat and dust and sweat dissolve away, and you just chill, in every sense of the word. I paddle around and try to find something, some place within myself that matches that deep, clear, blue-green stillness. It's worth the hated cringe moment, well worth it.
But there is still a moment when you have to push away from the dock and plunge all the way in, and every time I do it, I cringe. I hate that bit. But then you're in, and the water is so .... bracing, refreshing, invigorating-- pick your term. It's so shockingly cold that you feel yourself come alive in response.
All the heat and dust and sweat dissolve away, and you just chill, in every sense of the word. I paddle around and try to find something, some place within myself that matches that deep, clear, blue-green stillness. It's worth the hated cringe moment, well worth it.
And then a minute and a half later, I pull myself out, shivering.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
TBW: the zen-ish moment
Throwback Wednesday. Here is another old one, this one from February 2014. I do have a few new things to say, we'll get to that eventually. There will be one more old one tomorrow, when it actually will be Throwback Thursday. :-)
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Many years ago, I discovered what I think of as the travel mindset. Getting packed and ready to go may be a frantic mess, but once you get to the airport and get in line to check in, you let all the travel anxiety go. You just insert yourself into the travel system and let the system take care of you.
Like everybody, I have some travel horror stories to tell, like the time I got stuck in Salt Lake City for three days while trying to get back home from a weekend trip to California. But horror stories aside, for the most part, you get where you need to go. You just have to have a good book (or three) and some food (granola bars, bag of nuts, etc), and you're set. Well, if you're me, you also have to have dramamine, but you get the idea.
We live far enough away from a major airport that pretty much any time we fly, it takes a full day to get to wherever we're going. I used to dread the travel days, because TRAVEL STRESS. But now I look at them as a completely acceptable, valid excuse to sit and read all day, and how often do I get to do that? Over the years, this has worked out so well that now the travel days are one of my favorite parts of vacation.
(Of course it helps that I'm not travelling with toddlers anymore. Thank the saints and all the stars.)
I've discovered that something similar works at the post office. Not always, because standing in line at the post office is right up there with filing financial documents and having dental work done in my list of things I hate with irrational hatred. But usually I can just relax and stand in line and not worry about how long it's taking. Sometimes I even chat with complete and utter strangers (like many introverts, I find it easier to make small talk with strangers than with people I know).
I'm finding as I play with this idea that those moments of calm can occur anywhere, anytime. I think of it as zen calm, but since I've never seriously undertaken zen discipline, it may not be very close. Zen-ish, then. In the midst of traffic, waiting to pick up the kid at school, any time I'm in a situation that is out of my control, if I just give in to it, let go of the need to be in control, I can reach a sort of calm stillness. (I typed clam stillness first, which is different, but I bet clams live a pretty zen life.)
I've never experienced true enlightenment. When I think of capital-E Enlightenment, Elizabeth Gilchrist's phrase from Eat Pray Love comes to mind: she says she was "catapulted into the lap of God." Although I didn't care for that book, that phrase stuck in my head. A moment of perfect bliss, feeling like you are connected to everything and everything is connected to you, suffused by light and love-- I've never been there.
But sometimes these little pockets of zen-ish calm at an airport or in the post office lead to a kind of enlargement of consciousness, a feeling of accessing something beyond myself. Especially when I'm reading. And those moments .... oh, let's just say they make up for a lot of other moments of confusion, fear, anguish, etc.
I typed that much on Friday. Then last night I had one of those other moments where I get tangled up in a load of crap. I sent an e-mail to a family group and got back a bunch of very sneering, negative vibes--which may have been real, or may have been my projection of things I've felt in the past. I started to panic about my new class, which starts tonight. I had a strange experience at the grocery store yesterday afternoon which didn't really register at the time but came back full force.
So there I was about 12:30 a.m. last night, letting myself get buried under a load of self-contempt and self-criticism. It's a hell of a lot harder to try to find zen-ish calm under those circumstances than it is while you're reading a book in the Denver airport. But I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, so I tried. And it helped. I don't think I got to zen calm, but I got back to the point where I could go to sleep.
Work in progress.
-----------------------
Many years ago, I discovered what I think of as the travel mindset. Getting packed and ready to go may be a frantic mess, but once you get to the airport and get in line to check in, you let all the travel anxiety go. You just insert yourself into the travel system and let the system take care of you.
Like everybody, I have some travel horror stories to tell, like the time I got stuck in Salt Lake City for three days while trying to get back home from a weekend trip to California. But horror stories aside, for the most part, you get where you need to go. You just have to have a good book (or three) and some food (granola bars, bag of nuts, etc), and you're set. Well, if you're me, you also have to have dramamine, but you get the idea.
We live far enough away from a major airport that pretty much any time we fly, it takes a full day to get to wherever we're going. I used to dread the travel days, because TRAVEL STRESS. But now I look at them as a completely acceptable, valid excuse to sit and read all day, and how often do I get to do that? Over the years, this has worked out so well that now the travel days are one of my favorite parts of vacation.
(Of course it helps that I'm not travelling with toddlers anymore. Thank the saints and all the stars.)
I've discovered that something similar works at the post office. Not always, because standing in line at the post office is right up there with filing financial documents and having dental work done in my list of things I hate with irrational hatred. But usually I can just relax and stand in line and not worry about how long it's taking. Sometimes I even chat with complete and utter strangers (like many introverts, I find it easier to make small talk with strangers than with people I know).
I'm finding as I play with this idea that those moments of calm can occur anywhere, anytime. I think of it as zen calm, but since I've never seriously undertaken zen discipline, it may not be very close. Zen-ish, then. In the midst of traffic, waiting to pick up the kid at school, any time I'm in a situation that is out of my control, if I just give in to it, let go of the need to be in control, I can reach a sort of calm stillness. (I typed clam stillness first, which is different, but I bet clams live a pretty zen life.)
I've never experienced true enlightenment. When I think of capital-E Enlightenment, Elizabeth Gilchrist's phrase from Eat Pray Love comes to mind: she says she was "catapulted into the lap of God." Although I didn't care for that book, that phrase stuck in my head. A moment of perfect bliss, feeling like you are connected to everything and everything is connected to you, suffused by light and love-- I've never been there.
But sometimes these little pockets of zen-ish calm at an airport or in the post office lead to a kind of enlargement of consciousness, a feeling of accessing something beyond myself. Especially when I'm reading. And those moments .... oh, let's just say they make up for a lot of other moments of confusion, fear, anguish, etc.
I typed that much on Friday. Then last night I had one of those other moments where I get tangled up in a load of crap. I sent an e-mail to a family group and got back a bunch of very sneering, negative vibes--which may have been real, or may have been my projection of things I've felt in the past. I started to panic about my new class, which starts tonight. I had a strange experience at the grocery store yesterday afternoon which didn't really register at the time but came back full force.
So there I was about 12:30 a.m. last night, letting myself get buried under a load of self-contempt and self-criticism. It's a hell of a lot harder to try to find zen-ish calm under those circumstances than it is while you're reading a book in the Denver airport. But I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, so I tried. And it helped. I don't think I got to zen calm, but I got back to the point where I could go to sleep.
Work in progress.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
TBT: meditate me home
A couple of weeks ago I told you I did a month-long yoga and meditation challenge. Then I proceeded to talk about yoga and didn't say anything about meditation.
So this week's topic was going to be meditation, but my brain doesn't seem to be functioning well enough today to write out what I want to say. hmmm. Maybe I should go meditate.
Anyway. I'm shamelessly modifying "Throwback Thursday" to "Throwback Tuesday" and starting the discussion with a (slightly edited) post from my old blog. I was originally drawn into meditation by reading Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher. I'm not really interested in the Buddhist aspect anymore, but this might still be a good place to start. Originally posted February 1, 2008.
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When I first came in contact with Buddhism, it wasn't very appealing to me. The books I read and the Buddhists I knew back then made it sound like it was all about discipline-- having your thoughts under perfect control, being cool and emotionally detached. Then a few years ago I ran across the writings of Pema Chodron and met some different Buddhists, and my impression began to change.
The heart of Buddhist practice is meditation. But my early understanding of what that meant was wrong. I thought the idea was to completely shut down all thought in your brain and try to merge with the Great Nothing. I had no idea exactly what that meant, it was just my impression of Buddhist meditation.
When I sit down to meditate now, my goal isn't to stop thinking, or even to control my thoughts. What I want is to create a little space between me and my thoughts, to watch them, see them go by-- the classic example is like watching clouds float across the sky. (I especially like that example when it is the night sky, with clouds floating by in front of a vast starry expanse.)
The point isn't to be in control of your thoughts, but to let go of the idea that they have intrinsic importance. They're just thoughts, electrical impulses that have no meaning outside what I give them.
I confess that I am terrible at this. Like many (most?) people, I have Busy Brain Syndrome. In the space of a minute, I might think about what we're having for dinner, who's picking up my son from school, what responsibilities are "real" vs. ones that I've just picked up out of guilt, where my daughter is going to college next year, whether or not I'm over-involved in her decision, is that load of laundry done, and if evil starts small, how am I participating?
And honestly, I have rarely managed to stop this flow of constant mental chatter for more than a minute or two, although I've spent far longer than that sitting and working on it. What I'm slowly learning to do is to just observe all that constant stream of thought. Just sit and watch it.
I sometimes imagine that I have a helmet on that completely covers my head. The helmet is covered with lights and dials and wires that are constantly blinking and humming and clicking, representing all my mental activity. Then I slip out of the helmet and leave it sitting there, flashing and humming and clicking away, all by itself. It is such an enormous relief.
According to the Buddhist teachers I've read in the last few years, the mind is innately spacious. If we step away from the claustrophobic stream of thoughts that makes us feel stressed and anxious, we can experience that spacious, open feeling. I've only rarely experienced this; I'm not the most disciplined of practitioners. But I've experienced it enough to continue to work at it.
So this week's topic was going to be meditation, but my brain doesn't seem to be functioning well enough today to write out what I want to say. hmmm. Maybe I should go meditate.
Anyway. I'm shamelessly modifying "Throwback Thursday" to "Throwback Tuesday" and starting the discussion with a (slightly edited) post from my old blog. I was originally drawn into meditation by reading Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher. I'm not really interested in the Buddhist aspect anymore, but this might still be a good place to start. Originally posted February 1, 2008.
------------------
When I first came in contact with Buddhism, it wasn't very appealing to me. The books I read and the Buddhists I knew back then made it sound like it was all about discipline-- having your thoughts under perfect control, being cool and emotionally detached. Then a few years ago I ran across the writings of Pema Chodron and met some different Buddhists, and my impression began to change.
The heart of Buddhist practice is meditation. But my early understanding of what that meant was wrong. I thought the idea was to completely shut down all thought in your brain and try to merge with the Great Nothing. I had no idea exactly what that meant, it was just my impression of Buddhist meditation.
The point isn't to be in control of your thoughts, but to let go of the idea that they have intrinsic importance. They're just thoughts, electrical impulses that have no meaning outside what I give them.
I confess that I am terrible at this. Like many (most?) people, I have Busy Brain Syndrome. In the space of a minute, I might think about what we're having for dinner, who's picking up my son from school, what responsibilities are "real" vs. ones that I've just picked up out of guilt, where my daughter is going to college next year, whether or not I'm over-involved in her decision, is that load of laundry done, and if evil starts small, how am I participating?
And honestly, I have rarely managed to stop this flow of constant mental chatter for more than a minute or two, although I've spent far longer than that sitting and working on it. What I'm slowly learning to do is to just observe all that constant stream of thought. Just sit and watch it.
I sometimes imagine that I have a helmet on that completely covers my head. The helmet is covered with lights and dials and wires that are constantly blinking and humming and clicking, representing all my mental activity. Then I slip out of the helmet and leave it sitting there, flashing and humming and clicking away, all by itself. It is such an enormous relief.
According to the Buddhist teachers I've read in the last few years, the mind is innately spacious. If we step away from the claustrophobic stream of thoughts that makes us feel stressed and anxious, we can experience that spacious, open feeling. I've only rarely experienced this; I'm not the most disciplined of practitioners. But I've experienced it enough to continue to work at it.
Friday, June 12, 2015
7ToF: the sun's so hot I forgot to go home
1. The weather. We are having August weather already. It's hard to complain, because it has been gorgeous--sunny and clear with a bit of a breeze. But we've had record-breaking or -tying highs for the past three days in a row and I have turned into a heat wimp. Oh, my. 95 and no air conditioning is not fun. Thankfully tomorrow (which will be today when you're reading this) it is supposed to get back to our regularly scheduled June weather.
2. So yesterday I went to the movie theater, where the A/C was turned down so low that I nearly froze--which I would normally hate, but it felt fabulous compared to the heat wave outside. I've done this a couple of times over the past few months, after never going to a movie by myself ever in my entire life. It's kind of fun if I can find a free afternoon for it. It's a cheaper way to see a movie that I want to see but Dean doesn't, and there are usually half a dozen or so people in the theater who are there by themselves, so I don't feel too weird. Yesterday I bought myself popcorn and a diet coke and called it lunch. And BONUS: new Star Wars movie trailer. It was pretty fabulous, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up (I'm looking at you, so-called Episode One).
3. The movie was Tomorrowland. As a kids' movie, it's a lot of fun. Gorgeous CGI, just enough plot to keep it interesting, and everything turns out well in the end. But the dialog is awful, and the moral is driven home with a sledgehammer. So for adults, it's barely watchable. Without Clooney and Hugh Laurie, it would have been a complete loss--the two of them manage to turn clunky, stilted dialog into something that you can at least sit through.
It's too bad it wasn't done in a more subtle way, because some of the ideas behind it are worth thinking about. But you do wonder how it could possibly be a good idea to skim all the dreamers and creators and geniuses off the top of the world's population and ship them off somewhere else so they're not doing anybody any good at home. A much better movie with some of the same ideas is Meet the Robinsons, an under-rated Disney flick from 2007.
4. The basic premise of Tomorrowland is that we (as in the global population) are in a negative feedback loop where we imagine how horrible everything is, and so it's no surprise that everything turns out so horrible. The most interesting line in the entire movie is when Hugh Laurie (or was it George Clooney?) says, "And you know why? Because if you imagine that the world is going to hell anyway, then you can sit back and do nothing." (I'm sure that's not an exact quote.) I've become less and less of an idealist as the years go by, but I still have enough of it in me that I found the basic idea of the movie to be cool.
5. Also, they nailed the comparison between the attitude toward the future when I was a kid in the 60s--when everything was all about progress and how great new inventions and technology are, etc--and now, when apocalyptic visions are eveywhere, and we don't seem to be able to even imagine a future where the world hasn't been utterly destroyed. I remember when I was a kid and double-knit polyester was a miracle fabric--nobody wanted stupid cotton anymore. Then we went through the backlash when nobody would wear polyester anything, and now we've come out somewhere in the middle, where "technical" clothing is a high-tech mix of cotton and synthetic materials, or all synthetic that has been engineered to feel like cotton. Possibly a model for the way we could handle other pendulum swings.
And just for the record, George Clooney and I are the same age and he was not eleven in 1964, he was three, just like me. Not that I would be confusing the real-life George with the fictional character in the movie, because I would never do that. (I wrote this paragraph purely so that I could include the phrase "George Clooney and I" in a plausible context.)
6. And speaking of movies and post-apocalyptic dystopias, last Saturday Dean and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road. I appreciated the amazing special effects, and the even more amazing stunt work done by people up on tall bendy-poles in vehicles being driven at high speeds, but I have to say that I could barely watch this movie. Three minutes in, Tom Hardy is already been tortured and enslaved, and the entire movie is one long catalog of ways that human beings can be horrible to each other. There were endlessly creative methods of killing, maiming, dismembering, and every other possible horrible thing you could do to someone.
I hate that kind of movie. I get that there was a great positive ending, and strong, smart women with agency and integrity, but I still don't like to watch that stuff. Fortunately there was no one sitting near us, so I did Seven Little Words on my phone during the battle scenes and looked up to watch when it was quiet. I think I watched most of the good parts. If that sadistic stuff doesn't bother you, it's a great movie and you should go see it. But if you can't sleep after watching two hours of squalor (like me), skip it. I made Dean take me out for ice cream after. :-)
7. ...... I'm a little surprised that I just wrote five Friday Things about movies, because we almost never go to the theater. So let's see, what's something totally different I could tell you about? My summer reading list? (People of the Book, All the Light We Cannot See, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Saint Anything, State of Wonder, The Ocean at the End of the Lane--got any other suggestions for me?). My search for the perfect pillow? (got any suggestions for me?) My course list for the fall (which is due this week)(got any suggestions for me?). I can't do a recipe because this has been a Costco Food Week to avoid heating up the kitchen.
*spends three minutes on Google* OK, here you go:
7. Interesting Things Around the Internet Dept: have a look at this slideshow of strange and gorgeous public art. Love. and have a great weekend.
(also, p.s. if you only check in on Tues and Fri, I snuck in an extra post yesterday about long marriages.)
2. So yesterday I went to the movie theater, where the A/C was turned down so low that I nearly froze--which I would normally hate, but it felt fabulous compared to the heat wave outside. I've done this a couple of times over the past few months, after never going to a movie by myself ever in my entire life. It's kind of fun if I can find a free afternoon for it. It's a cheaper way to see a movie that I want to see but Dean doesn't, and there are usually half a dozen or so people in the theater who are there by themselves, so I don't feel too weird. Yesterday I bought myself popcorn and a diet coke and called it lunch. And BONUS: new Star Wars movie trailer. It was pretty fabulous, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up (I'm looking at you, so-called Episode One).
3. The movie was Tomorrowland. As a kids' movie, it's a lot of fun. Gorgeous CGI, just enough plot to keep it interesting, and everything turns out well in the end. But the dialog is awful, and the moral is driven home with a sledgehammer. So for adults, it's barely watchable. Without Clooney and Hugh Laurie, it would have been a complete loss--the two of them manage to turn clunky, stilted dialog into something that you can at least sit through.
It's too bad it wasn't done in a more subtle way, because some of the ideas behind it are worth thinking about. But you do wonder how it could possibly be a good idea to skim all the dreamers and creators and geniuses off the top of the world's population and ship them off somewhere else so they're not doing anybody any good at home. A much better movie with some of the same ideas is Meet the Robinsons, an under-rated Disney flick from 2007.
4. The basic premise of Tomorrowland is that we (as in the global population) are in a negative feedback loop where we imagine how horrible everything is, and so it's no surprise that everything turns out so horrible. The most interesting line in the entire movie is when Hugh Laurie (or was it George Clooney?) says, "And you know why? Because if you imagine that the world is going to hell anyway, then you can sit back and do nothing." (I'm sure that's not an exact quote.) I've become less and less of an idealist as the years go by, but I still have enough of it in me that I found the basic idea of the movie to be cool.
5. Also, they nailed the comparison between the attitude toward the future when I was a kid in the 60s--when everything was all about progress and how great new inventions and technology are, etc--and now, when apocalyptic visions are eveywhere, and we don't seem to be able to even imagine a future where the world hasn't been utterly destroyed. I remember when I was a kid and double-knit polyester was a miracle fabric--nobody wanted stupid cotton anymore. Then we went through the backlash when nobody would wear polyester anything, and now we've come out somewhere in the middle, where "technical" clothing is a high-tech mix of cotton and synthetic materials, or all synthetic that has been engineered to feel like cotton. Possibly a model for the way we could handle other pendulum swings.
And just for the record, George Clooney and I are the same age and he was not eleven in 1964, he was three, just like me. Not that I would be confusing the real-life George with the fictional character in the movie, because I would never do that. (I wrote this paragraph purely so that I could include the phrase "George Clooney and I" in a plausible context.)
6. And speaking of movies and post-apocalyptic dystopias, last Saturday Dean and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road. I appreciated the amazing special effects, and the even more amazing stunt work done by people up on tall bendy-poles in vehicles being driven at high speeds, but I have to say that I could barely watch this movie. Three minutes in, Tom Hardy is already been tortured and enslaved, and the entire movie is one long catalog of ways that human beings can be horrible to each other. There were endlessly creative methods of killing, maiming, dismembering, and every other possible horrible thing you could do to someone.
I hate that kind of movie. I get that there was a great positive ending, and strong, smart women with agency and integrity, but I still don't like to watch that stuff. Fortunately there was no one sitting near us, so I did Seven Little Words on my phone during the battle scenes and looked up to watch when it was quiet. I think I watched most of the good parts. If that sadistic stuff doesn't bother you, it's a great movie and you should go see it. But if you can't sleep after watching two hours of squalor (like me), skip it. I made Dean take me out for ice cream after. :-)
7. ...... I'm a little surprised that I just wrote five Friday Things about movies, because we almost never go to the theater. So let's see, what's something totally different I could tell you about? My summer reading list? (People of the Book, All the Light We Cannot See, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Saint Anything, State of Wonder, The Ocean at the End of the Lane--got any other suggestions for me?). My search for the perfect pillow? (got any suggestions for me?) My course list for the fall (which is due this week)(got any suggestions for me?). I can't do a recipe because this has been a Costco Food Week to avoid heating up the kitchen.
*spends three minutes on Google* OK, here you go:
7. Interesting Things Around the Internet Dept: have a look at this slideshow of strange and gorgeous public art. Love. and have a great weekend.
(also, p.s. if you only check in on Tues and Fri, I snuck in an extra post yesterday about long marriages.)
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Long and Winding Road: marriage at midlife
I was flipping through a magazine last fall when I ran across an article about how to have a happy marriage at any age. You know how those articles work--In your twenties, do this. In your thirties, do that. la la la. For "in your fifties," the article said--drumroll, please-- in your fifties, the best predictor for happiness in marriage is a new partner.
I swear I'm not making that up. That's the best they could do? Once you're in your fifties, if you're still married to the same old partner, give it up. Find a new one, or else it's all downhill.
Long-term relationships--and I'm not talking about three years or seven or even ten, but really long term relationships, are a complex topic. No surprise there. If you've been together for a long time, lots of things have happened. You've seen each other at your very best and your very worst, because you've been there, right there, the whole time.
Dean and I are both pretty nice people. We're fairly easy-going, don't fight much, manage our day-to-day life pretty well. But still, each of us could tell you stories about the other that would curl your hair. Not because we're so awful, but because we've been together since 1981, married since 1984, and when you've been together that long, there's no hiding yourself.
You might be able to put up a good front and look awesome for a few years, maybe even six or seven, but after three decades together? Nobody is that good at acting. Just look at the math--even if I only had one total bitch-a-thon every three years, that's eleven bouts of ugliness that Dean has had to live through--and trust me, there have been a lot more than that. With the hormonal mood swings of menopause, we're lucky to make it a week.
So what's a married couple to do? Do we just resign ourselves to living out the rest of our lives in bored tolerance because we don't have the courage to branch out and start a new life? That's the impression that this article gave.
The assumption seemed to be that if you've been married that long, you've changed significantly (and that's true--we have). So there's no way the person you're married to can still be the "right" person. You're better off cutting your losses and finding someone who suits the new you.
Sometimes maybe that's true. But like I said, long-term marriages are complex things. You can't ditch the relationship without ditching years and years of intertwined experience. In sickness and in health? check. For richer and for poorer? check. Good times and bad? check. You know each other's siblings, you were there when your partner started his/her career, you've watched your children grow up. Perfectly suited or not, there's no replacing that.
I know most of you who read here regularly are in this category--some of you have been married or together longer than we have. So you don't need advice from me. In fact, several of you would do a better job writing this post than I can.
But I'm watching the marriage of some of our dearest friends disintegrate right now, and I've been thinking about this quite a bit. I listen to my friend talk, and many of the things she's upset about are things that I could say about Dean. But we're not splitting up.
What I think I need to tell her is: you just have to let go of the idea that you'd be better off married to someone else. Even though it might be true, no good can come from thinking that. Dean and I don't share many interests outside of our kids, and over the years, we've each grown in different directions. We met and fell in love when we were too young to really know what we wanted. Neither of us is the same person we were when we said our vows. Of course we're not. No one could be nearly 35 years later.
But we're still here, and we still like each other, and even if we're not the ideal partners, we are in this relationship and have been for a long time. It's our reality. We can't ditch each other to find a better-suited partner without losing all those years of inter-mingled experience, the base of solid togetherness that has taken us decades to build.
Would my friend be happier with somebody else? Would I be? Maybe so. Maybe not. There's no way to find out without destroying what we've got, and what we've got is worth quite a bit.
When I was thinking up a title for this post, I tried to decide if a long marriage is a midlife celebration, or a midlife problem, or both--as I sometimes specify in the title. I'm still not sure. You certainly can't be in a 31-year marriage if you're in your twenties, so it's a topic that's specific to middle age.
You know what it is? It's a privilege. To be with someone who has been willing to put up with me for that long, just as I have been willing to put up with him. We're pretty lucky.
Go, us. And all of you who are hanging in there and making it work: Go, us.
I swear I'm not making that up. That's the best they could do? Once you're in your fifties, if you're still married to the same old partner, give it up. Find a new one, or else it's all downhill.
Long-term relationships--and I'm not talking about three years or seven or even ten, but really long term relationships, are a complex topic. No surprise there. If you've been together for a long time, lots of things have happened. You've seen each other at your very best and your very worst, because you've been there, right there, the whole time.
Dean and I are both pretty nice people. We're fairly easy-going, don't fight much, manage our day-to-day life pretty well. But still, each of us could tell you stories about the other that would curl your hair. Not because we're so awful, but because we've been together since 1981, married since 1984, and when you've been together that long, there's no hiding yourself.
You might be able to put up a good front and look awesome for a few years, maybe even six or seven, but after three decades together? Nobody is that good at acting. Just look at the math--even if I only had one total bitch-a-thon every three years, that's eleven bouts of ugliness that Dean has had to live through--and trust me, there have been a lot more than that. With the hormonal mood swings of menopause, we're lucky to make it a week.
So what's a married couple to do? Do we just resign ourselves to living out the rest of our lives in bored tolerance because we don't have the courage to branch out and start a new life? That's the impression that this article gave.
The assumption seemed to be that if you've been married that long, you've changed significantly (and that's true--we have). So there's no way the person you're married to can still be the "right" person. You're better off cutting your losses and finding someone who suits the new you.
Sometimes maybe that's true. But like I said, long-term marriages are complex things. You can't ditch the relationship without ditching years and years of intertwined experience. In sickness and in health? check. For richer and for poorer? check. Good times and bad? check. You know each other's siblings, you were there when your partner started his/her career, you've watched your children grow up. Perfectly suited or not, there's no replacing that.
I know most of you who read here regularly are in this category--some of you have been married or together longer than we have. So you don't need advice from me. In fact, several of you would do a better job writing this post than I can.
But I'm watching the marriage of some of our dearest friends disintegrate right now, and I've been thinking about this quite a bit. I listen to my friend talk, and many of the things she's upset about are things that I could say about Dean. But we're not splitting up.
What I think I need to tell her is: you just have to let go of the idea that you'd be better off married to someone else. Even though it might be true, no good can come from thinking that. Dean and I don't share many interests outside of our kids, and over the years, we've each grown in different directions. We met and fell in love when we were too young to really know what we wanted. Neither of us is the same person we were when we said our vows. Of course we're not. No one could be nearly 35 years later.
But we're still here, and we still like each other, and even if we're not the ideal partners, we are in this relationship and have been for a long time. It's our reality. We can't ditch each other to find a better-suited partner without losing all those years of inter-mingled experience, the base of solid togetherness that has taken us decades to build.
Would my friend be happier with somebody else? Would I be? Maybe so. Maybe not. There's no way to find out without destroying what we've got, and what we've got is worth quite a bit.
When I was thinking up a title for this post, I tried to decide if a long marriage is a midlife celebration, or a midlife problem, or both--as I sometimes specify in the title. I'm still not sure. You certainly can't be in a 31-year marriage if you're in your twenties, so it's a topic that's specific to middle age.
You know what it is? It's a privilege. To be with someone who has been willing to put up with me for that long, just as I have been willing to put up with him. We're pretty lucky.
Go, us. And all of you who are hanging in there and making it work: Go, us.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Pain in the neck, plus Too Much Stuff follow-up
Remember a couple of weeks ago when I told you I was going to see a physical therapist for my neck? Part of his treatment plan involves setting up a more ergonomic computer space--and since for several years now I've spent a good part of my day hunched over my laptop, this has been too long in coming.
So right this minute I'm typing on a split keyboard--not one of those ergonomic keyboards with a raised center and an inch of space between the two halves of the keyboard, but an entirely split keyboard. I've got it set up so it's about three inches apart (a little further than in the picture), which makes it so I can square my shoulders as I sit here and type. So far, I love it.
I thought it would take me awhile to adjust to the split, but it hasn't taken any time at all. Also, in the boring-trivia-you-don't-need-to -know department, I've discovered that I always hit the space bar with my right thumb. There's half a space bar on each side of this thing and I would have guessed that I use them interchangeably, but I don't. Right thumb, every time.
The PT also recommended sleeping with a pillow between my knees. I took this with a grain of salt, because while I can see that would be a great help to someone with hip or lower back problems, how would it help me with my neck? I didn't even try it until four or five days after I saw him.
But you know, your hip bone is connected to your...spine (someone should write a song about that), and your spine runs right up your back to your neck, and it has made a remarkable difference. I'm sleeping better, and waking up without feeling like I'm eighty. I still feel like I'm 53, darn it, but not 80. Highly recommended.
Too Much Stuff follow-up:
Seems like everyone I know is dealing with clutter right now, and in her Friday post, sister-of-the-heart Debbie mentioned using her old stuff in craft projects. Oh my word, is that ever something I wouldn't think of-- you can't imagine how un-crafty I am-- but it is a great idea, so I thought I would pass it along. If I understand the process correctly, she is cutting old T-shirts into strips, which will then be knitted into a rug. *envy*
London Mabel also wrote a post about how you figure out which things to keep and which things to toss, using Marie Kondo's criteria: does this item bring me joy? Great post exploring the larger implications of how we organize our lives.
If you haven't heard of Marie Kondo, she wrote a book about decluttering as spiritual practice that is really popular right now. On Amazon, it is here. I haven't read it yet, but I've read enough about it that I almost feel like I don't need to.
And if you're looking for inspiration, I have two sites to recommend. The FlyLady is an entire internet phenomenon all to herself. I personally would not recommend joining her group or getting her emails, since they can be a bit overwhelming and obsessive (my opinion, and many people disagree). But her website is great and has lots of good ideas for how to get started and how to keep going.
And Unfuck Your Habitat (excuse the profanity). In spite of the profanity in the title, UfYH is a great resource with not much other profanity. She has checklists of ways to get started, and an entire community of people who post before/after pictures of their formerly-junky-now-spacious habitats (keep scrolling down if you're not seeing pictures). It's aimed at young people who are on their own for the first time, but still there is some great inspiration.
One thing both of them highly recommend (and I completely agree) is starting small. Fifteen minutes a day, or whatever works for you. It's too easy to get overwhelmed if you try to spend an entire weekend cleaning your whole house. You'll burn out right after you get everything pulled out of your storeroom and then you'll just have a bigger mess.
Not that I would have any personal experience with that, I'm just relaying what I've heard. Really.
So off I go for my fifteen minutes.Well, actually, I'm taking Sadie on a walk first, but then I'll do my 15 minutes.
So right this minute I'm typing on a split keyboard--not one of those ergonomic keyboards with a raised center and an inch of space between the two halves of the keyboard, but an entirely split keyboard. I've got it set up so it's about three inches apart (a little further than in the picture), which makes it so I can square my shoulders as I sit here and type. So far, I love it.
 |
| Kinesis Freestyle 2 keyboard, with separate accessory kit installed. It's wired, but I've never liked wireless keyboards anyway since it seems like they need new batteries every ten minutes. |
The PT also recommended sleeping with a pillow between my knees. I took this with a grain of salt, because while I can see that would be a great help to someone with hip or lower back problems, how would it help me with my neck? I didn't even try it until four or five days after I saw him.
But you know, your hip bone is connected to your...spine (someone should write a song about that), and your spine runs right up your back to your neck, and it has made a remarkable difference. I'm sleeping better, and waking up without feeling like I'm eighty. I still feel like I'm 53, darn it, but not 80. Highly recommended.
Too Much Stuff follow-up:
Seems like everyone I know is dealing with clutter right now, and in her Friday post, sister-of-the-heart Debbie mentioned using her old stuff in craft projects. Oh my word, is that ever something I wouldn't think of-- you can't imagine how un-crafty I am-- but it is a great idea, so I thought I would pass it along. If I understand the process correctly, she is cutting old T-shirts into strips, which will then be knitted into a rug. *envy*
London Mabel also wrote a post about how you figure out which things to keep and which things to toss, using Marie Kondo's criteria: does this item bring me joy? Great post exploring the larger implications of how we organize our lives.
If you haven't heard of Marie Kondo, she wrote a book about decluttering as spiritual practice that is really popular right now. On Amazon, it is here. I haven't read it yet, but I've read enough about it that I almost feel like I don't need to.
And if you're looking for inspiration, I have two sites to recommend. The FlyLady is an entire internet phenomenon all to herself. I personally would not recommend joining her group or getting her emails, since they can be a bit overwhelming and obsessive (my opinion, and many people disagree). But her website is great and has lots of good ideas for how to get started and how to keep going.
One thing both of them highly recommend (and I completely agree) is starting small. Fifteen minutes a day, or whatever works for you. It's too easy to get overwhelmed if you try to spend an entire weekend cleaning your whole house. You'll burn out right after you get everything pulled out of your storeroom and then you'll just have a bigger mess.
Not that I would have any personal experience with that, I'm just relaying what I've heard. Really.
So off I go for my fifteen minutes.Well, actually, I'm taking Sadie on a walk first, but then I'll do my 15 minutes.
Friday, June 5, 2015
7ToF: too much stuff, part 2
I'm pretty good at going through and culling things that I no longer want or need. The dilemma is: what do you do with the stuff you're ready to jettison? That's where I stall out. So this is to help me figure out how I'm going to handle my current round of clutter clearing.
Here are the options I can think of, with their pros and cons.
Free Space in "What to Do With Your Stuff" Bingo: Don't do anything. But eventually you end up buried under piles of unwanted junk. I've never watched the extreme hoarders TV show, but I've seen the ads. It's ugly.
1. Garage Sale/Yard Sale.
#7, the Philosophical Thing On Friday, which threatened to take over the entire post but my brain just isn't big enough to handle it. I mean, why do we need so much stuff? and I'm not being holier-than-thou here, I'm as bad as anyone.
I love my things. I have many beloved possessions--my great grandmother's Haviland china, Dean's coin collection, kitchen gadgets I could do without but that I appreciate when I use them, old scanners and printers and cameras. Shelves of photo albums. Stacks of books. Hunting equipment, fly tying equipment, skis and bicycles and hiking gear. And camping equipment. Oh my word.
What is it with Americans and stuff? If we lived in a third world country, we'd somehow manage to get by without all this stuff. In fact, from a global perspective, there is no definition of the word "need" that covers a third pair of pumps or exactly the right knick-knack for the top of the dresser in the guest room.
And yet still I buy things. It's not a good thing, but neither is it bad or evil. I'm learning to be careful--in the sense of taking care-- to not buy things thoughtlessly, just because something catches my eye or it's a good price or it's something I don't have. But you know, even though I have an entire drawer full of T-shirts, sometimes a new T-shirt makes me inexplicably happy. It doesn't make sense. As with most things, this is a work in progress.
edited to add: Our very own LondonMabel works at a second hand shop and wrote out some great advice in a comment to the first "too much stuff" post-- the link is here.
Here are the options I can think of, with their pros and cons.
Free Space in "What to Do With Your Stuff" Bingo: Don't do anything. But eventually you end up buried under piles of unwanted junk. I've never watched the extreme hoarders TV show, but I've seen the ads. It's ugly.
1. Garage Sale/Yard Sale.
Pros: You make some money off stuff you no longer want. You can be pretty sure that your stuff is going to people who want/need it, because otherwise why would they buy it?
Cons: Around here, people are looking for stuff dirt cheap. If it's over $2, they're not interested. You put a bargain price on something and they're still going to want to talk you down. Also, yard sales are lots of work. LOTS. OF. WORK. You may or may not make enough money to make it worth the effort.2. Donate to someone else's yard sale/rummage sale/fundraiser.
Pros: presumably you're donating to someone or some cause you care about, so you get to help them raise money. Also, they do all the work of sorting, pricing, running the sale, and getting rid of the leftovers.
Cons: There may not be a rummage sale at the time you need to dump your stuff.3. Goodwill and other charitable secondhand shops:
Pros: You help a good cause raise money. You drop the stuff off, and they deal with it. You get a tax break if you remember to get a receipt. Your stuff eventually finds its way to someone who needs it.
Cons: if you don't do your research carefully, you may end up supporting a cause that you don't agree with. Also, these places get so much stuff, it may be a long time before yours gets processed and makes it way into the retail area.4. Consignment shops:
Pros: You get some money back for your stuff if/when it sells, like a yard sale, but you don't have to mess with advertising, pricing, organizing, or selling. If you have nice stuff, you'll get more money this way than from a yard sale.
Cons: some consignments shops are really picky about what they'll take. You only get a small percentage of the price. If it doesn't sell in a specified period of time (90 days?), they have the right to drop the price, offer your stuff as part of a 2-for-1 deal, or dispose of it as they see fit.5. Participate in freecycling, which is a fancy name for giving your junk to someone else who needs/wants it. In some communities, this is done informally by leaving your stuff out at the curb, a known signal that people can help themselves. There is also freecycle.org, an informal network that helps you find people who want the things you don't want anymore.
Pros: You don't want it, someone else does, problem solved.
Cons: finding someone who needs your stuff can be a chore and the logistics of getting it to them can be a hassle. As with almost everything in life, your good intentions can result in strange or unintended consequences. I guess that is true of just about all of these, come to think of it.6. Throw it out.
Pros: It's easy. Temptingly easy, if you've tried any of #1-5. Sometimes it's unavoidable.
Cons: It's going in a landfill, and ours is already overflowing. Our county landfill is nearly full, and no one wants a new landfill to go anywhere near where they live. Space for trash is an increasing problem everywhere. I mean, there's a huge island of trash in the Pacific Ocean, and people have come up with ever-crazier ideas, like sending it into space.I cleaned out my closet this week. I highly recommend this, not only do you find things to get rid of, but you find things you forgot you had. I ended up with several "new" outfits from my very own closet--double win.
Aside: My advice for closet cleaning: start by taking everything out of one section at a time. Then don't put anything back unless you're sure you still want it. This results in way more clutter-clearing than just riffling through and hoping to find a few things to pass along.And in spite of the "cons" list for charity secondhand shops (#3), I will be taking the stuff from my closet to one of them this afternoon. It's got to go somewhere, and our church rummage sale doesn't take clothing.
Aside #2: Here's my other bit of advice: As soon as you're done with one closet or shelf or cabinet, get rid of the results. Because if you save it all up to take at the same time, it ends up just becoming more piles of stuff.Which brings us to:
#7, the Philosophical Thing On Friday, which threatened to take over the entire post but my brain just isn't big enough to handle it. I mean, why do we need so much stuff? and I'm not being holier-than-thou here, I'm as bad as anyone.
I love my things. I have many beloved possessions--my great grandmother's Haviland china, Dean's coin collection, kitchen gadgets I could do without but that I appreciate when I use them, old scanners and printers and cameras. Shelves of photo albums. Stacks of books. Hunting equipment, fly tying equipment, skis and bicycles and hiking gear. And camping equipment. Oh my word.
What is it with Americans and stuff? If we lived in a third world country, we'd somehow manage to get by without all this stuff. In fact, from a global perspective, there is no definition of the word "need" that covers a third pair of pumps or exactly the right knick-knack for the top of the dresser in the guest room.
And yet still I buy things. It's not a good thing, but neither is it bad or evil. I'm learning to be careful--in the sense of taking care-- to not buy things thoughtlessly, just because something catches my eye or it's a good price or it's something I don't have. But you know, even though I have an entire drawer full of T-shirts, sometimes a new T-shirt makes me inexplicably happy. It doesn't make sense. As with most things, this is a work in progress.
edited to add: Our very own LondonMabel works at a second hand shop and wrote out some great advice in a comment to the first "too much stuff" post-- the link is here.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Midlife problems: Too Much Stuff
When we were younger, we could legitimately say there were things we "needed." When I got my first real job, I needed professional clothing. When we moved to a bigger house, we needed everything from wastebaskets to furniture.
I'm not an obsessive shopper, but when I had the time and the inclination, I enjoyed shopping. Dean and I were never ones to need everything perfectly decorated right off the bat, so we gradually collected stuff over the years as we found things we liked and as our budget would allow. We've also inherited stuff from our parents, grandparents, great aunts, and the previous owners of the houses we've lived in. We've brought interesting things home from trips and received gifts from dear friends.
But now we've been accumulating things for 31 years, and we've got too much stuff. Every time I buy another pair of shoes or a new pair of jeans, I think with despair of my bulging closet. I can no longer enjoy shopping because we cannot stuff one more dang thing into this house. Especially after we downsized to a smaller house three years ago.
We're not hoarders, at least not in any extreme sense of the word. I would never let so much stuff stack up that you had to make a path through the dining room to get to the kitchen. But on the other hand, neither of us is good at getting rid of things, either. We each have clothing in our side of the closet that we haven't worn in years, but what if we need it next month?
Or maybe it has some special memory associated with it, like the T-shirt MadMax designed in grade school that was a picture of three striped columns. I couldn't tell what it was until I saw the similar t-shirt one of his classmates had drawn: OH! beech trees! (Sadly MadMax has inherited his parents utter lack of artistic skill.) Obviously we can't get rid of that.
The central areas of our home are clear and relatively uncluttered. But around the edges? We've got a mess. Closets, the back counter of our kitchen where mail piles up, the storeroom where we keep moving things around so we can shove one more item on the shelf, the corners where I stack extra books, the bottom shelf of the sofa table where who-knows-what has accumulated: just thinking about it makes me feel buried under a mountain of stuff.
It's not so bad when you can feel good about donating things to a good cause, but a few years ago I made the mistake of looking around the back of one of our local charitable second hand stores, and was astonished to find vast mountains of clothes, piles of stuff, mounds of crap. My smug delusions that at least my excess stuff was going to someone who needed it dissolved in the face of the reality of how much stuff Americans are shifting from one location to another. The logistics of relocating our junk are far more complex than I wanted to know.
So what in the world are we going to do with it? Stay tuned. This post turned into two, the second half, about figuring out what to do with all the stuff, is in progress. (Fair warning: I have no magic solutions, just more thoughts.)(so what else is new.)
(last minute note: sorry this went up late. I had it written last night but I must have screwed up the "scheduled publish" thing. Oops.)
I'm not an obsessive shopper, but when I had the time and the inclination, I enjoyed shopping. Dean and I were never ones to need everything perfectly decorated right off the bat, so we gradually collected stuff over the years as we found things we liked and as our budget would allow. We've also inherited stuff from our parents, grandparents, great aunts, and the previous owners of the houses we've lived in. We've brought interesting things home from trips and received gifts from dear friends.
But now we've been accumulating things for 31 years, and we've got too much stuff. Every time I buy another pair of shoes or a new pair of jeans, I think with despair of my bulging closet. I can no longer enjoy shopping because we cannot stuff one more dang thing into this house. Especially after we downsized to a smaller house three years ago.
We're not hoarders, at least not in any extreme sense of the word. I would never let so much stuff stack up that you had to make a path through the dining room to get to the kitchen. But on the other hand, neither of us is good at getting rid of things, either. We each have clothing in our side of the closet that we haven't worn in years, but what if we need it next month?
Or maybe it has some special memory associated with it, like the T-shirt MadMax designed in grade school that was a picture of three striped columns. I couldn't tell what it was until I saw the similar t-shirt one of his classmates had drawn: OH! beech trees! (Sadly MadMax has inherited his parents utter lack of artistic skill.) Obviously we can't get rid of that.
The central areas of our home are clear and relatively uncluttered. But around the edges? We've got a mess. Closets, the back counter of our kitchen where mail piles up, the storeroom where we keep moving things around so we can shove one more item on the shelf, the corners where I stack extra books, the bottom shelf of the sofa table where who-knows-what has accumulated: just thinking about it makes me feel buried under a mountain of stuff.
It's not so bad when you can feel good about donating things to a good cause, but a few years ago I made the mistake of looking around the back of one of our local charitable second hand stores, and was astonished to find vast mountains of clothes, piles of stuff, mounds of crap. My smug delusions that at least my excess stuff was going to someone who needed it dissolved in the face of the reality of how much stuff Americans are shifting from one location to another. The logistics of relocating our junk are far more complex than I wanted to know.
So what in the world are we going to do with it? Stay tuned. This post turned into two, the second half, about figuring out what to do with all the stuff, is in progress. (Fair warning: I have no magic solutions, just more thoughts.)(so what else is new.)
(last minute note: sorry this went up late. I had it written last night but I must have screwed up the "scheduled publish" thing. Oops.)
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