Glass half full, half-way there, unapologetic Pollyanna

Why not be positive? Is there a cash prize for all the doubters when the worst-case scenario becomes possible? Does looking at the negative improve your daily existence? I just don't get it.

And I don't think I'm a happy shiny person. But of course, none of us do. I can't deny that knowing someone thought I was cynical would bother me a lot. I do still care about what people think of me, for some reason.

I see negativity as the ultimate logical fallacy. Nothing good is going to happen, so I expect nothing good, and then nothing good happens.

Yes, yes, there's some advantage to having a lowered set of expectations, but it seems like a slim one to me. If you can readjust your plans after somethings turns out not as great as you hoped, how is that different from re-adjusting your plans when something is not as bad as you feared? Either way, the essential skill is adjustment. So why not look on the upside?

Why not wander the world thinking the flowers are pretty, that everyone probably really likes you, that it's kind of frustrating right now, but it's going to turn out okay? Why not believe that you will be in the 60% that recover, instead of the 40% that do not? Why not believe in democracy?

(I could go on and on about voting right now, but will not. But it does seem that part of the generation gap in American election turn-out is because the Millennial generation thinks it doesn't matter, politics is just theater, my vote doesn't count because it didn't go my way last time, etc. It then becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy... and I'm going on and on when I said I would not.)

You can try to argue with me, but luckily, due to nifty things like confirmation bias, I will not be deterred. 

Memory Lane

What a stupid address. Because everything and nothing always changes, and we know that "always" and "never" is usually a lie.

I walked to dinner tonight. The Fitbit demands these kinds of sacrifices, and it's no sacrifice when it's a temperate autumn evening and your destination is over the ridge, at a campus restaurant.

So when I wonder how I got so stuck, if you could gently remind me that I live not only in the town where I went to college, but the town where I was born? That would be appreciated.

In walk just short of 10,000 steps, I can walk by:

• every ex-boyfriend's college housing
• the woods where I suspect my stolen purse was tossed, but have never been able to find therein
• a most magnificent view of Kalamazoo College's chapel, and if you turn 120 degrees to the right, the East Hall cupola at Western Michigan University
• the track where a college student was killed by a mentally ill stranger in 1987, which changed this town the obvious and paranoid ways that these things do
• a ginkgo sapling growing in an eaves-trough
• Dairy Queen, and all the calories therein
• the tracks where I flipped the bike I'd borrowed from my brother, and broke its frame
• the apartment where I lived at first with my now-husband
• the apartments of many more friends, past to present
• rotten apples placed along the top of a stone wall
• smells of wood burning, leaf mold, sour water and trash
• and finally, the overgrown garden of home.

For all these connections, I don't have more plans for tonight than the dinner I already ate. It's the time when I would be getting ready for bed on a weeknight. I guess I am worrying, what if I was alone? Would I ever leave the house? Or would I just connect with these memories, again and again? Does this worry mean that it's already too late?

But it's not too late. I can go for a walk anywhere, but here I know these things, and can learn  even more. (In fact, I'm already plotting a trip to go back and see if that's really a gingko, and how to take a picture of it.) There's no need to hyperventilate. Just breathe. And besides, my Fitbit fell off my wrist somewhere, so none of these future steps "count" anyway.

Change your pillow, change your life!

I am pretty sure a new pillow would change my life right now.

Have I cheapened the concept of life change? What does it mean to "change your life"?

Right now, not having neck pain that may be traveling down my arms and making giants knots that are palpable on my scapula, according to my massage therapist friends, would be pretty fantastic. It would make every instant of my existence better. Is shopping for a new pillow less authentic than doing the work? What IS the work that would make my neck feel better?

If it makes the woo woo gurus feel better, I have consulted my inner child, and she would also like a new pillow. She wants one like the ones at the Hilton in Atlanta, when she got to go to the fancy IT conference. Those were the best pillows.

Ah, but why those pillows? Could it be that you just want to go back in time to when you made plenty of money, and got to go to fancy conferences? Although that was probably 10 years ago now, you weren't really a child then, you know. Not chronologically, anyway.

Besides, those were feather pillows, and that might not be firm enough for side-sleeper positioning. And you can't go back in time to that Hilton to steal them, or even look at the labels. You will have to hug a bunch of pillows at the store. It looks like Bed Bath and Beyond is your future, honey.

P.S. I went to BB&B and pushed my fist into every display pillow they had, because they were all vaguely grimy and I didn't want my head near them. I selected a mid-priced latex one, because I don't like the idea of memory foam very much. (I used to think it actually remembered what you were shaped like, but have since realized that's not literally so.) I have slept on my savior for two nights in a row, and my life is exactly the same, otherwise.

P.P.S. I would like to say that "I give up!" here, but you and I know that I will keep trying. 

Update: List Edition

What I've been working on:

Not really. But that is quite a useful skill, don't you think?

1. Habit Building Galore - I am finding the Lift app to be so awesome and motivating. If a habit is made of the trigger, the habit itself and a reward, Lift provides the trigger and the reward. You bring the habit. Seriously, it's a routine-changer. It is available for iphone and android. I'm currently tracking sweets, intuitive eating, morning pages, biking / walking / belly dancing, and blogging. See more below. 

2. Sweets / Intuitive Eating - I don't want to mess with it anymore. I'm just going to do what the ol' gut says. Literally. They don't call me Literal Liz for nothing, you know. I do struggle with sweet, delicious baked goods. Well, they don't really struggle...and they're super easy to eat, so I'm not struggling either. I guess it's just plain over-indulgence. I'm following the "No Sweets" goal in Lift, and only set my goal to no sweets for 5 days a week, but still haven't made it past 3 days. I'm breaking all the intuitive eating rules for the this habit because it keeps me honest. It really feels like I never get any treats, and yet, the check marks don't lie. 

3. Morning Pages - I started reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Yes, everyone else has already done this, but then you know it's pretty powerful. Yes, she does mention God a lot, but she also shoots down your "god" hang up pretty quick. The basic premise is to write 3 pages first thing in the morning, take your inner artist on a date, and get on with "it", whatever your it is. There are 12 weeks to mull it over. I've been quite good at getting in the morning pages, and it's really clarified my thinking on a lot of topics. Plus, with the freedom to write about conceptual blocks instead of blog-worthy news or personal exposition (which happens in my girly whiny personal journal), I'm using parts of my brain that haven't been to the beach in a long time. 

4. Biking / Walking / Dancing - It's the attempt-at-exercise trinity. I might run a little, starting next week, if my shoes are nice to me. Yeah, I should probably do some body-weight type exercise, but I've broken up with John Should, the jerky boyfriend from my 20s. I only do fun stuff now, guys. Maybe if push-ups become fun... I could assign them a goal on Lift, and allow myself to eat scones every day.

5. Blogging - Did you miss the big announcement? Because I kind of buried it, again? I'm going to publish every Wednesday, so I'd better have some kind of draft going to choose from. I'd like to write a little every day, or preferably, write a day, edit a day, etc. 

This does kind of beg the question, what IS this blog about? I like to think of it as the bird that gathers all the shiny bits to build a nest. And lays blog eggs. What would you like to see hatch? 

Waning, with no regrets

There are still 18 days of summer left. Yes, I am aware most of the children are back in school, but summer is not dependent on the school year, right? It ends September 21 in 2014.

I am trying to reassure myself that I didn't miss the whole thing, while running in circles inside my head. I did get the usual stuff done - a couple trips up north, some beach time, as many peaches as I could buy and eat. I did a lot of walking. I wore some cute summer clothes.

Hammock time.

All that's left to do is have some ice cream, try and wear those red sandals I really like that don't really go with anything, and maybe try to catch one more Lake Michigan sunset. By running around inside my head, I actually have less regrets than I do running around aimlessly. I think I used to know this, but I have re-learned it again.

. 

The time that Sharon Kihara made me cry.

I may have recovered from Tribal Revolution by now (it was in June, if that puts it in scale). I'm not sure I want to "get back to normal", though, because some of these things are important lessons, that I don't want to waste.

As usual, I did not take enough pictures. Or, any pictures. I did get a souvenir mug, of which I am exceedingly fond. It was the 10th Tribal Rev, and you know what? I've only been going since 2012, and have found it to be a consistently well-planned, friendly, and awesome experience every time. So, kudos to you, Blue Lotus Tribe! I'll be back. And hopefully next year, there won't be a wedding in the middle of the weekend forcing me to depart.

I almost didn't go, because of this wedding. But Kat convinced me I should, and I certainly didn't regret it. I hopped in my car and motored down to Illinois (Wheeling is NOT Chicago, by the way) for a Thursday afternoon session with Rachel Brice.

It was called White Cat, Black Cat. By the end, I was a dead cat. She is so excellent at breaking down combinations that you can feel some mastery... until she puts the music back on the correct tempo. Suddenly, you remember, you are a baby dancer, and you have some work to do. I did thoroughly enjoy the Rob Halford warm-up squats, however.

We then hustled back to the room to see if we could be helpful in any way because Kat was performing in the Thursday night show! Thursday night is usually when the troupes and up and coming individual performers dance. It was in staged in the round, with the lights dimmed but the audience was pretty much IN YOUR FACE! I would have been super intimidated, but Kat performed beautifully. Seriously, someone yelled, "Beautiful!" at the end.

There was wine and Jimmy Johns. Since I was only there for 2 days, I signed up for 3 classes (7 hours of instruction) on Friday. Rest was required.

My Friday morning class was with Asharah. I signed up for these classes in March, and had kind of forgotten what I picked or what I was thinking at the time. We were stretching, chatting, checking phones before class, and I thought, this instructor looks familiar. Then we started a vigorous warm up and she started commanding, "Right! Left!" and it all came back to me. Shimmies, Asharah Style, 2012. I love her brainy, technical and precise way of looking at dance. But that was some hard work.

Next up was Tempest and Nathaniel Johnstone. This is actually my 3rd workshop from Tempest. She is a great teacher of creativity and interpreting music, and she had her new husband and collaborator with her to help. Nathaniel had brought his instruments and played each one to that we could do interpretation. So useful! And it really does make snake arms so much more graceful if you imagine you are petting the kitties on the wall.

I had an hour, so I actually went to the hotel restaurant to eat some real food, instead of the Luna bars and bananas I had been fueled with earlier. And it's a good thing I did, because I shudder to consider how hunger would have enhanced the next experience.

Sharon Kihara was the only instructor I had never taken before, as it turns out. And what a beautiful, calming force she is. I had taken dance workshops in emotional expression before, and was kind of puzzled at how certain emotions were unavailable to me, or perhaps just too scary. Sharon somehow made it safe to mess with these ideas. It was based on the Japanese dance forms of Ankoko Butoh, and I wouldn't say we did anything particularly Middle Eastern in those 3 hours. We strolled and ran and jumped up and down in unison with another dancer's limbic system on an imaginary balancing platform. We used a 7 minute song to grow from a seed into the strongest form we could represent. We pounded the excess energy back into the ground.

It got really intense when we split into 2 groups and performed for each other. My group was first assigned to imagine we were in a box, buried in the earth, for 6 minutes. I laid on my back, closed my eyes, and felt the dimensions of my box. I eventually came to terms with it. It was my cozy constriction. And the song ended, and I realized that we do this in real life, contain ourselves in boxes that are too small, and imaginary as well, and find ourselves comfortable and resigned.

My group's next exercise was to walk across the room with our heaviest emotional burden in a backpack, regard the audience directly, and lay the imaginary luggage at their feet. Sharon encouraged us to use a real, meaningful burden. I chose my mother's death when I was 21, dragged it across the floor like a stubborn toddler, put my hands on hips and cried. I was not the only one in tears at the end. We discussed it, hugged, wiped our tears, took a break. A woman in the audience group told me during the break she was intrigued by my "performance" because it looked so different than the others, because I had my hands clenched and on my hips and the anger. I think she wanted me to tell her what I was acting out, but I couldn't really talk about it then. I was later haunted on the drive home that I didn't put the burden down clearly. I had kept it, like a broken toy, but I eventually decided it was part of me, and it makes me stronger in the long run.

It was not quite all over. There was a Friday show, but it's like Sharon's last workshop wiped my brain clean. I barely remember any of the performances (well, except when Tempest busted into the knee spins. That was pretty awesome.) I think I was still busy processing.

This was back in June. Since then, I have stumbled through a few choreography classes, drove to Grand Rapids to take a couple classes with my first tribal teacher, Carrie Susemihl, and taken a workshop with Aida al-Adawi, But I still think the most powerful dance workshop I have ever experienced was that one.

And I apologize for the sporadic nature of this blog this summer. NEW POST EVERY WEDNESDAY. There. I did it. I promised it, I shall deliver. Take that, Panic Monster.

Life hacker has collected all the tools, done very little hacking

Have you tried tapping? Apple cider vinegar? The one perfect exercise, which according to some click-bait health site, is squats? The abs challenge? Oh, everyone else is doing green juice and planks, silly me.

Topiary cats are all the rage. 

I've just been realizing that in my zeal to collect all the tools, I'm not really using any of them. Or, maybe I'm just using them ineffectively, and maybe even for the wrong job. Squats will not reform my pathetic finances, even though I had a pretty fantastic ass for a month or so there. But
apple cider vinegar did kind of attract some clicks to this blog, for some (Dr. Oz tag!) reason. 

But it's so hard to focus on just one project! And so many of these "hacks" are about removing parts of your life (perhaps they're for literally hacking, like a machete!) that are maybe a little awkward, but not exactly unsightly. I think that I'm a little more motivated by adding things. (Today's cockamamie idea: sew my own wardrobe using Built By Wendy book. Still considering this one....)

I have been doing the Anna Kunnecke's Queen Sweep for a little more than 2 months though. And I'm really impressed by it. She offered it for free, and I am the lucky girl that won even more free Mastery session. I love her outlook and approach on these things (time, money, beauty, - the important stuff). Another sign that it was destiny - she loves peonies. I love peonies, which if you are typing really fast, comes out people! And that means something, right? Even though free things can be taken for granted, I am not wasting THIS opportunity.

So I was kind of shocked to realize that some of my tools are contradictory. You can't use a hammer and drill at the same time, you know? Anna was able to talk me down from the toolbox, and convinced me that I could pick which tool I liked, using my own criteria (most beautiful and badass? fun and useful?) AND IT WOULD BE FINE TO NOT USE ALL THE TOOLS AT ONCE.

Wow wow wow wow.

For example, of all the home de-cluttering programs that I am aware of, I get to pick the one I think is the most useful and badass? (That would be most of UFYH, by the way.) I can still check out new ideas, but I don't need to keep them?

The answer is yes. Always the best answer.