Aw. Awe. Awesome.

So, for a woman who does performance improvement for a living, reads self-help books for fun, and writes about self-improvement because she can't NOT do it, New Year's is IT. It's the time. The best time.

(To be truthful, I have also set Valentine's Resolutions, Easter Intentions, Memorial Day Meanings, et cetera, because I can find a way to start over whatever time of year it happens to be. But this is New Year's...)

So we're obviously a few days in. As you saw in my last post, resolutions can be frustrating because if you don't achieve that exact outcome, it's easy to feel like you've failed, even if other valuable lessons were learned on the journey. This was my conclusion after reading 1 billion articles and snippets about other wayfinders picking their Word of the Year. I did the same last year, and I think it was helpful to focus.

So after advice from Martha Beck, Anna Kunnecke, Danielle LaPorte and somehow I found Christine Kane as well, the advice was to focus on an adjective, on what you wanted to be as opposed to do, and a whole tool.

I'd had a discussion with a friend about a month ago about how annoying it was to read misuse of the word "awe". Honestly, I don't know if this is a grammar rule, or just our own issues with phonetics, but I'd always thought that "aw" was the noise you made when there was an adorable kitten present, and "awe" was a sense of wonder. Therefore, it's not wrong to write "Awe!" under a picture of a cute baby, but it's not exactly correct either.

(Sidebar: My cat is named Mr. Awesome partially because I was rambling aloud to a co-worker about this cat I'd seen on Petfinder named Sam and I was going to adopt him and it was going to be awesome because "Aw, Sam!". On my 3rd attempt to adopt this cat, it actually worked. So his name is Mr. Sam Awesome.)

Cat, on some hats. It's Mr. Sam Awesome!

So, I'd picked those words because they were sounds that encompassed what I wanted to be this year. I wanted to be empathetic and compassionate as well as restore a sense of wonder in the world. and as even the Foodist, Daria Pinto Rose says, I wanted life to be awesome.

But then I had my crisis of faith. What if it wasn't the right word? Also, isn't it breaking the rules to have 2 words? Even if one of them is more of a sound?

Enter BFF Lindsey. We don't always exchange Christmas presents but for whatever reason, this year we'd both found the perfect thing for each other. Of course, we don't always exchange them right on Christmas. So she brought it for me to the New Year's Party we were both attending. And it cemented my choice for Word of the Year, because it's this coffee mug:

So, here's the ritual: drink my coffee in the Captain Awesome mug. At the end of the day, assess what was Aw / Awe / Awesome during the day (I'm considering doing an Awesome journal for a while. Maybe the month of March, which is not always evident in awesomeness.) And stand back in awe...

How do we get to 2015 from here?

Ah, the New Year. That wonderful, new time, when it's okay to wear sparkles in public, and everyone feels like they can start over again. I've borrowed some rituals over the years, and I think I've finally got a system I like. See what you think.

Some earrings to guide me through the path.

Chris Guillebeau does a nice write-up on his method over on the Art of Non-Conformity blog, and I suppose I've based quite a bit of my process on his.(Heck, the synopsis on Princess Farhana's blog is pretty good too!) But I feel resistant to the goal setting, for some reason. Especially this year. I feel like I did so well, but when I look back to what my 2014 habits were supposed to be, I didn't really follow through as fully as I would have hoped. For example, I do see an improvement in communication with the "bosses", but it wasn't necessarily from saying hello. And I did some decluttering, but it wasn't day by day. It was a program, through Anna Kunnecke's Queen Sweep, and from reading the Marie Kondo book. I did write a lot more, but I have less blog posts to show for it (but man, do I have a lot of morning pages to review....)

So that's what went well, and it seems very emblematic for my life (make bold declaration, start project, through millions of adjustments you get through it, then finally look around and realize you're in a completely different place than you declared you would be). That's always the "resolutions don't work" argument, when you can't show direct results. But there was improvement! It may just be time to accept that you can't tell where the path will end or how it will twist when you start down it.

What could have gone better? There's been a lot of foot dragging at work, and some of it was my fault. This must stop. I need to work on limits for information gathering when I start a project. And I could also pick up the pace. I wish I was a little more confident. And it's probably time to shore up the education.

I do see how setting hard goals could work for some people. But it doesn't work for me. I am a chicken-shit goofy-ass late bloomer who is easily spooked and have to take tiny steps to move forward at all.

So the universe (or perhaps, Mail Chimp) threw this Martha Beck blog post in my hands this morning, and this is exactly it. The goal is not the goal! The journey is the goal. And the feelings behind the goal are your destination.

So how do we get from Awe / Aw to confidently ending foot dragging and endless information gathering?

Well, I guess that's how we write the next post.

Kondo Crazy

I am amused to see that all the self-improvement type decluttering fans have gone Kondo crazy (see, the New York Times,Chris Guillebeau, etc.). Marie Kondo, that is, the author of the book "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying-Up". But why wouldn't we? It's life-changing!

Well, it has the potential to be, anyway. I have only been folding my clothes for 4 weeks. I suppose I could jump in a little deeper water, and I intend to soon.

Her basic premise is that you reduce clutter by category, all at once, by giving respect to your possessions, handling them all (!!!) and seeing if they spark joy in you, as a condition for staying in your life. Otherwise, you thank them for their service, and send them on their way (to another recipient, Goodwill, a landfill, whatever.)

I LOVE this idea. Because to be surrounded by only things that you love... where would the struggle be? And if you needed more things, you would only buy things that you loved, right? Because there's only so much room in your house.

And I do recommend you read the book, if you are inspired by my synopsis, because there's so much more subtlety and a shocking disregard for sentimentality. "But I could never get rid of all my paper!" you think. (She gives a pass to your old love letters, so relax.) Everyone has a weakness or lame collection somewhere (I suspect it could be craft items for me. Or old journals.)

And I also love that she asks you to visualize what you will experience when you have completed the project. How will it make you feel? What will it allow you to experience?

It still feels odd, wildly throwing away boxes from new appliances (what if I have to move? How will we pack the coffee maker? This seems like a semi-reasonable question until you consider that I have lived in this house for 17 years, am not looking for new housing, and coffee makers are not especially fragile and could probably be wrapped in larger moving box anyway.) Now, multiply this thought process times 5,000, which might not even been a good estimate of the number of items in my home. Does it make me happy? Yes, or no. The end. Oh.

Ah, but what to do about the husband's stuff? She has some adorable stories about her precocious teen years, raising the ire of family members by decluttering for them, but doesn't provide a clear solution for the reader. Perhaps he will be jealous of my joyful room. Perhaps he won't notice that 10 years of music magazines stacked in the bathroom (and soaked in microscopic urine and fecal spores, if there is such a thing, which there probably isn't) have ended up in the recycling bin.

But there's nothing as compelling as a before and after picture. Here is my "sweatpants" drawer before:

(There's some shorts in there, too.)

And here is the same drawer, all refolded, with the horrible hippy skirt, random white bustier, and other non-lovable items removed:

To be continued.....

An open letter to Renee...

Dear Renee,

I am writing to you about your face. Or rather, the media attention on your face. I know, it's old news at this point, but it really bothers me. You see, we're about the same age, and I think I know what you're going through.

Charming Diagram from New York Daily News here.


But you're right, in so many ways, I don't. I've never been famous. Hell, I've never even been thin. I don't make money with my face. If I got a peel, some fillers, and a nose job, absolutely no one but my husband would notice. And he'd be pissed that I'd spent so much money to look marginally better for a very short amount of time, and that he had to do all the chores and cooking during my recovery.

But here's the thing. When you're 45, stuff starts to happen. Cheeks deflate. Eyes sink. Puffy lips have creases around the borders. One day, you see a picture of your neck and it's shocking. Whose neck IS that?

But that's kind of what makes it beautiful, you know? Wabi sabi? Shabby chic? A beautiful face decays, and you can no longer deny that you've had experiences, and heartbreaks, and that you've cried, or stayed up too late or had too many fried pickles and gin and tonics. You don't have to walk around like perpetually ripe melon any more. You can wear a ton of eyeliner, or none.

And to worry about the size of your eye, the depth of the nasolabial folds, whether there's a dark spot on one cheek, is absolutely ridiculous at this point. It's not fair that women have to report to the rest of the world about what they've done with their bodies or faces. But when you do something, and don't report it, that's not fair either.

I think that I look younger than you, because I didn't do anything to my face. Is that the contest, who can look younger? And by anything, I mean with needles or scalpels because yes, I used sunscreen and moisturizer. Sometimes, they market me into trying a new cream (I'm scoping out an undereye one right now). But for you to pretend that you've just been resting and in love is absolutely insulting. Fuck you. Admit that you're scared. Point out that the system is unfair. But don't try to tell me it's because you're in a good (read, better than anyone's) place, and just looking well rested. If eyes are the windows to the soul, well, you've messed with them, and now we're worried about your soul.

Why not just deal with the fact that there will be comment, whether you do or do not "do" anything to your face? Would it have hurt more to have heard them say you looked 45? Because there are so, so so many of us who don't have any other option.

I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm quite clear it's just a rigged system. I am glad you're happy and well-rested and in love. But you could have been happy, well-rested and in love without throwing your colleagues in their 40s into a tizzy of self-doubt, horror and shame. I am sure you have your reasons.

Sincerely,

Liz

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.