The Security of Enough

After many years of living a "less is best" ethos, I'm now learning to master the art of having enough. Enough Christmas presents for nieces and nephews, enough sweaters to stay warm and comfortable through the winter, enough hair and body products to feel clean and attractive. Like a newly adopted cat adapting to the boundaries of a strange home, however, the wide open spaces feel treacherous.

I feel like the opposite of a hoarder, those sad beings we like to watch on television. I would make a terrible television show. "Do you want-" "No." Do you need-" "Probably, but get the Hell off my property." I tend to my objects with gentle, somewhat suspicious care. How many bed sheets does an individual need to feel comfortable? Happy? I don't want bed sheets to make me happy. I don't want my happiness to be tied to something I can, and inevitably will, lose.

I am mature and awake enough to realize that this isn't a search for the material good, but a sense of security. A sense of security I habitually reject rather than learn to lean on. It's made harder by the abundance and celebration of over-consumption. I feel surrounded by people who can't seem to say "no" or recognize when they don't actually want the material goods they are accumulating. My housemates seem to be constantly ordering box after box of toys off of Amazon and piling up under-used goods in the giveaway pile as their closets over-fill. Granted, this is only my perception, a perception tinted by negative experience. A mother who once shouted at me for emptying the trash because what if she had put something - she had no clue what - important in there? A husband who kept drawers packed with receipts and mysterious phone numbers scribbled on loose scraps of paper and brochures for events we would never attend. A stepmother who would go through my personal items and leave nasty opinionated notes on my most private possessions. A father who was constantly running away and ordered me on more than one occasion to grab what I could carry because we were going away and never coming back.

As an adult, I fear having more than I can carry and anything I can't find, track, and defend. It's bothersome because a shortage of material goods leads to over-use. Favorite clothes wear out faster, and a refusal to replace them leaves me looking and feeling grungy. Having too little doesn't seem to reduce clutter and mess or even make it easier to organize my life.

Having enough, on the other hand, forces life into order. It seems to answer the daily questions and soothe the daily woes. It's tidier to have enough than too little. I can't even quite explain exactly how having more possessions has cut down on clutter. A couple of months ago I bought a small umbrella that fits in my purse. I had never before purchased an umbrella in my life. Since its purchase, I have carried it every single day without fail, because it is so easy and compact and useful. I don't think about it. I've only used it once or twice, but it saved me so much time and frustration to have on hand. The tiny bit of daily weight it adds to my life is well worth never getting soaking wet waiting for the bus.

Even writing this post, I'm looking at the large shelving unit I hope to soon give away. It takes up too much space and provides much more storage than I ever hope to use. Next to it is a small bag of books and clothing that need to go to the thrift store. There are still many things in my room that need to find a new home, relics from my old life.  But I no longer crave emptiness. Only cleanliness, organization, enough...security.

Good, Bad, Right, and Wrong

Last week I read Gretchen Rubin's amazing book, "The Happiness Project." This married mother of two, something of a Jo EveryWoman, was a perfectly well off and emotionally healthy and loved her career. And yet she wondered about the feasibility, acceptability, and process of simply being happier.

I picked the book up at a Goodwill last Saturday, while jeans shopping, based on the title alone. There was no dust cover, I didn't glance through the introduction, I simply knew that this is the book I've been looking for. This book held the answer to the question I asked every single on of my friends during the depths of my depression: Is happiness even really a real thing? Or do we just adjust to the numbness, find something to smile about, and call it good?

Check out her blog and grab her book at the library and, if you want to hear every little detail from her, go ahead and read that instead of the rest of this entry. Because I've been meditating on her Fist Splendid Truth since the moment I read the words: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

I'd never thought about how a single choice could bring both good and bad feelings as well as right or wrong feelings. And yet nearly every single choice does so! Sleeping in feels good and wrong. Missing my bus that morning in order to make myself breakfast and lunch and showing up to work a half-hour late feels good, bad, and right. Getting to work on time and buying myself a less healthy, more expensive, but yummy lunch during my lunch break feels good and bad and wrong...These decisions become the basic building blocks of my personal mood. This explains my instinctive and near-obsessive desire to have a routine in place that shields me from making those decisions from scratch every morning.

Rubin actually stops at right feelings, by the way. I suspect because "wrong" translates so directly into bad feelings. For me it helps to make the distinction between bad and wrong because, as she does mention, a lot of right choices elicit bad feelings. Really, the good and bad refers to the short term effects (coffee feels good in the morning) and the right and wrong refers to the long term (too much coffee can destroy one's adrenal system). More specifically, feeling right means to feel in-step with your own character and value system.

This framework is a fantastic tool in recognizing what I've come to think of as "system glitches." These glitches are the daily choices that we take for granted even as they degrade our emotional well-being. Rubin used the example of her daily "fake food" habit. To save time and money during lunch, she would buy some sort of low calorie snack instead of a sit-down meal. Although it was a reasonably thought out choice, she eventually realized that the thrice-daily habit induced very mild, but still perceptible, bad feelings. She altered her lifestyle in a way that felt more right, and learned to trim away those bothersome bad feelings.

It's small and big at the same time. Carrying around those bad feelings junk food induces is like carrying around the empty wrappers all day and forever. Practically weightless, easy to shove in a purse, but clutter and bothersome all the same. Add to that the myriad other choices we make, and lives become more and more challenging.

Transportation is probably my most bothersome system glitch right now. Having started to track my daily commute again, I'm faced with the frustrating reality that more than two hours of every work day goes to walking to and from bus stops, waiting, and riding. Now, riding the bus feels significantly better to me than driving. It is more in line with my values, gives me time to read and decompress, and forces me to exercise. My problem isn't with the act of sitting on the bus, but the fact that I very regularly miss the damn things. Due to transfers and timing, missing one bus typically adds a half hour to my trip. I have been trying to either change or come to terms with this reality, but weather, errands, a flexible work schedule, and other people's needs are all uncontrollable direct influences on this conundrum. 

Again, driving is not an answer. The bus at least has the benefit of feeling right to me, whereas car-ownership has its own host of rage-inducing experiences and makes me feel wrong in general. A solution would need to feel right and reduce the bad feelings. Fortunately, in this case, a solution is fairly obvious. I need to get a new bike (my old bike was quite literally ridden beyond repair). I can ride my bike to and from work easily in the same amount of time it takes me to ride the bus (or be stuck in a car in afternoon traffic). While I'll miss the reading and decompression time of the bus, I'll get more aerobic exercise, which might help combat the fatigue that has been the primary cause of bad feelings in my life. I'll also save time because a bus arriving five minutes early (or my boss holding me back five minutes for a quick chat), won't tack an extra entire half hour to my trip.

I've been intending to to buy a bike for months, and a good bike for years, but the expense has put it low on the priority list. I knew it would make me happy, but realizing it might eradicate a certain amount of daily unhappiness is even better!

What seemingly insignificant, automatic, "obvious" things do you do every day that, if altered, could buoy your daily mood?

Hate Everything, Behave Anyway

"Not such a productive day today," I wrote in my Friday journal entry "just blogged, put my check in the bank, purchased Mordi's baby shower present, restocked on vitamins, washed and hung up and folded the laundry, had dinner at K and S's, hung out with Ambi...huh. Maybe more productive than it felt."

Saturday was more of the same. I picked up my room, which had developed a layer of clutter which six months ago would have been common and is now unbearable. I dragged a small shelving unit out of my closet and turned it into a bedside table. I took my guitar into the shop for set-up and repair, purchased my monthly bus pass, and went clothes shopping. At Goodwill I found four pairs of jeans, a shirt, a great pair of brand new shoes, and two books for just over $60. In the evening, I washed and folded the new clothing, spent a few more minutes picking up the room, and basically completed my evening routine for the first time since turning my focus to the morning routine. 

This morning was especially rewarding. Even though I had a hard time getting to sleep last night (for the first time in my memory actually giving up, turning the light on, and writing in my journal for twenty minutes) I woke up with minimal fuss. I poured my coffee, stretched, showered, assembled and packed my breakfast and lunch. I don't even remember making the bed, but it happened thoughtlessly, automatically. 

Paradoxically, I'm somewhat pleased to note that my mood has been one of particular melancholy these past several days. I am not zipping around cheerfully and efficiently, marking to-dos off my list with satisfaction and aplomb. Every step feels heavy, I spend a great deal of time in bed between tasks and resent leaving it for any reason. However, patterns are being established and routine is becoming habit. This is what I've been hoping for, to be able to maintain and improve my quality of life regardless of mood or inspiration. To hate everything and behave well regardless. 

How Artists Work

Yesterday I happened upon the very lovely book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Written by Mason Currey, and based on his blog Daily Routines, it provides the very basic daily habits of 161 scientists, painters, novelists, composers, and other creatives.

This subject - how I spend my time, how my daily mundane chores shape my life, why my relationship with routine is so antagonistic and how to change that - has been on the forefront of my mind. The rest of February is dedicated to focusing on my mornings (because...you know, baby steps?), but I'm well aware that my evenings have a pretty direct influence on the a.m. And my afternoons, despite being dedicated to work, are bleeding into my evening productivity levels...

It's a very definite relief to read about the many artists who seem to face the exact same wrestling match that I do, in some cases every day of their lives. Sylvia Plath wrote little pep talks within her journal entries that are very familiar, "set alarm for 7:30 and get up then, tired or not. Rip through breakfast and housecleaning (bed and dishes, mopping or whatever) by 8:30...Be writing before 9 (nine), that takes the curse off it." It's amazing that artists and writers experience their passion as a curse, a compulsion, a drive that is as hard to begin as it is to step away from. 

Pocketing The Coin

I used to flip a lot of coins. Probably three or four times a day I would ask myself a question: should I pack or buy a lunch today? Should I work ten hours or leave early and catch a show at the bar? Should I have dinner with my brother on Friday or have me time? And every single time, for most of my life, I would answer the query with a flip of the coin. Chance. I consider myself an extremely lucky person, and these little choices didn't seem that important, so there didn't seem to be any harm to the habit. Sometimes I was emotionally invested in the decision, and would flip a coin anyway.

I never consciously decided this was bad. At one point last year, however, I stopped cold turkey. It's probably been at least six months since my last coin flip. I decided to take responsibility for every single decision I make. To start asking, "What would be best? What do I actually want? What were my plans for today?" Now I reach into my pocket at least once a day, seeking the coin, and freeze. No. This matters. I'm responsible for this, however minor.

None of my friends have admitted to a similar addiction to chance in their daily decision-making lives, but everyone I know has an equally destructive excuse for deflecting personal responsibility. "I need to wind down after a hard day," say my friends who consistently stay up late and wake up almost every morning feeling sick and tired. "I don't have time," say the friends who don't cook or get exercise. An addiction to credit creates a vast array of acceptable and ridiculous excuses: "I'm building credit so I can buy a house someday," says my friend who earns $7.25 an hour as he buys $80 pants on a card with a 25% interest rate. "I want to get a good job with the state, so I need a mater's degree," says my friend who is unemployed but racking up $50,000 in student loans to get a job that pays less than his previous employment. "The IRS, or HR, or someone made a mistake, so now the government thinks I owe them some huge amount of money, so I just don't file any more. It's sucks not getting a tax refund," someone once told me. "My student loans didn't do me any good, so I decided not to pay them back. Now my wages get garnished, so I can only ever work under the table," is another. Each and every individual told me they bought pants or maintain unemployment because they had to. Someone else - the mortgage industry or the IRS or the state was to blame.

We always have a choice. Always. That is not to say that we can not be of two minds on a matter, or that every choice is easy. Sometimes making the "right" choice can mean re-shaping or even destroying every other pattern of our life. The choice to give up a car that costs more than its worth, or an impressive job that just doesn't pay enough for the hassle, or a marriage that simply is not working, can be devastating. When faced with emotional choices, the course of action I least want to pursue is often the healthiest! That's what it means to become healthy after a lifetime of poor boundaries and toxic relationships. It sucks.

But someday it gets easier. There's a point to all this. Because the IRS and the mortgage industry and the state really are jerks who really do influence our lives. In order to face that fact of reality, though, we need to have a really good grasp of the rest of reality. We need to fully grasp what we are responsible for and what we are capable of in order to face the big Bads of the world. Otherwise we'll be going into debt so we can afford a house, overworking so we can afford health insurance, sitting in traffic and eating fast food to save time, and basically shadow-boxing for our entire lives. Otherwise we might as well be flipping coins.

Day Four of Ready...um...ish?

I've been making a fairly decent effort at hopping out of bed in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, by sheer force of will alone. Experiencing sleepy, grumpy me as a childish incarnation to be mothered rather than bullied has, at the very least, altered the emotional experience of my morning dialogue.

Every morning has been very different than the one before. I've yet to hit on a pattern, method, or process that has me accomplishing my entire morning routine on schedule. It's not been bad. I made my breakfast and a healthy lunch almost every morning. Making my bed is habitual. Since establishing a routine is the first I think about upon waking, it tends to stick with me throughout the day. My entire life seems to be slipping into a pattern.

I still face a very powerful resistance to actually crawling out of bed. And I still dread doing enjoyable and healthy things every morning. Making a morning smoothie, stretching, meditation, and packing my lunch are all seemingly insurmountable daily obstacles. It has nothing to do with weariness: I could attempt these daily tasks at five a.m. or five p.m. Either way it's stupidly hard.

My only theory is that this is habitual, an emotional pattern established long ago that can only be broken by experience. The longer I wake up, do my best, and experience the benefits of such, the more accustomed I will grow to said benefits. Someday soon it will seem ridiculous not to have a packed lunch or to feel rushed brushing my hair. Before long it won't even occur to me to leave the house without taking ten minutes to stretch and center myself. 

Problem, Theory, Solution: My Morning Routine

This is my problem:

I've been setting my alarm for five, dragging my butt out of bed a little after six, and missing meditation every single day. I've also been skipping breakfast and failing to pack lunch. I have been in total, gentle rebellion against the agenda created by me for me and held accountable to only by me.

This morning I was absolutely, totally awake at five a.m. "So I have plenty of time for meditation," I realized, sitting up and taking stock of life. I felt an intense resistance to the notion. No. No meditation. Even though I like it and it makes me feel good and the people are nice and I have all the time in the wooooorld. No. Nope. Nada.

Why?

Nooooooooooo.

Everything felt so unnecessarily hard. Making my morning smoothie, which I used to do every single morning and haven't done all year, took a great deal of strength. I didn't even want to drink it! I forced myself to pack lunch. I put on my stretchy pants and packed my jeans and bus pass. I sat down and resolved not to go at least half a dozen times. And then I went.

And it was a great way to start the day. Why the Hell was it so hard?

Why is it so hard to do anything on my agenda? I didn't set up a list of major feats or goals. I have a morning routine and an evening routine which carefully outlines the most basic things I need to do to keep my life running smoothly. Neither routine lasts longer than thirty minutes, and both include necessities like showering, cooking and eating, and brushing my teeth. Stuff I should do without thought, much less outright revolt. The evening routine enables me to face the bare minimum responsibility in the morning, which should enable me to make the seven a.m. meditation, which should put me on the eight 'o'clock bus to work, which should dominate my day until the late afternoon...It's a very basic maintenance schedule. What is my problem?

This is my theory:

Mornings were hard on me as a child. I fought getting ready for school with all of my might. And Mom didn't have a lot of fight in her. I was often on the bus before realizing I'd forgotten items such as homework or a shoe. It was humiliating and traumatic and daily. I have nightmares about it.

I'm still that child every morning, who quite simply doesn't want to. She doesn't want to anything. Even the stuff I looked forward to the night before, even the stuff that absolutely must be done so my teeth don't fall out, even the fun stuff like weekend hiking trips. Even when I'm wide awake! I wake up with my claws out, ready to fight, even if there's no one here but me. Heck, especially when there's no one but me.

I've decided to change. I understand the "why," behind my early-morning struggle, and I'm ready to put it to rest. It doesn't serve me and it's all in my head. I have a story about my childhood which justifies my current behavior. Big deal. I want to hold that child, that version of me, and make up for all the fear and bullshit she was subjected to. But I also want to go to daily meditation and eat breakfast and deal with reality here and now.

This is my plan:

This is my intention: every morning for the rest of February I am going to make like Spongebob Squarepants. I will hop out of bed (after a reasonable amount of sleep) and say, "I'm READY." No snooze, no groggy inner-debate. I will experience and acknowledge my resistance, but then I will SMILE and also experience the satisfaction of meeting my goals.

I am Mom now, it's time to let her win. I will feel thankful for the care and thought I put into my day and appreciate the sacrifices I make so that my life can feel safe and secure. And I will embrace my daily routine. And it will be awesome.

Forever.

Probably. Certainly at least tomorrow.

The Drywall Ceiling

Last week I arranged to have yesterday off in order to babysit for my housemates. Luckily they were able to hire a new nanny, and I had a full day to putter uninhibited! It was kind of magical.

I worked more on the kitchen ceiling, which i fell through late last year. Just before going on my cruise my friend Ambi walked me through the repair process. I removed the shattered drywall, cutting a cleaner shape, and replaced it with a fresh square drilled into the beams. I then taped the seam and plastered over them with joint compound and let that sit for...uh, several weeks.

Yesterday I finally sanded the entire area smooth, and covered the gaps with a fine wire mesh. Treating that mesh much like the tape, I smoothed over the edges with the drywall joint compound. I also applied an even coat of compound over the rest of the drywall.

This sort of work is good for clarifying one's thoughts on independence, sustainability, and freedom. Even though I was the fool who fell through the ceiling in the first place, I'm proud to be able to do this repair myself. Maintenance and repair are among the trials and privileges of home ownership. After doing the work I had the energy to bake a batch of chocolate chip almond butter cookies, and then went ahead and cooked up a large shepherds pie. All the while I thought about what my life could look like, what my thirties could look like, what this blog could look like.

The more we do and provide for ourselves, be it home-cooked meals or home-grown vegetables, the more depth and complexity we bring to our lives. There is great joy to be found in drilling drywall into the ceiling. Many of us our fortunate to live in a time and place that, if required, our daily work can be outsourced to local contractors. But the more fortunate among us are able to do for ourselves.

And how fortunate am I to be an adult woman in this day and age, and in such a place that I can learn the skills necessary to save money and enrich my home?  So many things make me feel powerful: riding my bike to work, volunteering, feeding my family...what if I put all of my energy into pursuits that straight up gave me a feeling of creation and satisfaction? What if I invited others to join me? How cool would hat be. Where could we get in the next twelve years?

Gentle Considerations

If my posts seem overly self-congratulatory lately, understand that I am being very gentle on myself after nearly succumbing to an illness. Also understand that this blog was meant to be an honest portrayal of my life from the age of 22 to 42, and...well, here is my honesty. And, finally, I just don't know what to do with myself or this blog in the wake of last year's events.

My mission statement, which has been posted at the top of this page since its very beginning, describes a life that is no longer truly possible. I don't even know how desirable I find it any more. To own property, build a house, have children...own the most environmentally friendly vehicle available..? I respect young me a great deal, she certainly had her life together better than I do now, but damn. My faith in my mission statement started to deteriorate long before my marriage did: building a house is hard and kind of unnecessary, owning property isn't such a great deal to me now that I understand cooperative ownership and in a sense own my home already, and what can I say about children? I have four nieces and nephews within driving distance and a six-month old baby living in my house. I can be as involved with children as I like without actually procreating.

Is that what I want my life to be? Not to own outright, but simply share property, family, vehicles, and the other makings of life? From a Buddhist perspective, that's certainly a more realistic understanding of life. Perhaps I can even explore the idea that by forgiving myself the accumulations of apparent adulthood, I can better see to actual wealth-building. Or am I sticking my head in the sand?

I wanted very much to be a model for a better way of living. I wanted to prove that one could live normally and successfully without the use of credit. House, car, kids, picket fence and all...Every year I drifted further from "normal." I can't expect anyone to want to follow in these footsteps now, to be a thirty-year-old woman with no partner, eight housemates, and a prescription for Prozac.

I know plenty of people out there, however, who aren't normal and don't aspire to be. I know plenty of thirty-somethings whose lives got derailed or were never on the right track in the first place. On Christmas day last year I said to a friend, "hey, no one ever told me this, and I want to make sure you know: "Life doesn't have to be so hard." She stared at me, disbelieving, but confident that I wasn't actually lying. Two nights ago she sent me a text to let me know she had made some radical changes. If she survives, her life will get easier than she ever imagined. And she will survive.

Maybe that's what I want to write about now? Not just bucking the system to meet one's needs more appropriately, but to develop an honest and realistic understanding of one's needs? Maybe? How?

Guess we'll find out.

Organizing

I spent my weekend puttering about my room. About six months ago I painted and began a reorganization process that stalled at a stage you might call "mostly livable." Finishing the job felt akin to writers block: I stared at my space and my clutter and knew something had to be done, but couldn't figure out just how to begin.

I have a built-in shelves, a medium-sized bookcase, a large shelf/cabinet unit, and another very large and deep bookcase. I also have a beautiful little desk. Each unit was covered in books, dishes, important paperwork, knick-knacks, spare change, and other such debris. I envisioned a a tidy and well-organized area, a place for everything and everything in its place, but couldn't quite make that reality. It was only after finally forcing the cabinets into order (deciding to keep my hair products, hygiene, make-up, and medicinals behind closed doors), that I realized my problem: too much storage.

I had maybe a bookcase worth of stuff spread among four bookcases. I was using inefficiency as a tool to fill space. Once I decided to organize everything nicely on the built-in shelves and cabinet, in face, I barely filled up a full shelf of my smaller bookcase. And I have three empty drawers in my desk.

I can't wait for at least one of these bookcases to a new home. Heck, I can probably send both cases on their way, and create enough space in my room for a comfortable meditation and yoga area. I'd like a smaller bed, as well. Then this room could easily be described as open and spacious!

For too long my minimalist tendencies have been treated as a type of selfishness. Whenever things of any type or variety came into my life, I had to scoot over and shrink to make space, to ensure that my partner had "enough." Despite our tiny shared room, or other limited means, every object seemed welcome with open arms.

Now it is finally sinking in that this is mine. My floor, my walls, my bed, my desk, my books, my furniture. My life, to be organized as I see fit. 

Taking Responsibility

I was thirty-years-old, had worked for more than half of my life, had paid bills, paid off my debt, traveled a great deal, and managed a decade of marriage before realizing that I wasn't a responsible person.

I was dependable. I was also faithful and reliable. I was very rarely late for anything ever and exactly the person you might call to do anything at all, at any time. But I was not responsible.

I was reactionary. So, so very reactionary. That's why my life seemed to flash by in a chaotic blur, a series of events that seemed to happen to me and those around me. Ask me "how are you," and I would answer either with a strained, "oookay," or a description of my Mom, Dad, brother, or sister's latest plight.

A reactionary individual allows events, situation, and other people to define her life. Reactionary people often seek out events and people that seem to justify her feelings of helplessness. At the very least, they allow these intrusions, time and time again. Responsibility means to own ones response to any given event, situation, or person. To be responsible means to acknowledge that even in times of great hardship and struggle, we make choices. And many of us are perfectly capable of choosing to avoid many hardships and struggles.

My housemates' nanny quit suddenly a couple of weeks ago. I offered a certain amount of support, including short-term babysitting. After serious consideration, I even offered to shift my days off for a couple of weeks to take care of the baby while the parents are at work. I'm accepting payment, and the parents are proving very vigilant in their search for a permanent replacement. 

In the past I have babysat as many as five days a week, for free, when friends for family faced similar situations. Any financial goals - or even security - was suspended for the time being. "It's an emergency," I would groan miserably to my employer. Never mind that it wasn't my emergency. I felt helplessly trapped in a pattern of rescuing others, apparently magnetically attracting individuals who would inevitably need rescue. 

Now I own my reactions. I hate to see anyone suffer, but I no longer try and take that suffering onto myself. I respect the people in my life too much for that. I treat every adult as such.

The end result is a life that is...easy. Yeah. Easy. Having disentangled myself from the myriad dramas I'd accumulated all these years, my life is almost distressingly simple. Go to work. Pay rent. Set some goals. Actually work towards achieving said goals. Make the bed, maybe. Brush hair. Take vitamins. It's not rocket science. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and for everything to fall apart, but stability seems to have the opposite effect. Today my laundry is clean, my floor is swept, and my plants watered. I have time to read and cook a nice dinner. I even have time to babysit this evening! That is what it means to be responsible, to have put my own life in order so that I can offer help to those around me.